Ctrl blog

Compared DNS caching/TTL of different CDNs

Short DNS TTL times are great for failover but can be detrimental to DNS performance. Here’s a comparison of the DNS TTL caching durations of popular CDNs.

Adjust or silence a systemd service’s logging levels

Three ways to either change the logging level for or stop logging a systemd service unit or desktop app.

Contour Next Link vs Next One glucose meter

Compare the Contour Next Link (insulin pump companion) and Next One (stand-alone) glucose meters.

When does IPFS’ garbage collector clear the cache

Garbage collection in ipfs-go isn’t enabled by default. The cache can grow to fill all your storage. However, you won’t want to turn it on either.

IPFS pinning services overcharge for duplicated objects

IPFS is a globally deduplicated file system. However, hosted pinning services bill you for the original file size rather than deduplicated size.

Report spam emails to their hosting providers with SpamCop

SpamCop is a service that auto-generates spam reports to ISPs and hosting providers from spam messages. Reporting with SpamCop really does stop the spammers!

Secondary authoritative DNS service providers compared

A comparison of the security features and other features offerings at 14 different secondary/slave DNS providers.

Chrome is right to remove the webRequest extension API

As an extension developer, I support Google’s controversial decision to remove of a slow and over-powered extension API favored by ad-blocking extensions.

Android apps time out connections after setting up a PAC proxy

An over-aggressive power-savings system causes Android devices configured with a PAC proxy configuration file to lose networking.

Enable both .onion and .i2p routing with Proxy Auto-Configuration

Two competing proxy anonymity proxy services can live side-by-side when configured with a PAC.

Well-Known URI vs DNS-SD for distributed web service-discovery

I compare the resilience of DNS Service-Discovery vs HTTPS Well-Known URIs when routing distributed internet traffic around censorship.

The distributed web isn’t ready for Runet cutoff from the Internet

Russia to test disconnecting from the global Internet. Peer-to-peer distributed internet alternatives won’t survive after the Runet cutoff.

PHP HTML Tidy ironically doesn’t tidy up after itself

The ob_tidyhandler handler from the PHP libtidy extension mistakenly enables the tidy.clean_output option persistently.

Your web browsers are slowing down your Time Machine backups

Third-party web browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome slows down your Mac’s Time Machine backups by dumping their files in all the wrong places.

Hurricane Electric secondary DNS adds support for TSIG authentication

I asked HE DNS if they had plans to support TSIG authenticated AXFR requests. Weeks later they rolled out support for the feature.

ProtonMail vs Mailbox.org comparison

Comparison review of the two secure PGP-oriented email providers ProtonMail vs Mailbox.org. A huge price discrepancy for the same service.

Don’t rely on mod_negotiation to serve pre-compressed resources

Apache’s module for server-driven HTTP content negotiation isn’t suited to make decisions about which pre-compressed resource to serve.

Here’s four Firefox-derived browsers you can try

Stave off the looming Chromium monoculture with a Firefox-based web browser. Here’s a look at four of them: Cliqz, Tor Browser, Pale Moon, and Waterfox.

Aren’t AMP Caches committing copyright infringement?

How can mass-copying pages from web publishers without a license not be considered copyright infringement?

What’s with the tech media’s obsession with VPN services

VPN providers are good advertisers and also pay good money to make even [formerly] reputable tech media websites “recommend” their services.

Copyright and the distributed peer-to-peer web

An investigation into the legal-side and international copyright law when publishing on distributed peer-to-peer internet alternatives.

Enough of WordPress

WordPress no longer makes me happy so I’m changing it out for something that does.

Ctrl blog is now licensed under Creative Commons licenses

I’ve applied a permissive content license in hopes to enable more free-culture sharing and attract more incoming links.

HTML5 parsed as 4 with uppercase DOCTYPE in HTML Tidy

HTML5 documents could end up being parsed as legacy HTML4 documents in HTML Tidy (libtidy) depending on the DOCTYPE casing.

Put your image metadata to use: embed it in your image files

Put your existing image metadata to good use. Embed descriptions, copyright information, and more into your images to improve Bing/Google Image Search results.

BtrFS vs Ext4 performance on random-read/write operations

I got a faster disk and investigate alternate file systems to fix a disk I/O performance bottlenecked. The difference between BtrFS and Ext4 were unexpected.

I archived 26 500 old Ask Fedora community Q&As

Ask Fedora removed tens of thousands of questions-and-answers, but you can now access all of them through the Internet Archive.

