Today I learned that Kagi uses Yandex as part of its search infrastructure, making up about 2% of their costs, and their CEO has confirmed that they do not plan to change that. To quote: Yandex represents about 2% of our total costs and is only one of dozens of sources we use. To put this in perspective: removing any single source would degrade search quality for all users while having minimal economic impact on any particular region. The world doesn’t need another politicized search engine. It needs one that works exceptionally well, regardless of the political climate. That’s what we’re building. That is unfortunate, as I found Kagi to be a good product with an interesting take on utilizing LLM models with search that is kind of useful, but I cannot in good heart continue to support it while they unapologetically finance a major company that has ties to the Russian government, the same country that is actively waging a war against Ukraine, an European country, for over 11 years, during which they’ve committed countless war crimes against civilians and military personnel. Kagi has the freedom to decide how they build the best search engine, and I have the freedom to use something else. Please send all your whataboutisms to /dev/null.

It was time to upgrade Hibernate on that one Java monolithic1 backend service that my team was responsible for. We took great precautions with these types of changes due to the scale of the system, splitting changes into as many small parts as possible and releasing them as often as possible. With bigger changes we opted for running a few instances of the new version in parallel to the existing one. Then came Hibernate 5.2. Hibernate 5.2 introduced a new warning log to indicate that the existing API for writing queries is deprecated. Hibernate's legacy org.hibernate.Criteria API is deprecated; use the JPA javax.persistence.criteria.CriteriaQuery instead Every time you used the Criteria API it would print the line. Just one little issue there. Can you see it? Every time you used the Criteria API it would print the line. In a poorly written Java backend service, one HTTP request can make multiple queries to the database. With hundreds of millions of HTTP requests, this can easily balloon to billions of additional logs a day. Well, that’s exactly what happened to our service, resulting in the CPU usage jumping up considerably and the latency of the service being negatively impacted. We didn’t have the foresight to compare every metric against every instance of the service, and when the metrics were summarized across all instances, this increase was not that noticeable while both new and existing instances of the service were running. Aside from the service itself, this had negative effects downstream as well. If you have a solution for collecting your service logs for analysis and retention, and it’s priced on the amount of logs that you print out, then this can end up being a very costly issue for you. We resolved the issue by making a configuration change to our logger that disabled these specific logs. This does make me wonder who else may have been impacted by this change over the years and what that impact might’ve looked like regarding the resource usage on a world-wide scale. I’m not blaming the Hibernate developers, they had good intentions, but the impact of an innocent change like that was likely not taken into account for large-scale services. Last I heard, the people behind Hibernate are a very small team, and yet their software powers much of the world, including critical infrastructure like the banking system. I’m well aware that we’re talking about Hibernate releases that were released around the time I was still a junior developer (2016-2018). Some call it technical debt, others call it over half a decade of neglect. unmaintaned monoliths suck, but so do unmaintained microservices. ↩︎

I have worked with a few software developers who made the switch to this industry in the middle of their careers. A major change like that can be scary and raise a lot of fears and doubts, but I can attest that this can work out well with the right personality traits and a supporting environment. Here’s what I’ve observed. To keep the writing concise, I’ll be using the phrase “senior junior”1 to describe those that have made such a career switch. Overcoming the fear Fear is a natural reaction to any major change in life, especially when there’s risk of taking a financial hit while you have a family to support and a home loan to pay. The best mitigation that I’ve heard is believing that you can make the change, successfully. It sounds like an oversimplification, sure, as all it does is that it removes a mental blocker and throws out the self-doubt. And yet it works unreasonably well. It also helps if you have at least some savings to help mitigate the financial risk. A years’ worth of expenses saved up can go a long way in providing a solid safety net. What makes them succeed A great software developer is not someone that simply slings some code over the wall and spends all of their day working only on the technical stuff, there are quite a few critical skills that one needs to succeed. This is not an exhaustive list, but I’ve personally observed that the following ones are the most critical: ability to work in a team great communication skills conflict resolution ability to make decisions in the context of product development and business goals maintaining an environment of psychological safety Those with more than a decade of experience in another role or industry will most likely have a lot of these skills covered already, and they can bring that skill set into a software development team while working with the team to build their technical skill set. Software development is not special, at the end of they day, you’re still interacting with humans and everything that comes with that, good or bad. After working with juniors that are fresh out of school and “senior juniors” who have more career experience than I do, I have concluded that the ones that end up being great software developers have one thing in common: the passion and drive to learn everything