My wife asked my assistance to find the source of the daily alarm which was nagging her at 6:20 AM every morning. I don’t use an iPhone so I was pretty clueless myself.
The details
Of course she had done the obvious things like look at the clock for set alarms. And at installed apps for alarms. Nothing.
Yet every day – unless the iPhone was turned completely off – this alarm would go off at 6:20 AM. And her Apple iWatch, or whatever it’s called, also had some message about this alarm.
We searched all installed apps for “alarm” and “clock” but there was nothing left to look at. Maybe one of her health apps? Nope. doesn’t seem to be. Maybe the Army Knife app with all its little useful gadgets? Nope, no alarm clock there.
The breakthrough
Then I got an idea. Since the wake-up screen mentioned domething about sleep, I decdied to search the phone for sleep. And voila, there is a sleep app, or at least sleep settings. And it was set to end her sleep at 6:20 AM.
So you see the misdirection at work? We kept thinking in terms of clock and alarm. But Apple just thinks of it as sleep and calls it as such.
Case: closed
Conclusion
Two people were frustrated for days trying to find the source of an iPhone alarm, which eventually was found. Beware that there is a sleep app. We followed the leads on the Internet about turning off certain notifications, which led nowhere.
It’s convenient to name drop different types of cyber attacks at a party. I often struggle to name more than a few. I will try to maintain a running list of them.
But I find you cannot speak about cybersecurity unless you also have a basic understanding of information technology so I am including some of those terms as well.
As I write this I am painfully aware that you could simply ask ChatGPT to generate a list of all relevant terms in cybersecurity along with their definitions – at least I think you could – and come up with a much better and more complete list. But I refuse to go that route. These are terms I have personally come across so they have special significance for me personally. In other words, this list has been organically grown. For instance I plowed through a report by a major vendor specializing in reviewing other vendor’s offerings and it’s just incredible just how dense with jargon and acronyms each paragragh is: a mother lode of state-of-the-art tech jargon.
Terms from history
I’ve thrown in some terms from my personal history having spent decades in the field, terms I’m pretty sure you won’t find in anyone else’s standard dictionary, like, let’s say xmosaic.
AiTM (Adversary in the Middle)
Bad Likert Judge
A technique for jailbreaking LLMs.
Baitortion
I guess an attack which has a bait such as a plum job offer combined with some kind of extortion? The usage was not 100% clear.
bootkit
BYOVD (Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver)
Clickfix infection chain
Upon visiting compromised websites, victims are redirected to domains hosting fake popup windows that instruct them to paste a script into a PowerShell terminal to fix an issue.
Collision attack
I.e., against the MD5 hash algorithm as done in the Blast RADIUS exploit.
Credential Harvesting
Credential Stuffing Attack
I.e., password re-use. Takes advantage of users re-using passwords for different applications. Nearly three of four consumers re-use password this way. Source: F5. Date: 3/2024
Data Wiper
Authentication Bypass
See for instance CVE-2024-0012
Email bombing
A threat actor might flood a victom with spam then offer “assistance” to fix it.
Evasion
Malicious software built to avoid detection by standard security tools.
Password spraying
A type of attack in which the threat actor tries the same password with multiple accounts, until one combination works.
Port Scan
ProxyLogon
Affected MS Exchange and exploited by Silk Typhoon.
Host Sweep
Supply Chain attack
Social Engineering
Hacking
Hacktivist
I suppose that would be an activitst who uses hacking to further their agenda.
Hex Staging
No idea. Insufficient context in the place where I read the term.
Jailbreaking
A form of privilege escalation. Removing limitations of an OS like Android or iOS.
Living off the land
Network reconnaissance
Data Breach
Keylogger
Darknet
Captcha
Click farms
DLL hijacking
Jackpotting
This is one of my favorite terms. Imagine crooks implanted malware into an ATM and were able to convince it to dispense all its available cash to them on the spot! something like this actually happened. Scary.
Overlay Attack
Example: When you open a banking app on your phone, malware loads an HTML phishing page that’s designed to look just like that particular app and the malware’s page is overlaid on top.
Payment fraud attack
In a recent example, the victim experienced “multiple fraudulently induced outbound wire transfers to accounts controlled by unknown third parties.”
PlugX
A type of malware.
Skimmer
XSS (Cross site Scripting)
bot
Anti-bot, bot defense
Mitigation
SOC
Selenium (Se) or headless browser
Obfuscation
PII, Personally Identifiable Information
api service
Reverse proxy
Inline
endpoint, e.g., login, checkout
scraping
Layer 7
DDOS
Carpet bombing DDOS attack
Many sources hitting many targets within the same subnet. See:
A social engineering attack where scammers target grandparents by pretending to be a grandchild in a bind.
GUI
(JavaScript) Injection
Command Injection
Hotfix
SDK
Method
TLS
Clear text
X-Forwarded-For
Client/server
Threat Intelligence
Carding attack
Source code
CEO Fraud
Phishing
TOCTOU (Time-of-Check Time-of-Use)
Vulnerability in VMWare ESX.
Vishing
(Voice Phishing) A form of cyber-attack where scammers use phone calls to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information or performing certain actions.
Business email compromise (BEC)
Deepfake
Threat Intelligence
Social engineering
Cybercriminal
SIM box
Command and control (C2)
Typo squatting
Voice squatting
A technique similar to typo squatting, where Alexa and Google Home devices can be tricked into opening attacker-owned apps instead of legitimate ones.
North-South
East-West
Exfiltrate
Malware
Infostealer
Obfuscation
Antivirus
Payload
Sandbox
Control flow obfuscation
Buffer overflow
Use after free
Indicators of Compromise
AMSI (Windows Antimalware Scan Interface)
Polymorphic behavior
WebDAV
Protocol handler
Firewall
Security Service Edge (SSE)
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
Zero Trust
Zero Trust is a security model that assumes that all users, devices, and applications are inherently untrustworthy and must be verified before being granted access to any resources or data.
Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)
ZTA (Zero Trust Architecture)
Zero Trust Edge (ZTE)
Secure Web Gateway (SWG)
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
Remote Browser Isolation (RBI)
Content Disarm and Reconstruction (CDR)
Firewall as a service
Egress address
Data residency
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
Magic Quadrant
Managed Service Provider (MSP)
0-day or Zero day
User Experience (UX)
Watermark
DevOps
Multitenant
MSSP
Remote Access Trojan (RAT)
SOGU
2024. A remote access trojan.
IoC (Indicators of Compromise)
Object Linking and Embedding
(Powershell) dropper
Backdoor
Data Bouncing
A technique for data exfiltration that uses external, trusted web hosts to carry out DNS resolution for you
Infostealer
Shoulder surfing
Ransomware
Pig butchering
This is particularly disturbing to me because there is a human element, a foreign component, crypto currency, probably a type of slave trade, etc. See the Bloomberg Businessweek story about this.
Sites set up to encourage unsuspecting victims to voluntarily hand over their identity documents and facial images in return for financial compensation.
Defense in depth
Lateral movement
Access policy
Micro segmentation
Least privilege
Privilege Escalation (PE)
Breach
Intrusion
Insider threat
Cache poisoning
I know it as DNS cache poisoning. If an attacker manages to fill the DNS resolver’s cache with records that have been altered or “poisoned.”
