Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
What a screen protector really protects
A protector takes scratches and wear on a replaceable surface instead of the display itself. But surviving a drop also depends on the angle of impact, the…
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Who curved TVs were really made for
The curve mainly benefits one person sitting directly in front of the screen; viewers off to the side may see distorted images and more glare.
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The tiny switches that controlled arcade games
Arcade owners could change a game's settings, including its difficulty, with tiny physical switches on the motherboard. A pen was often enough to flip one.
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Premium computer cases focus more on airflow than silence
High-end cases often favor perforated mesh over sound-dampening foam because moving heat out matters more than muffling the fans.
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Mesh systems force internet signals to endlessly relay
Each station passes the signal to the next, helping it reach devices around walls.
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Google mapped a desert with a camel
For Street View in the Liwa Oasis, Google mounted its Trekker camera on Raffia, a 10-year-old camel.
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The first total artificial heart bought a patient 64 hours
In 1969, Denton Cooley implanted the Liotta-Cooley device in Haskell Karp while a donor heart was sought. It supported him for roughly 64 hours before…
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Vertical centering used to be a surprisingly awkward CSS job
Older layout techniques handled text flow and floating elements more naturally than aligning a box inside another box in both directions. Developers combined…
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The word podcast was coined as a throwaway
Journalist Ben Hammersley tossed “podcasting” into a Guardian article about amateur internet radio as a quick label. Apple didn’t invent the technology, but…
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Dropped PC screws vanish into thin air
A dropped screw can lodge under the motherboard, where it may cause a short circuit.
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A compression tool became a back door into Linux systems
In 2024, malicious code was discovered in two releases of XZ Utils, an open-source compression tool. On affected systems, the altered library could interfere…
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The PC Engine squeezed a console into a tiny square
NEC's 1987 Japanese system used thin HuCard games and a compact body instead of a bulky cartridge slot. Its small size hid capable graphics hardware. The…
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Why chess engines sacrifice pieces for a distant checkmate
A chess engine may sacrifice a piece because its search finds that the loss forces checkmate many moves later. What looks reckless can be a calculated route…
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Hardware bottlenecks happen when one component holds back
A fast processor can sit idle while waiting for files from a slow drive, so upgrading the processor alone may not speed up the computer.
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Task managers lack the authority to close kernel processes
The task manager can close ordinary apps, but the operating system protects essential kernel processes from being ended that way. If a critical driver…
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Resin 3D printers use toxic goo cured by ultraviolet light
A build plate dips into liquid photosensitive resin while an ultraviolet screen flashes each layer's pattern from below, hardening the object a layer at a time.
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Snow plows use heavy angled steel blades to push snow aside
As the truck moves forward, the blade redirects snow to the side instead of gathering it up.
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World of Warcraft has a secret island
Game masters use the hidden island to test commands and banish rule-breakers, away from the game’s regular players.
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How a vocoder turns voices into robots
A vocoder analyzes a voice’s frequency bands, then uses their rhythm to open and close filters on a steady synthesizer tone. The result sounds robotic because…
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Why HTML isn't a programming language
HTML structures webpage content, but it can't perform calculations or run logic on its own. Those tasks require a programming language.
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What happens when AI learns from itself
When successive models learn from earlier models' output without enough grounding in real data, rare details can disappear and errors can compound.…
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IBM once sold cheese slicers
Alongside scales and punch clocks, IBM sold commercial cheese slicers before it became known for computers.
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State machines rigidly lock software into specific modes
They define which transitions are legal, so a shopping cart can’t jump straight to shipping without passing through payment.
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How tree shaking cleans useless code
A compiler’s “tree shaking” removes code that an application never calls, trimming unused functions from the final app.
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