Max L

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I’m Max, a security engineer with 12+ years. I write about building secure systems, trading infrastructure, and homelab setups — always with real code and real tradeoffs.

This page is your roadmap. Pick a learning path below, start with the pillar guide, then work through the posts in order.

🗺️ Choose Your Learning Path

🔐 Security Engineering

Start here → The Complete Kubernetes Security Guide

Then work through these in order:

Pod Security Standards — Enforce least-privilege at the pod level
Secrets Management in Kubernetes — Seal, rotate, and audit secrets
Docker Security Best Practices — Harden images and runtime
Supply Chain Security — SBOMs, signing, and provenance
Terraform Security Best Practices — Secure IaC from plan to apply
GitHub Actions Security — Lock down CI/CD pipelines
Zero Trust Architecture — Network security beyond the perimeter

🛡️ DevSecOps

Start here → The Complete DevSecOps Guide

Then dive deeper:

GitHub Actions Security — Hardening your CI/CD workflows
Terraform Security — Policy-as-code and drift detection
Supply Chain Security — Dependency scanning and SBOM generation
Docker Security — Build and runtime hardening
CVE Deep Dives — Analyzing real-world vulnerabilities

🏠 Homelab Infrastructure

Start here → The Homelab Security Guide

Then build out your lab:

TrueNAS Setup Guide — Storage foundation for your homelab
OPNsense Network Segmentation — VLANs and firewall rules
Secure Remote Access — VPN and tunnels done right
Wazuh & Suricata — SIEM and IDS for your network
Backup & Recovery — The 3-2-1 strategy in practice
UPS & Battery Backup — Protect against power failures
Running Ollama Local LLM — Self-hosted AI on your own hardware

📊 Algorithmic Trading & Finance

Start here → The Algorithmic Trading Engineering Guide

Then explore the strategies:

Options Strategies — Spreads, straddles, and risk-defined trades
RSI, Ichimoku & Stochastic — Technical indicators that actually work
Risk Management — Position sizing and drawdown control
Insider Trading Detector — Anomaly detection on SEC Form 4 data
SEC Filings API — Programmatic access to EDGAR data

Also explore → The Pre-IPO Investing Guide — Valuations, due diligence, and secondary markets

🔧 Developer Tools & Productivity

Start here → The Developer Tools & Productivity Guide

Tools I’ve built or written about:

Claude Code Review — AI-assisted code review workflows
Git Worktrees — Parallel development without branch switching
QuickShrink — Image compression tool
PixelStrip — Background removal tool
TypeFast — Typing speed trainer
JSON Forge — JSON formatting and validation
HashForge — Hash generation utility
RegexLab — Interactive regex tester

⭐ Most Popular Posts

Not sure where to start? These are the most-read posts on the blog:

The Complete Kubernetes Security Guide — The definitive guide to securing K8s clusters
Vibe Coding Security — What happens when AI writes your code and nobody reviews it
The Homelab Security Guide — Enterprise-grade security for your home network
Self-Hosted GitOps — Running your own Git infrastructure with CI/CD
Algorithmic Trading Engineering Guide — Building trading systems that don’t lose money
Claude Code Leak Analysis — Deep dive into the leaked system prompt

👋 About Me

I’m Max L — a security engineer with 12+ years of experience, building production systems at Big Tech scale. I write here because I believe security knowledge shouldn’t be locked behind enterprise paywalls. Every post includes real configs, real code, and real tradeoffs.