AOL’s most legendary hacker built his seminal app through trial and error—the same way he rebuilt his life.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It was a small “Windows add-on program” for AOL, and it wasn’t made by a software company, but by a hacker calling themselves “Da Chronic.” When you launched it, the title screen depicted the giant ...