Is StackSocial legit? I bought Windows 11 Pro for less than $20

StackSocial, an online marketplace owned by StackCommerce is seemingly always running the deal of a lifetime on Windows 11 Pro. StackSocial is offering the software with a retail value of $199 with 89% off. Reputable technology websites like ZDNET, CNET, Android Police, Cult of Mac, and PCMag are running commission-based promotions on Microsoft Software from StackSocial.

XPS 13 9345 Snapdragon X Elite Review

After my improbable love story with the MacBook Pro M1 I have descended further into madness. Awed by the ARM architecture of the MacBook Pro, I decided that I needed to get my paws on one of those new Windows ARM-based Copilot+ PCs. Being a longtime fan of Dell’s XPS product series, I bought the XPS 13 9345 Snapdragon® X Elite X1E-80-100.

iSwitched: From GNU/Linux to macOS

For reasons that currently escape me, I bought a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro during a black Friday sale back in 2021. After feeling somewhat discouraged with the latest offerings in the Enterprise Linux world, I decided it was time to unwrap the MacBook and have a closer look at macOS. Now, six months later, I thought it would be fun to look back on this journey and maybe get an answer to the dreaded question: Is macOS better than Linux?

Hetzner deprecated my CX11 server plan

After logging into my Hetzner account, I was met with a message informing me that my current cloud server plan was being deprecated. I could either choose to keep my existing server plan or rescale it. In my experience, this approach is usually a disguised upsell attempt, but thankfully not so with Hetzner.

Raivo OTP breaks users' one-time passwords

Finding a solid and reliable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) that you can trust is not a task to be taken lightly. For iOS, my choice has been the open-source application Raivo OTP. However, after yesterday’s automatic update, I no longer have my OTPs.

openSUSE Tumbleweed needs to fix Secure Boot

After my recent rant about Enterprise Linux, the company where I work became a SUSE Linux partner. Therefore, I’m giving Enterprise Linux another go. After initially looking at SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED), I decided to go with SUSE’s rolling offering, Tumbleweed.

HTTP/3 on Nginx – Be QUIC or be Dead

The Nginx mainline branch (currently version 1.25.3) has implemented support for HTTP/3 and I want it on my server. The first order of business will be to switch from the nginx stable branch (currently version 1.24.0) to the mainline branch. As Arch Linux provides both Nginx branches in their repository, it’s just a matter of performing a quick drop-in replacement.

Fedora 39 breaks Chromium-based browsers after a Mesa update

I temporarily return to Fedora and am welcomed back by more breakage. The first thing I did after updating and restarting my Fedora laptop was to fire up the Cider app to connect to Apple Music. It immediately croaked with its dying words being Skia shader compilation error. That felt eerily familiar, as I remember facing the same problem on Fedora a few months back.

I'm giving up on Enterprise Linux on the desktop

This is not another post about the never happening “Year of the Linux desktop”. I’ve been running GNU/Linux on my desktop for more than 20 years without ever believing the grass was greener on the other side. However, three years ago, I reluctantly replaced my Slackware Linux installations with the offerings from Linux Enterprise providers Canonical and Red Hat.

About all those -k.html backlinks to your website

Since the end of last year, most of my backlinks have originated from websites without any relevant connection to my content. However, they’re suspiciously similar, identified by the suffix of the referring URL being -k.html. Another distinct feature of the backlinks is that they’re only targeting (as in hotlinking) images.