Category
Science & Tech
45 articles
When Lead Was in Gasoline, Paint and Almost Everything
For centuries lead was in wine, paint, gasoline and even makeup. The story of the toxic metal it took humanity millennia to finally give up on.
NFC: The Invisible Tech in Cards, Phones and Passports
NFC powers contactless payments, transit cards and passports with a tap. Here is how near field communication works and where this invisible tech came from.
Lithium: From Medicine to the Battery of the Modern World
Lithium went from miracle cure and soft drink to mood stabilizer and battery of the modern world. This is the story of the lightest metal, from medicine to power.
RISC-V: the free chip that could be hardware's Linux
RISC-V is the open, royalty-free chip architecture challenging ARM and x86. What it is, why it's growing so fast, and where you already use it without knowing.
How USB-C works and why one cable charges fast
All USB-C cables look the same, but they aren't: we explain the e-marker chip and why one charges at 240W while another barely reaches 15W.
ESP32 vs Arduino vs Raspberry Pi Pico: which to choose
A clear comparison of the ESP32, Arduino and Raspberry Pi Pico: how they differ, which one fits your project and what each board actually costs.
ESP32 from scratch: which board to buy and what to build
A beginner's guide to the ESP32: which board to buy for your project, how the S3, C3 and C6 models differ, and what you can actually build with each.
The Year Without a Summer of 1816
In 1815 Mount Tambora erupted and darkened the planet. 1816 became the year without a summer: failed crops, famine and the birth of Frankenstein.
Asimov: The Man Who Wrote About Everything (Literally)
Isaac Asimov published some 500 books: science fiction, yes, but also history, chemistry, Shakespeare, the Bible and even humor. This is his story.
The Doctor Who Toasted With Bacteria and Won a Nobel
Nobody believed a bacterium caused ulcers. Fed up, Barry Marshall drank a culture of it, made himself sick on purpose, and changed medicine.
The Fifth Sleep: when we slept in two shifts
For centuries we did not sleep eight hours straight, but in two sleeps with a waking hour in between. The history of segmented sleep, from Cervantes to science.
The Origin of the Word “Petrichor”
The smell of rain has had a name since 1964: petrichor, “the blood of the gods flowing from stone”. This is its story — and its science.
Isaac Peral's 1888 Electric Submarine (and Its Sad End)
In 1888, Isaac Peral built an electric submarine that sailed underwater and fired torpedoes, yet Spain buried this future in paperwork.
Project Huemul: the secret Argentine experiment that promised to master nuclear fusion
How a physicist convinced Perón he could tame nuclear fusion on a Patagonian island, and how a young Balseiro exposed the spectacular fraud.
Why I Think an Internet Blackout Is Coming Soon
The day the internet forgets its own name, the roads will still exist but no one will reach them: why a DNS blackout may be closer than you think.
The Car That Runs on Firewood: Old Technology Cuba Is Reviving Out of Necessity
A Cuban mechanic runs his Fiat on charcoal, reviving the century-old gasifier that powered half a million cars in WWII, now reborn out of necessity.
Fiction or Prophecy? 20 Cartoons and Films That Predicted Our Present
From the Jetsons to Blade Runner, 20 cartoons and films predicted smartwatches, video calls and AI decades before they became part of daily life.
How Apple's AirTag ACTUALLY Works
Apple's AirTag doesn't transmit over long distances like many believe; here's how it really finds lost items using BLE and a vast Find My network.
The Awakening: The Day Machines Become Conscious
Could an artificial intelligence ever become conscious? A look at artificial brains, integrated information theory and the crucial role of memory.
The Invisible Giants and Their Shoulders of Concrete: The Story of Forgotten Brilliant Minds
Behind 20 famous inventions stand forgotten brilliant minds who nearly got the credit, the real giants on whose shoulders history's stars stood.
Could a Quantum Computer Crack All Our Passwords?
Could a quantum computer crack all our passwords? The short answer is yes, and even the NSA warns it could break today's encryption.
Can AI Predict Earthquakes in the Near Future?
Could AI predict earthquakes and let us evacuate cities days in advance? A look at how far science has come toward forecasting the unforeseeable.
What Is a Digital Brain and Why Should You Have One?
A digital brain stores and organizes everything you learn so nothing slips away: here's why you need one and how to start building your own today.
