Apr 7th, 2019 - Category: Miscellaneous
Almost every personal computer is fast enough to run another whole computer as a program. It’s called virtualization and programs like VirtualBox, VMWare, or Parallels can run Windows 10 as a program on your Mac, run Linux as a program on Windows, etc. Despite this power most people only use their computer for Email, Facebook, and cat videos.- How fast are computers in human terms? Well, when a computer retrieves a number from memory, it takes about 14 nanoseconds or 0.000000014 seconds. There are as many nanoseconds in a second as seconds in over 30 years!
- Hosting a simple website is child’s play for even the most basic computer. Web hosting data centers look like big scary places full of racks of computers and blinking lights, but commercial web hosting companies like GoDaddy make a lot of money for good reasons, a simple one CPU computer with only 1 gigabyte of ram can easily handle it. Companies like Digital Ocean specialize in renting servers that cost less than $5 / month which can support four simple websites without breaking a virtual sweat.
- Many televisions, internet routers, security cameras, smart watches, printers, smart thermostats, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices contain a full computer running an “embedded” version of an operating system.
Embedded in this case means special purpose. For example, since they are buried inside the device, they don’t use a keyboard, mouse, or have a display. Many run Linux and because they are hidden from the user, they sometimes don’t get regular software updates so they can be vulnerable to hackers in unexpected ways. In 2016, the Mirai Botnet took advantage of a security bug in a version of Linux for a specific device called the “ARC processor,” the CPU for billions of these types of devices. Mirai hacked these devices (mostly security cameras and routers) and used them to attack websites by overwhelming them with fake internet traffic. Interestingly, since Linux is open source software, devices that use Linux (GNU / Linux to be specific) have to disclose their open source license information. Here is the screen from our TCL TV. - Finally, modern cars contain dozens of stand-alone, special purpose computers that communicate over a network called the CAN-bus. Many people have heard about their car’s ECU, Engine Control Unit computer, but don’t realize, for example, that the speedometer is not connected physically to the wheels anymore. There are sensors for speed, RPM, fuel quantity, engine temperature, etc. that transmit data over the car’s network to a computer in the instrument panel. The instrument panel contains small devices that move the physical needles to their proper position in response to the digital numbers sent from these sensors. Wow!