about the role and the work we do. One highlight that I often like to share in discussions is one software developer who used to work in manufacturing. At some point they got interested in learning how they can use software to make work more efficient. They started with an MVP solution involving a big TV and Google Sheets, then they started learning about web development for a solution in a different area of the business, and ended up building a basic inventory system for the warehouse. After 2-3 years of self-learning outside of work hours and deploying to production in the most literal sense, they ended up joining my team. They got up to speed very quickly and ended up being a very valuable contributor in the team. In another example, I have worked with someone who previously held a position as a technical draftsman and 3D designer in a ship building factory (professionals call it a shipyard), but after some twists and turns ended up at a course for those interested in making a career switch, which led to them eventually working in the same company I do. Now they ship builds with confidence while making sure that the critical system we are working on stays stable. That developer also kicks my ass in foosball about 99% of the time. The domain knowledge advantage The combination of industry experience and software development skills is an incredibly powerful one. When a software developer starts work in a project, they learn the business domain piece by piece, eventually reaching a state where they have a slight idea about how the business operates, but never the full picture. Speaking with their end users will help come a long way, but there are always some details that get lost in that process. Someone coming from the industry will have in-depth knowledge about the business, how it operates, where the money comes from, what are the main pain points and where are the opportunities for automation. They will know what problems need solving, and the basic technical know-how on how to try solving them. Like a product owner, but on steroids. Software developers often fall into the trap of creating a startup to scratch that itch they have for building new things, or trying out technologies that have for a very long time been on their to-do list. The technical problems are fun to solve, sure, but the focus should be on the actual problem that needs fixing. If I wanted to start a new startup with someone, I’d look for someone working in an industry that I’m interested in and who understands the software development basics. Or maybe I’m just looking for an excellent product owner. How to help them succeed If you have a “senior junior” software developer on your team, then there really isn’t anything special you’d need to do compared to any other new joiner. Do your best to foster a culture of psychological safety, have regular 1-1s with them, and make sure to pair them up with more experienced team members as often as possible. A little bit of encouragement in challenging environments or periods of self-doubt can also go a long way. Temporary setbacks are temporary, after all. What about “AI”? Don’t worry about all that “AI”2 hype, if it was as successful in replacing all software development jobs as a lof of people like to shout from the rooftops, then it would have already done so. At best, it’s a slight productivity boost3 at the cost of a huge negative impact on the environment. Closing thoughts If you’re someone that has thought about working as a software developer or who is simply excited about all the ways that software can be used to solve actual business problems and build something from nothing, then I definitely recommend giving it a go, assuming that you have the safety net and risk appetite to do so. For reference, my journey towards software development looked like this, plus a few stints of working as a newspaper seller or a grocery store worker. who do you call a “senior senior” developer, a senile developer? ↩︎ spicy autocomplete engines (also known as LLM-s) do not count as actual artificial intelligence. ↩︎ what fascinates me about all the arguments around “AI” (LLM-s) is the feeling of being more productive. But how do you actually measure developer productivity, and do you account for possible reduced velocity later on when you’ve mistaken code generation speed as velocity and introduced hard to catch bugs into the code base that need to be resolved when they inevitably become an issue? ↩︎

Fairphone has bad customer support. It’s not an issue with the individual customer support agents, I know how difficult their job is1, and I’m sure that they’re trying their best, but it’s a more systematic issue in the organization itself. It’s become so bad that Fairphone issued an open letter to the Fairphone community forum acknowledging the issue and steps they’re taking to fix it. Until then, I only have my experience to go by. I’ve contacted Fairphone customer support twice, once with a question about Fairphone 5 security updates not arriving in a timely manner, and another time with a request to refund the Fairphone Fairbuds XL as part of the 14-day policy. In both cases, I received an initial reply over 1 month later. It’s not that catastrophic for a non-critical query, but in situations where you have a technical issue with a product, this can become a huge inconvenience for the customer. I recently gave the Fairbuds XL a try because the reviews for it online were decent and I want to support the Fairphone project, but I found the sound profile very underwhelming and the noise cancelling did not work adequately.2 I decided to use the 14-day return policy that Fairphone advertise, which led to the worst customer care experience I’ve had so far.3 Here’s a complete timeline of the process on how to return a set of headphones to the manufacturer for a refund. 