Ceos3c is a blog about AI tools, Linux, self-hosting, and security. Hands-on guides for developers who want AI in their workflow and control over their stack. Everything here is written or reviewed by me, and I test what I publish.
My name is Stefan Rows. I’m a self-taught Senior Software Engineer from Germany, I founded Ceos3c in 2016, and I build my own products in public. Ten years later the motto still fits: complicated things, made easy.
What you’ll find here
Everything on this site falls into one of three areas. If a post doesn’t fit one of them, it doesn’t get published.
1. AI-assisted development and workflows
Claude Code, custom instruction files, AI agents running on hardware you own. This is the newest part of the blog and already the most read part of it. If you want AI doing actual work instead of writing your social posts, start here.
2. Linux, self-hosting and security
WSL2, Kali Linux, pfSense, and general sysadmin work. Some of these guides have been online since 2017. They get rewritten, not abandoned, because this is the foundation the rest of the site stands on.
3. Build in public
Honest reviews, tool comparisons, SEO experiments, and the products I ship. Real numbers, including the ones that make me look bad.
The overlap between those three is the whole point. Running Claude Code on a cheap VPS is an AI post and a Linux post at the same time. AI tools on infrastructure you actually control, that’s the corner of the internet I’m interested in.
The honest story
Peak (2019): Ceos3c reached roughly 78,000 visits per month. Tutorials on Kali Linux, WSL2, and ethical hacking ranked well and the site generated meaningful income.
Decline (2023 to 2025): Google’s helpful-content updates, AI answers eating informational queries, and a failed scaled AI content experiment all hit at once. Traffic fell from around 50,000 to under 2,000 visits per month. The rankings didn’t break because the pages were bad. The traffic tap upstream was turned off.
Rebuild (2026): I’m reviving Ceos3c with a different model. Fewer posts, more depth, real expertise, and full transparency about who writes what. No fake author personas. No mass-produced AI filler. Just hands-on guides from someone who does the work.
What I build
Besides the blog and my YouTube channel, I run three small products. All of them are bootstrapped, all of them get written about here when there’s something useful to say:
- ProofSwap is a give-first testimonial and social proof exchange for indie makers.
- XPMetric is privacy-friendly web analytics. It’s also the tool I use to measure this blog.
- EasyEarningsTracker tracks income for creators and freelancers.
Background
Hacker. Fascinated by security since watching movies like Hackers as a kid, though I didn’t learn real hacking until my late twenties. No exciting black-hat story here, I’ve always been one of the good guys. Being a hacker, to me, means being curious and always eager to learn.
Self-taught developer. I started programming in my early thirties. No bootcamp, no CS degree. I use that knowledge to teach others and to build the products above.
I quit a well-paying CTO role in December 2020 to do content creation full-time. Then Covid happened and that plan fell apart. I went back into a Software Engineer role, got promoted along the way, and I’ve been working as a Senior Software Engineer since 2023. Still am.
The blog sat there for a while after that. I was honestly torn between letting it die quietly or putting in the hours to bring it back. Ten years of work and a lot of heart went into this thing, so letting it rot felt wrong. Here we are then. Same site, different direction.
How this site works now
Every article on Ceos3c is written or reviewed by me. Guest posts carry a real byline with a real person behind it, and they have to fit one of the three areas above. On roundups and reviews I disclose how I test, whether that’s reading every book cover to cover or testing WiFi adapters on my own Kali setups. If I haven’t used it, I don’t recommend it.
Find me elsewhere
- YouTube for video tutorials
- X for the build-in-public side, including the numbers
- GitHub for code and the odd side project
- LinkedIn for the professional version of all of the above
Got a question, a correction, or something you want covered? Send me a message. I read everything.