Cryptography is as old as the desire of humans to communicate secretly. A famous example is that of the so-called Caesar cypher, named after Julius Caesar. He used to encrypt his correspondence by shifting the letters of the alphabet to the right or left an agreed-upon number of spaces. Cypher disc Image Credit: Cypher disc By Hubert Berberich (HubiB) – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php ...
Computers have a very particular way of communicating with each other. For example, before widespread computer networks and the internet, people shared files by “sneakernet”: wearing a comfortable pair of sneakers and putting the info on the storage media and travelling to the destination computer to copy the data. This is not a very effective way to share files, and large companies soon realised this was a huge market and started developing various network protocols. The problem was that many of these protocols were proprietary and incompatible with each other. ...
I have some peculiarities for my desktop setup that I use every time I reinstall a new OS. So instead of researching how to do the setup all over every time I reinstall an OS, dual boot, or distro hop, I will throw them all in a blog post and save some keystrokes and a bit of time. On my main computer, an old Dell Optiplex, with an NVIDIA GTX1650, I am dual-booting Kubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10. ...
This is a tutorial for installing Pi-hole on your home network. As the devs on the pi-hole.net put it, it is a “network-wide ad blocking” solution. The app acts as a DNS (domain name system) server. More info on this wiki. It basically sends ad queries that you generate when you visit a website to nowhere (hence the cosmic flavor of the app name). Ingredients A few elements are needed for the setup. In this tutorial, I will use a pi zero computer, but the setup can be done on a slew of devices and there is also a docker install. ...
It has been a long time coming. I have delayed it and procrastinate around it for a few months, but I finally finished it with 100% completion. The journey for me started on the 12th of May 2020 and finished yesterday, the 7th May 2021. Sal and his team truly deserve the most generous praise and all the donations we can spare, because this is a remarkable project, and the lessons are concise and the explanations easy to follow. ...
Linux gaming had become easier and easier over the years thanks to the wonderful communities at Lutris and PlayOnLinux and the implementations of Vulcan on the Linux side of computing. I have arranged the options by steps, but sometimes the steps need to be changed based on the local implementation, previous installed packages and preference. Without further ado, let’s begin: ...
After finishing the free Version Control with Git from Udacity, Git became a little less scary. I even inherited a little cheat sheet with some important commands and short descriptions of them. Some references for learning and working with Git: Git documentation from Git website Git tutorial from Atlassian Dotfiles on Github Gi-it repository for learning Git Git branching tutorial
Today while desperately trying to find a way to understand more about programming and learn more about CS basics, I got lucky. Open Source Society University is developed by a group of motivated people that are organising a curriculum for getting the equivalent of a CS degree while following free courses online from excellent resources. This will definitely structure my leaning greatly and I can’t wait to start studying.
Great practical examples from Harvard CS50’s Brian Yu: Video on Youtube Also reviewed today: OOP from YouTube and CS50 pong5 games track