Tom Lawrence

Look who I found at the 45Drives Creator Summit! A wild @allanjude.com, @wendell1.bsky.social, and @lawrencesystems.com appear:

Is security though obscurity finally dead?

every single person pushing this angle is intellectually bankrupt. The data centers being built today are for NOTHING other than AI compute, and are much, much larger and more destructive. If none of them got built, services like online banking, social media and streaming would continue to function.

Asking AI for advice on topics I don't understand: 🤩 Asking AI about my actual job: 💀 😜

Love the SLOP signs from the @hope.net conference.

Tuning ZFS for databases shouldn’t feel like guesswork. Next week @allanjude.com & @lawrencesystems.com break down safe ways to improve latency + IOPS. Real bottlenecks. Real metrics. No risky changes. 👉 Register: na3.hubs.ly/y0sW6J0

On our upcoming webinar, we're featuring @lawrencesystems.com of Lawrence Systems! 30+ years in infrastructure, security, and open source. He’s joining Klara to share practical ways to improve ZFS database performance—cut latency, boost IOPS, and find real bottlenecks. 👉 na3.hubs.ly/y0sRy90

@lawrencesystems.com joins @allanjude.com for a live ZFS webinar. Tuning for Latency + IOPS 📅 May 27 Cut latency, boost IOPS, and find real bottlenecks—without risking production. PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle. Real-world tuning. Save your spot → na3.hubs.ly/y0sj110

Proxmox Backup Server Hardening: Secure Permissions Done Right youtu.be/HDRGAfJZPSs?...

have never seen popular public opinion shift so fast about a surveillance product than the fallout from ring's super bowl "search party" ad. they'll teach this in advertising courses one day. chef's kiss baby www.404media.co/with-ring-am...

Comet Pro Review: The KVM That Gives You The Finger Full Video Here: youtu.be/la0rbheTx2c

Happy Friday, hope no one gets a surprise pen test today!

Check out this video to see what the experience of upgrading my Framework laptop with a Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU and RTX 5070 GPU was like, and if an upgradable system like this one is for you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYST...

Well, you see, when two networks like each other very much...

Happy Friday Here's COPILOT!!!

VLOG Thursday 471:IoT Firewall Security, Docker, Self hosted, and Homelab Q&A Live at 5pm EST www.youtube.com/live/QtfTfNK...

Testing the UniFi AI PTZ Precision 31x zoom

VLOG Thursday 470: Remote Management Tools, and Homelab Q&A going live at 6/8/26 6:00 EST youtube.com/live/vPUFfxq...

In this video, I demonstrate how to use Wireshark with UniFi to capture live packets directly from your network devices. Whether troubleshooting DNS, DHCP, or mysterious disconnects, Wireshark lets you go beyond the UniFi dashboard and see the truth in the traffic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_H1...

Going Live For Christmas! www.youtube.com/live/XgWOwHb...

Kubernetes is great... if you like complexity. Here’s how I keep my homelab simple: running Docker on one Debian 13 VM with straightforward bind mounts. Clean, easy to manage, and simple to back up - plus a look at the containers I rely on day to day. youtu.be/Z5aGH4XltP4

TP-Link acknowledged security reports but... Did nothing until the research was made public. Take a close look at the timeline 📄 Research write-up: www.evilsocket.net/2025/12/18/T...

A few seconds, an exposed port, or the right timing can lead to a serious incident. In this video, I break down an event that struck shortly after onboarding a client, what could have gone wrong, and why it didn’t - lessons for anyone managing real-world IT environments. youtu.be/2lLKZsd4QqY

Live in five! We're talking n8n, TrueNAS, and answering your Homelab questions! www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXAx... #livestream #homelab #networking #truenas #n8n #automation

Few people know ZFS like Allan Jude, and in this discussion, we dive deep into what makes it so powerful - and occasionally so tricky. From alignment tuning and drive choices to ZFS with containers and NVMe optimization, we unpack what’s changing, what’s coming next, and more. youtu.be/OscKOZ5nxxA

pfSense+ has made some changes in 2025. There's better security defaults for OpenVPN, they made PPPoE significantly faster, added VXLAN support, and Netgate Nexus - their new multi-instance management tool that you can self-host on your own system: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCNy...

