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Two months ago, I decided to buy two Bitcoin ASIC Miners. The reason is quite simple: I am easy to get bored when I have everything prepared and ready to be used. 😴 Particularly if we are talking about technologies and computers. There is no fun if I can’t learn from crafting it, right?

When “The 21 Bitcoin computer” was announced I was surprised to see a Raspberry Pi device with a huge black brick on top of it: an ASIC Chip that mines between 50 and 120Gh/s. Basically it is an “already assembled and configured” device that can mine and be a Bitcoin full node. 👍

Few days ago, while watching The Martian something special happened to me: I got my first epileptic seizure. I don’t remember that much of that evening, but I realized how much I grew up by moving away from Italy, and deciding to stop working for Startups.

Since when I was little, I always loved peer-to-peer technologies… I even tried to create a GNU/Linux distribution based on that. .. but recently I have discovered a brilliant project that is combining the power of asynchronous cryptography, using Bitcoin private and public keys, with BitTorrent technology. This project is called ZeroNet and it is a new and interesting way to provide websites and real-time services in a p2p network.

It’s been a long time, and finally, exactly when I forgot about it, my Pebble Time arrived. Because the web is full of people excited to review this product, I decided to wear one for 2 weeks before writing this post… and my review is probably different than the others.

During the last month I started experimenting a lot with some editors for software development. I’ve been playing for 2 weeks with Atom and Visual Studio Code and here are my impressions from a Mac and Sublime user.

If you think that a keyboard layout can boost your productivity, you should consider the time you will spend to learn a new one, the hassle and the frustration when typing something wrong… but if you love programming, you may consider to buy/switch to the international keyboard. Back in February, I had to switch to a new MacBookPro. My old 2011 13 inch MacBookPro, started being impossible to use… and after 4 years I had to remove all the stickers from its back and turn it off forever.

I really care about keeping the OS clean and untouched. Sometimes, when I have to develop using specific softwares and tools, I have to modify core and important sections of the system on my Mac or PC, and this can create some problems with package managers (like homebrew for Mac OS X; or like APT, pacman or yum for GNU/Linux)… For example, few months ago I installed node.js on my Mac using the official package.

Since I started working at bigger startups, like MinbilDinbil, I had to face the problem of providing pages to a larger amount of users every day. For this reason, it is really important to use a CDN service like CloudFlare, in order to provide a good user experience on our website: we don’t want our clients wait too much to load the homepage! How do we do that? The author of GNU grep once said:

During the 2014 I’ve learned how much privacy and security are important. Apart from my “nerdy needs”, I started observing my habits, considering who reads what and where my important information are stored online. My bank accounts, passwords, email and some private conversations should stay private and encrypted. Some other information should still be available to somebody as other documents could be read by anyone.

I am in the world of bitcoin since 2012 when I opened my first bitcoin wallet on blockchain.info… and a lot of things changed since that moment: new services, growing communities, new alternative crypto currencies, ATMs, Credit-Debit cards, and a larger diffusion of people accepting bitcoin in their shops. After those two years I can see a better view of what Bitcoin means to me and the innovation behind that technology, including Xapo debit card… and some of my friends are tired of me talking about bitcoins :)