#IchBinHanna
A hashtag has appeared on the German Twitter trends yesterday. #IchBinHanna, or “I am Hanna” is a hashtag born out of a promotional video by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), promoting the alleged benefits of one of the most detrimental laws in German academia: The WissenschaftsZeitVertragsGesetz (WissZeitVG). This article explains what it is, why it is detrimental, and closes with a showcase of all those people who deserve to be heard.
What the Hell is LiDAR?
There is a rumour around that Apple will allegedly introduce LiDAR sensors into the iPhone 13. In this article, I want to debunk that mystery. If Apple is reasonable, they won’t introduce LiDAR sensors to their iPhones. Here, I give you the reasons why that is the case. I explain what LiDAR sensors are, why the rumour might have begun, and why it doesn’t hold.
How I work, Part VIII: Calendar, Task Scheduling and Organisation
At least since Marie Kondo became famous, everything sparks joy – but only, if you do it right. Organising anything is hard, and especially if you have a part-time OCD and can’t stand things littering around, it becomes even more important to get the right tools for the job. In this article, I want to dump unto you my collected knowledge of how to organise the universe!
« Le Bricoleur »
If you have visited this page in the past, you might’ve noticed some hiccups over the past weeks. The reason is that the CMS which runs this site has been completely locked up, so I searched for an alternative, which I found, only to be pointed towards a fork of that very CMS which remains Open Source a few days later. In this article, I give you a small update of what happened, why it happened, and I also go over a few changes and additions to the site itself.
Writer’s Block
This week’s article is about a sudden realisation I had this week: Writer’s block. We’ve all had our share of writer’s block, and there are plenty of articles out there. I’m not going to tell you how to get out of it in very much detail, since — as I said — there’s already a lot of good and valuable info out there. Rather, I’m gonna reflect upon the kind of writer’s block I had and why I strongly suspect that writer’s block necessarily correlates with the amount of text you write.
Postmortem: Zettlr’s first Security Incident
Today is the day: I publish the first post-mortem that I had to write up. Having developed my app Zettlr for the past four years, I knew I'm not safe from security issues, and last Thursday, it was time: I received a mail containing a security related disclosure concerning a huge hole in the safety of Zettlr. I have posted this Postmortem also on the Zettlr blog, but I wanted to share it with you here as well. The reason? Don't be such an idiot as I was.
How I work, Part VII: E-Mails
Today is finally the day I continue my series on "How I work." After a few digressions, I focus on our habit of mailing, not so much because I want to advocate for a specific program, but rather because I would like to advocate against a practice I see well too often. The TL;DR this week is short: Don't use webmailers; except if you have to.
Goodbye, October
For the better part of the last decade, I built all my websites using October CMS. However, due to a change in their policy, that won't work anymore. So I need to migrate all my pages to a new system. After some fiddling around, I settled with Jekyll. In this post I just want to quickly summarise the why, the how, and the next steps.
Research Ethics, or: How to get your University banned for Life
This week, I’m breaking the streak of my “How I Work” series, since something has come up that bugs me quite a lot. On Wednesday one of the maintainers of the Linux Kernel, Greg Kroah-Hartman, dropped a tweet that might seem like everyday banter. Upon closer look, however, it is all but normal business: It shows such a blatant violation of research ethics that I have to comment on that.
How I work, Part VI: Terminals and DIY Automation
With part 6 of the series on How I Work, we’re entering smaller and smaller apps. Although the big hubs of my digital work environment are Zotero, Zettlr, and VS Code, these small apps all play a vital role in easing my workload to a high degree. Efficient helper apps can never be underestimated, so I’ll gradually introduce these in the next parts of this series! My terminal makes the start since it’s a multi-purpose app that can do quite a lot of heavy lifting for me. Even if you don’t do any programming yourself, you can profit from using a terminal. So continue reading why you should start using a terminal!