Article index
All 125 articles on Tech Behind Things, by section.
Devices
Section page →- Why your phone slows down, and which explanation is actually trueAug 11, 2026
- What is actually inside a smartwatch, and why the battery is the whole designAug 9, 2026
- Your phone camera is mostly software, and that is not cheatingJul 3, 2026
- What a higher refresh rate actually buys youJun 27, 2026
- Why two laptops with the same chip perform very differentlyJun 24, 2026
- The nanometre number on a chip stopped being a measurementJun 22, 2026
- What a waterproof rating actually promises, and for how longJun 18, 2026
- How a touchscreen knows it is a finger and not a raindropJun 16, 2026
- Why the storage in your device is slower than the number on the boxJun 10, 2026
- More memory does not mean more apps stay openJun 8, 2026
- OLED and LCD fail in opposite waysJun 4, 2026
- Why your device is glued shut, and what the glue is actually doingJun 2, 2026
- How an e-reader holds a page with the power switched offMay 29, 2026
- How a phone fakes the click of a button that does not existDec 1, 2025
- Why noise cancelling silences an engine but not a conversationNov 25, 2025
- Where a phone hides its antennas, and why your hand is part of the circuitNov 23, 2025
- Why a device that thin cannot make bass, and what it does insteadNov 18, 2025
- Automatic brightness is guessing what your eyes have already adapted toNov 16, 2025
- How a receiver finds itself by listening to four clocks it cannot seeNov 13, 2025
- The moving parts inside a phone are etched, not assembledNov 8, 2025
- Phone glass is strengthened by swapping atoms, and it still breaksNov 5, 2025
Networks
Section page →- Wi-Fi is a shared medium, and that explains most of your problemsAug 5, 2026
- Your packets do not take the route you think they doJul 31, 2026
- Why 5G often feels exactly like 4GMay 24, 2026
- DNS decides far more than which address you reachMay 22, 2026
- Your upload speed is the number that decides how the connection feelsMay 18, 2026
- Bufferbloat: the reason your connection stalls while the speed test passesMay 16, 2026
- What actually limits your broadband, and it is rarely the headline speedMay 12, 2026
- How a VPN actually moves your traffic, and what it moves it away fromMay 9, 2026
- How a phone hands your call to the next tower without dropping itMay 5, 2026
- Why you cannot reach your own devices from outside your houseMay 3, 2026
- What a speed test measures, and the four things it cannotApr 27, 2026
- Bluetooth audio makes you choose two out of quality, latency and batteryApr 25, 2026
- Almost all intercontinental traffic runs through cables on the seabedApr 22, 2026
- The faster Wi-Fi band is the one that cannot get out of the roomNov 3, 2025
- A repeater spends half its airtime repeating, and that half was yoursOct 31, 2025
- The distance to the server sets a delay no upgrade can removeOct 27, 2025
- A SIM card is a small computer that proves who you areOct 23, 2025
- Twisting the pairs is the entire reason an Ethernet cable worksOct 19, 2025
- The page you loaded probably came from a building a few miles awayOct 15, 2025
- How a strand of glass carries a signal for a hundred kilometresOct 14, 2025
- Satellite internet trades altitude for delay, and the trade decides everythingOct 9, 2025
Power & Batteries
Section page →- Battery percentage is an estimate, and a fairly rough oneJul 29, 2026
- USB-C solved the connector and not the confusionJul 25, 2026
- Wireless charging wastes energy as heat, and the heat is the real costApr 17, 2026
- Why the last twenty per cent of a charge takes so longApr 15, 2026
- Why a 10,000mAh power bank will not charge a 5,000mAh phone twiceApr 12, 2026
- Not all lithium batteries share the same chemistry, and the rules change with itApr 7, 2026
- Where the electricity goes when everything is switched offApr 4, 2026
- Heat is what actually ages your electronicsApr 2, 2026
- The memory effect was real, and it has nothing to do with your phoneMar 28, 2026
- Why an electric car battery outlives a phone batteryMar 26, 2026
- What is actually inside a phone chargerMar 23, 2026
- What happens when a lithium cell fails, and what to do about itMar 18, 2026
- Watts, watt-hours, and why the label on a device overstates what it usesMar 16, 2026
- Two devices argue about voltage before any fast charge beginsOct 6, 2025
- A charging cable is a resistor you chose without noticingOct 3, 2025
- Cold does not drain a battery, it hides the charge until things warm upSep 30, 2025
- A solar panel almost never produces the number printed on its backSep 27, 2025
- Why a smoke alarm suits a disposable cell and a camera flash does notSep 22, 2025
- A capacitor charges in seconds, and that is not the advantage it sounds likeSep 18, 2025
