Posts

Posted on

Donald Trump Jr. Talks Second Amendment

don_silencerco_3

SilencerCo. sat down with Donald Trump, Jr., son of Presidential candidate Donald Trump, to talk about firearms and firearms-related issues.

According to SilncerCo’s CEO Joshua Waldron, meeting with Trump Jr. is a risky move for his company but it’s something they felt compelled to do because of the need to protect the Second Amendment.

“The Second Amendment for us – for me, the Second Amendment isn’t just a passion and a hobby that I do every weekend,” Trump Jr. says. “It’s a lifestyle. It’s the thing that they thought of—that our Founding Fathers thought of—after Free Speech and religion… It’s a basic right of an American.”

Check out the full video:

 

The post Donald Trump Jr. Talks Second Amendment appeared first on Bearing Arms.

via Bearing Arms
Donald Trump Jr. Talks Second Amendment

Posted on

Striker TRiLIGHT Garage Light

Striker TRiLIGHT Garage Light

Price: $85+  | Pledge

A screw-in lightbulb replacement designed to illuminate dark places like garages, unfinished basements, sheds, and more. With its adjustable LED panels, and 3000 lumen output, it can illuminate every corner of the room, and turns on and off via motion sensor.

via The Awesomer
Striker TRiLIGHT Garage Light

Posted on

Doctor Strange Has a Giant Fire Whip and an Awkward Moment in a New Trailer


GIF

There’s a new Doctor Strange trailer which shows us a lot more of Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen). Be prepared to find him a lot more charming than our hero.

There are two very good moments in this new footage: The first puts Strange in context with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Wong (Benedict Wong) saying, “The Avengers protect the world from physical dangers. We safeguard it against more mystical threats.”

And the second is Kaecilius and Strange interacting. With Kaecilius calling him “Mister” and then “Mister Doctor.” Eventually Doctor Strange manages to get out, “It’s Strange.”

And then Kaecilius hits him with “Maybe, who am I to judge?” It’s so good and Mikkelsen’s delivery is masterful. There’s never been more evidence that this movie might actually be as fun and weird as it should be.

via Gizmodo
Doctor Strange Has a Giant Fire Whip and an Awkward Moment in a New Trailer

Posted on

Avoid the startup graveyard

The startup world moves at breakneck speed — what’s hot one minute is old news the next, and it can feel like the rules of the game change every day.

For successful startups, rapid growth often attracts the attention of incubators and accelerators, and popular programs such as Y Combinator and Techstars have been instrumental in launching some startups to great success.

However, there are other options. Namely, partnering with tech “titans” — bigger technology companies that used to be startups themselves and understand the journey. These titans can offer access to resources, R&D, capital and customers, and many are now seeking to attract startups to their own ecosystems.

Business visionary Steve Case argues we are now entering the Third Wave of the internet — an era in which entrepreneurs have the ability to change the way we live by driving transformation through technology. Part of this new era requires rethinking relationships, specifically those with large organizations that have the capability to support startups’ missions to invent new business models and scale.

Founders may be wary of partnering with a large company because they don’t want to get locked into a particular platform, or, even worse, look uncool to fellow startups! But partnering with a tech titan to advance goals is actually a very smart move. Of course, careful calculation is required. How do you choose the right titan? Here are some things to look for.

What equity does its brand name hold?

Choosing a tech titan with which to partner requires an honest assessment of the company’s credibility in the market. Beyond ensuring their values are a match, it’s important to assess whether the titan’s reputation and brand cachet has the power to attract and provide you with top-tier guidance, technology and go-to-market capabilities. Another indicator to consider is the titan’s track record of dealing with startups positively and supportively.

Access to customers — and funding

Once startups build their products and obtain seed funding, they often struggle to scale and gain traction with their market. In fact, 75 percent of startups fail, according to The Global Startup Ecosystem Ranking 2015. This is due to lack of customers, not necessarily funding — although many founders spend a huge amount of time chasing their next rounds.

The best companies understand that innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and that relationships are the key to success.

