Stop deploying web application firewalls

As someone who has built a career on Kubernetes, I'm always thinking about what "the next platform" is (for job security purposes). By "platform", I mean the kind that platform engineers like myself build for internal dev teams on which to run their applications. Kubernetes has been the star platform for quite a few years now (or maybe that's...

This post will make more sense if you first read Dear Sir, You Have Built a Compiler. Dear friend, I am afraid to inform you that you have built a Kubernetes. I know you wanted to "choose boring tech" to just run some containers. You said that "Kubernetes is overkill" and "it's just way too complex for a simple task" and yet, six months later,...

Recently at work I've learned about Cloudflare Tunnels, which has increased my interest in tunneling technologies in general. Tunneling is a generic networking term, but in the web-dominated world it usually refers to software that you can run on any computer with outbound network access to serve a website. The tunneling software has a another...

If you're reading this blog, there's a high chance that you are one of the 1-in-5 workers who has a non-compete clause hiding in your employment contract. These are clauses that prevent workers from taking other jobs or starting other businesses that "compete" with the employer after leaving the job. I originally thought they were unique to...

Lately I've been obsessing over this ProPublica article which talks about Microsoft's involvement in the SolarWinds hacks, specifically due to a design weakness in Microsoft's Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS). It's a great article, highly recommended. Anyway, the wiki page for ADFS says it first appeared around 2003, which made me...