Technology

AbuseIO – Open Source abuse management

AbuseIO is an Open Source software for management of abuse reports. It’s like a specialized ticketing/support system, which can automatically parse a variety of abuse notifications, file them, notify the team, and provide the tools to respond and close the incident. In a nutshell:

100% Free & Open Source

Works with IPv4 and IPv6 addresses

Automatically parse events into abuse tickets and add a classification

Integrate with existing IPAM systems

Set automatic (re)notifications per case or customer with configurable intervals

Allow abuse desks and end users to reply, close or add notes to cases

Link end users to a self help portal in case they need help to resolve the issue

If that sounds interesting, have a look at the Features page. You might also want to read the blog post covering a last year’s release of AbuseIO version 4.0.

The system is written in PHP, with Laravel framework, so making changes and adding features should be quite easy.

sshrc – bring your .bashrc, .vimrc, etc. with you when you ssh

sshrc looks like a handy tool, for those quick SSH sessions to machines, where you can’t setup your full environment for whatever reason (maybe a shared account or automated templating or restricted access). Here’s a description from the project page:

sshrc works just like ssh, but it also sources the ~/.sshrc on your local computer after logging in remotely.
$ echo "echo welcome" >> ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
welcome

$ echo "alias ..='cd ..'" >> ~/.sshrc
$ sshrc me@myserver
$ type ..
.. is aliased to `cd ..'
You can use this to set environment variables, define functions, and run post-login commands. It’s that simple, and it won’t impact other users on the server – even if they use sshrc too. This makes sshrc very useful if you share a server with multiple users and can’t edit the server’s ~/.bashrc without affecting them, or if you have several servers that you don’t want to configure independently.

I’ve discovered it by accident when searching through packages in the Fedora repositories. So, yes, you can install it with yum/dnf.

How to Synchronize WordPress Live and Development Databases

SitePoint runs through a few options that one can use to synchronize WordPress live and development databases. I’ve linked to some of these options before, but it’s nice to have them all conveniently together. The solutions discussed include WordPress-specific tools:

as well as generic tools, such mysqldump, mysqlpump, rsync, and git.

Overall, it’s a pretty complete list of tools. The one I’d like to add though is WP CLI, which allows a great deal of automation when it comes to WordPress, including things like database imports and exports, post and option management, and more.

Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective

Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective is a rather old article on how gay marriage (and other types of marriages) can affect technology, but somehow I missed it for all these years.

It’s interesting from a variety of perspectives – technical, social, and cultural. It’s also somewhat tongue in cheek, yet insightful and thought-provoking. Irrelevant of your views on the subject, I recommend this read. Where else will you find 14 database schema designs trying to solve the same problem.

The legal ramifications of what I’m about to describe are unguessable. I have no idea what rights a civil union like the ones which would be possible below would have, nor do I have any idea what kind of transhuman universe would require so complex a system. This is the marriage database schema to take us up to the thirty-first century, people.

If databases are that difficult to adjust, I can’t even imagine the effort needed for humans…

The 20 best wireframe tools

Creative Bloq lists 20 best wireframe tools. The selection varies from free, through cheap, to expensive, and covers web-based, desktop, and mobile solutions. Quite handy for those of us not involved in web design on a daily basis, but needing a sketch / mockup / wireframe tool once in a while.

The list includes the following:

Update (May 22, 2017): Also, have a look at this list of mockup tools.