9 – Simple, Secure Browser-Based Text Sharing
9 is a free, anonymous, browser-based tool that sends text directly between two devices via encrypted WebRTC – no server, no signup.
Nicky Reinert
Blog & projects by Nicky Reinert (Institute for Digital Challenges): web development & software development, SEO & analytics, hosting & DevOps, WordPress & Hugo, tools & projects, data protection & digital culture — plus content on AI and autism & society.
Latest posts
LEAKED: Anthropic's Secret Claude Strategy
A satirical take on the recurring conspiracy theory that AI labs secretly nerf their models only to re-release them for double the price.
The Confidence Calculator - A/B Testing Made Easy
A simple and easy-to-use confidence calculator for A/B testing. Calculate confidence levels, p-values, power and more for your A/B tests.
Digital Dilemma: Why Google Accounts Should Be Treated as Critical Infrastructure
Google and Microsoft accounts have become part of digital public life. Why account suspensions are more than just an email problem.
Arrma Gorgon: Purchase, Repairs and Costs
And now to something completely different… A few weeks ago I dived into a new “hobby”: remote-controlled semi‑pro vehicles — a birthday present for my child. So I started researching. For me, the priorities were robustness and modularity. I wanted my kid to be able to drive through rough terrain and …
Numbers, please — about anthropic
1/300 - ratio of support staff to users in traditional SaaS companies B2B [1] 1/3000 - max ratio of support staff to users in traditional SaaS companies B2C [2] 30 Bn - annual revenue of Anthropic [3] 5000 - number of employees at Anthropic [4] 18 - 30 million - estimated monthly active users at …
pictero.com
Well, another year, another idea for my domain pictero.com. I was about to get rid of that domain for good. But here we are. This time I spend a little more time in a “product” - or whatever you want to call it and I came up with this idea: A (mostly) browser based toolbox for a couple of common, …
Why I Cancelled Claude: Token Issues, Declining Quality, and Poor Support
Prefix Note As this post is gaining more attention than expected on HN, I want to make some things clear - although I thought they are obvious. It sounds like a rant about Claude’s quality in general - if you don’t read to the end. But my concerns are more focused on the support performance and …
How to create an animated ticker in Excel without VBA
How to create an animated ticker in Excel without VBA? Last night, around 3 am, I woke up and thought: Wouldn’t it be nice to have an animated ticker in Excel? Like text that scrolls from right to left? With just one big formula? Welcome to the second episode of my series “How to create weird …
AI assisted coding - the plAIbook
Famous first words I work extensively with AI, and as it is a new tool that introduces an entirely different way of working, it sometimes takes time to adapt to these new circumstances. In this context, I am still exploring the best approach to integrate AI or agentic chatbots into my development …
How to simulate proof of work in SQL and BigQuery
(or: How does blockchain mining work?) A miner has to solve a mathematical problem to validate a block for the Blockhain. The so called Proof of Work requires a lot of computing power aka energy and therefore is quite expensive. Googles BigQuery has a price model, that charges you for the …
The Thin Line Between Scam and Ambitious Entrepreneurship
German Version I’m not a fan of mobile games Not because I don’t like playing, but because a questionable business model has developed around mobile games, making it very difficult to find the true gems. It seems like it’s more about selling ad space or generating in-app purchases with simple game …
wad - about chatbots, captchas, and Chromecast
New month, new category – “We are doomed” (wad) is about “smart and new technology” that turns out to be not so smart. But new, at least. Chatbots are going to replace search engines. Aren’t they? Well, no. I asked Gemini (Google’s AI chatbot) how to update Stadia’s firmware (Google’s former gaming …
My 2,718281828459045235 Cents - State Of AI: Year 3 of the hype. Things I learned
