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  1. Blogger
    By: Janus Atienza
    Tue, 28 Jan 2025 23:16:45 +0000


    As a digital marketing agency, your focus is to provide high-quality services to your clients while ensuring that operations run smoothly. However, managing the various components of SEO, such as link-building, can be time-consuming and resource-draining. This is where white-label link-building services come into play. By outsourcing your link-building efforts, you can save time and resources, allowing your agency to focus on more strategic tasks that directly contribute to your clients’ success. Below, we’ll explore how these services can benefit your agency in terms of time and resource management.
    Focus on Core Competencies
    When you choose to outsource your link-building efforts to a white-label service, it allows your agency to focus on your core competencies. As an agency, you may excel in content strategy, social media marketing, or paid advertising. However, link-building requires specialized knowledge, experience, and resources. A white-label link-building service can handle this aspect of SEO for you, freeing up time for your team to focus on what they do best. This way, you can maintain a high level of performance in other areas without spreading your team too thin.
    Eliminate the Need for Specialized Staff
    Building a successful link-building strategy requires expertise, which may not be available within your existing team. Hiring specialized staff to manage outreach campaigns, content creation, and link placements can be expensive and time-consuming. However, white-label link-building services already have the necessary expertise and resources in place. You won’t need to hire or train new employees to handle this aspect of SEO. The service provider’s team can execute campaigns quickly and effectively, allowing your agency to scale without expanding its internal workforce.
    Access to Established Relationships and Networks
    Link-building is not just about placing links on any website; it’s about building relationships with authoritative websites in your client’s industry, especially within relevant open-source projects and Linux communities. This process takes time to establish and requires continuous effort. A white-label link-building service typically has established relationships with high-authority websites, bloggers, and influencers across various industries. By leveraging these networks, they can secure quality backlinks faster and more efficiently than your agency could on its own. This reduces the time spent on outreach and relationship-building, ensuring that your client’s SEO efforts are moving forward without delays. For Linux-focused sites, this can include participation in relevant forums and contributing to open-source projects.
    Efficient Campaign Execution
    White-label link-building services are designed to execute campaigns efficiently. These agencies have streamlined processes and advanced tools that allow them to scale campaigns while maintaining quality. They can manage multiple campaigns at once, ensuring that your clients’ link-building needs are met in a timely manner. By outsourcing to a provider with a proven workflow, you can avoid the inefficiencies associated with trying to build an in-house link-building team. This leads to faster execution, better results, and more satisfied clients.
    Cost-Effectiveness
    Managing link-building in-house can be costly. Aside from the salaries and benefits of hiring staff, you’ll also need to invest in tools, software, and outreach efforts. White-label link-building services, on the other hand, offer more cost-effective solutions. These providers typically offer packages that include all necessary tools, such as backlink analysis software, outreach platforms, and reporting tools, which can be expensive to purchase and maintain on your own. By outsourcing, you save money on infrastructure and overhead costs, all while getting access to the best tools available.
    Reduce Time Spent on Reporting and Analysis
    Effective link-building campaigns require consistent monitoring, analysis, and reporting. Generating reports, tracking backlink quality, and assessing the impact of links on search rankings can be time-consuming tasks. When you outsource this responsibility to a white-label link-building service, they will handle reporting on your behalf. The provider will deliver customized reports that highlight key metrics like the number of backlinks acquired, domain authority, traffic increases, and overall SEO performance. This allows you to deliver the necessary information to your clients while saving time on report generation and analysis. For Linux-based servers, this can also involve analyzing server logs for SEO-related issues.
    Scalability and Flexibility
    As your agency grows, so does the demand for SEO services. One of the challenges agencies face is scaling their link-building efforts to accommodate more clients or larger campaigns. A white-label link-building service offers scalability and flexibility, meaning that as your client base grows, the provider can handle an increased volume of link-building efforts without compromising on quality. Whether you’re managing a single campaign or hundreds of clients, a reliable white-label service can adjust to your needs and ensure that every client receives the attention their SEO efforts deserve.
    Mitigate Risks Associated with Link-Building
    Link-building, if not done properly, can result in penalties from search engines, harming your client’s SEO performance. Managing link-building campaigns in-house without proper knowledge of SEO best practices can lead to mistakes, such as acquiring low-quality or irrelevant backlinks. White-label link-building services are experts in following search engine guidelines and using ethical link-building practices. By outsourcing, you reduce the risk of penalties, ensuring that your clients’ SEO efforts are safe and aligned with best practices.
    Stay Up-to-Date with SEO Trends
    SEO is an ever-evolving field, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and algorithm updates can be a full-time job. White-label link-building services are dedicated to staying current with industry changes. By outsourcing your link-building efforts, you can be sure that the provider is implementing the latest techniques and best practices in their campaigns. This ensures that your client’s link-building strategies are always aligned with search engine updates, maximizing their chances of success. This includes familiarity with SEO tools that run on Linux, such as command-line tools and open-source crawlers, and understanding the nuances of optimizing websites hosted on Linux servers.
    Conclusion
    White-label link-building services offer significant time and resource savings for digital marketing agencies. By outsourcing link-building efforts, your agency can focus on core business areas, eliminate the need for specialized in-house staff, and streamline campaign execution. The cost-effectiveness and scalability of these services also make them an attractive option for agencies looking to grow their SEO offerings without overextending their resources. Especially for clients using Linux-based infrastructure, leveraging a white-label service with expertise in this area can be a significant advantage. With a trusted white-label link-building partner, you can deliver high-quality backlinks to your clients, improve their SEO rankings, and drive long-term success.
    The post White-Label Link Building for Linux-Based Websites: Saving Time and Resources appeared first on Unixmen.
  2. Blogger

    Sigma Browser

    · Blogger · 01/28/25 07:28 AM

    by: aiparabellum.com
    Tue, 28 Jan 2025 07:28:06 +0000

    In the digital age, where online privacy and security are paramount, tools like Sigma Browser are gaining significant attention. Sigma Browser is a privacy-focused web browser designed to provide users with a secure, fast, and ad-free browsing experience. Built with advanced features to protect user data and enhance online anonymity, Sigma Browser is an excellent choice for individuals and businesses alike. In this article, we’ll dive into its features, how it works, benefits, pricing, and more to help you understand why Sigma Browser is a standout in the world of secure browsing.
    Features of Sigma Browser AI
    Sigma Browser offers a range of features tailored to ensure privacy, speed, and convenience. Here are some of its key features:
    Ad-Free Browsing: Enjoy a seamless browsing experience without intrusive ads. Enhanced Privacy: Built-in privacy tools to block trackers and protect your data. Fast Performance: Optimized for speed, ensuring quick page loads and smooth navigation. Customizable Interface: Personalize your browsing experience with themes and settings. Cross-Platform Sync: Sync your data across multiple devices for a unified experience. Secure Browsing: Advanced encryption to keep your online activities private. How It Works
    Sigma Browser is designed to be user-friendly while prioritizing security. Here’s how it works:
    Download and Install: Simply download Sigma Browser from its official website and install it on your device. Set Up Privacy Settings: Customize your privacy preferences, such as blocking trackers and enabling encryption. Browse Securely: Start browsing the web with enhanced privacy and no ads. Sync Across Devices: Log in to your account to sync bookmarks, history, and settings across multiple devices. Regular Updates: The browser receives frequent updates to improve performance and security. Benefits of Sigma Browser AI
    Using Sigma Browser comes with numerous advantages:
    Improved Privacy: Protects your data from third-party trackers and advertisers. Faster Browsing: Eliminates ads and optimizes performance for quicker loading times. User-Friendly: Easy to set up and use, even for non-tech-savvy individuals. Cross-Device Compatibility: Access your browsing data on any device. Customization: Tailor the browser to suit your preferences and needs. Pricing
    Sigma Browser offers flexible pricing plans to cater to different users:
    Free Version: Includes basic features like ad-free browsing and privacy protection. Premium Plan: Unlocks advanced features such as cross-device sync and priority support. Pricing details are available on the official website. Sigma Browser Review
    Sigma Browser has received positive feedback from users for its focus on privacy and performance. Many appreciate its ad-free experience and the ability to customize the interface. The cross-platform sync feature is also a standout, making it a convenient choice for users who switch between devices. Some users have noted that the premium plan could offer more features, but overall, Sigma Browser is highly regarded for its security and ease of use.
    Conclusion
    Sigma Browser is a powerful tool for anyone looking to enhance their online privacy and browsing experience. With its ad-free interface, robust privacy features, and fast performance, it stands out as a reliable choice in the crowded browser market. Whether you’re a casual user or a business professional, Sigma Browser offers the tools you need to browse securely and efficiently. Give it a try and experience the difference for yourself.
    Visit Website The post Sigma Browser appeared first on AI Parabellum.
  3. Blogger

    Sigma Browser

    · Blogger · 01/28/25 07:28 AM

    by: aiparabellum.com
    Tue, 28 Jan 2025 07:28:06 +0000

    In the digital age, where online privacy and security are paramount, tools like Sigma Browser are gaining significant attention. Sigma Browser is a privacy-focused web browser designed to provide users with a secure, fast, and ad-free browsing experience. Built with advanced features to protect user data and enhance online anonymity, Sigma Browser is an excellent choice for individuals and businesses alike. In this article, we’ll dive into its features, how it works, benefits, pricing, and more to help you understand why Sigma Browser is a standout in the world of secure browsing.
    Features of Sigma Browser AI
    Sigma Browser offers a range of features tailored to ensure privacy, speed, and convenience. Here are some of its key features:
    Ad-Free Browsing: Enjoy a seamless browsing experience without intrusive ads. Enhanced Privacy: Built-in privacy tools to block trackers and protect your data. Fast Performance: Optimized for speed, ensuring quick page loads and smooth navigation. Customizable Interface: Personalize your browsing experience with themes and settings. Cross-Platform Sync: Sync your data across multiple devices for a unified experience. Secure Browsing: Advanced encryption to keep your online activities private. How It Works
    Sigma Browser is designed to be user-friendly while prioritizing security. Here’s how it works:
    Download and Install: Simply download Sigma Browser from its official website and install it on your device. Set Up Privacy Settings: Customize your privacy preferences, such as blocking trackers and enabling encryption. Browse Securely: Start browsing the web with enhanced privacy and no ads. Sync Across Devices: Log in to your account to sync bookmarks, history, and settings across multiple devices. Regular Updates: The browser receives frequent updates to improve performance and security. Benefits of Sigma Browser AI
    Using Sigma Browser comes with numerous advantages:
    Improved Privacy: Protects your data from third-party trackers and advertisers. Faster Browsing: Eliminates ads and optimizes performance for quicker loading times. User-Friendly: Easy to set up and use, even for non-tech-savvy individuals. Cross-Device Compatibility: Access your browsing data on any device. Customization: Tailor the browser to suit your preferences and needs. Pricing
    Sigma Browser offers flexible pricing plans to cater to different users:
    Free Version: Includes basic features like ad-free browsing and privacy protection. Premium Plan: Unlocks advanced features such as cross-device sync and priority support. Pricing details are available on the official website. Sigma Browser Review
    Sigma Browser has received positive feedback from users for its focus on privacy and performance. Many appreciate its ad-free experience and the ability to customize the interface. The cross-platform sync feature is also a standout, making it a convenient choice for users who switch between devices. Some users have noted that the premium plan could offer more features, but overall, Sigma Browser is highly regarded for its security and ease of use.
    Conclusion
    Sigma Browser is a powerful tool for anyone looking to enhance their online privacy and browsing experience. With its ad-free interface, robust privacy features, and fast performance, it stands out as a reliable choice in the crowded browser market. Whether you’re a casual user or a business professional, Sigma Browser offers the tools you need to browse securely and efficiently. Give it a try and experience the difference for yourself.
    Visit Website The post Sigma Browser appeared first on AI Parabellum.
  4. Blogger
    by: Chris Coyier
    Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:10:10 +0000

    I love a good exposé on how a front-end team operates. Like what technology they use, why, and how, particularly when there are pain points and journeys through them.
    Jim Simon of Reddit wrote one a bit ago about their teams build process. They were using something Rollup based and getting 2-minute build times and spent quite a bit of time and effort switching to Vite and now are getting sub-1-second build times. I don’t know if “wow Vite is fast” is the right read here though, as they lost type checking entirely. Vite means esbuild for TypeScript which just strips types, meaning no build process (locally, in CI, or otherwise) will catch errors. That seems like a massive deal to me as it opens the door to all contributions having TypeScript errors. I admit I’m fascinated by the approach though, it’s kinda like treating TypeScript as a local-only linter. Sure, VS Code complains and gives you red squiggles, but nothing else will, so use that information as you will. Very mixed feelings.
    Vite always seems to be front and center in conversations about the JavaScript ecosystem these days. The tooling section of this year’s JavaScript Rising Stars:
    (Interesting how it’s actually Biome that gained the most stars this year and has large goals about being the toolchain for the web, like Vite)
    Vite actually has the bucks now to make a real run at it. It’s always nail biting and fascinating to see money being thrown around at front-end open source, as a strong business model around all that is hard to find.
    Maybe there is an enterprise story to capture? Somehow I can see that more easily. I would guess that’s where the new venture vlt is seeing potential. npm, now being owned by Microsoft, certainly had a story there that investors probably liked to see, so maybe vlt can do it again but better. It’s the “you’ve got their data” thing that adds up to me. Not that I love it, I just get it. Vite might have your stack, but we write checks to infrastructure companies.
    That tinge of worry extends to Bun and Deno too. I think they can survive decently on momentum of developers being excited about the speed and features. I wouldn’t say I’ve got a full grasp on it, but I’ve seen some developers be pretty disillusioned or at least trepidatious with Deno and their package registry JSR. But Deno has products! They have enterprise consulting and various hosting. Data and product, I think that is all very smart. Mabe void(0) can find a product play in there. This all reminds me of XState / Stately which took a bit of funding, does open source, and productizes some of what they do. Their new Store library is getting lots of attention which is good for the gander.
    To be clear, I’m rooting for all of these companies. They are small and only lightly funded companies, just like CodePen, trying to make tools to make web development better. 💜
  5. Blogger
    by: Andy Clarke
    Mon, 27 Jan 2025 15:35:44 +0000

