December 31, 2024
Although the definitions of Open Source are related to specific software characteristics (i.e., the license), the reality is much more complex.
Open-source is way more related to a social contract that the software’s creator and its users morally sign than the definition might lead you to believe.
This social contract’s key aspect concerns the software’s current license and the licenses of future versions.
This is because although users of open-source software usually do not pay to use it, they incur high costs to do so.
Examples of those costs are training costs and potential costs to replace a certain technology should it become unavailable in the future.
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November 30, 2024
I often talk with people about Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in public cloud contexts, and I discover that their idea of what those SLAs are is often distorted.
I believe SLAs need to be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism.
In reality, they often provide little meaningful recourse when things go awry.
There are two big issues, in my opinion, with the SLA provided by many companies, including the hyperscalers:
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October 4, 2023
As it happens every couple of years, my Google Cloud Certifications were up for renewal at the end of August.
I started to look for possible exam dates at the beginning of June since it is possible to renew Google Cloud exams only from the 60th day before the expiration to the 30th day after the expiration date.
Since the system informed me that I was outside the 60-day window, I assumed I had to wait until 60 days before the expiration to book the exam.
So I waited.
The day arrived and passed, and still, I was not able to book my exams.
After a few tickets opened to both Google and Kryterion, they informed me that they unblocked my Google Professional Cloud Architect exam, while for the Google Associate Cloud Engineer, more time to unblock it was needed.
I, therefore, took the Google Professional Cloud Architect exam.
Once that one was renewed, I noticed that Google silently and retroactively increased the validity of Google Associate Cloud Engineer certifications from 2 to 3 years, so I will be able to renew that one next year.
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September 26, 2022
In the last few months, we have witnessed multiple European Data Protection offices weigh on the legitimacy of Google Analytics.
Back in January, I’ve published a post that touched on the topic but was not really about Google Analytics.
So, let’s start looking at what happened, why Google Analytics seems to be so interesting for the European Privacy authorities, and finish with some guessing on what could happen in the next few months.
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May 23, 2022
We have seen a massive increase in the “real world” dependency on digital services in the last few years.
This process will probably continue in the future, and we are not ready for it.
In the same few years, we have seen a lot of cases where digital services went offline or got hacked.
In a society that relies more and more on digital services, we can not afford such services not to be available or secure.
Although security is essential, I want to focus on availability for now.
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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).
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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
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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.
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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).
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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.
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(Fabio Alessandro Locati|Fale)'s blog