The Mikrotik family of routers are known for their extensive configurability, offering enterprise level features such as PoE, custom routes, VLANs and more. It runs a custom Linux distribution known as RouterOS which offers a WebGUI and terminal interface, as well as SSH.
I wanted to replace my old Singtel WiFi Gigabit Router AC Elite, after it started intermittently dying.
Previously on Windows, I was using MediaMonkey to manage my music. It offered wireless syncing (over LAN) for the associated Android client, and worked well.
When I switched to Linux, I had to look for a replacement. I wanted a solution that was free and open-source, could be self-hosted on a server, and supported features such as bookmarks, playlists and transcoding (for clients not supporting certain formats).
Having your own VPN can be useful for bypassing geo-restrictions and censorship, as your IP address is that of the exit node. Your traffic is also encrypted and this protects you against sniffing attacks when using public WiFi.
However most VPN services are paid. So if you have a physical server/VPS running somewhere, why not use that?
Tailscale is an awesome open-source VPN service which lets you create a secure peer-to-peer network between your devices. It's built on the open-source Wireguard protocol which is faster than the IPsec and OpenVPN protocols.
ChatGPT was recently released and has been taking the world by storm. In the online space, there is much discussion about whether we are close to general purpose AI. There is no doubt that better and more capable models (e.g. GPT-4) will soon be released, which will overcome the flaws of its predecessors.
I skied here during December 2022 with my family. Most of the slopes were closed due to insufficient snow (we were here before Christmas, early in the season), and so we spent most of our time on a few slopes (Silver Bell, Twisting Forest, Knaster).
My Google Photos account ran out of storage recently (since 2021 June, Google has stopped providing free storage for photos in High Quality), and I was looking for a self-hosted, open source replacement, with similar features to Google Photos (fast gallery view, facial recognition, object detection).
I have been interested in nutrition from young, seeing as it affects not only weight, but clarity of thought, longevity and sleep among other things. Over here I have collated some of the research I have done over the years, which I have incorporated into my diet.
This page is continually updated as more studies and information develop.
I recently watched a discussion involving Donald Huffman, in which he argues that the world as we perceive it is not its true form - our senses are heavily colored by evolutionary adaptations to ensure our survival and reproduction. The analogy he provides is that what we perceive is akin to the icons on a computer desktop, bearing no resemblance to the actual forms which are magnetic charges on a spinning disk. This is similar to the argument he puts forth in his book, The Case Against Reality, as well as a summary online.
From the 20th to 31st of July 2022, I signed up for a 10-day meditation retreat at Saleng Eco Farm, Johor, conducted by a Vipassana Meditation Center following the teachings of S. N. Goenka (which are in turn derived from Buddhism1).
Running an Android VM in a web browser lets you run Android applications from any computer. This lets you test out apps, or even suspicious programs without compromising your actual device.
The setup:
virt-manager in Docker, which exposes virt-manager in a browser window, and also acts as the VNC server for the Android VM