Improvements that we will never seeImprovements that we will never see Sometimes the cost of change is just too high Our world is not ideal. Many small decisions which are kind of arbitrary and could have easily been done different ā¦ Oct 11 25October 11, 2025Article at Medium
AI and Advanced JSON context profiles - Martin Thoma - MediumIāve recently seen this trick on TikTok: You give an LLM an image and ask it to generate an āAdvanced JSON context profileā. Here is what it gives you: Jun 25 25June 25, 2025Article at Medium
Are LLMs (still) Dangerously Suggestible? - Martin Thoma - MediumChatGPT and Google Gemini have become a tool that I use on a daily basis. I would like to use it for general fact checking, but Iām afraid that the LLM might confidently make wrong statements āā¦ Jun 21 25June 21, 2025Article at Medium
Signs of Recession - Martin Thoma - MediumThe US isnāt the same since Trump took office. April 2025 was especially crazy from an economic perspective: The US had a GDP of $29724 Billion USD in 2024. A 1% loss would mean almost $300 Billionā¦ Apr 28 25April 28, 2025Article at Medium
Phishing š - Martin Thoma - MediumPhishing is a type of scam in which the attacker disguises himself/herself as a trustworthy entity to make the victim perform an action. For example, the attacker could present himself as your bankā¦ Apr 21 25April 21, 2025Article at Medium
My Vision for our Education SystemIn school you have 10ā35 students in one room, being taught by one teacher. The teacher speaks, the students listen. While there are some variations, this is true for 70% of the time at school sinceā¦ Jan 21 25January 21, 2025Article at Medium
A Vision for our Future: Automatic ChargingImagine youāre driving to a supermarket. While youāre shopping, your car is automatically re-charging for an acceptable price. You donāt have to plug it in. You donāt have to compare prices. Youā¦ Jan 14 25January 14, 2025Article at Medium
āHow to get rich in 5 easy stepsā and other scams to warn your family aboutI originally wanted to write about the three characteristics that lead to high worker-income: Providing high value (e.g. doctors), having a good negotiation position due to supply/demand (e.g. seniorā¦ Jan 07 25January 07, 2025Article at Medium
Awesome PR processes in 7 easy stepsIn this article Iāll describe some patterns Iāve noticed that help to make the pull request (PR) process smooth and productive. But itās not only that. If you make many unrelated changes, itās hardā¦ Nov 16 24November 16, 2024Article at Medium
Mobile Device Management (MDM)Mobile devices are laptops, tablets, and smarphones. The issue with mobile devices is that they get lost if you have enough employees/devices. You also cannot easily physically access them when youā¦ Oct 27 24October 27, 2024Article at Medium
What is a (n+1) query?An (n+1) query is a performance issue that happens in backend development. Instead of doing one query to show n objects, one does one query to get the objects and n additional query to get detail information. Example Imagine you have a website aboutā¦ Oct 20 24October 20, 2024Article at Medium
Pagination done rightoffset, limit, order, filtering, performance, and UX In times of infinite scrolling, you might be tempted to think that pagination doesnāt matter. But even infinite scrolling sites use pagination under the hood for their backends. They automaticallyā¦ Sep 28 24September 28, 2024Article at Medium
Network Scanning šHost Discovery via Ping First, you want to see who/what else is in the network. To do so, you want to execute a ping to every single address in the network. When you get a response, you know somebody is there: # Find your network$ ifconfig | grepā¦ Sep 14 24September 14, 2024Article at Medium
Why Story Points are a bad idea for measuring developer productivityPeople want to be good in their jobs and make decisions they can justify. For this reason, data-driven decisions are a wildly popular concept. One of the most expensive parts of software development is the salary of software engineers. Hence it makesā¦ Sep 10 24September 10, 2024Article at Medium
Open Source vs Free SoftwarePeople use āopen sourceā and āfree softwareā as synonyms but are not. All Free Software is open source, but not all open-source software is free software. Free software is free as in āfree speechā, not as in āfree beerā. That is the philosophy ofā¦ Sep 07 24September 07, 2024Article at Medium
How to test Requests in Web DevelopmentAs a backend developer, I sometimes have the need to check which requests are sent, including the headers and the payload. Itās enormously useful to have a local tool which can check that. Iāve just released postbin: A simple small webserver whichā¦ Aug 19 24August 19, 2024Article at Medium
What is a forward/reverse proxy?A proxy forwards requests. They can filter or change requests. A forward proxy takes are request for the user and forwards it to a website. Examples are: Privoxy: A forward proxy which helps to protect privacy (German Talk from 2016). You can alsoā¦ Aug 18 24August 18, 2024Article at Medium
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) šA Virtual Private Network (short: VPN) is a mechanism that which allows you to remotely connect your computer to a private network over a public channel such as the internet. The VPN routes your traffic over the VPN provider. This means you donātā¦ Aug 15 24August 15, 2024Article at Medium
Timekeeping on MarsLocaltime, timezones, and Calendars Localtime is what you see when you look at your watch. Itās what changes when you move far away in other countries. The concept is pretty simple: A day is one full rotation of Earth. We split that into 24 segmentsā¦ Jul 26 24July 26, 2024Article at Medium
How to calculate if a solar roof makes economic senseA photovoltaic system on your home is pretty neat: You produce a big chunk of the energy you need yourself. But itās also expensive. Does it make economic sense? The amount of variables to answer this question is overwhelming. Donāt worry, Iāll breakā¦ Jun 28 24June 28, 2024Article at Medium
