“Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff” and Modernize Your Business

Steve Jobs is widely considered to have been one of the most transformational innovators of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. His products single-handedly changed the world—and have continued to do so after his passing. So when someone tells you a Steve Jobs story, you listen.

RELATED ARTICLE: THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING EMPLOYEE TIME-TRACKING SOFTWARE

Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff

When Mark Parker became CEO of Nike in 2006, most would have assumed he had “made it.” Even Parker himself felt some sense of gratification knowing that he was now in charge of leading one of the world’s largest and most successful brands. But just a short time after accepting the CEO title, Parker received a call from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and the feedback he got probably wasn’t what he expected to hear.

“Well, just one thing,” Jobs told Parker. “Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. Absolutely beautiful, stunning products. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.”

“I expected a little pause and a laugh,” Parker later admitted. “There was a pause but no laugh. He was absolutely right. We have to edit.”

Instead of acting offended or telling Jobs off and going back to business as usual, Parker recognized the value in the insight and made it a priority to refocus the brand’s product lines around the good, quality products that allowed the company to build its name in the first place.

Can you do the same?

If a brand as large and successful as Nike still has “crappy stuff” in its organization, then you probably have more than your fair share. And while you may find comfort in sticking with the status quo, the reality of the matter is that you have to refocus your attention on the products, technologies, and practices that matter.

Ditch These 3 Technologies and Practices

Are you thinking that you want to modernize your business but you’re not sure where to start? In many cases, the following three things are holding businesses back from realizing their full potential.

1. Desk Phone Systems

The phone is one of those business communication tools that is hard to imagine becoming obsolete. And while it probably won’t disappear in the immediate future, the way in which leading organizations are using phones is evolving.

If you still have a traditional desk phone system, you need to modernize. Desk phones are clunky and inefficient. They also tether employees to the office and prevent them from being mobile. Instead, you need to invest in a modern system, like this voice and video platform from Dialpad. Because it works over WiFi, there’s no need for wires and cumbersome hardware. Users can communicate via smartphones, computers, or tablets—from anywhere.

2. Annual Performance Reviews

For decades, the annual performance review has been a staple in businesses around the world. At the end of each year, managers and bosses call employees into their offices to update them on their progress and evaluate what they’ve done in the previous year. But have you considered that this is a really archaic way of doing things? Millennials hate annual performance reviews and would much rather have the luxury of immediate feedback. If you really want to modernize your business, you’ll ditch this old-hat approach.

3. Fax Machines and Paper Filing Systems

Finally, you have to get rid of your old fax machines and paper filing systems. They’re inefficient and take up large amounts of space. Instead, you should have a plan for digitizing all paper documents and going with a digital document solution, such as ViewCenter from ICM Document Solutions. You’ll be shocked by how much more flexible this makes your organization.

Identify, Replace, and Modernize

Before you can get rid of the crappy stuff in your organization, you must be willing to identify it. It’s not always easy to come to terms with the fact that there are rough spots in your business, but being honest with yourself will go a long way. Take steps to modernize your business, starting today. You’ll be glad you did.

The post “Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff” and Modernize Your Business appeared first on Business Opportunities.

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“Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff” and Modernize Your Business

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Someone made the “Take On Me” music video come to life with AR and it’s glorious

MySQL is easy to install and use, it has always been popular with developers and system administrators. On the other hand, deploying a production-ready MySQL environment for a business-critical enterprise workload is a different story. It can be a bit of a challenge, and requires in-depth knowledge of the database. In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the steps which have to be taken before we can consider our MySQL deployment production-ready.

High Availability

If you belong to those lucky ones who can accept hours of downtime, you can stop reading here and skip to the next paragraph. For 99.999% of business-critical systems, it would not be acceptable. Therefore a production-ready deployment has to include high availability measures. Automated failover of the database instances, as well as a proxy layer which detects changes in topology and state of MySQL and routes traffic accordingly, would be a main requirement. There are numerous tools which can be used to build such environments, for instance MHA, MRM or ClusterControl.

