Author: Johannes Ernst

  • Setting a root password, the stress-free way

    Just created myself a new boot disk for a Raspberry Pi. Booted it, darn, how do I log on? Usually, you need to find a keyboard and plug it in. And a monitor and plug it in. And an HDMI cable in between. Assuming that you can find an extra HDMI cable. That the monitor…

  • Responding to Ben Werdmuller: Open issues: lessons learned building an open source business

    Ben Werdmuller posted a great, detailed essay on his experiences building the Known open-source, personal publishing application and turning it into a profitable business, and then asks some tough questions about the viability of open-source as a business. What a read for a Saturday! The entire essay is excellent; I’m sure he rewrote it many…

  • Update on: the Pain in my Butt

    TL;DR: Forget about medical doctors when in musculoskeletal pain; use Google DuckDuckGo, a good chiropractor and systematic exercise. Open-sourcing my condition has been a total flop. Here’s the good news: I’m much better. As you might remember, a couple of months ago I put as many details as I could think of on this blog…

  • The Internet of Things may not exist (yet)

    “Have you seenthe IoT?” The Internet of Things is supposedly the hottest growth sector in technology since the social media craze. So if you visit one of the few conferences dedicated to the IoT, what would you expect to see? I’d expect something like Java One back in the late ’90s. Tons of people. Tons…

  • Giving up on nftables

    Supposedly, nftables is the successor to iptables. So when implementing a firewall for UBOS, the logical thing to do is to use the new thing instead of the clumsier old thing. But I give up. I cannot figure out how this thing works. All the how-to pages that I found essentially have the same examples,…