Gadgetory

ever seen something advertised as hot-swap and not been sure what that means I mean at first I thought it was an easy way of identifying really bad Plastic Surgeons you know swap your heart for something else that died never mind that joke fell flatter than a botched breast reduction the context of technology specifically electronics is that a particular component is designed to be disconnected and even reconnected without powering down the rest of the system okay Linus so why would we want to do that well imagine for a second a world where you had to power down your cellular telephone every time you wanted to plug in your headphones and you know jam out to some tunes as the kids would say and then upon completion of the jam out session turn your phone back off take the headphones out and then power it back on I mean it's ridiculous right so that's what it's for quickly changing out peripheral devices like keyboards mice and game controllers USB drives as long as you do it safely displays and network cables on personal computers for a much more convenient user experience or if you think much bigger than that it's also important to achieve the reliability that allows the servers that host your favorite websites and online services to provide nearly perfect uptime in an enterprise setting hot-swap can be used on some pretty unexpected stuff dead or working hard drives can be pulled out of redundant arrays and replaced or upgraded on-the-fly with no data loss and in the case of redundant power supplies even a power supply for a server can be swapped out without ever shutting it down but not everything can be hot swapped and there are many things an interface designer needs to consider to make hot swapping safe mechanical interfaces need to protect the user from mashing his or her fingers or getting zapped and similarly the electrical design of the interface and the software needs to be resilient enough to handle being suddenly disconnected in the middle of operation some things aren't designed to work for hot-swap but might actually work like sim cards for cell phones and older ps2 mice but others must never be hot slugs would result in an instant software error causing the system to shut down and possibly hardware failure examples of these sorts of things include system memory graphics cards and CPUs but this might not always even be the case technology is always changing and some of the early concepts for the project are a phone for example suggests that we might even see components like batteries become hot swappable so who knows I sure don't speaking of things I don't know I don't know what could be a better sponsor for today's episode than audible.com there are a longtime supporter of the show actually our very first sponsor they've got over a hundred and fifty thousand audiobooks available on their website and you can get a free 30-day trial of their monthly audiobook service just by checking out the link right here there are monthly audiobook membership gets you one book every month and discounts on books after that it allows you to keep up with your reading on the go while you're driving taking public transit working out or whatever else and lets you avoid completely unnecessary cliffhanger BS like The Hunger Games Mockingjay movie the last book of which has been split up into two parts only one of which is available because you can just listen to the whole thing on audiobook because it's available already and that book is by Suzanne Collins which I'm supposed to say otherwise I don't do all the things I'm supposed to say so their Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins anyway guys sign up at audible.com slash tech quickie to get your free trial of their service today thanks for watching guys like the video if you liked it dislike it if you just liked it leave a comment if you have suggestions for future fast as possible episodes just like this one and I think we're pretty much done here