benschwarz

Founder & Product developer @ calibreapp.com. Into sustainability, online privacy, cycling, photography, music, hiking, native country and creative pursuits 🌞

My website: https://germanforblack.com
Calibre: https://calibreapp.com
GitHub: https://github.com/benschwarz

Last Notes

2026-05-24 00:00:22 UTC

This project allows you to remove your personal data from 500+ data brokers. It does automated opts-out using web forms, solves captchas, and tracks it in a local database. Can be run monthly.
https://github.com/stephenlthorn/auto-identity-remove

2026-05-18 01:44:25 UTC

If you ignore the health, ethical, social, moral, financial, environmental, creative, cultural, privacy, quality, legal and geopolitical concerns, then this thing really has legs!!

2026-05-06 07:14:19 UTC

Bunnings, a giant retailer in Australia just dropped their updated privacy policy, and boy. they like collecting data:
customer identity (gore PII), credit history, income details, images of you in store, online activity/habits/interests
and of course, use cookies to track you across the web

2026-04-22 01:37:26 UTC

🆕 On the blog: How I built Calibre’s new dynamic hexagonal world map, in just 10kb.
https://calibreapp.com/blog/building-our-beloved-hex-map
https://cdn.masto.host/frontendsocial/media_attachments/files/116/445/793/331/057/252/original/562a5097d2d21412.png

2026-03-04 11:04:33 UTC

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Pouring one out for anyone still using CGI module

2026-01-19 21:01:35 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@sir_pepe/115923413113414435
This article provides the perfect view into React brain worms:
Instead of a native HTML input radio element
It’s somehow easier to import hundreds of lines of code, and implement a faux radio button (that’s actually a button with svg to LOOK LIKE A RADIO), and ARIA rules (to WORK LIKE A RADIO)
#note19wx…kfs2

2024-11-26 05:12:35 UTC

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I am “offended by word of the year” years old

2024-11-11 01:19:29 UTC

TIL: MacOS has a built in `networkquality` command you can use to test network speed and latency
https://cdn.masto.host/frontendsocial/media_attachments/files/113/461/687/482/590/419/original/8c01821642fe94b5.png

2024-10-21 00:55:50 UTC

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that sounds a bit like the tech screaming pillow I wanted to patent

2024-09-26 01:26:30 UTC

Based on first-hand stories about Matt Mullenweg, none of this is surprising whatsoever.

2024-09-14 10:20:55 UTC

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my old neighbourhood dropped from 40 to 30km/h and while plenty of drivers struggled to a) pay attention b) drive below the limit, it genuinely made the area nicer to walk in, quieter and a bit more chill in general.

2024-09-13 00:02:56 UTC

🕵️ Still using Chrome?
How do you feel about any site being able to call `document.browsingTopics()`to learn all about you?
https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/private-advertising/topics/web/topic-classification

2024-08-21 02:43:23 UTC

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In my tests the removals persisted… but as another commenter said, probably wouldn't be good for a site you frequent (assuming ad containers periodically get updated), but is good to get crap out of the way.
Having said that, doesn't replace the need for an adblocker!

2024-08-15 01:37:13 UTC

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react 😁

2024-08-14 08:17:44 UTC

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by getting popped I mean that the provider somehow exposes/leaks information to an attacker.
A unique password limits the damage to a single provider, but passwords do still rely on good security practices like safe resets, rate limiting, encryption, salting etc etc
I say this as both someone who maintains auth for an app, but also a user. The organisational risk of passwords feels too high imo so I’m quite interested in leaving passwords behind!

2024-08-14 07:10:23 UTC

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do you blindly trust random websites have good security policies (salting passwords, encryption etc?)? Or use another login mechanism? What happens when someone gets popped?

2024-08-14 05:54:20 UTC

If you see passkeys authentication offered by a website signup, are you using it?

2024-07-31 17:03:15 UTC

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when the company fails they’ll still have a saleable asset, tho getting the same as they’ve paid for it is probably going to be difficult