--- title: "AWS CloudShell, Google's outages, and Docker Desktop 3.0" publication: "StatusCode Weekly" issue: 297 published_at: "2020-12-16" canonical_url: "https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/297" --- Plus the C++20 spec, CertBot's ECDSA support, and AWS gets a cloud shell. | #297 — December 16, 2020 [Web Version](https://weekly.statuscode.com/issues/297) 🎄 Welcome to the final issue of 2020! Unlike in most of our newsletters, we're not doing a 2020 round up in this issue, because there's simply been too much going on in the past week that we want to cover :-) We'll be back on January 6, 2021 after the Christmas break, and hope you have a good break of your own. We really appreciate your continued subscription as well as the submissions, best wishes, and other replies many of you send in. __ _Peter Cooper, your editor_ StatusCode Weekly What's happening in software development, ops, platforms and tools. [![\](https://res.cloudinary.com/cpress/image/upload/w_1280,e_sharpen:60/dnjoz8h8xqrlwoxp6dol.jpg)](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cloudshell-command-line-access-to-aws-resources/) [AWS CloudShell: Web-Based Command-Line Access to AWS Resources](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-cloudshell-command-line-access-to-aws-resources/) — Other clouds have browser-based shell environments and while [EC2 Instance Connect](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/new-using-amazon-ec2-instance-connect-for-ssh-access-to-your-ec2-instances/) offered something similar for specific EC2 instances, it couldn’t stand alone as a central place to do things with your AWS account generally. CloudShell does and you get 1GB of persistent storage too. I’ve written up [how to install Ruby](https://dev.to/peterc/how-to-install-ruby-on-aws-cloudshell-3n8c) and [how to install `nano`](https://dev.to/peterc/how-to-install-the-nano-text-editor-on-aws-cloudshell-23cc) on the service. Jeff Barr (AWS) [Google's _Septem Horribilis_ (Bad Week!)](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-heres-what-caused-our-big-global-outage/) — If you escaped this week’s big Google outage, you were lucky. Google’s central identity management system took a brief vacation. Then, the next day, [Gmail also went rogue](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25435916) and began reporting that many email addresses no longer existed, causing havoc with numerous ESPs. Liam Tung (ZDNet) [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/b5f8f584.png)](https://go.logianalytics.com/ebook-devops-and-embedded-analytics-statuscode-weekly.html) [Are Your Embedded Analytics DevOps-Friendly?](https://go.logianalytics.com/ebook-devops-and-embedded-analytics-statuscode-weekly.html) — Does your analytics solution work with your current tech stack and DevOps practices? If not, any update to the analytics could increase deployment complexity and become difficult to maintain. Learn the 5 elements of DevOps-friendly embedded analytics. Logi Analytics sponsor - [Docker Desktop 3.0.0 is here](https://www.docker.com/blog/docker-desktop-3-0-0-smaller-faster-releases/) and brings a new update strategy of small, faster, delta-based releases downloaded in the background. - The [final spec for C++20](https://www.iso.org/standard/79358.html) has been published. Costs money, though. Or you can compile your own 'close enough' version [from the drafts](https://github.com/cplusplus/draft/tree/c++20). - In the Ruby world, [Ruby on Rails 6.1 was released](https://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2020/12/9/Rails-6-1-0-release/) and the [second preview of Ruby 3.0](https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2020/12/08/ruby-3-0-0-preview2-released/) was too, in advance of an anticipated Christmas Day release for Ruby 3.0 proper. - The [State of JavaScript 2020 Survey](https://stateofjs.com/?source=js_weekly) is taking place. - Azure Functions, Azure's serverless platform, [now supports any language](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/apps-on-azure/azure-functions-in-any-language-with-custom-handlers/ba-p/1942744?a=1) by way of _'Custom Handlers.'_ - Eric Engstrom, a fundamental co-creator of DirectX, [has died.](https://venturebeat.com/2020/12/07/friends-remember-microsoft-renegade-eric-engstrom-who-suggested-a-directx-console/) - The HTTP Archive has released its [2020 'State of the Web' report.](https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2020/) Coming in 2021.. [AWS Fault Injection Simulator: A Managed 'Chaos Engineering' Service](https://aws.amazon.com/fis/) — If you needed to test the resiliency of, or find the flaws in, your home furnishings, you could let several children loose and see how things look in a few hours 😂 Chaos engineering brings the same idea to technical systems and there are [lots of tools](https://github.com/dastergon/awesome-chaos-engineering) for the job. AWS will get its own native solution in 2021. Amazon Web Services [TerminusDB Dropping GPLv3 for the Apache 2.0 License](https://terminusdb.com/blog/2020/12/08/we-love-gplv3-but-are-switching-license-to-apache-2-0-terminusdb/) — Database system licensing changes have been more common in the past few years as vendors juggle wanting a healthy developer ecosystem against the threat of cloud providers reselling their software ([as with MongoDB](https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/16/mongodb-switches-up-its-open-source-license/)). The folks behind TerminusDB, an open source graph database, are moving