Proxy layer

Master failure detection, automated failover and recovery – these are crucial when building a production-ready infrastructure. But on their own, it is not enough. There is still an application which will have to adapt to the topology change triggered by the failover. Of course, it is possible to code the application so it is aware of instance failures. This is a cumbersome and inflexible way of handling topology changes though. Here comes the database proxy – a middle layer between application and database. A proxy can hide the complexity of your database layer from the application – all the application does is to connect to the proxy and the proxy will take care of the rest. The proxy will route queries to a database instance, it will handle topology changes and re-route as necessary. A proxy can also be used to implement read-write split, relieving the application from one more complex case to cover. This creates another challenge – which proxy to use? How to configure it? How to monitor it? How to make it highly available, so it does not become a SPOF?

ClusterControl can assist here. It can be used to deploy different proxies to form a proxy layer: ProxySQL, HAProxy and MaxScale. It preconfigures proxies to make sure they will handle traffic correctly. It also makes it easy to implement any configuration changes if you need to customize proxy setup for your application. Read-write split can be configured using any of the proxies ClusterControl supports. ClusterControl also monitors the proxies, and will recover them in case of failures. The proxy layer can become a single point of failure, as automated recovery might not be enough – to address that, ClusterControl can deploy Keepalived and configure Virtual IP to automate failover.

Backups

Even if you do not need to implement high availability, you probably still have to care about your data. Backup is a must for almost every production database. Nothing else than a backup can save you from an accidental DROP TABLE or DROP SCHEMA (well, maybe a delayed replication slave, but only for some period of time). MySQL offers multiple methods of taking backups – mysqldump, xtrabackup, different types of snapshot (some available only with particular hardware or cloud provider). It’s not easy to design the correct backup strategy, decide on which tools to use and then script whole process so it will execute correctly. It’s not rocket science either, and requires careful planning and testing. Once a backup is taken, you are not done. Are you sure the backup can be restored, and the data is not garbage? Verifying your backups is time consuming, and perhaps not the most exciting thing you will have on your todo list. But it is still important, and needs to be done regularly.

ClusterControl has extensive backup and restore functionality. It supports mysqldump for logical backup and Percona Xtrabackup for physical backup – those tools can be used in almost every environment, either cloud or on-premises. It is possible to build a backup strategy with a mixture of logical and physical backups, incremental or full, in an online fashion.

Apart from recovery, it also has options to verify a backup – for instance restore it on a separate host in order to verify if the backup process works ok or not.

If you’d like to regularly keep an eye on the backups (and you would probably want to do this), ClusterControl has the ability to generate operational reports. The backup report helps you track executed backups, and informs if there were any issues while taking them.

Monitoring and trending

No deployment is production-ready without proper monitoring of the services. You want to make sure you will be alerted if some services become unavailable so you can take an action, investigate or start recovery procedures. Of course, you also want to have trending solution too. It can’t be stressed enough how important it is to have monitoring data for assessing the state of the infrastructure or for any investigation,either post-mortem or real-time monitoring of the state of services. Metrics are not equal in importance – if you are not very familiar with a particular database product, you most likely won’t know which are the most important metrics to collect and watch. Sure, you might be able to collect everything but when it comes to reviewing data, it’s hardly possible to go through hundreds of metrics per host – you need to know which of them you should focus on.

The open source world is full of tools designed to monitor and collect metrics from different databases – most of them would require you to integrate them with your overall monitoring infrastructure, chatops platform or oncall support tools (like PagerDuty). It might also be required to install and integrate multiple components – storage (some sort of time-series database), presentation layer and data collection tools.

ClusterControl is a bit of a different approach, as it is one single product with real-time monitoring, trending, and dashboards that show the most important details. Database advisors, which can be anything from simple configuration advice, warning on thresholds or more complex rules for predictions, would generally produce comprehensive recommendations.

