Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
The email worm that caused $38 billion in damage
The early 2000s internet was a lawless wasteland. Released in 2004, the MyDoom worm spread through email attachments faster than any malware in history,…
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Why thousands of websites are hacked every day
Sleep tight, website owners! While you're proudly looking at your poorly designed WordPress blog, automated bots are aggressively breaching over 30,000 sites…
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Why high-refresh screens make scrolling smoother
Standard screens update their image sixty times a second. Premium models double or triple that rate, meaning the gap between frames is significantly shorter.…
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Before Windows, Bill Gates coded a donkey game
Before he became one of the wealthiest men in human history, Bill Gates was up at 4 AM coding a pixelated driving simulator. Included in the early versions of…
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The original IBM PC had less memory than a photo
The machine that launched the global PC revolution was profoundly weak by today's standards. The 1981 IBM PC base model came with a pathetic 16 kilobytes of…
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Your surge protector may stop protecting you
That heavy block under your desk uses sacrificial metal oxide varistors to absorb massive electrical spikes from the wall. Every time it takes a hit, those…
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Why the spacebar has no label
The largest, most frequently aggressively smashed button on your entire desk is utterly devoid of a nameplate just to mock you. Since the days of mechanical…
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One modder cut GTA V load times by 70 percent
A billion-dollar studio spent years ignoring a glaring inefficiency that one guy fixed in an afternoon. The incredibly long load times were caused by the…
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Thousands of new malware variants appear every month
Because some people clearly have far too much free time. While you are struggling to update your antivirus software, malicious actors are churning out…
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Why sunlight can destroy a blank CD
Burning your favorite mixtape onto a shiny optical disc used to be the pinnacle of permanent media. However, writable discs use a highly sensitive chemical…
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Sump pumps rely on a simple floating ball to detect floods
The incredibly crucial device saving your basement from total devastation has the exact same mechanical logic as a standard toilet tank. A hollow plastic…
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Why programmers use names like Foo and Bar
Generations of students have been deeply confused by placeholder nonsense. Whenever a tutorial needs to name a generic chunk of data, they aggressively…
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What a hand-crank radio is really doing
Emergency survival kits feature bizarre plastic radios heavily equipped with a massive crank sticking out the side. Turning this handle furiously does not…
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FLAC keeps every detail while shrinking audio files
Audiophiles rejoice, your data hoarding is validated. Unlike lossy formats that permanently destroy frequencies to save space, FLAC uses pure data…
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The jet engine that needs supersonic speed to start
Standard jet engines use heavy fan blades to suck in and compress air, but scramjets consider moving parts to be dead weight. A supersonic combustion ramjet…
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Wikipedia relies on bots to keep it clean
You think human collaboration built the world's largest encyclopedia, but it's mostly mindless software janitors sweeping the floors. Bots handle millions of…
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Steve Jobs didn't write Apple's code
The guy who has a Hollywood movie made about his singular genius didn't actually know how to build the thing he was selling. Wozniak was the engineering…
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LCD refresh rates caused heavy ghosting
Remember the majestic blurry trails following your character across the portable screen? Early liquid crystal displays were so chemically slow to change…
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Why every ZIP file contains its creator’s initials
You can achieve digital immortality if you compile things correctly. Every single ZIP file in existence starts with the hidden hexadecimal characters 'PK,'…
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Why one elevator can't reach the tallest buildings
There is a strict, ridiculous limit to how high a single elevator can travel. Eventually, the sheer weight of the thick steel cables required to pull the…
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Why some rocket engines have no bell-shaped nozzle
Traditional rocket nozzles look like bells, and they are incredibly inefficient because they only work perfectly at one specific atmospheric pressure. An…
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The easiest way to crack encryption is threatening the keyholder
Cryptographers can spend years developing unbreakable encryption algorithms, but none of it matters if the person holding the key is physically threatened.…
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Inclined elevators travel diagonally up steep hillsides
When a hill is too steep for a road but too awkward for stairs, you get a sideways elevator. The cabin remains perfectly level while the entire contraption…
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Curved screens try to keep edges at equal focal distances
It is not just a gimmick for aggressive aesthetics. When a massive screen sits on a desk, the extreme left and right edges are physically farther from your…
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