Self-Professed Nerd

Qwen Code CLI sandbox bug

2026-02-15T22:27:00.007+08:00

If you are running `qwen -s` or `qwen --sandbox` and everytime you need to reauthenticate, There is a bug in qwen-code:0.10.1 docker image.

The CLI tool mount host `~/.qwen` directory to the container /home/node/.qwen directory: See https://github.com/QwenLM/qwen-code/blob/9adad2f369bbeea7e7295614f3e3e5342d20ce5a/packages/cli/src/utils/sandbox.ts#L433

But there is a recent commit which removed `User node` from the docker image. See: https://github.com/QwenLM/qwen-code/commit/5c949136432e91a90d2b565116d73fe498fcc262#diff-dd2c0eb6ea5cfc6c4bd4eac30934e2d5746747af48fef6da689e85b752f39557L40

Work around 1 - Rebuild Docker and get it back to run with user node

check out the qwen-code project, update the Dockerfile, revert some of the change of the commit back and then `npm run build:sandbox`.

Work around 2 - Hack installed qwen-code script in node_modules

Find the `cli.js` in the node_modules installation. Find the line `/home/node/${SETTINGS_DIRECTORY_NAME}` and change it to `/root/${SETTINGS_DIRECTORY_NAME}`.

Work around 3 - Rebuild Docker and symlink /root/.qwen with /home/node/.qwen

checkout out the qwen-code project, update the Dockerfile to symlink /root/.qwen to /home/node/.qwen like this

Both workaround 2 & 3 worked for me.

Workaround 1 is "better", as it adheres to the rule of giving least/minimum access to the execution user, but it is slightly more complicated to get right and I couldn't quite get it to work yet.

Analysis: Websites Using Prebid.js Without Google Publisher Tag2026-02-15T14:21:00.000+08:00
Executive SummaryOur investigation into websites using Prebid.js without Google Publisher Tag revealed a surprising trend: despite extensive testing across multiple categories of websites, we found no major publishers that exclusively use Prebid.js without Google Publisher Tag. This finding is particularly relevant in light of recent anti-trust litigation against Google in the digital advertising space.
Key FindingsTesting ResultsTested over 60 websites across multiple categories (news, tech, entertainment, gaming, newspapers)
Found that nearly all websites using Prebid.js also use Google Publisher Tag
No websites found using Prebid.js without Google Publisher Tag
Some websites use neither technology
Industry Context: Google's Anti-Trust IssuesRecent developments in the ad tech industry provide important context for these findings:
Department of Justice Lawsuit (2023-2024): The U.S. Department of Justice filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Google, specifically targeting its dominance in the digital advertising ecosystem. The lawsuit alleges that Google has monopolized ad tech markets through anti-competitive practices. [^1]
European Union Actions: The EU has also taken regulatory action against Google regarding its advertising practices, including concerns about preferential treatment of Google's own ad tech products. [^2]
Publisher Dependency: The lawsuit has highlighted how publishers have become heavily dependent on Google's suite of advertising tools, creating barriers to adopting alternative solutions. [^3]
Analysis of FindingsWhy Publishers Continue Using Both TechnologiesMarket Dominance: Google's dominance in the ad tech ecosystem means publishers often feel compelled to use Google Publisher Tag to maintain access to Google's demand sources and ad exchange.
Revenue Optimization: Publishers may use Prebid.js for header bidding to increase competition among demand sources while still relying on Google's ad server for guaranteed deals and direct-sold inventory.
Technical Integration: Many publishers have legacy systems built around Google's ad tech stack, making it difficult to transition to alternative solutions.
Demand Access: Google's ad exchange provides access to significant demand that publishers may be reluctant to forgo.
The Paradox of IndependenceDespite the anti-trust concerns and the availability of alternative ad servers, our findings suggest that publishers are not moving away from Google's ad tech stack. This could be attributed to:
Switching Costs: The technical and operational costs of migrating to alternative ad servers may outweigh the benefits for many publishers.
Revenue Risk: Publishers may fear revenue loss if they abandon Google's demand sources.
Technical Complexity: Managing multiple ad server technologies can be complex and resource-intensive.
Implications for the Ad Tech IndustryImpact of Anti-Trust LitigationThe ongoing anti-trust litigation against Google has brought increased attention to the concentration of power in the ad tech industry. However, our findings suggest that:
Behavior Change Slow: Despite legal challenges, publisher behavior has not significantly shifted toward abandoning Google's ad tech stack.
Market Inertia: The complexity and risk associated with changing ad tech infrastructure creates significant market inertia.
Alternative Solutions: While alternatives like Amazon Publisher Services, Index Exchange, and other non-Google ad servers exist, adoption appears limited among major publishers.
Future OutlookThe relationship between anti-trust pressure and publisher behavior remains complex:
Potential Regulatory Changes: If the anti-trust lawsuit results in regulatory changes that limit Google's ability to favor its own ad tech products, we may see more publishers exploring alternatives.
Industry Evolution: The ad tech industry continues to evolve, with privacy regulations and changes in browser behavior driving innovation in alternative solutions.
Publisher Empowerment: Initiatives to promote publisher independence and competition in ad tech may gain momentum as regulatory pressure increases.
ConclusionOur investigation reveals that despite anti-trust concerns and legal challenges facing Google in the ad tech space, major publishers continue to use both Prebid.js and Google Publisher Tag. This suggests that while publishers may embrace header bidding solutions like Prebid.js to increase competition among demand sources, they remain reliant on Google's ad serving infrastructure.
The lack of publishers using Prebid.js without Google Publisher Tag highlights the entrenched position of Google in the ad tech ecosystem and the challenges facing alternative ad servers in gaining broader adoption. As regulatory scrutiny continues and the industry evolves, it will be important to monitor whether publisher behavior shifts toward greater independence from Google's ad tech stack.
This finding underscores the importance of continued regulatory oversight and industry initiatives aimed at promoting competition and publisher independence in digital advertising.
CodeGithub repository: https://github.com/lsiu/sites-with-prebid-without-gpt
References[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice. (2023). "Justice Department Sues Google for Monopolizing Digital Advertising Technologies." https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies
[^2]: European Commission. (2019). "Antitrust: Commission fines Google €1.49 billion for abusive practices in the area of online advertising." https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_1770
[^3]: Miles Kruppa, Dave Michaels (2023). "DOJ Sues Google, Seeking to Break Up Online Advertising Business" The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/u-s-sues-google-for-alleged-antitrust-violations-in-its-ad-tech-business-11674582792

