Tech — older stories

A 519-milliliter estimate and a 0.26-milliliter one both come from real research. The gap comes down to what each study counts, onsite cooling, power-plant water, or both, not who's lying.

There's no such thing as an "HDMI 2.1 cable" -- only a certified "Ultra High Speed" one, and the difference decides whether a TV blacks out at 120Hz.

Two chargers rated at the same wattage can still charge a phone at very different speeds, and the wattage number rarely explains why.

Inkjet printers periodically flush ink through their nozzles to stop them clogging — sending it straight into a hidden waste pad, whether or not you've printed a page.

A coffee stain or a peeling sticker shouldn't kill a QR code, and usually it doesn't. Here's the redundant-data trick, borrowed from deep-space communication, that keeps damaged codes readable.

SSDs need free blocks to write fast. The real reason a drive suddenly feels slow is almost always capacity, not calendar age.

Deep discharge, heat and a bad charger all break down a battery's electrolyte into trapped gas. Here's the actual chemistry, the real fire risk it creates, and how to stop it in a device sitting in a drawer.

Waymo just told Uber it's building its own app for Austin and Atlanta. Behind the split is a messier question riders rarely think about: who pays when the car with no driver hits something.

An FAA order to inspect 471 Boeing 737 MAX jets sounds alarming. The mechanism behind it, and why no cracks have actually turned up on the model, explains why airlines aren't changing their schedules.

Microwave ovens and Wi-Fi routers share almost the same frequency, and one of them is about 35,000 times more powerful than the other.

Your black-and-white document didn't need cyan, but your printer used it anyway, and in some models an empty color cartridge stops every print job cold.

True wireless earbuds run two separate Bluetooth connections, not one, and the link between the two buds is the fragile half. Here's the actual engineering reason one earbud drops before the other, and what fixes it.

A powered-down phone isn't on pause. Self-discharge, a clock circuit, and a storage habit worth breaking all quietly chip away at its charge.

Airplane mode was built to silence your phone's cell radio, not your earbuds — the actual rule is about protecting cell towers on the ground.

Two USB-C cables can look completely identical and still perform nothing alike. The difference usually comes down to a chip smaller than a grain of rice.

Every dual-band router quietly makes the same trade: 2.4GHz for reach, 5GHz for speed. The reason comes down to wavelength physics, not a router flaw.

Passkeys are supposed to be unphishable and unstealable, but that safety depends on whether yours are synced to the cloud or bound to a single device. Here's what actually happens when the device is gone.

Passkeys are supposed to replace passwords entirely, but a credential created on an iPhone often can't be used on an Android phone. Here's the design decision behind it.

Six state laws took effect Jan. 1, pushing repair protections past a quarter of the country. But a software trick called parts pairing shows how much control manufacturers still keep.

Not exactly a kill switch, but not exactly nothing — the 2021 law behind the scare requires new cars to detect impaired driving. It just doesn't exist yet.