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There are many different ways to provide styling for React components, such as importing plain CSS, using styled components, JS-in-CSS or CSS Modules. These all have various advantages and disadvantages. In this article I go through some considerations when using CSS Modules. Specifically I am interested in looking at this in a framework agnostic way. By Max Rohde.

To me, it seems CSS Modules provide the best solution overall for beginner to intermediate use. We can use the standard CSS syntax, which allows for effective copy and paste programming, and we can be assured of good client-side performance.

The article main parts:

• CSS modules basics
• CSS modules intelliSense
• Compile CSS modules
• CSS modules for server-side rendering (Node.js)
• CSS modules for client-side bundling

The easiest way to use CSS modules is to make us of the support provided in frameworks, such as Next.js or Create React App. However, there is a lot of implicit complexity in CSS modules that can lead to unexpected behaviour and bugs. Author tried to demonstrate that we can achieve anything we need with relatively few lines of code. The three libraries I provide are all very simple and consist of a single, short source file: node-css-require, esbuild-css-modules-server-plugin, esbuild-css-modules-client-plugin. Good read!

With the boom in cloud computing, new types of security threats have emerged. Confidential computing is a solution to the added IT security issues of working with the cloud. By Daniele Buono, James Bottomley, Hubertus Franke, Robert Senger.

With Confidential computing, a third type of data needs to be protected, called data in use. This means offering mechanisms to protect the physical memory (such as RAM) being used by a customer, so that no other tenants on that cloud have any way to access it. This is generally done by hardware mechanisms that provide protection to virtual machines (VMs). It can be done either by partitioning, where the CPU places hardware checks on the memory allocated to each VM and ensures these boundaries are not crossed, or with memory encryption, where the CPU automatically encrypts VM memory with different keys for different VMs. Some operations, like IBM Z Secure Execution, offer both.

Over the last decade, cloud computing has revolutionized the way the world computes. Many companies and organizations have moved from dedicated managed servers at properties they own to flexible solutions that can scale up or down based on the amount of power and storage they need at any given moment.

It’s our belief that confidential computing will become a ubiquitously adopted mechanism to strengthen security boundaries and enable increasingly sensitive workloads to be effectively deployed on public clouds. There are, however, considerable technology gaps that need to be addressed to get there. Some of the main questions that are still unanswered are things like figuring out how to attest to the trustworthiness of components inside secure enclaves, as well as the components that manage them. Good read!

As an adept at Functional Programming (FP), I feel at ease with expressing my data manipulation logic by chaining high order functions like map, filter, and sort operating on arrays and maps. Ballerina, being designed as a Data-Oriented programming language, supports this FP style of coding. By Yehonathan Sharvit.

The main points from the article:

• Ballerina has been designed as a Data-Oriented programming language and supports a functional programming coding style
• Expressing data manipulation logic with functions can be powerful
• Using arrow functions with type inference can make code compact and clear
• Ballerina query language is similar to SQL in the sense that a query expression is made up of clauses. Data manipulation expressed with Ballerina query language is easier to read in comparison with other functional programming expressions
• Ballerina “Table” data structure can be more effective than maps in representing indexed data collections

Ballerina query language is similar to SQL in the sense that a query expression is made up of clauses, like select, from, where, order by, join, etc… But, unlike in SQL, we are not limited to SQL operators to express our custom business logic: we are allowed to use any function inside our queries. Moreover, the Ballerina query language syntax makes it very convenient to manipulate data as it deals with records. Good read!

Resiliency of applications surpasses everything else in building customer trust. Because of this, it cannot be an afterthought. Instead of simply reacting to a failure, why not be proactive?. By Piyali Kamra, Aish Gopalan, Isael Pimentel, and Aditi Sharma.

Source: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/architecture/a-multi-dimensional-approach-helps-you-proactively-prepare-for-failures-part-1-application-layer/

As your system expands, you’ll likely encounter issues that can hinder your ability to scale, like security and cost. So, it’s necessary to think about the correct architectural patterns beforehand to minimize your chances of enduring a failure without a recovery plan.

The inetresting parts in the article:

• Example use case
• Pattern 1: Microservices
• Pattern 2: Saga pattern
• Pattern 3: Event-driven architecture
• Pattern 4: Cache pattern
• Improving application resiliency with bounded contexts

Distributed systems can use all of these patterns, which helps improve resiliency at the application layer. Applying these patterns, along with the Infrastructure and Operations improvements will provide frameworks for resilient applications. Nice one!

The moment we introduce strong coupling between our services, we lose the potential advantages of a microservice architecture. This article addresses the challenge by introducing the concept of a Change Coupling analysis. Change Coupling is a behavioral code analysis technique that uncovers logical dependencies across services and team boundaries. Let’s see it in action. By Adam Tornhill.

Source: https://codescene.com/blog/visualize-microservice-dependencies-in-team-context/

The main concepts discussed:

• Prioritize dependencies that cross team boundaries
• Introducing change coupling: uncover logical dependencies
• Automated change coupling discovery
• Adding the team dimension

Microservices is a high-discipline architecture where loose dependencies are key. Failing that, we’ll face a situation where it gets hard for a team to operate in an autonomous way. Just like we expect alerts from our production environment, we really should monitor the key architectural properties so that we can act upon dependencies early. Nice one!

