In the rapidly evolving landscape of software development and deployment, containerization has become a cornerstone technology. Among the myriad containerization tools, Podman stands out as a lightweight, flexible, and efficient choice for macOS users. This guide is your gateway to the world of Podman, taking you through the seamless process of installing and running containers on your macOS system.
Installing Podman on MacOS
There are multiple avenues to bring Podman into your macOS environment. Below, we’ll explore two popular methods: using Homebrew for convenience and manual installation for those who prefer hands-on control.
The rise of microservices architecture has changed the way developers build and deploy applications. Spring Cloud, a part of the Spring ecosystem, aims to simplify the complexities of developing and managing microservices. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore Spring Cloud and its features and demonstrate its capabilities by building a simple microservices application.
What Is Spring Cloud?
Spring Cloud is a set of tools and libraries that provide solutions to common patterns and challenges in distributed systems, such as configuration management, service discovery, circuit breakers, and distributed tracing. It builds upon Spring Boot and makes it easy to create scalable, fault-tolerant microservices.
In today's interconnected global marketplace, secure data transmission is more crucial than ever. As digital platforms become increasingly important for financial transactions and personal communications, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of data is vital. If someone gets unauthorized access to data, it can be not good. If someone gains unauthorized access to data, it can be not good. It can cost a company money, ruin its good name, and make customers lose trust. This article explores the best practices for ensuring secure data transmission, offering valuable insights for anyone engaged in online activities, whether a multinational corporation or an individual consumer.
Why Secure Data Transmission Matters
The significance of secure data transmission goes beyond just keeping sensitive information out of the wrong hands. It is a cornerstone of business integrity and a key to competitive advantage in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. As companies extend their reach globally, they frequently exchange data across different authorities, each with its regulations and potential vulnerabilities. Secure data transmission is not just about preventing financial loss through fraud or data theft; it is also about regulatory compliance, protecting intellectual property, and maintaining customer trust. Businesses considered secure are more likely to attract customer engagement, and this perception directly affects a company's bottom line. In an age where data breaches are becoming increasingly common and costly, the ability to transmit data securely is not just an operational requirement but a critical business strategy that can differentiate a company in a crowded market.
Real-time analytics is necessary for any business that needs to make decisions in hours, minutes, or seconds. Implementing real-time analytics requires processing high volumes of input data and matching it with existing data in minutes, seconds, or even less time.
This Refcard aims to acquaint readers with real-time analytics, where it is used, how it works, and the challenges involved.
In today's highly interconnected digital landscape, web applications face the constant challenge of handling a high volume of incoming requests. However, not all requests are equal, and excessive traffic can put a strain on resources, leading to service disruptions or even potential security risks. To address this, implementing request rate limiting is crucial to preserve the stability and security of your environment.
Request rate limiting allows you to control the number of requests per unit of time that a server or application can handle. By setting limits, you can prevent abuse, manage resource allocation, and mitigate the risk of malicious attacks such as DDoS or brute-force attempts. In this article, we will explore how to set up request rate limiting using NGINX Ingress, a popular Kubernetes Ingress Controller. We will also demonstrate how to test the rate-limiting configuration using Locust, a load-testing tool.
DataWeave (DW) is a new functional programming language that emerged from Mulesoft technology. This is a simple, transparent, and powerful language for data transformation.
Since the language is new, I found there was no well-established practice on how to organize a DW code inside the Mulesoft app. I frequently ran into situations where the absence of a single DataWeave style or recommendations for a team can make the project difficult to understand and maintain. In this article, I will try to uncover some of my thoughts based on my experience that can be useful when writing your code in DW.
I’ve been working in IT in various roles for more than 12 years, and I witnessed and experienced how release cycles became faster and faster over time. Seeing recent (and not so recent) trends in competitiveness, degradation of attention span, advertisement of short-term satisfaction, etc., I wonder where this increase in speed will lead in terms of software quality, end-user experience and satisfaction, engineer burnout, and whether it is possible to slow down a little.
What Do We Want? Anything! When Do We Want It? Yesterday!
Two things come to my mind regarding this topic: shortened attention span and the want for short-term perceived satisfaction.
What Are Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are closely related fields within the broader domain of computer science and data science. While they are related, they have distinct definitions and purposes:
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI refers to the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks encompass a wide range of activities, including problem-solving, learning, reasoning, perception, language understanding, and decision-making. AI aims to create machines or software that can mimic or simulate human cognitive functions.
