Tech – Page 84 – Scriptingthewhy.com

Cloud by an Angel, view how to…

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City in the clouds — We’re years into the future and we’re still not living like this, uh humans.
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Have you ever had that moment where you’re seated at your computer and thought to yourself, “there’s a lot of news on cloud computing. Seems like it’s a big deal. I wonder who puts everything in the cloud together.”

Well let me tell you, there are a certain group of people that have set things in place for any data you send to be able to reach your cloud (it may go to someone else’s cloud if you got hacked) and they even have contingency plans just in case something was to go awry.

Yes, these people have a particular set of skills (had to make a Taken reference, sorry), some of which may surprise you that you already have. Looks like after reading this, it might be time for that career change you were always thinking about.

So, we’ll be going over the mysterious shadow group in the sky, the masterminds powering your crippling addiction, and as usual, we’ll tackle what, who, how, and if you can join the ranks without having to live off a steady diet of ramen noodles to get a degree.

man talking on phone in front of window — Sir, I do cloud computing, that does not mean I have control over the weather.
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Sky of Architects

To answer the question, you may be asking about the big group of people in the sky (where again your information does not go) the people that make like Scarface and put this thing together are the all-mighty Cloud Architects (I’m going to refer to them as CA for short).

But before you can understand what they are, you first have to understand what cloud architecture is. Cloud architecture is a group of resources and services provided by a cloud provider that is structured in such a way as to work in tandem with one another.

These professionals handle everything running in the cloud and at times handle everything running around it. There are times when they may have to be the developer, negotiator, and consultant so in short, this role wears many hats, again at times they might be wearing several at once.

This role is not to be confused with Cloud Engineers, the difference is engineers focus on the day-to-day operation of the cloud architecture, and the architects focus on the creation of the infrastructure and providing possible solutions for the future of the organization’s cloud.

With so much on the line, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a CA who doesn’t like to have a little coffee in their system to keep focused. A little Java anyone?

young woman mapping out an idea — The one to overview the many…a six-figure salary just means I’m never off the clock.
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Jack of all Clouds

Who uses these Jack of all trades players? Almost everyone, thing, or company you can think of is using a Cloud Architect to build, manage, monitor, and even keep up to date their cloud operation.

There’s not one business (unless it’s brand new and does not have the capital) that isn’t or hasn’t moved to the cloud. Being a CA is such a hot career that its demand is the highest in the world.

This makes sense seeing the number of skills you must have in your toolbox and the number of interactions that you must have throughout the creation and maintenance of the architecture. What are some of these interactions you ask?

Well, if you could imagine going back and forth with DevOps engineers, software developers, and whatever third-party vendor brought on to help deliver final projects that solve organizations’ cloud computing needs.

So, yeah CAs talk to and are wanted by a lot of people. Pimping out that cloud baby.

man seated looking at laptop — After five cups of coffee, three bathroom breaks, and screaming match between me and the monitor, the EC2 instance is finally connects.
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Cloud Before and After

Let’s take a trip back in time before the cloud was even thought of (fun fact, the cloud has been around since the 60s, just not to the extent that we have today), before if you were to start or have a business running, you would have to go out and acquire a space then get your hands on the hardware, software, and accessories.

Not only with making those large purchases you would also have to hire someone or a team to come in and set up everything for you in order to even get your business to run virtually. You would have to worry about how large of a space you could rent and where you were going to be able to have your setup.

Then you would have to worry about ventilation to keep your machines cool and running, and storage for when your business becomes larger and starts to house more data. Eventually, you would either have to expand your space which would see you making more purchases or be forced to stall until something comes along.

This is called on-premises or on-prem for short, since cloud computing is around now, there’s no longer a need to seek out hardware or even software. CAs can simply plan and design a cloud adoption strategy that suits your needs.

So, basically, a CA had a hand in everything you use that connects to the cloud.

Person in a field looking upward to the sky — I just connected a load balancer to my instance, why is it still cloudy out here?
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Architect Skyward

So, now you’re probably pondering,” can I get into this job without a degree?” Well, yeah of course if you’re willing to go out and obtain one or more certifications, again multiple held certs better your odds.

This is a grey area and not sure how much I trust it but if someone had any luck with this please feel free to script a comment below about your experience, it is possible for you to get a cloud computing job with no experience.

Again, I haven’t had any luck and I hold a cert with AWS with little experience. Things you’re going to want to know are networking (both computing and actual networking), working knowledge of operating systems, security, and as you could guess a fundamental knowledge of programming language.

Another thing to consider is that being a CA is a challenging and stressful career, I mean you’re dealing with your fellow humans, and humans are stressful enough without the presents of being on the job.

older fellow thinking to himself — These humans’ human too hard.
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Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, launch a share, or plug-in to follow.

Would like to give sincere thanks to current followers and subscribers, your support and actions mean a lot and has a play in the creation of each script.

Think you have what it takes to be a Cloud Architect?

Script a comment below on what you find interesting about cloud architecture.

Also, if you found this script on cloud to be interesting and would like to read more then check out my script on things I wish I knew before jumping to the cloud.

