Posts made by Kit

Stands for General Purpose Input/Output. GPIO is a type of pin found on an integrated circuit that does not have a specific function. While most pins have a dedicated purpose, such as sending a signal to a certain component, the function of a GPIO pin is customizable and can be controlled by software.
Not all chips have GPIO pins, but they are commonly found on multifunction chips, such as those used in power managers and audio/video cards. They are also used by system-on-chip (SOC) circuits, which include a processor, memory, and external interfaces all on a single chip. GPIO pins allow these chips to be configured for different purposes and work with several types of components.
A popular device that makes use of GPIO pins is the Raspberry Pi, a single-board computer designed for hobbyists and educational purposes. It includes a row of GPIO pins along the edge of the board that provide the interface between the Raspberry Pi and other components. These pins act as switches that output 3.3 volts when set to HIGH and no voltage when set to LOW. You can connect a device to specific GPIO pins and control it with a software program. For example, you can wire an LED to a GPIO and a ground pin on a Raspberry Pi. If a software program tells the GPIO pin to turn on, the LED will light up.
Most computer users will not encounter GPIO pins and do not need to worry about configuring them. However, if you are a hobbyist or computer programmer, it can be helpful to learn what chips have GPIO pins and how to make use of them.

GNU (pronounced g-new) is a free Unix-like operating system distributed by the Free Software Foundation. It is available in several different versions, but the most popular is the GNU/Linux system, which uses the Linux kernel. Since the GNU/Linux system is a popular version of Linux, it is often referred to as simply Linux. However, GNU/Linux is technically a specific version of Linux developed by the GNU Project.
Several GNU/Linux distributions are available, including BLAG, Dragora, gNewSense, Kongoni, Musix GNU Linux, Trisquel, Ututo, and Venenux. While each version of GNU/Linux is based on the GNU system, each has a custom user interface and may include unique bundled applications. For example, Trisquel is designed for small business and home and educational purposes, while Musix GNU Linux is designed primarily for audio production.
GNU operating systems, software programs, and development tools, such as the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), are distributed for free under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This license states that the software may be freely used, modified, and distributed. Therefore, all GNU software is freely available without a commercial license. Many freeware programs developed for other operating systems are now distributed under the GNU General Public License as well.
The name GNU is a recursive acronym for GNUs Not Unix.

Dithering is a process that uses digital noise to smooth out colors in digital graphics and sounds in digital audio.
Digital Graphics
All digital photos are an approximation of the original subject, since computers cannot display an infinite amount of colors. Instead, the colors are estimated, or rounded to the closest color available. For example, an 8-bit GIF image can only include 256 (2^8) colors. This may be enough for a logo or computer graphic, but is too few colors to accurately represent a digital photo. (This is why most digital photos are saved as 16 or 24-bit JPEG images, since they support thousands or millions of colors.)
When digital photos contain only a few hundred colors, they typically look blotchy, since large areas are represented by single colors. Dithering can be used to reduce this blotchy appearance by adding digital noise to smooth out the transitions between colors. This noise adds makes the photo appear more grainy, but gives it a more accurate representation since the colors blend together more smoothly. In fact, if you view a dithered 256-color image from far away, it may look identical to the same image that is represented by thousands or millions of colors.
Digital Audio
Like digital images, digital audio recordings are approximations of the original analog source. Therefore, if the sampling rate or bit depth of an audio file is too low, it may sound choppy or rough. Dithering can be applied to the audio file to smooth out the roughness. Similar to dithering a digital image, audio dithering adds digital noise to the audio to smooth out the sound. If you view a dithered waveform in an audio editor, it will appear less blocky. More importantly, if you listen to a dithered audio track, it should sound smoother and more like the original analog sound.
Summary
Several types of dithering algorithms are used by various image and audio editors, though random dithering is the most common. While dithering is often used to improve the appearance and sound of low quality graphics and audio, it can also be applied to high quality images and recordings. In these situations, dithering may still provide extra smoothness to the image or sound.

Stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. DHCP is a protocol that automatically assigns a unique IP address to each device that connects to a network. With DHCP, there is no need to manually assign IP addresses to new devices. Therefore, no user configuration is necessary to connect to a DCHP-based network. Because of its ease of use and widespread support, DHCP is the default protocol used by most routers and networking equipment.
When you connect to a network, your device is considered a client and the router is the server. In order to successfully connect to a network via DHCP, the following steps must take place.
DHCP works in the background when you connect to a network, so you will rarely see any of the above steps happen. The time it takes to connect via DHCP depends on the type of router and the size of the network, but it usually takes around three to ten seconds. DHCP works the same way for both wired and wireless connections, which means desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones can all connect to a DHCP-based network at the same time.