    Honestly, it’s difficult for me to come to terms with, but almost 20 years have passed since I wrote my first book, Transcending CSS. In it, I explained how and why to use what was the then-emerging Multi-Column Layout module.
    Hint: I published an updated version, Transcending CSS Revisited, which is free to read online.
    Perhaps because, before the web, I’d worked in print, I was over-excited at the prospect of dividing content into columns without needing extra markup purely there for presentation. I’ve used Multi-Column Layout regularly ever since. Yet, CSS Columns remains one of the most underused CSS layout tools. I wonder why that is?
    Holes in the specification
    For a long time, there were, and still are, plenty of holes in Multi-Column Layout. As Rachel Andrew — now a specification editor — noted in her article five years ago:
    She’s right. And that’s still true. You can’t style columns, for example, by alternating background colours using some sort of :nth-column() pseudo-class selector. You can add a column-rule between columns using border-style values like dashed, dotted, and solid, and who can forget those evergreen groove and ridge styles? But you can’t apply border-image values to a column-rule, which seems odd as they were introduced at roughly the same time. The Multi-Column Layout is imperfect, and there’s plenty I wish it could do in the future, but that doesn’t explain why most people ignore what it can do today.
    Patchy browser implementation for a long time
    Legacy browsers simply ignored the column properties they couldn’t process. But, when Multi-Column Layout was first launched, most designers and developers had yet to accept that websites needn’t look the same in every browser.
    Early on, support for Multi-Column Layout was patchy. However, browsers caught up over time, and although there are still discrepancies — especially in controlling content breaks — Multi-Column Layout has now been implemented widely. Yet, for some reason, many designers and developers I speak to feel that CSS Columns remain broken. Yes, there’s plenty that browser makers should do to improve their implementations, but that shouldn’t prevent people from using the solid parts today.
    Readability and usability with scrolling
    Maybe the main reason designers and developers haven’t embraced Multi-Column Layout as they have CSS Grid and Flexbox isn’t in the specification or its implementation but in its usability. Rachel pointed this out in her article:
    That’s true. No one would enjoy repeatedly scrolling up and down to read a long passage of content set in columns. She went on:
    But, let’s face it, thinking very carefully is what designers and developers should always be doing.
    Sure, if you’re dumb enough to dump a large amount of content into columns without thinking about its design, you’ll end up serving readers a poor experience. But why would you do that when headlines, images, and quotes can span columns and reset the column flow, instantly improving readability? Add to that container queries and newer unit values for text sizing, and there really isn’t a reason to avoid using Multi-Column Layout any longer.
    A brief refresher on properties and values
    Let’s run through a refresher. There are two ways to flow content into multiple columns; first, by defining the number of columns you need using the column-count property:
    CodePen Embed Fallback Second, and often best, is specifying the column width, leaving a browser to decide how many columns will fit along the inline axis. For example, I’m using column-width to specify that my columns are over 18rem. A browser creates as many 18rem columns as possible to fit and then shares any remaining space between them.
    CodePen Embed Fallback Then, there is the gutter (or column-gap) between columns, which you can specify using any length unit. I prefer using rem units to maintain the gutters’ relationship to the text size, but if your gutters need to be 1em, you can leave this out, as that’s a browser’s default gap.
    CodePen Embed Fallback The final column property is that divider (or column-rule) to the gutters, which adds visual separation between columns. Again, you can set a thickness and use border-style values like dashed, dotted, and solid.
    CodePen Embed Fallback These examples will be seen whenever you encounter a Multi-Column Layout tutorial, including CSS-Tricks’ own Almanac. The Multi-Column Layout syntax is one of the simplest in the suite of CSS layout tools, which is another reason why there are few reasons not to use it.
    Multi-Column Layout is even more relevant today
    When I wrote Transcending CSS and first explained the emerging Multi-Column Layout, there were no rem or viewport units, no :has() or other advanced selectors, no container queries, and no routine use of media queries because responsive design hadn’t been invented.
    We didn’t have calc() or clamp() for adjusting text sizes, and there was no CSS Grid or Flexible Box Layout for precise control over a layout. Now we do, and all these properties help to make Multi-Column Layout even more relevant today.
    Now, you can use rem or viewport units combined with calc() and clamp() to adapt the text size inside CSS Columns. You can use :has() to specify when columns are created, depending on the type of content they contain. Or you might use container queries to implement several columns only when a container is large enough to display them. Of course, you can also combine a Multi-Column Layout with CSS Grid or Flexible Box Layout for even more imaginative layout designs.
    Using Multi-Column Layout today
    Patty Meltt is an up-and-coming country music sensation. She’s not real, but the challenges of designing and developing websites like hers are. My challenge was to implement a flexible article layout without media queries which adapts not only to screen size but also whether or not a <figure> is present. To improve the readability of running text in what would potentially be too-long lines, it should be set in columns to narrow the measure. And, as a final touch, the text size should adapt to the width of the container, not the viewport.
    Article with no <figure> element. What would potentially be too-long lines of text are set in columns to improve readability by narrowing the measure. Article containing a <figure> element. No column text is needed for this narrower measure. The HTML for this layout is rudimentary. One <section>, one <main>, and one <figure> (or not:)
    <section> <main> <h1>About Patty</h1> <p>…</p> </main> <figure> <img> </figure> </section> I started by adding Multi-Column Layout styles to the <main> element using the column-width property to set the width of each column to 40ch (characters). The max-width and automatic inline margins reduce the content width and center it in the viewport:
    main { margin-inline: auto; max-width: 100ch; column-width: 40ch; column-gap: 3rem; column-rule: .5px solid #98838F; } Next, I applied a flexible box layout to the <section> only if it :has() a direct descendant which is a <figure>:
    section:has(> figure) { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; gap: 0 3rem; } This next min-width: min(100%, 30rem) — applied to both the <main> and <figure> — is a combination of the min-width property and the min() CSS function. The min() function allows you to specify two or more values, and a browser will choose the smallest value from them. This is incredibly useful for responsive layouts where you want to control the size of an element based on different conditions:
    section:has(> figure) main { flex: 1; margin-inline: 0; min-width: min(100%, 30rem); } section:has(> figure) figure { flex: 4; min-width: min(100%, 30rem); } What’s efficient about this implementation is that Multi-Column Layout styles are applied throughout, with no need for media queries to switch them on or off.
    Adjusting text size in relation to column width helps improve readability. This has only recently become easy to implement with the introduction of container queries, their associated values including cqi, cqw, cqmin, and cqmax. And the clamp() function. Fortunately, you don’t have to work out these text sizes manually as ClearLeft’s Utopia will do the job for you.
    My headlines and paragraph sizes are clamped to their minimum and maximum rem sizes and between them text is fluid depending on their container’s inline size:
    h1 { font-size: clamp(5.6526rem, 5.4068rem + 1.2288cqi, 6.3592rem); } h2 { font-size: clamp(1.9994rem, 1.9125rem + 0.4347cqi, 2.2493rem); } p { font-size: clamp(1rem, 0.9565rem + 0.2174cqi, 1.125rem); } So, to specify the <main> as the container on which those text sizes are based, I applied a container query for its inline size:
    main { container-type: inline-size; } Open the final result in a desktop browser, when you’re in front of one. It’s a flexible article layout without media queries which adapts to screen size and the presence of a <figure>. Multi-Column Layout sets text in columns to narrow the measure and the text size adapts to the width of its container, not the viewport.
    CodePen Embed Fallback Modern CSS is solving many prior problems
    Structure content with spanning elements which will restart the flow of columns and prevent people from scrolling long distances. Prevent figures from dividing their images and captions between columns. Almost every article I’ve ever read about Multi-Column Layout focuses on its flaws, especially usability. CSS-Tricks’ own Geoff Graham even mentioned the scrolling up and down issue when he asked, “When Do You Use CSS Columns?”
    Fortunately, the column-span property — which enables headlines, images, and quotes to span columns, resets the column flow, and instantly improves readability — now has solid support in browsers:
    h1, h2, blockquote { column-span: all; } But the solution to the scrolling up and down issue isn’t purely technical. It also requires content design. This means that content creators and designers must think carefully about the frequency and type of spanning elements, dividing a Multi-Column Layout into shallower sections, reducing the need to scroll and improving someone’s reading experience.
    Another prior problem was preventing headlines from becoming detached from their content and figures, dividing their images and captions between columns. Thankfully, the break-after property now also has widespread support, so orphaned images and captions are now a thing of the past:
    figure { break-after: column; } Open this final example in a desktop browser:
    CodePen Embed Fallback You should take a fresh look at Multi-Column Layout
    Multi-Column Layout isn’t a shiny new tool. In fact, it remains one of the most underused layout tools in CSS. It’s had, and still has, plenty of problems, but they haven’t reduced its usefulness or its ability to add an extra level of refinement to a product or website’s design. Whether you haven’t used Multi-Column Layout in a while or maybe have never tried it, now’s the time to take a fresh look at Multi-Column Layout.
    Revisiting CSS Multi-Column Layout originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
  6. Blogger

    How to Update Kali Linux?

    · Blogger · 01/26/25 04:06 PM

    By: Janus Atienza
    Sun, 26 Jan 2025 16:06:55 +0000

    Kali Linux is a Debian-based, open-source operating system that’s ideal for penetration testing, reverse engineering, security auditing, and computer forensics. It’s a rolling release model, as multiple updates of the OS are available in a year, offering you access to a pool of advanced tools that keep your software secure. But how to update Kali Linux to the latest version to avoid risks and compatibility issues? 
    To help you in this regard, we are going to discuss the step-by-step process of updating Kali Linux and its benefits. Let’s begin! 
    How to Update Kali Linux: Step-by-Step Guide 
    Being hired to build smart solutions, a lot of custom IoT development professionals use Kali Linux for advanced penetration testing and even reverse engineering. However, it is important to keep it updated to avoid vulnerabilities. 
    Before starting with how to update the Kali Linux process, you must have a stable internet connection and administrative rights. 
    Here are the steps you can follow for this: 
    Step 1: Check Resources List File 
    The Linux Kali package manager fetches updates from the repository, so you first need to make sure that the system’s repository list is properly configured and aligned. Here’s how to check it: 
    Open the terminal and run the following command to access the resources list file: http://kali.download/kali
    The output will display this list if your system is using the Kali Linux rolling release repository: deb http://kali.download/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
    If the file is empty or has incorrect entries, you can edit it using editors like Nano or vim.  Once you are sure that the list has only official and correct Kali Linux entries, save and close the editor.  Step 2: Update the Package Information 
    The next step is to update the package information using the repository list so the Kali Linux system knows about all the latest versions and updates available. The steps for that are:
    In the terminal, run this given command: sudo apt update
    This command updates the system’s package index to the latest repository information. You also see a list of packages being checked and their status (available for upgrade or not). Note: It only extracts the list of new packages and doesn’t install or update them! 
    Step 3: Do a System Upgrade
    In how to update Kali Linux, the third step involves performing a system upgrade to install the latest versions and updates. 
    Run the apt upgrade command to update all the installed packages to their latest version. However, unlike a full system upgrade, this command doesn’t remove or install any package from the system.  You can then use the apt full-upgrade that upgrades all the packages and even add or remove some to keep your system running smoothly. The apt dist-upgrade is given when you want to handle package dependency changes, remove obsolete packages, and add new ones. Review all the changes that the commands have made and confirm the upgrade.  Step 4: Get Rid of Unnecessary Packages
    Over time, useless files can accumulate in your system, taking up valuable disc space. You should get rid of them to declutter the system and also enhance the overall storage. Here are the steps for that:
    To remove the leftover packages, run the command: sudo apt autoremove -y
    Cached files also take up a lot of disc space, and you can remove them via the following command:  sudo apt autoclean
    Step 5: Double-Check the Update 
    Once you are all done installing the latest software, you should double-check to see if the system is actually running the upgrade. For this, give the command: 
    cat /etc/os-release
    You can then see operating system information like version details and release date. 
    Step 6: It’s Time to Reboot the System 
    Well, this step is optional, but we suggest rebooting Kali Linux to ensure that the system is running the latest version and that all changes are fully applied. You can then perform tasks like security testing of custom IoT development processes. The command for this is: 
    sudo reboot
    Why Update Kali Linux to the Latest Version? 
    Software development and deployment trends are changing quickly. Now that you know how to update and upgrade Kali Linux, you must be wondering why you should update the system and what its impacts are. If so, here are some compelling reasons: 
    Security Fixes and Patches
    Cybercrimes are quickly increasing, and statistics show that 43% of organizations lose existing customers because of cyber attacks. Additionally, individuals lose around $318 billion to cybercrime. 
    However, when you update to the latest version of Kali Linux, there are advanced security fixes and patches. They remove all system vulnerabilities and make sure that professionals don’t fall victim to such malicious attempts. 
    Access to New Tools and Features 
    Kali Linux offers many features and tools like Metasploit, Nmap, and others, and they receive consistent updates from their developers. 
    So, upgrading the OS assures that you are using the latest version of all pre-installed tools. You enjoy better functionality and improved system performance that make your daily tasks more efficient.
    For instance, the updated version of Nmap has fast scanning capabilities that pave the way for quick security auditing and troubleshooting.
    Compatibility with New Technologies 
    Technology is evolving, and new protocols and software are introduced every day. The developers behind Kali Linux are well aware of these shifts. They are pushing regular updates that support these newer technologies for better system compatibility. 
    Conclusion 
    The process of how to update Kali Linux becomes easy if you are aware of the correct commands and understand the difference between upgrade options. Most importantly, don’t forget to reboot your system after a major update like Kernel to make sure that changes are configured properly. 
    FAQs 
    How often should I update Kali Linux? 
    It’s advisable to update Kali Linux at least once a week or whenever there are new system updates. The purpose is to make sure that the system is secure and has all the latest features by receiving security patches and addressing all vulnerabilities. 
    Can I update Kali Linux without using the terminal?
    No, you cannot update Kali Linux without using the terminal. To update the system, you can use the apt and apt-get commands. The steps involved in this process include checking the source file, updating the package repository, and upgrading the system. 
    Is Kali Linux good for learning cyber security? 
    Yes, Kali Linux is a good tool for learning cyber security. It has a range of tools for penetration testing, network security, analysis, and vulnerability scanning.
    The post How to Update Kali Linux? appeared first on Unixmen.
  7. Blogger
    By: Janus Atienza
    Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:06:01 +0000

    AI-powered tools are changing the software development scene as we speak. AI assistants can not only help with coding, using advanced machine learning algorithms to improve their service, but they can also help with code refactoring, testing, and bug detection. Tools like GitHub, Tanbine, and Copilot aim to automate various processes, allowing developers more free time for other, more creative tasks. Of course, implementing AI tools takes time and careful risk assessment because various factors need to be taken into consideration. Let’s review some of the most popular automation tools available for Linux.
    Why Use AI-Powered Software Tools in Linux?
    AI is being widely used across various spheres of our lives with businesses utilizing the power of Artificial Intelligence to create new services and products. Even sites like Depositphotos have started offering AI services to create exclusive licensed photos that can be used anywhere – on websites, in advertising, design, and print media. Naturally, software development teams and Linux users have also started implementing AI-powered tools to improve their workflow. Here are some of the benefits of using such tools:
    An improved user experience. Fewer human errors in various processes. Automation of repetitive tasks boosts overall productivity. New features become available.  Innovative problem-solving. Top AI Automation Tools for Linux
    Streamlining processes can greatly increase productivity, allowing developers and Linux users to delegate repetitive tasks to AI-powered software. They offer innovative solutions while optimizing different parts of the development process. Let’s review some of them.
    1. GitHub Copilot
    Just a few years ago no one could’ve imagined that coding could be done by an AI algorithm. This AI-powered software can predict the completion of the code that’s being created, offering different functions and snippets on the go. GitHub Copilot can become an invaluable tool for both expert and novice coders. The algorithms can understand the code that’s being written using OpenAI’s Codex model. It supports various programming languages and can be easily integrated with the majority of IDEs. One of its key benefits is code suggestion based on the context of what’s being created.
    2. DeepCode
    One of the biggest issues all developers face when writing code is potential bugs. This is where an AI-powered code review tool can come in handy. While it won’t help you create the code, it will look for vulnerabilities inside your project, giving context-based feedback and a variety of suggestions to fix the bugs found by the program. Thus, it can help developers improve the quality of their work. DeepCode uses machine learning to become a better help over time, offering improved suggestions as it learns more about the type of work done by the developer. This tool can easily integrate with GitLab, GitHub, and Bitbucket.
    3. Tabnine
    Do you want an AI-powered tool that can actually learn from your coding style and offer suggestions based on it? Tabnine can do exactly that, predicting functions and offering snippets of code based on what you’re writing. It can be customized for a variety of needs and operations while supporting 30 programming languages. You can use this tool offline for improved security.
    4. CircleCl
    This is a powerful continuous integration and continuous delivery platform that helps automate software development operations. It helps engineering teams build code easily, offering automatic tests at each stage of the process, whenever a change is implemented in the system. You can develop your app fast and easily with CirlceCL’s automated testing that involves mobile, serverless, API, web, and AI frameworks. This is the CI/CD expert who will help you significantly reduce testing time and build simple and stable systems.
    5. Selenium
    This is one of the most popular testing tools used by developers all over the world. It’s compatible across various platforms, including Linux, due to the open-source nature of this framework. It offers a seamless process of generating and managing test cases, as well as compiling project reports. It can collaborate with continuous automated testing tools for better results.
    6. Code Intelligence
    This is yet another tool capable of analyzing the source code to detect bugs and vulnerabilities without human supervision. It can find inconsistencies that are often missed by other testing methods, allowing the developing teams to resolve issues before the software is released. This tool works autonomously and simplifies root cause analysis. It utilizes self-learning AI capabilities to boost the testing process and swiftly pinpoints the line of code that contains the bug.
    7. ONLYOFFICE Docs
    This open-source office suite allows real-time collaboration and offers a few interesting options when it comes to AI. You can install a plugin and get access to ChatGPT for free and use its features while creating a document. Some of the most handy ones include translation, spellcheck, grammar correction, word analysis, and text generation. You can also generate images for your documents and have a chat with ChatGPT while working on your project.
    Conclusion
    When it comes to the Linux operating system, there are numerous AI-powered automation tools you can try. A lot of them are used in software development to improve the code-writing process and allow developers to have more free time for other tasks. AI tools can utilize machine learning to provide you with better services while offering a variety of ways to streamline your workflow. Tools such as DeepCode, Tabnine, GitHub Copilot, and Selenium can look for solutions whenever you’re facing issues with your software. These programs will also offer snippets of code on the go while checking your project for bugs.
    The post How AI is Revolutionizing Linux System Administration: Tools and Techniques for Automation appeared first on Unixmen.
  8. Blogger
    By: Janus Atienza
    Sat, 25 Jan 2025 23:26:38 +0000

