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 all things tech, and I want to
Speaker 1: welcome you all back to our ongoing saga of tackling
Speaker 1: various acronyms and initialisms in tech and demystifying them. So
Speaker 1: we're just kind of making our way through the alphabet
Speaker 1: and learning what these different groups of letters actually stand for,
Speaker 1: and hopefully learning a bit of extra stuff about them
Speaker 1: along the way. So far, we've we've made it up
Speaker 1: to the g s, and we have a couple more
Speaker 1: to go in that realm before we get the H
Speaker 1: out of here, So let's get started. Also, Hey, as
Speaker 1: I've gone through this, I've noticed that I may have
Speaker 1: left out, you know, a few acronyms and initialisms just
Speaker 1: because of blind spots or you know, just just skimming
Speaker 1: over stuff or why whatever. So after all these episodes,
Speaker 1: if you feel there's some that I've missed, let me
Speaker 1: know on Twitter at tech Stuff HSW and maybe I'll
Speaker 1: do a roundup episode at the end. All right, g
Speaker 1: PU this stands for graphics processing unit. Now, back in
Speaker 1: the first episode of this series, I talked about c
Speaker 1: p u s, or central processing units. Well, GPUs are
Speaker 1: kind of similar in that they are microprocessors that execute
Speaker 1: instructions on data and they produce output. But as the
Speaker 1: name suggests, the intended purpose for a GPU is to
Speaker 1: process graphics. Now, in the ancient days of the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: there was a shift in computing and the need for processors.
Speaker 1: Programmers primarily video game developers, but not exclusively video game developers. Well,
Speaker 1: they kept making software that pushed computing hardware to the limit,
Speaker 1: and sometimes went beyond that limit. The central processing units
Speaker 1: of these computers would get over taxed and performance would suffer,
Speaker 1: and you just typically wouldn't be able to get as
Speaker 1: much out of the game as the developers had hoped
Speaker 1: you would. Now, graphics cards, which could help offload some
Speaker 1: of the work that the CPU had to do, had
Speaker 1: been a thing since the nineteen eighties. The nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: saw developers creating games and applications that included three D graphics.
Speaker 1: Not that the graphics were coming out of your screen
Speaker 1: or whatever, but rather images now appeared to have depth
Speaker 1: to them. They weren't just two dimensional like flat cutouts
Speaker 1: on screen, and we saw companies like in Nvidia and
Speaker 1: three d f X manufacture more sophisticated cards to help
Speaker 1: handle that processing requirement, to kind of offload that work
Speaker 1: so the CPU wasn't so burdened. And Video introduced the
Speaker 1: g Force to five six in n and the company
Speaker 1: referred to it as the first graphics processing unit. So
Speaker 1: while we had cards that fulfill the function of a
Speaker 1: GPU for a while, this would be when someone actually
Speaker 1: coined the term itself. These days, the architecture of a
Speaker 1: GPU means that it has a parallel approach to processing data.
Speaker 1: That means they can process information in parallel, dividing up
Speaker 1: data into more manageable chunks, and working on everything at
Speaker 1: the same time. And I always use a classroom analogy
Speaker 1: to describe parallel processing because I think it really helps
Speaker 1: illustrate how this works from a high level. So let's
Speaker 1: go over that right now. So let's say you've got
Speaker 1: a class of six really bright math students, and one
Speaker 1: of those students is a true genius, someone who just
Speaker 1: has a natural affinity for mathematics, and we'll call her Rachel.
Speaker 1: So Rachel is a math genius and she's great at math.
Speaker 1: She can solve any mathematical problem faster than her fellow students.
Speaker 1: The other five just aren't as fast. They are all
Speaker 1: very good. They're all very good students, they just aren't
Speaker 1: genius level. One day, the teacher comes in with a challenge,
Speaker 1: and the teacher has a math quiz and has five
Speaker 1: problems on that quiz. Each problem is completely independent of
Speaker 1: the others, so there's no connection between like problems one
Speaker 1: and two and two and three and so on. And
Speaker 1: the teacher hands out the quiz to all six students
Speaker 1: and explains that Rachel is going to tackle all five problems,
Speaker 1: but the other five students will each take only one
Speaker 1: problem each, So student one takes problem one, student who
Speaker 1: takes problem to, etcetera. So it's going to be a race.
Speaker 1: And the quiz begins and Rachel gets to work, but
Speaker 1: she needs to solve all five problems one after the other,
Speaker 1: while the other five students each must concentrate on just
Speaker 1: one problem each. The other students get to tackle the
Speaker 1: quiz in parallel. They chop up the quiz into individual problems.
Speaker 1: So Rachel is fast, but she's not fast enough to
Speaker 1: overcome the advantage that the other students have, and that's
Speaker 1: how parallel processing works. A processor that can perfor warm
Speaker 1: parallel processing a lot of alliteration in this passage. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like a multi core processor or modern GPUs
Speaker 1: are all in this way. They can solve certain types
Speaker 1: of computational problems far faster than a really really beefy
Speaker 1: single core processor could. But there are also computational problems
Speaker 1: that cannot split up into smaller chunks. So if the
Speaker 1: teacher structured the math quiz so that question two depended
Speaker 1: upon the answer to question one, and question three dependent
Speaker 1: upon the answer to question two, and so on, Rachel
Speaker 1: would have the advantage then because the five individual students
Speaker 1: would have to wait for the previous answer before they
Speaker 1: could jump on their particular question. Well, graphics processing is
Speaker 1: a really specific computational task, and thus GPUs don't need
Speaker 1: to be able to do all the general computing that
Speaker 1: a CPU has to handle. That means that manufacturers can
Speaker 1: optimize GPUs to make them really efficient for that specific
Speaker 1: type of processing. On a side note, cryptographers and bitcoin
Speaker 1: miners really love GPUs because they can be repurposed to
Speaker 1: tackle other parallel processes like breaking encryption or mining bitcoins.
