Category: Uncategorized

  • WordPress Security

    “The crux of the matter is how to choose a good security plugin. We’ve compiled an essential list, getting rid of things that aren’t related to security. 

    • Essential security features
      • Malware scanning
      • Malware cleaning
      • Firewall
    • Good-to-have security features
      • Vulnerability detection
      • Brute force login protection
      • Activity log
      • Two-factor authentication
    • Potential problems
      • Impact on server resources

    As you can see, there are only 3 essential features you need to worry about. A security plugin should be great at these 3 things: malware scanning, malware cleaning, and firewall. Everything else is gravy. We aren’t putting down brute force protection or two-factor authentication, because those are important too. But you can get other plugins for that functionality. 

    MalCare is the only security plugin that has great malware scanning and cleaning capabilities, and an advanced firewall that keeps out threats. Every other plugin fails in one place or the other.”

    From an article comparing WordFence to Sucuri.

    Another article comparison: 13 Best WordPress Security Plugins Compared & Tested

    OK, this article was taken from the MalCare site, so they have an agenda, but I’m going to check it out.

    Here’s another article: 12 Best Security Plugins for WordPress to Protect Your Website, from a wordpress site that is promoting their own product as well.

  • The First Artificial Intelligence

    Adi Da Samraj writes:

    Mind is “artificial intelligence”. Mind is the first “robot” that human beings ever made. In the usual discussions of such matters, artificial intelligence is presumed to be something generated by computers. In actuality, however,
    language is the first form of artificial intelligence created by human beings.

    from The Ancient Walk-About Way, by Adi Da Samraj, page 55

    Adi Da then goes on to discuss the limitations of “mind”, and then defines real intelligence: “Real Intelligence is tacit (or intrinsically wordless) living
    existence.” –page 56

    So then what? What happens if you’re really intelligent? the World-Friend, Adi Da continues: “If you are sensitive to the actual nature of your experience, you discover that conditionally manifested existence is disturbed and limited and unsatisfactory. Therefore, you actively look (even if only inwardly, in a feeling sense) for Something Greater.” Ibid.

    Mickey Mouse & European Magician
    Mickey Mouse & European Magician

    This reminds me of a Disney story, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from the movie Fantasia, in which Mickey Mouse, as that apprentice, decides to cast a spell so the broom works for him (his robot!) and then things get out of hand and that’s rather amusing. Disney got the story from the German Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

    Mickey Mouse as Sorcerer
    Mickey Mouse as Sorcerer

    “The earliest known written version of the tale was penned by the Greco-Roman satirist Lucian of Samosata (c. 120–180 AD). In his work The Lover of Lies, a character named Eucrates recounts his time studying under an Egyptian magician.” —article “The Greek writer Lucian provided some of the details about the sorcerer being a priest of Isis and learning his art in the catacombs under the city of Memphis.”–article2

  • You Already have AI

    Steve Wozniak
    Steve Wozniak Speech

    Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak famously told graduates at Grand Valley State University that they already possess “AI,” which stands for “Actual Intelligence”. Instead of praising artificial intelligence, he emphasized that human creativity, critical thinking, and emotional understanding are far more valuable than any dry or perfect machine. 

    While other commencement speakers—such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt—were booed by students for praising artificial intelligence, Wozniak was met with roaring applause. He has previously noted that he finds current AI disappointing because it lacks genuine human understanding, preferring organic intelligence over the hype surrounding generative tech. 

  • From Running AI remote to AI running on my PC

    local big GPU card running AI
    local big GPU card running AI
    • buy a GPU (not nvidia so it’s cheaper)
    • fix the GPU (broken fan, replace)
    • start working in claude code AI (amazing!)
    • focusing on daily consistent time with AI work
    • learning how to code with local AI (prompt coding)
    • use LM Studio (ai framework)
    • LM Studio sort of works, sort of doesn’t (3 different PCs to test different configurations)
    • local AI with a small card is slow and dumb
    • use claude code remote to help setup a local AI GPU
    • new ubuntu release using Apple unified memory
    • old cpu, LM Studio doesn’t like
    • use claude to get local AI working without LM Studio
    • use Ollama with AMD GPU (since it’s not nvidia, requires more work to setup, but it’s cheaper)
    • use docker to simplify connecting AI gpu to llama.cpp underneath
    • use webUi as interface for web access
    • use VS Code with extension to edit file in local PC directory
    • ask a simple ?: how long does it take for Saturn to revolve once around the sun? (It actually had enough information to calculate it based on Kepler’s planetary laws of motion–it doesn’t have access to the web yet) It took 30 seconds to tell me: 29.43 years, google takes 3 seconds to pull NASA data: 29.5 years

    It takes a lot of work to get this setup working like I want to! Every line item has hours if not days of details to go with it. Right now the AI companies (like OpenAI and Anthropic) are subsidizing AI development, but at some point in the near future, heavy AI users are going to have to start paying for actual AI runtime usage, so I figure I better have something that I can use locally for easier work tasks so I won’t be paying $hundreds of dollars per month for software development.

  • Using AI to create a webpage

    Adi Da Poetry Webpage
    Adi Da Poetry Webpage

    I was listening to an old poetry recitation (on cassette) from my teacher, Adi Da Samraj, and wanted to put it on my local computer so I told AI to create a webpage from the 20 some .mp3 files I had.

    After a couple of minutes, I actually had a nicely layed out webpage that put the poems into 3 categories: Adi Da’s poetry, Dylan Thomas’s poetry, and Others poetry.

    Adi Da Poetry Recitation
    Adi Da Poetry Recitation

    I’m quite amazed that just taking the title of an audio file such as: “In The White Giant’s Thigh.mp3” it went out to the web and figured out who the author is and when and where the poem was published: “In Country Sleep (1952); Collected Poems 1934–1952 (1952)”.