Is BlueSky the New Tech Twitter?

For the moment Exactly , I guess we'll just launch right into the news this week . It's pretty interesting . We have a little bit of a roundup . We got a little bit different for every little something for everybody Speaking of . So our first story is that Twitter is seeing a mass exodus of tech people actually . So our X , or as Alex would call it , there is .

There's a large number of people who are actually deleting their accounts , deleting all their tweets , getting rid of X or Twitter completely and migrating over to blue sky .

So we have a article here from tech crunch called how to use blue sky and you know , as part of the stats or others part of the article , it mentions some pretty impressive stats actually from blue sky here . Now , blue sky is not brand new . It's actually been around for , oh man , like almost a year now , I think .

I think I messed with it when it first started , uh as about a year .

But yeah , so after the election and given , you know , elon's involvement and just honestly , really just kind of , it's just been kind of a slope that's been going down for a while , blue Sky is absolutely exploding . So here the article mentions that they've now surpassed 16 million users and many of them .

They've now surpassed 16 million users and many of them , many of them , within the last two , three weeks , you know , since the election , which is pretty crazy actually , and it's actually on track and every day , you know , keeps , keeps growing .

So this is interesting because blue sky is not actually crashing and burning like you would expect with the rapid , huge influx of people and um , and I can actually attest to this myself .

I don't know if chris has noticed the same and check with him in a second , but you know , I've actually lost a decent number of followers on twitter and I was checking and it's not like everybody just decided that they hate me all of a sudden . Get rid of it .

There's a actually a large amount of people who followed me at the tech sphere that deleted their accounts . They're gone , they're moved and yeah , I'm seeing a lot of people show up in Blue Sky and gaining a lot of followers and it's been interesting . I don't know , chris , are you seeing any of this ? Have you made the move yet ?

But you know , I thought it was really cool at the time and it seemed like it was , it was gaining traction and it just never really took off and people were just kind of kind of , you know , regressed back to Twitter or something like that , regressed back to Twitter or something like that .

But now I think , with you know , uh , recent events being the election and Elon's obviously uh , there's no , there's no hiding which side of the , which side of the fence he's on with , with a lot of this stuff , and it's becoming quite obnoxious and he's uh running this in a very certain way now .

And I think , like I know a lot of people that were the day that he pretty much announced there's no more block button , that's game over .

But like they're using this specific like at protocol , I think is what it's called um for , like the . You know the like you have a domain name tied to your actual um handle on there . So if you didn't , you have to .

I'm sure people signing up for , uh , these accounts on blue sky are , you know , if they're not familiar with DNS , they're probably learning about DNS because that requires some of the authorization to get a specific domain on your handle . But I definitely encourage people to check it out . It's pretty cool .

Here's your authentication . If you don't have that , though , of course their normal one is like bskysocial , which you'll just get if you don't feel like creating a DNS record . So there's a lot of that , but it is pretty cool actually , and from a decentralization perspective , it's not like Mastodon where there's all these different servers . You join a server .

I think it's right . That's the big thing about Mastodon . Right is that you would join a specific server or run your own , and so it was truly decentralized .

It was just kind of running their own instances , or or you could join an instance as a males is running Right and then somehow they I don't know how they federate , they federate or something like that , so I never really got too far into it . I blue sky is decentralized in a different way . I think it's based on the product .

It's more about the protocol , like you , like you , like you said . But uh , this is pretty interesting stuff , guys . The the from a social media perspective .

Um , I mean , twitter's been around for 20 years now , almost right , like it's , yeah , and to see , and the gravity is , any social media platform is only as good as the gravity of the people that are using it . Right , so right , it's right in the name social media , right ?

So you know , this article mentions that on just on Wednesday , x saw more than 115,000 visitors or users deactivating their Twitter accounts . This is not a small amount of this is not just sour grapes or something like that . Right , there's a very real exodus going on .

It's definitely thriving and I think if kelsey hightower is saying that , that probably means something . You see , one of the most active guys on social media in that space right , so yeah , you know what .

Anyone in social media have basically said that since just blowing away their Twitter account and not going to it and not reading it , their mental health is better , like they're not raging all the time , like I mean , let's be fair , like we know , the X is a , is rage bait right , like all social media thrives on rage bait .

So I mean , and who knows , maybe someday , you know , blue sky will become the thing we hate , but right now at least , they said a lot of people , more than people that I thought are like you know , this is the best decision I made for my mental health . I'm just getting much more done . I'm , you know I'm . I've had a better day . So interesting stuff .