Speaker 1: For that reason, it can often be very difficult for
Speaker 1: gamers to get hold of the most recent GPUs because
Speaker 1: other folks are scooping them up to use in completely
Speaker 1: unrelated applications. And in the case of bitcoin mining, it's
Speaker 1: a very potentially profitable application, and thus the money generated
Speaker 1: from the mining can go back into building out even
Speaker 1: more powerful bitcoin mining systems, and that requires more GPUs.
Speaker 1: And thus do you have your you know, humble gamer
Speaker 1: who just wants to build a gaming PC who can't
Speaker 1: get hold of a graphics card. Plus the graphics cards
Speaker 1: prices are skyrocketing because of this high demand. Well in
Speaker 1: part because of the high demand, they're also very expensive.
Speaker 1: Moving on g u I. This stands for graphical user
Speaker 1: interface and most of the time we don't say g
Speaker 1: u I, we actually say gooey. So gooey is a
Speaker 1: g UI, which is intern a graphical user interface. Most
Speaker 1: popular operating systems these days have a g UI. Windows, Mac, os, iOS,
Speaker 1: and Android all have gooey's and the gooey represents programs
Speaker 1: and processes as icons that you click on and then
Speaker 1: they activate. So, if you remember from the last episode
Speaker 1: we covered DOSS, which is a text based operating system
Speaker 1: with DOWS you have to type in commands to navigate
Speaker 1: the OS and execute programs. It's far less intuitive than
Speaker 1: an OS that uses a gooey. But on the flip side,
Speaker 1: text based operating systems require much fewer computer resources to operate,
Speaker 1: so it leaves way more are for the actual programs
Speaker 1: you want to run, and they don't have to worry about,
Speaker 1: you know, the OS itself hogging some of those resources.
Speaker 1: Early work and gooey design dates back to the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Douglas inglebart Man, associated with the gooey as well as
Speaker 1: the computer mouse and other innovations, demonstrated a system in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties during an event that folks later
Speaker 1: referred to as the mother of all demos. Xerox Is
Speaker 1: Park Division developed a gooey for an internal computer system
Speaker 1: that never really saw much practical use, but folks like
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs got a chance to see a gooey in
Speaker 1: action along with the computer mouse, and saw it as
Speaker 1: the future of operating systems. A well designed gooey significantly
Speaker 1: lowers the learning curve of using a computer. In the
Speaker 1: early days of personal computers, the general sense was that
Speaker 1: computers were for hobbyists and other nerds and geeks, people
Speaker 1: who didn't mind diving into manuals to learn cryptic commands
Speaker 1: in order to make these mysterious machines actually work. But
Speaker 1: the emergence of the gooey in the mid nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: made it way easier to understand how to interact with
Speaker 1: a computer. All the processes that required people to navigate
Speaker 1: file trees and type in commands were out the window,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and now icons and clicking did all
Speaker 1: the work. Since then, the gooey has become the standard
Speaker 1: OS approach for most consumer facing computational devices. You still
Speaker 1: have some text based systems out there, but for the
Speaker 1: most part, the general public doesn't encounter them. Specialists totally
Speaker 1: different story, but general public mostly gooey based. These days,
Speaker 1: we're a gooey bunch. Next is h d D. This
Speaker 1: stands for hard disk drive. So a disk drive is
Speaker 1: a device that allows the computer to read and write
Speaker 1: to some form of digital storage, and there are lots
Speaker 1: of different versions of disk drives. Back in the day,
Speaker 1: a floppy disk drive referred to a drive that allowed
Speaker 1: a user to insert or remove physical disks from a drive,
Speaker 1: but a hard disk drive could be an integral part
Speaker 1: of a computer all by itself, allowing the system to
Speaker 1: store and read information on an internal drive that was
Speaker 1: non volatile, meaning that the information would remain in place
Speaker 1: even should the computer be powered down. Some hard disk
Speaker 1: drives are internal to a computer, some are separate and
Speaker 1: connect to a computer via cables, so it all just
Speaker 1: depends upon the specific setup. But these hard disk drives
Speaker 1: are mechanical devices, and HDD has at least one rotating
Speaker 1: platter inside it, and most h d d s have
Speaker 1: multiple platters positioned almost like a stack of pancakes, except
Speaker 1: there's a gap between each platter, so there's not you know,
Speaker 1: they're not stacked touching each other. There's a gap between
Speaker 1: each one and in between them, within that gap there
Speaker 1: is an actuator arm. Most h d d s have
Speaker 1: multiple actuator arms that can extend between the different platters,
Speaker 1: and at the end of that actuator arm is a
Speaker 1: magnetic head that can read or write information magnetically to
Speaker 1: the platters, so all the info is stored magnetically. This
Speaker 1: is why if you ever were around computers in the
Speaker 1: old days, uh people always said make sure you don't
Speaker 1: have magnets near them, because that could corrupt data on
Speaker 1: the device. Still not a great idea to work with
Speaker 1: computers near powerful magnets for multiple reasons, but that was
Speaker 1: the main reason back in the day. Because hd d
Speaker 1: s are mechanical, stuff can and does break down. So
Speaker 1: if the platter has become misaligned, the whole thing could
Speaker 1: grind to a halt, or worse, it could shake itself
Speaker 1: to pieces. If an actuator arm bends the wrong way,
Speaker 1: it could cause irreparable damage to the platters. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of parts that could potentially break down or
Speaker 1: wear out. Not all the problems are show stoppers. Some
Speaker 1: of them are totally reparable, but it does mean that
Speaker 1: there are several all potential points of failure with an
Speaker 1: hd D. They also tend to add a lot of
Speaker 1: weight to devices. For that reason, many smaller gadgets rely
Speaker 1: on alternative data storage systems, some of which we will
Speaker 1: cover later in these episodes. So for a long time,
Speaker 1: h d d s were significantly cheaper than alternatives, and
Speaker 1: they remain the primary method of internal storage for computers.