Tools to help understand ads on websites

2025-12-08T11:48:00.007+08:00

Professor Prebid - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/kdnllijdimhbledmfdbljampcdphcbdc?utm_source=item-share-cb
Add `google_console=1` as a URL query parameter to the URL to load the Google Ad Manager | Publisher Console

Try out Qwen CLI in a docker container sandbox

2025-09-13T22:59:00.005+08:00

Overview

This run Qwen in a docker container and mount your current working directory into the docker container which qwen runs on.

Why? This limit the damage it can do if these things get out of control. E.g. it tries to run rm -rf / , it on effects your current directory and kills the docker container.

Preqrequisites

1. Docker Desktop

2. Qwen account -> Register on https://chat.qwen.ai/, it is free.

Command Line

Run Qwen CLI in *nix

docker run --rm -it -v .:/src ghcr.io/qwenlm/qwen-code:latest sh -c "cd /src && qwen"

Run Qwen CLI in Windows

docker run --rm -it --mount type=bind,source=.,target=/src ghcr.io/qwenlm/qwen-code:latest sh -c "cd /src && qwen

RAG with local quantized LLM model

2024-08-17T18:11:00.001+08:00

While there are many Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) post out there, many of them rely on external LLM APIs such as OpenAI or Amazon Bedrock, etc.

How well do they work with quantized LLM models that can run locally? I got one here, and it works quite well for me.

How I chose Generali home insurance in 2023?

2023-02-04T21:12:00.002+08:00

I read through multiple home insurance comparison sites such as MoneySmart and MoneyHero, and articles/sites such as those from 10life, spacious.hk, and even this old article in 2012 from Consumer Council, and still have no clue which insurance to get. There are too many "features'' offered by these insurance companies, and it just muddles the water. What it comes down to is really knowing what I want want out of the home insurance, and it comes down to 2 things:

Third-party legal liability protection
Insurance for my home content

I went through all the insurance company that offers home insurance: Zurich, FWD, Generali, Blue Cross, Dah Sing, QBE, AIG, Allied World, Prudential, HSBC/AXA, AXA, MSIG, AIA, Pingan, One Degree, Bank of China Group (BOCG), Sompo, Hong Leong and Allianz, and got their annual premium, third party legal liability protection amount and home content insurance amount and calculated the Legal Liability Insured per $ and Home content insured per dollar. I rank them all in this spreadsheet.

