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    • ๐Ÿค–Chapter 1 : AI Literacy
    • ๐ŸŒChapter 2 : AI Governance in the 21st Century
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    • โ“Decoding the Digital World: Exploring Everyday Technology
    • ๐Ÿ‘๏ธIntroduction: Why Privacy Matters?
      • Age of Mass Surveillance
      • Privacy & Democracy
      • Privacy & Government Surveillance
    • โšกChapter 1 : How Computers Work?
      • Electricity
      • Bits
      • Logic Gates
      • Central Processing Unit (CPU)
      • Graphic Processing Unit (GPU)
      • Motherboard
      • Data Storage
      • Databases
      • Operating System (OS)
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      • The File System
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    • ๐Ÿ›ฐ๏ธChapter 2 : How the internet works?
      • Physical Infrastructure
      • Network and Protocols
      • Switch
      • Routers
      • IP Address
      • Domain Name System (DNS)
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      • TCP / IP
      • OSI Model
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      • Secure Socket Shell (SSH)
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    • ๐Ÿ–ฅ๏ธChapter 3 : How Websites Work?
      • HTML
      • CSS
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      • Browser
      • HTTP
      • Databases
      • Front End (Client Side)
      • Back End (Server Side)
      • Cookies
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      • XHR Requests
      • Web APIs
      • Webhooks
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      • Pixels
      • Canvas Fingerprinting
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      • Containers
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    • โš›๏ธChapter 4 : How Quantum Computers Work?
      • Quantum Properties
      • Quantum Bits (Qubits)
      • Decoherence
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      • Quantum Algorithms
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    • ๐Ÿ“ณChapter 5 : Mobile Apps and Privacy
      • Battery
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      • Mobile Device Sensors
      • Wireless Connectivity
      • Camera & Microphone
      • Mobile Apps
      • Software Development Kits (SDKs)
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      • Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
  • ๐Ÿ•ต๏ธโ€โ™‚๏ธPrivacy Engineering Field Guide Season 2
    • โ“Introduction to Privacy Engineering for Non-Techs
      • ๐ŸŽญChapter 1 : Digital Identities
        • What is identity?
        • Authentication Flows
        • Authentication vs. Authorization
        • OAuth 2.0
        • OpenID Connect (OIDC)
        • Self Sovereign Identities
        • Decentralized Identifiers
        • eIDAS
      • ๐Ÿ‘๏ธโ€๐Ÿ—จ๏ธChapter 2 : De-Identification
        • Introduction to De-Identification?
        • Input / Output Privacy
        • De-identification Strategies
        • K-Anonymity
        • Differential Privacy
        • Privacy Threat Modeling
  • ๐Ÿ“–HGPE Story and Lore
    • ๐ŸชฆChapter 1 : The Prologue
    • โ˜„๏ธChapter 2 : Battle for Earth
    • ๐Ÿฆ Chapter 3 : A Nightmare To Remember
    • ๐Ÿง™โ€โ™‚๏ธChapter 4 : The Academy
    • ๐ŸŒƒChapter 5: The Approaching Darkness
    • โš”๏ธChapter 6 : The Invasion
    • ๐ŸฐChapter 7 : The Fall of the Academy
    • ๐Ÿ›ฉ๏ธChapter 8 : The Escape
    • ๐ŸชChapter 9 : The Moon Cave
    • ๐Ÿฆ‡Chapter 10: Queen of Darkness
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    • ๐ŸงฉPrivacy Quest
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On this page
  • What are bits?
  • How do we use bits?
  • What can you do with bits?
  • What are bytes?
  • What is binary?
  • What is ASCII?

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  1. Privacy Engineering Field Guide Season 1
  2. Chapter 1 : How Computers Work?

Bits

Since a bit is actually nothing more than the electricity being on or off, we can use a bit to represent other things.

PreviousElectricityNextLogic Gates

Last updated 2 years ago

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What are bits?

A bit, my dear friend, is a curious creature that exists in the world of computers. It is a unit of information that is represented by either a one or a zero, much like the binary system that underlies all computer technology.

But a bit is more than just a number, you see.

It is the building block of all computer data, from the emails we send to the videos we stream. It is the smallest unit of information that a computer can understand, and it is the foundation upon which all of our digital lives are built.

