June 14, 2021 • 48 mins
In this new series, we take a look at acronyms and initialisms in tech and learn what they mean, plus get a little story behind them. Learn about ASCII and BIOS and CSS and more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And you know, one
thing I haven't really covered in this show is just
(00:25):
a rundown on common acronyms and initialisms in the world
of tech and what those things actually mean. Sometimes you
run into these things and they can throw you for
a loop. So today and in the next few episodes,
we're doing a sort of glossary of tech related terms
you might encounter and what those actually mean. Not really terms,
(00:49):
but again those initialisms and acronyms. I will spend a
little bit of time on each of these because there's
a lot to get through, so expect to hear a
bit of context, not just a deaf ffinition. Do you
want a definition? You could pull up lists of acronyms
and initialisms and just see that. Now, before I jump
into this, I do want to mention that this is
(01:09):
by no means an exhaustive list of acronyms in tech.
If I did that, it would pretty much completely take
over this podcast for the next like four weeks. Instead,
I've selected a bunch of acronyms and initialisms that I
think are important to know, but I'm leaving out a
ton of them, and I wouldn't blame anyone for saying
(01:32):
I was being a bit arbitrary with my approach to selection.
It turns out the tech world absolutely loves acronyms and initialisms,
and some of them take longer to say than the
full names, because I mean, why not. Also, just for
the purposes of organization, I'm going to go alphabetically through
the list here because I needed to organize this in
(01:55):
some way and that seemed to make the most sense
to me. In addition, with some of these, I have
actually grouped related terms together. For example, if I just
go strictly alphabetically, I would hit d RAM before RAM,
which means things we get a little weird. So instead,
d RAM is going to be part of a larger
(02:17):
treatment on RAM in general. So if you feel like
I've skipped over something, and I definitely have skipped over
some things, just wait for all of these episodes to
come out, just in case that thing shows up in
a group entry, and maybe by that time you will
have forgotten all about it, and I won't have to
get angry messages. So let's get to it. And our
(02:41):
first one isn't actually starting with a letter at all.
It starts with the numeral two, so it's two f A.
This one means to factor authentication, which I'm guessing most
of you out there have encountered at some point. This
is a means of authenticating a user, you know, saying yes,
(03:01):
this user is who they claim to be, and they
do it through well two factors. Those factors should belong
to two different categories of things. There are three categories total.
There's knowledge, so that would be stuff like a password.
It's something that the user knows. There's stuff what is
(03:23):
you by that I mean like biometrics like a retinal
scan or a fingerprint scan or you know, a vocal
scan that kind of thing. And then there's stuff what
you own, like your cell phone or a physical token
or something like that. So with two factor authentication, you
(03:44):
have to provide two out of the three categories in
order to get access to whatever system it is you're
trying to access. This could be a building, it could
be a computer, it could be a specific piece of software.
A pretty common version of this is a password and
a one time use access code that the system then
(04:05):
sends to your registered smartphone. So the idea here, of course,
is that if someone were to get hold of your password,
like let's say you wrote it on a post it
note or something I've seen it happen, well, that person
would still need to have your phone in order to
access that account once they were prompted by the system. So,
(04:28):
when implemented properly, two factor authentication is a big boost insecurity.
On a related note, you also have m f A,
which stands for multi factor authentication that includes to F
A but could extend beyond to F A for certain systems.
And also, I know it can feel like a huge
(04:49):
hassle to log into systems that require multi factor authentication,
but it really is a more secure method than using
passwords alone, for example, particularly in a world where data
breaches and poor security habits can lead to someone gaining
unauthorized access to a computer or network. Next, we have
(05:09):
and C A n s I stands for American National
Standards Institute. So if you're like me, you probably haven't
traditionally spent a whole lot of time thinking about standards
and where those standards come from. Now, standards are incredibly useful.
They're what makes it possible for you to use stuff
from totally different sources like manufacturers, for example, or or
(05:34):
just companies in general, and have those things still work together.
Imagine a world without standards. It kind of like me
in college. It would just be a total mess. You
would be locked into ecosystems even more than you already are.
Like if every PC manufacturer went totally proprietary with their hardware,
(05:56):
their firmware, and their software, you would be lawed into
that system. You would never be able to use anything
from anywhere else on a hardware related level, like not
even computer hardware, just literal like hardware store hardware. Imagine
that you had proprietary screws from one company and proprietary
(06:18):
screw drivers from a different company, and they're not at
all compatible, and that you would have to have everything
from the same manufacturer for it to work together. It
would be a nightmare and it would make things really
difficult whenever you need to make repairs or add on
to anything. So standards can apply to stuff like equipment
(06:40):
or even processes and personnel. So standards can be far
beyond just the physical stuff that we encounter or the
types of of software that we use, and and see
the organization that verify standards that dates back to nineteen
It doesn't actually establish standards itself. It's not like this
(07:01):
organization gets together and says we have the stone tablet
that says all uh Phillips head screwdrivers have to be
this particular shape. It's not like that. Instead, it's an
accreditation organization that evaluates and approves standards that have been
developed by other entities. That process involves a lot of collaboration.
(07:22):
So and C brings together all the various parties that
are affected by the adoption of those standards so that
they can hash it out. Ultimately, this leads to a
more orderly marketplace. All that being said, there's still lots
of companies that develop proprietary technologies and processes, but the
vast majority of the stuff we depend upon has an
(07:43):
underlying uniformity thanks to standards. Next, a p I and
s d K. This is one of those where I've
combined two different things. So a p I stands for
Application programming interface, s d A stands for software development kit.
These two terms are frequently used together, but they are
(08:06):
not interchangeable, and a p I is kind of like
a software liaison, so it's a set of rules and
tools that allow different pieces of software to communicate with
each other. It helps developers create application software that can
interoperate with some other piece of software or platform. So,
(08:26):
for example, Facebook has an ap I that lets developers
create apps that can tap into basic Facebook functionality. N
s d K, on the other hand, is a more
robust set of tools for the purposes of developing software,
and s d K often has an API as part
(08:47):
of the kit. So you can think of an API
as a subset of the kind of tools that you
find in an s d K. So an operating system
might have an s d K, and that would allow
developers to create software that could then run on top
of that operating system, which, by the way, we often
abbreviate to O S, so that's another bonus. OS stands
(09:11):
for operating system. Next a R. A R stands for
augmented reality. This applies to technologies that use some form
of computer generated information to enhance our real world experience
in some way. Frequently, we think of this as a
visual overlay of the world around us. So, for example,
(09:34):
Google Glass which had a transparent prism that was sort
of look in a way that was not directly in
your view if you were looking straight ahead, but rather
up just a little bit, so you'd glance up a
bit and you could look at this prism that was
actually a screen that could display digital information. So I
could give you, for example, step by step directions as
(09:56):
you navigated around an environment. You would just glance up
and see that, you know, in one feet you would
need to make a left turn. Other versions of a
R use a camera to pick up on an image
and then display where you would be able to see
some sort of effect related to that image. So one
example of this is like an app where you would
(10:16):
hold it up your phone, you know, hold up your phone,
so the camera is looking at say a movie poster,
and then on your screen that movie poster suddenly becomes
animated and it's it's, you know, a pretty interesting effect.
But you could have a R implementations that don't use
visual elements at all. Just has to be a computer
generated sensory experience that enhances or augments what's going on
(10:42):
in the world around you. A R is a type
of mixed reality which you can think of as existing
on a spectrum. So on one end of the spectrum
you have an experience that is heavily dependent upon real reality,
and the computational elements are extremely light touch. And then
on the other side of the spectrum you have experiences
(11:05):
that are heavily dependent on a computer generated reality. In fact,
you could have somewhere the computer generated reality is replacing
almost everything of your real experience. Arguably, augmented reality started
off as an entertainment experience pioneered by a guy named
Morton Heilig back in the late nineteen fifties. He invented
(11:26):
a machine called the sensor Rama. The idea being that
you would sit down in one of these machines. It's
kind of like a almost like a console type thing.
You would sit at and you would watch some form
of movie or short film, and that would be augmented
with other sensations, like the device would emit certain smells,
(11:47):
like let's say that you're looking at video or a
film rather of orange groves, and suddenly you can smell oranges,
and you could even get haptic sensation, so so tactile feedback.
There would be little vibrating motors and stuff, and that
was a kind of the birth of augmented reality. As
(12:08):
for the term itself, Thomas P. Coddle gets the credit
for coining that term in nine back when he was
working at Boeing. Next up, we've got our PA slash DARPA.