Legal Liability Insured per $

Rank	Company	Rate	Coverage	Insured per dollar
1	AXA/HSBC 2	1680	20,000,000.00	11,904.76
2	Prudential Premier	1360	15,000,000.00	11,029.41
3	Prudential Harmony	990	10,000,000.00	10,101.01
4	One Degree Standard	1025	10,000,000.00	9,756.10
5	Pingan	1066	10,000,000.00	9,380.86
6	Dah Sing Plan C	1280	12,000,000.00	9,375.00
7	Blue Cross Plan B	980	9,000,000.00	9,183.67
8	One Degree Plus	1342	12,000,000.00	8,941.88
9	One Degree Prestige	1690	15,000,000.00	8,875.74
10	Generali	888.89	7,500,000.00	8,437.49

Home Content Insured per $

Rank	Company	Rate	Coverage	Insured per dollar
1	Generali	888.89	1,000,000.00	1,125.00
2	Sompo 2	900	1,000,000.00	1,111.11
3	Prudential Premier	1360	1,500,000.00	1,102.94
4	Sompo 1	1000	1,000,000.00	1,000.00
5	Pingan	1066	1,000,000.00	938.09
6	Dah Sing Plan C	1280	1,200,000.00	937.50
7	AIG Standard	1280	1,000,000.00	781.25
8	One Degree Standard	1025	800,000.00	780.49
9	Blue Cross Plan B	980	750,000.00	765.31
10	Blue Cross Plan A	1580	1,200,000.00	759.49

The AXA/HSBC Plan 2 offer was quite tempting, given its high legal liability total coverage and insured per dollar. This is especially true after reading unverified information from forums such as this one from baby-kingdom where the poster claimed “someone forgot to turn off the water, flood the elevators and have to pay 15 million Hong Kong dollars for damage”. However, the home content coverage is a little low at only HK$600,000, which doesn’t even make it to the top 10 for home content insured per $.

Did someone really pay HK$15 million for damage to the building’s elevator? Hard to say. Doing my own research, I found a couple of news articles that put claims of flood damage to elevator(s) at up to K$1 million for this case (2022) and HK$3.5 million for another case (2019). It is a good idea to take even news articles with a grain of salt these days, so if anyone in the elevator repair industry or home insurance industry knows what a “sensible” amount to insure for, please do share!

At the end of the day, I chose Generali, with annual premium at only HK$888.89, with the HK$7.5 million legal liability coverage (rank #10) and HK$1 million dollar home content coverage (rank #1).

For less than HK$200 extra, Pingan also seems like a decent choice for my situation, with annual premium at HK$1,066, you can HK$10 million legal liability (rank #5) and HK10 million home content (rank $5) insurance coverage.

For an extra few hundred dollars per year, Prudential Premier with annual premium at HK$1,360, with HK$15 million and HK$15 million is also a good choice if I move into a more upscale condo and I own more expensive stuff in my home.

Proluxury PDE001060 dehumidifier will not turn on!

2021-12-17T20:38:00.004+08:00

This is the second dehumidifier that won't turn on for me. The first one was a busted tactile switch. I am prettier sure of that because I opened up the dehumidifier to access the circuit board. I was able to short circuit across the switch and the dehumidifier will turn on. First time round, as a spoiled developed-world brat, I just bought another dehumidifier, a Proluxury pde001060 dehumidifier.

This time I also opened up the dehumidifier. Long and behold, another busted tactile switch. I short circuit across the switch pins, and the device turn on.

Took out the circuit board of the dehumidifier.

It actually locked burnt out!

"Not again!?", as my daughter will put it. And as an engineer, this is totally not acceptable, so I go about my journey to fix it. Time for some Googling.

First off, Google Lens. Yup, found images of the switch, but none of the linked sites tell me the model or where to buy it.

Good thing my google-fu is up to snuff. Measure the size of the switch, let's try "6mm tactile switch".

Is that 5 or 6mm? as I squint to try and red the tape measurer. Good thing digital zoom on phone camera are awesome these days.

