Month: February 2022

With our newly connected world, it is easy to become enamored with new technologies and new devices that are coming out. Many tech companies come out with a new phone or device almost annually to keep the forward march of progress and growth anew. According to Statista.com, over 200 million iPhone shipments were recorded in 2020. That is more than the mind can comprehend in a single device. That doesn’t include other Android phones. That is a lot of mobile device that all at the end of the day, have one destination at the end of their life, the graveyard. Mobile phones are made almost to be in a commodity state at this point. They have non-replaceable parts like batteries and ports. These are common things that wear over time that could be replaced to expand the lifespan of these products, but they are not. Why is that? Well, it could be a complex answer.

The expected lifespan of a mobile device is about 2 years. This is when the battery will be at its end of life expectancy usually. It makes sense to just replace the battery correct? Well, it can be argued that by allowing easy replacement of the battery, the IP rating is degraded, but this has been proven wrong. (See the Samsung S5 Active with a IP68 rating and user replaceable battery, unlike the iPhone 13 and Samsung S22 of now with IP68 ratings and no battery replacement.) So what can we do to fight this? If major phone manufactures do not want to make the hardware more durable, what else can we do?

Luckily, the software side has answered this issue. While Apple is seen as a clear argument about e-waste on their products, they do have a very powerful weapon against e-waste, “Long Term Support”. Looking at their support page for the most recent iOS 15.2 release at this time, they have support still listed for iPhones from 2016. Namely the iPhone 6S, 6S Plus, and iPhone SE (1st generation). These are almost 6 year old phones that have the latest security updates and software features. Keeping an older item going reduces your impact more than you can imagine. It much like scrapping an old car for a newer, more efficient car might not necessarily be more impactful to reducing energy consumption. Contrast this with Android. Android has finally started to get to a more stable place in terms of core updates for Android devices. The darkest of times are behind us, but the way updates are pushed for Android phones outside of the Pixel lineup is very archaic. An Android phone that is not mainstream can stop receiving updates within a year or so. It also does not help that a majority of mobile network tied devices also require a custom build of that update to the device. This means that a certain phone could be updated on one carrier and not the other. This fragmentation leads to more phones not getting the proper updates that they need. While forking software can lead to more long term support, it has not seemed to be so.

So how do we go further than our current standard? It again is a complex answer. The most obvious answer would be to implement both a mix of long term software support and replaceable parts, but that future is far from right now. (Luckily, some uncommon players are leading this charge like Steam with their upcoming Steam Deck device.) Though the easiest answer at the moment would be to open up platforms. While an Apple is never going to open up their mobile hardware platform, Android could go far in this field. Manufactures such as Samsung opening up hardware drivers to open source to allow open source software to run on them. Imagine, you could use older mobile phones to build things like an easy security camera setup with the amazing cameras they have now. Heck, with the high speed connectivity and powerful processors phones have now, running a file server could be easily done on the device if the open source community had the official drivers from Samsung themselves. Giving purpose to an older device so that it does not land in a landfill is the ultimate way to reduce our impact. This does not even need to be a fully functioning open phone, but giving drivers for open source bootloading of an operating system with wireless drivers would help immensely.

While our impact on the world is not going to end abruptly, we know the steps that corporations need to take to reduce e-waste for consumers. Building products that continue to sell, but also opening up longevity can become a huge plus in this day and age.

For the last few decades, it seems like hardware and software have been playing this tug of war. What side is more “advanced” in this day and age? What does it mean to be “advanced” compared to the other. Looking back to previous times in history might give a better view on it and what the future looks like for both realms of technology.

If you were born in the 90s, you grew up in a time where technology transitioned from being a specialized item to being dominate in our lives. Technology in the 90s was cutting edge, but by far from a clear cut, standardized item. Anything went. Then, the 2000s hit. IBM is not longer a household brand. Apple unveils the iPod. Mobile phones were as fragmented as can be. It was a lawless land. Your PC was only as fast as Moore’s law could make it. Windows XP was really just DOS perfected and Vista was an attempt at something new. Anything was possible in this day and age. But then, something changed, Moore’s law, was… broken… Hardware screeched to a halt. The same tech that revolutionized before became bloated, requiring more power and creating more heat. Though at the same time, something new happened…

The smartphone took off. These mobile devices needed to be power efficient. They need to cut down that bloat. It reframed what technology was. It wasn’t going to the moon with what hardware could do, while software just road the wave. It was what software could do to squeeze out performance of the now. The creation of ARM was arguably one of the biggest shifts in technology of all time. x86 computing, carried on from the Intel 8086 chip in the 80s, tried to keep as much backwards compatibility with existing technology. The band-aids kept being applied. While x86 has come a long way in 2022, it had a wake up call. It no longer was the end all, be all. ARM could do what it did, but more efficient. So what did x86 do to change? Well, it didn’t really need to. Software was the one who took notice…

