Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love of all things tech. And Okay, I
Speaker 1: think we are now down to the home stretch here,
Speaker 1: So if you've just joined us. Over the past several
Speaker 1: long episodes, we've been going through popular acronyms and initialisms
Speaker 1: in tech to explain what they mean and kind of
Speaker 1: give some background on each of them. This is the
Speaker 1: sixth and final episode for all those terms. Keeping in
Speaker 1: mind that we did skip a couple, but that'll just
Speaker 1: have to wait for a follow up at some point.
Speaker 1: We are currently in the SYS, so let's get right
Speaker 1: to it and not waste any more time. First is
Speaker 1: s EO. This stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty much what it sounds like. SEO covers a suite
Speaker 1: of strategies and best practices that give web page creators
Speaker 1: a better chance of ranking well in various search engines.
Speaker 1: And really, when we say search engines, we mostly mean Google.
Speaker 1: According to Global Stats, Google accounts for staggering ninety two
Speaker 1: point two percent of the search engine market share so really,
Speaker 1: focusing on anything else doesn't make any sense. You're just
Speaker 1: you're targeting such a small audience that should really focus
Speaker 1: on Google. But let's talk a little bit about why
Speaker 1: s EO is such a big deal in the first place. Well,
Speaker 1: according to Statista, a different site that tracks these sorts
Speaker 1: of things, nearly thirty percent of all web traffic is
Speaker 1: funneled through search. That was back in twenty nineteen at least,
Speaker 1: so nearly a third of all traffic on the Internet
Speaker 1: is dependent upon search. Search represents a way for people
Speaker 1: to discover web content, but only if you rank well
Speaker 1: enough to be found in a search right. If your
Speaker 1: web page isn't showing up pretty early on in search results,
Speaker 1: you might as well not even be in the listing
Speaker 1: at all. And here's another statistic. This one is according
Speaker 1: to webfx, only twenty of users ever bother to go
Speaker 1: beyond the first page of search results. So that means
Speaker 1: seventy of people using the web will use a search
Speaker 1: result that appears on the first page and they never
Speaker 1: go beyond that first page, which means if your website
Speaker 1: doesn't pop up in that first page for whatever relevant
Speaker 1: search criteria match your sight, then you're not going to
Speaker 1: get very much web traffic through search, and it gets worse. Actually,
Speaker 1: when you look at search results, you really only see
Speaker 1: the first few listed before you need to start scrolling
Speaker 1: down the page. We would typically call the search results
Speaker 1: that appear below the screen as being below the fold.
Speaker 1: That's term the dates back to newspapers, and some folks
Speaker 1: won't even go beyond the fold, right, They'll just look
Speaker 1: at the first view and they won't even scroll down.
Speaker 1: So you really need to have your page rank very
Speaker 1: high in search results for whatever the relevant search queries
Speaker 1: are for your web page. Google uses a ranking system
Speaker 1: for search results that has changed several times since it
Speaker 1: first appeared. Now, in the old days, the criteria that
Speaker 1: really determined where a specific result would appear within search
Speaker 1: would include stuff like how old the site was, was
Speaker 1: it had it been around for a while? Uh, how
Speaker 1: many other sites were linking to this page? The idea
Speaker 1: being that if a lot of other sites are linking
Speaker 1: into a specific one, that specific one should be pretty good, right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like wisdom of the crowd and other
Speaker 1: stuff like that really played a big part. Today it's
Speaker 1: even more complicated, and that's what gave birth to the
Speaker 1: idea of search engine optimization. So the goal is to
Speaker 1: give a web page every advantage so that it has
Speaker 1: the best chance of ranking high in search results for
Speaker 1: the irrelevant queries. And a lot of the strategies in
Speaker 1: s c O are individually pretty small, they can seem insignificant,
Speaker 1: but when they're used collectively, they can all make a
Speaker 1: big difference. That is, until Google changes its algorithm again
Speaker 1: and all your strategies no longer work, which is a thing.
Speaker 1: The dependence on search engines can become a really limiting
Speaker 1: factor on web based companies. For websites that generate revenue
Speaker 1: through ads and those that depend on search traffic, it
Speaker 1: can be devastating when Google makes a change. A site
Speaker 1: could be doing really well in search one quarter, and
Speaker 1: then its performance the following quarter might plummet because of
Speaker 1: a change in Google's algorithm, and that means that revenue
Speaker 1: will plummet as well. It's tough these days. Search isn't
Speaker 1: the only area that companies need to focus on. Social
Speaker 1: networks are another big source of web traffic, and so
Speaker 1: there are similar strategies meant to encourage people to visit
Speaker 1: sites through links on platforms like Twitter, and Facebook. Moving
Speaker 1: on next, we have s m S or Short Message Service,
Speaker 1: which is kind of another way to say text messaging.
Speaker 1: SMS is on top of communication protocols that both determine
Speaker 1: how messages can transmit over telecommunications lines and also places
Speaker 1: some limits on those communications. For example, the SMS allows
Speaker 1: for transmission of messages of up to one hundred sixty
Speaker 1: characters per message. This is why Twitter had a one
Speaker 1: hundred forty character limit for a really long time. Twitter
Speaker 1: was built to work with SMS so that people could
Speaker 1: tweet or receive tweets via text on their phones, and
Speaker 1: you know, twenty characters were says aside for stuff like
Speaker 1: user handles. A variant of SMS, MMS or Multimedia Messaging Service,
Speaker 1: which can send audio, video, and images via cellular communication.
Speaker 1: All right, moving on s little oh big C SO
Speaker 1: s o C, and there are actually quite a few
Speaker 1: tech related topics that have the acronym s O C.
