Miscellaneous

How to get simple DNS Protection

Malware sites are the plague of the century! And it’s so easy to fall for them. Phishing, hacked website content, or malware-ads – one click and you are on a website you shouldn’t be.

One way to deal with the issue is to block malicious domains at DNS resolver level. The advantage is that you do not have to do any modification at the devices!

Good bye reading LinkedIn

I just figure: it is exactly 2 months since I wrote Good Bye posting on LinkedIn?. And it seems I’m ready for the next step: Good bye reading LinkedIn?

20 Years of OpenStreetMap, 14 Years of Contribution and counting

“In just twenty years, OpenStreetMap grew from a small UK-based mapping project into the largest crowdsourced and crowd-worked geospatial project of all time.” [Happy Birthday OpenStreetMap – Celebrating 20 Years]

I can’t even remember how I came across one of the best projects that we have. But I am super happy that Steve Coast started it, and that I decided to join.

I just checked and saw in my profile that I registered at 2010-04-30. But I do remember that I never wanted to contribute to GoogleMaps but contribute to a true OpenData project.

Social Media Platforms vs Entertainment Platforms?

I often like to listen / read when someone tells about his or her experience on different social media platforms. And when it comes to Mastodon, I’ve noticed a recurring theme: Many users describe how other social networks fill their timelines with entertaining or funny content and that they were missing this in the beginning of their “Mastodon-experience”.

And at some point I thought by myself: “Wait wait wait – Are we still talking about social networks?” Is it the purpose of a social network to keep me entertained? I mean – this isn’t the expectation from my real-world-social-network, is it?

Why do I feel triggered when Managers talk about AI?

I still don’t know why it triggers me so much when managers talk about “(Gen)AI” with such fascination. Maybe because I get the feeling that they tell themselves that IT problems will magically disappear?

But … what does ChatGPT say … the AI for sure must know (*cough*)

The truth about (Gen)AI

(✅ clickbait title)
Recently I attended a GenAI event organized by <big company>. All professional, interesting, insightful. Really good. (Really! I mean it! No sarcasm.)

Until it hit me like a blow during a discussion:

I DO KNOW the whole plot already!

How to: Migrate from Outlook.com to GMail / Fix connected accounts

Microsoft / Outlook.com have silently removed connected accounts from outlook.com on July 1st, 2024.

TL;DR: Connected accounts are gone and cannot be fixed 🙁

I only got aware of it as some people told me that my eMails were marked as “unverified sender” on their side. And indeed, eMails were suddenly sent via the outlook email server. Before I sent the mails through the SMTP server of my hosting provider.

Your Company Blog needs RSS! Really

In the last couple of weeks it happened repeatedly that I wanted to follow a company’s blog – just to see that they have a blog but no RSS feed!

It’s surprising and a bit disheartening to see companies investing time in writing / maintaining a blog without providing an RSS feed – even though any proper content management system would provide the functionality.

How to get rid of Cookie-AdTracking – easily

TL;DR: Delete cookies when closing the browser, allow-list only the sites you want to stay logged in. It’s really that easy.

I recently checked my browser settings and was “surprised” to find more than 3.000 cookies. Most of them from sites I didn’t recognize, many from obvious ad-tracking companies. These companies, with whom I have no business, were all able to track my online activity. Seriously? 3.000 companies being able to track me? Okay maybe some of them were not valid anymore – but still – that’s just ways too much.

Category: Miscellaneous