To boost my article visibility on the fractured internet, reposting to larger platforms is my strategy to grow and HackerNoon has been my choice for years. However, this platform is a boat which sinks even faster than Medium. I have been rejected arbitrarily by the editor earlier this year just for minor formatting improvements, which is still tolerable. This time, they not only rejected my submission, but also banned me from the platform for no reason whatsoever. I can’t find any information in my Inbox, notifications or anywhere else. Whenever I’m trying to edit or write a post, I get a red warning saying “You have been banned”. ...

As a book reader, I read over a hundred books each year and collect much more. The preferred format is absolutely EPUB, however, I can’t always get books in EPUB/MOBI especially for rare or old books. Usually, they are available in PDF if at all. Some of these PDFs are manually scanned in a barely readable condition. I wouldn’t blame on them since I’ve been doing that before and know that is not easy. What I need is a tool to convert the not so readable book into a readable one with OCR and LLM, that is MinerU. ...

Recently, I downloaded an old documentary made in early 2000s. The original resolution was 854×480 with a less than 1000 KB/S bitrate. Because I like the content so there is enough reason to enhance my watching experience. Download installer instead of the zip pack from k4yt3x’s github repo, this will install all binaries and dependencies for Windows. After restart the system, open video2x and load a video, it can automatically detect the GPU if it exists. Gaming GPU with higher frequency/hashrate is preferred over larger VRAM in this case. ...

Since I was a teenager, I have started voluntarily helping people around me with my skill of technology. This time, I’m helping someone to build up a robust, secure and cost-effective firewall/gateway/soft router at home. It ends up on a $100 worth N100 mini-pc with dual Ethernet port, which can be a great pfSense box for home or even business use. Hardware Tweaks This model (T8PLUS) secured with 4 screws at outside, after removing them the outer case can be easily pried open (just a little bit more effort than Intel NUCs), and removing 4 more screws inside to get the access of the motherboard (way more simpler design of the power button comparing to NUCs). ...

Recently, YouTube is messing with user disobedience again. For the sake of that, FreeTube has been updating with fix multiple times. Although FreeTube has fixed the API block done by YouTube, I have to deal with a new IP block from my end as its aftermath. “YouTube has blocked your IP address from watching videos. Please try switching to a different VPN or proxy.” There are many ways to get around this IP block. Because I think switching VPN server is too heavy just for this, I would like to use a proxy. ...