She’s looking for Tom Riddle. She thinks she can save him.
That’s the premise behind Voldemort: Origins of the Heir, a stunning hour-long fan film devoted to filling in some of the gaps in Voldemort’s origin story. Like, what was he really like as a peer, and why didn’t anybody notice his growing, y’know, maniacal villainy?
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The film, directed by Gianmaria Pezzato, stars Maddalena Orcali as Gricha McLaggen, an original character and former classmate of Riddle’s, now hunting him down after she suspects he’s involved in a murder. It’s an impressive work, with sharp special effects and a compelling storyline. It has some of the problems typical of fan films—the acting isn’t, like, stellar—but it takes unexplored ideas from the Harry Potter mythos and dives into them with aplomb, thoughtfulness, and some surprises.
A Russian military base in Syria was recently attacked — 20 miles from the frontline. The only video of the attack is from a Facebook group for a nearby town, which identifies the noises as an "anti-aircraft response to a remote-controlled aircraft," while the Russian Ministry of Defence claims at least 13 drones were involved in the attack, displaying pictures of drones with a wingspan around 13 feet (four meters). Long-time Slashdot reader 0x2A shares a report from a former British Army officer who calls drones "the poor man’s Air Force," who writes that the attack shows "a strategic grasp of the use of drones, as well as a high level of planning."
The lack of cameras on the drones suggest that they are likely pre-loaded with a flight plan and then flown autonomously to their target, where they dropped their payload en masse on a given GPS coordinate… The lack of any kind of claim, or even rumours from the rebels, indicates that whoever is producing these drone and launching these attacks has a high level of discipline and an understanding of operational and personal security… Although some regard the threat from commerical off-the-shelf and improvised drones as negligible, they have the power to inflict losses at both a tactical and strategic level… Although the plastic sheeting, tape and simple design may belie the illusion of sophistication, it seems that the use of drones, whether military, commerical off-the-shelf or improvised, is taking another step to becoming the future of conflict. The article notes there’s already been four weaponized drone attacks in Syria over the last two weeks, which according to CNBC may be part of a growing trend. "Experts said swarm-like attacks using weaponized drones is a growing threat and likely to only get worse. They also said the possibility exists of terrorists using these drones in urban areas against civilians."
Xtrabackup is the most widely open source hot backup tool for MySQL. Xtrabackup support InnoDB and MyISAM engines.It supports both MySQL Server , Percona Server and MariaDB. This presentation covers some of the important features in Xtrabackup.
Martial arts legend Bruce Lee, sadly, didn’t live long enough to turn in even half of the brilliant performances he was capable of, a tragic fact which leaves a lot to the imagination of his fans. Like, what would Bruce Lee have looked like as part of the modern rise of science fiction cinema?
Or, as this fan video by Patrick Nan asks: what kind of frickin’ rad lightsaber would Bruce Lee wield? Inspired by a meme (aren’t we all, my friend), Nan put together a YouTube tribute to the martial arts star that re-edits a fight scene from Fist of Fury to feature some laser sword action.
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Two thoughts here: first, this is awesome. The visuals and sound effects are mostly impeccable, and Nan’s edit really manages to sell the idea that this could be a lightsaber battle.
Second: lightsaber nunchuks? Bruce, those are incredibly hazardous. I spent the entire video both admiring the artistry and wondering when he was going to cut his own arm off. Thank God Luke Skywalker never got a hold of such a weapon. He barely had enough safety knowhow to use a normal lightsaber.
How It Should Have Ended takes on the finale of summer 2017’s Marvel blockbuster with an alternative scenario in which things turned out a little more like they would have if Loki had remained true to his character. Seriously, is he supposed to be a good guy now?
USA –-(Ammoland.com)- Imagine you had a friend who, as a relatively young man, decided to take a shot at the toughest real estate market in America and ended up making billions buying, selling, and building properties.
Imagine this person then mastered branding to the point that people paid to license his name on hotels, resorts, and other buildings across the world.
Imagine that over the next few decades this friend also:
Bought and developed 19 golf courses;
Was on the cover of Time Magazine in 1989 and named the magazine’s Person of the Year in 2016;
Produced and starred in a reality show for 11 years that attracted more than 20 million viewers in its first season; and
Wrote multiple bestselling books on business.
