Recent content on cosmicqbit.dev

 Today Proton officially announced the aliases for free tier users. While I noticed the feature in the web app last week but at that time It allowed me to create only one alias. However today Proton reported that: 
 
 You can create up to 10 hide-my-email aliases with the Proton Free plan, or upgrade to Proton Unlimited to create as many as you need. 
 This is a great step towards…
I have multiple browsers installed on my machine but I use Firefox most of the time, especially when I need to login into certain accounts to use them like Github & Fosstodon. I use Arc for its folders which are similar to bookmarks and Safari to access google drive specifically. 
 On the top of all three lives Velja that allows me to pick the browser for desired links or auto redirect them to…

 
 
 Today, we delve into the profound words of praise dedicated to the beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in the Naat “Sab Se Awla o Aa’la Hamaara Nabi.” 
 Written by the Sayyidi Aala Hazrat Imam Ahmad Raza Khan رَحِمَهُ ٱللَّٰهُ, this poetic masterpiece beautifully articulates the exalted status and unmatched virtues of our beloved & blessed Prophet ﷺ . 
 Translated by…
You might be familiar with the command to open a directory or file in VSCode. By triggering code . the command launches the current working directory or the file you pass in as an argument in VSCode, which is quite convenient. 
 
 However, by default the window launches as a small display which rquires manual intervention to be maximized or a simple shortcut works Ctrl + CMD + F
If you prefer to minimize your online privacy fingerprint, you will definitely like to consider preventing any potential IP leaks while browsing online. In this post, I will show you how you can prevent WebRTC IP leaks inside the Firefox browser. 
 ⚠️ Note: If you use audio or video communications within your browser, such as virtual conferencing web apps, these configurations could break…

 In a recent development that has sparked debates on digital privacy and security forums, the Indian government made headlines with its decision to block ProtonMail, a renowned end-to-end encrypted email service. 
 The HT reported that: 
 
 The IT ministry has decided to issue an order blocking end-to-end encrypted email service Proton Mail on Wednesday at the request of the Tamil…
The first time I was introduced to the concepts of philosophy was during my high school years. Back then I used to visit a local Internet cafe to learn about the Science & Philosophy. 
 It was during one of these visits that I stumbled upon ImportanceOfPhilosophy.com . I used to write the Metaphysical & Epystemological concepts down on my notebook for later reference. As I progressed through…
On 10th Feb ‘24, /r/Skiffmail announcement on Reddit stated that Skiff is merging with Notion and will officially close down after a 6-month transition period, allowing users time to move their custom domains elsewhere. 
 During this 6-month period, Skiff services will remain operational, giving users the freedom to duplicate, migrate, or export their data at their convenience.…
I have been reading through a book on Theology recently. In one of the chapters I came across some fallacies mentioned which I hadn’t known previously. So, I thought to share them. I have documented some logical fallacies from a dedicated book on the subject before . 
 Now, let’s dive into another set of fallacies. 
 Dicto Simpliciter 
 Example: “Exercise is good for…
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, supposed to be posted on Monday’s 
 
 
 
 
 Starting this issue with Satire by heyokyay.com 
 
 
 If you also admire the idea of digital gardens, checkout this ranked list of 91 awesome open source digital gardens. I have also setup mine at wiki.cosmicqbit.dev which I come back to populate with new…
Lately, I got to cleanize a massive dump of 1.5 Email Addresses for my employer who is planning to launch an ad campaign for his upcoming project. I am not sure about the source but the text file I was provided with had random comments, commas & breaks in it besides the emails. 
 I downloaded the .txt file which was 34.6 MB in size and imported in my code editor to have a look. It had millions…
Today, I made some minor changes to the site’s footer. Instead of plain links for replying and subscribing via RSS and Telegram, there are now dedicated buttons with theme-matching colors, enclosed within a dashed border. 
 All this along, I was repeatedly copying and pasting the footer note from older posts to the new ones, which became evidently repetitive. Consequently, I decided to…

 I’ve been iTerm2 user for as long as I’ve been on Mac. I had known about Warp around for two years I believe but I had never given it a shot until three days ago. 
 Warp positions itself as a Rust-based terminal alternative for Mac. With its recent AI integration, it stands out as a “modern” terminal, offering users a fresh experience. 
 However, that’s…
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Monday’s 
 
 
 
 
 If you are planning for your next project find the perfect domain at gemdomains.co . It is a free search engine for expired domains. 
 
