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• Security022

  Prove nothing is using it before you shut it off

  Close the port, stop the service, keep the data. Verify first, make every step reversible.

  7 minute read
• Reliability021

  Read the log before you believe your own story

  The remembered pattern was wrong, and two different causes were wearing the same costume.

  8 minute read
• Home lab020

  Your machine is not dying. The thing watching it is cooking it.

  Thermal throttling that looked like dying hardware was the metrics container holding a core around the clock.

  7 minute read
• ReliabilitySeries

  The thing that reports is the thing that lies

  Five parts on machines that cheerfully report success while doing nothing. It is really about how to think when something tells you a thing that is not true, which stops being a computing problem fairly quickly.

  5 parts37 minute readOpen the series

  1. Part 1My assistant said it did something. It had not.A model will narrate success for things it cannot do, and asking it nicely to stop is not a fix. The gate that is.7 minute read
  2. Part 2The worst alert is a green oneA job reported success every night while doing nothing at all. A check that can only ever say ok is not a check.7 minute read
  3. Part 3Prove the monitor is not the thing that is brokenDozens of outage alerts for a service that was fine. A broken gauge does not read honest, it reads empty.7 minute read
  4. Part 4If your health check does real work, it will take down what it watchesThe status endpoint that became the outage. The observer has to be cheap.7 minute read
  5. Part 5My research agent faked it for three weeksA proxy quietly dropped its tools, so it could not research anything and invented the answers instead.9 minute read
• AI018

  I made a music studio out of free software and AI

  Generate original music on your own GPU, split it into stems, and master it. Open source the whole way, nothing leaving the machine.

  10 minute read
• Security017

  Secrets leak from the boring places

  Not a breach. A hardcoded password, a world-readable backup, and a token printed by a test stub that only half replaced the real thing.

  6 minute read
• Security016

  Every automation gets its own key

  One key copied everywhere turns one small mistake into all of them. Scope each job so a leak is one account on one host.

  6 minute read
• Reliability015

  Measure before you delete

  Sixty files to clean up, three of them causing the problem, and a sweep that would have taken the credentials backup with it.

  6 minute read
• Reliability014

  Never let an AI job spend money unattended

  See it, project it and pause, check the environment not the config, and make the expensive path unreachable instead of discouraged.

  6 minute read
• Reliability009

  What I learned the hard way

  The rules paid for by real mistakes, written down so a few of yours are free.

  4 minute read
• Network008

  A private network for all your machines

  Reach every machine from anywhere with nothing exposed. Plus the routing gotcha that looks exactly like slow hardware.

  5 minute read
• Storage and media007

  Backups that actually work

  Three copies, two kinds of storage, one off-site, and the restore test that proves it. A backup you have never restored is a wish.

  5 minute read
• AI006

  Build your own AI agent

  An agent is a model with a chat window and a few safe tools it is allowed to use. The keys are the risk, not the model.

  6 minute read
• Home lab005

  I put this site in my own house

  This page is served off a small computer in a spare room, reachable without opening a single port. Ten dollars a year, all in.

  6 minute read
• Home lab004

  A smart home that is not listening for someone else

  Local control, local voice, no account required. The lights still work when the internet is down.

  6 minute read
• Storage and media003

  Own your movies again

  Your own media server on hardware too old to sell. Nothing disappears from your library because a licensing deal expired.

  6 minute read
• Network002

  Kill every ad on your network

  One small computer between your router and everything else. Works on the TV, the phone, the tablet, and your visitors.

  7 minute read
• AI001

  I stopped renting my brain

  A real AI assistant running on hardware you already own. No subscription, no cloud, no data leaving the house.

  5 minute read
• Network023

  Text with no internet and no carrier

  Long range radio mesh you own end to end, so a message still goes through when the grid does not. Planned, not built yet.

  Planned, not built yet

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