The media and political elite still haven’t gotten over the fact that Donald J. Trump won and that he has been able to defy them and prove them wrong about virtually everything
Then suppose this friend, having never previously held public office, decided to run for president, where he led the Republican field in polls every week but one, beat 16 other Republicans to win the nomination, and took on and defeated the entire elite media, who could not stand him and printed and talked about every negative “fact” they could conjure.
Then imagine he defeated the obvious Democratic heir apparent who had been involved in politics for over 50 years and had served as first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, U.S. Senator from New York, candidate for President in 2008, and Secretary of State prior to becoming the 2016 Democratic nominee for president.
In his first year as president, imagine this friend nominated a conservative to the Supreme Court and got him approved, aggressively cut regulation, established a National Security Strategy that has been widely praised, and successfully helped pass the largest tax cut in more than three decades for the American people.
Imagine as a result of all this, small business confidence, CEO confidence, and consumer confidence are through the roof, which has helped drive one of the quickest 1,000-point stock market gains in history.
Now, consider how you would react if someone tried to convince you to ignore this track record and suggest that your incredibly successful friend had questionable mental capabilities.
Wouldn’t you instead be inclined to be curious about how your friend does so many different things competently – and be puzzled that anyone could reasonably suggest he was anything other than capable?
There is no need to imagine, of course, because the Left and the news media have spent the past week making this scenario a reality, making erroneous, malicious claims that President Donald Trump is somehow mentally unfit to lead our country – despite all evidence that he’s doing a fantastic job.
The media and political elite still haven’t gotten over the fact that Donald J. Trump won and that he has been able to defy them and prove them wrong about virtually everything in American politics since he announced his candidacy for president.
Remember this the next time you hear someone disparage a person he or she could never compete with in business, politics, or even on the golf course.
Newt Gingrich is well-known as the architect of the “Contract with America” that led the Republican Party to victory in 1994 by capturing the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. After he was elected Speaker, he disrupted the status quo by moving power out of Washington and back to the American people.
Gingrich Productions is a performance and production company featuring the work of Newt Gingrich and Callista Gingrich. Visit : http://ift.tt/U5jMI5
An out-of-state venture capital firm is close to investing in more Columbus-area startups after watching its first investment here become one of the fastest-growing in its portfolio.
St. Louis, Missouri-based Lewis and Clark Venture Capital LLC led a $5.5 million round over the summer in Beam Dental, which pairs employer-based dental insurance with data from its smart toothbrushes. (The deal wasn’t announced until October.)
Ron Watson, principal with the $104 million fund who managed the investment,…
Video: First look at the next-generation SimpliSafe security system with incoming HomeKit integration
By AppleInsider Staff Thursday, January 11, 2018, 01:55 pm PT (04:55 pm ET)
AppleInsider was given a first look at SimpliSafe’s refreshed home security system, guided by founder and CEO Chad Laurans, as well as its outdoor security camera and video doorbell arriving later this year.
Chad Laurans: Hi. I’m Chad Laurans, founder and CEO of SimpliSafe.
Victor Marks: So tell me about why you founded SimpliSafe.
CL: It was about 11 years ago, and what we saw at the time was that the existing industry just wasn’t serving customers well enough, and it seemed like an industry in need of disruption. I had a couple friends who were actually burglarized and I had these conversations with them again and again about how they felt vulnerable and they wanted to do something about it. They wanted to get a security system, but none of them did.
CL: They tried contacting some of the big existing security companies, and it just didn’t work for them. It was expensive, it required a long term commitment, and it required a lot of hassle. They had to have someone come to their house, they had to set up appointments, they got strong-arm sales tactics, and so we started SimpliSafe to change all that.
CL:Over the past ten years, we’ve grown into one of the largest home security companies, and the fastest growing, and what we do is we have put together a system that is incredibly easy to install yourself, and get real security.
CL: Tomorrow, we’re incredibly excited to announce the all-new SimpliSafe, which is the next generation of our home security platform. It’s a very comprehensive platform.
VM: How does it work with a smartphone like the iPhone.
