--- title: "The story of Slack's no-good, very bad day." publication: "StatusCode Weekly" issue: 274 published_at: "2020-07-08" canonical_url: "https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/274" --- Plus some leaked password facts, running apps on EC2 spot instances, and Abstract Wikipedia. #274 — July 8, 2020 [Web Version](https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/274) StatusCode Weekly Covering the week's news in software development, ops, platforms, and tooling. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/xvym4ubrfz9yj38cgclx.jpg)](https://slack.engineering/a-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day-at-slack-dfe05b485f82) [A Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day at Slack](https://slack.engineering/a-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day-at-slack-dfe05b485f82) — While I don’t think you can take pleasure in someone else’s outage, the story _behind_ an outage can make for good reading indeed. So it goes here with a significant outage Slack had in May and it came down to how they were using [HAProxy](http://www.haproxy.org/), one of my favorite bits of infrastructure software ever. Laura Nolan ▶[The Story of Building Subversion](https://corecursive.com/054-software-that-doesnt-suck/) — A podcast interview (but with full transcript!) with one of the original creators of [Subversion](https://subversion.apache.org/), a version control system that saw a lot of popularity in the early 2000s. CoRecursive Podcast podcast [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/39047667.png)](https://bridgecrew.io?utm_medium=sponsorednewsletter&utm_source=statuscode&utm_campaign=200708&utm_content=platform) [The Codified Cloud Security Platform for Developers](https://bridgecrew.io?utm_medium=sponsorednewsletter&utm_source=statuscode&utm_campaign=200708&utm_content=platform) — Bridge the gap between security and developers with a common language—code. Find, fix, and prevent cloud misconfigs in both run-time (AWS, GCP, etc.) and build-time (Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.). Sign up for free. Bridgecrew sponsor [Code Only Says What It Does](https://brooker.co.za/blog/2020/06/23/code.html) — But, quite often, the _why_ is useful to know too, and _“few topics invite a programmer flame war like comments..”_ Some basic thoughts worth chewing over. Marc Brooker [How Hackers Are Exploiting a 5-Alarm Networking Equipment Bug](https://www.wired.com/story/f5-big-ip-networking-vulnerability/) — _“Any company that uses a certain piece of networking equipment from Seattle-based F5 Networks had a rude interruption to their July 4 weekend…”_ Andy Greenberg ▶[A Professor Tries to Solve 240 Comp Sci Exam Problems in 4 Hours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ZdcHSFGv0) — An almost four hour long video where a CS professor attempts to solve every exam problem from the [GATE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Aptitude_Test_in_Engineering) theory exams (a set of exams administered in India) and explains his thinking along the way. Easy Theory **⚡️ Quick bytes:** - SUSE is to [acquire Rancher Labs](https://rancher.com/press/suse-to-acquire-rancher/), best known for their Kubernetes tooling. - Some [analysis of millions of leaked passwords](https://github.com/FlameOfIgnis/Pwdb-Public) shows `123456` is the most popular password (0.722%), plus lots of other fun stats including how few were truly unique. - A fascinating Twitter thread about [an out-of-the-blue S3 bill](https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig/status/1280280727133642753) for $2700. - The creators of FaunaDB [have raised $27M](https://fauna.com/blog/funding-to-scale-serverless-data) – I've been seeing FaunaDB in a lot more places recently (particularly in its serverless niche). - [docs.github.com](https://docs.github.com/) is a new, centralized home for all of GitHub's product documentation and [here's how they built it.](https://github.blog/2020-07-02-how-we-launched-docs-github-com/) - The US Supreme Court has said that [generically named domains can now be trademarked](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/supreme-court-says-generic-domains-like-booking-com-can-be-trademarked/) (e.g. `booking​.com`). - The Wikimedia Foundation are [showing off](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Abstract_Wikipedia/July_2020_announcement) _Abstract Wikipedia_, a new, cross-language way to share factual data more universally. 💻 Jobs [Find a Job Through Vettery](https://www.vettery.com/tech?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=cooper-webopsweekly&utm_term=tech&utm_content=grouped&utm_campaign=ad-77581) — Use Vettery to connect with growing tech teams at startups and Fortune 500 companies. Vettery [DevOps Engineer at X-Team (Remote)](https://x-team.com/remote-devops-engineer-jobs/?utm_source=cooperpress&utm_medium=email-ad&utm_campaign=webops) — Join X-Team and work on projects for companies like Riot Games, FOX, Coinbase, and more. Work from anywhere. X-Team ℹ️ _Interested in running a job listing in StatusCode Weekly? There's [more info here.](https://booking.cooperpress.com/jobs)_ 📕 Tutorials, and Guides [Running Spot Instances Effectively with Amazon EKS](https://m.signalvnoise.com/running-spot-instances-effectively-with-amazon-eks/) — One of the developers behind Basecamp’s new _HEY_ email service shares some insights on keeping as much of their compute infrastructure on EC2’s cheaper _spot instances_ as possible (around 90% so far, they claim). Blake Stoddard (Basecamp) [Building Serverless GraphQL API in Node.js with Express and Netlify](https://css-tricks.com/building-serverless-graphql-api-in-node-with-express-and-netlify/) — A very accessible tutorial that will suit anyone