Bits are like the atoms of the computer world, combining together to form more complex structures like bytes, kilobytes, and gigabytes. And just like atoms, bits have a remarkable ability to create something out of nothing, to turn raw data into art, music, and words.

So the next time you hit send on an email or watch a cat video on YouTube, remember that it's all thanks to the humble bit, the tiny but mighty creature that makes our digital world go round.

How do we use bits?

A bit can be in one of two possible states, zeroes and ones, and may be made to change back and forth between those two states.

In a computer, bits resemble the most like a light. That is, the bits in a computer are places that either have electricity or they do not. If there is no electricity in that place, then the light is off ("0"). When electricity is present, then the light is on ("1").

A single 0 or 1 is known as a bit, which is an abbreviation for binary digit.

As itโ€™s difficult to get any meaning from single ones and zeroes, computers typically read bits in blocks of 8 bits which are called bytes.

Just to briefly test this concept, how many bytes are in the binary below?

111000100110100101101110011000010111001001111001

What can you do with bits?

A "bit" is atomic: the smallest unit of storage. Where 8 bits are grouped together to make 1 byte. One byte can hold a number between 0 and 255 which makes it perfect for use as a unit of information storage.

We can take a bit and say that when this bit is on, it means go shoot proton lasers and; and when this bit is off, you may jump to light speed.

Bits can stack up to become even the sentient machine overlords of the galaxy which spread terror and pain on every planet they hunt humans.

What are bytes?

Since a bit is actually nothing more than the electricity being on or off, we can use a bit to represent other things.

1 Byte = e.g. 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0

One byte can store one character that you press on your keyboard such as e.g. 'M' or 'b' or 'โ‚ฌ'. They can stack up to store documents, images, and even movies.

All storage is measured in bytes, despite being very different hardware.

Kilobyte, KB  --> about 1 thousand byte

Megabyte, MB, --> about 1 million bytes

Gigabyte, GB, --> about 1 billion bytes

Terabyte, TB, --> about 1 trillion bytes

What is binary?

At a fundamental level, digital computers store information and perform operations by using a series of zeroes and ones: binary.

Well, itโ€™s a system of counting that is different from our normal way of counting. We typically count upwards using 10 digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Because there are 10 digits in our system of counting, we call it base 10, or decimal. By contrast, binary only uses 2 digits: 0 and 1. For this reason, binary can also go by the name base 2.

Now, because we are in base 2, the place value for each digit (moving from the right to the left) is only 2 times the value of the previous digit.

So, the 109 in base 10 is equal to 01101101 in base 2.

Hereโ€™s an example of what binary looks like:

01010000 01110010 01101001 01110110 01100001 01100011 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100100 01100101 01100001 01100100

If you are a computer the zeroes and ones above will be read as:

Privacy is not dead.

But how did we get from a byte of binary code to a letter? The answer is ASCII, which is a standardized way of transforming numbers into letters. Letโ€™s take a closer look at the top row of the table above.

What is ASCII?

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

Converting the base 10 numbers into plaintext by checking them against an ASCII table works as follows:

67 114 101 097 116 105 118 101 032 080 114 105 118 097 099 121

โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†• โ†•

c r e a t i v e "space" p r i v a c y

The bits can be flipped using the flow of which in turn will affect the . Logic gates are made up of transistors.

Computers can only understand numbers, so an is the numerical representation of a character such as 'a' or '@' or an action of some sort. ASCII was developed a long time ago and now the non-printing characters are rarely used for their original purpose.

ASCII code
๐ŸŽ“
โšก
electrons
transistors
When humans discovered the Machines' many technological developments, they made plans to steal their blueprints. The operation got compromised and during their escape, the alpha team destroyed the nuclear power plant which started a chain reaction and destroyed the factories of machines. - Journals of Order of Epoch, 2231 Anno Domini
Then the war started, which carried on for 100 years for domination of Earth. For a hundred years the war went at a stalemate, when humans engineered the PETs, their para natural powers helped humans have the advantage. - Journals of Order of Epoch, 2234 Anno Domini
Here you can see that each letter in the alphabet and characters are matched with a number. The value of bytes represents electrically which letter we would like to signal using logic gates.
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