On Linux, backups and encrypted filesystems

Today, I want to focus on backups. Specifically, how can I backup my Linux filesystems in a way that I can perform it frequently without hassle, keep it secure with encryption, and make restoration painless.

Oct 26, 2018

X.org Security Vulnerability: CVE-2018–14665

X Windows, and the popular fork X.org, is notorious for security issues and vulnerabilities. Most recently, a bug in X.org that has been around for nearly two years and is trivial to exploit has been disclosed.

May 6, 2018

Lightweight Docker images with Alpine

One of the challenges in building Docker images is keeping it small and lean. For example, let's take a simple app that prints a simple message to the console, and containerize it in Docker.

Mar 19, 2018

Building a service mesh with Istio

If you're looking to build a modern microservices architecture that is highly scalable, observable, secure and resilient, it would make sense to consider some of the service mesh technologies that are rapidly evolving right now. At the time of this writing, Istio is one of the key frameworks that have been gaining a lot of traction, and a key contender in the service mesh race.

Jan 1, 2018

AlphaGo: a journey to machine intuition

When IBM's Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov, I was fifteen years old. I didn't know the significance of the event at the time, nor was I even interested in the epic battle that was to define the technology advancements in AI in that decade.

Dec 24, 2017

Dissecting Bitcoin, Part 2 — Challenges

In the previous part, we discussed the core technology behind Bitcoin and the concepts that make it tick. In this post, we will be covering some challenges Bitcoin faces as its adoption grows at a rapid rate.

Sep 18, 2017

How to put that GPU to good use with Python

Graphics chip manufacturers such as NVIDIA and AMD have been seeing a surge in sales of their graphics processors thanks mostly to cryptocurrency miners and machine learning applications that have found uses for these graphics processors outside of gaming and simulations.

Jul 22, 2017

Dissecting Bitcoin, Part 1 — The Technology

Recently, I decided to pull up Satoshi Nakamoto's paper with the hope of getting a deeper appreciation for Bitcoin and the machinations of a protocol that's driving speculators insane watching a candlestick chart. In the paper, Satoshi puts forward a solution to an old problem in distributed computing circles using Cryptography.

May 7, 2017

For the love of chess

Nearly twenty years to this day, in May 1997, a machine that IBM built challenged then world chess champion Garry Kasparov to a six game match, and won. An year earlier, in 1996, a similar match between the IBM built Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov ended with Kasparov winning the series comfortably.

Apr 15, 2017

Machine learning for fun and profit

Machine learning and artificial intelligence has been going through a phase of democratization to the point that in recent years the barrier to entry for technologies that can be used to build intelligent and self learning applications is at an all time low. I will show just how easy it is to get started with machine learning by walking you through building a simple classifier using open source technologies.

Apr 10, 2017

Bootstrapping Go

Over the weekend, I came across a couple of videos on how the Go compiler was migrated from C to Go. The Go compiler was originally written in C and after it reached a certain level of maturity, the creators were looking at how to bootstrap the compiler in Go so that the language can inherit some of the benefits of Go.

Mar 11, 2017

Coaching software engineers 101

Software engineers are a breed apart and coaching them to bring out their best has almost been a passion for me. I've had the pleasure of working with really good software engineers and watching them climb the ranks and achieve their career objectives has been especially fulfilling over the years.