RAID isn’t a backup, and failures don’t wait for a schedule. In this video, I show how I use Syncthing for real-time backups that alert you to changes as they happen. Perfect for Homelab setups, tests, or anyone who likes keeping data safe without waiting for a nightly job. youtu.be/cccPnXnh6wA

n8n 2.0 Docker Setup in 5 Minutes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vypp... #automation #homelab #docker

In this video, I test a tiny Beelink Cube to see if it can handle a TrueNAS instance. Compact, surprisingly capable, and yes… a little borg-cube-esque. Perfect for homelab tinkerers who like to push small hardware a little too far (but not lightyears or anything.) youtu.be/35piaJgaeEA

Who says open source is just for tinkering? Companies like Vates prove it can power a real business: youtu.be/19oGMBQypeE

This is about when ZFS replication goes wrong – how you recover from it or fix it, so you don’t have to resend everything, and how to fix a stuck process. There’s some command line work involved, but it’s well worth the effort. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKuX... #truenas #zfs #replication

I Moved to Immich... Can It Really Replace Google Photos? www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5td...

Live in five! Today we're talking surveillance cameras, open source note taking, and answering your Homelab questions! www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MaF...

Turning a Mini PC into a NAS sounds like a stretch - but that’s half the fun. Here’s an experiment using an NVMe-to-SATA adapter to see how far small form-factor hardware can go. Compact, unconventional, and it just might inspire your next budget-friendly homelab build. youtu.be/-bpEyuMO55E

Back in 2019, I compared Synology and UniFi’s camera platforms. A lot has changed since then. In this update, I walk through how both systems have evolved, where each one shines, and what you should focus on when evaluating them or any modern surveillance stack. youtu.be/fMVFCPzV41g

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Need a safer way to browse without putting your system at risk? In this clip, we look at Kasm, a sandboxed browser environment built for security and convenience. It’s perfect for testing unknown sites, isolating risky tasks, or keeping your main system squeaky clean. youtu.be/TbtGd3lWc4M

VLOG Thursday 464: Happy Thanksgiving! www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlh_...

Three years in, still the best label maker I’ve owned. Reliable, simple, and it hasn’t jammed once - can’t say that about most printers: youtu.be/6PfJoDIzrlo

ZFS Dedupe: How it works and when *NOT* to use it. youtu.be/0CcykFYHlt0 #zfs #datastorage #nas #truenas

Privacy, not anonymity. In this clip, I share why Signal remains my go-to for secure messaging and why it still earns my trust today. Some apps talk about privacy - Signal just delivers. What’s your messenger of choice? youtu.be/3cX2BBYi0cU

Live in five! We're talking about getting back to independent work, new UniFi cameras, and answering your Homelab questions! www.youtube.com/watch?v=37KU... #homelab #unifi #networking

Will setting up a special metadata VDEV on your ZFS pool make it faster? www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex35... #zfs #truenas #datastorage #metadata

If the xkcd comic 2347 made today... 😂

Don't attrible malice to what can easily be explained by legacy code - or a file getting so big it filled up multiple systems causing them to run out of space and crash. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xzY... #networking #outage #cloudflare

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by… 𝙡𝙚𝙜𝙖𝙘𝙮 𝙘𝙤𝙙𝙚 Here is the report from Cloudflare: blog.cloudflare.com/18-november-... More thoughts I have on this topic here: www.linkedin.com/posts/lawren...

Passkeys and password managers improve security - but they aren’t foolproof. In this video, I explore how storing passkeys can weaken MFA and outline best practices to keep your accounts truly secure. Essential knowledge for IT pros and Homelab enthusiasts alike. youtu.be/eLaSonHB9mE

I Resigned... youtu.be/dmMZlZAV_l0

Live in five! Today we're talking Apple Silicon, my Framework Laptop, and Homelab Q&A: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLJ0... #apple #framework #laptop #vlog #homelab

Does buy once, upgrade forever, actually hold up? Check out this video to see what the experience of upgrading my Framework laptop with a Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU and RTX 5070 GPU was like, and if an upgradable system like this one is for you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYST...