June 21, 2021 • 48 mins
Our series on tech acronyms and initialisms continue. From learning basics like input and output to what it is that ICANN does, we've got you covered.
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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 I want to
welcome you all back to our ongoing saga of tackling
various acronyms and initialisms in tech and demystifying them. So
(00:28):
we're just kind of making our way through the alphabet
and learning what these different groups of letters actually stand for,
and hopefully learning a bit of extra stuff about them
along the way. So far, we've we've made it up
to the g s, and we have a couple more
to go in that realm before we get the H
out of here, So let's get started. Also, Hey, as
I've gone through this, I've noticed that I may have
(00:51):
left out, you know, a few acronyms and initialisms just
because of blind spots or you know, just just skimming
over stuff or why whatever. So after all these episodes,
if you feel there's some that I've missed, let me
know on Twitter at tech Stuff HSW and maybe I'll
do a roundup episode at the end. All right, g
PU this stands for graphics processing unit. Now, back in
(01:16):
the first episode of this series, I talked about c
p u s, or central processing units. Well, GPUs are
kind of similar in that they are microprocessors that execute
instructions on data and they produce output. But as the
name suggests, the intended purpose for a GPU is to
process graphics. Now, in the ancient days of the nineteen nineties,
(01:38):
there was a shift in computing and the need for processors.
Programmers primarily video game developers, but not exclusively video game developers. Well,
they kept making software that pushed computing hardware to the limit,
and sometimes went beyond that limit. The central processing units
of these computers would get over taxed and performance would suffer,
(02:00):
and you just typically wouldn't be able to get as
much out of the game as the developers had hoped
you would. Now, graphics cards, which could help offload some
of the work that the CPU had to do, had
been a thing since the nineteen eighties. The nineteen nineties
saw developers creating games and applications that included three D graphics.
(02:20):
Not that the graphics were coming out of your screen
or whatever, but rather images now appeared to have depth
to them. They weren't just two dimensional like flat cutouts
on screen, and we saw companies like in Nvidia and
three d f X manufacture more sophisticated cards to help
handle that processing requirement, to kind of offload that work
(02:40):
so the CPU wasn't so burdened. And Video introduced the
g Force to five six in n and the company
referred to it as the first graphics processing unit. So
while we had cards that fulfill the function of a
GPU for a while, this would be when someone actually
(03:01):
coined the term itself. These days, the architecture of a
GPU means that it has a parallel approach to processing data.
That means they can process information in parallel, dividing up
data into more manageable chunks, and working on everything at
the same time. And I always use a classroom analogy
(03:22):
to describe parallel processing because I think it really helps
illustrate how this works from a high level. So let's
go over that right now. So let's say you've got
a class of six really bright math students, and one
of those students is a true genius, someone who just
has a natural affinity for mathematics, and we'll call her Rachel.
(03:43):
So Rachel is a math genius and she's great at math.
She can solve any mathematical problem faster than her fellow students.
The other five just aren't as fast. They are all
very good. They're all very good students, they just aren't
genius level. One day, the teacher comes in with a challenge,
and the teacher has a math quiz and has five
(04:04):
problems on that quiz. Each problem is completely independent of
the others, so there's no connection between like problems one
and two and two and three and so on. And
the teacher hands out the quiz to all six students
and explains that Rachel is going to tackle all five problems,
but the other five students will each take only one
(04:25):
problem each, So student one takes problem one, student who
takes problem to, etcetera. So it's going to be a race.
And the quiz begins and Rachel gets to work, but
she needs to solve all five problems one after the other,
while the other five students each must concentrate on just
one problem each. The other students get to tackle the
(04:45):
quiz in parallel. They chop up the quiz into individual problems.
So Rachel is fast, but she's not fast enough to
overcome the advantage that the other students have, and that's
how parallel processing works. A processor that can perfor warm
parallel processing a lot of alliteration in this passage. Uh,
you know, like a multi core processor or modern GPUs
(05:08):
are all in this way. They can solve certain types
of computational problems far faster than a really really beefy
single core processor could. But there are also computational problems
that cannot split up into smaller chunks. So if the
teacher structured the math quiz so that question two depended
(05:29):
upon the answer to question one, and question three dependent
upon the answer to question two, and so on, Rachel
would have the advantage then because the five individual students
would have to wait for the previous answer before they
could jump on their particular question. Well, graphics processing is
a really specific computational task, and thus GPUs don't need
(05:51):
to be able to do all the general computing that
a CPU has to handle. That means that manufacturers can
optimize GPUs to make them really efficient for that specific
type of processing. On a side note, cryptographers and bitcoin
miners really love GPUs because they can be repurposed to
(06:12):
tackle other parallel processes like breaking encryption or mining bitcoins.
For that reason, it can often be very difficult for
gamers to get hold of the most recent GPUs because
other folks are scooping them up to use in completely
unrelated applications. And in the case of bitcoin mining, it's
a very potentially profitable application, and thus the money generated
(06:37):
from the mining can go back into building out even
more powerful bitcoin mining systems, and that requires more GPUs.
And thus do you have your you know, humble gamer
who just wants to build a gaming PC who can't
get hold of a graphics card. Plus the graphics cards
prices are skyrocketing because of this high demand. Well in
(06:59):
part because of the high demand, they're also very expensive.
Moving on g u I. This stands for graphical user
interface and most of the time we don't say g
u I, we actually say gooey. So gooey is a
g UI, which is intern a graphical user interface. Most
popular operating systems these days have a g UI. Windows, Mac, os, iOS,
(07:24):
and Android all have gooey's and the gooey represents programs
and processes as icons that you click on and then
they activate. So, if you remember from the last episode
we covered DOSS, which is a text based operating system
with DOWS you have to type in commands to navigate
the OS and execute programs. It's far less intuitive than
(07:48):
an OS that uses a gooey. But on the flip side,
text based operating systems require much fewer computer resources to operate,
so it leaves way more are for the actual programs
you want to run, and they don't have to worry about,
you know, the OS itself hogging some of those resources.
Early work and gooey design dates back to the nineteen sixties.
(08:11):
Douglas inglebart Man, associated with the gooey as well as
the computer mouse and other innovations, demonstrated a system in
the late nineteen sixties during an event that folks later
referred to as the mother of all demos. Xerox Is
Park Division developed a gooey for an internal computer system
that never really saw much practical use, but folks like
(08:33):
Steve Jobs got a chance to see a gooey in
action along with the computer mouse, and saw it as
the future of operating systems. A well designed gooey significantly
lowers the learning curve of using a computer. In the
early days of personal computers, the general sense was that
computers were for hobbyists and other nerds and geeks, people
(08:53):
who didn't mind diving into manuals to learn cryptic commands
in order to make these mysterious machines actually work. But
the emergence of the gooey in the mid nineteen eighties
made it way easier to understand how to interact with
a computer. All the processes that required people to navigate
file trees and type in commands were out the window,
so to speak, and now icons and clicking did all
(09:16):
the work. Since then, the gooey has become the standard
OS approach for most consumer facing computational devices. You still
have some text based systems out there, but for the
most part, the general public doesn't encounter them. Specialists totally
different story, but general public mostly gooey based. These days,
(09:36):
we're a gooey bunch. Next is h d D. This
stands for hard disk drive. So a disk drive is
a device that allows the computer to read and write
to some form of digital storage, and there are lots
of different versions of disk drives. Back in the day,
a floppy disk drive referred to a drive that allowed
(09:57):
a user to insert or remove physical disks from a drive,
but a hard disk drive could be an integral part
of a computer all by itself, allowing the system to
store and read information on an internal drive that was
non volatile, meaning that the information would remain in place
even should the computer be powered down. Some hard disk
(10:19):
drives are internal to a computer, some are separate and
connect to a computer via cables, so it all just
depends upon the specific setup. But these hard disk drives
are mechanical devices, and HDD has at least one rotating
platter inside it, and most h d d s have
multiple platters positioned almost like a stack of pancakes, except
(10:42):
there's a gap between each platter, so there's not you know,
they're not stacked touching each other. There's a gap between
each one and in between them, within that gap there
is an actuator arm. Most h d d s have
multiple actuator arms that can extend between the different platters,
(11:02):
and at the end of that actuator arm is a
magnetic head that can read or write information magnetically to
the platters, so all the info is stored magnetically. This
is why if you ever were around computers in the
old days, uh people always said make sure you don't
have magnets near them, because that could corrupt data on
(11:23):
the device. Still not a great idea to work with
computers near powerful magnets for multiple reasons, but that was
the main reason back in the day. Because hd d
s are mechanical, stuff can and does break down. So
if the platter has become misaligned, the whole thing could
grind to a halt, or worse, it could shake itself
(11:43):
to pieces. If an actuator arm bends the wrong way,
it could cause irreparable damage to the platters. There are
a lot of parts that could potentially break down or
wear out. Not all the problems are show stoppers. Some
of them are totally reparable, but it does mean that
there are several all potential points of failure with an
hd D. They also tend to add a lot of
(12:04):
weight to devices. For that reason, many smaller gadgets rely
on alternative data storage systems, some of which we will
cover later in these episodes. So for a long time,
h d d s were significantly cheaper than alternatives, and
they remain the primary method of internal storage for computers.