To succeed, early-stage startups not only need to build the right product, but also need to gain traction with the right customer base. Titans may introduce you to their established customers, in addition to potentially investing directly. In fact, corporate venture capital is picking up speed, as many large companies that prioritize innovation are setting aside funds for external investment in companies and startups. According to the Venture Pulse Q2 2016 report published jointly by KPMG and CB Insights, VC-backed companies raised $27.4 billion across 1,886 deals in Q2 2016.

Find the titan that understands your audience

The reality facing founders today is that there is no shortage of potential partners in the market willing to hedge their bets on a group of promising startups. For that reason, selecting a titan that truly understands the market you are targeting is paramount. Key to establishing and defining this shared commitment is holding open and honest conversations during the discovery period of your relationship, setting joint milestones and remaining true to your vision but open to suggestions. This will help you determine if a titan is willing to invest some skin in the game and be a true partner when you need it.

The best companies understand that innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and that relationships are the key to success. While tech titans might not be the most obvious place to start when thinking about partnerships, ignore them at your peril! All startups don’t want to be startups forever. Titans can share key insights for navigating your growth journey. And many are generous when it comes to sharing resources, customers, experience, funding and more.

Featured Image: Bryce Durbin

via TechCrunch
Avoid the startup graveyard

Posted on

IBM releases DataWorks to give enterprise data a home and a brain

While the gears of research are turning fast developing new methods of machine intelligence, another, perhaps more impactful, trend is brewing in the field. Open source frameworks like Apache Spark are hitting their stride at the ideal time to put data analytics in the hands of the business development analyst without forgetting about the needs of the data scientist.

IBM’s new Project DataWorks is built with both Spark and IBM Watson at its core to prioritize speed and usability without sacrificing robust analytics. The best way to think about DataWorks is as a sort of Google Docs for data analytics. In practice, companies have huge data libraries that often end up in a variety of decentralized locations. IBM’s new product eats all this company data and puts it in one intuitively accessible place.

Tmanagement-consoleo keep all that data at the fingertips of those who need it, IBM has deployed a dashboard that displays data assets broken down with access, user, and categorical stats. IBM calls its technology for organizing data catalogs. With natural language search, users can pull up specific data sets from those catalogs much more quickly than with traditional methods. DataWorks also touts data ingestion at speeds of 50 to 100s of Gbps.

Leveraging technologies like Pixiedust and Brunel, users can produce data visualizations with as little as one line of code. These visualizations can bring life to things like association and classification models, enabling everyone in a business to gain insights at a glance.

 

Both enterprises and small businesses can access the new DataWorks tools via IBM’s Bluemix cloud platform. There will be a traditional pay as you go monetization structure, where anyone can come and run the system for hours, days, or months. But IBM also thinks that data analytics could take a page from cellphone carrier data plans and charge users a flat monthly subscription fee.

Rob Thomas, VP of analytics for IBM, argues that the biggest savings for companies will be in human capital. IBM DataWorks really opens up the ecosystem so that users don’t have to have to be retrained in specific open source skill sets. The sweet spot for the new platform will be serving the usual suspects like retail, financial services, and telecoms, but Thomas notes that medium size businesses are also gravitating to the platform.

The IBM Watson system powering much of DataWorks has been a key source of growth and revenue for the company in previous years. Watson can only continue to improve with new use case challenges. Many of the core technologies for DataWorks are based off of components of The Weather Company that IBM acquired earlier this year. The original catalyzer of the deal was the company’s platform for analyzing large unstructured datasets. Now, instead of weather, and with augmentation from Watson, businesses can produce market and company research with the same fundamental tools.

 

via TechCrunch
IBM releases DataWorks to give enterprise data a home and a brain

Posted on

Data Pipeline: Salesforce Connector

This is the fifth post in a series covering Yelp’s real-time streaming data infrastructure. Our series explores in-depth how we stream MySQL updates in real-time with an exactly-once guarantee, how we automatically track & migrate schemas, how we process and transform streams, and finally how we connect all of this into datastores like Redshift and Salesforce. Read the posts in the series: Billions of Messages a Day – Yelp’s Real-time Data Pipeline Streaming MySQL tables in real-time to Kafka More Than Just a Schema Store PaaStorm: A Streaming Processor Data Pipeline: Salesforce Connector Yelp uses Salesforce, a customer relationship management…
via Planet MySQL
Data Pipeline: Salesforce Connector

Posted on

How to Stream Tonight’s First Presidential Debate Online, No Cable Required

Tonight, presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will meet for their first debate. Here’s how to tune in for free online, even if you don’t have cable.

