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site iconVictor Kropp Modify

A software engineer in Munich, Germany.
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App Defaults

2026-11-05 03:27:46

Three years since original App Defaults lists have been shared by many people around the internet, some started revisiting them. I wrote one in 2023, and updated it in early 2025.

I opened them today and realized that literally nothing has changed since then. I discovered some new apps after the first round, which I now use regularly, such as NetNewsWire RSS reader.

Here’s my (almost unchanged) list
📨 Mail Client: Mail.app
📮 Mail Server: Migadu
📝 Notes: Apple Notes
✅ To-Do: Apple Reminders
🟦 Photo Management: iCloud Photos & Google Photos (also want to finally setup Immich on my homelab)
📆 Calendar: Google Calendar via Calendar.app
📁 Cloud File Storage: Google Drive & iCloud
📖 RSS: NetNewsWire
🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Google Contacts
🌐 Browser: Safari (personal) & Google Chrome (work)
💬 Chat: Telegram, WhatsApp & Slack
🔖 Bookmarks: Linkding ✨
📑 Read It Later: Safari Reading List
📜 Word Processing: Markdown, Google Docs
📈 Spreadsheets: Google Sheets
📊 Presentations: Keynote, Google Slides
🛒 Shopping Lists: –
🍴 Meal Planning: my wife
💰 Budgeting and Personal Finance: personal custom app ✨
📰 News: Süddeutsche Zeitung
🎵 Music: Spotify
🎤 Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
🔐 Password Management: 1Password
💻 Terminal: Ghostty

It doesn’t mean that I haven’t tried any new app since then, they are just more specialized apps. And, more personal.

And, of course, apps like ChatGPT or Claude have also become indispensable parts of daily workflows.

Lists

2026-11-04 05:05:24

I like lists and keep many of them on my homepage. I don’t trust much external services and don’t want to have half a dozen accounts to track

I regret not starting tracking all these things earlier.

And the reason I write it now is that I updated my books page with tons of book covers and fancy stacks. You should have your own favorite lists too!

Daylight Saving Time and Leap Seconds

2026-11-03 01:22:14

I rant about Daylight Saving Time in April this year already. All the points from that post are still valid. And there’s another one, surfaced in the latest Apple Watch update, when the watch may start showing the wrong time after the change. My wife experienced this bug herself, bad that I didn’t record the bug on video.

Well, there is also some good news about time. Leap seconds are now obsolete. Unlike with DST, people were able to talk to each other and agreed on the plan. Probably, because these leap seconds were only noticeable for distributed technical systems. But my hope that one day we’ll get rid of DST is reinvigorated.

Designer In Japan

2026-10-28 02:50:35

It is becoming a new recurring topic on my blog, a short video recommendation. Short in a sense of less than 10 minutes or so, not a few seconds long reel (god save).

Today I’d like to recommend not your usual YouTube video, but a piece of art.

Anton, designer living in Tokyo, collects memories of his life in various forms, from journal to an incredible complex graphic intensive hand crafted videos.

I enjoy visual arts a lot, and follow him for some time already. And if you liked this video, you may want to learn how he creates music or motion graphics for his channel.

Compromised Certificates

2026-10-22 02:00:33

I’ve briefly seen the news regarding compromised intermediate certificates from some unknown CA (eMudrah) yesterday, but quickly dismissed them. I was like, shit happens, something leaked, certificates were already revoked, I was not affected, all good.

Well, it appears the problem was much bigger.

After a security researcher posted private keys for all certificates on GitHub (note the repository name), it has become clear that they weren’t private at all. Instead of 384 bits long random numbers, astonishingly, they were literally 4, 56, 66, 115, 155, 156, 230, 237.

And while you’re trying to comprehend this, an obligatory reminder of this timeless XKCD comic.

© XKCD

How could this even be possible? The most plausible explanation is that these keys originated from some test environment, which was accidentally pushed to production. Anyway, I’d call it the biggest security issue ever.

Internet and computers in general run on trust. You as a user trust developers of the operating system and browser you use, the internet provider, and so-called Certificate Authorities, who issue certificates protecting HTTPS sites. The chain of trust is as strong as its weakest point. And yesterday it appeared to be very weak.

I personally am going to review all online security measures I take. And I already have many in place, it’s just you always need to be a step ahead.

How to start a movement

2026-10-21 03:54:45

Derek Sivers brilliantly explains in under five minutes what it takes to be a leader. Not all TED talks deserve your attention, but this one definitely does.

And Derek Sivers himself too. After his successful musician and entrepreneur careers, he wrote several books. If I am to recommend one, that would be Your Music and People, where Derek reflects on those periods of his life. He also tells an unbelievable story about his conflict with Apple and Steve Jobs in this book.

Besides that Derek started Now pages and maintains a collection of Now pages. And you should have Now page too.