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Organizing All of Your Screenshots

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 15:36:47 +0800

Screenshots… These days, we all have literally THOUSANDS of them. Although each image is usually small because screenshot resolutions tend to be much lower than those of photos taken with your rear camera, once you have thousands of them, the collection can be, uhhh, quite large.

Problems

Deleting them is most people’s choice, I suppose. But it always upsets me to think that I might have screenshotted useful credentials (I know it’s not safe, but hey, sometimes you don’t get to choose) or useful chat histories. I might not go over them anytime soon, but deleting them is just not my cup of tea.

Booting Raspberry Pi From NVMe SSD (but differently)

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 17:25:15 +0800

Intro

Raspberry Pis have always been the go-to platform for geeks to tinker with, but there’s a crucial problem.

For many years, microSD cards were the only storage medium for Raspberry Pis, and, as you may know, they are pretty darn slow. Even the fastest cards, say, SanDisk Extreme Pro, perform better than average cards, but they are still nowhere near even those DRAM-less QLC SSDs.

Fortunately, after the Raspberry Pi 5 came out with a PCIe Gen 2 bus, NVM Express SSDs can now be used on Raspberry Pis.

Where Have I Been...

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:43 +0800

Wow… It has literally been nearly a year (July 31, 2025) since I last wrote. I believe many of you were wandering where have I been. Don’t worry, I was doing perfectly well in real life and was purely because I was busy and didn’t have time to write. 😂

Where have I been

Study. If you know me well, you should know that I was a senior student of a senior high school. And quite literally I didn’t have time to write.

Encrypting disks on Linux using LUKS

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 23:36:00 +0800

As the era passes, we are in serious need of encrypting our disks. Built-in encryption software, such as BitLocker in Microsoft Windows and FileVault in macOS, is both amazing.

Though BitLocker has been proven to be vulnerable.

In GNU/Linux, we have some great alternatives. The best and most popular one must be LUKS, aka cryptsetup.

So today I’m going to share how to encrypt your drive in Linux.

Caution

Everything on that drive will be erased and unrecoverable (as the encryption software will randomly fill part of the drive), so please back everything up.)

[Follow-Up] Removable eUICCs

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 23:30:00 +0800

It’s been a long time since my last post about eUICCs. A lot things have changed since then.

Major changes

5ber.eSIM has gone bankrupt and it’s said that their employees’ insurance was in debt for months before the entire company went collapsed. However, the technical team has started a new company called XeSIM. It’s fundamentally the exact same thing as original 5ber.eSIM, same solution, same card manufactured by Eastcompeace. DON’T BUY IT.

Secretly Generating Keys

Thu, 16 Jan 2025 16:11:42 +0800

Generating cryptographic keys is the most important* part in the cryptography world.

Why and How?

random numbers

I’m not going to talk about the theories and principles of cryptography, but there’s one thing you need to know that, for asymmetric cryptography, the keys are everything. Your private keys take the responsibility of authenticating, decrypting and signing etc.

Therefore, there are mainly two important parts. The first one is to safely generate your keys. Keys are essentially processed random numbers. The randomness of the numbers is of most significance. However, computers, as a strict and accurate machine, is not good at doing these kinds of things that need entropy (the randomness_).

2024 Final Review

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:56:14 +0800

Wow it’s been another year. This year, a lot of things have changed.

Life

This year, I’ve finally reached my age of 16! I’ve gone to Nanjing twice, visited a lot of places of interest; I’ve also met some of my friends which we originally met online offline :), which is a big step forward towards my relationship circle.

There aren’t really many things to be written about my life, cuz there’s really nothing important happening :(. Everyday seems to be the exact same.

Removable eUICCs...

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 15:36:24 +0800

This post has some updates! Available at: here

eSIM, aka embedded SIM cards, a new form of SIM cards. The traditional SIM cards are essentially a Java Card with customized applet on it. You need to use this card in order to connect to the cellular network. But as time goes by, these little plastic SIM cards seem to be out-of-fashion. That’s when eSIM comes into play. You can straight download your carrier’s profile onto your phone and enable it. Puff! It works just like the traditional SIM card.

