Technology
Exploring "Why" questions about Technology
491 articles
Why is Russia’s cyberattack against the White House not a bigger story?
The scope of the breach was very limited. To our knowledge, it was limited to essentially the President's schedule and agenda. There was no classified information and the breach did not extend to more
Why are calculator numpads vs. phone numpads vertically reversed in number order?
Actually, keypas on the Calculator and on the phone have different developments: For Calculators, the old mechanical machines needed a deeper keypress for higher numbers, and those can be achived easi
Why do computer games have to be programmed separately for Windows and Mac?
You know those books at the back of your kindergarten class? Well, they're different from the books at the back of the kindergarten class next door! And you have to base what you read on the books tha
why my laptop battery will take an hour to reach 90% but then take another hour to cap to 100%
ELI5 Option (this is off my vague understanding, might be incorrect). Imagine a battery is like a cup, and your charging source is a fat pitcher of water. When you first start pouring the water, the c
Why on a computer screen does the cursor disappear when moved to the right/bottom edges, but not at the left/top edges?
The cursors 'point' is the very tip of the arrow and this cant leave the boundary of the working area (so your screen). When moved to the bottom right of the screen, the cursor is still on screen just
Why has apple never updated their software to allow us to leave group texts?
As a non-apple user, it drives me up a wall when apple users do group texts.
Why is that a browser needs 5-10 million lines of code?
A browser needs to understand, and interpret, the various commands and files that web servers send; web pages are instructions for your browser on how to put together the text, images, videos, and men
Why are English words phonetically explained with strange symbols? Why not just include those symbols in the alphabet?
First, they're not an English alphabet — each symbol in IPA is meant to represent a distinct and unambiguous sound that humans make to communicate. There are *some* sounds used by humans that aren't r
Why do some internet services make it impossible to actually delete an account? What do they gain by holding on to an empty profile?
Shareholders, advertising money, and all that comes with it. If a website can say "look at our userbase! It's huge!" even if it's a lot of unused/dead accounts, it looks better to potential investors
Why can’t deep web/dark web websites be closed?
They are operated by individuals hosting servers in various countries. And first, you need to find the server/website then find the person hosting/paying for it. It will usually be in some remote coun