from GPLv3 to Apache 2 to _encourage_ independent vendors to embed the system into their apps. TerminusDB 📘 Tutorials, Opinions and Stories [Kafka is Not a Database](https://fivetran.com/blog/kafka-is-not-a-database) — Kafka is a message broker / streaming platform commonly used for processing streaming data and while it fills the role of a database in some specific ways, it’s not ideal as a primary data store, as demonstrated here. Arjun Narayan and George Fraser [A Dive Into Processing Millions in Donations in 2 Hours with Cloudflare Workers](https://medium.com/we-are-serverless/a-technical-deep-dive-into-processing-5-million-in-donations-in-2-hours-using-cloudflare-workers-fd857ea5cd37) — A look at the serverless architecture behind the _Late Late Toy Show_ donation platform. Peter Vanhee [Haven’t Checked Out Our AWS re:Invent Sponsor Page? Only 3 Days Left](https://virtual.awsevents.com/sponsor/186983463/New_Relic) — Learn all about our new AWS partnership from cloud experts, get in-depth hands on learning, see new products, and more. New Relic sponsor [How We Burnt $72K Testing Firebase + Cloud Run..](https://blog.tomilkieway.com/72k-1/) — Several ‘runaway cloud bill’ stories pop up each year and this is the latest. As always, let them serve as a reminder to set up your budgets and reporting systems accordingly (as well as cross your fingers for a bit of luck). Sudeep Chauhan [Build your Backend with Netlify Functions in 20 Minutes](https://labs.thisdot.co/blog/build-your-backend-with-netlify-functions-in-20-minutes) — While most of the time you think of Netlify for deploying frontend code, this looks at using Netlify Functions combined with AWS services like DynamoDB to build a fully functional cloud-based backend. Kyle Mitofsky [Towards a Strong Mental Model of Docker](https://blog.andrewray.me/towards-a-strong-mental-model-of-docker/) — Targeted at developers who don’t often think about the backend. Andrew Ray [An Engineering Leader’s Guide to OpenTelemetry](https://go.lightstep.com/register-engineering-leaders-guide-to-opentelemetry-co.html?utm_campaign=statuscode&utm_source=cooper&utm_medium=Email) Lightstep sponsor ▶[Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6120/2020fa/self-guided/) — If you’ve got the time over Christmas and ‘build a compiler’ is on your programming bucket list.. Cornell University [Life of a Netflix Partner Engineer — The Case of the Extra 40 ms](https://netflixtechblog.com/life-of-a-netflix-partner-engineer-the-case-of-extra-40-ms-b4c2dd278513) John Blair (Netflix) [Using Airtable as a Database to Store Realtime Messages](https://www.ably.io/blog/airtable-database-realtime-messages) Srushtika Neelakantam 🔧 Code and Tools [Get Ready to Up Your (Google) Apps Script](https://developers.googleblog.com/2020/12/get-ready-to-up-your-apps-script.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GDBcode+%28Google+Developers+Blog%29&utm_content=FeedBurner) — Google introduced _Apps Script_ over ten years ago as a powerful, JavaScript-powered way to script its various services (e.g. Gmail, Sheets..) Rather than shutting it down, Google has unveiled a new online IDE to make the development process far smoother. Google [`git wip`: What The Heck Was I Just Doing?](https://carolynvanslyck.com/blog/2020/12/git-wip/) — _“`git wip` displays your branches and when you last changed them. It’s really useful for remembering which one you were just working on, and which branches probably should be deleted.”_ Carolyn Van Slyck - Oracle has released [Oracle Database 21c](https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/10/oracle_21c/) which brings Oracle truly into the JSON data type party. - AWS has a [Managed Service for Grafana](https://aws.amazon.com/grafana/) currently in preview. - GitHub now has [more flexible temporary interaction limit settings](https://github.blog/2020-12-15-powerful-updates-to-temporary-interaction-limits/) for when you need repo activity to just take a break. - GitHub is to [cease supporting password-based auth](https://github.blog/2020-12-15-token-authentication-requirements-for-git-operations/) for Git operations from August 2021. Tokens all the way. - Deno, an alternative server-side TypeScript runtime (though it still uses the V8 engine, as Node does), can [now compile apps to executables](https://deno.land/posts/v1.6). - [CertBot 1.10.0](https://github.com/certbot/certbot/releases/tag/v1.10.0) was released and added ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) support. ECDSA keys require far fewer bits to get the same security as RSA. [GNORM: Converts Database Schemas into Code or Text via Templates](https://gnorm.org/) — Gnorm believes code shouldn’t generate database schemas, but database schemas should generate code! Nate Finch et al. [JSweet 3.0: A Java to JavaScript Transpiler](https://github.com/cincheo/jsweet) — Java programs are transpiled to TypeScript and JavaScript for use in browsers, mobile Web views, or Node.js. There's [a live sandbox](http://www.jsweet.org/jsweet-live-sandbox/) you can use to test it out. Cinchéo [DockerStats: Plot Your Docker Image's Pull Count Over Time From Docker Hub](https://github.com/aeneasr/dockerstats) hackerman [Mundane: A Rust Cryptography Library Backed by BoringSSL That Is 'Difficult to Misuse'](https://github.com/google/mundane) Google [Clair: Vulnerability Static Analysis for Containers](https://github.com/quay/clair) QUAY 💻 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 🙏 Can you do us a favor? 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