Let’s have a look at very old database systems. Things like dBase or compatible systems (“xBases”) allowed to manipulate record based files (with indexes) in a procedural way. What does that mean?

xBase

The system allows developers to create files that contain a well defined (fixed size) record structure, basically an array of struct on disk, often together with the definition of on-screen masks designed to show a single record and a (searchable) list of records. Data would be entered in masks and stored automatically on disk in records in the file. Writes would modify records in place, during the write (and the edit of the data in a mask) the record would be locked.

In the foreword to his short story “With Friends Like These” , Alan Dean Foster writes

HFY?

My favorite writer of science fiction was, and still is, the inimitable Eric Frank Russell. When I was turning in short stories to the magazines instead of papers to my college professors and collecting rejection slips instead of credits and grades, I often wondered why Russell had stopped writing. I miss him.

A lot of super rich people are currently busy blowing their money into space. Who are these people, and what drives them?

Space Barons , Christian Davenport, 10.99 Eur (Kindle)

In Space Barons, Christian Davenport goes through the rather short list of super rich men who are trying to get private spacecraft flying, tells their history, successes and failures, and their motivations - or, in some cases, the story of the death of their dreams and how they drop out of the second, private space race.

“Hexenmacht” (German Edition) and “Maschinengötter” (German Edition) are part 2 and 3 in the series “Die Krone der Sterne” (The Crown of Stars) by Kai Meyer. See Die Krone der Sterne for a review of part 1.

Hexenmacht , Kai Meyer, 12.99 Eur (Kindle)

Where part 1 spent a lot of time with world building and tourism, showing of the wonder and the atmosphere of the universe, part 2 is approaching from a different angle - we get a lot more action, and a lot less background.

It’s Coronavirus Crisis and Netflix is killing us all, again. This time it’s not their excessive energy use , but their dreaded HD videos that are overloading the Internet. Or is it?

It’s only Swisscom

Supposedly Switzerland is considering Netflix shutdown to prevent Home Office workers from being disconnected.

According to its own statements, on the first day of the quasi curfew in our neighboring country, Swisscom recorded an enormous increase in the load on the infrastructure. There were three times more calls via the mobile network than on normal days. The volume in the fixed network has also increased massively

So where I work we have a large number of MySQL instances. They are organized in a slightly smaller number of replication hierarchies, which tend to cross region boundaries.

Structure of a large database setup

A rough sketch of the setup we have. Variants of this exist in various sizes - from 6 replicas in 3 regions to hundreds of replicas per region, with Group Replication at the top and per Region Intermedia Master.

“Normalitär”, ein Begriff, der von @beimwort geprägt wurde. Nach einem Twitter Thread . In seinem Artikel auf T-Online propagiert Schaible eine Bruchlinie innerhalb der “rechten” Parteien, weil Teile der Mitglieder die Weltbildverschiebung der frühen 2000er mitgemacht haben, andere sie ablehnen.

Er beschreibt die Welt von 1990, die Nachwendezeit:

• Vergewaltigung in der Ehe nicht strafbar,
• Diercke Weltatlas redet von Menschenrassen,
• unter den 250 Positionen der politischen Elite in Deutschland war nur eine Frau; alles weiße, angeblich heterosexuelle und angeblich christliche Männer.

In dieser auf dem Papier egalitären Welt hing der Platz der Menschen ganz selbstverständlich von Geschlecht, Hautfarbe, Sexualität und Religion ab.

So I wrote about the Sonos Recycle Program before Sonos announced their plans to actively discontinue support for their older Speakers. Back then, the program did make sense, because it was kind of voluntary and avoided sending stuff back to Sonos for a Trade-Up. Even then, people disliked it.

Then Sonos announced that they would discontinue support for these devices, and it’s basically ‘you brick them now, or we are going to brick them for you in May and without a rebate for new equipment.’

These images are older than time itself. I picked them up while working as a consultant for MySQL AB, but I do not know the source.

Here are some important latency numbers. A pixel is a nanosecond (nano = 10^-9, a billionth of a second, 1 billion events/s = 1 GHz):

And below is the HDD disk seek latency in full at the same scale. An uncached index access can result in up to 5 disk seeks, worst case.

Welcome to the Netherlands. Please excuse me, I need to fetch a few things before I have time for you. I need a few things from Lidl in Hoofddorp, do you want to come with me?

It’s not far, we are taking the bike for some six kilometres. Also, I’m going to show you a trick: Look, Mom! Not riding with the cars, and no lights.