Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Electronic waste recycling facilities extract significantly more gold from a ton of discarded smartphones than traditional mining operations can extract from a ton of actual gold ore.
Electronic waste recycling facilities extract significantly more gold from a ton of discarded smartphones than traditional mining operations can extract from…
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Phantom vibration syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where smartphone users hallucinate the physical sensation of their phone buzzing in their pocket when it is actually doing nothing.
Phantom vibration syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where smartphone users hallucinate the physical sensation of their phone buzzing in their pocket when…
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Half a byte has an adorable name
In a rare moment of whimsy from the socially awkward pioneers of computer science, data got cute. Since eight bits make a 'byte' (bite), they naturally…
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Google was born from a misspelling
The most influential tech company in the universe was born from a typo. The founders wanted to name it 'Googol'—a one followed by a hundred zeros—to represent…
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How Plato may have built an ancient alarm clock
Turns out, waking up against your will is a cross-cultural, millennia-spanning trauma. The philosopher Plato supposedly had a massive water clock (clepsydra)…
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Grace Hopper and her team at Harvard University recorded the very first actual computer bug in 1947 when a literal moth flew into the relays of the Mark II computer and caused a massive hardware failure.
Grace Hopper and her team at Harvard University recorded the very first actual computer bug in 1947 when a literal moth flew into the relays of the Mark II…
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Linux began as a student's “just a hobby”
The operating system that currently runs massive corporate servers, supercomputers, and the entire Android ecosystem was literally just a college kid's side…
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Douglas Engelbart originally designed the computer mouse cursor to point straight up in 1981, but the Xerox PARC interface team tilted it forty-five degrees to the left because…
Douglas Engelbart originally designed the computer mouse cursor to point straight up in 1981, but the Xerox PARC interface team tilted it forty-five degrees…
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Cambridge University researchers invented the world's first webcam in 1991 for the sole purpose of monitoring a coffee pot in the Trojan Room computer lab.
Cambridge University researchers invented the world's first webcam in 1991 for the sole purpose of monitoring a coffee pot in the Trojan Room computer lab.…
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Luis von Ahn and his colleagues invented the CAPTCHA system in 2003, and the acronym actually stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.
Luis von Ahn and his colleagues invented the CAPTCHA system in 2003, and the acronym actually stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell…
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First ever web browser was created by Tim Berners-Lee
In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee didn't just invent the World Wide Web; he had to build the software to actually view it. He created a browser simply called…
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The town where Wi-Fi can be forbidden
Welcome to the ultimate unplugged nightmare. The town is situated in the National Radio Quiet Zone, established to protect the incredibly sensitive Robert C.…
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Cloud computing is a deliberately misleading marketing term designed to make consumers envision their digital data floating peacefully in an ethereal sky, when in reality it is…
Cloud computing is a deliberately misleading marketing term designed to make consumers envision their digital data floating peacefully in an ethereal sky,…
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Modern smart phone battery chargers frequently contain built-in microprocessors that possess significantly more raw computing power than the Apollo Guidance Computer used to navigate astronauts to the moon in 1969.
Modern smart phone battery chargers frequently contain built-in microprocessors that possess significantly more raw computing power than the Apollo Guidance…
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Hackers held the Olsen twins’ fan site for ransom
Forget high-stakes corporate espionage; sometimes cybercrime is just profoundly weird. In the late 1990s, when celebrity fan sites were the pinnacle of web…
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Why your waterproof phone can still drown
Corporate marketing lies to you, shocker. There is no such thing as a truly waterproof consumer smartphone, despite what the commercials showing people…
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Early Apple computers saved files on cassette tapes
Imagine saving your life's work onto a screeching audio cassette. The highly revered Apple I and early Apple II computers did not come with internal hard…
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The 1966 computer that ran a household
Before Alexa was awkwardly listening to your private arguments, a giant mainframe was making shopping lists. The ECHO IV was constructed in 1966 by an…
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Google spins when you search “do a barrel roll”
Engineers get bored too, and this is how they silently cry for help. If you go to Google and type 'do a barrel roll' into the search bar, the entire webpage…
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The hidden signatures inside every original Mac
Steve Jobs treated a plastic box of circuit boards like it was a timeless Renaissance masterpiece. In a massive flex of corporate ego, Steve Jobs viewed the…
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A tenth of all photos were taken in the past year
Humanity has truly lost its collective mind when it comes to documenting mundane breakfast foods. Thanks to smartphones, we now collectively generate…
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Why software contains so much invisible whitespace
Your massive software updates are mostly just structured nothingness. Because human programmers need code to be visually readable, they use endless tabs,…
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Samsung’s name means three stars
Your smartphone's brand name secretly implies it's only slightly above average. 'Sam' means three, and 'Sung' means stars in Korean. The founder chose this…
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Ethernet cables use twisted wires to stop interference
Your high-speed gaming connection is entirely dependent on cables holding hands. If you cut open an Ethernet cord, you'll find pairs of wires tightly twisted…
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