    In today’s digital age, safeguarding your communication is paramount. Email encryption serves as a crucial tool to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access. Linux users, known for their preference for open-source solutions, must embrace encryption to ensure privacy and security.
    With increasing cyber threats, the need for secure email communications has never been more critical. Email encryption acts as a protective shield, ensuring that only intended recipients can read the content of your emails. For Linux users, employing encryption techniques not only enhances personal data protection but also aligns with the ethos of secure and open-source computing. This guide will walk you through the essentials of setting up email encryption on Linux and how you can integrate advanced solutions to bolster your security.
    Setting up email encryption on Linux
    Implementing email encryption on Linux can be straightforward with the right tools. Popular email clients like Thunderbird and Evolution support OpenPGP and S/MIME protocols for encrypting emails. Begin by installing GnuPG, an open-source software that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication.
    Once installed, generate a pair of keys—a public key to share with those you communicate with and a private key that remains confidential to you. Configure your chosen email client to use these keys for encrypting and decrypting emails. The interface typically offers user-friendly options to enable encryption settings directly within the email composition window.
    To further assist in this setup, many online tutorials offer detailed guides complete with screenshots to ease the process for beginners. Additionally, staying updated with the latest software versions is recommended to ensure optimal security features are in place.
    How email encryption works
    Email encryption is a process that transforms readable text into a scrambled format that can only be decoded by the intended recipient. It is essential for maintaining privacy and security in digital communications. As technology advances, so do the methods used by cybercriminals to intercept sensitive information. Thus, understanding the principles of email encryption becomes crucial.
    The basic principle of encryption involves using keys—a public key for encrypting emails and a private key for decrypting them. This ensures that even if emails are intercepted during transmission, they remain unreadable without the correct decryption key. Whether you’re using email services like Gmail or Outlook, integrating encryption can significantly reduce the risk of data breaches.
    Many email providers offer built-in encryption features, but for Linux users seeking more control, there are numerous open-source tools available. Email encryption from Trustifi provides an additional layer of security by incorporating advanced AI-powered solutions into your existing setup.
    Integrating advanced encryption solutions
    For those seeking enhanced security measures beyond standard practices, integrating solutions like Trustifi into your Linux-based email clients can be highly beneficial. Trustifi offers services such as inbound threat protection and outbound email encryption powered by AI technology.
    The integration process involves installing Trustifi’s plugin or API into your existing email infrastructure. This enables comprehensive protection against potential threats while ensuring that encrypted communications are seamless and efficient. With Trustifi’s advanced algorithms, businesses can rest assured that their communications are safeguarded against both current and emerging cyber threats.
    This approach not only protects sensitive data but also simplifies compliance with regulatory standards regarding data protection and privacy. Businesses leveraging such tools position themselves better in preventing data breaches and maintaining customer trust.
    Best practices for secure email communication
    Beyond technical setups, maintaining secure email practices is equally important. Start by using strong passwords that combine letters, numbers, and symbols; avoid easily guessed phrases or patterns. Enabling two-factor authentication adds another layer of security by requiring additional verification steps before accessing accounts.
    Regularly updating software helps protect against vulnerabilities that hackers might exploit. Many systems offer automatic updates; however, manually checking for updates can ensure no critical patches are missed. Staying informed about the latest security threats allows users to adapt their strategies accordingly.
    Ultimately, being proactive about security measures cultivates a safer digital environment for both personal and professional communications. Adopting these practices alongside robust encryption technologies ensures comprehensive protection against unauthorized access.
    The post Mastering email encryption on Linux appeared first on Unixmen.
  9. Blogger
    by: Preethi
    Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:59:25 +0000

    When it comes to positioning elements on a page, including text, there are many ways to go about it in CSS — the literal position property with corresponding inset-* properties, translate, margin, anchor() (limited browser support at the moment), and so forth. The offset property is another one that belongs in that list.
    The offset property is typically used for animating an element along a predetermined path. For instance, the square in the following example traverses a circular path:
    <div class="circle"> <div class="square"></div> </div> @property --p { syntax: '<percentage>'; inherits: false; initial-value: 0%; } .square { offset: top 50% right 50% circle(50%) var(--p); transition: --p 1s linear; /* Equivalent to: offset-position: top 50% right 50%; offset-path: circle(50%); offset-distance: var(--p); */ /* etc. */ } .circle:hover .square{ --p: 100%; } CodePen Embed Fallback A registered CSS custom property (--p) is used to set and animate the offset distance of the square element. The animation is possible because an element can be positioned at any point in a given path using offset. and maybe you didn’t know this, but offset is a shorthand property comprised of the following constituent properties:
    offset-position: The path’s starting point offset-path: The shape along which the element can be moved offset-distance: A distance along the path on which the element is moved offset-rotate: The rotation angle of an element relative to its anchor point and offset path offset-anchor: A position within the element that’s aligned to the path The offset-path property is the one that’s important to what we’re trying to achieve. It accepts a shape value — including SVG shapes or CSS shape functions — as well as reference boxes of the containing element to create the path.
    Reference boxes? Those are an element’s dimensions according to the CSS Box Model, including content-box, padding-box, border-box, as well as SVG contexts, such as the view-box, fill-box, and stroke-box. These simplify how we position elements along the edges of their containing elements. Here’s an example: all the small squares below are placed in the default top-left corner of their containing elements’ content-box. In contrast, the small circles are positioned along the top-right corner (25% into their containing elements’ square perimeter) of the content-box, border-box, and padding-box, respectively.
    <div class="big"> <div class="small circle"></div> <div class="small square"></div> <p>She sells sea shells by the seashore</p> </div> <div class="big"> <div class="small circle"></div> <div class="small square"></div> <p>She sells sea shells by the seashore</p> </div> <div class="big"> <div class="small circle"></div> <div class="small square"></div> <p>She sells sea shells by the seashore</p> </div> .small { /* etc. */ position: absolute; &.square { offset: content-box; border-radius: 4px; } &.circle { border-radius: 50%; } } .big { /* etc. */ contain: layout; /* (or position: relative) */ &:nth-of-type(1) { .circle { offset: content-box 25%; } } &:nth-of-type(2) { border: 20px solid rgb(170 232 251); .circle { offset: border-box 25%; } } &:nth-of-type(3) { padding: 20px; .circle { offset: padding-box 25%; } } } CodePen Embed Fallback Note: You can separate the element’s offset-positioned layout context if you don’t want to allocated space for it inside its containing parent element. That’s how I’ve approached it in the example above so that the paragraph text inside can sit flush against the edges. As a result, the offset positioned elements (small squares and circles) are given their own contexts using position: absolute, which removes them from the normal document flow.
    This method, positioning relative to reference boxes, makes it easy to place elements like notification dots and ornamental ribbon tips along the periphery of some UI module. It further simplifies the placement of texts along a containing block’s edges, as offset can also rotate elements along the path, thanks to offset-rotate. A simple example shows the date of an article placed at a block’s right edge:
    <article> <h1>The Irreplaceable Value of Human Decision-Making in the Age of AI</h1> <!-- paragraphs --> <div class="date">Published on 11<sup>th</sup> Dec</div> <cite>An excerpt from the HBR article</cite> </article> article { container-type: inline-size; /* etc. */ } .date { offset: padding-box 100cqw 90deg / left 0 bottom -10px; /* Equivalent to: offset-path: padding-box; offset-distance: 100cqw; (100% of the container element's width) offset-rotate: 90deg; offset-anchor: left 0 bottom -10px; */ } CodePen Embed Fallback As we just saw, using the offset property with a reference box path and container units is even more efficient — you can easily set the offset distance based on the containing element’s width or height. I’ll include a reference for learning more about container queries and container query units in the “Further Reading” section at the end of this article.
    There’s also the offset-anchor property that’s used in that last example. It provides the anchor for the element’s displacement and rotation — for instance, the 90 degree rotation in the example happens from the element’s bottom-left corner. The offset-anchor property can also be used to move the element either inward or outward from the reference box by adjusting inset-* values — for instance, the bottom -10px arguments pull the element’s bottom edge outwards from its containing element’s padding-box. This enhances the precision of placements, also demonstrated below.
    <figure> <div class="big">4</div> <div class="small">number four</div> </figure> .small { width: max-content; offset: content-box 90% -54deg / center -3rem; /* Equivalent to: offset-path: content-box; offset-distance: 90%; offset-rotate: -54deg; offset-anchor: center -3rem; */ font-size: 1.5rem; color: navy; } CodePen Embed Fallback As shown at the beginning of the article, offset positioning is animateable, which allows for dynamic design effects, like this:
    <article> <figure> <div class="small one">17<sup>th</sup> Jan. 2025</div> <span class="big">Seminar<br>on<br>Literature</span> <div class="small two">Tickets Available</div> </figure> </article> @property --d { syntax: "<percentage>"; inherits: false; initial-value: 0%; } .small { /* other style rules */ offset: content-box var(--d) 0deg / left center; /* Equivalent to: offset-path: content-box; offset-distance: var(--d); offset-rotate: 0deg; offset-anchor: left center; */ transition: --d .2s linear; &.one { --d: 2%; } &.two { --d: 70%; } } article:hover figure { .one { --d: 15%; } .two { --d: 80%; } } CodePen Embed Fallback Wrapping up
    Whether for graphic designs like text along borders, textual annotations, or even dynamic texts like error messaging, CSS offset is an easy-to-use option to achieve all of that. We can position the elements along the reference boxes of their containing parent elements, rotate them, and even add animation if needed.
    Further reading
    The CSS offset-path property: CSS-Tricks, MDN The CSS offset-anchor property: CSS-Tricks, MDN Container query length units: CSS-Tricks, MDN The @property at-rule: CSS-Tricks, web.dev The CSS Box Model: CSS-Tricks SVG Reference Boxes: W3C Positioning Text Around Elements With CSS Offset originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
  10. Blogger
    by: Geoff Graham
    Thu, 23 Jan 2025 17:21:15 +0000

    I was reading through Juan’s recent Almanac entry for the @counter-style at-rule and I’ll be darned if he didn’t uncover and unpack some extremely interesting things that we can do to style lists, notably the list marker. You’re probably already aware of the ::marker pseudo-element. You’ve more than likely dabbled with custom counters using counter-reset and counter-increment. Or maybe your way of doing things is to wipe out the list-style (careful when doing that!) and hand-roll a marker on the list item’s ::before pseudo.
    But have you toyed around with @counter-style? Turns out it does a lot of heavy lifting and opens up new ways of working with lists and list markers.
    You can style the marker of just one list item
    This is called a “fixed” system set to a specific item.
    @counter-style style-fourth-item { system: fixed 4; symbols: "💠"; suffix: " "; } li { list-style: style-fourth-item; } CodePen Embed Fallback You can assign characters to specific markers
    If you go with an “additive” system, then you can define which symbols belong to which list items.
    @counter-style dice { system: additive; additive-symbols: 6 "⚅", 5 "⚄", 4 "⚃", 3 "⚂", 2 "⚁", 1 "⚀"; suffix: " "; } li { list-style: dice; } CodePen Embed Fallback Notice how the system repeats once it reaches the end of the cycle and begins a new series based on the first item in the pattern. So, for example, there are six sides to typical dice and we start rolling two dice on the seventh list item, totaling seven.
    You can add a prefix and suffix to list markers
    A long while back, Chris showed off a way to insert punctuation at the end of a list marker using the list item’s ::before pseudo:
    ol { list-style: none; counter-reset: my-awesome-counter; li { counter-increment: my-awesome-counter; &::before { content: counter(my-awesome-counter) ") "; } } } That’s much easier these days with @counter-styles:
    @counter-style parentheses { system: extends decimal; prefix: "("; suffix: ") "; } CodePen Embed Fallback You can style multiple ranges of list items
    Let’s say you have a list of 10 items but you only want to style items 1-3. We can set a range for that:
    @counter-style single-range { system: extends upper-roman; suffix: "."; range: 1 3; } li { list-style: single-range; } CodePen Embed Fallback We can even extend our own dice example from earlier:
    @counter-style dice { system: additive; additive-symbols: 6 "⚅", 5 "⚄", 4 "⚃", 3 "⚂", 2 "⚁", 1 "⚀"; suffix: " "; } @counter-style single-range { system: extends dice; suffix: "."; range: 1 3; } li { list-style: single-range; } CodePen Embed Fallback Another way to do that is to use the infinite keyword as the first value:
    @counter-style dice { system: additive; additive-symbols: 6 "⚅", 5 "⚄", 4 "⚃", 3 "⚂", 2 "⚁", 1 "⚀"; suffix: " "; } @counter-style single-range { system: extends dice; suffix: "."; range: infinite 3; } li { list-style: single-range; } Speaking of infinite, you can set it as the second value and it will count up infinitely for as many list items as you have.
    Maybe you want to style two ranges at a time and include items 6-9. I’m not sure why the heck you’d want to do that but I’m sure you (or your HIPPO) have got good reasons.
    @counter-style dice { system: additive; additive-symbols: 6 "⚅", 5 "⚄", 4 "⚃", 3 "⚂", 2 "⚁", 1 "⚀"; suffix: " "; } @counter-style multiple-ranges { system: extends dice; suffix: "."; range: 1 3, 6 9; } li { list-style: multiple-ranges; } CodePen Embed Fallback You can add padding around the list markers
    You ever run into a situation where your list markers are unevenly aligned? That usually happens when going from, say, a single digit to a double-digit. You can pad the marker with extra characters to line things up.
    /* adds leading zeroes to list item markers */ @counter-style zero-padded-example { system: extends decimal; pad: 3 "0"; } Now the markers will always be aligned… well, up to 999 items.
    CodePen Embed Fallback That’s it!
    I just thought those were some pretty interesting ways to work with list markers in CSS that run counter (get it?!) to how I’ve traditionally approached this sort of thing. And with @counter-style becoming Baseline “newly available” in September 2023, it’s well-supported in browsers.
    Some Things You Might Not Know About Custom Counter Styles originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
  11. Blogger
    by: Abhishek Kumar
    Thu, 23 Jan 2025 11:22:15 +0530

    Imagine this: You’ve deployed a handful of Docker containers to power your favorite applications, maybe a self-hosted Nextcloud for your files, a Pi-hole for ad-blocking, or even a media server like Jellyfin.
    Everything is running like a charm, but then you hit a common snag: keeping those containers updated.
    When a new image is released, you’ll need to manually pull it, stop the running container, recreate it with the updated image, and hope everything works as expected.
    Multiply that by the number of containers you’re running, and it’s clear how this quickly becomes a tedious and time-consuming chore.
    But there’s more at stake than just convenience. Skipping updates or delaying them for too long can lead to outdated software running in your containers, which often means unpatched vulnerabilities.
    These can become a serious security risk, especially if you’re hosting services exposed to the internet.
    This is where Watchtower steps in, a tool designed to take the hassle out of container updates by automating the entire process.
    Whether you’re running a homelab or managing a production environment, Watchtower ensures your containers are always up-to-date and secure, all with minimal effort on your part.
    What is Watchtower?
    Watchtower is an open-source tool that automatically monitors your Docker containers and updates them whenever a new version of their image is available.
    It keeps your setup up-to-date, saving time and reducing the risk of running outdated containers.
    But it’s not just a "set it and forget it" solution, it’s also highly customizable, allowing you to tailor its behavior to fit your workflow.
    Whether you prefer full automation or staying in control of updates, Watchtower has you covered.
    How does it work?
    Watchtower works by periodically checking for updates to the images of your running containers. When it detects a newer version, it pulls the updated image, stops the current container, and starts a new one using the updated image.
    The best part? It maintains your existing container configuration, including port bindings, volume mounts, and environment variables.
    If your containers depend on each other, Watchtower handles the update process in the correct order to avoid downtime.
    Deploying watchtower
    Since you’re reading this article, I’ll assume you already have some sort of homelab or Docker setup where you want to automate container updates. That means I won’t be covering Docker installation here.
    When it comes to deploying Watchtower, it can be done in two ways:
    Docker run
    If you’re just trying it out or want a straightforward deployment, you can run the following command:
    docker run -d --name watchtower -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock containrrr/watchtower This will spin up a Watchtower container that monitors your running containers and updates them automatically.
    But here’s the thing, I’m not a fan of the docker run command.
    It’s quick, sure, but I prefer stack approach rather than cramming everything into a single command.
    Docker compose
    If you facny using Docker Compose to run Watchtower, here’s a minimal configuration that replicates the docker run command above:
    version: "3.8" services: watchtower: image: containrrr/watchtower container_name: watchtower restart: always volumes: - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock To start Watchtower using this configuration, save it as docker-compose.yml and run:
    docker-compose up -d This will give you the same functionality as the docker run command, but in a cleaner, more manageable format.
    Customizing watchtower with environment variables
    Running Watchtower plainly is all good, but we can make it even better with environment variables and command arguments.
    Personally, I don’t like giving full autonomy to one service to automatically make changes on my behalf.
    Since I have a pretty decent homelab running crucial containers, I prefer using Watchtower to notify me about updates rather than updating everything automatically.
    This ensures that I remain in control, especially for containers that are finicky or require a perfect pairing with their databases.
    Sneak peak into my homelab
    Take a look at my homelab setup: it’s mostly CMS containers for myself and for clients, and some of them can behave unpredictably if not updated carefully.
    So instead of letting Watchtower update everything, I configure it to provide insights and alerts, and then I manually decide which updates to apply.
    To achieve this, we’ll add the following environment variables to our Docker Compose file:
    .tg {border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0;} .tg td{border-color:black;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px; overflow:hidden;padding:10px 5px;word-break:normal;} .tg th{border-color:black;border-style:solid;border-width:1px;font-family:Arial, sans-serif;font-size:14px; font-weight:normal;overflow:hidden;padding:10px 5px;word-break:normal;} .tg .tg-0pky{border-color:inherit;text-align:left;vertical-align:top} Environment Variable Description WATCHTOWER_CLEANUP Removes old images after updates, keeping your Docker host clean. WATCHTOWER_POLL_INTERVAL Sets how often Watchtower checks for updates (in seconds). One hour (3600 seconds) is a good balance. WATCHTOWER_LABEL_ENABLE Updates only containers with specific labels, giving you granular control. WATCHTOWER_DEBUG Enables detailed logs, which can be invaluable for troubleshooting. WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATIONS Configures the notification method (e.g., email) to keep you informed about updates. WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_FROM The email address from which notifications will be sent. WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_TO The recipient email address for update notifications. WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_SERVER SMTP server address for sending notifications. WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_SERVER_PORT Port used by the SMTP server (commonly 587 for TLS). WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_USERNAME SMTP server username for authentication. WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_PASSWORD SMTP server password for authentication. Here’s how the updated docker-compose.yml file would look:
    version: "3.8" services: watchtower: image: containrrr/watchtower container_name: watchtower restart: always environment: WATCHTOWER_CLEANUP: "true" WATCHTOWER_POLL_INTERVAL: "3600" WATCHTOWER_LABEL_ENABLE: "true" WATCHTOWER_DEBUG: "true" WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATIONS: "email" WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_FROM: "admin@example.com" WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_TO: "notify@example.com" WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_SERVER: "smtp.example.com" WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_SERVER_PORT: "587" WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_USERNAME: "your_email_username" WATCHTOWER_NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_PASSWORD: "your_email_password" volumes: - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock I like to put my credentials in a separate environment file.Once you run the Watchtower container for the first time, you'll receive an initial email confirming that the service is up and running.
    Here's an example of what that email might look like:
    After some time, as Watchtower analyzes your setup and scans the running containers, it will notify you if it detects any updates available for your containers.
    These notifications are sent in real-time and look something like this:
    This feature ensures you're always in the loop about potential updates without having to check manually.
    Final thoughts
    I’m really impressed by Watchtower and have been using it for a month now.
    I recommend, if possible, to play around with it in an isolated environment first, that’s what I did before deploying it in my homelab.
    The email notification feature is great, but my inbox now looks totally filled with Watchtower emails, so I might create a rule to manage them better. Overall, no complaints so far! I find it better than the Docker Compose method we discussed earlier.
    Updating Docker Containers With Zero DowntimeA step by step methodology that can be very helpful in your day to day DevOps activities without sacrificing invaluable uptime.Linux HandbookAvimanyu BandyopadhyayWhat about you? What do you use to update your containers?
    If you’ve tried Watchtower, share your experience, anything I should be mindful of?
    Let us know in the comments!
  12. Blogger
    by: Geoff Graham
    Tue, 21 Jan 2025 14:21:32 +0000