Speaker 1: If you're actually talking all caps, you might mean Security
Speaker 1: Operations center, which is a centralized department in charge of
Speaker 1: dealing with computer security, typically within a company or other organization. Uh,
Speaker 1: you could mean BIGES, little oh big C and talk
Speaker 1: about separation of concerns. That refers to an approach in
Speaker 1: computer programming, but I actually wanted to look at a
Speaker 1: different version of s OC, that being system on a chip.
Speaker 1: This is a type of integrated circuit that includes all
Speaker 1: the basic components of a computer all on a single chip.
Speaker 1: So that would include a processor, computer memory, some form
Speaker 1: of storage, and in put in output ports. So as
Speaker 1: the name suggests, it's a full computer system all located
Speaker 1: on a single chip. This is all about manaturization and
Speaker 1: building out mobile devices that have lots of features in them,
Speaker 1: so they tend to be pretty power efficient as well.
Speaker 1: And you can find s OC and stuff like smartphones
Speaker 1: or car systems or Internet of Things devices. And that's
Speaker 1: just a start. There are also lots of research facilities
Speaker 1: that use system on a chip design for various scientific projects.
Speaker 1: And they can even be used in laptops and small
Speaker 1: PCs because they can be powerful and really efficient when
Speaker 1: it comes to how much power they consume, how much
Speaker 1: electricity they need to operate. Okay, burning through it, let's
Speaker 1: get to the next one. S q L. This stands
Speaker 1: for structured query language. This language relates to databases and
Speaker 1: think of all the stuff you might do with a database,
Speaker 1: such as you might want to update records in the database,
Speaker 1: you might want to search a database, you might want
Speaker 1: to pull U S Pacific record. All of those basic things. Well,
Speaker 1: s q L is useful when you're dealing with structured data.
Speaker 1: Some engineers at IBM originally developed s q L in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. Back then it was actually called Sequel.
Speaker 1: Some people will still refer to s q L as Sequel,
Speaker 1: but the company that really took the ball and ran
Speaker 1: with it was Oracle, which built an entire industry around
Speaker 1: database construction and management. So if you ever see s
Speaker 1: q L, that's what it's in reference to. It's this
Speaker 1: language that tends to be used regarding databases. Next, we
Speaker 1: have S s D solid state drive. Now, in a
Speaker 1: previous episode in this series, we talked about h d
Speaker 1: d s, or hard disk drives, and how those storage
Speaker 1: devices use physical platters to store data magnetically. A solid
Speaker 1: state drive is a different type of data storage system.
Speaker 1: Rather than using spinning platters and magnetic storage, s s
Speaker 1: D s use an integrated circuit to store data. The
Speaker 1: most common method is to use what is called flash memory.
Speaker 1: This is a non volatile form of computer storage and
Speaker 1: just as a reminder. That means that the information stored
Speaker 1: in this kind of format will remain intact even if
Speaker 1: the computer were to lose power. You can erase and
Speaker 1: right over stuff that's stored in flash memory, so it's
Speaker 1: not like it's set in stone, but otherwise information will
Speaker 1: remain persistent within flash memory. S s d s have
Speaker 1: several advantages over h d ds. For one thing, they
Speaker 1: have no moving parts and so they are silent, and
Speaker 1: HDD requires a motor to spin the platters, and depending
Speaker 1: on the make of the hard disk drive, it can
Speaker 1: sometimes be kind allowed when it starts to spin up
Speaker 1: to speed. Uh They s s d s are are
Speaker 1: more resistant to physical damage as well. If you were
Speaker 1: to drop a hard disk drive, you would run the
Speaker 1: risk of knocking the platters out of alignment or breaking
Speaker 1: some mechanical component. But ss d s are a bit
Speaker 1: more shock resistant than that. They are not damage proof.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to suggest that they're like Superman and invulnerable.
Speaker 1: S s d s are also typically much smaller, I
Speaker 1: mean physically smaller than hard disk drives. That's also a
Speaker 1: big advantage. It means you can make smaller form factors
Speaker 1: for computers, as well as making lighter computers as well.
Speaker 1: This gets to be pretty important when you're working with
Speaker 1: stuff like laptops and portable computers and smartphones and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Computers can pull information from ss d
Speaker 1: s much more quickly than they can from HDDs. For
Speaker 1: that reason, solid state drives are the preferred long term
Speaker 1: storage solution for people who need to run very low
Speaker 1: latency applications. That includes gamers. A good solid state drive
Speaker 1: means that you have little to know load times when
Speaker 1: you're initiating a program. So let's say you're playing a
Speaker 1: really you know, resource intensive game. Let's say it's something
Speaker 1: like a big open world game like an Assassin's Creed game. Well,
Speaker 1: with a solid state drive, you might be able to
Speaker 1: run all over the world map in that game and
Speaker 1: never encounter a loading screen. That's a pretty big deal
Speaker 1: for gamers. Generally speaking, solid state drives are much more
Speaker 1: expensive than hard disk drives if you're looking at it
Speaker 1: on a per gigabyte basis. Also, it's easier and far
Speaker 1: less expensive to find really high capacity hard disk drives
Speaker 1: compared to solid state drives. When you start looking at
Speaker 1: the multi terrabyte range of storage, hard disk drives are
Speaker 1: significantly less expensive than solid state drives, so it's not
Speaker 1: as easy as saying that solid state drives are outright
Speaker 1: better than hard disk drives. It actually depends on what
Speaker 1: you want to use storage for and how much you
Speaker 1: have to spend on it, like how much money you've got.
