Nuffing.com

The internet is filled with websites. Billions of them. Some are useful, some, not so much. Some of the useful websites are quite popular, and rightly so—a tool like Canva is a life saver for easy web graphics. Then you have helpful tools like Down for Everyone or Just Me.

But there are many other useful websites beyond the ones you may know about. The fun is in discovering them. Fortunately, we went ahead and did the hard work for you.

1. Student.com

If you are looking for cheap accommodation as an international student, this website helps you search for a home near your college/university or a neighborhood of your preference. The site covers around 400 cities and their service is for free!

2. Inner Body

The interactive guide to human anatomy. It is an easy way to study the human anatomy classified precisely into different segments theoretically as well as visually. This is a useful website to teach students in school with interactive tools to view the various human internal systems in 2D as well as 3D.

3. KissPNG

This website provides free high definition images without the background. Search for more than one million PNG images absolutely free for your brochures, banners, websites, etc. The website provides unlimited downloads.

4. Pixlr

Edit pictures without Photoshop or any other high-end software. Pixlr is an easy to use software that doesn’t need installation and is absolutely free. You can edit your images in your browser or download the app on your phone to edit pictures without any complicated tools!

5. Pixabay

Shutterstock can be really expensive at times so here comes Pixabay to save your day. Million of royalty free images to download along with illustrations, videos, and vector graphics. All of it free! Suitable for beginner level graphic designers or non-designers who want to dabble in basic designing.

6. Privnote

Send a note that can self-destruct after it’s read. Emails sometimes cannot be private enough and sometimes you just forget to delete sensitive information. This is an easy to use website to make sure there is no data recovery of intensely sensitive notes.

7. Skyscanner

If you’re on a budget or if you’re trying to save money on your travels, this is the perfect site for you. This is a perfect website to find cheaper flights that even Google shows on its list. Apart from the flights it also shows cheaper hotels to stay in or a pocket-friendly car to hire.

8. Spotahome

Apartments or rooms for renting mid to long term. This site has people check for the properties personally, has a virtual video tour of the entire apartment as well as HD pictures of the properties. Currently, they are covering almost 30 cities in Europe. Suited best for students and backpackers in Europe.

9. Uniplaces

Another great website for students looking for affordable accommodations in Europe with a bigger list of cities and an even more helpful staff. The site is also affiliated with various colleges and universities in Europe to provide certain discounts to their students. They also provide free help for the first 7 days.

10. Bachelor Studies

This website finds a Bachelor’s Program or Degree for you according to your preference of the country, language, cost, part-time or full time and much more. It also gives a list of top destinations to study in your home country. It also enquires details about the course from your side if you create an account & add the universities in your interested list.

11. Computer Hope

Keyboard shortcuts can drastically increase your productivity. Computer Hope teaches the basic shortcut keys as well as lists the shortcuts for various software that are used by an average computer user.

12. Lucidchart

An easy to use website that converts your data into a neat diagram. A great way to make flowcharts, task flows, and even wireframes. You do not need to install any software, just get things done on the website along with collaborations with your team or colleagues using any device, across any platforms.

13. Swole

The automatic diet planner. Lets you plan your grocery list, your meals according to calories you need to consume and has a food bank that shows the detailed nutrition list of all kinds of food. Helps you keep a proper diet and divides it into different frequencies of meals according to your liking.

14. Mega

Dropbox and Google Drive limit your storage online after a mere 15 GBs. Mega gives you 50GB of free storage after you create an account. It is secure and runs on all the platforms.

15. Tinycards By Duolingo

Flashcards make learning easier, especially when it comes to languages. This fun website by Duolingo is a simpler version to remember words using flashcards and allows you to create your own deck on any topic of your choice with either text or pictures!

16. Diff Checker

A perfect way to find out if your document has been changed by someone else. It allows you to find the differences between two pieces of text and compare them. Just got an updated piece back from your editor? Use Diff Checker to find out exactly what your editor changed.

17. Dillinger

Dillinger is an online cloud-enabled HTML5 Markdown editor. It is mobile friendly and provides offline storage. Using Dillinger, you can export clean markdown to HTML, drag and drop images and more. Dillinger is perfect for bloggers and developers alike.

18. Fast

Be it a mobile hotspot, an airport Wi-Fi, mobile data or your office broadband. Check the current speed of your internet connection on this website that is minimal and to-the-point.

