Technology
Discover facts about technology. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Technology
Researchers made computer chips from mushroom skin
Because nothing screams 'next-generation computing' quite like decaying fungus. Researchers got tired of unrecyclable plastic circuit boards sitting in…
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Amazon made a fitness band that judged your voice
In case you really needed consumer electronics to tell you that you're being obnoxious, Amazon briefly sold the Halo band. It completely lacked a screen,…
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Netflix uses a program that deliberately breaks its servers
Modern server architecture is too massive for humans to fix manually, so engineers let the machines heal themselves. Programs like Netflix's Chaos Monkey…
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MIT turned wallpaper into a Wi-Fi antenna
Shouting at your router won't fix dead zones, but turning your literal walls into an antenna just might. MIT researchers developed a smart surface called…
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Military chips can erase themselves when tampered with
Field Programmable Gate Arrays are blank-slate chips that can rewire their own hardware on the fly, making them highly desirable for military drones. The…
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How warehouse robots tell a person from a pillar
Early warehouse robots mapped their surroundings blindly, frequently confusing a human leg with a steel pillar. Semantic Simultaneous Localization and Mapping…
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Human brain cells learned to play Pong
Silicon can only take us so far before we hit the physical limits of thermodynamics, which is why scientists are looking to actual biology. Biohybrid…
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Darktrace cybernetic AI exposes subtle network intrusions and outputs plain English reports detailing the hacker tactics
Security teams are drowning in a sea of meaningless alert sirens. Traditional anomaly detection spots weird network behavior but leaves humans guessing what…
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The invisible watermark hiding inside AI images
Spotting an AI-generated image used to rely on counting messed-up fingers, but the visual fidelity of generators like Stable Diffusion has bypassed human…
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Quantum magnets can create truly random numbers
Software-generated random numbers aren't actually random; they're just highly complex mathematical illusions that a supercomputer can eventually crack. To…
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Invisible pixels can fool medical AI
You would reasonably assume medical AI evaluating an X-ray is entirely infallible, but hackers can gaslight the algorithm with terrifying ease. In the realm…
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Optical phased arrays steer lasers without motors
Forget spinning laser buckets strapped to the roof of autonomous cars. Solid-state lidar relies on optical phased arrays to steer light using pure physics…
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When databases start tuning themselves
The days of highly paid database administrators frantically optimizing SQL queries during a traffic spike are coming to a close. Modern autonomous databases…
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Starlink relays tractor data from dead zones to cloud
Tracking moisture sensors across thousands of acres of deep Amazonian rainforest or open ocean is a logistical nightmare with zero cell service. Low Earth…
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The smartwatch chip powered by electrical leakage
You would think a transistor is either securely on or definitively off, but silicon is delightfully leaky. Instead of driving normal voltage through…
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Hackers can steal keys by listening to a CPU
Your computer is physically leaking its secrets into the room right now. Advanced hackers don't bother breaking encryption; they use side-channel attacks. By…
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The sensor that sees bullets by ignoring still objects
Traditional cameras are incredibly stupid; they capture the same boring frame 60 times a second even if nothing moves. Prophesee's event-based sensors mimic…
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How AirTags find your lost keys so precisely
Bluetooth is notoriously terrible at telling you exactly where your lost wallet is, mostly just guessing based on signal strength. Apple’s U1 chip upgrades…
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How Microsoft SEAL computes on encrypted data
Historically, if you wanted a cloud server to calculate your taxes, you had to decrypt the data first, exposing it to hackers. Microsoft SEAL uses homomorphic…
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How tiny robots build shapes without a central brain
Imagine a pile of metallic sand that suddenly decides to stand up and form a wrench. Swarm robotics pushes us closer to programmable matter, where thousands…
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How radar tracks tanks through clouds
Multi-million dollar optical satellites are completely blinded by a simple overcast day, but Synthetic Aperture Radar simply doesn't care about the weather.…
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SAP HANA crushing data to fit inside fast RAM
Moving a massive enterprise database from agonizingly slow hard drives into ultrafast RAM is the ultimate speed hack, but memory chips are incredibly…
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DARPA tracks hardware cloning of unique radio signals
It turns out microchips are just as uniquely flawed as human beings. Even two identical radios rolling off the exact same assembly line possess microscopic…
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Cerebras giant AI chips bypass standard silicon slicing
Traditional chipmaking involves slicing a massive silicon pie into tiny, individual processors, but cutting them physically severs their high-speed…
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