S/MIME Signatures on Git

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 15:33:27 +0800

S/MIME, our old friend, usually used to sign and encrypt emails. Essentially it’s a standard to ensure the authenticity and security of your communications, especially emails. However, it can also be used to sign regular data. You guessed it, we are going to use it to sign Git commits.

The difference between PGP signatures and S/MIME signatures is that the latter requires a central organization to ensure the certificate is trustworthy, and thus it’s popular among corporations. However, as an individual, we can also utilize that.

Using OpenSSL to Sign and Encrypt Data (Simple Guide)

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 22:37:46 +0800

OpenSSL is one of those tools that accompanies us all the time while still being ignored by almost everyone. It is powerful, but it is also complicated and sometimes confusing.

This guide demonstrates two different operations:

Signing: prove that data was signed by the holder of a private key and that it has not been modified.
Encryption: keep data confidential for a particular recipient and detect tampering.

These are not the same thing. A signature does not hide the data, and encryption does not by itself prove who created the data.

How Do I Organize My Storage Today

Tue, 28 May 2024 14:59:00 +0800

Wow, it’s been 2 years since I wrote the last storage-related posts (and that was actually my first blog post ever, learn more)

So, two years have passed, and it’s time to write another one.

Briefly introduction

Despite that I started to focus on privacy and security, the cloud storage is still my main storage medium. But don’t panic just yet, I now have decent amount of local storage as well, and thanks to the magic of moden cryptography, any data stored on the cloud is safe and sound.

Vanity GPG Keys

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 13:52:47 +0800

If you haven’t known what a GPG key is, please close this tutorial.

As we all know, GPG keys have their IDs, they are essentially 40 hexadecimal characters that are used to identify your keys.

Your ID may look like this.

9684 79A1 AFF9 27E3 7D1A  566B B569 0EEE BB95 2194 // GitHub web-flow signing

Usually we just memorize the last 16 characters because it is enough in most cases.

But it’s still hard to remember, is it?

How to Create a Self Signed Certificate Authority

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 21:30:42 +0800

If you have a lab like me, you will probably need to serve some of your services through Web. And speaking of web, we cannot ignore one critical aspect – Security.

The easiest way to secure your websites is to use TLS. However, most easy-to-get certificates for websites are meant for public domains, not for IPs, not to mention internal IPs. Furthermore, you might not feel comfortable exposing your service to your CA.

Why Did I Use OpenBSD for My Remote File Server

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 21:10:39 +0800

So, many of you may know that I am a long-time Linux user.

However, recently many of my friends tried REALLY HARD to convince me to try BSD-based systems.

At first glance, my opinion was a solid NO. I mean, one of the most important thing for me is software ecosystem. Of course, Linux (GNU/Linux) absolutely crushed most operating systems in terms of ecosystems.

Later, as I was looking for a way to configure my remote file server, I decided to give it a try.

How Do I Take Care of My Cryptographic Keys

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 22:35:55 +0800

So, as you start to jump down the rabbit hole of cryptography, you will start to face another question:

How can I take care of my keys?

Well, it’s a long story for everyone, and here’s mine.

Asymmetric

There are symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, and I will walk you through.

OpenPGP Keys

If you have followed my blog for a long time, you might know that I have had two YubiKeys and a couple of smartcards. Those are all being used for OpenPGP (not exclusively though).

DIY OpenPGP SmartCard using SmartPGP

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 22:07:00 +0800

If you have caught up with my blog for a long time, you may know what OpenPGP is. And you probably know what a YubiKey is, which can act as a smartcard.

Traditional OpenPGP stores your private key on your computer, generally in ~/.gnupg, which is nowhere near safe. Storing your private keys to a OpenPGP smartcard has following benefits.

Safe, only people who physically has access to your smartcard and know your PIN can do operations i.e. signing, authenticating, decrypting.

2023 Final Review

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 16:23:12 +0800

It’s been another year. The final review has been delayed on my calendar for like two months. But hey better late than never. It’s time to summarize the past year.

