Es beginnt mit einem Tweet von Manuel Atug : “Wegen Überlastung der Server: #Notruf-App vorerst nicht mehr in App-Stores” und der Tweet verlinkte einen (inzwischen nicht mehr existierenden) Artikel beim Deutschlandfunk. Christoph Petrausch erklärt, wie solche Projekte falsch laufen können: Sowas erfordert eine Fehlerkultur. Du musst als Organisation in der Lage sein, nach so einem Incident einen Schritt zurückzutreten. Alle Fakten auf den Tisch zu legen und zu fragen: Warum kam es dazu?

Golem titelt Intel will Xeon-Funktionen als Lizenz-Update verkaufen : Intel will Xeon-Funktionen als Lizenz-Update verkaufen. Mit dem Software Defined Silicon will Intel in Xeon-Hardware zunächst abgeschaltete Funktionen künftig als Lizenz-Upgrade bereitstellen. Manuel Atug ranted darüber auf Twitter: Wenn dir die eigene Hardware nicht mehr gehört… Intel will Xeon-Funktionen als Lizenz-Update verkaufen “Mit dem Software Defined Silicon will Intel in Xeon-Hardware zunächst abgeschaltete Funktionen künftig als Lizenz-Upgrade bereitstellen.” Ich antwortete :

I ranted about hiring interviews, and the canned questions that people have to answer. One of the interviews we do is a systems design interview, where we want to see how (senior) people use components and patterns to design a system for reliability and scale-out. A sample question (based on a Twitter thread in German): It is 2010, and the company has a database structure where a fixed number front end machines form a cell.

My task is to collect performance data about a single query, using PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA (P_S for short) in MySQL, to ship it elsewhere for integration with other data. In a grander scheme of things, I will need to define what performance data from a query I am actually interested in. I will also need to find a way to attribute the query (as seen on the server) to a point in the codebase of the client, which is not always easy when an ORM or other SQL generator is being used.

My task is to collect performance data about a single query, using PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA (P_S for short) in MySQL, to ship it elsewhere for integration with other data. In a grander scheme of things, I will need to define what performance data from a query I am actually interested in. I will also need to find a way to attribute the query (as seen on the server) to a point in the codebase of the client, which is not always easy when an ORM or other SQL generator is being used.

Like I said, I never had much reason to use table compression, and only recently looked into the topic. MySQL Page Compression looks a lot easier at the database end of things, but relies on hole punching support in the file system. Let’s have a look at what that means. Files, Inodes and Arrays of Blocks The original Unix filesystem saw the disk as a sea of blocks, which were represented in a free map as an array of bits.

For the MySQL Million Challenge, I was going through the server syntax in order to understand what things can be created in the server. And now my OCD triggered. DDL is a mess. Creation As a database developer, I want to be able to create server objects using the CREATE thing syntax. The server gives you that for the following things: DATABASE EVENT FUNCTION (and FUNCTION SONAME) INDEX LOGFILE GROUP (NDB only, not going to look at this) PROCEDURE RESOURCE GROUP ROLE SERVER SPATIAL REFERENCE SYSTEM TABLE TABLESPACE TRIGGER USER VIEW Safe creation As a database developer I want to be able to script things safely, so I need IF NOT EXISTS clauses in my CREATE syntax.

A long-standing idea that I have is to test the servers limits: How does it fail and break if there are very many of a thing? Previously that was too easy, because many structures were constructed in a way that it was obvious they would not scale. But with MySQL 8 many things were overhauled, so let’s see what we can make many of and see how the server fares.

We observe a large number of messages of the kind The table '../tmp/#sql…' is full Before MySQL 8 In older Versions of MySQL, implied temporary tables are being created whenever your EXPLAIN contained the phrase using temporary. In this case, MySQL would create an in-memory temporary table to materialize an intermediate query result, and then continue to process the data from there. If that temporary table was larger than some configurable limit, the temporary table would instead be converted to a MyISAM table on disk, streamed out, and then work would continue with this.

I never had much reason to use table compression, so I largely ignored the topic in MySQL. I knew that MySQL had table compression since 5.1, but I also knew the implementation was horribly complicated and double stored all data. There is also page compression, a feature introduced with 5.7, which replaces table compression and works much better. Table Compression Table Compression is available in MySQL 5.1 and newer. It is used by setting an InnoDB table up with ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=8 or similar, for even smaller key block sizes.

