Day: November 2, 2023

There is no doubt that Jira is one of the most popular project management and issue-tracking tools for organizations. It provides a great number of benefits to teams, including improved collaboration between technical and non-technical teams, increased visibility, enhanced productivity, better project planning, flexible customization, scalability, comprehensive reposting, agile methodology support, and, of course, easy compatibility with other Atlassian cloud products — Bitbucket and Confluence. 

However, what would your team do if something went wrong with your Jira data? In this artice, we will have a deep dive into Jira security best practices. Yet, first, let’s have a quick tour of what security risks and threats your Jira data can face, and what security approaches Atlassian uses to protect your data against those threats. 

LLM hallucination refers to the phenomenon where large language models like chatbots or computer vision systems generate nonsensical or inaccurate outputs that do not conform to real patterns or objects. These false AI outputs stem from various factors. Overfitting to limited or skewed training data is a major culprit. High model complexity also contributes, enabling the AI to perceive correlations that don't exist.

Major companies developing generative AI systems are taking steps to address the problem of AI hallucinations, though some experts believe removing false outputs entirely may not be possible. 

I recently attended my second All Things Open conference and wanted to share some of the observations, experiences, and lessons I learned along the way.

As conferences go, All Things Open stands out to me for a few reasons. Hosted at the Raleigh Convention Center in North Carolina, it’s one of the few larger shows that doesn’t sit in a wallet-busting city. And, at ~5,000 attendees, it’s definitely one of the more significant events, standing out from events like DevOpsDays, BSides, and even Monitorama, which attract much more modest crowds. And, of course, it stands out because of its focus. While every event — from the aforementioned DevOpsDays all the way up to the monster conferences like Cisco Live, VMware Explore, and re:Invent — contain an acknowledgment of the importance of open source tools, none of those events are so wholly and wholesomely focused on the tools, techniques, and community that make open source the powerful force for good that it is.

In this article, we are going to compare the performance of the Garbage Collection(GC) of OpenJDK and  GraalVM. GraalVM is a popular open-source JVM implementation in Java with the capability to run applications as native images. Apart from that, it has got other functionalities such as fast loading time, compacted memory usage, etc.

In this article, we will compare the garbage collection details of GraalVM and OpenJDK.

Suppose you have an existing RAML specification to import into Amazon API Gateway for API definition. In that case, you won’t be able to use it as is since API Gateway does not support RAML specifications. This article will guide you step by step on creating a specification file with OpenAPI from scratch from an existing RAML specification. 

If you prefer not to manually convert your RAML specification into an Open API Specification (OAS). In that case, we have compiled a helpful list of tools to assist you in this conversion process. It's important to note that the complexity of your RAML may impact the accuracy of the translation performed by these tools. Therefore, it is crucial to review the resulting conversion for any inconsistencies and address them accordingly. 

In today's tech landscape, where application systems are numerous and complex, real-time monitoring during deployments has transitioned from being a luxury to an absolute necessity. Ensuring that all the components of an application are functioning as expected during and immediately after deployment while also keeping an eye on essential application metrics is paramount to the health and functionality of any software application. This is where Datadog steps in — a leading monitoring and analytics platform that brings visibility into every part of the infrastructure, from front-end apps to the underlying hardware. In tandem with this is Ansible, a robust tool for automation, particularly in deployment and configuration management. In this article, we will discover how Datadog real-time monitoring can be integrated into Ansible-based deployments and how this integration can be leveraged during deployments. This concept and methodology can be applied to similar sets of monitoring and deployment tools as well. 

Why Integrate Real-Time Monitoring in Deployments?

In the ever-evolving realm of DevOps, the line between development and operations is continuously blurring. This integration drives a growing need for continuous oversight throughout the entire lifecycle of an application, not just post-deployment. Here's why integrating Datadog with your deployment processes and within your deployment scripts is both timely and essential:

This post is about building a unified OLAP platform. An insurance company tries to build a data warehouse that can undertake all its customer-facing, analyst-facing, and management-facing data analysis workloads. The main tasks include: 

• Self-service insurance contract query: This is for insurance customers to check their contract details by their contract ID. It should also support filters such as coverage period, insurance types, and claim amount. 
• Multi-dimensional analysis: Analysts develop their reports based on different data dimensions as they need so they can extract insights to facilitate product innovation and their anti-fraud efforts. 
• Dashboarding: This is to create a visual overview of the insurance sales trends and the horizontal and vertical comparison of different metrics.

Component-Heavy Data Architecture

The user started with Lambda architecture, splitting their data pipeline into a batch processing link and a stream processing link. For real-time data streaming, they apply Flink CDC; for batch import, they incorporate Sqoop, Python, and DataX to build their own data integration tool named Hisen.  

