News Aggregator

Mesos: Simplifying Large-Scale Cluster Management

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 13:42:37

Large-scale cluster management has become a critical challenge for organizations in the age of big data and cloud computing. To address this issue, Apache Mesos emerged as a powerful open-source platform that simplifies the management of distributed systems. Mesos allows businesses to abstract and pool computing resources, allowing for dynamic resource allocation and efficient utilization across multiple applications and frameworks. In this article, we will delve into the features, benefits, and use cases of Mesos, exploring how it revolutionizes cluster management.

Comprehensive Guide on Integrating OpenAI ChatGPT API With React JS

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 13:12:37

In the dynamic landscape of modern web development, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence (AI) has become a game-changer. OpenAI's ChatGPT API is a prime example of cutting-edge technology that allows developers to seamlessly integrate natural language processing into their applications. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the ins and outs of using the OpenAI ChatGPT API with React JS, unlocking a world of possibilities for interactive and engaging user experiences. Understanding the OpenAI ChatGPT API Before diving into the integration process, it's crucial to have a solid understanding of what the OpenAI ChatGPT API is and how it works.

Understanding and Using Docker Containers in Web Development: A Guide

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 11:42:36

Introduction to Docker and Containers Docker is a developer's equivalent of a magic box. It enables people to design and run programs in an orderly and efficient manner. Docker employs lightweight containers rather than huge virtual machines. These containers act as mini-packages for applications, allowing them to be moved around and operated on multiple systems. Docker has greatly simplified the life of developers! Docker allows developers to package applications with all the necessary parts, such as libraries and other dependencies, and ship them out as one package. Using containers ensures consistency across multiple development, staging, and production environments. Understanding how Docker works is crucial for modern web development workflows. Docker and Containers Have Changed the Game in Web Development Providing an isolated environment for applications that minimizes conflicts between different working environments. Enhancing the scalability and efficiency of applications, as containers are more lightweight than traditional virtual machines. Making it easier to update and deploy code changes by streamlining the CI/CD pipeline. The Main Components of Docker That You Should Be Familiar With Docker Images: These are the blueprints for containers, defining the environment and what it contains. Docker Containers: Instances of Docker images that run the applications. Docker Daemon: The background service running on the host manages the building, running, and distribution of Docker containers. Docker Client: The tool you use to communicate with Docker and instruct it on what to perform. Docker Store: A marketplace for sharing and managing Docker images. Understanding Docker and container technology is pivotal for any web developer looking to stay current with the trends and best practices in software development. Setting up Docker for Web Development Setting up Docker for web development is simple and useful. It facilitates your work. Here's how to go about it:

