Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Modern apps use dozens of tiny services, so one crash can trigger a detective hunt
Because the services rely on one another, a failure in one small component can ripple through the system and make the source of a crash hard to trace.
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The sorting algorithm that just keeps shuffling
Bogosort checks whether a list is in order and, if it isn't, shuffles the whole list and tries again. It might finish on the first try—or keep going for an…
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ARPANET crashed after UCLA sent just LO
On October 29, 1969, a UCLA computer tried to send 'LOGIN' to a machine at the Stanford Research Institute. The receiving system failed after the first two…
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The NSF paid domain fees until 1995
The National Science Foundation paid domain registration costs until 1995, when Network Solutions began charging $100 for a two-year registration.
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The Wayback Machine is housed in a former church
The Internet Archive, which runs the Wayback Machine, is housed in a former Christian Science church in San Francisco. Its server racks preserve hundreds of…
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Decaying plutonium powers probes beyond sunlight's reach
As plutonium decays, it releases heat that a probe can harness for power when sunlight is too weak for solar panels.
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Damaged lithium-ion cells produce gas that can swell their casing
As a lithium-ion cell ages or is damaged, its electrolyte can break down and produce gas. The sealed casing may swell, and puncturing it can create a fire risk.
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Monitor stands push keyboards toward desk edges
The base's wide, forward-reaching legs can take up enough desk depth to push your keyboard toward the edge.
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Microwave buttons complete circuits with conductive pads
Pressing a button pushes a conductive pad against two contacts beneath the plastic, completing the electrical connection.
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American Standard Code for Information Interchange was developed from telegraph codes to standardize computer text
Standardized in 1963, ASCII let different computers represent characters with the same codes, so a letter like “A” wouldn't turn into gibberish when data…
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The $120,000 computer that became a video-game machine
In 1962, MIT students used a PDP-1 that cost over $120,000 to create Spacewar!, a game of two spaceships shooting at each other. Steve Russell spent 200 hours…
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A PlayStation 2 patent points back to Atari
A Sony design patent's references include Atari's Falcon Microbox, a little-known computer design. Patent citations record earlier designs relevant to an…
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How scientists solve impossible equations with random numbers
Monte Carlo simulations use many random samples to estimate answers when exact calculations are impractical. Scientists track the outcomes of those trials…
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The hollow needle changed where medicine could go
Alexander Wood and Charles Pravaz independently developed early hypodermic devices in the 1850s. A hollow needle provided a controlled route beneath the skin…
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A lightning rod gives a strike a route around the building
The metal rod connects to conductors leading into the ground, providing a low-resistance path for lightning current. Its job is to carry the electrical…
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Games disguise repeated sounds by changing them slightly
Audio engines subtly vary each repetition’s pitch and speed, so the same sword swing sounds slightly different each time.
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Why fixing one typo can take all day
A tiny fix can trigger a chain of prerequisite chores: updating a library, then an operating system, then formatting a drive. That kind of detour is called…
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That bright pixel on your screen is not dead
A bright pixel may be stuck rather than dead: its liquid-crystal element can keep letting light through despite electrical commands to change.
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VHS tapes had to be manually rewound before returning them
The magnetic tape had to be wound back onto its spool, a whirring process renters had to finish before returning a movie or risk a fee.
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Why your edge-to-edge screen still has a black border
The display doesn’t extend all the way to the glass: a narrow, unlit border beneath it remains visible, even on screens marketed as edge-to-edge.
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A wet touchscreen can mistake water for your finger
Capacitive screens detect changes in an electric field, not the physical pressure of a fingertip. Water bridging parts of the sensor can change that field in…
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When your Mac's trash can visibly filled up
Dragging files into the trash made its icon visibly fill up, giving users a visual cue that discarded files were piling up.
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Why broken servers get blamed on DNS
DNS translates domain names into IP addresses, and failures in that process can make a site or service unreachable. That's why troubleshooting often starts…
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Without an exit condition, a recursive function can crash a program by overflowing its stack
Each call adds another stack frame; without a base case, calls keep piling up until the program runs out of stack space and crashes.
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