~/nicholas/writings
writings
i write about what i've been working on, problems i've solved, and things i'm still trying to figure out.
- Lonika Mideva (1946-2026)June 22, 2026I will never forget how to eat. Thank you for your support and memories, forever in my heart.
- Why is ipv6 stalling?June 15, 2026IPv6 has been the future for a very long time. The problem is not that it is hard to explain. The problem is that IPv4, NAT, and workarounds are still good enough for most people to avoid the migration pain.
- Should I create a k9s style TUI for NATS?June 2, 2026I use k9s heavily, so building something similar for NATS keeps sounding like a good idea. I am not convinced yet, but JetStream is the part that makes me pause.
- Blocking IMDS access on Karpenter NodePoolsMay 17, 2026Every EC2 instance exposes the Instance Metadata Service at 169.254.169.254. By default, pods can reach it. They should not and if they need AWS credentials, Pod Identity is the right tool for that.
- k8s Jobs, Helper Containers, and Native SidecarsSeptember 10, 2025k8s won't mark a Job complete while any container in the Pod is still running. If you have a logging sidecar that never exits on its own, you need a way to tell k8s it's a helper, not the work itself. That's what native sidecars are for.
- Image Compression Efficiency, and Why AVIF WinsJanuary 17, 2023JPEG has been the default image format on the web since 1992. AVIF, derived from the AV1 video codec, compresses better at every quality level. The Netflix engineering team benchmarked this. The numbers are significant.