So our PA A r p A stands for Advanced
Research Projects Agency and DARPA, which is the same organization.
(12:30):
It's just a new name that stands for Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. That's the current name for the organization.
This is the R and D ARM of the United
States Department of Defense. Now this agency isn't actually a
think tank filled with like labs and scientists playing with
(12:50):
beakers and robots and aliens and stuff. Instead, it's an
organization that's focused primarily on providing funding to other research
organizations that are actually developing technologies that could potentially be
useful in the cause of national defense. DARPA has played
a huge role in the evolution of technologies like computer networks,
(13:13):
autonomous cars, drone technology, and much more. ARPA net a
predecessor of the Internet, came out of an ARPA initiative.
As the name implies, many of the autonomous car projects
in various companies can actually trace their history back to
participants who are competing in one of the DARPA Grand
(13:34):
Challenges of Driver Ellis vehicles. These challenges lay out really
ambitious goals and then various teams strive to achieve those
while competing against other teams, and they're all going for
a cash prize and really bragging rights for winning the
whole thing. Now, it's important to remember that the chief
role of DARPA is ultimately to fund projects that could
(13:56):
potentially be used in a defense or millet very context,
and the organization has been connected to some rather unsavory
projects in the past, such as the use of herbicides
in warfare, most notably agent orange, which is a highly
toxic and carcinogenic compound that was used by the United
(14:17):
States during the Vietnam War. Then we have as key
or a s c I. I stands for American Standard
Code for Information into Exchange. It's a standard for how
an eight bit system represents numbers, letters, and certain symbols.
So a bit is a binary digit and it can
(14:39):
have a value of zero or one. So each bit
has two potential values. Right, a bit can be either
a zero or a one. If you have two bits.
Then you've got four potential values, which would be zero, zero, zero, one,
one zero, or one one. When you get up to
eight bits, you have two hundred fifty six potential values.
(15:03):
The American Standards Association's X three division created as key
as a standard for representing various characters using binary with
these eight bits or a bite if you prefer, a
bite is eight bits. The standard could then be used
in bit based computer systems, which allowed for electronic communication
(15:24):
of these characters. So we have to remember that computers
don't process language the same way we do. They typically
process language and form of machine code. Machine code, more
often than not, means binary. That's something that we humans
can't really handle very well. Machines can handle it very
(15:45):
very quickly. So the as key was a way of
translating binary into characters and vice versa. Very important when
you're using computers to communicate between two different people. Basic, alright, Basic,
believe it or not, is an acronym. It's not just
(16:07):
a word. Basic stands for beginners all purpose symbolic instruction code.
It's a type of high level programming language, and the
developers of Basic intended it to be a relatively easy
to use programming language that computer science students could pick
up pretty quickly. So what does high level mean in
(16:27):
this case, Well, machines, like I said, process information in
machine code, and the most famous of this is binary.
Machines can process binary code very very quickly, but it's
incredibly hard for humans to do the same. It's easy
for me to say the letter H, for example, but
if I have to look up the as key code
(16:48):
for the letter H, that would be zero one one
zero one zero zero zero. That's if I wanted to
do a lower case H, and upper case H is
a totally different code, so that would very quickly become
impossible for me to use this this binary language to
make any kind of meaningful set of instructions, like a
(17:10):
program to run on a computer. So to make it
easier for humans to program and work with computers, various
very smart people have created programming languages. Now, some programming
languages we refer to as being low level languages. That
means they are fairly close to machine code and thus
they're pretty hard for humans to work with. But other
(17:32):
languages are more of an abstraction and they are high level,
so they are easy or at least easier for humans
to work with as they type out instructions to create
a program, so a compiler then takes that language and
translates it into machine code for the computer to process.
(17:54):
Basic is one of the older modern computer languages and
one that goofs is like yours. Truly it around with
when personal computers first became a thing. You can still
program in Basic, though there are far more sophisticated programming
languages out there. Of course. Next is BIOS, which stands
for Basic Input output System. So if you look at
(18:16):
a computer and you get a bit abstract, you realize
there's some proverbial layers going on with your basic computer
or computational device. You've got your actual circuitry, right, You've
got the actual hardware through which information ultimately must be processed.
These are the physical pathways that electricity can flow through.
(18:38):
These are the transistors and the wires and processors and
all that kind of stuff. But you've also got software.
These are the programs that you run to create various outputs.
Maybe it's a video game, maybe it's a word processor,
maybe it's a web browser. These are chunks of code
that respond to your input and create an output based
(18:58):
on that. But there's got to be a layer that
allows for software to interact with hardware, and that's kind
of what BIOS is doing. It's a type of firmware,
which is a low level software that interacts with a
hardware level. BIOS initiates the boot up process, among other things,
and the BIOS sets the boot priority, which is essentially
(19:20):
a list that dictates the order in which processes may
initiate upon a machine booting up. All right, so far
we have covered only the a's and the bees plus
a number with two F A. When we come back,
we'll see what's next. It's um, it's c because that
was a pun. I'm so sorry. We'll be right back.
(19:50):
We're gonna start off the seas with CAT C A D.
It's not just a scoundrel. It actually stands for a
computer aided design and as the name IMPLOY lies, this
refers to the practice of using computers or computerized workstations
to assist in the design of something. It could be
in the design of electronics or architecture, or mechanical systems
(20:14):
or animation. I first learned about CAD approaches from my
friend Michael in high school. He took a course in drafting,
and that's where he first worked with CAD applications. Me. No,
I never got into that because ain't no computer that's
been made that can aid me in the design enough
to make something I make look good or be functional. Today,
(20:39):
CAD is used in tons of industries, from aerospace to
prosthetics to computer animation. Designers may work in a two
D format that's two dimensional, or they might use three
D models. It all depends on the specific implementation. You
know what they're using it for, and the program next
is CAT or C A T. In this case, I'm
(21:02):
talking about CAT as in category, which we use to
describe certain types of network cables, like ethernet cables. These
are a subset of twisted pair cables. So let's just
walk through that really quickly. If you're familiar with electromagnetism,
you know that a current running through a conductor generates
(21:23):
a magnetic field, and you know that a fluctuating magnetic
field will induce a current to flow through a nearby conductor.
We can do a lot of cool stuff with that
because of that basic law of physics, but it also
means we have to take interference into account when we
build out electronics. If you had two unshielded conductors that
(21:45):
were near each other, the current flowing through conductor number
one would interfere with conductor number two. So one thing
you can do to limit this is you can insulate
the conductors. You can use a non conductive material to
coat those. But another thing you can do is you
can twist a pair of conductors together that actually reduces
(22:07):
the interference between the two. Alexander Graham Bell discovered this
and used it when building out devices like the early telephone,
and in fact telephone wires use this particular approach. Let's
skip ahead to the nine nineties. After the development of
Level one cables, which are used for telephone wires, and
(22:29):
Level two, which was used in early computer terminal systems,
particularly at places like IBM, twisted pair cables came in
a type called Category three or just Cat three cables,
and then went from there. Cat three cables allowed for
a bandwidth of sixteen mega hurts of frequencies for the
purposes of data transmission. These days, most Ethernet cables are
(22:52):
actually Cat five E cables, which can transmit data at
up to gigabit speeds. There are other Cat gory cables
out there, some of which have yet to be ratified
by standards organizations. That also means that because they haven't
been ratified, there aren't that many equipment manufacturers that have created,
(23:12):
you know, actual devices that accept those kinds of cables,
because it could be a very expensive mistake to build
out stuff that is accepting a non standardized input. If
standards organizations never ratify specific implementations and declare them as standard,
you could end up having devices that have useless ports,
(23:34):
and that's just an expense that you didn't need to have. Next,
we have C MOSS or c m O S. This
stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor, which is a type
of semiconductor that says nice things about your outfit. Wait no,
I'm sorry, wait being told that's the wrong kind of complementary.
(23:56):
With regard to computer chips, C MOSS refers to a
chip that's ors information about the hardware settings of the device.
So BIOS references s MOSS when going through the booting process.
So SA MOSS and BIOS work together to bring a
computational device online and in proper working order upon booting up.
(24:17):
The memory on S MOSS is dynamic and technically it's
temporary or volatile in other words, And if S Moss
were to ever go unmpowered, like if the chip were
to be able to cut off from power, the memory
on that chip would just wipe out. It would be blank.