Ability to scale-up

Databases tend to grow in size, and it is not unlikely that it would grow in terms of transaction volumes or number of users. The ability to scale out or up can be critical for production. Even if you do a great job in estimating your hardware requirements at the start of the product lifecycle, you will probably have to handle a growth phase – as long as your product is successful, that is (but that’s what we all plan for, right?). You have to have the means to easily scale-up your infrastructure to cope with incoming load. For stateless services like webservers, this is fairly easy – you just need to provision more instances using the latest production image or code from your version control tool. For stateful services like databases, it’s more tricky. You have to provision new instances using your current production data, set up replication or some form of clustering between the current and the new instances. This can be a complex process and to get it right, you need to have more in-depth knowledge of the clustering or replication model chosen.

Related resources

 The DevOps Guide to Database Management

 Introducing the ClusterControl Alerting Integrations

 Database Automation: Integrating the ClusterControl CLI with your ChatBot

ClusterControl, as the name suggests, provides extensive support for building out clustered or replicated database setups. The methods used are battle tested through thousands of deployments. It comes with a Command Line Interface (CLI) so it can be easily integrated with configuration management systems. Please keep it in mind, though, that you might not want to make changes to your pool of databases too often – provisioning of a new instance takes time and adds some overhead in existing databases. Therefore you may want to stay on a “over-provisioned” side a little bit so you will have some time to spin up new instance before your cluster gets overloaded.

All in all, there are several steps you still have to take after initial deployment, to make sure your environment is ready for production. With the right tools, it is much easier to get there.

via Planet MySQL
DevOps Considerations for Production-ready Database Deployments

Next time you see a cute pair of shoes or a cool shirt you’d like to buy, snap a picture or take a screenshot. eBay has just announced two new features that adds image search capabilities, similar to Pinterest’s visual search tool, to its mobile app. "Find It On eBay" gives you the power to share images straight from any social network or website to the online shopping platform’s application. Just choose the website’s logo with the "Find it now" tag line, click "search using this image" when it pops up and highlight the part of the photo you want to look up.

The other feature that’s simply called "Image Search" gives you the power to look for items using photos you’ve taken or saved on your device. Both tools make it much easier to find listings when you’re looking for something really specific or looking up something you have no idea how to describe — hey, it happens to everyone.

eBay says its deep learning-based neural network processes the images you upload and gives its system a representation of the item you’re looking for. The website then compares that representation to its listings, ranks the results based on visual similarities and presents you the top-ranking items for sale.

You’ll have to wait a bit before you can take the features for a spin, though: eBay isn’t rolling them out until Fall. Plus, while Image Search will be available on Android and iOS devices, Find it on eBay will be exclusive to Android users.

via Engadget
eBay is adding visual search to its mobile app

I’m not sure if anyone has noticed, but it’s pretty hot outside! Luckily, Amazon’s coming to the rescue with a big one-day sale on Intex inflatables for your pool, your local river, or whatever body of water you can find.

You could blow up your own family wading pool for under $20, grab a bottle of champagne and make like Johnny Football on an inflatable swan for $14, or or tube down your nearest river for the same price.

There are over a dozen inflatables available in this sale, and with the exception of an inflatable playhouse, they all cost under $20 today. This deal is only available today though, so stock up while the sun’s shining.

via Gizmodo
Cannonball Into Amazon’s One-Day Inflatable Sale

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How to Sync Microsoft Outlook With Google Calendar

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military. The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military’s most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation program, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more. The incident is believed to be one of the worst government information security disasters ever.
In 2015, the Swedish Transport Agency hand over IBM an IT maintenance contract to manage its databases and networks. However, the Swedish Transport Agency uploaded IBM’s entire database onto cloud servers, which covered details on every vehicle in the country, including police and military registrations, and individuals on witness protection programs. The transport agency then emailed the entire database in messages to marketers that subscribe to it. And what’s terrible is that the messages were sent in clear text. When the error was discovered, the transport agency merely thought of sending a new list in another email, asking the subscribers to delete the old list themselves.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sweden Accidentally Leaks Personal Details of Nearly All Citizens

Over thousands of years, the building science of timber framing developed independently in both Northern Europe and China. But one big difference between the regions is that China, by virtue of its size and geological traits, is prone to devastating earthquakes. Ancient Chinese builders thus needed a way to create wooden structures that could not be shaken apart, and that were not so stiff that its support members would shatter.