Mouser did some excellent SEO, and they are one of the first site to show up. 4 pages worth of 6mm switches. After looking through a few switches, I narrowed it down to the FSM12JH model and it is only HK$1.28! Great! Add to cart, checkout.

Wait a minute, HK$125 for shipping!?

Wait a minute, HK$125 for shipping? Err... That is why Taobao is your friend. CNY 0.5 per switch HK$ 12.31 shipped to Hong Kong. In fact, it was so cheap I am worried that they won't bother with my order, or have some hidden MOQ. I double check with the seller to see whether they are okay to just ship 4 pcs to Hong Kong, and they are okay with that. I end up buy 10pcs, don't know why....

Buy and shipping from Taobao to Hong Kong is so affordable!

Ordered on Sunday 12/12, goods arrived on Friday 12/15. I ordered way more than just the switches, from shops across China, so the shipping took a little longer than if I just ordered the switches. This is expected.

Hohoho! I went a little nuts with the 12/12 discounts.

Busted out by soldering and de-soldering skills.

Fixed!

It will be a lot easier to just by a new dehumidifier, but what a waste for just a busted switch. I am glad I gave it a try and managed to fix it.

The infamous Razer laptop battery swelling / bulging

2021-11-15T22:02:00.002+08:00

The infamous Razer laptop battery swelling / bulging problem

The infamous Razer laptop battery swelling / bulging. Yes. I got it too. I have own more than 10+ laptop of various brands - Apple, Lenovo, Dell, HP, Gateway, etc., and my first Razer is the only one that I got a swelling/bulging battery problem.

Is it just my luck or razer's quality problem?

Is it a battery quality problem, or just the laptop design will kill any battery?

Swelling battery vs replacement battery

I got a replacement from a TMall Taobao store, which has the most review. I scanned through the reviews and they are look all positive, diverse and genuine. It is definitely not the cheapest, but I do not think going for the cheapest replacement here is a good idea.

Let's see how long this last and whether I will get a battery swelling problem again.

Smallest Java hello world web application

2021-09-11T17:02:00.001+08:00

Requires no dependencies other the Java runtime itself.
Since JDK 11+, you can run the file directly

Withholding tax by country of major markets

2021-05-24T22:28:00.001+08:00

Withholding tax by country of major financial markets

Australia	30%
Canada	25%
China (Mainland Incorporated)	10%
China (Offsohore Incorporated)	0%
Hong Kong	0%
Japan	20.42%
Singpaore	0%
Singapore REITs	10%
U.K.	0%
U.K. REITs	20%
U.S.	30%

Source: https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/additional-material/withholding-tax-index-values.pdf

Most stock pickers loses to the index? Just buy the index. Does this advice work in Hong Kong?

2021-05-23T09:52:00.002+08:00

If you invest in the Hong Kong stock market, Tracker Fund (2800) is one of the bigger and better-known funds. Does just buy the index work?

source: charts created from https://www.tradingview.com/

If you invested in 2800 10 years ago (2011-05-16 to 2021-05-17), in the course of this 10 years, you are looking at about 23% capital appreciation. Assuming inflation at 2% p.a., it barely tracks inflation of ~22%. The good news is there is a dividend, and you would have collected 8.01 HKD per share, and this doesn't look too bad.

source: http://www.aastocks.com/en/stocks/analysis/company-fundamental/dividend-history?symbol=02800

Let's look at trading view says when we click the "adj" - adjust data for dividends, and we are looking at about 70% return.

source: charts created from https://www.tradingview.com/

However, if you look at VTI and DIA in US, you can see 2800 really lacks behind:

VTI rose 210.92% for the same period
DIA rose 173.96% for the same period

source: charts created from https://www.tradingview.com/

Although, past performance is not indicative of future results, given this observation, should we bother with investing in the Tracker fund (2800)? Or any Hong Kong index fund / ETFs at all?

Is Kotlin still a good choice for JVM based backend today?

2021-05-19T16:23:00.003+08:00

It has been while since I start a new JVM project. I needed to build something quick and dirty, e.g., within a day or two, so I went with something I was most familiar with, Spring Boot, to get the project up and running.

It has been a while, but Kotlin has been the crazy a few years back and I had used it a few times with my previous employer. It is now a choice among the JVM languages. I have been away from the JVM space for more than a year (and boy, do I miss it), so it was either Java or Kotlin for me. I went with Kotlin just to keep it interesting.

