Technology
Exploring "Why" questions about Technology
491 articles
Why has the Mars Rover Opportunity’s Lithium Ion Battery Lasted 11+ Years and the one in My Cell Phone/Laptop/Tablet Dies in Less Than 2?
NASA requirements lean toward the 'overengineered' side (for good reason - if something goes wrong you can't replace it). The battery in your phone is more from the "make it cheaper, they can always b
Why are internet speeds measured in megabits or gigabits, but storage space (Hard Drive, Flash Drive, etc.) Measured in Megabytes or Gigabytes?
There are at least two reasons: 1. It makes the number sound bigger, 2. History.
Why do websites push us to use their app?
Your mobile phone can expose your name, number, current location, contacts and call history, etc. This information in extremely valuable in today's business and political world for many reasons. Adver
Why do clouds that are about to storm turn dark?
Storm clouds are much taller than normal clouds, so they more effectively block the sun and appear much darker from underneath.
Why do women adopt their husband’s last name upon marriage?
Because, traditionally, marriage was a transfer of property. The bride's father transferred ownership of the bride to her new husband. Hence the giving away of the bride by the father that still occur
Why are chiropractors popular if they are not part of mainstream medicine?
Their treatments provide an immediate, but temporary fix to people's musculoskeletal problems. The key word being temporary, as in you have to keep going back indefinitely to maintain the level of pai
Why the US is allowed to shutdown websites such as Mega-upload?
Because the relevant assets were inside the jurisdiction of the governments that did the seizures. A website hosted inside Germany using the .de ccTLD of Germany is safe from the USA because all of it
why when I turn my music up to the max volume, say on my phone, its all distorted.
It's the speakers. In order to make sounds, the speaker has to move back and forth *extremely* quickly, up to 20 thousand times a second for the highest tones that humans can hear. To make the sound l
Why do computers store negative numbers as complements to their positive counterpart? Rather than a byte specifying the sign?
The math is easier to implement that way. Say you have -1 and 1 to add. Stored in two's complement form -1 is FFFF.
Why does the computer mouse sometimes jump in a random direction?
It shouldn't, when just sitting still. I assume you mean when you are moving it. Older mouses had a ball that made two different little wheels inside rotate, and that would be translated by the comput