RSS Parrot

Christopher Latham Sholes, the printer and Wisconsin state senator who designed the QWERTY keyboard, was appointed Milwaukee’s postmaster by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War — he tinkered with a page-numbering machine on the job before turning to typewriters

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-christopher-latham-sholes-the-printer-and-wisconsin-state-senator-who-designed-the-qwerty-keyboard-was-appointed-milwaukees-postmaster-by-abraham-lincoln-during-the-civil-war-he-tinkered-with-a-pa/

Published: September 21, 2026 07:57

Before he arranged the letters that still sit under nearly every keyboard, Christopher Latham Sholes ran the Milwaukee post office by day and tinkered with a small numbering machine in the back room. The typewriter grew out of that tinkering.

Why did the QWERTY keyboard, arranged in the 1870s to stop mechanical typebars from jamming, outlast every layout designed to beat it over the next 150 years?

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-q-why-did-the-qwerty-keyboard-arranged-in-the-1870s-to-stop-mechanical-typebars-from-jamming-outlast-every-layout-designed-to-beat-it-over-the-next-150-years/

Published: September 21, 2026 03:57

The story that QWERTY was designed to slow typists down is half-true at best, and the reason it survived a century and a half of challengers has less to do with speed than with the economics of switching.

Pixel 3 Night Sight can capture a photo in near-darkness because it doesn’t take one picture — it can take up to 15 short exposures, align them with sub-pixel precision and average down the noise while the phone keeps collecting light after you press the shutter

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-pixel-3-night-sight-can-capture-a-photo-in-near-darkness-because-it-doesnt-take-one-picture-it-can-take-up-to-15-short-exposures-align-them-with-sub-pixel-precision-and-average-down-t/

Published: September 18, 2026 15:47

Modern phones see in the dark by cheating time. When the shutter button is tapped, the camera has already been quietly stacking frames — and the picture that appears is a composite the software built while the finger was still on the glass.

Screens use red, green and blue because human retinas carry only three types of colour-sensing cones, tuned near those wavelengths — a display isn’t reproducing colour, it’s tricking three specific proteins in your eye into firing in the right ratio

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-screens-use-red-green-and-blue-because-human-retinas-carry-only-three-types-of-colour-sensing-cones-tuned-near-those-wavelengths-a-display-isnt-reproducing-colour-its-tricking-three-specific-prote/

Published: September 17, 2026 04:43

Every colour on a screen is a controlled hallucination. Displays emit only red, green and blue light because the human retina has just three cone types to fool, and hitting them in the right ratio produces every hue the brain can name.

Voyager 1 is over 15.8 billion miles from Earth and its generators lose about four watts of power every year

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-voyager-1-is-over-15-8-billion-miles-from-earth-and-its-generators-lose-about-four-watts-of-power-every-year/

Published: September 16, 2026 07:22

Launched in 1977 on a four-year mission to Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 1 is now the most distant human-made object — and the plutonium batteries keeping it alive weaken by roughly four watts a year.

When you delete a file from a traditional hard drive, the operating system usually removes the pointer to it — the bytes themselves can sit undisturbed until something else writes over that patch of disk, which is why recovery tools can rebuild photos months later

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-when-you-delete-a-file-from-a-traditional-hard-drive-the-operating-system-usually-removes-the-pointer-to-it-the-bytes-themselves-can-sit-undisturbed-until-something-else-writes-over-tha/

Published: September 14, 2026 14:16

Deleting a file rarely destroys anything. The operating system unlinks the reference and marks the space as available, but the actual bytes remain on the disk until something else happens to overwrite them.

The Gulf Offshore Research Institute has been awarded $20 million to turn idle Gulf oil platforms into hubs for energy, minerals and aquaculture

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-the-gulf-offshore-research-institute-has-been-awarded-20-million-to-turn-idle-gulf-oil-platforms-into-hubs-for-energy-minerals-and-aquaculture/

Published: September 14, 2026 10:03

A new University of Houston-led institute has been awarded roughly $20 million to study whether the thousands of ageing structures dotting the Gulf of Mexico can be given a second working life instead of being cut up and hauled away.

How did a metal box first secured to a converted tanker in April 1956 cut ocean freight loading costs by more than 90 per cent?

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-how-did-a-metal-box-first-secured-to-a-converted-tanker-in-april-1956-cut-ocean-freight-loading-costs-by-more-than-90-per-cent/

Published: September 10, 2026 08:10

The idea was simple enough that dockworkers laughed at it: put the cargo in a standard steel box and never unpack it until it arrived. What Malcom McLean stacked onto the Ideal X that April morning would gut the world's ports within two decades.

In December 2014, Google introduced a reCAPTCHA checkbox that let many users skip distorted letters while the system weighed browser characteristics and a Google tracking cookie before deciding whether to show another challenge

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-in-december-2014-google-introduced-a-recaptcha-checkbox-that-let-many-users-skip-distorted-letters-while-the-system-weighed-browser-characteristics-and-a-google-tracking-cookie-before-deciding-wh/

Published: September 9, 2026 08:45

The little "I'm not a robot" tickbox looks like a formality, but behind it sits a behavioural analysis system that was quietly rebuilt more than a decade ago. The distorted letters faded because something better replaced them: watching the way a cursor…

Microsoft didn’t just stop shipping Flash with Windows 10 — in February 2021 it began silently force-installing update KB4577586, which scrubs the player from the operating system itself, with the rollout finishing across most Windows machines by July 2021

https://maketecheasier.com/mte-microsoft-didnt-just-stop-shipping-flash-with-windows-10-in-february-2021-it-began-silently-force-installing-update-kb4577586-which-scrubs-the-player-from-the-operating-system-itself-with-the-roll/

Published: September 8, 2026 10:06

Adobe pulled the plug on Flash Player on 31 December 2020, but the code did not vanish on its own. Microsoft spent the following months pushing an update that quietly removed it from Windows for good.