Removing Windows 10 Diagnostics from Windows 7/8/8.1

Windows 10 "Security?": We got opt-out-only-all-included-private-Wifi-Password-Sharing with all your Facebook Friends, access to all data, addressbooks, emails, voice and video as well as the possiblity to shutdown hardware you attached to your PC - if MS does not like it. Quite some people from the Facebook and Computerbild Front already upgraded to the new Windows 10 - "don't get left behind and get your upgrade" - well... it sounds more like a really evil episode of Dr. Who and the Cyberman to me. Ugh.

To get to the point: Microsoft did backport some of his Windows 10 telemetry magic to Windows 7/8/8.1 and installed it unasked as updates. So your data can enjoy its "freedom" even without you upgrading to Windows 10.

Sweet.

TL;DR - Microsoft did backport Windows 10 telemetry to Windows 7/8/8.1. Xvitaly on Github made a nice cmd file, just download it and execute it to remove all the bad updates and Windows 10 Ads. Restart. After that, check the Windows Update Section and disable the Updates in Question. Otherwise, you will install these again on your next Update.
Link: https://gist.github.com/xvitaly/eafa75ed2cb79b3bd4e9

Open-source / private Evernote alternative: Paperwork

I use tools like Google Keep and Evernote from time to time to manage my pile of recipies, data and "knowledge" (what ever that'd be ;)). However, I don't feel really comfortable and looked for alternatives. There are certain plugins for ownCloud, however, these are basically text-editors at best... Never liked that idea. So I came around Paperwork: http://paperwork.rocks/.
Truth beeing told: It is still in development. It is as bleeding edge as it gets. Sharp as a knife. And yes - I forgot to do backups of my (until then not used) database and lost a lot of data on an simple update... (Yep, the reason why I introduced you to automysqlbackup some days ago...).
But at the moment, it is working very well and I like it very much. I think it will become an really great tool :)!

Private Dropbox/Google Drive/File Sync: Syncthing

I tested quite a lot of sync tools out there: Dropbox, G-Drive, Bittorrent Sync, ownCloud, plain Rsync,... You name it.
But to be true, I never really liked any tool that much: It never really *worked out* somehow: The Mobile Apps were bad, "Servers" did eat up too much performance, etc. etc.
And we don't want to forget these little itching problems with privacy - thinking about Dropbox, G-Drive and the now closed source Bittorrent Sync...
Well - enter Syncthing: https://syncthing.net/
In truth I can only say one thing: It works. It just, plainly, works for syncing data from your mobile devices to your swarm of servers or pcs.
So give it a shot :)!

[Win7+] Arduino 1.6.4+ Portable Installation

In the last months, a lot of new updates arrived from the Arduino front. The latest installment of the Arduino IDE is now 1.6.4 and got some really nice additions, i.e. an Board Manager to install board definitions from the net via one click, the Library Manager, line numbers and much more. However, given the nature of the Board Manager, it always installed the files somewhere on the Computer, i.e. the AppData folder - which not really made the Arduino IDE portable. However, with 1.6.3, this was fixed.

Preparation
1.) Download the latest Arduino IDE (1.6.4 here) from http://www.arduino.cc/en/pmwiki.php?n=Main/Software
We took the "Windows ZIP file for non admin install" Version.
2.) Unpack the Arduino IDE somewhere
3.) In the Main Arduino IDE Folder, create an Folder named portable

Installation of Board Support Packages
4.) Start Arduino IDE
5.) Go to File -> Presettings
6.) In the Line "Additional Boards Manager URLs" you can enter as many URLs as you want, seperated by comma.
You can find a list of the URLs at https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Unofficial-list-of-3rd-party-boards-support-urls
Click Ok if you're done
(i.e. enter http://arduino.esp8266.com/package_esp8266com_index.json for the ESP8266 Package)
7.) Go to Tools -> Board -> Boards Manager
Arduino will refresh its boards list from the URLs you entered. You can now click on every entry you want and install it with a click on install.
You can also uninstall and change versions using that menu.

Installation of Libraries
8.) Go to Sketch -> Include Library
Here you can a) Install a Library with the Library Manager in the same way as the Boards Manager, b) Install a Library from a ZIP File
Just install the libraries you need and close the window.
i.e. MQTT