CatOps Digest 2026-01-30
What was on CatOps... this year...
Welcome back!
Frankly, I should have posted a new issue of this newsletter weeks ago, but better late than never, right?
Charity
Friend’s fundraiser for a car on Zaporizhzhia direction. Monobank Jar.
A standing jar for a guy from my wife’s hometown. Monobank Jar.
Time Sensitive
“High Tech Career Playbook Bundle” by Manning books on Humble Bundle. You still have 17 days to grab it!
Digest
Incident Report for Honeycomb - a postmortem from Honeycomb for their issues with Kafka in Europe, which lasted for 12 days.
The Hidden Cost of Database Indexes - a nice write-up on the tradeoffs of database indices.
When Change Outruns Us - smart companies do not push changes for the sake of changes, but adopt more sustainable cyclic rhythms.
New term “Claude Hole” - when it takes 5 minutes to generate code, and 5 hours to debug the generated code in production.
Frameworks for understanding databases - self-explanatory title.
Sorted string tables (SST) from first principles - a nice recap for one of the chapters of the “Design Data-Intensive Applications” book.
Culture Debt - it’s like technical debt, but for your organization. And it’s much harder to get rid of, compared to actual technical debt.
From RSS to WSS: Navigating the Depths of Kubernetes Memory Metrics - how Linux and Kubernetes (cadvisor) calculate memory differently.
Terraform Skill - Cloude skill for Terraform and OpenTofu by Anton Babenko.
Bring Back Ops Pride - an article by Charity Majors about how we tend to treat IT operations, and what’s wrong with that.
“You Had One Job”: Why Twenty Years of DevOps Has Failed to Do it - another article from Charity that triggered the previous one. This one is a marketing material for Honeycomb, but it provides context for the previous article.
Kubectl Prof - a tool to profile your Kubernetes pods live.
Kubernetes Remote Code Execution Via Nodes/Proxy GET Permission - a new vulnerability in Kubernetes, and a hands-on lab to reproduce it.
How do we use Terraform at Preply - last but not list, my own article about the usage of Terraform in the company I currently work. At last, some original content!
That’s all for today, folks! I am on my way to Brussels for FOSDEM 2026. If you also are going to be there, ping me! Let’s have a chat!