At Octomind, we are using Large Language Models (LLMs) to interact with web app UIs and extract test case steps that we want to generate. We use the LangChain library to build interaction chains with LLMs. The LLM receives a task prompt, and we, as developers, provide tools the model can utilize to solve the task.

The unpredictable and non-deterministic nature of the LLM output makes ensuring type safety quite a challenge. LangChain's approach to parsing input and handling errors often leads to unexpected and inconsistent outcomes within the type system. I’d like to share what I learned about parsing and error handling of LangChain.

The tech industry has a lot to offer, from good pay and remote work options to a warm welcome in the professional community. People of all ages are drawn to it. This article explores how to become a developer efficiently and move up in your career quickly. I've gathered knowledge from experienced professionals and various sources, along with the experiences of colleagues who have achieved great results. I won't promote specific courses, but you can easily find effective ones based on their descriptions.

For someone without a computer science background, starting to learn programming can be overwhelming. You'll encounter many unfamiliar terms and need to make decisions about specialization and programming languages. Choosing the right educational programs, courses, and creating a development plan is just the beginning. After you've mastered the basics, you'll need to dive into the technologies surrounding your chosen language, a challenge even experienced programmers face as it involves a lot of knowledge that can vary from project to project.

Since the time AWS was introduced in 2002, the Cloud Platforms have both increased in number and have also matured in terms of the services that they offer. The cloud providers each have over 100 services. As these Cloud platforms continue to mature, the wealth of information that is available for someone to consume has also grown considerably and continues to grow. This can be overwhelming for someone who wants to build their career on Cloud, to even know where to start and how to go about learning and building on cloud skills. It also becomes challenging to balance work and learning for many of the cloud aspirants. Add to that, costly training, seeking approvals, and getting on waiting lists are enough to kill the enthusiasm for many.

If you are one of those folks who is just getting started on the AWS Cloud, the blog lists the free resources that will make your journey much easier. Read on…

DevOps has shown to be successful in streamlining the product delivery process over time. A well-structured framework for maximizing the value of corporate data had to be established when firms all over the world adopted a data-driven strategy. These data-driven insights enabled consumers to make wise decisions based on verifiable evidence rather than relying on incorrect assumptions and forecasts.

To better understand the distinction between DataOps and DevOps, it is meaningful to first define a clear definition. 

I’ve been on the lookout for a privacy icon and thought I’d bring you along that journey. This project I’ve been working on calls for one, but, honestly, nothing really screams “this means privacy” to me. I did what many of us do when we need inspiration for icons and searched The Noun Project, and perhaps you’ll see exactly what I mean with a small sample of what I found.

Padlocks, keys, shields, and unsighted eyeballs. There’s a lot of ambiguity here, at best, and certainly no consensus on how to convey “privacy” visually. Any of these could mean several different things. For instance, the eyeball with a line through it is something I often see associated with visibility (or lack thereof), such as hiding and showing a password in an account login context.

So, that is the journey I am on. Let’s poke at some of the existing options of icons that exist for communicating privacy to see what works and what doesn’t. Maybe you’ll like one of the symbols we’ll stumble across. Or maybe you’re simply curious how I — or someone else — approach a design challenge like this and where the exploration goes.

Is A Specific Icon Even Necessary?

There are a couple of solid points to be made about whether we need a less ambiguous icon for privacy or if an icon is even needed in the first place.

For example, it’s fair to say that the content surrounding the icon will clarify the meaning. Sure, an eyeball with a line through it can mean several things, but if there’s a “Privacy” label next to it, then does any of this really matter? I think so.

Visuals enhance content, and if we have one that is not fully aligned with the context in which it is used, we’re actually subtracting from the content rather than adding to it.

In other words, I believe the visual should bolster the content, not the other way around.

Another fair point: text labels are effective on their own and do not need to be enhanced.

I remember a post that Thomas Byttebier wrote back in 2015 that makes this exact case. The clincher is the final paragraph:

“I hope all of this made clear that icons can easily break the most important characteristic of a good user interface: clarity. So be very careful, and test! And when in doubt, always remember this: the best icon is a text label.”

— Thomas Byttebier

The Nielsen Norman Group also reminds us that a user’s understanding of icons is based on their past experiences. It goes on to say that universally recognized icons are rare and likely exceptions to the rule:

“[…] Most icons continue to be ambiguous to users due to their association with different meanings across various interfaces. This absence of a standard hurts the adoption of an icon over time, as users cannot rely on it having the same functionality every time it is encountered.”

That article also makes several points in support of using icons, so it’s not like a black-and-white or a one-size-fits-all sort of rule we’re subject to. But it does bring us to our next point.

Communicating “Privacy”

Let’s acknowledge off the bat that “privacy” is a convoluted term and that there is a degree of subjectivity when it comes to interpreting words and visuals. There may be more than one right answer or even different answers depending on the specific context you’re solving for.

