Reliability Engineering
199 episodes · Page 3 of 9
#4233: How Old Planes Get Safer With Age
Why a 30-year-old cargo plane may be safer than a new passenger jet — and what that teaches us about sustainability.
#4190: LoRa Through Concrete: Real-World Parking Sensor Physics
Why your LoRa parking sensor can't reach through three floors — and how to fix it.
#4178: DIY ISP Quality Dashboard Tools
Measure your real internet performance with self-hosted tools. No ISP speed tests, no guesswork.
#4147: When Your Server Won't Even Boot a Live USB
Diagnose a dead server when it won't boot anything — not even SystemRescue from USB.
#3973: How Autoland Guides Planes Through Zero Visibility
The engineering behind aircraft autoland systems that guide planes to the runway when pilots can't see anything.
#3972: Car Maintenance Apps That Actually Work
Turn your phone into a car maintenance log with photo tracking, mileage-based reminders, and cost analysis.
#3967: What F1 Pit Stops Teach Us About Smarter Procedures
Two elite operations, one surprising set of principles. What airlines and F1 teams know about coordination that most teams don't.
#3957: The Hidden Miracle of Airport Baggage Systems
How baggage systems achieve 99.9% reliability while supermarket scanners fail on curved bottles.
#3956: The Four-Second Crossing: How Traffic Lights Actually Work
A Jerusalem crossing gives pedestrians 4 seconds for 12 meters. The hidden safety systems most people never see.
#3887: The Science Behind a Boring 25-Story Building
How tuned mass dampers, self-healing concrete, and vortex shedding make tall buildings feel boringly ordinary.
#3883: Inside OPNsense Tunables: Kernel Variables Explained
What OPNsense tunables actually do, how they work under the hood, and when to touch them.
#3815: Should You Rack-Mount Your Desktop PC?
Tower form factor fighting you? We explore when and how to rack-mount a desktop for better serviceability and cooling.
#3797: How Self-Reverting Watchdogs Save Broken SSH Sessions
A dead man's switch for server configs that automatically rolls back risky changes when connectivity drops.
#3795: The Fifteen-Cent Screw That Stops Server Builds
A seized M.2 screw, a missing heat sink, and why inventory blind spots cost more than any technical skill.
#3792: Cloud Brain, Local Fingers: Decoupled Home Assistant
Can Home Assistant run in the cloud while Zigbee stays local? We explore the decoupled control plane architecture.
#3788: RAID Reshaping Showdown: BTRFS vs ZFS vs XFS
Can you change RAID levels without nuking your data? We compare BTRFS, ZFS, and XFS for home server upgrades.
#3786: When Your DNS Dies: Home Network Failure Cascade
One dead server, ZFS corruption, and a DNS collapse that takes down everything—including your ability to fix it.
#3782: Ezra the Scribe vs. Hardware Failure
What ancient text preservation teaches us about modern backup strategies that hardware redundancy can’t fix.
#3776: ZFS Mirroring: Why Your RAID Card Is the Weak Link
A hardware RAID card makes ZFS less safe. Here's why an HBA and a simple mirror are the real upgrade.
#3775: SBC Clusters vs Virtualization: The Real Tradeoffs
Why physical isolation sounds great but virtualization usually wins for home servers.
#3748: Your Backup Is Probably Corrupted Right Now
How to catch ZFS pool degradation before your backup faithfully preserves garbage for weeks.
#3530: How Pharmacies Stock 4,000 Drugs Without Running Out
How retail pharmacies stock thousands of obscure drugs while maintaining 97-99% in-stock rates.
#3471: What OS Actually Runs Inside a Siemens PLC?
Siemens, Rockwell, Beckhoff — the OS choices inside modern PLCs are more varied than you'd expect.
#3450: Who Actually Buys a Luggable Computer?
The people who need a 27-inch workstation in a hard case. Military, oil rigs, and live events.