Darknet Diaries · Tuesday, July 7, 2026
Nick Merill, a guest on Darknet Diaries, recounts his early experiences with computers and the internet, starting with discovering 2600 magazine at age 14. At 20, he leveraged a small inheritance to start one of the first internet service providers (ISPs) in New York City, called Calix.
“I grew up in New York City. At some point I was in Grand Central Station, the famous Grand Central Station, and they had an amazing newsstand back then that had like thousands of titles. And I had some time to kill before this train came, and I was looking around and I found this little tiny magazine called 2600 magazine. Hacker magazine.”
“And I ended up starting one of the first internet service providers in New York City.”
“Yep, this was in my my very first apartment on East 10th Street in the East Village in Manhattan. And my apartment had an old, no longer working fireplace that was wasted space because you could never have a fire in it. And the chimney was plugged up. But I filled that space with a bunch of modems.”