Hi everyone! 👋
Welcome to cron.weekly issue #149.
Hope you’re all having a good week! Find yourself a nice cup of ☕️ and a 🥐 or two and have fun reading this issue.
Take care!
News & general 🗞
Microsoft submits Linux kernel patches for Hyper-V
Microsoft has submitted a series of patches to the Linux kernel with its aim being “to create a complete virtualization stack with Linux and Microsoft Hypervisor." The patches are designated “RFC” (Request for comments) and are a minimal implementation presented for discussion.
NVIDIA to Acquire Arm for $40 Billion
Wow, that’s a lot of money. Curious to see what this means for the future of Arm.
If you’re curious about Arm vs Intel etc, I recorded a podcast a while back on this exact topic.
What is the Value of Browser Diversity?
This is a very good question: what is the value of having different browsers compete? Dave does a really good job summing up his thoughts in here, I mostly tend to agree with him.
Unix timestamp rolls over to 16!
Last week, the unix/epoch timestamps have rolled over to start from 16********! This is such a nerdy thing to be excited about. 😅
Tools & Projects 🛠
kb
kb is a text-oriented minimalist command line knowledge base manager. kb can be considered a quick note collection and access tool oriented toward software developers, penetration testers, hackers, students or whoever has to collect and organize notes in a clean way.
GitHub CLI 1.0
GitHub CLI brings GitHub to your terminal. It reduces context switching, helps you focus, and enables you to more easily script and create your own workflows.
Visualize the health of all your servers in one place
Understand your entire environment and monitor Linux servers in real-time with Datadog. Discover underutilized cloud and on-prem servers using the auto-generated host map and reduce excess capacity based on historical data so you can easily save on operational costs. Start a free trial today, create one dashboard, and Datadog will send you a free t-shirt!. Sponsored
tmpmail
tmpmail is a command line utility that allows you to create a temporary email address and receive emails to the temporary email address.
Endlessh
Endlessh is an SSH tarpit that very slowly sends an endless, random SSH banner. It keeps SSH clients locked up for hours or even days at a time. The purpose is to put your real SSH server on another port and then let the script kiddies get stuck in this tarpit instead of bothering a real server.
JDK 15
JDK 15 has been released, the open-source reference implementation of version 15 of the Java SE Platform.
query-json
query-json is a faster and simpler re-implementation of the jq language. query-json allows you to write small programs to operate on top of json files in an easy syntax like query-json ".store.books | filter(.price > 10)" stores.json.
HEY.com - Email at its best, new from Basecamp
Stop emailing like it’s 2010 and get a fresh start with HEY. HEY is an all-new take on email designed to give you back control with features like the screener, reply later workflow, file attachment explorer and more. Run your email, don’t let it run you.
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Relativty
Relativty is an open-source VR headset. You can build one yourself using a soldering iron and a 3D printer. It even supports SteamVR games!
Guides & Tutorials 🎓
Building Pastebin for text using NGINX and Lua
A fun & practical example of what you can do with Lua and Nginx. This takes it from a theoretical thing (which it has mostly been for me) to a real life implementation!
Raspberry Pi as a local server for self hosting applications
A Pi can be a very useful little computer/server to have in the house. Not only does it encourage experimentation and tinkering with some server toolings, it can also be use to run some home automation applications!
Debian-installer, mdadm configuration and the Bad Blocks Controversy
This post tought me a few things about mdadm that I didn’t know and should know. If a disk read encounters an error, it’ll be permanently marked as a “bad block”. This bad block list (BBL) can also be copied over to a new device, when a RAID is rebuilt, even if that new device never had any disk errors.
How do Routers Work, Really?
Routers have become more and more complex, using technologies and algorithms under the hood we mostly no longer have to (actively) think about. This was a good reminder of some of the magic of L2/L3 packet delivery!