# Computers glossary part 6

## T

Table - a means of holding data, uses fields for each part of the table

Tailgating - physically following someone into a secure area where they can access a computer

Tape drive - long-term storage that puts binary information on a long string of magnetic tape, excellent for storing *huge* amounts of information that isn't life-and-death if it gets relatively corrupted

Task-based testing - testing by giving people tasks to complete, then measuring how well they do and any hangups in that task

TCP - transmission control protocol, the [Transport-level](networks-cs.md) standard for sending high-quality information across a network, in contrast with UDP

TCP/IP - a hybrid of TCP and IP, since they work together so frequently

Tech stack - the set of languages a developer understands for handling all their front-end and back-end needs

Technical debt - quick short-term solutions that create long-term problems, where the debt is paid later in the future

Technology - a broad word that can mean a programming language, specific hardware, specific software, protocol, or network configuration, a management way to say "computer things": you can use a technology on a technology to run a technology via a technology to accomplish a technology, once was "high-technology" but has been contracted over time

Telemetry - long-distance measurements, often to track users or user behavior

Telephony - long-distance computer information transfer

Terminal/Console/Command prompt - a text-based input that also gives output text, scary to people unfamiliar with computers but extremely useful for pipelining and APIs

Terminator - a network endpoint that absorbs a signal, prevents data from bouncing back at the end of a wire and shutting down an entire bus network

Texture - a graphical pattern or image overlaid onto a polygon

Time-sharing - using a computer for more than one thing at a time, generally a built-in necessity of parallel processing, especially important in virtual machines

Timeout - broad term for the deadline when a computer ends a condition to maintain a status, often pertains to when a session ends before information has successfully transferred

Timestamp - a copy-paste recording of the BIOS clock, a frequent aspect of log files and metadata

Toast - a small message with a border around it on an interface's overlay meant to quickly communicate small bits of information

Token - a relatively small line of code that triggers an event

Tooltip - a popup block of text when someone moves their mouse over an element

Topology - the construction of something, often refers to network design, can be a physical topology (how it visually looks) or a signaling/logical topology (how it connects)

Tor - short for The Onion Router, a protocol/software that runs on a type of parallel overlay network compared to the rest of the internet, often broadly classified (mostly incorrectly) as the "dark web"

Torrent - use the BitTorrent protocol, a P2P protocol, often associated with piracy but has many important uses for free content distributors

Touch screen - the primary input of most mobile devices by using a digitizer under the glass to capture absolute motion, can often emulate a keyboard on it, tends not to show a cursor if it was designed for touch screens

Tracker - a feature of a program that collects and sends user data, often necessary for debugging but can often invade privacy, may also refer to a torrent-based host that distributes magnet links

Traffic shaping - configuring the QoS settings to improve the user experience on a network

Trailer, an optional bit of code at the end of a packet that contains error-correcting code

Transceiver - combo transmitter/receiver, used for sending *and* receiving signals

Transducer - a device that receives energy in one form, then expresses it in another form (e.g., a computer speaker)

Transistor - an implementation of a semiconductor, usually as an electrical switch, to do all sorts of things like modifying signals, stabilizing voltage, performing logic, and storing information

Translation lookaside buffer - a cache in the MMU that tracks the mapping between virtual and physical memory locations

Transponder - a satellite radio beacon used for location and routing information, effectively a transceiver but differentiated because it provides information to decode Doppler shifts

Tribal knowledge - small undocumented details that are critical to understand something

Trigger box - an invisible box in a game world that triggers an action when the user enters or exits it

Trilateration - Using multiple data from geolocation-based distances to triangulate a location

Trojan horse/Trojan - malware that masquerades as a non-executing document (such as a video)

Troll - to antagonize people into an argument, named after the fishing term of throwing bait out the back of a boat

Trusted intermediary - a third-party computer that two computers can trust, often involves digital certificates

Truthy - a data value that has something in it and therefore expresses to TRUE, opposite of falsy

TTL - time to live, how many hops until a network signal drops, avoids a signal bouncing around indefinitely in a system

Tunnel - a two-way communication between two resources, typically applies to VPNs but also applies to HTTP communication

