David Kalat Brg

September 10, 2024 | Legaltech News

Honeypots are designed to trick hackers into exposing themselves. The first known use of such a trap occurred in the mid-1980s, when a $0.75 discrepency exposed an international cadre of spies attempting to steal military secrets about the fabled "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

August 19, 2024 | Legaltech News

The first attempt at offering commercially available email encryption software found its distributor charged with trafficking in illegal arms.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

July 08, 2024 | Legaltech News

Any discussion of arguably the most impressive database system of the 20th Century inevitably involves giggle-inducing names and veers towards Not Safe for Work connotations. Richard "Dick" Pick, creator of GIRLS and the father of Reality, would not have had it any other way.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

June 03, 2024 | Legaltech News

The first chatbot, ELIZA, was created by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the 1960s as a Rogerian-style "psychotherapist" using natural language communication.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

May 07, 2024 | Legaltech News

Hacking may seem like a current phenomenon, but in the 1830s, a pair of brothers managed to carry on a scheme of hijacking the French national telecommunications network for two years before being caught.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

April 04, 2024 | Legaltech News

The seeds of what would become the FCC had been planted in the waning hours of April 14, 1912, when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. Senators were disquieted to learn just how closely modern telecommunications technology had come to averting the disaster—if only it had actually been used properly.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

March 05, 2024 | Legaltech News

Related to a pioneering line of portable computers in the early 1980s, the phrase "Osborne Effect" took root to describe the phenomenon of current technology being prematurely abandoned in anticipation of a future upgrade.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

February 07, 2024 | Legaltech News

Fantastic technological leaps forward may be possible, but they leave behind a frustrated base of users invested in abandoned tech. One such example in the 1970s was the rise of 32-bit memory structures, which threatened to render the existing suites of 16-bit-based software code obsolete.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

January 03, 2024 | Legaltech News

In the early 2000s, the now-defunct Pay-By-Touch was the first service to offer payment via a fingerprint registered with a biometric recognition system. Privacy concerns related to the massive database of fingerprints the company left behind would eventually inspire legislation like BIPA.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

December 11, 2023 | Legaltech News

The original Y2K was resolved thanks to an estimated $100 billion worth of diligent effort by dedicated computer engineers dutifully rewriting affected code behind the scenes. A similar issue will arise in 2038—the Y2K38 problem, as it were—and will yield to the same solution.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read