Speaker 1: But it also takes time for a computer to retrieve
Speaker 1: information stored on an hd D Because we have to
Speaker 1: remember this is a mechanical system. It actually takes time
Speaker 1: for components to move into place and start to search
Speaker 1: for and pull relevant data. So on top of the line,
Speaker 1: h d D typically has a lot more storage capacity
Speaker 1: than the alternatives, so when it comes to actual storage,
Speaker 1: the hd D tends to win out, particularly when you
Speaker 1: look at the price tag per amount of storage. It's
Speaker 1: pretty common to find h d ds today in the
Speaker 1: two to four terrabyte range, which honestly still ows my
Speaker 1: mind because I'm old and I remember when a megabyte
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Next, we have h d M I.
Speaker 1: This is high definition Multimedia interface. In the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: a group of companies that included Tashiba, Sony, Phillips, and
Speaker 1: Hitachi worked together to create a standardized technology that would
Speaker 1: allow for the transfer of uncompressed audio and video signals
Speaker 1: from a source to an output, such as from a
Speaker 1: computer to a display or a set top box to
Speaker 1: a television. The HDMI standard would allow for higher resolution
Speaker 1: video while also carrying audio signals, and over the years
Speaker 1: there have been many different cables and ports designed for
Speaker 1: these purposes. So let's do a very quick rundown for
Speaker 1: the video side. Early on in the nineteen fifties, you
Speaker 1: had the development of composite r c A this cable,
Speaker 1: little yellow tipped cable you might remember, those that could
Speaker 1: carry an analog video signal of up to standard definition
Speaker 1: resolution that's either four A d I or five seventy
Speaker 1: six I depending upon your region. The signal coded down
Speaker 1: to a single channel of information. A couple of decades later,
Speaker 1: companies introduced the S video cable, which carried video into
Speaker 1: channels and allowed for a higher quality video transmission. Then
Speaker 1: you had component video cables, which split the video into
Speaker 1: three channels and could be even better quality, especially for
Speaker 1: color representation and luminosity. The component video cables were the
Speaker 1: top of the line and analog video signal transmission, but
Speaker 1: they also came right at the tail end of that,
Speaker 1: just before the digital revolution, so they weren't relevant for
Speaker 1: terribly long. They sort of became obsolete. After component cables,
Speaker 1: we got d V I and shortly after that we
Speaker 1: got h d M I, and the h d M
Speaker 1: I tech has essentially one out and become the standard
Speaker 1: tech for transmitting digital video and audio. Companies have improved
Speaker 1: the text since its introduction. The h d M I
Speaker 1: of two two was you know HDMI one point oh?
Speaker 1: These days, the most recent specification is h d m
Speaker 1: I two point one, and that specification allows for the
Speaker 1: transmission of signals of up to eight K resolution with
Speaker 1: sixty frames per second or four K resolution at one
Speaker 1: twenty frames per second. I think it can even transmit
Speaker 1: up to ten K resolution, though you do take a
Speaker 1: hit on the frames per second at that point, and
Speaker 1: it can transmit data at a band with a forty
Speaker 1: eight gigabits per second. To take advantage of the specification,
Speaker 1: all the parts of a connected system have to be
Speaker 1: HDMI two point one compatible. That includes the source of
Speaker 1: the signal, the cables you're using, and the output device
Speaker 1: whatever you're viewing it on. So, in other words, you've
Speaker 1: got a system that has an HDMI two point one
Speaker 1: out port and an HDMI two point one cable, but
Speaker 1: your television only supports to up to I don't know,
Speaker 1: HDMI one point four, you will not get the full
Speaker 1: benefit of HDMI two point one. It would still work
Speaker 1: because it is as a specification that is backwards compatible.
Speaker 1: It could still carry and deliver signals that the television
Speaker 1: would be able to show. It just wouldn't be at
Speaker 1: the two point one specifications. You wouldn't get the full
Speaker 1: benefit unless every part of the system is current with
Speaker 1: h d M. I well, we are at a point
Speaker 1: where I think it's a good time to take a
Speaker 1: break because these acronyms, despite how short they are, get
Speaker 1: kind of exhausting. To say, we're back and let's hit
Speaker 1: it with h d R, which stands for high dynamic range.
Speaker 1: This is a dynamic range that is high. It can
Speaker 1: actually cover a lot of different types of stuff. High
Speaker 1: dynamic range is not limited to a specific technology. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it means that whatever range you're looking at, whether it's
Speaker 1: for us of it kind of a signal or color
Speaker 1: representation or rendering or whatever, it's a range that has
Speaker 1: lots and lots of divisions. There's a big difference between
Speaker 1: the lowest end of the range and the highest end
Speaker 1: of the range. It's got a lot of dynamics to it.