How to archive a page or an entire website in the Internet Archive

A quick tutorial using wayback_archiver to submit single webpages or entire websites to the Internet Archive’s collection.

URLs don’t belong in <meta> elements

Why the <link> element, a metadata element for link type data, is better suited for links than the more generic <meta> element.

How to fix macOS “update package has been deleted” errors

An error message indicating that Apple removed a software update from its servers may be caused by an issue with a local content caching service.

Many feed readers don’t handle plain text with XML-entities correctly

Plain text isn’t HTML. Many clients decode it as XML and then strip away the resulting HTML anyway. The spec is clear, but many implementations are buggy.

My thoughts on Firefox blocking tracking/ad cookies by default

A small AdSense publishers’ perspective on Firefox’s new cookie-blocking policy change.

How to disable outgoing mDNS broadcasts on Linux

Tutorial for quieting Multicast DNS using various firewall front-ends for Linux’s iptables firewall.

Compressed favicons are 70% smaller but 75% are served uncompressed

The majority of websites don’t compress their favicon files despite an impressive average file size reduction of over 70 %.

Choosing a monitor: 4K, 1440p, ultra wide, or what?

Where do you even begin to choose from the overwhelming number of monitor options on the market?

Safari’s Beacon API problems

You must implement the Beacon API the way WebKit deems to be “the right way” to make it work on iOS, Safari, and WebKit browsers.

Progressive JPEGs make a meaningful impact on perceived performance

Make a meaningful impact on your website visitors’ low-bandwidth user experience with semi-progressive JPEG loading.

I created my own web analytics system from scratch

I’ve removed Google Analytics from my website and built my own data-collection tool to focus on the metrics that matter to me and doesn’t impact visitors’ privacy.

How quickly do Firefox derived browsers receive security updates

A case study in how timely Firefox derived web browsers ship critical security updates.

Feitian MultiPass recall highlights need to use multiple security keys

The recall of the Feitian MultiPass FIDO security key demonstrates why you always should use multiple security key products from different vendors.

Where are the managed IP-anycast VPS service providers?

VPS service providers have data centers located all over the world. You need managed anycast IP-addresses to direct users to the nearest VPS location.

Add Webmention support to your website in ten minutes

Webmention is a platform-independent protocol for notifications of linking webpages. Here’s how to quickly get started with Webmentions for any website.

Google should auto-delete aging user data by default

Users can now opt-in to have some of their personal data be deleted after some months. The GDPR says this should be the default, however.

Why my 7-year old Windows 10 laptop became unbearably slow

My aging PC’s processor didn’t support a new Windows 10 security feature, enabled by default, causing it to become slow and unstable.

How to test if your Bluetooth devices support BLE Privacy

Some Bluetooth Low-energy (BLE) devices support the BLE Privacy extension that makes their location harder to track. How to test if your devices support it.

Bluetooth privacy and the FreeStyle Libre 2 glucose monitoring system

The FreeStyle Libre 2 can push critical glucose level alerts to your phone. Great for managing diabetes, but it also makes you trackable out in the world.

Scale static-content archives and tag pages with Nanoc

Nanoc’s default helper methods can be a real performance bottleneck.

How to change the keyboard layout on the macOS login screen

Set the keyboard layout/language on Mac’s login window, and fix the issue of it being reset to the wrong layout (e.g. ABC Keyboard) after rebooting.

First impressions of the Scroll news subscription service

Scroll wants to be your one-stop subscription service for news published all over the web. How does it work? and can one subscription save journalism?

How to switch firewalls from FirewallD to UFW

A quick tutorial for migrating from FirewallD and getting started with the Uncomplicated Firewall (UFW).

Unobtrusive sleep tracking app for Android

Sleep Debt Tracker is a simple Google Fit-compatible Android app that assumes you’re sleeping in the hours when you don’t use your phone at night.

How to block programmatic podcast ads

Here is how you can block most programmatically inserted ads, or “dynamic ads”, in your podcast subscriptions.

What’s it like to wear a FreeStyle Libre glucose monitoring sensor?

Experiences with showering, sleeping, and living with a FreeStyle Libre 2 Sensor glued to the upper arm for up to 14 days. The convenience trumps all.

Your online identity is owned by your email provider

Your email provider owns your online identity by controlling your email address. You can’t port your email address to another provider as with phone numbers.

Make changes to static content with response body substitutions

Tweak the HTTP response body with regex substitutions. Apache HTTPD configuration example shows changing the URL tracking parameters in a syndication feed file.

