Guides
In-depth guides on how to use our tools and the concepts behind them.
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RAID Level Comparison Guide
Choosing the right RAID level is a balance between capacity efficiency, fault tolerance, performance, and cost. This guide walks through the practical differences between the most common RAID levels and ZFS equivalents, so you can pick the right configuration for your workload before committing to hardware. Pair this guide with our RAID Calculator to model exact usable capacity and parity overhead for the disk count you have on hand.
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URL Safety Check Guide
Phishing and malicious URLs remain one of the most common attack vectors on the modern web. Attackers are increasingly sophisticated, using lookalike domains, homograph attacks, and legitimate-looking redirects to trick even careful users. This guide walks through a practical first-pass review process you can apply to any suspicious URL — whether it arrived via email, chat, social media, or a search result — so you can make an informed decision before clicking.
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Base64 Encoding Explained
Base64 is one of the most common encoding schemes in modern software, yet it is also one of the most misunderstood. Developers frequently misuse it as a form of obfuscation, conflate it with encryption, or apply it where it adds unnecessary overhead. This guide explains what Base64 is, why it exists, where it shines, and where it does not belong — so you can use it appropriately in your own code.
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Hash Functions Explained
Hash functions are fundamental building blocks of modern computing, used for everything from file integrity to digital signatures to password storage. They are also a common source of confusion: developers reach for MD5 when they should use SHA-256, use a fast hash for passwords, or expect hashes to be reversible. This guide untangles what hash functions are, how SHA-256 and SHA-1 compare, why MD5 is no longer safe, and the special rules for password hashing.
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JSON Best Practices
JSON is the default data format for APIs, configuration, logs, and just about any data exchange between systems. Its simplicity is part of why it has won, but that same simplicity hides surprising pitfalls — silent type coercion, ambiguous numbers, inconsistent naming, and parse errors that production debuggers see far too often. This guide collects the practical rules that experienced engineers follow to keep JSON predictable and maintainable.
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Image Format Comparison
Choosing the right image format affects page speed, visual quality, file size, and compatibility — sometimes by orders of magnitude. There is no single best format; each strikes a different balance between compression, quality, and browser support. This guide compares the formats you are likely to encounter on the modern web and tells you which to reach for in common situations.
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Regex Basics
Regular expressions are one of the highest-leverage tools any developer or analyst can learn. A 30-character regex can replace dozens of lines of imperative code, validate user input, find patterns in logs, or rewrite filenames in bulk. They are also famously cryptic. This guide builds up the practical pieces — literals, classes, quantifiers, anchors, groups, and flags — so that you can read most regexes you encounter and write the ones you need without consulting reference cards for every problem.
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JSON vs YAML vs TOML
JSON, YAML, and TOML are the three configuration formats you will meet on almost every modern project. They look similar at a glance, but they diverge sharply on indentation rules, comment support, error tolerance, and what humans versus machines find friendly. This guide compares them on the dimensions that actually matter when you choose one for a new tool, config file, or data exchange format.
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REST vs GraphQL vs gRPC
Three API styles dominate modern backend design: REST (the universal default), GraphQL (the query-driven challenger), and gRPC (the high-performance contender). They are not directly interchangeable — each makes different trade-offs around coupling, performance, tooling, and how clients evolve. This guide compares them on the dimensions that determine real-world fit, so you can pick deliberately instead of by default.
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UUID v4 vs UUID v7 vs ULID
Choosing an identifier strategy looks trivial until you hit production: random UUIDs fragment your database indexes, sequential IDs leak business data, and time-based IDs need careful clock handling. UUID v4, UUID v7, and ULID are three modern options that each balance randomness, sortability, and database friendliness differently. This guide compares them so you can pick the right one before millions of rows make the choice expensive to reverse.
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Base64 vs Base58 vs Base32
Base64 is the universal binary-to-text encoding, but it has alternatives that solve specific problems Base64 ignores. Base58 (used by Bitcoin) removes visually ambiguous characters; Base32 (used by TOTP secrets and DNS) is case-insensitive and human-typeable. Picking the right encoding for the wrong use case wastes bytes or introduces subtle bugs. This guide compares the three on alphabet design, size overhead, and the situations where each shines.
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bcrypt vs Argon2 vs scrypt
Storing user passwords with raw SHA-256 is a known mistake — SHA-256 is too fast, and a stolen hash file can be brute-forced at billions of guesses per second on commodity GPUs. The industry response is purpose-built password hashing functions: bcrypt (1999), scrypt (2009), and Argon2 (2015). They are deliberately slow and increasingly memory-hard to make brute force expensive. This guide compares them on design goals, attack resistance, and the practical considerations that decide which one your team should use.
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