--- title: "htop 3.0, Amazon's new Linux for containers, and a great coding font" publication: "StatusCode Weekly" issue: 282 published_at: "2020-09-02" canonical_url: "https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/282" --- Plus a diff utility for tree-like data, a post-HTML utopia, and making fewer basic mistakes when programming. #282 — September 2, 2020 [Web Version](https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/282) StatusCode Weekly Covering what's new in software development, ops, platforms, tech, and tooling. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/m8aqzlbtgqa3neoedjv6.jpg)](https://htop.dev/) [htop 3.0 Released: The Interactive Process Viewer](https://htop.dev/) — `htop` is a long standing tool that provides a better process viewing experience than standard `top`. v3.0 has just been released. [Changelog](https://github.com/htop-dev/htop/blob/master/ChangeLog) here, but mostly this is an evolutionary step. You might also enjoy [these comments](https://github.com/hishamhm/htop/issues/992#issuecomment-683286672) by the main creator on what it’s been like to work on the project for fifteen years so far. htop maintainers [Bottlerocket: A Linux Distribution from Amazon Built to Run Containers](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/announcing-the-general-availability-of-bottlerocket-an-open-source-linux-distribution-purpose-built-to-run-containers/) — This is _not_ “Amazon Linux” but a new, separate minimal Linux distribution specifically built for containers with many of the components newly built using Rust. Everything installed on Bottlerocket runs as containers, which are kept isolated from each other and the host with best practice security features such as SELinux. Amazon Web Services [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/9f86af00.jpg)](https://tsdb.co/monitoring-queries-rsvp) [⏰ Live Webinar: 5 PostgreSQL Functions for Monitoring & Analytics >>](https://tsdb.co/monitoring-queries-rsvp) — PostgreSQL is ideal for real-time monitoring and historical analysis – but writing efficient queries can be tricky. [Join us on Sept 16](https://tsdb.co/monitoring-queries-rsvp) to master 5 essential and powerful queries for common monitoring & analysis scenarios 🏆. Timescale sponsor [The Life of a Data Byte](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3419941) — A byte is just eight bits.. right? Not always! Jessie takes a pretty interesting ‘walk down memory lane’ (ha!) to look at the history of bits and bytes from 1951 to the current time. You’ll learn at least an interesting factoid or two here. Jessie Frazelle [API Gateway HTTP APIs Adds Integration with Five AWS Services](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/08/api-gateway-http-apis-adds-integration-with-five-aws-services/) — API Gateway provides a handy way to offer APIs powered by Lambda functions (or other HTTP services) behind the scenes, but now you can hook it up to AppConfig, EventBridge, Kinesis Data Streams, SQS, and Step Functions too which opens up a lot of new serverless-feeling opportunities (e.g. starting a Step Functions workflow by a simple HTTP call). Amazon Web Services **⚡️ Quick bytes:** - Backblaze, the cloud backup service, does frequent roundups of its experiences with the hard drives that it buys (in huge volumes). [The latest stats are here.](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q2-2020/) - A look at [five of the biggest outages of Q2 2020.](https://statusgator.com/blog/2020/08/21/5-biggest-outages-of-q2-2020/) - Did you know Apple has its own bot ('Applebot') that might be hitting your pages? [Here's a bit more info about it.](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204683) - A study suggests that modern technical interviews really [test for performance anxiety](https://news.ncsu.edu/2020/07/tech-job-interviews-anxiety/) rather than whether or not you can do the job. - Talking of recruitment, here are [some ways to spot toxic software jobs](https://t.co/xDp3JIVto5?amp=1) from their descriptions. 💻 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) — Create a profile on Vettery to connect with hiring managers at startups and Fortune 500 companies. It's free for job-seekers. Vettery ℹ️ _Interested in running a job listing in StatusCode Weekly? There's [more info here.](https://booking.cooperpress.com/jobs)_ 📕 Tutorials, Opinions and Stories [Make Your Kubernetes Services Faster by Removing CPU Limits](https://erickhun.com/posts/kubernetes-faster-services-no-cpu-limits/) — An engineer at Buffer talks about a CPU throttling issue they ran into which was causing unnecessary slowness on Linux kernels below 4.19. Eric Khun ▶[How To Make Fewer Basic Mistakes When Programming](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/how-to-make-less-mistakes-when-programming) — The first in a series of three screencasts ([part 2](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/how-to-avoid-dumb-code-mistakes), [part 3](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/episode/how-to-reduce-coding-errors)) providing tips on avoiding mistakes when coding and how to be more aware of easily avoidable mistakes. Jack Kinsella [Exposing a SOAP Service as a REST API - The Serverless