Technology
Exploring "Why" questions about Technology
491 articles
Why does the number on an analog bathroom scale go up when you bend down to read it?
A bathroom scale doesn't measure weight, it measures normal reaction. When you bend, the normal force on different areas of your sole changes to keep you from toppling over. If it increases at the pla
Why cant iOS developers just write a app to jailbreak any ios device and just have individuals sign it themselves in xcode?
The difficulty in jailbreaking is not to get an application to run, it is in finding a way to trick the operating system into allowing the application to permanently modify the operating system itself
why does an analog clock’s second hand continue to move, but stay in the same position, when the batteries are low?
It's not a feature, it's that the second hand requires a certain amount of force to be moved. If the motor running the clockwork doesn't have enough power to move the second hand all the way, it just
Why do older TVs have a weird screen effect while being viewed on another camera?
because the refresh rate of the TV screen collides with the frame rate of the video resulting in an "animation" of said refresh rate - the line moving up or down the screen. It's similar to the way ri
Why is my internet connection noticeably slower at night?
This is easy. Imagine the internet connection your ISP runs to your neighborhood as a garden hose and everyone who has internet is represented as a straw. Now during the day the hose is running full b
Why do we still use USB and not fibre optic for file transfer. My Soundbar uses fibre optic, so it can’t be a cost issue.
You wouldn't gain anything. USB 3.0 can transfer data faster than a hard drive can read and write it. Fiber is used when pure speed is needed, but that's usually on big servers in data centers.
Why and how do dead pixels spread across a screen?
If anyone can explain also how a vertical line of dead pixels in my monitor came back to life, I would appreciate that as well.
Why does the back button on the browser work and other times does not?
Hitting the 'Back' button in a browser reloads the previous html file. That worked great for a long time because websites were structured as a series of files. But since JavaScript was developed, many
Why do two images that have the same pixel dimensions have different storage sizes?
Most images are held in a compressed format that works by finding repeatable patterns in the arrangement of pixels. For example, a row of 100 red pixels can be compressed into something like "row 15 i
Why do websites push so hard to get you to download their mobile app? What advantage does it have for the website owner over using a browser?
Many times that app is ad supported meaning they have another source of revenue. Also the app may not specifically be free giving them even more revenue. Right now in Software Engineering app developm