#ThinkMainframe

In this edition

▪️ Meet the Emperor ▪️Mainframers Think▪️ CyberSecurity▪️ Deep Dive into the z17▪️ IBM Badge Program▪️ Open AI▪️ Who has been a naughty boy? ▪️De-clouding or Repatriation ▪️ Plus a Pot Pourri of interesting stories & something for the Star Wars fans ▪️

Intro

The Mainframerz meetup events & newsletters are designed to share the latest news and training to 'help you grow your skills and network'.

At our events and through the newsletter you can network with like minded friendly folks keen to help and engage in discussion around the mainframe.

To get the most from our community we invite you to jump in with questions, ideas, or helping with one of our events.

IBM launches latest #LinuxOne

Pick-up a Penguin

OK apologies I'm not sure that outside of the UK Penguin biscuits are a big thing, I do know that US visitors to the UK are partial to a Penguin biscuit and I have delivered these across the pond to excited family in America.

P-p-p-p-p-ick up a Pengiun

The line above was a quote from the advert for Penguin biscuits and I know that the Linux Logo is the Penguin so I tip my hat to whoever called the latest IBM LinuxOne the Emperor 5, which conjures up not just images of Star Wars but also Penguin biscuits.

If you would would like to sit down with a cup of tea and a penguin biscuit and take a look at what the new IBM LinuxOne Emperor 5 looks like you can find courtesy of Juergen Roser here:

Mainframers #Think

Think LEGO

I spotted a great idea that took place at IBM Think and it was shared by J. Graeme Noseworthy the idea was to use LEGO to capture votes.

If you haven't seen this before or want to know more I will share a link, the post caught my eye as I do not remember ever seeing some of the colours of the LEGO that are in the model build.

Link to see the Lego Sandbox Technical Topics vote is here:

Q. How long until we see a Mainframer Barbie made out of LEGO?

Also if you love LEGO read on in the 'Pot Pourri' of others stories I have another LEGO related post you may enjoy.

Ransomware: CyberSecurity is more than Firewalls & Password

Look after your Systems Health

A quick shout out to one of my fellow Mainframerz colleagues Rob Gould I'm not sure if this is Robs handywork but it is great advice from Triton, who advise to keep your mainframe safe you should do more to make sure all systems are also secure and resilient.

“Ransomware is a unique type of malware in that the perpetrators usually announce their presence once they’ve taken hold of your environment. At that point, it’s often too late.”

We also offer a Db2 Database Health Check to help organisations spot risks early.

You can view the Db2 Database Health Checker from Triton here:

You can read the report: Ransomware and the DB2 database here:

A Deeper Dive into the z17

Infrastructure, Security & Software

Thank you to Graham Sturrock BSc(Hons), MBCS, CITP, CEng who has shared a great post from Stig Quistgaard which offers a deeper dive into the capability of the new z17 mainframe.

I love finding these hidden gems in the wild and it's great that we have a community helping to share the riches of gems out there, my payment is only a like of the post but thank you again Graham.

The post from Stig is focused on:-

• Infrastructure
• Security
• Software

You can read the post with the link to find out more about the new z17 here:

It's amazing how many people mention in passing mention how they enjoy seeing an article or post receive a like as they know people like what they are doing so in some way the design of LinkedIn does work well at times for this.

About the IBM Badge Program

Lets start with a did you know?

Fact number 1- Did you know that IBM has now issued over 10 million badges?

Wait what apart from this being a staggeringly high number it also gives me a chance to remind everyone of another fact.

Fact number 2 - Did you know the IBM Champions badges are issued across a range of all of IBM products and services. Although there may be 1200+ Champions, the actual percentage of those who are IBM Champions on IBM Mainframe is actually lower, so if you see an IBM Champion and they have earned it as a z Mainframe Champion they are actually quite rare!!!

If you would like to know more and lets be honest more interesting facts about the IBM Champions badge program than I have shared then why not pop over to visit Libby Ingrassia who has created a post all about the IBM Badge program

The #IBMChampion program joined the digital badging journey when it began, in 2016, just after I joined the team. We had a lot of discussions about how to organize our badges, what skills to connect to them, and whether to "badge backward" for all the years the program had been in existence - and overall, how would OUR #digitalcredentials serve the overall #IBMCredentials story by helping to....

🥇 Demonstrate skills that are current, specific, and market-aligned.

🥈 Tell a verifiable story of growth and expertise.

🥉 Unlock new career pathways in a transparent and equitable way.

You can read Libby's post here:

OpenAI

AI Academy

I thought with the growth in AI and the buzz of the new z17 I would allow myself the luxury of adding the next post as interest to all mainframers in some way. If even just for awareness.

