Earn Interest on Your Crypto

While some people recommend you purchase a wallet, if you do not mind storing your crypto on a third party platform, you could earn interest.

Some of the advertised rates are above 5%. The cryptocurrency is not backed by FDIC. To learn more about how it works, see these postings:


If you want to receive free cryptocurrency by just learning more, try Coinbase; it is ideal for Americans. For Europeans, the platform/company Iconomi.com can allow you to buy crypto or learn more.

How Do You Launch the Amazon Workspaces Client from Your Debian Server?

Problem scenario
You have installed the Amazon Workspaces Client on your Ubuntu or Linux Mint server. You want to start the application from the GUI desktop. What do you do?

Possible solution #1
Run this command: sudo find / -name workspacesclient*

Possible solution #2
Try running this from the terminal:
/opt/workspacesclient/workspacesclient

What Do You Do if the Data Input Does Not Fit in Memory in Computer Programming?

Problem scenario
You have a massive amount of data to process. The amount is too big for the server you have. How do you write a program or algorithm to handle a very large set of data?

Possible Solution #1
Logically divide the memory by writing portions of the data to files. This is called "chunking" the data. Serially/sequentially process batches. Use external sorting with subfiles in parallel with multiple hard disks if the data set is very large.

Possible Solution #2
Try to use the C programming language to allocate memory more efficiently.

Possible Solution #3
Persist the data in a data store such as a SQL or NoSQL solution.

Possible Solution #4
Manipulate the data with encoding so there is symbolic or nested data that represents the original data with a smaller set. Sometimes ordering data can obviate retrieving a payload. Try using deduplication of the data (such as Hadoop and MapReduce jobs).

Possible Solution #5
Refactor the code's logic to use O(1) memory space.

The following sentences are indirectly related to the exact problem. If you can generate values dynamically rather than build up a set of data, this can help. Memoization can help use less memory in general. Breadth-first-searches can use less memory than depth first searches (according to this external site).

Possible Solution #6
Normally memory constraints are dealt with at the software level -- not at the hardware level. One solution could be to add more memory; see this page for more information on how to do this (even if your server is in the public cloud).

Possible Solution #7 (an extension of #1)
If you are using PowerShell and want to write to disk instead of downloading a file to memory first, you can see this posting.

How Do You Find out if UAC is Enabled on Your Windows Computer?

Problem scenario
You are using either Windows Server 2019 or Windows 10. You want to know if UAC is enabled or not. What should you do?

Solution
Open PowerShell. Run this:

If((Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System).EnableLUA -eq 1) { echo "UAC is enabled"} Else {echo "UAC is NOT enabled"}

Is It Enough to Use Best Practices?

Question
You hear and read about companies that always use best practices. If you use best practices, is your data safe?

Answer
No.

In 2014 many people respected Akamai Technologies, Amazon Web Services, GitHub, Pinterest, Bitbucket, Reddit, SourceForge, Stripe, and Tumblr. Many of these companies are still venerated. Professionals and authoritative I.T. outlets who love best practices undoubtedly would have praised the previously mentioned companies. Yet they were affected by the Heartbleed bug. To learn more about best practices versus recommended practices, see this posting.

How Do You Write a Flask Program to Accept a Parameter in the URL?

Problem scenario
You want to pass a variable via a URL to a Python program. You want to use Flask for this. What do you do?

Solution
Prerequisite

Install Flask. If you need assistance, see this posting if you are using a CentOS/RHEL/Fedora server or this posting if you are using a Debian/Ubuntu server.

Procedures
This is a multi-route Flask program. Integers can be passed when the URL is called like this: curl http://127.0.0.1:5000/ccc/1

# The /ccc/ route below allows for integers to be passed.  The "ccc(var1)" function accepts a variable.

from flask import Flask, Response

app = Flask(__name__)


@app.route("/aaa")
def users():
    return Response("It works! Continually Integrate and Improve!"), 200

@app.route("/bbb")
def index():
    return Response("YYYYYYYYYYYYYYY"), 200

@app.route("/ccc/<int:var1>", strict_slashes=False)
def ccc(var1):
    return Response("the string entered is " + str(var1)), 200

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(debug=True)

How Do You Change the Resolution of the Screen Size So You Can See the Entire Window/GUI Application?

Problem scenario
You are using a Windows or Mac laptop or workstation with an external monitor. In the external monitor when you maximize applications, you cannot see the very top or very bottom of the window. You cannot see the lower portion of the bottom toolbar or ribbon. How do you get the resolution to fit in the screen and not extend beyond your monitor's size?

Solution
Root cause: The problem is not with the computer; the problem is with the monitor's settings.

Procedures

  1. Push a physical button on the monitor. (The solution is not with the OS configuration.)
  2. Go to Image Control -> Custom Scaling -> Overscan
  3. Turn Overscan "Off" (instead of "On" or "Auto"). Now when you maximize a window you will be able to see the top of it. It will be like a normal monitor configuration.

To buy a new HP Pavilion monitor, click on this link.

How Do You Sort a Dictionary in Python and Use It?

Problem scenario
You want to use a sorted dictionary in Python. What do you do?

Solution
Create a sorted list based on the dictionary's keys. Use the list as keys to summon the dictionary's values.

contint_dict = {}
contint_dict["a_test"] = "123"
contint_dict["b_test"] = "456"
contint_dict["c_test"] = "789"
sorted_dict_list = sort1ed(contint_dict.items())  # sorted_dict_list is a list, not a dictionary.
list_of_keys = sorted(contint_dict.keys())

for key_pair in sorted_dict_list:
    print(key_pair)

print("")
print("Above are key-pairs.  Below are just values.  Below demonstrates a very useful")
print("way to use a list and a dictionary (for sorting).")
print("")

for key in list_of_keys:
    print(contint_dict[key])

How Do You Troubleshoot “conntrack not found in system path” when You Run a kubeadm Command?

Problem scenario
You try to run "kubeadm init", but you receive this error:

[ERROR FileExisting-conntrack]: conntrack not found in system path
[preflight] If you know what you are doing, you can make a check non-fatal with --ignore-preflight-errors=...

What should you do?

Solution
Install conntrack.

If you are using SUSE Linux run this:

sudo zypper -n install conntrack-tools

If you are using Debian/Ubuntu Linux:

sudo apt -y install conntrack