Author desk
How It Works
Contributor at Make Tech Easier
- 17 stories
- Writing since 2026
How It Works explains the technology you already use. Clear answers, no jargon left undefined, and enough depth that the explanation sticks.
Signature pieces
- + Gaming How did a publicly humiliated Japanese electronics firm turn a failed CD partnership with Nintendo into a console that… Aug 10, 2026
- + Tech Explained How does a fibre-optic cable no thicker than a garden hose carry roughly 99 per cent of intercontinental internet… Aug 9, 2026
- + Tech Explained Wi-Fi can slow to a crawl in a crowded café even when the fibre connection is fast, because 2.4 GHz offers only three… Aug 7, 2026
All stories
- Aug 6, 2026 How did a Cornell graduate student's 99-line bootstrap program in November 1988 infect roughly 6,000 machines + Tech Explained
- Aug 5, 2026 When you tap Send on an end-to-end encrypted message, the server passes along a scrambled blob it cannot read + Tech Explained
- Aug 5, 2026 How did a stray calico cat, handed a stationmaster's cap at the unstaffed end of a dying Japanese branch line, lift its… + Lifestyle
- Aug 4, 2026 When you type bbc.com, the invisible DNS lookup that may end in a nearby cache or climb from one of 13 named… + Tech Explained
- Aug 4, 2026 How did one incorrect command input during a routine debugging task in February 2017 knock a large slice of the… + Tech Explained
- Aug 3, 2026 Bluetooth was named after a 10th-century Viking king who united Denmark and Norway + Tech Explained
- Jul 30, 2026 Fast charging isn't killing your battery + Tech Explained
- Jul 30, 2026 Deleting a file usually doesn't erase it + Tech Explained
- Jul 30, 2026 A password manager stores your vault in the cloud as encrypted ciphertext, not readable passwords, which is why… + Tech Explained
- Jul 29, 2026 Airplane mode was never just about planes + Tech Explained
- Jul 29, 2026 Incognito mode was never private + Tech Explained
- Jul 28, 2026 HTTPS doesn't encrypt which sites you visit + Tech Explained
- Jul 27, 2026 Your phone's 'battery health' number is mostly marketing + Tech Explained
- Jul 27, 2026 Your SSD doesn't forget files the way a hard drive does + Tech Explained