Latest

New from Make Tech Easier

Clear how-tos, explainers, and tech updates — published as we verify them.

By How It Works · Aug 21, 2026

How does a fibre-optic strand thinner than a spaghetti noodle carry a signal across 13,000 kilometres of ocean without…

Aug 20 Wi-Fi signals struggle through walls not because concrete is thick, but because water in the plaster absorbs 2.4 GHz… How It Works
Aug 20 Voyager 1 is now more than 25 billion kilometres from Earth, and its transmitter runs on about 22 watts Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Aug 18 How did a rubber gasket the size of a dinner plate, stiffened overnight in a Florida cold snap, rewrite the way NASA… How It Works
Aug 18 A QR code's three corner squares aren't decoration How It Works
Aug 17 When your phone shoots a portrait, the blurred background isn't optical How It Works
Aug 17 How did a country with no large rivers and limited land to collect rain build the capacity to meet up to 40 per cent of… How It Works
Aug 16 How did a cracked rubber O-ring the size of a coin, stiffened by a Florida cold snap in January 1986, destroy a space… How It Works
Aug 12 The rarest form of mental strength in adult life isn't discipline or resilience, it's the capacity to sit inside an… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Aug 12 The 'root' of the internet is 13 named server clusters How It Works
Aug 12 How did a Sunday driving ban imposed by Dutch prime minister Joop den Uyl during the 1973 oil shock quietly turn empty… How It Works
Aug 11 Deleting a file removes only the signpost pointing to it How It Works
Aug 11 When YouTube launched in April 2005, its first video was a 19-second clip of co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Aug 11 The JPEG format was finalised in 1992 by a committee that met for six years to agree on how much visual information a… Make Tech Easier Editorial Team
Aug 10 How did a publicly humiliated Japanese electronics firm turn a failed CD partnership with Nintendo into a console that… How It Works
Aug 9 How does a fibre-optic cable no thicker than a garden hose carry roughly 99 per cent of intercontinental internet… How It Works
Aug 7 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… How It Works
Aug 6 How did a Cornell graduate student's 99-line bootstrap program in November 1988 infect roughly 6,000 machines How It Works
Aug 5 When you tap Send on an end-to-end encrypted message, the server passes along a scrambled blob it cannot read How It Works
Aug 5 How did a stray calico cat, handed a stationmaster's cap at the unstaffed end of a dying Japanese branch line, lift its… How It Works