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A cadre of tech giants have created the Rust Foundation. This is neither the first nor largest contribution to an open-source project by private tech vendors. Still, the creation of this new body marks another noteworthy instance in which proprietary software companies took the initiative to found a...

As I study tech sector innovations, I see signs that the old traditions are fading. I'm not one to sanctify tradition for tradition's sake, but I see merit in maintaining a traditional approach to computing tasks that encourages shrewdness. To illustrate what I mean, these are some ways we are stray...

Linux began its life as a humble experiment in Unix porting, but from there it quickly became a popular kernel for server OSes due to its low cost and customizability. From there it morphed to power network appliances and Android, proving it was lean enough for a whole gamut of embedded systems. It'...

In spite of being a beloved companion to computer hobbyists the world over, the Raspberry Pi doesn't get enough credit. In fact, single-board computers of all stripes haven't gotten their due -- I just happen to have a Raspberry Pi.

This piece is a demonstration of one means of setting up file-level encryption which is widely available for Linux desktop users. To offer a similar encryption scheme to as many users as possible, we'll walk through how to use fscrypt to create an encrypted filesystem. While simple, fscrypt offers m...

Linux users love to chat, and few topics are so prevalent among users as distributions. A big one is a distro's suitability for beginners. Drawing in eager new users is the only way to grow the Linux community. Successful recruitment often hinges on making sure that newcomers start with a distro tha...

Once in a blue moon, one will experience sheer terror at the hands of a buggy Linux system. No amount of battle-hardiness can keep you completely safe, either. I know this because not too long ago, a fear-inducing Linux bug came for me. I wanted to share this true Linux story, so that you may be inf...

Canonical's AdGuard Home Ubuntu Appliance is a new addition to the ranks of its appliances. With this offering, users can quickly implement a ready-made solution for blocking bothersome content at the network level on a home network. Doing so involves no more than downloading, installing, and bootin...

Average computer users would be forgiven for not having any idea what PGP is. There is so much going on below the surface of the modern computing experience that even critically important security tools like PGP are tucked away. To be sure, there are specialized circles that make regular explicit us...

The information security industry, with all its raging debates, has rallied around a small corpus of best practices. One of the highest on this list is full-disk encryption, which security experts regard as sacrosanct. This is the encryption that ensures that someone who snatches your device won't b...

Cybersecurity incident response teams have choices when it comes to communication tools: Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom and numerous others. Some require a subscription or commercial license -- others are free. Some are niche tools specifically designed for incident response. Some are generic busines...

When Linux first emerged from its cocoon in a frenzied Usenet thread, it is doubtful that almost anyone imagined the project would ascend to global prominence. Even more astonishingly, its dominance was driven as much, if not more, by its adoption by the private sector -- although it posed an antith...

It is newly minted conventional wisdom that not a single information security conference goes by without a presentation about the abysmal state of IoT security. While this is a boon for researchers looking to make a name for themselves, this sorry state of affairs is definitely not beneficial for an...

It would have been reasonable for those attending Josh Bressers' session at CypherCon -- myself included -- to expect a presentation by a cryptocurrency expert. It was billed as a talk about plumbing the depths of the Bitcoin blockchain. When Bressers admitted that his material grew out of a hobby, ...

A recent episode of a Linux news podcast I keep up with featured an interview with a journalist who had written a piece for a non-Linux audience about giving it a try. It was surprisingly widely read. The writer's experience with some of the more popular desktop distributions had been overwhelmingly...

For those who try to keep their finger on the Linux community's pulse, 2018 was a surprisingly eventful year. Spread over the last 12 months, we've seen various projects in the Linux ecosystem make great strides, as well as suffer their share of stumbles. All told, the year wrapped up leaving plenty...

A recent episode of a Linux news podcast I keep up with featured an interview with a journalist who had written a piece for a non-Linux audience about giving it a try. It was surprisingly widely read. The writer's experience with some of the more popular desktop distributions had been overwhelmingly...

It's common for Linux users to hop between distributions and survey the field, and I recently reached a point where I had to seriously rethink the one I was using most of the time. Between hardware compatibility issues with my old standby and some discouraging missteps with other go-to choices, I fe...

Just like leaders in every other field you can imagine, academics have been hard at work studying information security. Most fields aren't as replete with hackers as information security, though, and their contributions are felt much more strongly in the private sector than in academia. The differin...

In spite of all the high-profile breaches that seem to sweep the headlines with greater frequency, companies slowly but surely have been getting a handle on internal security practices. At this point, it's hard to imagine any employee, in or out of the tech sector, who hasn't been run through antiph...