200: Tech Tales Found

OpenZFS: How a Community Saved a File System and Created a Digital Guardian

20 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This narrative explores the rise, near-collapse, and rebirth of ZFS, a revolutionary file system developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 2000s. Des...

From Suburban Lawns to Bankruptcy: How a Small Engine Giant Fueled an American Revolution—Then Stalled

20 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Briggs & Stratton’s story is a defining chapter in American industrial history, tracing a century-long journey from pioneering automotive compon...

When Open Source Rebels: The Icinga Split That Reshaped Internet Monitoring

19 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The emergence of Icinga in 2009 marked a pivotal moment in open-source software history, born from growing dissatisfaction with Nagios, the dominant o...

From Regional Dream to Aviation Tragedy: The Rise and Repeated Fall of Flybe

19 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Flybe’s story is a powerful narrative of ambition, resilience, and systemic vulnerability in the aviation industry. Originating in 1979 as Jersey Eu...

OPAL: When Open Source Turned Closed: The Battle for Free Internet Calls

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This narrative explores the pivotal evolution of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, focusing on the rise and transformation of two founda...

How a High-Tech Pasta Chain Crashed in America — And What Brought It Back

18 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Vapiano, a German-born casual dining chain founded in 2002, pioneered a unique 'fresh casual dining' experience centered on customization, tra...

LibreSSL: The Digital Rebellion That Saved the Internet: How a Tiny Bug Sparked a Security Revolution

17 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2014, the discovery of the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL—software underpinning secure internet communications—exposed a critical flaw tha...

How a $1 Gamble Built a Cruise Empire — And Survived a Global Pandemic

17 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Carnival Cruise Line’s story is one of bold vision, high-risk entrepreneurship, and extraordinary resilience. Founded in 1972 by Israeli immigrant T...

Craigslist: How a Simple Email List Sparked a Digital Revolution — And Changed the Internet Forever

16 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Craigslist began not as a tech startup, but as a personal email list in 1995, created by Craig Newmark to share local events in San Francisco. A self-...

How a Salad Bar Built a Community—And Why It Couldn’t Survive a Pandemic

16 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Souplantation, known as Sweet Tomatoes outside Southern California, began in 1978 as a pioneering salad buffet in San Diego, founded by Dennis Jay and...

When Open Source Splits: The Argo CD Fork That Shook the Internet’s Foundations

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2024, a pivotal moment in open-source history unfolded when Argo CD, a critical continuous delivery tool used to deploy and manage applications acr...

How a Suit Dressed Presidents, Fought Time, and Cheated Death

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Brooks Brothers, founded in 1818 by Henry Sands Brooks, became a cornerstone of American menswear through an unwavering commitment to quality, innovat...

The OpenGrep Rebellion: How a Licensing Change Sparked a Fork in the Heart of Open Source

14 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This narrative explores the dramatic split between Semgrep, Inc. and the open-source community that led to the creation of OpenGrep, a fork born from ...

How a Venice Beach Gym Became a Global Fitness Revolution—And Survived Collapse

14 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gold's Gym began in 1965 as a modest, no-frills gym in Venice Beach, founded by Joe Gold, a former bodybuilder and merchant marine with a passion ...

From Lawsuit to Liberation: The Zotero Story of Open-Source Triumph

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Zotero, a free and open-source reference management software, has empowered millions of students, researchers, and individuals to master their informa...

When Free Software Gets a Price Tag: The Rocket.Chat Controversy That Shook Open Source

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rocket.Chat, once celebrated as a beacon of open-source collaboration, became the center of a major controversy in 2023 when its parent company shifte...

How J.Crew Went from Preppy Icon to Bankruptcy and Back

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

J.Crew’s journey from a 1947 door-to-door clothing operation to a defining force in American fashion illustrates the profound impact of consumer beh...

How React Redefined the Web: The Invisible Code Behind Your Favorite Apps

12 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

React, developed by Facebook engineer Jordan Walke in 2011, revolutionized web development by introducing a component-based architecture and a virtual...

How a Fitness Tech Pioneer Spun Out of Control

12 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Flywheel Sports emerged in 2010 as a revolutionary force in boutique fitness, co-founded by Ruth Zukerman, a key architect of SoulCycle’s success. S...

