Sys. Admin. Archives - Page 2 of 9 - How To Train Your Robot

2023-12-052023-12-05

Learning from previous mistakes – pulling historical vulnerability information from various plugins

If you keep a watch on software security newsletters or blogs like the Wordfence blog, you’ll know there are a good number of new detected defects and vulnerabilities on a regular basis, even on well known plugins and software. It’s worth looking into the details of how this happens especially if you work on PHP software from time to time. Thankfully there are public records which let you compare to look at how these are fixed:

2023-12-042023-12-04

Interesting news about Amazon Q AI

There’s some interesting news about Amazon Q AI this week: The AI that is supposed to give useful help for your Amazon Web Services apparently was giving more than expected…

2023-08-142023-09-01

Where are the big roofs for Solar? A mathematical look at pulling data from OpenStreetMap

In recent years there has been a lot of talk about solar and more renewable energy. In USA the recent IRA has provisions for extending solar and renewable energy, and the Florida governor last year supported Solar benefits which turn out to be helpful in many natural disasters, making an energy grid more easily self-sustainable after hurricanes that are common to that state. What if we could go over a map and see what buildings are the best candidates for solar generation? OpenStreetMap has not just street maps, but many other features, including building coordinates, which can give us polygons that can calculate areas for potential solar!

2023-06-242023-06-24

How to build your own ChatGPT-style chat bot

In recent months, new inventions like ChatGPT have been said to be possibly the end of society, or the saving of society… but maybe this is something that is something very similar to what has been hyped before?

2023-06-012023-06-01

Computer efficiency numbers – useful rating or greenwashing?

In a recent newsletter, well known scientist Katherine Hayhoe mentioned a listing of the top most efficient computers – while efficiency is something to consider in your purchases, is there really a big difference in which laptop you buy and use?

2023-03-07

The space heater that improves public health

Many of us may have an old, old computer around – did you know that you can use it as a small heater this winter, while potentially making a difference in public health and science?

2023-02-242023-02-24

I don’t always test BETAs on the production home page…

… but when I do, it’s WordPress.org? – Check out a recent announcement from Make WordPress Core:

2023-01-242023-01-25

NodeRed for Onstar access for GM/Chevy vehicle access

In recent years there has been a surge in popularity of Chevrolet vehicles like the Chevrolet Bolt and, coming soon, the Equinox EV. There has also been increased popularity for Linux phones like the Librem phone, but unfortunately there has been no equivalent for the “myChevrolet” app for your own computer or Linux-phone… unless you know where to look.

2022-11-26

Getting your camera pictures back to the correct created-time

How many times have you had some new battery in your camera set, after which the time did not set correctly and each photo you take is a photo taken in 1970 or has another issue when seen on the computer? This is a common problem that one tool, Exiftool has a quick solution for:

2022-11-042022-11-04

Adding a Bleachbit cleaner for disk space and privacy

If you have ever seen the disk usage nearly full message, you have probably been grateful for the free Bleachbit application for your computer. Whether it’s on Linux, Windows or other systems, Bleachbit is a good way to clear old cache when you get a warning about low disk space or to clear out a lot of old data for privacy. However there are many applications that don’t have a cleaning definition… yet.