    Chris wrote about “Likes” pages a long while back. The idea is rather simple: “Like” an item in your RSS reader and display it in a feed of other liked items. The little example Chris made is still really good.
    CodePen Embed Fallback There were two things Chris noted at the time. One was that he used a public CORS proxy that he wouldn’t use in a production environment. Good idea to nix that, security and all. The other was that he’d consider using WordPress transients to fetch and cache the data to work around CORS.
    I decided to do that! The result is this WordPress block I can drop right in here. I’ll plop it in a <details> to keep things brief.
    Open Starred Feed Link on 1/16/2025Don’t Wrap Figure in a Link
    adrianroselli.com In my post Brief Note on Figure and Figcaption Support I demonstrate how, when encountering a figure with a screen reader, you won’t hear everything announced at once:
    Link on 1/15/2025Learning HTML is the best investment I ever did
    christianheilmann.com One of the running jokes and/or discussion I am sick and tired of is people belittling HTML. Yes, HTML is not a programming language. No, HTML should not just be a compilation target. Learning HTML is a solid investment and not hard to do.
    I am not…
    Link on 1/14/2025Open Props UI
    nerdy.dev Presenting Open Props UI!…
    Link on 1/12/2025Gotchas in Naming CSS View Transitions
    blog.jim-nielsen.comI’m playing with making cross-document view transitions work on this blog.
    Nothing fancy. Mostly copying how Dave Rupert does it on his site where you get a cross-fade animation on the whole page generally, and a little position animation on the page title specifically.

    Link on 1/6/2025The :empty pseudo-class
    html-css-tip-of-the-week.netlify.appWe can use the :empty pseudo-class as a way to style elements on your webpage that are empty.
    You might wonder why you’d want to style something that’s empty. Let’s say you’re creating a todo list.
    You want to put your todo items in a list, but what about when you don’t…
    Link on 1/8/2025CSS Wish List 2025
    meyerweb.comBack in 2023, I belatedly jumped on the bandwagon of people posting their CSS wish lists for the coming year.  This year I’m doing all that again, less belatedly! (I didn’t do it last year because I couldn’t even.  Get it?)
    I started this post by looking at what I…
    Link on 1/9/2025aria-description Does Not Translate
    adrianroselli.com It does, actually. In Firefox. Sometimes.
    A major risk of using ARIA to define text content is it typically gets overlooked in translation. Automated translation services often do not capture it. Those who pay for localization services frequently miss content in ARIA attributes when sending text strings to localization vendors.
    Content buried…
    Link on 1/8/2025Let’s Standardize Async CSS!
    scottjehl.com6 years back I posted the Simplest Way to Load CSS Asynchronously to document a hack we’d been using for at least 6 years prior to that. The use case for this hack is to load CSS files asynchronously, something that HTML itself still does not support, even though…
    Link on 1/9/2025Tight Mode: Why Browsers Produce Different Performance Results
    smashingmagazine.comThis article is a sponsored by DebugBear
    I was chatting with DebugBear’s Matt Zeunert and, in the process, he casually mentioned this thing called Tight Mode when describing how browsers fetch and prioritize resources. I wanted to nod along like I knew what he was talking about…
    Link on 12/19/2024Why I’m excited about text-box-trim as a designer
    piccalil.liI’ve been excited by the potential of text-box-trim, text-edge and text-box for a while. They’re in draft status at the moment, but when more browser support is available, this capability will open up some exciting possibilities for improving typesetting in the browser, as well as giving us more…
    It’s a little different. For one, I’m only fetching 10 items at a time. We could push that to infinity but that comes with a performance tax, not to mention I have no way of organizing the items for them to be grouped and filtered. Maybe that’ll be a future enhancement!
    The Chris demo provided the bones and it does most of the heavy lifting. The “tough” parts were square-pegging the thing into a WordPress block architecture and then getting transients going. This is my first time working with transients, so I thought I’d share the relevant code and pick it apart.
    function fetch_and_store_data() { $transient_key = 'fetched_data'; $cached_data = get_transient($transient_key); if ($cached_data) { return new WP_REST_Response($cached_data, 200); } $response = wp_remote_get('https://feedbin.com/starred/a22c4101980b055d688e90512b083e8d.xml'); if (is_wp_error($response)) { return new WP_REST_Response('Error fetching data', 500); } $body = wp_remote_retrieve_body($response); $data = simplexml_load_string($body, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA); $json_data = json_encode($data); $array_data = json_decode($json_data, true); $items = []; foreach ($array_data['channel']['item'] as $item) { $items[] = [ 'title' => $item['title'], 'link' => $item['link'], 'pubDate' => $item['pubDate'], 'description' => $item['description'], ]; } set_transient($transient_key, $items, 12 * HOUR_IN_SECONDS); return new WP_REST_Response($items, 200); } add_action('rest_api_init', function () { register_rest_route('custom/v1', '/fetch-data', [ 'methods' => 'GET', 'callback' => 'fetch_and_store_data', ]); }); Could this be refactored and written more efficiently? All signs point to yes. But here’s how I grokked it:
    function fetch_and_store_data() { } The function’s name can be anything. Naming is hard. The first two variables:
    $transient_key = 'fetched_data'; $cached_data = get_transient($transient_key); The $transient_key is simply a name that identifies the transient when we set it and get it. In fact, the $cached_data is the getter so that part’s done. Check!
    I only want the $cached_data if it exists, so there’s a check for that:
    if ($cached_data) { return new WP_REST_Response($cached_data, 200); } This also establishes a new response from the WordPress REST API, which is where the data is cached. Rather than pull the data directly from Feedbin, I’m pulling it and caching it in the REST API. This way, CORS is no longer an issue being that the starred items are now locally stored on my own domain. That’s where the wp_remote_get() function comes in to form that response from Feedbin as the origin:
    $response = wp_remote_get('https://feedbin.com/starred/a22c4101980b055d688e90512b083e8d.xml'); Similarly, I decided to throw an error if there’s no $response. That means there’s no freshly $cached_data and that’s something I want to know right away.
    if (is_wp_error($response)) { return new WP_REST_Response('Error fetching data', 500); } The bulk of the work is merely parsing the XML data I get back from Feedbin to JSON. This scours the XML and loops through each item to get its title, link, publish date, and description:
    $body = wp_remote_retrieve_body($response); $data = simplexml_load_string($body, 'SimpleXMLElement', LIBXML_NOCDATA); $json_data = json_encode($data); $array_data = json_decode($json_data, true); $items = []; foreach ($array_data['channel']['item'] as $item) { $items[] = [ 'title' => $item['title'], 'link' => $item['link'], 'pubDate' => $item['pubDate'], 'description' => $item['description'], ]; } “Description” is a loaded term. It could be the full body of a post or an excerpt — we don’t know until we get it! So, I’m splicing and trimming it in the block’s Edit component to stub it at no more than 50 words. There’s a little risk there because I’m rendering the HTML I get back from the API. Security, yes. But there’s also the chance I render an open tag without its closing counterpart, muffing up my layout. I know there are libraries to address that but I’m keeping things simple for now.
    Now it’s time to set the transient once things have been fetched and parsed:
    set_transient($transient_key, $items, 12 * HOUR_IN_SECONDS); The WordPress docs are great at explaining the set_transient() function. It takes three arguments, the first being the $transient_key that was named earlier to identify which transient is getting set. The other two:
    $value: This is the object we’re storing in the named transient. That’s the $items object handling all the parsing. $expiration: How long should this transient last? It wouldn’t be transient if it lingered around forever, so we set an amount of time expressed in seconds. Mine lingers for 12 hours before it expires and then updates the next time a visitor hits the page. OK, time to return the items from the REST API as a new response:
    return new WP_REST_Response($items, 200); That’s it! Well, at least for setting and getting the transient. The next thing I realized I needed was a custom REST API endpoint to call the data. I really had to lean on the WordPress docs to get this going:
    add_action('rest_api_init', function () { register_rest_route('custom/v1', '/fetch-data', [ 'methods' => 'GET', 'callback' => 'fetch_and_store_data', ]); }); That’s where I struggled most and felt like this all took wayyyyy too much time. Well, that and sparring with the block itself. I find it super hard to get the front and back end components to sync up and, honestly, a lot of that code looks super redundant if you were to scope it out. That’s another story altogether.
    Enjoy reading what we’re reading! I put a page together that pulls in the 10 most recent items with a link to subscribe to the full feed.
    Creating a “Starred” Feed originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
  13. Blogger

    Chris’ Corner: HTML

    · Blogger · 01/20/25 04:31 PM

    by: Chris Coyier
    Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:31:11 +0000

    HTML is fun to think about. The old classic battle of “HTML is a programming language” has surfaced in the pages of none other than WIRED magazine. I love this argument, not even for it’s merit, but for the absolutely certainty that you will get people coming out of the woodwork to tell you that HTML, is not, in fact, a programming language. Each of them will have their own exotic and deeply personal reasons why. I honestly don’t even care or believe their to be any truth to be found in the debate, but I find it fascinating as a social experiment. It’s like cracking an IE 6 “joke” at a conference. You will get laughs.
    I wrote a guest blog post Relatively New Things You Should Know about HTML Heading Into 2025 at the start of the year here which had me thinking about it anyway. So here’s more!
    You know there are those mailto: “protocol” style links you can use, like:
    <a href="mailto:chriscoyier@gmail.com">Email Chris</a> And they work fine. Or… mostly fine. They work if there is an email client registered on the device. That’s generally the case, but it’s not 100%. And there are more much more esoteric ones, as Brian Kardell writes:
    A tel: link on my Mac tries to open FaceTime. What does it do on a computer with no calling capability at all, like my daughter’s Fire tablet thingy? Nothing, probably. Just like clicking on a skype: link on my computer here, which doesn’t have Skype installed does: nothing. A semantic HTML link element that looks and clicks like any other link that does nothing is, well, it’s not good. Brian spells out a situation where it’s extra not good, where a link could say like “Call Pizza Parlor” with the actual phone number buried behind the scenes in HTML, whereas if it was just a phone number, mobile browser that support it would automatically turn it into a clickable link, which is surely better.
    Every once in a while I get excited about the prospect of writing HTML email with just regular ol’ semantic HTML that you’d write anywhere else. And to be fair: some people absolutely do that and it’s interesting to follow those developments.
    The last time I tried to get away with “no tables”, the #1 thing that stops me is that you can’t get a reasonable width and centered layout without them in old Outlook. Oh well, that’s the job sometimes.
    Ambiguity. That’s one thing that there is plenty of in HTML and I suspect people’s different brains handle it quite differently. Some people try something and it if works they are pleased with that and move on. “Works” being a bit subjective of course, since works on the exact browser you’re using at the time as a developer isn’t necessarily reflective of all users. Some people absolutely fret over the correct usage of HTML in all sorts of situations. That’s my kinda people.
    In Stephanie Eckles’ A Call for Consensus on HTML Semantics she lists all sorts of these ambiguities, honing in on particularly tricky ones where there are certainly multiple ways to approach it.
    While I’m OK with the freedom and some degree of ambiguity, I like to sweat the semantics and kinda do wish there were just emphatically right answers sometimes.
    Wanna know why hitting an exact markup pattern matters sometimes? Aside from good accessibility and potentially some SEO concern, sometimes you get good bonus behavior. Simon Willison blogged about Footnotes that work in RSS readers, which is one such situation, building on some thoughts and light research I had done. This is pretty niche, but if you do footnotes just exactly so you’ll get very nice hover behavior in NetNewsWire for footnotes, which happens to be an RSS reader that I like.
    They talk about paving the cowpaths in web standards. Meaning standardizing ideas when it’s obvious authors are doing it a bunch. I, for one, have certainly seen “spoilers” implemented quite a bit in different ways. Tracy Durnell wonders if we should just add it to HTML directly.
  14. Blogger

    pwd command in Linux

    · Blogger · 01/18/25 04:57 AM

    by: Satoshi Nakamoto
    Sat, 18 Jan 2025 10:27:48 +0530

    The pwd command in Linux, short for Print Working Directory, displays the absolute path of the current directory, helping users navigate the file system efficiently.
    It is one of the first commands you use when you start learning Linux. And if you are absolutely new, take advantage of this free course:
    Learn the Basic Linux Commands in an Hour [With Videos]Learn the basics of Linux commands in this crash course.Linux HandbookAbhishek Prakashpwd command syntax
    Like other Linux commands, pwd also follows this syntax.
    pwd [OPTIONS]Here, you have [OPTIONS], which are used to modify the default behavior of the pwd command. If you don't use any options with the pwd command, it will show the physical path of the current working directory by default.
    Unlike many other Linux commands, pwd does not come with many flags and has only two important flags:
    Option Description -L Displays the logical current working directory, including symbolic links. -P Displays the physical current working directory, resolving symbolic links. --help Displays help information about the pwd command. --version Outputs version information of the pwd command. Now, let's take a look at the practical examples of the pwd command.
    1. Display the current location
    This is what the pwd command is famous for, giving you the name of the directory where you are located or from where you are running the command.
    pwd2. Display the logical path including symbolic links
    If you want to display logical paths and symbolic links, all you have to do is execute the pwd command with the -L flag as shown here:
    pwd -LTo showcase its usage, I will need to go through multiple steps so stay with me. First, go to the tmp directory using the cd command as shown here:
    cd /tmpNow, let's create a symbolic link which is pointing to the /var/log directory:
    ln -s /var/log log_linkFinally, change your directory to log_link and use the pwd command with the -L flag:
    pwd -LIn the above steps, I went to the /tmp directory and then created a symbolic link which points to a specific location (/var/log) and then I used the pwd command and it successfully showed me the symbolic link.
    3. Display physical path resolving symbolic links
    The pwd command is one of the ways to resolve symbolic links. Meaning, you'll see the destination directory where soft link points to.
    Use the -P flag:
    pwd -PI am going to use the symbolic link which I had created in the 2nd example. Here's what I did:
    Navigate to /tmp. Create a symbolic link (log_link) pointing to /var/log. Change into the symbolic link (cd log_link) Once you perform all the steps, you can check the real path of the symbolic link:
    pwd -P4. Use pwd command in shell scripts
    To get the current location in a bash shell script, you can store the value of the pwd command in a variable and later on print it as shown here:
    current_dir=$(pwd) echo "You are in $current_dir"Now, if you execute this shell script in your home directory like I did, you will get similar output to mine:
    Bonus: Know the previous working directory
    This is not exactly the use of the pwd command but it is somewhat related and interesting. There is an environment variable in Linux called OLDPWD which stores the previous working directory path.
    This means you can get the previous working directory by printing the value of this environment variable:
    echo "$OLDPWD"Conclusion
    This was a quick tutorial on how you can use the pwd command in Linux where I went through syntax, options, and some practical examples of it.
    I hope you will find them helpful. If you have any queries or suggestions, leave us a comment.
  15. Blogger
    by: Temani Afif
    Fri, 17 Jan 2025 14:57:39 +0000