who likes to keep things easy to maintain. Matthew Ström [How to Measure Linux Performance Avoiding Most Typical Mistakes: Disk Storage](https://ma.ttias.be/how-to-measure-linux-performance-avoiding-most-typical-mistakes-disk-storage/) Peter Zaitsev [The SaaS Security CTO Checklist](https://link.sqreen.com/9kzBfDQt) — Learn the latest best practices for SaaS CTOs and technical leaders around leveling up your company's security with this actionable checklist. Sqreen sponsor [Building Domain Driven Microservices](https://t.co/y2QQU6m3OE) — If you’ve been in the industry a while you’ll see the same ideas come around again and again, and DDD is one of those. This is, nonetheless, a good high level overview. Chandra Ramalingam [How to Test and Play with Web APIs the Easy Way with Postman](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-test-and-play-with-web-apis-the-easy-way-with-postman/) Colby Fayock [Scaling Linux Services: Before Accepting Connections](https://theojulienne.io/2020/07/03/scaling-linux-services-before-accepting-connections.html) Theo Julienne 💭 Opinions and Stories [The Evolution of HEY: Basecamp's New Email Service](https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-evolution-of-hey/) — I’ve not been convinced by HEY for my personal use, but Basecamp has clearly made a splash here and it’s a neat story. Jonas Downey (Basecamp) [These are Exciting Days for ARM Processors](https://smist08.wordpress.com/2020/06/24/exciting-days-for-arm-processors/) — ARM or ARM-based processors are getting all over the place now, whether in phones, the Raspberry Pi, and, next, the Mac. Stephen Smith [Why AnyList Won’t Be Supporting 'Sign In with Apple'](https://blog.anylist.com/2020/06/sign-in-with-apple/) — Privacy is good, but Apple’s ‘sign in’ platform can cause a lot of confusion with end users. Jeff Hunter [The BBC iPlayer Team's Journey with End to End Tests](https://t.co/mRVTLUYq2V?amp=1) — A brief look at how iPlayer Web achieved a stable end to end testing platform using BrowserStack. Dineshraj Goomany [Cloudflare's Approach to Making the WAF 40% Faster](https://blog.cloudflare.com/making-the-waf-40-faster/) — _Web Application Firewalls_ are a key part of protecting modern webapps against security threats nowadays and Cloudflare runs one at mega scale. This post covers a few of the things they’ve done to improve performance. Miguel de Moura (Cloudflare) [How Did Vim Become So Popular](https://pragmaticpineapple.com/how-did-vim-become-so-popular/) — Short walk through Vim’s origins and why is Vim so popular today Pragmatic Pineapple [Gopherspace in the Year 2020](https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/gopherspace.html) — I know this makes me a huge nerd, but anything to do with ‘old’ Internet protocols is my bag, and did you know there are still [Gopher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29) systems out there? Think the Web, but more lightweight and hierarchical. _(And modern versions of cURL even support it.)_ Cheapskate [A Look At The Die of the 8086 Processor](http://www.righto.com/2020/06/a-look-at-die-of-8086-processor.html) — It might be 42 years old, but even so, its complexity and manufacturing process is mind boggling. Ken Shirriff 🛠 Code and Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/ssveonbprnofjs2hzgao.jpg)](https://github.com/B-Software/Ward) [Ward: A Simple and Minimalistic Server Dashboard](https://github.com/B-Software/Ward) B-Software [unavatar: A Way to Quickly Get User Avatars](https://unavatar.now.sh/) — Given a username or email address, it’ll query multiple social providers to return an avatar. It’s built using Node.js and is [open source](https://github.com/Kikobeats/unavatar) if you want to run your own version. Kiko Beats [HTTPie: A Command-line HTTP Client for the API Era](https://httpie.org/) — JSON and sessions support, syntax highlighting, wget-like downloads, plugins, and more. [HTTP Prompt](http://http-prompt.com/) is built on top of this and takes things a step further if you want flag completion or OpenAPI/Swagger spec integration support, say. Jakub Roztocil [Webinar: Observability and Reliability in Deep Systems](https://go.lightstep.com/register-observability-and-reliability-ls.html?utm_campaign=statuscode&utm_source=cooper&utm_medium=Email) Lightstep sponsor [GitHubDefreshed: A User Script to Bring Back the Old GitHub Repo Layout](https://github.com/Kir-Antipov/GitHub-Defreshed) — If you happen to dislike the new GitHub repository page layout, this Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script brings back the old layout. Kir_Antipov [Bach: A Testing Framework for Bash Scripts](https://github.com/bach-sh/bach) — The idea is that _behavior_ is verified without actually running the commands specified in the scripts. Bach Testing Framework [Red Hat Mandrel Makes Java Native](https://www.infoq.com/news/2020/07/mandrel-graalvm/) — [Mandrel](https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2020/06/05/mandrel-a-community-distribution-of-graalvm-for-the-red-hat-build-of-quarkus/) is a new GraalVM-based Java distribution that compiles Java apps directly to native code. InfoQ [Heliocron: Run Programs in Relation to Daylight](https://github.com/mfreeborn/heliocron) — We’ve linked this before but it’s had some updates. It’s capable of delaying execution of other programs for time periods relative to ‘solar events’ like sunrise and sunset. Michael Freeborn [Guietta: A Novel Library for Building Simple Python GUIs](https://github.com/alfiopuglisi/guietta) — The approach taken here is really neat. You basically lay out labels, fields, and buttons using a plain text approach. Alfio Puglisi Curated by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). 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