What Edu is Reading This Week (Nov 17-23 2025)

Nov 23, 2025 · 798 words · 4 minute read

What Edu is Reading This Week 🔗

Plenty of content this week!

Tuning Linux Swap for Kubernetes: A deep-dive article on why and how to correctly configure and tune Linux swap settings when running Kubernetes workloads.
Production-Grade Container Deployment with Podman Quadlets: How to deploy and manage containers using Podman and Quadlets, which leverage native systemd unit files for production-ready setups.
Security Contexts in Kubernetes: A breakdown of Kubernetes Security Contexts, covering settings like runAsUser, capabilities, and SELinux options to tighten pod security.
A Small Vanilla Kubernetes Install on NixOS: A guide to setting up a minimalist, declarative Kubernetes cluster using the NixOS operating system (too complex if you ask me).
etcd Hardware Requirements: The official etcd documentation on hardware considerations (especially disk speed and network latency) for optimal performance and cluster stability.

RavynOS: The macOS-like OS on a FreeBSD Kernel: The project page for RavynOS, an operating system that aims to achieve macOS-like design and application compatibility using the FreeBSD kernel.
We’re (now) moving from OpenBSD to FreeBSD for firewalls: The author is moving their firewalls and VPN servers from OpenBSD to FreeBSD because FreeBSD offers clearly superior network performance, particularly on a 10G network, despite OpenBSD having served them well for years.
Why the BSDs?: A philosophical and technical discussion on the key differentiators and advantages of using the various BSD operating systems.
Static Web Hosting Performance Comparison: A performance comparison of serving static web files across FreeBSD, SmartOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux on low-power Intel hardware.
systemd.preset Man Page: Official documentation for systemd.preset, which defines default enablement/disablement policies for services at installation time.
Setting up Software TPM (swtpm) for Libvirt VMs: A small post on how to install swtpm to provide TPM emulation capabilities to libvirt VMs (I wasn’t aware swtpm even existed!).

Spec-Driven Development for Infrastructure Automation: An article exploring the methodology of using clear, formal specifications (like APIs or schema) to drive the automated creation and management of infrastructure. I’m both amazed and scared about SDD.
Terraform Provider for OpenWrt: A fun hack/project that creates a custom Terraform provider to manage OpenWrt router configurations declaratively.
Self-Hosting DNS for No Fun But a Little Profit: A candid look at the challenges and minor financial/control benefits of running your own recursive DNS server.
Declarative RPM: A blog post discussing how to achieve declarative package management for RPM-based systems, taking inspiration from the Nix/Guix philosophy.
qemu-img Conversion Command: How to use the qemu-img command to convert virtual disk images (qcow2) into ZFS volumes (zvol).

The Zig Book: A comprehensive, free online book for learning the modern, low-level programming language Zig.
Pong in a 512-Byte Boot Sector: A fascinating demonstration of low-level programming where a complete Pong game is squeezed into the 512-byte limit of a boot sector.
Why Castrol Honda Superbike crashes on (most) modern systems: A technical deep dive into reverse engineering the graphics and data files of the classic PC racing game.

PicoIDE: A project page for PicoIDE, a new open-source IDE/ATAPI drive emulator.
DIY Synthesizer for a Daughter: A touching and technical project documenting the process of building a custom hardware synthesizer. I’m amazed about people being able to do this kind of stuff.
ESP32 Cheap Yellow Display Project: A GitHub project providing code and documentation for utilizing the ubiquitous, inexpensive “Cheap Yellow Display” with ESP32 microcontrollers.
LibrePods: AirPods liberated from Apple’s ecosystem.
Struggling to heat your home? How about 500 Raspberry Pi units?: Heating your house the nerd way!

Cloudflare’s November 18, 2025 Outage: The official post-mortem from Cloudflare detailing the root cause and resolution of their recent network outage.
Open Source Developers are Exhausted: A discussion on the pervasive issue of burnout and fatigue within the open-source community due to lack of resources and high demands.
Keynote: Rust in the Linux Kernel, Why? - Greg Kroah-Hartman (Video): Self explanatory.
Living My Best Sun Microsystems Ecosystem Life in 2025: A fun, nostalgic look at running old-school Sun Microsystems hardware and software (like Solaris) in the modern era.
Add a VLAN to OPNsense in Just 26 Clicks Across 6 Screens: Notes and observations on using the OPNsense firewall, focused on specific UI interactions and hardware setup steps.
Google Antigravity Project: New Google’s AI focused IDE.
Shortwave Live: A web application that provides access to the schedule of shortwave radio transmissions around the world.
Espectre: Motion detection system based on Wi-Fi spectre analysis (CSI), with Home Assistant integration.
Law of Triviality (Wikipedia): Wikipedia entry explaining Parkinson’s Law of Triviality, where groups spend a disproportionate amount of time on trivial issues (the “bike-shedding” effect).
Tongue-in-cheek (Wikipedia): Wikipedia entry for the phrase “Tongue-in-cheek,” describing humor that is ironic or insincere.