So , like I , I was able to navigate that pretty well and like having like my one feed that was pure like dog shit , just like entertainment , like like not , not stuff that betters my life in any way .

And then you know , I had the tech side of it where I was like I kept the feed pretty , pretty clean and it was just folks like you know , like minded folks and talking about tech .

Um , so , the the content is good , the the you know people are nice , people haven't gotten very mean and and very mean and stuff like that . I encourage everyone to check it out . It's worth going there , at least for right now , so do it .

Uh , you know , chris and I work for aviatrix , so take we're , we're not here to chill , but at the same time , this is a pretty big announcement and it does affect cloud networking , so we're sharing it in that spirit . So Aviatrix just released a new cloud network security platform as a service .

So Aviatrix obviously has been around for quite a while as a platform , meaning a full networking platform . We have security and all of that stuff is baked in . This is a new offer , a new package for the same technology with a bunch of new stuff rolled in right ?

So what we're calling Aviatrix PAS for short , but you know , cloud Network Security Platform as a Service that's quite the descriptive name is a managed service .

So if you're familiar at all with , like Viptela SD-WAN or Cisco SD-WAN , rather , how the controller is managed by Cisco and then you as a user , you utilize the platform to deploy your networks and to manage your lifecycle infrastructure and all that , that's basically what this is from a pure technology perspective .

You know , aviatrix hosts the control plane , the controller , the co-pilot , all of the control services does all the lifecycle management . So you , as the customer , focus entirely on how are you going to use your cloud network .

Now , in the first iteration , the use case that we're supporting is called cloud perimeter security , which is deploying Aviatrix security policy and gateways into VPCs and VNets and eventually VCNs . I'm sure as well Actually , I don't remember , chris do we support OCI in the very first version of this or not Not day one ?

I well , actually , I don't remember , chris Do we support OCI in the very first ?

Also built into this is going to be some very interesting Gen AI stuff . Speaking , I don't know , I'm not going to , I'm not going to get some too much into it , because a lot of this stuff is going to come out a closer to reinvent . But just so , we're doing some stuff with AI that goes far beyond you know , talk to your network type level stuff .

It's going to be a lot more interesting . There's going to be real insight , real recommendation stuff . So stay tuned on that . Anything to add to that , chris ?

So there's obviously a lot of trust that goes into that with a specific vendor and things like that , and we fully understand that . So it's you know , I'm really happy to see this come out . Like you said , it's been something that we've been asked for for quite some time .

You know , one thing that's pretty cool is , like I feel like we do a good job at , you know , being able to discover things and , you know , host it all in one pane of glass type thing . But it's the long pole in the tent , is always like you got to get the control plane deployed in your own environment .

In order to do that , you have to manage the life cycle of it , you have to make sure it's highly available , you have to put load balancers in front of it and you know , for some customers that is that is easy , that is like totally fine , they want things in house . But a lot of customers don't want to deal with that .

So , um , you know , we'll put that burden on us and take that over . So yeah really excited to see this come out . We've been talking about it internally for months and months and months now , so I'm glad to see it finally hitting light of day .

So if you've been in touch with the news , probably in the last , you know , six to 12 months , you would know that Microsoft is they've had a lot of concerns coming around antitrust and their , you know practices towards competitiveness and things like that . So this is kind of another one . I'm talking about the FTC , which is the US Federal Trade Commission .

The FTC , which is the US Federal Trade Commission , preparing to investigate Microsoft . For you know , the article points out that they were doing things like sharply raising subscription fees for customers , looking to switch providers , imposing high exit charges and reportedly making Office 365 less compatible with competitor cloud services .

So you know I can't say I'm surprised , but you know I mean I think they got in trouble recently for something like something about the packaging of Microsoft teams and , uh , all this stuff by default , and then it became like a , you know , default chat platform or something and uh , yeah , so you know that basically just another , uh , another edition of of this

dog and pony show with Microsoft . So you know the and it also talks quite a bit about the previous FTZ interventions with the within the cloud sector , like with their acquisition of Blizzard and things like that .

So , yeah , there's I mean there's not a ton in here as far as data wise , but you know , it's almost like they're preparing to launch an investigation , so I'd be very curious to see what they find . I don't think I'll be that surprised , but I don't know how . About you ?

We've talked about on the show multiple times where Microsoft's strength is being able to commoditize their offer and bundle all their shit together so that , of course , I'm going to use Azure . I've already got my Office 365 . I already have Microsoft Teams . I already have , you know , whatever , I'm already using all this shit already .