19. Dictation.io

Dictate your emails and documents in Google Chrome with any language you speak. Dictation.io accurately transcribes speech to text in real time. It allows you to add smileys, paragraphs and even punctuations using the voice commands!

20. FlightStats

Be it a globetrotter, student, businessman or just a concerned parent. This website allows you to track any flight all over the world from anywhere. Just enter the flight number and get the real-time location or status of the flight!

21. Every Time Zone

Calculating different time zones can be a headache most of the time. This site is a less confusing view of the world’s time zones with reference to yours.

22. PDF Escape

This PDF editor lets you easily edit a PDF or a PDF form online without using Adobe Acrobat or any other software. Did we mention that it’s free?

23. Infogram

This website not only allows you to create stunning infographics but also lets you create charts, reports, social media visuals and a custom dashboard to keep track of the inner as well as outer workings of your business.

24. Snopes

If you are the one looking for online deals to save money then this website is perfect for you. Snopes allows you to find out whether that email deal received is real or just another scam!

25. Slide.ly

A do-it-yourself tool to make your own promotional videos. It is the only digital video service that provides you with premium video footages, licensed music, and amazing copy to create instant promotional videos at affordable prices.

Be a Part of the Web Culture

These are just some websites on the web you can use to cover little needs here and there. The internet machine chugs on every day, so bookmark our previous collection of the most useful websites.

Read the full article: 25 More Insanely Useful Websites You Might Need Someday

via MakeUseOf.com
25 More Insanely Useful Websites You Might Need Someday

GRINNELL, Iowa –-(Ammoland.com)- Brownells adds some real pop to an already-explosive lineup, making its exclusive Lewis Machine & Tool M203 37mm Launchers available for sale.

Unveiled during the 2018 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits in early May in Dallas, Texas, the Brownells M203 37mm Launchers are close copies of M203 40mm Grenade Launchers first issued to the U.S. military in 1969, and currently in military use worldwide.

Manufactured by Lewis Machine & Tool, the M203 37mm launchers attach to standard Government rifle and carbine length barrels on AR-15 style rifles, sold separately, with .625″ front diameter and a GI-compatible barrel nut, including various models of Brownells Retro Rifles chambered in 5.56.

“Lewis Machine & Tool has been a longtime supplier of the 40mm M203 Grenade Launcher to the US Military, and now Brownells is proud to partner with LMT to offer a 37mm M203 Flare Launcher to the firearms enthusiast, collector and reenactor,” said Brownells Director of Product Management Paul Levy. “Neither a destructive device or controlled FFL item, owning an authentic M203 has never been more straightforward and accessible.”

Because of their smaller, smooth bores, and inability to accept 40mm projectiles, the 37mm launchers do not require an FFL for purchase, nor any special registration to own.

Fireworks, flares, smoke rounds, “bird bombs” and other 37mm launcher ammo is widely available from several sources.

In addition to the launchers themselves, Brownells also offers accessories and the required mounting kits for the 37mm M203 Launchers:

• #100-027-797 M203 37mm Launcher. $1,599 retail
• #100-027-795 M203 Carbine Mounting Kit w/Leaf Sight. $259 retail
• #100-027-819 M203 A2 Rifle Mounting Kit w/Leaf Sight. $259 retail
• #100-027-794 M203 Under Barrel QD Mounting Bracket. $218 retail

To see the M203 37mm Launchers and accessories, visit the M203 “Launch The New You” page at Brownells.

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About Brownells

Serious About Firearms Since 1939, Brownells is the world’s leading source for guns, gun parts and accessories, ammunition, gunsmithing tools and survival gear. With a large selection of both common and hard-to-find items, and an extensive collection of videos, articles, and gun schematics, Brownells is the expert for everything shooting-related. Committed to maintaining our great traditions, Brownells has more, does more and knows more – and guarantees it all, Forever. For more information or to place an order, call 800-741-0015 or visit Brownells.com. Stay up-to-date with Brownells on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The post Brownells Launches Exclusive LMT M203 37mm Launcher appeared first on AmmoLand.com.

via AmmoLand.com
Brownells Launches Exclusive LMT M203 37mm Launcher

Holy smokes! Disrupt San Francisco 2018, which takes place September 5-7, is less than one month away. We have important news for anyone who purchased Startup Alley, Founder, Investor or Insider passes: CrunchMatch — your gateway to efficient networking — is officially open!