Programming, Tech

Pixar’s Cars didn’t know this about Rust…

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punch Buggie covered in rust. — One of many faces made when trendy programming languages are released.
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All right, so, you’re sitting at your computer, plotting to make your great escape into the all-so-coveted world of Information Technology (IT) but the buzz of “what programming languages are trending” prompts halt and confusion.

You think to yourself, “just when I thought I picked the right coding boot camp, the best online course, the perfect programming language only to experience derailment, THIS… IS… MADNESS!! (Not Sparta)”.

You slump back and deflate into your computer chair, eyes synced with your mind racing back and forth with feelings of panic. The walls begin to darken, zeroing in, siloing you into thoughts of being the only one.

Whispering to yourself; “I’m alone in this”, you feel despair, quickly followed by a fit of rage while you stare at the computer screen.

Whoa, wait, let’s stop right there.

Before you flip your desk and begin smashing everything in frustration, let me tell you something… you’re not alone.

I bounced from Python, Java, and Kotlin (Kotlin was a fling, nothing serious) before I settled back into learning Python. It’s okay to “dip the toe” or (if you feel like being immature) “give it just the tip” when learning a language.

With there being many programming languages in the world, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. So, in short, go for the language that would best suit you, which may be the language we’re talking about today, Rust.

rust car in rust landscape — This is a result of a car being stripped for parts and left for years in the elements.
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Rusting with Jay

What is Rust? Well, that’s a simple question and I’m glad you asked it.

Rust is the reddish-brown material that develops when something has been sitting in a garage for too long. If you’re anything like Jay Leno, you must have several cars sitting so long that one, two, or maybe even thirty are starting to develop rust.

Okay, now with the bad rust jokes aside, it’s time to tell you what rust in the computing world is actually.

Rust is known as a general-purpose programming language designed for improved performance, safety, and concurrency (meaning you can run more than one copy of a program simultaneously).

Like Java, C#, and Swift along with several other programming languages, Rust is considered to be memory safe, meaning they all handle memory automatically instead of relying on the developer.

This means the developer (or programmer) can program away and not have to worry about having to use a garbage collector.

No, not the people who collect your trash every week or so.

Garbage collectors, when enabled, will automatically free up memory space that has been tied to objects which are no longer being used by the program.

Rust also prevents developers from running the risk of introducing certain types of bugs in relation to memory.

Memory safety bugs often tend to be an issue making this language more than secure.

So, you could think of this as one of the programming languages that stops you from having a Homer Simpson moment and yelling “D’oh”.

When car parts decide to add some kink.
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Kink of Rusting

Rust has been around for about 11 years or more now and hasn’t gotten the chance to get rusty since many industry leaders have adopted the use of Rust. Some are the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Dropbox, and Cloudflare just to name a few.

AWS uses Rust for their CloudFront, Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) as well as several other services which use Rust as well.

Dropbox uses Rust for the filing engine because this language being memory safe, prompts fewer memory error messages to deal with. Preventing developers from reenacting Britney Spears in her famous song, “Oops, I did it again”.

Since the Rust compiler will refuse any unsafe code, Cloudflare has chosen this language for this and its other security features.

Rust is normally used for projects dealing with Command Line Tools (CLI), web development, and system programming.

In the arena of data science and analytics, Rust is not up to the level of Python or R, but Rust does offer properties for creating backend systems focusing on data parallelization and low-level code optimization.

All this boils down to if this language was your side piece, it very well may be finding its way to becoming your main piece.

person sitting watching the sunset — Pondering thoughts on the horizon.
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Facing the World with Rust

Rust has given programmers more flexibility to develop functional code without having to worry about memory issues. Due to Rust’s speed and performance, data scientists have made this language a choice for when handling machine learning and large amounts of data in a hurry.

So, if you wanted to imagine trying to rifle through a mountain of warehouse data in record time, this language has you covered.

You’re also not going to find too many cult followers as you do with Python, Java, or many of the other programming languages, instead you may find people from many avenues in the tech world joining the Rust ever-growing community.

With there being many applications and growing in popularity, Rust doesn’t seem to be slowing down or going anywhere soon. In some cases, it may find its way next to Python and Java being the top languages to learn.

man in brown jacket thinking in front of laptop — Man thinking intensely about his next purchase on Walmart’s site.
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Pursue or Not

Thinking about getting a job as a Rust developer or interested in making it an addition to your skillset? Either way, you can’t go wrong.

However, just knowing this language isn’t going to be good enough to land you a job. Since Rust is so close to C++, you are going to be expected to code in this language as well.

Again, you don’t have to know everything about the language, just enough to be able to move around and make sense of everything in view.

Also, depending on what your potential place of work is looking for you are going to have to be familiar with Linux and other operating systems.

Notice how you must be familiar with mentioned items and a degree was not brought up. In this day and age, being able to show you have practical knowledge supersedes having a four-year computer science degree.

Building a small list of projects using this language will boost your resume and help you stand out from the herd. Leading to rust never developing on you (sorry, I know that was bad, that was my last rust pun).

