Technology

Technology Ordinary cheap computer hard drives do not work reliably above 10,000ft in altitude, because they require a cushion of dense air for the magnetic head to float on. Without that air density, the head will scratch the disk. People who live above 10,000ft must buy special hard drives. March 28, 2021

Technology A casino's database was hacked through a smart fish tank thermometer March 22, 2021

Technology The common method for a spacecraft to shift between two orbits is called a Hohmann Transfer, and that the guy who calculated it (in 1925) was inspired by a science fiction book written in 1897, which gave a generally correct explanation of the concept of orbit trajectory January 31, 2021

Technology In 2018, A hacker broke into people's routers (100,000 of them) and patched their vulnerabilities up so that they couldn't be abused by other hackers. December 9, 2020

Technology Audio experts could not tell the difference between $100 Monster speaker cables and cables made from soldering together old coat hangers December 7, 2020

Technology PCs in the 80s and 90s often had a "Turbo" button which when pressed would counterintuitively slow down the processor speed to allow compatibility with older games designed for slower processors. November 27, 2020

Technology Babies' cuteness is key to their survival. Cute babies are just extremely hard to ignore, and this is likely hardwired into human brains. Less cute children are treated differently. November 14, 2020

Technology America's oldest, unbroken treaty relationship is with Morocco, which was the first nation to recognize the US. The treaty was signed by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Sultan Muhammad III. It has lasted 232 years and is called the "Treaty of Friendship". November 11, 2020

Technology What Did Mark Zuckerberg Do After Losing a Game of Scrabble to a Teenager? October 30, 2020

Technology Where Did the Bluetooth Name and Symbol Come From? October 29, 2020

Technology Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto and How Much Is He Worth? October 29, 2020

Technology Steve Jobs personally killed the calculator app on iPad because it wasn't aesthetic. To this day, the iPad still does not have a native calculator app. October 14, 2020

Technology Although GPS is free for the world to use, it costs $2 million per day to operate. The money comes from American tax revenue. June 9, 2019

Technology The inventor of the USB had originally intended for it to be flippable, however that idea was scrapped due to the extra cost. Despite USB becoming the standard, he still regrets that decision. "In hindsight, we blew it," he said. May 30, 2019

Technology Once hailed as the future of television, 3D TV's have not been produced by any manufacturer since 2016. 3D TV is dead. May 28, 2019

Technology NASA ground controllers were once shocked to hear a female voice from the space station, apparently interacting with them, which had an all-male crew. They had been pranked by an astronaut who used a recording of his wife. May 16, 2019

Technology Steam was originally created so Valve didn't have to keep shutting off Counter-Strike servers to fix issues with the game. May 14, 2019

Technology Nintendo pushed usage of the term "game console" so people would stop calling products from other manufacturers "Nintendos", otherwise they would have risked losing their trademark. May 10, 2019

Technology First game of chess against a computer was played in 1952 by Alan Turing. Because there were no computers powerful enough to actually run the program Alan Turing "ran" the program manually on a piece of paper May 6, 2019

Technology Farmers in USA are hacking their John Deere tractors with Ukrainian firmware, which seems to be the only way to actually *own* the machines and their software, rather than rent them for lifetime from John Deere. May 4, 2019