hrbrmstr's Daily Drop

  • Drop #659 (2025-06-03): Typography Tuesday

    Today’s typography-centric edition of the Drop again discusses the risks posed by modern printer surveillance, which can trace printed materials back to their sources, highlighting the importance of returning to analog methods like letterpress printing for security. It also features two free fonts: Comic Shanns Mono and Empty Marker, suitable for coding and creative uses,…

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #656 (2025-05-26): A Different Kind Of Memor[y|ial] Day

    Today’s Drop emerges from a brutal travel/work week for a Memor[y|ial] focused issue that takes a peek at the DuckDB 1.3.0 release, which enhances data analysis with external file caching, improving performance by 75%, and introduces recursive query functionality for complex data structures. It further showcases jOOQ enables type-safe SQL queries in Java/Kotlin and features…

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #640 (2025-04-17): Twisted Topics Thursday

    Today’s Drop discusses MotherDuck’s #DuckDB Model Context Protocol server with a walk through a look at my sensor network data. It further highlights the rise of automated bots, which now constitute 51% of web traffic, and, lastly, emphasizes the privacy concerns surrounding modern web browsers’ telemetry practices.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #622 (2025-03-17): Monday Morning Grab Bag

    Today’s Drop covers Plonk.li — a new gist service on the ATproto network, storing pastes in Personal Data Servers to enhance data portability; Nash — a portable web-based note-taking app without server dependencies, supporting various formatting options;; and highlights Arc Browser’s new integrated ad blocker.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #584 (2025-01-02): Looking Back To Move Forward

    Today’s Drop discusses the 2024 digital landscape which shows that global internet access is unequal, with only two-thirds online and substantial disparities between income levels; IPv6 adoption surpassed 30%, and decentralized networks like Threads and Bluesky gained millions of users. 👀 to see where we’ve been and where we might be headed in these areas.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #583 (2025-01-01): Wrapping Day

    The inaugural Drop of 2025 takes a look back at the Drops of 2024, my 2025+ daily drivers, and covers a new-to-me tool: Mise.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #580 (2024-12-20): Safety First

    Today’s Drop puts us back into the safety zone, starting with “The 2025 Digital Security Checklist” which highlights strong passwords, encryption, and multi-factor authentication as essential for protecting digital assets. We then get introduced to systemd’s Credentials system to avoid keeping seekrits in the clear. Finally — just in time for the holiday season —…

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #578 (2024-12-18): Wonkish Wednesday

    Today’s very wonky Drop showcases 3 RFCs: HTTP Message Signatures enhance message integrity beyond TLS; RFC 9620 emphasizes designing protocols considering human rights; and RFC 9557 improves timestamp formats, allowing for rich metadata.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #567 (2024-12-06): In Defense Of…

    Today’s Drop explores three distinct topics centered around safety. We take a deep look into DuckDB’s sophisticated query optimization capabilities, examine a new security tool for GitHub Actions workflows, and review the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s comprehensive guide to surveillance self-defense. Each section provides practical insights and actionable guidance for their respective domains.

    hrbrmstr

  • Drop #552 (2024-11-08): One. Step. Forward.

    Today’s unexpected Drop emphasizes online safety, privacy, and resilience amidst growing threats from tech companies and governments. It starts a conversation about secure communication tools like Signal and offers resources for reducing online privacy exposures.

    hrbrmstr