Application Production Readiness Guide

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 11:12:36

Deploying an application in production is not the end state but a very crucial stage of the software development lifecycle. There are a lot of factors that could go wrong, especially when you’re developing a new service, deploying for the first time, or releasing a major feature update. In order to avoid any incident, this guide can help you in creating a blueprint for deploying and managing your application in production. Production Readiness Architecture review: I know this is the very first step before starting the development. But most of the time, as development progresses, a lot of things change, and the architecture of documents becomes outdated. It’s always a good practice to keep your document updated and verify once before the final release. Security: Security is another important pillar of a healthy service. This guarantees the safety of the data stored and shared across various sub-systems. Verifying and making sure all good security practices are followed before releasing the service will help in the long run. Service dashboard: A set of service monitoring dashboards consolidated at one place to provide a holistic view of service health and performance. This will help in understanding various components and usage of the application. Alarms: There are a few standard alarms like memory, CPU, GPU, etc. (threshold at 70% or 80%), which will let your team know about the potential issue and help mitigate it proactively. This event will help you put right methodologies to scale your application as required. There are certain data points that are unknown at the time of release, and it is fine to put an arbitrary number to raise the alarm for that kind of metric. Scaling, caching, and latency: Every application is built for a certain set of users and a certain number of transactions to support. But oftentimes, we need to be ready to scale up/down based on usage. It’s always best practice to put proper scaling factors to upscale and downscale the application based on various parameters to avoid any downtime or customer impact.Ensure a proper caching mechanism is implemented to cache and invalidate the cached data. This will help you maintain your SLA for low Latency. Beta testing: Beta testing provides a developer environment to test the flow, interactions, and end-to-end working of the application. This helps in building confidence. Gamma testing or UAT (User Acceptance Testing): It’s always better to test your application/feature with a certain set of Braveheart users who can provide feedback based on real usage. This will also help you to test your application before opening it to a wider audience. Runbooks: There are scenarios where certain sets of manual operations are required in order to perform certain sets of tasks, e.g., onboarding users, migrating existing customers, etc. These should be properly documented to avoid any issues. UT coverage: Define minimum coverage criteria, say 80% or 90%, and follow that to write unit tests. The better the coverage, the lesser the chance of a bug. Integration tests: UT is a great way to capture any issue with your function or a unit of code, but an integration test will allow you to test functionality as a whole. This will also ensure any future changes should not be breaking existing functionality. CM (Change Management) process: Point# 8 talks about Runbooks. While Runbooks defines the steps to perform the manual steps, the Change Management process will ensure proper steps are followed and document these changes. This will establish a best practice for any manual change and avoid any issues in production. CI/CD Pipeline: Avoid manual intervention as much as you can. A full CI/CD pipeline will ensure the changes are properly reviewed, unit tested, and integration tested. Dev testing: Perform as much dev testing as you can for all the possible scenarios you can think of. This will raise the quality of deliverable and ensures the safety of the code deployed in production. Incident mitigation plan: However better the system is designed and developed, there will always be some known or unknown risks associated with it. It is always a good practice to document a risk mitigation plan in case any incident happens. For example, what if the web server is crashed, what if web page redirection is broken, etc? A mitigation plan will act as a guide for any developers in the team to act quickly in case of an incident. “Develop the best; prepare for the worst!” Dependency documentation: If your application is dependent on some other application or applications, review it, document it, and create a mitigation plan for use cases like what if that service starts throttling, what if the service is down, etc. Logging: Ensure proper logging is implemented for all the scenarios like info, error, warn, or debug. Also, ensure no critical data is printed in the log and proper log level is implemented in different stages. Load testing: Performing a load test on your application will provide you with a number when the application might break. This will help you implement a proper scaling mechanism to avoid downtime. Rollback mechanism: What if a faulty deployment reaches production? What if some untested code reaches production? What if the deployed code is not behaving right in production? In order to mitigate any such issues, a proper rollback mechanism should be established and documented to roll back the application to a previously known state. This will help you to quickly restore applications' previously known state. A/B testing: In case of some major feature update, It’s better to collect metrics based on A/B customers. These metrics will provide insight into the feature released and its adoption. This will help you make the decision to roll out to a wider audience or roll it back. Roll-out mechanism: Alpha, beta, gamma, UAT, and Production. These are various stages that you could set up to target different kinds of customers. But in order to release your application or a major feature to a wider audience, define a proper rollout strategy like rolling out to a certain geographic user base, rolling out to a certain percentage of users, rolling out to a certain number of users, etc. Once the initial rollout is a success, then how to roll out to a wider audience. Conclusion In conclusion, having detailed documentation capturing various data points not only navigates a safer development but also provides safer deployment and healthy service.

Unlocking the Power of Streaming: Effortlessly Upload Gigabytes to AWS S3 With Node.js

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 10:57:37

Uploading massive datasets to Amazon S3 can be daunting, especially when dealing with gigabytes of information. However, a solution exists within reach. We can revolutionize this process by harnessing the streaming capabilities of a Node.js TypeScript application. Streaming enables us to transfer substantial data to AWS S3 with remarkable efficiency, all while conserving memory resources and ensuring scalability. In this article, we embark on a journey to unveil the secrets of developing a Node.js TypeScript application that seamlessly uploads gigabytes of data to AWS S3 using the magic of streaming. Setting up the Node.js Application Let's start by setting up a new Node.js project:

Demystifying Distributed Systems: A Beginner’s Guide

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 10:42:36

Distributed systems are ubiquitous today, powering everything from the internet and cloud computing to social networks, gaming, e-commerce, and streaming services. A distributed system comprises independent components in different locations that communicate to achieve a common goal. These components can be computers, servers, devices, sensors, etc., that process data and exchange messages. Distributed systems enable various services and tasks through improved scalability, availability, performance, and cost-effectiveness over centralized systems. However, they also introduce complexities that designers and developers must address. This article discusses distributed systems' basics, types, concepts, communication methods, challenges, and real-world examples that we encounter daily. Basics of Distributed Systems Before diving into distributed systems details, let's review key components and principles of it.

How To Implement Cosine Similarity in Python

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 10:12:36

Cosine similarity has several real-world applications, and by using embedding vectors, we can compare real-world meanings in a programmatic manner. Python is one of the most popular languages for data science, and it offers various libraries to calculate cosine similarity with ease. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can implement cosine similarity in Python using the help of Scikit-Learn and NumPy libraries. What Is Cosine Similarity? Cosine similarity is a measure of similarity between two non-zero vectors in an n-dimensional space. It is used in various applications, such as text analysis and recommendation systems, to determine how similar two vectors are in terms of their direction in the vector space.