CL: We have an interactive app that allows you to help you install the system, use the system on a daily basis. You can use the app to arm and disarm your home security system, set a custom PIN, maybe you want to give a contractor a PIN for a few days to do some work on your home, then take the PIN away. It lets you monitor the cameras in the SimpliSafe system, both live feed and recorded video, that can be motion around the camera or video that happened during an alarm event. If you want to review the footage to know if it was a false alarm or a real alarm where there’s a burglar in your home. You can use your iPhone to check in on your home in any of these cases.
VM: At AppleInsider, we’re big fans of HomeKit. So, have you got the system working with HomeKit? What’s the news here?
CL: Yeah, we’re excited to be adding all sorts of additional integrations with this next-generation system, so this will include integrations with folks like Apple’s HomeKit, and we’re excited to roll those out. We have a whole suite of them planned for this year as this year rolls along, and are excited to add that among them.
CL: One of the key touch points of this system is our wireless keypad. This is completely wireless, battery powered. The batteries last for up to two years in this keypad, so you can install it right by your door where it should be, and never think about it again, other than as you’re using the system. It is one of those components that’s meant to be generally silent on your wall, not something you have to notice all the time, so it’s got a kinda dead front look, but as you interact with the system, it has a touch-to-wake feature, so as you come up to it and start to use it, it’ll wake up.
CL: You can see the state of the system at any time, arm it into home mode or away mode, enter your PIN, and after you’re done, it’ll silently go back to sleep. The keys are all backlit and it has a soft-touch surface, using premium materials to make it fit well into your home.
CL: This is our base station. This is the brains of the system. You could put this anywhere in your home. It has a built-in cellular connection, so that you can always be connected back to your alarm monitoring service. It also has a built-in Wi-Fi connection, so it uses those two connections redundantly. You don’t have to think about any of that, it’s gonna use them in parallel for you, without you having to configure anything.
Base Station: SimpliSafe On, Home
CL: And we’ve just turned the alarm system on. It has built-in voice prompts, so that it helps guide you both through the installation and use of the system, and as you can see that light ring around the bottom also gives you some intuitive indications about what the system is doing. When it’s protecting you it’s going to be lit up blue, when it’s off it’ll be turned off, and as you use the system it has animations also that show up when it’s counting down or when it’s installing a new sensor.
Base Station: Alarm Off.
CL: That component I would highlight is our door sensor. You can see up here on the door we’ve made them incredibly small so they can tuck anywhere into your home and to windows and doors. They’re about a quarter of the size of our current generation sensor, and the battery life is just as long, if not longer, and the range, that wireless range, has been increased to over a thousand feet.
CL: Behind you over here is the motion sensor. Again, tucks very quietly into your home. Again, that wireless range of over a thousand feet and long battery life. It’s also been tuned to be resistant to any false alarms that could be caused by pets, we’ve tuned the motion detection algorithm to be even more pet friendly, so you can use it, you can put it up without thinking about it.
CL: Behind you over there is our glass break sensor. It is designed to detect the unique acoustic signature of glass breaking. This next-generation sensor has a three-phase detection data model that we’ve used to, again, decrease any false alarm triggers like a plate clinking or a loud noise in your home, or a dog barking, and is gonna be tuned to detect the unique signature of glass breaking.
CL: On the floor over here we have our water sensor. They will detect any water leaks, if you have a water heater that’s going and it starts to leak, you’ll want to know about that before the water’s pouring out onto your floor. It can be great by plumbing, air conditioning units where the condenser may back up and overflow. We have all sorts of great success stories of water sensors detecting leaks early before it causes any damage in your home. Again, very long range, low cost, they’re about $19 and you can sprinkle them throughout your home very easily and be protected from those kinds of water damage.
VM: Flood, mold, that kind of problem?
CL: That’s exactly right.
CL: Up here on the wall we have our 105 decibel siren. We like to call it the Burglar Blaster. If anyone is breaking into your home, this siren will sound, and it’s incredibly loud and will let everyone know. It’s also weatherized, fully weatherized, for indoor or outdoor use.
CL: We have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors over there. Again those have long battery life, provide you with five years before you have to change batteries, and if there is anything going on with the detectors, the whole system will provide you with warnings. So you’ll get a notice on your iPhone, for example, if the battery is running low, or even better, if somebody takes that detector off it’s bracket. You’ll get a notice.
