Tech on Pink Noise

KOReader Plugins and Library Integration

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

KOReader is one of the best upgrades you can give an e-reader. It runs on devices like Kindle, Kobo, PocketBook, Android, and Linux, and it is especially nice if you want more control over formats, typography, PDF handling, OPDS catalogs, and plugins than the stock reader usually provides.

The default experience is already powerful, but KOReader gets much more interesting once you add a few focused plugins and connect it to a proper library backend.

Quicktip: USGerman Keyboard Layout on macOS

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you use a Mac with a US keyboard but still write German regularly, the USGerman keyboard layout is a small quality-of-life fix. It keeps the normal US layout and adds German umlauts and ß behind the Option key, so you do not have to switch to a full German keyboard layout or use macOS’ long-press character picker.

After downloading and unzipping the layout, copy Roman.bundle into the system keyboard layouts folder:

Quicktip: Blocking LG WebOS Ads

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

LG WebOS TVs are notorious for phoning home – ads on the home screen, tracking via ACR (automatic content recognition), and telemetry across 1,700+ domains including alphonso.tv, lgsmartad.com, and various lge.com subdomains. HaGeZi maintains a dedicated LG WebOS DNS blocklist for all of these that you can add to your DNS blocker of choice.

One domain worth blocking separately is snu.lge.com – this is responsible for the firmware update notification popups. Blocking it stops the TV from nagging you to update, which is useful if you want to stay on a specific firmware version.

Quicktip: WebOS Homebrew Apps for LG TVs

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

LG TVs let you enable a Developer Mode through the LG Content Store, which allows sideloading apps via ares-install. Two apps worth installing:

youtube-webos is an actively maintained fork that replaces the stock YouTube app with one that blocks ads, integrates SponsorBlock, and adds features like Return YouTube Dislike, force max quality, and customizable themes. The official YouTube app needs to be uninstalled first.

Moonfin is an enhanced Jellyfin client built with LG’s Enact framework. It supports multi-server unified libraries, Jellyseerr integration for requesting content, and hardware-accelerated playback through the native webOS media pipeline.

Deploying Hugo to Codeberg Pages

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This site uses Forgejo Actions to automatically build and deploy whenever changes are pushed. The repository is named pages, which is required for Codeberg Pages to serve it at the canonical URL.

The source files live in the main branch, and the workflow builds the Hugo site and pushes the resulting HTML to a pages branch. After the first deployment, you need to change the default branch to pages in the repository settings.

Tailscale Setup Guide: Self-Hosted and UniFi Integration

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Tailscale is a modern VPN built on WireGuard with automatic mesh networking. For complete self-hosting, use Headscale—an open-source Tailscale control server implementation.

UniFi Devices: If you run UniFi hardware (Dream Machine, Dream Router, etc.), install Tailscale directly on your gateway:

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# Install the latest version of Tailscale on UniFi OS 2.x+
curl -sSLq https://raw.github.com/SierraSoftworks/tailscale-udm/main/install.sh | sh

# Start Tailscale
tailscale up

# Advertise routes to your local network
tailscale up --advertise-routes=10.0.0.0/24 --advertise-exit-node

The installation automatically restarts after UniFi updates, runs via systemd on UniFi OS 2.x+, and supports Tailscale SSH. It works on UniFi Dream Machine, Dream Router, Cloud Key Gen 2, and similar devices.

Quicktip: Bypass Tailscale Routing for Local LAN

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When using Tailscale with Magic DNS enabled, hostname resolution always routes through Tailscale—even when you’re on your home network. This adds unnecessary latency for local connections. The issue is documented in GitHub issue #1227.

A workaround is to use split DNS with a custom domain. Configure your local router with local DNS entries and set up public DNS entries that point to Tailscale IPs. When you’re at home, your devices use the router’s DNS. When away, they use public DNS.

k9s

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Kubernetes CLI To Manage Your Clusters In Style!

K9s provides a terminal UI to interact with your Kubernetes clusters. The aim of this project is to make it easier to navigate, observe and manage your applications in the wild. K9s continually watches Kubernetes for changes and offers subsequent commands to interact with your observed resources.

Link: https://github.com/derailed/k9s

Website: https://k9scli.io

AeroSpace: Fixing Homebrew PATH for GUI Apps on macOS

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

When using AeroSpace (a tiling window manager for macOS), GUI applications don’t have Homebrew’s prefix in their PATH by default. This means Homebrew binaries like sketchybar or yabai won’t be found unless you specify the full path.