    You have for sure heard about the new CSS Anchor Positioning, right? It’s a feature that allows you to link any element from the page to another one, i.e., the anchor. It’s useful for all the tooltip stuff, but it can also create a lot of other nice effects.
    In this article, we will study menu navigation where I rely on anchor positioning to create a nice hover effect on links.
    CodePen Embed Fallback Cool, right? We have a sliding effect where the blue rectangle adjusts to fit perfectly with the text content over a nice transition. If you are new to anchor positioning, this example is perfect for you because it’s simple and allows you to discover the basics of this new feature. We will also study another example so stay until the end!
    Note that only Chromium-based browsers fully support anchor positioning at the time I’m writing this. You’ll want to view the demos in a browser like Chrome or Edge until the feature is more widely supported in other browsers.
    The initial configuration
    Let’s start with the HTML structure which is nothing but a nav element containing an unordered list of links:
    <nav> <ul> <li><a href="#">Home</a></li> <li class="active"><a href="#">About</a></li> <li><a href="#">Projects</a></li> <li><a href="#">Blog</a></li> <li><a href="#">Contact</a></li> </ul> </nav> We will not spend too much time explaining this structure because it can be different if your use case is different. Simply ensure the semantic is relevant to what you are trying to do. As for the CSS part, we will start with some basic styling to create a horizontal menu navigation.
    ul { padding: 0; margin: 0; list-style: none; display: flex; gap: .5rem; font-size: 2.2rem; } ul li a { color: #000; text-decoration: none; font-weight: 900; line-height: 1.5; padding-inline: .2em; display: block; } Nothing fancy so far. We remove some default styling and use Flexbox to align the elements horizontally.
    CodePen Embed Fallback Sliding effect
    First off, let’s understand how the effect works. At first glance, it looks like we have one rectangle that shrinks to a small height, moves to the hovered element, and then grows to full height. That’s the visual effect, but in reality, more than one element is involved!
    Here is the first demo where I am using different colors to better see what is happening.
    CodePen Embed Fallback Each menu item has its own “element” that shrinks or grows. Then we have a common “element” (the one in red) that slides between the different menu items. The first effect is done using a background animation and the second one is where anchor positioning comes into play!
    The background animation
    We will animate the height of a CSS gradient for this first part:
    /* 1 */ ul li { background: conic-gradient(lightblue 0 0) bottom/100% 0% no-repeat; transition: .2s; } /* 2 */ ul li:is(:hover,.active) { background-size: 100% 100%; transition: .2s .2s; } /* 3 */ ul:has(li:hover) li.active:not(:hover) { background-size: 100% 0%; transition: .2s; } We’ve defined a gradient with a 100% width and 0% height, placed at the bottom. The gradient syntax may look strange, but it’s the shortest one that allows me to have a single-color gradient.
    Related: “How to correctly define a one-color gradient”
    Then, if the menu item is hovered or has the .active class, we make the height equal to 100%. Note the use of the delay here to make sure the growing happens after the shrinking.
    Finally, we need to handle a special case with the .active item. If we hover any item (that is not the active one), then the .active item gets the shirking effect (the gradient height is equal to 0%). That’s the purpose of the third selector in the code.
    CodePen Embed Fallback Our first animation is done! Notice how the growing begins after the shrinking completes because of the delay we defined in the second selector.
    The anchor positioning animation
    The first animation was quite easy because each item had its own background animation, meaning we didn’t have to care about the text content since the background automatically fills the whole space.
    We will use one element for the second animation that slides between all the menu items while adapting its width to fit the text of each item. This is where anchor positioning can help us.
    Let’s start with the following code:
    ul:before { content:""; position: absolute; position-anchor: --li; background: red; transition: .2s; } ul li:is(:hover, .active) { anchor-name: --li; } ul:has(li:hover) li.active:not(:hover) { anchor-name: none; } To avoid adding an extra element, I will prefer using a pseudo-element on the ul. It should be absolutely-positioned and we will rely on two properties to activate the anchor positioning.
    We define the anchor with the anchor-name property. When a menu item is hovered or has the .active class, it becomes the anchor element. We also have to remove the anchor from the .active item if another item is in a hovered state (hence, the last selector in the code). In other words, only one anchor is defined at a time.
    Then we use the position-anchor property to link the pseudo-element to the anchor. Notice how both use the same notation --li. It’s similar to how, for example, we define @keyframes with a specific name and later use it inside an animation property. Keep in mind that you have to use the <dashed-indent> syntax, meaning the name must always start with two dashes (--).
    CodePen Embed Fallback The pseudo-element is correctly placed but nothing is visible because we didn’t define any dimension! Let’s add the following code:
    ul:before { bottom: anchor(bottom); left: anchor(left); right: anchor(right); height: .2em; } The height property is trivial but the anchor() is a newcomer. Here’s how Juan Diego describes it in the Almanac:
    Let’s check the MDN page as well:
    Usually, we use left: 0 to place an absolute element at the left edge of its containing block (i.e., the nearest ancestor having position: relative). The left: anchor(left) will do the same but instead of the containing block, it will consider the associated anchor element.
    That’s all — we are done! Hover the menu items in the below demo and see how the pseudo-element slides between them.
    CodePen Embed Fallback Each time you hover over a menu item it becomes the new anchor for the pseudo-element (the ul:before). This also means that the anchor(...) values will change creating the sliding effect! Let’s not forget the use of the transition which is important otherwise, we will have an abrupt change.
    We can also write the code differently like this:
    ul:before { content:""; position: absolute; inset: auto anchor(right, --li) anchor(bottom, --li) anchor(left, --li); height: .2em; background: red; transition: .2s; } In other words, we can rely on the inset shorthand instead of using physical properties like left, right, and bottom, and instead of defining position-anchor, we can include the anchor’s name inside the anchor() function. We are repeating the same name three times which is probably not optimal here but in some situations, you may want your element to consider multiple anchors, and in such cases, this syntax will make sense.
    Combining both effects
    Now, we combine both effects and, tada, the illusion is perfect!
    CodePen Embed Fallback Pay attention to the transition values where the delay is important:
    ul:before { transition: .2s .2s; } ul li { transition: .2s; } ul li:is(:hover,.active) { transition: .2s .4s; } ul:has(li:hover) li.active:not(:hover) { transition: .2s; } We have a sequence of three animations — shrink the height of the gradient, slide the pseudo-element, and grow the height of the gradient — so we need to have delays between them to pull everything together. That’s why for the sliding of the pseudo-element we have a delay equal to the duration of one animation (transition: .2 .2s) and for the growing part the delay is equal to twice the duration (transition: .2s .4s).
    Bouncy effect? Why not?!
    Let’s try another fancy animation in which the highlight rectangle morphs into a small circle, jumps to the next item, and transforms back into a rectangle again!
    CodePen Embed Fallback I won’t explain too much for this example as it’s your homework to dissect the code! I’ll offer a few hints so you can unpack what’s happening.
    Like the previous effect, we have a combination of two animations. For the first one, I will use the pseudo-element of each menu item where I will adjust the dimension and the border-radius to simulate the morphing. For the second animation, I will use the ul pseudo-element to create a small circle that I move between the menu items.
    Here is another version of the demo with different coloration and a slower transition to better visualize each animation:
    CodePen Embed Fallback The tricky part is the jumping effect where I am using a strange cubic-bezier() but I have a detailed article where I explain the technique in my CSS-Tricks article “Advanced CSS Animation Using cubic-bezier()”.
    Conclusion
    I hope you enjoyed this little experimentation using the anchor positioning feature. We only looked at three properties/values but it’s enough to prepare you for this new feature. The anchor-name and position-anchor properties are the mandatory pieces for linking one element (often called a “target” element in this context) to another element (what we call an “anchor” element in this context). From there, you have the anchor() function to control the position.
    Related: CSS Anchor Positioning Guide
    Fancy Menu Navigation Using Anchor Positioning originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
  16. Blogger

    Adding Grouped Items in Waybar

    Tutorials · Blogger · 01/17/25 03:37 AM

    by: Sreenath
    Waybar is the perfect top panel program for Wayland systems like Hyprland, Sway, etc.
    It offers many built-in modules and also allows the user to create custom modules to fill the panel.
    We have already discussed how to configure Waybar in a previous tutorial.
    📋
    I recommend you to go through the article first. It should make things easy to understand as you read on.
    In this article, let's learn some eye-candy tricks to make your Hyprland user experience even better.
    0:00
    /0:11
    1×
    Hardware Groups with Waybar with group module.
    Grouping modules in Waybar
    Those who went through the wiki pages of Waybar, may have seen a module called group. Unlike other modules (memory, cpu, etc.), this group module allows you to embed more pre-built modules inside it.
    This is shown in the above video.
    So, what we are doing here is grouping related (or even unrelated, as you like) modules inside a group.
    Writing a sample group module
    Usually, all modules should be defined and then called in the top bar on respective places as you require.
    This is applicable to the group as well. Let's make one:
    Step 1: Start with framework
    First, define the group with a name and the structure:
    "group/<groupname>": { ----, ---- } The group module definition should be wrapped between the parentheses.
    For example, I am creating a group called hardware to place CPU, RAM (memory), and Temperature modules.
    🚧
    The modules like cpu, memory, etc., that we need to add to a group should be defined separately outside the group definition. These definitions are explained in the Waybar article.
    So, I will start the group definition at the end of my ~/.config/waybar/config.jsonc file:
    "group/hardware": { ----, ---- } 🚧
    In the JSONC files, never forget to add a comma to the end of previous module (},), if it is not the last item.
    Step 2: Add an orientation
    You already know that Waybar allows you to place the bar on the top, bottom, left, or right of the screen. This means, you can place your bar either vertically (left/right) or horizontally (top/bottom).
    Therefore, you may need to specify an orientation for the group items using the key orientation.
    "group/hardware": { "oreintation": "horizontal", } I am using a bar configured to appear at the top of the screen. Therefore, I chose “horizontal” orientation. The value for orientation can be horizontal, vertical, orthogonal, or inherit.
    Step 3: Add a drawer effect
    With orientation set, let's make the groups a bit neat by hiding all items except one.
    The interesting part is, when you hover over this unhidden item, the rest of the modules inside the group will come out with a nice effect. It is like collapsing the items at once under one of the items, and then expanding.
    The keyword we use in the configuration here is “drawer”.
    "group/hardware": { "oreintation": "horizontal", "drawer": { --- }, } Inside the drawer, we can set the transition duration, motion, etc. Let's go minimal, with only setting the transition duration and transition motion.
    "group/hardware": { "oreintation": "horizontal" "drawer": { "transition-duration": 500, "transition-left-to-right": false }, } If we set the transition-left-to-right key to false, the first item in the list of modules (that we will add in the next section) will stay there, and the rest is expanded.
    Likewise, if left to default (true), the first item and the rest will all draw out.
    Step 4: Add the modules
    It's time to add the modules that we want to appear inside the group.
    "group/hardware": { "oreintation": "horizontal", "drawer": { "transition-duration": 500, "transition-left-to-right": false }, "modules": [ "custom/hardware-wrap", "cpu", "memory" "temperature" ] } Here, in the above snippet, we have created four modules to appear inside the group hardware.
    📋
    The first item inside the module key will be the one visible. The subsequent items will be hidden and will only appear when hovered over the first item.
    As said earlier, we need to define all the modules appearing inside the group as regular Waybar modules.
    Here, we will define a custom module called custom/hardware-wrap, just to hold a place for the Hardware section.
    So, outside the group module definition parenthesis, use the following code:
    "custom/hardware-wrap": { "format": Hardware "tooltip-format": "Hardware group" } So, when "custom/hardware-wrap" is placed inside the group module as the first item, only that will be visible, hiding the rest (cpu, memory, and temperature in this case.).
    Step 5: Simple CSS for the custom module
    Let's add a CSS for the custom module that we have added. Go inside the ~/.conf/waybar/style.css file and add the lines:
    #custom-hardware-wrap { box-shadow: none; background: #202131; text-shadow: none; padding: 0px; border-radius: 5px; margin-top: 3px; margin-bottom: 3px; margin-right: 6px; margin-left: 6px; padding-right: 4px; padding-left: 4px; color: #98C379; } Step 6: Add it to the panel
    Now that we have designed and styled the group, let's add it to the panel.
    We know that in Waybar, we have modules-left, modules-center, and modules-right to align elements in the panel.
    Let's place the new Hardware group to the right side of the panel.
    "modules-right": ["group/hardware", "pulseaudio", "tray"], In the above code inside the ~/.config/waybar/config.jsonc, you can see that, I have placed the group/hardware on the right along with PulseAudio and system tray.

    Hardware Group Collapsed

    Hardware Group Expanded
    Wrapping Up
    Grouping items is a handy trick, since it can create some space to place other items and make the top bar organized.
    If you are curious, you can take a look at the drawer snippet given in the group page of Waybar wiki. You can explore some more customizations like adding a power menu button.
  17. Blogger

    Thea

    · Blogger · 01/17/25 02:59 AM

    by: aiparabellum.com
    Fri, 17 Jan 2025 02:59:35 +0000

    https://www.theastudy.com/?referralCode=aipara
    Thea Study is a revolutionary AI-powered platform designed to optimize studying and learning for students of all levels. With its user-friendly interface and cutting-edge technology, Thea serves as a personalized study companion that adapts to your learning style. Whether you’re preparing for standardized tests, mastering school subjects, or needing quick summaries of your notes, Thea offers an innovative solution tailored to your needs. Completely free until April 15, 2025, Thea is transforming how students prepare for academic success.
    Features of Thea
    Thea offers a robust suite of features aimed at enhancing study efficiency and understanding:
    Smart Study Practice with varied questions using the Socratic method to improve comprehension. Gain deeper understanding through dynamic, interactive learning. Flashcards Create instant, interactive flashcards for effective memorization. Review on-the-go with engaging games and activities. Summarize Upload study materials, and Thea generates concise summaries in seconds. Break down complex content into manageable, digestible parts. Study Guides Generate comprehensive study guides effortlessly. Download guides instantly for offline use. Test Simulation Experience real exam conditions with Thea’s test environment. Reduce test anxiety and enhance readiness for the big day. Spaced Repetition Utilize scientifically-backed learning techniques to strengthen long-term memory. Review material at optimal intervals for maximum retention. Language Support Access Thea in over 80 languages for a truly global learning experience. Customizable Difficulty Levels Adjust question difficulty to match your learning needs, from beginner to advanced. How It Works
    Thea is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. Here’s how it works:
    Create a free account to access all features. Start by uploading study materials or selecting a subject. Choose the desired study feature: flashcards, summaries, or tests. Let Thea generate personalized content tailored to your input. Practice using interactive tools like Smart Study or Test Simulation. Track your progress and refine your approach based on performance. Benefits of Thea
    Thea offers numerous advantages for students aiming to optimize their academic efforts:
    Time Efficiency Thea reduces study time by offering precise, ready-to-use materials. Stress Reduction Simulated test environments and organized study guides help alleviate anxiety. Personalized Learning Adaptive features cater to individual learning styles and needs. Accessibility Completely free until 2025, making it accessible to all learners globally. Versatility Suitable for various subjects, including math, history, biology, and more. Global Reach Supports multiple languages and educational systems worldwide. Pricing
    Thea is currently free to use with no paywalls, ensuring accessibility to students worldwide. This free access is guaranteed until at least April 15, 2025. Pricing details for future plans are yet to be finalized, but the platform’s affordability will remain a priority.
    Thea Review
    Students and educators worldwide highly praise Thea for its innovative and effective approach to studying. Testimonials highlight its ability to improve grades, reduce stress, and make learning engaging. Users appreciate features like the instant flashcards, test simulation, and comprehensive summaries, which set Thea apart from other study platforms. The platform is often described as a game-changer that combines advanced AI with simplicity and usability.
    Conclusion
    Thea Study is redefining how students approach learning by offering a comprehensive, AI-powered study solution. From personalized content to real exam simulations, Thea ensures that every student can achieve their academic goals with ease. Whether you’re preparing for AP exams, IB tests, or regular coursework, Thea’s innovative tools will save you time and enhance your understanding. With free access until 2025, there’s no better time to explore Thea as your ultimate study companion.
    Visit Website The post Thea appeared first on AI Parabellum.
  18. Blogger

