Nuffing.com

Cloud service provider Backblaze has updated its earlier study of hard drive failure rates (Nov 2013) in its own infrastructure – from 27,000 to more than 34,000 drives, and the new report (Sep 2014) is quite informative. Hitachi comes out pretty high, Western Digital has produced some good drives, but Seagate tends to come out worst. Each brand does have good and not-so-good models so there’s no single right answer, and for any new model you’ll always be dealing with an unknown factor.
Backblaze also found that consumer drives actually perform well compared to enterprise grade drives, and once price is taking into account the enterprise drives just lose. We’ve been noting this to our clients for a number of years – based on actual performance (rather than specs). It’s useful to see this backed up by reliability data, also.
Typically, enterprise drives are SAS, consumer drives are SATA. Comparing SAS and SATA, there’s actually very little difference. SAS has a longer command queue, allowing it to be more efficient in seeks by re-ordering commands. That’s nice, but a RAID or other storage controller and even your operating system would be doing that as well now. So it’s pretty much a moot point.
Higher RPM or even data transfer rate tend to be minor factors as well – your database server will already have all recent pages in memory anyway. When it asks the physical storage for some pages, it won’t hit any cache and it’ll require a seek. It can ask for more nearby pages (this is configurable in MySQL/MariaDB), but those pages may or may not actually be used. With a higher RPM and higher data transfer rate, such reads would be a bit faster. But compared to the overhead of a seek operation, which is measured, in milliseconds, it’s really minimal.
These days, if you have issues with (spinning) hard drive performance, the solution is not caching (other than database server caching which is hugely important!), not higher RPM, higher transfer rate, not higher grade drives, but solid state. And probably local, as latency then becomes the critical factor: if the access path to your fast storage device is slow (again, in terms of latency for reading or writing a specific block, not burst transfer rate), the end result is going to be slow.
via Planet MySQL
Hard Drive Reliability

We’ve all been on flights where something has gone wrong, and it’s hard to remember what airlines are required to give in the way of compensation. Tourist Meets Traveler has a handy online guide covering what you can expect from domestic carriers.

We’ve talked about air travel rights before, as well as web sites that will try to get you compensation. These all depend on the "contracts of carriage," though, and those contracts differ slightly among the airlines. Tourist Meets Traverl’s list links to each carriers’ website, so if the airlines’ policy changes, you’ll be able to check that.

Check out the link and save it the next time your flight gets delayed or cancelled.

Airline Passenger Rights for Bumped, Canceled or Delayed Flights | Tourist Meets Traveler

Photo by Jason Tester Guerrilla Futures.

via Lifehacker
Know Your Compensation Rights on Major AIrlines

Maybe you’ve heard of The Pixar Theory by Jon Negroni that showed how all the characters of the Pixar movies are connected to each other in one universe. The evidence was undeniable! Bloop Animation shows how it all ties together in the video below. I want to believe!

The theory is encompasses all of Pixar’s movies since Toy Story, which are:

• A Bug’s Life
• Toy Story 2
• Monsters Inc.
• Finding Nemo
• The Incredibles
• Cars
• Ratatouille
• Wall-E
• Up
• Toy Story 3
• Cars 2
• Brave
• Monsters University

Brave sets the stage for intelligent animals which leads the way for Ratatouille, Finding Nemo and Up to happen. For AI, the timeline starts with The Incredibles which leads to Toy Story, Cars and Wall-E. Which then in turns brings A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc. into the equation.

It’s a super fun theory that’s been passed around for a bit now but here it is in video form below to add to your YouTube education.

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via Gizmodo
Here’s how all the Pixar movies are connected in one universe

via Dilbert
Dilbert 2014-09-27

Ever wonder how to create an arched opening in drywall? The Family Handyman has a step-by-step slideshow that shows how to do it with modern materials like bendable sheetrock and plastic beading.

Arches have had varying popularity in home design over the last century or so. In older houses they might be built with brick or plaster, but they are much easier to re-create with modern materials in new construction. Even if you’re not looking to install a new archway, understanding how they are constructed can help with repair and removal as well. See the complete how-to below.

