All Chapters

[ sections: 8 · chapters: 36 · published: 36 ]

A visual exploration of the hidden mechanics inside everyday technology. Start anywhere that sparks your curiosity.

Light and Color

6/6 available

01.012.0k words

The anatomy of a pixel

What actually happens when your screen glows

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01.021.7k words

Why we see in three colors

The biology and physics of color perception

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01.031.5k words

The science of contrast

How your brain perceives differences

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01.041.7k words

How colors combine

Additive vs subtractive color mixing

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01.051.7k words

From photons to JPEGs

The journey from light to digital image

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01.061.7k words

Capacitive touch explained

How your phone knows where you tapped

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Shapes and Typography

5/5 available

02.012.4k words

The mathematics of curves

Bézier curves and the pen tool

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02.021.7k words

Inside a font file

What makes a typeface work

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02.031.6k words

Pixels vs vectors

Rasterization and anti-aliasing

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02.041.8k words

How SVGs actually work

Vector graphics on the web

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02.051.6k words

Union, subtract, intersect

Boolean operations demystified

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Rendering and GPUs

5/5 available

03.012.3k words

What makes a GPU different

Parallel processing explained

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03.021.9k words

The shader pipeline

How graphics get drawn

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03.031.8k words

Ray tracing demystified

Realistic lighting simulation

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03.041.7k words

Visual effects explained

Blurs, glows, and shadows

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03.051.5k words

3D on a 2D screen

Projection and perspective

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Intelligence and Learning

4/4 available

04.012.3k words

What is a neural network

Layers, weights, and activations

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04.022.0k words

How machines learn

Gradient descent and backpropagation

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04.032.2k words

The attention mechanism

What makes transformers work

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04.042.5k words

Generating pixels with AI

Diffusion models and GANs

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Information and Storage

5/5 available

05.011.9k words

Binary: the universal language

How computers count

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05.021.7k words

Squeezing data smaller

Compression algorithms

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05.031.5k words

Why JPEGs get blurry

Lossy image compression

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05.041.7k words

Keeping secrets with math

Cryptography fundamentals

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05.051.5k words

From spinning disks to flash

How data is physically stored

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Networks and Protocols

4/4 available

06.011.6k words

Packets and routing

How data travels

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06.021.6k words

The layers of the internet

TCP/IP and the OSI model

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06.031.6k words

What the cloud actually is

Servers and virtualization

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06.041.6k words

Inside your browser

Rendering web pages

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Code and Execution

4/4 available

07.012.5k words

From text to instructions

What code actually is

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07.022.2k words

Interpreters explained

Running code line by line

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07.031.8k words

Compilers explained

Translating code ahead of time

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07.042.0k words

Why some code runs faster

Optimization and algorithms

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Curiosities

3/3 available

08.013.1k words

Pattern matching with regex

Regular expressions decoded

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08.022.8k words

Decoding QR codes

How those squares store data

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08.032.6k words

Quantum bits and superposition

The future of computing

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