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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · 6d

Our car reached 300k kilometers today. I am not proud of driving that far. But I am lucky to have a car that can be maintained that long, without having to replace it every few years and waste all these resources. I wish they would still make such cars today.

#t4

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · 13d

If I had to explain my job... @ioer.. I'd just show this workflow from the last two days. It's a great example of building reproducible, automated documentation. 🚀

1. Start: A project schema, drafted by colleagues in Excel.
2. Problem: Excel isn't reproducible and is hard to use as a single […]

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Reposted by Alexander Dunkel

Mike Perham :sidekiq: @getajobmike.ruby.social.ap.brid.gy · Jul 1

The key to coding productivity is your Mental Model: your own understanding of how all the software and APIs are interacting.

With AI, you aren’t strengthening the mental model in your head and really that’s what employers are paying you for: your experience just boils down to the knowledge in […]

Original post on ruby.social

ruby.social

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · 24d

#plastic -alternative made from grape vine that will decompose in 17 days. #science is the solution!

https://www.sdstate.edu/news/2025/08/can-grapevines-help-slow-plastic-waste-problem

葡萄藤纤维素制成更强韧的塑料替代品，17天内可生物降解

Grapevine cellulose makes stronger plastic alternative, biodegrades in 17 days (www.sdstate.edu) 06:15 ↑ 114 HN Points

www.sdstate.edu

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · 27d

Gerade über den Instagram Account der @tudresden gestolpert.. nicht so toll, wie die Frau in dem Post in der Mitte dargestellt wird.

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · 28d

Quite good read on fallacies in the AI race [1]: A world of over-promising and under-delivering, as within many other disciplines today (looking at you, research!). We all need to get away from these volatile cycles of hype and disappointment.

1]: [ […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Aug 26

> Julia Klöckner hat die Gesellschaft gespalten. Ob mutwillig oder aus Dämlichkeit, weiß ich nicht.

I think Robert doesn't like Julia.

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Aug 8

At the @ioer FDZ, we have been thinking about ways to improve the production of scientific knowledge and contribute solutions to the #reproducibility crisis.

One initiative that we are now sharing with the wider scientific community is #Carto-Lab […]

[Original post on himself.alexanderdunkel.com]

Reproducible spatial visual analytics with Carto-Lab Docker

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jul 31

I had to #migrate all #gitlab #registry #container Images from one Gitlab to another (about 25GB). Here is the #bash script as a Github #gist [1].

1]: [https://gist.github.com/Sieboldianus/be5dbb57cdada3ea8af4b1512a6e8e41

Migrate all Gitlab Registry Container images from one Gitlab to another

Migrate all Gitlab Registry Container images from one Gitlab to another - README.md

gist.github.com

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jul 29

Great comment on why #socialmedia is faster than #democracy - "faster than democratic institutions can adapt". [1]

1]: [https://tushardadlani.com/the-leverage-arbitrage-why-everything-feels-broken

The Leverage Arbitrage: Why Everything Feels Broken

Something fundamental has shifted in how power works, and most of our institutions haven't noticed. We're living through what might be called "leverage arbitrage divergence"—a growing gap between...

tushardadlani.com

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jul 24

New article about #embedding based multilingual search 1]. Dominik Weckmüller, the lead author, contributed the #nlp of this article, which focuses on workflow, cartography and social media data. This is a great read if you are working in fields such as #NLP and [#cartography.

1]: [ […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jul 19

Vor ein paar Tagen habe ich bei einem Rack-Server-Angebot bei eBay für 1.400 Euro geboten. Außer den Fotos und dem Namen (Supermicro Sys-7049GP-TRT Server) gab es keine Angaben. Aber ich wusste, dass allein das Gehäuse den Preis wert ist. Da ich […]

[Original post on himself.alexanderdunkel.com]

GPU-Rack, Surprise Surprise: A TESLA V100S!

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jun 23

Learning how to directly open VS Code in a remote folder via SSH from WSL:

```
code --folder-uri "vscode-remote://ssh-remote+remote_vm/home/user/dev/working_dir"
```

Where `remote_vm` is your SSH client config for the VM.

Add this to your Bash aliases to start your working day with a single […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jun 20

> It’s 2025 and software engineering is the backbone of pretty much everything. But for all its prevalence and influence, most people don’t have the technical literacy to even grasp the basics.

Good read:
https://thoughtfuleng.substack.com/p/ai-is-going-to-hack-jira

AI is going to hack Jira

Hide your kids, hide your wife: how the Agile Industrial Complex has set us all up to be duped by AI codegen

thoughtfuleng.substack.com

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jun 11

Today, I discovered that Postgres materialised views do not inherit their parent table's indexes. This is why my spatial query is still running after 24hours.. 9000 × 50,000,000 = 450 billion geometry comparisons. Doh!

#postgres #computation #spatial #sql

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jun 11

An increasing number of websites use TOTPs (time-based one-time passwords) as a second factor. One aspect of security is having a second device that provides this second factor and is independent of your first device. However, leaving your phone unlocked for hours a day to enter 50 TOTPs can […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Jun 5

This is a great article on a study on cognition and the human brain [1]. The authors argue that the brain uses 20% of the human body's total energy. Much of this energy is not used for conscious attention but rather for unconscious "prediction" of the future and possible actions. This automated […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · May 26

How to best create, maintain and archive custom environments from within Jupyter? .. just updated the documentation for Carto-Lab Docker with examples for Python [1] and R [2].

The tricky part is linking Kernels from custom envs with the Jupyter kernelspec. However, most of this can be stored […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · May 12

Wow! After delving into IPSec strongSwan rekeying, I now know that the initial 'data key' (Child SA) is like a quick handshake with no fancy secret exchange (PFS) (see the documentation [1]). However, for rekeys, it's full secret agent handshake mode! Writing the GitHub bug report, which turned […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Apr 25

I have observed both sides of this issue. Choose your side!

#llm #ai

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Apr 21

6 EUR overnight parking with this view. Where did we get this? Lusatia! (this was yesterday, at Bärwalder See)

#lusatia #Bärwalder #see #t4

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Apr 20

Just published a small tool we use in our non-profit to export user data from #keycloak
into Excel. It pulls standard and custom fields like IBAN, birthdate, phone, etc.,
using the Keycloak Admin API. You can run it through a SOCKS proxy if access is restricted.
Config is done via a .env file […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Apr 13

#opnsense users, it is time to migrate your legacy #ipsec VPN tunnels to the new connection setup. The Legacy IPSEC feature will be deprecated in 26.1.

I have updated my IPSEC post [1] with the new connection settings. The migration was not straightforward and required some changes, but it is […]

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Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Apr 6

> science.org: **Earth’s #clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming**
> Narrowing storm bands may be a surprising and dangerous new feedback of #climate change

https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-s-clouds-are-shrinking-boosting-global-warming

Earth's clouds are shrinking, boosting global warming

Comments

www.science.org

Alexander Dunkel @alex.himself.alexanderdunkel.com.ap.brid.gy · Feb 26

Worth a read [1].

> If you publish something online, sooner or later, it will vanish.

If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

> https://p.migdal.pl/blog/2025/02/markdown-saves

If it is worth keeping, save it in Markdown

Why and how to preserve digital content in plaintext format for long-term accessibility and reuse

p.migdal.pl

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