Link Dump - Calendar Week 44

Author Christian Reading time 3 minutes

Photo by Element5 Digital: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-book-from-shelf-1370298/

From time to time I stumble across interesting links which I think are worth sharing. So I just make a "Link Dump"-Post when I have enough.

Enjoy!

Link Dump:

https://kagi.com/: Kagi is a Ad-free search engine with many customization features (see: https://blog.kagi.com/kagi-features). You can create a free account which is limited to 100 searches. 300search are 5$/month. Unlimited searches are 10$/month. Currently I'm trying the free tier and I'm loving the possibility to boost/block certain domains! (Bye bye SEO sites with no value that just copy-paste from StackOverflow and the like..)

https://sadservers.com/: You know online hacking challenges (Capture the flag)? Sadservers goes into another interesting direction. You get your own system and have a time limit to solve a certain problem. These are typical day-to-day problems at first, but with later challenges the problems get more complex. Definitely a good page for people that want to learn Linux.
Here is the article how it works: https://github.com/fduran/sadservers#replay-system

https://webvm.io/: This page is older, but I recommended it recently to a client for an internal training. Just open the webpage and you get a Debian VM to test your stuff.
They even offer a version called Mini.WebVM which you can host yourself! Details here: https://labs.leaningtech.com/blog/mini-webvm-your-linux-box-from-dockerfile-via-wasm

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/: Do you notice how platforms constantly get worse over time and even more so if they dominate or even have a monopoly? How they add features which add no real value for their users - but rather their advertisers... How settings are removed or stripped down? Useful features are cut just to release new ones which are no replacement and not really interesting? Or in the words of Cory Doctorow: Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Cory Doctorow coined the term "Enshittyfication" in this article which I do read more and more on the web.

https://dmitry.khlebnikov.net/2015/07/18/should-we-use-sudo-for-day-to-day-activities/: A blog article from 2015 but still an interesting read which raises some interesting questions. It outlines how you can build and use systems that don't have sudo installed.

https://wejn.org/2023/09/running-ones-own-root-certificate-authority-in-2023/: How to run your own Root-CA for your personal certificates. Useful for my homelab which, of course, uses a domain which isn't publically reachable. So Let's Encrypt is not an option.

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/shell-_-screen-text-are-broken-distortion-scramble.121947/: After switching to Firefox the WebUI-Shell in my Proxmox instances wasn't usable. Turns out: This is a side effect if you don't allow Browser Fingerprinting.

https://garrit.xyz/posts/2023-10-13-organizing-multiple-git-identities: Short read on how to organize multiple Git identities.

https://cockpit-project.org/: Web-based interface for the administration of your Linux server. Yes, there exist dozens of these like Webmin, Froxlor, Plesk.. But it looks like a nice alternative and it's also Open-Source.

https://austinsnerdythings.com/2021/04/19/microsecond-accurate-ntp-with-a-raspberry-pi-and-pps-gps/: Ever wanted to have our own NTP-Server? This article describes how to do it with a Raspberry Pi and a GPS module.

https://pboyd.io/posts/at-company-we-are-family/: This text tries to straighten the "We are a family!" claim by putting it in a somewhat bitchy way. ;-)