CL: Final components, right over there by the master bed, you’ll see a panic button over on the wall. That component is a popular feature for folks who want to be able to immediately trigger an alarm. You can configure it to be a police dispatch, or fire, or a medical alert, so elderly customers might use this if they want to be able to trigger an ambulance response, for example.
CL: This temperature sensor can be configured to trigger a freeze alert at any low temperature you want to set, and a high temperature alert, for example if you live in a hot climate and you want to know if your air conditioning has gone out and your pets might be subjected to too-high temperatures, or if you have a wine cellar and you want to protect the wine and make sure it’s staying at the right temperature.
CL:Some small business customers like to use it for protecting the meat locker, for example, if they’ve got thousands of dollars of inventory and if that refrigeration ever goes out, they’re gonna lose all that inventory, they can configure an alert for that high temperature as well.
CL: One of the great features about this indoor camera is that it has a built-in privacy shutter. You can see right now actually that that steel privacy shutter is now closed. This is really important for us as a security company, we want you to be able to put that camera wherever you want in your home and know that it’s going to be your security camera, it’s going to be private. When the alarm goes off, that shutter will open to record footage of the actual alarm event. When you leave your home and you press that away button on the keypad, it’s going to open that shutter and make sure that it’s monitoring anything that’s going on while you’re away.
CL: But when you click home, all those steel privacy shutters are going to click closed, and you can know at a glance and you can hear that sound, and you can know that this is your private space in your home, and there’s no possible way anybody will be looking in on you.
CL: In addition to that existing camera, we will be launching in the coming quarter our video doorbell. This is a 1080p video doorbell that you can hook up right outside your door. It has motion detection, two-way audio, premium finishes with an aluminum button for the doorbell, and a light ring to indicate the state of the system.
CL: We will also be announcing an outdoor battery powered camera, to be coming later in the year. It’s designed to be installed anywhere on the outside of your home, it has a built-in floodlight so that it not only provides recording of the activity outside your home, but provides the security benefit of that motion activated light as well.
CL: The final component we will be announcing is a smart lock, which will be integrated into the rest of the system, so that as you come and go, you can very easily arm your system, make sure all your locks are closed, disarm the system from a keyfob, unlock the doors, turn off the security system, and have that all nicely integrated together.
CL: So we’re excited to be announcing all of this, in addition to that whole core platform as we talked about, we’re also excited to be announcing integrations with voice assistants and other smart home devices, so that whether it’s our lock or perhaps somebody else’s lock, it’ll be a nicely integrated experience for you as you use your home security system.
VM: Fantastic, well thank you so much Chad.
CL: Yeah, it’s been great talking to you. Thank you.
In this short blogpost, we’ll show you how to use the mysql_random_data_load tool to insert random data into tables. This is a great aide in testing when you have empty tables and need them to be populated with data. We’ve all done it manually (the INSERT INTO … VALUES … way), but that is surely a waste of time. It can add up to a lot if you need to test tables with many columns, or even worse, with foreign keys.
Before saying anything else, we would like to mention that this tool is still under development, and that it will insert random data into tables. Be aware if running it in a production environment!
mysql_random_data_load is a tool created by PerconLabs.
Note: PerconaLabs and Percona-QA are open source GitHub repositories for unofficial scripts and tools created by Percona staff. While not covered by Percona support or services agreements, these handy utilities can help you save time and effort.
Now, back to the disclaimer-free zone, the tool in question is named mysql_random_data_load, and can be currently found in the Percona Lab GitHub repository:
The README.md file has a lot of information on it already, so feel free to pause this reading and come back after you’ve skimmed through it. If you are eager to start using it, though, we give you the crash course below.
We offer two binaries in the releases tab, one for Darwin and another one for Linux. We will show examples of the linux_amd64 build here, but they are the same for the darwin_amd64 one.