Creating and Serving Your First Machine Learning Model

Aggregated on: 2023-11-23 09:57:36

Welcome to the world of machine learning, where computers learn from data and make predictions without explicit programming. At the heart of this technology lies the concept of a “model.” What Is a Model? In traditional programming, we create functions/methods that receive inputs/parameters and return a result based on a formula. For example, imagine a Java method that applies the formula y = 3x + 1.

Amazon EC2 Deep Dive: Optimizing Workloads With Hardware Insights

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 21:27:36

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) stands as a cornerstone of AWS's suite of cloud services, providing a versatile platform for computing on demand. Yet, the true power of EC2 lies in its diverse array of instance types, each meticulously crafted to cater to distinct computational requirements, underpinned by a variety of specialized hardware architectures. This article goes into detail, exploring the intricacies of these instance types and dissecting the hardware that drives them. Through this foundational approach, we aim to furnish a more profound comprehension of EC2's ecosystem, equipping you with the insights necessary to make the right decisions when selecting the most apt instance for your specific use case. Why Understand the Hardware Beneath the Instances? When diving into cloud computing, it's tempting to view resources like EC2 instances as abstracted boxes, merely serving our applications without much thought to their inner workings. However, having a fundamental understanding of the underlying hardware of your chosen EC2 instance is crucial. This knowledge not only empowers you to make more informed decisions, optimizing both performance and costs, but also ensures your applications run smoothly, minimizing unexpected disruptions. Just as a chef selects the right tools for a dish or a mechanic chooses the correct parts for a repair, knowing the hardware components of your EC2 instances can be the key to unlocking their full potential. In this article, we'll demystify the hardware behind the EC2 curtains, helping you bridge the gap between abstract cloud resources and tangible hardware performance.

AWS: Overview of AWS Direct Connect, Connect Location, Connect Endpoint and Connect Gateway

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 20:42:36

In this blog on AWS, I want to bring out a study (overview) on AWS Direct Connect and its related terminologies: AWS Direct Connect Location, AWS Direct Connect Endpoint, and AWS Direct Connect Gateway. AWS Direct Connect Diagram

Apply Strangler Pattern To Decompose Legacy System Into Microservices: Part 1

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 20:27:36

Many sources provide explanations of microservices in a general context, but there is a lack of domain-specific examples. Newcomers or those unsure of where to begin may find it challenging to grasp how to transition their legacy systems into a microservices architecture. This guide is primarily intended for individuals who are struggling to initiate their migration efforts, and it offers business-specific examples to aid in understanding the process. There is another pattern I wanted to talk about - the Strangler Pattern - which is a migration pattern used to transition from a legacy system to a new system incrementally while minimizing risk.

Analyzing the Various Components of TCO for Digital Products

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 19:57:36

Are you ready to unravel the hidden costs of digital products? Buckle up and join us on a journey through the intricate world of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). In today's fast-paced digital landscape, understanding the expenses involved in developing, deploying, and maintaining a digital product is crucial for businesses and individuals. From hardware and software investments to ongoing maintenance and upgrades, every component contributes to the grand TCO puzzle. In this article, we'll delve deep into each aspect, providing you with invaluable insights and eye-opening revelations.

Advanced Content Prioritization Techniques for Web Developers

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 19:42:36

Creating performant and responsive websites is a top priority for web developers. One way to achieve this is through content prioritization, which involves loading critical content before non-critical content. In this article, we will explore advanced techniques and tools that can help web developers optimize their projects using content prioritization. Advanced Content Prioritization Techniques and Tools Extracting Critical CSS With PurgeCSS and Critical Extract only the necessary CSS rules required to render above-the-fold content using PurgeCSS (https://purgecss.com/) and Critical (https://github.com/addyosmani/critical). PurgeCSS removes unused CSS, while Critical extracts and inlines the critical CSS, improving the rendering of critical content.

Integrate Alexa With Voiceflow

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 19:42:36

Alexa has a lot of capabilities, but it is not easy to create a complex conversation. Voiceflow is a tool that allows you to create complex conversations with Alexa without writing code. This integration allows you to create a conversation in Voiceflow and then deploy it to Alexa. Because of that, In this repository, you will find a simple example of how to integrate Alexa with Voiceflow using the Alexa Skills Kit SDK for Node.js and calling Voiceflow’s Dialog Manager API.