In my particular case, the project is calling for a visual for situations when the user’s account is set to “private,” allowing them to be excluded from public-facing interfaces, like a directory of users. It is pretty close to the idea of the eyeball icons in that the user is hidden from view. So, while I can certainly see an argument made in favor of eyeballs with lines through them, there’s still some cognitive reasoning needed to differentiate it from other use cases, like the password protection example we looked at.

The problem is that there is no ironclad standard for how to represent privacy. What I want is something that is as universally recognized as the icons we typically see in a browser’s toolbar. There’s little if any, confusion about what happens when clicking on the Home icon in your browser. It’s the same deal with Refresh (arrow with a circular tail), Search (magnifying glass), and Print (printer).

In a world with so many icon repositories, emoji, and illustrations, how is it that there is nothing specifically defined for something as essential on the internet as privacy?

If there’s no accord over an icon, then we’ll just have to use our best judgement. Before we look at specific options that are available in the wild, let’s take a moment to define what we even mean when talking about “privacy.” A quick define: privacy in DuckDuckGo produces a few meanings pulled from The American Heritage Dictionary:

1. The quality or condition of being secluded from the presence or view of others. “I need some privacy to change into my bathing suit.”
2. The state of being free from public attention or unsanctioned intrusion. “A person’s right to privacy.”
3. A state of being private, or in retirement from the company or from the knowledge or observation of others; seclusion.

Those first two definitions are a good point of reference. It’s about being out of public view to the extent that there’s a sense of freedom to move about without intrusion from other people. We can keep this in mind as we hunt for icons.

The Padlock Icon

We’re going to start with the icon I most commonly encounter when searching for something related to privacy: the padlock.

If I were to end my search right this moment and go with whatever’s out there for the icon, I’d grab the padlock. The padlock is good. It’s old, well-established, and quickly recognizable. That said, the reason I want to look beyond the lock is because it represents way too many things but is most widely associated with security and protection. It suggests that someone is locked up or locked out and that all it takes is a key to undo it. There’s nothing closely related to the definitions we’re working with, like seclusion and freedom. It’s more about confinement and being on the outside, looking in.

Relatively speaking, modern online privacy is a recent idea and an umbrella term. It’s not the same as locking up a file or application. In fact, we may not lock something at all and still can claim it is private. Take, for instance, an end-to-end encrypted chat message; it’s not locked with a user password or anything like that. It’s merely secluded from public view, allowing the participants to freely converse with one another.

I need a privacy symbol that doesn’t tie itself to password protection alone. Privacy is not a locked door or window but a closed one. It is not a chained gate but a tall hedge. I’m sure you get the gist.

But like I said before, a padlock is fairly reliable, and if nothing else works out, I’d gladly use it in spite of its closer alignment with security because it is so recognizable.

The Detective Icon

When searching “private” in an emoji picker, a detective is one of the options that come up. Get it, like a “private” detective or “private” eye?

I have mixed feelings about using a detective to convey privacy. One thing I love about it is that “private” is in the descriptor. It’s actually what Chrome uses for its private browsing, or “Incognito” mode.

I knew what this meant when I first saw it. There’s a level of privacy represented here. It’s essentially someone who doesn’t want to be recognized and is obscuring their identity.

My mixed emotions are for a few reasons. First off, why is it that those who have to protect their privacy are the ones who need to look like they are spying on others and cover themselves with hats, sunglasses, and coats? Secondly, the detective is not minimal enough; there is a lot of detail to take in.

When we consider a pictograph, we can’t just consider it in a standalone context. It has to go well with the others in a group setting. Although the detective’s face doesn’t stand out much, it is not as minimal as the others, and that can lead to too many derivatives.

A very minimal icon, like the now-classic (it wasn’t always the case) hamburger menu, gives less leeway for customization, which, in turn, protects that icon from being cosmetically changed into something that it’s not. What if somebody makes a variation of the detective, giving him a straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt? He would look more like a tourist hiding from the sun than someone who’s incognito. Yes, both can be true at the same time, but I don’t want to give him that much credit.

That said, I’ll definitely consider this icon if I were to put together a set of ornate pictographs to be used in an application. This one would be right at home in that context.

The Zorro Mask Icon

I was going to call it an eye mask, but that gives me a mental picture of people sleeping in airplanes. That term is taken. With some online searching, I found the formal name for this Zorro-esque accessory is called a domino mask.

I’m going with the Zorro mask.

I like this icon for two reasons: It’s minimal, and it’s decipherable. It’s like a classy version of the detective, as in it’s not a full-on cover-up. It appears less “shady,” so to speak.

But does the Zorro mask unambiguously mean “privacy”? Although it does distinguish itself from the full-face mask icon that usually represents drama and acting (🎭), its association with theater is not totally non-existent. Mask-related icons have long been the adopted visual for conveying theater. The gap in meaning between privacy and theater is so great that there’s too much room for confusion and for it to appear out of context.

