Operating systems, infrastructure, emulation, and technical history.
Bash, Zsh, and sh accept most of the same commands, which is exactly what makes their real differences easy to miss until a script breaks.
A colorful prompt showing git branch and exit code is not a separate program — it is a string the shell re-evaluates before every command.
An unquoted variable works in testing, then silently breaks the first time its value contains a space — the single most common shell scripting bug.
Terminal and shell are separate programs linked by a kernel pty: one renders characters and handles input, the other interprets commands.
Full-screen terminal apps like htop and vim redraw the screen selectively and read keystrokes one at a time. This is the library layer that makes it possible.
A forensic account of the dot-com boom, its long collapse, and why real innovation coexisted with prices that outran plausible profits.
The 2014 Alamogordo dig recovered cartridges spanning 59 different titles, not just E.T. — evidence of a market-wide inventory purge.
BBSes, Usenet, FTP, and IRC were moving files between strangers a decade or more before Napster's 1999 launch. What Napster actually added.
One is a network of networks from the 1970s-80s; the other is a hypertext application built on top of it in 1990. The difference still matters.
Why Y2K remediation, documented failures, and government testing show the bug was real—and why a quiet January 1 was evidence of preparation, not a hoax.