Tag: Saved for Later

If you’ve ever tried to compare cell phone plan prices, you know it’s an exercise in frustration. This calculator from The Wall Street Journal simplifies the 500 or so variations in pricing to tell you whether T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T has the best pricing for your specific needs.

Answer five questions and the calculator will show you the cheapest plans and how the pricing breaks down. (Update: Note that the calculator doesn’t include prepaid plans, which could save you a bundle more, but you’ll have to compare those plans yourself.)

In most cases, whether you have one or multiple lines, T-Mobile is the cheapest option of the Big Four providers—something we’ve discussed previously. (I wish this calculator was around back then!) However, if you look at the 2-year prices, sometimes—depending on how many phone lines you need—the other providers are less expensive or close to T-Mobile. That’s because this calculator rolls into the two-year price the cost of paying for an iPhone 5—and T-Mobile customers pay full price for the phones while the other providers subsidize them.

Price isn’t the only factor when choosing a wireless provider, but it’s definitely one of the major considerations. This tool takes the pain out of comparing your different options.

WSJ’s Wireless Savings Calculator | The Wall Street Journal via Consumerist

via Lifehacker This Interactive Tool Shows the Cheapest Wireless Plans for Your Needs

There are a lot of ways to block ads, but with a simple command in the developer console, you can disable all ads on YouTube via an experiment.

Google frequently tries out new features with experiments via TestTube. A less advertised experiment can disable all ads on the site. Here’s how to turn it on:

1. Open up a YouTube video (any will do).
2. Open up the developer console (Ctrl-Shift-J for Chrome, Ctrl-Shift-K for Firefox)
3. Enter the following code:

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=oKckVSqvaGw; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

Boom. No more ads. Since this is something that Google is allowing, it’s possible it could go away in the future, but while it works, you get a lovely ad-free viewing experience without any plugins. It even works on those pesky video ads.

YouTube Experiment gets rid of all advertisement on site | Ghacks

via Lifehacker Disable Ads on YouTube With This Simple Command

It’s the middle of August. It’s hot. You want to break open every fire hydrant you see. You view ice cubes as a precious resource. You see air conditioning as the greatest invention ever created. You can’t wait to forget that you are a sweaty pig. You are jealous of these three guys in Russia who have hitched themselves to the insides of an excavator that dunks, swings, re-dunks, re-swings, re-re-re-dunks and keeps dunking them in a lake. Who cares if it looks dirty. Who cares if it looks like you’d probably drown. It looks like a hell of a good time. [TurkeyEuropechannel via Geekosystem]

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via Gizmodo Using an Excavator As a DIY Water Park Ride Is Death Defying Fun

If the X-Men existed in medieval times, would they be casted as demons or witches? Or perhaps some of them would be worshiped as magical beings? Would a leader emerge amongst them? Illustrator Nate Hallinan explored the idea, which resulted in ‘The Order of X’. This is a personal fan-fiction variation on the X-Men. I thought it would be a fun exercise to do the X-Men in an alternate medieval/fantasy reality. Prejudice and discrimination were rampant in our history. Being a darker and less civilized time, fear and hatred ran deeper making it an interesting setting for the X-Men. The…

Read the full article: If The X-Men Lived In Medieval Times

via MakeUseOf If The X-Men Lived In Medieval Times

In what is quite possibly the most comprehensive look at the financial cost of being Batman, Movieclips Trailers analyzed the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy and compared Batman’s gear to current market prices to come up with the definitive price it would take to be the dark knight. The final tally? $79,237,480.98. Not too expensive for a billionaire, right?

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via Gizmodo How Much Does It Really Cost to Be Batman?

common_schema 2.2 is released. This is shortly after the 2.1 release; it was only meant as bug fixes release but some interesting things came up, leading to new functionality.
Highlights of the 2.2 release:
Better QueryScript isolation & cleanup: isolation improved across replication topology, cleanup done even on error
Added TokuDB related views
split with “index” hint (Ike, this is for you)
table_rotate(): a logrotate-like mechanism for tables
better throw()
Drill down:
Better QueryScript isolation & cleanup
common_schema 2.1 introduced persistent tables for QueryScript. This also introduced the problem of isolating concurrent scripts, all reading from and writing to shared tables. In 2.1 isolation was based on session id. However although unique per machine, collisions were possible across replication topology: a script could be issued on master, another on slave (I have such use cases) and both use same (local) session id.
With 2.2 isolation is based on server_id & session id combination; this is unique across a replication topology.
Until 2.1, QueryScript used temporary tables. This meant any error would just break the script, and the tables were left (isolated as they were, and auto-destroyed in time). With persistent tables a script throwing an error meant legacy code piling up. With common_schema 2.2 and on MySQL >= 5.5 all exceptions are caught, cleanup is made, leaving exceptions to be RESIGNALled.
TokuDB views
A couple TokuDB related views help out in converting to TokuDB and in figuring out tables status on disk:
sql_alter_table_tokudb will help you out to generate the complex ALTER statement to TokuDB engine if you happen to used COMPRESSED InnoDB tables with KEY_BLOCK_SIZE specified. The view generates a complex DROP KEYs & ADD KEYs statementl this is due to bug …
tokudb_file_map simplifies the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Tokudb_file_map table: the original view is not normalized and is difficult to interpret and follow when your table had many indexes or is partitioned (I will write more on this shortly). with common_schema’s tokudb_file_map you get, per table, the list of files representing that table, along with a couple Shell commands to tell you the thing you want to know most: “what is the size of my TokuDB table on disk?”
split
QueryScript’s split device now supports the “index” parameter (or hint), which instructs the split() operation to use an explicitly named index. If used, the index must exist and must be UNIQUE.
table_rotate()
Rotate your tables a-la logrotate with table_rotate(): generate a new, identical, empty table, version your table, pushing older versions along the line; optionally drop older versions. You get the picture. Got some nice use case behind this on cleaning up a test database.
throw()
On MySQL >= 5.5 throw() uses SIGNAL. No more weird “table `Unknown column ‘$t’ in ‘field list’` does not exist” messages. Just plain old:
ERROR 1054 (42S22): Unknown column ‘$t’ in ‘field list’
Get it
common_schema is free and open source. It is licensed under GPL v2. This is where you can find and download latest common_schema release.
Your input is welcome! Please submit your bugs, or otherwise share your experience with common_schema.

via Planet MySQL common_schema 2.2: better QueryScript isolation & cleanup; TokuDB; table_rotate, split params

Deep down we all know we shouldn’t crank our music or listen to headphones with the volume really high, but we still do. And if you’ve ever wondered if years of hard rock has done any serious damage, here’s an easy way to find out.

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via Gizmodo Test How Old Your Ears Are (And How Much Damage You’ve Done to Them)

For a TV show, Game of Thrones has clearly mastered the art of special effects. The quality of its visuals is simply spectacular. From the beautiful castles and boorish giants and nipple cutting we already know are fake to the amazing tricks of turning day into a bustling night camp and making snow impossibly glisten, the world they are able to create is simply amazing. And so damn real. This reel from SpinVFX shows some of the special effects used in Game of Thrones Season 3. [SpinVFX, Jose Antonio Espejo via The Mary Sue]

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via Gizmodo The Special Effects of Game of Thrones Are Still Unbelievably Amazing

Summer is swiftly coming to an end. One of the ways to enjoy the last of the warm weather weekends is to take an afternoon by the lake or river and make a rope swing. Safety is paramount, and close behind is gaining maximum height and velocity. We show you how to do both. See […]

via The Art of Manliness How to Make a Rope Swing and Fly Like Tarzan: An Illustrated Guide