Deepmind’s AlphaStar crushes best StarCraft 2 players

Deepmind's AlphaStar crushes best StarCraft 2 players
So today’s Deepmind’s StartCraft AI, named AlphaStar  neural network AI thoroughly trounced a couple of top StarCraft players. The first set of matches against Dario ” TLO ” Wünsch (StarCraft II player from Germany. TLO is a former Brood War and Supreme Commander player currently playing for Team Liquid.). AlphaStar beat TLO 5 games to ...

PHP on Linux authenticate users with a Windows Server Active Directory 11

PHP on Linux authenticate users with a Windows Server Active Directory
A common request when building INTRANET web applications is to have users use only one  common shared set of  login credentials. Typically in most small and medium businesses this means that logging into a Windows Server of some kind to access the network.  Windows Servers use Active Directory (AD) ,which is  basically Microsoft’s glorified LDAP ...

Easy battery powered Mailbox Door IoT sensor using ESP32 38

Easy battery powered Mailbox Door IoT sensor using ESP32
This post is how I took my rusty (literally) old mailbox and made it into a battery powered smart mailbox (an IoT device) , that sends you an SMS  (text messagE) or MQTT alerts, and in the process  how I  learned about Arduino and particularly  the ESP32 chip which lets us relatively easily  setup with minimal ...

Running Mosquitto MQTT on Windows 10 super easy 26

Running Mosquitto MQTT on Windows 10 super easy
So I’ve been playing with IoT lately,  using platforms such as  Arduino ,ESP32, Raspberry Pi and when it comes to being able to have these devices communicate with a hub or server, the de facto standard is to use a MQTT  server and protocol  . Unfortunately, prior to Windows 10  finding a  native Windows  version is ...

Raspberry Pi Zero W LED matrix stock ticker code and demo 4

Raspberry Pi Zero W LED matrix stock ticker code and demo
So I was recently intrigued by Raspberry Pi Zero W, it’s small ARM-based Linux PC with integrated WiFi and ability to connect shields (known as Hats or pHats in Raspberry lingo) , got me thinking what kinds of interesting applications could I use it for. After coming across the Scroll Phat HD in my electronics ...

code for MySql / MariaDB to trigger / signal external script from database 4

code for MySql / MariaDB to trigger / signal external script from database
One feature I often wish MySQL / MariaDB (I’ll refer from now to just MariaDB referring to both) had was the ability to trigger or launch an  external script or open a socket connection to some external site; on a database event. Perhaps using a stored procedure in other words generate a signal /event to ...

WordPress linux backup script to offsite NAS via Rsync 5

WordPress linux backup script to offsite NAS via Rsync
Here’s a simple straightforward bash | shell script that I use for this SITE to easily and routinely backup my Entire  Wordpress Site , all its folders and plugins , and the corresponding database.   Of course there are dozens of WordPress Backup  plugins (such as Backup Buddy;  Updraft Plus; BackWpUp ) that do this ...

Lazarus – Discover Windows, Mac & Linux cross platform Development IDE 5

Lazarus - Discover Windows, Mac & Linux cross platform Development IDE
If you’re a developer of a certain age (say north of 35) you will likely have worked with or heard of Visual Basic and to a lesser known extent Delphi IDE (Integrated Development Environment) development platforms. These development IDE’s, were very popular in the mid to late 90’s and ushered in an era or rapid Windows applications ...

PHP 7 is here! 1

PHP 7 is here!
It looks like the latest edition of PHP has been released, PHP 7 , and it  brings a lot of new enhancements. Its biggest new capabilities are vast speed improvements, rumor has it that its on par with Facebook’s proprietary HHVM project (PHP JIT compiler). There’s a nice write up here over at Kinsta.com of PHP ...