It would be a race essentially. But Bios needs the
instructions from s Moss to boot properly, right, Bios depends
(24:41):
on s Moss to essentially instruct the Bios what order
to do stuff in so, the S Moss chip relies
on a small battery to stay powered up even when
the computer itself has turned off or if you lost
power or whatever. These batteries can last a really long time.
Ten years, isn't on you usual, Uh, it's typically at
(25:02):
least as long as the life cycle for the motherboard
of your computer. Most of the time you would actually
be ready to replace the whole device before you would
ever need to replace the C Moss battery, although there
are cases where people have had to do that. Now,
when you boot up a computer, you actually do have
a tool that allows you the option to either boot
into BIOS or S Moss. Booting into sea Moss gives
(25:25):
you the chance to change sea Moss settings which in
turn will affect how BIOS handles the booting process in
the future. Sea Moss, by the way, is a PC term,
as in personal computer, not politically correct. In Apple Mac computers,
the equivalent is PRAM or p RAM that stands for
parameter ram. But we're gonna talk about RAM in a
(25:49):
later episode, all right. I should also add that there
is another s MOSS in tech, and that's the type
of active pixels sensor found in some digital cameras. See
MOSS is just one type of these kinds of sensors,
and to go into how those sensors work would require
a pretty thorough explanation, and it's full episode on its own,
(26:09):
so I'm going to leave that for the time being.
Just understand that there's that version to It still stands
for the same thing, by the way, It's still complementary
metal oxide semiconductor, but it has a different purpose. Moving
on CMS now with regard to tech, CMS means content
management system. Typically, this is a framework within which users
(26:31):
can post, edit, and delete content, such as web content.
A CMS typically has a structure that allows for a
uniform approach to adding content to a pre existing system,
like say a website that way, even someone who is
new to that environment can still post stuff that's in
line with the standards and protocols of the site. So
(26:51):
let's take an actual example and use my old employer,
how stuff works dot com. That site has a CMS
that allows people to create content in article format, including
the basics and how images show up on screen, where
captions should appear, and in what font and all that
kind of stuff. It's sort of like a way to
(27:12):
create and manage templates and then post content within that template.
And back when I worked at how stuff Works, I
didn't have to use the CMS very much myself. I
would write my articles and then a publisher would take
the finished and edited product and then put it into
CMS for publication. Our CMS also allowed publishers to set
(27:32):
a time for that publication, so that a finished piece
of copy could go live on the site at a
specific designated time. So there was a content delivery application
or c d A that would take the formatted content
and push it to go live. A good CMS will
have lots of features that make life easier for publishers,
(27:54):
like audit logs to keep track of changes that are
made to content, or a small server footprint so that
the CMS isn't taking too much space on a network.
Really good ones will have a very intuitive UI that
stands for user interface. So a user interface is exactly
what it sounds like. It's the way in which a
user interacts with a technology. So that's another little bonus
(28:15):
initialism for you. Right there. Next is KAPPA c O
p p A. I covered this in a recent episode
of Tech Stuff, so I'm not gonna spend too much
time on it, but it stands for Children's Online Privacy
Protection Act. The US Congress passed this Act into law
in n KAPPA requires online sites and services that target
(28:38):
users who are under the age of thirteen to comply
with certain rules or else face civil lawsuits from entities
like the Federal Trade Commission or FTC. Those rules state
that a site or service has to get the express
permission from a parent or guardian of a child before
they can collect that child's information. Further, the eighter service
(29:00):
cannot collect any and all information about the kid. It
can't just like build out a comprehensive database of all
data points about that child. They are only supposed to
collect the information needed to provide whatever service it is
that the entity is providing So, for example, if it's
a web based game, it can't be asking for all
(29:22):
the information about the kids address and parents names and
all that kind of stuff because it's not necessary in
order to just play the game. Also, these entities are
supposed to delete that information once the info is no
longer needed to provide that service. This is tied pretty
closely to the rules that the advertising industry set for
itself when it comes to marketing towards children. In Kappa
(29:46):
made the news uh within YouTube circles because the platform
initiated some pretty big changes that had widespread effects on
content creators. The short version is that YouTube requires creators
to design whether their channels or on a more granular level,
their individual videos are targeting kids specifically, and if so,
(30:09):
then many of the typical features that we've come to
expect on YouTube, you know, stuff like comments, uh, notifications,
merchandise links, that kind of stuff, all of that gets
turned off because of those strict rules about how sites
and services can collect information about kids or how they
can advertise to kids. So, in addition, that means personalized
(30:33):
ads are turned off automatically for any of those videos or,
in the case of channels, that are directed towards kids
for the entire channel that affects monetization. It means that
you get a lower level for revenue than you would
with personalized ads, and that means that creators will make
less money through those means. And for a lot of creators,
(30:54):
these changes raised questions about whether or not their channel,
which might be family friend e, might be tagged as
being explicitly targeting kids. They could say, well, no, I
don't target kids. I mean, I don't make content that's
inappropriate for children, but I'm not specifically targeting children as
my audience. And so there are a lot of questions
(31:16):
about how do these different creators, you know, how do
they fit within this rule set. So far, it doesn't
seem as though these changes have turned YouTube upside down
or anything, but it is an ongoing dialogue between creators
and the platform itself. Next, we have c P, A CPC, CPL,
(31:38):
and CPM. So speaking of monetization, that's what all these
initialisms kind of relate to. The CP in each of
these stands for cost per So you've got cost per
action for c P, a cost per click for CPC,
cost per lead for CPL, and cost per mill a
(31:59):
for cp UM. So all of this ties to advertising
and how ad deals are struck between content providers or
content platforms and the advertisers. So cost per action covers
an amount paid per specific action that's taken by users.
That action could be clicking on an AD, or it
(32:19):
could be submitting an online form, or it might go
so far as actually making a purchase. So the agreement
here states that the advertiser will pay the content platform
a specific fee every time some user takes this very
particular action related to whatever the ad is. Cost per
click is really a subset of cost per action. It
(32:42):
specifically refers to the moment when someone clicks on an AD,
So this isn't just whether or not someone saw an ad.
It's not enough for it to just be an impression.
In other words, this is if a person saw the
ad and then acted by clicking through to see what
the ad links to. So Google ads in search results
(33:04):
typically fall into this category. If you ever do a
Google search and then you click on one of the
ad results, which are typically at the very top of
the list, that's likely counting towards a cost per click
revenue model. It doesn't affect you directly, it's just how
the money is changing hands at that advertiser platform level.
(33:26):
Then you have cost per lead or CPL. That's when
you're usually talking about scenario in which someone is explicitly
signing up for an offer. So if the ad leads
to someone signing up to get a newsletter or something
like that, that might be a cost per lead. And
like the previous examples, the advertiser will pay out a
certain amount of money for every user that actually follows
(33:49):
through and generates a lead. And yeah, leads in this
case essentially mean potential sales, as they typically represent someone
who is interested in a specific product or so of us.
And then finally you've got cost per mil a mill
a is the old Roman word for thousand, and this
is the impression model. So essentially CPM establishes a certain
(34:11):
amount of money that an advertiser will pay per one
thousand impressions or views. So if you've got a website
and your website displays ads that are all based on impressions,
the more people who come to visit your site, the
more money you'll make. Once you have those one thousand
(34:32):
impression blocks start to fill up. In addition, more popular
sites can actually require a higher CPM, so that means
that advertisers will actually pay more per one thousand impressions.
These agreements typically have a set time limit on them,
so for example, you might have an ad deal that
(34:52):
lasts for three months, and at the end of the
three months you get paid according to whatever your CPM
rate is and how any people actually viewed that ad
within the three month period. CPM approaches have led to
some of the types of web pages that I personally dislike,
such as the slide show approach for listicles, where every
(35:14):
item on a list is its own web page. That's
done because moving from one slide to another counts as
a page refresh, which means you get another impression. So
one way web pages boost impression counts is by using
stuff like slide shows, galleries, and quizzes in order to
get those page views to go up. Also, a website
(35:36):
that can show that it has a higher page view
rate can demand a higher CPM rate, so it all
kind of feeds back on itself. We've got a few
more seeds to go through, but I need to take
a really quick break. Okay, we're up to a big one.
(35:59):
See pu this one is a basic term that maybe
all of you know, but just in case, it stands
for central processing unit. This is the logic center for
a computational device. It's the chip that performs basic operations
on data to generate results. So you could have a
program that's sending instructions and data to the CPU. Those
(36:23):
instructions might be as simple as add these two numbers together,
and then the CPU executes those instructions on the data
and then sends the output to wherever it's supposed to
go based on those instructions. CPUs handled general instructions, and
so they have to be pretty good at pretty much everything,
or at least they have to be passable at everything.
