DevOps'ish 223: Hostile AWS Free Tier, Bye bye Bezos, InfoSec competencies, Rust in Linux Kernel, Git for Computer Scientists, secrets on the CLI, and more

In vacation mode this week. News reading played second fiddle to having fun. People AWS pricing problems could deter new cloud engineers I was quoted in this piece. I take the same opinion that the AWS Free Tier is indeed user hostile. Not because it’s limited in weird ways but, because new users could be billed thousands and before they know it, it’s too late. Take a deep dive into observability at o11ycon+hnycon, a two-day virtual conference on the future of shipping software. Happening June 9-10, this highly interactive event connects you and your peers to explore cutting-edge capabilities and unique outcomes that define observability. You’ll also hear from top Honeycomb customers and observability experts– including Corey Quinn, Chief Cloud Economist of The Duckbill Group, and Nora Jones, CEO of Jeli! Guess less and know more with Honeycomb SPONSORED. Upwards of 40% of workers are thinking about quitting their jobs I don’t blame anyone for pursuing jobs that fit better to their lifestyle. I also realize a 40% is a tectonic shift in the workforce. If this holds true, we’re all going to be impacted in some way. ...

June 20, 2021 · 4 min · Chris Short

DevOps'ish 222: Industry under pressure, Holy $%^& I agree with Torvalds, US Congress begins assault on big tech, polkit vuln, ALPACA, How To Love Kubernetes and Not Wreck The Planet, and more

I want to point out a few signs that I think we’re pushing the industry too hard, too fast. Fires in AWS data centers, Fastly (the CDN) took an hour-long outage triggered by a customer finding a bug, Cloudflare had outages in Chicago and Los Angeles. Ransomware is running through companies like Grant went through Richmond (to the point the US Justice department is equating them, in some ways, to terrorist attacks). Things need to change. Moving towards a more hybrid and fluid environment is not just a strategic priority; it’s survival at this point. Then making sure that your entire business can’t grind to a halt because lowest common denominator security issues happen. I thought we figured it out in the early 2000s. But, technology has changed so much since then, and there are new zero-days every day. We’re in a very tight position as technologists. If you’re a developer, you’re a target. If you’re an employee, you’re a target. You and every service you touch is a target. Nothing is safe. ...

June 13, 2021 · 5 min · Chris Short

DevOps'ish 221: On the passing of Peeyush Gupta, Apple employees balk at return to office plans, 1:1 with CNCF's Priyanka Sharma, StackOverflow acquired, Flux, Argo, HTTP 3, and more

The Cloud Native community lost a great person; Peeyush Gupta. He leaves behind a wife and 10-month old child. His employer, Digital Ocean, and the Kubernetes community are trying very hard to make that that mother and child will not be as devastated. I beg of you, please donate to the Peeyush Gupta: Family Education Fund. If half the DevOps’ish readership gave $25, we’ll hit the current goal of Rs.5,500,000. It’s been surprisingly difficult for me to deal with the loss of Peeyush. I think I’ve learned death doesn’t get easier with age, at least when the person is a decade younger than you—my deepest condolences to the Gupta family. I cannot imagine what you are dealing with right now. I’ve made two public statements on Peeyush’s death. Please accept my apologies for quoting myself here. “I was gobsmacked by the news. The impact Peeyush has had in the community is a large one. It’s not possible to sit down and look at GitHub to capture Peeyush’s work. It extended into so much more than code.” —Chris Short, Heartfelt Remembrance for Peeyush Gupta (pensu) ...

June 6, 2021 · 6 min · Chris Short

DevOps'ish 220: Fretting over free tier, Amazon's creepy network, NOBELIUM, Half-Double Rowhammers on sale, Istio vs. Linkerd, cost of cloud, and more

I’m in surgery recovery mode. I will be for a while it looks like. Nerves are weird. Do me a favor; if you’re reading this, take the 2021 DORA State of DevOps survey. People Growing Concerns among Developers about the AWS Free Tier It feels like if you think you’re keeping yourself in the free tier you’re an API call or bug in the system away from a massive panic attack. Are you looking to learn more about observability practices? Join Honeycomb for o11ycon+hnycon June 9-10! This is the observability event of the year, where people come together to explore cutting-edge observability practices, new tech like OpenTelemetry, and more. Register for this free virtual conference to connect with peers and learn from top Honeycomb customers and observability experts–including speakers from HelloFresh, Slack, CircleCI & Netflix! Observe, debug, and improve with Honeycomb. SPONSORED Amazon devices will soon automatically share your Internet with neighbors This is a security nightmare laying in shadows. Disable this setting now (directions in article)! ...

May 30, 2021 · 6 min · Chris Short

DevOps'ish 219: Mobile First Development, Bill Gates, your Wi-Fi are belong to us, irksome IRC, Argo with Okta, kubectl debug, and more

Mobile first development. A simple idea in principle, but the options, while numerous, all suck in some particular way. Yes, I’m a sucker and bought a new iPad Pro. I think that the time is right to make this purchase now, both for family and productivity. With a 5G modem, the device has somewhat unbounded future potential. But, the hardware is hamstrung by iPadOS. Last night, I was sitting at my desk using the new Magic Keyboard (there’s a mousepad). This is an ultra-level netbook with a demon inside it. It is indeed fast. Playing larger maps on Civ6 is enjoyable. The rapid responsiveness of the device is a lot like my Red Hat-issued 16" MacBook Pro (which usually sits on my desk I wrote about in January, I do need to provide an updated version soon). This thing could easily handle a lot of my day-to-day work right now. I could, in theory, do my daily job on this iPad Pro. Slack, email, browser, RDP client, and most other software I use to produce and host OpenShift.TV has iPad-friendly versions. When KubeCon NA comes (the CFP closes today), I’ll have some hard choices to make. I have to decide between bringing an 11" iPad Pro and a mic or a buffet of A/V gear in a Pelican case. ...

May 22, 2021 · 7 min · Chris Short