Ask The Hosts – Episode 33

Sean tells us about a recent catastrophe in his Kubernetes homelab (that’s really home prod). What went wrong, how did he fix it, and how can he avoid it happening again?               HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/hcs10fm to Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan.     Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes           Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Jim and Allan disagree on how new hard drive tech is likely to work, more on storage and compute in the same box, and how we set up disk encryption on laptops.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes OpenZFS Monitoring and Observability   News/discussion Western Digital doubles the performance of hard drives with dual-actuator High-Bandwidth, with path to 8X performance increase — Power-Optimized HDDs will reduce power by 20 percent   Free consulting We were asked about how we set up disk encryption on laptops. A quick-start guide to OpenZFS native encryption – Ars Technica Keeping Data Safe with OpenZFS: Security, Encryption, and Delegation                     See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

The professional-grade audio workstation Ardour has a great new version, LinkedIn does a shocking but not surprising amount of browser fingerprinting, Firefox is getting a button to turn off the AI nonsense, a new way to prevent slop “contributions” to your project, another tale of someone failing to switch to Linux, and why we should talk more about why open source software can be better than proprietary alternatives. With guest host Kevin from Linux Dev Time.   News/discussion Ardour 9.0 — What’s new Linkedin-extension-fingerprinting AI controls are coming to Firefox Introducing Vouch: explicit trust management for open source I went back to Linux and it was a mistake                 Automox Turnkey Results Endpoint management tailored to your specific environment. Know the plan. Trust the result. Learn more at www.automox.com     Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

With the price of RAM and storage through the roof, what are we going to do when it comes to supporting people who come to us for IT advice?               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes         See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Notepad++ falls victim to a state-sponsored attacker, AI agents talk nonsense to each other on an insecure vibe coded social network, and backing up a laptop properly.   Plugs Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes ZFS vs Btrfs: Architecture, Features, and Stability   News/discussion Notepad++ Hijacked by State-Sponsored Hackers AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it’s getting weird fas Hacking Moltbook: AI Social Network Reveals 1.5M API Keys   Free consulting We were asked about backing up a laptop properly.                   See our contact page for ways to get in touch.  

The best museums we’ve been to, the people we admire, and our weirdest train journeys. With Gary from Linux After Dark.         Patrons got this this in their feed two weeks ago.          

Pricing and release dates for the new Steam hardware are delayed, Xfce is getting a new Wayland compositor that’s written in Rust but it might take a while, the Sudo dev could do with sponsorship, Lennart Poettering and friends are cooking up something (but it’s not exactly clear what that is), KDE Linux is progressing nicely, and more. With guest host Kevin from Linux Dev Time.   News Steam Hardware: Launch timing and other FAQs Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor Xfwl4 (Xfce’s Wayland Compositor) FAQ Xubuntu Development Update February 2026 Sudo’s maintainer needs resources to keep utility updated Ikea’s new Matter smart home devices are having connection problems Introducing Amutable Busy months in KDE Linux               Automox Turnkey Results Endpoint management tailored to your specific environment. Know the plan. Trust the result. Learn more at www.automox.com     Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. RSS: Subscribe to the RSS feeds here

The career progression options you have as a software engineer, moving from junior to senior dev, other paths you can go down like architecture or tech lead, and why management isn’t for everyone.               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed    

Why we have doubts about the new AWS European Sovereign Cloud, what it would take to build a proper European cloud that could compete with AWS, and why it’s such a difficult undertaking.               Antigravity A1 The Antigravity A1 is the world’s first all-in-one 8K 360 drone. It’s a real game-changer. You get full immersive flight with the goggles, intuitive controls, and endless creative freedom in editing. If you’re thinking about buying a drone, make it this one. Learn more at antigravity.tech   HelloFresh Go to HelloFresh.com/hcs10fm to Get 10 free meals + a FREE Zwilling Knife (a $144.99 value) on your third box. Offer valid while supplies last. Free meals applied as discount on first box, new subscribers only, varies by plan.     Support us on patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes           Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Outlook’s autodiscover feature is leaking data again, our thoughts on the cycle of cloud and on-prem (centralised and local computing), and why you probably shouldn’t use NMVe to SATA adapters.   Plugs ZFS in Production: Real-World Deployment Patterns and Pitfalls Modern VDI on Proxmox: ZFS Reliability and GPU Acceleration at Lower Cost   News/discussion Why has Microsoft been routing example.com traffic to a company in Japan?     Free consulting We were asked about SATA to PCIe adapters.                   See our contact page for ways to get in touch.