I went with the Spring Initializr, picked my poison and got my project up in no time. It is a simple Web-MVC application, with one simple page with a form, some REST API call out to other services, and read only to database. Picking Gradle for build and Kotlin for language, the project generated a Kotlin base build file build.gradle.kts. This is new to me, but the script is still very readable, so no extra learning curve here.

Last time I used Spring Boot with Kotlin, I recalled there are little things here and there that we need to "tweak" to get Spring Boot feature to work properly with Kotlin. These "tweaks" feel like some inherent mismatch between Spring Boot and Kotlin. For my new recent project, it appears all these “mismatch” still exist.

For example, to use Kotlin data class as @ConfigurationProperties object, we need to add this @ConstructorBinding annotation to the class and add “kapt” plugin to the project. This feels like some sort of workaround for some incompatibility between Kotlin data class and how Spring Boot @ConfigurationProperties works.

Next adding spring-data-jpa support with Kotlin, we need to add another slew of plugins “plugin.allopen”, “plugin.noarg”, “plugin.jpa”, and some custom extra gradle configuration:

allOpen {
    annotation("javax.persistence.Entity")
    annotation("javax.persistence.Embeddable")
    annotation("javax.persistence.MappedSuperclass")
}

These little problems are often the reason why many “experienced” developers still refuse to adopt higher order frameworks such as Spring Boot and Ruby and Rails, and prefer to keep rolling their own, copy-and-pasting from past projects, because when the magic works, it is awesome, but if it doesn’t, trying to find the problem on your own is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. This is the size of the ecosystem matters, and the good old Spring Boot and its "Google-able-bility" is still top notch.

The target deployment environment is Kubernetes and I had experience using Docker and Dockerfile to build image, but Spring Boot simplified this for me and all I need is run gradlew bootBuildImage. With a little bit more work to setup the Gitlab pipeline to use kustomize and kubectl to push to EKS, the application was up in a day.

This got me thinking: Is Kotlin still a good choice for JVM based backend today?

With Java 17 LTS fast approaching, and many awesome language features added since the last LTS, such as java records in Java 16, it appears the language level gap between Kotlin and Java has shrunk. So, does it still justify using Kotlin, knowing that all these little incompatibility between the language and other frameworks? I think I found my answer in a comment by rzwitserloot in r/java.

An app to show bus ETA to the nearest stop quickly

2020-12-09T23:59:00.008+08:00

I take the bus to work daily. At least before COVID-19 hit. I could never understand why would any reputable company would put so many ads on their official bus app. Are they so desperate for that little extra revenue?

Terrible UX from CityBus NWFB. An anoying splash screen, then a full page ad, before the app loads.

I just want open the app, and see the ETA of the bus for the stop nearest to me! Luckily CityBus NWFB publish their ETA via API, so I wrote Hong Kong Buses to do just that.

What is C# equivalent for: Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control for a developer with Java background

2020-10-17T22:33:00.005+08:00

I recently joined a company that is a C#/.NET shop. I have been working primarilyc in the JVM ecosystem for backend through most of my professional work, so this is quite a big of change.

The language different is minor, but re-learning the ecosystem is quite another story.

Let us start with Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control Container. There are quite a bit few to choose from:

From my few conversation with developers coming from the .NET ecosystem, the default answer is always to go with the "official" Microsoft provided solution. So that is what I did.

Perhaps the documentation is written for people completely new to programming. For those with a Java background and are familiar with the concept of DI and IoC, here is my take of a quick start guide.

Use Host from the Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting namespace and build your IHost

IHost host = Host.CreativeDefaultBuilder()

.ConfigureServices(

( _, services ) =>

services.AddSingleton<MyInterface, MyImplementationClass>()

.AddSingleton<NextInterface, NextImplementationClass>()

// ... ...

);

For thosse coming from the Spring world, this is approximately equivalent to:

@Configuration

public class MyConfig {

@Bean

public MyInterface myClass() {

return new MyImplementationClass();

}

Or Guice if you come from Guice:

Guice.createInjector(new AbstractModule() {

@Override

protected void configure() {

bind(MyInterface.class).toInstance(new MyImplementationClass());

}

});

Spring Boot take this a step further with its @ComponentScan and @Component magic. Does .NET have something similar? I do not know, if you do, please drop me a comment!

