Makura no Soshi

Thoughts and recipes to build and run systems and services.

• How to build stable systems
  The first decision is easily the most important. It is one of ideology: the developers are in control of the software. Not the other way around. Managers are not in control of the software. Product Owners are not in control of the software. Developers are.
• The 15-point DevOps Check List
  The checklist could help you proceed with setting up a DevOps culture but don’t consider it as a unique way to proceed with your organization transformation.
• 10 Philosophies for Engineers
  In this post and podcast episode, I convey some loose philosophies about modern software engineering. These are strong opinions weakly held. I welcome debate and discussion.
• 3 Reasons AWS Lambda Is Not Ready for Prime Time
  When I first sat down to write my microservice using Lambda, I really wanted it to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. […] Sadly, it was too good to be true.
• Microservices & Einradfahren
  Zu meiner großen Enttäuschung muss ich nun feststellen, dass die Leute in der IT, bzw. Developer wie sie heute genannt werden, mit den gleichen Denkmustern arbeiten wie die Business Kasper.
• Creating a Microservice? Answer these 10 Questions First
  Microservices appear simple to build on the surface, but there’s more to creating them than just launching some code running in containers and making HTTP requests between them.

A failure, a success story, and several thoughts on system design.

• Inside the sad, expensive failure of Google+
  Create a social network or risk everything.
• Jetbrains: The unicorn Silicon Valley doesn’t like to talk about
  The reason why Jetbrains has such little competition is because few startups and programmers are willing to learn and embrace non-sexy tech.
• Why I Strive to be a 0.1x Engineer
  Given the cost of maintaining everything we build, it would literally be better for us to do 10% the work and sit around doing nothing for the rest of our time, if we could figure out the right 10% to work on.
• Boring Systems Build Badass Businesses
  Build the most minimal solution you possibly can. See if customer’s like it, use it, and will pay enough for it. Only then build it into a full solution.
• Logging v. instrumentation
  Logging and instrumentation are two perennially hot topics in software development generally, and seem to be enjoying a certain renaissance in the context of microservices particularly. And I see quite a lot of confusion on the topic.
• How to build stable systems — Medium
  The first decision is easily the most important. It is one of ideology: the developers are in control of the software. Not the other way around. Managers are not in control of the software. Product Owners are not in control of the software. Developers are.

Politik & Menschen

• Der dunkle Bruder des Feedback, Ralf Westphal
  Der dunkle Bruder Hilferuf muss aus dem Schatten des Feedback heraustreten. Denn alles, was nicht anerkannt wird, stiftet Unruhe – und das, ohne dass man womöglich genau sagen könnte, woher die kommt.
• Die Webregierung, Teil I – Der Tod des Open Web, mspro
  Ich persönlich habe für mich das Open Web bereits abgehakt. Es war eine gute Idee. So wie der Kommunismus eigentlich eine gute Idee war.
• Von den Quellen des Hasses, Benjamin Birkenhake
  Heute bin ich mit irgendwelchen Regionalzügen über irgendwelche Dörfer gefahren und in den Zügen sassen die Menschen, die in diesen Dörfern leben.
• Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace, Stephen Wolfram
  Ada Lovelace was born 200 years ago today. To some she is a great hero in the history of computing; to others an overestimated minor figure. I’ve been curious for a long time what the real story is.
• Gamers Mimic a Lot of the Tactics of the Religious Right, Jef Rouner
  Criticism of the status quo, no matter how mild, is felt like an attack on a person’s morality. […] Players who are perfectly happy with a white, male-centric, violent, heteronormative status quo in gaming feel judged for that happiness when marginalized people and their allies speak up about how it affects them.
• How SysAdmins Devalue Themselves, Tom Limoncelli
  If we all make a concerted effort, then all sysadmins, as a community, can make sure that the role of system administrator stays devalued for a very long time.

Security & Crypto edition

• On the Juniper backdoor, Matthew Green
  And while every reasonable person knows you can’t just drop “passive decryption vulnerability” and expect the world to go on with its business, this is exactly what Juniper tried to do. Since they weren’t talking about it, it fell to software experts to try to work out what was happening by looking carefully at firmware released by the company.
• Why I don’t care that Dell installs Rogue Certificates On Laptops, Tom Limoncelli
  Every new machine should be wiped and reloaded with your organization’s “standard build”. Having a “standard build” is one of the foundational pieces of infrastructure that your organization is responsible for. It is so fundamental that not having this kind of infrastructure is negligent.
• The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, Phillip Rogaway
  As computer scientists and cryptographers, we are twice culpable when it comes to mass surveillance: computer science created the technologies that underlie our communications infrastructure, and that are now turning it into an apparatus for surveillance and control; while cryptography contains within it the underused potential to redirect this tragic turn.
• The IPv6 Numeric IP Format is a Serious Usability Problem, Adam Ierymenko
  While the IPv6 protocol itself is fine, its original designers made some truly bizarre decisions around how to represent numeric addresses.
• How to C (as of 2016), Matt Stancliff
  The first rule of C is don’t write C if you can avoid it. If you must write in C, you should follow modern rules.
• Mozilla SSL Configuration Generator
  The goal of this document is to help operational teams with the configuration of TLS on servers.