The debate begins at 9PM ET/6PM PT.Host of NBC’s Nightly News Lester Holt will be moderating the debate. Tonight, all the questions will come from the moderator, but Facebook will be collecting questions throughout tonight’s debate for the next presidential debate on October 9th.

Here are some of the easiest ways to watch online:

If you do have a cable subscription, you can also watch on your phone, tablet, or set-top box with these options:

Nearly every media site is covering the event, so you can pick which network you want to watch on. Note, while all of the following networks will have a live stream, some may require a cable subscription:

If you have your own Samsung Gear VR or Oculus Rift and want to watch the debates in the most novel way possible, AltspaceVR is also offering a virtual reality stream of the debate. So you really do have more choices than ever. Just keep in mind how your choice of media coverage can affect how you perceive the debates.


via Lifehacker
How to Stream Tonight’s First Presidential Debate Online, No Cable Required

Posted on

Introducing BakaSQL, the MySQL web-based query executor

BakaSQL: a bit of history

When I joined this new company I was already aware there was a lot of work to do. There was no DBA Team to speak of; any MySQL related task was handled by the sysadmins, and the company was growing as fast as you can imagine, with 15-20 new employees arriving each month, most of them in the IT department. For sure, there was much fun ahead.

During my first week in the new job  I immediately felt that something was not right. I was receiving too much DMLs to execute each day, spanning a wide set of servers, schemas an tables. This is not something I had seen before, so I started asking around what the reason behind it was.  It turned out that there were multiple reasons behind it:

  • there were known bugs in the applications that were never fixed
  • application configuration items were stored in MySQL, but there was no admin panel to modify them
  • accounting department had to apply corrections to the accounting records, which were also stored in MySQL, but again they had no tool to do this
  • lastly, most developers did not have write  privileges to production servers
You may ask yourself why, for example, bugs were not fixed, or admin panels were not built to allow for modification of the config items, or why the accounting department did not have a tool to apply the needed corrections.  Well, so did I. The answer lied in the start-up nature of the company, where all effort were spent in developing new features, and there was little or no time left for fixing bugs or building administrative tools.  Although I did not agree at all with this approach, I had to live with it.
But spending most of the day executing DMLs on behalf of other teams certainly was not something I was happy with. Mind you, executing a DML can be a quick task, but backing up old rows that were going to be changed by said DML was time consuming and rather frustrating. But of course having a rollback plan was mandatory, as it can happen that the DML you have executed is not what the requestor actually wanted to execute… In any case, in order to bring everything back under control, I had to revoke write privileges from the developers who had them,  and this of course added up to the amount of DMLs that I had to handle on a daily basis. Ouch!
So I am in my 3rd week at the new job and the DMLs keep coming my way,  while there was much more important stuff to work on, like for example setting up proper backups, apply retention to data, consolidate, review,  improve performances… you name it.  So I had to find a way to speed up this DML execution thing, in order to save my time for something more important and especially more interesting and challenging.
In the next days, I started working on a bash script that was meant to be called via the CGI interface, from a web browser. At the beginning it was a very basic script which accepted user and password for the database and allowed to execute the DML that you pasted in the web form.  The script would parse the DML and, before executing it, would compute SQL statements that, if executed, would roll back the changes applied by the DML, saving these statements on file. In case a rollback was needed, I could just open this file and execute the code contained herein to revert the change.
Week after week, the small script improved, mainly because every time I received a DML that was not properly handled by the script (read: the rollback code was  not computed properly), I worked to improve it by having it handle the new DML. 
After few months, the small script had become a large script, and was handling almost any DML that was sent to me just fine. Still it was a bit on the slow side: parsing and building SQL using a bash script was not be the best option, of course there are dozens of other languages that would be more suited for this task, but please bear with me, as I am not a dev, I am just a DBA and although my development skills are there, they are rather old school. Anyways, I was receiving tickets with  up to 2000 update statements, or 1500 inserts, or 3000 deletes. Crazy, I know, but still I had to do something in order to handle them without having to wait 20 minutes each time.
I decided to rewrite some of the functions of the script using C, in order to boost execution speed, which was especially important when there was a large number of statements like in the examples above. So I introduced a poor man’s profiler in the script, which allowed me to see where the script was spending most of its time.  After a week, I looked at the profiling data and rewrote some of the most frequently used and/or time consuming routines in C,  so that invocation of such routines in the script were replaced by a call to an external executable, which contained the replacement routine. 
The results were amazing, as now the script was able to execute even a large amount of statements in short time.  Over the next months some bugs popped out here and there, most of them being edge cases, and more features were added, for example proper handling of variables.
Fast forward to present day, the small then large script has now become our everyday tool. I named it BakaSQL (from a notorious Indian demon who is well known for its insatiable appetite) and it is not only used by the DBA Team, but also by some developers which can modify their config tables independently and in a quick and safe manner without the need to raise a ticket to our team.