Speaker 1: We call music really dynamic if there are a lot
Speaker 1: of variations between the softest tones and the loudest tones,
Speaker 1: as well as the quality of tone. So typically this
Speaker 1: means you have more minute steps between the lowest end
Speaker 1: and the highest end. All of that sounds pretty wishy
Speaker 1: washy when I say it out loud. So let's use
Speaker 1: colors as an example. I'm pretty sure you all know
Speaker 1: roy GBIV right, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet,
Speaker 1: the color spectrum for stuff like rainbows. That's a very
Speaker 1: simple spectrum, right, just seven colors. But you know there's
Speaker 1: more than just seven colors. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: different shades of these colors, which you could also think
Speaker 1: of as little steps between one color whatever you designate
Speaker 1: as being the true version of say red, and the
Speaker 1: next color whatever is the true version of orange. Heck,
Speaker 1: I remember in the old days having crayons that had
Speaker 1: blue green and green blue in the same crayon pack,
Speaker 1: and the two crayons were not exactly the same color. Instead,
Speaker 1: both of them showed a color that in one instance
Speaker 1: was just a little more blue than it was green,
Speaker 1: and the other was the opposite. So, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about a color spectrum, HDR might refer to more variants
Speaker 1: or shades of colors, perhaps in a spectrum broad enough
Speaker 1: that two adjacent colors might be difficult to distinguish for
Speaker 1: the average person that they are different, but they might
Speaker 1: not be distinct enough for you to be able to
Speaker 1: tell on casual glance with a digital display. The sort
Speaker 1: of color range means you're able to experience more lifelike colors.
Speaker 1: The display doesn't have to rely as much on tricking
Speaker 1: your eyes, but using a more limited palette of colors
Speaker 1: to create the illusion of that range, and we end
Speaker 1: up with more vibrant and lifelike images as a result.
Speaker 1: So while HDR can refer to a ton of different
Speaker 1: stuff in tech, for the average consumer, we typically see
Speaker 1: it in reference to displays and televisions. There's no standard
Speaker 1: HDR format, which is kind of a pain in the
Speaker 1: took us since there are competing formats on the market.
Speaker 1: There is a minimum set of specs that each format
Speaker 1: has to meet in order for the Ultra HD Alliance
Speaker 1: which sounds like a supervillain group UH, for them to
Speaker 1: consider it actual HDR. So, in other words, you have
Speaker 1: to meet certain criteria for it to be HDR, but
Speaker 1: there's no standardized way to do this, and it's just
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how you get the output, it just
Speaker 1: has to have the output meet those specifications, which is
Speaker 1: a little frustrating. HD M I two point one, which
Speaker 1: we talked about before the break so ports HDR and
Speaker 1: kind of like hd M I. To enjoy the benefits
Speaker 1: of HDR, you need every element in your system to
Speaker 1: be compatible with whichever format you're trying to display, and
Speaker 1: HDR video is about more than just color representation. It
Speaker 1: also has to do with luminates or brightness. HDR is
Speaker 1: also a great way to explain that image quality goes
Speaker 1: well beyond just resolution. A picture could have very high
Speaker 1: resolution but very poor color representation. Video image quality depends
Speaker 1: upon multiple factors. So that includes resolution, color representation, contrast
Speaker 1: which is the difference between the brightest and darkest colors,
Speaker 1: and how many steps there are between those two extremes.
Speaker 1: It's kind of its own high dynamic range feature, as
Speaker 1: well as frame rate. That's another big one. Now. The
Speaker 1: reason I mentioned all of this is in case you're
Speaker 1: ever in the market to upgrade your home theater system.
Speaker 1: It's good to know there is not just one single
Speaker 1: component you should con learn yourself with, or else you
Speaker 1: might find that the setup you buy doesn't match your expectations.
Speaker 1: Moving on, next, we have HTML and x HTML. These
Speaker 1: are not you know, partners that had a nasty breakup
Speaker 1: and now they're X is no HTML is hypertext markup language,
Speaker 1: and x HTML is extensible hypertext markup language. Let's break
Speaker 1: these down a bit to understand what they actually mean. So,
Speaker 1: a markup language is a tool that allows someone to
Speaker 1: make annotations to a document that is distinct from the
Speaker 1: content of that document. So, for example, if you've ever
Speaker 1: worked with a document program that allows editors to put
Speaker 1: in comments off to the side in that electronic format,
Speaker 1: perhaps it shows up as like a little word bubble. Well,
Speaker 1: that's an example of a markup language system. It's a
Speaker 1: technological evolution of an editor making notes in red pencil,
Speaker 1: and man, that takes me back so much red pencil.
Speaker 1: Hypertext is a method of creating text that can link
Speaker 1: to other parts of a document, an electronic document, or
Speaker 1: it can link other documents together. So it's links. In
Speaker 1: other words, if you're familiar with the web, it's links.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you have an electronic document version of
Speaker 1: the play Hamlet by Shakespeare, and you want to go
Speaker 1: straight to the to be or not to be speech. Well,
Speaker 1: then you can go to the table of contents in
Speaker 1: that electronic document and click on the hypertext link for
Speaker 1: Act three, Scene one, and boom, that link takes you
Speaker 1: to that section of the document. And like I said,
Speaker 1: those links can go either within a document itself or
Speaker 1: between different documents in the Worldwide Web. Hypertext represents the
Speaker 1: strands of web that hold different points together. You can
Speaker 1: also think of HTML as a set of instructions as
Speaker 1: to how a web browser should display a page. The
Speaker 1: markup language uses tags to distinguish different elements within the document.
Speaker 1: So for example, there's the tag open bracket i mg
Speaker 1: slash closed bracket, which indicates an image. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 1: So using HTML you can create structured documents that behave
Speaker 1: a specific way within a browser. Alright, So x HTML
Speaker 1: is an x m L version of HTML, and x
Speaker 1: m L, as you might guess, stands for Extensible Markup Language.
Speaker 1: It's a markup language that is readable by both machines
Speaker 1: and humans, and it standardizes the methods to access information,
Speaker 1: so it makes that process more efficient and accurate. So
Speaker 1: x HTML in many ways is similar to HTML, but
Speaker 1: it has a more strict error handling approach. A web
Speaker 1: browser will still give the old college Try to display
Speaker 1: a web page that has HTML errors in it, but
Speaker 1: with x HTML, well you'll be headed back to editing
Speaker 1: to find out where you've done messed up. Tim berners
Speaker 1: Lee developed HTML back in the early nineties while working
Speaker 1: with CERN, and I'm sure many of you listening to
Speaker 1: this have played around with HTML at some point. The
Speaker 1: first two web pages I ever made I coded completely
Speaker 1: in HTML. Actually had a document open where I typed
Speaker 1: everything out in HTML. Then I had to upload it.