But it also takes time for a computer to retrieve
(12:25):
information stored on an hd D Because we have to
remember this is a mechanical system. It actually takes time
for components to move into place and start to search
for and pull relevant data. So on top of the line,
h d D typically has a lot more storage capacity
than the alternatives, so when it comes to actual storage,
(12:46):
the hd D tends to win out, particularly when you
look at the price tag per amount of storage. It's
pretty common to find h d ds today in the
two to four terrabyte range, which honestly still ows my
mind because I'm old and I remember when a megabyte
was a big deal. Next, we have h d M I.
(13:07):
This is high definition Multimedia interface. In the early two thousand's,
a group of companies that included Tashiba, Sony, Phillips, and
Hitachi worked together to create a standardized technology that would
allow for the transfer of uncompressed audio and video signals
from a source to an output, such as from a
(13:27):
computer to a display or a set top box to
a television. The HDMI standard would allow for higher resolution
video while also carrying audio signals, and over the years
there have been many different cables and ports designed for
these purposes. So let's do a very quick rundown for
the video side. Early on in the nineteen fifties, you
(13:48):
had the development of composite r c A this cable,
little yellow tipped cable you might remember, those that could
carry an analog video signal of up to standard definition
resolution that's either four A d I or five seventy
six I depending upon your region. The signal coded down
to a single channel of information. A couple of decades later,
(14:11):
companies introduced the S video cable, which carried video into
channels and allowed for a higher quality video transmission. Then
you had component video cables, which split the video into
three channels and could be even better quality, especially for
color representation and luminosity. The component video cables were the
top of the line and analog video signal transmission, but
(14:35):
they also came right at the tail end of that,
just before the digital revolution, so they weren't relevant for
terribly long. They sort of became obsolete. After component cables,
we got d V I and shortly after that we
got h d M I, and the h d M
I tech has essentially one out and become the standard
(14:55):
tech for transmitting digital video and audio. Companies have improved
the text since its introduction. The h d M I
of two two was you know HDMI one point oh?
These days, the most recent specification is h d m
I two point one, and that specification allows for the
transmission of signals of up to eight K resolution with
(15:16):
sixty frames per second or four K resolution at one
twenty frames per second. I think it can even transmit
up to ten K resolution, though you do take a
hit on the frames per second at that point, and
it can transmit data at a band with a forty
eight gigabits per second. To take advantage of the specification,
all the parts of a connected system have to be
(15:38):
HDMI two point one compatible. That includes the source of
the signal, the cables you're using, and the output device
whatever you're viewing it on. So, in other words, you've
got a system that has an HDMI two point one
out port and an HDMI two point one cable, but
your television only supports to up to I don't know,
(15:59):
HDMI one point four, you will not get the full
benefit of HDMI two point one. It would still work
because it is as a specification that is backwards compatible.
It could still carry and deliver signals that the television
would be able to show. It just wouldn't be at
the two point one specifications. You wouldn't get the full
benefit unless every part of the system is current with
(16:20):
h d M. I well, we are at a point
where I think it's a good time to take a
break because these acronyms, despite how short they are, get
kind of exhausting. To say, we're back and let's hit
it with h d R, which stands for high dynamic range.
(16:44):
This is a dynamic range that is high. It can
actually cover a lot of different types of stuff. High
dynamic range is not limited to a specific technology. Essentially,
it means that whatever range you're looking at, whether it's
for us of it kind of a signal or color
representation or rendering or whatever, it's a range that has
(17:07):
lots and lots of divisions. There's a big difference between
the lowest end of the range and the highest end
of the range. It's got a lot of dynamics to it.
We call music really dynamic if there are a lot
of variations between the softest tones and the loudest tones,
as well as the quality of tone. So typically this
means you have more minute steps between the lowest end
(17:30):
and the highest end. All of that sounds pretty wishy
washy when I say it out loud. So let's use
colors as an example. I'm pretty sure you all know
roy GBIV right, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,
the color spectrum for stuff like rainbows. That's a very
simple spectrum, right, just seven colors. But you know there's
(17:53):
more than just seven colors. There are a lot of
different shades of these colors, which you could also think
of as little steps between one color whatever you designate
as being the true version of say red, and the
next color whatever is the true version of orange. Heck,
I remember in the old days having crayons that had
(18:15):
blue green and green blue in the same crayon pack,
and the two crayons were not exactly the same color. Instead,
both of them showed a color that in one instance
was just a little more blue than it was green,
and the other was the opposite. So, if we're talking
about a color spectrum, HDR might refer to more variants
or shades of colors, perhaps in a spectrum broad enough
(18:39):
that two adjacent colors might be difficult to distinguish for
the average person that they are different, but they might
not be distinct enough for you to be able to
tell on casual glance with a digital display. The sort
of color range means you're able to experience more lifelike colors.
The display doesn't have to rely as much on tricking
your eyes, but using a more limited palette of colors
(19:02):
to create the illusion of that range, and we end
up with more vibrant and lifelike images as a result.
So while HDR can refer to a ton of different
stuff in tech, for the average consumer, we typically see
it in reference to displays and televisions. There's no standard
HDR format, which is kind of a pain in the
(19:22):
took us since there are competing formats on the market.
There is a minimum set of specs that each format
has to meet in order for the Ultra HD Alliance
which sounds like a supervillain group UH, for them to
consider it actual HDR. So, in other words, you have
to meet certain criteria for it to be HDR, but
(19:44):
there's no standardized way to do this, and it's just
it doesn't matter how you get the output, it just
has to have the output meet those specifications, which is
a little frustrating. HD M I two point one, which
we talked about before the break so ports HDR and
kind of like hd M I. To enjoy the benefits
of HDR, you need every element in your system to
(20:06):
be compatible with whichever format you're trying to display, and
HDR video is about more than just color representation. It
also has to do with luminates or brightness. HDR is
also a great way to explain that image quality goes
well beyond just resolution. A picture could have very high
resolution but very poor color representation. Video image quality depends
(20:31):
upon multiple factors. So that includes resolution, color representation, contrast
which is the difference between the brightest and darkest colors,
and how many steps there are between those two extremes.
It's kind of its own high dynamic range feature, as
well as frame rate. That's another big one. Now. The
reason I mentioned all of this is in case you're
(20:52):
ever in the market to upgrade your home theater system.
It's good to know there is not just one single
component you should con learn yourself with, or else you
might find that the setup you buy doesn't match your expectations.
Moving on, next, we have HTML and x HTML. These
are not you know, partners that had a nasty breakup
(21:14):
and now they're X is no HTML is hypertext markup language,
and x HTML is extensible hypertext markup language. Let's break
these down a bit to understand what they actually mean. So,
a markup language is a tool that allows someone to
make annotations to a document that is distinct from the
(21:35):
content of that document. So, for example, if you've ever
worked with a document program that allows editors to put
in comments off to the side in that electronic format,
perhaps it shows up as like a little word bubble. Well,
that's an example of a markup language system. It's a
technological evolution of an editor making notes in red pencil,
(21:58):
and man, that takes me back so much red pencil.
Hypertext is a method of creating text that can link
to other parts of a document, an electronic document, or
it can link other documents together. So it's links. In
other words, if you're familiar with the web, it's links.
(22:18):
Let's say that you have an electronic document version of
the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, and you want to go
straight to the to be or not to be speech. Well,
then you can go to the table of contents in
that electronic document and click on the hypertext link for
Act three, Scene one, and boom, that link takes you
to that section of the document. And like I said,
(22:39):
those links can go either within a document itself or
between different documents in the Worldwide Web. Hypertext represents the
strands of web that hold different points together. You can
also think of HTML as a set of instructions as
to how a web browser should display a page. The
markup language uses tags to distinguish different elements within the document.
(23:02):
So for example, there's the tag open bracket i mg
slash closed bracket, which indicates an image. Yeah, I get it.
So using HTML you can create structured documents that behave
a specific way within a browser. Alright, So x HTML
(23:23):
is an x m L version of HTML, and x
m L, as you might guess, stands for Extensible Markup Language.
It's a markup language that is readable by both machines
and humans, and it standardizes the methods to access information,
so it makes that process more efficient and accurate. So
x HTML in many ways is similar to HTML, but
(23:46):
it has a more strict error handling approach. A web
browser will still give the old college Try to display
a web page that has HTML errors in it, but
with x HTML, well you'll be headed back to editing
to find out where you've done messed up. Tim berners
Lee developed HTML back in the early nineties while working
with CERN, and I'm sure many of you listening to
(24:07):
this have played around with HTML at some point. The
first two web pages I ever made I coded completely
in HTML. Actually had a document open where I typed
everything out in HTML. Then I had to upload it.
Then I had to refresh a page to see how
it would display. Then I would realize that everything was terrible.
(24:28):
I'd have to go back into my document, change it
there and re upload the code and repeat that process
until I got it right. Thankfully, I don't remember the
address for either of those web pages anymore. I mean
they are you know, gosh, how old would they be.
I made them back in in college, so that was
in the early mid nineties, So if they still exist,
(24:51):
I am unaware of them. I bet they don't exist.
I'm sure those servers are down, but I cannot relive
that terrible, terrible web page that I made, and I'm
thankful for that. I remember one was definitely about pirates,
So let's move on. Next, we have h t t
P and h t t P S. On a related note,
(25:12):
this is similar to or relates to the h t
m L. This stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and HTTPS
is hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. As I mentioned, a protocol
is a set of instructions or rules that machines follow
in order to complete some process. So it's how machines
quote unquote know what to do and in what order.
(25:36):
So in this case, the process is the transmission of
hyper media documents, such as those that are coded in
h t m L. The original purpose for h t
t P was to allow web browsers also known as clients,
to request and receive HTML documents from web servers also
known as servers. So in brief, let's say you wanted
(25:59):
to navigate to a website. You would type an address
into your browser's address bar and you hit enter or
you click or whatever. And at this point, the client
that is your web browser follows h t t P
and sends a request out to the server. There's a
lot of steps in between here, but we're just gonna
skip over those and hopefully that server responds by sending
(26:22):
the appropriate HTML document to your browser. The browser then
renders the web page based on the code of the
h t m L page within the browser, window. As
for HTTPS, the secure is really important these days, many
sites rely on HTTPS rather than planal H T t P.
(26:42):
Communication across HTTPS is encrypted by the Transport Layers Security
or TLS. In the old days, this was known as
the Secure Sockets Layer or s s L. What that
means is that the information sent between the client and
server goes through an encryption process. So if someone should
(27:03):
intercept the data, all they would end up with would
look like meaningless garbage. So it uses an asymmetric public
key infrastructure, and you might wonder what the heck does
that mean. Well, in a simple encryption process, you would
have an encoding device that would transform your plane message
into encrypted text. Let's say that we're using an old
(27:26):
stand by, the classic plastic decoder ring, like the kind
that used to come in cereal boxes and stuff. Anyone
who had a copy of that same ring could decrypt
your message because all the rings followed the exact same
encoding process, all the same rings anyway, different rings had
different encoding, you get what I mean. So this would
(27:47):
be a pure public key effectively, and it wouldn't be
very useful because the key would spread so far and
wide that it would just add a minor step between
intercepting a message and learning what's in that message. If
the key is easily available, then it's almost as if
you sent stuff unencrypted. So an asymmetric public key has
(28:09):
two keys. One is a public key used to encode messages.
But this encoding process is not reversible. You cannot use
a public key to decode an encrypted message. It doesn't
work that way, so once the public key transforms the message,
only a second private key can decode it. The web
(28:29):
server in this case holds onto this precious private key
and does not share it, and that way any information
sent to the server remains safe. HTTPS is what enables
online shopping. Because of that encryption, consumers can have confidence
that they're purchasing information like credit card numbers will remain secure.
(28:50):
You can see if a website is using HTTPS just
by looking at the beginning of the address and seeing
HTTPS at the beginning. In additional out of browsers will
also include a padlock icon that will indicate whether or
not the site is using HTTPS. Next up, we have
I slash. Oh. Now, this isn't just the name of
(29:13):
Google's developer conference for all things Android, the IO Conference.
It's an older term that means input and output, and yeah,
this is getting pretty darned. Basic. Input is obviously the
stuff you put into a computer. It might be key
strokes on a keyboard. It might be moving and clicking
a mouse. It might be using a touch screen command
(29:35):
or maybe a voice command, or you know, there's lots
of stuff. It's how you act on a computer and
not just you. Input can include incoming communications from other
devices and systems. Output, well, that's what a computer puts out.
It might be something really overt. It might be like
a print job sent to a printer, or a message
(29:55):
on a display, or sound effects played on a speaker,
or it could be more subtle, with the CPU executing
instructions that aren't necessarily observable by a human user. It's
the result of the computer executing instructions on data that's
the output. So some devices are pretty easy to categorize
as either input or output devices. A keyboard, amounts, a
(30:19):
tract pad, a joystick. These appear to be pretty clearly
input devices. A computer display or printer that's pretty clearly
an output device, But to be fair, some of these
can actually straddle the line. For example, joysticks with haptic
feedback are arguably both input and output devices because the
(30:40):
computer can send signals to the motors in the joystick
that make it rumble according to computer output, and a
lot of modern printers can also act as scanning devices,
so you can use them to input data into a
computer system, not just print data out. There are also
all the various cables and modems and routers such that
(31:00):
act as both input and output devices. In some cases
they might relay information to your computer, and in others
they might carry that information from your computer to somewhere else.
So it's not as clear cut as all that, but
you know, generally you can kind of categorize stuff. We've
got a lot more eyes to get through, but before
(31:22):
we do that, let's take a quick break. So do
you think I can get through all the rest of
the eyes before the end of the episode? I can.
That's a joke, because our next one is I can
I see a n N. That means the Internet Corporation
(31:44):
for Assigned Names and Numbers. This is a not for
profit agency that formed in and its purpose is to
coordinate quote unique identify irs end quote that let computers
find each other over the Internet. Now, you might remember
in the last episode in this series that I talked
about the domain name system or d n S. The
(32:05):
DNS makes it way easier to navigate the Internet because
it uses letters, typically in the form of words or initialisms,
rather than a seemingly random series of numbers or possibly
numbers and letters, which is the underlying format for i
P addresses. We'll talk about more of those in a second. Well,
what's going on here is that the address you type in,
(32:27):
like www dot YouTube dot com, relates to a numerical
i P address. You just don't have to worry about
that number because of the d n S. For all
this to work, each address needs to be unique. If
there were two different sites that we're using www dot
YouTube dot com, your computer and all the machines beyond
(32:48):
your computer wouldn't know which one you wanted to go
to when you typed in the address. Similarly, each IP
address must be unique. I CAN coordinates how i P
addresses and top level domains are supplied so that there's
no confusion and Internet traffic goes to where it's supposed
to go. Now, I CAN does not control the Internet itself.
(33:11):
It's more of a facilitator, kind of like a centralized
authority that various entities like registrars work with in order
to keep things running smoothly. I can calls its chief
responsibility quote universal resolvability end quote, meaning that no matter
where in the world you are, if you type a
particular address out in the web browser or send an
(33:34):
email to a specific email address, you can be assured
that you're going to get the same results that you
would get anywhere else in the world, assuming you're not,
you know, falling victim to a man in the middle attack.
But that's a totally different kettle of fish. Moving on.
I E E E. That's really I triple E, or
as I used to say in the old days, I E.
(33:57):
This is formally known as the Instant Tute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, And I'll quote the organization on itself,
uh in a second, But these days it's just the
eye triple E. And I'll explain why in a moment.
This is quote an association dedicated to advancing innovation and
technological excellence for the benefit of humanity end quote. And
(34:22):
it's also quote the world's largest technical professional society end quote.
The organization actually traces its history back more than a century,
all the way back to eight eight four. You know,
obviously the Internet was not around back then. That's often
we we associate the EYE Tripoli with the Internet, But
back then they were associated with the bustling telegraph industry,
(34:45):
and at that point it was known as the ai
EE or American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The more modern
version of the EYE Tripoli, you could say, launched in
the nineteen sixties. While the original purpose of the group
as a professional organization for engineers, these days it counts
numerous professions in its membership, including scientists and medical professionals.
(35:09):
And that is why the EYE Triple E usually good.
It just goes by I Triple E rather than its
full name, because the full name implies it's just an
organization for engineers alone, and that's just not the case.
The EYE Triple E promotes collaboration among companies, technical professionals,
scientists and more, all to push technological innovation and ideally
(35:32):
to service humanity in general. The EYE Triple E is
host to numerous educational services in the technical fields. It
pushes for standardizations in various areas of tech. It acts
as a repository for a wealth of publications relating to
technical knowledge and specifications. One of the famous standards that
(35:53):
the Eye Triple E ratified and helped develop was for
the Family of Local Area Network Technical Standards. This is
the SEV standards computers used to communicate with one another
at a local area network. More on those in the
future episode. This is the eight to two point one
one set of standards, which includes all those wild designations
(36:14):
you see on WiFi modems and routers. When you hear
people talking about A to two point one one G
versus A no two point one one a X or whatever.