Welcome, BakaSQL!

So how does BakaSQL work? 
It connects to a MySQL instance using the supplied credentials, and executes the supplied DML statement(s), which should be delimited by the usual semicolon.
BakaSQL has a dry run feature built in, which should be used to check the DML statements before executing them and, especially, to verify that the generated rollback code is proper. You should first run your DML with the tick on the dry run checkbox, then if everything looks good, you remove the tick from the dry run checkbox and execute again. When running in dry-run mode, the statements are effectively sent to the MySQL server, however, a ROLLBACK statement is issued at the end, instead of a COMMIT; this ensures a proper validation of the entire DML, including duplicate keys, FK constraint violations, etcetera.
One word of caution: the DML statements are executed within a single transaction. This is to enforce an all-or-nothing modification of the data. If you have a large number of statements in your DML, e.g. 2000 updates, please keep in mind that all the affected rows will be locked for the entire duration of the execution, until the commit (or rollback), and this may have side effects if some other process wants to modify one of these rows in the meantime. This also applies when running in dry-run mode.
So, here is what BakaSQL can offer:
  • automatic generation of rollback scripts that will revert the changes applied by your DML when executed
  • confirmation that every query uses a proper index (avoid locking table scans!!)
    

  • dry run capability (check DML statements and compute rollback code without modifying the data)
    

  • logging of everything executed against the database, including reference ticket # if supplied
    