Writing An Efficient Software Design Document

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 18:42:36

Software design plays a vital role in the life of a software engineer. It begins with a problem statement and sets the path for implementing a solution. In this article, I’ll be talking about a typical process that I follow to thoroughly understand a problem and successfully deliver a solution. Problem Statement Defining a problem statement is the very first and crucial phase of the development process. These comes from product, leadership, or another engineers. A well defined problem provides a very clear picture of how the system should look like. But often, How well a problem statement is defined, there are a lot of ambiguities and unknowns. To overcome these, we proceed to requirement gathering.

Reading an HTML File, Parsing It and Converting It to a PDF File With the Pdfbox Library

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 17:42:36

In this article, we will ensure that the HTML file we put in a folder we specify is read and the variables in its content are parsed and replaced with their real values. Then, I modified the HTML file with the "openhtmltopdf-pdfbox" library. We will cover converting it to a PDF file. First, we will read the HTML file under a folder we have determined, parse it, and pass our own dynamic values to the relevant variables in the HTML. We will convert the HTML file to PDF file using the "openhtmltopdf-pdfbox" library in its latest updated form.

Everything You Need to Know and Do With Load Balancers

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 16:42:36

Hey there, I'm Roman, a Cloud Architect at Gart with over 15 years of experience. Today, I want to delve into the world of Load Balancers with you. In simple terms, a Load Balancer is like the traffic cop of the internet. Its main gig? Distributing incoming web traffic among multiple servers. But let's not try to swallow this elephant in one go; we'll munch on it one piece at a time, step by step. I'll break down this complex topic into digestible chunks.

Voice Synthesis: Evolution, Ethics, and Law

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 16:42:36

Voice synthesis technology has progressed remarkably from early mechanical experiments to present-day AI systems capable of natural, human-like speech. Modern applications span accessibility, education, entertainment, communication, and information retrieval, enhancing user experiences with various platforms like smart speakers and chatbots. This article traces the evolution of voice synthesis and explores its far-reaching legal implications as the technology continues advancing. A Long History Leading to Recent Advances The history of artificially generating human speech can be split into three main eras: mechanical, electronic, and digital. The mechanical era involved physical devices like bellows and keyboards that manipulated sounds to mimic speech, such as von Kempelen's 1769 acoustic-mechanical machine. The electronic era used electricity and components like filters and amplifiers to generate more lifelike vocal sounds, like Bell Labs' 1939 Voder. The digital era, enabled by computers, revolutionized synthesis through software algorithms and datasets. Early systems like Bell Labs' 1962 PAT used mathematical models and parameters to control synthetic speech. Later systems like MIT's 1980 Klatt Synthesizer used linguistic rules and tables.

Elevating React Development: Unleashing the Power of ChatGPT for React Developers

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 16:42:36

React, an open-source JavaScript library for building user interfaces, has become a cornerstone in web development. As React developers continually seek ways to enhance productivity and streamline their workflows, the integration of ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, presents an exciting frontier. In this comprehensive exploration, we will delve into the myriad use cases where ChatGPT can empower React developers, from assisting in code development to providing valuable insights and boosting creativity. Understanding ChatGPT and React 1. ChatGPT Overview ChatGPT, based on the GPT-3.5 architecture, is a state-of-the-art language model capable of understanding and generating human-like text. Its versatility extends beyond traditional chatbots, making it a valuable tool for various natural language processing applications.

Setting Sail for Success: A Comprehensive Guide to Productive Large-Team Retrospectives

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 16:27:36

Navigating the complexities of overseeing the development of a large and intricate solution platform as a Solution Train Engineer brings forth a unique set of challenges, particularly in ensuring active participation during retrospective sessions. The environment is characterized by a multitude of drivers and teams concurrently working on various releases and commitments, underscoring the critical importance of continuous improvement for maintaining business relevance and market dominance.

Build a Philosophy Quote Generator With Vector Search and Astra DB (Part 2)

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 16:27:36

This is the penultimate post in a mini-series about building a vector-search-based generative AI application with Python and Astra DB from scratch. We explained several important concepts in part 1. In this installment, we will store quotes from famous philosophers in the database and query them within a semantic search engine. Create and Fill the Vector Store The present application will focus on quotes by famous philosophers, such as:

Simulating Data in Onesait Platform (Part 1)

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 15:57:36

Frequently, when you start with a project, you have a data model but not the data itself, either because it still has to be loaded into the databases or because the access API is not available. To get by until the data is available and you are able to develop the front, we commonly use mock data, whether it is created by the back team itself, a sample of the real data that will arrive, or even data generated by the front itself to do tests.

Simplifying Access: The Power of Single Sign-On

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 15:42:36

In today’s digital world, individuals and organizations interact with numerous online platforms and applications on a daily basis. Managing multiple usernames and passwords can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and prone to security risks. This is where Single Sign-On (SSO) comes to the rescue. SSO is a solution that simplifies access management, enhances user experience, and improves security. In this article, we delve into the concept of SSO, its benefits, and its growing relevance in an interconnected digital landscape.