    Thea

    · Blogger · 01/17/25 02:59 AM

    by: aiparabellum.com
    Fri, 17 Jan 2025 02:59:35 +0000

    https://www.theastudy.com/?referralCode=aipara
    Thea Study is a revolutionary AI-powered platform designed to optimize studying and learning for students of all levels. With its user-friendly interface and cutting-edge technology, Thea serves as a personalized study companion that adapts to your learning style. Whether you’re preparing for standardized tests, mastering school subjects, or needing quick summaries of your notes, Thea offers an innovative solution tailored to your needs. Completely free until April 15, 2025, Thea is transforming how students prepare for academic success.
    Features of Thea
    Thea offers a robust suite of features aimed at enhancing study efficiency and understanding:
    Smart Study Practice with varied questions using the Socratic method to improve comprehension. Gain deeper understanding through dynamic, interactive learning. Flashcards Create instant, interactive flashcards for effective memorization. Review on-the-go with engaging games and activities. Summarize Upload study materials, and Thea generates concise summaries in seconds. Break down complex content into manageable, digestible parts. Study Guides Generate comprehensive study guides effortlessly. Download guides instantly for offline use. Test Simulation Experience real exam conditions with Thea’s test environment. Reduce test anxiety and enhance readiness for the big day. Spaced Repetition Utilize scientifically-backed learning techniques to strengthen long-term memory. Review material at optimal intervals for maximum retention. Language Support Access Thea in over 80 languages for a truly global learning experience. Customizable Difficulty Levels Adjust question difficulty to match your learning needs, from beginner to advanced. How It Works
    Thea is designed to be intuitive and easy to use. Here’s how it works:
    Create a free account to access all features. Start by uploading study materials or selecting a subject. Choose the desired study feature: flashcards, summaries, or tests. Let Thea generate personalized content tailored to your input. Practice using interactive tools like Smart Study or Test Simulation. Track your progress and refine your approach based on performance. Benefits of Thea
    Thea offers numerous advantages for students aiming to optimize their academic efforts:
    Time Efficiency Thea reduces study time by offering precise, ready-to-use materials. Stress Reduction Simulated test environments and organized study guides help alleviate anxiety. Personalized Learning Adaptive features cater to individual learning styles and needs. Accessibility Completely free until 2025, making it accessible to all learners globally. Versatility Suitable for various subjects, including math, history, biology, and more. Global Reach Supports multiple languages and educational systems worldwide. Pricing
    Thea is currently free to use with no paywalls, ensuring accessibility to students worldwide. This free access is guaranteed until at least April 15, 2025. Pricing details for future plans are yet to be finalized, but the platform’s affordability will remain a priority.
    Thea Review
    Students and educators worldwide highly praise Thea for its innovative and effective approach to studying. Testimonials highlight its ability to improve grades, reduce stress, and make learning engaging. Users appreciate features like the instant flashcards, test simulation, and comprehensive summaries, which set Thea apart from other study platforms. The platform is often described as a game-changer that combines advanced AI with simplicity and usability.
    Conclusion
    Thea Study is redefining how students approach learning by offering a comprehensive, AI-powered study solution. From personalized content to real exam simulations, Thea ensures that every student can achieve their academic goals with ease. Whether you’re preparing for AP exams, IB tests, or regular coursework, Thea’s innovative tools will save you time and enhance your understanding. With free access until 2025, there’s no better time to explore Thea as your ultimate study companion.
    Visit Website The post Thea appeared first on AI Parabellum.
  19. Blogger
    by: Juan Diego Rodríguez
    Mon, 13 Jan 2025 15:08:01 +0000


    New features don’t just pop up in CSS (but I wish they did). Rather, they go through an extensive process of discussions and considerations, defining, writing, prototyping, testing, shipping handling support, and many more verbs that I can’t even begin to imagine. That process is long, and despite how much I want to get my hands on a new feature, as an everyday developer, I can only wait.
    I can, however, control how I wait: do I avoid all possible interfaces or demos that are possible with that one feature? Or do I push the boundaries of CSS and try to do them anyway?
    As ambitious and curious developers, many of us choose the latter option. CSS would grow stagnant without that mentality. That’s why, today, I want to look at two upcoming functions: sibling-count() and sibling-index(). We’re waiting for them — and have been for several years — so I’m letting my natural curiosity get the best of me so I can get a feel for what to be excited about. Join me!
    The tree-counting functions
    At some point, you’ve probably wanted to know the position of an element amongst its siblings or how many children an element has to calculate something in CSS, maybe for some staggering animation in which each element has a longer delay, or perhaps for changing an element’s background-color depending on its number of siblings. This has been a long-awaited deal on my CSS wishlists. Take this CSSWG GitHub Issue from 2017:
    However, counters work using strings, rendering them useless inside a calc() function that deals with numbers. We need a set of similar functions that return as integers the index of an element and the count of siblings. This doesn’t seem too much to ask. We can currently query an element by its tree position using the :nth-child() pseudo-selector (and its variants), not to mention query an element based on how many items it has using the :has() pseudo-selector.
    Luckily, this year the CSSWG approved implementing the sibling-count() and sibling-index() functions! And we already have something in the spec written down:
    How much time do we have to wait to use them? Earlier this year Adam Argyle said that “a Chromium engineer mentioned wanting to do it, but we don’t have a flag to try it out with yet. I’ll share when we do!” So, while I am hopeful to get more news in 2025, we probably won’t see them shipped soon. In the meantime, let’s get to what we can do right now!
    Rubbing two sticks together
    The closest we can get to tree counting functions in terms of syntax and usage is with custom properties. However, the biggest problem is populating them with the correct index and count. The simplest and longest method is hardcoding each using only CSS: we can use the nth-child() selector to give each element its corresponding index:
    li:nth-child(1) { --sibling-index: 1; } li:nth-child(2) { --sibling-index: 2; } li:nth-child(3) { --sibling-index: 3; } /* and so on... */Setting the sibling-count() equivalent has a bit more nuance since we will need to use quantity queries with the :has() selector. A quantity query has the following syntax:
    .container:has(> :last-child:nth-child(m)) { }…where m is the number of elements we want to target. It works by checking if the last element of a container is also the nth element we are targeting; thus it has only that number of elements. You can create your custom quantity queries using this tool by Temani Afif. In this case, our quantity queries would look like the following:
    ol:has(> :nth-child(1)) { --sibling-count: 1; } ol:has(> :last-child:nth-child(2)) { --sibling-count: 2; } ol:has(> :last-child:nth-child(3)) { --sibling-count: 3; } /* and so on... */This example is intentionally light on the number of elements for brevity, but as the list grows it will become unmanageable. Maybe we could use a preprocessor like Sass to write them for us, but we want to focus on a vanilla CSS solution here. For example, the following demo can support up to 12 elements, and you can already see how ugly it gets in the code.
    That’s 24 rules to know the index and count of 12 elements for those of you keeping score. It surely feels like we could get that number down to something more manageable, but if we hardcode each index we are bound increase the amount of code we write. The best we can do is rewrite our CSS so we can nest the --sibling-index and --sibling-count properties together. Instead of writing each property by itself:
    li:nth-child(2) { --sibling-index: 2; } ol:has(> :last-child:nth-child(2)) { --sibling-count: 2; }We could instead nest the --sibling-count rule inside the --sibling-index rule.
    li:nth-child(2) { --sibling-index: 2; ol:has(> &:last-child) { --sibling-count: 2; } }While it may seem wacky to nest a parent inside its children, the following CSS code is completely valid; we are selecting the second li element, and inside, we are selecting an ol element if its second li element is also the last, so the list only has two elements. Which syntax is easier to manage? It’s up to you.
    But that’s just a slight improvement. If we had, say, 100 elements we would still need to hardcode the --sibling-index and --sibling-count properties 100 times. Luckily, the following method will increase rules in a logarithmic way, specifically base-2. So instead of writing 100 rules for 100 elements, we will be writing closer to 10 rules for around 100 elements.
    Flint and steel
    This method was first described by Roman Komarov in October last year, in which he prototypes both tree counting functions and the future random() function. It’s an amazing post, so I strongly encourage you to read it.
    This method also uses custom properties, but instead of hardcoding each one, we will be using two custom properties that will build up the --sibling-index property for each element. Just to be consistent with Roman’s post, we will call them --si1 and --si2, both starting at 0:
    li { --si1: 0; --si2: 0; }The real --sibling-index will be constructed using both properties and a factor (F) that represents an integer greater or equal to 2 that tells us how many elements we can select according to the formula sqrt(F) - 1. So…
    For a factor of 2, we can select 3 elements.
    For a factor of 3, we can select 8 elements.
    For a factor of 5, we can select 24 elements.
    For a factor of 10, we can select 99 elements.
    For a factor of 25, we can select 624 elements.
    As you can see, increasing the factor by one will give us exponential gains on how many elements we can select. But how does all this translate to CSS?
    The first thing to know is that the formula for calculating the --sibling-index property is calc(F * var(--si2) + var(--si1)). If we take a factor of 3, it would look like the following:
    li { --si1: 0; --si2: 0; /* factor of 3; it's a harcoded number */ --sibling-index: calc(3 * var(--si2) + var(--si1)); }The following selectors may be random but stay with me here. For the --si1 property, we will write rules selecting elements that are multiples of the factor and offset them by one 1 until we reach F - 1, then set --si1 to the offset. This translates to the following CSS:
    li:nth-child(Fn + 1) { --si1: 1; } li:nth-child(Fn + 2) { --si1: 2; } /* ... */ li:nth-child(Fn+(F-1)) { --si1: (F-1) }So if our factor is 3, we will write the following rules until we reach F-1, so 2 rules:
    li:nth-child(3n + 1) { --si1: 1; } li:nth-child(3n + 2) { --si1: 2; }For the --si2 property, we will write rules selecting elements in batches of the factor (so if our factor is 3, we will select 3 elements per rule), going from the last possible index (in this case 8) backward until we simply are unable to select more elements in batches. This is a little more convoluted to write in CSS:
    li:nth-child(n + F*1):nth-child(-n + F*1-1){--si2: 1;} li:nth-child(n + F*2):nth-child(-n + F*2-1){--si2: 2;} /* ... */ li:nth-child(n+(F*(F-1))):nth-child(-n+(F*F-1)) { --si2: (F-1) }Again, if our factor is 3, we will write the following two rules:
    li:nth-child(n + 3):nth-child(-n + 5) { --si2: 1; } li:nth-child(n + 6):nth-child(-n + 8) { --si2: 2; }And that’s it! By only setting those two values for --si1 and --si2 we can count up to 8 total elements. The math behind how it works seems wacky at first, but once you visually get it, it all clicks. I made this interactive demo in which you can see how all elements can be reached using this formula. Hover over the code snippets to see which elements can be selected, and click on each snippet to combine them into a possible index.
    If you crank the elements and factor to the max, you can see that we can select 49 elements using only 14 snippets!
    Wait, one thing is missing: the sibling-count() function. Luckily, we will be reusing all we have learned from prototyping --sibling-index. We will start with two custom properties: --sc1 and --sc1 at the container, both starting at 0 as well. The formula for calculating --sibling-count is the same.
    ol { --sc1: 0; --sc2: 0; /* factor of 3; also a harcoded number */ --sibling-count: calc(3 * var(--sc2) + var(--sc1)); }Roman’s post also explains how to write selectors for the --sibling-count property by themselves, but we will use the :has() selection method from our first technique so we don’t have to write extra selectors. We can cram those --sc1 and --sc2 properties into the rules where we defined the sibling-index() properties:
    /* --si1 and --sc1 */ li:nth-child(3n + 1) { --si1: 1; ol:has(> &:last-child) { --sc1: 1; } } li:nth-child(3n + 2) { --si1: 2; ol:has(> &:last-child) { --sc1: 2; } } /* --si2 and --sc2 */ li:nth-child(n + 3):nth-child(-n + 5) { --si2: 1; ol:has(> &:last-child) { --sc2: 1; } } li:nth-child(n + 6):nth-child(-n + 8) { --si2: 2; ol:has(> &:last-child) { --sc2: 2; } }This is using a factor of 3, so we can count up to eight elements with only four rules. The following example has a factor of 7, so we can count up to 48 elements with only 14 rules.
    This method is great, but may not be the best fit for everyone due to the almost magical way of how it works, or simply because you don’t find it aesthetically pleasing. While for avid hands lighting a fire with flint and steel is a breeze, many won’t get their fire started.
    Using a flamethrower
    For this method, we will use once again custom properties to mimic the tree counting functions, and what’s best, we will write less than 20 lines of code to count up to infinity—or I guess to 1.7976931348623157e+308, which is the double precision floating point limit!
    We will be using the Mutation Observer API, so of course it takes JavaScript. I know that’s like admitting defeat for many, but I disagree. If the JavaScript method is simpler (which it is, by far, in this case), then it’s the most appropriate choice. Just as a side note, if performance is your main worry, stick to hard-coding each index in CSS or HTML.
    First, we will grab our container from the DOM:
    const elements = document.querySelector("ol");Then we’ll create a function that sets the --sibling-index property in each element and the --sibling-count in the container (it will be available to its children due to the cascade). For the --sibling-index, we have to loop through the elements.children, and we can get the --sibling-count from elements.children.length.
    const updateCustomProperties = () => { let index = 1; for (element of elements.children) { element.style.setProperty("--sibling-index", index); index++; } elements.style.setProperty("--sibling-count", elements.children.length); };Once we have our function, remember to call it once so we have our initial tree counting properties:
    updateCustomProperties();Lastly, the Mutation Observer. We need to initiate a new observer using the MutationObserver constructor. It takes a callback that gets invoked each time the elements change, so we write our updateCustomProperties function. With the resulting observer object, we can call its observe() method which takes two parameters:
    the element we want to observe, and
    a config object that defines what we want to observe through three boolean properties: attributes, childList, and subtree. In this case, we just want to check for changes in the child list, so we set that one to true:
    const observer = new MutationObserver(updateCustomProperties); const config = {attributes: false, childList: true, subtree: false}; observer.observe(elements, config);That would be all we need! Using this method we can count many elements, in the following demo I set the max to 100, but it can easily reach tenfold:
    So yeah, that’s our flamethrower right there. It definitely gets the fire started, but it’s plenty overkill for the vast majority of use cases. But that’s what we have while we wait for the perfect lighter.
    More information and tutorials
    Possible Future CSS: Tree-Counting Functions and Random Values (Roman Komarov)
    View Transitions Staggering (Chris Coyier)
    Element Indexes (Chris Coyier)
    Related Issues
    Enable the use of counter() inside calc() #1026
    Proposal: add sibling-count() and sibling-index() #4559
    Extend sibling-index() and sibling-count() with a selector argument #9572
    Proposal: children-count() function #11068
    Proposal: descendant-count() function #11069