 
 Storyteller - A self-hosted platform for automatically syncing ebooks and audiobooks. Definitely worth a try if you are into…

 In the Beta version of Telegram for macOS, new privacy settings have been introduced. 
 Who Can Message Me 
 
 This setting allows you to choose which groups of users can send you personal messages: “ Everyone ” or only “ Contacts and Premium ” 
 Well I’m not a Beta user but that would be insufficient to test this feature anyway. Because it is…

 
 “Stop bombing kids” shouldn’t be a controversial statement. And it certainly shouldn’t cost people their jobs. Yet, this is the reality tech workers are facing when they oppose Israel’s war on the people of Gaza - TFP press release . 
 It’s been 100 days since Israel began its aggression against the Gaza Strip. Israel has committed over 2000…
In the last two years, we have witnessed more than 4,000,000 layoffs across the tech industry. Some attribute this to the mass hiring spree during the pandemic, driven by the Work From Home (WFH) culture and the Web3 hype in particular. However, once everything returned to normal, things started to fall apart. 
 This trend shows no sign of stopping in 2024. The new year has barely begun, yet…
While reading the book “Feel Good Productivity” by Ali Abdaal, I came across this real incident of a software developer that really struck me. So, I thought I would share it here. 
 In June 2016, this prodigy actually made headlines for getting fired for automating his job. At that time, I was in high school and barely had any access to the internet, so this is the first time I got…

 In this post I’ll demonstrate how we can dockerize a React App. If you are a frontend developer & you’re not familiar with the concept of containerization or nitty gritty of docker this might be a bit off but if you follow along you will get gist of it. 
 Prerequisites 
 
 Code Editor of your choice (I’m using VSCode) 
 Terminal Access 
 Docker installed…
Static Site Generators such as Jekyll, Hugo, 11ty, Astro, and Next.js have become the go-to choice for setting up a blog or personal site nowadays, partly due to their performance and client-side transition speed. 
 If you’re unsure about what SSGs are and their place among other rendering techniques in web development, stay with me for a few minutes, and we’ll gain a deeper…
I use Telegram as my primary medium of online communication. I heavily rely on it, whether for its vast, resourceful communities or its features like cloud-based, cross-device sync. 
 On top of that, bots make it highly extensible and equip users with superpowers. I’m no exception to that experience. In this post, I will be sharing top 3 useful and free Telegram bots that make my life…
I started blogging back in March 2023, again, when I was done with the redesign of website – with high hopes to write consistently. I didn’t keep the archive of old posts except a few because they were scattered across different blogging platforms I was hopping between. 
 It was absolutely out of the idea to own a little personal space on the gigantic web where I can share my…

 Although I have been documenting my progress of reading on my shelf already, as we enter a new year, it’s time to reflect on the books I’ve read this whole year. 
 I completed 105 books this year & left 20ish books unfinished for different reasons. I believe 90+ books I read were in digital format. The books belong to different genres though but I have broadly categorized…
I often witness developers discussing languages like JavaScript being backward compatible, making it tolerant to new updates without breaking old legacy code. 
 However, I recently discovered the existence of a counter concept known as “Forward Compatibility” in programming. Now, let’s explore the significance of both these terms within the context of HTML, CSS, and…
As we approach the end of this year, it’s that time again to take a step back and share a bit of my digital world with you all. 
 So, let’s take a peek at my launchpad and explore what’s been residing on my digital dashboard this year. 
 