Unlike last year, I wouldn’t explain which month happened which event, but in general.

Study

It’s been a year, and this year I have been admitted to the high school which I was looking forward to across all three years in junior high. Thankfully I did it.

Authencating SSH using YubiKey PIV

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 09:02:15 +0800

If you have ever seen my previous posts, you might know that I have two YubiKeys and a bunch of Linux servers.

Passwords are far from secure when comparing them with a pair of keys.

Technically not a pair of keys, just because I’m talking about asymmetric keys, so a pair of.

But if you decide to switch to Keys instead of Passwords, it’s highly possible that you will run into a trouble when you don’t know how to take care of your keys.

Getting Started With Parchive

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 13:59:35 +0800

What is Parchive?

Parchive is redundant file format. If you lose part of your file in transmission or in storage, you can use a Parchive file to repair it. It’s like RAID for files instead of a whole file system. – parchive.github.io

It uses a codec called Reed-Solomon Codes. Yes, the same codec that is used by RAID-5.

Parchive is essentially parity files for files.

Getting Started

Parchive project has been there for nearly 20 years, thus there are a lot of compatible software that can create/use PAR2 files. Since I always like CLI-like programs, this tutorial will focus on POSIX software.

GnuPG for Everyone

Tue, 18 Jul 2023 18:37:32 +0800

Introduction

In today’s digital age, safeguarding our personal information and communications is of utmost importance. One effective solution to ensure privacy and security is GnuPG (GNU Privacy Guard). In this blog post, we’ll explore what GnuPG is and how it can help you protect your sensitive data from prying eyes.

What is GnuPG?

GnuPG, also known as GNU Privacy Guard, is a software application that allows you to encrypt and sign your data. It acts like a digital lock, ensuring that only the intended recipient can access the information you send. GnuPG is built on the OpenPGP standard, a widely accepted method for encryption and digital signatures.

CSL Mobile Roaming in mainland China Experience

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:34:33 +0800

Recently I have purchased an HK Mobi prepaid SIM card. The card is essentially a Prepaid HKCSL SIM. My plan includes 12 GB of local data, 12 GB of Greater China Roaming data, 2000 minutes of local call, as well as 38 HK$ of balance.

This post focuses on the roaming experience in mainland China, my primary residence.

Test environment

The test machine is a OnePlus 8, the phone supports 5G, but the card only supports 4G/LTE roaming.

SHA, but it displays as words.

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:10:16 +0800

What is SHA & What is the problem

SHA, also Secure Hashing Algorithm, is a widely used hash algorithm. It is used to validate the integrity of your files and messages. However, your hash may looks like this.

e35386cfc8311b630a29da909dff48d3334caf2ee85c6318a86d1496afa5ed14

This is a SHA256sum, it is a 64-byte long string constructed with HEX. It is hard to remember and if you need to verify the integrity of the files with your recipient over, let’s say phone or IRC. This could be hard to communicate.

We switched to Static!

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 01:46:43 +0800

After the careful consideration, we decided to switch to static blog eventually. That’s right, we are ditching WordPress! Originally, we used Neve with WordPress, running on OVHcloud. It works fine, but we all know WordPress is very heavy and slow, especially for low-end machines like the OVH one. Now, we changed a lot. We used Hugo as our static site generator, and used Poison as our theme. I also self-hosted Remark42 as our commenting system, running on Oracle Cloud, and it will be replicated to the United States every day to ensure that our data is safe. Overall, I feel good to switch to a new blogging system, and I can finally write in markdown!!!. – Frank Ruan

Proxmox Backup Client on ARM?

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Proxmox Backup Server/Client is software that helps you protect and secure your important data. It creates and manages backups of your computer systems, files, and virtual machines. It schedules regular backups, stores them safely, and allows easy restoration. It also supports virtual machine backups, making it a comprehensive backup solution.

However, you may find no ARM support for Proxmox Backup Server or Client, just like the Proxmox VE.

http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pbs-client/dists/bookworm/main, as you can see that there is only support for amd64.