(36:45):
For a general purpose computer, they typically have an arithmetic
logic unit or a LU in them, which, as the
name suggests, is in charge of executing arithmetic operations on data.
A LU chip can exist on their own. They don't
have to be full CPUs, and in fact, in some
more um basic electronics you might just have an a
(37:08):
l U. The CPU typically also has a control unit
that's in charge of coordinating things within the CPU, such
as fetching data from memory and then dictating the order
of operations that the CPU is supposed to follow. CPUs
operate at a specific rate of operations called the clock
rate or clock speed. You can think of this as
how many basic instructions the CPU is able to execute
(37:33):
in a second. We measure this in hurts or cycles
per second. So a CPU that operates on the mega
Hurts scale is executing basic instructions at a rate of
millions per second, though these days that would be slow.
Your basic CPUs today operate on the giga Hurts scale,
so we're talking billions of basic instructions every second. Some
(37:56):
operations require more than one step in instructions, and the
faster the clock rate, the faster the CPUs can execute instructions.
Generally speaking, the practice of overclocking refers to boosting a
CPUs clock rate beyond whatever the factory set limit for
that CPU happens to be. It's kind of like removing
(38:18):
any sort of limitation device from a car so that
it can actually go faster than it's rated top speed.
On another note, while early CPUs used a single core architecture,
it's pretty common these days for computers to have multi
core processors. You can sort of think of these as
slightly smaller CPUs that all work together. For certain types
(38:41):
of computational problems, the multi core approach greatly speeds up
processing by breaking those problems up into different components. This
doesn't work for every computational problem, however, and so a
multi core processor may sometimes not match a single or
processor of a similar clock rate for a specific subset
(39:04):
of computational problems. Getting into all of that would require
a full episode of itself, so we'll leave it for now.
Just know that most CPUs out there these days are
multi core processors, and for the vast majority of types
of software that we typical users run, that's fine. It's
perfectly cromulent, as the Simpsons would say. Next, we have
(39:27):
c R T. So in the context of technology, I'm
talking about cathode ray tubes. This refers to the old
style of computer monitors and displays and even television sets.
These devices are big, bulky displays. They aren't just wide
and tall like flat panel displays. They have depth, so
(39:47):
in our flat screen world they look really clumsy and bulky.
They're also incredibly heavy. Oh and they also have very
powerful capacitors inside them that can hold on to a
latent electric charge that makes them potentially very dangerous if
you were to ever break one, So don't do that
(40:08):
because you could get electrocuted or at least suffer a
really serious shock. Anyway, the cathode ray tube refers to
a component inside these displays that is in many ways
similar to a light bulb. So you've got a tube
inside of which is a filament that is suspended in
a vacuum. So inside the tube is a vacuum, electricity
(40:32):
can flow through the filament, which then causes the filament
to start to give off electrons. Frequently, we call this
an electron gun because of how it gives off and
then directs electrons to hit the backside of a fluorescent screen.
The impact of the electrons on those fluorescent components causes
those components to you know, fluoresce or glow, and on
(40:55):
the flip side, we see those as pixels of light
on these types of display. So these electron guns are
consistently scanning across the backs of these screens and generating
the images that we see, whether it's television or computer
monitor or display or whatever. These days, c r T
s are a rarity. You still find them with some
(41:17):
legacy systems, and folks who have old working televisions may
still be using them, though with some pretty big limitations,
but for the most part they have been replaced by
other types of tech. Next, we have c s S
that's cascading style sheets. This is a style sheet language,
and that doesn't really help very much for most of us,
(41:39):
I think, But for the web it means that you
can use CSS to create the formatting style for information
that will be displayed on the web, and you can
separate the format that is the way that things are
displayed within a browser, and you can separate that from
the content, as in the actual stuff that's being displayed.
(42:01):
So in the old days, if you wanted to create
a web page, you had to code everything in. You
had to set whatever the background color of the page
was going to be, the text color of the font
of the table, formats, font styles and size, layout styles
and more, and it was a lot of work. CSS
allows developers to create what is sort of like a
(42:24):
format template. Any content that uses that CSS format will
end up fitting that template once you publish it to
the web, and you could port that content to a
different CSS sheet and it would end up looking totally different.
The word cascading here is used to describe a sort
of order of operations. UH. You can think of it
(42:46):
as an if then kind of approach, such as, if
this web page is being viewed on a mobile device,
then use this specific layout scheme. However, if the content
is being viewed through a web browser on say a
desktop computer, then use this other layout scheme that's optimized
(43:07):
for that. Since different rules might apply depending upon the
specific circumstances, the operations cascade and priority based on those circumstances.
So it's really about removing a lot of the work
that you would have to do if you were to
do all of this by hand. CSS, by the way,
is one of the foundational elements of the World Wide Web,
(43:29):
and we'll talk about another one in a future episode.
And spoiler alert that one is HTML. But we've got
a long way to go. We've got a lot more
letters in the alphabet before we get to H. Next,
we have DOLL and this isn't just what I say
when I see a cute puppy dog, however, it's also
that I also do say that no. DAW stands for
(43:50):
digital audio workstation. So this is what audio editors and
engineers used to work on digital audio files. A doll
can be a selection of physical equipment, so it can
be like a big bank of controls, complete with lots
of you know, knobs and buttons and sliders. Or it
can consist of software in which all of those physical
(44:11):
controls are essentially virtualized. Or it could be a combination
of the two. Podcasters use DAWs to record and edit
their content. Most DAWs have tons of options to let
you manipulate audio files in various ways. It might mean
adding reverb to a selection, or it might mean changing
(44:31):
the pit of the audio or the speed of the
audio playback. And those are just tiny examples and some
of the more overt features you'll find with DAWs. There's
some that are incredibly subtle, and you might not even
pick up on them, but you know, producers who have
been working in the field for years will immediately recognize them.
The one DAW that most of our producers tend to use,
(44:54):
not all of them, but most of them, is called
Audition from Adobe. Some produce there's wouldn't even call Audition
a dawn simply because it lacks support that, say, musicians
would rely upon, such as native support for MIDI integrations
MIDI or m I d I is another initialism that
we will cover in a future episode. Next, we have
(45:18):
d l C. This stands for downloadable content, and typically
this refers to additional content that embellishes an existing piece
of software, most notably in video games, but not exclusively.
DLC is a way for publishers to create and sell
expansions to existing pieces of software. But it doesn't require
(45:39):
developers to go in and create an all new version
of the stuff, right. They can rely heavily on existing
assets to build out these additional features. So in the
video game world, you'll frequently see DLC used to flesh
out fictional world or create new storylines or levels or
missions for the play here to follow. But sometimes DLC
(46:02):
might include purely cosmetic changes, or they'll include content that's
you know, tangential to the game play. It doesn't actually
represent more gameplay, but just kind of augments what's already
been there. Just like games in general, DLC can be
done really well or it can be done poorly. For
most gamers, I would say good, DLC is typically seen
(46:23):
as something that's priced appropriately. Typically you're talking about something
that's priced below the price for a full game and
provides a satisfying experience on top of whatever the main
game is. Bad, DLC might be viewed as being too
expensive or just containing superfluous content that doesn't really add anything.
DLC can extend the life cycle of a game title.
(46:47):
Some games can remain relevant years after their initial release
because of DLC, and some games, like the hit Man games,
the most recent ones, for example, can create entire revenue
models based around DLC that just consistently adds new content
to an older game. Well, I think that's a good
(47:07):
place for us to leave off. We've got a lot
more to cover. Obviously, we're just now INDs and we've
still got a few DS to go. Beyond that, we
have the rest of the alphabet. But I think that
this is a really useful approach to kind of understanding
some terms that you're gonna encounter as you navigate the
world of tech, and not all of them are intuitive,
(47:30):
and a lot of them can actually lead to people
thinking that the initials stand for totally different stuff, and
it can be very confusing. So I find that this
sort of approach is good to build an understanding and
a contextualization around tech, and I always find that to
be particularly useful. So we will continue this in Wednesday's
(47:52):
episode and probably beyond that, because unless I just get
extremely efficient with descriptions, will have a lot more to
go beyond that. But I think that this is a
really useful path to go down. If you have suggestions
for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
whether it's elaboration on any of these terms or something
(48:15):
just interesting in the tech world, reach out to me.
