I love classic Volkswagen Beetles. In fact, I own more than one. (It only makes sense to have one convertible and one sedan!) One of the best things about owning classic Volkswagens is that fixing and maintaining them is really simple. Kyle Rankin would agree with me on that, because he's also a Volkswagen fan, although his VW of choice is a Ghia. Nevertheless, when it comes to maintenance, those old rear-engine vehicles are simple and fun. Linux is a bit like that. It's not the sort of OS everyone uses; there are many friendly people online willing to help you fix things, and everyone who sees you use it will be jealous!
This month, Reuven M. Lerner starts things off by talking about Data Science. Technology and computers have become such an integral part of our lives, that data itself has become invaluable. Reuven explains what Data Science is all about, how it affects our world and provides many resources to help you learn more about it.
Dave Taylor follows up with a nifty article on extracting information about song lyrics using scripts. In true Dave Taylor fashion, he teaches how to pull data from an online source and analyze the data while having fun along the way. Even if you're not interested in statistical information about 1960s artists' lyrics, you'll want to read his column this issue for the scripting tricks.
Kyle Rankin talks about the Jira ticketing system again this month, but rather than learning about the system itself, Kyle describes how to interact with the system via the command line. A GUI is nice, but if you're trying to update tickets while you're knee deep in terminal windows, it's nice to make a change without opening a web browser.
I go the opposite way in my column this month and explain how I stream my bird feeder cam to YouTube in order to provide a live stream that doesn't stress my bandwidth. I've talked about most of the tools separately, but in this article, I explain how to automate the live stream.
We pick up where we left off last month with Nathan R. Vance, Michael L. Poublon and William F. Polik teaching how to create your own computer cluster. Their last article covered setting up the hardware, and this month, they describe how to automate the installation process for individual nodes. Making the process fully automated requires a bit of work up front, but the authors walk through the process here step by step.
Last but not least, Jeremiah Bowling has a fascinating article on phishing your own users. No, he doesn't teach you how to steal your users' credit-card numbers, but rather he explains how to use the open-source Gophish package to test your users. Obviously, the process must be coupled with education in order for it to work, but coming up with phishing scenarios that are both safe and effective for testing is hard! I didn't know such a thing existed, but sure enough, it does, and Jeremiah explains how to use it.
We also have new product announcements, tech tips, cool apps and all the usual things you've come to expect in every issue of Linux Journal. So whether you're a fan of maintaining your Linux machines or just want to try the latest and greatest toys, we've got you covered. This is a fun issue, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed putting it together!