Why old CRT monitors still win at fast games
Tube monitors draw the image with an electron beam, so there is almost no processing delay and motion stays sharp. Competitive retro players still haul 30-kilo sets to tournaments.
The unit bug that lost a Mars orbiter
In 1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter burned up because one team used pound-force seconds and another expected newton-seconds.
Speedrunners keep finding new ways to break games from the 1980s
Decades after release, players still discover glitches that shave seconds off world records, sometimes by rewriting game memory with controller inputs.
Thermal paste: how much is enough?
A pea-sized dot, a line or a spread: the testing says it matters less than you fear.
The apps people keep for ten years
Calculators, notes and flashlights: the boring tools win.
Booting a 40-year-old computer from a cassette
Loading screens that take ten minutes, and people love it.