Vodafone #Romania and #GDPR, or how to trick customers to circumvent #GDPR

By | April 22, 2018

Yesterday I received two weird SMS messages from Vodafone. They are basically trying to trick me in accepting a contract that is invalidating some of my rights that I will get due to the new European GDPR regulation. First message: Buna! Iti oferim cadou 5 GB trafic national,valabil 30 de zile; pentru aceasta te invitam… Read More »

#Facebook clean-up check-list for people who cannot #deletefacebook

By | April 22, 2018

Due to the fuck-up of Facebook I decided to drastically remove my contact with it. I am not from the pack that just now discovers “amazed” that on Facebook you are the product. My upbringing as an East-European kid in a communist dictatorship made me aware early in life that there is no free meal.… Read More »

AP-AC-Pro with #Unifi as a taxi monitoring tool

By | April 22, 2018

It is always fun to find new usage to UBNT devices. I just discovered that my UniFi AP-AC-Pro is a powerful monitoring tool for the Wi-FI enabled taxis. In a city that considers itself as one of the “Silicon Valleys” of Eastern Europe Internet is a must. Obviously in such an environment having a Hot-Spot… Read More »

Disable core dump generation on #Linux

By | April 22, 2018

Generation of core dumps that result in freezing the Linux system is another common issue in the new Linux kernels discussed on many forum threads. Same as the bug of kswapd0 discussed here Kswapd0 going haywire this can become very annoying. It seems that lately someone tries to add developer features turned on by default… Read More »

Banking 2.0 or the online revolution #Revolut

By | March 10, 2018

The rise of alternative banking is starting to get in the mainstream. Just 10 years ago there was a limited number of banks who offered the possibility to connect to your account online and get electronic statements. Now we see pressure to get the consumer closer and closer to the bank operations and make it… Read More »

Perfect use case for #Bitcoin and #QR codes found

By | March 2, 2018

We all know the fact that Bitcoin can be used to make anonymous and untraceable (up to a point) electronic payments. The QR code representation of a Bitcoin address makes it easier to send funds to someone (see also the donation QR code of this blog). Printed QR codes that cannot be altered without the… Read More »

Do not get stuck in #Java with Out of Memory threads.

By | February 28, 2018

In a JVM environment sometimes a thread can end up with an “OutOfMemoryError” exception. If this occurs we have a problem and most of the times this is so bad that we should no longer continue. The last thing you want in this case is to get stuck in a limbo state where your java… Read More »

#Apache #Kafka solutions going mainstream

By | February 28, 2018

I like when solutions you are excited about and are first seen as “experimental” start to go mainstream. This happened with containers (Docker, CoreOS, Kubernetes etc.) which are now the hottest topic in DevOps right now. The same is happening now for Apache Kafka which was adopted by no other than “Goldman Sachs” for their… Read More »

A solution for kswapd0 going haywire on #Linux

By | February 28, 2018

This is a common issue in the new Linux kernels discussed on many forum threads. There is a long thread here about this problem. In short the issue is that when you run out of memory “kswapd0” a kernel process than manages virtual memory will start moving “old memory entries” to swap. The “run out… Read More »

#RaspberryPi #AIY Project with #ModMyPi case

By | February 19, 2018

The AIY project from Google or Create a voice kit with your Raspberry Pi is a wonderful gift from Google. I got it last year after a long preorder wait from ModMyPi. The kit is nice comes with a do it yourself cardboard case, that is nice but obviously not to be used as a… Read More »