Aquest és el guió per al proper programa El nou món digital a Ràdio Amèrica Barcelona, a emetre Dilluns 13 de Juny de 2022. 2022-06-13 14:30 Irish Time / 15:30 Zona horària Catalunya / 06:30 Pacific Time.
This is the excerpt of my radio program at Radio America Barcelona on Monday 2022-06-13 14:30 Irish Time / 15:30 Catalonia Time / 06:30 Pacific Time.
Notícies
Amb impressores 3D i cèl·lules d’un pacient han creat un teixit cardíac que funciona.
De les moltes dones increïbles que han fet avançar la humanitat i la tecnologia, avui m’agradaria parlar de Margaret Hamilton, que és la científica i programadora que va fer que la nau tripulada Apolo pogués aterrar a la lluna el 1969, en la missió Apollo 11.
No només va escriure el Software de la nau, si no que va haver de lluitar amb management, que no es prenia seriosament la tasca de programació, que no entenien, i li va dotar a la enginyeria de software d’un respecte necessari.
Va salvar la missió quan per un error humà, la tripulació va activar sensors de baixa prioritat que van saturar el processador de la nau. Ella havia previst l’escenari de molts errors humans, malgrat els seus caps li deien que no calia, i es va poder redreçar la situació i la nau va aterrar a la lluna perfectament.
Aquí es veu el codi que va escriure, en gruixuts llibres, que posats un sobre l’altre superen l’alçada de la científica.
Ella va començar a fer servir el terme Software Engineer, per a que managemen reconegués la importància d’aquesta funció. I va crear conceptes sobre Reliability de Software que fem servir actualment.
Lego també va fer un kit el 2017 LEGO Women of NASA set.
Videojocs
Moltes fires de videojocs han anunciat els títols per a Agost i 2023.
A mi m’encanta la quantitat de títols que es podran jugar amb cascos de realitat virtual.
N’hi ha molts, però jo vull destacar un que s’estrena el proper 16 de Juny, que és remake retro de les tortugues ninja, on poden jugar fins a 6 jugadors simultàniament.
GOONGALA! 🏒💥@TMNT#ShreddersRevenge is coming on JUNE 16 for $24.99! Get ready to kick shell with Casey Jones on PC, PS4, XB1 + Game Pass & Nintendo Switch!
Sony Playstation està apostant molt fort pels jocs de realitat virtual. Han desenvolupat un nou casc i comandaments de realitat virtual que seran la pera.
Es pot jugar gratis al resident evil village, sense tenir compte a Stadia, amb el navegador chrome o el mòbil. En ser una demo no pots guardar la partida, però pots saber com és el joc.
Microsoft i Samsung estan portant enguany, els jocs de Game Pass als televisors smarttv de Samsung. Això vol dir que amb la subscripció de Game Pass i amb el televisor de Samsung podrem jugar a jocs de XBOX i PC sense necessitar tenir una consola o PC.
Algunes de les smart TV de Samsung ja suporten streamming de videojocs amb Google Stadia i NVIDIA GeForce Now.
zpool watch is a small Python program for Linux workstations with graphical environment and ZFS, that checks every 30 seconds if your OpenZFS pools are Ok.
If a pool is not healthy, it displays a message in a window using tk inter.
Basically allows you to skip checking from the terminal zpool status continuously or to having to customize the ZED service to send an email and having to figure out how to it can spawn a window alert to the graphical system or what to do if the session has not been initiated.
carleslibs
Since last News from the Blog I’ve released carleslibs v.1.06, v.1.0.5 and v.1.0.4.
v.1.0.6 adds a new class OsUtils to deal with mostly-Linux Os tasks, like knowing the userid, the username, if it’s root, the distribution name and kernel version.
It also adds:
DatetimeUtils.sleep(i_seconds)
In v.1.0.5 I’ve included a new method for getting the Datetime in Unix Epoc format as Integer and increased Code Coverage to 95% for ScreenUtils class.
v. 1.0.4 contains a minor update, a method in StringUtils to escape html from a string.