2025-02-10: initial purchase of the headphones 2025-02-14: I receive the headphones and test them out, with disappointing results 2025-02-16: I file a support ticket with Fairphone indicating that I wish to return the headphones according to their 14-day return policy 2025-02-25: I ask again about the refund after not hearing back from Faiprhone 2025-03-07: I receive an automated message that apologized for the delay and asked me to not make any additional tickets on the matter, which I had not been doing 2025-04-01: I start the chargeback process for the payment through my bank due to Fairphone support not replying over a month later 2025-04-29: Fairphone support finally responds with instructions on how to send back the device to receive a refund 2025-05-07: after acquiring packaging material and printing out three separate documents (UPS package card, invoice, Cordon Electronics sales voucher), I hand the headphones over to UPS 2025-05-15: I ask Fairphone about when the refund will be issued 2025-05-19 16:20 EEST: I receive a notice from Cordon Electronics confirming they have received the headphones 2025-05-19 17:50 EEST: I receive a notice from Cordon Electronics letting me know that they have started the process, whatever that means 2025-05-19 20:05 EEST: I receive a notice from Cordon Electronics saying that the repairs are done and they are now shipping the device back to me (!) 2025-05-19 20:14 EEST: I contact Fairphone support about this notice that I received, asking for a clarification 2025-05-19 20:24 EEST: I also send an e-mail to Cordon Electronics clarifying the situation and asking them to not send the device back to me, but instead return it to Fairphone for a refund 2025-05-20 14:42 EEST: Cordon Electronics informs me that they have already shipped the device and cannot reverse the decision 2025-05-21: Fairphone support responds, saying that it is being sent back due to a processing error, and that I should try to “refuse the order” 2025-05-22: I inform Fairphone support about the communication with Cordon Electronics 2025-05-27: Fairphone is aware of the chargeback that I initiated and they believe the refund is issued, however I have not yet received it 2025-05-27: I receive the headphones for the second time. 2025-05-28: I inform Fairphone support about the current status of the headphones and refund (still not received) 2025-05-28: Fairphone support recommends that I ask the bank about the status of the refund, I do so but don’t receive any useful information from them 2025-06-03: Fairphone support asks if I’ve received the refund yet 2025-06-04: I receive the refund through the dispute I raised through the bank. This is almost 4 months after the initial purchase took place. 2025-06-06: Fairphone sends me instructions on how to send back the headphones for the second time. 2025-06-12: I inform Fairphone that I have prepared the package and will post it next week due to limited access to a printer and the shipping company office 2025-06-16: I ship the device back to Fairphone again. There’s an element of human error in the whole experience, but the initial lack of communication amplified my frustrations and also contributed to my annoyances with my Fairphone 5 boiling over. And just like that, I’ve given up on Fairphone as a brand, and will be skeptical about buying any new products from them. I was what one would call a “brand evangelist” to them, sharing my good initial experiences with the phone to my friends, family, colleagues and the world at large, but bad experiences with customer care and the devices themselves have completely turned me off. If you have interacted with Fairphone support after this post is live, then please share your experiences in the Fairphone community forum, or reach out to me directly (with proof). I would love to update this post after getting confirmation that Fairphone has fixed the issues with their customer care and addressed the major shortcomings in their products. I don’t want to crap on Fairphone, I want them to do better. Repairability, sustainability and longevity still matter. I haven’t worked as a customer care agent, but I have worked in retail, so I roughly know what level of communication the agents are treated with, often unfairly. ↩︎ that experience reminded me of how big of a role music plays in my life. I’ve grown accustomed to using good sounding headphones and I immediately noticed all the little details being missing in my favourite music. ↩︎ until this point, the worst experience I had was with Elisa Eesti AS, a major ISP in Estonia. I wanted to use my own router-modem box that was identical to the rented one from the ISP, and that only got resolved 1.5 months later after I expressed intent to switch providers. Competition matters! ↩︎

My evenings of absent-minded local auction site scrolling1 paid off: I now own a Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny. It’s relatively old, being manufactured in 20162, but it’s tiny and has a lot of useful life left in it. It’s also featured in the TinyMiniMicro series by ServeTheHome. I managed to get it for 60 EUR plus about 4 EUR shipping, and it comes with solid specifications: CPU: Intel i5-6500T RAM: 16GB DDR4 Storage: 256GB SSD Power adapter included The price is good compared to similar auctions, but was it worth it? Yes, yes it was. I have been running a ThinkPad T430 as a server for a while now, since October 2024. It served me well in that role and would’ve served me for even longer if I wanted to, but I had an itch for a project that didn’t involve renovating an apartment.3 Power usage One of my main curiosities was around the power usage. Will this machine beat the laptop in terms of efficiency while idling and running normal home server workloads? Yes, yes it does. While booting into Windows 11 and calming down a bit, the lowest idle power numbers I saw were around 8 W. This concludes the testing on Windows. On Linux (Fedora Server 42), the idle power usage was around 6.5 W to 7 W. After running powertop --auto-tune, I ended up getting that down to 6.1 W - 6.5 W. This is much lower compared to the numbers that ServeTheHome got, which were around 11-13 W (120V circuit). My measurements are made in Europe, Estonia, where we have 240V circuits. You may be able to find machines where the power usage is even lower. Louwrentius mada an idle power comparison on an HP EliteDesk Mini G3 800 where they measured it at 4 W. That might also be due to other factors in play, or