Raspberry Pi 4: WiFi vs Wired Connection

Raspberry Pi 4 is capable of moving data over the network at reasonable speeds but there is a huge difference between WiFi and Ethernet performance, especially if you prefer to store your data on SSD drives and not on SD cards.

On Debt

Debt is a fascinating concept and it has a huge impact on our lives whether we like it or not. Some people, like me, avoid having personal debt at all costs but there is no easy way to force our governments to not borrow money on our behalf.

Installing Raspbian Lite on an SD Card

This article contains a list of steps and notes on installing Raspbian Lite on an SD card. I often document some tasks for future reference and I've just got five more Raspberry Pi's for my new project, which means that installing Raspbian Lite might be a thing I'll need to repeat from time to time.

Detecting Fake Flash Drives and SD cards

It's not uncommon to see myriads of suspiciously cheap SD cards on Amazon or AliExpress and most of those listings are scams. Their capacity and/or performance claims are lies and they lure their victims by offering lower prices. Low price is a huge red flag but even adequately priced SD cards and flash drives might be fake or dysfunctional and it's always a good idea to check them before you start to rely on them for storing your data.

Adding HTTP Basic Auth for Traefik and Nginx-Proxy Routes

There are many ways to restrict access to certain places behind a reverse proxy and many services have their own auth systems so they might not need any extra protection. Unfortunately, some pages might not have their own auth systems so we may instruct our reverse proxies to restrict acess to some HTTP endpoints.

How to Prevent Malicious SSH Login Attempts

I'm not a server guy but I had to deploy a few web sites and web services recently and it has been an interesting journey so far, although sometimes it feels a bit scary: it's like stepping into the unknown. I have to ask myself many questions, such as: how do I know that my servers are secure?

Restoring Privacy: Part 2 - Payments

The world is going cashless and I don't think that anything can reverse this trend. There are plenty of reasons why people prefer cashless transactions and the most obvious one is convenience. Some older people still struggle to figure out how to make payments in a progressively cashless world but the younger generation reveals its overwhelming preference for cashless ways of paying for goods and services.

Book Review: Human Action

I don't usually keep more than two or three quotes when I read a good book. Some books offer new knowledge and others try to find new ways of explaining old and complex knowledge using simple words. In both cases, I really appreciate a book that can provide a few deep thoughts or to explain a complex thing in a way that makes it easier to understand.

Installing Docker on Raspberry Pi 4

Docker and Docker Compose are convenient tools if you need to run some software without bloating your system with dependencies that you don't use on a daily basis so Docker was one of the first things I wanted to install on my new Raspberry Pi 4.

Restoring Privacy: Part 1 - Email

I'm happy to see that privacy have become a hot topic recently and that the increasing number of people want to know who holds their data, what kind of data is it and why are those people and companies holding it?