Hardware

As written last month in My homeserver is dying in slow motion it just crashed again a day after. Of course while I was in Paris for the EWC so no chance to fix it. In an impulse I decided against another DIY build PC as homeserver and settled with the Aoostar WTR Pro which is a really compact 4-Bay NAS. Aoostar WTR Pro - a NAS? Yes and no. It is basically marketed as a NAS but not like QNAP or Synology, it does not come with a own OS at all. It is basically a mini embeded PC with a AMD 5825U (8 Corese up to 4.5GHz) which consume near half of the wattage my old Intel i3 did (35W vs 60W) and have more than double performace and the whole case with 4 bay 3.5" is about 1/4 of the size of my old case. ...

And with slowly I mean slowly to the point where it actually not bothering me enough to take action immediatly… Did you ever had that? A piece of Hardware slowly losing it’s reliability but refuses to die properly. It just dies enough to bother but not fully so you actually need to spend money and solve it. Maybe it’s a me problem, but I refuse to replace tech which is actually working. Not because I want to save a few bucks, but becaus well - cite the meme - “This is fine” nad partly it is. ...

I mean isn’t it a totaly adult and viable decision to directly buy a tech thing after you read a bunch of blogs writing about it? Yeah, absolutely :) And as some of the Podcasts I listen also mentioned this one I was sold. As you can see on Bubbles how this is really in everyones “mouth” in the last days. What the… ? Well the XTEINK X4 isn’t just a regular boring ebook reader. It’s also not going to replace my 8" ebook reader, but it is tiny, it fits in my palm allowing me to really just have it with me everywhere. ...

Minor Blog Extensions First I added asciinema support to better show some console stuff. ASCIInema allows to record a terminal session in text and replay it as text. So no wasteful GIF or blurry MP4 for just text. You can see the first use of it in this blog in my FZF SSH Parser Article. Then inspired by Naty I also implemented humans.txt [?] and human.json [?] standards to this blog. Im not so big in all the Indieweb standards. But specially in times of AI slob everywhere, it cant hurt to have more humans on the web. ...

This short Article is in addition to my Pockethernet V2 Review I posted last year December. At the time of writing the original Article there was a announced BER Loop Adapter and ID Plugs but not available at that time. Now some time later this changed and I clicked them in the official Pockethernet store. Brief preface; I am neither sponsored by Pockethernet nor have I received anything for free; everything here was purchased by me through normal means and is in regular use by myself. ...

Not an lenghy Article, just posting my findings for whoever may need it. The Hardware: i-tec USB-C 4K Metall Nano Docking Station Named by the bulky name i-tec USB-C 4K Metall Nano Docking Station 1x HDMI 1x GLAN 3x USB 3.0 1x SD/MicroSD 1x Audio Power Delivery 100W I found mine on Amazon. Port-wise, it has what I need. Mostly I use this kind of light dock if I work remotely or at events to attach one screen, network, mouse and have it charging my laptop. So I can quickly grab it when I need to go somewhere. ...

Currently I use as my productivity working device a Tuxedo Laptop, the Infinity book pro 14". It is about 1.5yrs old and started acting up in december when it comes to battery. The Battery sometimes was overnight discharging to 0% even the laptop was powered off. Also it showed a reduced maximal capacity. In Linux you can check your battery stats quickly with upower -b the old battery looked like this: ...

Uhhm sometimes you realize how lucky you been buying your PC Upgrade at the right time. Shortly after Gamescom 2025 I upgraded my home desktop to new CPU and Motherboard also decided to make the jump from DDR4 to DDR5… I read about the recent explosion in RAM prices but little did I realize how huge it actually is on some specific RAM Models. An eye opener screenshot, the Store page where I bought my 64 GB DDR5 MT6000 Kit. Same Kit in September vs exactly 3 Month later in December. 264 € vs 1.748 € Uhmmm… ...

Pockethernet 2: Hands-On Test of the Revived Network Tester Some years ago, at a event, I could try the original Pockethernet V1. At this time I owned a bigger Tester with display, mostly not with me because to heavy for every day carry. The Pocketethernet looked like a interesting0 small tester for cables and simple network checks, but after playing a bit with it I didn’t like it much. The App was mediocre, I had issues with the connection but now, fast forward: ...

