The Hacks The Hacks

Tom and Chunga both developed a passion for computers in a similar way. Neither one of them started out as a "software guy". Rather, they each got started by building and modifying their own custom built computers. They were "hardware guys", first! That just how it was back in the day.
Today, things seem to be much different, with modern engineers and developers cutting their teeth in software, and staying in that field for their entire careers. Tom says that most modern developers have little to no understanding of the hardware their creations actually run on! Is that a good thing?  Tom will explain many of the reasons this can happen, and he has a bunch of opinions on wether or not it's good for both individuals and companies.  Listen now!
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We live in strange and challenging times. When it comes to world events, one can find themselves, in a word, conflicted. Thats definitely the case for Chunga when it comes to todays topic.
Recently, the U.S. Government voted to continue the practice of warrantless surveillance of its own citizens. Interpol is also joining a growing chorus of law enforcers that want big tech to ditch its use of end to end encryption. What do you think about that? Do you think tech companies should give government agencies a "master key" to their encryption sofware, or end the practice all together?  Are you on the otherside of the discussion?  Is the government outrageously overstepping their bounds and violating the rights of its citizens? 
Chunga is conflicted about this. Tom on the other hand isn't. As a former member of the U.S. intelligence community, he has a very thougtful and clear opinion about all of this!  What does he think?  Listen NOW to find out!
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Tom and Chunga are tired, TIRED of talking about AI!  They need a dang break from talking about AI!!  Are they going to get a break in this episode of The Hacks?  Nope... Well, ok, kind of.
At the start of the year, Tom predicted one of the biggest stories of 2024 will be the failure and ultimate collapse of a whole bunch of AI focused companies and products. The most recent organization to proove Tom right, is Stability AI. 
What did they do wrong?  How could they botch things so badly? Will other companies make the bad mistakes?  Tom says "Oh! Most definitely!" Listen now, to learn what those mistakes are and who may be making them next!
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Do you remember a few episodes ago, when Chunga said "The tech industry is terrible at this! We're the worst I've ever seen, in any industry, when it comes to taking 20-steps to do something, when it can be done in two!" This episode of The Hacks, is a perfect case study of what Chunga's talking about.
Recently, Terraform changed it's license. Shortly after, a group of open source community members forked Terraform and renamed it "Open Tofu".  Last week, it looks like someone within the Open Tofu eco-system has caused an awful lot of trouble. Why? Well, there is a solid accusation that Open Tofu has stolen some new features of a recent release of Terraform. To make things even more contentious and embarassing, they didn't just steal the complete feature set, they also stole the line by line code of the Terraform copywrite itself.  Tom is shocked, asking the question "How could someone be this freakin stupid?!?" 
How does something like this happen? More importantly, whats going to happen next? Tom knows exactly why this kind of thing happens, and he has several different examples of what's going to happen next! Listen NOW
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Tom and Chunga have a good one for you today! 
Late last week, news broke that an extremely dangerous backdoor CVE, built within the XZ compression library had compromised Linux Debian Unstable and Fedora 40-41.  Fortunately, was discovered before it could hit an enterprise platform!
Tom says this particular CVE was especially dangerous and hard to detect because it was built deep into the XZ compression library. As dangerous as it was, it was also brilliant backdoor hack because nobody ever pays any attention to the compression library! Plus, the hacker took an extremely long time to execute his or her plan. It was so smart in fact, that Tom says we're all very lucky it was ever discovered. 
Chunga has a theory that this is only the beginning when it comes to what this individual is actually planning. He's of the opinion that this person has several of these CVE's built into multiple open source software platforms.  Does Tom agree with this theory?  Listen NOW to find out!
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Tom tells people a lot... a lot. When you choose to pick up or "adopt" open source software, you take on a certain level of liability. If you choose to deploy open source software into your infrastructure you run the risk of that software going away!
We've seen this happen several times within the past year. Now things are changing at Redis.
Last week, Redis announced it's changing to a dual source license. What does this mean? Well... it basically means it's no longer free for most users. In this episode of The Hacks, explain why they think Redis chose to make this decision, and why Tom says we're going to see more and more of this type of thing within the world of open source. Listen NOW!
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