macOS is a Unix, and not built on Linux. This can bite you when trying to write scripts which support both platforms. I think most of us realize that macOS isn’t a Linux OS, but what that also means is that instead of shipping with the GNU flavor of command line tools, it ships with the FreeBSD flavor. As such, writing shell scripts which can work across both platforms can sometimes be challenging. Homebrew Homebrew can be used to install the GNU versions of tools onto your Mac, but they are all prefixed with “g” by default.

Overview aws-vault is a tool for storing your AWS credentials in your system keychain instead of as a plain text file on-disk. Credentials and other secrets (including your various system passwords) are stored inside your system keychain. They are encrypted, and cannot easily be stolen by a rogue script or application. By keeping your AWS credentials in your system keychain, they are available to you when you are logged in, unavailable when you are logged out, and provide an important layer of security that the standard plain text storage method does not.

With the impending shutdown of HipChat (February 2019), my team has been working hard on migrating everything over to Slack. Why not have some fun while we're at it? Slackmoji Firstly, what is Slackmoji? Slackmoji (the word) refers to Slack + emoji — namely, the custom emoji you can add to your Slack account. It adds a bit of color and personality to the default Slack experience. Since I work in technology and the web, my set of Slackmoji tends to be Mac/Web/Browser-centric.

I’ve been a fan of P.O.D. since the 90s, and I’ve continued to follow them throughout their career. This is a collection of my favorite tracks into a single playlist. Playlist View on Apple Music, Pandora, or Spotify (in varying degrees of completeness). A few notes… For the most part, all of P.O.D.’s major-label releases (e.g., Atlantic, Universal) are easy to find across music services, but a couple of albums are incredibly hard to find.

Only a tiny fraction of the code your application runs was written by you or your team. How do you know you can trust the code that was written by other people? Where would you even start? This piece is part of a larger series on Engineering for Site Reliability, specifically balancing stability against the edge of technology. What do I mean by “trust”? Movies and TV shows have given us a version of trust which essentially boils down to “Do you trust me?