Scikit-learn: The Silent Machine Learning Genius Behind Your Daily Tech

11 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode explores the profound impact of Scikit-learn, a powerful open-source machine learning library that quietly shapes everyday digital experi...

How California Pizza Kitchen Reinvented Pizza—And Then Fought to Survive

11 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) emerged in 1985 as a culinary innovator, founded by two lawyers, Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield, who reimagined pizza w...

From Frustration to Fame: The Homebrew Revolution

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of '200: Tech Tales Found' dives into the fascinating story of Homebrew, a powerful open-source package manager that transformed ...

From Kitchen Table to Bankruptcy: How a For-Profit University Promised Dreams and Delivered Debt

10 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

National American University (NAU), founded in 1941 as the National School of Business in Rapid City, South Dakota, began as a modest institution offe...

From Sci-Fi to Server Rooms: The Magical Automation of Ansible

09 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of 'Tech Tales Found' dives into the fascinating origin, evolution, and impact of Ansible — an open-source automation tool with...

How a Founder's Flu Sparked a Tech Empire — and a Reputation War

09 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Yelp emerged in 2004 from a simple frustration: co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman couldn’t find a reliable doctor online while sick. Initially conceived ...

Debian: The Hidden Powerhouse Behind Your Digital Life

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Debian, a Linux distribution born from one student's frustration in 1993, has grown into a foundational force powering much of the modern digital ...

How a Rotisserie Chicken Empire Crumbled Under Debt, Greed, and Broken Promises

08 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Boston Market, originally Boston Chicken, began in 1985 as a small Massachusetts restaurant offering home-style meals centered on rotisserie chicken, ...

From Air Mattresses to a $100 Billion Empire: The Unlikely Rise of Airbnb

07 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Airbnb’s story begins in 2007 San Francisco, where roommates Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia, struggling to pay rent, rented out air mattresses in their...

GeoCities: The Digital Frontier That Shaped the Modern Web

07 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode dives deep into the rise and fall of GeoCities, one of the earliest and most iconic platforms that gave ordinary people their first taste...

From Chaos to Code: The Explosive Birth of Git

06 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode dives deep into the origin and evolution of Git, the revolutionary version control system that quietly powers nearly every digital produc...

Podman: The Container Champion Redefining Security and Simplicity

05 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Podman, an open-source container management tool developed by Red Hat, has emerged as a powerful alternative to Docker, offering a daemonless architec...

From Billion-Dollar Vision to Financial Ruin: The InfoSpace Saga

05 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is the gripping story of InfoSpace, once hailed as the next Microsoft, which soared to a $31 billion valuation during the dot-com boom before col...

From Mailing Lists to Billions: The Explosive Rise and Collapse of CMGI

04 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of '200: Tech Tales Found' dives into the dramatic story of CMGI, a company that transformed from a humble college mailing list b...

Apache HTTP Server: The Digital Titan That Built the Internet

04 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Apache HTTP Server, often simply called Apache, is one of the most influential technologies in internet history. Born from necessity in the mid-19...

How BEA Systems Built the Invisible Internet Backbone That Powers Your Daily Life

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

BEA Systems was a revolutionary tech company that built the invisible infrastructure enabling seamless digital transactions, from online banking to fl...

Nginx: The Silent Engine Powering the Internet’s Biggest Sites

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode delves into the fascinating journey of Nginx, an open-source web server that quietly powers a massive portion of the internet. Initially ...

Exodus Communications: The $32 Billion Giant That Vanished Overnight

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Exodus Communications was a pioneering force in the early internet, providing critical colocation and web hosting services that powered some of the er...

From Facebook's Inbox to Netflix Streams: The Untold Power of Apache Cassandra

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Apache Cassandra began as a revolutionary solution to Facebook’s inbox crisis in the mid-2000s, when traditional databases couldn’t handle the exp...

From IPO to Ashes: The Sock Puppet Saga of Pets.com

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Pets.com emerged during the dot-com bubble, a time of wild optimism and reckless investment in internet startups. Founded in 1998 with the backing of ...

Kitty: The Terminal Emulator That’s Redefining Speed and Style

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode dives into the story of Kitty, a groundbreaking GPU-accelerated terminal emulator created by Kovid Goyal, also known for developing the p...

