Category Archives: Technology News

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No Common Heritage: Why the Internet Cannot be Regulated Like the Sea

“Username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported…” How to add a specific user to sudoers on Linux

Sooner or later, if you use Linux and you prefer Terminal to GUI you will stumble on this message:

Username is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported

The first thing to clarify is that the “incident” will never be reported outside your computer but in the auth.log file. But if you have previously configured your Linux OS to send these kind of logs to you by email, you receive an alert about.. your own activity with sudo…

In any case, to solve the above mentioned specific sudo matter, use Terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/sudoers

At this point the text file “sudoers” will be opened and you will be able to modify it using e.g. gedit.

Obviously you can use another text editor you prefer as, for example, nano. In this case the command will be:

sudo nano /etc/sudoers

Now you have to peer into the text and find the “#User privilege Specification” section and add the command:

your-username ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

where ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL stands for: allow the specific user (your-username) to access all the terminals, as if he/she were any other user, and allow him/her to execute the full range of commands.

And you will obtain something similar to this:

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL
your-username ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Try it! (..if you need…)

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References:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

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Digital currency is poised to reinvent how startups are funded, led by Chroma Fund

Online Speech to Text Recognition

radio64It’s fast, it’s immediate and it lets you to write an email or a text in a while, anywhere you are. When you use a mobile, you need to find the right app. For my experience the universal app for this doesn’t exist. It depends on the model of the mobile in general and in particular on the type of the installed microphone. This means you need to test different apps to fins a suitable solution for your specific needs. But usually it doesn’t keep much time.

When you are at home or for more complex works that need to be directly edited on a PC, you usually cannot use any Android app and so you need a similar tool. This is my case.

If you google it, you will find different solutions. Some of them are desktop software that can be installed and settled up in a reasonable time (usually few hours). These software are really accurate and have many tools that allow you to develop complex texts typing just few keys to refine some inaccuracies. The “problem” is represented by their cost that, for some products, is high (… certainly, we are talking about few bucks…). 

Instead, a good solution could be the online -speech to text- tools offered by different websites. They are usually free but you need to be obviously connected to the web if you want to use them. 

Furthermore the text results generated by these on line tools are connected with the particular model of microphone you installed into your PC. Also in this situation you can find enthusiastic reviews for an on line tool that is completely ineffective for you. And as for Android apps you need to spend some hours to discover what is the best online tool for your needs. Last but not least to use them you need to authorized Flash (sic! yes the nosey Flash…) for managing your audio hardware.

In my experience, after some tests, the best sites offering  -speech to text- tools are four:

  • Speechlogger that is really simple to use and the most versatile as for exporting the “written” text but it works just on the Chrome Browser (version 25 or later) and this is a big limitation when you are fond of Firefox:
  • TalkTyper that is also complete and it is supported by different browser (Firefox included);
  • Dictation that is very minimalist as web graphics but it really does what it promises in every browser…;
  • SpeechPad that  is very complete but it requires a free registration to use the -speech to text- feature. There are two big features offered by this website. The first is about that it has a good grade of recognition for speeches in Russian. The second feature is represented by the possibility of using an audio file or an url redirecting to audio files and/or video (but only for YouTube or HTML5audio/video).

Some of the above described websites have a large selection of different languages you can be interested to use. Others have a narrow choice of languages but for the accuracy of the -speech to text- work, could really be what you are looking for.

So, to conclude, if you need a -speech to text- online tool, you have just to invest some hours to find the right website for your needs. When you will start to use these kind of online tools you save a lot of time that before you spent for typing.

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Everything You Know About the Internet of Things is Wrong — Backchannel — Medium