It uses the library html (part of Python core) so it was small work to do for me to create this method, and the Unit Test for it, but I wanted to use carleslibs in more projects and adding it as core functionality, makes the code of these projects I’m working on, much more clear.
Minor refactors and adding more Code Coverage (Unit Testing), and protection in the code for division per zero when seconds passed as int are 0. (this was not an actual error, but is worth protecting the code just in case for the future)
Currently in Master there is a stable version of 0.8.9 mainly fixing https://gitlab.com/carles.mateo/ctop/-/issues/51 which was not detecting when CTOP was running inside a Docker Container (reporting Unable to decode DMI).
My Books
Docker Combat Guide
Added 20 new pages with some tricks, like clearing the logs (1.6GB in my workstation), using some cool tools, using bind mounts and using Docker in Windows from command line without activating Docker Desktop or WSL.
One of my SATA 2TB 2.5″ 5,400 rpm drive got damaged and so was generating errors, so that was a fantastic opportunity to show how to detect and deal with the situation to replace it with a new SATA 2TB 3.5″ 7,200 rpm and fix the pool.
The company sent me the Stein, which is sent to the employees that serve for two years, with a recognition and a celebration called “The Circle of Honor”.
Books purchased
I bought this book as often I discover new ways, better, to explain the things to my students.
Sometimes I buy books for beginners, as I can get explained what I want to do super fast and some times they teach nice tricks that I didn’t know. I have huge Django books, and it took a lot to finish them.
A simpler book may only talk about how to install and work with it under a platform (Windows or Mac, as instance) but it is all that I require as the command to create projects are the same cross platform.
For example, you can get to install and to create a simple project with ORM, connected to the database, very quickly.
Software
So I just discovered that Zoom has an option to draw in the shared screen, like Slack has. It is called Annotate. It is super useful for my classes. :)
Also discovered the icons in the Chat. It seems that not all the video calls accept it.
Hardware
As Working From Home I needed an scanner, I looked in Amazon and all of them were costing more than €200.
I changed my strategy and I bought a All-In-One from HP, which costed me €68.
So I’ll have a scanner and a backup printer, which always comes handy.
The nightmare started after I tried to connect it with Ubuntu.
Ubuntu was not recognizing it. Checking the manuals they force to configure the printer from an Android/iPhone app or from their web page, my understanding is for windows only. In any case I would not install the proprietary drivers in my Linux system.
Annoyed, I installed the Android application, and it was requesting to get Location permissions to configure it. No way. There was not possible to configure the printer without giving GPS/Location permissions to the app, so I cancelled the process.
I grabbed a Windows 10 laptop and plugged the All-in-one through the USB. I ran the wizard to search for Scanners and Printers and was not unable to use my scanner, only to configure as a printer, so I was forced to install HP drivers.
Irritated I did, and they were suggesting to configure the printer so I can print from Internet or from the phone. Thanks HP, you’ll be the next SolarWinds big-security-hole. I said no way, and in order to use the Wifi I have to agree to open that security door which is that the printer would be connected to Internet permanently, sending and receiving information. I said no, I’ll use only via USB.
Even selecting that, in order to scan, the Software forces me to create an account.
Disappointing. HP is doing very big stupid mistakes. They used to be a good company.
Since they stopped doing the drivers in Barcelona years ago, their Software and solutions (not the hardware) went to hell.
I checked the reviews in the App Store and so many people gave them 1 star and have problems… what a shame the way they created this solution.
This is a great Open Source, multi-platform editor, so I wanted to support the creator.
Security
Attacks: looking for exploits
This is just a sample of a set of attacks to the blog in a 3 minutes interval.
Another one this morning:
Now all are blocked in the Firewall.
This is a non stop practice from spammers and pirates that has been going on for years.