From Virtual Farms to Billion-Dollar Bets: The Rise and Reinvention of Zynga

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Zynga emerged in 2007 as a pioneer of social gaming, revolutionizing how people interacted online through simple yet addictive games like 'FarmVil...

How Hugging Face Transformers Quietly Took Over Your Digital Life

31 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hugging Face Transformers have become the invisible yet powerful force behind many of today's most intuitive digital experiences. Originally found...

Chromium Chronicles: The Hidden Engine Powering Your Digital Life

30 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Chromium is the unsung hero of the modern internet — a powerful, open-source browser engine that silently powers most of the web experiences we take...

From Digital Guardian to Global Fugitive: The Wild Life of John McAfee

29 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This gripping narrative explores the extraordinary life of John McAfee, the founder of McAfee Associates, a company that revolutionized cybersecurity ...

NixOS: The Secret Software Revolution Keeping Your Digital Life Afloat

29 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode dives into the revolutionary world of NixOS, an operating system born from academic research that's now quietly transforming how soft...

Webvan: The Billion-Dollar Dream That Crashed Before Its Time

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1990s, amid the frenzy of the dot-com bubble, Webvan emerged with a bold vision: to revolutionize grocery shopping by delivering orders wi...

MySQL: The Digital Hero Behind Your Favorite Websites and Billion-Dollar Battles

28 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of '200: Tech Tales Found' dives into the rich, dramatic history of MySQL, the open-source relational database that silently powe...

VerticalNet: From $10 Billion Dream to Digital Dust

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 90s, VerticalNet emerged as a pioneering force in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, transforming niche trade publishing into digital ...

From Jazz to Code: The Hidden Power Behind Your Favorite Websites

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Django, a powerful and widely-used web framework, was born not in a Silicon Valley startup but in the high-pressure newsroom of the Lawrence Journal-W...

How GeoCities Built the Internet’s First Wild, Colorful Communities

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode explores the groundbreaking impact of GeoCities, a pioneering platform that gave ordinary people their first taste of online self-express...

Gogs: The Lightweight Code Keeper That Sparked a Tech Family Feud

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gogs is a lightweight, open-source, self-hosted Git service that empowers individuals and small teams to manage their code with full control, minimal ...

How eToys Promised Joy and Delivered Heartbreak: The $7.8 Billion Toy Catastrophe

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1990s, as the internet was still in its infancy, entrepreneur Toby Lenk saw an opportunity to revolutionize holiday shopping with eToys, a...

LightGBM: The Speedy Brainpower Behind Smarter Tech

25 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode explores the remarkable impact of LightGBM, a powerful machine learning tool designed for speed and efficiency in handling massive datase...

How a Tiny Ad Network Transformed Mobile Phones into Profit Machines

24 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AdMob, founded by Omar Hamoui in 2006, revolutionized mobile advertising by creating a self-serve platform that allowed developers to monetize free ap...

From Video Game Cheats to Cloud Revolution: The Packer Story

24 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of Tech Tales Found explores the fascinating origin story of Packer, a powerful open-source tool that transformed cloud computing. Develo...

TimescaleDB: The Hidden Hero Behind Your Smart Devices and Global Markets

23 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

TimescaleDB is a powerful open-source time-series database that has quietly become essential in managing the vast streams of data generated by smart d...

Epinions: The Rise, Ruin, and Revolt of the First Review Giant

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Epinions emerged in 1999 as a revolutionary platform for user-generated product reviews, aiming to give everyday consumers a voice. Founded by seasone...

From Side Project to $6 Billion: The Grafana Data Revolution

22 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Grafana began as a side project by developer Torkel Ödegaard in 2014, born from a desire to make data visualization more intuitive and beautiful. Fru...

From Dot-Com Ashes to Amazon Empire: The Secret Robot Revolution

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 2003, Kiva Systems emerged from the wreckage of Webvan's dot-com collapse with a groundbreaking idea: instead of workers walking miles in wareh...

From Airplane Sketch to AI Powerhouse: The Neo4j Story

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Neo4j, a revolutionary graph database, emerged from a 2003 frustration during a flight when co-founder Emil Eifrem envisioned a new way to manage inte...

