Welcome to Technology Short Take #192! Who’s interested in some links to data center technology-related articles and posts? If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Here’s hoping you find something useful!

Networking

• Interested in an autonomous network engineering agent powered by Claude? (Hat tip to Russ S. for sending this my way.)

Security

• Google’s Threat Intelligence Group recently published some details around Coruna, an iOS exploit kit targeting a range of iOS versions and equipped with a number of potential exploits.
• As an example of one of the challenges around “default” secuity settings, Rory McCune highlights the fact that MicroK8s does not enable role-based access control.
• Bryce Kerley explains Web PKI—the infrastructure that powers secure connections on the modern Web.
• Mike Masnick writes about the massive surveillance stack hiding inside the “age verification” checks.

Cloud Computing/Cloud Management

• I’ve had this article on AWS Lambda for the containers developer sitting in my read queue since first publication in 2023. (Sorry, Massimo.) I finally got around to reading it—really reading it, not just skimming it—and I found it to be helpful in helping me get a better grasp on Lambda.
• The AWS Load Balancer Controller recently gained support for Kubernetes Gateway API. This allows Kubernetes administrators to use AWS ALBs or NLBs for Gateway resources, and eliminates annotation-based configuration in favor of Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs).

Operating Systems/Applications

• While using containers is certainly a step forward in securing autonomous agents—such as what NanoClaw is doing—I don’t think it’s enough on its own. Helpful, yes, but there is still more to do. Am I wrong?
• Does Gentoo’s migration from GitHub to Codeberg—obstensibly due to Microsoft’s AI emphasis—signal a turning point?
• The recent announcement of a partnership between Motorola and GrapheneOS opens the possibility for the privacy-focused smartphone OS to arrive on new hardware platforms.
• Although some sites are sensationalizing early news about Windows 12 (in particular, how much of the OS will be subscription-based), the PC World article that appears to be the source for these sites paints a different picture.
• Tara Tarakiyee says it’s not about “the year of the Linux desktop,” it’s about the decade of Linux.
• KubeSimplify introduces ing-switch, a tool to assist in migrating away from Ingress NGINX to Traefik or Gateway API.
• The fmd command-line tool provides an way to find Markdown files based on metadata. I’ve been looking for something like this!
• Nick Janetakis has a shell alias for getting outdated packages across distributions (Arch, Debian, and macOS+Homebrew).

Programming/Development

• I was recently introduced to ast-grep (website, GitHub repository), a CLI tool that leverages the abstract syntax tree (AST) of code to allow users to find (and potentially change) values in code without great effort and at scale. I am not a programmer by trade so I do not have any immediate use cases, but there is one use case that I am exploring (if it works out, it will be the topic of a future blog post). Here is one example of what you can do with ast-grep.
• Datadog reviews how they reduced the size of their Agent Go binaries by 77%.
• Andrew Nesbitt makes the assertion that package registries are more than just infrastructure—they are also governance.
• Via Chris Short, I noted the OSI has adopted SPDX IDs for open source license URLs. (By the way, Chris’ DevOps’ish newsletter is outstanding—highly recommended.)
• David Anderson shares some thoughts on LLM coding. One quote really stood out to me: “The psychology of LLMs use worries me deeply. It’s a system that could not be better designed to encourage harmful behaviors if you tried, because it mixes a couple of very potent psychological traps. And it’s further being pushed by a large amount of venture money, and being co-opted by grifters with vested interests.”
• Leonardo de Moura argues for the need for formal verification of AI-written software.

Career/Soft Skills

• A colleague (thanks James L.!) shared this rather long essay on generative AI with me. While the article is a lengthy read, it really resonated with me. I am including it here in this situation because so much of the discusion in the article relates to our careers and how we view our work.
• These two articles (part 1, part 2) paint a not-rosy picture of the future should AI have the impact people are saying (hoping?) it will have. (Hat tip to Michael K for the link.)

That’s all I have for now. I love to hear from readers, so feel free to reach out and say hi! You can find me on X/Twitter, Mastodon, and Bluesky. My email address isn’t hard to find, so you also have the option of sending me a message that way. Thanks for reading!