Teardrop attack
A teardrop attack exploits how systems reassemble fragmented data packets during transmission by sending overlapping fragments that the target system cannot properly reconstruct, leading to a denial of service.
A text-based interfaces that allow for remote server control.
Crypto Miner
RCE (Remote Code Execution)
Threat Actor
APT (Advanced Persistent Threat)
Compromise
Vulnerability
Bug
Worm
Remote Access VPN (RAVPN)
XDR (Extended Detection and Response)
SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
Path traversal vulnerability
An attacker can leverage path traversal sequences like “../” within a request to a vulnerable endpoint which ultimately allows access to sensitive files like /etc/shadow.
Tombstoning
Post-exploit persistence technique
Volumetric DDoS
MFA bomb
Bombard a user with notifications until they finally accept one.
Use-after-free (UAF)
A use-after-freevulnerability occurs when programmers do not manage dynamic memory allocation and deallocation properly in their programs.
Cold boot attack
A cold boot attack focuses on RAM and the fact that it is readable for a short while after a power cycle.
Formed in 2023 and known for its sophisticated cyber warfare attacks and successful hacks of high-security systems. Has a pro-Palestinian bent.
Silk Typhoon
A Chinese-based group focused on espionage, now targeting common IT solutions to gain initial access, and then compromise these companies’ downstream customer environments.
Volt Typhoon
2024. A China-nexus threat actor
Cybersecurity Terminology
What makes a term a cybersecurity term versus an It term? I had to think about it a bit. There is a lot of overlap for sure. Today to be in IT is to be mindful of security every working moment of your day. So I ended up with just a few terms which I threw into this bucket of cybersecurity terminology. It was my judgment call.
360
360 Security Group is a respected vendor in the threat intelligence arena.
Attack Surface
A loose way of talking about the variety of infrastructrure owned by an entity which is exposed to hacking.
ASM (Attack surface Management)
A testing and tracking tool a cyber security center might use.
Blast Radius
One of those annoying terms borrowed from the military that only marketing people like to throw around. It means what you think it might mean.
Blue Team – see Red Team
BSI (The German Federal Office for Information Security)
Cisco Talos
A cybersecurity technology and information security company that conducts threat research, vulnerability disclosure, and incident response for Cisco and its customers
Cryptomining
CSAM
The process of identifying, categorizing, tracking, and managing information technology (IT) assets to ensure their integrity, confidentiality, and availability
DDosia
A cross-platform program that conducts DDoS attacks with a pro-Russia bent against websites in Europe and other regions
DLP (Data Loss Prevention)
DLS (Data Leak Sites)
Sites where you can see who has had their data stolen.
Dwell Time
Time spent by a hacker in your network.
Hacktivism
Hacking done by activitsts.
Initial Access Broker
The agent who got access to a network and may hand it off to others.
IR (Incident Response)
Malspam
Spam containing malware, I guess.
MITRE ATT&CK
Offensive Security
See red team.
Patch Tuesday
Microsoft releases patches for all their bugs on the first or second Tuesday of each month.
Red Team
In a red team/blue team exercise, the red team is made up of offensive security experts who try to attack an organization’s cybersecurity defenses.
Shodan
A search engine that allows users to find various types of devices connected to the internet, such as webcams, routers, and servers, plus what software versions are running.
TOR (The Onion Router)
A series of network nodes which provide anonymity to its users. Mainly used for nefarious pruposes.
TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures)
Whitehat
The good guys.
IT terminology
I’ve chosen the terms I personally come across. I find most IT concepts not particularly difficult to understand, but they are usually coded in a firehose of shorthand references. So a reference is helpful. Thus I’ve also decided to include some terms specific to some of the more popular vendors – because you hear others talking about them using their terminology and shorthand references, and you want to know what they are saying. Some of the definitions are meant to be humorous, like Johnson’s dictionary.
2FA (2 Factor Authentication)
3PL (3rd Party Logistics)
802.1x
ACL (Access Control List)
AD (Active Directory)
ADO (Azure DevOps)
AFK (Away From Keyboard)
Agentic AI
Autonomous agents power by AI. Term becoming popular in 2025.
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence)
AGI is the theory and development of computer systems that can act rationally.
AIOps
Applying AI to IT operations.
AIP (Azure Information Protection)
This is the old name as of March 2025. See MPIP for the new name.
AIX
A Unix variant supported by IBM. It had really strange conventions.
AMS (Access Management Systems)
Physical building access through authentication methods like passwords, biometrics, and multi-factor authentication.
Anaconda
A python development platform.
ANN (Artificial Neural Network)
Ansible
I would call it an open source orchestrator.
anti-aliasing
When you smooth out color in neighboring pixels.
anycast
Anydesk
A popular remote management software.
AP (Access Point)
apache
A formerly popular open source web server which became bloated with features.
APM (Application Performance Management)
ARD (Apple Remote Desktop)
ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers)
They dole out blocks of IPv4 and IPv6 public address space.
ARM
A processor architecture from ARM Corporation, as opposed to, e.g., x86. Raspberry Pis use ARM. I think Androids do as well.
ARP (Address Resolution Protocol)
ASCII
An early attempt at representing alpha-numeric characters in binary. Was very english-focussed.
ASN (Autonomous System Number)
Each AS is assigned an autonomous system number, for use in Border Gateway Protocol routing
ASN.1 (Abstract Syntax Notation One)
A standard interface description language (IDL) for defining data structures that can be serialized and deserialized in a cross-platform way.
ASPA (Autonomous System Provider Authorization)
An add-on to RPKI that allows an ASN to create a record that lists which ASNs can be providers for that ASN. The concepts are “customer” (an ASN) and “providers” (a list of ASNs). This is used to do hop by hop checking of AS paths.
ASR (Aggregation Services Router)
A high-end Interent router offered by Cisco for business customers.
Assembly
The raw instructions for a microprocessor to follow which results from compiling a program.
AT (Authenticated Transfer [Protocol])
A protocol supporting social networking. Used by Bluesky.
At scale
A scaled-up deployment.
AV (anti-virus)
AWS (Amazon Web Services)
AZ (Azure)
Azure AD
Beacon
System which broadcasts keep alive data regularly, I think.
BeQ (not sure about this one yet)
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)
BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Daemon)
An open source implementation of DNS, found on many flavors of linux.
BIOS (Basic Input/Output System)
BITNET
An early (pre-Internet) network for High Energy Physics which connected some universities in the US with some in Europe. I used to use it.
BOM (Bill of Material)
Boot start
A flag for a driver in Windows that tells it to always start on boot.
bootp
A predecessor protocol to DHCP.
broadcast
Browser
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
I.e., when employees are permitted to use their personal smartphone to conduct company business.
BYOL (Bring Your Own License)
F5 permits this approach to licensing one of their cloud appliances.
CA (Certificate Authority)
Callback
A routine designed to be called when someone else’s code is executing. At least that’s how I understand it.
CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)
An entry-level IT certification covering Cisco products.
CDL (Cortex Data Lake)
Another Palo Alto Networks term.
CDR (Call Detail Record)
Metadata for a phone call.
CDN (Content Distribution Network)
CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol)
This protocol allows devices connected to switch ports to learn what switch and which switch port they are connected to. It is a layer 2 protocol.
CDR (Cloud Detection and Response)
CDSS (Cloud Delivered Security Services)
Only used in Palo Alto Networks land.