Thinking Rust developer might be the career path for him.
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Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

Think you have what it takes to become a developer for Rust?

Script a comment about how you think learning Rust would benefit you.

Cloud Talk, Security, Tech

Icebergs and the Darknet

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couple laying down on boat deck. — Sarah: Tom, did you read the latest script on Scriptingthewhy?
Tom: No, I don’t find any of them funny.
Sarah: Oh really…it’s over.
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You are on the bow of the titanic with your version of Jack and you’re feeling like you’re the queen, king, it, them, they, infinite letters and symbols of the world. For those who have seen the titanic, you know the ending, despite there being enough room on the floating door Jack chooses the “Irish exit” over dealing with possible child support cases.

Since the movie The Titanic’s release which seems like it has been forever, this isn’t much of a spoiler; people get on a boat, party hard, the captain sucks at captaining, and the boat finds that icebergs have a deeper meaning to them.

The symbolism in all of this, what is it? Well, after figuring out what gender you land your spinning wheel on, the breakdown is as follows; clearly, your character is Rose, Jack is your virtual private network the titanic is your computer, and finally, the iceberg is the internet.

Why is it that the iceberg is considered to be the symbol of the internet and not the ocean? It may be attributed to depth and not width, but I didn’t coin the idea so don’t ask me.

photo of an iceberg — The captain of the titanic saw this and kept sailing forward.
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Web in Layers

I’m just going to make the assumption that everyone in the world has some point or another in their life spent some time on the internet. Rather it is shopping online, checking emails, looking for that special someone, or…filtering through their list of pronouns.

We have all spent time on this portion of the internet which is called the “surface web” due to it being readily available to the public. Making this portion of the internet or the iceberg to be considered “just the tip”. What are the other portions I can hear you ask? They are deep and dark web.

What’s the difference between the two? The deep web is the middle of the iceberg that includes everything that search engines cannot identify because they are protected with a password or stored behind internet services, so for example, you may have been spending a good portion of your time perusing on the deep web if you have an Amazon or Netflix account.

And for our main event at the bottom of the iceberg which is every emo kid’s wet dream, the dark web, is the hidden collective of internet sites only accessible via a specialized web browser (Tor) used to keep internet activity anonymous and private.

A brief history of the dark web according to the International Monetary Fund, the dark web or also known as “darknet” was created back in the late 90s by two organizations in the US Department of Defense to create an environment of anonymized and encrypted networks that would protect the sensitive communications of US spies.

people at a nightclub — Bob: Did anyone bring the E?
Eric: I got you bro, there’s some ecstasy in my bag.
Bob: I was talking about the Ethernet cord.
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Darknet Clubbing

Aside from protecting America’s greatest spies and turning into a nightclub for hackers, what can be done on the dark web you may be asking? Well, pretty much anything you can think of.

The list is as follows but is not limited to; conducting black markets for stolen identity, selling of weapons, prostitution, sex trafficking, and the last thing you thought the internet would be used for since we still have corners on the block, the slinging of dope.

Do you want to perform a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service)? Purchasing botnets on the dark web will help you perform this form of cyber-attack. You can also download files from the dark web however, they are more likely to come with a nasty array of surprises in the form of a virus, malware, spyware, ransomware, trojans, and many other devious files that could harm either your computer, bank account or just your life in general.

Now while being on the dark web sounds like a normal day in Camden New Jersey, just know, being present there is legal however, the activity you take part in begs the question if you’re joining the dark side or not.

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young man surfing. — Sailing would be so much easier if I had a boat.
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Freedom not Allowed

So, having access to the dark web, why is this part of the iceberg so important? Well, as mentioned before, joining the dark side because they have candy, will grant you anonymity making you and your activities harder to trace.

This helps you avoid government censorship if you live in a country where freedom is a no-no and provides you with some privacy. An example of this would be if you wanted to watch a movie or show that you don’t have access to within your country, you could simply “sail the seas to find your booty”.

Translation: you would have a VPN to change your location to the region where you would have access to said viewing. Finding out all this information may have you terrified and asking if your information is being sold on the dark web and Buddha only knows what people are looking to do with it. If that is the case, then you can venture to the “Have I been Pwned”(HIBP)website to see if your information is doing the cupid shuffle.

young man in a hoodie grayscale — Not every hacker wears a hoodie…it’s only the serious ones.
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Hacking Above to Depth Below

Now, if all this being on the dark web has you in Mr. Robot mode and you want to catch the bad guys or even play one part-time, there are careers in cyber security that can land you in the dark web.

Getting a degree helps but is not required since you have to display the ability to handle given situations versus sitting in a lecture hall letting valuable hacking time pass you by. Obtaining Security+ and acquiring certificates via online courses or boot camps will get you to depth faster.

Other certifications later acquired like the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) could see you higher up career-wise and in-depth iceberg-wise.

Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

Would like to give sincere thanks to current followers and subscribers, your support and actions mean a lot and has a play in the creation of each script.

Do you feel like I may have missed something about the dark-web? Script a comment below.