Way](https://medium.com/@adrin.mukherjee/exposing-soap-service-as-rest-api-the-serverless-way-c3b565326cbd) — If you’ve got a SOAP-based Web service, there are a variety of ways you can expose it via other protocols/standards. One way is to put API Gateway and a Lambda in front of it to translate calls to the service. Adrin Mukherjee [Stream Chat: The Most Feature-Rich, Scalable & High-Speed Chat Solution](https://getstream.io/blog/hipaa-compliant-chat-apps/?utm_campaign=statuscode_ongoing&utm_medium=promoted_newsletter&utm_source=status_code) Stream sponsor [10 Lesser-Known Web APIs You May Want to Use](https://blog.greenroots.info/10-lesser-known-web-apis-you-may-want-to-use-ckejv75cr012y70s158n85yhn) — Includes the likes of the Performance Interface API, the Vibration API, Clipboard Async API, and others. Your bound to learn something here. Tapas Adhikary [The Inner Workings of Oracle Development](https://momjian.us/main/blogs/pgblog/2020.html#August_31_2020) — Thoughts on a Hacker News [thread](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941) I somehow missed at the time that touched on some of the processes and approaches used at Oracle to work on its database. The key to success? Millions of tests. Bruce Momjian [13 Lessons Learned From Taking 8 AWS Certification Tests in 4 Weeks](https://t.co/CXpFsaAzG3?amp=1) — _“It was mostly painful. Herein follows a compression algorithm for experience.”_ Richard Quinn [A Clean Start for The Web: Daydreaming A Post-HTML Utopia](https://macwright.com/2020/08/22/clean-starts-for-the-web.html) — Musings on the current web ‘monoculture’, the problems this creates, and ideas as to where we go from here. Tom MacWright ['Very Short Functions Are A Code Smell'?](https://softwarebyscience.com/very-short-functions-are-a-code-smell-an-overview-of-the-science-on-function-length/) — This runs contrary to common opinion, but it’s an interesting look at some rather old studies. Maybe it’s time for someone doing their PhD to take this topic on again? 😁 Software by Science [A Leap of Faith: Committing to Open Source](https://github.com/readme/henry-zhu) — Babel maintainer Henry Zhu talks about how he left his role at Adobe to become a full-time open source maintainer, touching upon his faith, the humanity of such a role, and the finances of making it a reality. The ReadME Project (GitHub) [Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like `jwt.io` and Online JSON Validators](https://www.jvt.me/posts/2020/09/01/against-online-tooling/) — Why one engineer thinks you should be opting for local tooling when working with sensitive data, even non-production data. Jamie Tanna 🛠 Code and Tools [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/v35w2qhf9xq3ehlufygn.jpg)](https://github.com/trailofbits/graphtage) [Graphtage: A Semantic Diff Utility and Library for Tree-Like Files](https://github.com/trailofbits/graphtage) — This CLI and Python-based library can be used to compare and merge tree-like structures like those in JSON, XML, HTML, YAML, and CSS files. Trail of Bits [JetBrains Mono: A Free and Open Source Typeface for Developers](https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/) — We’ve linked this before, but this developer focused font from JetBrains, the IDE folks, remains popular and well worth checking out. JetBrains [The Security-As-Code Platform for Developers](https://bridgecrew.io?utm_medium=sponsorednewsletter&utm_source=statuscode&utm_campaign=200902&utm_content=sac-platform) — Automatically find and fix misconfigurations in runtime (AWS, GCP, etc.) and buildtime (Terraform, serverless, etc.) with Bridgecrew. Bridgecrew sponsor [Dot Browser: A Firefox-Based Privacy-Conscious Web Browser](https://github.com/dothq/browser) — This project not only delivers a browser which respects your privacy—that makes a change—but the source also provides a good starting point for building your own browser, should you have a mind to do that. Dot HQ [asroute: Interpret Traceroute Output to Show Names of ASNs Traversed](https://github.com/stevenpack/asroute) — An [autonomous system (AS)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_%28Internet%29) is a group of IP routing prefixes essentially defining a single administrative unit when it comes to routing IP addresses, and this Rust-based tool parses `traceroute` output and pulls up descriptions of each hop’s AS administrator. Steve Pack [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/kwdiadtlfm7w16y9o9ry.jpg)](https://github.com/hediet/vscode-debug-visualizer) [Debug Visualizer 2.0: Visualize Data Structures Live in VS Code](https://github.com/hediet/vscode-debug-visualizer) — Provides rich visualizations of watched values and can be used to visualize ASTs, results tables, graphs, and more in multiple languages (JavaScript, Java, Go, C++, Rust, and more). [VS Marketplace link.](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hediet.debug-visualizer) Henning Dieterichs Curated by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/). [Change your email address](https://webopsweekly.com/edit_subscription/*|UID|*) or[Stop getting this newsletter](https://webopsweekly.com/leave/*|UID|*). © Cooper Press Ltd · Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Louth, LN11 0LS, United Kingdom