The best place to do that is on Twitter. The
handle we use is tech stuff h s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
(48:36):
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And you know, one
thing I haven't really covered in this show is just
(00:25):
a rundown on common acronyms and initialisms in the world
of tech and what those things actually mean. Sometimes you
run into these things and they can throw you for
a loop. So today and in the next few episodes,
we're doing a sort of glossary of tech related terms
you might encounter and what those actually mean. Not really terms,
(00:49):
but again those initialisms and acronyms. I will spend a
little bit of time on each of these because there's
a lot to get through, so expect to hear a
bit of context, not just a deaf ffinition. Do you
want a definition? You could pull up lists of acronyms
and initialisms and just see that. Now, before I jump
into this, I do want to mention that this is
(01:09):
by no means an exhaustive list of acronyms in tech.
If I did that, it would pretty much completely take
over this podcast for the next like four weeks. Instead,
I've selected a bunch of acronyms and initialisms that I
think are important to know, but I'm leaving out a
ton of them, and I wouldn't blame anyone for saying
(01:32):
I was being a bit arbitrary with my approach to selection.
It turns out the tech world absolutely loves acronyms and initialisms,
and some of them take longer to say than the
full names, because I mean, why not. Also, just for
the purposes of organization, I'm going to go alphabetically through
the list here because I needed to organize this in
(01:55):
some way and that seemed to make the most sense
to me. In addition, with some of these, I have
actually grouped related terms together. For example, if I just
go strictly alphabetically, I would hit d RAM before RAM,
which means things we get a little weird. So instead,
d RAM is going to be part of a larger
(02:17):
treatment on RAM in general. So if you feel like
I've skipped over something, and I definitely have skipped over
some things, just wait for all of these episodes to
come out, just in case that thing shows up in
a group entry, and maybe by that time you will
have forgotten all about it, and I won't have to
get angry messages. So let's get to it. And our
(02:41):
first one isn't actually starting with a letter at all.
It starts with the numeral two, so it's two f A.
This one means to factor authentication, which I'm guessing most
of you out there have encountered at some point. This
is a means of authenticating a user, you know, saying yes,
(03:01):
this user is who they claim to be, and they
do it through well two factors. Those factors should belong
to two different categories of things. There are three categories total.
There's knowledge, so that would be stuff like a password.
It's something that the user knows. There's stuff what is
(03:23):
you by that I mean like biometrics like a retinal
scan or a fingerprint scan or you know, a vocal
scan that kind of thing. And then there's stuff what
you own, like your cell phone or a physical token
or something like that. So with two factor authentication, you
(03:44):
have to provide two out of the three categories in
order to get access to whatever system it is you're
trying to access. This could be a building, it could
be a computer, it could be a specific piece of software.
A pretty common version of this is a password and
a one time use access code that the system then
(04:05):
sends to your registered smartphone. So the idea here, of course,
is that if someone were to get hold of your password,
like let's say you wrote it on a post it
note or something I've seen it happen, well, that person
would still need to have your phone in order to
access that account once they were prompted by the system. So,
(04:28):
when implemented properly, two factor authentication is a big boost insecurity.
On a related note, you also have m f A,
which stands for multi factor authentication that includes to F
A but could extend beyond to F A for certain systems.
And also, I know it can feel like a huge
(04:49):
hassle to log into systems that require multi factor authentication,
but it really is a more secure method than using
passwords alone, for example, particularly in a world where data
breaches and poor security habits can lead to someone gaining
unauthorized access to a computer or network. Next, we have
(05:09):
and C A n s I stands for American National
Standards Institute. So if you're like me, you probably haven't
traditionally spent a whole lot of time thinking about standards
and where those standards come from. Now, standards are incredibly useful.
They're what makes it possible for you to use stuff
from totally different sources like manufacturers, for example, or or
(05:34):
just companies in general, and have those things still work together.
Imagine a world without standards. It kind of like me
in college. It would just be a total mess. You
would be locked into ecosystems even more than you already are.
Like if every PC manufacturer went totally proprietary with their hardware,
(05:56):
their firmware, and their software, you would be lawed into
that system. You would never be able to use anything
from anywhere else on a hardware related level, like not
even computer hardware, just literal like hardware store hardware. Imagine
that you had proprietary screws from one company and proprietary
(06:18):
screw drivers from a different company, and they're not at
all compatible, and that you would have to have everything
from the same manufacturer for it to work together. It
would be a nightmare and it would make things really
difficult whenever you need to make repairs or add on
to anything. So standards can apply to stuff like equipment
(06:40):
or even processes and personnel. So standards can be far
beyond just the physical stuff that we encounter or the
types of of software that we use, and and see
the organization that verify standards that dates back to nineteen
It doesn't actually establish standards itself. It's not like this
(07:01):
organization gets together and says we have the stone tablet
that says all uh Phillips head screwdrivers have to be
this particular shape. It's not like that. Instead, it's an
accreditation organization that evaluates and approves standards that have been
developed by other entities. That process involves a lot of collaboration.
(07:22):
So and C brings together all the various parties that
are affected by the adoption of those standards so that
they can hash it out. Ultimately, this leads to a
more orderly marketplace. All that being said, there's still lots
of companies that develop proprietary technologies and processes, but the
vast majority of the stuff we depend upon has an
(07:43):
underlying uniformity thanks to standards. Next, a p I and
s d K. This is one of those where I've
combined two different things. So a p I stands for
Application programming interface, s d A stands for software development kit.
These two terms are frequently used together, but they are
(08:06):
not interchangeable, and a p I is kind of like
a software liaison, so it's a set of rules and
tools that allow different pieces of software to communicate with
each other. It helps developers create application software that can
interoperate with some other piece of software or platform. So,
(08:26):
for example, Facebook has an ap I that lets developers
create apps that can tap into basic Facebook functionality. N
s d K, on the other hand, is a more
robust set of tools for the purposes of developing software,
and s d K often has an API as part
(08:47):
of the kit. So you can think of an API
as a subset of the kind of tools that you
find in an s d K. So an operating system
might have an s d K, and that would allow
developers to create software that could then run on top
of that operating system, which, by the way, we often
abbreviate to O S, so that's another bonus. OS stands
(09:11):
for operating system. Next a R. A R stands for
augmented reality. This applies to technologies that use some form
of computer generated information to enhance our real world experience
in some way. Frequently, we think of this as a
visual overlay of the world around us. So, for example,
(09:34):
Google Glass which had a transparent prism that was sort
of look in a way that was not directly in
your view if you were looking straight ahead, but rather
up just a little bit, so you'd glance up a
bit and you could look at this prism that was
actually a screen that could display digital information. So I
could give you, for example, step by step directions as
(09:56):
you navigated around an environment. You would just glance up
and see that, you know, in one feet you would
need to make a left turn. Other versions of a
R use a camera to pick up on an image
and then display where you would be able to see
some sort of effect related to that image. So one
example of this is like an app where you would
(10:16):
hold it up your phone, you know, hold up your phone,
so the camera is looking at say a movie poster,
and then on your screen that movie poster suddenly becomes
animated and it's it's, you know, a pretty interesting effect.
But you could have a R implementations that don't use
visual elements at all. Just has to be a computer
generated sensory experience that enhances or augments what's going on
(10:42):
in the world around you. A R is a type
of mixed reality which you can think of as existing
on a spectrum. So on one end of the spectrum
you have an experience that is heavily dependent upon real reality,
and the computational elements are extremely light touch. And then
on the other side of the spectrum you have experiences
(11:05):
that are heavily dependent on a computer generated reality. In fact,
you could have somewhere the computer generated reality is replacing
almost everything of your real experience. Arguably, augmented reality started
off as an entertainment experience pioneered by a guy named
Morton Heilig back in the late nineteen fifties. He invented
(11:26):
a machine called the sensor Rama. The idea being that
you would sit down in one of these machines. It's
kind of like a almost like a console type thing.
You would sit at and you would watch some form
of movie or short film, and that would be augmented
with other sensations, like the device would emit certain smells,
(11:47):
like let's say that you're looking at video or a
film rather of orange groves, and suddenly you can smell oranges,
and you could even get haptic sensation, so so tactile feedback.
There would be little vibrating motors and stuff, and that
was a kind of the birth of augmented reality. As
(12:08):
for the term itself, Thomas P. Coddle gets the credit
for coining that term in nine back when he was
working at Boeing. Next up, we've got our PA slash DARPA.
