DevOps

I Built a PDF Toolbox That Never Uploads Your Files — Here's How

Every "free online PDF tool" uploads your files to a server. I built one that doesn't — and here's the technical breakdown. The Privacy Problem Try th…

Why I stopped copy-pasting JSON into online converters and built TypeMorph

Why I stopped copy-pasting JSON into online converters and built TypeMorph Every developer has done it. You grab a JSON response from an API, paste it…

rclone crypt: encrypt files client-side before they touch any cloud

If you want files encrypted before they ever reach a cloud provider — so the provider only ever sees ciphertext — rclone crypt is the simplest tool th…

I built a document converter that never uploads your files

Every time you use an online PDF converter, your file travels to a server somewhere — processed by a company you don't know, stored temporarily on har…

I'm building local voice dictation that turns talk into finished text — commit messages, tickets, clean prose — all on your own machine

I talk most of my AI-coding prompts now instead of typing them, and I wanted a tool that does more than transcribe: you speak, and it gives you finish…

Why I Stopped Using ChatGPT and Built My

Why I Stopped Using ChatGPT and Built My Discover the shift from cloud-dependent AI to digital sovereignty and why running your own local LLM is the u…

Launched a free DSGVO compliance scanner — scanned 200+ sites, 73% had violations

Originally written for r/SideProject on Reddit — sharing here for the dev.to community. TL;DR: Built a free tool that scans websites for GDPR/DSGVO co…

What a Mailman service shutdown reveals about the state of mailing lists in 2026

DreamHost is shutting down their hosted Mailman service on July 31. If you run a list there, you already know. If you don't, it's worth understanding …

Building for Indonesia? What UU PDP Actually Requires From Developers (a Practical Checklist)

If your product touches users in Indonesia, the country's Personal Data Protection Law — UU PDP, Law 27/2022 — is now fully in force. The two-year tra…

E.L.L.A. — Embedded Local Logic Agent

Building a Privacy-First AI Assistant for Windows — The Directive Architecture Every AI assistant I've ever used made the same assumption: the intelli…

Architecting isolated workspaces with Kasm: hardened, egress-controlled, disposable

TL;DR: A hardened Kasm Workspace deployment where every research session runs in an isolated, egress-controlled, throwaway container. Four layers (ser…

ChatGPT's New Memory Doesn't Ask Permission First

On June 4, OpenAI rolled out Dreaming V3 to ChatGPT Plus and Pro users in the US. The pitch is simple: ChatGPT now remembers you properly. Not because…

Age verification is coming. Free Software can build it right.

In December 2025, Australia became the first country to ban under-16s from social media. Ten platforms, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, X, and the…

🚀 Rebuilding My Android App with Jetpack Compose: The Mailfo v2.0 Journey

Hey DEV community! 👋 I just completely rebuilt and launched Mailfo v2.0 , an privacy-focused temporary disposable email app for Android[cite: 1, 2]. T…

AI Independence: Why it Matters More Than You Think

AI Independence: Why it Matters More Than You Think Discover why moving toward local-first AI is about more than just privacy—it's about reclaiming yo…

Top 5 Vulnerability Scanners in 2026: Beyond CVE Matching and False Positives

The vulnerability management landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. For a long time, vulnerability scanners focused on discovering servic…

Your AI Vendor Says 'Trust Us' with Your Data. There's a Better Option.

Your AI vendor says "trust us" with your data. At the end of June, ByteDance's Doubao (豆包) officially ends its free tier and starts charging for API c…

Spectre and Meltdown: When CPUs Leak Secrets by Guessing

For decades, processor designers chased speed by letting the CPU run ahead of itself — executing instructions before it was certain they were needed, …

Why Windows Still Can't Open HEIC Files in 2026 (And What Actually Works)

The scenario is familiar: someone takes a photo on an iPhone, sends it to you over email or WhatsApp. You try to open it on Windows — a warning appear…

PewDiePie built an open-source AI workspace, and the point is bigger than the hype

PewDiePie launching an open-source AI project sounds like one of those internet headlines you have to read twice. But it is real. Felix Kjellberg, bet…

I built 5 free VPN diagnostic tools — here's what most online testers miss

TL;DR I built and published 5 free VPN diagnostic tools on AnonymFlow. The methodology behind them — what they measure, why it matters, what other "VP…

Run Cursor with a Local Model: Privacy-First AI Coding Without a Subscription

This article was originally published on runaihome.com If you write code for a living, your IDE is now an AI agent — Cursor, GitHub Copilot , Claude C…

Why Searching Encrypted Data Is Harder Than Most Developers Think

Most developers take search for granted. Add a search bar. Query the database. Return matching results. Simple. At least that's what I thought before …

Why I built OrganizeShots — a browser-based screenshot organizer

I had 500+ screenshots on my phone — OTPs, payments, WhatsApp chats — all mixed up. Finding anything was impossible. Existing apps required cloud uplo…

Self-Hosted VPN in 2026: WireGuard, Headscale, NetBird and More Compared

Using a commercial VPN means handing your traffic to a third party, paying monthly, and accepting their network rules. For developers and homelab oper…

Cloudflare Turnstile requiring fingerprintable WebGL

Test a DNS Leak in 2 Minutes: Complete Methodology + Per-OS Fixes (2026)

TL;DR Testing for a DNS leak takes 2 minutes: connect your VPN, open dnsleaktest.com and run the Extended Test, then check whether the DNS servers det…

How to not Lose $500M via API Bills: Run Private AI for 100 Engineers Under $1 Million

Last week a company nobody can name spent $500 million in a single month on Anthropic's Claude API. Not $500K. Not $5M. Half a billion dollars. In one…

[Day 9] A local Japanese sentiment AI (BERT) read 8 years of a LINE chat, and the ups and downs surfaced from numbers alone

Intro Day 9. Today is less about model internals and more of a personal experiment: have a local AI analyze the entire chat history with one LINE frie…

Part 8: Free Self-Hosted Mind Mapping for a Home Lab: Why I Put a Significant Part of MindMapVault on GitHub

When people say they build a privacy-first product, I ask one simple question: How much of the implementation story is publicly verifiable? For MindMa…