mostsignificant in June
Linux in Government, Pentagon Pizza Meter, PNG Update, Google Earth Turns 20, OS Creator Dinner, and Data Modeling
A steep temperature curve is kicking off the summer in Europe this year and probably for many years to come. My laptop taunts me by staying silent while I have a stand-up fan blasting at full speed to prevent a human meltdown. Or maybe it just means I bought a machine that’s a little too powerful for writing blog posts and reading the news.
I made some changes to my blog: I imported all my blog posts from Medium and will have only two sites for my blog posts in the future: Medium and a mirror here on Substack (if you are out of free stories at Medium). For the rest of the year, I’ll only send monthly news updates via email, but starting next year, I’ll include all new blog posts in the newsletter as well. This also means I’ll stop using GitHub Pages to mirror blog posts, which simplifies my publishing workflow. Less is more.
What was news-worthy in June 2025?
👩💻 I remember vividly how many years ago the government of Munich started a project called LiMux to bring open source software to the desktop PCs of their municipal administration endusers, mainly replacing proprietary Microsoft software by Linux. However, despite initial success by already having migrated more than 80% of desktop machines, the project failed “due to alleged productivity problems“ and resulted in migrating all machines back to Microsoft Windows and Office. One keeps wondering if the main German Microsoft HQ being located in Munich had anything to do with it. This month two governments showed that it is in fact possible to bring Linux to public government PCs, Denmark and the French city of Lyon:
TechRadar and The Register🖼️ There is a format for digital pictures called Portable Network Graphics (PNG). The format was created in 1994 and became an official web standard in 1997. For a historical classification: that was the year when UK handed Hong Kong back to China and Princess Diana tragically died. Since then, the specification didn’t change and we are still using this format as it was specified back then. Until this month, when it came back with an update with support for HDR, APNGs and Exif data:
ProgramMax🌍 Google Earth celebrates its 20th anniversary. Google Earth was created with Google’s acquisition of Keyhole (I recommend to check out the movie The Billion Dollar Code on Netflix). More and more features were added to it over the years, for example tree canopy coverage and land temperatures for professional use. For the birthday, they added historical Street View imagery to their product, letting users explore how places have changed over time:
9to5Google
What was read-worthy in June 2025?
🍕 A data analysis of pizza deliveries into the Pentagon might have spoiled the US attack on Iran. This phenomenon already happened in 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and in 1989, shortly before the invasion of Panama. It’s called the “Pentagon Pizza Meter” and comes from the fact that the Pentagon’s food court has no pizza places—so when long nights are ahead, officials order in:
Journee Mondiale🐧 There are two operating system legends in the IT world and the combined share of their creations make up more than 60% of the global market. As you’ve probably guessed right, I am talking about Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. But did you know they never actually met in person until this month? They met up at a dinner hosted by Mark Russinovich—another IT legend, who is now the CTO at Microsoft Azure, and captured the meeting in a photo:
The Verge
What did I do in June 2025?
✍️ I wrote an article about Data Modeling. Data modeling is the process of defining and structuring how data is stored, organized, and used in systems. Modern tools with shiny user interfaces brush so easily over the basics of data engineering that I thought it would be a good fit to write about an essential skill when working with data:
Medium or Substack
Quote of the month:
A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for. Sail out to sea and do new things.
While researching for a planned blog series about IT history I came across this remarkable quote by the wonderful Grace Hopper.
I wish you all a great July!