Why don’t UI Designers contribute to Open-Source software, and why is it often so ugly?

Bitwarden, the password manager I use, announced a visual redesign. As one of the least aesthetic apps I rely on, I was eager to see the update. Sadly, my excitement turned to disappointment—it still feels like a hackathon project with noticeable UI quirks. Why is that?

AI

If I can accomplish the task with a computer, the AI can do it as well

Anthropic just gave their Claude 3.5 Models access to our screens, mice and keyboards. With that, they are no longer limited to API calls but can accomplish tasks the same way that we humans do.

AI

Create photorealistic fake pictures of yourself by fine-tuning FLUX.1

How to create your own fine-tuned version of the latest Flux.1 Model from Black Forest Labs with just 12 photos of yourself, to generated AI pictures of yourself.

With the fall of Stack Overflow, AI Coding Assistants like GitHub Copilot will have a data problem!

Stack Overflow, one of the biggest data sources of LLM trainings, is seeing a decrease in questions being asked on the platform. This reduces the training data for the coding assistants of tomorrow.

What we learned after spending 5,000 EUR on developer marketing

For Space Blocks, a Developer Platform for Permission Management, we decided to spread the word through online ads in various channels like Social Media, Google Ads, Newsletters, Podcasts and YouTube Video Ads. Here is our wrap-up.

AI

Run Large and Small Language Models locally with ollama

Since ChatGPT, we all know at least roughly what Large Language Models (LLMs) are. You might have heard that they require an immense amount of GPU power to run. But did you know, there are also smaller and less powerful versions of some models (SLMs) that you can run locally on your computer?

Local Calendar Sync

Building Local Calendar Sync Day 07: Publish to the App Store

Last day of building Local Calendar Sync. Here is how to publish the macOS App to the Apple App Store.

Local Calendar Sync

Building Local Calendar Sync Day 06: Launch on Startup and run in the Background

At day 6 of building Local Calendar Sync, we make sure, the app Launches on Startup and runs the sync in the Background.

Local Calendar Sync

Building Local Calendar Sync Day 05: Logo and App Icon

At day 5 of building Local Calendar Sync, we care about the Logo. The app runs locally on my computer and will hopefully solve the Calendar Problem in my life.

Local Calendar Sync

Building Local Calendar Sync Day 04: Settings

Day 4 of building Calendar Sync, which runs locally on my computer and will hopefully solve the Calendar Problem in my life. Today, we built the Settings screen.

Local Calendar Sync

Building Local Calendar Sync Day 03: Building the Calendar Sync Logic

Day three of building Calendar Sync, which runs locally on my computer and will hopefully solve the Calendar Problem in my life. Today, we got the sync logic working for the first time.

Local Calendar Sync

Building Local Calendar Sync Day 02: Add Status Bar Icon and remove Main Window

Day two of building a small software tool called Local Calendar Sync, which runs locally on my computer and will hopefully solve the Calendar Problem in my life. Today, we added a Status Bar icon and removed the default window.

Local Calendar Sync

Building Local Calendar Sync Day 01: Creating a new project and exploring EventKit

This is the beginning of a blog series about building a small software tool called Local Calendar Sync, which runs locally on my computer and will hopefully solve the Calendar Problem in my life. I initially wanted to outsource this work, but Fiverr doesn't seem to work for

Fiverr doesn't work for software projects

I have a little calendar problem in my life, which I want to solve with software. Software, that I didn't want to write myself, but rather outsource to someone I can pay for developing it for me. Here is why I ended up coding it myself and why Fiverr doesn't work for these kinds of projects.

smart home

Sync Windows Sensors with tado Thermostat in Home Assistant

tado's built-in Window-Open-Detection never works. So I installed windows contacts and connected them to tado with Home Assistant.

dapr

Dapr sidecar Race Conditions in .NET when using Secret Stores?

Although the Dapr sidecar is stating that it blocks untils the application is ready to serve on its port, we can still access Secrets through it and use them in our application startup.

build

Microsoft Build 2023: Highlights for App Developers

Last week, Microsoft's annual Developer conference took place and besides interesting sessions, a bunch of new announcements have been made. This post summarizes the most important ones for App Developers, along with a list of recommended sessions to watch.

The ultimate guide to Git Hooks

A comprehensive guide around what Git Hooks are and what to use them for, their challenges and how to deal with them, tools to manage their dependencies easier, how to cross-check Git Hooks in when checking pull requests and how to mitigate findings and policy violations.

azure

Redirect WebSockets to different backends in Azure API Management

Azure API Management supports proxying WebSocket connections between clients and multiple backends. Adding a WebSocket API to API Management configures the handshake operation automatically. But what if we want to chose a backend based on the WebSockets URL? Let's explore our options.

Useful Developer Tools

Useful Developer Tools #16: Free Userpics Pack

A collection of 100 hand-drawn dummy user profile pictures for your next App Design

Optimizing Network Traffic across Availability Zones in Kubernetes

Spanning Kubernetes Clusters across multiple Availability Zones is common when optimizing for resiliency but brings additional challenges like network performance and costs when workloads need to communicate with each other across zones.

Useful Developer Tools

Useful Developer Tools #15: ketall

When working with Kubernetes, you will come to a point where you want to list all resources in a cluster or namespace. The kubectl command-line tool has a command for that, but unfortunately it does only list Pods, Services and Deployments. Ketall is a kubectl Plugin, which show really all

build

Microsoft Build 2021: Developer and Cloud Native Highlights

Microsoft's yearly Build Conference took place last week and brought us a bunch of new announcements around Microsoft Azure. Here are my highlights from a cloud-native and developer perspective.

Develop against a remote instance of Ory Kratos from localhost

Ory Kratos uses secure cookies, which cannot travel across domains. This can become a problem when testing an app on localhost against a remote instance of Ory Kratos. Here is, what you can do.

github

Deploy Pull Requests for Review into Kubernetes with GitHub Actions

To review a Pull Request, it can be helpful to deploy it temporarily. The infrastructure and the application must be prepared for this.