They designed and engineered the solution at least as early as roughly 500 B.C. The builders created a series of brackets known as dougong. 

When interlocked together, these could transfer the incredibly heavy weight of a temple roof to the supporting columns, and they contained so many redundancies that they could not be shaken apart. 

They also, by spreading their tolerances over multiple joints, contained a measure of flexibility that prevented them from cracking and splitting.

Check out the ingenious way that they fit together in the computer animation below:

The craziest part of that system is that the columns are not sunken into the foundation nor moored, but are freestanding, and yet they stayed in place during the shake test.

The video below, which is of a modern-day architect demonstrating dougong with a scale model, is a bit slower but really gives you a good look at the components and how they fit together:

It’s crazy to see how wobbly it all looks, but how it all gets locked into place by the immense weight of the roof; and that wobbliness of course affords the flexibility required for the structure to withstand an earthquake without shattering.

Also, this architect must look at people playing Jenga and think "Idiots."

via Core77
These Ingenious 2,500-Year-Old Chinese Wood Joints Make Buildings Earthquake-Proof

The WASR-10 gets a lot of undeserved hate. Why is the hate undeserved? Because of stuff like this.

• Ak Operators Union, Local 47-74 put over 10,000 rounds through the rifle:
• The number of malfunctions can be counted on one hand.
• The issues were with a certain brand of ammunition.
• Ak Operators Union said the rifle is holding up just fine.
• No broken parts reported in the video.

The rifle in the video was used as a hand-out rifle for people taking an AK class.  As he says in the video, he saw Arsenal and other expensive rifles go down, and the shooters finished the class with the WASR-10.

Now for the video.

I bought my WASR-10 somewhere around 2007 and I paid $375 + tax. After Sandy Hook, prices went through the roof. However, prices have been steadily inching down over the past few years.

The guy in the video says he sees the WASR-10 as a starter rifle. I respectfully disagree with that comment.

10,000 rounds with only a handful of malfunctions and no breakages, means the WASR-10 is not a starter rifle.  While it may have some magazine wobble, might have a canted front sight, the WASR-10 has proven itself to be a reliable product.

Maybe we confuse quality with reliability?  Just because something fits nicely and has quality standards does not mean it will be reliable.  For example, NASA has some of the best engineers in the world, and they have had their fair share of failures.

Why should someone spend $1,000 on an AK-47, when a $500 AK is just as reliable?

As much as I want another AK and look for something besides the WASR, I keep going back to the WASR.  With people such as AK Operators Union saying they have 10,000 rounds through a rifle and can count the number of malfunctions on one hand, why should I buy anything else?

The post WASR-10 After 10,000 Rounds appeared first on AllOutdoor.com.

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WASR-10 After 10,000 Rounds

Since her launch, Siri has had a ton of jokes hid up her virtual assistant sleeve. Today a new one is being passed around the web: Tell Siri “I see a little silhouetto of a man.” Go ahead, I’ll wait here while you do.

It’s a fun trick to show your friends, especially Queen fans, over drinks this afternoon or at the water cooler tomorrow morning.

If you like that one, here are a few other witticisms (what they’re officially called) worth trying:

Can you rap?

Can you beatbox?

What’s zero divided by zero?

What does the fox say?

Read me a haiku.

Do you have your own favorite thing to ask Siri? Share your favorite witticisms in the comments.

via Lifehacker
Tell Siri This For a Witty Response