CatOps

14 February 2026 18:22

From CatOps with love: a new issue of our newsletter is here!

https://newsletter.catops.dev/p/catops-digest-2026-02-14

#digest #newsletter

CatOps

10 February 2026 18:58

Some results of a fun testing of different LLMs to generate Terraform code.

This article is old, but they have updated the results in mid 2025. Anyways, keep in mind that since then, LLMs evolved. So, even those results are not quite correct anymore.

Still, it’s an interesting test that you can also do yourself. Another point is that LLMs are already quite usable to generate Terraform code.

#terraform #ai

CatOps

06 February 2026 11:55

A Friday read for y’all.

A collection of AI slop reports security reports to the curl project.

This eventually forced the curl team to halt their bug bounty program on Hackerone.

Here’s also a FOSDEM talk by Daniel Stenberg - the creator of curl - on how to survive the avalanche of AI generated code.

#ai #slides #fosdem

CatOps

02 February 2026 12:52

​​For today’s Donations Monday, let’s help our friends from DevOps 01 chat to buy an EcoFlow for 154s Separate Mechanized Brigade.

https://send.monobank.ua/jar/5fYjQVfvFA

There’s just a small push left!

#donations #Ukraine

CatOps

30 January 2026 10:06

The first newsletter of this year is live!

https://newsletter.catops.dev/p/catops-digest-2026-01-30

#newsletter #digest

CatOps

28 January 2026 11:37

I know that the last thing you'd like to see on Wednesday is yet another remote code execution possibility in Kubernetes, but here you are.

Kubernetes Remote Code Execution Via Nodes/Proxy GETPermission

and here's a lab for that.

tl;dr: web sockets use GET to initiate a connection and then upgrade it, but the permissions are only checked for GET, regardless of what you send through that web socket later. Thus, read permissions are enough to run some code.

P.S. This news came from the chat. If you want to join our chat (in Ukrainian), you can use this link.

#kubernetes #security

CatOps

22 January 2026 16:26

Unfortunately, kubectl flame tool for profiling in Kubernetes wasn't updated in 4 years. It cannot even run on ARM-based machines.

But what if you need to profile something in your systems? You can use continuous profiling, if it's available in your observability stack.

Or you can use kubectl prof to do some ad-hoc profiles.

- Tool on GitHub
- Medium post

#kubernetes #performance

CatOps

20 January 2026 09:30

Wanna become a true Terraform SLOPerator?

Here is a carefully vibecoded solution by Anton Babenko. I can confirm that he checks the docs at least once during his Claude conversations, so you can be confident in the quality :)

Jokes aside, this is a cool Skill for Claude Code, which currently works better than any other official or popular alternative out there.

#terraform #ai #claude

CatOps

17 January 2026 12:21

“How much memory does a Kubernetes node use without the Kubernetes layer”? This is exactly the question From RSS to WSS: Navigating the Depths of Kubernetes Memory Metrics tries to figure out.

And the answer to this question might be harder to get to, as it seems at the first glance.

#kubernetes #systems

CatOps

14 January 2026 17:35

I found a young blog that has some potential. There are two articles so far:

- Frameworks for understanding databases
- Sorted string tables (SST) from first principles

If you've read "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" by Martin Kleppmann and "Database Internals" by Alex Petrov, you may find these articles repeating information from those books. However, unless you actively work on building databases, you may easily forget this information.

So, such articles serve as a great reminder. I enjoy getting back to such "low level" details from time to time. These details help one to better understand the tradeoffs of the end solution, in my opinion.

#databases

CatOps

09 January 2026 10:21

I think, this could be a good Friday read: "When Change Outruns Us" is a tale about sustained progress.


The main point of this article is that smart companies do not push for "constant change for the sake of change", but rather adopt a more cyclic pace, when the periods of extensive work are followed by more relaxed times.

This article is particularly interesting to me, because I've just finished listening to the "Slow Productivity" book by Cal Newport. One of the principles, outlined in that book, is that one should work in their natural pace. However, a constant run is no one's natural pace. Another observation in that book, is that starting from the second half of the XX century, managers started to approximate work by "business", i.e. if you look busy, you do some work, even if in the reality, there are zero outcomes.

Many tech companies like to claim that they are "outcomes-oriented" or "value impact", but in my experience, "business" is still the approximation for work. Especially, once a company growth beyond the size, when everyone naturally knows everyone, as well as what they are doing.

#culture #mgmt

CatOps

06 January 2026 11:51

Starting a new year with a postmortem, eh?

There was a prolonged incident with Kafka at Honeycomb last month. Here you can find a preliminary postmortem for this incident.

"Preliminary" means that there is no root cause analysis yet, but there's already the timeline and the remediation steps.

#postmortem

CatOps

27 December 2025 18:11

The last digest of this year is here!

https://newsletter.catops.dev/p/catops-digest-2025-12-27

With this digest been out, I'm taking some holidays. So, there will be no new posts here until the end of the year (it's not like there were many posts in the last couple of days, lol).

Also, I would really appreciate it, if you could share your thoughts about the newsletter in general. Unlike for the Telegram channel, I cannot really find a good fit for it. You can share your thoughts in the comments on Substack, in our chat (in Ukrainian), or via info@catops.dev

🎄🎄🎄 Happy holidays! 🎄🎄🎄

CatOps

22 December 2025 14:57

​​For today’s Donations Monday, I would like to ask to help a friend of mine to get a car at the Zaporizhzhia front lines.

https://send.monobank.ua/jar/5mSFtTYUFt

This is a personal request, so you can be sure that this fundraiser is legit.