Those are all different network standards for the transmission of
wireless data, and I Triple E, through collaboration of countless contributors,
established those standards, which means you know that the stuff
(36:36):
you have will talk to the other stuff you have.
Without those standards, you would have all these different proprietary
means of wireless communication and the Internet would be a
total mess. Moving on, IoT, this is the Internet of Things.
Back in nine, Kevin Ashton, a technologist and author, coined
(36:59):
this for PRAS, and he was looking ahead and envisioning
a world in which lots of different stuff would connect
directly or indirectly to the Internet. It wouldn't just be
a network of computers and network devices and switches and stuff,
but of all sorts of things, from individual sensors to appliances,
to vehicles and beyond. Not the time, I think a
(37:20):
lot of people didn't really appreciate what this would really mean,
or the scope at which it would happen, or how
it would necessitate huge strides, and how we handle stuff
like privacy, security, data storage, and information analysis. In fact,
I'd say a lot of us are still getting a
handle on that today, particularly as we see companies continue
(37:40):
to market products that could pose as a potential security
vulnerability within a network. It took several years for IoT
to evolve from a hypothetical concept to a buzzword to
a real thing, but we're definitely in that real thing
stage today. Heck, we get the first popular consumer smartphone
(38:03):
until two thousand seven, so it took quite a while
for IoT to kind of take off. But these days
you'll find tons of consumer products that fall into the
IoT category, from smart thermostats that have a persistent network
connection to sensors that you can put out into the
garden and let you know when you should water your plants.
And then there are the countless Internet connected devices that
(38:26):
the average consumer isn't even aware of. These could be
used to collect data on a regional level, giving organizations
like civil engineers more information from a hyper local level
all the way out to broad regional views. Again, the
technology has both incredible potential to help transform our world
in meaningful ways, as well as the potential to cause
(38:47):
a lot of problems, whether through poor implementation or questionable motivations.
It's hard to say how big the Internet of Things
really is because new devices join every day, and so
we're aft with estimates, and even with estimates, there are
a huge range there. For example, Juniper Research estimates that,
(39:08):
for one, we're looking at forty six billion connected devices,
but statists UM estimates that will hit thirty eight point
six billion connected devices by five That's a pretty big difference,
like seven and a half billion devices difference in those estimates,
and one of those estimates involves a year that's by
(39:31):
my account, four years in the future. So to be fair,
this kind of thing is really hard to get a
handle on. It's hard to get an accurate estimate as
to how many devices are connected to the Internet Also,
how do you define that? Do you discount stuff like
computers and smartphones and just focus on what we would
traditionally refer to as IoT devices. So I think it's
(39:53):
pretty safe to say we're somewhere in the tens of
billions of connected devices somewhere, though a precise head count
really isn't possible. Next, we have i P. This stands
for Internet Protocol, and it's frequently paired with the word
address in other words, IP address. This is the numerical
(40:13):
string that is unique to each device connected to a
computer network that is using i P as it's communication
protocol anyway, But more broadly, i P is a communications protocol,
and it all gets incredibly technical. Plus, we're going to
dive into this further when we get to t C
P I P later on, because more often than not,
we hear of these two sets of protocols grouped together,
(40:36):
then we typically hear of them separately. Now, I will
say there are two major versions of i P that
are in use today. I P V four is the
older one. That one has been in use for decades
and it still remains the dominant version of i P
used today. It's been in use since the early nineteen
eighties with stuff like sat net and ARPA net. It
(40:59):
used is a thirty two bit address space, which allows
for two to the thirty second power of addresses. So
in theory, uh that you would get that many addresses,
but a lot of those millions of them are actually
held in reserve. But that translates to nearly four billion,
three hundred million addresses. Not quite, it's like four billion,
(41:19):
two hundred ninety something million. That sounds like a lot
of addresses. But again, you know, we just talked about IoT.
When you take into account all of the devices connected
to the Internet, you realize four point three billion is
really not that much. In the grand scheme of things,
you'll usually see an I p v four address written
(41:39):
in dot decimal notation with four groups of numbers separated
by decimal points. So in the old House stuff Works
article on IP addresses, which I used to refer to
all the time back in my day's writing for that site,
the address for the quote machine that humans referred to
as how stuff works dot com end quote has the
address to two one six dot three dot one oh
(42:04):
three dot one five oh. By the way, I see
you all you websites out there, that took that information
and presented it on your own web pages without attribution.
Some of you didn't even bother to change the wording
at all, for shame anyway. The groups of numbers can
only occupy a range of zero to two, so you
(42:27):
would never have an I p V four address that
would have a group of numbers like four, seven, two
or anything like that that's not supported by the protocol. Now.
I p V six is the most recent version of
the Internet Protocol. It has been a standard since two
thousand seventeen when it was ratified, and it's addressing system
is a one hundred twenty eight bit address. Remember I
(42:50):
p V four is thirty two bit, so that means
that it could allow for addresses at two to the
hight power way more than I pv for it's it's
it's it's an understatement to say way more. These addresses
are in hexadecimal digits, grouped in four digits each with
(43:11):
eight groups total, and they're separated by colon's and one
of the main reasons for I p V six was
that it was clear that I p V four addresses
were going to run out. In fact, that has happened
with several regional Internet registries, and that would necessitate greater
adoption of I p v six. But both I p
(43:32):
v four and i p v six protocols are able
to work simultaneously, and browser's modern browsers support both. That
means that a lot of systems are still using i
p v four because they haven't you know, felt an
urgent need to get up to date on on all
of that, because it still works now. To be fair,
(43:53):
the process of switching over isn't as simple as actually
flipping a switch. It's much more involved than that. Now,
I p v six has a lot of advantages over
I p v four beyond the fact that it's not
going to run out anytime soon. That is, and I
probably will need to do a full episode to run
down both versions of the protocol to explain it a
(44:15):
bit more. Finally, for this episode, we have i r
C Internet Relay Chat. This is a text based online
chat system that dates back to the nineteen eighties. I
r C allows a single computer to open up multiple
chat communication channels with other computers all at the same time,
and multiple computers can also join a single communication channel,
(44:38):
so you kind of have party chat. So you can
have numerous one on one chats open through I r
C clients, or you could join a party chat or both.
In the old days, to use i r C, you
need to install an i r C client, and it's
kind of like a web browser, but it's for text
based chat. Later on, some web owsers incorporated I r
(45:01):
C clients within the browser itself, which allowed users to
pop into I r C chat without the need for
a separate client. The i r C uses its own
network of servers, with each server hosting chat rooms. Now
this means that unlike a web browser, where you just
type an address in your browser bar and you get
(45:22):
the web page you want, with i r C, you
actually first have to navigate to the correct server that
hosts the chat room you want to join. If you
go to the wrong server, you'll either end up in
a different room with the same name as the one
you intended to visit, but it won't have any of
the people you wanted to chat with their or you'll
create a brand new room with that name and you'll
(45:45):
be the only person. They're all by your lonesome, and
that's just sad. So I r C is not nearly
as user friendly as many other chat systems online are,
but it also has way lower bandwidth requirements and you
and me reasonably sure that your chat logs aren't being
used to sell you more stuff in most cases, which
(46:07):
is not something I can say for all chat systems online.
Learning I r C does require a bit of work,
but only just a bit in order to get started.
If you want to be a power user, well that's
a totally different thing, and you can put in the
time to really learn how to use I r C,
and you can even create your own I r C
server and you can host I r C chats on
(46:30):
your own computer. So some groups still use I r
C as sort of the no nonsense method to communicate,
but a lot have moved on to other more user
friendly systems like discord. But those systems have their own drawbacks, um,
primarily things like how they generate revenue. It's a very
(46:51):
fascinating version of of communication protocols really, and UM, I
definitely have been part of I r C chat rooms.
I want to say that Scott Johnson's UH chat room
back in the old days was in an I r
C chat and these days I think he uses something different.
But I want to say that that was the case.
(47:11):
I could be wrong. I could be misremembering. Scott Johnson,
by the way, phenomenal web comic artist as well as
podcast host. If you're not familiar with his work, you
should look it up. And that is it for this
episode of tech Stuff. When we come back on Wednesday,
we will continue down the line of the alphabet one day.