Storage stuff which I use.

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Disclaimer

No brands nor manufacturers paid me to write this blog post. It is entirely based on my own experiences.

Introduction

In the ever-evolving landscape of the digital era, our lives have become intricately intertwined with the vast realm of the internet. From streaming our favorite movies and music to capturing precious moments through high-resolution photographs, our reliance on online services continues to grow exponentially. As we immerse ourselves in this digital revolution, the need for robust and efficient storage devices becomes paramount. In this blog post, we embark on a captivating journey to explore the diverse array of storage devices that have become indispensable companions in our quest to preserve, organize, and access our ever-expanding digital world. Join us as we delve into the world of cutting-edge technologies that empower us to embrace the boundless possibilities of the digital age. Get ready to uncover the secrets behind these storage marvels that shape our everyday lives and revolutionize the way we store and safeguard our most cherished memories and data.

Configuring network for Proxmox VE on OCI ARM

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A few months ago, I posted a tutorial on how to install Proxmox VE on the ARM instance of OCI, and this is a follow-up. Original Post

Goal

The goal is to create a container that has NAT IPv4 (only for IPv4 connection, no ports opened, and with PVE, it is not possible to do that, at least with no official methods), and has a dedicated IPv6 address.

Requirements

You need to have a working PVE instance running on OCI, tutorial above. And that is pretty much it.

Hosting a password manager? Why and how (vaultwarden)

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the modern era, where our lives are increasingly intertwined with technology, the need for robust digital security has become more crucial than ever. One of the fundamental aspects of securing our online presence lies in the effective management of passwords. With the multitude of online accounts and services we use on a daily basis, it has become almost impossible to remember unique and strong passwords for each one. This is where password managers come into play, offering a convenient and secure solution to this ongoing challenge.

LiteServer 2.4€ Black Friday VPS Benchmark

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

LiteServer started as a small byte on the big internet back in October 2007, which is now 15 years ago. During the first years of their business, they covered the hosting market in The Netherlands and Belgium.

During the 2022 Black Friday, they offered 60% OFF for all their VPSes. The base model of the HDD VPS is 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM, 500 GB cached HDD, and 15 TB@1 Gbps network, hosted in Amsterdam, NL. It costs 6 EUR per month, so it is 2.4 EUR per month after the discount.

Servarica $29 annually VPS benchmark

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

ServaRICA is a VPS merchant established back in 2010. Their campus is in Montreal, Canada currently.

Their Summer Deal and Black Friday deal is very attractive and I purchased one for benchmarking.

Their best seller is obviously, their “Opossum” tier. A year ago, the tier only had IPv6 addresses. That’s right, no IPv4, not even NAT. However, starting from the Black Friday of 2022, IPv4 has been added to every plan.

[NOTICE] Everything back on track

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

After two months’ suspension, everything is back on track and this blog will continue to update as normal.

两个月后的今天，一切回到了正轨，一切都会像往常一样运作。

-- Frank Ruan, 18:57 Jun. 20, 2023 (China Standard Time)

[NOTICE] Update suspension

Wed, 03 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This notice is bilingual. (Simplified Chinese & English)

Due to some unexpected and unpreventable reasons, me (@orwtmc), and my blog (frank-ruan.com) won’t update until Jun. 20, 2023. Sorry for the inconveniences.

因不可抗力原因，本人（@orwtmc）以及我的博客（frank-ruan.com）将暂停更新，直到2023年6月20日晚间（中国标准时间）。为您带来的不便敬请谅解。

-- Frank Ruan, 19:02 on May 3, 2023 (China Standard Time).

Vultr Free Tier - Is it good enough?

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Vultr is a cloud computing company established back in 2014. Although they entered the industry for just less than 10 years, they really have dominated the “bang for the buck” market along with DigitalOcean and Linode.

However, they recently (a few months ago) announced a Free Tier. Users need to debit their account 5$ via Credit Card and enable two-factor authentication.

Although they claimed that only Credit Cards would work, actually any method will work, including Alipay, PayPal, Cryptocurrency, etc.