How To Build a Drywall Arch | The Family Handyman

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via Lifehacker
Convert a Drywall Doorway Into an Arch

Improved Visual Explain
In MySQL 5.7, the Optimizer Team has been doing great work in refactoring as well as innovation with the new Cost Model. The improved Visual Explain enables the DBA to now get deeper insights into Optimizer decision making, for improved performance tuning of queries.   The UI was also improved to allow easier navigation in large query plans.
Streamlined Query Results Panel
The query results panel was updated to centralize the many features related to result sets into a single location. Result Grid, Form Editor, Field Types, Query Stats, Execution Plan (including the traditional and Visual Explain) and the new Spatial Viewer are all easily accessible from a single interface. Run SQL Script
It often happens that people try to load gigantic SQL script files into the Workbench SQL editor just to execute them. That will rarely work, as loading files for editing uses a lot of memory and Workbench does a lot of processing in the editor (syntax highlighting, syntax checking, code folding etc). To execute arbitrarily large scripts easily, you can now use the dialog at File -> Run SQL Script:   The dialog lets you preview a part of the script, specify a default schema (in case it’s not already defined) and a default character set to use when importing it. The output window shows warnings, messages and a nice progress bar.
Shared Snippets
SQL Snippets are useful to store queries and commands that are used often, but until now they could only be stored locally. In 6.2, you can now store snippets in the MySQL server you’re connected to and anyone anywhere who can access the .mysqlworkbench schema can also use these snippets.
Small changes
Resultset grid columns are now automatically resized to fit – and if you manually resize a column, the customized size is remembered, so next time you run that query again, the columns will be back to the size you left them.
Customize font for resultset grid – some people want to cram more text in the resultset grid, some people prefer bigger, easier to read text. Now you can pick what you like in Preferences.
Improved state saving for the SQL Editor – Opened, closed and reordered tabs are now properly saved and restored. The scroll position and cursor location is also remembered.
via Planet MySQL
MySQL Workbench 6.2: It’s all about the Query

I’m excited to once again be heading to San Francisco next week for Oracle OpenWorld, and also very pleased to have a booth there this year along with some great speakers from Percona. The scope of Oracle OpenWorld 2014, which runs Sept. 28-Oct. 2, is enormous and there are several keynotes and sessions I’m looking […]

The post Looking forward to Oracle OpenWorld 2014; visit us at Booth 2413! appeared first on MySQL Performance Blog.

via MySQL Performance Blog
Looking forward to Oracle OpenWorld 2014; visit us at Booth 2413!

In our recent article How To Make Money As A High End Wedding Photographer, we explored the high end wedding photography market. But, it seems that the more I am able to charge for a wedding, the more complicated and stressful wedding photography becomes. So recently I have decided that I would like to simplify […]

The post How To Photograph A Wedding With One Photographer, One Camera, One Lens and One Flash appeared first on DIY Photography.

via DIYPhotography.net -Hacking Photography, One Picture At A Time
How To Photograph A Wedding With One Photographer, One Camera, One Lens and One Flash

Shellshock, the newly discovered vulnerability that allows attackers to inject code into your machine, puts your Mac or Linux at a serious risk for malicious attacks. Here’s how to test if your machine is vulnerable.

Shellshock uses a bash script to access your computer. From there, they can launch programs, enable features, and access files. The script only affects UNIX-based systems, so Linux and Mac are the only ones vulnerable.

You can test your system by running this test command from Terminal:

env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c 'echo hello'

If you’re not vulnerable, you’ll get this result:

bash: warning: x: ignoring function definition attempt
bash: error importing function definition for `x'
hello

If you are vulnerable, you’ll get:

vulnerable hello

You can also check the version of bash you’re running by entering:

bash --version

If you get version 3.2.51(1)-release as a result, you’ll need to update. Many Linux distributions already have patches available, so you can follow these instructions to update your system. Mac users are still waiting for a patch, but you can update bash manually using this guide.

via Gizmodo
How To Check If Your Mac or Linux Machine Is Vulnerable to Shellshock

The CRKT Graphite Folding Knives are quite interesting to look at while being very simple in function. The stainless steel skeletal frame is machined in such a way that it is both handle and locking mechanism in one. This cool… Continue Reading →
via KnifeCenter Blog
CRKT Graphite Folding Knives