Normalize fridge temperatures by installing a PC fan

I installed a 120 cm 12-volt PC-fan in my aging Electrolux combo fridge-freezer. The upgrade cut its power-bill by 29 % and more stable temperatures.

Why Syncthing kept deleting my re-created files

I finally worked out why files seemingly at random kept disappearing from my Syncthing-synchronized directories.

Text rendering doesn’t look too good on VA-QLED display panels

“Quantum pixels” works by turning off half of the pixel. This can badly affect text-rendering on VA-QLED displays like the one in the Samsung C24FG70.

How Coil and Web Monetization works compared to Flattr

I explore the new Coil micro-payment system and browser extension, based on the proposed Web Monetization web-standard, and compare it to Flattr.

Semantic markup improves the quality of machine-translated texts

Text-level semantic HTML can improve machine-translation of texts containing program names, programming instructions, file paths, URIs, etc.

Mitigate “tabnabbing” without breaking window.open() features

Windows opened from your website can redirect the opening tab to a new destination. Mitigations break window.open() functionality like sizing and positioning.

How to detect machine-translated webpages

Detect and measure when a web browser or translation-service has translated the contents of your webpages.

Standard Notes kept losing my notes

The Standard Notes webapp kept either deleting or overwriting the unlucky note at the top of my notes list. It’s time to switch note-taking apps again.

Optimize your <head> metadata for better compression

Reduce the file size of compressed webpages by optimizing the order of <meta> and <link> elements in the document <head> section.

How to make a vanity Payment Pointer for Web Monetization

The Web Monetization API uses Interledger Payment Pointer (ILP3) addresses to transfer funds. Here’s how to set up a short vanity ILP3 alias for your wallet.

Review: Joplin note-taking app

The open-source note-taking app Joplin supports encryption and choose-your-own-cloud. Desktop app gets the job done, but the Android app is slow and clunky.

Ctrl blog was unavailable in Bing Search for a month

Ctrl blog was nowhere to be found with Bing in September. I can only speculate on what I did to offend Bing. Link canonicalization may be to blame.

The curious case of the working-directory-changing Rakefile

Rake randomly ran into problems with non-existing files. That wasn’t the core issue. Instead, something interfered with the process’ working directory.

Google shouldn’t be the only source of interest-based recommendations

How do you keep up with all the new webpages talking about your favorite niche interests? There are few options but Google Discover.

Why pay for Grammarly when you’re the one doing the work?

You’re the one paying for Grammarly. However, you’re also the one spending your time training and improving its machine-learning algorithm. Is that okay?

Cubbit NAS is an IoT datacenter-trojan for your home

Cubbit promises peer-to-peer redundancy for your data hosted by its other customers. They product will also act as a datacenter operated from your home.

Risks with renting your home PC to FluidStack for “up to $50/month”

Your ISP and internet services may not be happy with you if you rent our your PC and IP through FluidStack. An effortless $50/month sure is tempting, though.

What to <link rel=dns-prefetch> and when to use preconnect

Learn the difference between dns-prefecth vs preconnect, how to work around browser bugs, and when to use which? iOS and Safari requires special attention.

How to use AddToAny as a fallback for the Web Share API

AddToAny offers privacy-by-default content-sharing and is well-suited as a light-weight falback to the native Web Share API.

Opera Unite tried decentralizing the web ten years ago

A decade ago, the Opera web browser shipped a virtual fridge and a built-in web server in the browser.

World of Warcraft Classic: Hell is other people

I had a fun time playing WoW Classic until other people started showing up.

Why I developed my own email newsletter system

I wasn’t happy with MailChimp, and phpList didn’t do a good-enough job. So I developed my own automated RSS-to-email newsletter system instead.

Long-lived image retention issue on Philips 276E8VJSB monitor

My new 4K monitor, the 27″ Philips 276E8VJSB, has image retention (“burn-in”/“ghosting”) issues that can last for weeks and months.

Break up the YouTube Premium bundle and give me ad-free only

YouTube should focus on its primary asset: its creators. Give them the money and viewers an ad-free experience. Unbundle YouTube Premium.

Firefox contained in Flatpak vs Snap comparison

A comparison of features, security, performance, and limitations of Firefox browser running in isolated sandboxes provided by Flatpak vs. Snap.

How to format code blocks for narrow screens

You can’t fit 80 cpl. of preformatted code onto a narrow mobile screen. Here are three tips on how to make your code fit without horizontal scrolling.

What is Samsung Secure Wi-Fi?

Secure Wi-Fi is a VPN service from Samsung and McAfee. Here is what it does and how to stop its adverts and remove it from your phone.