When it comes to securing the software supply chain, engineering teams often assume that the choice between building their own hardened images or buying a solution is straightforward…until they try to build the images themselves. As the programmer’s credo goes: “We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they’d be easy.” The decision […]
Author: drweb
SSH (Secure Shell) is one of the most important tools for Linux system administrators and developers, as it allows you to securely log in to remote machines, run command-line programs, manage files, transfer data, forward ports, and even run GUI apps remotely. But here’s the catch → using SSH with default settings isn’t always safe, because hackers constantly scan the internet for open SSH ports and weak logins. That’s why learning how to properly configure and secure SSH is a must. In this guide, we’ll cover essential SSH configurations and security tips every Linux beginner should know to keep their…
I’ve been experimenting with local models for a while now, and the progress in making them accessible has been exciting. Initial experiences are often fantastic, many models, like Gemma 3 270M, are lightweight enough to run on common hardware. This potential for broad deployment is a major draw. However, as I’ve tried to build meaningful, specialized applications with these smaller models, I’ve consistently encountered challenges in achieving the necessary performance for complex tasks. For instance, in a recent experiment testing the tool-calling efficiency of various models, we observed that many local models (and even several remote ones) struggled to meet…
Shortcut this week added an artificial intelligence (AI) agent that is capable of orchestrating the planning, tracking and coordination of software projects. Company CEO Kurt Schrader said the Korey agent takes ideas described in natural language and converts them into structured, build-ready plans in seconds, including generating detailed specifications with clear acceptance criteria. It then […]
It’s 2 AM in a lab somewhere. A researcher has three terminals open, a half-written Jupyter notebook on one screen, an Excel sheet filled with sample IDs on another, and a half-eaten snack next to shell commands. They’re juggling scripts to run a protein folding model, parsing CSVs from the last experiment, searching for literature, and Googling whether that one Python package broke in the latest update, again. This isn’t the exception; it’s the norm. Scientific research today is a patchwork of tools, scripts, and formats, glued together by determination and late-night caffeine. Reproducibility is a wishlist item. Infrastructure is…
The New Arena of LeadershipThe role of the Chief Data Officer is no longer about governance alone. It is about vision. It is about turning data into the lifeblood of strategy. Artificial intelligence is no longer a side note in the story of business. It has become the ink with which the next chapters of the enterprise are written. The CDO is now the architect of how decisions are made, how risks are managed, and how opportunities are seized.The CDO of yesterday was a custodian of compliance. The CDO of today is a commander of competitive advantage. This shift requires…
After setting up dozens of Internet of Things (IoT) smart home devices, I started to wonder: how hard could it be to build one from scratch?I needed a project to learn on, so I decided to create something fun: a device that alerts my neighbors when my kids go swimming, extending the invitation for their kids to come swim too.What follows are the lessons I learned from building such an IoT device from scratch.Here’s a short video demoing the device and its features:Watch this video on YouTubeThe instructions and code for building your own Splashflag can be found at the…
Presenting you with an updated version of our sp_snapshot procedure, allowing you to easily create database snapshots.This new version fixes a bug that we’ve found in version 2 where snapshots will fail for databases with multiple data files.We’ve also added the @STMTOnly parameter, allowing you to generate the scripts for creating the required snapshots without actually doing so.Parameters@DatabaseList – a comma delimited string of database names, allows wildcards@Suffix – adds a suffix to the snapshot name, giving it the format _, DEFAULT value is ‘snapshot’@FilePath – specify a file path where the snapshot files will be saved to. If left blank, this will default…
News At JetBrains, we want the PHP community to shine. First and foremost, we do this by building PhpStorm, the best IDE for PHP development; but we also support and help drive the PHP Foundation; have just organised PHPverse, accessible for everyone worldwide; and recently we made the Laravel Idea plugin free for all. On top of that, we support open-source projects that we believe impact the PHP community or have the potential to do so, and which will benefit from our financial support. Our support includes free PhpStorm licenses for active open source maintainers, but also financial sponsorships. With…
SELECT * feels convenient, but in SQL Server it bloats I/O, burns network bandwidth, blocks covering-index usage, and makes code brittle when schemas change. Specify only the columns you need—your DBAs (and your latency) will thank you.Top 5 reasonsExtra I/O and bigger result payloadsFetching every column—including wide MAX types—moves more data from disk and across the network than needed, hurting throughput. Microsoft notes the performance implications of wide tables/rows; real-world demos also show SELECT * inflating query costs. Prevents covering indexes and triggers key lookups/scansThe optimizer can only use a covering nonclustered index (often via INCLUDE) when it knows the exact…