Speaker 1: Then I had to refresh a page to see how
Speaker 1: it would display. Then I would realize that everything was terrible.
Speaker 1: I'd have to go back into my document, change it
Speaker 1: there and re upload the code and repeat that process
Speaker 1: until I got it right. Thankfully, I don't remember the
Speaker 1: address for either of those web pages anymore. I mean
Speaker 1: they are you know, gosh, how old would they be.
Speaker 1: I made them back in in college, so that was
Speaker 1: in the early mid nineties, So if they still exist,
Speaker 1: I am unaware of them. I bet they don't exist.
Speaker 1: I'm sure those servers are down, but I cannot relive
Speaker 1: that terrible, terrible web page that I made, and I'm
Speaker 1: thankful for that. I remember one was definitely about pirates,
Speaker 1: So let's move on. Next, we have h t t
Speaker 1: P and h t t P S. On a related note,
Speaker 1: this is similar to or relates to the h t
Speaker 1: m L. This stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol and HTTPS
Speaker 1: is hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. As I mentioned, a protocol
Speaker 1: is a set of instructions or rules that machines follow
Speaker 1: in order to complete some process. So it's how machines
Speaker 1: quote unquote know what to do and in what order.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the process is the transmission of
Speaker 1: hyper media documents, such as those that are coded in
Speaker 1: h t m L. The original purpose for h t
Speaker 1: t P was to allow web browsers also known as clients,
Speaker 1: to request and receive HTML documents from web servers also
Speaker 1: known as servers. So in brief, let's say you wanted
Speaker 1: to navigate to a website. You would type an address
Speaker 1: into your browser's address bar and you hit enter or
Speaker 1: you click or whatever. And at this point, the client
Speaker 1: that is your web browser follows h t t P
Speaker 1: and sends a request out to the server. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of steps in between here, but we're just gonna
Speaker 1: skip over those and hopefully that server responds by sending
Speaker 1: the appropriate HTML document to your browser. The browser then
Speaker 1: renders the web page based on the code of the
Speaker 1: h t m L page within the browser, window. As
Speaker 1: for HTTPS, the secure is really important these days, many
Speaker 1: sites rely on HTTPS rather than planal H T t P.
Speaker 1: Communication across HTTPS is encrypted by the Transport Layers Security
Speaker 1: or TLS. In the old days, this was known as
Speaker 1: the Secure Sockets Layer or s s L. What that
Speaker 1: means is that the information sent between the client and
Speaker 1: server goes through an encryption process. So if someone should
Speaker 1: intercept the data, all they would end up with would
Speaker 1: look like meaningless garbage. So it uses an asymmetric public
Speaker 1: key infrastructure, and you might wonder what the heck does
Speaker 1: that mean. Well, in a simple encryption process, you would
Speaker 1: have an encoding device that would transform your plane message
Speaker 1: into encrypted text. Let's say that we're using an old
Speaker 1: stand by, the classic plastic decoder ring, like the kind
Speaker 1: that used to come in cereal boxes and stuff. Anyone
Speaker 1: who had a copy of that same ring could decrypt
Speaker 1: your message because all the rings followed the exact same
Speaker 1: encoding process, all the same rings anyway, different rings had
Speaker 1: different encoding, you get what I mean. So this would
Speaker 1: be a pure public key effectively, and it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: very useful because the key would spread so far and
Speaker 1: wide that it would just add a minor step between
Speaker 1: intercepting a message and learning what's in that message. If
Speaker 1: the key is easily available, then it's almost as if
Speaker 1: you sent stuff unencrypted. So an asymmetric public key has
Speaker 1: two keys. One is a public key used to encode messages.
Speaker 1: But this encoding process is not reversible. You cannot use
Speaker 1: a public key to decode an encrypted message. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work that way, so once the public key transforms the message,
Speaker 1: only a second private key can decode it. The web
Speaker 1: server in this case holds onto this precious private key
Speaker 1: and does not share it, and that way any information
Speaker 1: sent to the server remains safe. HTTPS is what enables
Speaker 1: online shopping. Because of that encryption, consumers can have confidence
Speaker 1: that they're purchasing information like credit card numbers will remain secure.
Speaker 1: You can see if a website is using HTTPS just
Speaker 1: by looking at the beginning of the address and seeing
Speaker 1: HTTPS at the beginning. In additional out of browsers will
Speaker 1: also include a padlock icon that will indicate whether or
Speaker 1: not the site is using HTTPS. Next up, we have
Speaker 1: I slash. Oh. Now, this isn't just the name of
Speaker 1: Google's developer conference for all things Android, the IO Conference.
Speaker 1: It's an older term that means input and output, and yeah,
Speaker 1: this is getting pretty darned. Basic. Input is obviously the
Speaker 1: stuff you put into a computer. It might be key
Speaker 1: strokes on a keyboard. It might be moving and clicking
Speaker 1: a mouse. It might be using a touch screen command
Speaker 1: or maybe a voice command, or you know, there's lots
Speaker 1: of stuff. It's how you act on a computer and
Speaker 1: not just you. Input can include incoming communications from other
Speaker 1: devices and systems. Output, well, that's what a computer puts out.
