Why Is It Slow? When you request a website, say, b3n.org, your computer needs the IP address. So it sends out packets through your router/firewall, your modem, and out to your ISPs DNS Servers. Your ISP’s DNS server will probably have it cached, if not it queries the authoritative (starting with the Root Name Servers) … Read more
Amazon Lightsail has entered the VPS market, competing directly with DigitalOcean and Vultr. I for one welcome more competition in the $5 cloud server space. I wanted to see how they perform so I spun up 24 cloud servers, 8 for each provider and ran some benchmarks. $5 Cloud Server Providers Compared DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Amazon … Read more
Looking for a Christmas gift idea for your computer geek? Here’s a short gift guide with a few ideas I think would make great gifts. Unlike a lot of other top gift idea lists written by non-tech people just to make a sale, I’m actually a developer and these are the sort of things that … Read more
Magnus Carlsen is the best chess player in the world. And I’m going to beat him. – Elijah Bryan
The most Frequently Asked Question from my Family, Friends, and FOAFs… Laptop Buyer: What Kind of Laptop Should I buy? Ben: Get one with an Intel Wireless card WiFi Cards Matter The first piece of advice I have is make sure your wireless card is made by Intel. Do not get anything else. You might … Read more
This October 31st, 2016, is the 499th Reformation Day, alongside All Hallow’s Eve (or Halloween). We owe much to the reformers. Many were involved, most notably Ulrich Zwingli and later John Calvin, but Martin Luther is said to have started the Reformation by posting the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. … Read more
Phones depreciate in value fast, their useful life is less than their lifespan. Not because old phones don’t work anymore. But because manufacturers stop providing security updates after about 3 years (at best!) What If I Told You a Hacker Can Take over Your Phone with One Text… And You Don’t Even Have to Open … Read more
So, you want to hide your email from the NSA’s prying eyes? It’s impossible… but here are some steps you can use to make it harder. This isn’t theoretical. The NSA has and does intercept this traffic. Common Points of NSA Interception The NSA has unlimited resources to compromise your communications. You’re not going to stop … Read more
ZFS is flexible and will let you name and organize datasets however you choose–but before you start building datasets there’s some ways to make management easier in the long term. I’ve found the following convention works well for me. It’s not “the” way by any means, but I hope you will find it helpful, I … Read more
Let’s Encrypt is an excellent service offering the ability to generate free SSL certs. The way it normally works is using http-01 challenge… to respond to the Let’s Encrypt challenge the client (typically Certbot) puts an answer in the webroot. Let’s Encrypt makes an http request and if it finds the response to the challenge … Read more