Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Why cloud gaming can't outrun the speed of light
Corporate marketing loves to promise seamless remote rendering, completely ignoring the fundamental laws of astrophysics. Pressing a button sends an…
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Why the Xbox 360's green ring was so affordable
That iconic glowing green ring of light wasn't entirely a stylistic choice; it was a frugal one. At the time of manufacturing, green light-emitting diodes…
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When code behaves like a duck, types don't matter
Instead of rigidly defining what type of data a variable is supposed to hold, duck typing takes a violently laid-back approach. If a piece of code walks like…
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Most humans entirely ignore the middle click on their mice
Engineers gave us a magical third button, and society collectively decided to just roll it instead. While the scroll wheel is universally loved, physically…
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Yahoo was almost named after its founders
The titans of the early internet possessed the marketing instincts of two guys running a lemonade stand. Before adopting the Yahoo acronym, the founders…
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Acoustic foam absorbs sound by trapping air in pores
The expensive spiky foam squares plastered all over podcast studios do not magically destroy echoes. They simply force aggressive sound waves to navigate a…
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Why changing a domain name takes so long
Changing where a website points is essentially asking the entire planet to update their contact lists. Because domain records are heavily cached globally to…
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Radio frequency tags operate without internal power
They are the ultimate parasites of the electromagnetic spectrum. They aggressively hijack the invisible wave energy broadcasted from the scanner just to…
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How programmers move individual bits
When standard arithmetic is too slow, hardcore engineers use 'Bitwise Operators'. These commands bypass decimal numbers entirely, ripping data open and…
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Empty PDF documents contain hundreds of metadata bytes
You might think a blank document equals zero bytes, but portable document formats are bureaucratic nightmares. Even without a single drop of text, they…
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Why Amazon chose the name Alexa
You aren't shouting at a human; you're shouting at a linguistic exploit. Engineers chose the name Alexa not for its poetic ring, but because the hard 'X'…
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Digital clocks use a century-old number design
Those blocky, angular digital numbers you see on every modern microwave and alarm clock were actually patented over a century ago. We have spent an entire era…
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Linux kernel contains over thirty million lines of code
What started as an unassuming student's weekend hobby project is now a bloated, gigantic monolith. It inexplicably powers almost every modern web server on…
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The Walkman was built for listening together
Sony initially believed that listening to music alone was profoundly rude. The first Walkman came equipped with dual jacks and an orange 'hotline' button that…
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The game that turned a real cave into text
One of the foundational experiences in digital entertainment was incredibly grounded in boring reality. The creator was an avid spelunker who simply…
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The dictionary word for life outside the internet
To perfectly differentiate between our glorious, escapist virtual worlds and the miserable physical reality we actually inhabit, cyber-enthusiasts coined an…
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The solid that is lighter than air
Just when aerogel thought it was the lightest material in the room, a bunch of interconnected carbon tubes ruined its day. Aerographite is a synthetic foam…
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Pinball once had no flippers
Before someone finally realized players actually wanted to interact with the game, early pinball was just organized gambling. You simply pulled a plunger and…
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Your old TV could reveal echoes of the Big Bang
Tuning an old analog television to a dead channel unleashes a violent storm of black and white fuzz. A small but measurable percentage of that chaotic snow is…
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The blood-bank pioneer who died because of racism
In a display of horrifying irony, the man who developed large-scale plasma storage was left to bleed out. Charles Drew, an African American surgeon whose work…
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How solid-state batteries avoid flammable liquid
Because carrying a pouch of highly flammable liquid electrolyte in your pocket was always a terrible idea, engineers finally invented a fix. Solid-state…
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The $10,000 computer Apple sold in 1983
If you think buying a modern iPhone requires a second mortgage, you clearly weren't around in 1983. Apple released the Lisa with a graphical user interface…
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Symmetric connections provide equal transmission speeds
The holy grail of connectivity means never having to suffer upload bottlenecks. Symmetric connections ensure that the exact same amount of capacity is equally…
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Why escalator handrails move faster than the stairs
You aren't imagining things; your arm really is drifting forward. The rubber rail is intentionally geared to move a fraction of a percent faster to keep…
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