Coding Goes Online: A Brief Guide to Cloud Development Environments

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 14:57:36

What Are Cloud Development Environments? A Brief History Let us start with the end goal: the aim of Cloud Development Environments is to enable software development to move online. Although it is becoming the talk of the town, this approach to coding online has an interesting history that dates back to the mid-2010s when a handful of innovative startups took their first steps into this emerging field. Bringing development online brings new benefits, from productivity to security aspects.

HasMySecretLeaked: Building a Trustless and Secure Protocol

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 14:42:36

HasMySecretLeaked is the first free service that allows security practitioners to proactively verify if their secrets have leaked on GitHub.com. With access to GitGuardian's extensive database of over 20 million records of detected leaked secrets, including their locations on GitHub, users can easily query and protect their sensitive information. This database is compiled from scanning billions of code files, commits, GitHub gists, and issues since 2017. By opening this project to everyone, we strive to enhance secret protection at scale while acknowledging the responsibility and security challenges involved.

Alerts Should Work for You, Not the Other Way Around

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 14:27:36

“A few years back, I was tuning an alert rule and accidentally triggered the alert, which created 772 tickets. Twice.” This (all too true) story serves as the introduction of the main thesis of my talk in the video below (and the reason for its title): That alerts — contrary to the popular opinion held by IT practitioners across the spectrum of tech — don’t inherently suck. The problem lies in how alerts are typically created, which causes them to be… well, let’s just say “sub-optimal” and leave it at that.

How To Use KubeDB and Postgres Sidecar for Database Integrations in Kubernetes

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 13:57:36

In contemporary web development, a recurring challenge revolves around harmonizing the convenience and simplicity of using a database with a web application. My name is Viacheslav Aksenov, and in this article, I aim to explore several of the most popular approaches for integrating databases and web applications within the Kubernetes ecosystem. These examples are examined within the context of a testing environment, where constraints are more relaxed. However, these practices can serve as a foundation applicable to production environments as well. One Service, One Database. Why? Running a database alongside a microservice aligns with the principles outlined in the Twelve-Factor App methodology. One key factor is "Backing Services" (Factor III), which suggests treating databases, message queues, and other services as attached resources to be attached or detached seamlessly.

A Maven Story

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 13:57:36

Back with a fresh blog on Maven – no saga, just a simple update on an old project of mine. It's like catching up with an old buddy and sharing what's new. In this blog, we'll dive into the world of Maven, exploring the tweaks and improvements I've made to an old favorite. Whether you're a Maven pro or just getting started, let's take a stroll through My Maven adventure together! TL;DR The Challenge: Figuring out how to upgrade an application server in a project with lots of parts using Ant. The Solution: Use Maven's Multi-Module plan and a Bill Of Materials (BOM) to control versions in one place, making upgrades and managing parts easier. The Journey: Facing issues like circular dependencies and copying projects, Maven's tools, and multi-module system helped a lot. Key Takeaways: Sharing practical lessons learned during the move, showing how Maven made the project better and ready for more improvements. Once Upon a Time in Engineering In a tech adventure, I have been tasked to upgrade the Application Server for a product used on servers like Glassfish or WebLogic. The goal? Boost security and prepare for future JDK upgrades. The product included 20+ EJB projects and 20+ war projects packed into an EAR.

Elevating Humanity: The Confluence of AI and IoT in Human Augmentation

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 13:42:36

In the ever-evolving landscape of technological progress, the fusion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) stands as a beacon, promising to redefine the limits of human potential through the transformative lens of human augmentation. Wearable Wonders: A Gateway to Personalized Wellness At the forefront of this technological revolution are wearable devices, embodying the pinnacle of AI and IoT collaboration. Far surpassing their initial roles as fitness trackers, these devices have metamorphosed into sophisticated health custodians. Imbued with IoT sensors and driven by intricate AI algorithms, wearables offer more than real-time health data; they present a personalized journey into well-being. From heart rate variability and sleep patterns to nuanced analyses of physical exertion, this amalgamation elevates health awareness to unprecedented heights, ushering in an era of preventative healthcare enlightenment. Kinetic Marvels: Precision Redefined in Prosthetics The intersection of AI and IoT is reshaping the landscape of mobility through the evolution of smart prosthetics. Embedded with a pantheon of sensors intricately woven into IoT ecosystems, these prosthetics transcend mere functional replication. AI, the maestro in this kinetic symphony, endows these marvels with erudition, learning, and adapting to the unique movement nuances of their users. The result is not just an augmentation of mobility but a transformative journey where agency, dignity, and fluidity become the defining notes in this prosthetic opus.