(47:33):
We will make it through all of them, and then
I'll have to start figuring out what else i want
to talk about. So I'm actually not in a rush
to get through it all because this is easy. I
know what the next episode is going to be about
because there are more letters left. If you want to
add more letters to the end of the alphabet to
extend this series, please do. If you have any suggestions
for topics I should cover in tech Stuff, reach out
(47:56):
to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is
tech Stuff HSB you and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(48:17):
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 I want to
welcome you all back to our ongoing saga of tackling
various acronyms and initialisms in tech and demystifying them. So
(00:28):
we're just kind of making our way through the alphabet
and learning what these different groups of letters actually stand for,
and hopefully learning a bit of extra stuff about them
along the way. So far, we've we've made it up
to the g s, and we have a couple more
to go in that realm before we get the H
out of here, So let's get started. Also, Hey, as
I've gone through this, I've noticed that I may have
(00:51):
left out, you know, a few acronyms and initialisms just
because of blind spots or you know, just just skimming
over stuff or why whatever. So after all these episodes,
if you feel there's some that I've missed, let me
know on Twitter at tech Stuff HSW and maybe I'll
do a roundup episode at the end. All right, g
PU this stands for graphics processing unit. Now, back in
(01:16):
the first episode of this series, I talked about c
p u s, or central processing units. Well, GPUs are
kind of similar in that they are microprocessors that execute
instructions on data and they produce output. But as the
name suggests, the intended purpose for a GPU is to
process graphics. Now, in the ancient days of the nineteen nineties,
(01:38):
there was a shift in computing and the need for processors.
Programmers primarily video game developers, but not exclusively video game developers. Well,
they kept making software that pushed computing hardware to the limit,
and sometimes went beyond that limit. The central processing units
of these computers would get over taxed and performance would suffer,
(02:00):
and you just typically wouldn't be able to get as
much out of the game as the developers had hoped
you would. Now, graphics cards, which could help offload some
of the work that the CPU had to do, had
been a thing since the nineteen eighties. The nineteen nineties
saw developers creating games and applications that included three D graphics.
(02:20):
Not that the graphics were coming out of your screen
or whatever, but rather images now appeared to have depth
to them. They weren't just two dimensional like flat cutouts
on screen, and we saw companies like in Nvidia and
three d f X manufacture more sophisticated cards to help
handle that processing requirement, to kind of offload that work
(02:40):
so the CPU wasn't so burdened. And Video introduced the
g Force to five six in n and the company
referred to it as the first graphics processing unit. So
while we had cards that fulfill the function of a
GPU for a while, this would be when someone actually
(03:01):
coined the term itself. These days, the architecture of a
GPU means that it has a parallel approach to processing data.
That means they can process information in parallel, dividing up
data into more manageable chunks, and working on everything at
the same time. And I always use a classroom analogy
(03:22):
to describe parallel processing because I think it really helps
illustrate how this works from a high level. So let's
go over that right now. So let's say you've got
a class of six really bright math students, and one
of those students is a true genius, someone who just
has a natural affinity for mathematics, and we'll call her Rachel.
(03:43):
So Rachel is a math genius and she's great at math.
She can solve any mathematical problem faster than her fellow students.
The other five just aren't as fast. They are all
very good. They're all very good students, they just aren't
genius level. One day, the teacher comes in with a challenge,
and the teacher has a math quiz and has five
(04:04):
problems on that quiz. Each problem is completely independent of
the others, so there's no connection between like problems one
and two and two and three and so on. And
the teacher hands out the quiz to all six students
and explains that Rachel is going to tackle all five problems,
but the other five students will each take only one
(04:25):
problem each, So student one takes problem one, student who
takes problem to, etcetera. So it's going to be a race.
And the quiz begins and Rachel gets to work, but
she needs to solve all five problems one after the other,
while the other five students each must concentrate on just
one problem each. The other students get to tackle the
(04:45):
quiz in parallel. They chop up the quiz into individual problems.
So Rachel is fast, but she's not fast enough to
overcome the advantage that the other students have, and that's
how parallel processing works. A processor that can perfor warm
parallel processing a lot of alliteration in this passage. Uh,
you know, like a multi core processor or modern GPUs
(05:08):
are all in this way. They can solve certain types
of computational problems far faster than a really really beefy
single core processor could. But there are also computational problems
that cannot split up into smaller chunks. So if the
teacher structured the math quiz so that question two depended
(05:29):
upon the answer to question one, and question three dependent
upon the answer to question two, and so on, Rachel
would have the advantage then because the five individual students
would have to wait for the previous answer before they
could jump on their particular question. Well, graphics processing is
a really specific computational task, and thus GPUs don't need
(05:51):
to be able to do all the general computing that
a CPU has to handle. That means that manufacturers can
optimize GPUs to make them really efficient for that specific
type of processing. On a side note, cryptographers and bitcoin
miners really love GPUs because they can be repurposed to
(06:12):
tackle other parallel processes like breaking encryption or mining bitcoins.
For that reason, it can often be very difficult for
gamers to get hold of the most recent GPUs because
other folks are scooping them up to use in completely
unrelated applications. And in the case of bitcoin mining, it's
a very potentially profitable application, and thus the money generated
(06:37):
from the mining can go back into building out even
more powerful bitcoin mining systems, and that requires more GPUs.
And thus do you have your you know, humble gamer
who just wants to build a gaming PC who can't
get hold of a graphics card. Plus the graphics cards
prices are skyrocketing because of this high demand. Well in
(06:59):
part because of the high demand, they're also very expensive.
Moving on g u I. This stands for graphical user
interface and most of the time we don't say g
u I, we actually say gooey. So gooey is a
g UI, which is intern a graphical user interface. Most
popular operating systems these days have a g UI. Windows, Mac, os, iOS,
(07:24):
and Android all have gooey's and the gooey represents programs
and processes as icons that you click on and then
they activate. So, if you remember from the last episode
we covered DOSS, which is a text based operating system
with DOWS you have to type in commands to navigate
the OS and execute programs. It's far less intuitive than
(07:48):
an OS that uses a gooey. But on the flip side,
text based operating systems require much fewer computer resources to operate,
so it leaves way more are for the actual programs
you want to run, and they don't have to worry about,
you know, the OS itself hogging some of those resources.
Early work and gooey design dates back to the nineteen sixties.
(08:11):
Douglas inglebart Man, associated with the gooey as well as
the computer mouse and other innovations, demonstrated a system in
the late nineteen sixties during an event that folks later
referred to as the mother of all demos. Xerox Is
Park Division developed a gooey for an internal computer system
that never really saw much practical use, but folks like
(08:33):
Steve Jobs got a chance to see a gooey in
action along with the computer mouse, and saw it as
the future of operating systems. A well designed gooey significantly
lowers the learning curve of using a computer. In the
early days of personal computers, the general sense was that
computers were for hobbyists and other nerds and geeks, people
(08:53):
who didn't mind diving into manuals to learn cryptic commands
in order to make these mysterious machines actually work. But
the emergence of the gooey in the mid nineteen eighties
made it way easier to understand how to interact with
a computer. All the processes that required people to navigate
file trees and type in commands were out the window,
so to speak, and now icons and clicking did all
(09:16):
the work. Since then, the gooey has become the standard
OS approach for most consumer facing computational devices. You still
have some text based systems out there, but for the
most part, the general public doesn't encounter them. Specialists totally
different story, but general public mostly gooey based. These days,
(09:36):
we're a gooey bunch. Next is h d D. This
stands for hard disk drive. So a disk drive is
a device that allows the computer to read and write
to some form of digital storage, and there are lots
of different versions of disk drives. Back in the day,
a floppy disk drive referred to a drive that allowed
(09:57):
a user to insert or remove physical disks from a drive,
but a hard disk drive could be an integral part
of a computer all by itself, allowing the system to
store and read information on an internal drive that was
non volatile, meaning that the information would remain in place
even should the computer be powered down. Some hard disk
(10:19):
drives are internal to a computer, some are separate and
connect to a computer via cables, so it all just
depends upon the specific setup. But these hard disk drives
are mechanical devices, and HDD has at least one rotating
platter inside it, and most h d d s have
multiple platters positioned almost like a stack of pancakes, except
(10:42):
there's a gap between each platter, so there's not you know,
they're not stacked touching each other. There's a gap between
each one and in between them, within that gap there
is an actuator arm. Most h d d s have
multiple actuator arms that can extend between the different platters,
(11:02):
and at the end of that actuator arm is a
magnetic head that can read or write information magnetically to
the platters, so all the info is stored magnetically. This
is why if you ever were around computers in the
old days, uh people always said make sure you don't
have magnets near them, because that could corrupt data on
(11:23):
the device. Still not a great idea to work with
computers near powerful magnets for multiple reasons, but that was
the main reason back in the day. Because hd d
s are mechanical, stuff can and does break down. So
if the platter has become misaligned, the whole thing could
grind to a halt, or worse, it could shake itself
(11:43):
to pieces. If an actuator arm bends the wrong way,
it could cause irreparable damage to the platters. There are
a lot of parts that could potentially break down or
wear out. Not all the problems are show stoppers. Some
of them are totally reparable, but it does mean that
there are several all potential points of failure with an
hd D. They also tend to add a lot of
(12:04):
weight to devices. For that reason, many smaller gadgets rely
on alternative data storage systems, some of which we will
cover later in these episodes. So for a long time,
h d d s were significantly cheaper than alternatives, and
they remain the primary method of internal storage for computers.