Installing Proxmox VE on OCI

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Proxmox Virtual Environment is a great virtualization platform. And Oracle Cloud Infrastructure seems to provide virtual machines for free forever. The regular x86_64 instance has only 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB RAM. However, the new Ampere instance is aarch64 (arm64) architecture. With 4 Neoverse N1 Cores and 24 GB RAM, we can fire up some decent containers on it.

However, Proxmox doesn’t officially provide the tutorial (or even workarounds) to install Proxmox VE on an ARM computer. So we need to switch to a project called Pimox. This project is used to install Proxmox VE to a Raspberry Pi, which is also ARM64 architecture. So we can use it to install.

My own opinion on the principles of cryptography

Sat, 18 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In the modern era, cryptography has become one of the most important part of our digital life. We all know, cryptography is used to encrypt, sign, authenticate. Above all, the most important is of course, the security. We would never want anyone except ourselves (or the recipients, if applicable). So here are some advices based on my own experience.

1. Use proper algorithm.

It depends on your needs. For example, would you like to use symmetric or asymmetric? If you are going to use symmetric, do you want to use Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, approved by the U.S. government, standardized in FIPS 197) or other algorithms like DES, Twofish, RC4, ChaCha20 etc.?

KURUN Cloud 3$ China-Optimized VPS Benchmark

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

KURUN Cloud is a VPS company established back in 2019. They are an LIR of ARIN. From the website, I would guess that a group of Chinese people launches it, but headquartered in California, US.

They have a great deal, you get 1 vCPU core, 1 GB RAM, 10 GB Disk for just 3$/month, and very good networking to China (it’s very obvious that this machine is the best choice for proxy.

OVHcloud US 0.97$/month VPS Starter Benchmark

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000

OVHcloud is a European cloud computing and hosting company. It was founded in 1999 in France and has since expanded to operate globally, with locations in Europe, North America, and Asia. OVHcloud offers a wide range of services, including cloud infrastructure, dedicated servers, web hosting, and domain name registration. The company is known for its innovative technology and commitment to privacy and security, making it a popular choice among businesses and individuals who require reliable and secure hosting solutions.

S/MIME certificates

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) certificate is a type of digital certificate that is used to encrypt and sign email messages. It allows the recipient of the email to verify the identity of the sender, and to ensure that the message has not been tampered with during transit.

There are multiple companies that offer S/MIME certificates, such as DigiCert, GlobalSign, Comodo, and GoDaddy. You can also find other providers by searching online.

2022 Final Review

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 23:06:00 +0800

2022 Final Review

This is December 31, 2022, 23:06 PM CST now.

2022 is a pretty terrible year for us, but there were still some noticable events which are worth noting.

January:

Nothing serious, took final exam of 8A, I remembered that it wasn’t too good.

February:

Get Chinese New Year, bought Google Workspace for the first time (and then got rid of it).

Played Minecraft A LOT, but didn’t actually do anything meaningful.

My YubiKey purchase experience in China

Sat, 03 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Yubico is famous for its excellent hardware keys, and somehow they have become the industry standard. But unfortunately, for unknown reasons*, they don’t offer services to China (mainland), not even sell to China. That sucks since I live in China. (oof, don’t worry, but that’s how the story starts)

How did I make up my mind to buy a YubiKey?

It’s a long story, but long story short. I have been interested in cryptography for a few months, especially when it comes to things like OpenPGP, and I got to know a thing called Smart Card, which is a card that stores your private key.

Kimsufi 4.99€ Dedicated Server Benchmark

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Kimsufi is an affiliated company with one of the biggest providers in France – OVH. A couple of months ago, all of Kimsufi’s services are migrated to OVH and everything is now OVH’s.

For 4.99€ (before tax, more on that later), you will get the following spec.

Intel ATOM N2800 @ 1.86 GHz - 2 Cores / 4 Threads; 4 GB DDR3 1066 MHz; 1 x 1 TB SATA HDD*; Symmetric & Dedicated 100 Mbps Internet Connection.

