My Favorite IaC Tool Just Got Discontinued
This is the second time I’m writing an introduction for this article. It was supposed to be about what makes my favorite Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool, CDKTF, so great. I actually released that ar
Michi's Blog
Passionate about software development and architecture, web and cloud technologies, as well as game development.
Latest posts
The New Age of Web Development
💡 This article was originally published in German on golem.de. You can read it here. Web development today is nothing like it used to be: With the rise of web apps, frameworks, and developer tools have matured massively. And now there are even spe...
The Smallest Hello World Program
So, initially, I just wanted to see what the smallest binary size for a ‘Hello World’ program written in Rust would be. Why? Out of curiosity - it's probably just a simple compiler flag anyway, right? Well, turns out there are some that help, but you...
Talking To Your Mailserver Is Not as Hard as You Think!
The technology behind E-Mails (or ‘emails‘) always interested me. This is because in some sense it was way ahead of its time by being a decentralized communication system. Unlike WhatsApp, Telegram or other messenger services, where the service provi...
The Case Against Character Count Line Limits
I recently had a discussion with a colleague about whether we should introduce a character count limit per line into our style guide. He believes it enhances readability, while I argue that readability should be facilitated by the editor or IDE, not ...
Embedded TypeScript: Hosting a Frontend on a ESP32
You might have read about how (and why!) we use Rust on embedded. If not, go check out my previous article! In this one, I will talk about how we added a frontend based on Typescript into the mix. Some background: I work for a company building second...
Embedded Rust in Production ..?
When I mention that we use Rust on the embedded ESP32 platform the most common reaction is a jaw-dropping "This is possible?!". Yes, it is indeed possible! - And we at STABL Energy have used it successfully for over a year now. And because so many pe...
After a day of programming in Zig
I am a big fan of Rust since it provides great tooling and allows me to write code with lots of confidence that it will work reliably. But sometimes I hate it, too. It takes more time to write code in Rust and some things are pretty difficult to prop...
The first 5 minutes on a Linux Server
When deploying a new Linux server, I always perform the same steps to introduce a basic level of security. In this article, I present those steps I take (and you probably should take them too) on a new server installation. Even though those steps pro...
Reverse engineering Microsoft's dev container CLI
Dev containers allow you to open up projects and have them running in a fully pre-configured environment with one click! ... is how I introduced the concept of dev containers in my last article. I also mentioned that I have been working on a small u...
Dev Containers: Open, Develop, Repeat...
Dev containers allow you to open up projects and have them running in a fully pre-configured environment with one click! It is especially useful if you want to keep your system clean of different SDKs with different (conflicting) Versions (looking at...
Making IBANs more memorable
Or: "How I fixed IBANs with Bitcoin". This article is supposed to walk you through the journey I had while exploring an idea I had in mind for making IBANs more memorable. The IBAN (International Bank
Hacking Google CTF - Episode 5
This is a write-up about how I solved the sixth episode of the H4CK1NG GOOGL3 security CTF. If you didn't read my post about the first episode, I highly recommend you to check it out since it introduces the concept of a CTF. It took me quite a while ...
Hacking Google CTF - Episode 4
This is a write-up about how I solved the fifth episode of the H4CK1NG GOOGL3 security CTF. If you didn't read my post about the first episode, I highly recommend you to check it out since it introduces the concept of a CTF. Challenge 01: Bug Hunters...
Hacking Google CTF - Episode 3
This is a write-up about how I solved the fourth episode of the H4CK1NG GOOGL3 security CTF. If you didn't read my post about the first episode, I highly recommend you to check it out since it introduces the concept of a CTF. Challenge 01: OAuth 2.0 ...
Hacking Google CTF - Episode 2
This is a write-up about how I solved the third episode of the H4CK1NG GOOGL3 security CTF. If you didn't read my post about the first episode, I highly recommend you to check it out, since it introduces the concept of a CTF. Challenge 01: LSB stego ...
Hacking Google CTF - Episode 1
This is a write-up about how I solved the second episode of the H4CK1NG GOOGL3 security CTF. If you didn't read my post about the first episode, I highly recommend you to read it, since it contained one of the most fun challenges of this CTF. Challen...
Hacking Google CTF - Episode 0
Yesterday, I found out about the H4CK1NG GOOGL3 security CTF on Hackernews. It is a gamified set of hacking challenges. In each challenge, you are presented with a piece of software or system that can be used to access some secret "flag" in its close...
Changing the primary display on Windows by code is easy... right?
I have this issue where Windows is sometimes randomly changing my primary display after a system restart. So I wanted to create a simple command-line application that would allow me to change the display settings on system startup - should be easy, r...
The struggle with SSH key management under Linux
When using tools like git, ssh etc. from the command line, reentering the passphrases of your keys can become very tedious rather quickly. This is where key management comes into play: Basically, you want to unlock your key once and keep it ready in ...