Tools

AI singularity? Meh. It's AI-augmented humans that worry me.

On my List of Things to Worry About, a superintelligent AI taking over the world just doesn’t rank. We humans don’t understand our own sentience and intelligence. We’re a long way from creating a truly sentient, understanding, superintelligent machine. The current and near-term models labeled artificial “intelligence” introduce a threat similar to a nuclear bomb. Just like the bomb, these AI have no real intelligence, no real understanding. An intelligent bomb could understand what was going on and refuse to explode.

OtpTranslate: Migrate from Raivo to Aegis, and beyond

Recently a friend asked me about copying his Raivo OTP database to Aegis. Those are both solid MFA apps. The only problem is Raivo only works on iOS, and Aegis only works on Android. His Raivo database had hundreds of entries, so it would have been a real pain to manually set it up in Aegis. Plus, keeping them in sync would be an additional pain. We searched for an existing open-source conversion tool, but came up empty-handed.

Connect to an Android Emulator running on Linux from Windows

Once upon a time I needed to connect to an Android emulator running on a Linux box from a Windows virtual machine. Yes, it was very strange. In case you every find yourself in a similar situation, here’s one way to do it.

Display a QR code on the fly from zsh

You’re typing away at the console in Linux or Mac OS when you suddenly need to display a QR code. There are a lot of dubious websites that purport to generate QR codes for you, but at what cost? Let’s just generate our own QR codes using open-source tools.

A Few Notes about Note Taking

Wisdom is applied knowledge, therefore memory is the foundation of wisdom. The physical act of taking notes enhances memory encoding and storage. Reviewing notes increases the amount and breadth of information retrieved. Keeping notes is a useful practice with a number of benefits, some of them even monetary. The following activities are driven and enhanced by good notes.

Front Toward Enemy - When a "Killer Feature" Becomes Friendly Fire.

Can your product’s “killer feature” — that amazing bit of utility that sets it apart from the competition — actually drive customers away from your product? Consider one example.

Write a Custom Webhook to Handle MailGun events

Wouldn’t you like to know when MailGun fails to deliver an email? Or worse still, when someone complains about an email you sent? MailGun can notify you about the following events: Clicked Complained Delivered Failed Opened Unsubscribed There’s just one catch: You have to write your own webhook, then subscribe to those events with your webhook’s URL. If that thought left you cross-eyed, fear not! The reign of cloud computing has made this simpler than it used to be, especially the introduction of functions as a service.

Use SSH with multiple GitLab.com accounts

Here’s the situation: The easiest and most secure way to interact with Git repos hosted on GitLab is over the SSH protocol. While most people only use one GitLab.com account, a freelancer or consultant might need to work with repos from multiple accounts. If that freelancer attempts to upload their public SSH key to multiple accounts, they’ll get the following error message from GitLab: Fingerprint has already been taken. Assuming they don’t want to use password-based authentication over HTTPS as a workaround, how can our friendly freelancer get SSH working?

git greenbase means never pulling a broken build

If your team uses Git and Continuous Integration, chances are good that your workflow could benefit from git greenbase. But first, strap on your VR headset and experience the perils of git pull through the eyes of our seasoned developer, Karen. Table of Contents Karen vs the broken build Where vanilla git pull falls short git greenbase to the rescue! What about local feature branches? Installing git greenbase But what about Mac and Windows?

Hard up for hosting: From DigitalOcean, to AWS, to Heroku.

The year was 2016. I was a hobbyist with ideas to burn. Naturally, I needed an inexpensive hosting provider for my latest web app. Where would I start? Who would prove to be the elusive “hostess with the mostest?” This is the story of my migration to and from DigitalOcean, AWS, and Heroku – the trial and error, the pros and the pain points. You’ve seen the archetypal hero’s tale. Now cinch up your belt, oil your sword.