James'Techblog

While loops or Do While loops are loops that, based on a condition, will loop through a list of data. While loops are good for listing several names at once or continually running an application through a loop to gather complete user input and data in order to store that information in variables for later use. While loops are common in Bash, Python and all kinds of programming languages, and unlike Until loops, they can run indefinitely. While loops are discernible from For loops in how they operate, however, sometimes scenarios can be skewed where both might seem to fill a need. It can often be confusing at times for beginners to programming. However, While loops are more flexible and can handle boolean values really well. A couple of examples of while loops are as follows: while TRUE do command FALSE done n=0 while [ $n -lt 7 ]; do command n=$n+1 sleep 1 done while [ $? -eq 0 ]; do command1 command2 command3 break done As you can...

Apparently, the newer Linux kernel is now including an NSA encryption tool. The find was recently covered by itsfoss and others. Needless to say, if you’re a Linux user, you’re probably not alone to be unhappy with this move. Someone from Google reworked the code for the tool and placed it inside the Kernel. No one knows for sure if this will last, no one knows if this was intended by Linus Torvalds, but so far, he has yet to comment one way or the other. The module isn’t enabled by default in Ubuntu, however, it does appear to be enabled in Arch-based systems (This is kind of strange as Arch users are the ones making the biggest protest). The reason this is considered such a big deal is not that it has anything to do with opening a door for NSA people to spy on Linux users, this is a big deal because it is the idea of taking untrusted third-party code from someone outside the Linux community and placing it into the Linux kernel, an open source piece of software, without ask...

I generally steer clear of this platform as a rule. I neither use, nor cover news about Microsoft heavy topics these days. I am mostly a Linux person, however, when dealing with technology, it’s hard to miss such a big elephant in the room. From phones, to tablets, to desktop pc’s, Microsoft has a big hand in deep pockets. Last year, Germany’s leading officials had planned, with very little foresight, to launch a campaign in which they would all scrap Microsoft Windows for Linux and other open source software. This did not go so well as the local tech experts had trouble understanding and or maintenancing Linux machines. Due to a lack of research, appropriate tech personnel, use of aging hardware and a number of other incorporating factors, Germany decided to ditch Linux to revert back to Windows, but in doing so, they costed taxpayers Millions and opted for newer and better machines in the process. It boggles the mind how many people still rely on this dated and increasingl...

According to an article from thehackernews, Whatsapp, the commonly used mobile messaging app which allows users to use wifi to send messages, was found vulnerable to attack via the end-to-end encryption method that Whatsapp uses to encrypt messages. This hole could be used to spread what researchers are calling “fake news”. “Fake news” is any considered misinformation from any credible or noncredible source that at least pretends to be the news. To call something fake news, however, can often be biased as one person’s fake news is another person’s gullable truth. Either way, the idea is that the messages can be altered based on this vulnerability and even the sender can be changed. Regardless of what is considered to be misinformation here, Whatsapp’s own solution is to limit the amount of users a sender can forward a message to. There is an old game where a group of children stand in a row and one child starts telling a secret and it gets passed down via word-of-mout...

Recently, I embarked on a journey to try and see if it was possible to change the current dns settings via terminal for arch-based systems using NetworkManager service. There were some challenges with this. Many of my attempts kept getting overwritten at boot. One of the reasons is that unlike other network services, NetworkManager has its own way of handling dns settings. The etc resolv.conf file should be changeable by creating a .head file for it, but that doesn’t seem to work with Network Manager’s current settings. To make that work, you have to add two files to NetworkManager’s conf.d directory. That didn’t fly with me, so I opted to install wicd. Wicd is an alternate, albeit faster seeming Network management replacement that really feels lighter to work with. Wicd is often used for its better compatibility with wireless connectivity. That’s why I’m considering adding it to the scripts and making a small dns changer function for it as well. To do this, I’ll have to alter th...