DevOps’ish is in a state of spring cleaning. First, I’ve found a tool that I like more than Pocket to bookmark and save pages in Raindrop.io. All the Recommended Reads automation is now pulling from Raindrop.io. Then three Zapier rules ferry everything off to the appropriate places. I made that transition midweek. Next is the newsletter service itself. I’ve been unhappy with the current provider ever since doing the never-easy switch from Mailchimp (how forward-thinking that was) to the current provider. I’ve had more tickets opened than newsletters sent; enough was enough. Last week, I discovered EmailOctopus. I have been researching it in my spare time. Yesterday was a day off for me, so I started the switch to making DevOps’ish a Google Workplace domain and use EmailOctopus to send newsletters. It takes a lot more work than it should to get and send an email than it used to, but it’ll be worth it. The DevOps’ish Solarwinds supply chain compromise Index has many updates this week. Including the former Solarwinds CEO blaming an intern for the mistake and a congressional hearing on the matter. ...

Sometimes you don’t know what the world needs until someone tells you. On Monday this week, a friend asked if I had any additional books to point them to for Kubernetes help. I have a mile-long list in my head. I said, yeah, let me punch that up for you real quick. But, instead of creating a locked down doc or dust bin email, I built a website. Behold, Kubernetes README. It’s nothing really fancy. A copy of an existing site, with a different name, and data to help folks make a selection that fits their needs. But, this is the beauty of working in an open source environment. I didn’t even think of typing them an email. It was going to be a website the second the ask came in. There was no reason to go to the effort of creating a list of books that would live in a vacuum. Sharing knowledge helps us all. It’s how folks can figure out how to grow on their own. Thanks for the idea, Justin. I hope it helps. ...

First off, Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you’re enjoying it as best you can. This week I learned that an organization in the healthcare industry is working on a large project involving Kubernetes Pod Security Policies as a mainstay in their project. In case you haven’t heard, Pod Security Policies (PSPs) will begin the Kubernetes deprecation process in the 1.21 release. Kubernetes 1.21 releases on or about Thursday, April 8th, 2021. With PSPs being completely phased out by the 1.25 release (sometime in mid’ish 2022). When 1.21 is released, you’ll see a message similar to the following when touching PSPs, “The PodSecurityPolicy API is deprecated in 1.21, and will no longer be served starting in 1.25.” The Kubernetes Contributor Marketing Team is working on an official blog post, but it is taking longer than I’d prefer given the amount of PSP utilization that’s out there. I’m writing this here because I have worked in large banks, healthcare systems, and government agencies where changes like this could take quite some time to plan, test, verify, and implement. But, what is replacing PSPs? Well, that’s to be determined, which is equally terrifying to some. But, this is where folks have to have faith in the process. Sometimes we have to plan deprecation of something to force the community to respond to fill the gap. ...

This week’s biggest stories (my opinion): Email from Jeff Bezos to employees Jassy in charge of the juggernaut come Q3. Deserted Island DevOps 2021: Call for Speakers/Papers @ Sessionize.com I gotta hype this event. It was a very well done event last year. KubeCon EU Registration Now Open $10 for a limited time. The Next Cyberattack Is Already Under Way A few nits, but otherwise accurate. People Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Walk “Walking is one of the simplest and most strategic things you can do for yourself. It takes little preparation, minimal effort, no special equipment, and it can contract or expand to fit the exact amount of time you have available. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a single bout of moderate-to vigorous activity (including walking) can improve our sleep, thinking, and learning, while reducing symptoms of anxiety.” Can confirm from multiple walks this week. Ephemeral Environments as a Service Do you find that your engineers spend too much time creating and maintaining staging environments and yet, there never seems to be enough environments to go around? A shortage of environments is a top driver of low developer productivity and often impacts an engineering team’s ability to ship features on time. With Release, you can get a full instance of your app with all of its services with every pull request. Your developers will never have to fight over staging environments again. Get started now. SPONSORED ...

We don’t talk about salaries in the US like people do in other countries. Apparently, we citizens of the United States are extremely conservative when it comes to this topic. I’d like to see that change in my lifetime. I sat down and looked at my W-2 like I do every year. A number hit me out of the blue. It proved to me job hopping works (to a point). From my first job out of the military to now, I’ve increased my salary by 3X. I’m not trying to brag at all. It’s a living testament that veterans are likely undervalued. Also, that they should take full advantage of their newfound job flexibility. When you look at my resume, since 2011, I’ve held 12 different positions. Each one was a pay raise, status boost, morality alignment, or open source work alignment. Then there was a transition from carrying a pager to not carrying one anymore. I’ve been at Red Hat for two and a half years. Today, my job is the best job I’ve ever had (and that is saying a lot). But, the two positions before joining Red Hat were only six-month stints with very legitimate reasons for leaving both. But, before that, a year at a great company. It shows that people are willing to work for great companies that align with their morals and ethos. Red Hat is a fantastic tech company with a wonderful culture. Every move to get here was worth it. Because it finally put my value and compensation in sync. It has made up for the previous nine years of not being able to put as much in a college or retirement fund. But, now that’s all possible. ...