Infra
A hosts file for one service
1 min A systemd bind mount gave each Snap lobby its own hosts file while leaving the host machine’s resolver file in place.
Autoscaling with no coordinator
3 min Symlinked peer status, systemd path activation, and one-neighbor watcher logic form a ring that starts, drains, and stops lobbies without a central controller.
Snap Game Services
6 min Keeping competitive VR speedball lobbies available around a closed game server, and scaling down without ending people’s matches.
Docker transfer settings in kOps
1 min Exposing Docker transfer settings in kOps required carrying them through internal types, versioned APIs, conversions, copies, and the CRD.
The target was already there
1 min One Makefile alias exposed Kubernetes’ existing OpenAPI generator without adding another implementation.
The type disappeared
2 min Inlining OpenAPI references preserved fields while removing the type identity that policy transforms needed.
Assume physical access
7 min An Exosite webinar on connected-device security: what a datacenter’s layers of protection become when the device is in someone else’s hands.
Let the client carry the bytes
1 min An S3 upload proxy became unnecessary once the service could authorize an upload by returning a presigned URL.
The old certificate still matters
1 min A Convox proposal left certificate replacement to CloudFormation and kept the previous certificate available for rollback.
The stack’s other name
2 min Convox needed rack-scoped cloud identities while keeping short application names and recognizing stacks created under the old naming scheme.
bcrypt in the auth query
2 min A pam_pgsql path could not verify Django’s bc$ bcrypt value directly, so SQL performs the check and returns the submitted password as its own answer.
pacproxy
4 min A caching proxy for Arch packages that streamed and cached in one pass, kept HTTP validators as sidecar state, and published its own caveat list.
Broadband for the Bakken
3 min Installing satellite broadband at drilling sites and helping build a fixed-wireless ISP on the Montana–North Dakota line.