#donations #Ukraine

CatOps

18 December 2025 07:51

Good one. Have literally the same feedback. Cool tech but mostly useless.

https://johnjames.blog/posts/graphql-the-enterprise-honeymoon-is-over

CatOps

12 February 2026 11:06

Continuing the topic of Terraform, here's an article from a friend of mine on how to keep the versions of Terraform binaries, modules, and providers in check.


This article was already featured in Anton's newsletter, but it won't hurt to re-iterate. If you're into Terraform, make sure to subscribe, tho.

P.S. If you're hiring in DE, CH, LU, DK, or remote; he has his CV on his blog. You know what to do 😉

#terraform

CatOps

08 February 2026 14:21

Two bundles on Humble Bundle:

- Linux for Seasoned Admins by O’Reilly. This is a reoccurring bundle, so check if you have it already before buying!
- Networking bundle by Pact. This is a video bundle to prepare for various certification exams.

#books #bundle

CatOps

03 February 2026 11:57

Hello Kubernetes Community,

Multiple issues are disclosed today in ingress-nginx, and assigned the following CVE IDs: CVE-2026-1580, CVE-2026-24512, CVE-2026-24513, CVE-2026-24514.

The most serious of these issues have been rated HIGH (CVSS calculator, score: 8.8).

https://groups.google.com/a/kubernetes.io/g/dev/c/9RYJrB8e8ts?pli=1

CatOps

01 February 2026 13:32

A book bundle for Solutions Architect exam preparations from Packt.

Packt didn’t have the best reputation, but the topic may be interesting to many people in this channel.

#books

CatOps

29 January 2026 11:47

Some time ago, I posted here an article from a well-known company on how they use Terraform.

When I was reading that article, I had a thought: “C’mon, I also can write crap like that!”.

So I did!

I hope you like it!

#terraform #oc

CatOps

27 January 2026 10:59

A book bundle for exam and interview preparations from Manning press.

I'm not sure how good are those books outside the context of interviews, but Manning books usually considered good.

#books

CatOps

21 January 2026 16:34

Bring Back Ops Pride is a new article by Charity Majors on how it comes that the operational work is often seen as of lower importance, and why is it bad.

This is her answer to the comments under her another article “You Had One Job”: Why Twenty Years of DevOps Has Failed to Do it. This article has some interesting ideas, but it's a marketing material, so beware.

#ops #culture

CatOps

19 January 2026 12:35

For today's donations Monday, I'd like to share once again the standing Monobank jar for FPV equipment.

This jar is for the unit in which a guy from my wife's hometown serves.

https://send.monobank.ua/jar/4WLw91UqFe

#donations #Monday

CatOps

16 January 2026 18:05

Another Friday read on the Culture debt.

The core idea behind it is the same as for the technical debt, but this time it’s about the culture. As company growths, relationships within it inevitable change. This is silly to ignore these changes. Yet, if nothing is done, the culture can drift away, and then it’s much harder to fix, than refactoring a couple of services.

Also, this line strikes hard, when talking about the symptoms of the culture debt: “What you reward diverges from what you say you value.”

People are quite good in calling bullshit on someone or something. It’s often quite obvious when proclaimed values are just empty slogans. This erodes trust as nothing else.

#culture

CatOps

13 January 2026 10:56

A topic on Reddit that argues for a new term - Claude Hole. This is when AI is tasked with fixing an issue, but you actually end up further away from the fix after the AI changes.

This reminded me of a completely unrelated article - I Was Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn and All I Got Was 1.50 EUR - in that story, the author also ended up further away from their destination than at the beginning of their journey.

Regardless of your views on AI, distinguishing good from bad becomes more and more valuable these days.

#ai

CatOps

07 January 2026 10:25

Our job is all about tradeoffs.

This article describes tradeoffs of database indices.

#databases

CatOps

05 January 2026 11:43

​​I'm back!

It always feels nice to start a new year from scratch. Unfortunately, it's often not the case, and we have to finish things that remained.

Today's fundraiser is one of those things: let's help a friend of mine to raise funds for a pickup truck for the Zaporizhzhia front lines:

https://send.monobank.ua/jar/5mSFtTYUFt

#donations #Ukraine

CatOps

23 December 2025 11:14

Monzo - a British neobank - reveals their system that grants engineers temporary elevated access.

tl;dr: They are using AWS Nitro Enclaves for this.

During my time at N26, we also had a system that served the same purpose, albeit it was designed differently.

#security

CatOps

19 December 2025 14:47

Cold-Restart Resilience is an article on what could go wrong, when a system recovers from a total outage. Cases, covered in this article, with some tips on how to solve those:

- Circular bootstrap dependencies
- Using in-memory storage as databases
- Failures when trying to create a quorum
- Failures to fetch a remote dynamic config
- Stale data in leaderless systems

It doesn't mention cascading errors, but those are kinda famous already.

#sre #reliability #systems

CatOps

17 December 2025 17:09

On the positive note: Docker opens access to their hardened images (DHI) to everyone, not just their enterprise customers.

DHI uses a distroless runtime and includes SBOM.

Here you can browse the whole catalog of DHI. Docker asked me to login, though, but I'm definitely not an enterprise customer :D

#docker #security