Mike Preston

Technical Marking Architect @RubrikInc | Husband, Father, Toronto VMUG Leader, VCP4/5, VCAP5-DCA, ,vExpert, vBlogger @ - and Go Habs Go!

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

@Antho_Martineau Ax y and I are going sxx zz .5. They Will re watch way.Www is the ratedand c wtwf acts like wf 2ndw fis r safew and w s the same thing w t the same

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Like why can’t we thumbs up a thumbs up? Come on @Apple - channel your inner snark!

[Corey Quinn @QuinnyPig]

Today’s power move: when arguing with someone via text, like your own messages.

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Ah dang. Looks like a new telnetd vulnerability on the loose 🪲

Once your done patching up this servers be sure to head downstairs and unplug all the fax machines!

https://t.co/nxEwy9DQ0H

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

It felt off just typing it for this tweet

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

There are so many “hills to die on” and little camps within IT.

Hate to say it, but if you use “rm -rf” instead of “rm -fr”, well, I think you are a psychopath!!!

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Ivan Demidov is unreal!

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

💻 A while back, I had some concerns about AI. Mostly, my lack of knowledge around a tool that I am using daily. I said it would most likely become my next rabbit hole.

🐰 Well, I have started digging and would love for you to join me!

I’m sharing what I’m learning as I go in two places:
📖 Learn AI With Me (the written lessons + code)
📺 Mike Knows Nothing About AI (the matching video walkthroughs)

Lesson 1 is now live: Foundations

It covers LLM basics, like, really basic, like, "why is the answer different every single time" basic. I try to explain exactly how an LLM differs from software that we are traditionally used to!

If you are curious and want to learn alongside me:
📌 GitHub lesson: https://t.co/4j6mjPrDzt
🎥 YouTube video: https://t.co/cWFcqca3R9

If you watch or read it, I’d love feedback. What felt confusing, what should I simplify, what am I missing?

Lesson 2 which deals with tokens will be along shortly!

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Here is an easier one

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Anyone want to take a crack at it?

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Seen a few posts now complaining that OpenAI copied Google with translate. Seems like a pretty mundane topic to copy. If that’s the case I mean, did they both copy Marriam-Websters?

[Bipul Sinha @bipulsinha]

It was a pleasure catching up with you on @MadMoneyOnCNBC, @JimCramer! I loved speaking with you on how @RubrikInc helps our customers achieve cyber resilience and deploy trusted AI agents with confidence.

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

@SawyerMerritt @welles @Tesla Not. A. Chance.

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

@mamboitaliano__ Delissio

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Two missing characters, one horrible result 😬

Wiz shared a supply chain risk tied to AWS CodeBuild + GitHub that (in the worst case) could’ve ended with an attacker gaining control of your repos.

Here’s what went wrong... 🧵👇

Some CodeBuild projects used a webhook filter based on GitHub ACTOR_ID (GitHub account ID) and compared it using a regex allow-list.

But the regex wasn’t anchored (basically missing ^ and $), so it behaved like a substring match instead of an exact match. 🔓

So in essence, an adversary could… 🧨
🔍 Learn which IDs are “trusted” from the exposed/observable pipeline configuration tied to the project.
👥 Create lots of GitHub identities until one ends up with a numeric ID that contains a trusted ID as a substring. Basically, if an approved ID was 1234, a user with an ID of 584912343939 would word as 1234 is in the string. Wiz used automation to speed this up. 🎰
🧾 Open a PR from that identity.
⚙️ In turn, that triggered a CodeBuild run (because the substring match passes the allow-list check).
🕵️ Abuse the build context to grab GitHub credentials/tokens from the build environment/process.
🔑 Use those creds to wreak havoc on the GitHub Org, setting up a classic supply-chain nightmare 💣

AWS patched this up quickly and found no evidence of exploitation ✅

The lesson 🧯 Treat CI like production:
🔐 least-privilege tokens
🧑‍⚖️ approval gates for privileged builds

and of course,
💾 Backup + Recovery for your GitHub org (and actually test restores)

If you’re thinking about this from a resilience angle, this is why solutions like Rubrik exist. 🧊🛟

Stay safe out there ✌️

https://t.co/JIrvLUsAYa

https://t.co/kIXdT2raD5

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

@discoposse @jasonfried No kidding. Didn’t matter how many giant pots and cast iron pans you through on top of that thing in the cupboard. Always came out like brand new!

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Em Dash per Answer

[vmiss @vmiss33]

IOPS are dead.

In AI, tokens are the unit of measurement that actually matters.

A token is a chunk of text. Sometimes a word, sometimes part of one. Models do not read sentences. They read tokens. They generate tokens. Everything is counted in tokens.

That is why performance is tokens per second.

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

No matter what OpenAI and I talk about there is always one thing that is 100% clear - I am the smartest, most creative person the model has ever interacted with. And every idea I have is just so great!

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

A lot of teams treat Azure DevOps like it’s disposable 🗑️

Worst case we will just recreate pipelines right?
Repos are versioned by got, shouldn’t be an issue
Boards aren’t that important, we’re good!

🤣Sure. Cool cool cool!

That is until Azure DevOps goes sideways and suddenly:

🤷nobody remembers why a change was approved
❌ half the pipelines fail for “reasons”
⛱️ and the one person who knows how it works is on vacation

✅ Turns out DevOps data is… data.

🔥 And losing it hurts more than you think.

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

@pfguglielmi

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

Fun fact: I still misspell “focuses.”

In college, I had a summer job with the Canadian federal government, teaching employees Microsoft Word - right when autocorrect was brand new.

My demo? Adding an autocorrect for focusses → focuses.

20+ years later… my brain never updated. Autocorrect still hasn’t either.

[Mike Preston @mwpreston]

@discoposse @DiscoPossePod USD or CAD?