    How to Wait for the sibling-count() and sibling-index() Functions originally published on CSS-Tricks, which is part of the DigitalOcean family. You should get the newsletter.
  20. Blogger
    By: Joshua Njiru (cleaned up by ChatGPT)
    Thu, 16 Jan 2025 19:44:28 +0000
    Understanding the Error
    The error "AttributeError: module ‘pkgutil’ has no attribute ‘ImpImporter’" typically occurs in Python code that attempts to use the pkgutil module to access ImpImporter. This happens because ImpImporter was removed in Python 3.12 as part of the deprecation of the old import system.
    Root Cause
    The removal of ImpImporter is due to:
    The deprecation of the imp module in favor of importlib
    The modernization of Python’s import system
    Changes in Python 3.12 that eliminate legacy import mechanisms
    Solutions to Fix the Error
    Solution 1: Update Your Code to Use importlib
    Replace pkgutil.ImpImporter with the modern importlib equivalent:
    Old Code:
    from pkgutil import ImpImporter New Code:
    from importlib import machinery importer = machinery.FileFinder(path, *machinery.FileFinder.path_hook_for_FileFinder()) Solution 2: Use ZipImporter Instead
    If you’re working with ZIP archives, use ZipImporter from pkgutil.
    Old Code:
    from pkgutil import ImpImporter New Code:
    from pkgutil import ZipImporter importer = ZipImporter('/path/to/your/zipfile.zip') Solution 3: Downgrade Python Version
    If updating the code isn't possible, downgrade to Python 3.11:
    Create a virtual environment with Python 3.11:
    python3.11 -m venv env source env/bin/activate # On Unix env\Scripts\activate # On Windows Install your dependencies:
    pip install -r requirements.txt Code Examples for Common Use Cases
    Example 1: Module Discovery
    Modern approach using importlib:
    from importlib import util, machinery def find_module(name, path=None): spec = util.find_spec(name, path) if spec is None: return None return spec.loader Example 2: Package Resource Access
    Using importlib.resources:
    from importlib import resources def get_package_data(package, resource): with resources.path(package, resource) as path: return path Prevention Tips
    Always check Python version compatibility when using import-related functionality
    Use importlib instead of pkgutil for new code
    Keep dependencies updated
    Test code against new Python versions before upgrading
    Common Pitfalls
    Mixed Python versions in different environments
    Old dependencies that haven’t been updated
    Copying legacy code without checking compatibility
    Long-Term Solutions
    Migrate to importlib completely
    Update all package loading code to use modern patterns
    Implement proper version checking in your application
    Checking Your Environment
    Run the following diagnostic code to check your setup:
    import sys import importlib def check_import_system(): print(f"Python version: {sys.version}") try: print(f"Importlib version: {importlib.__version__}") except AttributeError: print("Importlib does not have a version attribute.") print("\nAvailable import mechanisms:") for attr in dir(importlib.machinery): if attr.endswith('Loader') or attr.endswith('Finder'): print(f"- {attr}") if __name__ == "__main__": check_import_system() More Articles from Unixmen
    Fixing OpenLDAP Error: ldapadd Undefined Attribute Type (17)
    Using the cp Command to Copy a Directory on Linux
    The post Fixing "AttributeError: module ‘pkgutil’ has no attribute ‘ImpImporter’" appeared first on Unixmen.
  21. Blogger

    How to Install Arch Linux

    Tutorials · Blogger · 01/16/25 07:42 PM

    By: Joshua Njiru
    Thu, 16 Jan 2025 19:42:43 +0000
    Arch Linux is a popular Linux distribution for experienced users. It’s known for its rolling release model, which means you’re always using the latest software. However, Arch Linux can be more challenging to install and maintain than other distributions. This article will walk you through the process of installing Arch Linux, from preparation to first boot. Follow each section carefully to ensure a successful installation.
    Prerequisites
    Before beginning the installation, it is crucial to ensure that you have:
    A USB drive (minimum 4GB)
    Internet connection
    Basic knowledge of command line operations
    At least 512MB RAM (2GB recommended)
    20GB+ free disk space
    Backed up important data
    Creating Installation Media
    Download the latest ISO from archlinux.org
    Verify the ISO signature for security
    Create bootable USB using dd command:
    <span class="token">sudo</span> <span class="token">dd</span> <span class="token assign-left">bs</span><span class="token">=</span>4M <span class="token assign-left">if</span><span class="token">=</span>/path/to/archlinux.iso <span class="token assign-left">of</span><span class="token">=</span>/dev/sdx <span class="token assign-left">status</span><span class="token">=</span>progress <span class="token assign-left">oflag</span><span class="token">=</span>sync
    Boot Preparation
    Enter BIOS/UEFI settings
    Disable Secure Boot
    Set boot priority to USB
    Save and exit
    What are the Initial Boot Steps?
    Boot from USB and select “Arch Linux install medium”
    Verify boot mode:
    ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivarsInternet Connection
    For wired connection:
    ip link dhcpcdFor wireless:
    iwctl station wlan0 scan station wlan0 connect SSIDVerify connection:
    ping archlinux.orgSystem Clock
    Update the system clock:
    timedatectl set-ntp trueDisk Partitioning
    List available disks:
    lsblkCreate partitions (example using fdisk):
    fdisk /dev/sdaFor UEFI systems:
    EFI System Partition (ESP): 512MB
    Root partition: Remaining space
    Swap partition (optional): Equal to RAM size
    For Legacy BIOS:
    Root partition: Most of the disk
    Swap partition (optional)

    Format partitions:
    # For EFI partition mkfs.fat -F32 /dev/sda1 # For root partition mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2 # For swap mkswap /dev/sda3 swapon /dev/sda3Mounting Partitions
    # Mount root partition: mount /dev/sda2 /mnt # For UEFI systems, mount ESP: mkdir /mnt/boot mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/bootBase System Installation
    Install essential packages:
    pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware base-develSystem Configuration
    Generate fstab:
    genfstab -U /mnt <> /mnt/etc/fstabChange root into the new system:
    arch-chroot /mntSet timezone:
    ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Region/City /etc/localtime hwclock --systohcConfigure locale:
    nano /etc/locale.gen # Uncomment en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8 locale-gen echo "LANG=en_US.UTF-8" > /etc/locale.confSet hostname:
    echo "myhostname" > /etc/hostnameConfigure hosts file:
    nano /etc/hosts # Add 127.0.0.1    localhost ::1          localhost 127.0.1.1    myhostname.localdomain    myhostnameBoot Loader Installation
    For GRUB on UEFI systems:
    pacman -S grub efibootmgr grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfgFor GRUB on Legacy BIOS:
    pacman -S grub grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfgNetwork Configuration
    Install network manager:
    pacman -S networkmanager systemctl enable NetworkManagerUser Management
    Set root password:
    passwdCreate user account:
    useradd -m -G wheel username passwd usernameConfigure sudo:
    EDITOR=nano visudo # Uncomment %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALLFinal Steps
    Exit chroot:
    exitUnmount partitions:
    umount -R /mntReboot:
    rebootPost-Installation
    After first boot:
    Install graphics drivers:
    pacman -S xf86-video-amdgpu  # For AMD pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils  # For NVIDIAInstall desktop environment (example with GNOME):
    pacman -S xorg gnome systemctl enable gdmInstall common applications:
    pacman -S firefox terminal-emulator file-managerTroubleshooting Tips
    If bootloader fails to install, verify EFI variables are available
    For wireless issues, ensure firmware is installed
    Check logs with
    journalctl
    for error messages
    Verify partition mounts with
    lsblk
    Maintenance Recommendations
    Regular system updates:
    pacman -SyuClean package cache periodically:
    pacman -ScCheck system logs regularly:
    journalctl -p 3 -xbMore Articles from Unixmen
    https://www.unixmen.com/minimal-tools-on-arch-linux/
    https://www.unixmen.com/top-things-installing-arch-linux/

    The post How to Install Arch Linux appeared first on Unixmen.
  22. Blogger
    by: Women in Technology

    As a woman navigating the world of tech and subsequently leadership, you’re likely all too familiar with the unique challenges that come with the territory. Whether it’s battling imposter syndrome or finding your voice in rooms where you might be the only woman, the journey can sometimes feel overwhelming. One thing I’ve learned through my own experience is that you don’t have to go it alone. In fact, mentorship has been one of the most important elements in my own growth, and it continues to shape how I approach my career.
    But here’s the thing: mentorship isn’t just about having one person by your side throughout your entire career. Your needs change as you grow, and the mentors who help you early on might not be the same ones who guide you when you’re at a senior leadership level. The beauty of mentorship lies in its fluidity, allowing you to seek out different people at different stages of your career to help tackle the challenges you’re facing in that moment.
    When I think back to some of the biggest hurdles I’ve faced as a woman in tech leadership, it’s clear that they were not just about technical competence. Sure, mastering technology skills was critical early on, but as I grew into leadership roles, the challenges became more nuanced. There was the pressure to prove myself in a field where women are still underrepresented, the occasional frustration of having my ideas dismissed in meetings, and the delicate balance between being empathetic and authoritative—a balance that women often feel they must manage more carefully than men.
    You may have felt the same way—wondering how to assert yourself without being labeled as “too aggressive,” or finding that work-life balance is an ongoing struggle, especially if you’re juggling family responsibilities alongside the demands of your role. These challenges are real, and they can sometimes make you question whether you belong in the room at all. But you do. And this is where mentorship becomes so important.
    In the early stages of my career, I sought out mentors who could help me sharpen my technical skills and build confidence. One of my first mentors was my manager at Freddie Mac—Angie Enciso. Angie was assertive, a thorough technologist and data engineer. The larger the problem, the calmer Angie became. I approached her expressing my desire to learn from her style and being transparent of how nervous production support calls would make me as a brand-new NOC Sybase DBA. Angie taught me how to handle the pressure of tight deadlines while still delivering high-quality work. I leaned on her guidance as I found my footing in a complex field.
    Then there was female leader in my tenure with Fannie Mae who taught me how to operate in male-dominated executive spaces, providing insights I wouldn’t have been able to see from my own perspective. She wasn’t just a strategic advisor—she helped me understand the unwritten rules of networking and how to ensure that my voice was heard even when I felt overlooked.
    Later on, as I transitioned into leadership, the nature of my mentorship relationships changed. When I joined Capital One, I did not have the experience of managing large teams. I had been a people leader before, but nothing could prepare me for the scale I was required to operate at within Capital One. I found a great mentor in my leader Raghu Valluri who helped me see the bigger picture—how to lead teams, navigate corporate politics, and make decisions that had a broad impact. He was instrumental in helping me develop a leadership style that was true to myself, even when the pressure was to conform to traditional, sometimes rigid, leadership molds. Through that mentor-mentee relationship, I found my footing and effective ways to lead my team through multi-million-dollar initiatives which had significant revenue and partnership impacts for the larger organization.
    Very recently, I transitioned back to federal contracting and was contemplating establishing my venture in the field. I leaned on mentorship again and approached Gautam Ijoor, the CEO of Alpha Omega and unashamedly asked for the opportunity to establish a mentor-mentee relationship. Gautam was kind, made time for me from his extremely busy schedule and graciously guided me through a process which helped me realize the very goals I was intending to walk towards. It was through those conversations and eventual contemplation that I realized how I can effectively navigate the next steps in my career journey.
    These experiences taught me that mentorship is not about sticking with one person for the long haul. Instead, it is about finding the right people who can help you with specific challenges as they arise. The mentor who guides you through technical growth may not be the same one who helps you navigate the boardroom. And that is ok. 
    One thing I’ve come to believe strongly is the importance of having diverse mentors. Just as you need a variety of skills to succeed in leadership, you also need different perspectives to tackle the challenges that come your way. Whether it’s a mentor who’s walked in your shoes as a woman in tech or someone who offers a completely different viewpoint, having a range of voices to turn to is invaluable.
    For women in tech leadership having both male and female mentors can offer a well-rounded perspective. Female mentors can share their experiences of navigating the same biases and barriers you might be facing. They can offer practical advice on how to make your voice heard, how to lead authentically, and how to manage the constant balancing act of work and life. Meanwhile, male mentors can help you understand the dynamics of male-dominated spaces, giving you insights into how to succeed without losing your sense of self.
    Mentoring Others: Paying it Forward
    As I’ve progressed in my own career, one of the things that brings me the most satisfaction is mentoring others. There’s something incredibly rewarding about helping someone else see their potential and guiding them through the same obstacles I once faced. I’ve mentored people at various stages of their careers, and one thing I always emphasize is that you don’t have to do it all alone.
    If there’s one piece of advice I can offer from my own experience, it’s this: don’t be afraid to seek out mentorship throughout your entire career. You don’t need to have all the answers, and you certainly don’t have to figure everything out on your own. By finding mentors who understand your challenges—whether it’s mastering technical skills, building leadership confidence, or navigating the complexities of work-life balance—you can grow in ways you never thought possible.
    And as you grow, remember to pay it forward. Mentoring others isn’t just about giving back; it’s about continuing the cycle of growth, empowerment, and inclusion in an industry that needs more diverse voices. Together, we can create a tech leadership landscape where more women thrive—and where mentorship plays a pivotal role in making that possible.

    If you’re looking for direction and knowledge for career advancement and success, or have insight to pass on to professional women, learn more about the WIT Mentor-Protégé program here: https://www.womenintechnology.org/mentor-protege-program
    Reha Malik is Vice President of Data and ML tech at Alpha Omega, Technology Executive, Graduate teaching faculty at George Mason University and WIT Member
  23. Blogger
    by: Abhishek Kumar
    I host nearly all the services I use on a bunch of Raspberry Pis and other hardware scattered across my little network.
    From media servers to automation tools, it's all there. But let me tell you, the more services you run, the more chaotic it gets. Trying to remember which server is running what, and keeping tabs on their status, can quickly turn into a nightmare.
    That's where dashboards come to the rescue. They're not just eye candy; they're sanity savers.
    These handy tools bring everything together in one neat interface, so you know what's running, where, and how it's doing.
    If you’re in the same boat, here’s a curated list of some excellent dashboards that can be the control center of your homelab.
    1. Homer 🔗
    It’s essentially a static homepage that uses a simple YAML file for configuration. It’s lightweight, fast, and great for organizing bookmarks to your services.
    Customizing Homer is a breeze, with options for grouping services, applying themes, and even offline health checks. You can check out the demo yourself:

    While it’s not as feature rich as some of the other dashboards here, that’s part of its charm, it’s easy to set up and doesn’t bog you down with unnecessary complexity.
    Deploy it using Docker or just serve it from any web server. The downside? It’s too basic for those who want features like real-time monitoring or authentication.
    ✅ Easy YAML-based configuration, ideal for beginners.
    ✅ Lightweight and fast, with offline health checks for services.
    ✅ Supports theme customization and keyboard shortcuts.
    ❌ Limited to static links—lacks advanced monitoring or dynamic widgets.


    2. Dashy 🔗
    If you’re the kind of person who loves tinkering with every detail, Dashy will feel like a playground.
    Its highly customizable interface lets you organize services, monitor their status, and even integrate widgets for extra functionality. Dashy supports multiple themes, custom icons, and dynamic content from your other tools.
    You can check out the live demo of Dashy yourself:

    However, its extensive customization options can be overwhelming at first. It’s also more resource-intensive than simpler dashboards, but the trade-off is worth it for the sheer flexibility it offers. Install Dashy with Docker, or go bare metal if you’re feeling adventurous.
    ✅ Highly customizable with themes, layouts, and UI elements.
    ✅ Supports status monitoring and dynamic widgets for real-time updates.
    ✅ Easy setup via Docker, with YAML or GUI configuration options.
    ❌ Feature-heavy, which may feel overwhelming for users seeking simplicity.
    ❌ Can be resource-intensive on low-powered hardware.

    3. Heimdall 🔗
    Heimdall keeps things clean and simple while offering a touch of intelligence. You can add services with optional API integrations, enabling Heimdall to display real-time information like server stats or media progress.
    It doesn’t try to do everything, which makes it an excellent choice for those who just want an app launcher that works. It’s quick to set up, runs on Docker, and doesn’t demand much in terms of resources.

    That said, the lack of advanced features like widgets or multi-user support might feel limiting for some.
    ✅ Clean and intuitive interface with support for dynamic API-based widgets.
    ✅ Straightforward installation via Docker or bare-metal setup.
    ✅ Highly extensible, with the ability to add links to non-application services.
    ❌ Limited customization compared to Dashy or Organizr.
    ❌ No built-in user authentication or multi-user support.

    4. Organizr 🔗
    Organizr is like a Swiss Army knife for homelab enthusiasts. It’s more than a dashboard, it’s a full-fledged service organizer that lets you manage multiple applications within a single web interface.

    Tabs are the core of Organizr, allowing you to categorize and access services with ease. You can experiment yourself with their demo website.
    It also supports multi-user environments, guest access, and integration with tools like Plex or Emby.

    This Organizr dashboard is shared by a user on Reddit | Source: r/organizr
    Setting it up requires some work, as it’s PHP-based, but once you’re up and running, it’s an incredibly powerful tool.
    The downside? It’s resource-heavy and overkill if you’re just looking for a simple homepage.
    ✅ Tab-based interface with support for custom tabs and user access control.
    ✅ Extensive customization options for themes and layouts.
    ✅ Multi-user and guest access support with user group management.
    ❌ Setup can be complex for first-time users, especially on bare metal.
    ❌ Interface may feel cluttered if too many tabs are added.

    5. Umbrel 🔗
    Umbrel is more like a platform, since they offer their own umbrelOS and devices like Umbrel Home. Initially built for running Bitcoin and Lightning nodes, Umbrel has grown into a robust self-hosting environment.

    It offers a slick interface and an app store where you can one-click install tools like Nextcloud, Home Assistant, or Jellyfin, making it perfect for beginners or anyone wanting a “plug-and-play” homelab experience.