Speaker 1: It might be something really overt. It might be like
Speaker 1: a print job sent to a printer, or a message
Speaker 1: on a display, or sound effects played on a speaker,
Speaker 1: or it could be more subtle, with the CPU executing
Speaker 1: instructions that aren't necessarily observable by a human user. It's
Speaker 1: the result of the computer executing instructions on data that's
Speaker 1: the output. So some devices are pretty easy to categorize
Speaker 1: as either input or output devices. A keyboard, amounts, a
Speaker 1: tract pad, a joystick. These appear to be pretty clearly
Speaker 1: input devices. A computer display or printer that's pretty clearly
Speaker 1: an output device, But to be fair, some of these
Speaker 1: can actually straddle the line. For example, joysticks with haptic
Speaker 1: feedback are arguably both input and output devices because the
Speaker 1: computer can send signals to the motors in the joystick
Speaker 1: that make it rumble according to computer output, and a
Speaker 1: lot of modern printers can also act as scanning devices,
Speaker 1: so you can use them to input data into a
Speaker 1: computer system, not just print data out. There are also
Speaker 1: all the various cables and modems and routers such that
Speaker 1: act as both input and output devices. In some cases
Speaker 1: they might relay information to your computer, and in others
Speaker 1: they might carry that information from your computer to somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So it's not as clear cut as all that, but
Speaker 1: you know, generally you can kind of categorize stuff. We've
Speaker 1: got a lot more eyes to get through, but before
Speaker 1: we do that, let's take a quick break. So do
Speaker 1: you think I can get through all the rest of
Speaker 1: the eyes before the end of the episode? I can.
Speaker 1: That's a joke, because our next one is I can
Speaker 1: I see a n N. That means the Internet Corporation
Speaker 1: for Assigned Names and Numbers. This is a not for
Speaker 1: profit agency that formed in and its purpose is to
Speaker 1: coordinate quote unique identify irs end quote that let computers
Speaker 1: find each other over the Internet. Now, you might remember
Speaker 1: in the last episode in this series that I talked
Speaker 1: about the domain name system or d n S. The
Speaker 1: DNS makes it way easier to navigate the Internet because
Speaker 1: it uses letters, typically in the form of words or initialisms,
Speaker 1: rather than a seemingly random series of numbers or possibly
Speaker 1: numbers and letters, which is the underlying format for i
Speaker 1: P addresses. We'll talk about more of those in a second. Well,
Speaker 1: what's going on here is that the address you type in,
Speaker 1: like www dot YouTube dot com, relates to a numerical
Speaker 1: i P address. You just don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: that number because of the d n S. For all
Speaker 1: this to work, each address needs to be unique. If
Speaker 1: there were two different sites that we're using www dot
Speaker 1: YouTube dot com, your computer and all the machines beyond
Speaker 1: your computer wouldn't know which one you wanted to go
Speaker 1: to when you typed in the address. Similarly, each IP
Speaker 1: address must be unique. I CAN coordinates how i P
Speaker 1: addresses and top level domains are supplied so that there's
Speaker 1: no confusion and Internet traffic goes to where it's supposed
Speaker 1: to go. Now, I CAN does not control the Internet itself.
Speaker 1: It's more of a facilitator, kind of like a centralized
Speaker 1: authority that various entities like registrars work with in order
Speaker 1: to keep things running smoothly. I can calls its chief
Speaker 1: responsibility quote universal resolvability end quote, meaning that no matter
Speaker 1: where in the world you are, if you type a
Speaker 1: particular address out in the web browser or send an
Speaker 1: email to a specific email address, you can be assured
Speaker 1: that you're going to get the same results that you
Speaker 1: would get anywhere else in the world, assuming you're not,
Speaker 1: you know, falling victim to a man in the middle attack.
Speaker 1: But that's a totally different kettle of fish. Moving on.
Speaker 1: I E E E. That's really I triple E, or
Speaker 1: as I used to say in the old days, I E.
Speaker 1: This is formally known as the Instant Tute of Electrical
Speaker 1: and Electronics Engineers, And I'll quote the organization on itself,
Speaker 1: uh in a second, But these days it's just the
Speaker 1: eye triple E. And I'll explain why in a moment.
Speaker 1: This is quote an association dedicated to advancing innovation and
Speaker 1: technological excellence for the benefit of humanity end quote. And
Speaker 1: it's also quote the world's largest technical professional society end quote.
Speaker 1: The organization actually traces its history back more than a century,
Speaker 1: all the way back to eight eight four. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously the Internet was not around back then. That's often
Speaker 1: we we associate the EYE Tripoli with the Internet, But
Speaker 1: back then they were associated with the bustling telegraph industry,
Speaker 1: and at that point it was known as the ai
Speaker 1: EE or American Institute of Electrical Engineers. The more modern
Speaker 1: version of the EYE Tripoli, you could say, launched in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. While the original purpose of the group
Speaker 1: as a professional organization for engineers, these days it counts
Speaker 1: numerous professions in its membership, including scientists and medical professionals.
Speaker 1: And that is why the EYE Triple E usually good.
Speaker 1: It just goes by I Triple E rather than its
Speaker 1: full name, because the full name implies it's just an
Speaker 1: organization for engineers alone, and that's just not the case.
Speaker 1: The EYE Triple E promotes collaboration among companies, technical professionals,
Speaker 1: scientists and more, all to push technological innovation and ideally
Speaker 1: to service humanity in general. The EYE Triple E is
Speaker 1: host to numerous educational services in the technical fields. It
Speaker 1: pushes for standardizations in various areas of tech. It acts
Speaker 1: as a repository for a wealth of publications relating to
Speaker 1: technical knowledge and specifications. One of the famous standards that
Speaker 1: the Eye Triple E ratified and helped develop was for
Speaker 1: the Family of Local Area Network Technical Standards. This is
Speaker 1: the SEV standards computers used to communicate with one another
Speaker 1: at a local area network. More on those in the
Speaker 1: future episode. This is the eight to two point one
Speaker 1: one set of standards, which includes all those wild designations
Speaker 1: you see on WiFi modems and routers. When you hear
Speaker 1: people talking about A to two point one one G
Speaker 1: versus A no two point one one a X or whatever.
