Website Tech

Tag: AI Software

  • Why Your Computer’s Apps Can See Your Secrets (And an Easy Way to Fix It)

    As a creator, coach, or entrepreneur, your computer is your digital office. It holds everything: client notes, financial records, passwords, and private SSH keys.

    For years, we operated under a comforting assumption: If I trust the company that made this app, I trust the app completely.

    Unfortunately, modern software has changed. Today, applications aren’t written by a single team—they are assembled from thousands of third-party pieces built by anonymous developers. And a new category of tools—autonomous AI coding assistants—can write and execute their own terminal commands on the fly.

    If an AI tool gets confused, or if a background component is compromised, standard computer permissions allow it to look at any file your user account owns.

    The Good News: You Don’t Need a Computer Science Degree to Stay Safe

    You don’t need to write complex security rules or stress over system files. You can protect your workspace using two effortless strategies:

    Strategy 1: Stick to Sandboxed App Stores (Flatpaks & Snaps)

    When installing desktop software on Linux Mint or Ubuntu, check if the app is available as a Flatpak or Snap in your software center.

    • Why it helps: These formats automatically place apps inside an invisible “sandbox”. A sandboxed text editor or media player literally cannot see your private documents or keys because the operating system hides them.

    Strategy 2: Use a Simple Startup Shield for Autonomous AI Tools

    For advanced AI coding software that needs to look at your project folders but nothing else, you can wrap its launch command in a tiny security script (often called a sandbox wrapper).

    Instead of letting an AI tool roam free across your entire home directory, a simple launcher script restricts it to a single designated folder (like ~/sites/) while cutting off access to sensitive areas like your .ssh or Documents folders.

    By taking these small steps, you keep your digital workspace secure without getting bogged down by technical headaches!

    How You Can Make a Sandbox Wrapper for Your Software That Needs A Startup Shield

    Here is a copy-and-paste prompt you can give to an assistant, a tech-savvy employee, or use yourself with Gemini.

    This prompt instructs Gemini to act as a Linux security guide, ask a few quick questions about your specific setup, and then output a ready-to-run Bubblewrap (bwrap) script tailored precisely to your computer.

    Act as a Linux security expert and systems administrator. I want to create a secure Bubblewrap (bwrap) sandbox script for a desktop application on Linux (such as an AI coding tool) to restrict it from accessing sensitive folders like ~/.ssh, ~/Documents, or ~/.aws, while allowing it to access a specific project folder, and its settings folder.

To help me write the exact custom Bash script I need, please ask me the following 4 questions:
1. What is the exact command or name of the application I want to sandbox (e.g., devin-desktop)?
2. What specific folder(s) does the application need permission to read and write to (e.g., ~/sites/, and its own settings)?
3. What is my Linux username?
4. Are there any other specific folders I want to completely hide or block from this app?

Once I answer those questions, write a complete, copy-pasteable Bash script using bwrap that I can save into my ~/bin/ folder, make executable, and run safely.

  • Can AI help do all the layouts you want?

    What about AI tools that make “an entire website with images and copy in seconds”

    Those sound tempting, but by the time you figure out how to ask it for exactly what you want, instead of taking whatever it comes up with, you probably aren’t saving much time compared to learning simple tools for making a layout for a WordPress page. 

    You used to have to hire a theme designer to make a layout for your website. Not anymore. 

    WordPress now has Full-Site Editing, using the same Block Editor you’ve been using to add headings, paragraphs, lists, images, menus. That will do all the header and footer designs you are likely to ever need.

    WordPress now has a color palette, set the colors you want to use throughout your site, and pick from the palette for section backgrounds, for columns, for text, for color gradients, and more.

    What WordPress Tools let me make good layouts easily?

    Start with the latest version of WordPress, default theme, Block Editor. Add Spectra by Brainstorm Force, which is a great extension of the Block Editor, lets you customize columns, colors using the same settings area the Block Editor uses. Spectra accesses all the default block types, and has some well-made other block types. Since it uses the block editor, it doesn’t load a lot of resources on every page, like full page builder plugins do.

    The block editor with Spectra, will handle every layout you want to do, for free, a very long time, with one simple user interface.

    What Does Your Website Need?

    Find out what your website needs to do, what presentation works best for your clients. You’ll discover that as you build out your website.

    It is very likely that a simple, clear presentation will be best for your clients. Eben Pagan, and Jeff Walker, and Jay Abraham, and many others, point out that the most effective ads of all time are still basic layouts. For example, an image, a great heading, 1- or 2-column text like a newspaper (because that’s where many of them were published) and a contact method.

    If not AI for layouts, what is AI best used for?

    Use AI for helping you Write. Help you clarify your ideas, and clarify who you’re writing to, and who your ideal customers/clients are. Then take your ideas for an article or sales page or social media post, and ask AI for other topics to include, and then with all that information about what you want, have AI write the draft of the article for you. Always check what AI generated, make sure it covers the topics you want, the way you would say it to your customers.

    Are there good WordPress AI plugins?

    Yes, there are plugins inside WordPress for writing, e.g. “AI Engine: ChatGPT Chatbot, Content Generator, GPT 3 & 4, Ultra-Customizable” by Jordy Meow.

    This helps convert ideas into articles, come up with headings, make summaries for search engines, prepare social media posts to attract people to your article, and more.

    Even better, you can specify in the plugin settings who your ideal client is and what your business niche is, so it can write better for you. Or, you can include all that background information in your AI prompting, for a specific article.

    So, what about those “build a site” tools?

    What about tools like durable.co? Fine if you just want to throw something onto the Internet, that is a few basic pages. By the time you teach it how to do the look you want, and say it the way you want, you aren’t saving much time. And then you have 50 more pages to write, so you’re taking more time.