Robot vacuums come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and price points. While the technology has sometimes gotten a bad rap, it can truly make a big difference in making your house cleaner — without you needing to raise a finger.

Instead of having to lug a standard vacuum all around the house and spend time and energy sucking up dust, debris, pet hair, and who knows what lurking on the ground, a robot vacuum can get the job done with minimal fuss.

Even though this smart home technology


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has been available to consumers for a while, robot vacuums are just starting to become more popular due to the growing variety of options available.

Let’s examine the technology and highlight one great all-around option: the Neato Botvac Connected.

What Exactly Is a Robot Vacuum?

While it’s not exactly as fun as having R2-D2 or WALL-E living at your home, robot vacuums accomplish a single purpose: to keep your floors clean. Since you don’t have to worry about pushing them around,  the vacuums are low to the ground and can fit under many obstacles like tables and chairs.

Unlike the usual vacuum, robot models use a battery and don’t require a power cord. Instead, most models automatically return to a corded charging dock.

The built-in wheels help the unit navigate around your home and also automatically move the vacuum up or down depending on floor type: carpet, tile, hardwood, laminate, and others.

Unfortunately, no robot vacuum on the market can be used on stairs, but most models have special sensors that will prevent them from running off the edge of a tall surface. As well, the dirt doesn’t just disappear — any debris picked up by a vacuum is stored in a small bin that you’ll need to empty.

Who Needs One?

Does everyone need a robot vacuum? Absolutely not. If you’re living in a small home with just a few other relatively tidy adults, don’t mind doing the chore often, or have some type of maid service, you’ll be just fine without one.

But in my house, I have a trio of issues that most of us are probably familiar with: two young children, a dirty dog, and a wide variety of different allergies that affect everyone in my family.

As anyone with kids or animals knows, they’re not exactly known for being neat and tidy. Throw in allergies to pollen, grasses, dust mites, and more, and a robot vacuum helps keep my house clean and my family more healthy.If you’re ready to take the plunge, one of the best choices is Neato’s Botvac Connected.

The Neato Botvac Connected

Currently available for $649 (£679/C$915), the Connected is the top-of-the-line vacuum from Neato, and it offers a host of unique features not found anywhere else.

The standout feature is the small circle on top of the unit that houses the LaserSmart mapping and navigation technology. Using special technology called LIDAR, the vacuum takes time before it starts to scan and map the room, planning the exact route it will take while cleaning.

Unlike some other models, this approach means the vacuum has already mapped out a plan of attack while avoiding other obstacles in the room. That saves time and is definitely more efficient on the battery. On the turbo mode, it can clean for up to 90 minutes.

Another great plus is the vacuum’s “D” shape. Unlike circular vacuums, the flat edge allows the Connected to fully back into corners and crevices where dirt and dust like to pile up.

Neato Botvac Connected Wi-Fi Enabled Robot Vacuum


Neato Botvac Connected Wi-Fi Enabled Robot Vacuum
Wi-Fi Connected for Ultimate Control-use the Neato app to clean your floors from wherever you are. Receive notifications on the go.
Buy Now At Amazon Too low to display

Perfect for a Connected Home

Beyond being a great way to clean floors, Neato’s vacuum lives up to its name in a number of ways. The built-in Wi-Fi opens the door for a number of great features.

Using a smartphone app designed for either iOS or Android devices, you can set a schedule for cleaning and even start, stop, or pause the vacuum from anywhere in the world. Users can also use all of these features directly from their Apple Watch


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.

There are even more advanced features exclusive to the Connected available on the app. A coverage map shows where exactly the vacuum has cleaned. And the cleaning history is akin to a fitness tracker, showing cleaning stats from the last 21 runs.

And if that wasn’t enough, you don’t even need to use an app to start the vacuum. With Amazon Echo integration, just tell the connected speaker “Alexa, ask Neato to start cleaning.” That’s definitely a unique way to use voice control


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. It also offers similar integration with Google Home


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.

Long-Term Use

I’ve been using my Neato Botvac Connected for more than six months and have come away very happy. While a robot vacuum is something that is never on the top of anyone’s must-purchase list, after using one for a few months, it’s something I couldn’t live without. I schedule mine to run seven days a week. And it’s able to complete my entire house mixed with hardwood, tile, and carpet, in a little less than 90 minutes.

Even though it runs daily, the amount of dirt and dog hair the vacuum sucks up is staggering. I’ve thrown a number of tasks at it, and it always seems to come out just fine.