 
 
 Questionairre 
 What is the first app you open in the morning? 
 It is either a Web browser or Telegram. 
 What…
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Mondays. 
 
 
 
 If you find zines helpful to digest byte sized concepts like those wizardzines.com by Julia Evans, you might want to check out How to make a zine from a single sheet of paper by Austin Kleon. I personally want to try my hands with digital zines but knowing how to create tangibles is a plus…

 This post is inspired by a YouTube Video I got in recommendations recently. For English translation you can refer to this video or this . 
 The video made me realize how often we overlook the importance of safety equipment and fail to learn how to use it properly, even though it could potentially save lives. 
 Frankly speaking, I learned the usage of a fire extinguisher for first…
GitHub Wrapped 
 This is my GitHub Wrap of Year 2023. 
 
 
 Click here to watch. You can get your own at githubunwrapped.com 
 Skyline 
 This is the Skyline of my Github for Year 2023. 
 
 
 Click here to watch. You can generate your own here 
 
 Reply via [mail](mailto:mail@cosmicqbit.dev?subject=📝 Response to blog post)
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Mondays 
 
 
 Arc - The Productivity Browser is coming for Windows. The beta got announced just today. You can join the waitlist . 
 Many of us spend our days typing, but do we really pause to consider what that feels like in our body? This experience is an opportunity to do just that. Check out Keyboardyoga .…

 ✍🏼 Author: Binyamin Abrahamov

📄 Pages: 201

🏷️ Genre: Religion, Non Fiction

🗓️ Published: 2014

🤔 My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4 Stars)
 This book aims to evaluate & explore the originality of The Great Mystical Sufi saint, Ibn-al-‘Arabi’s philosophy, novel thoughts, parables & poems he proposed. It does that by examining Ibn al-‘Arabi’s…
Earbuds have been popular for several years now but frankly speaking I didn’t own any pair until three days back. The reason is I didn’t need one. Even the wired Portronics earphones I had for few years, I barely used them, and they probably got misplaced or lost somewhere while we shifted to a new place a couple of weeks ago. 
 
 Why Now & Why Apple Airpods 
 Not so long…

 In early 2021, when then-Twitter was thriving during lockdown, I was exploring federated social networks. I decided to try Mastodon as it was the closest alternative to closed-source Twitter. After browsing through suggested servers, Fosstodon caught my attention, and I signed up. 
 I started learning how the timeline works and got my bare minimum account setup. I discovered many people…
Could there be a better way to welcome the new month than with a collection of desktop wallpapers? 
 
 The winter is almost here and Smashing Magazine have got us some great wallpapers for December 2023. 
 
 You can find the complete Cold Days, Shining Wallpapers Collection here . 
 They’ve got walls for different screen resolutions and certain variants with calendar as…
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet & lived, posted on Monday’s 
 
 
 This week, we moved to a new home 🏡. Although it is not entirely new, it has been partly rebuilt and renewed enough to be considered a “new” home. The environment is much quieter here, and the air is less dusty. Besides, this new place is only one minute away from our former…
This is a response to garrit’s post on Positive Hacker News RSS Feed . 
 
 So Garrit have come up with an alternative RSS feed for HackerNews that selectively presents stories that have a positive sentiment making news less stressful. 
 I personally spend more time browsing news on lobste.rs when I feel like it besides my RSS feed. I avoid HackerNews primarily because of its…
A weekly list of interesting things I found on the internet, posted on Monday’s 
 
 
 A sane person can no longer stay silent on this. I found some resources to better understand Gaza by Tracy Durnell. And there is also an age-old question by Star Trek. 
 A dev turned 30 recently and he compiled 30 Bits of Advice for 30 Years . It is a great read inspired by Kevin…
Sharing a comprehensive collection of Black Friday sales from various retailers, providing an overview of the best deals and discounts available, mainly for developers/geeks. 
 I haven’t thoroughly skimmed through the lists yet. However, I thought to document the lists here and keep it updated as I come across more such collections. 
 Here are some of the lists I have found so far:…