differences in measurement tooling. During normal home server operation with 5 SATA SSD-s connected (4 of them with USB-SATA adapters), I have observed power consumption being around 11-15 W, with peaks around 40 W. On a pure CPU load with stress -c 8, I saw power consumption being around 32 W. Formatting the internal SATA SSD added 5 W to that figure. USB storage, are you crazy? Yes. But hear me out. Back in 2021, I wrote about USB storage being a very bad idea, especially on BTRFS. I’ve learned a lot over the years, and BTRFS has received continuous improvements as well. In my ThinkPad T430 home server setup, I had two USB-connected SSD-s running in RAID0 for over half a year, and it was completely fine unless you accidentally bumped into the SSD-s. USB-connected storage is fine under the right circumstances: the cables are not damaged the cables are not at a weird angle or twisted I actually had issues with this point, my very cool and nice cable management resulted in one disk having connectivity issues, which I fixed by relieving stress on the cables and routing them differently the connected PC does not have chronic overheating issues the whole setup is out of the reach of cats, dogs, children and clumsy sysadmin cosplayers the USB-SATA adapters pass through the device ID and S.M.A.R.T information to the host the device ID part especially is key to avoiding issues with various filesystems (especially ZFS) and storage pool setups the ICY BOX IB-223U3a-B is a good option that I have personally been very happy with, and it’s what I’m using in this server build a lot of adapters (mine included) don’t support running SSD TRIM commands to the drives, which might be a concern has not been an issue for over half a year with those ICY BOX adapters, but it’s something to keep in mind you are not using an SBC as the home server even a Raspberry Pi 4 can barely handle one USB-powered SSD not an issue if you use an externally powered drive, or an USB DAS After a full BTRFS scrub and a few days of running, it seems fine. Plus it looks sick as hell with the identical drives stacked on top. All that’s missing are labels specifying which drive is which, but I’m sure that I’ll get to that someday, hopefully before a drive failure happens. In a way, this type of setup best represents what a novice home server enthusiast may end up with: a tiny, power-efficient PC with a bunch of affordable drives connected. Less insane storage ideas for a tiny PC There are alternative options for handling storage on a tiny 1 liter PC, but they have some downsides that I don’t want to be dealing with right now. An USB DAS allows you to handle many drives with ease, but they are also damn expensive. If you pick wrong, you might also end up with one where the USB-SATA chip craps out under high load, which will momentarily drop all the drives, leaving you with a massive headache to deal with. Cheaper USB-SATA docks are more prone to this, but I cannot confirm or deny if more expensive options have the same issue. Running individual drives sidesteps this issue and moves any potential issues to the host USB controller level. There is also a distinct lack of solutions that are designed around 2.5" drives only. Most of them are designed around massive and power-hungry 3.5" drives. I just want to run my 4 existing SATA SSD-s until they crap out completely. An additional box that does stuff generally adds to the overall power consumption of the setup as well, which I am not a big fan of. Lowering the power consumption of the setup was the whole point! I can’t rule out testing USB DAS solutions in the future as they do seem handy for adding storage to tiny PC-s and laptops with ease, but for now I prefer going the individually connected drives route, especially because I don’t feel like replacing my existing drives, they still have about 94% SSD health in them after 3-4 years of use, and new drives are expensive. Or you could go full jank and use that one free NVMe slot in the tiny PC to add more SATA ports or break out to other devices, such as a PCIe HBA, and introduce a lot of clutter to the setup with an additional power supply, cables and drives. Or use 3.5" external hard drives with separate power adapters. It’s what I actually tried out back in 2021, but I had some major annoyances with the noise. Miscellaneous notes Here are some notes on everything else that I’ve noticed about this machine. The PC is quite efficient as demonstrated by the power consumption numbers, and as a result it runs very cool, idling around 30-35 °C in a ~22-24 °C environment. Under a heavy load, the CPU temperatures creep up to 65-70 °C, which is perfectly acceptable. The fan does come on at higher load and it’s definitely audible, but in my case it runs in a ventilated closet, so I don’t worry about that at all. The CPU (Intel i5-6500T) is plenty fast for all sorts of home server workloads with its 4 CPU cores and clock speeds of 2.7-2.8 GHz under load. The UEFI settings offered a few interesting options that I decided to change, the rest are set to default. There is an option to enable an additional C-state for even better power savings. For home server workloads, it was nice to see the setting to allow you to boot the PC without a keyboard being attached, found under “Keyboardless operation” setting. I guess that in some corporate environments disconnected keyboards are such a common helpdesk issue that it necessitates having this option around. Closing thoughts I just like these tiny PC boxes a lot. They are tiny, fast and have a very solid construction, which makes them feel very premium in your hands. They are also perfectly usable, extensible and can be an absolute bargain at the right price. With solid power consumption figures that are only a few watts off of a Raspberry Pi 5, it might make more sense to get a TinyMiniMicro machine for your next home server. I’m definitely very happy with mine. well, at least it beats doom-scrolling social media. ↩︎ yeah, I don’t like being reminded of being old, too. ↩︎ there are a lot of similarities between construction/renovation work and software development, but that’s a story for another time. ↩︎