My one and only issue with the Neato Botvac Connected is its glossy black finish. While it looks great out of the box, after a few months it’s taken its fair share of scrapes. That doesn’t bother me, but just a word of warning.

While the device will take care of vacuuming, it still needs a bit of help from us lowly humans.

The dust bin needs emptying after pretty much every cleaning. You will have to change parts like the brushes and filters after a couple months for the best results. All of those parts of widely available to purchase online, and replaceable in just a few minutes.

All told, my house is much cleaner. And my big, heavy, full-sized vacuum is gathering dust in a closet.

Some Strong Alternate Options

If the Botvac Connected isn’t up your alley, there are two other (cheaper) options to consider.

The Neato Botvac D3 Connected ($399/£449/C$599) comes in at around $300 less than the Botvac Connected.

Neato Botvac D3 Wi-Fi Connected Laser Navigating Robot Vacuum


Neato Botvac D3 Wi-Fi Connected Laser Navigating Robot Vacuum
Easy to operate. Use the Neato App to start, schedule, and receive notifications. Or, just press the button on the robot and go
Buy Now At Amazon $349.00

This model offers Wi-Fi and uses the same laser mapping technology as the more expensive model. You will lose a few features like the built-in LCD screen, eco/turbo mode, a side brush, included boundary markers, and a higher-capacity battery.

But if you live in a smaller home or apartment and can do without those features, it’s another good choice.

You may also want to take a look at the iRobot Roomba 680 ($325/£312). The Roomba brand has been synonymous with robot vacuums since the original version hit the market in 2002.

iRobot Roomba 650 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner


iRobot Roomba 650 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner
iAdapt Navigation uses a full suite of sensors to navigate and adapt to your changing home
Buy Now At Amazon $316.08

There are a few notable differences compared to the Neato Connected line, though. While you can schedule cleaning on the vacuum itself, there is no built-in wireless connectivity.

Also, the Roomba 680 doesn’t offer any of the same laser-guided navigation. It depends on a bumper to detect and steer away from obstacles. My Roomba is able to clean floors, but not to the same level nor as quickly as the Neato. But it’s something to consider with a smaller and uncluttered home.

There are also other, less expensive robot vacuums on the market. One example is the iLife A-series that we’ve reviewed in the past, most recently the A6 model


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. But for now, Neato and Roomba devices offer the best combination of features and reliability on all types of flooring.

Will You Be Getting a Robot Vacuum?

Even though robot vacuums aren’t perfect


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and still require some human assistance, the technology is improving with each new product cycle. And the technology can go a long way to making any living space cleaner and free of dust, dirt, pet hair, and other allergens without you needing to do a thing.

Have you ever thought about purchasing a robot vacuum? What questions do you have about the technology? Let us know in the comments.

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via MakeUseOf.com
Why You Should Be Cleaning Your Home With a Robot Vacuum

This is hilarious: In the UK, a fellow named Tom runs the Friars Inn, a pub in Bridgnorth. He asked his buddy Dave to help him with some design work. Here’s what happened:

This perfectly sums up why graphic design will always be easier than industrial design. (Yes it does. Yes it DOES. No you shut up.)

Via Digg

via Core77
World’s Laziest Graphic Designer Creates Perfect Poster

via xkcd.com
Photo Library Management

Price: Free  | Download | Link

Pallette-Swap Ninja is celebrating the upcoming May the Fourth holiday in the best possible way, by releasing a free album comprised entirely of Star Wars parody songs, all done to the tune of songs from the Beatles’ famed record Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

via The Awesomer
Princess Leia’s Stolen Death Star Plans

via TechCrunch
Mailchimp’s marketing automation tools are now available for free

Three-dimensional printing is becoming more prevalent in the defense industry, as engineers explore the process to make parts for the most sophisticated U.S. weapons, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles.

But lesser-known projects have been in the works at a Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, shop that has been producing parts for Air Force aircraft for at least two years.

In February, Lt. Gen. John Cooper, deputy chief of staff for logistics, engineering and force protection, asked audiences at an Air Force Association breakfast, “Can we find better ways to maintain these airplanes? Is there some new technology that can help us? Or some new repair processes?”

The 3-D printing process is one way to do that, he said.

The general cited a trip he took to Tinker where he saw members of the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex, one of the Air Force’s largest depot maintenance units, making a dashboard casing for a B-1B Lancer bomber.

