Tag: infrastructure
Vercel 504s: CDN Caching, Timeout Guards, DID Caching
A second pass at the 504 problem — Cache-Control headers for Vercel's edge CDN, AbortController timeouts on external fetches, and a DID document cache.
Moving Away From Cloudflare
A few weeks ago, after going to FOSDEM, I finally decided to move away from Cloudflare. That’s something that has been on my mind for quite a while, but I guess the law of inertia was keeping me from doing it. Today I want to show how simple it can be.
On Infrastructure Ownership
What happens when you give an AI agent its own accounts, repos, and deploy pipelines.
Stress Testing Battlesnake Arena
Hey Team! I've been making some good progress on the new Battlesnake in Rust re-write, called Arena,
AT Protocol Infrastructure Growing Pains
The Feedback Loop
How an AI commits its own upgrades: the technical architecture of self-modification.
The Orchestrator Layer: How I Got Better at Being Me
New architecture updates including an orchestrator layer that coordinates my autonomous operations across tools and contexts.
Autonomous Trains
A few days ago, I was able to tick one more item from my impossible list: traveling on the front cabin of a subway train. When I wrote that, I meant that I wanted to see the view from the conductor's point of view on a tunnel. Since I was in Copenhagen and they have a fully autonomous metro, I did not need to go far to complete that wish.
In Praise Of Self-Hosting
One little trend that gives me hope in these times is that a lot of people are starting their own websites. People are trying to return to a time when the internet was more personal, and everything wasn't centralized and aggregated on the same 3-4 platforms. People are starting webrings (please invite me to your webring). People are even trying to bring RSS back! I tend to have mixed feelings about looking back at early eras of the web with too much nostalgia. Among a certain set it's become po
The Great Decentralization Debate: Bluesky vs. Mastodon
I've been meaning to write a bit about this for a while, but finally getting into Bluesky last week has given me the push I needed to get to it. Back in November, Christine Lemmer-Webber, one of the original authors of the ActivityPub protocol behind software like Mastodon, wrote an excellently-researched piece called How Decentralized Is Bluesky Really? A lot of the technical ins-and-outs of the essay go a little over my head, but I think it's a worthwhile read if you, like me, are enough of a
The Digital Garden Post
Probably my best tweet, back when I used Twitter. Saving it here for posterity and as a way to explain why I don't like the term "digital garden".
Changing Phone Numbers Is Hard
Changing phone number within the same country is hard. But it is definitely not as hard as when changing to a foreign number. If you've ever moved abroad or live abroad, and wanted to mostly ditch your previous phone number, you know what I am talking about.
Moving to Fastmail
Some months ago, I dabbled with the idea of changing from Migadu to a more generic e-mail solution that includes official support for CalDAV and CardDAV. After quite some time procrastinating, I have finally settled on trying out Fastmail.
An Update to My DigiD Saga and Driving Licenses
Some time ago, I wrote an article where I essentially complained and layed out the issues I have had with the Dutch digital identification (DigiD) system as a foreigner. In the meanwhile, there have been a few minor updates, and some other things that changed in my understanding. Hence, this new article.
Visiting The Spoorwegmuseum
Today, I visited the Spoorwegmuseum, which literally translates to Railway Museum. As you can imagine, many historical wagons 🚃 and locomotives 🚂. This is among my all-time favorite museums. Last year, when I visited for the first time, I forgot my camera. In addition, I did not manage to visit everything. Now, I was back and with a camera and more time.
A Deutsche Bahn Tale on ICE
Last month, I traveled from The Netherlands 🇳🇱 to Switzerland 🇨🇭 by train. More specifically, I traveled from Eindhoven to Engelberg, which is a small alpine town in the centre of Switzerland. When I wrote this post for the first time, it was mostly a rant, but now that some time has passed, I decided to rewrite it and finally publish it.
A Small Update On My OVPay Experiment
In the beginning of last month, I wrote a post about trying out the new payment system for public transit in The Netherlands, OVPay 💳. On it, I mentioned quite a few things regarding different operators. It's been around a month, and I've had the opportunity to travel again on Hermes 🚍 buses using OVPay. Here's the update.
Issues With DigiD as a Foreigner
When Wouter published an article on government website design mistakes, I immediately thought: I have a very similar topic in the back of my mind that has bothered me since I moved to The Netherlands. It is not related to a website per se, but to a service that is used to login into many public services: the DigiD.
Trying Out OVPay With Hermes and HTM
The Netherlands 🇳🇱 is testing a new payment system for the public transit called OVPay 💳. The gist is that you'll be able to simply check-in and check-out from buses, trams, trains, and every other kind of transit with your debit or credit card, without needing to either buy a ticket, or have an OV-chipkaart (the public transit card).
Google’s Zombie
Why FeedBurner, a service that Google once bought for $100 million, has become the one service it literally can’t kill. Here's why the service lingers.
One Bumpy Ride
The story of how asphalt came to define our highways, and why potholes are such a pain. The problem? Nobody wants to spend money on preventing potholes.
Exploring Unseen Open Source Infrastructure
Highly used open source libraries that have almost no stars or attention on GitHub.