If you haven’t yet grabbed a pass to Disrupt SF 2018, it’s not too late to jump on the CrunchMatch train. Startup Alley, Founder and Investor passes are still available. Buy them right here.

Lest you’ve forgotten, CrunchMatch is the free business match-making service at Disrupt. Powered by Brella, this platform curates and connects early-stage startup founders and investors who share similar business interests and profiles.

The matching process is in full swing, so if you’re registered, keep your eyes peeled on your inbox for an invitation to create a CrunchMatch profile. For example, founders provide information about their early-stage startup — its tech category, funding stage, where it’s located and its current funding status. Investor profiles outline specific investment categories, the funding stage and preferred geographic locations. CrunchMatch takes all that information and works a bit of algorithmic voodoo to match compatible founders and investors based on the information they provide.

Once you receive those recommendations, the networking ball lands in your court. Send, receive, accept and decline invitations, set up appointment meetings and reserve private meeting space at the CrunchMatch meeting booth at Disrupt.

CrunchMatch also lets you act quickly in the heat of the moment. Say you see a particularly promising startup compete in Startup Battlefield. Use CrunchMatch to send an invitation and schedule a meeting in minutes. Boom! Hey, it worked for Michael Kocan, an early-stage investor at Trend Discovery.

“I get the most value from Disrupt at the intersection of CrunchMatch and Startup Battlefield. I can quickly schedule a meeting for later that day. I had over 35 meetings with startups that I pre-vetted using CrunchMatch, and I made a significant investment in one.”

He’s not the only satisfied customer. Last year at Disrupt SF 2017, CrunchMatch facilitated more than 1,300 meetings and 97 percent of participants said they’d use the service again. With more than 10,000 attendees coming to Disrupt SF 2018, we fully expect to triple the number of meetings.

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place September 5-7. Be sure to fill out your profiles when you receive your invitation. Or buy your Founder or Investor passes now. You have only three days at Disrupt SF to make potentially life-changing connections. Let CrunchMatch simplify your networking — for free.

via TechCrunch
CrunchMatch is open for business at Disrupt SF 2018

via Dilbert Daily Strip
Comic for August 07, 2018

Introduction In software terminology, multitenancy is an architectural pattern which allows you to isolate customers even if they are using the same hardware or software components. Multitenancy has become even more attractive with the widespread adoption of cloud computing. A relational database system provides a hierarchy structure of objects which, typically, looks like this: catalog … Continue reading A beginner’s guide to database multitenancy →

The post A beginner’s guide to database multitenancy appeared first on Vlad Mihalcea.

via Planet MySQL
A beginner’s guide to database multitenancy

In this blog post, we talk about how to run applications across multiple clouds (i.e. AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure) using Continuent Clustering. You want your business-critical applications to withstand node, datacenter, availability-zone or regional failures. For SaaS apps, you also want to bring data close to your application users for faster response times and a better user experience. With cross-cloud capability, Continuent also helps avoid lock-in to any particular cloud provider

From both a business and operational perspective, spreading the application across cloud environments from different vendors provides significant protection against vendor-specific outages and vendor lock-in. Running on multiple platforms provides greater bargaining leverage with each vendor, because they do not have a monopoly on your cloud operations.

Continuent Clustering is flexible and platform-agnostic, which means it allows me to run across many different environments. You may mix-and-match any and all together (i.e. one or more clusters of 3 nodes each per environment), which means I can have a cluster spanning AWS, GCS, Azure and even include my bare-metal datacenter. For cost savings, test/dev/etc. can be put on VM’s, Docker containers or even VirtualBox.

There are many challenges to running an application over large distances, including network latency for reads and getting local writes distributed to other regions.

Continuent Clustering provides a cohesive solution which addresses the various concerns when running a geo-distributed application.

Let’s look at the various factors, and how each is handled:

All of the above facets combine to make a polished diamond of a solution, fit for your company’s worldwide enterprise-quality deployment!

If you are interested in running a proof-of-concept, please contact us now!

via Planet MySQL
Multi-Cloud SaaS Applications: Speed + Availability = Success!

Scientists have uncovered a potential therapeutic target for kidney cancers that have a common genetic change.

Scientists have known this genetic change can lead to an overabundance of blood vessels, which help feed nutrients to the tumors, but the latest finding shows a potential new cancer-driving pathway.

