Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Most email traffic is malicious spam
Your inbox is a microscopic lifeboat floating on an ocean of digital garbage. Despite advanced filtering algorithms, the vast majority of emails sent globally…
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The tiny cable latch that can wreck your graphics card
Using a standard video cable is usually a simple affair of plugging and unplugging. Some sadist decided that DisplayPort cables needed tiny metal hooks that…
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A tiny uranium pellet packs the energy of tons of coal
Fossil fuels look downright primitive when you realize a piece of metal the size of a gummy bear can power a city block. Nuclear reactors utilize compressed…
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Early telephones required human operators to patch calls
Before the luxury of simply dialing a number, you had to pick up an earpiece, wait for a disgruntled worker on a switchboard to answer, and kindly ask them to…
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Ebay started its life under the horrific name AuctionWeb
Nothing screams 'trusted online marketplace' quite like a name that sounds like a 1990s hacker forum. Pierre Omidyar launched the site using a grey background…
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Why a teapot still appears in 3D graphics
If you look closely at complex digital scenes, you might find an ordinary household teapot hiding in the background. Created in the seventies as a perfect…
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How parking meters know your car is there
Modern meters don't need a coin to know you are there. They constantly emit high-frequency sound waves that bounce off your vehicle's bumper to detect your…
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Why 123456 is still the world’s favorite password
Cybersecurity experts have spent billions trying to protect networks using biometric data, multi-factor authentication, and military-grade encryption.…
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Why solar panels waste most of the sunlight they receive
Despite sounding like the ultimate green solution, standard consumer photovoltaic cells are impressively inefficient. The vast majority of the photons that…
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The lights overhead may flicker faster than you can see
The depressing glow of a modern classroom or hallway relies on alternating current rapidly igniting and extinguishing gas dozens of times per second. You are…
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Your investments may be riding on math, not people
The idea of a frantic Wall Street broker shouting on a trading floor is archaic theatrical nonsense. Today, high-frequency trading bots control the vast…
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Why 3D worlds use flat images
Not everything in a digital landscape is fully fleshed out. Sprites are flat, two-dimensional images forced to awkwardly exist inside three-dimensional…
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Glass can be spun into fabric
If you thought glass was only meant for shattering safely into a million pieces, think again. By melting standard glass and extruding it through impossibly…
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Emojis began as a sales pitch for pagers
Your ability to send a laughing face to your friends stems from archaic corporate communication. The first standardized set of digital expressions was created…
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Pagers began as doctors' emergency tools
Long before they became a mandatory accessory for nineties teenagers and street hustlers, the humble beeper was strictly a medical tool. Introduced in 1950,…
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The Genesis had a port Sega never used
Because leaving a mysterious hole on the bottom of a console is peak nineties corporate strategy. Sega included a covered edge connector on the original…
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Simon electronic memory game was inspired by an arcade game
Because copying a massive coin-operated machine and turning it into a noisy plastic frisbee was a brilliant move. The creators ripped off an obscure Atari…
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Why electric chainsaws hit full power instantly
Those battery-powered yard tools are secretly terrifying due to their sheer instant rotational torque. A traditional motor slowly builds up combustion power,…
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The innocent-looking USB drive that can fry your computer
Picking up random electronics off the street is a fantastic way to incinerate thousands of dollars. USB Killer flash drives look completely normal, but…
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Your phone screen is coated in transparent metal
You are aggressively tapping your finger against a wildly exotic material every single day. Touch panels only function because they are coated in indium tin…
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How meme coins get value from hype
Welcome to modern finance, where invisible digital coins have value simply because a subreddit says they do. Without underlying physical assets, fiat backing,…
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Neoprene is a synthetic rubber resistant to oil
Natural rubber heavily degrades and turns to slush the moment it touches raw petroleum. By heavily polymerizing chloroprene, chemists spawned a resilient…
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The $3,000 car GPS that needed cassette tapes
Getting utterly lost was still significantly cheaper than buying this monster. Released in 1985, the Etak Navigator used vector graphics stored on literal…
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Why auto-updates can break your device
Allowing your system to patch itself overnight guarantees you will eventually wake up to a completely broken device. Because software is impossibly complex,…
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