War in Europe

In General () – 2022-02-25, edited Leave a comment

On February 24, 2022, a state of war was declared in Ukraine after Russia launched an attack on Ukraine on the night of February 23-24, 2022.

On February 25, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered general mobilization. The order includes the drafting of conscripts and reservists, and men between the ages of 18 and 60 can no longer leave the country.

Two people I’ve been working closely together over the last few months are software developers from the Ukraine. My thoughts are with you and your families and friends and I wish all the people there that they get through these difficult times without much suffering.

Good bye MagiskHide

In Android – Leave a comment

As early as May 2021, the developer of Magisk announced that he will start working in the Google Platform Security Team (also see XDA about this). This also means that MagiskHide – a method for hiding root access – is no longer supported. As of version 24.0, installing Magisk inevitably means that you can’t use apps that no longer run on rooted devices.

Since I need some apps in everyday life that can only be used without root access, this means for me that I will not use Magisk any longer. Data backups and adjustments in the system are a bit more cumbersome because this is only possible in the recovery ROM – but at least not impossible. Fortunately using the custom ROM by xiaomi.eu on my Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite is also not a problem – apps won’t complain as long as Magisk is not installed :-).

Working from home and power consumption

In General – Leave a comment

Due to the Covid 19 pendamic I work from home since about march 2020 at my computer and this will likely not change very soon in the current situation. This is clearly noticeable in the power consumption which is around 1000 kWh more per year.

Concrete figures:

March 2018 – March 2019 1664 kWh
March 2019 – March 2020 1629 kWh
March 2020 – March 2021 2621 kWh

The billing for the past year is still pending, but it will probably not be much less than 2600 kWh. The monthly payments were already adjusted at the beginning of 2021, which amounts to over 300 EUR more per year. However, I assume that due to rising electricity prices this will not be enough.

After all, it is positive that the consumption for our two-person household without working from home is well below 2000 kWh per year despite a refrigerator, dishwasher and washing machine – the value that energy suppliers normally assume for a household of this size in an apartment. The fact that the entire apartment is equipped with LED lighting (usually lamps with a power consumption of 7 to 10 watts) certainly also contributes to this.