How Things Work
What Is a Large Language Model, and How Does It Work?
The chatbots everyone is using run on large language models, systems that write essays and code by doing one humble thing very well: guessing the next word. Here is how a word-guessing machine became so capable, and where it still slips up.
What Is Machine Learning, and How Does It Work?
Machine learning is the engine behind spam filters, film recommendations, and the chatbots everyone is talking about. Instead of following rules a human wrote, it learns patterns from data. Here is how that actually works.
What Is an API, and How Does It Work?
Every time you check the weather, log in with Google, or split a bill in an app, an API is quietly doing the work. It is the plumbing that lets software talk to other software. Here is how it works.
How Do Satellites Stay in Orbit Without Falling?
Thousands of satellites circle overhead right now, and gravity is pulling on every one of them. So why don’t they fall? The answer is stranger and simpler than it sounds.
How Do Rockets Actually Reach Orbit?
Getting a rocket up to space is the easy part. The real trick, and the reason rockets are almost all fuel, is going sideways fast enough to fall around the planet forever.