So our PA A r p A stands for Advanced
Research Projects Agency and DARPA, which is the same organization.
(12:30):
It's just a new name that stands for Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. That's the current name for the organization.
This is the R and D ARM of the United
States Department of Defense. Now this agency isn't actually a
think tank filled with like labs and scientists playing with
(12:50):
beakers and robots and aliens and stuff. Instead, it's an
organization that's focused primarily on providing funding to other research
organizations that are actually developing technologies that could potentially be
useful in the cause of national defense. DARPA has played
a huge role in the evolution of technologies like computer networks,
(13:13):
autonomous cars, drone technology, and much more. ARPA net a
predecessor of the Internet, came out of an ARPA initiative.
As the name implies, many of the autonomous car projects
in various companies can actually trace their history back to
participants who are competing in one of the DARPA Grand
(13:34):
Challenges of Driver Ellis vehicles. These challenges lay out really
ambitious goals and then various teams strive to achieve those
while competing against other teams, and they're all going for
a cash prize and really bragging rights for winning the
whole thing. Now, it's important to remember that the chief
role of DARPA is ultimately to fund projects that could
(13:56):
potentially be used in a defense or millet very context,
and the organization has been connected to some rather unsavory
projects in the past, such as the use of herbicides
in warfare, most notably agent orange, which is a highly
toxic and carcinogenic compound that was used by the United
(14:17):
States during the Vietnam War. Then we have as key
or a s c I. I stands for American Standard
Code for Information into Exchange. It's a standard for how
an eight bit system represents numbers, letters, and certain symbols.
So a bit is a binary digit and it can
(14:39):
have a value of zero or one. So each bit
has two potential values. Right, a bit can be either
a zero or a one. If you have two bits.
Then you've got four potential values, which would be zero, zero, zero, one,
one zero, or one one. When you get up to
eight bits, you have two hundred fifty six potential values.
(15:03):
The American Standards Association's X three division created as key
as a standard for representing various characters using binary with
these eight bits or a bite if you prefer, a
bite is eight bits. The standard could then be used
in bit based computer systems, which allowed for electronic communication
(15:24):
of these characters. So we have to remember that computers
don't process language the same way we do. They typically
process language and form of machine code. Machine code, more
often than not, means binary. That's something that we humans
can't really handle very well. Machines can handle it very
(15:45):
very quickly. So the as key was a way of
translating binary into characters and vice versa. Very important when
you're using computers to communicate between two different people. Basic, alright, Basic,
believe it or not, is an acronym. It's not just
(16:07):
a word. Basic stands for beginners all purpose symbolic instruction code.
It's a type of high level programming language, and the
developers of Basic intended it to be a relatively easy
to use programming language that computer science students could pick
up pretty quickly. So what does high level mean in
(16:27):
this case, Well, machines, like I said, process information in
machine code, and the most famous of this is binary.
Machines can process binary code very very quickly, but it's
incredibly hard for humans to do the same. It's easy
for me to say the letter H, for example, but
if I have to look up the as key code
(16:48):
for the letter H, that would be zero one one
zero one zero zero zero. That's if I wanted to
do a lower case H, and upper case H is
a totally different code, so that would very quickly become
impossible for me to use this this binary language to
make any kind of meaningful set of instructions, like a
(17:10):
program to run on a computer. So to make it
easier for humans to program and work with computers, various
very smart people have created programming languages. Now, some programming
languages we refer to as being low level languages. That
means they are fairly close to machine code and thus
they're pretty hard for humans to work with. But other
(17:32):
languages are more of an abstraction and they are high level,
so they are easy or at least easier for humans
to work with as they type out instructions to create
a program, so a compiler then takes that language and
translates it into machine code for the computer to process.
(17:54):
Basic is one of the older modern computer languages and
one that goofs is like yours. Truly it around with
when personal computers first became a thing. You can still
program in Basic, though there are far more sophisticated programming
languages out there. Of course. Next is BIOS, which stands
for Basic Input output System. So if you look at
(18:16):
a computer and you get a bit abstract, you realize
there's some proverbial layers going on with your basic computer
or computational device. You've got your actual circuitry, right, You've
got the actual hardware through which information ultimately must be processed.
These are the physical pathways that electricity can flow through.
(18:38):
These are the transistors and the wires and processors and
all that kind of stuff. But you've also got software.
These are the programs that you run to create various outputs.
Maybe it's a video game, maybe it's a word processor,
maybe it's a web browser. These are chunks of code
that respond to your input and create an output based
(18:58):
on that. But there's got to be a layer that
allows for software to interact with hardware, and that's kind
of what BIOS is doing. It's a type of firmware,
which is a low level software that interacts with a
hardware level. BIOS initiates the boot up process, among other things,
and the BIOS sets the boot priority, which is essentially
(19:20):
a list that dictates the order in which processes may
initiate upon a machine booting up. All right, so far
we have covered only the a's and the bees plus
a number with two F A. When we come back,
we'll see what's next. It's um, it's c because that
was a pun. I'm so sorry. We'll be right back.
(19:50):
We're gonna start off the seas with CAT C A D.
It's not just a scoundrel. It actually stands for a
computer aided design and as the name IMPLOY lies, this
refers to the practice of using computers or computerized workstations
to assist in the design of something. It could be
in the design of electronics or architecture, or mechanical systems
(20:14):
or animation. I first learned about CAD approaches from my
friend Michael in high school. He took a course in drafting,
and that's where he first worked with CAD applications. Me. No,
I never got into that because ain't no computer that's
been made that can aid me in the design enough
to make something I make look good or be functional. Today,
(20:39):
CAD is used in tons of industries, from aerospace to
prosthetics to computer animation. Designers may work in a two
D format that's two dimensional, or they might use three
D models. It all depends on the specific implementation. You
know what they're using it for, and the program next
is CAT or C A T. In this case, I'm
(21:02):
talking about CAT as in category, which we use to
describe certain types of network cables, like ethernet cables. These
are a subset of twisted pair cables. So let's just
walk through that really quickly. If you're familiar with electromagnetism,
you know that a current running through a conductor generates
(21:23):
a magnetic field, and you know that a fluctuating magnetic
field will induce a current to flow through a nearby conductor.
We can do a lot of cool stuff with that
because of that basic law of physics, but it also
means we have to take interference into account when we
build out electronics. If you had two unshielded conductors that
(21:45):
were near each other, the current flowing through conductor number
one would interfere with conductor number two. So one thing
you can do to limit this is you can insulate
the conductors. You can use a non conductive material to
coat those. But another thing you can do is you
can twist a pair of conductors together that actually reduces
(22:07):
the interference between the two. Alexander Graham Bell discovered this
and used it when building out devices like the early telephone,
and in fact telephone wires use this particular approach. Let's
skip ahead to the nine nineties. After the development of
Level one cables, which are used for telephone wires, and
(22:29):
Level two, which was used in early computer terminal systems,
particularly at places like IBM, twisted pair cables came in
a type called Category three or just Cat three cables,
and then went from there. Cat three cables allowed for
a bandwidth of sixteen mega hurts of frequencies for the
purposes of data transmission. These days, most Ethernet cables are
(22:52):
actually Cat five E cables, which can transmit data at
up to gigabit speeds. There are other Cat gory cables
out there, some of which have yet to be ratified
by standards organizations. That also means that because they haven't
been ratified, there aren't that many equipment manufacturers that have created,
(23:12):
you know, actual devices that accept those kinds of cables,
because it could be a very expensive mistake to build
out stuff that is accepting a non standardized input. If
standards organizations never ratify specific implementations and declare them as standard,
you could end up having devices that have useless ports,
(23:34):
and that's just an expense that you didn't need to have. Next,
we have C MOSS or c m O S. This
stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor, which is a type
of semiconductor that says nice things about your outfit. Wait no,
I'm sorry, wait being told that's the wrong kind of complementary.
(23:56):
With regard to computer chips, C MOSS refers to a
chip that's ors information about the hardware settings of the device.
So BIOS references s MOSS when going through the booting process.
So SA MOSS and BIOS work together to bring a
computational device online and in proper working order upon booting up.
(24:17):
The memory on S MOSS is dynamic and technically it's
temporary or volatile in other words, And if S Moss
were to ever go unmpowered, like if the chip were
to be able to cut off from power, the memory
on that chip would just wipe out. It would be blank.
It would be a race essentially. But Bios needs the
instructions from s Moss to boot properly, right, Bios depends
(24:41):
on s Moss to essentially instruct the Bios what order
to do stuff in so, the S Moss chip relies
on a small battery to stay powered up even when
the computer itself has turned off or if you lost
power or whatever. These batteries can last a really long time.