Speaker 1: For gamers, solid state drive might be important for holding
Speaker 1: whatever games are in current rotation of play, and then
Speaker 1: you might want to supplemental hard disk drive that's standing
Speaker 1: by that holds onto other titles that aren't in your
Speaker 1: current player rotation. That's just an example. Moving on S
Speaker 1: s i D. This stands for Service set identify Er.
Speaker 1: This is more or less a fancy way of saying
Speaker 1: network name. They can be up to thirty two characters long.
Speaker 1: There's no minimum length, though, and routers typically come with
Speaker 1: a default S s I D, usually something that relates
Speaker 1: to whatever company manufactured that router, followed by some letters
Speaker 1: or numbers or both. Generally speaking, it's usually a good
Speaker 1: idea to go into the settings of your router. You
Speaker 1: can usually find some pretty easy instructions on how to
Speaker 1: log into your local router. It's not typically very hard,
Speaker 1: and then you change the default name of your network
Speaker 1: to something else. You can also pretty much name it
Speaker 1: anything you like within those thirty two characters. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I can use my phone to serve as a WiFi hotspot,
Speaker 1: which I do occasionally whenever I can't access reliable WiFi,
Speaker 1: but you know I do happen to have a strong
Speaker 1: cell signal. I can use it as as sort of
Speaker 1: like a WiFi modem. My phone's hot spot name is
Speaker 1: totally trustworthy WiFi because I think that's funny, and because
Speaker 1: it's the sort of name that would give other folks
Speaker 1: just a bit of a pause before they would try
Speaker 1: to connect to it, because like, but if it's totally
Speaker 1: not trustworthy, I also protect it with a pretty strong password,
Speaker 1: so actually connecting to that network is kind of tough.
Speaker 1: But the reason you want to go in and change
Speaker 1: the default name and password is because some companies use
Speaker 1: a blanket default password, like using admin as a log
Speaker 1: in and the word password as password, and that could
Speaker 1: mean that someone else might get access to your network
Speaker 1: and cause all sorts of mischief, from attempting to snoop
Speaker 1: on what you're doing, to using your network as part
Speaker 1: of like a bottan net attack on a target Typically,
Speaker 1: routers have a sticker somewhere on them that lists the
Speaker 1: default S s I D, though obviously if you go
Speaker 1: through in settings and you change this, then that default
Speaker 1: is no longer going to apply. You can use settings
Speaker 1: on your computer or smartphone to look at S s
Speaker 1: i D s within range. So if you were to
Speaker 1: come into possession of a router and you discovered it
Speaker 1: along the way that someone had changed the S s
Speaker 1: i D, you could scan the available networks and look
Speaker 1: to see if you could find the strongest signals and
Speaker 1: try to identify which one is your actual router. Of course,
Speaker 1: if someone also changed the default password, you might be
Speaker 1: kind of stuck. Though. Many of these machines also have
Speaker 1: a reset button so that you can reset it to
Speaker 1: the UH the manufacturer default settings and get into it.
Speaker 1: That way. You can also change settings on your router
Speaker 1: so that it won't broadcast the S s i D
Speaker 1: to nearby devices. That means that in this case, when
Speaker 1: people search for networks, they won't see yours as they're
Speaker 1: scanning the S s i D s. You can only
Speaker 1: connect to such a network if you already know the
Speaker 1: S s I D and you specifically direct your device
Speaker 1: to connect with it. That requires manually changing wireless settings
Speaker 1: on your device. Now, this sounds like it's a pretty
Speaker 1: powerful way to protect yourself, but really it's more of
Speaker 1: a surface level protection. Hiding your S S I D
Speaker 1: might save you from the nubiast of nubes when it
Speaker 1: comes to you know, bad actors, but folks who know
Speaker 1: what they're doing can still track network traffic with the
Speaker 1: right know how and the right tools. Maybe I'll reach
Speaker 1: out to friend of the show, Shannon Morris to guests
Speaker 1: on an episode to talk about the steps you can
Speaker 1: take to best secure your home network. I think that
Speaker 1: would be a valuable conversation to have. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: some acronyms and initialisms, but we're starting to head into
Speaker 1: the home stretch. We're first going to take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back and we're starting with S s L and
Speaker 1: I reference this a little bit with HTTPS. SSL stands
Speaker 1: for Secure Socket Layer. Uh, this is actually an outdated term.
Speaker 1: The more current version is the t l S or
Speaker 1: transport layer security. But in either case, the purpose is
Speaker 1: to authenticate and encrypt communication links between networked computers. So
Speaker 1: these are protocols that allow for secure and secret communications. Now,
Speaker 1: when I say secret communications, I don't mean that the
Speaker 1: fact that communication is happening is a secret. S s
Speaker 1: L and t l s do not hide the fact
Speaker 1: that communication is happening between computers. Instead, they encrypt and
Speaker 1: obvious skate the nature of that communication. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like seeing two of your friends whispering to each other.
Speaker 1: You know, you know they're up to no good, but
Speaker 1: you don't know what they're specifically plotting. You might even
Speaker 1: suspect that they're whispering about you, but you can't be
Speaker 1: certain because you're not able to hear what they're saying.
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying is, I know you're up to something,
Speaker 1: Lena and Shay, and I don't approve, not one bit.
Speaker 1: Knock it off. All right, all right, that got a
Speaker 1: little personal. Let's let's get back on track. S s
Speaker 1: L and t l s work by binding websites with
Speaker 1: a digital document called an x dot five oh nine certificate,
Speaker 1: which assigns pairs of keys to those websites. One key
Speaker 1: is a public key. This is the key that the
Speaker 1: website can share with the world. Anyone communicating with this
Speaker 1: website through a browser does so using the public key,
Speaker 1: which encrypts the messages that are sent to that website.
Speaker 1: The only way to decrypt those messages to change it
Speaker 1: back into meaningful information is to use the private key.
