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In the previous blog, we discussed how any user without RBAC access to a Kubernetes secret can use a trick to access that secret. To mitigate that problem, we will use a validating admission webhook. But before looking at what sorcery this validating admission webhook server is, let us understand how Kubernetes handles the API requests. What are admission controllers? All requests going to the Kubernetes API server go through the following four steps: ...

You can gain access to any secret that you want in Kubernetes even if you don’t have RBAC permissions to get, list or view that secret. All you need is permission that allows you to do anything on pods and an ability to guess the names of secrets. With these two ingredients, here is how you can access any secret out there. Nasty User Here is a user called nastyuser who can only do stuff on pod objects. Everything else is forbidden. The user cannot list secrets, namespaces or deployments: ...

There are numerous Hindu festivals celebrated throughout the year. The rituals associated with each festival differ to the extent these festivals are celebrated. I am here to recount the environmental impact of the customs Hindus are involved in. Although a ritual associated with each festival and its effect on the environment is insignificant on a small scale. But with Hindus in India being close to a billion (966 million as per the 2011 census, with the population growth rate that might be almost a billion), these rituals don’t scale very well. The practices Hindus have been following, believing them benign, just a form of worshipping their god of belief. Let us look at the environmental impact of various rituals performed on particular occasions (festivals, funeral). ...

How do you monitor your own computer? Of course, using Prometheus, node-exporter and Grafana. You might ask why would you wanna do that when you can simply use the operating system provided, “System Monitor”. Well, yes, you can use that. But the data you get from the OS System Monitor is coarse-grained. OS system monitor is not configurable, but this stack is. It is like running htop but where you can go back in history, unlike htop, which only shows the current state. Using this stack of Prometheus, node-exporter, and Grafana is a proactive approach than being reactive to the problems that occur on a PC. Instead of digging later to figure out what went wrong, you are already collecting metrics so you can see on dashboards what went wrong. ...

If you are studying for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam, you might have come across folks recommending Kelsey Hightower’s Kubernetes the Hard Way. It is an excellent first step for someone who has no idea about the components that form a Kubernetes cluster. As the name suggests, it is created so that you learn the Kubernetes building blocks the “hard way”. But all that can be intimidating to someone who hasn’t played with Kubernetes ever. Also, the guide uses Google Cloud as a platform to install everything, which mandates you to have a Google Cloud account. But don’t worry, there is a version of Kubernetes the Hard Way, which runs locally, hence free. Enter Kubernetes the Hard Way Vagrant! ...

I took the reins of the Kubernetes Bangalore Meetup back in 2017. I have been organising the meetup since then. Earlier with Suraj Narwade, Aditya Konarde and now with Prakash Mishra. Over time the meetup has grown a lot, now it boasts about 5000 members. Organising meetup earlier was a straightforward affair, especially with Narwade and Konarde being my colleagues and friends. We could chat about the upcoming meetup at any time we would like, and it was all spontaneous. Once they left in 2019, Prakash took over as co-organiser, and we are managing the meetup since then. ...

There are specific skills which you should acquire early on in your life. These skills are the foundational skills. Everything you do after developing these skills becomes better, faster and easier. I call these skills Compounder Skills. Derived from the term “Compound Interest”. The idea is that once you are laced with a particular compounder skill, you can apply it in various fields of your life. An example of a compounder skill that most humans get exposed to is “school education”. The disadvantages of being unlettered are numerous viz. being dependent for information, gullible to most straightforward scams, the limited scope of jobs they can do, etc. ...

Yes, today’s topic is typing skills. I think not many people stress about it, but it is a very underrated skill, yet useful in our daily lives. I typed the most organic way anybody starts doing it. Look at the keyboard when you are typing and fix mistakes after looking at the monitor. I moved my hand around on the keyboard and only used index fingers to touch the keys as if other fingers were glued together away from the keyboard. I learned the QWERTY keyboard’s keys placement while playing GTA Vice City with a friend since I typed cheat codes. Although I was still looking at the keyboard and typing, I did not search for the keys. ...

If you are reading this, you are definitely a Knowledge Worker. As Knowledge Workers, we rely a lot on the information we know or have access to for our day to day work. Occasionally, we will do the same thing twice, face the situation more than once, want to read that reference or try to understand the insights mentioned in that one particular blog. How do you keep track of such information? How do you find such information again after you have researched it once?! You need a knowledge management system that aids you in revisiting such information. ...

Introduction I recently finished reading the book: “How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom” by Matt Ridley. The book was published less than a year ago in May 2020, and it is a short read of fewer than four hundred pages. I am not sure how to categorise this book, it probably falls into business, science and/or technological history. While listening to Naval Ravikant’s podcast, I found this book when Matt Ridley, the author, was a guest in one episode. I was profoundly influenced by the introduction of the book I got in the podcast. ...