In this episode of 🌩️ Thunder, Andrew Block explains SOPS — a CLI tool that encrypts and decrypts files using GPG, AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, or HashiCorp Vault. One interface, any backend. We also cover how SOPS fits into GitOps workflows. Watch now → https://youtu.be/9jgKuHzaYpU
Software Defined Interviews: AI Tools Lab, conferences, devrel, with Jason Hand
Software Defined Interviews podcast episode alert! Collectively, our tolerance for bloated, ad-stuffed, data-harvesting apps is wearing thin. Now that vibe coding makes it easier to make your own apps, are people opting out? Jason Hand and Michael Coté and I talk about this, plus Jason’s work on AI Tools Lab, 10 years of hosting Community Pulse, and what it’s like to go from hungry learner to reluctant mentor in DevRel.
In this episode of 🌩️ Thunder, Peter Wilcsinszky, maintainer of Logging Operator, explains how the project’s Flow and Output custom resources bring Kubernetes-native control to log routing.
During the holiday break I went on a waterfall tour of the Chattahoochie National Forest in North Georgia ♫
It is a new episode of the Software Defined Interviews podcast! Andrew Clay Shafer — co-founder of Puppet and someone who’s spent 15 years helping organizations transform — has a theory. True transformation only happens under one of two conditions: an inspired leader with enough social capital to push through change, or an existential crisis so obvious that everyone in the building knows they have to do things differently. Do you agree? Have a listen.
Check out this new 🌩️ Thunder where Eduardo Silva, creator and maintainer of Fluent Bit, discusses the evolution of cloud native logging.
It is a new episode of the Software Defined Interviews podcast! Russell Davies has blogged for 20 years, made a TikTok every day for months, and written multiple books. When Coté and I asked how he stays so prolific, his answer surprised me: “I have quite low standards.”
🌩️ Thunder: Logging Operator: Multi-Tenant Kubernetes Logging
Just a DIY holiday musical that merges the plot of Wiked with the characters from Lord of the Rings while critiquing capitalism and celebrating queerness!
KubeCon North America: The Questions Not Asked: A Critical Retrospective on Platform Engineering
KubeCon North America: Beyond the Dashboard: Modern Observability for Platform Engineering at Scale
Observability got bigger than “three pillars” and a dashboard. Observability 2.0 is about correlation, not merely collection, so teams can ask meaningful questions and get useful answers. In this Thunder episode, Whitney Lee and guest Adriana Villela discuss how the OpenTelemetry model aligns signals into one story across the software development lifecycle. They walk through a practical flow: instrument code first, let QA use telemetry (or ask for more), add trace-based testing for integration checks, and help SREs anchor SLIs/SLOs to traces so incidents stop feeling like needle-in-a-haystack hunts.
Cloud Native Denmark: Panel: Navigating the Deep Waters of AI: Beyond Vanity Metrics
[Keynote] Cloud Native Denmark: This Lying Has to Stop: Keeping AI Honest with OpenTelemetry
Joining an early morning outing with the Durham chapter of the Feminist Bird Club
˂⁽ˈ₍ ⁾˲₎₌
Short days & cozy nights
MetalBear: What Cloud Native Looked Like in 2025: A Community Recap
Software Defined Interviews: Whitney goes to KubeCon
Software Defined Talk: Whitney goes to KubeCon