More than 90 percent of the most common type of kidney cancer have a genetic change that leads to the loss of an important tumor suppressor gene called VHL.

In the study, which appears in Science, researchers identify a new downstream effect of this genetic change that is helping to drive kidney cancer: A protein called ZHX2 over-accumulates in these cells and helps to turn on other signals involved in cancerous growth.

The findings suggest that the protein is a potential new therapeutic target for clear cell renal cell carcinoma, which is the most common type of kidney cancer.

Losing VHL

“If you lose VHL, you will accumulate lots of this ZHX2 protein, which will turn on signals that promote kidney cancer,” says Qing Zhang, an assistant professor in the pathology & laboratory medicine and pharmacology department at the UNC School of Medicine. “This protein could be a potential therapeutic target used to treat kidney cancer on its own or in combination. The next step is to try to figure out how we can target it therapeutically.”

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma accounts for about 70 percent of all cases of kidney cancer, researchers report. Approximately 90 percent of patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma have genetic mutations or alterations that cause them to lose the function of VHL. When the function of VHL is gone, cells can accumulate signals that trigger blood vessels to grow.

“VHL is the most important tumor suppressor in clear cell renal cell carcinoma,” Zhang says. “There are extensive reports showing that from initiation to tumor progression to metastasis—during the whole process of kidney cancer development—VHL plays a central role.

“It is important to understand how the VHL loss contributes to kidney cancer, and how we can therapeutically target the downstream effects of this loss in kidney cancer.”

“We wanted to understand, once VHL is lost, what else in kidney cancer cells is promoting oncogenesis?”

There are US Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs that block cell signals involved in abnormal blood vessel production—which is a downstream effect of VHL loss—that are part of the standard of care for clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Patients can show little response to these drugs or can develop resistance, so Zhang and his colleagues wanted to search for other targets that accumulate in cells lacking VHL function that help to drive the abnormal cancerous growth.

“We wanted to understand, once VHL is lost, what else in kidney cancer cells is promoting oncogenesis?” Zhang says. “Therapeutically speaking, we’re trying to understand how we can target these novel signaling pathways, once we identify them.”

Too much ZHX2

The researchers created a screening technique to discover new molecules that might help drive cancer when VHL is lost. This led them to determine that kidney cancer cells lacking VHL usually had more ZHX2. By eliminating ZHX2 from their laboratory models, they inhibited cancer cell growth, invasion, and the cancer’s spread. In addition, they saw that it was involved with signals that can help cancer cells grow.

Belly fat cuts survival odds for women with kidney cancer

There have been major advances in the treatment of kidney cancer with the development of molecularly-targeted therapies and immune-based treatments, says William Kim, associate professor of medicine and genetics at the UNC School of Medicine. However, additional treatments are needed to reach more patients with metastatic disease.

“The vast majority of kidney cancers have mutations in VHL, so it makes it a very important gene to investigate,” Kim says. “In the last decade or more, we’ve had quite a number of major treatment advances in kidney cancer. There are nearly a dozen FDA-approved treatments now for this disease, but many of them are similar.

Androgen receptor affects the spread of kidney cancer

“Studies like this are important because they delineate the underlying biology of kidney cancer and identify novel, distinct pathways to develop drugs against.”

A US Department of Defense Career Development Award, the University Cancer Research Fund, and the National Cancer Institute funded the work.

Source: UNC-Chapel Hill

The post Too much of this protein may drive kidney cancer appeared first on Futurity.

via Futurity.org
Too much of this protein may drive kidney cancer

Topics: 

• What it was like, to meet President Trump
• President Trump’s charisma levels are off the chart impressive
• Dumbest guy on television, the Don Lemon tweet

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I fund my Periscopes and podcasts via audience micro-donations on Patreon. I prefer this method over accepting advertisements or working for a “boss” somewhere because it keeps my voice independent. No one owns me, and that is rare. I’m trying in my own way to make the world a better place, and your contributions help me stay inspired to do that.

See all of my Periscope videos here.

Find my WhenHub Interface app here.

