Inject DB connections in Golang gRPC API

 March 21, 2022

One of the first issues that I had to solve when I started to use gRPC was how to inject a DB connection pool to the function handling the request. The DB connection injection is needed because creating a new SQL connection every time there is a new gRPC request (and tearing it down at the end) is a massive waste of resources. Also, this approach could limit the scalability of the API since the database probably has a limited number of connections it will accept.

gRPC-Gateway 2 in Fedora

 February 22, 2022

gRPC is a very nice technology that allows the implementation of efficient APIs in a very efficient way. Thanks to gRPC and protobuf, you do not have to write much boilerplate code since the boilerplate code is generated automatically from the proto file. This works perfectly until both your client and server can perform gRPC calls. Luckily most of the languages have no issue with this. Still, the big exception is JavaScript (and other languages that will compile to JS, such as TypeScript) running in a browser.

pdfcpu in Fedora

 February 19, 2022

pdfcpu is a command-line tool to perform actions on PDF files. It allows to perform all the standard operations, such as merge, split, and rotate pages. It also allows less common operations such as changing the user and owner passwords, encrypting/decrypting, optimizing, etc.

The project started back in 2017, but I discovered it only last year. I like pdfcpu due to the high focus on allowing and making it easy to perform those kinds of operations in batch.

US services, EU privacy rules

 January 25, 2022

In the last few weeks, there has been a lot of talking about Google Analytics and the GDPR. I think most of the comments around it have missed the whole picture.

A little bit of history

Our brief history begins at the end of the ’90s when the EU and the US agreed on the International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles. On the 26th July 2000, the European Commission (EC) formalized it with the Commission Decision 2000/520/EC, where it was defined that data could be freely moved from the EU to the US. The assumption was that the data on US soil would have comparable (or better) protection than the same data on EU soil, and therefore the privacy of European citizens was not at risk. On 6th October 2015, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidated this decision on the basis that in the US laws were authorizing public authorities to have access on a generalized basis to the content of electronic communications, and this was deemed to be “compromising the essence of the fundamental right to respect for private life” (the quote is from the ECJ decision).

Google and Facebook fined for cookies practices

 January 10, 2022

The CNIL, France’s data regulator, fined Meta (Facebook) and Google for violating the GDPR for a total of 210M€. More specifically:

• Google LLC (USA) got fined 90M€
• Google Ireland Limited got fined 60M€
• Facebook Ireland Limited got fined 60M€

Also, if the companies will not fix the issue within three months, an additional penalty of 100'000€/day will be added.

There are two facts that I think are very interesting about these fines: the reason behind the fines the fines issuer

CentOS Linux 8 EOL

 December 31, 2021

In December 2020, the CentOS Project announced a series of changes. The three most important are:

• the creation of CentOS Stream and the consequent rename of CentOS (the classic Linux distribution the project is known for) in CentOS Linux
• the anticipation to today (31/12/2021) of the End Of Life for CentOS Linux 8
• the fact that CentOS Linux 8 is going to be the last and that from now on, only CentOS Stream will have new releases

That announcement created a lot of different sentiments in the community and even more among the CentOS Linux users. As many predicted, multiple solutions are now available for the users that used to be on CentOS Linux.

Web3: the risk of naming

 November 26, 2021

In the last few weeks, I’ve heard from many - mainly not technical - people the expression “Web3”. In a way, it is excellent that people that are not tech-savvy start to learn about the Web, how it works, and where it might go, since they are using it consciously or not to perform the majority of tasks in their lives. The issue I have with this, though, is that no one of them could explain how it would work or why they are so confident that the future is going in that direction. The only thing they could associate with Web3 was that cryptocurrencies would be the future, and their value would go to the moon.

The risk of a Cloud shutdown

 October 31, 2021

I often see people and companies moving their workloads to the cloud. Speaking with them, they explain that the cloud is cheaper, more flexible, and more reliable than their current infrastructure. To further increase investment return, they often target a specific (single) cloud to reduce management costs and complexity.

By itself, this trend seems a very reasonable one. The risk is that, sometimes, people do not consider the less immediate risks around this move. There are many of those risks, and if there is an appetite for it, I’ll be talking further about the other dangers, but now I would like to focus on a specific one: the risk of a shutdown.

Google Professional Cloud Architect

 September 20, 2021

After having renewed the Google Associate Cloud Engineer certification, it was the moment to renew the Google Professional Cloud Architect certification as well.

Since I wanted to keep Windows on my laptop for the smallest amount of time possible, I decided to book the Professional Cloud Architect exam the day after the Associate Cloud Engineer one.

On the exam day (18th of August), having had experience the previous day, I ensured to set up everything correctly. As I did the previous day, I decided to use my Lenovo Bluetooth Laser Mouse. The exam started without any hiccups at 15:00. At around 15:30, I moved the mouse wheel to the left, triggering a “back” signal, equivalent to press the “back” button in a browser. Kryterion Sentinel decided that the proper way to handle such a signal was to interrupt the exam. I tried to call the Kriterion call centers, but a recorded voice informed me that the fastest way to access their customer care was via chat. I opened a chat with their support and got put in a queue of about 20 people. After 40 minutes, I managed to chat with a support representative, and they managed to schedule a new exam session for me a couple of minutes later (16:15).

Google Associate Cloud Engineer

 August 25, 2021

A couple of years ago, I obtained the Google Associate Cloud Engineer certification, so it was re-certification time.

Since it is August and probably also due to the whole ongoing health situation, I’ve not found any test center at a reasonable distance. Therefore, I’ve decided to use the Online Proctored option.

Google relies on Kryterion for their exams, as many other companies do, since Kryterion has more than 1100 associated test centers and, at least in the ICT certification space, it’s one of the most commonly used networks. Having had experience with Red Hat remote certifications, I was expecting at least the same level of user experience with Kryterion.