Background Image
 

Tedium. The newsletter all your other newsletters look up to.

Since 2015, Ernie Smith's Tedium has been hunting for the end of the long tail, and we've yet to find it. But we'd sure love it if you followed us on our journey. Especially now that we're ten friggin' years old and we're still using a Street Fighter II slogan as our subscribe button. Validate the use of obscure video game slang as a successful subscription strategy. Click the button.

 

 Check out our latest attention ploys 

My Portable Heater
The Latest

My Portable Heater

This new eGPU barely works in Linux, gets quite hot, and is based on tech gamers already rejected. So why am I so excited about it?

By Ernie Smith • June 10, 2026
 About  Archives  Sponsor Us Support Us On Ko-Fi
Follow Us
Mastodon Bluesky Twitter

Copping My Style

Can you legally protect an artistic style? Not currently, but an Adobe-backed bill, a seeming reaction to AI, is pitching the idea. Personally, I see a bunch of blurred lines.

By Ernie Smith • June 6, 2026

One &udm After Another

Google made everyone mad again, so another wave of people just learned about &udm=14. Maybe we should all take the hint.

By Ernie Smith • May 30, 2026

The $500 Price Increase

Plex sends a message to the self-hosting community with a massive upcharge targeted at the very people who hate monthly fees.

By Ernie Smith • May 21, 2026

The Biz Reaper

If Byron Allen shows up at your door, you did something wrong with your media business. And BuzzFeed has a visitor. Also: I built a thing.

By Ernie Smith • May 13, 2026

The Bold Ones Win

We lost Ted Turner, a patron saint of Tedium, just as an entrepreneur made an audacious Turner-style bet. What can we learn from that?

By Ernie Smith • May 7, 2026

Reinventing the Wheel

You’ve probably heard it’s futile, but that hasn’t stopped plenty from trying—some successfully, shockingly.

By John Ohno • May 3, 2026

When The Bill Comes Due

Be wary of the cool new AI tools Anthropic and OpenAI are throwing—because you’ll eventually get stuck with the bill. (By the way, did you know there are cheaper options?)

By Ernie Smith • April 28, 2026

A Plethora of Tweezers

Pondering the way that tweezers isolate things at a small scale, and the fact that you can take an aptitude test to show that you can tweeze with the pros.

By Ernie Smith • April 23, 2026

The Scapegoat

Yes, AI is changing things in the corporate world, but let’s be clear: The humans are driving the actual change. McClatchy proves it.

By Ernie Smith • April 21, 2026
Want more? Check the archives! ⮕