Tuple - a finite ordered list of elements, indicated by n (e.g., an n-tuple has n elements)

TWAIN - the driver standard for scanners, not an acronym but is a reference to "never the twain shall meet"

Two's complement - a mathematical means of representing negative numbers by using the binary number from decrementing in binary from 0

Typeahead - an input box that employs a simplified searching algorithm for text

Type coercion - changing data types before operating with it, can often make the difference between Boolean statements being true or false

Typography - the design and style of text

## U

UDP - user datagram protocol, the [Transport-level](networks-cs.md) standard for sending information rapidly across a network, contrast to TCP

UEFI - unified extended firmware interface, a BIOS-like system designed for more advanced drivers

UI - user interface, the visual design of the elements of an operating system, web page, or software

Unbounded color value - color values that aren't constrained to an arbitrary number

Unconditional jump - an instruction in code to move to a specific location in the instructions, very useful in creating loops, contrast to conditional jumps

Under-provisioning - giving less resources than necessary, often causes slowdown or crashing depending on the use case, opposite of under-provisioning

Underclocking - lowering the speed of the computer below the manufacturer specifications, which could make worse benchmarks but may make your computer last longer, opposite of overclocking

Unicast address - an address that's designated to 1 network asset, contrast to broadcast address

Unicode - aka UTF-32, a character encoding format that uses up to 32 bits of data, technically only uses 18 bits to capture everything

Unicorn - a startup that's worth over $1 billion

Unified Modeling Language (UML) - a standardized language for working with [data visualizations](data-viz.md)

Unix-like - an operating system designed closely to the original Unix system, typically refers to GNU/Linux but can also refer to FreeBSD

Unsorted list - a list that hasn't been sorted, or at least hasn't been identified as sorted by a computer

Uptime - time that a computer is continuously on, contrast to downtime

URI - uniform resource identifier, a given thing on the internet represented by a sequence of characters

URL - uniform resource locator, aka web address, an internet location designed to avoid having to remember IP addresses, uses a FQDN

USB - universal serial bus, a type of port that most peripherals can use

Use case - aka usage case, a scenario a programmer will have to consider caused by external input from a user or another computer, often interchangeable with implementation

Userland - the domain of the computer designed for users to interact

User-driven - a state where content and assets created by users instead of the creators' efforts

User base - the people who already use a particular computer software or hardware product

User journey - the intuitive flow that a user makes with an interface

UPS - uninterruptible power supply, which is a surge protector mixed with a battery that gives enough time for you to shut the computer down

User - can refer to either a person (for UX reasons) or a specific login account in a computer system

UUID/GUID - universally unique identifier or globally unique identifier, a specific and unique device ID given to every networked computer device, always has 36 characters

UX - user experience, broad term referring to the general feelings the user receives when interacting with the user interface, the newer model compared to HCI that incorporates [marketing principles](marketing.md) into it

## V

Validation error - a text field which doesn't provide correct information

Variable - a math concept of something that can be changed, refers to specific letters/symbols in math but can be labeled as almost *anything* in programming, opposite of constant

Variable-length - a length that isn't fixed, though it may have thresholds, often used in Unicode character encoding

Variable lighting - visually referencing a light source, then adding shadows to make a 3D environment feel more realistic

VDI - virtual desktop interface, a GUI that looks like an entire OS, often accessible through a web browser

Vector graphics - controlling an electron to run horizontally across a screen to give a line, the oldest form of GUI, eventually replaced by raster graphics

Venture capitalist - someone willing to risk money to fund someone else's business

Version - a specific assembled program, typically has a number to specify what iteration it is

Version control - a system of managing changes in computer code

VGA - video graphics array, an old pin-based plug for sending video information

Vibe coding - using machine learning algorithms to generate sloppy code without knowing what the code actually does

Video game console - a specialized computer designed to play video games, not to be confused with input consoles/terminals, functionally the same as a PC since the late-2010's

Viewport - the size of what is being expressed on the screen (such as the [browser](computers-browser.md)), can often change with the zoom feature

Virtualization - aka virtual machine, using a portion of computer assets to create a virtual computer-in-a-computer