Lilith Wittmann asked on Twitter: Why do we have so much dangerous software in Germany? Because we don’t have the competency anywhere (administration, enterprise or science) to understand the complexity of software. My take was : Computer science is easy. It is the science of Zeroes and Ones, and it does not get any more complicated anywhere. Computer science piles abstractions on top of each other, though, 30 layers deep and with non-linear interactions.

This 2018 book in some aspects is already outdated: Silicon Valley Techbro Kai-Fu Lee describes what AI is and what he thinks it will do to our future, the nature of work and the job market. But since then, the worlds view on what AI can and cannot do, what the problems to solve really are and a lot of other things have changed. AI Superpowers:China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order , Kai-Fu Lee

“Old Man’s War ” is the first “large” works by John Scalzi, Old Man’s War , John Scalzi The plot premise is weird, but simple: Humanity has taken to the stars, but with private enterprise. Basically all advanced space technology is controlled by the Colonial Union. Life on earth on the other hand goes on almost as before. John Perry enlists to serve in the Colonial Defense Force at the age of 75, to protect humanity, but mostly to have the CU fight the effects of him aging with some unspecified Scifi tech.

Ram V is a writer, sometimes for comics. Together with artist Sumit Kumar he wrote a simple story: English Vampires vs. Indian Rakshasa. These Savage Shores , Ram V & Sumit Kumar The 1760’ies. An english vampire puts his peers at risk by not having his desires under control, and is exiled to Calicut, India. He soon finds out that even older and fiercer beings rule the night: Rakshasa, the Vampire equivalent of Indian Myth.

Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar co-authored This Is How You Lose The Time-War , not exactly a Science Fiction novel. This Is How You Lose The Time War , Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone Red and Blue are representatives, spies and saboteurs of two nearly all-powerful, warring factions. They travel through time to manipulate events at critical points in history in favor of their respective factions. They are leaving each other messages, they taunt each other, and gradually earn mutual respect.

Dave Addey ran a Tumblr once, titled “Typeset in the Future”, in which he dissected the typography of Science Fiction films. This has been turned into the eponymous book. Typeset in the Future , Dave Addey In 2013, Addey nerded out over the fonts in a Science Fiction movie and discovered it was an Eurostile variant (“Eurostile Extended Bold”). He started a Tumblr about this, and in great detail went through a number of movies, and about every sign, letter and font used in there.

The memoir of Brian Kernighan, and the story of how UNIX came to be and what working at Bell Labs was like at that time: UNIX: A History and a Memoir is required reading for anyone who wants to know where Unix concepts came from and what ideas were behind its inception. "UNIX: A History and a Memoir ", Brian Kernighan Kernighan takes us through the history and the setting of Bell Labs, why it existed and what it did.

I had reason to look into the UNIX Eschaton, the time when the signed 32 bit counter of seconds since Midnight, 1970-01-01 UTC overflows. Going to Wikipedia , I learned we will die two years earlier, because in 2036-02-07, 06:28:16 UTC NTP will kill us all: At 06:28:16 UTC on Thursday, 7 February 2036, Network Time Protocol will loop over to the next epoch, as the 32-bit time stamp value used in NTP (unsigned, but based on 1 January 1900) will overflow.

It began with a tweet by Sebastian Bergmann , which made me buy “88 names ” by Matt Ruff. The book is a tour of massive multiplayer online role playing games for people who do not play, and also a discussion of identity on the Internet. John Chu has a small sherpa company, an outfit that helps causal players who have the coin to experience hard content in MMORPGs in an easy and successful way without investing too much time into the game.

Paul Fischer writes “A Kim Jong-Il Production ”, a documentary the 1978 abduction of the famous South Korean actress Madam Choi, and her ex-husband, the filmmaker Shin Sang-Ok. Before becoming the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il headed the Ministry for Propaganda. Dissatisfied with the talent available, he had the famous actress Choi Eun-Hee kidnammed. When her ex-husband started to investigate, he had him kidnapped in Hong Kong and transported to North Korea by ship.