Why wouldn't I use azure , right ? It's one ecosystem , um , and that's always been microsoft's go-to right for better or worse , right .

And so how many times have they stuck their , you know , hands on the , the burner , so to speak , seeing how far they can go with it , and then you know , before they get slapped back by a , uh , some kind , some kind of antitrust body Uh , I think it was your . I think the internet explorer thing was , was , it was Europe . They paid a huge fine , right ?

But you know , I guess , if , ultimately , if you pay the fine and keep on doing the thing like is it , it's not an effective fine . I mean , we've talked about that too , a fine is really just a . It only puts things out of the range of companies that can't afford to pay it . Basically . So , yeah , no , that's very , very normal for Microsoft .

I am a little dismayed that to go that far as to build it into the licensing and all of that . But allegedly right , this is all allegedly , but yeah , we'll see what the FTC Actually , I have very little faith that the FTC will do anything useful for the next four years .

So if you're familiar with , you know kind of a CVE system or a common vulnerabilities and exposure system .

So it's a common way to just report , you know , crucial vulnerabilities and exploits and things like that in digital systems and you know involves kind of a system of you know there's people out there that can submit these known vulnerabilities to the vendor , to the operator , in terms of like a bug bounty type thing . This one's kind of interesting .

So the Google Cloud head of security , head of security response , I think is actually the title Sri Telastrium Sorry , I probably butchered that name , but I've never heard it out loud . But so they announced a major expansion of their CVE program . So they're going to be publishing all of their kind of CVEs for the systems that are running on Google Cloud .

And you know there's this kind of weird thing is like I actually had to look this up to see you know whether or not Microsoft and AWS do this on a regular basis as well , because the thing is about . You know , the cloud's like everything , every one of their services . Even if there was a known CVE , there's no customer interaction in order to patch that .

Typically , you know , when a CVE is launched , you have to have some type of response to it . Right , you know I need to go in and patch the server , do something like that . I have to have , you know , a triage response for that . But this is all owned purely by the vendor in this case .

So Google Cloud , or if it was AWS or Azure , they do it and the customer is kind of none the wiser . So I think it's more just about a goal of being transparent , and I guess they've talked about they can improve their bug bounty for the hunters out there that are trying to do these things as well . But yeah , I don't know . It seems like it's nice .

I don't necessarily know that I understand the full benefit of it on the surface , like I said , with this being something that's not done by customers , but I don't know . How do you feel , tim ?

Sorry I lost it , but like I seem to remember seeing like a CVE issued for like Transit Gateway or something like that , and like Chris was you were saying usually the point of a CVE is to obviously get it patched , but also for an incident response because , hey , you're a customer , you're running affected software , you know you are now exploitable .

This makes you aware of it and also you know you should patch it or fix it or do whatever the c you know , whatever the mitigation is in the cve . Here , of course , with a native service , you don't have any interaction with the , with the native service like , or in terms of like being able to life cycle it , patch it , mitigate really in any way .

So it's , it's interesting . I that's not to say that and I think that they , I think the the article mentions it as well . The guy whose name I probably can't pronounce either mentions it as well . Being transparent about vulnerabilities is about more than just letting customers know that there's mitigation that needs to take place .

Sometimes it's just about making people aware of vulnerabilities that exist . So I kind of agree with that . I mean , it's better to know than not know , even though the ultimately , usually by the time of like , if Google's issuing a CVE , the odds are very high that by the time you see the CVE it's mitigated in some way .

Right , so you know , but it is still good to have it out there for recording purposes , if , if , if , nothing else , perhaps , yeah , I don't know , I don't know . This is a kind of a weird one .

Like you know , I'm sure there's people that are , you know , constantly having to , you know , discuss with the cloud providers like , hey , you know either I know about this CVE , or you know , are you guys , um , uh , are you guys affected by this ? And you know ? Yeah , I mean , transparency is good , but I wonder you know what ?

What is the overall benefit here ? Uh , I don't necessarily know , but uh , I don't , I want to . I want to make sure that I don't come across like I think this is a bad thing or a useless thing or just like giving themselves a pat on the back type thing .

But yeah , I'm , I'm curious if , if anyone out there knows what , what the major benefit of this is , please let us know . I would like to hear from you guys .

Definitely make sure that you send Chris a Christmas card in Australia in about a month or so . It might get there around Christmas time .

You can also visit our website for all of the show notes at CablesToCloudscom . Thanks again for listening and see you next time .