Top all-time · #3976
blog.dave.tf
Personal blog · blog.dave.tfsystemsprogramming
blog.dave.tf is a personal blog at blog.dave.tf about systems and programming. Since 2020, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “A better Kubernetes from the ground up”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-08-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog's deep dives on low-level networking and Kubernetes, such as IP address parsing, jumbo frames and Kubernetes design. Comments cite posts as sources for their own points.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- A better Kubernetes from the ground up6 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2020-11-29
- Fun with IP address parsing5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-12-26
- Finding the Bottom Turtle4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-06-21
- Why are ethernet jumbo frames 9000 bytes? (2018)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-04-20
What Hacker News says?
They wrote it into a blog that may be nicer to read https://blog.dave.tf/post/ip-addr-parsing/
Comment linking /post/ip-addr-parsing/
on “Fun with IP address parsing”Submitted Fun with IP address parsing as a story · 505 points
HN discussionThere's some weird legacy parsing for IPv4 addresses with less than four components. 1.2.3.4 can be represented equivalently as 1.2.772, 1.131844, or 16909060. (Note that 772 = 0x0304, 131844 = 0x020304, and 16909060 = 0x01020304.) TL;DR: the second "1" in "1.1" is treated as a 24-bit integer. Longer explanation: https://blog.dave.tf/post/ip-addr-parsing/
Comment linking /post/ip-addr-parsing/
on “Shortest URLs on the Internet”Submitted What Is PID 0? as a story · 407 points
HN discussionRelated to this, a 2020 take on the topic from the MetalLB dev: https://blog.dave.tf/post/new-kubernetes/
Comment linking /post/new-kubernetes/
on “What would a Kubernetes 2.0 look like”Submitted A better Kubernetes from the ground up as a story · 261 points
HN discussionSo instead of making the applications use a good RPC library, we're going to shove more crap into the kernel? No thanks, from a security context and complexity perspective. Per https://blog.dave.tf/post/new-kubernetes/ , the way that this was solved in Borg was: > "Borg solves that complexity by fiat, decreeing that Thou Shalt Use Our Client Libraries For Everything, so there’s an obvious point at which to plug in a…
Comment linking /post/new-kubernetes/
on “eBPF will help solve service mesh by getting rid of sidecars”Submitted Finding the Bottom Turtle as a story · 164 points
HN discussionIt's so saddening to see how the Kubernetes hype-cycle follows OpenStack and all the fundamental problems still seem unsolved. I sometimes feel like its just the same story playing out 5 years later, one layer up to the stack (IaaS -> CaaS) and with other fools to fall for it (with OpenStack it was sysadmins trying to run a control plane, with Kubernetes its devs trying to run infrastructure). The abstractions we ha…
Comment linking /post/new-kubernetes/
on “Ask HN: What is your Kubernetes nightmare?”Submitted Fun with IP address parsing (2020) as a story · 34 points
HN discussion> Now I want the story of the 9000 bytes MTU. * 2018: https://blog.dave.tf/post/jumbo-frames/ * April 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35647779
Comment linking /post/jumbo-frames/
on “Magic Numbers”Submitted Some Thoughts on LLM Coding as a story · 4 points
HN discussionIMO, Kubernetes isn't inevitable, and this seems to paint it as such. K8s is well suited to dynamically scaling a SaaS product delivered over the web. When you get outside this scenario - for example, on-prem or single node "clusters" that are running K8s just for API compatibility, it seems like either overkill or a bad choice. Even when cloud deployed, K8s mostly functions as a batteries-not-included wrapper aroun…
Comment linking /post/new-kubernetes/
on “Dear friend, you have built a Kubernetes (2024)”Submitted A better Kubernetes, from the ground up (2020) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> As far as I can see, the best choice for writing bootstrap-related software in 2024 is still C99 That seems a bit silly, since going from ISO C99 to C++ is only one more build away[0] and from there you can practically build the whole world as you please. > CMake is absolutely out Considering how hostile Meson is to platforms other than *nix[1], I doubt there is any realistic alternative here. > I still haven’t fo…
Comment linking /post/finding-bottom-turtle/
on “Which Build Tool for a Bootstrappable Project?”Submitted TAI64 in the wild is (sometimes) not TAI as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBesides my local cluster of virtual box cluster, I have tried Kubernetes on three clouds with at least a dozen different installers/distributions and operational pain would be a factor going forward has always been my gut feeling. That's where the author also has following to say: >My conclusion at this point is that if you can afford it, both in terms of privacy/GDPR and dollarinos then managed is the way to go. An…
Comment linking /post/new-kubernetes/
on “Bare-Metal Kubernetes, Part I: Talos on Hetzner”Submitted Why are ethernet jumbo frames 9000 bytes? (2018) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The FastLanes Unified Transport Layout as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A better Kubernetes, from the ground up (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Finding the Bottom Turtle (2021) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted A better Kubernetes, from the ground up (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fun with IP address parsing (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Finding the bottom turtle: bootstrapping from source as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a NAS, Part 1: Requirements as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