  • transaction consistency: your DML code is run in a single transaction so an all-or-nothing modification is enforced
Rollback code is generated and shown to you during dry run. Please see the screenshot below for reference. When you execute, the rollback code is saved to a file named after the username that is executing, the ticket information, and the BakaSQL instance pid number.
BakaSQL will only execute DMLs. No DDLs are supported (better use pt-osc for those!) and also you cannot run SELECTs through this tool, with the exception of variable initialization (see below).
BakaSQL enforces some restrictions on what you can pass as DML; some are intended to avoid situations that could cause harm to the database, while others are to avoid unnecessary complications and slowdowns in the script:
  • backticks (backquotes) are not allowed as these create troubles within bash, but there is a checkbox that you can use to wipe them out (check it when runnng in dry run mode)
  • USE statement is not allowed, table names should be qualified if more than one schema is in use in the DML
  • SHOW WARNINGS, COMMIT, ROLLBACK are not supported, we already run our own transaction anyways
  • comments (double dash at start of line) should be removed from the code 
  • strings should be enclosed in single quotes; double quotes are not supported as string delimitator
  • INSERT IGNORE is not supported so ask the requestor to make up his mind up and decide whether he really wants that row inserted or not
  • auto_increment columns cannot be loaded with specific values, these are meant to be  populated by MySQL
  • WHERE conditions that have both an equality and an IN(), or multiple IN()s, are not supported (e.g.: where a = 1 and b in (2, 3) ) – these should be converted to all equalities
  • statements that use NOT in the WHERE condition are not accepted as index is rarely used in that case, these need to be converted  to avoid the NOT operator
  • statements that use OR in the WHERE condition are not accepted for the same reason as above; these need to be converted to multiple statements instead
  • subqueries are not supported, so if there is need to update some rows with the contents of some other table, CONCAT() can be used to generate updates by primary key that can be submitted to the tool
  • setting values in UPDATE statements using functions is not supported
There are also a few important limitations that you should be aware of when using the tool, some are listed above already but I want to stress about their importance so…
  •  BakaSQL only recognizes the single quote as a string delimiter, this is to make parsing simpler and faster; therefore, you need to properly escape single quotes in  your strings if there are any
  • BakaSQL does not like backticks (backquotes), these create problems within the bash script, however  there is a checkbox that you can use to quickly remove all of them from the DML before execution. If the damn developer likes to use MySQL reserved words as column names, you can check the backtick removal checkbox, run a dry run to wipe them all, then re-add the backticks only around the reserved names used as column, that will work and allow you to proceed
  • sometimes, when you receive DML through a ticket, there is some weird character in it. I have verified that Microsoft Word, and a few other editors, like to allow the user to specify UTF-8 characters that look exactly the same as their ASCII counterparts, but actually they are different. Specifiically, the double quote, the single quote and even the blank (space) character may have been replaced by some UTF-8 bizarre counterpart that BakaSQL will not digest. If you see weird behaviour when executing BakaSQL, check your DML code for those weird substitutes by copying the DML code into a 7 bit editor first
  • if the last statement in the DML does not get executed (or if the only statement in a single statement DML does not get executed) it is likely that the semicolon that should delimit the query (or the queries) is not there; please check that out!
Also, it is worth mentioning that there are a couple of edge cases where BakaSQL is not able to properly create rollback code:
  • the tool will not support changing (part of) a primary key with an update statement, as rollback code will be incorrect in this case; you will get an error if your DML tries to do that
  • if, in an update statement, the WHERE condition contains one of the columns touched by the update, rollback may be incorrect; BakaSQL will try to fix simple cases for you, but remember to always check the rollback code…. if this situation is detected, you will see a warning right before the rollback code pertaining to the offending statement
Although these limitations may seem too much of a burden at first, I can assure you that once your dev team gets acquainted with them, everything will work quite smoothly.

Variables

BakaSQL supports variables in the DML that is passed to it. Variable substitution happens in a recursive way, so it is also possible to have variables that reference other variables.  
Syntax for variable initialization is similar to standard MySQL, but only a specific syntax is supported by BakaSQL.  See following examples:
set @myvar1 = (select val from rick.t1 where val=12121 and id = 1021);
set @myvar2 = (select val from rick.t1 where id = 1385);
set @myvar3 = (select 666);
insert into t1 (val) values (@myvar1);
insert into t1 (val) values (@last_insert_id), (@myvar2), (@myvar3);
Basically, the only way to initialize a variable will be :
set @variable = (select statement that returns one row);
but it is possible to assign one variable to another, using same syntax, as well to use a variable name in any place in a query that is part of your DML, as long as the variable has been initialized beforehand. Please note that you cannot reuse (reassign) variables, so you have to use a new variable name each time that you initialize a new one.
A special variable exists and is called @last_insert_id.  This variable is automatically initialized when you insert a row in a table which has an auto increment primary key, and you can use it as any other place in your DML. For this reason, LAST_INSERT_ID() function is not supported by the tool, as it is built in and automatically executed on your behalf if the tool detects that there is an auto increment column in the table that you are inserting into.