CodeCraft: Agile Strategies for Crafting Exemplary Software

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 13:42:36

Coding is not just about strings of code — it's an art form, a creative endeavor where developers use Agile methodologies as their paintbrushes and palettes to craft software masterpieces. In this article, we'll explore how Agile strategies align with the creative spirit of developers, turning the process of coding into a journey of craftsmanship. The Agile Developer's Canvas Imagine the Agile Developer's Canvas as an artist's sketchbook. It's a place where developers lay the foundation for their creations. User stories, sprint planning, and retrospectives are the vivid colors on this canvas, guiding developers through the creative process. This visual representation ensures that the development journey is not just a technical process but a canvas filled with the aspirations and visions of the creators.

Connecting With the Community at BSides Atlanta 2023

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 13:27:36

Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is the busiest in the world, serving over 93 million passengers to and from this international destination last year. There are many reasons to visit Atlanta, such as seeing the home of Coca-Cola, visiting the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or taking in a Braves game. But none of those reasons were why over 500 security professionals gathered at the Kennesaw State University Center. They gathered to share their knowledge and experiences defending their organizations and teams at BSides ATL 2023. In the opening remarks, we learned this was the largest free BSides in the south, welcoming just over 500 attendees, vendors, speakers, and volunteers. Folks had a lot of programming options, including four speaking tracks, a lock pick village, and a network hacking 'king of the hill' capture the flag.

Escaping the Quagmire of Antiquated Cloud Configuration Practices

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 12:57:36

Modern cloud-native applications promise scalability and velocity, but realizing the benefits depends on harmonizing all the underlying components glued together via configuration and secrets. Legacy approaches fail to meet the demands of complexity at the cloud scale, resulting in a quagmire of brittleness, environment skew, disjointed tooling, and manual upkeep, draining productivity. As Christian Tate, CEO of CloudTruth explains, "You have duplicate values in your repos, incomplete values because of poor handoffs between teams, linked values that fall out of sync, cloned fragments that diverge over time, bad values that take systems down — these five bad practices will cause a lot of pain consistently."

What’s New Between Java 17 and Java 21?

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 12:57:36

On the 19th of September, 2023, Java 21 was released. It is time to take a closer look at the changes since the last LTS release, which is Java 17. In this blog, some of the changes between Java 17 and Java 21 are highlighted, mainly by means of examples. Enjoy! Introduction First of all, the short introduction is not entirely correct because Java 21 is mentioned in one sentence with being an LTS release. An elaborate explanation is given in this blog of Nicolai Parlog. In short, Java 21 is a set of specifications defining the behaviour of the Java language, the API, the virtual machine, etc. A reference implementation of Java 21 is implemented by OpenJDK. Updates to the reference implementation are made in this OpenJDK repository. After the release, a fork is created jdk21u. This jdk21u fork is maintained and will receive updates for a longer time than the regular 6-month cadence. Even with jdk21u, there is no guarantee that fixes are made during a longer time period. This is where the different Vendor implementations make a difference. They build their own JDKs and make them freely available, often with commercial support. So, it is better to say “JDK21 is a version, for which many vendors offer support."

How To Plan Product Prioritization From Users Perspective

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 12:42:36

Product development planning with a focus on identifying customer pain points and writing user stories can be a powerful approach for developing products that meet the needs of customers and address their pain points. Product Managers identify customer pain points through customer interviews, surveys, focus groups, or other methods. Once the pain points have been identified, they use them to write user stories that describe the problem that the product is trying to solve and the benefits that it will deliver to customers. User stories are written in a way that clearly communicates the value that the product will provide to customers and the specific problems it will solve. Here are a few examples of good user stories:

Kubernetes Resiliency (RTO/RPO) in Multi-Cluster Deployments

Aggregated on: 2023-11-22 12:12:36

Ah, Kubernetes! The panacea to all our DevOps challenges. Kubernetes is the open source container orchestration tool that was supposed to speed up software delivery, secure our applications, lower our costs and reduce our headaches, right?

PostgreSQL Views With Runtime Parameters

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 22:12:36

There are many situations when applications are requested to be agile and versatile enough so that they can run dynamic reports for which the input comes at runtime. This article aims to present a way of achieving as much by leveraging the temporary configuration parameters supported by PostgreSQL databases.

