tobru.guru Newsletter #39

News

Software releases, news articles and other new stuff

Is the ship still stuck?
‌‌#ship, #container

Ever Given in Suez Canal

The Suez Canal ship accident is now a major source for Cloud Native memes. They are coming in all the time:

And some pictures taken from space: https://twitter.com/AirbusSpace/status/1375078054884749318

Crossplane Community Day Schedule
‌‌#crossplane, #conference

The schedule for the Crossplane Community Day is out. Can you spot a familiar name on it? I'll give a lightning talk titled "Self-Service Provisioning with the Crossplane Service Broker". Looking forward to it. It's an amazing technology, I'm absolutely fan of it.

Argo CD v2.0-rc1 is here!
‌‌#argocd, #release

Argoproj team is proud to announce the first release candidate for Argo CD v2.0! As denoted by the version number, this is a major release with many new features and enhancements, but no breaking changes or painful migrations.

Argo CD keeps growing, it's such a great tool to do GitOps. I'm particularly looking forward to trying out Argo CD Application Set.


Articles

Interesting articles and blog posts

[DE] Aufruf: Daten bei meineimpfungen.ch löschen lassen!
‌‌#ikea, #bekant, #megadesk

Er ruft Nutzerinnen und Nutzer auf, die Herausgabe und gleichzeitige Löschung ihrer Dossiers zu verlangen und fordert, dass das Bundesamt für Gesundheit die Verantwortung für eine sichere und vertrauenswürdige Alternative übernehmen muss.

This incident made me angry and also ashamed of the state of digitalization in Switzerland. How can such an important platform made so insecure? Unbelievable. For all who have an account there: Reach out to them, ask for data deletion and never ever use that platform again, it's so bad.

Read Wollen Sie wissen, womit Viola Amherd geimpft ist? by Repulik.ch and Sicherheitsprüfung meineimpfungen.ch und services.mycovidvac.ch (both in German) and you know why!

[DE] Megadesk: Alternativer Controller für IKEA Bekant-Tische
‌‌#ikea, #bekant, #megadesk

Ich habe seit einer Weile einen Bekant-Stehtisch von IKEA. Die Steuerung lässt nur Heben und Senken der Tischplatte zu, man kann jedoch Positionen nicht speichern. Dies wird durch das megadesk-Projekt 5 behoben. Dabei können mit einer alternativen Platine viele Positionen gespeichert und abgerufen werden.

I also have this controller powering my desk at home. Fantastic! It really makes the table much better. The next thing will be to control it via serial and make it a true IoT table. How cool would it be to control it over MQTT? A scheduler then reminds you of doing standing desk and if you don't react within a minute it automatically moves the table up. Cool =)

It's Time for The Linux Foundation to Stop Ignoring Desktop Linux - It's FOSS News
‌‌#linux, #desktop

There is no denying that the strategic hard work has worked wonders for the commercial adoption of Linux. The IT industry today cannot be imagined without Linux. However, the same cannot be said about the desktop Linux.

I'm pretty sure that 2021 is the year of Linux on the desktop!! YES! At least for me, 2021 marks year ~15 of Linux on the desktop as the daily driver. Couldn't imagine switching to another desktop OS. And with Arch I never ever have to do upgrades anymore, the updates just keeps on coming. Gone is the days of distro upgrades.

Teaching | akos.ma
‌‌#speaking, #talking, #teaching

Many programmers are usually very shy of talking in public, let alone capable of explaining technical concepts in intelligible ways to non-technical audiences.

Thank you, Adrian, for this write-up. Writing and talking was always a way for me to learn new things. That's the reason why I write and give talks from time to time, that makes me learn stuff by heard. In my free time I'm voluntary firefighter in the role as a non-commissioned officer ("Unteroffizier") which is the person who teaches the soldier the firefighter craft. Same here, I was able to learn so many things since I'm in this role which I've never learned before.

What Remote Work Really Does To Your Engineering Productivity
‌‌#remote, #work, #story

With companies on lockdown, remote work is currently at the peak of its hype cycle. Leaders and managers are touting its efficiency and flexibility... The data-backed reality, however, offers a more nuanced perspective.

Interesting write-up on the remote working topic. Many things apply to my employer as well.

The S in IOT is for Security – Purism
#iot, #security

Ownership is the ultimate measurement of privacy, security, and freedom; if you don’t own the device fully, you are owned by the developer (and manufacturer) of the device. The only way to own my lamp was to pwn my lamp.