Software took a very big turn at this time. Programs no longer focused on taking advantage of a large desktop PC, they focused on being as small and efficient as possible. You no longer had spinning hard drives with large GB capacity. You had flash memory that was in the MB. Hardware was placing heavy constraints on software to power these new interactions with technology. Libraries were smaller. Programs had to be more streamlined. With this, your desktop PC experienced a rebirth. No longer was anyone concerned with continuous leaps in technology, but rather software to be more compact. If you remember the problems with Chrome Random Access Memory, it was a wake up call for everyone to cut down bloat with software.

So in 2022, what is the focus? What is more advanced? Well, we are at a new renaissance because of a new obstacle. Supply Shortage. Because of the new supply problems created by COVID-19, technology is more expensive to produce and sell. What has come of this? AMD, a processor company, has now added support to previous platforms for new processors not previously supported. (X370 chipset to 5000-series processors) Nvidia, a graphics processor company, reusing older technology to keep up with demand. (RTX 2060 from 2 years ago is now being manufactured again.) Because of new constraints on this, software companies have now had to work around this. Microsoft is introducing Windows 11, which requires a TPM (Trust-Platform Module). They have walked this back to help support older systems going forward. Video games are having to support multiple older platforms due to scarcity of newer consoles. (Games running on PS4 and PS5.) It has learned from the efficient days to a time of compatibility again. It must support as many platforms as possible, while also keeping streamlined to run on older platforms.

If you are looking inward on the situation, software right now is way ahead of hardware at the moment. It is at the moment being as flexible as possible to hardware in its current state. As far as even being able to pipe ultra-streamlined products virtually. (Remote Desktops and Cloud gaming) Hardware for most of the time has lead the way while Moore’s law was king. It seems like for the last few years, software has taken that crown.

You are reading every article you can find on Computer Science. You are reading SubReddits to figure out what you need to do to get into Software Engineering. But there is one big problem? You aren’t a high school senior, you aren’t even in college. Better yet, you have already graduated college. One day you decided, do I have what it takes to get into a tech career at this point?

A brief overview of my journey is that I graduated from college with a Bachelor’s in Biology, looking to go to Physician Assistant school, only to get to the point where I realized that I didn’t want to work in the healthcare field after almost two years of working in one in preparation to that next step. As you can imagine, it looked bleak. The one thing I did have going for me at that time was a solid support system of friends and family. I have always had a background in technology, but never at the level of sitting down and building programs, websites, the like. Jobs in tech all had the same tag line: “Degree in Computer Science.” I could work to build my portfolio and skills on my own. I could even go through a bootcamp that still to my knowledge, can be effective, but can be a hit-or-miss. I needed the piece of paper and the knowledge to get me there. Like a lot of people, I typed in Google, “Computer Science degrees.” What came up was the usual local colleges and such. One though happened to be at the top of the search results. “Oregon State University Online – Postbacc degree.” I instantly wanted to know everything about it. I applied almost immediately. I knew I wanted a second chance, but before I could apply, I needed to prove something to myself. Is this something I could do? Could I build anything?

The first things you should ask yourself before going into anything highly committal is, “is this something I think I could do?” Luckily, computer science and development is a plethora of knowledge outside the bounds of traditional learning. I simply typed in Google, “how to become a developer,” and I was presented with many guides. I eventually found, Python Crash Course by Eric Matthes. I told myself that I could not go back to school until I completed this book. I know the Oregon State program started with Python. If I could learn the basics of Python, I knew I could be better positioned. After a lot of confusion, but a lot of hard work. (You know, typing every single thing out and not copy and pasting? Especially since this was a physical book.) I eventually was to the point where I could make simple programs with logic. I learned I was accepted shortly after completing it and knew exactly it was what I wanted to do.

Pivoting into tech after being established was a very interesting time. Not only did I go back to school, but also a pandemic started at the same time in March 2020. I also decided to switch jobs. I said goodbye to healthcare and said hello to finance. I became a service professional in investments for a large financial firm at the same time. It was a lot but I never faltered from my goal of changing my life into tech. I have been blessed that the Oregon State program has given me the availability to learn a degree at the same time as working full time. I never could have done it without them.

Since coming to the end of the program here at Oregon State, it definitely has not been the traditional Computer Science path of grinding Leetcode and such that was described to me, but it has been a lot of networking with individuals to build a portfolio. I have been making a lot of strides to pickup where I had failed before in my career with this new second chance. I am really excited for the next chapter in my life going forward.

