You'll recall that in my last article I shared a long, complex explanation for why spam email catches my attention and intrigues me, perhaps more than it should. Part of it is that I've been involved in email forever—I even wrote one of the most popular old-school email programs back in the day.

The Python language, which is not new but continues to gain momentum and users as if it were, has changed remarkably little since it first was released. I don't mean to say that Python hasn't changed; it has grown, gaining functionality and speed, and it's now a hot language in a variety of domains, from data science to test automation to education.

In past articles, I've looked at several libraries or specialist applications that can be used to model some physical process or another. Sometimes though you want to be able to model several different processes at the same time and in an interactive mode.

In the June 2016 issue, I described my Raspberry Pi outdoor camera build. Since then, however, I've discovered a different way to stream video from it.

In my Open-Source Classroom column in the May 2016 issue, I discussed how to set up Gmail as your SMTP provider for outgoing email. The problem with email is that sometimes the sheer quantity of it makes important messages slip past my radar. So for really important error messages, I like to get SMS messages.

In the May 2016 issue (also available here), I introduced the idea of the Tiny Internet Project, a self-contained Linux project that shows how to build the key pieces of the public internet on a single computer using one or two old computers, a router and a bunch of Linux software.

The following is a list of security exercises you can try after reading Susan Sons' article "Security Exercises". 1) It's Gone

Regular security exercises are, bar none, the most powerful, cost-effective tool for maturing a project's information security operations—when done well.

I have a dirty secret to share, and I hope you won't think less of me once you learn it.

In my last article, I took an initial look at nginx, the high-performance open-source HTTP that uses a single process and a single thread to service a large number of requests. nginx was designed for speed and scalability, as opposed to Apache, which was designed to maximize flexibility and configuration.

HTTPS is a small island of security in this insecure world, and in this day and age, there is absolutely no reason not to have it on every Web site you host. Up until last year, there was just a single last excuse: purchasing certificates was kind of pricey.

If you read my articles on when I originally set up BirdCam a few years ago, you'll remember I did it with compatibility in mind. At the time of this writing, BirdCam is simply an HTML page with the JavaScript language to refresh the images constantly, in order to create a low-fps video stream of sorts.

In recent years, hardware virtualization has become commonplace in the computing industry and more available to end users. The idea behind it is a noble one. Why invest in allocating more server hardware and not utilize it to its full potential, when instead you can consolidate it all onto one or a few servers and share their resources?

During the past few years, my BirdCam setup has evolved significantly. As I mention in the UpFront section of this issue, I hope to get the stream transferred to a YouTube Live stream at some point, so I can watch the feathery show on my television. And although watching the birds is the end goal, I'm constantly on a mission to improve the quality and flexibility of my setup.

This is the third article in my series about Qubes. In the first two articles, I gave an overview about what Qubes is and described how to install it.

When last I discussed shell scripts, I was presenting a shell script that offered an alternative to the -C context flag in GNU grep.

Most of the time when I start a project, or spin up a virtual server, it's done in my own basement "server farm". Not too many years ago, if I wanted those services to be public, I'd simply port-forward from my static IP into my personal machines. Or, perhaps I'd set up a name-based virtual host as a reverse proxy if I needed to expose a Web app.

As LJ readers well know, Linux drives many of the technologies we use every day, from smart TVs to Web servers. Linux is everywhere—except most homes and classrooms.

Engineers love to think that they make decisions based on pure logic and merit. But of course, everyone has biases in terms of programming languages, editors and other technologies—biases that probably can be defended in technical terms, but that often come down to an emotional argument as much as a technical one.

A project I'm involved with has made me think about how there are always many solution paths for any given problem in the Linux universe. For this other project, I wanted to cobble together a version of grep that let me specify proper regular expressions without having to worry about the -E flag and get a context for the matches too.