In the first article, server-side web pages with Kotlin part 1, a brief history of web development was outlined: namely, the four main stages being static HTML page delivery; server-side programmatic creation of web pages; HTML templating engines, again server-side; and finally, client-side programmatic creation of web pages. While contemporary web development is mostly focused on the last of the four stages (i.e., creating web pages on the client side), there still exist good cases for rendering web pages on the server side of the web application; furthermore, new technologies like kotlinx.html – a library by the authors of Kotlin for generating HTML code via a domain-specific language (DSL) – provide additional options for server-side web development. To give an example, the following two approaches produce the same homepage for the Spring Boot-powered website of a hypothetical bookstore:
Templating Engine (Thymeleaf)
The basic workflow for rendering a webpage with a template engine like Thymeleaf is to create an HTML template page in the resources/templates folder of the project, in this case home.html:
React, the popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces, has seen significant changes and improvements over the years. One of the most game-changing additions to React is the introduction of Hooks. React Hooks revolutionized how developers manage state and lifecycle in functional components. In this comprehensive guide, we'll delve deep into the world of React Hooks, exploring their benefits, use cases, and how to leverage them to write cleaner and more maintainable React code.
Introduction
React, developed by Facebook, has become the go-to library for building modern and interactive web applications. Traditionally, React components have been written as classes with complex state and lifecycle management. However, with the release of React 16.8 in early 2019, the React team introduced Hooks, which enables developers to use state and other React features in functional components. This shift in React's paradigm has had a profound impact on how developers write and structure their code.
In the face of ever-changing threats and complex infrastructures, the zero-trust architecture represents an important transformation in our understanding and implementation of security. This innovative approach promises not only increased protection but also increased adaptability and efficiency in IT infrastructure management. By removing outdated belt-driven thinking and prioritizing individuality, segmentation, and continuous authentication, we are paving the way for a more secure digital future.
Elements of the Zero-Trust Framework
Micro-Segmentation: Enhancing Network Security
Micro-segmentation involves dividing the network into secure zones or segments, thus limiting the horizontal movement of potential attackers.
The zero-trust strategy aims to combat side-scrolling attacks by implementing granular access controls in these segments.
Continuous Authentication and Authorization: Real-Time Adaptation
This component revolves around dynamic policies that adapt based on real-time user behavior and contextual information.
It also entails continuous surveillance to ensure that security remains flexible and responsive to changing threats.
Identity and Access Management (IAM) at the Core
IAM forms the foundation of zero-trust by implementing stringent security measures.
This includes multi-factor authentication (MFA) to bolster user verification, single sign-on (SSO) for streamlined access, and additional measures to fortify identity and access security.
Do you want to block a WordPress user from your blog?
The simplest way to achieve this is to delete their user profile, but this will remove them completely from your site.
In this article, we will show you how to block or disable a WordPress user without deleting their account.
When You Shouldn’t Delete a User Account
The easiest way to block a user on your WordPress website is by simply deleting their user account.
However, deleting a user account in WordPress requires you to assign all their content to another user. This will change the author information for those articles.
One way to deal with this issue is to change the user’s password and email address by editing their user profile. This will block their access, and they will not be able to log in. However, this will also change their Gravatar image.
The ability to disable a user without deleting their account is especially helpful on multi-author blogs, forums, as well as community sites.
Now, let’s take a look at how you can easily block a WordPress user without deleting their user account. We will cover three methods, and you can use the quick links below to jump to the method you want to use:
Method 1: Blocking a User by Downgrading Their Role
Your WordPress website comes with a powerful user management system that allows you to assign different roles to each user.
One way to block a WordPress user is to downgrade their role. This won’t stop them from logging in to your WordPress site, but it will restrict what they can do after they log in. If you don’t want them to be able to log in at all, then you should use Method 2 or 3 instead.
Downgrading the User Role to Subscriber
You could downgrade the user’s role to Subscriber. Once they log in, they will be given limited access to the WordPress admin area. They will only be able to change their user settings, such as their name and admin color scheme.
However, this can be a problem if the user has written posts on your site. If they want to cause trouble, then they can change their name to something offensive, and it will be displayed on all of their posts on your website.
Downgrading the User Role to ‘No Role for This Site’
A better role to give users you wish to block is ‘No role for this site’.
When they log in, they will not be directed to the admin area. If they try to navigate there, then they will be shown an error message stating that they don’t have access.