Open AI has now launched the AIU Academy:-

👉 Introduction to Prompt Engineering

👉 ChatGPT & Reasoning

👉 Deep Research

👉 OpenAI, LLMs & ChatGPT

👉 ChatGPT Search

👉 ChatGPT for Data Analysis

👉 Advanced Prompt Engineering

👉 Multimodality Explained

👉 ChatGPT for Writing and Coding

👉 ChatGPT Projects

👉 Introduction to GPTs

Thank you to Chris Donnelly for sharing, on his post you can find a link to all of the courses you can take which is available here:

Who has been a naughty boy this week

LZ Labs v IBM

Well it appears that LZ labs has been a naughty boy as we suspected may be the case. I will now defer to the honourable gentleman....

Joydeep Banerjee has posted an update on the case...

The Judgement: https://lnkd.in/dRqe6z59

Part 26 of the judgement directs LzLabs to "to terminate existing contracts for the sale of, licensing of, or any services relating to, the SDM and provide a statement verifying compliance. However, having regard to the evidence submitted by Mr Rockmann and Mr Hartweg in respect of existing customers who would suffer disruption to their businesses if their contracts were to be terminated, it would be appropriate to provide for a run-off period of 10 months from the date on which the injunction is effected"

I think he has summed up the case much more neatly than I would have, you can read his post and view a few comments which I think are interesting further considerations here:

De-clouding or Repatriation: Why Cloud Strategy is being rethought by IBM i and AIX User

Thought piece article

I read an interestingly article published by one of the Datacentre Hosting Companies in the UK Baby Blue IT & Consulting in the article it describes the growing trend which has appeared of moving off of the Cloud which we all know is happening but it is interesting when we see an independent source such as a Datacentre Host telling us the same story:-

✅ Why businesses are rethinking their cloud commitments

✅ What de-clouding or “cloud repatriation” really means

✅ The hidden risks with some specialist cloud providers

✅ Why vendor management and infrastructure transparency matter more than ever

✅ And how hybrid is no longer a stepping stone, but a strategic destination

If you would like to read this article it is available here:

Q. Are there any changes you would suggest to improve the mainframerz newsletter?

"Do you have an idea or topic you would like to present at one of our Mainframerz events, do you have a topic you would likes us to discuss at the Mainframerz event.....

....or would you like to suggest an article, topic or discussion for the newsletter...

...if so I want to hear from you as well as my regular contributors!"

✨ 💬 Potpourri {mainframe & non-mainframe stories} ✨

Do any of you Mainframers Actually like StarWars?

I resisted the temptation to post early and actually publish on May 4th as in doing this I would have to do it every year, so instead here is my belated May the 4th be with you posts.

First up: Pew Pew Pew

Yes saying Pew, Pew, Pew to certain grown adults will make them talk about the Star Wars guns and the sounds it makes.

On a side note I am amazed that no training company has ever used the storm troopers blasting away with a tag line:

"Invest in training to avoid disappointment - pew pew pew"

You may be shocked to find out how the "pew pew pew" sounds were created

I thought I would have a bit of a blow out for you on Star Wars related content, so for my next offering...

Please can anyone tell me why when I first saw this I thought of Star Wars?

A new computer is powered by living human brain cells. It doesn't just mimic the brain — it is one

A story that caught my attention was posted by David Dor and it is probably for me more scary than watching artificial robots walking or fighting like humans which I also find slightly unsettling even though they would probably be more effective if they were designed differently, in human form they seem scarier.

Sorry back to another scary story in fact this one tops the 'ick' above to bring a new level of "...is this going too far" in tech.

Cortical Labs has unveiled the CL1, what it calls the world’s first commercially available “code-deployable biological computer.”

You can read the full post which for me just does not become better reading here:

Am I alone that I find this scarier than AI, Robot humans or anything else a human powered computer?

Lifting the CLOAK on CyberSecurity

Thank you this time to Kev Milne who has shared an interesting post that as Mainframers I always think is fun to read about in relation to CyberSecurity.

In short CLOAK - Concealment Layers for Online Anonymity and Knowledge is a publicly available knowledge base on cybercriminal concealment measures.

It was created by Mick Deben as part of his Masters thesis and if you want to read the post you can jump to it here:

North Korea's army of fraudulent workers

I'm sure we have all seen the advice beware of phishing scams and sending over a CV to a gmail account, etc etc and by now most of us are heeding the warnings and sensibly most of us will be following the advice I shared of asking for a job description before sharing your CV for a role as a way of avoid phishing scams.

A new threat has now emerged that we all need to be mindful of....

Every company in the West needs to be aware of the huge and growing threat from North Korea's army of fraudulent workers.

