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Practical writing about software, systems, and the small details that make products feel solid.

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Fresh from the notebook

Tech 03 Sep 2026 8 min read

Why USB Hubs Share Bandwidth Between Connected Devices

A USB hub can turn one computer port into several useful connections. You might plug in a keyboard, mouse, external drive, webcam, and card reader at the same time and expect each new socket to behave like a separate port on the computer. The important detail is that those devices usually still reach the computer through the hub’s single upstream USB connection. When several devices need to transfer substantial amounts of data at once, they can therefore compete for the capacity of that shared connection.

USB USB Hubs

Tech 03 Sep 2026 7 min read

Why Safely Ejecting USB Drives Still Matters

Copying a file to a USB flash drive can look finished before every related storage operation has completely settled. Modern operating systems use memory, caches, and background work to make storage feel fast, so the progress window is not always the whole story. That is why computers provide an eject, safely remove, or unmount command for removable storage. The command gives the operating system a chance to finish pending work and stop using the drive before you disconnect it.

USB Drives Storage

Tech 03 Sep 2026 8 min read

Why a Higher-Wattage USB-C Charger Does Not Force More Power Into Your Device

A laptop may come with a 65 W charger while a phone normally uses much less. If both devices have USB-C ports, an obvious question follows: is it safe to plug the phone into the larger charger, and will the charger push 65 watts into it? With standards-compliant USB-C charging equipment, the wattage printed on a charger is primarily a statement of capacity. It tells you how much power the charger can provide under supported conditions. It does not mean every connected device must consume that amount.

USB-C Charging

Tech 03 Sep 2026 7 min read

What Private Browsing Does and Does Not Hide

Most modern browsers offer a mode called private browsing, incognito mode, or a similar name. The feature is useful, but its name can create the wrong expectation: it mainly changes what the browser keeps on your device after the private session ends. Private browsing is not an invisibility mode for the internet. Websites can still receive network information, online services can still associate activity with an account you sign in to, and the network carrying your traffic can still handle your connections.

Browsers Private Browsing

Software Engineering 03 Sep 2026 9 min read

Using Feature Flags Without Creating Permanent Complexity

A code change is often ready to deploy before it is ready to expose to every user. A team may want to test a new workflow with internal users, release it gradually, or keep unfinished behavior inactive while several changes reach production. A feature flag provides that control. It is a runtime decision that selects between behaviors without requiring a new deployment for every change in exposure. That sounds simple, but feature flags create their own engineering cost. Every active flag can introduce another path through the system. If flags accumulate, developers eventually have to reason about combinations of old and new behavior that nobody intended to keep forever.

Software Engineering Feature Flags

Cybersecurity 03 Sep 2026 6 min read

Use HTTP Security Headers as Defense in Depth

HTTP security headers let a server tell browsers which security rules should apply to a response. They can restrict where content loads from, prevent MIME type guessing, reduce referrer leakage, and enforce encrypted transport. They are useful defense in depth, not a replacement for input validation, output encoding, authentication controls, or secure session handling. A strong header policy can limit the impact of some mistakes, but it cannot make an unsafe application secure by itself.

Cybersecurity Web Security

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