In this article, we will introduce you to the big data ecosystem and the role of Apache Spark in Big data. We will also cover the Distributed database system, the backbone of big data. In today’s world, data is the fuel. Almost every electronic device collects data that is used for business purposes. By Abhishek Jaiswal.

The article also discusses Resilient Distributed Dataset (RDD) and Transformations and actions:

• What is Apache Spark?
• Apache Spark Architecture
• Spark RDDs can’t be modified only can be replaced
• Spark RDDs are lazy evaluated, which helps in data integrity and doesn’t let data corrupt
• Spark Supports distributed SQL that is built on top of RDDs
• Spark Supports various machine learning models, including CNN as well as NLPs

Spark Architecture contains a driver node, context reader, and node manager. Spark works in a distributed manner, the same as Hadoop, but alike Hadoop, it uses In-memory computation instead of disk. Good read!

Distributed systems must balance their needs for high availability and low latency with consistency guarantees; providing a mostly hit happy path for requests enables these systems to push the boundaries of this tradeoff. By Audrey Cheng.

At scale, there are three particular concerns a distributed system must address when providing a mostly hit happy path:

• Performance isolation by ensuring that clients do not affect each other
• Hotspot tolerance so that hot keys do not affect availability
• Bounding the worst-case since tail latency can slow overall user interaction. We provide examples below on how the three systems tackle these issues

Given challenging, real-world workloads, any performance degradation resulting from enforcing stronger consistency guarantees for one client should not affect others. Insulating performance effects is also crucial to protecting against misbehaving users.

Ultimately, finding the right balance between availability / latency and consistency depends on application needs. To push the limits of what can be achieved in this tradeoff, distributed systems should identify and leverage local information to provide a mostly hit happy path for requests. This approach can be especially impactful at global scale. Nice one!

Since the open-source introduction of Apache Kudu in 2015, it has billed itself as storage for fast analytics on fast data. This general mission encompasses many different workloads, but one of the fastest-growing use cases is that of time-series analytics. By Todd Lipcon.

In this blog post, we’ll evaluate Kudu against three other storage systems using the Time Series Benchmark Suite (TSBS), an open-source collection of data and query generation tools representing an IT operations time-series workload.

The article then covers:

• Kudu-TSDB architecture
• Benchmarking target systems
• Benchmark hardware
• Benchmark setup
• Results: Data loading performance
• Results: Light queries, 8 client threads
• Results: Light queries, 16 client threads
• Performance on heavy queries

Although Apache Kudu is a general purpose store, its focus on fast analytics for fast data make it a great fit for time series workloads. In addition to the quantitative differences summarized above, it’s important to understand qualitative differences between the stores. In particular, Kudu and ClickHouse share the trait of being general-purpose stores, whereas VictoriaMetrics and InfluxQL are limited to time series applications. In practical terms, this means that Kudu and ClickHouse allow your time series data to be analyzed alongside other relational data in your warehouse, and to be analyzed using alternative tools such as Apache Spark, Apache Impala, Apache Flink, or Python Pandas. Good read!

In HashiCorp’s new State of Cloud Strategy survey, 86% of respondents said they rely on cloud platform teams — for a wide variety of very good reasons. Organizations with complex business requirements have long sought ways to simplify operations and boost the productivity of their software development teams. It appears business and IT leaders have found an answer: adopt and empower centralized cloud platform teams. By Jared Ruckle.

Main article points:

• What’s powering the rise of platform teams?
• Different cloud service providers have different APIs
• Skills shortages
• Cultural transformation is siloed and uneven
• Governance becomes difficult to manage
• Business leaders trust platform teams – and expect a lot from them
• Cloud platform teams require continued investment

In our experience working with many of the world’s largest brands, platform teams typically include engineers who provision, run, and manage cloud infrastructure and other shared services. These teams create and operate highly automated platforms available on-demand across the organization. Developers can access the platform capabilities via self-service processes, making it easy to quickly create new environments and new service instances.

But platforms are never finished, just shipped. There’s always more to be done. The Forrester Consulting study (Unlocking Multicloud’s Operational Potential) suggests platform teams are critical “to mitigate people – and process-themed challenges like skills shortages (41%) and siloed teams (35%).” Good read!

Cyber threats are some of the biggest challenges organizations face, but cybersecurity failure is still seen as a critical short-term risk.. By Artem Nikulchenko. By Candid Wüest, Nisha Almoula, Roman Hagen @weforum.org.

Cyber risk is one of the main challenges that organizations face today. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2022 highlights how cyber threats have intensified through digital transformation and growing digital dependency.

The article then walks you through:

• 80% of firms have suffered a cybersecurity breach
• Boards should prioritize cyber risks in planning
• Strategic involvement is vital to secure assets and services
• Cross-functional coordination can strengthen response capabilities
• Collaboration is key to being ‘cybersecurity ready'

Most executives and board members are aware of key global cyber threats and recognize cybersecurity risk as an enterprise-wide risk, but not everyone understands the impact of these cyber risks and their economic drivers.

Cybersecurity must be a core strategic priority, and ownership and accountability for cybersecurity risk management activities must be adopted both within and outside the CISO organization. Nice one!