Friendhosting 2.99€ Storage HDD VDS Benchmark

Sat, 29 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Friendhosting is a VDS provider established back on April 20, 2009. So pretty old merchant.

They offer Web Hosting, SSD VDS and HDD VDS for storage.

The location for HDD VPS is only Bulgaria and Netherlands. Since they are all DMCA-ignored, it will be nice for torrenting. (Ignoring the disk speed, more on that later.)

The base model is 2 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, and 100 GB HDD. I bought one, in Sofia, Bulgaria. Here’s the benchmark bench.sh

Nacsshost $2.98 VDS Benchmark

Sat, 24 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Nacsshost is a VDS provider located in Turkey. Currently they are not providing any further information, so be careful when you are purchasing.

They use PayTR as their payment gateway, just like most Turkish merchants would do. They only supports Credit Card/Debit Card payment with 3D-Secure. So no PayPal whatsoever. But your credit card info is still safe since PayTR is widely used.

I bought the VDS #3 Bundle, cost $2.98 per month, for 4 cores & 4 GB RAM, that’s very sweet.

Why is Linux's logo -> Penguin 🐧?

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This post will be Q&A formed, just see if this is great.

Q1: Where does penguins live?

A1: Antarctica.

Q2: Who owns Antarctica?

A2: …? Nope.

Q3: Does any countries or any people own Antarctica?

A3: No.

Q4: So does any of above own penguins?

A4: No.

Q5: Move back to Linux, what’s Linux’s avatar?

A5: Penguin.

Q6: Does Linux owned by anybody?

A6: No, that’s open-source software.

Q7: Do you understand now?

Matrix, the new era of open-source instant messaging

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Speaking of instant messaging, you may think about WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc. But those apps are stealing your privacy for business reasons, which is sad, especially when you are discussing some indescribable topics with your friends. You may run into trouble at any time. So that’s when Matrix comes in!

According to their website,

Matrix is an open-source project that publishes the
Matrix open standard for secure, decentralized, real-time communication, and its Apache licensed
reference implementations.

IPFS, the distributed web.

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

We’ve heard a lot about Web3.0, Blockchain, Distributed Web, etc. But most of them are just in concept and a bunch of essays. Did you know that there’s a real-life example, which powers the distributed web? I’m talking about IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System.

WARNING: IPFS Website & default Gateway are blocked in the People’s Republic of China, so make sure your network condition is okay to access related information. But IPFS itself can’t be blocked, more on that later.

Gullo $10 annually VPS Benchmark

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Gullo is a one-man virtual server provider. Further information is unknown. They didn’t provide any information, so be careful when buying their services,

I’ve seen their offers in the forum LowEndTalk, so I’ve ordered a few months ago (March 2022).

The setup is really bad. 1 ancient Xeon CPU, 256 MB DDR3 RAM, 5 GB HDD… For $10 bucks, please no…

Well, bench.sh is here anyways.

Australia location, please don’t buy it.

idc.wiki Los Angeles CU4837 Lite - Mainland optimized VPS Benchmark

Fri, 05 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

idc.wiki (formerly 50network) is a virtual private service provider, established in 2016 (unsure, seen from domain RDAP data). They’ve been famously known for their great optimized network connection between Los Angeles and mainland China.

The network is provided by China Unicom.

There are two kinds of network, one is the China Unicom Backbone (AS4837), and the other is China Unicom Global (AS10029/AS9929). The China Unicom Global is mainly targeting the China Telecom Next Carrier Network (CNCN, CN2).

Interserver $6 Monthly Storage VPS Benchmark -- Best bang for the buck you would ever see.

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Interserver is an ancient cloud service provider which is established back in 1999! So the reliability is ensured.

Their Storage VPS is famously known as the best in the LowEndTalk forum. Yesterday (Aug. 3, 2022) was a guy in the LET forum’s birthday. The Interserver guy has posted a coupon code to celebrate his birthday—code happybirthdaylala. It is a 50% off recurring discount, which is very sweet.

I’ve bought one Storage VPS. The lowest spec one. It costs 6 USD per month before the discount and I paid 3 USD for that.