CE (Customer Edge or Customer Equipment)
CGN (Carrier Grade NAT)
The address space 100.64.0.0/10 is handled specially by ISPs for CGN. RFC 6598
CHAP
Chatbot
A computer program that simulates human conversation with and end user.
Checksum
An XOR operation on binary data which creates a short and unique signature. Different algorithms may be used.
Chrome
An OS from Google based on linux and somewhat more inflexible and less buggy than Windows.
Chromebook
A laptop which runs CHROME OS.
Chromium
I think this is the open source(?) foundation for some browsers such as Edge.
CI (Configuration Item)
An ITIL term referring to the object upon which changes are made.
CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency)
CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)
CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)
Cleartext
Format where no encryption has been applied.
CLI (Command Line Interface)
Client Server
Was all the rage 20 years ago.
CMDB (Configuration Management Database)
CMO (Current Mode of Operations)
CNN (Congruential Neural Network)
CO (Central Office)
Old telecom lingo.
Codec (Compressor-Decompressor)
A technology or software that encodes and decodes digital data streams or signals
Computer Vision
A field of AI that leverages machine learning and neutral networks to enable machines to identify and understand visual information such as images and videos.
Copilot
Microsoft’s AI built into their productivity software. Sorry, no more Clippy.
Courrier
A well-known fixed-width font.
CPE (Customer Premise Equipment)
CRL (Certificate Revocation List)
A primitive predecessor to OCSP.
CSAM (Customer Success Account Manager)
CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management)
CSR (Certificate Signing Request)
CSSA (Cyber Security Sharing and Analytics alliance)
CUPS (Common Unix Printing Systems)
curl
A simple browser for the command line.
Cursor
The underline thingy which shows where your typed text will be entered into a document or form.
CVE
CVEs, or Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, are a maintained list of vulnerabilities and exploits in computer systems. These exploits can affect anything, from phones to PCs to servers or software. Once a vulnerability is made public, it’s given a name in the format CVE–. There are also scoring systems for CVEs, like the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System), which assigns a score based on a series of categories, such as how easy the vulnerability is to exploit, whether any prior access or authentication is required, as well as the impact the exploit could have.
CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System)
Part of CVE lingo.
d-marc (Demarcation panel)
Telecom concept: a board where the handoff from cables from the street meet cables frmo the data center.
DAS (Distributed Antenna System)
An extensive network of strategically placed antennas throughout a building to enhance cellular coverage where it’s needed.
DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing)
Data at rest
Data in motion
Data Plane
A physical security appliance separates data traffic from its management traffic, which transits the managemenbt plane.
Data Remanence
The residual representation of data that remains even after attempting to erase or initialize RAM.
DDI (DNS, DHCP and IP address management)
Debian Linux
A nice distro which I prefer. It is free and open source. Its packages are relatively uptodate.
Deduplication
A data optimization technique used to eliminate duplicate copies of data.
Deep Learning
A subset of machine learningthat focus on using deep neural networks with multiple layers to model complex patterns in data.
Deepfake
A manipulated video or other digital representation produced by sophisticated machine-learning techniquies that yield seemingly realistic, but fabricated images and sounds.
DHCP (Dynamic Host Control Protocol)
Distributed Cloud
A Gartner term for a SaaS service which runs over multiple cloud environments.
DLL (Dynamic Link Library)
It’s a Windows thing.
DMA (Digital Millenium Act)
A law intended to bring copyright into the digital age.
DNAT (Destination NAT)
DNS (Domain Name System)
DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions)
DOA (Dead on Arrival)
Usage: That equipment arrived DOA!
Docker
DoH (DNS over HTTPS)
Domain
Downselect
Reducing the number of vendors under consideration during the RFP process. Term maybe only used in companies where I have worked??
dp (data independent pixel)
Unit which assumes a screen resolution of 160 pixels per inch.
DR (Disaster Recovery)
DRDC (Disaster Recovery Data Center)
Perhaps only used at my company?
DRM (Digital Rights Management)
DTLS (Datagram Transport Layer Security)
A communications protocol providing security to datagram-based applications by allowing them to communicate in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, or message forgery.
DVI (DeVice Independent file)
See LaTEX entry.
EAP
East-West
Data movement with a data center, I believe, as oppose to North-South.
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization)
Hey, an IT person needs to know some business terminology!
EDT
The first editor in the VAX/VMS world. It got renamed to TPU.
Eduroam
Enhanced Factory Reset (EFR)
Entra
From Microsoft. The new name for Azure AD
EntraID
Another way to refer to Entra from Microsoft.
ERRP (Expired Registration Recovery Policy)
It’s an ICANN-specific acronym.
ETR (Estimated Time to Restore)
EU AI Act
EULA (End User Licnese Agreement)
Exact Data Matching (EDM)
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
FE (Field Engineer)
A network vendor sends out an FE to a down site.
Fedora Linux
Free and open source linux. New features are introduced here before migrating into Redhat Linux
FEX (Fabric Extender)
FIFO (First in, First Out)
FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard)
Government security practices. Best to avoid if possible.
FM (Fabric Manager)
I.e., the Gigamon Fabric Manager. A kind of informal acronym I just heard being used.
Fortran
A very basic procedural programming language once popular in the scientific and engineering communities.
Fuzzy Logic
Uses non-exact matching.
FMO (Future Mode of Operation)
As opposed to CMO.
FN (False Negative)
FO (Fiber Optic)
An informal abbreviation used by networking folks.
Forensics
Fortran
An ancient procedural programming language popular in the scientific and engineering communities from decades ago.
FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)
FP (False Positive)
freeBSD
A Unix variant which still exists today.
Fritz!Box
A popular home router in Germany.
(Azure) Front Door
A scalable and secure entry point for fast delivery of global web applications.
FW (Firewall)
GA (General Availability)
Gartner Group
A well-regarded research firm which reviews software and SaaS products. They decide which vendors are in the Magic Quadrant.
GBIC
A type of fiber optic transceiver that converts electric signals to optical signals.
GCP (Google Cloud Provider)
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
An EU directive to achieve data privacy.
Generative AI
AI which can create new human-quality content, including text, images, audio or video.
Ghostscript
An open source postscript implementation.
GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice)
FDA lingo that implies their rules are being followed.
GMT – see UTC
gopher
An information retrieval protocol popular with libraries just prior to the web taking off.
GP (Global Protect)
Palo Alto Network’s name for their VPN offering.
GPMI (General Purpose Media Interface)
The successor to HDMI in China.
GRE
An encrypted tunneling protocol.
GRUB (probably stands for something silly because it’s linux after all)
Linux bootloader.
GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing)
Intelligent DNS-based load-balacing.
GSMO (Global Service Module Owner)
Not sure how widespread this usage is!
GUI (Graphical User Interface)
HA (High Availability)
Hallucination
When an LLM perceives patterns that are non-existent creating nonsensical or inaccurate outputs.
Hands and Eyes
When you don’t have physical access to a server, you need someone who does to be this for you.
A DDI vendor whose products are considered best-in-class.
ISC (Internet Systems Consortium)
They develop and maintain Internet infrastructuire software such as BIND.
ISC2 (International Information System Security Certification Consortium)
Organization which specializes in training and certifications for cybersecurity professionals. Nothing at all to do with ISC despite the similar name!
