Akber A Choudhry

Security at Machine Speed

AI agents are starting to plan, act, use tools, iterate, and operate across digital environments at speeds no human can keep up with. A single agent can execute thousands of actions in the time it takes a person to read one email. This creates a fundamental problem: just as we

Sovereignty in the Cloud is an Illusion

For years, the tech industry has sold Confidential Computing as the ultimate shield for data sovereignty and cloud security.

AI

5. Allocating responsibility for AI-authored code at the protected branch boundary

A protected branch is a contract. Whatever lands there is what the team — and the company — has agreed to ship. When a human approves an AI-authored PR, they aren't endorsing the AI; they're stepping forward as the person responsible for that code. The reviewer owns the merge.

Escaping SCRAM-SHA-1 with AWS IAM Auth

Amazon DocumentDB (with MongoDB compatibility) seems "stuck" on SCRAM-SHA-1—is a frequent point of frustration for developers used to standard MongoDB. While MongoDB moved to SCRAM-SHA-256 as the default in version 4.0 (released in 2018), DocumentDB has maintained SHA-1 as its primary password-based mechanism for a few

AWS

Using TTI and AWS IDC for Amazon Q Business Querying

When integrating an external Identity Provider (IdP) with Amazon Q Business for secure querying, the architecture involves a sophisticated game of "pass the credential," ensuring identity context and permissions are maintained across boundaries.

AWS

Principal AWS Solution Architect

The title "AWS Solutions Architect" is ubiquitous, but a truly elite architect must be more than a cloud specialist—they must be a full-stack, battle-tested strategist.

Repeatability of the Build

Apache Ant was a task-oriented build tool which was widely used in Java application builds. for those who remember it. Task-oriented. What Maven brought was an opinionated approach to the build. No more tasks; goals. Yes, there are options, but they all focus on the goal at hand. The process

cloud

Certify for Google Cloud Platform

How to prepare for Google Cloud Certification examinations What is GCP Certification and Why does it Matter? Certification is a process where Google Cloud certifies that a person has the requisite depth and breadth of information, skill and experience. You may be working for an organization or providing consulting services

Devops

7 Reasons to Migrate from SVN to Git now

1. Latest versions of Eclipse and other IDEs have a Git interface built in while SVN plugins are a clumsy add-on. Even IBM and Microsoft, with their own SCM offerings, have Git baked into their IDE products. 2. Git is a ‘distributed’ source control system and does not require a

memory

Personal Technology and Human Memory?

Technology is part of our day to day lives, and we may have started to depend on it in more ways than we may be aware. There are a number of scientific studies done on this subject and they fall on both sides of the argument. We probably do not

enterprise

Is Ceylon Enterprise Ready?

Ceylon is an up-and-coming JVM language with some very interesting features. I took it for a spin and experiences are posted at http://java.dzone.com/articles/ceylon-enterprise-ready

APIs

Fluent HttpClient for APIs

The new HttpClient provides a fluent interface that is quite intuitive. However, any non-trivial implementation soon starts to miss the flexibility of configuring the connection manager. As a pre-configured HttpClient can be passed into the fluent Executor, it is not necessary to configure it each time. posted at http://java.

mobile

Bloatware Destroying Android Experience

Samsung makes beautiful handsets. Can Samsung please stick to doing what they do best? If you were that good at software, would you be latching on to the open-source Android in the first place? And this goes for vendors other than Samsung as well. [http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/

IBM

First looks: IBM SmartCloud Enterprise

. . . since replaced by BlueMix and then IBM Cloud Last year, there was an opportunity to participate in IBM's Cloud Beta and I wrote about [https://akber.com/ibms-test-and-dev-cloud/] some initial impressions. IBM have now rolled this out with geographically dispersed data centres. Even with some terms being unique

algorithm

Software Testing

... overview and challenges Algorithmic Complexity and the Theoretical Limits of Testing: According to the undecidability theorem, most software quality properties are not provable. Therefore, what kind of testing techniques do we use to achieve software quality? While it is theoretically impossible to deterministically test a system for flawless quality, it

network

Program Management

... things learnt while managing a large infrastructure program Program Management, a discipline that has been around for a long time (as in 'social programs'), is gaining wider acceptance as IT projects become more complex, inter-related and closer to the actual business processes that they help to run. In

architecture

Overview of ITIL-based Application Backup and Recovery

Derived from a subset of IT Service Continuity Management (ITIL v3 ITSCM): ITIL v3 ITSCM considers application backup and recovery as one of the risk mitigating factors in assuring service continuity. This is a brief discussion of commonly understood IT application backup and recovery methods within the ITIL v3 ITSCM

Linux

Ubuntu as a First-Choice Desktop OS

Working with Linux desktops for about 15 years now, I am always preparing for workarounds and compromises when using Linux for day-to-day desktop work. Our new Canon MP-series printer/scanner/copier was to be used for scanning and colour printing. We would plug it into the Ubuntu desktop for printing

apps

Google Apps and Blackberry-style Device Wipes

[%7B%7Bsite.url%7D%7D/assets/2012/remote-wipe.jpg] Google is changing and maturing as a corporation, and has recently missed an earnings target. Rumours abound that Google may be turning 'evil'. However, I stumbled on to some features that Google has added to its 'Apps'

architecture

Setting up the RDS Database Instance

... experimenting with Amazon AWS EC2 Update: Amazon AWS RDS can now be configured from the AWS Web console Although the RDS is a service and we are not supposed to think of it as a machine, it is just like an EC2 instance. We have to use the command-line tools,

architecture

Resilient Crowd, Jira and Confluence on Amazon EC2 and RDS

... experimenting with Amazon AWS EC2 This page is out-of-date. Atlassian has come out with cloud pay-as-you-go pricing (OnDemand [http://www.atlassian.com/software/ondemand/overview]) which is now recommended instead of the 10-user license mentioned below. These are three tools that I cannot do without, and thanks to new Atlassian

architecture

The App is King

Networks, storage, and all other information technology infrastructure are fairly complicated things and it takes substantial planning and flawless execution to get it right. Project managers and analysts do great work to ensure that what runs on these infrastructure systems is properly specified and delivered on time. And with all

IBM

IBM Finally Gets It with WebSphere 8.5 'Liberty'

Finally! Some long-needed innovation in WebSphere application servers from IBM, and some fresh thinking that may boost the long-term viability of IBM leadership in middleware software. Whether it is the pressure from Oracle or open-source innovation, or a long-overdue grounds-up overhaul of the WebSphere application server architecture that has been

management

ITIL, PRINCE2 and Agile

... back-of-envelope thoughts Enterprise systems required service management to ensure that newly deployed projects run in a predictable and manageable manner. The discipline and project managment that enabled project delivery should continue in some form. The project has now become a service and service management picks up from project management, preferably

desktop

OOO - Happy 10th Birthday

Happy birthday to OpenOffice, also known as OpenOffice.Org and their contribution to the standardisation of the ODF standards and providing a viable alternative to an entrenched market leader. Reminds us of the browser wars of the early 2000s. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_Of_OpenOffice.