• New 6-days Validity of Let’s Encrypt Certificates

    I just saw this great news: Let’s Encrypt Announces 6-day Validity Certificates Let’s Encrypt, the non-profit certificate authority, has introduced six-day validity certificates, commonly referred to as short-lived certificates. Shorter validity periods are great for security. Traditional certificates can last up to a year, meaning if they get compromised, they remain a threat for a…

  • Don’t Believe Everything …

    We’ve all been there: listening to a talk, podcast or reading about groundbreaking innovations, especially on LinkedIn. It all sounds fantastic, super new, cutting edge technology – almost too good to be true. And often … it is. Overselling seems to be more common lately – or maybe I’m just noticing it more? Especially with…

  • Tim Berners-Lee is on Mastodon

    I’m hardly following any very well-known people on any social media – but I was positively surprised to see Tim Berners-Lee (@timbl@w3c.social) on Mastodon! Well for the unlikely event that you don’t know what we owe him, check out his Wikipedia entry: Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955),[1] also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best…

  • Kill It with Fire – Manage Aging Computer Systems

    I just noticed that I never made a book recommendation, even though I’m reading quite some books – well okay, not too many IT books to be honest. A while ago a – very valued – colleague recommended Kill It with Fire – Manage Aging Computer Systems to me.

  • Is your phone listening – or is it IP based Ad Tracking?

    In my recent blog post about reducing Ad-Tracking by using Firewall rules, I already mentioned that I might dig a bit deeper into the topic of IP-based AD-tracking.

  • RaspberryPi System upgrade vs. Fresh install

    Recently I noticed that one of my RaspberryPIs was running a rather old version of Raspian. I thought it might be a good idea to upgrade and followed the instructions from Upgrade Raspberry Pi OS to the Latest Version (2024) – RaspberryTips.

  • Are you ready to hear the Feedback you were asking for?

    Feedback is a double-edged sword – powerful for growth but tough to hear. Whether it’s improving a skill, leading a team, or refining creative work, feedback is invaluable. Yet, how we react to it can make or break the result.

  • How to enable automatic updates on Linux / RaspberryPi

    I just noticed that I haven’t logged on to one of my RaspberryPIs for quite a while and also didn’t update it. Instead of hacking some root crontab, a quick search brought this thread in the Raspi forums up: crontab update – Raspberry Pi Forums and unattended upgrades – How do I enable automatic updates?…

  • How to reduce AdTracking with Fritz!Box filter lists for mobile devices

    Problem: I am using Pi-Hole on my network to block quite a few ADs and trackers. However, the blocking does not work reliably on Android devices on our WiFi (This thread suggests that this also concerns Apple devices – but we don’t have any at home, though). I noticed this when I was researching some…

  • Avoid commercial (WordPress) Plugins that require annual licences

    One reason to stay away from commercial Plugins is that you might be f**ed when they raise prices: Years ago, I chose the Before-After-Slider from Themefic (like here: https://www.franzgraf.de/blog/2024/discovering-the-bosensteiner-almpfad/ ). Back then for 19$ / year.Now we are at 39$ / year. Yes, the plugin now can do more – more stuff that I simply…