    The user interface is incredibly polished, with a design that feels like it belongs on a consumer-grade device (Umbrel Home) rather than a DIY server.
    While it’s heavily focused on ease of use, it’s also open-source and completely customizable for advanced users.
    The only downside? It’s not as lightweight as some of the simpler dashboards, and power users might feel limited by its curated ecosystem.
    ✅ One-click app installation with a curated app store.
    ✅ Optimized for Raspberry Pi and other low-powered devices.
    ✅ User-friendly interface with minimal setup requirements.
    ❌ Limited to the apps available in its ecosystem.
    ❌ Less customizable compared to other dashboards like Dashy.

    6. Flame 🔗
    Flame walks a fine line between simplicity and functionality. It gives you a modern start page for your server, where you can manage bookmarks, applications, and even Docker containers with ease.
    The built-in GUI editor is fantastic for creating and editing bookmarks without touching a single file.
    Plus, the ability to pin your favorites, customize themes, and add a weather widget makes Flame feel personal and interactive.

    However, it lacks advanced monitoring features, so if you’re looking for detailed stats on your services, this might not be the right fit.
    Installing Flame is as simple as pulling a Docker image or cloning its GitHub repository.
    ✅ Built-in GUI editors for creating, updating, and deleting applications and bookmarks.
    ✅ Supports pinning favorites, local search, and weather widgets.
    ✅ Easy Docker-based setup with minimal configuration required.
    ❌ Limited dynamic features compared to Dashy or Heimdall.
    ❌ Lacks advanced monitoring or user authentication features.

    7. UCS Server (Univention Corporate Server) 🔗
    If your homelab leans towards enterprise-grade capabilities, UCS Server is worth exploring.
    It’s more than just a dashboard, it’s a full-fledged server management system with integrated identity and access management.
    UCS is especially appealing for those running hybrid setups that mix self-hosted services with external cloud environments.
    Its intuitive web interface simplifies the management of users, permissions, and services. Plus, it supports Docker containers and virtual machines, making it a versatile choice.

    The learning curve is steeper compared to more minimal dashboards like Homer or Heimdall, but it’s rewarding if you’re managing a complex environment.
    Setting it up involves downloading the ISO, installing it on your preferred hardware or virtual machine, and then diving into its modular app ecosystem.
    One drawback is its resource intensity, this isn’t something you’ll run comfortably on a Raspberry Pi. It’s best suited for those with dedicated homelab hardware.
    ✅ Enterprise-grade solution with robust user and service management.
    ✅ Supports LDAP integration and multi-server setups.
    ✅ Extensive app catalog for deploying various services.
    ❌ Overkill for smaller homelabs or basic setups.
    ❌ Requires more resources and knowledge to configure effectively.

    8. DashMachine 🔗
    Dash Machine is a fantastic lightweight dashboard designed for those who prefer simplicity with a touch of elegance.
    It offers a tile-based interface, where each tile represents a self-hosted application or a URL you want quick access to.
    One of the standout features is its search functionality, which allows you to find and access services faster.
    Installing Dash Machine is straightforward. It’s available as a Docker container, so you can have it up and running in minutes.
    However, it doesn’t offer multi-user functionality or detailed service monitoring, which might be a limitation for more complex setups.
    ✅ Clean, tile-based design for quick and easy navigation.
    ✅ Lightweight and perfect for resource-constrained devices.
    ✅ Quick setup via Docker.
    ❌ Limited to static links—no advanced monitoring or multi-user support.



    9 Hiccup (newbie) 🔗
    Hiccup is a newer entry in the self-hosted dashboard space, offering a clean and modern interface with a focus on user-friendliness.
    It provides a simple way to categorize and access your services while keeping everything visually appealing.
    What makes Hiccup unique is its emphasis on simplicity. It’s built to be lightweight and responsive, ensuring it runs smoothly even on resource-constrained hardware like Raspberry Pis.
    The setup process is easy, with Docker being the recommended method. On the downside, it’s still relatively new and it lacks some of the advanced features found in more established dashboards like Dashy or Heimdall.
    ✅ Sleek, responsive design optimized for smooth performance.
    ✅ Easy categorization and Docker-based installation.
    ✅ Minimalistic and beginner-friendly.
    ❌ Lacks advanced features and monitoring tools found in more mature dashboards.








    Bonus: Smashing 🔗
    Smashing is a dashboard like no other. Formerly known as Dashing, it’s designed for those who want a widget-based experience with real-time updates.
    Whether you’re tracking server metrics, weather, or even financial data, Smashing makes it visually stunning.
    Its modular design allows you to add widgets for anything you can imagine, making it incredibly versatile.

    However, it’s not for the faint of heart, Smashing requires some coding skills, as it’s built with Ruby and depends on your ability to configure its widgets.
    Installing Smashing involves cloning its repository and setting up a Ruby environment.
    While this might sound daunting, the results are worth it if you’re aiming for a highly personalized dashboard.
    ✅ Modular design with support for tracking metrics, weather, and more.
    ✅ Visually stunning and highly customizable with Ruby-based widgets.
    ✅ Perfect for users looking for a unique, dynamic dashboard.
    ❌ Requires coding skills and familiarity with Ruby.
    ❌ More complex installation process compared to Docker-based solutions.






    Wrapping It Up
    Dashboards are the heart and soul of a well-organized homelab. From the plug-and-play simplicity of Umbrel to the enterprise-grade capabilities of UCS Server, there’s something here for every setup and skill level.
    Personally, I find myself switching between Homer for quick and clean setups and Dashy when I’m in the mood to customize. But that’s just me!
    Your perfect dashboard might be completely different, and that’s the beauty of the homelab community.
    So, which one will you choose? Or do you have a hidden gem I didn’t mention? Let me know in the comments—I’d love to feature your recommendations in the next round!
  24. Blogger
    by: Abhishek Prakash
    Linux Mint 22.1 codenamed Xia is available now. I expected this point release to arrive around Christmas. But it got delayed a little, if I can call it a delay, as there are no fixed release schedule.
    Wondering what's new in Mint 22.1? Check this out 👇

    6 Exciting Features in Linux Mint 22.1 ‘Xia’ Release
    Linux Mint’s latest upgrade is available. Explore more about it before you try it out!
    It's FOSS NewsAnkush Das

    And the Tuxmas lifetime membership offer is now over. We reached the milestone of 100 lifetime Plus members. Thank you for your support 🙏
    💬 Let's see what else you get in this edition
    A new Raspberry Pi 5 variant.
    AI coming to VLC media player.
    Nobara being the first one to introduce a release in 2025.
    And other Linux news, videos and, of course, memes!
    This edition of FOSS Weekly is supported by PikaPods.
    ❇️ PikaPods: Self-hosting Without Hassle
    PikaPods allows you to quickly deploy your favorite open source software. All future updates are handled automatically by PikaPods while you enjoy using the software. Did I tell you that they also share revenue with the original developers of the software?
    Oh! You also get a $5 free credit to try it out and see if you can rely on PikaPods.
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    📰 Linux and Open Source News
    Microsoft's Phi-4 AI model has been made open source.
    The Raspberry Pi 5 now has a 16 GB variant for power users.
    COSMIC Alpha 5 serves as a reminder of how the desktop environment is progressing.
    Flatpak version 1.16 is released with new features
    Earlier, Kdenlive introduced AI feature and now VLC is adding AI subtitles.
    AI Subtitles Are Coming to VLC— Get Ready!
    VLC is adding the ability to generate subtitles with the help of AI.
    It's FOSS NewsSourav Rudra

    🧠 What We’re Thinking About
    Linus Torvalds is proposing to build a guitar effects pedal for one lucky kernel contributor.
    Linus Torvalds offers to build free guitar effects pedal
    ‘I’m a software person with a soldering iron’, he warns alongside release of Linux 6.13-rc7
    The RegisterSimon Sharwood

    🧮 Linux Tips, Tutorials and More
    Level up your Gedit experience with these 10 tweaks.
    Using your phone's camera and mic in Ubuntu is possible.
    You can run Windows apps on Linux by following this beginner's guide.
    Don’t Believe These Dual Boot Myths
    Don’t listen to what you hear. I tell you the reality from my dual booting experience.
    It's FOSSAnkush Das

    👷 Maker's and AI Corner
    ArmSoM AIM7 sets the stage for cutting-edge AI applications.
    ArmSoM AIM7: A Promising Rockchip Device for AI Development
    Harness the power of RK3588 Rockchip processor for AI development with ArmSoM RK3588 AI Module 7 (AIM7) AI kit.
    It's FOSSAbhishek Kumar

    Usenet was where conversations took place before social media came about.
    Remembering Usenet - The OG Social Network that Existed Even Before the World Wide Web
    Before Facebook, before MySpace and even before the Word Wide Web, there existed Usenet. From LOL to Linux, we owe a lot to Usenet.
    It's FOSSBill Dyer

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    What's so clever about KleverNotes? Find out:
    KleverNotes Is A Practical Markdown Note-Taking App By KDE
    That’s a clever markdown-powered editor. Give it a try!
    It's FOSS NewsSourav Rudra

    🛍️Deal You Would Love
    Challenge your brain and have a blast learning with these acclaimed logic and puzzle games exploring key concepts of programming and machine learning.
    New Year, New You: Programming Games
    Have fun learning about programming and machine learning in this puzzle and logic game bundle featuring while True: learn(), 7 Billion Humans, and more.
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    🧩 Quiz Time
    Here's a fun crossword for correctly guessing the full forms of the mentioned acronyms.
    Expand the Short form: Crossword
    It’s time for you to solve a crossword!
    It's FOSSAnkush Das

    💡 Quick Handy Tip
    You can search for free icons from Font Awesome or Nerd Fonts to add to panels and terminal tools like Fastfetch.
    Ensure that you install the respective fonts, font-awesome and firacode-nerd on your system before using. Otherwise, they won't appear properly.

    On Font Awesome, click on Copy Glyph to copy the icon to the clipboard. And in Nerd Fonts, click on the Icons button to copy the icon to the clipboard.

    🤣 Meme of the Week
    Yep, that happens. 😆

    🗓️ Tech Trivia
    Wikipedia launched on January 15, 2001, as a free, collaborative encyclopedia. Created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it grew to host millions of articles in multiple languages.
    Today, it’s one of the most visited websites globally, embodying the spirit of open knowledge.
    🧑‍🤝‍🧑 FOSSverse Corner
    Would it be possible to learn to code after 50? Community members share their views and experience.
    50+ and learning to code...?
    I’m over 50 (became 50 on 28 October 2024) and, while I did do some coding in a grey past, I noticed I’m currently finding it difficult to pick it up. There’s so much to learn: Coding (in my case C++) The API of the relevant libraries I intend to use for my Amazing FLOSS Project™. 🙂 (In my case FLTK, and yaml-cpp). The language of the build system (CMake in my case). Some editor like thing with some creature comforts (in my case I’m going with sublime text). Git (including how to…
    It's FOSS Communityxahodo

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  25. Blogger
    by: Tatiana P
    Thu, 16 Jan 2025 09:42:00 +0000


    Discover your passion for technology and pursue it with all your heart!
    My name is Leena, and I am a Business Advisor Consultant and Development Manager at BearingPoint Finland. I have a passion for people leadership and technical development. With over 18 years of experience in the banking industry, I specialize in card payments.
    As a consultant, I work on projects for our commercial customers, sharing our expertise through various company initiatives. My customer projects typically involve card payments, where I have served as an Epic Lead, Capability Lead, Project Manager, and Architectural Lead.
    In my role as a Development Manager, I ensure the professional growth and engagement of our employees with the company and their projects. I take great pleasure in enabling people to succeed and grow, and I am proud to help customer companies implement more secure, flexible, and efficient solutions. It is important to me that the outcomes of my work lead to meaningful improvements.
    Finding my way in technology
    I hold a Master’s degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Technology. However, my study path wasn’t clear from the start. When I graduated from high school, I didn’t initially see technology as my field. I was good at math, but at the time, it was more connected to business than technology. I first studied economics, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Economics, and began my career in a bank. I was 21 when I graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration. After working in various positions in a bank for seven years, I realized that having a Master’s degree would be beneficial for gaining more expertise in finance. Therefore, I pursued a Master’s in Economics.
    After graduation, I transitioned into digital solution development within the bank. These assignments involved digital development and improving processes, services, and products, which required a better understanding of technical solutions. I noticed a gap between engineer coders and top management economists in the finance industry. They spoke different languages, and I wanted to bridge that gap. This realization led me to pursue a degree in technology. I earned a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and then a Master’s in Technology, focusing on digital services.
    As you can see, my study path has always followed my work. I have studied according to the needs I observed in my field. Technology has become increasingly important in the financial sector over the decades. Understanding the technology behind banking and financial services is crucial. I found my drive and passion by expanding my knowledge from business to technology.
    Working at BearingPoint
    At BearingPoint, I feel heard. I can express my interests and where I want to grow. I have a say in where I work and the types of projects I take on. The best part of my job is diversity. I can focus on leadership and people engagement through traditional organizational leadership as well as customer projects. I work in areas that interest me, and I always learn a lot when moving from one customer to another. We also have the opportunity to expand our expertise based on our interests and customer requests.
    BearingPoint is a global management and technology consulting firm that bridges the gap between business and IT for our clients. Our approach is hands-on, working as part of the client’s delivery teams. Additionally, I can participate in other BearingPoint initiatives according to my interests and take on roles within the company that align with my development goals and capabilities.
    At our company, people are our most valuable resource, so they are at the centre of everything we do. We work across team lines and countries, and we are encouraged to express our interests for personal development. I feel that I can be open about my work preferences and responsibilities.

    Leena Latvala-Heinonen, Business Advisor Consultant and Development Manager at BearingPoint Finland
    Keeping yourself updated
    I use various techniques to stay up to date. It’s important to keep track of vendors who are developing different solutions. Collaboration with them is crucial. Additionally, self-motivation, exploration, and observation are always beneficial. In short, vendor collaboration and proactive thinking are essential for integrating new technology into different types of companies.
    When I listen to podcasts or read blogs, I focus on how people feel when they face changes in the technical setup. In technology, we sometimes forget that we are leading people, not just technology. It’s important to understand why there is resistance at times and why there can be a gap between top management and the people enabling technical development.
    On the impact of AI
    AI enables people to work more efficiently through automation. It allows us to use our time better, focusing on decision-making instead of manual reporting or monitoring. I also see significant benefits in AI’s ability to process data, supporting decision-making and risk management activities.
    I don’t see AI replacing people’s jobs. Currently, customer experience is often enhanced by AI-supported chatbots, which free up time for more complex customer cases. AI can handle simpler questions and administrative tasks, allowing us to focus on more interesting and engaging work, thereby improving employee engagement.
    However, it is crucial to clearly define and communicate AI usage to ensure data privacy, ethicality, and accuracy. This transparency will help secure common acceptance and understanding of AI’s benefits among employees and customers.
    Skills in IT and technology
    When working with IT and technology, you need a variety of skills. One of the most important is problem-solving. I am a problem-solver both at work and in my private life. In problem-solving, it’s crucial to understand the real issue, which people can’t always articulate. I have tried to follow advice from one of my previous managers: “Stand tall and represent what you believe in, but be humble and respectful towards others, as they are the ones who can help you grow and succeed.”
    This highlights another important skill: the ability to listen and understand. Listening is crucial in the IT field. You must grasp the real problem, as people often need help to express their actual issues. Sometimes, the reasons they give are not the real reasons. Therefore, the ability to listen and identify the root cause of problems is pivotal.
    Understanding and solving problems also requires expertise in solutions. With technical solutions and software developing rapidly, you need to be a quick learner of current solutions and technical possibilities.
    Project management, change management, and stakeholder management skills are essential if you want to lead technical development and innovations. During projects and technical changes, there might be resistance to change. Not everyone likes change, and people cope with innovation differently. It’s important to understand why this resistance occurs. This is a crucial skill to consider when undertaking any technical project or working with people in general.
    Life outside work
    Work-life balance is very important to me. When you have a good work-life balance, you become more proactive at work. It’s also important to take breaks and spend your free time with friends. Focusing on something completely different from your line of business can be beneficial. You might even discover a new passion.
    Playing the guitar is my relaxing hobby. When I play, I focus entirely on the music and forget about work, which helps me maintain a good balance in my free time. Playing an instrument has made it easier for me to achieve work-life balance because it requires me to set aside my work thoughts while I learn and practice.
    Work towards your passion
    We all spend a significant amount of time studying or working, and it can sometimes be hard or frustrating. To stay energized and satisfied, it’s important to find your passion. Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t found it yet. Keep exploring what inspires you and pursue it wholeheartedly. Ignore excuses or blockers like “no time” or “not good enough.” Try new things and discover where your passion lies.
    From my experience, the field of technology offers a broader range of assignments and positions than commonly understood. Don’t confine yourself to a predefined career path. Listen to yourself and your passions. This will guide you to the best career path uniquely suited for you.
    The post Role model blog: Leena Latvala-Heinonen, BearingPoint first appeared on Women in Tech Finland.

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