The desktop is the primary user interface of a computer. When you boot up your computer, the desktop is displayed once the startup process is complete. It includes the desktop background (or wallpaper) and icons of files and folders you may have saved to the desktop. In Windows, the desktop includes a task bar, which is located at the bottom of the screen by default. In Mac OS X, the desktop includes a menu bar at the top of the screen and the Dock at the bottom.
The desktop is visible on both Windows and Macintosh computers as long as an application or window is not filling up the entire screen. You can drag items to and from the desktop, just like a folder. Since the desktop is always present, items on the desktop can be accessed quickly, rather than requiring you to navigate through several directories. Therefore, it may be helpful to store commonly used files, folders, and application shortcuts on your desktop.
Both the Windows and Macintosh operating systems allow you to customize the appearance of your desktop. In Windows 7, you can change the desktop background and select the default desktop icons within the Personalization control panel. In Mac OS X 10.6, you can change the desktop background using the Desktop

Hoggy is another word for a pro, it is used to define a person who is better than everyone else

an exclamatory phrase that can be used in almost any situation, good or bad.

No, this is not just a cheap rip-off of Kodak. The name codec is short for coder-decoder, which is pretty much what a codec does. Most audio and video formats use some sort of compression so that they dont take up a ridiculous amount of disk space. Audio and video files are compressed with a certain codec when they are saved and then decompressed by the codec when they are played back. Common codecs include MPEG and AVI for video files and WAV and AIFF for audio files. Codecs can also be used to compress streaming media (live audio and video) which makes it possible to broadcast a live audio or video clip over a broadband Internet connection.

A cable modem is a peripheral device used to connect to the Internet. It operates over coax cable TV lines and provides high-speed Internet access. Since cable modems offer an always-on connection and fast data transfer rates, they are considered broadband devices.
Dial-up modems, which were popular in the early years of the Internet, offered speeds close to 56 Kbps over analog telephone lines. Eventually, DSL and cable modems replaced dial-up modems since they offered much faster speeds. Early cable modems provided download and upload speeds of 1 to 3 Mbps, 20 to 60 times faster than the fastest dial-up modems. Today, standard cable Internet access speeds range from 25 to 50 Mbps. On the high end, Comcast offers an Xfinity Extreme service with speeds up to 505 Mbps.
Most cable modems include a standard RJ45 port that connects to the Ethernet port on your computer or router. Since most homes now have several Internet-enabled devices, cable modems are typically connected to home router, allowing multiple devices to access the Internet. Some cable modems even include a built-in wireless router, eliminating the need for a second device.
NOTE: While cable modem includes the word modem, it does not function as a traditional modem (which is short for modulator/demodulator). Cable modems send and receive information digitally, so there is no need to modulate an analog signal.

A bare metal system is a computer that does not include any software. This means the user must install an operating system in order for the hardware to be functional.
The term bare metal is commonly used to refer to custom-built PCs and barebones systems. These types of computers are ideal for PC enthusiasts, who may prefer to install their own software rather than paying extra for pre-loaded programs. A bare metal system also allows advanced users to choose a non-mainstream OS, such as a specific Linux distribution.
Web hosting companies may also offer bare metal systems to clients who wish to customize their web server from the ground up. For instance, a client may purchase a dedicated or co-located server with a specific hardware configuration. The server administrator can then install a specific operating system and web server software on the computer.
NOTE: Bare metal is sometimes used to refer to a bare metal restore, which refers to restoring a complete computer software configuration.

ot on tinychat

Stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. ASCII character encoding provides a standard way to represent characters using numeric codes. These include upper and lower-case English letters, numbers, and punctuation symbols.
ASCII uses 7 bits to represent each character. For example, a capital T is represented by the number 84 and a lowercase t is represented by 116. Other keyboard keys are also mapped to standard ASCII values. For example, the Escape (ESC) key is represented as 27 and the Delete (DEL) key is represented as 32. ASCII codes may also be displayed as hexadecimal values instead of the decimal numbers listed above. For example, the ASCII value of the Escape key in hexadecimal is 1B and the hexadecimal value of the Delete key is 7F.
Since ASCII uses 7 bits, it only supports 2^7, or 128 values. Therefore, the standard ASCII character set is limited to 128 characters. While this is enough to represent all standard English letters, numbers, and punctuation symbols, it is not sufficient to represent all special characters or characters from other languages. Even Extended ASCII, which supports 8 bit values, or 256 characters, does not include enough characters to accurately represent all languages. Therefore, other character sets, such as Latin-1 (ISO-8859-1), UTF-8, and UTF-16 are commonly used for documents and webpages that require more characters.