Got one Ubiquiti Unifi 10G Ethernet Adapter, model UACC-Adapter-RJ45-USBC-10GE. In the past, I’ve mostly got StarTech adapters for 10G Copper, but right now they’re either sold out or going for double the price. The Unifi 10G is 150€ plus tax, it fits what I need. First off, it plugged right in on my Linux laptop running kernel 6.14 and a MacBook Air. No fuss with drivers or anything. Here’s what the kernel spit out on Linux: ...

Sometimes the smallest things can drive you insane. After rebuild of my gaming PC I started getting random screen flickers and digital tearing on my 1440p ultrawide OLED monitor. Not all the time, just enough to make me question my sanity. First thought: GPU’s dying? But how odd would that been just after a PC rebuild. I wiped Windows 11 and reinstalled everything, random flickers still there. Turns out, it was the stupid DisplayPort cable. A 3m DP1.4 one, which on paper should handle my setup no problem, bandwidth-wise. But nope, it was flaky, probably connector broken. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Intel NUCs from two generations ago have a nice feature: a multicolor LED Ring and Power LED that you can control by software. I use an i5 9th gen NUC at home as my “Homeserver, IoT, whatever” device. I created a tiny script running as cron every minute to set the LED Color depending on the internet connection “quality”. I’m not really pulling data from the modem; for my purposes, it’s not necessary. I just want to have a quick solution to let others in my family at home see if there are any issues or not. You know the situation: Wife cannot open a certain internet page or something is loading very slowly. “What’s wrong with our internet?” Most of the time the answer is “Nothing - it’s not on our end,” but now I have a quick way to visualize if anything may be wrong. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Thanks to the Unitymedia Expansion in Bochum I have a Gigabit connection for quite some time now. Unfortunately the previous router had some problems with it. Also the function of the router was not according to what I would like to see for myself. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Translation This original post is written in german 🇩🇪, a rough Translation: I set up my own Freifunk hotspot: a TP-Link CPE210 v1.1, great value and unexpectedly wide range, covering half a three-story house even behind it. It runs as FF-BO-WAT-Bismarckplatz, offering free WiFi at Bismarckplatz. Coverage in Bochum is sparse; no nearby mesh partner yet. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. After some days with the new Microsoft Surface 4 Pro I’m quite happy with it. One thing bugged me was the poorly SSD Performance. Microsoft use a Samsung M2 SSD with NVMe Protocol, actually a quite fast little thing. But a SSD Benchmark showed me unbelieveable bad performance at the Random Write and Threaded read: ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Translation This original post is written in german 🇩🇪, a rough Translation: Nvidia markets the GTX 950 as a “MOBA card” with latency optimizations. In reality, there’s no special MOBA chip; the driver sets pre-rendered frames to 0 or 1 for popular MOBAs, reducing delay. You don’t need a new card—adjust this in the Nvidia Control Panel under Manage 3D Settings. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Translation This original post is written in german 🇩🇪, a rough Translation: Fire TV is basically an Android phone without a display, with HDMI and a good remote for €49. You can control it with adb. In many cities worldwide, TV is fully digital IPTV via Ethernet; in Germany it’s still cable/satellite. FTTH is needed; DSL 16/0.5 isn’t broadband. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Translation This original post is written in german 🇩🇪, a rough Translation: Finally a weekend at home; I cleaned out my tech cabinet. For sale were: PS3 80GB with games/accessories, my gaming PC (Core i7, 12GB RAM, GTX770), Fritz!Box 7390, Google Nexus 10. Update: all gone. I still have other PCs; console barely used. Found cables, old HDDs, junk for disposal. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Translation This original post is written in german 🇩🇪, a rough Translation: Hardware review of the LG Ultrawide Monitor 29EA93 focused on gaming. 29-inch IPS panel, 2560x1080 (21:9), 67.5cm x 28.5cm, good contrast, black levels, and wide viewing angles. Many games supported 21:9 without settings; e.g., League of Legends shows more view, giving a slight tactical advantage. ...

Hey, just a heads-up that this content is based on an automatically imported version from our old CMS. If the formatting isn’t perfect, I’m sorry about that. Translation This original post is written in german 🇩🇪, a rough Translation: Genius used to be known; my first beige two-button mouse was from them. Since 1986 brands like Roccat, Razer, Logitech, SteelSeries dominated. With the Genius Maurus targeting North America, they chase MadCatz. Mouse shape is subjective, software often buggy. Marketing claims: over-clocking SG Core, 21 macros, precision, 20G. ...