Speaker 1: The website retains the private key for itself, it does
Speaker 1: not share the private key. This way, all communications sent
Speaker 1: to the website can only be decoded by the website alone,
Speaker 1: unless some other entity were just about gain possession of
Speaker 1: the private key or use a method like brute force
Speaker 1: to try and replicate the private key. That brute force
Speaker 1: thing is possible, depending upon the nature of the key. However,
Speaker 1: it might be so difficult as to be practically impossible.
Speaker 1: So in other words, yeah, you could, in theory be
Speaker 1: able to do it, but it might take such a
Speaker 1: long time to accomplish that you would be long dead
Speaker 1: by the time of your computer finally managed it. In
Speaker 1: addition to encrypting information, the website can digitally signed documents
Speaker 1: that anyone with the public key can verify as being authentic.
Speaker 1: So ss L and t l s help ensure that
Speaker 1: private information like say a credit card number, remains secure
Speaker 1: and that the entity you're sharing that information with is authenticated,
Speaker 1: so you know for sure with whom you're sharing that information.
Speaker 1: It's why it's important to look for that HTTPS or
Speaker 1: that closed padlock symbol in your browser whenever you're interacting
Speaker 1: with a site and sharing sensitive information. Next up, we
Speaker 1: have TCP i P. Now collectively, these make up the
Speaker 1: Internet Protocol Suite. Individually, these refer to the Transmission Control
Speaker 1: Protocol or TCP and the Internet Protocol or i P,
Speaker 1: and we nearly always referred to both of them together,
Speaker 1: as they represent the set of communication protocols that allow
Speaker 1: computers to connect together in a network and you know,
Speaker 1: actually do stuff. These days, it seems natural that various
Speaker 1: computational devices should be able to link up with each
Speaker 1: other and communicate. It's been that way for decades now.
Speaker 1: But once upon a time this wasn't true. Computers were
Speaker 1: self contained silos. They served important purposes, but they did
Speaker 1: so in isolation. Different computers made from different men factors
Speaker 1: had proprietary means of operation, meaning there was no common language,
Speaker 1: if you will, So even if you could connect two
Speaker 1: different computers together, they wouldn't necessarily be able to interoperate.
Speaker 1: It would be kind of like putting me on the
Speaker 1: phone with someone who could only speak and understand Mandarin.
Speaker 1: That person and I would be unable to make any
Speaker 1: sort of meaningful conversation. In the nineteen sixties, the Department
Speaker 1: of Defenses Advanced Research Project Agency, then called ARPA these
Speaker 1: days we know it as DARPA set out to create
Speaker 1: the means for computers to connect with one another in networks.
Speaker 1: This would be the underlying foundation for modern computer networks
Speaker 1: in general and the Internet a k a. The Network
Speaker 1: of networks in particular. Vitten Surf and Robert Klein, who
Speaker 1: both joined the project in the early nineteen seventies, would
Speaker 1: pioneer the work on the basic set of protocols that
Speaker 1: would allow for the network to communications between computers. Now,
Speaker 1: to get them to the nuts and bolts of t
Speaker 1: C P I P would require a full episode, or
Speaker 1: probably more than one, so we're gonna save that for later.
Speaker 1: It's good to know that they represent the basic set
Speaker 1: of rules for computer networking. It's the set of instructions
Speaker 1: that determine how communication between machines happens. Next up, we've
Speaker 1: got UPS, and we are not talking about the delivery
Speaker 1: service here. Instead, we're talking about uninterruptable power supplies. That's
Speaker 1: what UPS stands for in this context, and as the
Speaker 1: name implies, these are technologies that supply power to other
Speaker 1: things even should a normal power source fail. So allow
Speaker 1: me to paint a scenario, as the quister would say,
Speaker 1: this is one that I have maybe personally experienced, possibly
Speaker 1: on numerous occasions. So let us say that you have
Speaker 1: an intrepid writer for a website, and this writer is
Speaker 1: plugging away at an article plug plug plug. And let
Speaker 1: us say that this optimist, naive young writer last saved
Speaker 1: the document that they happened to be working on quite
Speaker 1: some time ago. Maybe they've written a couple of pages
Speaker 1: worth of work since the last time they saved the document.
Speaker 1: And let us say that an inopportune moment, the power
Speaker 1: goes out inside the office building where this brash, handsome
Speaker 1: young writer is working, and because the writer is working
Speaker 1: on a desktop computer without a battery backup, that machine
Speaker 1: crashes and all the work that was created since that
Speaker 1: last save disappears into the ether. And then our unnamed
Speaker 1: but presumably dashingly handsome writer as all get out laments
Speaker 1: the fact that they will now have to start over
Speaker 1: back at their last save point and recreate all the
Speaker 1: work that they had done in order to write about
Speaker 1: how goose neck trailer hitches work. Mm hmm, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: happened to me, and I could have been spared a
Speaker 1: great deal of frustration if I had had my desktop
Speaker 1: computer plugged into an uninterruptable power supply. So these devices
Speaker 1: typically plug into a power source like a wall outlet,
Speaker 1: and then you plug other devices into the UPS itself,
Speaker 1: so the UPS plugs into the wall. You plug your
Speaker 1: stuff into the UPS kind of like a power strip right.