ITOM (IT Operations Management)
IPAM (IP Address Management)
IPI (IP Intelligence)
At least in the world of F5 this means IP Intelligence, i.e., the reputation of a given IP address.
IPS (Intrusion Prevention System)
IPSEC
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6)
iRule
F5 specific lingo for programmable control over load-balancing and routing decisions. Uses the TCL language.
ISC (Internet Software Consortium)
A body which maintains an open source reference implementation for DNS (BIND) and DHCP.
ISO 9001
ISP (Internet Service Provider)
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library)
Java
A language which was going to change the world until it was ruined by Oracle.
JMRT (Juniper Malware Removal Tool)
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
Pronounced JAY-son. A popluar format for data exchange. Sort of human-friendly. Example: {“hi”:”there”,”subnets_ignore”:[“10/8″,”192.168/16”]}
Kanban
Agile way of tracking progress on tasks and brief meetings.
Kernel mode
Kerning
Adjusting the spacing between letters in a proportional font.
KEV (Known Exploited vulnerabilities)
CISA maintains this catalog.
K8s (Kubernetes)
Open source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications
KQL (Kusto Query Language)
Used to query large datasets in Azure.
KVM (Kernel Virtual Module)
L2TP (Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol)
L3, L4, L7 (Layer 3, Layer 4, Layer 7)
Refers to ISO 7-layer traffic model.
LACP (Link Aggregation Control Protocol)
Where you combine several physical interfaces into one logical port channel.
LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL and PHP)
An application stack which gives a server needed software to do “interesting things.”
LaTEX
A markup language based on TEX I used to use to write a scientific paper. I think it gets transformed into a DVI, and then into a postscript file.
LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)
LEC (Local Exchange Carrier)
Link
Linux
LiveSP
A Cisco enterprise metrics tool to provide visibility into LAN and WAN.
LLD (Low Level Design)
LLD (Low Level Discovery)
A command-line browser for unix systems.
LLDP (Link layer Discovery Protocol)
See also CDP
An open source OS similar to Unix.
LLM (Large Langiuage Model)
lynx
A command-line browser for linux systems.
MAC (Media Access Control) Address
Layer 2 address of a device, e.g., fa-2f-36-b4-8c-f5
Machine Learning
A subfield of AI that deals with creating systems that can learn from data and improve their performance without explicit programming.
Magic Quadrant
Gartner’s term for vendors who exceed in both vision and ability to execute.
Management Plane
See Data Plane.
Mandiant
MD5 (Message Digest 5)
MDF (Main Distribution Frame)
Patch panels in a server room. They connect to IDFs.
MDM (Mobile Device Management)
Management software used to administer smartphones and tablets.
MELT (Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces)
An acronym in the Observability space.
MFA (Multi Factor Authentication)
Mishing
An obscure security company probably trying to make a name for itself invented this one which will probably never catch on. Mobile-first phishing techniques: Smishing (SMS/text-based phishing), Quishing (QR code phishing), voice phishing, Wi-Fi-based phishing and more!
But actually referred to as the .NET Remoting: Core Protocol Specification, which specifies a mechanism by which a calling program can invoke a method in a different address space over the network.
MSA (Modular Smart Array)
A SAN developed by HPE which features shared block-level storage.
MSI
A file type from Microsoft which is self-extracting and installs an application.
MSS (Maximum Segment Size)
Set by a TCP option in the beginning of the communcation.
MTTI (Mean Time To Identification)
Probably only Cisco uses this acronym e.g., in their ThousandEyes product.
MTTR (Mean Time To Resolution)
MTU (Maximum transmission unit)
Often 1500 bytes.
multicast
NAESAD (North American Energy Software Assurance Database)
Named pipes
I read it’s a Windows thing. huh. Hardly. It’s been on unix systems long before it was a twinkle in the eye of Bill gates. It acts like a pipe (|) except you give it a name in the filesystem and so it is a special file type. It’s used for inter-process communication.
NAT (Network Address Translation)
NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
.NET
Netflow
Think of it like a call detail record for IP communications. Metadata for a communications stream.
Netscape
One of the original Internet-first companies. They built a pretty good browser which we used back in 1996. They also built web server and other server software and helped promulgate Java and javascript.
NFS (Network File System)
A file share protocol popular on Unix systems.
NGFW (Next Generation FireWall)
Palo Alto Networks describes their firewalls this way.
NGINX
A web server that is superioir to apache for most applications.
NLP (Natural Language Processing)
A branch of AI that uses machine learning to enable computers to understand, interpret, and respond to human language.
NOC (Network Operations Center)
NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocl)
See Usenet.
North-South
Data movement from/to the data center. Also see East-West.
NQS (Network Queueing System)
We used to use NQS to distribute batch jobs amongst members of an Ultrix cluster.
NSA (National Security Agency)
NTLM
Relies on a three-way handshake between the client and server to authenticate a user.
NTU (Network Termination Unit)
Allows customer premises equipment to be connected to the switching equipment at the telco’s central office (CO)
OAuth bearer token
A security token with the property that any party in possession of the token (a “bearer“) can use the token in any way that any other party in possession of it can.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
OCSP
A service which tells you if a certificate has been revoked.
An online community that produces freely available articles, methodologies, documentation, tools, and technologies in the fields of IoT, system software and web application security.
P2V (Physical to Virtual)
Migrating a physical server to a VM.
PAM (Privilege Access Management)
PAN-OS
Palo Alto Networks name for its firewall OS.
PAP
Patch
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
PBF (Policy Based Forwarding)
PBR (Policy Based Routing)
PCI (Payment Card International?)
A standard which seeks to define security practices around the handling of credit cards.
PDF (Portable Document File)
PDU (Protocol Data Unit)
PE (Provider Edge)
Telecom lingo so cisco uses this term a lot.
PEM (Privacy Enhanced Mail)
The format certificates are normally stored in.
PHP (Probably stands for something)
A scripting language often used to program back-end web servers.
Photoshop
adobe’s photo-editing software. Considered the premier option.
PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
Ping
I guess we all know what it means. Usually implemented with ICMP.
PIP
Package management system for python.
pixel
PKCS (Public Key Cryptography Standard)
PKI (Public Key Infrastructure)
Plain Text
A human-readable format, i.e., no encyrption and not a binary file.
PLC (Programmable Logic Controller)
PM (Product Manager)
Could also be Project Manager but for me it usually means Product Manager.
PO (Purchase Order)
POC (Point of Contact)
POC (Proof of Concept)
PoP (Point of Presence)
An Internet provider has POPs in various locales.
POP3 (Post Office Protocol)
A very old protocol for mail servers and mail clients.
Port Channel
Portable Executable (PE)
POS (Point Of Sale)
I.e., what used to be called the cash register.
POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service)
Voice-grade telephone service employing analog signal transmission over copper
POV (Proof of Value)
PPT (PowerPoint)
A Powerpoint file.
Private Cloud
Prompt Engineering
The practice of crafting effective prompts that elicit high-quality answers from generative AI tools.
PS (PostScript)
A file type I used to use. It is a vector-oriented language, stack-based, which tells A printer how to move its ink pens around the page. Before there was PDF, there was postscript.
PS (PowerShell)
A versatile scripting language developed by Microsoft and available on all Windows computers.
