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Random Bits

An attempt at creating a DIY baby monitor

Occasionally, “modern” baby monitors hit the news, but not for the best reasons. Sometimes for the lack of security, other times for exploitative practices, etc. This also applies to many other categories of products that we can include in the so-called “Internet of Things”. After reading a recent article about the topic, some comments with […]

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Random Bits

Playing with maps

I’ve always been astonished about how well mapping apps work. Sure, when Google Maps was first released the sense of wonder was much greater than it is nowadays, nevertheless it is still impressive. The number of situations when/where this kind of software becomes handy is huge, from the well-known GPS guides to even games (remember […]

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Personal Random Bits

Cleaning my follow list using “jacanaoesta”

Last year we saw the rise of the Fediverse. Mostly because of a series of external events, that ended up pushing many people to try other alternatives to their centralized platform of choice. Mastodon was clearly the software component that got most attention and has been under the spotlight in the last few months. It […]

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Personal Random Bits

My picks on open-source licenses

Sooner or later everybody that works with computers will have to deal with software licenses. Newcomers usually assume that software is either open-source (aka free stuff) or proprietary, but this is a very simplistic view of the world and wrong most of the time. This topic can quickly become complex and small details really matter. […]

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Random Bits Technology and Internet

Giving a new life to old phones

Nowadays, in some “developed” countries, it is very common for people to have a bunch of old phones stored somewhere in a drawer. Ten years have passed since smartphones became ubiquitous and those devices tend to become unusable very quickly, at least for their primary purpose. Either a small component breaks, the vendor stops providing […]

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Random Bits Technology and Internet

Dynamic DNS using Cloudflare Workers

In this post I’ll try to describe a simple solution, that I came up with, to solve the issue of dynamically updating DNS records when the IP addresses of your machines/instances changes frequently. While Dynamic DNS isn’t a new thing and many services/tools around the internet already provide solutions to this problem (for more than […]

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Random Bits

kinspect – quickly look into PGP public key details

Sometimes I just need to look into the details of a PGP key that is provided in its “armored” form by some website (not everyone is publishing their keys to the keyservers). Normally I would have to import that key to my keyring or save it into a file and use gnupg to visualize it […]

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Random Bits

Staying on an AirBnB? Look for the cameras

When going on a trip it is now common practice to consider staying on an rented apartment or house instead of an hotel or hostel, mostly thanks to AirBnB which made it really easy and convenient for both side of the deal. Most of the time the price is super competitive and I would say […]

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Random Bits Startups

Some content about remote work

If you already have read some of my earlier posts, you will know that I currently work remotely and am part of a team that is spread across a few countries. For this reason I try to read a lot about the subject, in order to try to continuously the way we work.  On this […]

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Personal Random Bits

Observations on remote work

A few days ago I noticed that I’ve been working fully remote for more than 2 years. To be sincere this now feels natural to me and not awkward at all, as some might think at the beginning or when they are introduced to the concept. Over this period, even though it was not my […]