Now SentinelOne has taken the brave step of revealing its own battle against Kim Jong-un's undercover operatives after uncovering 1,000 job applications for roles including critical threat intel positions.

"The staggering volume of ongoing infiltration attempts far outpaces any other insider threat vector we monitor," it warns.

You can read the full story here:

Podcast from the National Cyber Security Centre

As you know from time to time I like to recommend the odd podcast that I think might be interesting to listen to in the car or office instead of the radio.

For you this week I offer the National Cyber Security Centre who have a great podcast and on the podcast I thought they had a very interesting discussion around passkeys and whether it is time to say good bye to passwords.

You can find a link to the podcast by clicking here:

What to do after GSUK - Bletchley Park

I wanted to share a tory and then add a little more to it, to keep with a theme the National Cyber Security Centre have an event taking place at Bletchley Park. Bletchley Park is not far from where we hold the Guide Share UK event at Whittlebury Hall.

Bletchley Park is where you can find the history and back story of how we got to where we are today and whilst most of us have now heard of Alan Turing there were others such as William "Bill" Tutte.

A brilliant mathematician, Bill's work at Bletchley Park was key to decrypting the Lorenz cipher - which opened the door to cracking enemy German communications

You can read the full post by GCHQ here:

Mainframe Book Club, Me and What is next

As some of you may have seen the announcement of the Mainframe Book Club and may be wondering what is happening, don't worry all is progressing as part of my Peer Group Review it was suggested that I should invest in a professional microphone and also look at OBS. For now one out of two isn't bad and I have ordered a new microphone so the Mainframe Book Club can look even posher and this is complimented as recommended with new opening titles of the podcast which will be coming in the next podcast recording published.

I will be hosting the content in terms of the recommendations on my company webpage, which is being built as we speak, yes I am launching or will soft launch the first batch of service offerings from my new company very soon so watch this space, [another new podcast I am launching will be a Tech podcast - at least I will get good use out of the microphone].

My initial company offerings are aimed at plugging gaps or offering benefits to the mainframe community and are not very business focussed sorry I'm no Richard Branson or Elon Musk folks!

Apart from launching a business, creating video content and editing video content and the newsletter and my current day job with Ensono it has been very busy away from work [I have some more personal jobs to get done as well involving another business I own] and we have also had bank holidays in the UK so shorter weeks in which to get things done.

You may also see me appear on yet another podcast very soon, this will be more surprising to my fellow mainframerz colleagues as I always say I am not someone who wants to be in the limelight but if you would like to see me step out of the shadows I am always happy to do so.

LinkedIn get in the Comments

As some of you may have seen the famous, or some may say infamous clip of me calling out the mainframe community and asking for more engagement in the community on my podcast interview with WAVEZ .

I wanted to share the reason why I raised this and how this is helpful to help grow our Mainframe Community and establish us.

Step forward Jason Feifer who I doubt many of you may have heard of before now but he is the "Editor in Chief" of Entrepeneur Magazine. He has written a very interesting article that states in order to grow on LinkedIn the secret has always been to draw in "meaningful comments".

LinkedIn’s editor in chief Daniel Roth once explained it to me like this: If people reply thoughtfully to a post, then “our system is like, People want to be part of this conversation. Show this to more people.'"

(This contrasts with NON-MEANINGFUL comments, like “yes!” or emojis, which are often used by engagement groups.)

Think of comments as a virtuous cycle: When you comment smartly on people’s posts, you draw more attention to you — and then when your posts get good comments, they reach more people.

I'm sure as a mainframe community are keen to grow and be heard, well here is how you can do that and this is why I was so keen to share this message to our new members of the Mainframe Community on how we can continue to grow and attract new members, we need to be engaging in discussion.

If you would like to read more than here is a link to the post here:

Lego - Mainframers are Bricking it lately?

Just recently I have seem a big jump in the interest around LEGO and Mainframers, as mainframers we built a mainframe out of LEGO. I still think we have some way to go to beat the Volvo car I have seen which I did ask myself if this was an April fools post or not:-

As I can see the trend in LEGO and mainframers continuing for some time yet I though I would use this section to share a very interesting app I found. I would say stumbled upon but anyone who has stood on LEGO know this isn't always pleasant experience.

So I present the LEGO app, which is very cool and allows you to scan the LEGO pieces you have and then suggests what can be built along with instructions on how to build it.

Another Watch

I thought it only fair after sharing the IBM Watch that I thought was really cool to share another piece of nostalgia that I think is really cool and would loved to have had which nowadays we all take foregranted.

Introducing the 1982 TV WATCH

So a big congratulations at this point is owed to David Dor who is a two time entrant onto my Mainframers newsletter and he has done so, due to my love of cool retro watches.

Link to his post is here:

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