PS (Professional Services)
Most IT vendors have a professional services line of business which would love to charge you extra to make their product actually work.
PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network)
PTO (Paid Time Off)
Purple Team
Purple teams combine red team and blue team functions. See Red Team.
Putty
A popular software which implements an ssh client.
PXE (pronounced “pixie”)
A protocol offering a host a way to boot up via its network card.
PyPi (Python Package Index)
Python
A popular programming language, not the snake.
QR (Quick Response)
Those funny pixelated black-and-white sqaures which usuall;y convey a URL.
QSFP (Quad Small Form factor Pluggable)
A newer kind of SFP.
Quad9
A public DNS resolver with IP 9.9.9.9 run by a Swiss non-profit.
Quishing
QR-code phishing.
R
A development language popular in the data science community.
A method to customize LLMs by allowing it to train on internal data sources.
Ray
An open-source unified compute framework used by the likes of OpenAI, Uber, and Amazon which simplifies the scaling of AI and Python workloads, including everything from reinforcement learning and deep learning to tuning and model serving.
RBAC (Role-Based Access Control)
RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol)
Real Time
A real time OS is one which guarantees execution of the highest priority process.
Recursive
A function which calls itself.
Redhat Linux
A commercialized version of Fedora whose packages are always dated, usually by years.
Redirect
Relational Database
The traditional database with tables of rows of columns.
Remediation
Addressing a security flaw.
Remote Desktop Licensing (RDL) services
Often deployed on Windows severs with Remote Desktop Services deployed.
Responsive Design
Really, it just means an app alters its appearance to fit the device from which it is being used.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
Adding internal documents to your language model.
Reverse Engineer
To figure out the basic building blocks or code by first observing behavior of a system.
Reverse Proxy
A TCP gateway which terminates a tcp connection and maintains a separate tcp connection to a back-end server.
RFC (Request for Comment)
RFI (Requst for Information)
RFO (Reason for Outage)
RFP (Request for Proposal)
RFQ (Request for Quote)
RHSA (Redhat Security Advisory)
RIPE
RIR (Regional Internet Registry)
The place where ASN <-> IP prefix pairs are registered. The RIRs are ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LACNIC and AFRINIC.
RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization)
You hear this a lot when It guys need to get a replacement for failed equipment.
RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management)
A software platform that allows IT service providers to monitor and manage their clients’ IT systems remotely.
ROA (Route Origin Authorization)
ROCE (Return on Capital Employed)
Hey, an IT person has to know a few business terms!
Round Robin
A load balancing algorithm where each back-end server is used in a rotating sequence.
Route 53
In AWS-land, an intellugent DNS service, i.e., geoDNS +.
RPC (Remote Procedure Call)
RPKI (Resource Public key Infrastructure)
Provides a way to connect Internet number resource information to a trust anchor.
RPi (Raspberry Pi)
A popular small, inexpensive server aimed at the educational crowd.
RPM (Redhat Package Manager)
RPZ (Response Policy Zone)
A concept in DNS for either a DNS firewall or way to overwrite DNS responses.
RR (Resource Record)
RSA
Asymmetric encryption standard named after its creators, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman.
RTFM (Read The “flippin” Manual)
SaaS (Software as a Service)
SAML
SAN (Storage Area Network)
SAN (Subject Alternative Name)
The server names which an SSL certificate covers.
SANS
Private outfit in the US which specializes in information security and cybersecurity training.
Sans-Serif
A font type which does not have the fancy rounded blobs at the tips of the letter, such as Helvetica.
SASE (Secure Access Service Edge)
Palo Alto Networks likes to think they invented this term, but once Gartner started to use it they went on to embrace some other term. Or maybe it was the other way around.
SAN (Subject Alternative Name)
In certificate-land, an extension field which lists all the various names for which this certificate is authorized for.
SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)
That’s for OT stuff.
Scale sets
In cloud, a service which automates the build-up or tear-down of VMs behind a load balancer.
A timeshare operating system from DEC which I used in college.
TPM (Trusted Platform Module)
TPM, a Microsoft security feature required by Windows 11, is a dedicated chip designed to provide “hardware-level security services for your device,” keeping your private information and credentials safe from unauthorized users.
TPU
My favorite editor in the VAX/VMS world. Successor of EDT.
TSF (Tech Support File)
Palo Alto Networks-specific lingo for a dump file they require for a firewall support case.
TSID (Threat Signature Indicator)
Only used in the world of Palo Alto Networks.
TW (Time Window)
Ubuntu Linux
A commercialized implementation of Debian Linux from Canonical.
UC (Unified Communications)
Cisco likes this term.
udev rules
udev rules in Linux are used to manage device nodes in the /dev directory. Those nodes are created and removed every time a user connects or disconnects a device.
UFS (Unmanaged File Service)
Term probably specific to a company where I worked, but oh well, that’s how acronyms get started.
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface)
It’s like the boot environment, used by Windows OSes.
UI5
SAP’s UI for HTML 5.
Ultrix
A Unix variant which ran on DEC workstations.
Underlay
SD Wan terminology for the underlying network. As opposed to overlay.
Unit testing
UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply)
URL
Use case
Usenet
In the old pre-reddit days, these were forums to discuss specific topics which had its own protocol, NNTP.
UTC (Universal Time Coordinated)
What used to be called GMT.
UTF-8
Common representation of common language characters. I think of it as a successor to ASCII.
Validated
In FDA parlance, an adjective used to describe a system which follows FDA controls. It’s usually a pain in the rear to run a validated system, e.g., as part of a GMP environment.
VAX (probably stands for something)
A legacy line of micro-computers sold by Digital Equipment Corporation, as in, the VAX 8600. The OS was called VMS.
VAX/VMS
See entry for VAX.
VDI
A virtual desktop offered by Citrix.
Veriexec (Verified Exec)
A Juniper device kernel-based file integrity subsystem that protects the OS from unauthorized code binaries
VCU (Video Conference Unit)
Cisco terminology.
VLAN
VM (Virtual Machine)
VM/CMS
A piece of crap operating system for IBM mainframes back in the day. As I recall essentially everything had to be submitted as a batch job.
VMSS (Virtual machine Scale Set)
Azure uses this abbreviation.
VMWare
Will Broadcom destroy this company the way they did to Bluecoat/Symantec?
VNC (Virtual Networking Computer)
VNC is a software used to remotely control a computer.
VOIP (Voice Over IP)
As opposed to analog phone lines.
VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)
vPC (Virtual Port Channel)
A virtual port channel (vPC) allows links that are physically connected to two different Cisco FEXes to appear as a single port channel by a third device.
VPG (Virtual Port Group)
A Cisco-ism.
VPN – Virtual Private Network
VRF
A logically separated network when using MPLS.
WAF (Web Application Firewall)
WAIS (Wide Area Information System, or something like that)
Another competitor to the world wide web. I believe Brewster Kahle was behind it?
WAP (Wireless Access Point)
Waterfall
A discredited approach to software development.
Webhook
Website
Wiki
A less formal and usually more collaborative approach to documentation, the prime example being Wikipedia.
Windows PE or Win PE
A small OS for repairing or restoring Windows systems.
WLC (Wireless LAN Controller)
WSUS (Windows Server Update Services)
Enables administrators to manage the distribution of updates and hotfixes for Windows servers in an enterprise.
