Archive

Write-ups

Everything I have written here, newest first. Mostly security, engineering leadership and infrastructure, a recurring thread about what happens when a supplier changes the deal, and the occasional argument with a piece of regulation.

82 pieces·2023 to 2026

2026
08 Sep The Loop That Agrees With Itself 7 min 01 Sep How Many Things Can You Hold 6 min 23 Aug The Air Runs Out First 6 min 12 Aug The Security Tax Nobody Wrote Down 8 min 03 Aug Local Inference for Regulated Data 10 min 20 Jul How Far Down Does It Go? 12 min 14 Jul Nobody Wants Your Television 10 min 28 Jun The Team You Never Meet 7 min 16 Jun Where Do Seniors Come From? 8 min 26 May The Price of Disagreeing 7 min 11 May The Title I Gave Up 10 min 14 Apr Own the GPUs, or Rent Them 10 min 22 Mar Rolling Out AI Coding Tools 5 min 12 Mar Score It or Block It 8 min 23 Feb What a Course Cannot Buy 8 min 09 Feb Why I Stayed Hands-On 4 min 23 Jan The Keyboard Nobody Specified 7 min 16 Jan The Process That Fits Nobody 7 min
2025
20 Dec 2025 in AI 15 min 26 Nov Four Privacy Laws, One System 7 min 12 Nov Service Bus or Event Hubs 9 min 26 Oct The Platform Nobody Asked For 6 min 12 Oct The Laptop Stopped Being a Compromise 7 min 23 Sep Linux on the Machine You Have 8 min 09 Sep ASP.NET Core or Node 6 min 12 Aug The Radio That Lasted Six Years 7 min 18 Jul Buy Once, Cry Once 14 min 09 Jul What the Contractor Premium Buys 8 min 24 Jun A Team Twelve Hours Apart 7 min 12 Jun The Microphone in the Exam Room 8 min 23 May When the Debugger Stops Helping 7 min 09 May The Name That Arrives First 9 min 24 Apr Queue, Topic, and Stream 7 min 12 Apr Five Devices in One Plastic Box 8 min 24 Mar Out of Support, Out of Options 15 min 12 Mar Who Answers Your DNS Queries? 9 min 12 Feb Priced Per Core 9 min 28 Jan The Three Cloud Layers Stopped Fitting 9 min 17 Jan AI Lab 15 min
2024
26 Dec Credentials That Expire by Design 8 min 12 Dec Revocation Never Really Worked 6 min 26 Nov Ten Priorities, One Team 8 min 09 Nov The Webhook Endpoint Nobody Reviewed 7 min 23 Oct The Framework That Left Windows 9 min 09 Oct The Text Message Became a Registered Product 7 min 23 Sep The Migration Tool Is the Product 7 min 09 Sep Everything Lives at 2.4 8 min 09 Sep HTTP Moved to User Space 6 min 12 Aug The Update That Was Not Code 9 min 09 Aug Silicon That Wears Out 7 min 23 Jul Your Device Outlives Its Network 8 min 09 Jul Encrypted at Rest, and the Rest 8 min 25 Jun The Backup in the Same Building 8 min 11 Jun The Cache That Became a Database 8 min 23 May Three Managed Postgres, Three Databases 9 min 09 May Healthcare's Lag Is Mostly Earned 8 min 23 Apr Docker Desktop Became a Line Item 9 min 05 Apr The File Server Is the Foundation 11 min 26 Mar Egress Is the Real Lock In 7 min 12 Mar Who Ships Your Security Fix 6 min 04 Feb Leaving VMware 20 min 23 Jan The Cloud Repriced the Network 7 min 09 Jan The Programming Language Rankings Disagree 7 min
2023
23 Dec Single Sign On, Single Blast Radius 8 min 09 Dec Four Files to Reach a Constructor 10 min 26 Nov The Estimate Is Not the Fight 9 min 09 Nov Nobody Is Patching MySQL 5.7 9 min 23 Oct The HTTP/2 Bug Nobody Wrote 5 min 09 Oct Which JDK Are You Actually Running 7 min 26 Sep Three Uses for Git History 8 min 09 Aug The Protocol That Unbundled the IDE 8 min 26 Jul The Last Mile to a Phone 9 min 12 Jul The Keys You Cannot See 9 min 09 Jun The Database Bill Has Two Shapes 8 min 12 May Pip Against the Operating System 6 min 23 Apr Signed, and Still Malicious 9 min 09 Apr Mirror the Registry You Depend On 6 min 26 Mar What the Layoffs Left Behind 8 min 12 Mar When the Monitoring Goes Dark 7 min 12 Feb The VPN Box Is the Target 8 min 23 Jan Hosted Does Not Mean Patched 6 min 09 Jan Your Build System Knows Everything 8 min