Kuroit €5.90 Annually VPS Benchmark

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Kuroit has been a British-established hosting provider since 2018. They initially provide virtual hosting which only allows users to upload their website to servers. But now things changed. They are now providing virtual private servers to users.

They posted a thread in the forum LowEndTalk a few days ago and many users rushed into them.

They provide two data centers now and one is located in Los Angeles, US; the other is located in London, UK. All UK servers are equipped with a 1Gbps connection and US ones get 10Gbps.

macOS feels greater than everything else IMO

Sun, 31 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

To be clear, I am poor. So the only thing I can do is to install Hackintosh to my ancient Compotato (Computer + Potato cuz it’s even “sicker” than Ubisoft’s server XD).

Here’s my neofetch.

Just for lol. Time Machine & Homebrew absolutely slain Windows.

DigitalOcean NEW Premium AMD w/ nVME SSD Droplet Benchmark

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a saying in hosting world: Azure, AWS, GCP are the big three; Linode, Vultr, DigitalOcean are the small three.

DigitalOcean has officially go up on market (NYSE: DOCN), they are reliable as fuck.

Moreover, the generously provided students with $100 credit for one year, that’s a good way to let students learn about cloud computing and start their own projects.

No bullshit, I have opened an Droplet (in DigitalOcean, a droplet stands for a virtual machine.). Located in San Francisco, US. I think this is the fastest region. And I cranked everything to high in low spec.

OneProvider $11.66 Dedicated Server Benchmark

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Previous dedicated server costs €4.99, many people think that it sucks, so today I’m here to bring you guys a more advanced one.

Well okay, Atom C2750 still sucks, but at least it has 8 cores…

Hey the cores can’t say anything, think about AMD’s FX architecture CPU.

I’m poor so I didn’t buy it, my friend bought it and give it to me, thanks Billy! Love you😚.

Ancient bench.sh

Virmach BF-2020 $5.23 Annually VPS Benchmark

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Virmach sucks, so I don’t recommend y’all to store important data or use it as your production server, thanks.

At the price of 5.23$/year, it is a proxy-only server I think… And, making matters even worse, it’s not even unlimited bandwidth.

With that said, lightweight things can still run, just backup often.

Originally this machine I bought was in Los Angeles with 10Gbps network, but actually, 1Gbps is chugged…

A few months ago, Virmach allows all of us to migrate our VPS to other locations. I choose to migrate to Amsterdam, NL. 1Gbps only, but hey, who needs that fast with a bandwidth cap?

DediPath Cheap Los Angeles OpenVZ VPS -- What can this thing even do...

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

DediPath is an IaaS provider based in the United States. They have their own Datacenters and network infrastructure. So they are reliable as fuck.

Last year I bought the cheapest VPS in their system using their couple code. It seems like that it’s because of Chinese New Year? Anyways, I bought it in August. For 6$/year recurring.

LOL I got another 5$ fund from their trustpilot rating, so I just need to pay 1$ this year. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Oracle Cloud Free Virtual Machine Instances ----- Is free things always good/bad?

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

You may know MySQL, Oracle Database, or even Java before, but did you know that they have their own cloud platform too? I’m talking about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI.

OCI’s always-free tier has made everyone in LET and LOC crazy. The free tier really makes people feel: WOW THIS IS SO GOOD. The thing is that it’s really hard to sign up, 90% or more people stuck in the payment verification, even though their card is working completely fine (even once, a guy uses his American Express Centurion (aka. Black Card) to sign up, and OCI refused to sign him up, so… It all depends on your luck.

Three clouds.

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Dark, rain.

Sunny, hot.

Cloudy, dreamful.

In just a single day, single location.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/txEDcgUwtzwjQJgv6

Cheapest VM in Microsoft Azure --- B1ls. Is it good enough?

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Microsoft… All of you won’t feel strange about this company, you may reading this passage on a Windows PC. But we are talking about the cloud services provided by Microsoft (not OneDrive, that’s the consumer-grade stuff, but technically it’s powered by Azure too) Azure, who has eaten up 20% of cloud services’ market share.