Typing chinese puntuations

2020-06-09T07:34:00.003+08:00

倉頡
ZXAD-->。
ZXAC-->、
ZXAB-->，
ZXCD-->「
ZXCE-->」

Windows 10

組合鍵產生符號說明

Ctrl + , (逗號) ，逗號

Ctrl + . (點) 。句號

Ctrl + ; (分號) ；分號

Ctrl + ' (單引號) 、頓號

Ctrl + / (斜線[右上左下) … 刪節號

Ctrl + - (減號) — 破折號

Ctrl + [ (左中括號) 【左粗中括號

Ctrl + ] (右中括號) 】右粗中括號

組合鍵產生符號說明

Ctrl + Shift + , (逗號) 《左書名號(書名)

Ctrl + Shift + . (點) 》右書名號(書名)

Ctrl + Shift + ; (分號) ：冒號

Ctrl + Shift + ‘ (單引號) ＂雙引號

Ctrl + Shift + [ (左中括號) ｛左大括號

Ctrl + Shift + ] (右中括號) ｝右大括號

Ctrl + Shift + 1 (上方數字鍵) ！驚嘆號

Ctrl + Shift + / (斜線[右上左下) ？問號

Ctrl + Shift + 9 (開引號) 「開引號

Ctrl + Shift + 0 (閂引號) 」閂引號 「註一」

註一：要先把 Advance Key Settings - Between input langauges - Change Key Sequence - Switch Keyboard Layout 的 Key sequence 改為 Not Assigned.

(謝謝 mobile 1 的獨覺禪Source: https://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=300&t=4837494)

Face tracking web application

2019-04-27T21:41:00.001+08:00

Continuing the theme of exploring various technology, it is time to see how far the browser has come.

A web application which tracks user faces through the device video capture source. On mobile phone, user can choose which camera to capture the video from. Since mobile phone have limited computational power, the resolution of the video capture is lower to ensure a smooth experience.

Try out the face tracking web app. Please note the application is rather large ~ 9 MB, and may require a few minutes to download on a slow connection. You will also need a a modern browser such as Google Chrome. Available for desktop and mobile devices

Don't worry, all processing are done on the client side, i.e. no video or imagery are send to anyone.

Trying out flutter 1.0 to build an Android App

2019-04-26T00:25:00.001+08:00

With the recent 1.0 release of Flutter, it is time to try out yet another technology. This time, it was a pleasant surprise. It was surprisingly easy to build an app and publish it!

And here it is: Hong Kong Barbeque Sites in Google Play Store

This is a simple app which list out the Barbeque sites from LCSD Hong Kong. In this app, I get to tryout:

Dart + Flutter
Google Map integration
I18n with Chinese HK/CN and English.

Did you know? JDK comes with HttpServer since 1.6

2019-04-04T22:36:00.005+08:00

Did you know? JDK comes with a HttpServer since 1.6

And it is not a secret, do not use API under sun.*. It is under com.sun.*. Just tried it out and still works on JDK 11.

Intellij SLF4J live template - psfl

2017-08-10T22:53:00.006+08:00

In Settings > Editor > Live Templates
Under "others" section

Add the following with abbreviation: psfl and description: Insert slf4j logger

private static final org.slf4j.Logger log = org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getLogger($CLASS_NAME$.class);

And "Edit Variable" where CLASS_NAME = className()

Bitcoin Faucet - And I actually got paid by one of them

2015-05-31T00:13:00.003+08:00

In the past weekend, there was a Bitcoin-themed hackathon in Hong Kong. Although I didn't participate, it did bring my attention to bitcoin again and I did a little bit of research about it.

While I was doing my research, I learn about these little sites called "Bitcoin faucet". For those of us old enough to know about those get-paid-to-surf-the-net-schemes back in the 90s (e.g. AllAdvantage, are the still around?), are they back?

At first I was skeptical, but I figure I will give them a try. Of the 7-ish Bitcoin faucets I tried over the week, one of them actually did payout. The faucet that paid out is http://freebitco.in/

And here is a screenshot of the transaction receiving the bitcoin!

That's right. A Grand Total of $0.14 USD. Is it worth the time? Probably not. But at the end of the day, what intrigues me is the ability to enable micro-transactions. After all, paying out $0.14 USD by any other means, the transaction cost is probably more than the actual amount transferred.