Speaker 1: In fact, some UPS devices look a lot like power strips,
Speaker 1: so it's not just a power strip. The UPS also
Speaker 1: contains a battery backup or some other means of storing electricity.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe it's a supercapacitor or something, but battery
Speaker 1: backup is pretty common. And if the normal power supply
Speaker 1: that is power coming from the wall outlet suffers an outage,
Speaker 1: the backup power supply, the battery or whatever comes on
Speaker 1: practically instantaneously, at least fast enough so that it prevents
Speaker 1: an interruption of power to you or devices. So any
Speaker 1: devices you have plugged into the UPS continue to receive power. Now,
Speaker 1: typically a UPS doesn't have a huge capacity for storing electricity,
Speaker 1: so this isn't meant for you to just keep on
Speaker 1: working away while the power is out. The battery life
Speaker 1: might only allow for a few minutes of continued operation,
Speaker 1: but that can be enough for you to be able
Speaker 1: to save your progress and then shut down your equipment
Speaker 1: through proper methods. This can help prevent damage to your
Speaker 1: work and your equipment, and it can give you time
Speaker 1: to get stuff in a safe mode while you wait
Speaker 1: for the power to come back on. Frequently, a UPS
Speaker 1: can also act as a surge protector, so I can
Speaker 1: prevent voltage spikes from damaging equipment. Some UPS gadgets need
Speaker 1: to be reset after a power outage. Some of them
Speaker 1: will beep at you a lot. Typically they beat when
Speaker 1: they are running low on battery power, and this is
Speaker 1: a message that you really do need to start shutting
Speaker 1: down all of your plugged in devices if you don't
Speaker 1: want them to suddenly lose power. But they can also
Speaker 1: beep as an indication of capacity overload. In that case,
Speaker 1: you have plugged in devices that have too great a
Speaker 1: demand for power for the UPS to accommodate, and you
Speaker 1: need to distribute that load across other devices. Next, we
Speaker 1: have you r L. That stands for Uniform Resource Locator,
Speaker 1: but you could just call it a web address. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this is what tells computers where on a network a
Speaker 1: particular resource resides. It's kind of like your physical address,
Speaker 1: so u r L relates to a specific location on
Speaker 1: a specific server within a specific network. When you type
Speaker 1: out a web address and a browser, you're essentially telling
Speaker 1: the browser I want to see the stuff that is
Speaker 1: stored at this location, and the browser sends out a
Speaker 1: request up through your network to the Internet. Then routers
Speaker 1: direct that request to the proper destination, and thanks to
Speaker 1: that handy dandy u r L that cross references to
Speaker 1: that location, your request arrives there at its proper destination.
Speaker 1: Or if you miss type the web address, you get
Speaker 1: something else, probably an error, but possibly someone's page, especially
Speaker 1: if someone is squatting on commonly made typos. That's still
Speaker 1: a thing. Tim berners Lee, the guy who invented the
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web, defined u r L s in an RFC.
Speaker 1: Do you remember RFCs? That stands for Request for Comments.
Speaker 1: I covered it in the last episode. Next, we have USB.
Speaker 1: This stands for Universal Serial Bus and it is a
Speaker 1: standardized connection for all sorts of stuff. And boy, howdy,
Speaker 1: am I thankful for it because it really made things easy.
Speaker 1: I'm not even being facetious here. USB s are fantastic.
Speaker 1: So in the old old days we would use all
Speaker 1: sorts of different types of connection ports to connect stuff
Speaker 1: to other stuff. And really I'm focusing primarily on computers
Speaker 1: here because I feel that that's what most of us
Speaker 1: associate with this kind of thing, although I will allow
Speaker 1: that people who are really into home entertainment centers or
Speaker 1: or audio setups are also really familiar with the the uh,
Speaker 1: the burdens of having to make lots of different connections
Speaker 1: using different types of cables and ports. Anyway, back in
Speaker 1: the old days, computers had all sorts of different connection
Speaker 1: ports on them, and I'm talking about stuff like parallel ports,
Speaker 1: serial ports, more specific stuff like PS two connectors or
Speaker 1: D I N connectors. Some game controllers required a special
Speaker 1: game port. Typically you would find those on some of
Speaker 1: the more popular sound cards. Back in the day. Sound
Speaker 1: cards were a thing too, because you didn't have uh
Speaker 1: integrated sound chips in computers, so you would have to
Speaker 1: install a sound card in your computer, and on the
Speaker 1: back plate of your PC you would have a new
Speaker 1: port there where you could plug in a controller. It
Speaker 1: was a real mess. Some of these ports required expand
Speaker 1: in cards, and you would have to slot those into
Speaker 1: your motherboard. Just like the sound cards I mentioned, Your
Speaker 1: keyboard might need to go into one specific port, your
Speaker 1: mouse in another. And then in the ninety nineties that
Speaker 1: began to change. That's when we saw the introduction of
Speaker 1: the USB standard. USB allows for the transmission of data
Speaker 1: and power over the same cable, and it did not
Speaker 1: take long for computer accessory manufacturers to start making stuff
Speaker 1: like USB keyboards or USB computer mice. Uh. And later
Speaker 1: on we saw more stuff like computer printers and docking
Speaker 1: stations and stuff like you know, you know, a docking
Speaker 1: station for an MP three player, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: The USB standard itself also evolved, with more recent versions
Speaker 1: capable of carrying far more data per second than older versions.
Speaker 1: And this meant that now suddenly you had a universal
Speaker 1: kind of connection port and universal cable system where you
Speaker 1: could connect all your different stuff to any of those
Speaker 1: available ports on your computer. You didn't have to remember, oh,
Speaker 1: this one is for the printer, this one is for
Speaker 1: an extra display, Like if it was a USB then
Speaker 1: you can plug it into any port that was USB
Speaker 1: on your machine. With the USB three point oh standard,
Speaker 1: we're looking at transmission speeds of five gigabits per second
Speaker 1: and beyond. USB three point two generation two by two
Speaker 1: has a top speed of ten gigabits per second across
Speaker 1: two lanes of transmission, which gives you a total of
Speaker 1: twenty gigabits per second bandwidth. So now we can use
Speaker 1: USBs for stuff far more demanding than just powering a
Speaker 1: computer mouse. Now, there's still the issue of various connectors
Speaker 1: even with USB. I mean, there's nothing like mixing up
Speaker 1: USB B many with the USB B micro, with USB
Speaker 1: C connectors and all that kind of stuff. But still
Speaker 1: it's leagues better than the old days of the mishmash
Speaker 1: of connectors, and it makes managing that stuff way easier. Next,
Speaker 1: we have v g A, the stands for video graphics Array.