“We’re responsible for all the maintenance, repair and overhaul of all components that come off the aircraft,” Col. Robert Jackson, commander 76th Commodities Maintenance Group, told Military.com in a recent interview. The CMXG is part of the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex.

Jackson said the team has a wide variety of things to maintain, including many parts that would require an expensive bulk buy when they really need only one or two. Examples include mic switch knobs, crew compartment panels, sun visor brackets, and armrests that total roughly 60 different plane parts across the B-1, B-2, B-52, E-3 and KC-135  airframes, among others.

Martin Williams, director of the 76th’s Reverse Engineering and Critical Tooling, or REACT, office, said the unit already uses 3-D printers in various sizes, but they want others with flexible technologies to support making parts that engineers haven’t necessarily thought of yet.  

The Lancer dashboard — or standby compass cockpit panel, as officials called it — is something the unit is currently prototyping.

Even with larger items, which require more durable parts and aren’t suited to 3-D production, 3-D prototyping streamlines the process by experimenting with designs that will be manufactured later with metal, Jackson said.

“You’re using the 3-D printed technology in order to deliver a prototype that confirms form, fit and function … and then you can be confident of your repair solution or your new part, delivering that to the traditional, organic manufacturing [unit] that’s going to use multi-access milling machines to cut metal into that part,” he said.

Jackson said Tinker stood up the 553rd Commodities Maintenance Squadron in December 2015 for that reason, dedicated specifically to organic manufacturing.

The in-house 3-D process is much faster than going back and forth with outside suppliers for parts. “Once you get the geometry, you can print it overnight and have it the next day,” said REACT engineer Nate Pitcovich.

To identify the geometry of the part and print it takes at most two days, officials explained.

“With diminishing sources of supply, the benefit for us is the flexibility and the agility to respond to a warfighter need,” added Eric Bartlow, director of engineering for the CMXG.

“The benefit is speed,” he said.

“That’s our bottom line,” Jackson agreed.

via Defensetech
3-D Printing Is Changing Way Air Force Fixes Its Aging Planes

U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- Competition Target Systems (CTS Targets) is now available through OpticsPlanet.com. Often copied but never duplicated, CTS Targets does more than just cut steel, they engineer superior target solutions with quality, ease of use, and longevity in mind. The feature-rich designs of CTS Targets have been available through other online retailers and conventional storefronts, and now OpticsPlanet.com has added CTS Targets to their list of over 2,800 available brands.

This expansion of availability is a major advantage to the consumer as currently some of the 54 CTS products listed on Optics Planet are available with free shipping: gongs, stands, hangers, and targets as well as the popular T-Post Pro Hanger.

“We continue providing our customers with innovative, exceptional products and CTS Targets is no exception, ” Says Alex Royzen, Supply Chain Development Manager at OpticsPlanet, Inc. “CTS gives our customers an effective, durable, AR500 steel target selection at a price point our customers will appreciate!”

“As demand for our products has increased, so has the complexity of distribution. Copycats have tried to fill gaps,” said CTS Targets President Matt Teske, “with Optics Planet consumers know they are getting an authentic CTS Target.”

CTS Targets designs and manufactures AR500 steel targets and mounting solutions for both the recreational and professional shooter. Setting CTS apart is a sharp focus on design quality and shooter safety as demonstrated with their innovative target mounting solutions.

About Competition Target Systems:

Combining high quality AR500 steel with simple, yet innovative designs, CTS Targets has created superior quality products at an exceptional value. Every CTS product is 100% American engineered, sourced, and manufactured.

This post Competition Target Systems Now Available on Optics Planet appeared first on AmmoLand.com Shooting Sports News .

via AmmoLand.com Shooting Sports News
Competition Target Systems Now Available on Optics Planet

My last post about backups was a while ago. Although it is still valid, it’s not advisable to use it as daily backup. For that we can use XtraBackup.

With XtraBackup, you can take online backups without interrupt the server workload(it will require a small lock to take binlog coordinates).
Today I’ll show how to take a complete backup.

Install:

To install it, I advise you to use Yum / Apt-get repos:

Centos / Redhat:

sudo yum install http://ift.tt/2jkmf2a
sudo yum install percona-xtrabackup-24

Debian / Ubuntu

wget http://ift.tt/2jqiETr(lsb_release -sc)_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i percona-release_0.1-4.$(lsb_release -sc)_all.deb
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install percona-xtrabackup-24

Backup:

To take the backup, we will use innobackupex script:

innobackupex --user=root --password='Passw0rd!' /backups/

The script will produce some log messages, we need to verify if it ends with :

...
170429 21:07:12 completed OK!

Parallel:

Xtrabackup allows the copy of the tables to be done in parallel, you can set the number of threads by using the –parallel option:

innobackupex --user=root --password='Passw0rd!' --parallel=8 /backups/

We can observe that each threads receives a number which is displayed within []:

170429 21:12:27 [05] Copying ./ibdata1 to /backups/2017-04-29_21-12-27/ibdata1
170429 21:12:27 [06] Copying ./mysql/plugin.ibd to /backups/2017-04-29_21-12-27/mysql/plugin.ibd
170429 21:12:27 [06]        ...done
170429 21:12:27 [02] Copying ./mysql/servers.ibd to /backups/2017-04-29_21-12-27/mysql/servers.ibd
170429 21:12:27 [02]        ...done
170429 21:12:27 [03] Copying ./mysql/help_topic.ibd to /backups/2017-04-29_21-12-27/mysql/help_topic.ibd
170429 21:12:27 [07] Copying ./mysql/help_category.ibd to /backups/2017-04-29_21-12-27/mysql/help_category.ibd
170429 21:12:27 [07]        ...done

Compress:

Xtrabackup also allows you to compress your backup using –compress and –compress-threads (normally set to the same number of –parallel threads):

innobackupex --user=root --password='Passw0rd!' --parallel=8 --compress --compress-threads=8 /backups/

For example, a backup that takes 702M of disk space, now takes only 387M:

702M	/backups/2017-04-29_21-12-27
387M	/backups/2017-04-29_21-15-53

Restoring:

To restore the backup, we need to (1) decompress it with –decompress option in case we have compressed it before (we will require qpress for that) and (2) apply the log of transactions that happened while the backup was been taken (Basically a crash recovery that InnoDB does when MySQL starts):

innobackupex --decompress /backups/2017-04-29_21-18-04/
innobackupex --apply-log --use-memory=4G /backups/2017-04-29_21-18-04

To speed up the –apply-log process, we can configure –use-memory, which will behave like InnoDB Buffer Pool.

All .qp files will remain on the directory, we need to manually remove then. We can do it using below command:

find /backups/2017-04-29_21-18-04  -name "*.qp" -exec rm -f {} \;

Now we only need to copy the restored backup to the MySQL datadir and configure mysql as owner and group owner of all files in the folder.

That is it for today. Remember, if you don’t test your backups, YOU DON’T HAVE A BACKUP!

via Planet MySQL
MySQL Online Backup with xtrabackup

Last week, the Georgetown Village School District in Georgetown, Ohio voted unanimously to allow teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns beginning in the fall. According to the board’s superintendent, parents asked the board to take up the issue.

“When does help come? Every 30 seconds 2 people die. That’s not acceptable. I don’t know when the 911 call gets made. I don’t know when law enforcement arrives,” he asked. “It’s not that they don’t want to help but when do they help and I want to keep my kids safe.”

In order to carry on district campuses, teachers and faculty must be trained and certified. They must also be concealed carry permit holders.

During the training, staff will learn how to de-escalate situations before having to utilize their firearm. They will also receive first responder and first aid training.

From WKRC Cincinnati:

The Superintendent says the training that staff will have to go through goes far beyond staff and teachers carrying guns in school and he says the school district is partnering with Georgetown’s police department for the training.

The training will be conducted by Tactical Defense Institute over a three day period and cost $1,500 per person. In order to carry on campuses, faculty must receive a certification of completion from Tactical Defense Institute.

The school board’s decision is part of a yearly upgrade and update to the school’s safety plan.

Ohio now has around 40 school districts that allow faculty and staff to carry firearms on school campuses.

Watch Local 12‘s coverage of the story:

The post Ohio Teachers, Faculty Can Now Conceal Carry on Campus appeared first on Bearing Arms.

via Bearing Arms
Ohio Teachers, Faculty Can Now Conceal Carry on Campus

Columbus is the best city in Ohio to start a business, according to a new ranking, but that doesn’t amount to much nationally.
The city ranked No. 1 in Ohio in WalletHub’s Best Large Cities to Start a Business, but only No. 88 in the country, according to the financial website’s number-crunching.
WalletHub looked at 18 factors in three categories and Columbus got its worst score for business environment, which looked at things such as startups per capita, the growth in small businesses, the five-year…

via Columbus Business News – Local Columbus News | Business First of Columbus
Columbus rated No. 1 in Ohio for starting a business (but if you want cheap rent, head to Toledo)