Category: Uncategorized

In Pursuit of Micro SD-Card Speeds – Part 2

A few weeks ago I wrote about a magazine article I found in which micro-SD card speeds were evaluated. In the article, amazing speeds were mentioned that I could not reach with my USB2 Micro-SD adapters. So I went out and bought a small USB3 reader. I turned out that while read and write speeds improved, they were nowhere near those in the article, despite using the same Micro-SD cards. So I bought a ‘Ugreen USB 3.0 SD-card reader‘ with a built-in USB-3 hub that got good reviews for its read and write performance.

Continue reading In Pursuit of Micro SD-Card Speeds – Part 2

33C3: IPv6 at Home – Make Sure Your IPv6 Firewall Works As Intended!

Back in 2016, I’ve written quite a number of blog posts about how to set up a server at home that is reachable over IPv6. Here’s a link to the summary. Over time one forgets some of the details so I recently couldn’t remember anymore if I’ve just opened my IPv6 firewall for single ports to the IPv6 Interface ID of my server or if I had given a ‘carte blanche’. No worries, as after all, who can find me in 128 bits of IPv6 entropy? But then I watched this talk at the recent 33C3 conference and I got worried enough to check my setup like real quick…

Continue reading 33C3: IPv6 at Home – Make Sure Your IPv6 Firewall Works As Intended!

As announced in 2012, AT&T Is Shutting Down GSM Now

I’ve been in a presentation on the LoRA PHY on the 29th of December at the 33C3 that I can fully recommend if you are interested in the LoRA IoT radio standard and want to learn about “chirp” modulation. During the talk it was mentioned that AT&T is shutting down its GSM network in the US by the end of 2016. A day later, quite a number of German tech websites such as Heise, Teltarif and Golem had articles on the topic and it really made me wonder if this talk was the seed for them!?

Continue reading As announced in 2012, AT&T Is Shutting Down GSM Now

Give Me Back That Tunnel Coverage – The Joys Of Operator Monopoly And Outsourcing

Today I have a practical example of how monopolizing access and outsourcing network operation ends up in the ultimate customer disappointment: Network coverage in tunnels and the inability of the network operator to fix it.

Continue reading Give Me Back That Tunnel Coverage – The Joys Of Operator Monopoly And Outsourcing

Shutter to Make and Edit Screenshots in Ubuntu

shutterI’m making screenshots quite often for many purposes and most of the time the built-in functionality to take a screenshot of the entire screen, window or parts of the screen is just what I need. But in some instances, having more advanced functionality such as precisely selecting the part of the screen to capture and edit the result would come in handy. Almost by accident I recently stumbled over ‘Shutter’, a great and easy to use tool that allows me to do just that.

Continue reading Shutter to Make and Edit Screenshots in Ubuntu

2016 – My EU Roaming and Global VoWifi Year

I travel a lot in the EU and worldwide so advances in roaming technology and pricing are of particular interest to me. In the past year there have been two major evolutions that have significantly improved my global travel experience: All EU voice and data is now included in my tariff and my operator now supports Voice over Wifi which comes in handy when I need to make calls when traveling outside the EU.

Continue reading 2016 – My EU Roaming and Global VoWifi Year