UAT Student Blog

The term Machine Learning gets thrown around a lot recently, but what does it really mean and how does it work? Imagine a task that is simple for us humans, reading a sentence, or even just recognizing a character on a piece of paper. That is a task so simple that it is literally taught to 5-year-olds, some of which are not yet trained how to use a toilet, but for a computer this is normally a very difficult task. A program is a collection of statements and conditions, meaning that the programmer tells a computer what to do for every situation it encounters. This is not possible for things like handwriting; everyone writes differently. So how can machines read handwriting? That is where machine learning comes in.

Do you have a hobby that makes you feel like everything is all good in your world? Hobbies are a great way to spend your open time to be productive and learn something new. Spending time on an activity that you have fun with or enjoy can improve your mental health. Among all the research having a hobby, you are less likely to suffer from stress, low moods, and depression. Have you found your hobby that lets you let go? Having a hobby can either be a personal thing or a group thing, depending on what you want it to be. A hobby can be anything you enjoy enough to keep doing it time and time again.

The Internet, the information superhighway, the global hivemind. The Internet has many names, but what is it really and how does it work? The Internet is comprised of billions of computers that are all connected together. But this isn't a haphazard connection, it is all organized in a very efficient manner. When you type in the name of a website in your browser, such as uat.edu, your browser doesn't actually know what computer to connect to in order to retrieve that website. First it takes the address you put in and asks a Domain Name System, or DNS, name server where it should go. It does this by converting the name of the address into an IP Address and sending it back to the computer that asked for it. The IP address is then directly connected to by your computer and retrieves the desired information.

VMware vCenter servers have been hit in a new attack which left them exposed and vulnerable by the hackers which allowed them to take over any unpatched machine and take over companies' entire networks. Mind you this is about 6,700 servers that are at risk.

Have you ever watched an anime based on a game, you know besides Pokémon or Danganronpa? Well, I have news for you!

Have you ever been playing a game or watching a movie where a character eats or drinks some fantastical item and  you think to yourself, "I wonder what that tastes like."? Well in the near future, you may not have to wonder anymore. 3D printing has come a long way from its infant stages of barely printing out plastic shapes. Now we can print high fidelity prototypes for motorcycles, human organs, and even chocolate shapes. 

Long ago, people were starting to run into the problem of needing to access many servers at the same time, but each server only running at a smidge of its potential. Thus Virtualization was born. Virtualization is the process of taking a real physical system and creating virtual components for it. With this technique you can create an entire computer including its operating system within your own computer. 

The FBI, CISA, ODNI, and the NSA released a statement stating that Russia has orchestrated the SolarWinds attack. It was believed that the hackers were working with a foreign government, but the security agencies have pointed the blame to Russia.