From Pie Shop Sketch to Tech Titan: The Compaq Revolution and Its Dramatic Demise

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Compaq's journey began not in a tech hub but in a Houston pie shop, where three disillusioned managers sketched their future on a placemat—nearl...

Neovim: The Revolutionary Text Editor Born from Rebellion

20 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Neovim emerged in 2014 as a bold fork of the legendary text editor Vim, driven by a community frustrated with its outdated architecture and resistance...

From $850M to $1M and Back: The Wild Ride of Bebo

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bebo began as a quirky social network created by Michael and Xochi Birch in 2005. It quickly became a cultural phenomenon, especially among teenagers ...

Emacs: The Text Editor That Sparked a Digital Revolution

19 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode dives deep into the origins, evolution, and cultural impact of Emacs, one of the most powerful and controversial text editors in computin...

Kozmo.com: The Free Delivery Dream That Burned $250 Million

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1990s, Kozmo.com emerged as a revolutionary on-demand delivery service promising anything—from candy bars to DVDs—delivered to your do...

PostgreSQL: The Unsung Hero Powering Your Digital Life

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of '200: Tech Tales Found', hosts Amanda and Jason explore the fascinating history and global impact of PostgreSQL—commonly ...

How iWon.com Paid You to Browse: The Dot-Com Gamble That Almost Worked

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1990s, during the height of the dot-com boom, iWon.com emerged as a revolutionary—and wildly extravagant—web portal that paid users ca...

Phoenix Framework: The Secret Engine Behind Real-Time Web Magic

17 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Phoenix is a high-performance, open-source web framework built using Elixir, designed to deliver real-time, scalable, and resilient web applications. ...

From Hostile Takeovers to Cloud Comebacks: The PeopleSoft Saga

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this gripping episode of '200: Tech Tales Found,' hosts Amanda and Jason unravel the dramatic rise and turbulent fall of PeopleSoft, once a...

Terraform: From Open Source Darling to Licensing Drama and AI Dreams

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Terraform, an open-source infrastructure-as-code tool developed by HashiCorp, revolutionized how businesses manage cloud resources by enabling automat...

From Vision to Soundtrack: The Pandora Story That Changed Music Forever

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This story explores the rise of Pandora, an internet radio service that revolutionized music discovery through its groundbreaking Music Genome Project...

FastAPI: The Speedy Python Framework Revolutionizing Modern Web Development

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

FastAPI, a modern, high-performance web framework for building APIs in Python, has rapidly gained popularity due to its speed, ease of use, and automa...

How Digital Insight Quietly Revolutionized Your Bank Account

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This podcast episode dives into the untold story of Digital Insight, the company that transformed online banking from a futuristic dream into an every...

Caddy: The Web Server That Simplified the Internet's Chaos

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Caddy is a modern, open-source web server designed to simplify the often complex and frustrating process of hosting websites. Developed by Matthew Hol...

eStyle.com: The Virtual Fitting Room That Burned Bright and Crashed Hard

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the heady days of the dot-com boom, eStyle.com emerged as a dazzling digital dream — a high-fashion utopia promising to revolutionize shopping wi...

Consul: The Silent Architect Behind Your Digital Life

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the vast, interconnected world of modern technology, where millions of services—from streaming platforms to banking apps—must communicate seaml...

From Rebellion to Billions: The Anthropic AI Revolution

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Anthropic's story begins with a dramatic exit from OpenAI in 2021, driven by deep concerns over the direction of artificial intelligence. Founders...

Nomad: The Digital Traffic Cop Keeping Chaos at Bay

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

HashiCorp Nomad is a powerful workload orchestrator that helps companies manage complex software environments by efficiently scheduling and deploying ...

From Dot-Com Darling to Digital Relic: The Explosive Saga of eCompany.com

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

eCompany.com emerged in the mid-90s as a revolutionary force during the internet’s formative years. Founded by Craig Kanarick and Jeff Dachis, it wa...

Electron: The Hidden Engine Powering Your Favorite Desktop Apps

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Electron, originally born as Atom Shell in 2013 by GitHub engineer Cheng Zhao, revolutionized desktop software development by enabling apps to run sea...