WWW (World Wide Web)
X
Formerly knownm as Twitter. Elon Musk’s disastrous attempt at social media.
x86
A type of processor architecture. Found in most Windows PCs.
XHR (XMLHttpRequest)
I.e., ajax.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
Common file format for data exchange, but not too human-friendly.
x-mosaic
This is the browser I used in 1993. It was the Mosaic browser for X-Windows, developed by none other than Marc Andreesson.
X-Windows
The GUI environment for Unix. Most of its utilities have names beginning with x such as xterm.
YAML
YARA
Zabbix
An open source infrastructure monitoring system.
ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Architecture)
Assumes tha even on your Intranet you can’t trust anyone trying to access your systems until they’ve been vetted, each and every time.
After its customary overnight charging my A51 simply showed me a black screen in the morning. Yet I felt something was there because when I plugged it into the computer’s USB port the device was recognized. I was very concerned. But I did manage to completely fix it!
The symptoms
So various sites address this problem and give somewhat different advice. I sort of needed to combine them. So let’s review.
Black screen
Holding power button down for any length of time does nothing
plugging in to USB port of computer shows A51 device
What kind of works, but not really
Yes it’s true that holding the power button and volume down button simultaneously for a few seconds (about three or four) will bring up a menu. The choices presented are
Restart
Power off
Emergency Call
There’s no point to try Emergency Call. But when you try Restart you are asked to Restart a second time. Then the screen goes black again and you are back to where you started. If you choose Power off the screen goes black and you are back to where you started.
What actually works
Continue to hold the power button and volume down button simultaneously – ignore the screen you get mentioned above. Then after another 15 seconds or so it displays a lightning bolt inside a cricle. And if you keep holding that will disappear and you have a black screen. Keep holding and the lightning bolt appears, etc. So let them go. I don’t think it matters at which stage.
Now hopefully you have realy powered off the phone. So then hold the power button for a few seconds like you do to start the phone after it’s been powered off. It should start normally now.
As the other posts say, when you see Samsung on your screen you know you are golden.
Conclusion
I have shared what worked for me recover my Samsugn Galaxy A51 from its Black Screen of Death.
Many of us were quite enthusiastically awaiting the availability of SpaceX’s Starlink Internet service. On paper it sounded promising. the first results came in and the reality was far less impressive, but the update I got yesterday (July 2023) is that the service got better and better.
July 2023 Update
I guess they continued to add more satellites making the coverage better and better. When there is an outage it is only for a second – short enough for even real-time media to easily recover.
The original post, written when the service was newer, is below.
The details
I do not have this service but spoke with someone who does. He lives in Puerto Rico where the broadband option are limited. There’s the local cable company, then maybe some boutique services where you use microwave dishes, and this year, finally, Starlink. He had just a couple users on it. I think the net results are that it basically works, but with a big caveat. It sucks for real-time communication. And that’s precisely what he needed it for.
So you know when you’re streaming a movie, that downloads the movie in six(?) second chunks, so it’s a bit robust in the face of brief outages. But when you’re doing web conferencing an outage is very noticeable. And that’s what they experienced, time and again. Brief outages that interrupted their real-time applications. Perhaps lasting for a few seconds, but enough to spoil the broadcast.
Then one night, knowing their cable provider, Liberty, was out, they tested it again. It seemed fine at night. But during the day next day it failed in the same way – brief, disruptive outages.
Maybe some of it is due to holes in the satellite coverage and will get better as the fleet fills out. We’re not sure at this point.
And, yes, the dish was placed in a place where the app showed something like 98% visibility to the satellites in the sky.
Some interesting screenshots of what a Starlink IP looks like in Puerto Rico
ipinfo.ioipchicken.comspeedtest results
That speedtest looks quite good to me!
Results of Starlink app for this actual user in Puerto RicoRunning PING to google.com shows a single dropped packet
A few words from the actual user
Liberty Cable is not working even after a change of the cable modem. So this past two weeks his household has been exclusively using Starlink. In his own words:
“The single most important thing to consider when using Starlink is how obstructed your northern facing view of the sky is. I am attaching a screenshot from my Starlink app. The red shows the obstructed area. My placement is 2.5% obstructed but I still get an interruption every 4 minutes the app says. In reality it might be every 20 minutes for a few seconds.
“While my Liberty service has been out Starlink has been a life saver for us. A second user can still do her video calls but it will freeze during those 20-ish minute intervals for a few seconds. It’s not the end of the world for her but not totally idea.
“For me, my VPN will disconnect for those same few seconds and then will reconnect. If I’m entering a trade that can be a crucial few seconds while my vpn and software reconnects, but it’s workable.
“The Starlink app is free and available for everyone to use. I would suggest that anyone who is interested in the service to first download the app and scan the sky where they think they have the freest point of view north. They will only get purely uninterrupted service if the app registers 100% obstacle-free view. The properties that are most suited for Starlink are the ones at the top of a hill, with a field, or a roof taller than the surrounding trees, especially the trees to the north. An obstructed view like mine is perfectly suitable for streaming movies as they tend to buffer a few minutes in advance, downloading files, and surfing the web. Without a completely obstructed view of the sky, video calls, VPN connection, Remote desktop connection, and online gaming will be interrupted in a frustrating manner.
“I am also attaching a text file of my results from running a ping -t to google.com from my Starlink connection. This test ran for about 25 minutes. The request time outs are the times when the Starlink satellite was not able to connect due to my obstructions. However, also notice that during these times it only lost 1 ping and was immediately able to reconnect. Again, somewhat frustrating but it’s a usable product.
And during Hurricane Fiona?
Starlink performed like a champ during the hurricane. I assumed that coverage would be spotty during the drenching downpour but the user said no he was streaming Netflix. It was just a little more spotty than usual. Now that the island is without power as I write this, his Internet service is as good as usual and the day after the hurricane was a normal (remote) work day like any other.
Conclusion
Don’t throw away your cable modem*. In general as of this writing in June 2022, Starlink is a good solution for those working from home, but be prepared to be bumped every 20 minutes or so from your video conferencing or other real time uses. And of course it’s good for surfing the web or on-demand streaming.
I don’t cnosider this the final word however. There’s still hope. I’ll update this post if the quality of service ever improves.
*Unless you’re one of the many whose cable modem service isn’t all that great to begin with.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to access a web site in China in your Edge browser, you may find that from that point onwards all your new tab pages display in Chinese despite of your best efforts to eradicate it.
The details
I was in that same boar until today. There are many bad leads out there on the Internet. In fact I never did find the solution on the Internet. I got it from a colleague.
You click on the three dots, go to Settings and search for reset.
Do the Reset. It is a little disruptive, as i have found. It does not delete everything, but it certainly resets some things. As soon as that’s done you will no longer have new tab pages be in Chinese.
My wife was stuck while using the WW app on her Samsung A51 smartphone. She needed to lookup a nearby “studio.” We’ve all seen these forms – you enter a zipcode and up pops their nearby locations. But in this case there was a problem. No keyboard was popping up! Instead the bottom of the screen below the search field was filled with some blather which we could not get rid of to reveal the presumably hidden software keyboard.