What about coding People don’t get tired of announcing that AI will replace developers. Mostly salespeople. Microsoft claims that AI is already writing 30–50% of their code. They also admit, that quality of C+ is behind expectations. In 2030 they plan to reach a rate of 95% , though human oversight …
Monitor SSL Traffic On Android
Fantastic Preface Monitoring SSL Traffic of Android Apps is quite a challenge these days. While it’s an important way to understand how Apps work, find security flaws or possible data breaches, a weak encrypted traffic also is a potential security risk. These days, most apps use a thing called …
Adobe Launch DTM Naming Conventions
I’ve worked with Adobe Tracking Suite (which is Adobe Launch and all it’s sibblings) for quite a while and I saw many, some quite chaotic, tracking implementations and tag managers. At some point I felt the need to write down some basic rules to navigate those messy libraries. Hope that helps you, …
How to develop in 2025: Improve your Workflow with VS Code, GitHub & Copilot
VS Code Workspace Settings Shortcuts First of all, I strongly suggest adding some custom shortcuts because the default ones are a bit unintuitive. For example, CTRL + SHIFT + ' gets you to the terminal, while SHIFT + FN + F6 brings you back to the editor, andSHIFT + B opens the sidebar. What a mess! …
About Agility and Innovation
With the important caveat that my insights are based on experiences I’ve gathered in my own little bubble. In recent years, I’ve worked in and for a variety of companies, ranging from hands-on SMEs, through more or less organized startups, to large corporations and agencies. I mention this not to …
Imprint
Information according to § 5 TMG Nicky Reinert Institute for Digital Challenges E-Mail: nісkуrеіnеrt [at] gmаіl [dot] соm Characters obfuscated for spam protection, please type manually Note: The “Institute for Digital Challenges” is not a registered institution, but a private research and analysis …
Privacy Policy
Protecting your data is important to us. We handle information confidentially and comply with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the German Federal Data Protection Act (BDSG). This policy explains whether and to what extent data is processed and which rights you …
Advent of Code - Day 8 - Missing Operators (Ruby)
( task | solution ) The first time I read through the riddle, I was like: “Phew, no way, I’m going to skip this!” I looked at the example and the description, and it didn’t make sense at all. But when I’m stuck like that at the very beginning, the best approach to get a grip is: Visualize! (A …
Advent of Code - Day 7 - Missing Operators (C++)
( task | solution ) This is the kind of task I really enjoy: finding algorithms for simple mathematical challenges! Let’s go—this time in… C++! (Phew!) You’ll find my .devcontainer and Dockerfile on GitHub. Once again, I don’t want to bloat my system with additional compiler setups. It turns out, …
Advent of Code - Day 6 - Walking the map (JavaScript)
( task | solution ) This task looks tricky, so I am once again choosing a simple language that I am familiar with: JavaScript ( which, by the way, was developed in just 10 days ). With no further ado…
Advent of Code - Day 5 - Printer Updates (Bash)
( task | solution ) It’s the fifth day of our outrageous adventure, and we are dealing with printer updates. To solve this riddle, we are getting back to the roots and our good ol’ friend Bash! The good news here is that I don’t need to set up any particular environment because, thankfully, Bash is …
Advent of Code - Day 4 - Finding patterns (Excel)
( task ) I Made It to Day 4! And today’s task perfectly fits Excel. Some—if not most—people don’t like Excel and would never consider it a serious tool for data analytics, exploration, or even “engineering.” Well, you’re wrong about Excel. It’s quite powerful if you know how to use it. Let me show …
Advent of Code - Day 3 - Multiplications (Python)
( task | solution ) As I reached the third day of my adventure, I had already learned something new that significantly improves the process: the devcontainer.json file can handle creating and running the Docker container for me. This saves the trouble of manually building and running it—essentially …
Advent of Code - Day 2 - Increasing and decreasing (Rust)
( task | solution ) This task is about testing if integers in a list are increasing or decreasing. I’ll try Rust, and I assume I need nerves of steel for this exercise.
