Software Archives - aster.cloud

3 min

What To Expect From Apple’s WWDC 2023

Apple’s WWDC is an annual conference. It’s aimed at developers, but also routinely includes announcements us normal Apple fans can appreciate. 2023 is going to be a big year for these. The show starts on June 5 and ends on June 9. But we will get to know about all the big new Apple gear coming at 6pm on June 5. We anticipate Apple’s first virtual reality headset and a larger 15-inch version of the somewhat affordable MacBook Air line. We also expect a new Mac Pro family most of us almost certainly won’t be able to afford. Here’s a quick overview of what we think…

5 min

Docker’s Bad Week

Instead of focusing on the poorly communicated decision to sunset Free Teams, look at the company’s overall direction to focus on what developers want. Docker had a bad week. What’s less clear is whether Docker deserved it. For those who haven’t heard, last week Docker announced that it was sunsetting Free Team subscriptions. Some in the open source world read this as “pay up or lose your data.” In light of the uproar, Docker was quick to apologize: “We did a terrible job announcing the end of Docker Free Teams.” Unsurprisingly, this failed to placate its most vociferous critics: “The open source community…

3 min

Ditching Google: The 3 Search Engines That Use AI To Give Results That Are Meaningful

Google search engine is great. But if you’re the type that wants straight answers to every query without going through several blog posts, then you should consider AI-chat search engines. Ever since Chat GPT became a sensation, many companies have increased research and funding to harness AI chatbots. AI search engines have a chat feature, which means you’ll get a straight answer for every search as if you’re chatting with a smart person. Of all the companies with this feature, here are the three you should consider if you want to ditch Google. 1. Microsoft Bing Google has dominated the search engine…

13 min

Own Your Cloud With NextcloudPi On The Raspberry Pi

Install NextcloudPi on your Raspberry Pi in less than 30 minutes, synchronize your mobile devices with your own Nextcloud, and gain total digital sovereignty and privacy. You can now say goodbye to big commercial cloud providers and manage your appointments, contacts, and other data in your own home network. Install NextcloudPi on your Raspberry Pi in less than 30 minutes, synchronize your mobile devices with your own Nextcloud, and gain total digital sovereignty and privacy! I remember when the first Raspberry Pi hit the market in 2012. My Linux friends and I were absolutely thrilled: a tiny computer, available for…

6 min

Learn Expect By Writing And Automating A Simple Game

Code a “guess the number” game in Expect. Then, learn the real power of Expect with a separate script to automate playing the game. While trying to automate my workflow, I hit upon a configuration utility that defied meaningful automation. It was a Java process that didn’t support a silent installer, or support stdin, and had an inconsistent set of prompts. Ansible’s expect module was inadequate for this task. But I found that the expect command was just the tool for the job. My journey to learn Expect meant learning a bit of Tcl. Now that I have the background to create simple programs, I can better…

2 min

A New Smartphone Operating System That Puts Privacy First

A Swiss-based start-up is developing an operating system that aims to be a more secure alternative to Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Trust in the big smartphone operating systems has been increasingly eroded in recent years due to gaps in data protection resulting in several major court decisions. The Swiss start-up Apostrophy AG wants to address this issue and announced at the World Economic Forum 2023 last week in Davos that it will offer a new operating system with significantly better data protection. The highlight of the new system: the apps installed on the operating system are segregated from each other and,…

4 min

Five Steps To Help Make Your Software Supply Chain More Secure

Today, we published a new Google research report on software supply chain security because we’ve seen a sharp rise in software supply chain attacks across almost every sector —and expect these trends to continue for the foreseeable future. We urge all organizations to act now to improve their software supply chain security. Among the report’s conclusions, there are two key findings we want to highlight. First, the lessons we’ve learned from various security events call for a more holistic approach to strengthen defenses against software supply chain attacks. Second, we have worked with the security community to develop and deploy…

5 min

10 Tips For Writing Clean Code

Clean code is a reader-focused development style that produces software that’s easy to write, read and maintain. Knowing how to produce clean code is an essential skill for software developers. Often, you may be tempted to consider your work complete when the application operates as expected. But we’re not merely writing code for computer consumption. Clean code is about recognizing that your audience isn’t just a computer, it’s real-live humans! With this principle in mind, let’s review the reasons clean code matters and dive into some tips and tricks when it comes to how we can do it in practice. What…

4 min

Cybercrime Insurance Is Making The Ransomware Problem Worse

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was another outbreak in cyberspace: a digital epidemic driven by ransomware. Several organisations worldwide fell victim to cyber-extortionists who stole data either to sell to other criminals or held it as a ransom for a profit. The sheer number of attacks indicates that cyber security and anti-ransomware defences did not work or have limited effectiveness. Businesses are turning to cyberinsurance companies in desperation to protect themselves from attack. But the growth of the cyberinsurance market is only encouraging criminals to target companies that have extortion insurance. A 2021 study from the University of Leeds found…

6 min

5 Tactics to Increase Your Odds Of A Great Software Match

There are many obstacles to getting a great match on business software. The biggest obstacle is the huge number of software options in the market today. With a huge pool of software to choose from, it is easy to get duped by unscrupulous software developers. Another notable obstacle is the ambiguity of software features, which makes the process of vetting different software quite tedious. It is almost impossible to find one software that emphatically checks all your boxes of preferences. That’s why many new software buyers settle for a compromise and live to regret that decision. For starters, software that…

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