Speaker 1: Speaking of connectors, this was one of them, and some
Speaker 1: computer manufacturers continue to support v g A connections, though
Speaker 1: not nearly as many as they used to. These connectors
Speaker 1: support computer video output, and so this is a port
Speaker 1: that you would use to connect a computer to a
Speaker 1: compatible display or monitor. The connectors have three rows of
Speaker 1: five holes in them, and those line up with the
Speaker 1: fifteen pens that are in the cables. You would use
Speaker 1: to connect your computer to a display. These days, you
Speaker 1: typically see this replaced with more recent technologies like hd M. I. Okay,
Speaker 1: we have one last batch of acronyms and initialisms to
Speaker 1: get through. Let's see if I can do this without
Speaker 1: running super long. But first, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, here we go. VM. This stands for virtual machine,
Speaker 1: which I touched on a little bit in this aries.
Speaker 1: A virtual machine is the emulation of a computer system.
Speaker 1: You might use specialized software, some specialized hardware, or a
Speaker 1: combination of the two in order to make this happen.
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of reasons why you would
Speaker 1: want to run a virtual machine on top of actual
Speaker 1: physical hardware. For example, you might have a really powerful
Speaker 1: computer and you want to run separate processes that should
Speaker 1: not intermingle on a single machine. So rather than buy
Speaker 1: a second machine and then divide up the tasks, you
Speaker 1: create virtual machines on your one physical computer, and each
Speaker 1: virtual machine acts like its own standalone computer. They handle
Speaker 1: a specific task, and the two tasks won't come into
Speaker 1: contact with each other. Virtual machines can each have their
Speaker 1: own dedicated computer resources. Or maybe you've got a computer
Speaker 1: like a Mac, but you want to run PC software
Speaker 1: on it, so you create a virtual PC machine running
Speaker 1: on top of the MAC system. The virtual machine emulates
Speaker 1: the physical hardware and architecture of a PC and allows
Speaker 1: you to run PC software on this virtual platform. Virtualization
Speaker 1: is also really important for stuff like data centers, but
Speaker 1: I'll say further discussion for a future episode. Next, we
Speaker 1: have VPN. This stands for virtual private networks. These are
Speaker 1: means of creating a private network connection, particularly when you're
Speaker 1: on a public like WiFi network. The purpose of a
Speaker 1: VPN is to encrypt your Internet activities and disguise your
Speaker 1: online identity, something that can be really important if you
Speaker 1: happen to be working from say a public WiFi hotspot
Speaker 1: like in a coffee shop or something. The way this
Speaker 1: works is that you connect to a VPN directly. Your
Speaker 1: machine essentially makes a connection with the VPN. Then the
Speaker 1: VPN access kind of like your liaison. When you want
Speaker 1: to visit a website, for example, your request for goes
Speaker 1: to the VPN and the vp N kind of acts
Speaker 1: like a proxy to retrieve the website data, then sends
Speaker 1: that data to you and it's all encrypted. To the
Speaker 1: website on the other end, it looks like all the
Speaker 1: requests are coming from the VPN, not from you, So
Speaker 1: you know, if you were to go to how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, how stuff works dot Com would see
Speaker 1: the traffic coming from the VPN, but would not see
Speaker 1: that go further back to you. This is handy if
Speaker 1: you want to have some secure connections and not worry
Speaker 1: about someone, whether it's a hacker or an I s
Speaker 1: P or the admin of the hot spot that you're using,
Speaker 1: to know what you're doing. Some companies require employees to
Speaker 1: use a VPN before accessing internal systems to help mitigate
Speaker 1: the risk of hacker intrusions. Another way people use VPNs
Speaker 1: is to bypass region locking. So let's say you want
Speaker 1: to access a service in another country, but you get
Speaker 1: a message saying that you're not within the regional service
Speaker 1: area for that and this happens a lot with media
Speaker 1: based services like streaming video, So you could use a
Speaker 1: VPN to make it appear as though you are in
Speaker 1: that country and while you can access stuff. That is
Speaker 1: assuming that the media company hasn't blacklisted the VPN servers
Speaker 1: IP address and said this is a VPN, we don't
Speaker 1: want to allow traffic to it. I don't advocate for
Speaker 1: this approach. I would rather see region locking just kind
Speaker 1: of go away, rather than suggest you find ways around it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, VPNs are an important component to secure web browsing.
Speaker 1: It's also good to research VPNs before joining one. Some
Speaker 1: vBNS keep a record of users that could potentially become
Speaker 1: a problem if some other entity ever got hold of it.
Speaker 1: Other VPNs make it a practice to never maintain any
Speaker 1: kind of record at all, so your use of the
Speaker 1: service would never become public knowledge, even if, say, law
Speaker 1: enforcement were to go out after it. Next up is VR.
Speaker 1: This one's easy. It's virtual reality basically refers to any
Speaker 1: system in which some, most, or all of your sensory
Speaker 1: input is coming courtesy of a computer system. Typically we
Speaker 1: associated with systems that include head mounted displays. That means
Speaker 1: that everything you see comes from a computer source, and
Speaker 1: it's usually paired with technology that allows for head tracking,
Speaker 1: so that when you turn your head, the computer reflects
Speaker 1: this with a change in your perspective. It's a subtype
Speaker 1: of mixed reality, along with a R or augmented reality,
Speaker 1: which we covered way back at the beginning of this series.