Virtual memory - hard drive memory that has been converted into a swap space

Virus - malware that masquerades as legitimate software

Visual language - a visual dynamic shared among an organization

VM - virtual machine/virtualization, splitting a computer to make it feel like more than one computer at the same time, allows people to split up one powerful computer instead of using many weaker ones and use multiple operating systems without partitioning hard drives

VM escape - using an exploit to break out of a VM into the rest of a computer system

VM sprawl - making too many VMs where you can't keep track of them all

Volatile/Short-term storage - memory that goes away during a power cycle such as the cache, typically stored in RAM but also sometimes stored on a hard drive, opposite of non-volatile storage

Volume - either the intensity of sound data transfer to speakers, or a logical/physical disk partition

Von Neumann architecture - a CPU architecture that involves an input, logic processor, memory, and output, pretty much the basis for almost every computer

Voxels - volumetric pixels, a 3D grid of pixels as an alternative to polygon-based rendering, didn't last long

VPN - virtual private network, a service that uses a VPN tunnel on L2TP to safely transfer private information over long distances

VR - virtual reality, a vague concept referring to a computer-generated simulation of reality, often refers to an HMD

VST - virtual studio technology, a standardized framework that allows for plugins to interact with a DAW

VTON - virtual try-ON, an implementation of VR that involves the user sampling how a product will look in a VR environment

## W

WAN - wide area network, larger computer networks (such as the internet), in contrast with LAN

WAP - wireless access point, a physical piece of hardware that allows for a wireless connection

War dialing - entering all the phone numbers one-at-a-time to scan a phone system

Warrant canary - an organization's indicator that a government surveillance unit is non-present, with non-updates of that indicator demonstrating that a government surveillance unit *is* present

Warez - software that's typically had its DRM removed

Web crawler - to scrape specific keywords off websites, a component of search engines

Web browser - software designed for users to casually consume information across the internet

Web scraping - copying information off the internet and cleaning it up to make it more useful for users

Web server - a computer or distributed system, often with lots of processing power, which is publicly available on the internet

White balance - aka color temperature, an image post-processing effect that determines whether the image's output colors lean more red or blue

White-hat hacker - aka "white hat", a hacker who honors ethics

White noise - the noise generated by quantization

White space/negative space - empty space that gives structure to a UI

Whitelist - mark a MAC or IP address as safe, opposite of blacklist

Wi-Fi - a networking standard for local wireless signals that honors the 802.11 specification

Wiki - a public repository of information, typically user-driven, originally named after WikiWikiWeb in 1995

Wildcard - a regular expression component that indicates that anything can be used (e.g., *ing can return "cleaning", "sing", and "commingling").

Wireframe - a line-based form of something, can be a visual guide of how something will look like (the design side of "alpha version") or an earlier stage of 3D polygon graphical design

Word - the size of a memory register, typically a base-2 representation (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, etc.)

Worm - malware that self-replicates onto other networked computers

WPS - can refer to Wi-Fi positioning system (a method of using Wi-Fi signals for trilateration) or Wi-Fi protected setup (a button-activated authentication system built into most network routers)

Write tolerance - the number of times that you can write to a drive before it fails, often measured in ridiculously high numbers because they're usually designed to last a few years of normal use

## X

XIP - execute in place, a file system feature where a CPU can load a file from long-term storage instead of loading it to RAM first

## Y

Yak shaving - doing many things that are seemingly unrelated to a software design goal to accomplish that goal

Yank - to remove distribution of a specific version, often because of hacking or a defect in the code

## Z

Z-pattern - a design component where the eye moves left-to-right, then back to the next line's left-to-right, a common feature of reading books but tends to tire out the eyes when using a computer

Zero - a philosophical concept of nothingness represented by "0" that came from ancient India, not to be confused with "null" in computers, since it's still a value in memory

Zero-based numbering - how computers count, starting at 0 instead of how people intuitively start at 1 (e.g., 0, 1, 2, 3 instead of 1, 2, 3, 4)

Zero-click attack - a cyberattack that doesn't require the user to do anything to activate it

Zero-day exploit - aka "0 Day", an exploit that was just discovered after it could be exploited

Zone file - a file on a DNS host that indicates resource records