Advent of Code - Day 1 - Differences and Products (F#)
( task | solution ) As the challenge at AoC is not about the syntax but the algorithm, I decided to try a different approach this year: a new language every day. I am probably not going to explain the code in detail, but I will point out characteristics of each particular language that I think are …
sudoku
How to build a brute force Sudoku solver Follow my journey on how to build an algorithm that lets you create or solve Sudoku puzzles! Follow my steps or jump ahead — this is the Jupyter notebook: https://gist.github.com/nickyreinert/966299333429ef685338e5feb5056126 Warmup — introduction Before we …
How does the SHA256 algorithm work…in detail? (part 2/2)
SHA-256 (Secure Hash Algorithm) is the name of a “cryptographic hash function”. SHA-256 is part of an , with the same goal: to create a hash that is resistant to collisions, the calculation of which only works in one direction and has a fixed length. In the following article, I describe the steps …
How does the SHA256 algorithm work…in detail? (part 2/2)
Once you have successfully processed the first part , you are well prepared to learn in this part how the individual components or. Now functions together. Pre-certificate Before starting, I would like to clarify the connections again: We will immediately create a message (message), the length of …
The Bitcoin Puzzle
In this post, I’ll explain how I fell into a deep rabbit hole. I’ll cover how the puzzle works and how the algorithm can be optimized in Python using techniques like parallelization and pre-compiling with Cython. Finally, I’ll reveal how you can increase computation speed by nearly 100x by …
How to Persist User Configuration in a Gradio App with Cookies
I am currently building some kind of playground for Huggingface’s text-2-image models. This app offers more than a dozen configuration parameters. The problem: Every time the user reloads the page, all parameters are gone. Here’s my solution to cope with that. Gradio has a gr.Stateobject that allows …
Cryptocurrency Price Prediction with PyTorch: A Machine Learning Tutorial
Flying and predicting stock prices: two of humanity’s greatest dreams. While growing wings seems impossible, let’s focus on predicting the prices of stocks — or in this case, a ‘cryptocurrenciy’! It sounds catchier, doesn’t it? Goal You’ll learn how to leverage PyTorch, a machine learning …
How to predict prime numbers in JavaScript
There is only one thing that I love more than algorithms: Improving algorithms! This article will not explain one of those sophisticated formulas — but it will hopefully show you, how thoughtful thinking and tinkering will help you with optimising your code. Nota bene: Think Python is faster? Try …
How to find prime numbers in Python. Feat. Cython.
[PYTHON] How to find Prime Numbers. Fast. Feat. Cython. There is only one thing that I love more than algorithms: Improving algorithms! This article will not explain one of those sophisticated prime solving formulas — but it will show you, how thoughtful thinking and tinkering will help you with …
How to develop a balanced card game with Python
Join me on my journey from drawing for fun, to Excel, over Python to a, probably working and good balanced card game. But why? Shameless bragging: I own a Remarkable2 and from time to time I’m drawing random stuff on it. Just for the sake of recreation. I’m not a good painter. It’s no serious art, …
Managing Adobe Launch Tags with Local Overrides in Chrome DevTools
POV: You need to maintain a website that implements Adobe Launch (or probably any tag manager). The tag is a huge mess and contains fragmented rules and no clear naming system. Adding features or fixing bugs can be a real pain in the ass: Finding the right rule, modifying the custom code in a not so …
Web 3.0 explained, without the hype
Everyone is talking about Web 3.0 and it’s “driving technologies” Blockchain, Bitcoin, NFT or the Metaverse. Terms that belongs to every company’s roadmap if it’s want to be innovative. But if you try to find information about — let’s take Bitcoin — you’ll quickly find yourself on some …
How to sell your NFT — step by step, pros and cons
What is NFT? NFT is short for Non-Fungible Token. In fact it’s a reference to a (digital) asset. And that asset can be everything from a poem to a software. You also may reference to a physical asset. In short: A NFT can be understand as an evidence of ownership. The token aka the reference is saved …
How to use the new LAMBDA-feature in Excel (e.g. to identify outliers)
Whait what, Excel? You call yourself a data engineer and you work with Excel? Sure. Excel is still the best tool for quick’n’dirty solutions, don’t let Tableau, Python or Alteryx tell you something different… ;) What’s LAMBDA? One sentence: LAMBDA allows you to combine common Excel functions into …
My Python boilerplate and a little Python-Fu
Let me show you my Python boilerplate and some little nifty standard features I’m working with. You can download the full template from github . This post will probably be extended in the future. Summary The boilerplate will help you with the following features: Use virtual environments manage …