Installation

At this time, there is no packaging for BakaSQL (I think I already told you I’m a lazy guy), but its installation should be straightforward for anyone with basic Linux/UNIX skills. Basically, here is what you need to get it running:
  • a Linux/UNIX server (don’t ask me about Windoze please)
  • Apache httpd (or nginx, or your preferred web server that supports CGI specs)
  • gcc compiler, to compile the BakaSQL utility
Installation requires that you know where your cgi-bin directory is. Place the bakasql.cgi script into it, make it executable by web server, and edit it to tailor the following variables that you find on top of the script:
  • HOSTFILE should point to a file that contains the list of the hostnames of your masters, one per line
  • BASE should point to a folder where BakaSQL will save logs, rollback code and other information; it should be writable by the user that the webserver runs under
  • MIN_REQ_CARDINALITY is the minimum cardinality, from 0 to 100, that you require for an index to be considered by BakaSQL good;  sometimes, especially for small tables, you will get a false negative about the cardinality of an index, please see Ninja Mode below for a workaround
  • BAKAUTILS is the path to the bakautils C program, see below
There are a few other variables that refer to the MySQL profiling instance, you can safely ignore these and comment out the profiling code that you will find in the profile_out() routine (just comment out the insert that you’ll find there).
You also need to compile the bakautils.c program that contains the rewritten routines. You will need gcc for that purpose, just use the following command to compile the program:
      gcc -O3 -o bakautils bakautils.c
Once compiled, place the executable in the $BAKAUTILS path and ensure it is executable by the user your web server is running under.
Each user that wants to use BakaSQL needs MySQL privileges from the IP address of the web server that BakaSQL runs under.  The classic "INSERT,DELETE,UPDATE,SELECT" privileges are enough to use BakaSQL, no need to assign SUPER or other fancy privileges.
Make sure you create the $BASE/log and $BASE/rollback folders as I don’t think that BakaSQL will create these for you 🙂  These should be writable by the user the web server runs under. The former will contain log files (normal log and mysql debug log) and the latter will contain the rollback files for each DML successfully executed by BakaSQL. You will need to apply your own retention on these, as they are not deleted by BakaSQL.
When you are unsure what’s going on (eg: BakaSQL seems to be hung during execution of a DML) the mysql debug log is  a good place to look into. It will contains a copy of anything that is sent by BakaSQL to your MySQL server, including server responses. If it seems stuck, check your MySQL server for locks, using SHOW ENGINE INNODB STATUS.

Ninja Mode

Sometimes you will see that BakaSQL  will refuse to execute your DML code and will say that there is no valid index, but an option called Ninja Mode will appear, allowing you to select its checkbox to override the limitation. This can be used in those situations where the cardinality of the index is low because the table is really small. Just ensure that the table is actually a small one, then click on the Ninja Mode checkbox and run execution again to override the cardinality check.

Where to get BakaSQL

You can always fetch the latest version of BakaSQL from my GitHub page here. Be sure to give me your feedback if you try it out!

Caveats

Although this tool has become an everyday tool for us, and is therefore stable and well tested, standard disclaimer applies. Your mileage may vary. Bugs may be there. Be sure to always check the rollback code using dry run before executing the changes. If you find bugs and/or have questions, I will be glad to help, just contact me using the form on the right side. Also, your comments are welcome!  I really hope this tool will help you as much as it helped me.
Enjoy!!

via Planet MySQL
Introducing BakaSQL, the MySQL web-based query executor

Posted on

This Video Of A Guy Executing Fish With A Pistol Is Actually Good Because Lionfish Suck

I think every non-sociopath’s first instinct when seeing the title card of the video above—which lives up to its billing, as this is indeed a four-minute clip of a man equipped with a waterproof Glock who uses it to “fish” for lionfish—is one of dread. Oh no, you worry, accurately. Am I really about to watch someone brain scores of defenseless little fish with a goddamn handgun???

If you’re being honest, though, you can feel something else deep down there under all the guilt and disgust. Damn, you think, again accurately. It miiiight actually be kinda dope to pop a few off in some fish with a real-deal water gun.

Thankfully, the video makers provide some critical context that should allay your concerns about watching an extended fishy snuff film and allow you to watch the rest of the video with the same giddiness and slight pangs of jealousy as you would a Call of Duty highlight compilation. The context, here, is that lionfish are undeniable, unrepentant shitheads:

You see, the fisherman here is a hero, the fish themselves are villains, the body count he racks up proof of his awesome dedication to the environmentalist cause, and the lifeless corpses he flips into the camera’s lens a triumphant celebration that those waters now have one less evil lionfish to befoul our beautiful reefs.



GIF

Okay, maybe these kinds of slo-mo replays of a killing blow are a bit unnecessary…



GIF

…but let’s not forget who the bad guys are here. (Reminder: it’s the fish.)

Let this video do for marine biology what Indiana Jones did for archeology.

via Gizmodo
This Video Of A Guy Executing Fish With A Pistol Is Actually Good Because Lionfish Suck