A blog about current topics in computer science and media, maintained by students of the Hochschule der Medien Stuttgart (Stuttgart Media University).
Recent Posts
Kubernetes: from Zero to Hero with Kompose, Minikube, k3sup and Helm — Part 1: Design
This is part one of our series on how we designed and implemented a scalable, highly-available and fault-tolerant microservice-based Image Editor. The series covers the various design choices we made and the difficulties we faced during design and development of our system. It shows how we set up the scaling infrastructure with Kubernetes and what…
IPFS: the InterPlanetary File System demystified
In this article we will explore IPFS, the InterPlanetary File System. IPFS is a system for storing and accessing files, websites and other kinds of data — just as the Web we enjoy using every day — but unlike the Web, IPFS is peer-to-peer based and automatically distributes its content across the network.
Using Gitlab to set up a CI/CD workflow for an Android App from scratch
Tim Landenberger (tl061) Johannes Mauthe (jm130) Maximilian Narr (mn066) This blog post aims to provide an overview about how to setup a decent CI/CD workflow for an android app with the capabilities of Gitlab. The blog post has been written for Gitlab Ultimate. Nevertheless, most features are also available in the free edition. The goal…
How to increase robustness of a large scale system by testing
When a distributed software system grows bigger and bigger, one will end up with a big amount of various components which all need to scale independently. In order to achieve these components working smooth together, it is necessary to figure out at which time a component needs to be scaled, to avoid having one component…
Bidirectional Power Transfer for a Smart Load Management for Electric Vehicles
Abstract The global expansion of electromobility is progressing rapidly. The chinese city of Shenzhen has the world’s first and largest fleet of electric buses with more than 16,000 buses. A gigantic charging infrastructure for 5805 electric buses was established to cope with this. It reaches peak loads of 464.4 megawatts which is an enormous challenge…
DNS over HTTPS: One problem solved, but a bunch of new ones created…
In the course of attending the lecture “Secure Systems” I became aware of a blog post by Geoff Huston on how the Domain Name System (DNS) handles “no such domain name” (NXDOMAIN) responses and which possible attack vectors could result from this. His analysis showed how little effort is necessary to perform a Denial of…
Supply chain on Ethereum Network
600 million people – almost every tenth in the world – fall ill every year with contaminated food, 420,000 of them die (cf. World Health Organization 2019). The main reason for this are supply chains that can not be properly traced back to the source of the contamination (cf. Yiannas 2018). Experts say that the…
How to build fault-tolerant software systems
A brief introduction to the fundamental concepts of Erlang and Elixir Ever since the first electronic systems have been created, engineers and developers have strived to provide solutions to guarantee their robustness and fault-tolerance. Thereof arose the understanding that developing and building a fault-tolerant system is not an easy task, because it requires a deep…
Spy Gadgets that the most people don’t know
From time to time there are reports in the media about spy cameras in hotels rooms or in Airbnb apartments. These cameras are used to spy the gusts. But there are other spy gadgets then cameras, there are gadgets to attack wireless connections or to collect all keystrokes of a system. In this article is…
Are Passwords for Web Authentication Obsolete? Leakage of Passwords and API-Keys and Possible Solutions
Hardly any service today works without an API that allows users to log in and then use features that are not available to unregistered users. To do this, the user can create an account that is password protected. Services such as the Google Maps API also provide access interfaces to allow application developers to easily…
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