It does, however, have potential. If every designer were to begin employing the Zorro mask to represent privacy in interfaces, then users would learn to associate the mask with privacy just as effectively as a magnifying glass icon is to search.

In the end, though, this journey is not about me trying to guess what works in a perfect world but me in search of the “perfect” privacy pictograph available right now, and I don’t feel like it’s ended with the Zorro mask.

The Shield Icon

No. Just no.

Here’s why. The shield, just like the lock, is exceptionally well established as a visual for antivirus software or any defense against malicious software. It works extremely well in that context. Any security-related application can proudly don a shield to establish trust in the app’s ability to defend against attacks.

Again, there is no association with “secluded from public view” or “freedom from intrusion” here. Privacy can certainly be a form of defense, but given the other options we’ve seen so far, a shield is not the strongest association we can find.

Some New Ideas

If we’re striking out with existing icons, then we might consider conceiving our own! It doesn’t hurt to consider new options. I have a few ideas with varying degrees of effectiveness.

The Blurred User Icon

The idea is that a user is sitting behind some sort of satin texture or frosted glass. That could be a pretty sleek visual for someone who is unrecognizable and able to move about freely without intrusion.

I like the subtlety of this concept. The challenge, though, is two-fold:

1. The blurriness could get lost, or worse, distorted, when the icon is applied at a small size.
2. Similarly, it might look like a poor, improperly formatted image file that came out pixelated.

This idea has promise, for sure, but clearly (pun intended), not without shortcomings.

The Venetian Blind Icon

I can also imagine how a set of slatted blinds could be an effective visual for privacy. It blocks things out of view, but not in an act of defense, like the shield, or a locked encasing, such as the padlock.

Another thing I really like about this direction is that it communicates the ability to toggle privacy as a setting. Want privacy? Close the blinds and walk freely about your house. Want guests? Lift the blinds and welcome in the daylight!

At the same time, I feel like my attempt or execution suffers from the same fate as the detective icon. While I love the immediate association with privacy, it offers too much visual detail that could easily get lost in translation at a smaller size, just as it does with the detective.

The Picket Fence Icon

We’ve likened privacy to someone being positioned behind a hedge, so what if we riff on that and attempt something similar: a fence?

I like this one. For me, it fits the purpose just as well and effectively as the Zorro mask, perhaps better. It’s something that separates (or secludes) two distinct areas that prevent folks from looking in or hopping over. This is definitely a form of privacy.

Thinking back to The Norman Nielsen Group’s assertion that universally recognized icons are a rarity, the only issue I see with the fence is that it is not a well-established symbol. I remember seeing an icon of a castle wall years ago, but I have never seen a fence used in a user interface. So, it would take some conditioning for the fence to make that association.

So, Which One Should I Use?

We’ve looked at quite a few options! It’s not like we’ve totally exhausted our options, either, but we’ve certainly touched on a number of possibilities while considering some new ideas. I really wish there was some instantly recognizable visual that screams “privacy” at any size, whether it’s the largest visual in the interface or a tiny 30px×30px icon. Instead, I feel like everything falls somewhere in the middle of a wide spectrum.

Here’s the spoiler: I chose the Zorro mask. And I chose it for all the reasons we discussed earlier. It’s recognizable, is closely associated with “masking” an identity, and conveys that a user is freely able to move about without intrusion. Is it perfect? No. But I think it’s the best fit given the options we’ve considered.

Deep down, I really wanted to choose the fence icon. It’s the perfect metaphor for privacy, which is an instantly recognizable part of everyday life. But as something that is a new idea and that isn’t in widespread use, I feel it would take more cognitive load to make out what it is conveying than it’s worth — at least for now.

And if neither the Zorro mask nor the fence fit for a given purpose, I’m most likely to choose a pictograph of the exact feature used to provide privacy: encryption, selective visibility, or biometrics. Like, if there’s a set of privacy-related features that needs to be communicated for a product — perhaps for a password manager or the like — it might be beneficial to include a set of icons that can represent those features collectively.

An absolutely perfect pictograph is something that’s identifiable to any user, regardless of past experiences or even the language they speak.

Do you know how the “OK” hand sign (👌) is universally understood as a good thing, or how you know how to spot the food court in an airport with a fork and knife icon? That would be the ideal situation. Yet, for contemporary notions, like online privacy, that sort of intuitiveness is more of a luxury.

But with consistency and careful consideration, we can adopt new ideas and help users understand the visual over time. It has to reach a point where the icon is properly enhancing the content rather than the other way around, and that takes a level of commitment and execution that doesn’t happen overnight.

What do you think about my choice? This is merely how I’ve approached the challenge. I shared my thought process and the considerations that influenced my decisions. How would you have approached it, and what would you have decided in the end?