The (kludge) solution
Please note that I am a specialist in doing things the wrong way that manage to get it done. I noticed the field still permitted long touch, and hence paste (from the clipboard). So I told her to enter the zipcode into another app such as Evernote, copy that text into the clipboard, return to the WW app and paste it into that field.
And do you know – that actually worked!
Conclusion
So if you’re in a jam and just need to fill out a field on your Android phone but your software keyboard isn’t appearing, a way out is to paste the desired content from another app such as Evernote or Onenote.
I’m sure many people have faced this. You like to query your Echo Dot for basic information and you’d like to take it with you and work in your hotel room so you can get the local weather, etc. But then you are foiled by the setup process until you finally give up after trying to discover it as a new device numerous times.
I was in that exact situation last week. Finally I thought of something that broke me out of the discover device loop, so I wanted to share that.
But my own trick mostly does not work. So my 2024 update is to simply buy a pocket vpn router. See further below at the end of this article.
The details
A hotel will typically offer Internet, but through a “captive portal.” This means, technically, the password they provide you at the front desk is not the SSID password, but a password to their portal’s web site. So it is technically not part of the WiFi information. That’s what makes it so hard for dumb devices like the Echo Dot to get past that page.
Normally you go to your room after checking in, and you perhaps set your phone to use their WiFi after dutifully logging in to the portal page. Then you get around to setting up your Echo device. I could not manage to finish the Echo Dot configuration under those conditions last week, though I tried many times over, including manual setup.
What I realized, though, is that it might help to start clean. So I “forgot” the hotel’s SSID (WiFi) on my phone. Then I was only using 4G communication. Then I went through the Device Setup in the Alexa App on my phone. At some point you get asked which WiFi to connect to, and you get redirected to the captive portal, where you put in the information. In other words I stumbled my way through it. But then it did work.
So I’d say the upshot is to configure the Echo Dot first before setting up your phone to use the hotel’s WiFi. I’m not sure it will always work, but at least it did work once! But if you did things in the wrong order go to your WiFi settings and “forget” the hotel’s WiFi – it may have the same effect.
2nd test – successful
Since I’m supposed to be the expert I had the opportunity to try my own technique at another hotel. It was about 10 minutes of stumbling, but then it did work in the end. Maybe my tip helped, maybe not.
As I do not have the straight recipe, you have to be willing to try different things. Pay special attention to whether or not your setup device is connected to the Dot’s WiFi (amazon-dkd or something like that) or not. That’s generally a good thing. Then you have it (the Dot) search for available WiFi networks. I guess. It’s confusing. You’ll probably need to put your Dot into setup mode mulitple times. Esimated time to stumble your way through it: 10 minutes. You can decide if it’s worth it or not.
Other ways
I’m thinking about mac address emulation, i.e., temporarily emulate the MAC address of the Echo device with a more amenable device, and do the poral login. But I haven’t had time to research it. I will post it here if I ever figure that out.
2024 update – give up and get a pocket vpn router
I’ve had a string of failed attempts at hotels with captive portals lately. I am going to throw in the towel and buy a pocket vpn which my boss told me about. Here’s how you use it to connect to a hotel’s WiFi login screen, AKA captive portal: https://docs.gl-inet.com/en/4/tutorials/connect_to_a_hotspot_with_captive_portal/
This book is mainly about what to make of the very unusual sighting of an object which came from outside our solar system in 2017, dubbed ‘Oumuamua.
This book is written at a very simple level – perhaps fifth grade or sixth grade? So I guess it’d be a great addition to a middle school library. I was aching for some more details.
I’m actually ready and willing to ‘believe.” For me the main thing was the paucity of facts presented.
The biggest failing of the author is to fail to be so guarded! Professor Avi, you are uniquely qualified to spin any plausible story about this object. Surely you have thought of many origin stories for this thing. Why not share them? This is a book, after all, not a scientific publication. We won’t peer review you for daring to create a plausible backstory for this object.
For me to make my points I have to give some background so everyone sees what I am seeing.
Professor Avi has this super cool lightsail project. Something like 10 GigaWatt lasers are required to send a super slender light sail up to 1/10th the speed of light.
An aside. Wouldn’t a multi Gigawatt blast create a plasma out of the atmosphere, thereby transferring its power to the air rather than the target lightsail? Maybe you overcome that by spreading the laser over a wide area. or using micosecond blasts. Not sure. And what about the reflecting rays? Can they be adequately disbursed to avoid singeing the earth?
But I digress. Sending any macro object to any fraction of the speed of light is wondrous. And dangerous. By conservation of energy I have to assume the thing at that speed would have 10? 100? gigajoules of energy (I will do the math later). Imagine the consequences of an earth-like planet being “visited” by one of those things. Either cataclysmic, or at least terrifying to those lifeforms. Yes, I know the odds of collision are infinitesimal. But they are not zero. And no way can these things be aimed with such precision to avoid that scenario altogether. Not to mention the idea is to send thousands or millions of them out. Welcome to mankind, extraterrestrials, we like to announce our entrance with a bang!
For instance, ‘Oumuamua, though it comes from outside our solar system, is at the local system of rest of the nearby stars. So that is pretty remarkable, and it means its speed is not anywhere close to a fraction of the speed of light, unlike Prof Avi’s lightsails. Why is that? This particular civilization felt they could wait around thousands of years?? Or did it start out at a fraction of the speed of light and then get decelerated as it neared its target? And if so, by what force?
And when I learned it sped up as it zoomed around the sun, I immediately thought of the analogy of our space missions which sometimes use giant planets like Jupiter to pick up speed and slingshot away faster than they had been going. Was ‘Oumuamua purposely aimed near to our sun for its boomerang effect? But it was tumbling like every eight hours. Should lightsails do that? Or does that show if it was a lightsail, it was no longer fit for purpose – inactive space junk? ‘Oumuamua trajectory deviated in the manner a lightsail might. But if it was slowly tumbling, how is that compatible with that statement? Aren’t lightsails only good for catching rays from one orientation? I actually don’t know but that’s what I would naively assume.
And it came from somewhere. if you reverse its trajectory, where did it come from? Was it an area with an inhabitable exoplanet?? Is that area receiving heightened scrutiny from SETI and company??
Going back to these lightsail things travelling at a good fraction of the speed of light, if one were to whip past us, would we even have a chance to see it? I believe it would be effectively invisible to us. How would they fare when colliding with space dust?
A manufactured lightsail would have great symmetry. The brightness profile was not a nice sine function, though close. What is the lightsail shape we can assume given the observed brightness profile fluctuation? A partially destroyed lightsail, perhaps? Where is the artist’s rendering of that?
So you see my point now? Don’t make me speculate. You’re the expert. Your speculations will be grounded in better science than anything I can dream up. So I guess Prof Avi, despite being a maverick in many ways and bucking current scientific thinking in promoting this as a thing created by alien life, reverted to the usual scientist’s conservatism in not making unprovable statements. And we are worse off because of it.
The great filter
And this term bothers me. It reads poorly. The first I heard it was from a fellow reader, and, even though I was familiar with the concept, I had to ask for a definition. A good term of art is self-explanatory. This is not a good term. Advanced civilizations probably last for only a few hundred or at best a few thousand years before they self-destruct. Looking at ourselves, we’re probably only going to get a few hundred the way we’re going. And this is supposed to be the great filter or something? I don’t have a better term, but far more clever people could come up with one I am sure. Like inevitable self-destruction, except something with more of a ring to it.
