If you've ever wondered if your login details have ever been grabbed by one of the ever increasing hack breaches then I suggest you go to Troy Hunt's "Have I Been Pawned" website at haveibeenpwned.com. You could troll through the Dark Web and look at the actual data, but this is a lot easier and safer. Once there, search for your usernames and email addresses. Yes, more than one of mine had been hacked. If you use the same username, email address and password combinations for every site you sign up on then this becomes very important. Imagine there is some site that has been hacked for which you use the same combination you do on your banking site. Now the hacker has your banking login. I keep similar combinations for those sites I don't care about if they go in as me, but stricter and individual passwords for places like banks and PayPal. If the blood just drained out of your face as you think about this, then it may be time to update a few passwords and logins.
As mentioned last time every device connected to a network needs a unique identifier, known as an IP address, so that other devices know how to reach it. You care because there may be a time where you need to troubleshoot your home network and because it is interesting. Last time we covered the address itself and the subnet mask. Now it is time to move onto the default gateway. This is the connector to the outside world and may be called your router address or just "the router". It is where you send stuff to go to another network, typically the wider internet. Sometimes the router is built into the modem, other times it is before the modem connects to the incoming line. Its job is to manage traffic to your different connected devices.
When you type in a www address, your computer essentially sends a request to the target site to serve back a response, yes that's why they are called "servers". Your router will often have an address like 192.168.1.254 or 192.168.1.0 along with a public, external facing address that could be just about anything. The last piece of information in your IP set-up is the Domain Name System (DNS) servers, address(es). This turns the English like www.sitename.com into an IP address so that your request can be sent to the right target server. Think of it as the internet's phone book. Next time we'll discuss how each device gets an IP address and the problems this can cause.
The latest version of the wireless communications system that connects some of your devices, Bluetooth 5.0, is out. Bluetooth is typically the standard of choice for your smart home and Internet of things (IoT) devices. While the new version will work with older versions, the benefits are only between devices that support the latest standard. For example, iPhone 8s and Samsung Galaxy S8s and up support the new standard.
One new feature is support for Bluetooth low energy, giving wireless headsets better battery life. Apple AirPods use 4.2 so don't take advantage of the newer lower power requirements. To be fair at the time of writing there are very few 5.0 peripheral options but if you are looking for a new set of headphones and have the right device then wait until you can get it in a 5.0 version. 5.0 also supports dual audio, so you and a friend can listen to the music on your phone. The Galaxy S8 family of phones have this as an option. According to the Bluetooth standard organisation, Bluetooth 5.0 has four times the range, two times the speed, and eight times the broadcasting message capacity of older versions of Bluetooth. So that is up to 240m at 2mbps with line of sight. You won't need a new Bluetooth-enabled mouse so don't go overboard upgrading all your Bluetooth peripherals.
If you are looking for a free video conversion utility, then the free version of Any Video Converter will do a wide range of tasks for you. I was looking for something that would convert the webm format. After trying the converter I found out that you also need the associated audio file.
I love future tech. Scientists are working on a DNA-based storage device. The target is 215 petabytes of data, or two times Facebook plus Google, in a gramme of DNA. DNA conducts current very well and scientists already have a solution that will split and combine current using a four-strand DNA model. Anyway, back to reality. This approach is a very long way from any commercial applications and it will be very interesting to see how they can read or process 215 petabytes from a gramme of material.
Last for this issue are the new chips from Marvell Semiconductor. Their 802.3cd-compliant chips will run at 400Gbps across Ethernet and OEM versions, which will be available next year. So as usual stuff will be faster next year, an easy prediction.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.
