Folding@home is a way to easily contribute for free to the search for cures to Alzheimer’s disease and even many cancers. All you have to do is let Stanford University’s free program run in the background on your computer (Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD) or Sony PlayStation3. I recommend that you give it a try if you haven’t already. More details after the jump. More… »
Does the idea of blocking online advertisements appeal to you? Many solutions exist, such as the AdBlock Plus extension for Firefox, CSS-based ad-blocking, and Privoxy. What you may not be familiar with, however, is using a router to block ads. Imagine: ad-blocking for an entire network, for all browsers and all operating systems, without any additional configuration on the clients. This includes devices which might not otherwise have a way to block ads, and it can be made even nicer by having the router automatically update its ad-blocking rules. All you need is the Tomato firmware on a compatible router and this guide. More… »
When running a server, security is a major concern. Part of that means keeping the software up to date, and package managers make it very easy to update all of the software installed on a Linux system in one fell swoop. However, the person maintaining the server still needs to be made aware that updates are available, and servers are often headless. While it’s true that tools such as cron-apt are available to receive update notification via email, such tools require the user to run their own mail server, which many ISPs block in an effort to reduce spam. Fortunately, it is possible to get around this using Twitter. More… »