A sysadmin's field guide to VPNs: what a VPN actually does to your traffic, the threat models it does and does not answer, how no-logs claims and audits really work, which providers pass the test, and a deep technical comparison of OpenVPN, WireGuard, and the proprietary protocols (NordLynx, Lightway, Catapult Hydra, Chameleon), plus a hands-on self-hosted WireGuard setup.
A hands-on sysadmin guide to AIDE for file integrity baselines and inotify-tools for real-time filesystem event monitoring: what each tool actually does, install and configuration on Debian, Ubuntu, and RHEL, scheduling the daily check, inotifywait and inotifywatch recipes, the limits that bite, and how the two complement each other.
Grav 2.0 is a flat-file PHP CMS with Markdown and YAML content, a first-party REST API, an MCP server, and a new SvelteKit 5 admin. Astro is a content-driven JavaScript framework with typed content collections and islands. A hands-on comparison of content models, templating, admin, deployment, and when to pick which.
SMS two-factor authentication was a real upgrade, but SIM swapping, SS7 interception, and real-time phishing have turned the code into a second password an attacker can read. Why it now gives a false sense of security, and what to use instead: TOTP apps, passkeys, hardware keys, and printed recovery codes.
A sysadmin's hands-on walkthrough of a scratch-based, rootless Docker image for the SimpleX Chat CLI. Since the chat server binds 127.0.0.1 only (issue #6449 is still open), a small socat bridge exposes it on 0.0.0.0. Full multi-stage Dockerfile, build and run commands, and the honest trade-offs.
Spin up and tear down a vast.ai GPU box from the CLI: the vast-qwen.sh script searches offers, rents a 2x RTX 3090, serves Qwen3.8-27B-FP8 through vLLM, and exposes an OpenAI-compatible endpoint over SSH, plus the honest cost math on renting versus subscriptions.
SimpleX Chat is the first messenger with no user identifiers at all: no phone number, no username, no account. Here is what that changes for day-to-day users, how you actually connect with people, and how it compares to WhatsApp and Telegram on privacy and metadata.