The End of General and Free Public Education
Recently, the German educational minister has publicly stated that German Student Assistance, known as BAföG, does not need to be increased to counter the current cost-of-living crises. This has raised vocal critique across the political spectrum. I take this incident as a chance to focus on a bigger trend: Educational Retrenchment across all of Europe is rising, not just in Germany. Higher education is slowly turning from a public good to a privilege for wealthy families, reversing a trend started in the 1960s. [Read more]
This App Should’ve Been A Website
Every once in a while I go on a trip with friends. And, while I can keep data brokers (mostly) off of my phone with a bit of research, this is less possible when a group needs to coordinate. Because someone must suggest how, e.g., budget splitting is being done. And typically, this ends with me having another single-use app on my phone. So today I will be yelling at the clouds about this app that should really have been a website. [Read more]
TrueNAS, or, How I Rediscovered The Joy of Owning My Media
A few weeks ago I received a free computer, and turned it into a NAS. I subsequently discovered my old music collection, and decided to turn my NAS into a streaming service. Now I am rediscovering the joy of having no perfect choice, and supporting artists I enjoy directly. [Read more]
Why 8 GB of Memory Might Still Be Enough
Whenever I visit online discussions and someone is about to buy a new computer, one of the first and most fiercely discussed questions is always: "How much memory do I need?" This is typically answered with "More" or "More than you think." But I think that this is silly, especially in times when memory is priced closer to gold than to consumer electronics. In this article, I want to provide some suggestions for you to determine how much memory you might actually need. Spoiler: Depending on what you do, 8 GB might still be sufficient. [Read more]
Security Advisories and Cognitive Overload
Security advisories are a mechanism by the open source community to distribute potential software vulnerabilities to their developers confidentially. It is a vital mechanism to ensure software remains safe to use. However, in recent years, there has been an increase in low to medium severity reports which tend to drown out critical reports that need much faster response times. A rant on cognitive overload that decreases the security of software. [Read more]
Heuristics and Assumptions
Heuristics are everywhere. But every heuristic is always also just a good assumption. And assumptions can be violated. In this post, I share a story about when my data suddenly turned foul, and the cause of this was anything but obvious. The lesson? The road to hell is paved with good assumptions. [Read more]
Can We Still Trust Our Software?
In the past months, the software I use daily has started to get less and less reliable. While mostly anecdotal evidence, I believe this to be a potential canary for deeper problems that plague software. For now, we may still be able to trust our software. But what about in ten years? [Read more]
Where Zettlr Failed: How I Wrote My Entire Thesis Using (Almost) Only One Program
This is a (late) extension to both my PhD series and my “How I work” series. In this article, I explain the technical setup of my PhD thesis — how I integrated my data analysis pipeline into my writing, and how I enabled exports for the various journals I had to submit my work to. [Read more]
WebGL Series, Part 8: Implementing Multi-sample Antialiasing (MSAA)
In this last article in my series on WebGL, I re-implement antialiasing to make the rendered graphic look more crisp. This step concludes the full setup of the iris indicator that you can see on the demo page. [Read more]
WebGL Series, Part 7: Adding a Bloom-Filter
In the second-to-last installment of my series on WebGL, I explain how a Bloom filter works and how I added it into the processing-pipeline of the iris indicator. [Read more]