Technology
Exploring "Why" questions about Technology
491 articles
Why is there a separate security code on credit cards? If the three extra digits make it that much more secure, why not just make the number three digits longer?
In the olden days, credit cards were often not scanned with the mag strip, because the equipment was still too expensive for smaller retailers. What they did instead was use a carbon paper and a rolle
Why do screens have RGB coloured pixels when RYB are the primary colours?
RYB is a subtractive color model. If all colours overlap, then the result is black. RGB is an additive color model.
Why websites like Facebook and Youtube update their interfaces less user friendly?
They are probably tested designs and are probably more streamlined, meaning that - you just think they're less user friendly because you're resistant to change. It's only human nature.
Why do modern TVs seem to increase the framerate of video, even when to footage is decades old?
Modern televisions have a setting that is usually turned on by default that causes this effect. The way it does it is by looking at two frames in the image, seeing what the differences are, and "guess
Why a coder can’t simply “decompile” an executable to get perfect source code for reverse engineering a piece of software?
Because the compiler preforms many irreversible changes to the code. At the very least, comments and variable names are removed, names of private functions are obfuscated, and the code is optimized to
Why is the new World Central Airport Dubai expected to be the world’s busiest airport? How and why does Emirates need 150 Airbus A380s? How and why are these Middle Eastern airlines so much more ma…
Location, location, location. Dubai is more or less between the most populous parts of Europe and Asia. It's also located in a good spot on the Persian Gulf, a tremendously busy area for shipping.
Why can’t manufacturers include a sturdy gps system inside of a plane’s “black box”
They could, but it would be useless. Water is very good at abzorbing electromagnetic radiation, and the radio signals that GPS uses can only penetrate a few meters. So unless the plane crashed in very
Why does Zalgo text seem to display everywhere regardless of localization?
Zalgo text takes advantage of tricks built into unicode. Unicode is a standard for how text in all the world's major languages should be handled. It includes support not just for the latin alphabet bu
Why does the letter ‘a’ look different, in default computer fonts, from the one we write?
[15th-century Italy saw the formation of the two main variants that are known today. These variants, the Italic and Roman forms, were derived from the Caroline Script version. The Italic form, also ca
Why are you prompted to close all other programs when installing something?
The installer may need access to files for a program due to some connectivity or upgrade related things and it's easier to tell you to close everything than to try and find every possible program ever