 Last week, I went searching on O’Reilly’s Online Bookstore for DevOps related content. It listed hundreds of books and courses, but after narrowing down my search, I got some good recommendations. 
 One of them was The DevOps Career Handbook . It is actually a Packt Publication, and I personally find O’Reilly’s and PacktPub’s in-house publications very…
In this post, you will learn how to remotely access the Mac file system or shared folders from your iPad/iOS. 
 This can be achieved in two steps: 
 
 Enabling native File Sharing on Mac 
 Establishing a Tailnet Network 
 
 Enabling File Sharing 
 Mac allows users to share files and folders with others on the same network. You can share your entire Mac with everyone or…
I was checking my RSS feed a while back and I came across a bunch of posts documenting the default apps, which got me jumping into the fun too. 
 The trend is basically inspired by a pod-radio-show and somebody is maintaining a list of people who are joining in as well. 
 So here’s my list: 
 
 📨 Mail Service: Proton / Skiff 
 📮 Mail Client: Proton Web 
 📝 Notes:…
In this post I will walk your through the introduction & the step by step procedure of compiling & installing Nginx on ubuntu server from source code 
 What is Nginx 
 Nginx is an open source & powerful software for web serving, reverse
proxying , caching, load balancing, media streaming, and more. It was developed by the Russian developer Igor Sysoev back in 2004. Igor Sysoev…
In this post you will learn how you can setup your own VPN by routing all the traffic via remote Ubuntu server using Tailscale . 
 Tailscale is a service that makes the devices and applications you own accessible anywhere in the world, securely and effortlessly. It enables encrypted point-to-point connections using the open source WireGuard protocol . 
 Now let’s get working……
If you are into Web Development, especially into Node based stack like MERN there are fair chances you have a specific directory where you save all the projects related to development work. 
 One thing you can relate to is whenever you setup a new environment for development or clone a repository you rely on a command to install the node modules and the dependencies related to that project.…
The month of October is over, and a lot has happened lately. 
 
 On the world stage, it has been a distressing month. Israel has been mercilessly killing innocent civilians in Gaza. Among the casualties, around 70% are children, women, and the elderly.
It is generally not advised to use root as the main account on a server. There are various reasons for that. For instance, with root privileges we could break the system easily if a single command goes wrong. Moreover, while installing new software or packages as root, the packages being downloaded get the permission to write anywhere on the file system. 
 It is even worse to login as root…
The AWS Command Line Interface ( AWS CLI ) is an open-source tool that enable users to interact with AWS services using commands in the command-line shell. The AWS CLI can be used for managing AWS services from a terminal session locally, allowing users to control and script multiple AWS services. 
 To put it simple, AWS CLI allows users to manage their AWS resources right from their terminal…
This is how you can download or backup a youtube video which is private and shared specifically over email with you. 
 🍪 Extracting Cookies 
 First of all you need to be logged into Google Account in your browser with the same email you got the video shared over. Secondly, you need to install the cookie extractor browser extension. 
 
 For Chrome 
 For Firefox 
 
 Once…
I have previously shared my experience with certain web analytics services and my stance on their usage and potential privacy concerns. With that being said, I tend to prefer services that are privacy-friendly and convenient, while also considering the interests of both visitors and site owners. 
 For the past few months, I have been using GoatCounter on my website. I use it simply to track if…
Ever wanted to have certain links directed to specific browser or app based on their hostname, well read on to find out how to achieve that on macOS. 
 There is a fair possibility that you have multiple browsers installed on your machine & you use each of them for specific task. Like for example, I use Firefox for containerizing shopping, banking & MAANG/GAFAM sites; Arc Browser for emails,…
The Internet Archive, also known as archive.org, is a non-profit digital library that aims to provide universal access to knowledge. It was founded in 1996 with the mission of preserving and providing access to historical collections in digital form and it continues to do so. 
 The Internet Archive also offers access to millions of books, movies, audio recordings, and other media through its…