Ten years, isn't on you usual, Uh, it's typically at
(25:02):
least as long as the life cycle for the motherboard
of your computer. Most of the time you would actually
be ready to replace the whole device before you would
ever need to replace the C Moss battery, although there
are cases where people have had to do that. Now,
when you boot up a computer, you actually do have
a tool that allows you the option to either boot
into BIOS or S Moss. Booting into sea Moss gives
(25:25):
you the chance to change sea Moss settings which in
turn will affect how BIOS handles the booting process in
the future. Sea Moss, by the way, is a PC term,
as in personal computer, not politically correct. In Apple Mac computers,
the equivalent is PRAM or p RAM that stands for
parameter ram. But we're gonna talk about RAM in a
(25:49):
later episode, all right. I should also add that there
is another s MOSS in tech, and that's the type
of active pixels sensor found in some digital cameras. See
MOSS is just one type of these kinds of sensors,
and to go into how those sensors work would require
a pretty thorough explanation, and it's full episode on its own,
(26:09):
so I'm going to leave that for the time being.
Just understand that there's that version to It still stands
for the same thing, by the way, It's still complementary
metal oxide semiconductor, but it has a different purpose. Moving
on CMS now with regard to tech, CMS means content
management system. Typically, this is a framework within which users
(26:31):
can post, edit, and delete content, such as web content.
A CMS typically has a structure that allows for a
uniform approach to adding content to a pre existing system,
like say a website that way, even someone who is
new to that environment can still post stuff that's in
line with the standards and protocols of the site. So
(26:51):
let's take an actual example and use my old employer,
how stuff works dot com. That site has a CMS
that allows people to create content in article format, including
the basics and how images show up on screen, where
captions should appear, and in what font and all that
kind of stuff. It's sort of like a way to
(27:12):
create and manage templates and then post content within that template.
And back when I worked at how stuff Works, I
didn't have to use the CMS very much myself. I
would write my articles and then a publisher would take
the finished and edited product and then put it into
CMS for publication. Our CMS also allowed publishers to set
(27:32):
a time for that publication, so that a finished piece
of copy could go live on the site at a
specific designated time. So there was a content delivery application
or c d A that would take the formatted content
and push it to go live. A good CMS will
have lots of features that make life easier for publishers,
(27:54):
like audit logs to keep track of changes that are
made to content, or a small server footprint so that
the CMS isn't taking too much space on a network.
Really good ones will have a very intuitive UI that
stands for user interface. So a user interface is exactly
what it sounds like. It's the way in which a
user interacts with a technology. So that's another little bonus
(28:15):
initialism for you. Right there. Next is KAPPA c O
p p A. I covered this in a recent episode
of Tech Stuff, so I'm not gonna spend too much
time on it, but it stands for Children's Online Privacy
Protection Act. The US Congress passed this Act into law
in n KAPPA requires online sites and services that target
(28:38):
users who are under the age of thirteen to comply
with certain rules or else face civil lawsuits from entities
like the Federal Trade Commission or FTC. Those rules state
that a site or service has to get the express
permission from a parent or guardian of a child before
they can collect that child's information. Further, the eighter service
(29:00):
cannot collect any and all information about the kid. It
can't just like build out a comprehensive database of all
data points about that child. They are only supposed to
collect the information needed to provide whatever service it is
that the entity is providing So, for example, if it's
a web based game, it can't be asking for all
(29:22):
the information about the kids address and parents names and
all that kind of stuff because it's not necessary in
order to just play the game. Also, these entities are
supposed to delete that information once the info is no
longer needed to provide that service. This is tied pretty
closely to the rules that the advertising industry set for
itself when it comes to marketing towards children. In Kappa
(29:46):
made the news uh within YouTube circles because the platform
initiated some pretty big changes that had widespread effects on
content creators. The short version is that YouTube requires creators
to design whether their channels or on a more granular level,
their individual videos are targeting kids specifically, and if so,
(30:09):
then many of the typical features that we've come to
expect on YouTube, you know, stuff like comments, uh, notifications,
merchandise links, that kind of stuff, all of that gets
turned off because of those strict rules about how sites
and services can collect information about kids or how they
can advertise to kids. So, in addition, that means personalized
(30:33):
ads are turned off automatically for any of those videos or,
in the case of channels, that are directed towards kids
for the entire channel that affects monetization. It means that
you get a lower level for revenue than you would
with personalized ads, and that means that creators will make
less money through those means. And for a lot of creators,
(30:54):
these changes raised questions about whether or not their channel,
which might be family friend e, might be tagged as
being explicitly targeting kids. They could say, well, no, I
don't target kids. I mean, I don't make content that's
inappropriate for children, but I'm not specifically targeting children as
my audience. And so there are a lot of questions
(31:16):
about how do these different creators, you know, how do
they fit within this rule set. So far, it doesn't
seem as though these changes have turned YouTube upside down
or anything, but it is an ongoing dialogue between creators
and the platform itself. Next, we have c P, A CPC, CPL,
(31:38):
and CPM. So speaking of monetization, that's what all these
initialisms kind of relate to. The CP in each of
these stands for cost per So you've got cost per
action for c P, a cost per click for CPC,
cost per lead for CPL, and cost per mill a
(31:59):
for cp UM. So all of this ties to advertising
and how ad deals are struck between content providers or
content platforms and the advertisers. So cost per action covers
an amount paid per specific action that's taken by users.
That action could be clicking on an AD, or it
(32:19):
could be submitting an online form, or it might go
so far as actually making a purchase. So the agreement
here states that the advertiser will pay the content platform
a specific fee every time some user takes this very
particular action related to whatever the ad is. Cost per
click is really a subset of cost per action. It
(32:42):
specifically refers to the moment when someone clicks on an AD,
So this isn't just whether or not someone saw an ad.
It's not enough for it to just be an impression.
In other words, this is if a person saw the
ad and then acted by clicking through to see what
the ad links to. So Google ads in search results
(33:04):
typically fall into this category. If you ever do a
Google search and then you click on one of the
ad results, which are typically at the very top of
the list, that's likely counting towards a cost per click
revenue model. It doesn't affect you directly, it's just how
the money is changing hands at that advertiser platform level.
(33:26):
Then you have cost per lead or CPL. That's when
you're usually talking about scenario in which someone is explicitly
signing up for an offer. So if the ad leads
to someone signing up to get a newsletter or something
like that, that might be a cost per lead. And
like the previous examples, the advertiser will pay out a
certain amount of money for every user that actually follows
(33:49):
through and generates a lead. And yeah, leads in this
case essentially mean potential sales, as they typically represent someone
who is interested in a specific product or so of us.
And then finally you've got cost per mil a mill
a is the old Roman word for thousand, and this
is the impression model. So essentially CPM establishes a certain
(34:11):
amount of money that an advertiser will pay per one
thousand impressions or views. So if you've got a website
and your website displays ads that are all based on impressions,
the more people who come to visit your site, the
more money you'll make. Once you have those one thousand
(34:32):
impression blocks start to fill up. In addition, more popular
sites can actually require a higher CPM, so that means
that advertisers will actually pay more per one thousand impressions.
These agreements typically have a set time limit on them,
so for example, you might have an ad deal that
(34:52):
lasts for three months, and at the end of the
three months you get paid according to whatever your CPM
rate is and how any people actually viewed that ad
within the three month period. CPM approaches have led to
some of the types of web pages that I personally dislike,
such as the slide show approach for listicles, where every
(35:14):
item on a list is its own web page. That's
done because moving from one slide to another counts as
a page refresh, which means you get another impression. So
one way web pages boost impression counts is by using
stuff like slide shows, galleries, and quizzes in order to
get those page views to go up. Also, a website
(35:36):
that can show that it has a higher page view
rate can demand a higher CPM rate, so it all
kind of feeds back on itself. We've got a few
more seeds to go through, but I need to take
a really quick break. Okay, we're up to a big one.
(35:59):
See pu this one is a basic term that maybe
all of you know, but just in case, it stands
for central processing unit. This is the logic center for
a computational device. It's the chip that performs basic operations
on data to generate results. So you could have a
program that's sending instructions and data to the CPU. Those
(36:23):
instructions might be as simple as add these two numbers together,
and then the CPU executes those instructions on the data
and then sends the output to wherever it's supposed to
go based on those instructions. CPUs handled general instructions, and
so they have to be pretty good at pretty much everything,
or at least they have to be passable at everything.