Crafting a Customizable Weather Widget With Web Components

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 21:57:36

Weather widgets are a common sight on many websites and applications. They provide users with a quick glance at the weather conditions for a specific location. But what if you could create your own customizable weather widget that aligns perfectly with your site’s theme and also offers a chance to dive deep into the capabilities of Web Components? In this article, we’ll do just that! Introduction Web Components allow developers to create reusable and encapsulated custom elements. Our goal will be to build a weather widget that:

The Internet of Things: Development and Examples

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 21:42:36

The Internet of Things (IoT) is not just a buzzword; it’s a transformative technology that has been reshaping our world for the past few decades. In essence, IoT is a network of interconnected devices and objects equipped with sensors, software, and communication capabilities, enabling them to collect and exchange data. The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a disruptive force, revolutionizing how we interact with technology and transforming our living spaces and urban landscapes. IoT has paved the way for smart homes and cities, making them more efficient, sustainable, and interconnected than ever before.

Digital Twins Will Revolutionize Modern Logistics. Here's How

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 21:12:36

As of 2022, the global market for digital twins was valued at $11.12 billion — and experts estimate an impressive annual growth rate of 37.5% from 2023 to 2030. Digital twins help connect the physical and virtual worlds, allowing workers to timely identify when things need fixing, work more efficiently, and create less waste. So, embracing the potential of digital twins is a crucial move as the logistics sector steps into the new Industry 5.0 era.

The Hidden Facets of SQL Database Migration You're Probably Overlooking

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 20:57:36

In the arena of technology, database migration has carved out its own niche. While everyone talks about migrating for scalability or performance, we often overlook the layers of complexity involved. SQL database migration, often assumed to be straightforward, can become a convoluted process if not executed thoughtfully. So, let's delve into the often-overlooked aspects of SQL database migration. The Pre-Migration Mindset: It's Not All About Technology When you decide to migrate an SQL database, the first step involves understanding your current system. However, pre-migration assessment is not solely about auditing the SQL database's architecture or stored procedures. It is equally vital to align this technological change with your organization's business objectives and existing tech stack. Missing this initial alignment can make even a technically flawless migration feel disconnected from the strategic goals of your organization.

Test Automation 101: How and Why to Automate Testing

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 20:57:36

The software industry regularly witnesses the emergence of new trends, technologies, and approaches. And while not all of them are here to stay, some are not going anywhere. Automation testing definitely belongs to the latter group: having been known since the 1970s, automation in testing has only gotten more common and more powerful. But is automation needed on every software testing project? How to plan and set up an automation project to benefit from it the most? And why can automation projects fail? These are just some of the questions we’ll answer in today’s longread.

CI/CD Metrics You Should Be Monitoring

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 20:42:36

The evolution of technology has correspondingly improved all its associated operations in its wake - and software development methodology is one of them. To keep pace with high-velocity deployments, organizations today turn to creating robust CI/CD pipelines that enable them to continuously integrate and test their source code. It is a high-intensity operation that requires continuous monitoring and high visibility into every process involved. You need a set of key CI/CD metrics that sum up your entire pipeline in manageable numbers and give you a bird’s eye view of what’s going on in real time.

Demystifying APIs for Product Managers

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 20:12:36

As technology continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, product managers find themselves at the intersection of innovation and user experience. One key area that has become integral to the success of modern products is Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). In this article, we'll embark on a journey to demystify APIs for product managers, starting with the foundational concepts. Understanding the Basics What Is an API? At its core, an API, or Application Programming Interface, acts as a bridge that allows different software systems to communicate with each other. Think of it as a set of rules that enables applications to understand how to interact. APIs can be likened to a waiter in a restaurant, facilitating communication between the customer (client) and the kitchen (server).

Send Time Optimization

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 19:42:35

Did you know that email Send Time Optimization (STO) can improve the open rate by up to 93%? Awesome! Or it might only be 10%. A slightly more credible case study claims that message delivery at the right time resulted in an open rate of 55%, a click rate of 30%, and a conversion rate of 13%. I’ll take that increase any day if there’s a positive ROI. Optimization can be applied to any number of problems. It can be applied equally to content, where it may be to the customer’s benefit, as it can be applied to price, where optimization can deliver the maximum possible price for merchants.

