Journal
- Throwback Thursday: KDE 2 on SuSE Linux 7.3
3 Oct '24“Do you pine for the days when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?”
– Linus T. - Google Pixel 9 released: The Best Time to Upgrade to the Pixel 8 (and
GrapheneOS)
13 Aug '24The Google Pixel 9 has just been released, making this probably the best time to snap up its predecessor, the Pixel 8 – a solid phone with years-long software support – and switch to GrapheneOS along the way!
- Minimalist and Functional Desktop Environment without Xorg
18 Jul '24A brief write-up on how I’ve set up my Linux desktop environment to be minimal yet functional, to let me work and use the computer as efficiently as possible. All without using Xorg.
- Committing At Least One Line Each Day for Five Years
23 May '24No coffee for a week? Taking cold showers for thirty days? Ten push-ups a day for a year? How about comitting at least a single line of code every day for five years? I’m in!
- A Thought on Sixels
28 Mar '24In the age of visually stunning graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and interactive designs, there exists a timeless elegance in the simplicity of purely text-based interfaces. From command line interfaces (CLIs) to plain text file formats like Markdown, the beauty of text lies not only in its minimalistic aesthetic but also in the efficiency and clarity it brings to digital interactions.
- If You Must Use Signal, Use Molly
29 Feb '24While I’m critical towards the Signal messenger, I understand that network effects are strong and even though many people would much rather prefer a different platform, it’s not easy to get friends and family onto something better. In this brief write-up, I’ll introduce an alternative Signal client to make using Signal at least slightly less troublesome.
- A World without Passports
2 Feb '24According to my analytics dashboard, there’s a 70% chance you’re reading this on your phone. Maybe at home, or maybe while commuting to work, using your mobile data connection, for which you’ve probably signed up on a mobile contract. A contract for which you had to prove that you are you, likely by showing your national ID or passport. A contract for which you have to pay regularly, probably using a bank account that you also had to identify yourself for upon opening.
- A Brief Review of the Star Labs StarBook Mk VI Ryzen Ultrabook
25 Jan '24As announced back in the update of Q4/2023, I went ahead and ordered a Star Labs StarBook Mk VI with an AMD Ryzen processor to finally replace my previous laptop and eventually my workstation. This is a brief review of the device itself, without going too much into software details.
- An Overview of Privacy-Focused, Decentralized Instant Messengers
16 Nov '23An overview of privacy-focused, decentralized, open source alternatives to popular non-free
spywareinstant messengers like WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Apple iMessage. - NEVER click on a link that looks like that
8 Nov '23Every time one of my posts on this journal ends up somewhere on Reddit,
TwitterNostr or Hacker News, lots of people seem to be irritated by the site’s URL. Hence, let me do a quick introduction into what’s called Punycode, and why I’m using this domain name.