AeroSpace handles this automatically with a sensible default configuration. If you don’t override the [exec] section, it uses:

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[exec]
 inherit-env-vars = true
[exec.env-vars]
 PATH = '/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:${PATH}'

If you need custom environment variables, preserve the Homebrew PATH when overriding the [exec] section:

Generate a PDF Planner for Kindle Scribe or iPad

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Remarkably Organized is a web-based tool for generating custom PDF planners. Here’s a preconfigured version optimized for note-taking on Kindle Scribe or iPad:

Generate PDF Planner for iPad or Kindle Scribe

The configuration includes 11 note pages per week, week numbers in the navigation, and Baden-Württemberg school holidays. You can adjust all settings in the sidebar, add your own iCal calendar feeds, and toggle sections as needed. The URL encodes all your settings, so you can bookmark it and regenerate your planner anytime with updated dates.

Nix Setup on macOS: An Overview

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A collection of resources for setting up Nix on macOS with nix-darwin and home-manager.

The nix-darwin-kickstarter repository is a good starting point for macOS.

Run programs without installing them with nix-shell -p cowsay.

Remote Deployment: nixos-rebuild announcement

Example configurations:

jdheyburn/nixos-configs
Great examples for:

Caddy web server
FreshRSS
deploy-rs
Tailscale integration
wimpysworld/nix-config - Production-ready configuration

Remote installation with nixos-anywhere: nixos-anywhere uses kexec. If kexec doesn’t work, boot with NixOS ISO instead.

Wireless in initrd: Unlocking encrypted drives over WiFi

Running Kanata on macOS with LaunchDaemon

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Kanata provides more readable keyboard remapping configurations than Karabiner-Elements. To run it automatically on macOS startup, set it up as a LaunchDaemon.

Install Kanata via Homebrew:

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brew install kanata

Download and install the Karabiner VirtualHIDDevice driver. Kanata needs this to interact with macOS.

Create your Kanata configuration at ~/.config/kanata/config.kbd. See the documentation for examples. Add a key combo to reload your configuration (command: lrld) to avoid manually restarting.

Create two .plist files in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ to launch Kanata at startup.

Auto-mounting Encrypted External Drive in NixOS

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Note: This article is heavily based on The Uncommitted Changes Blog by Pankaj Raghav. All credit goes to the original author.

Setting up auto-mounting for a LUKS-encrypted external drive on NixOS requires coordinating LUKS decryption, udev device detection, and systemd mounting. Here’s how to configure it so the drive automatically decrypts and mounts when connected.

First, encrypt the drive if you haven’t already:

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cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda1
## Enter password
cryptsetup open /dev/sda1 vault
dd bs=512 count=4 if=/dev/random of=/root/keyfile.key iflag=fullblock
cryptsetup luksAddKey /dev/sda1 /root/keyfile.key
sudo mkfs.btrfs -L vault /dev/mapper/vault

The keyfile allows automatic decryption without typing a password each time. Your device layout will look like:

Incorporating EDID into initrd Image on Linux

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Some monitors don’t properly report their capabilities (EDID - Extended Display Identification Data) to Linux systems during early boot, causing incorrect resolutions or no video output. You can fix this by incorporating custom EDID data into the initrd image.

First, extract the EDID from a working system. Install the required tools:

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sudo apt install read-edid edid-decode

Extract and verify the EDID:

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sudo get-edid > desktop_edid.bin
edid-decode desktop_edid.bin

Transfer the file to your target system and copy it to the firmware directory:

Configuring markdownlint-cli2 in LazyVim

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Using shell variables like $HOME in LazyVim’s nvim-lint configuration doesn’t work as expected—the string gets passed literally instead of being expanded. To use a custom markdownlint-cli2 config file with a machine-agnostic path, use Lua’s os.getenv() function:

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local HOME = os.getenv("HOME")
return {
 "mfussenegger/nvim-lint",
 optional = true,
 opts = {
 linters = {
 ["markdownlint-cli2"] = {
 args = { "--config", HOME .. "/.markdownlint-cli2.yaml", "--" },
 },
 },
 },
}

Create your ~/.markdownlint-cli2.yaml configuration file with your preferred rules:

Mounting an Encrypted Btrfs System in Arch Linux

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

To access an encrypted Btrfs Arch Linux system from a live USB, you need to unlock the LUKS partition and mount each Btrfs subvolume before chrooting:

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# Unlock the encrypted partition
cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1 cryptlvm

# Mount the root subvolume
mount -o subvol=@ /dev/mapper/cryptlvm /mnt

# Mount the home subvolume
mount -o subvol=@home /dev/mapper/cryptlvm /mnt/home

# Mount the log subvolume with nodatacow option
mount -o nodatacow,subvol=@var_log /dev/mapper/cryptlvm /mnt/var/log

# Chroot into the system
sudo arch-chroot /mnt

The cryptsetup open command unlocks the encrypted partition and maps it to /dev/mapper/cryptlvm. Each Btrfs subvolume needs to be mounted separately. The nodatacow option on /var/log prevents copy-on-write for log files. The arch-chroot command automatically handles mounting /proc, /sys, and /dev.