Generally, when you think of your home network, it includes a router that provides internet to the whole house, be it through a wired connection or a wireless signal. I have always believed to have a decent understanding of making a home network until recently when I was thrown to the fire. What happens when you have most of your family working from home at all times and you start to have issues with the internet? Chaos ensues. That is what happens. So, I started my journey to become a network administrator for my house to build a “pro-sumer” network on a home network budget. There are some huge pitfalls and small tips and tricks for creating a powerful network.

So how did I get into this mess? Our family will have several people working on the internet at once, anywhere from 3-4 people. We have a full gigabit fiber connection as well so more than enough bandwidth. We had a pretty decent router. It was a newer Wifi 6, gigabit router from a reputable manufacture. Wifi coverage was okay. We recently added a mesh device with it to help cover our decent sized house. It worked for our needs until suddenly it did not. Every hour, the router would start to lose the WAN connection and require a reboot. Even after a factory reset, same behavior. It has a two year warranty so I reached out to their customer service, but they wanted to have us try new settings with DNS and experiment around, but here is the problem, people are working. I can’t just experiment with the internet when people need to use it for work. What is even harder is after work, guess what, they want to use it for leisure. I found my first hurdle in network admin, RELIABILITY. I did a few of the changes to see if I could take care of it and nothing. Same behavior. I had also used an older “Fast Ethernet” (limited to 100Mbps, 10x slower than our connection) equipped router to make sure it wasn’t an issue with our ISP. After determining that the ISP was not the issue, the support staff still wanted to keep experimenting on settings. I didn’t have anymore time. I had family members who were mad at slow and unreliable internet. Time for a change.

First thing first was getting our internet back online at full capacity without waiting on a new router. Luckily, I have an old dual gigabit Network Interface card. I know I can spin up a PFSense router with that on my home server. I have only experimented with it in the past with no real premise, but after seeing the current build of PFSense, it actually has become rather user friendly. After installing the card and then telling my host operating system (Windows Server 2022) to give the entire card to the PFSense VM, I was up and cooking within a few minutes of installing. All of a sudden, with very little infrastructure, I was able to get our router up with a free solution! Obviously, if my server died, the internet could go down, but I am able to make a copy of my configuration and can get the firewall back on almost immediately on my desktop on Hyper-V or an old computer with two network interfaces. That easily solves that. I chose obviously to keep things simple and have PFSense be my firewall and DHCP server. Though in the future, I could role up a separate DHCP server that then could handle all of my LAN interfaces separately than my firewall. It gives me a solid base. Now, up to this point, I have been using the separate mesh device to provide Wifi from PFSense. It only had a 100Mbps port so now only wired clients were getting that full gigabit speed. Now a journey down wireless networking.

So we have actually been through many routers in my house. We have had a gigabit connection at our house since they offered it in my area in 2014. Most either die after a year or two. Most have terrible wireless signal. The recent Wifi 6 router we had was the best solution so far, but something had to change. Time to look at the business sector. Since our gateway was taken care of, we just needed an access point. These will get you into a rabbit hole real quick. It essentially is investing into an ecosystem with a specific brand. Some brands have cheaper points, but require a “management” application that can either be ran on a paid for cloud experience or local machine. Since I have a server in use, this was an option. Some do run in a “standalone” mode for basic use, but you lose out on features if you want to add more. After reading a lot of reviews, I decided on a brand which is an enterprise brand, but not as mainstream as other popular solutions based on price, Wifi 6, and free cloud management. It was here within a day off Amazon. I do not want to reveal the brand on this blog, but for a enterprise/business product, setting the product up was easier than most consumer routers. I chose to go with the cloud management for the feature set. It was as simple as scanning a QR code on the device, signing up an account, setting the SSIDs and the passwords. After having to resort to a mesh system before for our Wifi to cover our house, I was scared I would need another access point. That was easily subsided within a quick walk around the house. I easily get full speed anywhere in the house on Wifi where my phone is the bottleneck first. After years of degraded Wifi and being in the consumer space, I finally found the endgame solution for internet.

So takeaway from this. First, the best part of this? When your family no longer asks about the internet, it means it is working. Second part, I learned a lot about larger networking. Solutions that 10 years ago would have been left to classically trained network admins are now very accessible for the consumer. I was able to spin up a small business capable network for less than 100USD. I learned a lot about network settings and practices from the new material out there. Building a modular network with redundant points of failure instead of everything on one single point of failure and stop a lot of headache down the road. I implore everyone to do a little reading into your own network as it opens a world of possibilities. I now am running a VPN from my own home so I can access everything and also have a DNS sinkhole for blocking ads. It makes homelab outside of programming possible. It gives me a further understanding of how our world stays connected.