First, head over to the Users » All Users page of your admin area.
Next, you need to click the ‘Edit’ link under the user you wish to block.
Now you need to scroll down to the ‘Role’ setting and select ‘No role for this site’ from the dropdown menu.
After that, you should click the ‘Update User’ button at the bottom of the page to store your settings.
The user will no longer be able to access any admin settings on your WordPress website.
If you wish to unblock a user in the future, then simply follow the same steps to assign them their previous role.
Method 2: Blocking a WordPress User With ‘Lock User Account’
Lock User Account is a light plugin that does just one job. Upon activation, you are ready to block users so that they can’t log in to your website.
Start by navigating to the Users » All Users page of the admin dashboard. Once there, you should click the checkbox next to every user you wish to block.
Next, simply click the ‘Bulk actions’ button, select ‘Lock’ from the menu, and then click the ‘Apply’ button.
Next time these users try to log in, they will be blocked and see the error message ‘Your account is locked!’
Unblocking a User
If you wish to unblock the user in the future, then simply follow the same steps but choose ‘Unlock’ from the ‘Bulk Actions’ menu.
Changing the Lock Message
You can customize the message that locked users see when trying to log in to your website.
You need to navigate to Settings » General and then scroll to the bottom of the page. You will find a Lock User Account section with a single option called ‘Locked User Message’.
Simply type the message you want locked users to see in this field, and then click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store the settings.
Method 3: Blocking a WordPress User on Certain Days or Dates
What if you don’t want to block a user permanently? Maybe you wish to ban a user for, say, 2 weeks or allow a certain team member to log in only during business hours.
In that case, you can use the User Blocker plugin. Besides being able to block users permanently, it also allows you to block them during certain times on different days of the week or over a date range.
Upon activation, you should navigate to the User Blocker page in your dashboard. Here, you can choose whether to opt-in to the User Blocker mailing list and share non-sensitive data with the developer to help improve the plugin.
Simply click the ‘Skip & Continue’ or ‘Opt-In & Continue’ button.
After clicking one of those buttons, you will see the User Blocker settings page.
There are three tabs, so you can block a user by time, date, or permanently. By default, you see the ‘User By Time’ tab.
Blocking a User by Time and Day
With the ‘Block User By Time’ tab selected, simply place a checkmark next to the name of all users you wish to block by time. Alternatively, you can block users who have a certain user role by selecting ‘Role’ from the dropdown menu.
If your website has a large number of users, then you can use the search feature to find them more easily.
Then in the ‘Block Time’ section, you can enter the times you wish to block those users on each day of the week. You can type the times or choose them from a dropdown menu.
You can quickly copy the same beginning and end time to each day of the week by clicking the ‘Apply to all’ button. The ‘Reset to all’ button will clear all of the times you entered.
After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Block Message’ section. When a blocked user tries to sign in, they will see a default message. However, if you want to display a more customized block message, you can type it here.
Instead of displaying an error message when a blocked user tries to sign in, you can redirect them to another page on your website, such as your Terms of Service page or Privacy Policy. If you’d like to do that, then simply paste that page’s URL into the box provided.
When you are happy with the settings, just make sure you click the ‘Block User’ button. The users you selected will now be blocked from logging in during the times and days you selected.
By repeating these steps, you can block other users for different time periods.
Blocking a User by Date Range
If you wish to block one or more users during a certain date range, then you should click the ‘Block User By Date’ tab at the top of the screen.
You will be able to select the usernames or roles that you wish to block.
Next, you should scroll down to the ‘Block Date’ section.
You can enter the date and time the block will start and end. Simply select the starting and finishing dates and times from the dropdown menus. The time will be in a 24-hour format.
You can also add a custom message that the users will see when trying to log in. Alternatively, you can enter the URL of the page you wish to redirect them to.
When you are finished, don’t forget to click the ‘Block User’ button.
You can block other users for different date ranges by repeating the steps above.
Blocking a User Permanently
You should make sure you are in the ‘Block User Permanent’ tab, and then you can select the usernames (or roles) that you wish to block permanently.
After that, all you need to do is type a custom message that blocked users will see when they try to log in to your website.
Or you can leave the box blank, and they will see the default message. This says, ‘You are permanently Blocked.’
Or, like the other options above, you can redirect the users to a web page rather than displaying a message. Simply type the page’s URL in the ‘Enter Redirection URL’ box.
Now when the blocked users try to sign in, they will see an error message.