Nowadays so many "smart" devices connect to the internet for unknown reasons. At home, I have IoT lightbulbs from IKEA, they only connect locally over ZigBee and even the WLAN gateway doesn't need internet access, it all works locally. When I buy new gadgets that's one important thing I look for: Can I use it without internet.

The Future of Cloud is Microsoft's to Lose - Last Week in AWS
‌‌#opinion, #cloud

They also clearly have a better integration story than AWS does since Google teams are apparently allowed to speak to one another in the company cafeteria. But that story remains weak at the introductory level—and that’s what matters.

Funny write-up with an interesting aspect. I'm sure there won't be the clear winner, it's important that there is competition, although there could be more competition in this market.

Stack Overflow: Here's what happened when we were hacked back in 2019 | ZDNet
#hack, #breach, #story

Company goes into detail on how a hacker used Overflow's community knowledge-sharing to figure out how to hack it back in 2019.

Ouch! It's so hard to run technology right...

Why Big Tech deplatforming should be deeply disturbing for everyone, regardless of your politics
#privacy

So many of today’s issues are viewed through a political lens, and that includes Big Tech deplatforming. But in reality, deplatforming is a problem worthy of deeper critical reflection as it touches on topics that are fundamental to democracy itself.

I absolutely agree with that!


Tools

Open Source tools newly discovered

LanguageTool - Grammatik-, Stil- und Rechtschreibprüfung
‌‌#spellcheck, #browser, #plugin

Unsere Grammatik-, Stil- und Rechtschreibprüfung ist in vielen Sprachen verfügbar und wird von Millionen Menschen weltweit genutzt

iot2tangle/Ruuvitag: Python code to read data from multiple Ruuvitag devices in the environment and send it to IOTA-Tangle over Streams Gateway
‌‌#ruuvi, #python

In this repository you will find explanations and step by step for the development of a system that every certain time interval (which you will set) will collect data from the internal sensors of one o more Ruuvitag devices in your environment, this data package will be sent to a special gateway designed by IOT2TANGLE that you will have on the local network, or even on an Raspberry Pi. This gateway will be in charge of adding these packages to Tangle Network of IOTA, through Streams.

r-darwish/topgrade: Upgrade everything
‌‌#upgrade, #update, #security, #rust

Keeping your system up to date mostly involves invoking more than a single package manager. This usually results in big shell one-liners saved in your shell history. Topgrade tries to solve this problem by detecting which tools you use and run their appropriate package managers.

Jukka Taimisto / bluewalker · GitLab
‌‌#bluetooth, #ble, #ruuvi

Bluewalker is a proof-of-concept Bluetooth LE scanner and advertiser which uses HCI user channel raw HCI sockets available on Linux to scan for Bluetooth LE devices or to start advertising with user-specified data. User channel sockets allow raw access to the Bluetooth controller and bypasses the Linux Bluetooth stack. This allows Bluewalker access to all Bluetooth LE Advertisement Data sent by nearby Bluetooth LE devices.

Uberspace/paternoster: Paternoster allows you to run Ansible playbooks like ordinary Python or Bash scripts.
‌‌#ansible

Paternoster enables ansible playbooks to be run like normal bash or python scripts. It parses the given parameters using python's argparse and the passes them on to the actual playbook via the ansible API.

mattermost/focalboard: Focalboard is an open source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.
‌‌#projectmanagement

It helps define, organize, track and manage work across individuals and teams. Focalboard comes in two editions. Focalboard Personal Desktop: A stand-alone desktop app for your todos and personal projects. This is a single-tenant locally run server running Focalboard for optimal speed and performance. Focalboard Personal Server: A self-hosted server for your team to collaborate

Zoom Escaper
#zoom, #videconference

Zoom Escaper is a tool to help you escape Zoom meetings and other videoconferencing scenarios. It allows you to self-sabotage your audio stream, making your presence unbearable to others.

Hardware

Hardware which caught my attention

dekuNukem/duckyPad: Do-It-All Mechanical Macropad
‌‌#keyboard, #hardware, #macro

duckyPad is a 15-key mechanical macropad that helps consolidate and speed up your workflow by automating keyboard inputs.

TOFU by Oratek
‌‌#raspberry, #board

A flexible carrier board for use with Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. All major inputs and outputs in a compact package. Storage, wireless possibilities through NGFF interface. The rest is up to you !

3rd generation AutoPi Telematics Unit
‌‌#hardware, #mobile, #obd, #raspberry

Presenting the AutoPi Telematics Unit (TMU) Pi3. Built on top of the Raspberry Pi 3 model A+ Our first generation telematics unit

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