Like it or not, Bitcoin or some other crypto-currency technologies like this will open a whole new world for us.

P.S. Wanna try out the bitcoin faucet? Here is the link to it again.

Javascript oddities #1

2015-03-28T21:11:00.002+08:00

var func = function() {}
console.log(func.prototype.constructor == func); // return true

JHipster: A code generator with a truck load of tech for AngularJS and Spring Boot based projects

2015-03-12T23:43:00.004+08:00

I recently came across a JHipster - a Yeoman-based generator, which generates a based project which includes a truck load of technologies (taken directly from JHipster's Technology Stack page):

Technology stack on the client side

Single Web page application:

Responsive Web Design
HTML5 Boilerplate
Twitter Bootstrap
AngularJS
Full internationalization support with Angular Translate
Optional Compass / Sass support for CSS design
Optional WebSocket support with Spring Websocket

With the great Yeoman development workflow:

Easy installation of new JavaScript libraries with Bower
Build, optimization and live reload with Grunt or Gulp.js
Testing with Karma and PhantomJS

And what if a single Web page application isn't enough for your needs?

Support for the Thymeleaf template engine, to generate Web pages on the server side

Technology stack on the server side

A complete Spring application:

Spring Boot for easy application configuration
Maven or Gradle configuration for building, testing and running the application
"development" and "production" profiles (both for Maven and Gradle)
Spring Security
Spring MVC REST + Jackson
Optional WebSocket support with Spring Websocket
Spring Data JPA + Bean Validation
Database updates with Liquibase
MongoDB support if you'd rather use a document-oriented NoSQL database instead of JPA
Cassandra support if you'd rather use a column-oriented NoSQL database instead of JPA

Ready to go into production:

Monitoring with Metrics
Caching with ehcache (local cache) or hazelcast (distributed cache)
Optional HTTP session clustering with hazelcast
Optimized static resources (gzip filter, HTTP cache headers)
Log management with Logback, configurable at runtime
Connection pooling with HikariCP for optimum performance
Builds a standard WAR file or an executable JAR file

Although I did not use it for any of my projects (yet), it is a great reference to see how to setup a project which truly separate the front and back development. What I meant by that is the project is setup where the front-end can be served via 'grunt serve', i.e. NodeJS, decoupled from the back-end Spring Boot server. Yet, we all these goodies, you can still easily call 'mvn package' to build a complete Spring Boot powered executable JAR.

It is a great project to get a glimpse of all these technologies and how they can integrate together. More importantly, it set up a viable project which separates but integrated workflow for front-end and back-end. After working with it for a bit, I do have some reservations and comments, but that for another post.

Have you used JHipster in your projects? In a production setting? If so, I love to hear your comments.

SLF4J Template for Eclipse

2014-12-17T20:30:00.001+08:00

In Preference > Java > Editor > Templates

Insert the following template:

${l:import(org.slf4j.Logger)}
${f:import(org.slf4j.LoggerFactory)}
private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(${enclosing_type}.class);

SOAPUI 5.0.0 hangs after upgrading OS X to Yosemite

2014-12-15T17:30:00.005+08:00

After upgrading to the company's Mac OS X to Yosemite, SOAPUI 5.0.0 refuse to load properly. It will start, and the UI will come up, but it just hang with the spinning wheel right away.

I was able to resolve this issue by uncommenting the line #53 in $SOAP_HOME/bin/soapui.sh

# JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dsoapui.browser.disabled=true"

I hope this help someone else out there who has the same problem, and also for myself to reference again if face with the same problem in the future.

Getting edx devstack to run on Windows

2014-04-06T21:33:00.000+08:00

1) Fix issue https://github.com/edx/edx-platform/issues/3230

2) Change Vagrant ansible-play command to

ansible-playbook -i localhost, -c local vagrant-devstack.yml --tags=deploy -e configuration_version=master -e edx_ansible_source_repo=https://github.com/lsiu/configuration.git -e edx_platform_repo=https://github.com/lsiu/edx-platform.git -e edx_platform_version=master -vvv

3) Fix symbolic link issue
See: https://github.com/edx/configuration/wiki/Vagrant-troubleshooting#dealing-with-line-endings-and-symlinks-under-windows