(36:45):
For a general purpose computer, they typically have an arithmetic
logic unit or a LU in them, which, as the
name suggests, is in charge of executing arithmetic operations on data.
A LU chip can exist on their own. They don't
have to be full CPUs, and in fact, in some
more um basic electronics you might just have an a
(37:08):
l U. The CPU typically also has a control unit
that's in charge of coordinating things within the CPU, such
as fetching data from memory and then dictating the order
of operations that the CPU is supposed to follow. CPUs
operate at a specific rate of operations called the clock
rate or clock speed. You can think of this as
how many basic instructions the CPU is able to execute
(37:33):
in a second. We measure this in hurts or cycles
per second. So a CPU that operates on the mega
Hurts scale is executing basic instructions at a rate of
millions per second, though these days that would be slow.
Your basic CPUs today operate on the giga Hurts scale,
so we're talking billions of basic instructions every second. Some
(37:56):
operations require more than one step in instructions, and the
faster the clock rate, the faster the CPUs can execute instructions.
Generally speaking, the practice of overclocking refers to boosting a
CPUs clock rate beyond whatever the factory set limit for
that CPU happens to be. It's kind of like removing
(38:18):
any sort of limitation device from a car so that
it can actually go faster than it's rated top speed.
On another note, while early CPUs used a single core architecture,
it's pretty common these days for computers to have multi
core processors. You can sort of think of these as
slightly smaller CPUs that all work together. For certain types
(38:41):
of computational problems, the multi core approach greatly speeds up
processing by breaking those problems up into different components. This
doesn't work for every computational problem, however, and so a
multi core processor may sometimes not match a single or
processor of a similar clock rate for a specific subset
(39:04):
of computational problems. Getting into all of that would require
a full episode of itself, so we'll leave it for now.
Just know that most CPUs out there these days are
multi core processors, and for the vast majority of types
of software that we typical users run, that's fine. It's
perfectly cromulent, as the Simpsons would say. Next, we have
(39:27):
c R T. So in the context of technology, I'm
talking about cathode ray tubes. This refers to the old
style of computer monitors and displays and even television sets.
These devices are big, bulky displays. They aren't just wide
and tall like flat panel displays. They have depth, so
(39:47):
in our flat screen world they look really clumsy and bulky.
They're also incredibly heavy. Oh and they also have very
powerful capacitors inside them that can hold on to a
latent electric charge that makes them potentially very dangerous if
you were to ever break one, So don't do that
(40:08):
because you could get electrocuted or at least suffer a
really serious shock. Anyway, the cathode ray tube refers to
a component inside these displays that is in many ways
similar to a light bulb. So you've got a tube
inside of which is a filament that is suspended in
a vacuum. So inside the tube is a vacuum, electricity
(40:32):
can flow through the filament, which then causes the filament
to start to give off electrons. Frequently, we call this
an electron gun because of how it gives off and
then directs electrons to hit the backside of a fluorescent screen.
The impact of the electrons on those fluorescent components causes
those components to you know, fluoresce or glow, and on
(40:55):
the flip side, we see those as pixels of light
on these types of display. So these electron guns are
consistently scanning across the backs of these screens and generating
the images that we see, whether it's television or computer
monitor or display or whatever. These days, c r T
s are a rarity. You still find them with some
(41:17):
legacy systems, and folks who have old working televisions may
still be using them, though with some pretty big limitations,
but for the most part they have been replaced by
other types of tech. Next, we have c s S
that's cascading style sheets. This is a style sheet language,
and that doesn't really help very much for most of us,
(41:39):
I think, But for the web it means that you
can use CSS to create the formatting style for information
that will be displayed on the web, and you can
separate the format that is the way that things are
displayed within a browser, and you can separate that from
the content, as in the actual stuff that's being displayed.
(42:01):
So in the old days, if you wanted to create
a web page, you had to code everything in. You
had to set whatever the background color of the page
was going to be, the text color of the font
of the table, formats, font styles and size, layout styles
and more, and it was a lot of work. CSS
allows developers to create what is sort of like a
(42:24):
format template. Any content that uses that CSS format will
end up fitting that template once you publish it to
the web, and you could port that content to a
different CSS sheet and it would end up looking totally different.
The word cascading here is used to describe a sort
of order of operations. UH. You can think of it
(42:46):
as an if then kind of approach, such as, if
this web page is being viewed on a mobile device,
then use this specific layout scheme. However, if the content
is being viewed through a web browser on say a
desktop computer, then use this other layout scheme that's optimized
(43:07):
for that. Since different rules might apply depending upon the
specific circumstances, the operations cascade and priority based on those circumstances.
So it's really about removing a lot of the work
that you would have to do if you were to
do all of this by hand. CSS, by the way,
is one of the foundational elements of the World Wide Web,
(43:29):
and we'll talk about another one in a future episode.
And spoiler alert that one is HTML. But we've got
a long way to go. We've got a lot more
letters in the alphabet before we get to H. Next,
we have DOLL and this isn't just what I say
when I see a cute puppy dog, however, it's also
that I also do say that no. DAW stands for
(43:50):
digital audio workstation. So this is what audio editors and
engineers used to work on digital audio files. A doll
can be a selection of physical equipment, so it can
be like a big bank of controls, complete with lots
of you know, knobs and buttons and sliders. Or it
can consist of software in which all of those physical
(44:11):
controls are essentially virtualized. Or it could be a combination
of the two. Podcasters use DAWs to record and edit
their content. Most DAWs have tons of options to let
you manipulate audio files in various ways. It might mean
adding reverb to a selection, or it might mean changing
(44:31):
the pit of the audio or the speed of the
audio playback. And those are just tiny examples and some
of the more overt features you'll find with DAWs. There's
some that are incredibly subtle, and you might not even
pick up on them, but you know, producers who have
been working in the field for years will immediately recognize them.
The one DAW that most of our producers tend to use,
(44:54):
not all of them, but most of them, is called
Audition from Adobe. Some produce there's wouldn't even call Audition
a dawn simply because it lacks support that, say, musicians
would rely upon, such as native support for MIDI integrations
MIDI or m I d I is another initialism that
we will cover in a future episode. Next, we have
(45:18):
d l C. This stands for downloadable content, and typically
this refers to additional content that embellishes an existing piece
of software, most notably in video games, but not exclusively.
DLC is a way for publishers to create and sell
expansions to existing pieces of software. But it doesn't require
(45:39):
developers to go in and create an all new version
of the stuff, right. They can rely heavily on existing
assets to build out these additional features. So in the
video game world, you'll frequently see DLC used to flesh
out fictional world or create new storylines or levels or
missions for the play here to follow. But sometimes DLC
(46:02):
might include purely cosmetic changes, or they'll include content that's
you know, tangential to the game play. It doesn't actually
represent more gameplay, but just kind of augments what's already
been there. Just like games in general, DLC can be
done really well or it can be done poorly. For
most gamers, I would say good, DLC is typically seen
(46:23):
as something that's priced appropriately. Typically you're talking about something
that's priced below the price for a full game and
provides a satisfying experience on top of whatever the main
game is. Bad, DLC might be viewed as being too
expensive or just containing superfluous content that doesn't really add anything.
DLC can extend the life cycle of a game title.
(46:47):
Some games can remain relevant years after their initial release
because of DLC, and some games, like the hit Man games,
the most recent ones, for example, can create entire revenue
models based around DLC that just consistently adds new content
to an older game. Well, I think that's a good
(47:07):
place for us to leave off. We've got a lot
more to cover. Obviously, we're just now INDs and we've
still got a few DS to go. Beyond that, we
have the rest of the alphabet. But I think that
this is a really useful approach to kind of understanding
some terms that you're gonna encounter as you navigate the
world of tech, and not all of them are intuitive,
(47:30):
and a lot of them can actually lead to people
thinking that the initials stand for totally different stuff, and
it can be very confusing. So I find that this
sort of approach is good to build an understanding and
a contextualization around tech, and I always find that to
be particularly useful. So we will continue this in Wednesday's
(47:52):
episode and probably beyond that, because unless I just get
extremely efficient with descriptions, will have a lot more to
go beyond that. But I think that this is a
really useful path to go down. If you have suggestions
for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
whether it's elaboration on any of these terms or something
(48:15):
just interesting in the tech world, reach out to me.
The best place to do that is on Twitter. The
handle we use is tech stuff h s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
(48:36):
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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