Month: October 2014

One of the new Continuity features between iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite is Instant Hotspot, giving users the ability to automatically connect to the Internet through their iPhone’s cellular data connection without the need to touch their phone.
via AppleInsider – Frontpage News
Get your Mac online anywhere easily with OS X Yosemite’s new Instant Hotspot iPhone tethering feature

The season of spooks has snuck up on us, but there’s still time to carve out your pumpkins if you haven’t done so already. Last year we brought you 14 awesome jack-o-lantern ideas to help you express your geeky side. Well, this year we’ve got 28 more ideas for you to explore. If you’ve never put knife to pumpkin before, why not give it a try this year? It’s a ton of fun and easier than you think. Just make sure you keep safety in mind and you’ll be all right. How To Carve A Jack-o-Lantern The carving process can…

Read the full article: 28 Geeky Jack-o-Lanterns You Can Carve This Halloween

via MakeUseOf
28 Geeky Jack-o-Lanterns You Can Carve This Halloween

In order for Spotlight to work properly, it needs to send your search data to Google, Apple, and Bing. Initially, it seems easy enough to disable this if you care about privacy, but as users over on Hacker News note, it’s not as obvious as it seems.

When you’re using your Mac with all the default settings, anything you search for in Safari or Spotlight gets sent to Apple along with whatever search engine it’s pinging. It’s not totally clear why your data needs to go to Apple, but that certainly makes searching with a search engine like DuckDuckGo slightly pointless. To turn all this stuff off and get a bit of privacy back you’ll need to disable two settings:

• Disable Spotlight Suggestions and Bing Web Searches. Head to System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results and uncheck those two boxes.
• Disable Safari’s Spotlight Suggestions. Head to Safari > Preferences > Search and uncheck Spotlight Suggestions.

From the look of it, a number of processes in Yosemite are phoning home to Apple, but it’s not totally clear why. For now, disabling Spotlight seems to cover the biggest suspected privacy intrusion. Check out logs on GitHub and the threads on Hacker News for more info.

In Yosemite, all Safari Web Searches… | GitHub via Hacker News
E.T. Phone Home | GitHub via Hacker News

via Lifehacker
Safari and Spotlight Can Send Data to Apple, Here’s How to Turn it Off

If you use the Internet, everything you do is being tracked and sold, and you’re not making a penny from it. I’m not here to encourage you to install some plugins to block it all though – far from it. I want you to do as I’ve done and embrace the idea of selling your personal information and feedback, but actually get something in return. Don’t be one of those suckers that sells their information for nothing! Am I crazy? Maybe, but the $2000 worth of cash, coupons and free products I receive every year from using all these tactics…

Read the full article: I Make $2000 A Year Selling My Personal Information, You Can Too

via MakeUseOf
I Make $2000 A Year Selling My Personal Information, You Can Too

Autumn is a season of MySQL-related conferences and I’m about to hit the road to speak and attend quite a  few of them. This week I’ll participate in All Things Open, a local conference for me here in Raleigh, N.C. and therefore one I do not have to travel for. All Things Open explores open source, […]

The post Autumn: A season of MySQL-related conferences. Here’s my list appeared first on MySQL Performance Blog.

via MySQL Performance Blog
Autumn: A season of MySQL-related conferences. Here’s my list

The V-22 Osprey’s mechanical and aeronautical shortcomings have been well-documented. That’s why, for its third-generation tiltrotor, Bell has taken a good hard look at the ill-fated aircraft (one it helped design) and built the plane-copter hybrid it should have back in 1983.

Dubbed the V-280 Valor, Bell’s new tiltrotor aircraft bears a close resemblance to the older V-22, which Bell teamed with Boeing to design and build for the US military beginning in the early 1980s. It’s reportedly a bit smaller than the V-22 but still larger than the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters that the US Army hopes it will replace by 2030.

Should the Valor platform make it to active duty, its four-person crew will be able to ferry up to 14 fully-equipped soldiers up to 800 nautical miles at speeds topping 350 mph—that’s double the range and speed of current-gen choppers. It can also fly one-way routes up to 2100 nmi, allowing them to be effectively "self-deployable"—there’s no need to pack them up in the bellies of C-17s for transcontinental shipping. And with the addition of two underbelly slings, the V-280 will be able to hoist up to 10,000 pounds of supplies, vehicles, and equipment as well.