But it also takes time for a computer to retrieve
(12:25):
information stored on an hd D Because we have to
remember this is a mechanical system. It actually takes time
for components to move into place and start to search
for and pull relevant data. So on top of the line,
h d D typically has a lot more storage capacity
than the alternatives, so when it comes to actual storage,
(12:46):
the hd D tends to win out, particularly when you
look at the price tag per amount of storage. It's
pretty common to find h d ds today in the
two to four terrabyte range, which honestly still ows my
mind because I'm old and I remember when a megabyte
was a big deal. Next, we have h d M I.
(13:07):
This is high definition Multimedia interface. In the early two thousand's,
a group of companies that included Tashiba, Sony, Phillips, and
Hitachi worked together to create a standardized technology that would
allow for the transfer of uncompressed audio and video signals
from a source to an output, such as from a
(13:27):
computer to a display or a set top box to
a television. The HDMI standard would allow for higher resolution
video while also carrying audio signals, and over the years
there have been many different cables and ports designed for
these purposes. So let's do a very quick rundown for
the video side. Early on in the nineteen fifties, you
(13:48):
had the development of composite r c A this cable,
little yellow tipped cable you might remember, those that could
carry an analog video signal of up to standard definition
resolution that's either four A d I or five seventy
six I depending upon your region. The signal coded down
to a single channel of information. A couple of decades later,
(14:11):
companies introduced the S video cable, which carried video into
channels and allowed for a higher quality video transmission. Then
you had component video cables, which split the video into
three channels and could be even better quality, especially for
color representation and luminosity. The component video cables were the
top of the line and analog video signal transmission, but
(14:35):
they also came right at the tail end of that,
just before the digital revolution, so they weren't relevant for
terribly long. They sort of became obsolete. After component cables,
we got d V I and shortly after that we
got h d M I, and the h d M
I tech has essentially one out and become the standard
(14:55):
tech for transmitting digital video and audio. Companies have improved
the text since its introduction. The h d M I
of two two was you know HDMI one point oh?
These days, the most recent specification is h d m
I two point one, and that specification allows for the
transmission of signals of up to eight K resolution with
(15:16):
sixty frames per second or four K resolution at one
twenty frames per second. I think it can even transmit
up to ten K resolution, though you do take a
hit on the frames per second at that point, and
it can transmit data at a band with a forty
eight gigabits per second. To take advantage of the specification,
all the parts of a connected system have to be
(15:38):
HDMI two point one compatible. That includes the source of
the signal, the cables you're using, and the output device
whatever you're viewing it on. So, in other words, you've
got a system that has an HDMI two point one
out port and an HDMI two point one cable, but
your television only supports to up to I don't know,
(15:59):
HDMI one point four, you will not get the full
benefit of HDMI two point one. It would still work
because it is as a specification that is backwards compatible.
It could still carry and deliver signals that the television
would be able to show. It just wouldn't be at
the two point one specifications. You wouldn't get the full
benefit unless every part of the system is current with
(16:20):
h d M. I well, we are at a point
where I think it's a good time to take a
break because these acronyms, despite how short they are, get
kind of exhausting. To say, we're back and let's hit
it with h d R, which stands for high dynamic range.
(16:44):
This is a dynamic range that is high. It can
actually cover a lot of different types of stuff. High
dynamic range is not limited to a specific technology. Essentially,
it means that whatever range you're looking at, whether it's
for us of it kind of a signal or color
representation or rendering or whatever, it's a range that has
(17:07):
lots and lots of divisions. There's a big difference between
the lowest end of the range and the highest end
of the range. It's got a lot of dynamics to it.
We call music really dynamic if there are a lot
of variations between the softest tones and the loudest tones,
as well as the quality of tone. So typically this
means you have more minute steps between the lowest end
(17:30):
and the highest end. All of that sounds pretty wishy
washy when I say it out loud. So let's use
colors as an example. I'm pretty sure you all know
roy GBIV right, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,
the color spectrum for stuff like rainbows. That's a very
simple spectrum, right, just seven colors. But you know there's
(17:53):
more than just seven colors. There are a lot of
different shades of these colors, which you could also think
of as little steps between one color whatever you designate
as being the true version of say red, and the
next color whatever is the true version of orange. Heck,
I remember in the old days having crayons that had
(18:15):
blue green and green blue in the same crayon pack,
and the two crayons were not exactly the same color. Instead,
both of them showed a color that in one instance
was just a little more blue than it was green,
and the other was the opposite. So, if we're talking
about a color spectrum, HDR might refer to more variants
or shades of colors, perhaps in a spectrum broad enough
(18:39):
that two adjacent colors might be difficult to distinguish for
the average person that they are different, but they might
not be distinct enough for you to be able to
tell on casual glance with a digital display. The sort
of color range means you're able to experience more lifelike colors.
The display doesn't have to rely as much on tricking
your eyes, but using a more limited palette of colors
(19:02):
to create the illusion of that range, and we end
up with more vibrant and lifelike images as a result.
So while HDR can refer to a ton of different
stuff in tech, for the average consumer, we typically see
it in reference to displays and televisions. There's no standard
HDR format, which is kind of a pain in the
(19:22):
took us since there are competing formats on the market.
There is a minimum set of specs that each format
has to meet in order for the Ultra HD Alliance
which sounds like a supervillain group UH, for them to
consider it actual HDR. So, in other words, you have
to meet certain criteria for it to be HDR, but
(19:44):
there's no standardized way to do this, and it's just
it doesn't matter how you get the output, it just
has to have the output meet those specifications, which is
a little frustrating. HD M I two point one, which
we talked about before the break so ports HDR and
kind of like hd M I. To enjoy the benefits
of HDR, you need every element in your system to
(20:06):
be compatible with whichever format you're trying to display, and
HDR video is about more than just color representation. It
also has to do with luminates or brightness. HDR is
also a great way to explain that image quality goes
well beyond just resolution. A picture could have very high
resolution but very poor color representation. Video image quality depends
(20:31):
upon multiple factors. So that includes resolution, color representation, contrast
which is the difference between the brightest and darkest colors,
and how many steps there are between those two extremes.
It's kind of its own high dynamic range feature, as
well as frame rate. That's another big one. Now. The
reason I mentioned all of this is in case you're
(20:52):
ever in the market to upgrade your home theater system.
It's good to know there is not just one single
component you should con learn yourself with, or else you
might find that the setup you buy doesn't match your expectations.
Moving on, next, we have HTML and x HTML. These
are not you know, partners that had a nasty breakup
(21:14):
and now they're X is no HTML is hypertext markup language,
and x HTML is extensible hypertext markup language. Let's break
these down a bit to understand what they actually mean. So,
a markup language is a tool that allows someone to
make annotations to a document that is distinct from the
(21:35):
content of that document. So, for example, if you've ever
worked with a document program that allows editors to put
in comments off to the side in that electronic format,
perhaps it shows up as like a little word bubble. Well,
that's an example of a markup language system. It's a
technological evolution of an editor making notes in red pencil,
(21:58):
and man, that takes me back so much red pencil.
Hypertext is a method of creating text that can link
to other parts of a document, an electronic document, or
it can link other documents together. So it's links. In
other words, if you're familiar with the web, it's links.
(22:18):
Let's say that you have an electronic document version of
the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, and you want to go
straight to the to be or not to be speech. Well,
then you can go to the table of contents in
that electronic document and click on the hypertext link for
Act three, Scene one, and boom, that link takes you
to that section of the document. And like I said,
(22:39):
those links can go either within a document itself or
between different documents in the Worldwide Web. Hypertext represents the
strands of web that hold different points together. You can
also think of HTML as a set of instructions as
to how a web browser should display a page. The
markup language uses tags to distinguish different elements within the document.
(23:02):
So for example, there's the tag open bracket i mg
slash closed bracket, which indicates an image. Yeah, I get it.
So using HTML you can create structured documents that behave
a specific way within a browser. Alright, So x HTML
(23:23):
is an x m L version of HTML, and x
m L, as you might guess, stands for Extensible Markup Language.
It's a markup language that is readable by both machines
and humans, and it standardizes the methods to access information,
so it makes that process more efficient and accurate. So
x HTML in many ways is similar to HTML, but
(23:46):
it has a more strict error handling approach. A web
browser will still give the old college Try to display
a web page that has HTML errors in it, but
with x HTML, well you'll be headed back to editing
to find out where you've done messed up. Tim berners
Lee developed HTML back in the early nineties while working
with CERN, and I'm sure many of you listening to
(24:07):
this have played around with HTML at some point. The
first two web pages I ever made I coded completely
in HTML. Actually had a document open where I typed
everything out in HTML. Then I had to upload it.