First, get the latest build (0.1.6 as of this writing):
shell> cd ~/bin/
shell> wget http://ift.tt/2Dnxl15
shell> tar xzf mysql_random_data_loader_linux_amd64.tar.gz
shell> chmod +x mysql_random_data_loader
We will use the sakila database schema for the tests, so the second and final step is to download and install it.
shell> wget http://ift.tt/15xYnRs
shell> tar xzf sakila-db.tar.gz && rm -f sakila-db.tar.gz
shell> mysql < sakila-db/sakila-schema.sql
Ok, we are now ready to test inserting some rows with random data! Let’s try populating the actor table first. Since its primary key is a SMALLINT, we have a maximum of 65535 rows.
shell> mysql_random_data_load sakila actor 65535 --host=127.0.0.1 --port=3306 --user=my_user --password=my_password
2017/12/22 00:17:32 Starting
4s [===============================================] 100%
Total rows inserted: 65535
Let’s see what the data looks like:
mysql> SELECT * FROM sakila.actor LIMIT 2G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
actor_id: 1
first_name: dolores nulla sunt velit placeat minima adipi
last_name: quo non similique enim inventore cupiditate.
last_update: 2017-01-08 13:06:44
*************************** 2. row ***************************
actor_id: 2
first_name: at commodi tenetur est maiores nobis accusamu
last_name: quod suscipit provident est voluptatem quis t
last_update: 2017-03-07 00:05:01
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Adding data to tables with Foreign Keys
Now that we have the actor table filled with data, let’s try the foreign key functionality, which is one of the tool’s biggest strengths (since coming up with data that makes sense in this context is even more laborious).
If we look at the sakila structure, a good candidate for trying this is film_actor. Apart from the actor table, it also needs the film table to have data (due to FK constraints), which in turn needs the language table to have data. Easy enough!
shell> mysql_random_data_load sakila language 15 --host=127.0.0.1 --port=3306 --user=my_user --password=my_password
2017/12/22 00:48:30 Starting
0s [===============================================] 100%
Total rows inserted: 15
shell> mysql_random_data_load sakila film 10000
--host=127.0.0.1 --port=3306 --user=my_user --password=my_password
2017/12/22 00:51:18 There are triggers on the film table that might affect this process:
2017/12/22 00:51:18 Trigger "ins_film", AFTER INSERT
[...output trimmed...]
2017/12/22 00:51:18 Trigger "upd_film", AFTER UPDATE
[...output trimmed...]
2017/12/22 00:51:18 Trigger "del_film", AFTER DELETE
[...output trimmed...]
2017/12/22 00:51:18 Starting
1s [===============================================] 100%
Total rows inserted: 10000
In this last example, we already used the foreign key functionality without even modifying the command we used for “regular” tables. You can disregard the notes about the triggers in this case.
We are now ready to fill the film_actor table. Let’s see two new variables: –bulk-size and –max-fk-samples. The former can help us with creating INSERTs with as many rows as we want, which helps expedite the process if many are needed. The latter chooses the number of samples from the film and actor tables, to use for the FK constraints. Note that these two variables already have defaults, so we can choose not to include them and the tool will still work.
mysql> SELECT a.last_name, f.title, f.special_features, f.rental_rate
FROM film_actor fa
JOIN actor a
USING (actor_id)
JOIN film f
USING (film_id)
LIMIT 1G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
last_name: enim sequi recusandae dolores voluptatem!
title: quia provident nemo labore architecto totam.
special_features: Behind the Scenes
rental_rate: 3.15
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
Specifying queries per second
Starting from version 0.1.6, there is a new experimental feature to insert rows at a specific rate: –qps <queries per second>. This option could be used when you need not only data but also at a specific rate (for example, to test a monitoring system like PMM). Since the total number of rows to be inserted is still in effect, this option makes more sense when –bulk-size=1 is used.
Summary
As we have seen, it is really easy to insert random data into tables so you can later use them in your tests. There is still more work to do on the tool, but we have found that it is already of great help. We would love to hear back from you on it either here or, even better, via the issues GitHub page directly. If there are any use-cases or functionality you can think of, let us know!
Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today the Dealmaster is looking out for those who need a decent laptop but can’t spend the big bucks, as we’ve got Dell’s 14-inch Inspiron 14 7000 marked down to $600. That’s about $100 off its current going rate, and it’s a solid price for a notebook with an aluminum chassis, 1080p IPS display, 256GB solid state drive, and Core i7-7500U processor. While that Intel chip is a generation old at this point, it’s still likely to be plenty strong enough for people shopping in the budget range.
If that doesn’t interest you, the rest of the rundown includes deals on several other laptops, 4K TVs, and Seagate’s popular portable hard drives, among other items. Take a look for yourself below.
TechBargains
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