Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
The eggplant emoji shares a standard with hieroglyphics
The Unicode standard defines both emoji and characters for ancient scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian cuneiform, letting devices represent them…
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Right-to-left overrides flip text backwards
A Unicode right-to-left override character can make following English text display backward, a trick sometimes used to disguise digital text.
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Polyglot scripts run in multiple languages
These scripts exploit comment markers that one language treats as code and another treats as comments, letting a single file run in multiple languages.
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Infinite loops freeze everything permanently
Without an exit condition, a loop can make a program repeat the same task indefinitely, leaving it unresponsive until it’s stopped or restarted.
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Why pressing Enter still acts like a typewriter
The key preserves a typewriter's two-part motion: move to the next line, then return the carriage to the left margin.
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How animators make computers fill in the movement
Computers mathematically interpolate the movement between an animator’s chosen poses, but the resulting path can be physically impossible.
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Particle systems spit out endless digital sprites
Smoke, fire, and spell effects can be built from many small 2D images emitted from a point; each image changes size, rotation, and opacity to create an…
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DEADBEEF is a joke a computer can read as a number
Hexadecimal notation uses only 0–9 and A–F, so that spelling is also a valid numeric pattern. Programmers have used memorable values like it as markers in…
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What that black diamond with a question mark means
It appears when a computer encounters data it can't decode, so it displays a black diamond with a question mark instead.
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Why virtual worlds fall apart at the edges
As a player moves far from the map's center, the underlying grid loses precision, making characters shake and physics behave erratically.
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How old games faked 3D with flat lines
The engine cast rays from the player's viewpoint across a 2D map, found where they hit walls, then drew those distances as vertical strips. Together, the…
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Alpha channels exist purely to manage transparency
An image's alpha channel controls opacity: it determines how much of the background shows through each pixel.
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The code that prints itself
A quine is a program whose output is its own source code, a neat exercise in self-reference.
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How old games hid too many objects on screen
Older systems could draw only a few objects on the same horizontal line at once. Programmers made objects alternate visibility from frame to frame, using…
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When two programs try to change the same data
When two processes change the same data at once, their competing updates can produce unpredictable results—like two people trying to steer one car.
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Bitwise operations manipulate raw binary code
They work directly with binary digits—ones and zeros—using operations such as shifts and comparisons instead of ordinary arithmetic.
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Why game characters suddenly strike a T-pose
A T-pose often appears when a game fails to load or apply an animation: it's the model's default pose, with its mesh bound to the skeleton.
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Typecasting forcefully changes data identities
When an application expects text but gets a number, typecasting converts the value into the required format—like reshaping a round peg to fit a square hole.
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UV mapping aggressively skins flat textures
Artists unfold a 3D model into flat coordinates to show how a 2D image fits its surface, much like opening up a cardboard box.
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The programming language built from Shakespearean insults
The Shakespeare Programming Language declares variables as characters and puts instructions into theatrical dialogue. Adjectives and nouns help encode values,…
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Splash damage relies entirely on distance vectors
The game measures how far a character is from the blast’s center; the farther away they are, the less damage they take.
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Ambient occlusion adds shadows to tiny corners
It estimates how much nearby surfaces block ambient light, darkening crevices and tight corners.
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How digital skin bends without crumpling
Each point on a digital model is assigned a percentage of influence from nearby bones. When an elbow bends, those weights guide the simulated skin's movement…
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Backface culling deletes inside-out polygons
Rendering engines skip polygons facing away from the camera. If you move inside an object, those hidden back faces can leave you looking through its surface.
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