So I was asked, if this comes from an advanced civilization, is this a cause for hope, or a cause for despair? To argue the despair first, we got space junk from an advanced civilization. Probably they died out and we are left to do astroarchaeology on their junk. Not so great. But I am more hopeful. It’s incredibly difficult to target another star, they managed to do it. Maybe their lightsail had an accident or something. No worries because they sent out millions more like Prof Avi proposes to do. And, the main thing, we overlapped with them! We were advanced enough to detect another’s technology. Mostly because of the self-destruction tendencies, and the randomness of when advanced life forms, we’re not going to have any overlap with the vast majority of our fellow aliens. Their time in the sun was either way in the distant past, or will occur way in the future. That we overlapped in any way at all, probably means there are very, very many advanced civilizations, even in our stellar neighborhood, such that we had decent odds of intercepting and overlapping with one. And that gives me awe and excitement to learn about this advanced life. The hope comes from the viewpoint that these beings aren’t threatening to us. I have a naive belief that they would be trained in cultural sensitivities a la Star Trek The Next Generation or something as opposed to Independence Day, and decide not to wipe us out, nor to alter our technology (much), but more to observe us from afar. So on balance this encounter makes me hopeful.
Any insight if this was a civilization which reached the singularity? I.e., where it transferred its organic intelligence to a program in silicon or some other infinitely long-lasting, purpose-built medium??
So yes I am convinced the simplest explanation is the best one, and prof Avi’s hypothesis is by far the simplest. It raises a few questions which I would have preferred answered. And I was dying for more speculations. The speculations of an insider is worth 100 times the speculations of an outsider such as myself who doesn’t know what they don’t know!!
Philosophy
Prof Avi devotes a lot of time to philosophy. That’s all good. I didn’t learn too much from it, but I suppose others could find it useful. I don’t have an issue with it.
Resources
If I were really responsible, I’d do research, or at least read the darn book reviews on Amazon or get an answer to some of my questions on Quora or something. Probably a lot of my questions are addressed. But my time is not infinite and I’m not trying to impress anyone. As I learn more in the course of my ad hoc reading I will revise this blog with better information. And one more thing about my personal philosophy, I am writing this based solely on self-reflection and readings I’ve absorbed from years ago. I consider active research “cheating” in this regard, and I will inevitably be swayed and biased by the first educated opinion I come across.
Before reading this book, I was aware of this object from 2017 and that it was special, just based on my general reading of science news. It was only from this book that I realized how compelling the extraterrestrial case was.
Prof Avi took a few facts and made a book out of it. He should probably create a fictional but plausible back story for this object and make another book that addresses some of these basic questions.
February 2022 update
They have just discovered signs of a third exoplanet around Proxima Centauri, our nearest neighbor in the galaxy! That’s exciting. The place is only four light years away. Maybe a lightsail craft will visit it within our lifetimes.
With the advancements in technology, there are now many features that allow for seamless connection between devices using wireless connections. One of the things that allow this is smart TVs. Currently, the market for them is dominated by South Korean company Samsung. 39% of all sales come from them, which is a huge number in comparison to the 19% from LG and 9.3% from Sony.
There are also devices you can attach to your traditional TV to give it the functions of a smart one, so you won’t have to spend too much to upgrade. With this kind of TV, you can do many different things like stream from platforms like Netflix or Hulu, or even mirror the screen of a mobile device.
What is screen mirroring?
Screen mirroring is basically the ability to project what is on one device to a TV display. This is normally done through the internet and is comparable to connecting a laptop to a monitor using an HDMI cable. As mentioned earlier, there are different ways you can do this. Some TVs have built-in software that allows you to do this, while some use different hardware attachments.
Examples of these accessories are the Amazon Firestick, Apple TV, and Google Chromecast. The last two are some of the most popular ones on the market right now and they both have their own pros and cons. For those already in the Apple ecosystem, using the attachment from the same company will make connecting them easier. If you are looking for a cheaper alternative that can work on almost any device, the Chromecast is your best bet.
These accessories work because of their internet connection. The circuitry is specially designed to deliver signal integrity which ensures that digital and analog signals do not become distorted during propagation. Moreover, this guarantees that the signal can be recovered if temporarily lost, and that screen mirroring is smooth and won’t experience delays.
How to mirror your screen
Make sure your devices are connected to the same internet source
As the feature heavily relies on connection, the only way you can display what is on your other device is by being on the same internet source. Go to the settings of both of your gadgets and connect them to the same wi-fi line. This will make them identifiable to each other and make mirroring possible.
Read the instructions
If you are using a TV box or tool like the Apple TV or Chromecast, make sure to read the connection instructions on the manual. For example, the former requires you to use AirPlay and the manual should teach you which buttons to press on your phone or laptop. For the latter device, you might need a third-party app like the Google Home One to be able to get the accessory to mirror. Be sure to check the instructions given so you can make it a more seamless experience.
Check your Wi-Fi’s integrity
Because mirroring heavily relies on your internet, if the integrity (or speed) that your Wi-Fi is giving out is not enough or lacks bandwidth, you will have a lagging experience. Before you start, try to check the speed of your internet to be sure that it is strong enough. You can simply go on speed test sites on your browser. A good speed would be at least 25mbps, so if it is lower than that, you might not be able to connect or mirror easily.
Screen mirroring is just one-way technology has made life more connected. Gone are the days when other wires and connections were needed. The internet now enables you to perform tasks like projecting from a smaller device to a bigger one, hassle-free.
I am kind of annoyed that my simple problem with a Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner took way more Internet research than should have been the case to resolve. I hope to spare someone else that grief.
The details
Actually this is a friend’s vacuum cleaner. I don’t think it would have played out this way had I been the exclusive user of it. She noted that it stops and starts. It goes for a few seconds and stops. Then you can start it up for a few more seconds. And so on.
More clues
This model shows the charge remaining on the battery. Still two bars out of three, so that’s good. It’s been properly charged. After examining it I get the gut feeling that the brush motor shouldn’t draw all that much power.
We also note that when the long tube is removed and its just acting as a short hand-held device, it doesn’t stop.
After doing some Internet research (not finding an exact hit for this model), I am inspired to take things apart and check all the filters. On other models the filters can do you in. This one has been very lightly used to date and so the filters are remarkably clean. No filter issue.
The solution
So I check the brush and that area. It is simply clogged with gray dirt. I begin to clear it out with my fingers – seems no easy way to do it – until all the gray dirt is gone from the brush area where it goes up into the tube.
The results
The results are in. Works like a champ now!
Comment
I am more used to a more obscure brand of vacuum cleaner, Miele. It has a simple orange status thing that visibly shows you when it can’t suck in dirt or what not due to a full bag, a clog, whatever. In addition you can pretty much hear the pitch of the motor’w whine increase when there’s a clog. With the Dyson I didn’t notice that pitch change, nor was there any indicator of a cloged system. So Dyson’s design is faulty.
Conclusion
A Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner was only running for a few seconds at a time. After a few more seconds it could run again. The power level showed two of three led bars. The filters were all clean, but the brush head was clogged with dirt. Cleaning that out fixed everything nicely.
Dyson’s design has to be faulted for not making this clogged situation more evident. Strange, coming from a company which obviously prides itself on its innovative design.
