Technology

With the advent of digital age, we are more connected than ever. Social media has transcended geographical locations, and no place is out of reach. But with this type of connectivity, there is a rise in the number of antisocial players. Cyber stalking cases has reportedly gone high in recent years.  Stalking is considered as any form of unwanted attention, contact or harassment directed towards an individual. This results in victim's personal space being encroached or taken for granted.  The preparator perform stalking through fake profiles, monitoring social media sites, messages or chat history. They initiate a volley of hate speech or try to tarnish their victim's reputation. Here stalking can be also a form of love addiction. An unrequited love can cause the stalker to perform the above steps as an act of revenge. Mode of Operation Installing a piece of code in the victim's computer for accessing the webcam. The spyware comes bundled with a software which could be do...

There is currently a clash between two main processors, Intel and AMD. Both do bring a fresh perspective, in their respective domains. So how can we choose a processor brand, based on our use priorities. Intel Stands for Integrated Electronics  and is credited for creating the first processor, Intel 8086. The family tree of the same is credited with higher performance, faster clock speed but, more power consumption AMD Stands for Advanced Micro Devices providing affordability and security. Though a late comer, AMD focused on budget friendly, low power consumption chips. What is Clock Speed A CPU is the brain of any computer and determines the rate at which complex operations are processed.  A chip consists of billions of transistors which are opened and closed n number of times during a cycle. This is a benchmark for speed, known simply as Clock Cycle .  The measuring unit is Hertz (Hz). 1 Hz equals to 1 cycle per second. For Example, a 3.2 GHz processor comple...

  Privacy is a major concern when browsing the internet. Your data could be eavesdropped by hackers, companies targeting ads or even rogue state actors. What gets revealed would be personal browsing history, location monitoring, IP addresses to name a few. Enter the tech... Virtual Private Network or simply known as VPN is a technology used to prevent unauthorized access of your private data. Even if a hacker penetrates the network and get hold of data packets, all that is revealed is gibberish.  This is because all the information that passes through your device is encrypted and can be only revealed through a personal key.  Internet Service Provider Before going further, a knowledge of Internet Service Provider (ISP) is needed. They are the backbone of the World Wide Web. ISP provides each device with a unique IP (Internet Protocol) address, bandwidth allocation and network security. When a website is searched, first it goes from your device to the Router or Modem which...

Operating system (OS) is the heart of any computer device controlling tasks like process scheduling, memory management, and driver implementation. There is a large difference between OS used in main frame or desktop computers, and embedded systems Embedded Systems An embedded system is a miniature computer used to perform a single task. This could be a medical device monitoring heartbeat, or a flight control system. Because of size constraints, the processing power as well as memory/storage capacity is less for the same.  Enter the brain Embedded Linux is a stripped-down version of the original Linux kernel, used in desktops. What makes it different is its capability to run in low power embedded systems, such as smart phones, tablets, medical equipment and avionics system. This OS is a classification of RTOS (Real time operating systems). It means they process data in real time mostly from sensors measuring humidity or temperature, and provide output within a fixed deadline   ...

  If hardware is the body... Then software is the brain controlling the tasks and operations behind the scenes. It provides memory management, task allotment, priority scheduling etc. Operating system or OS is mainly divided into two main categories Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS) or General-Purpose Operating Systems (GPOS) . The classification is based on how they allocate resources The difference GPOS is used in desktop, laptops, tablets or smart phones where the processor performs several tasks at once. Here deadline for a given process is not important, and small delays are overstepped. RTOS is used in embedded systems such as medical equipment, flight avionics etc where one task is processed at any given time. Here deadline needs to be met without compromise, and data inputs are computed in real time. GPOS are usually used in microprocessors which have high computation power and voltage requirements. Examples include Intel x86/64 and AMD Ryzen chips RTOS are used in microco...

The M series chip in MacBooks have brought about a revolution. Now we have processors providing higher speed, with lower battery usage. No wonder we hear ARM based laptops running 18 to 24 hours, on a single charge. This has even disrupted legacy chips like x86/x64 from market monopoly. Behind the Scenes All this is made possible by a chip architecture known as RISC. The acronym for Reduced Instruction Set Computer .  As the name suggests, here less is more. Lower instruction set leads to less complexity and higher performance. Data is stored in registers and executed result in memory. The Cycle Every instruction execution goes through the following stages Instruction fetch: In this stage, the processor fetch code for execution, from registers Instruction decode: The code is then decoded, and analyzed Operand fetch: The operands required is retrieved from registers Instruction execution: The code is executed by the processor. Result storage: The final data is stored in register or ...