Author: cavemandave

With the internet as big as it is, there are quite a few bad fish in the sea. They’re out to take advantage of anyone they can, and that may be you. How can you mitigate this? One of the easiest ways to protect yourself and your online presence is to keep your passwords diverse, complicated, and secure.

By having a different password for each site you use, you eliminate the vulnerability that exists in having one password for everything. Although you may be able to keep it in your head and never written down anywhere, the websites you log into have a database of logins – and yours is in there. If one of your favorite websites were to be hacked, your password would be out there. The hackers can then make educated guesses as to other sites you might log into, put in a similar or identical username, and try your password. By using a different password for every login, you ensure that they can’t access anything else.

A complicated password is also critical for your security. pass1234 is easy for hackers to crack. FJ#82_9’2;@6f.W//`dv” is not easy for hackers to crack. It would take thousands of years for a decently powerful computer to brute force its way through that password. And if you’ve followed my advice to diversify your passwords, you’ll have a bunch of different complex strings of characters, symbols, and numbers that no computer or human can crack. If there’s anyone out there who’s really dedicated to hacking specifically you, they’re going to have a hell of a time.

Okay you’re secure, but how are you supposed to remember all these passwords? Well, there’s a few methods. The most secure would be to remember them all, but that’d be near impossible. You could be like my mom and write them all down in a notebook, but that can be lost, stolen, or forgotten on a road trip. How could she check Facebook if her password is at home? The method that I recommend is that you find yourself a secure password management service. Do your research; make sure they’re using the latest encryption techniques and haven’t had security breaches in the past. Some even come with nifty features like sharing, autofill, and cross-device compatibility.

Stay safe, people. Protect your  online presence with the best passwords you can.

You’re playing an online game with your friends when your boss calls you. “Be right back!” you tell them. You answer the call and greet your boss, who tells you that you’re needed at work tomorrow. You hang up and curse under your breath, but your friends heard you.

All communication in the above scenario has been sponsored by the microphone! Yes, folks, the device that’s been bringing you someone else’s voice for 140 years is still here, and better than ever! Modern microphones are a technological wonder, capturing sound waves and sending them thousands of miles away. How do they do it? To understand this, we first need to understand sound waves. Your voice – or any sound for that matter – is a standing wave that is set up using the air particles around you. Your vocal folds create subtle but powerful pressure changes in the air in your throat, and these pressure changes propogate out in to the world around you. Inside of your microphone, there is a small membrane of metal, plastic, paper, etc. known as the diaphragm. As the pressure in the air changes, the diaphragm moves back and forth with the air particles. Attached to the diaphragm is a small magnet, which is pushed in and out of a coil of wire. The moving magnet causes changes in the magnetic field around the coil, which induces a current. Different volumes, pitches, and types of noises will vary the current that is induced, which is how a microphone can pick up such a wide variety of sounds. The generated current is translated into digital binary by either a small built in processor (in the case of a USB microphone) or some hardware implementation like a soundboard. The digital content is then sent across the country to your friends, or down the road to your boss.

It’s pretty amazing how something so common in our everyday lives can take some air particles that were wiggling around in your throat, turn them into ones and zeros, and send them wherever you want. Thank you, electrophysics!

I’m sure you’ve seen the blue wires stuck up above your ceiling tiles at work or in your basement. Those are ethernet cables that are run from your home’s switch or patch panel and terminate at the ethernet jacks in your wall. They’re functionally the same as the ethernet cable that plugs into the back of your motherboard, but these are behind-the-scenes and not intended to be seen. They ensure that you stay connected and have the quickest connection possible. But quickness wasn’t always an option. Continue reading On Ethernet Cables

It takes a whole lot of engineering to make a device work as well as possible. As I’m sure you know by now, electrical engineers and hardware engineers like to use valuable materials in their products, as these materials often have desirable properties. Gold and silver, for example, conduct electricity extremely well, and neodymium is a powerful paramagnetic substance. Aluminum is used in surplus, so this is less desirable, but it is recycled nonetheless.

When you give your old devices to a tech recycler, you are one of millions that do the same. In this way, recyclers are able to obtain thousands of tons of material in bulk at a very low price, so they earn much more than their money back when the device is through. This is why they can make money this way, but you or I cannot; we just don’t have the resources to get massive quantities of technology.

When they first bring in the electronic scrap, most of it consists of old PCB. This type of waste is relatively easy to obtain gold from and results in a high return on investment. They separate the PCB material from other waste via magnets, filters, and conveyor belts, which take the PBCs to a shredder which will completely tear apart the waste. The shreds are then left in a solvent, which will completely dissolve the printed fiberglass and leave just the copper, gold, silver, aluminum, platinum, etc. This scrap metal is then separated again to ease the rest of the process. Many recyclers have their own methods for doing this, including but not limited to using a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid (otherwise known as Aqua Regia) to dissolve out the gold and platinum, but leave other metals untouched. Regardless of the process chosen, the separate metals are then melted down and purified so that they can be sold. This typically results in an impressive profit, but another benefit that these companies receive is tax benefits. Tech recycling is a huge industry, and without them, landfills would be overflowing with random tech junk.

So go ahead and let your old junk go. It might end up in your spouse’s wedding ring later in life.

For the uninitiated, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a great way to ensure that your internet connection is secure, private, and encrypted. There’s a lot to them, and I’m not going to delve too deep into them, but this is definitely something that everyone should look into.

The basic idea is that you pay a VPN provider for their service. In return, you send all of your internet traffic to them through a tunnel that nobody can get through but you. This tunnel is virtual, it is private, and it acts just like a network. This is where the name comes from. Nobody but the provider can see the traffic. For a better idea, here are three pros and three cons of using a VPN to protect yourself online. Continue reading Pros and Cons of a VPN