Free Software Leftovers
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7.88.1 the second final one
Things did not work out the way we had planned. The 7.88.0 release that was supposed to be the last curl version 7 release contained a nasty bug that made us decide that we better ship an update once that is fixed. This is the update. The second final version 7 release.
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Activepieces: An Open Source No-code Automation Tool, Alternative to Zapier and IFTTT
Activepieces is a free web-based automation solution that allows you to automate almost anything without the need to code. Moreover, as a self-hosted system on your own server without any extra cost, which is an ideal solution for freelancers, web, and
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4 questions open source engineers should ask to mitigate risk at scale
At Shopify, we use and maintain a lot of open source projects, and every year we prepare for Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) and other high-traffic events to make sure our merchants can sell to their buyers. To do this, we built an infrastructure platform at a large scale that is highly complex, interconnected, globally distributed, requiring thoughtful technology investments from a network of teams. We’re changing how the internet works, where no single person can oversee the full design and detail at our scale.
Over BFCM 2022, we served 75.98M requests per minute to our commerce platform at peak. That’s 1.27M requests per second. Working at this massive scale in a complex and interdependent system, it would be impossible to identify and mitigate every possible risk. This article breaks down a high-level risk mitigation process into four questions that can be applied to nearly any scenario to help you make the best use of your time and resources available.
1. What are the risks?
To inform mitigation decisions, you must first understand the current state of affairs. We expand our breadth of knowledge by learning from people from all corners of the platform. We run “what could go wrong” (WCGW) exercises where anyone building or interested in infrastructure can highlight a risk. These can be technology risks, operational risks, or something else. Having this unfiltered list is a great way to get a broad understanding of what could happen.
The goal here is visibility.
2. What is worth mitigating?
Great brainstorming leaves us with a large and daunting list of risks. With limited time to fix things, the key is to prioritize what is most important to our business. To do this, we vote on risks, then gather technical experts to discuss highest ranked risks in more detail, including their likelihood and severity. We make decisions about what and how to mitigate, and which team will own each action item.
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Kubernetes policy engines: OPA vs. Kyverno vs. jsPolicy
A Kubernetes policy engine is essential for keeping your cluster safe and ensuring policies are set correctly at the outset. For example, you probably need a policy to control who has the authority to set a privileged pod. These engines define what end users can do on the cluster and ensure that clusters can communicate. Any time a Kubernetes object is created, a policy evaluates and validates or mutates the request. Policies can apply across a namespace or different pods with a specific label in the cluster.
Kubernetes policy engines block objects that could harm or affect the cluster if they don't meet the policy's requirements. Using policies enables users to build complex configurations that other tools, such as Terraform or Ansible, cannot achieve.
The policy landscape has evolved in recent years, and the number of policy engines available continues to increase. Newer products compete against well-established tools.
This article highlights some features you should look for in a policy engine and where these three examples excel and underperform. It compares three popular open source policy engines, Open Policy Agent (OPA), Kyverno, and jsPolicy.