The IT Blog

Category: Blog

IT, Data, Work

  • DNS4EU: a private, safe, and independent European DNS resolver

    Recently I switched my DNS Resolver to one of the European public DNS resolvers | European Alternatives mainly for privacy reasons after reading Cloudflare’s blog post about analytics in their free-tiers.

    But I missed the malware protection. But today I just got aware of DNS4EU For Public!

    DNS4EU is an initiative by the European Commission that aims to offer an alternative to the public DNS resolvers currently dominating the market.

    https://www.joindns4.eu/about

    It offers 5 different flavours:

    • Unfiltered resolution
    • Protective resolution: Blocks access to known malicious and fraudulent websites
    • Protective Resolution With Child Protection
    • Protective Resolution Ad-blocking
    • Protective Resolution With Child Protection & Ad-blocking

    And also with some step-by-step guidelines for configuring DNS settings on a variety of platforms.

    Update 23.06: The article Datenschutz: Wie viel EU steckt in DNS4EU? analyzes the technical setup. which unfortunately shows quite some US-corps involved. On the other hand, DNS4YOU does not aim to analyze the traffic.

    Fediverse Reactions

  • Is it finally over for Developers?!

    We’ve heard it all a couple of times: “GenAI is replacing Software Developers”, Vibe Coding, … A C-Levels dream to (finally) get rid of expensive software developers by using AI.

    (more…)

  • AI Agents: Loyal Only to the Prompt

    Recently I thought “If AI scrapers are scraping my website, would a prompt injection work? Just adding invisible Prompt commands …?”

    And just today, a colleague sent me this link to an article about prompt injection in GitLab Duo: Remote Prompt Injection in GitLab Duo Leads to Source Code Theft:

    TL;DR: A hidden comment was enough to make GitLab Duo leak private source code and inject untrusted HTML into its responses.

    https://www.legitsecurity.com/blog/remote-prompt-injection-in-gitlab-duo

    Well – it shows: damit! Someone else was faster! :-D

    But besides that: it confirms a paranoid thought that I have been harboring for quite a while. Any output of an AI system must not be trusted blindly.

    (more…)

  • Why “Open” may not Always be Enough

    If you care about open source, open data, or open standards, you should read “What we in the open world are messing up in trying to compete with big tech“.

    I found it a good critique on Open Source and why “technology” and an OpenSource Licence may not be enough to compete with BigTech players. The author doesn’t argue against OpenSource but he points some quite valid points.

    You might say “look at your own GitHub repo first” but wait: The difference in my view is: Do you open-source something just to make it available for others as well or do you make an OpenSource project to compete with a commercial product / to position yourself as a valid alternative …

    Anyways, give it a read – and maybe follow his Blog as well!

  • Buchempfehlung: Die Logik des Mißlingens

    Eine Kollegin hat mir neulich ein Buch empfohlen: “Die Logik des Mißlingens, Strategisches Denken in komplexen Situationen” von Dietrich Dörner. Klang ja wie eine Anleitung für Projektleitung. Kurz darauf lag also eine leicht vergilbte second-hand Ausgabe davon auf meinem Tisch.

    “Die Logik des Mißlingens” ist kein neues Buch – es ist von 1989, aber ein Thema, das zeitlos bleibt. Weil menschliches Verhalten zeitlos fehlbar ist und – wie ich glaube – sich die generelle Denkweise in nur 30 Jahren vermutlich kaum geändert hat.

    (more…)
    Fediverse Reactions

  • Podcast: Warum Arbeit häufig Zeitverschwendung ist

    Gerade von Kollegen empfohlen bekommen: eine Podcast Folge über Arbeit und Meetings. – Wird irgendwie nie alt.

    (more…)

  • Oh Synology – what are you doing?

    I’m running a Synology NAS here at home for a few years now, and I admit: I’m quite happy with it. Even though I haven’t really utilized all of the services. But recently Synology reminded me why I don’t want to buy into one system too deeply.

    (more…)
    Fediverse Reactions

  • Myown #UnplugTrump to more digital sovereignty / digital independence

    If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’m gradually moving away from “classical” Big Tech social media, focusing more on Mastodon and my own homepage.

    On Mastodon, I came across Elena Rossini and followed her journey toward greater digital sovereignty. Inspired by her example, I decided to give up my YouTube channel in favor of a self-hosted PeerTube instance.

    (more…)

  • How I Gave My Old Computer Parts a Second Life

    At the end of last year, we replaced our PCs that were over 10 years old. And with new equipment there is always the question: What to do with the old one?

    We haven’t had the best experience of trying to sell old PCs in one go. So throw them away? But … they work quite well! It would be sad to see them just go to the bin. Also, it just felt wrong to throw away fully functional discs, RAM and graphics cards.

    So I decided to try a different approach this time. Disassemble the machines and put all the parts up for sale on eBay separately. Not with the aim of making a lot of money, but to avoid electronic waste. – I took pictures of all the parts, gave them a (really) short description and put them up for auction on eBay for €1. The SSDs and HDDs were reset/overwritten and put online with the corresponding SMART values. I didn’t want to cheat anyone who bought a used disc.

    If the parts didn’t sell within a few weeks, I could always throw them away. If each item sold for €1, it wouldn’t justify the effort, but at least the parts could stay in use! Maybe someone just wants to try / learn how to assemble PCs. You likely wouldn’t want to buy brand new components for that, right? Who knows (and actually I don’t care).

    The Result: after about 3 weeks, to my surprise, almost all the parts were sold! The mainboard and the DVD burner sold for 1€ and 2€ respectively, but all the other parts sold for more.

    And I admit: it was also a bit fun to disassemble the machines. :-)

    Fediverse Reactions

  • Recommended talk: Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status

    This week I came across a post recommending the talk from Molly White (@molly0xff) at SXSW, talking about “Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status“.

    The abstract of the talk is: “The real power move for creators is ownership and control of their work and livelihoods. This freedom is actually closer for more people than ever before! Learn from two fediverse futurists how decentralized social media facilitates better publishing, community, and business models. These speakers will cover the theoretical and the practical, including how the landscape is evolving in 2025, where creators should focus their energies, and how they might thrive with or without “walled garden” social platforms.”

    It’s an interesting talk, where she’s talking about how (and WHY) she keeps her content mainly on her website and federates it to some social networks for discovery.