The post Episode 165 Scott Adams: Meeting President Trump (without details of course), Don Lemon Tweet appeared first on Dilbert Blog.

via Dilbert Blog
Episode 165 Scott Adams: Meeting President Trump (without details of course), Don Lemon Tweet

Wary of data breaches and a mounting challenge for businesses to protect their digital assets, Gov. John Kasich signed into law on Friday a bill that aims to prod businesses to beef up security. Senate Bill 220 creates a legal incentive for companies to voluntarily invest in better cybersecurity to protect customer information. The law, introduced in the fall by Sen. Bob Hackett, R-London, and State Sen. Kevin Bacon, R-Minerva Park, provides a legal "safe harbor" for companies that take steps…

via Columbus Business News – Local Columbus News | Business First of Columbus
Kasich signs bill protecting businesses that invest in data security

The world of application and its related services are migrating more towards cloud, because of availability, Elasticity, Manageability etc. While moving the entire stack we need to be very cautious while migrating the database part.

Migration of DB servers is not a simple lift and shift operation, Rather it would require a proper planning and more cautious in maintaining data consistency with existing DB server and cloud server by means of native replication or by using any third party tools.

The best way to migrate the existing MySQL database to RDS, in my opinion, is by using “logical backup“. Some of the logical backup tools as below,

Mysqldump — single threaded (widely used)
Mysqlpump — Multithreaded
Mydumper — Multithreaded

In this blog, we will see about a simple workaround and best practices to migrate DB objects such as procedures, triggers, etc from a existing database server on premises to Amazon RDS (MySQL), which is a fully managed relational database service provided by AWS.

In order to provide managed services, RDS restricts certain privileges at the user level. Below are the list of restricted privileges in RDS.

• SUPER – Enable use of other administrative operations such as CHANGE MASTER TO, KILL (any connection), PURGE BINARY LOGS, SET GLOBAL, and mysqladmin debug command. Level: Global.
• SHUTDOWN – Enable use of mysqladmin shutdown. Level: Global.
• FILE – Enable the user to cause the server to read or write files. Level: Global.
• CREATE TABLESPACE – Enable tablespaces and log file groups to be created, altered, or dropped. Level: Global.

All stored programs (procedures, functions, triggers, and events) and views can have a DEFINER attribute that names a MySQL account. As shown below.

DELIMITER ;;
CREATE DEFINER=`xxxxx`@`localhost` PROCEDURE `prc_hcsct_try`(IN `contactId` INT, IN `section` VARCHAR(255))
BEGIN
IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM contacts_details WHERE contact_id = contactId) THEN
INSERT INTO contacts_details (contact_id, last_touch_source, last_touch_time) VALUES (contactId, section, NOW());
ELSE
UPDATE contacts_details SET last_touch_source = section, last_touch_time = NOW() WHERE contact_id = contactId;
END IF;
END ;;
DELIMITER ;

While restoring same on to the RDS server, since the RDS doesn’t provide a SUPER privilege to its user, The restoration fails with the below error, since it fails

ERROR 1227 (42000) at line 15316: Access denied; you need (at least one of) the SUPER privilege(s) for this operation

This will be very annoying since the restore fails at the end,

To overcome this below is the simple one-liner piped with the mysqldump command, which replaces the “DEFINER=`xxxxx`@`localhost`”, So when you are restoring the dump file, the definer will be a user which is used to restore

mysqldump -u user -p -h 'testdb.xcvadshkgfd..us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com' --single-transaction --quick --triggers --routines --no-data --events testdb | perl -pe 's/\sDEFINER=`[^`]+`@`[^`]+`//' > test_dump.sql

Below is the content from the dump file after ignoring the default “DEFINER”, the same can also be done vis AWK and SED commands too.

DELIMITER ;;
CREATE PROCEDURE `prc_contact_touch`(IN `contactId` INT, IN `section` VARCHAR(255))
BEGIN
IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM contacts_details WHERE contact_id = contactId) THEN
INSERT INTO contacts_details (contact_id, last_touch_source, last_touch_time) VALUES (contactId, section, NOW());
ELSE
UPDATE contacts_details SET last_touch_source = section, last_touch_time = NOW() WHERE contact_id = contactId;
END IF;
END ;;
DELIMITER ;

As you can see from the above the DEFINER section is completely removed.

Best practices for RDS migration,

1, Restore dump files from EC2 within the same VPC and RDS to have minimal network latency
2, Increase max_allowed_packet to 1G(max), to accommodate bigger packets
3, Dump data in parallel ,based on the instance capacity.
4, Bigger redo-log files can enhance the write performance
5, Make innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=2 for faster write with a little compromise to durability.

 

via Planet MySQL
Database Objects migration to RDS/ Aurora (AWS)