Speaker 1: Those are all different network standards for the transmission of
Speaker 1: wireless data, and I Triple E, through collaboration of countless contributors,
Speaker 1: established those standards, which means you know that the stuff
Speaker 1: you have will talk to the other stuff you have.
Speaker 1: Without those standards, you would have all these different proprietary
Speaker 1: means of wireless communication and the Internet would be a
Speaker 1: total mess. Moving on, IoT, this is the Internet of Things.
Speaker 1: Back in nine, Kevin Ashton, a technologist and author, coined
Speaker 1: this for PRAS, and he was looking ahead and envisioning
Speaker 1: a world in which lots of different stuff would connect
Speaker 1: directly or indirectly to the Internet. It wouldn't just be
Speaker 1: a network of computers and network devices and switches and stuff,
Speaker 1: but of all sorts of things, from individual sensors to appliances,
Speaker 1: to vehicles and beyond. Not the time, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people didn't really appreciate what this would really mean,
Speaker 1: or the scope at which it would happen, or how
Speaker 1: it would necessitate huge strides, and how we handle stuff
Speaker 1: like privacy, security, data storage, and information analysis. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'd say a lot of us are still getting a
Speaker 1: handle on that today, particularly as we see companies continue
Speaker 1: to market products that could pose as a potential security
Speaker 1: vulnerability within a network. It took several years for IoT
Speaker 1: to evolve from a hypothetical concept to a buzzword to
Speaker 1: a real thing, but we're definitely in that real thing
Speaker 1: stage today. Heck, we get the first popular consumer smartphone
Speaker 1: until two thousand seven, so it took quite a while
Speaker 1: for IoT to kind of take off. But these days
Speaker 1: you'll find tons of consumer products that fall into the
Speaker 1: IoT category, from smart thermostats that have a persistent network
Speaker 1: connection to sensors that you can put out into the
Speaker 1: garden and let you know when you should water your plants.
Speaker 1: And then there are the countless Internet connected devices that
Speaker 1: the average consumer isn't even aware of. These could be
Speaker 1: used to collect data on a regional level, giving organizations
Speaker 1: like civil engineers more information from a hyper local level
Speaker 1: all the way out to broad regional views. Again, the
Speaker 1: technology has both incredible potential to help transform our world
Speaker 1: in meaningful ways, as well as the potential to cause
Speaker 1: a lot of problems, whether through poor implementation or questionable motivations.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say how big the Internet of Things
Speaker 1: really is because new devices join every day, and so
Speaker 1: we're aft with estimates, and even with estimates, there are
Speaker 1: a huge range there. For example, Juniper Research estimates that,
Speaker 1: for one, we're looking at forty six billion connected devices,
Speaker 1: but statists UM estimates that will hit thirty eight point
Speaker 1: six billion connected devices by five That's a pretty big difference,
Speaker 1: like seven and a half billion devices difference in those estimates,
Speaker 1: and one of those estimates involves a year that's by
Speaker 1: my account, four years in the future. So to be fair,
Speaker 1: this kind of thing is really hard to get a
Speaker 1: handle on. It's hard to get an accurate estimate as
Speaker 1: to how many devices are connected to the Internet Also,
Speaker 1: how do you define that? Do you discount stuff like
Speaker 1: computers and smartphones and just focus on what we would
Speaker 1: traditionally refer to as IoT devices. So I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty safe to say we're somewhere in the tens of
Speaker 1: billions of connected devices somewhere, though a precise head count
Speaker 1: really isn't possible. Next, we have i P. This stands
Speaker 1: for Internet Protocol, and it's frequently paired with the word
Speaker 1: address in other words, IP address. This is the numerical
Speaker 1: string that is unique to each device connected to a
Speaker 1: computer network that is using i P as it's communication
Speaker 1: protocol anyway, But more broadly, i P is a communications protocol,
Speaker 1: and it all gets incredibly technical. Plus, we're going to
Speaker 1: dive into this further when we get to t C
Speaker 1: P I P later on, because more often than not,
Speaker 1: we hear of these two sets of protocols grouped together,
Speaker 1: then we typically hear of them separately. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say there are two major versions of i P that
Speaker 1: are in use today. I P V four is the
Speaker 1: older one. That one has been in use for decades
Speaker 1: and it still remains the dominant version of i P
Speaker 1: used today. It's been in use since the early nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties with stuff like sat net and ARPA net. It
Speaker 1: used is a thirty two bit address space, which allows
Speaker 1: for two to the thirty second power of addresses. So
Speaker 1: in theory, uh that you would get that many addresses,
Speaker 1: but a lot of those millions of them are actually
Speaker 1: held in reserve. But that translates to nearly four billion,
Speaker 1: three hundred million addresses. Not quite, it's like four billion,
Speaker 1: two hundred ninety something million. That sounds like a lot
Speaker 1: of addresses. But again, you know, we just talked about IoT.
Speaker 1: When you take into account all of the devices connected
Speaker 1: to the Internet, you realize four point three billion is
Speaker 1: really not that much. In the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: you'll usually see an I p v four address written
Speaker 1: in dot decimal notation with four groups of numbers separated
Speaker 1: by decimal points. So in the old House stuff Works
Speaker 1: article on IP addresses, which I used to refer to
Speaker 1: all the time back in my day's writing for that site,
Speaker 1: the address for the quote machine that humans referred to
Speaker 1: as how stuff works dot com end quote has the
Speaker 1: address to two one six dot three dot one oh
Speaker 1: three dot one five oh. By the way, I see
Speaker 1: you all you websites out there, that took that information
Speaker 1: and presented it on your own web pages without attribution.