Speaker 1: Next is W three C. The number three so W
Speaker 1: three C. This stands for the Worldwide Web Consortium, which
Speaker 1: is a group that develops standards for use on the
Speaker 1: Worldwide Web. Tim berners Lee pops up again here, as
Speaker 1: he founded and currently leads the organization. The Consortium mainly
Speaker 1: focuses on getting all the various players in the Web
Speaker 1: to work on an agreed upon on set of standards
Speaker 1: so that the experience of accessing the Web remains consistent
Speaker 1: no matter what browser or platforms someone happens to be using.
Speaker 1: Next up, W A N. This is a wide area network.
Speaker 1: So in a previous episode we talked about l a
Speaker 1: N s lands or local area networks. Well, a w
Speaker 1: a N is just a really big network. It's one
Speaker 1: that spans a large geographic region. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: a network that measures at least half a mile across,
Speaker 1: but can be much larger. These networks, like lands, can
Speaker 1: be purely self contained. That means you can have a
Speaker 1: w a N that does not connect out to the Internet,
Speaker 1: or they might have interconnections with other types of networks.
Speaker 1: Next up, we've got w e P. This stands for
Speaker 1: Wired Equivalent Privacy. It's a type of security algorithm for
Speaker 1: use with wireless networks. So the idea is that this
Speaker 1: security algorithm would provide the same sort of privacy that
Speaker 1: you would experience if you had physically connected all the
Speaker 1: computers in your network together with cables. So you're trying
Speaker 1: to prevent the chance for some outside force to snoop
Speaker 1: in on what's going on with the network. And obviously
Speaker 1: this is something to be concerned about when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with wireless networks, right. I mean, all communications are relying
Speaker 1: on radio waves, which can be intercepted by anyone with
Speaker 1: a compatible tuner and antenna. W EP became a security
Speaker 1: standard back in n It uses encryption to protect network communications,
Speaker 1: but w e P has fallen out of favor since
Speaker 1: the mid two thousand's. It's not seen as being particularly secure.
Speaker 1: And our next entry will pick up where w EP
Speaker 1: left off, so let's move on to it. That would
Speaker 1: be w p A. This stands for WiFi Protected Access
Speaker 1: and this family of security systems are the current recommended
Speaker 1: ones to have in use for Wi Fi networks. There
Speaker 1: are three generations of this current LEE. You've got w
Speaker 1: P A, w P A two, and w p A three.
Speaker 1: To get into the full details of this will require
Speaker 1: a separate episode because it gets really technical, but it's
Speaker 1: a good thing to remember that if you have options
Speaker 1: to set your network security to either w e P
Speaker 1: or w P A, you should go with w p A.
Speaker 1: More and more devices infect Almost pretty much every device
Speaker 1: made now is going to be w p A compatible.
Speaker 1: If you're working with really old tech, you might have
Speaker 1: some that aren't, but generally speaking, networks should be w
Speaker 1: p A, preferably w P A three. Next up, we've
Speaker 1: got whizzy wig or w y s I w y
Speaker 1: G whizzy wig. It stands for what you see is
Speaker 1: what you get, and it refers to any type of
Speaker 1: editing software in which what you're seeing as you edit
Speaker 1: is pretty much what you're going to get with the
Speaker 1: final finished product. This is easier for me to explain
Speaker 1: with an old example. So if you've been listening to
Speaker 1: this series, you heard me talk about when I was
Speaker 1: making my first web pages decades ago, using a text
Speaker 1: editor to write out all the HTML code. The text
Speaker 1: document was a collection of markup language tags and then
Speaker 1: the content, and on casual glance it looked like a
Speaker 1: real mess. I mean, you could scan through the document
Speaker 1: and kind of get an idea of what the web
Speaker 1: page was all about. But if you just looked at
Speaker 1: it casually, it looked like a bunch of symbols and
Speaker 1: letters and numbers and didn't have a whole lot of
Speaker 1: meaning to it. Flash forward a few years and companies
Speaker 1: began to develop software that would let people develop a
Speaker 1: web page without having to manage the actual HTML code.
Speaker 1: It was more like a word processor. You could view
Speaker 1: the document as if it were a web page in progress,
Speaker 1: long before you ever uploaded it to a server. So
Speaker 1: what you see is what you get. The view you
Speaker 1: have of your web page in progress is what it
Speaker 1: would look like if some one were to visit it
Speaker 1: through a browser. Now, there tends to be trade offs
Speaker 1: with whizzywig interfaces. You can see right away if something
Speaker 1: is working or not, but you might have to dig
Speaker 1: a bit deeper in the user interface to get to
Speaker 1: some of the more fine tuning controls. If you're coding
Speaker 1: stuff the hard way, you typically have way more precise
Speaker 1: control over things if you know what you're doing, but
Speaker 1: it does require a lot more back and forth to
Speaker 1: make sure that everything's coming out all right. Man, this
Speaker 1: is making me think of the old days when I
Speaker 1: would use word perfect to make documents, and I would
Speaker 1: have reveal codes on all the time, just so I
Speaker 1: could see where stuff was, like an underlying section, or
Speaker 1: where hard returns were, stuff like that. And those were
Speaker 1: the days, man I miss those. Next XML. I touched
Speaker 1: on this in a previous entry, but it stands for
Speaker 1: extensible markup language. This language allows users to create and
Speaker 1: define their own tags, and so this is a meta
Speaker 1: textual markup language. Another way to think of it is
Speaker 1: that x m L is information that is wrapped in tags,
Speaker 1: and xm L doesn't actually do anything on its own.
