268: Long Time Show Host is CloudPod’s first Casualty to AI (For This Week, at Least)

The Cloud Pod

Welcome to episode 268 of the Cloud Pod Podcast – where the forecast is always cloudy! Justin says he’s in India, but we know he’s really been replaced by Skynet. Jonathan, Matthew, and Ryan are here in his stead to bring all the latest cloud news, including PGO for optimization, a Linux vulnerability, CloudFront’s new managed policies, and even a frank discussion about whether or not the AI Hype train has officially left the station. Sit back and enjoy!

Titles we almost went with this week:

• OpenSSH sings “Oops I did it again”
• All aboard, the AI hype train is leaving the station
• Caching In on CloudFront’s New Managed Policies
• Get your Go Apps a personal trainer this summer with PGO
• Was Japan actually using floppy disks or were they 3.5
• Azure is on summer break
• Singapore will soon just be datacenters

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General News

00:56 Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks

• Here’s a bit of tech nostalgia meets modernization for you!
• Japan’s government has finally phased out the use of floppy disks in all its systems.
• The Digital Agency has scrapped over 1,000 regulations related to their use, marking a significant step in their efforts to update government technology.
• Digital Minister Taro Kono, who’s been on a mission to modernize Japan’s government tech, announced this victory last week. It’s part of a larger push to digitize Japan’s notoriously paper-heavy bureaucracy, which became glaringly apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Japan’s digitization efforts have hit some bumps along the way, including issues with a contact-tracing app and slow adoption of their digital ID system.
• It’s a reminder that modernizing legacy systems isn’t just about replacing old hardware – it’s a complex process that involves changing long-standing processes and especially mindsets.

02:36 Jonathan – “Yeah, I remember a couple of years ago they started talking about this modernization they were doing and people started to panic because Japan’s the largest purchaser of floppy disks anymore, or three and a half inch disks anyway. And so I ended up buying some because I’ve still got a USB floppy drive and some machines that have floppy disks. And I wanted just to stock up on some for the future, just in case the price went through the roof if Japan finally cut them and they have.”

05:16 regreSSHion: Remote Unauthenticated Code Execution Vulnerability in OpenSSH server

• The Qualys Threat Research Unit just dropped a bombshell – they’ve discovered a remote code execution vulnerability in OpenSSH that affects millions of Linux systems.
• The vulnerability, dubbed “regreSSHion,” allows unauthenticated attackers to execute code as root on vulnerable system