From Dot-Com Dream to Digital Health Reality: The Rise, Fall, and Reinvention of Healtheon/WebMD

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is the gripping tale of two visionary entrepreneurs—Jim Clark and Jeff Arnold—and their tumultuous journey through the dot-com boom and bust ...

WireGuard: The Digital Guardian Revolutionizing Online Privacy

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

WireGuard emerged from a single developer’s frustration with outdated, complex Virtual Private Network (VPN) protocols and evolved into a revolution...

CKS Group: The Digital Dream That Soared and Imploded

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 1990s, three former Apple executives—Bill Cleary, Mark Kvamme, and Tom Suiter—founded CKS Group, a pioneering digital agency that hel...

From Startup Spark to Internet Backbone: The Untold Story of Ruby on Rails

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ruby on Rails began as a solution to a real-world problem faced by David Heinemeier Hansson while building Basecamp. Inspired by the elegance of the R...

From Parking Tickets to Bankruptcy: The Explosive Saga of GovWorks

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

GovWorks was a dot-com era startup born from frustration over a forgotten parking ticket. Founded in 1998 by childhood friends Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and...

From Rebellion to Reliability: The MariaDB Revolution Behind the Digital World

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

MariaDB emerged from a crisis in the open-source world when concerns arose over Oracle's acquisition of MySQL, its predecessor. Born as a 'for...

Onsale.com: The Online Auction Giant That Predated eBay and Paved the Way

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Onsale.com was a groundbreaking online auction platform that launched in 1995, five months before eBay, and pioneered the concept of selling surplus i...

Laravel: The Framework That Secretly Built Your Favorite Websites

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Laravel is far more than just another web development framework—it's a digital revolution that quietly powers a massive chunk of the internet. B...

From Vision to Vapor: The Tragic Tale of Joost, the Streaming Dream That Vanished

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the mid-2000s, Joost emerged as a bold challenger to traditional television, promising to deliver high-quality, legal streaming content via peer-to...

Svelte: The Secret Sauce Behind Faster, Smarter Websites

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of '200: Tech Tales Found' explores the rise of Svelte, a revolutionary front-end framework that's transforming how websites ...

Flooz.com: The Digital Currency That Vanished in a Cloud of Fraud

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the late 1990s, amid the dot-com boom, two entrepreneurs envisioned a safer, more convenient way to spend online through Flooz.com—a digital curr...

Ubuntu: The Unseen Revolution That Powered the Digital World

05 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode explores the fascinating and often dramatic story behind Ubuntu, an open-source operating system that quietly transformed the tech landsc...

How a $6.7 Billion Tech Giant Imploded and Changed the Internet Forever

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Excite@Home was born from a high-stakes merger between two ambitious companies—At Home Network, which sought to deliver broadband via cable lines, a...

SQLite: The Tiny Tech Giant Powering Your Daily Digital Life

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

SQLite, a self-contained, serverless database engine, quietly powers much of the modern digital world. Born from necessity in 2000 by developer D. Ric...

From Ethernet Pioneers to Corporate Ghosts: The 3Com Saga

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of '200: Tech Tales Found' dives into the rise, dominance, and eventual disappearance of 3Com, a company that laid the foundation...

MongoDB: The Flexible Giant That Redefined Data Storage

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of '200: Tech Tales Found' explores the compelling story behind MongoDB, a database that revolutionized how developers manage dat...

From Flu to Fortune: The Unfiltered Rise of Yelp

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of '200: Tech Tales Found' dives deep into the origin, evolution, and impact of Yelp, a platform that transformed how consumers i...

Phabricator: The Super-Toolbox That Redefined Code Collaboration

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Phabricator began as an internal tool at Facebook, crafted by Evan Priestley during a 2007 hackathon to solve the inefficiencies of code review. What ...

From Napkin to Bankruptcy: The Shocking Rise and Fraud of WorldCom

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is the story of WorldCom, a telecom giant that rose from humble beginnings in a Mississippi coffee shop to become one of the largest companies in...

ONNX: The Secret Language That Lets AI Speak to the World

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a world where artificial intelligence is everywhere—from your phone’s camera to life-saving medical diagnostics—an invisible force ensures th...