Speaker 1: You have to write some form of software to interpret
Speaker 1: and act upon those tags. So, for example, if you
Speaker 1: were to create a document and you wanted to use
Speaker 1: some XML tags, you might create a tag that reads,
Speaker 1: you know, open bracket, subheading clothes bracket. Then you might
Speaker 1: type you know a message that you want to have
Speaker 1: as a subheading on your document, and then at the
Speaker 1: end of it you would type open bracket slash subheading,
Speaker 1: close bracket. But that alone doesn't do anything right, that's
Speaker 1: meaningless by itself. But then let's say you create some
Speaker 1: software to handle how this document gets viewed, and in
Speaker 1: the creation of that software, you lay out the rules
Speaker 1: as to how that subheading tag should be displayed within
Speaker 1: a view of the document. That's what x m L does.
Speaker 1: It creates the opportunity to carry data in a specif
Speaker 1: ific way as determined by the tags and the definition
Speaker 1: of those tags. Now this is in contrast with HTML,
Speaker 1: a different markup language which has predefined tags. And finally
Speaker 1: we have HY two K. This was an abbreviation meant
Speaker 1: to indicate a potentially disastrous problem when the calendar switched
Speaker 1: from to two thousand. Some of you listening to this
Speaker 1: might have been born after two thousand or he might
Speaker 1: have been too young to know what this was all about.
Speaker 1: And um I remember, and it was crazy. It mostly
Speaker 1: boils down to people being a little lazy and relying
Speaker 1: on work that was never meant to stand the test
Speaker 1: of time. So let's get to it. Way back in
Speaker 1: the day, computer programmers were facing some pretty big challenges,
Speaker 1: and one of those was finding ways to limit the
Speaker 1: size of programs, both for the sake of simplicity and
Speaker 1: to conserve computer storage space, which was in short supply
Speaker 1: early on in the days of programming. To that end,
Speaker 1: when making programs that need to reference what year it
Speaker 1: was a lot of programmers used a shorthand. They only
Speaker 1: used the last two digits of the year, so for example,
Speaker 1: this year would be twenty one for one. Now, this
Speaker 1: started around the nineteen sixties, so let's be fair to
Speaker 1: those programmers. They probably did not anticipate that the code
Speaker 1: they were building was going to be dependent upon nearly
Speaker 1: half a century later. I'm sure they assumed understandably so
Speaker 1: that someone somewhere, at some point would make a better
Speaker 1: version of the program. And you know, when stuff like
Speaker 1: conserving computer storage space wouldn't be as quite a big concern.
Speaker 1: You could have code with four digits and not have
Speaker 1: to take the shorthand approach. But instead people kept on
Speaker 1: perpetuating that particular form of programming shorthand. At least a
Speaker 1: lot of people did, and a lot of systems, particularly
Speaker 1: systems that would become legacy systems, ones that companies would
Speaker 1: rely upon because it was just too expensive or too
Speaker 1: difficult to upgrade everything, so they would just continue to
Speaker 1: rely on this old infrastructure. A lot of that still
Speaker 1: relied on that two digit format for the year. And
Speaker 1: that works okay until you cross over the end of
Speaker 1: a millennium. Then you potentially have issues. So when was
Speaker 1: to become zero zero, people weren't sure what could happen.
Speaker 1: I mean for systems that use the year to calculate
Speaker 1: stuff like, you know, location data for things like airlines
Speaker 1: or particular financial data. The worry was that the computer
Speaker 1: systems would roll over from zero zero, and that the
Speaker 1: computers would essentially assume the current year would not be
Speaker 1: two thousand, it would instead be nineteen hundred, and that
Speaker 1: could be disastrous. Now, this worry lead to a global
Speaker 1: concer learned bordering on panic. In some instances, there were
Speaker 1: fears that technology ranging from computer systems to airplanes to
Speaker 1: microwaves might fail because of this oversight. Some companies spent
Speaker 1: millions hundreds of millions of dollars to hire programmers to
Speaker 1: go in and update code to reflect a four digit year,
Speaker 1: and in some cases programmers needed to create complicated software
Speaker 1: to adjust for hardware that was hard coded with this
Speaker 1: two digit year approach. In the end, when the clock
Speaker 1: ticked over, there were very few major problems with Y
Speaker 1: two K, particularly here in the United States. Part of
Speaker 1: that reason they have been just that a lot of
Speaker 1: the most necessary work had already happened. A lot of
Speaker 1: companies had spent much of n addressing the issue. There
Speaker 1: were a few exceptions, one of which was a particularly
Speaker 1: scary one. A nuclear energy facility in Japan had some
Speaker 1: creation containment equipment fail, but fortunately backup systems came online immediately,
Speaker 1: so disaster was averted. Some countries did see more problems
Speaker 1: than others. These were typically countries that had not invested
Speaker 1: nearly as much money into preventing the Y two K issue,
Speaker 1: So like South Korea had some issues. I'll probably have
Speaker 1: to do a full episode about Y two K and
Speaker 1: talk about all those related issues with code, including some
Speaker 1: that are similar and had uh you know, relating issues.
Speaker 1: But that is it. We have finally made our way
Speaker 1: through the alphabet. It only took six episodes, and honestly,
Speaker 1: I also skipped over some stuff, like I didn't talk
Speaker 1: about good news very much, but we will save that
Speaker 1: for a catch up episode. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff
Speaker 1: alphabetically or otherwise, let me know the best way to
Speaker 1: do that is through Twitter. The handle for the show
Speaker 1: is text Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.