Speaker 1: Some of you didn't even bother to change the wording
Speaker 1: at all, for shame anyway. The groups of numbers can
Speaker 1: only occupy a range of zero to two, so you
Speaker 1: would never have an I p V four address that
Speaker 1: would have a group of numbers like four, seven, two
Speaker 1: or anything like that that's not supported by the protocol. Now.
Speaker 1: I p V six is the most recent version of
Speaker 1: the Internet Protocol. It has been a standard since two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen when it was ratified, and it's addressing system
Speaker 1: is a one hundred twenty eight bit address. Remember I
Speaker 1: p V four is thirty two bit, so that means
Speaker 1: that it could allow for addresses at two to the
Speaker 1: hight power way more than I pv for it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's an understatement to say way more. These addresses
Speaker 1: are in hexadecimal digits, grouped in four digits each with
Speaker 1: eight groups total, and they're separated by colon's and one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons for I p V six was
Speaker 1: that it was clear that I p V four addresses
Speaker 1: were going to run out. In fact, that has happened
Speaker 1: with several regional Internet registries, and that would necessitate greater
Speaker 1: adoption of I p v six. But both I p
Speaker 1: v four and i p v six protocols are able
Speaker 1: to work simultaneously, and browser's modern browsers support both. That
Speaker 1: means that a lot of systems are still using i
Speaker 1: p v four because they haven't you know, felt an
Speaker 1: urgent need to get up to date on on all
Speaker 1: of that, because it still works now. To be fair,
Speaker 1: the process of switching over isn't as simple as actually
Speaker 1: flipping a switch. It's much more involved than that. Now,
Speaker 1: I p v six has a lot of advantages over
Speaker 1: I p v four beyond the fact that it's not
Speaker 1: going to run out anytime soon. That is, and I
Speaker 1: probably will need to do a full episode to run
Speaker 1: down both versions of the protocol to explain it a
Speaker 1: bit more. Finally, for this episode, we have i r
Speaker 1: C Internet Relay Chat. This is a text based online
Speaker 1: chat system that dates back to the nineteen eighties. I
Speaker 1: r C allows a single computer to open up multiple
Speaker 1: chat communication channels with other computers all at the same time,
Speaker 1: and multiple computers can also join a single communication channel,
Speaker 1: so you kind of have party chat. So you can
Speaker 1: have numerous one on one chats open through I r
Speaker 1: C clients, or you could join a party chat or both.
Speaker 1: In the old days, to use i r C, you
Speaker 1: need to install an i r C client, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a web browser, but it's for text
Speaker 1: based chat. Later on, some web owsers incorporated I r
Speaker 1: C clients within the browser itself, which allowed users to
Speaker 1: pop into I r C chat without the need for
Speaker 1: a separate client. The i r C uses its own
Speaker 1: network of servers, with each server hosting chat rooms. Now
Speaker 1: this means that unlike a web browser, where you just
Speaker 1: type an address in your browser bar and you get
Speaker 1: the web page you want, with i r C, you
Speaker 1: actually first have to navigate to the correct server that
Speaker 1: hosts the chat room you want to join. If you
Speaker 1: go to the wrong server, you'll either end up in
Speaker 1: a different room with the same name as the one
Speaker 1: you intended to visit, but it won't have any of
Speaker 1: the people you wanted to chat with their or you'll
Speaker 1: create a brand new room with that name and you'll
Speaker 1: be the only person. They're all by your lonesome, and
Speaker 1: that's just sad. So I r C is not nearly
Speaker 1: as user friendly as many other chat systems online are,
Speaker 1: but it also has way lower bandwidth requirements and you
Speaker 1: and me reasonably sure that your chat logs aren't being
Speaker 1: used to sell you more stuff in most cases, which
Speaker 1: is not something I can say for all chat systems online.
Speaker 1: Learning I r C does require a bit of work,
Speaker 1: but only just a bit in order to get started.
Speaker 1: If you want to be a power user, well that's
Speaker 1: a totally different thing, and you can put in the
Speaker 1: time to really learn how to use I r C,
Speaker 1: and you can even create your own I r C
Speaker 1: server and you can host I r C chats on
Speaker 1: your own computer. So some groups still use I r
Speaker 1: C as sort of the no nonsense method to communicate,
Speaker 1: but a lot have moved on to other more user
Speaker 1: friendly systems like discord. But those systems have their own drawbacks, um,
Speaker 1: primarily things like how they generate revenue. It's a very
Speaker 1: fascinating version of of communication protocols really, and UM, I
Speaker 1: definitely have been part of I r C chat rooms.
Speaker 1: I want to say that Scott Johnson's UH chat room
Speaker 1: back in the old days was in an I r
Speaker 1: C chat and these days I think he uses something different.
Speaker 1: But I want to say that that was the case.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. I could be misremembering. Scott Johnson,
Speaker 1: by the way, phenomenal web comic artist as well as
Speaker 1: podcast host. If you're not familiar with his work, you
Speaker 1: should look it up. And that is it for this
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff. When we come back on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: we will continue down the line of the alphabet one day.
Speaker 1: We will make it through all of them, and then
Speaker 1: I'll have to start figuring out what else i want
Speaker 1: to talk about. So I'm actually not in a rush
Speaker 1: to get through it all because this is easy. I
Speaker 1: know what the next episode is going to be about
Speaker 1: because there are more letters left. If you want to
Speaker 1: add more letters to the end of the alphabet to
Speaker 1: extend this series, please do. If you have any suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics I should cover in tech Stuff, reach out
Speaker 1: to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff HSB you and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Y. Text 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.