Then I had to refresh a page to see how
it would display. Then I would realize that everything was terrible.
(24:28):
I'd have to go back into my document, change it
there and re upload the code and repeat that process
until I got it right. Thankfully, I don't remember the
address for either of those web pages anymore. I mean
they are you know, gosh, how old would they be.
I made them back in in college, so that was
in the early mid nineties, So if they still exist,
(24:51):
I am unaware of them. I bet they don't exist.
I'm sure those servers are down, but I cannot relive
that terrible, terrible web page that I made, and I'm
thankful for that. I remember one was definitely about pirates,
So let's move on. Next, we have h t t
P and h t t P S. On a related note,
(25:12):
this is similar to or relates to the h t
m L. This stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and HTTPS
is hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. As I mentioned, a protocol
is a set of instructions or rules that machines follow
in order to complete some process. So it's how machines
quote unquote know what to do and in what order.
(25:36):
So in this case, the process is the transmission of
hyper media documents, such as those that are coded in
h t m L. The original purpose for h t
t P was to allow web browsers also known as clients,
to request and receive HTML documents from web servers also
known as servers. So in brief, let's say you wanted
(25:59):
to navigate to a website. You would type an address
into your browser's address bar and you hit enter or
you click or whatever. And at this point, the client
that is your web browser follows h t t P
and sends a request out to the server. There's a
lot of steps in between here, but we're just gonna
skip over those and hopefully that server responds by sending
(26:22):
the appropriate HTML document to your browser. The browser then
renders the web page based on the code of the
h t m L page within the browser, window. As
for HTTPS, the secure is really important these days, many
sites rely on HTTPS rather than planal H T t P.
(26:42):
Communication across HTTPS is encrypted by the Transport Layers Security
or TLS. In the old days, this was known as
the Secure Sockets Layer or s s L. What that
means is that the information sent between the client and
server goes through an encryption process. So if someone should
(27:03):
intercept the data, all they would end up with would
look like meaningless garbage. So it uses an asymmetric public
key infrastructure, and you might wonder what the heck does
that mean. Well, in a simple encryption process, you would
have an encoding device that would transform your plane message
into encrypted text. Let's say that we're using an old
(27:26):
stand by, the classic plastic decoder ring, like the kind
that used to come in cereal boxes and stuff. Anyone
who had a copy of that same ring could decrypt
your message because all the rings followed the exact same
encoding process, all the same rings anyway, different rings had
different encoding, you get what I mean. So this would
(27:47):
be a pure public key effectively, and it wouldn't be
very useful because the key would spread so far and
wide that it would just add a minor step between
intercepting a message and learning what's in that message. If
the key is easily available, then it's almost as if
you sent stuff unencrypted. So an asymmetric public key has
(28:09):
two keys. One is a public key used to encode messages.
But this encoding process is not reversible. You cannot use
a public key to decode an encrypted message. It doesn't
work that way, so once the public key transforms the message,
only a second private key can decode it. The web
(28:29):
server in this case holds onto this precious private key
and does not share it, and that way any information
sent to the server remains safe. HTTPS is what enables
online shopping. Because of that encryption, consumers can have confidence
that they're purchasing information like credit card numbers will remain secure.
(28:50):
You can see if a website is using HTTPS just
by looking at the beginning of the address and seeing
HTTPS at the beginning. In additional out of browsers will
also include a padlock icon that will indicate whether or
not the site is using HTTPS. Next up, we have
I slash. Oh. Now, this isn't just the name of
(29:13):
Google's developer conference for all things Android, the IO Conference.
It's an older term that means input and output, and yeah,
this is getting pretty darned. Basic. Input is obviously the
stuff you put into a computer. It might be key
strokes on a keyboard. It might be moving and clicking
a mouse. It might be using a touch screen command
(29:35):
or maybe a voice command, or you know, there's lots
of stuff. It's how you act on a computer and
not just you. Input can include incoming communications from other
devices and systems. Output, well, that's what a computer puts out.
It might be something really overt. It might be like
a print job sent to a printer, or a message
(29:55):
on a display, or sound effects played on a speaker,
or it could be more subtle, with the CPU executing
instructions that aren't necessarily observable by a human user. It's
the result of the computer executing instructions on data that's
the output. So some devices are pretty easy to categorize
as either input or output devices. A keyboard, amounts, a
(30:19):
tract pad, a joystick. These appear to be pretty clearly
input devices. A computer display or printer that's pretty clearly
an output device, But to be fair, some of these
can actually straddle the line. For example, joysticks with haptic
feedback are arguably both input and output devices because the
(30:40):
computer can send signals to the motors in the joystick
that make it rumble according to computer output, and a
lot of modern printers can also act as scanning devices,
so you can use them to input data into a
computer system, not just print data out. There are also
all the various cables and modems and routers such that
(31:00):
act as both input and output devices. In some cases
they might relay information to your computer, and in others
they might carry that information from your computer to somewhere else.
So it's not as clear cut as all that, but
you know, generally you can kind of categorize stuff. We've
got a lot more eyes to get through, but before
(31:22):
we do that, let's take a quick break. So do
you think I can get through all the rest of
the eyes before the end of the episode? I can.
That's a joke, because our next one is I can
I see a n N. That means the Internet Corporation
(31:44):
for Assigned Names and Numbers. This is a not for
profit agency that formed in and its purpose is to
coordinate quote unique identify irs end quote that let computers
find each other over the Internet. Now, you might remember
in the last episode in this series that I talked
about the domain name system or d n S. The
(32:05):
DNS makes it way easier to navigate the Internet because
it uses letters, typically in the form of words or initialisms,
rather than a seemingly random series of numbers or possibly
numbers and letters, which is the underlying format for i
P addresses. We'll talk about more of those in a second. Well,
what's going on here is that the address you type in,
(32:27):
like www dot YouTube dot com, relates to a numerical
i P address. You just don't have to worry about
that number because of the d n S. For all
this to work, each address needs to be unique. If
there were two different sites that we're using www dot
YouTube dot com, your computer and all the machines beyond
(32:48):
your computer wouldn't know which one you wanted to go
to when you typed in the address. Similarly, each IP
address must be unique. I CAN coordinates how i P
addresses and top level domains are supplied so that there's
no confusion and Internet traffic goes to where it's supposed
to go. Now, I CAN does not control the Internet itself.
(33:11):
It's more of a facilitator, kind of like a centralized
authority that various entities like registrars work with in order
to keep things running smoothly. I can calls its chief
responsibility quote universal resolvability end quote, meaning that no matter
where in the world you are, if you type a
particular address out in the web browser or send an
(33:34):
email to a specific email address, you can be assured
that you're going to get the same results that you
would get anywhere else in the world, assuming you're not,
you know, falling victim to a man in the middle attack.
But that's a totally different kettle of fish. Moving on.
I E E E. That's really I triple E, or
as I used to say in the old days, I E.
(33:57):
This is formally known as the Instant Tute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers, And I'll quote the organization on itself,
uh in a second, But these days it's just the
eye triple E. And I'll explain why in a moment.
This is quote an association dedicated to advancing innovation and
technological excellence for the benefit of humanity end quote. And
(34:22):
it's also quote the world's largest technical professional society end quote.
The organization actually traces its history back more than a century,
all the way back to eight eight four. You know,
obviously the Internet was not around back then. That's often
we we associate the EYE Tripoli with the Internet, But
back then they were associated with the bustling telegraph industry,
(34:45):
and at that point it was known as the ai
EE or American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The more modern
version of the EYE Tripoli, you could say, launched in
the nineteen sixties. While the original purpose of the group
as a professional organization for engineers, these days it counts
numerous professions in its membership, including scientists and medical professionals.
(35:09):
And that is why the EYE Triple E usually good.
It just goes by I Triple E rather than its
full name, because the full name implies it's just an
organization for engineers alone, and that's just not the case.
The EYE Triple E promotes collaboration among companies, technical professionals,
scientists and more, all to push technological innovation and ideally
(35:32):
to service humanity in general. The EYE Triple E is
host to numerous educational services in the technical fields. It
pushes for standardizations in various areas of tech. It acts
as a repository for a wealth of publications relating to
technical knowledge and specifications. One of the famous standards that
(35:53):
the Eye Triple E ratified and helped develop was for
the Family of Local Area Network Technical Standards. This is
the SEV standards computers used to communicate with one another
at a local area network. More on those in the
future episode. This is the eight to two point one
one set of standards, which includes all those wild designations
(36:14):
you see on WiFi modems and routers. When you hear
people talking about A to two point one one G
versus A no two point one one a X or whatever.