It was almost three decades ago, when I was the Linux responsible of an ISP, and I was installing a brand new Linux system connected to a service called “infovia”, at the time when Internet was used with dial-up and modems, and in the interval of time of the installation, it got hacked. I had the Ethernet connected. So then already, this was happening.
The morning I was writing this, I blocked thousands of offending Ip Addresses.
Protection solutions
I recommend you to use CloudFlare, is a CDN/Cache/Accelerator with DoS protection and even in its Free version is really useful.
Fun/Games
So I come with a game kind of Quiz that you can play with your friends, family or work colleagues working from home (WFH).
The idea is that the master shares screen and sound in Zoom, and then the rest connect to jackbox.tv and enter the code displayed on the master’s screen on their own browser, and an interactive game is started.
It is recommended that the master has two monitors so they can also play.
The games are so fun as a phrase appearing and people having to complete with a lie. If your friends vote your phrase, believing is true, you get points. If you vote the true answer, you get points too.
Very funny and recommendable.
Stuff
<humor>Skynet sent another terminator to end me, but I terminated it. Its processor lays exhibited in my home now</humor>
I bought a laminator.
It has also a ruler and a trimmer to cut the paper.
It was only €39 and I’ve to say that I’m very happy with the results.
It takes around 5 minutes to be ready, it takes to get to the hot-enough temperature, and feeds the pages slowly, around 50 secs a DIN-A4, but the results are worth the time.
I’ve protected my medical receipts and other value documents and the work was perfect. No bubbles at all. No big deal if the plastic covers are introduced not 100% straight. Even if you pass again an already plasticized document, all is good.
Fun
Databases
One of my friends sent me this image.
It is old, but still it’s fun. So it assumes the cameras of the parking or speed cameras, will OCR the plate to build a query, and that the code is not well protected. So basically is exploiting a Sql Injection.
Anybody working on the systems side, and with databases, knows how annoying are those potential situations.
It has been 9 years since I created the blog, and some articles have old content that still get many visitors. To make sure they get the clear picture and not obsolete information, all the articles of the taxonomy POST, will include the Date and Time when the article was first published.
I also removed the annoying link “Leave a comment” on top. I think it influences some people to leave comments before actually having read the article.
It is still possible to add comments, but they are on the bottom of the page. I believe it makes more sense this way. This is the way.
Technically that involved modifying the files of my template:
functions.php
content.php
My Books
Automating and Provisioning to Amazon AWS using boto3 Amazon’s SDK for Python 3
It’s 128 pages in Full size DIN-A4 DRM-Free, and comes with a link to code samples of a real project CLI Menu based.
Docker Combat Guide
I have updated my book Docker Combat Guide and I added a completely new section, including source code, to work with Docker’s Python SDK.
I show the Docker SDK by showing the code of an actual CLI program I wrote in Python 3.
Here you can see a video that demonstrates how I launched a project with three Docker Containers via Docker compose. The Containers have Python, Flask webserver, and redis as bridge between the two Python Containers.
All the source code are downloadable with the book.
Watch at 1080p at Full Screen for better experience
My Classes
In January I resumed the coding classes. I have new students, and few spots free in my agenda, as some of my students graduated and others have been hired as Software Developers. I can not be more proud. :)
Free Training
Symfony is one of the most popular PHP Frameworks.
Before leaving 2021, I registered WinRAR for Windows.
WinRAR is a compressing Software that has been with us for 19 years.
I’m pretty sure I registered it in the past, but these holidays I was out only with two Window laptops and I had to do some work for the university and WinRAR came it handy, so I decided to register it again.
I create Software and Books, and I earn my life with this, so it makes a lot of sense to pay others for their good work crafting Software.
Books I Purchased
I bought this book and by the moment is really good. I wanted to buy some updated books as all my Linux books have some years already. Also I keep my skills sharp by reading reading reading.