DevOps Service Providers Facilitating ISO 27001 and GDPR Compliance for Organizations

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 18:42:35

A DevOps service company can play a crucial role in assisting organizations with meeting ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance requirements by integrating security and compliance into their DevOps workflows. Such a provider can help with ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance in the following ways: Incorporate security from the start: Integrate security considerations into the development and deployment pipeline from the beginning. This includes code reviews, static and dynamic code analysis, and security testing at different stages of the software development life cycle. Constant monitoring and automated compliance checks: Put in place continuous monitoring and alert systems to identify security incidents and vulnerabilities in real-time. This guarantees quick responses to potential threats or breaches, which is vital for GDPR compliance. Automate compliance checks and tests to guarantee applications and infrastructure configurations satisfy ISO 27001 and GDPR requirements. This can involve automated checks for data protection, access controls, and encryption. Infrastructure as Code (IaC), version control, and audit trail: Utilize Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate the provisioning and configuration of infrastructure, which assists in consistently building systems that comply with security and compliance requirements. Implement version control for configurations, policies, and access controls. Maintain a thorough audit trail that records all changes, simplifying and demonstrating compliance during audits. Consider a fast-growing, medium-sized e-commerce company that has adopted DevOps practices to manage its infrastructure. To achieve ISO 27001 compliance, they must ensure the security and proper setup of their infrastructure.

Lessons From a Six-Month Job Search

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 18:42:35

Now that I’m free to share the news that I’ve landed at Kentik — a visionary company filled by an amazing group of folks who believe that the value of their team goes far beyond what they might offer to the business — I wanted to take a minute to reflect on my job search, comment on the state of the job market, and share some lessons I’ve picked up along the way. Let me be clear — I’m under no illusion that the world has breathlessly awaited the thoughts of a middle-aged white dude and will now, graced with my heretofore-undiscovered wisdom, be a truly better place. People with far more knowledge, experience, and expertise have written and spoken on this topic, with data and examples that are far more eloquent and compelling than anything I could hope to share.

Enable Hidden Fields of SAP BW DataSource

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 18:42:35

Fields Hidden by SAP in Standard BW Data Sources Many times, we would have observed that there are a few fields present in the extract structure of the data source but are not available in RSA6 or the data source that is replicated in BW. This blog talks about all the steps as to how we can enable fields present in the extract structure of the data source, make them visible in RSA3, and fetch the data in BW.

Data Ingestion for Batch/Near Real-Time Analytics

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 18:12:35

In the midst of our ever-expanding digital landscape, data management undergoes a metamorphic role as the custodian of the digital realm, responsible for the ingestion, storage, and comprehension of the immense volumes of information generated daily. At a broad level, data management workflows encompass the following phases, which are integral to ensuring the reliability, completeness, accuracy, and legitimacy of the insights (data) derived for business decisions. Data identification: Identifying the required data elements to achieve the defined objective. Data ingestion: Ingest the data elements into a temporary or permanent storage for analysis. Data cleaning and validation: Clean the data and validate the values for accuracy. Data transformation and exploration: Transform, explore, and analyze the data to arrive at the aggregates or infer insights. Visualization: Apply business intelligence over the explored data to arrive at insights that complement the defined objective. Within these stages, Data Ingestion acts as the guardian of the data realm, ensuring accurate and efficient entry of the right data into the system. It involves collecting targeted data, simplifying structures if they are complex, adapting to changes in the data structure, and scaling out to accommodate the increasing data volume, making the data interpretable for subsequent phases. This article will specifically concentrate on large-scale Data Ingestion tailored for both batch and near real-time analytics requirements.

Monitoring and Logging in Cloud Architecture With Python

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 18:12:35

Logging and monitoring are tools crucial for maintaining your infrastructure’s health. While log data offers valuable insights into the inner processes of applications and databases, error monitoring further intensifies it by addressing vulnerabilities. Integrating both ensures a seamless user experience. Further points of usefulness include: Enhanced Traceability: Logging records every activity and enables traceability of actions, thereby making the system more secure and able to detect any unauthorized accesses. Proactive Problem Detection: Monitoring and alerting allow for early detection and intervention, ensuring uninterrupted service. Compliance and Auditing: In regulated industries, logging facilitates compliance with mandated standards, ensuring readiness for reviews. Automated Responses: Coupled with monitoring, alerting can trigger automatic corrective actions, thereby ensuring system resilience. Over that, logging and monitoring through cloud architecture is crucial since it enables optimal performance and rapid issue resolution. With Python, a language best known for its versatility and simplicity, interfacing with cloud architectures becomes even more seamless. This article delves into the synergy between Python and cloud platforms, which creates the possibility of easier development of more transparent applications.

Crafting Effective Test Cases: A Journey Through Techniques, Challenges, and Solutions

Aggregated on: 2023-11-21 17:42:35

In the ever-evolving landscape of software testing, the importance of well-crafted test cases cannot be overstated. They are the building blocks of effective testing, guiding us through the intricate maze of software functionality. Join me on a journey as we explore various test case design techniques, uncover challenges faced, and discover practical solutions, all enriched with personal experiences. The Foundation: Understanding Test Cases Before delving into test case design techniques, let's establish a solid foundation. What exactly are test cases, and why are they crucial in the world of software testing?