Like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, they offer services to average people too. What you need is just a credit card. (If you are a verified student, you can claim 100$ per year for free and without a credit card.) For average people, you will get 200$ free for a month, and then you can either upgrade the account in order to fully use it, or you can use the free services.

Smell of Money (EK/UAE)

Sat, 02 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLldgEGJJglGuQcrOGTnH9YaZJ0fJJc7Aa&feature=share

CloudCone Hashtag-VPS Benchmark

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

CloudCone is a US-based VPS provider. It is famous for its really cheap VPS.

Most of their VPS are hosted in MULTACOM data center, which is great if you are comfortable with it XD.

I bought this VPS for 9.99$/year, act as my proxy, it’s actually not bad.

Again, don’t expect too much because you get what you pay for.

Good old bench.sh

Okay I guess?

YABS is not ran because why…

Late Night

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

https://photos.app.goo.gl/3XntFD21cgKPXFwW9

OneProvider €4.99 Dedicated Server Benchmark

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

OneProvider is a sub-company of Scaleway(formerly known as Online.net). It is famous for its cheap, affordable dedicated servers.

Recently, in its summer sale, they announced a flash sale. 4.99€ per month for a dedicated server.

For 4.99€, don’t expect too much. (At that price, you can only expect it as a “toy”, you can buy better VPS at that price.)

Here is bench.sh benchmark.

I said don’t expect too much!

RuVDS 780RUB annual payment VPS Benchmark

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

DISCLAIMER: THIS POST IS ONLY A VPS BENCHMARK, IT DOESN’T CONTAIN ANY OF MY OWN POLITICAL OPINIONS, THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING.

RuVDS is a Russian VPS provider, offering cheap VPS for 40RUB/month or 60RUB/month I think? Idk, it’s cheap.

I did annual payment at the price of 780 RUB/year.

bench.sh

It’s like capped in 100Mbps in upload, and everywhere in the world is essentially the same.

Other things are really no need to run because of the war, Russian VPS can do nothing.

SiberDC VDS-1 Benchmark

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

SiberDC is a Turkish server provider, operates their own network infrastructure and data center. Reliability is ensured. They promised 99.9%(I think?) SLA.

The basic VDS is located in Istanbul, TR. At the price of 20.00 TRY. 18.00% VAT is added for all customers, so the price is 23.60 TRY.

bench.sh is coming!

Acceptable I think? The speed to China and those (south)east Asian countries are SLOW TO THE HELL…

Virmach's NEW Cloud Storage VPS Benchmark

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Basically everyone who plays with VPS knows Virmach(known as Virtual Machine Solutions LLC), who is called ’the price butcher’, because they are really so f**king cheap… Especially during Black Friday, they offer plenty of flash sales. Even once, I think 1$/year for 1 cores, 1GB RAM? Whatever, really cheap.

I bought a Cloud Storage at the beginning of June, and it has finally delivered in July! Well it’s preorder, so don’t expect too much.

HostHatch VPS Benchmark

Sun, 19 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

HostHatch is a US-based virtual servers provider established in 2011. It has been famous for its great bang for the buck because it’s very, very cheap in Black Friday and even normal prices are pretty nice compared to other providers.

There are two tiers. One is Compute VM(with NVME SSD), and the other is Storage KVM. (I don’t really know what disk are they using. Seems like HDD but with SSD cached?)

What do I use for storage?

Sat, 18 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I am kind of a cloud storage guy because I always think that local storage is unreliable.

I have accidentally dropped my one and only WD My Passport Ultra removable hard drive which stores a lot of precious data, I can’t read anything from it after it’s dropped. Ouch..

And after watching the video on Austin Evans, I decided always to keep the 3-2-1 principle.

3-2-1 means 3 copies of data, stored in 2 different kinds of medium(like one for your mechanical drive and the other on LTO tapes. And at least 1 off-site backup. (Like store it in Google Drive/OneDrive/Dropbox.. or even just colocation your own server in a data center near you. You never know when your house may get burnt(oof) or earthquake happens.