Hardware I purchased
So I bought a cheap car power inverter.
The ones I saw in Amazon were €120+ and they were not very good rated, so I opted to buy a cheap one in the supermarket and keep it on the car just in case one day I need it. (My new Asus Zenbook laptop has 18 hours of autonomy and I don’t charge it for days, but you never know)
For those that don’t know, a power inverter allows you to get a 220V (120V in US) plug, from the connection of the lighter from your car. Also you can get the energy from an external car battery. This comes in really handy to charge the laptop, cameras, your drone… if you are in the nature and you don’t have any plug near.
I bought one years ago to power up Raspberry Pi’s when I was doing Research for a project I was studying to launch.
Fun
Many friends are using Starlink as a substitute of fiber for their rural homes, and they are super happy with it.
One of them send me a very fun article.
It is in Italian, but you can google translate it.
Anyways you can get the idea of what’s going on in the picture :)
So tell me… so your speed with Starlink drops 80% in winter uh… aha…
Random news about Software
I tried the voice recognition in Slack huddle, and it works pretty well. Also Zoom has this feature and they are great. Specially when you are in a group call, or in a class.
My health
I was experimenting some problems, so I scheduled an appointment to get blood analysis and to be checked. Just in case.
TL;TR I could have died.
The doctors saw my analysis and sent me to the hospital urgently, where they found something that was going to be lethal. For hours they were checking me and doing several more analysis and tests to discard false positives, etc… and they precisely found the issue and provided urgent treatment and confirmed that I could have died at any moment.
Basically I dodged a bullet.
I was doing certain healthy things that helped me in a situation that could have been deadly or extremely dangerous to my health.
With the treatment and my strict discipline, I reverted the situation really quick and now I have more health and more energy than before. I feel rejuvenated.
I’m feeling lucky that with my work, the classes, the books I wrote, etc… I didn’t have to worry about the expensive medicines, the transport, etc… It was a bad moment, during Christmas, with so many people on holidays, pharmacies and GPs closed, so I had to spend more time looking for, traveling, and to pay more than it would had been strictly necessary. Despite all the time I used to my health, I managed to finish my university duties on time, and I didn’t miss my duties at work after the hospital, neither I had to cancel any programming classes or mentoring sessions. Nobody out of my closest circle knew what was going on, with the exception of my boss, which I kept informed in real time, just in case there was any problem, as I didn’t want to let down the company and have my duties at work to be unattended if something major happened.
I was not afraid to die. Unfortunately I’ve lost very significant people since I was a child. Relatives, very appreciated bosses and colleagues which I considered my friends, and great friends of different circles. Illnesses, accidents, and a friend of mine committed suicide years ago, and some of my partners attempted it (before we know each other). When you see people that are so good leaving, this brings a sadness that cannot be explained with words. I have had a tough life.
We have a limited time, and he have freedom to make choices. Some people choose to be miserable, to mistreat others, to lie, to cheat, to be unfaithful, to lack ethic and integrity. Those are their choices. Their wasted time will not come back.
Some of my friends are doctors. I admire them. They save lives and improve the quality of life of people with health problems.
I like being an Engineer cause I can create things, I can build instead of destroy, I can help to improve the world, and I can help users to have a good time and to avoid the frustration of services being down. I chose to do a positive work. So many times I’ve been offered much bigger salaries to do something I didn’t like, or by companies that I don’t admire, and I refused. Cause I wanted to make a better world. I know many people don’t think like that, and they only take take take. They are even unable to understand my choices, even to believe that I’m like that. But it’s enough that I know what I’m doing, and that it makes sense for me, and that I know that I’m doing well. And then, one day, you realize, that doing well, being fair and nice even if other people stabbed you in the back, you got to know fantastic people like you, and people that adore you and love to have you in their life, in their companies… So I’m really fortunate. To all the good-hearted people around, that give without expect anything in return, that try to make the world a better place, thank you.