Your Next Hard Drive Will Be Made of DNA!
Scientists already stored video, books, and a GIF inside DNA, and one gram could hold 215 petabytes: your next hard drive may be biological.
Cómo minar Dogecoins en tu pc o laptop. Directo al grano. 2021.
Guía completa, paso a paso, de cómo minar la criptomoneda Dogecoin desde nuestra PC o laptop, ya sea Windows, Linux o Mac.
How to mine Dogecoins on Raspberry Pi 4? Straight to the point.
Can a tiny Raspberry Pi 4 actually mine Dogecoin? A hands-on, step-by-step experiment with Ubuntu and XMRig that proves it for pennies.
YuboxNow: equip your ESP32 board with its own LoRaWAN configuration and support Web interface
Embed a configuration web interface on your ESP32 just like a router, with built-in WiFi and LoRaWAN support for your next open-source IoT project.
Predictive vs progressive vs automatic scoreboard. Call center concepts.
Predictive, progressive, or automatic dialer: understand how each call center dialing mode works and why the right one saves real money.
CO2 monitoring, the key to return to normal after the pandemic
CO2 monitoring may be the key to safely reopening after the pandemic, since indoor carbon dioxide levels closely track the airborne viral load.
Telecommuting and other post-pandemic technological trends (2022-2023). Analysis.
The post-pandemic tech trends reshaping 2022-2023: remote work, video calls, CO2 monitoring, telemedicine, online learning and purpose-driven crypto.
The "smart" watches of yesteryear
The Casio Databank, an 80s wristwatch many call the first smartwatch, sparked a wave of nostalgia when readers shared their own forgotten gems.
Raspberry Pi vs Arduino. Which is better?
Differences between Arduino and Raspberry Pi. When to use one or the other? We explain here the pros and cons of each of them.
Open source vs free software. Their differences and which one is better?
Open source vs free software: a founder who built Elastix and met Stallman explains the real difference and why it still matters today.
The strange case of Satoshi Nakamoto. Who is behind the most wanted character in the world and father of cryptocurrencies?
He convinced cryptographers, handed over the code, registered the domain, then vanished without a trace: who is really behind Bitcoin's father?
Emergency charger for Macbook Pro. In case you lost the original.
Forgot your MacBook Pro charger? I reverse-engineered the USB-C voltage trick that tricks the laptop into charging from a lab power source.
Harvesting energy from radio waves (Energy harvesting). A technology that we already used more than a century ago.
Harvesting energy from radio waves sounds like the future, yet a battery-free crystal radio was already doing it back in the 19th century.
The most numerous animals on the planet are also the least known. The infamous case of krill and springtails.
The most numerous animals on Earth aren't ants or mosquitoes but krill and springtails, tiny creatures that quietly hold the food chain together.
Mysteriously endless experiments. Can they work indefinitely? One of them has been in operation since the 19th century.
A bell ringing nonstop since 1840 and a tar drop falling once a decade: two stubborn experiments that have outlived the scientists who began them.
Weather station with Arduino MKR1000
Build a DIY weather station with the Arduino MKR1000 to publish real-time temperature, humidity, and pressure to the web over WiFi from anywhere.
How to make a USB car charger (car) and how a DC voltage reducer works
When my car charger died, I took it apart to show how to build a USB car charger and how a DC voltage reducer works using the MC34063 chip.
High voltage source with recycled parts
Building a high voltage source of tens of thousands of volts from recycled parts, salvaging a flyback transformer out of a dead CRT monitor.
How to Make a Vacuum Tube by Hand!
Can you make a vacuum tube by hand? Watch Claude Paillard craft his own tubes, and even his machines, with astonishing patience and skill.
How to Multiply Two Numbers If You Only Know How to Multiply and Divide by Two
Multiply any two numbers knowing only how to double and halve, an ancient column trick that feels like a magic shortcut hiding in plain sight.
Our contextual reasoning doesn't always help
I couldn't recognize a familiar face at a distant airport for weeks, a true story revealing how much context shapes the way our brain reasons.
Dangerous pharmaceutical patents and the most hated man in the world. Are we turning to generic drugs?
Pharmaceutical patents explain why a forest plant that cures can never beat a lab-made pill, and why Martin Shkreli became the world's most hated man.