The V-280, despite appearances, operates very differently than its predecessor. The V-22 rotated its entire propulsion assembly—its engines, rotors, everything—when transitioning between vertical and horizontal flight. That caused performance issues since doing so requires much more power and control to accomplish because you’ve got all this extra engine weight shifting around the vehicle as it’s attempting to hover with some semblance of stability. The V-280, on the other hand, keeps the engines where they should be: in fixed positions out at the end of the wings with only the rotors and hinged driveshafts swiveling back and forth. This not only makes the aircraft much easier to control during transitions, it should significantly increase its fuel efficiency compared to the V-22 and provide the V-280 with around five times the coverage area of current MEDEVAC helicopters.

The V-280 made its public debut at AUSA 2014 in Washington DC earlier this week. Bell officials expect the Valor to be ready for flight testing by September 2017. [Defense Update – Bell 1, 2 – Wiki]

Image: Bell Helicopters

via Gizmodo
Bell’s Newest Tiltrotor Could Finally Improve on the Osprey’s Feathers

Recently come across the problem where mysql server stop running and refusing to start with an error
The server quit without updating PID file (/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid)
Checked Mysql error log and found that an invalid usage of charset with collation causing problem.
error log:
141017 12:20:41 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/mysql/data
while 15088 [ERROR] COLLATION ‘utf8_general_ci’ is not valid for CHARACTER SET ‘latin1′
15088 [ERROR] Aborting
In this case mysqld trying to start  with  character-set-server = latin1 and collation-server = utf8_general_ci, which is not valid.
The following is the right charset value for COLLATION ‘utf8_general_ci’
node1 [localhost] {msandbox} ((none)) > SHOW COLLATION LIKE ‘utf8_general_ci’;
+—————–+———+—-+———+———-+———+
| Collation       | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+—————–+———+—-+———+———-+———+
| utf8_general_ci | utf8    | 33 | Yes     | Yes      |       1 |
+—————–+———+—-+———+———-+———+
Solution:
Add following options in my.cnf
character-set-server = utf8
collation-server = utf8_general_ci
character-set-client-handshake = false
And start  mysql server.It will start without any error.
ALL SET.
via Planet MySQL
[ERROR] COLLATION ‘utf8_general_ci’ is not valid for CHARACTER SET ‘latin1′

BarbaraHudson writes Those free soft drinks at your last start-up may come with a huge hidden price tag. The Toronto Sun reports that researchers at the University of California — San Francisco found study participants who drank pop daily had shorter telomeres — the protective units of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes in cells — in white blood cells. Short telomeres have been associated with chronic aging diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer. The researchers calculated daily consumption of a 20-ounce pop is associated with 4.6 years of additional biological aging. The effect on telomere length is comparable to that of smoking, they said. "This finding held regardless of age, race, income and education level," researcher Elissa Epel said in a press release.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

via Slashdot
Soda Pop Damages Your Cells’ Telomeres

We all have to deal with difficult people we can’t avoid. Seeing things from their perspective helps create empathy and understand their perspective. Use the phrase "It must not be easy" to help you see their side before you react.

Over at Psychology Today, they’ve got some tips on how you can be empathetic. Instead of focusing on yourself and your reaction, first try to focus on the other person:

One effective way to de-personalize is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, even for just a moment. For example, consider the offender you’re dealing with, and complete the sentence: "It must not be easy…"

"My friend is so aggressive. It must not be easy to come from an environment where everyone was forced to compete…"

"My manager is really overbearing. It must not be easy to have such high expectations placed on her performance by senior executives…"

"My partner is so controlling. It must not be easy to have grown up in a family where he was told how to think and act in every way…"

The goal here is to realize it isn’t all about you, and that the other person has struggles too. You aren’t giving them permission or condoning how they’re acting. You’re just trying to understand them a bit more.

Check out the link for other tips for what to do with challenging personalities.

How to Successfully Handle Aggressive and Controlling People | Psychology Today

Photo by miguelb.

via Lifehacker
Remind Yourself “It Must Not Be Easy” When Dealing With Difficult People