 # You need to run this from cygwin, not the Windows command-line (see above)
 git rm --cached -r . && git reset --hard
 git config --global alias.add-symlink '!__git_add_symlink(){ dst=$(echo "$2")/../$(echo "$1"); if [ -e "$dst" ]; then hash=$(echo "$1" | git hash-object -w --stdin); git update-index --add --cacheinfo 120000 "$hash" "$2"; git checkout -- "$2"; else echo "ERROR: Target $dst does not exist!"; echo "       Not creating invalid symlink."; fi; }; __git_add_symlink "$1" "$2"'
 git config --global alias.rm-symlink '!__git_rm_symlink(){ git checkout -- "$1"; link=$(echo "$1"); POS=$'\''/'\''; DOS=$'\''\\\\'\''; doslink=${link//$POS/$DOS}; dest=$(dirname "$link")/$(cat "$link"); dosdest=${dest//$POS/$DOS}; if [ -f "$dest" ]; then rm -f "$link"; cmd //C mklink //H "$doslink" "$dosdest"; elif [ -d "$dest" ]; then rm -f "$link"; cmd //C mklink //J "$doslink" "$dosdest"; else echo "ERROR: Something went wrong when processing $1 . . ."; echo "       $dest may not actually exist as a valid target."; fi; }; __git_rm_symlink "$1"'
 git config --global alias.rm-symlinks '!__git_rm_symlinks(){ for symlink in `git ls-files -s | grep -E "^120000" | cut -f2`; do git rm-symlink "$symlink"; git update-index --assume-unchanged "$symlink"; done; }; __git_rm_symlinks'
 git config --global alias.checkout-symlinks '!__git_checkout_symlinks(){ POS=$'\''/'\''; DOS=$'\''\\\\'\''; for symlink in `git ls-files -s | grep -E "^120000" | cut -f2`; do git update-index --no-assume-unchanged "$symlink"; if [ -d "$symlink" ]; then dossymlink=${symlink//$POS/$DOS}; cmd //C rmdir //S //Q "$dossymlink"; fi; git  checkout -- "$symlink"; echo "Restored git symlink $symlink <<===>> `cat $symlink`"; done; }; __git_checkout_symlinks'
 git rm-symlinks

4) Before running `vagrant provision`, comment out the checkout and clean resets (if left in playbook, it will resets the above fix)

/edx/app/edx_ansible/edx_ansiblplaybooks/roles/edx_ansible/tasks/deploy.yml
/edx/app/edx_ansible/edx_ansiblplaybooks/roles/edxapp/tasks/deploy.yml

Self-Professed Nerd

Qwen Code CLI sandbox bug

Analysis: Websites Using Prebid.js Without Google Publisher Tag

Executive Summary

Key Findings

Testing Results

Tested over 60 websites across multiple categories (news, tech, entertainment, gaming, newspapers)Found that nearly all websites using Prebid.js also use Google Publisher TagNo websites found using Prebid.js without Google Publisher TagSome websites use neither technology

Industry Context: Google's Anti-Trust Issues

Analysis of Findings

Why Publishers Continue Using Both Technologies

The Paradox of Independence

Implications for the Ad Tech Industry

Impact of Anti-Trust Litigation

Future Outlook

Conclusion

Code

Github repository: https://github.com/lsiu/sites-with-prebid-without-gpt

References

Tools to help understand ads on websites

Try out Qwen CLI in a docker container sandbox

Overview

Preqrequisites

Command Line

Run Qwen CLI in *nix

Run Qwen CLI in Windows

RAG with local quantized LLM model

How I chose Generali home insurance in 2023?

Legal Liability Insured per $

Home Content Insured per $

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Smallest Java hello world web application

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Did you know? JDK comes with HttpServer since 1.6

Intellij SLF4J live template - psfl

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Javascript oddities #1

JHipster: A code generator with a truck load of tech for AngularJS and Spring Boot based projects

Technology stack on the client side

Technology stack on the server side

SLF4J Template for Eclipse

SOAPUI 5.0.0 hangs after upgrading OS X to Yosemite

Getting edx devstack to run on Windows

Tested over 60 websites across multiple categories (news, tech, entertainment, gaming, newspapers)
Found that nearly all websites using Prebid.js also use Google Publisher Tag
No websites found using Prebid.js without Google Publisher Tag
Some websites use neither technology