Those are all different network standards for the transmission of
wireless data, and I Triple E, through collaboration of countless contributors,
established those standards, which means you know that the stuff
(36:36):
you have will talk to the other stuff you have.
Without those standards, you would have all these different proprietary
means of wireless communication and the Internet would be a
total mess. Moving on, IoT, this is the Internet of Things.
Back in nine, Kevin Ashton, a technologist and author, coined
(36:59):
this for PRAS, and he was looking ahead and envisioning
a world in which lots of different stuff would connect
directly or indirectly to the Internet. It wouldn't just be
a network of computers and network devices and switches and stuff,
but of all sorts of things, from individual sensors to appliances,
to vehicles and beyond. Not the time, I think a
(37:20):
lot of people didn't really appreciate what this would really mean,
or the scope at which it would happen, or how
it would necessitate huge strides, and how we handle stuff
like privacy, security, data storage, and information analysis. In fact,
I'd say a lot of us are still getting a
handle on that today, particularly as we see companies continue
(37:40):
to market products that could pose as a potential security
vulnerability within a network. It took several years for IoT
to evolve from a hypothetical concept to a buzzword to
a real thing, but we're definitely in that real thing
stage today. Heck, we get the first popular consumer smartphone
(38:03):
until two thousand seven, so it took quite a while
for IoT to kind of take off. But these days
you'll find tons of consumer products that fall into the
IoT category, from smart thermostats that have a persistent network
connection to sensors that you can put out into the
garden and let you know when you should water your plants.
And then there are the countless Internet connected devices that
(38:26):
the average consumer isn't even aware of. These could be
used to collect data on a regional level, giving organizations
like civil engineers more information from a hyper local level
all the way out to broad regional views. Again, the
technology has both incredible potential to help transform our world
in meaningful ways, as well as the potential to cause
(38:47):
a lot of problems, whether through poor implementation or questionable motivations.
It's hard to say how big the Internet of Things
really is because new devices join every day, and so
we're aft with estimates, and even with estimates, there are
a huge range there. For example, Juniper Research estimates that,
(39:08):
for one, we're looking at forty six billion connected devices,
but statists UM estimates that will hit thirty eight point
six billion connected devices by five That's a pretty big difference,
like seven and a half billion devices difference in those estimates,
and one of those estimates involves a year that's by
(39:31):
my account, four years in the future. So to be fair,
this kind of thing is really hard to get a
handle on. It's hard to get an accurate estimate as
to how many devices are connected to the Internet Also,
how do you define that? Do you discount stuff like
computers and smartphones and just focus on what we would
traditionally refer to as IoT devices. So I think it's
(39:53):
pretty safe to say we're somewhere in the tens of
billions of connected devices somewhere, though a precise head count
really isn't possible. Next, we have i P. This stands
for Internet Protocol, and it's frequently paired with the word
address in other words, IP address. This is the numerical
(40:13):
string that is unique to each device connected to a
computer network that is using i P as it's communication
protocol anyway, But more broadly, i P is a communications protocol,
and it all gets incredibly technical. Plus, we're going to
dive into this further when we get to t C
P I P later on, because more often than not,
we hear of these two sets of protocols grouped together,
(40:36):
then we typically hear of them separately. Now, I will
say there are two major versions of i P that
are in use today. I P V four is the
older one. That one has been in use for decades
and it still remains the dominant version of i P
used today. It's been in use since the early nineteen
eighties with stuff like sat net and ARPA net. It
(40:59):
used is a thirty two bit address space, which allows
for two to the thirty second power of addresses. So
in theory, uh that you would get that many addresses,
but a lot of those millions of them are actually
held in reserve. But that translates to nearly four billion,
three hundred million addresses. Not quite, it's like four billion,
(41:19):
two hundred ninety something million. That sounds like a lot
of addresses. But again, you know, we just talked about IoT.
When you take into account all of the devices connected
to the Internet, you realize four point three billion is
really not that much. In the grand scheme of things,
you'll usually see an I p v four address written
(41:39):
in dot decimal notation with four groups of numbers separated
by decimal points. So in the old House stuff Works
article on IP addresses, which I used to refer to
all the time back in my day's writing for that site,
the address for the quote machine that humans referred to
as how stuff works dot com end quote has the
address to two one six dot three dot one oh
(42:04):
three dot one five oh. By the way, I see
you all you websites out there, that took that information
and presented it on your own web pages without attribution.
Some of you didn't even bother to change the wording
at all, for shame anyway. The groups of numbers can
only occupy a range of zero to two, so you
(42:27):
would never have an I p V four address that
would have a group of numbers like four, seven, two
or anything like that that's not supported by the protocol. Now.
I p V six is the most recent version of
the Internet Protocol. It has been a standard since two
thousand seventeen when it was ratified, and it's addressing system
is a one hundred twenty eight bit address. Remember I
(42:50):
p V four is thirty two bit, so that means
that it could allow for addresses at two to the
hight power way more than I pv for it's it's
it's it's an understatement to say way more. These addresses
are in hexadecimal digits, grouped in four digits each with
(43:11):
eight groups total, and they're separated by colon's and one
of the main reasons for I p V six was
that it was clear that I p V four addresses
were going to run out. In fact, that has happened
with several regional Internet registries, and that would necessitate greater
adoption of I p v six. But both I p
(43:32):
v four and i p v six protocols are able
to work simultaneously, and browser's modern browsers support both. That
means that a lot of systems are still using i
p v four because they haven't you know, felt an
urgent need to get up to date on on all
of that, because it still works now. To be fair,
(43:53):
the process of switching over isn't as simple as actually
flipping a switch. It's much more involved than that. Now,
I p v six has a lot of advantages over
I p v four beyond the fact that it's not
going to run out anytime soon. That is, and I
probably will need to do a full episode to run
down both versions of the protocol to explain it a
(44:15):
bit more. Finally, for this episode, we have i r
C Internet Relay Chat. This is a text based online
chat system that dates back to the nineteen eighties. I
r C allows a single computer to open up multiple
chat communication channels with other computers all at the same time,
and multiple computers can also join a single communication channel,
(44:38):
so you kind of have party chat. So you can
have numerous one on one chats open through I r
C clients, or you could join a party chat or both.
In the old days, to use i r C, you
need to install an i r C client, and it's
kind of like a web browser, but it's for text
based chat. Later on, some web owsers incorporated I r
(45:01):
C clients within the browser itself, which allowed users to
pop into I r C chat without the need for
a separate client. The i r C uses its own
network of servers, with each server hosting chat rooms. Now
this means that unlike a web browser, where you just
type an address in your browser bar and you get
(45:22):
the web page you want, with i r C, you
actually first have to navigate to the correct server that
hosts the chat room you want to join. If you
go to the wrong server, you'll either end up in
a different room with the same name as the one
you intended to visit, but it won't have any of
the people you wanted to chat with their or you'll
create a brand new room with that name and you'll
(45:45):
be the only person. They're all by your lonesome, and
that's just sad. So I r C is not nearly
as user friendly as many other chat systems online are,
but it also has way lower bandwidth requirements and you
and me reasonably sure that your chat logs aren't being
used to sell you more stuff in most cases, which
(46:07):
is not something I can say for all chat systems online.
Learning I r C does require a bit of work,
but only just a bit in order to get started.
If you want to be a power user, well that's
a totally different thing, and you can put in the
time to really learn how to use I r C,
and you can even create your own I r C
server and you can host I r C chats on
(46:30):
your own computer. So some groups still use I r
C as sort of the no nonsense method to communicate,
but a lot have moved on to other more user
friendly systems like discord. But those systems have their own drawbacks, um,
primarily things like how they generate revenue. It's a very
(46:51):
fascinating version of of communication protocols really, and UM, I
definitely have been part of I r C chat rooms.
I want to say that Scott Johnson's UH chat room
back in the old days was in an I r
C chat and these days I think he uses something different.
But I want to say that that was the case.
(47:11):
I could be wrong. I could be misremembering. Scott Johnson,
by the way, phenomenal web comic artist as well as
podcast host. If you're not familiar with his work, you
should look it up. And that is it for this
episode of tech Stuff. When we come back on Wednesday,
we will continue down the line of the alphabet one day.
(47:33):
We will make it through all of them, and then
I'll have to start figuring out what else i want
to talk about. So I'm actually not in a rush
to get through it all because this is easy. I
know what the next episode is going to be about
because there are more letters left. If you want to
add more letters to the end of the alphabet to
extend this series, please do. If you have any suggestions
for topics I should cover in tech Stuff, reach out
(47:56):
to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is
tech Stuff HSB you and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(48:17):
your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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