- An uninterruptible supply buys you seconds, and the seconds are the pointSep 16, 2025
- What happens to a battery after it stops holding a chargeSep 12, 2025
Software
Section page →- Why software gets slower on the same hardwareJul 23, 2026
- File formats decide whether your files outlive the softwareJul 19, 2026
- Why your device stops getting updates long before it stops workingMar 12, 2026
- Sync is not a backup, and the difference shows up on your worst dayMar 8, 2026
- What open source guarantees, and the three things it does notMar 4, 2026
- Why some machine learning runs on your device and some cannotMar 2, 2026
- Why some files compress to almost nothing and others refuseFeb 26, 2026
- Why text sometimes turns into question marks and boxesFeb 24, 2026
- Keeping accurate time is much harder than a clock suggestsFeb 18, 2026
- Why software ships with bugs the developers already know aboutFeb 15, 2026
- What a browser does between your click and the page appearingFeb 12, 2026
- Computers cannot invent randomness, so they harvest itFeb 8, 2026
- Almost everything on your screen was fetched before you asked for itSep 10, 2025
- Why a computer insists that a tenth plus two tenths is not three tenthsSep 6, 2025
- A file is a promise the filesystem makes, not an object on the diskSep 3, 2025
- How one processor convincingly pretends to be a different oneAug 31, 2025
- Adding cores stops helping at the point where the work refuses to divideAug 25, 2025
- How a letter shape becomes pixels, and why it looks different everywhereAug 24, 2025
- Why your update arrives a week after somebody else'sAug 19, 2025
- What a computer does in the seconds before anything appearsAug 15, 2025
- Modern software is assembled out of other people's softwareAug 13, 2025
Home Tech
Section page →- Smart home standards keep fighting, and your house is the battlefieldJul 16, 2026
- How a robot vacuum decides where it has already beenJul 12, 2026
- A fridge does not make cold, it moves heat somewhere elseFeb 6, 2026
- How an induction hob heats the pan and not the surfaceFeb 2, 2026
- Why a microwave heats unevenly, and what the turntable is really forJan 31, 2026
- Why the eco cycle on a washing machine takes three hoursJan 26, 2026
- How a smart speaker listens for its name without recording the roomJan 24, 2026
- Why a smart bulb flickers, and what colour temperature actually meansJan 19, 2026
- How a motion sensor decides that somebody is thereJan 17, 2026
- Turning the thermostat up does not heat the room any fasterJan 13, 2026
- Two kinds of smoke alarm detect two different kinds of fireJan 8, 2026
- Why your television makes films look like a soap operaJan 7, 2026
- A dishwasher does not scrub, it dissolvesAug 8, 2025
- A dryer that runs cooler finishes cheaperAug 6, 2025
- A dehumidifier heats the room it is dryingAug 4, 2025
- Suction is airflow, and the filter decides how much of it you getJul 30, 2025
- How a kettle knows the water boiled without measuring the waterJul 27, 2025
- How a filter catches particles smaller than the gaps in itJul 22, 2025
- Why a doorbell camera catches people leaving and misses them arrivingJul 20, 2025
- An oven set to one temperature spends its time above and below itJul 16, 2025
- How an infrared remote shouts a number at the whole roomJul 12, 2025
Data & Privacy
Section page →- What a website knows about you before you click anythingJul 9, 2026
- End-to-end encryption: what it protects and what it never didJul 6, 2026
- Why a website cannot tell you your own passwordJan 3, 2026
- What an app permission actually grants, and for how longDec 29, 2025
- Your phone knows where it is without using GPS at allDec 28, 2025
- Face and fingerprint unlock are convenience features with a security tradeDec 23, 2025
- Not all two-factor authentication is equal, and codes by text are the weak oneDec 19, 2025
- The padlock in your browser means less than most people thinkDec 18, 2025
- What telemetry actually sends, and why software collects itDec 12, 2025
- What actually happens when you delete somethingDec 10, 2025
- Your page view is auctioned in the time it takes the page to loadDec 7, 2025
- Anonymised data is frequently not anonymousDec 3, 2025
- Blocking cookies did not stop tracking, it changed the methodJul 11, 2025
- Metadata says who, when and where, and it is rarely encryptedJul 6, 2025
- Your photographs carry a second file inside themJul 2, 2025
- A passkey removes the secret you could be tricked into giving awayJul 1, 2025
- Nobody sold your name, they sold everything attached to itJun 25, 2025
- Your television is quietly identifying what is on its own screenJun 23, 2025
- The sender knows you opened it before you finish readingJun 20, 2025
- Why adding one lawful key to encryption weakens it for everyoneJun 16, 2025