Probably everyone who has ever seen off or accompanied relatives or friends on a plane has used the free service Flightradar24. It's a very convenient way to track a plane's position in real-time. As a survey of acquaintances showed, very few people know that this service is supported only by enthusiasts who send data to the server. Even fewer know that anyone interested can join the project. […]
Preface There exists a simple yet highly useful utility in the world — BDelta, which has long been embedded in our production process (though I couldn't install its version, it was certainly not the latest available). We use it for its intended purpose — building binary patches. Looking at what's in the repository, it becomes a bit […]
The Bailey–Borwein–Plouffe formula allows you to extract any specific hexadecimal or binary digit of the number pi without calculating the preceding ones (the current record was set using the Chudnovsky algorithm, see below). The Google Compute Engine computational cluster calculated the largest number of digits in pi over 121 days using 25 virtual machines, establishing a new world record: 31.4 trillion digits […]
Software documentation is just a collection of articles. But even they can be frustrating. First, you spend a long time looking for the right instruction. Then, you try to make sense of the incomprehensible text. You follow the instructions, but the problem remains unsolved. You search for another article, getting more and more anxious… After an hour, you give up and walk away. That's how poor documentation works. What makes it so bad, and how can it be improved […]
Let's look into the practical use of Windows Active Directory + NPS (2 servers for redundancy) + the 802.1x standard for access control and user authentication – domain computers – devices. You can refer to the theory regarding the standard in Wikipedia, at the following link: IEEE 802.1X. Since my 'laboratory' is resource-limited, I will combine the roles of NPS and domain controller, but […]
In February, a conference on high-performance computing (HPC) took place at Stanford. VMware representatives shared that when working with GPUs, a system based on a modified ESXi hypervisor performs comparably to bare metal solutions. We discuss the technologies that made this possible. / photo Victorgrigas CC BY-SA Performance Issue According to analysts, about 70% of workloads in data centers are virtualized. […]
The Belgian research center Imec announced the development of an affordable technology for producing nanoporous material with outstanding qualities. The unique material, in the form of a nano-porous structure, possesses extremely high porosity and an unprecedented surface-to-volume ratio. Imagine a small can of soda, 75% of which is empty space with a total surface area equivalent to a football field. Moreover, the production of the material is quite straightforward […]
There are often situations where access to a server is needed immediately. However, SSH connection is not always the most convenient method, as you may not have an SSH client, the server address, or the 'user/password' combination at hand. Of course, there is Webmin, which simplifies administration, but it also does not provide instant access. Therefore, I decided to implement a simple, yet […]
It would hardly be incorrect to say that the best among us find joy through suffering. Ludwig van Beethoven I am Sergey, working at Yandex.Money in the performance research team. I want to tell you the beginning of the story of our path to using orchestration — how we chose the tools and what we considered during the process. All events from the article take place in real time, […]
In one of our previous articles, we discussed how to 'friend' Zimbra and MS Active Directory, which is used in most Russian companies for user account management. We suggested that Zimbra users take advantage of the easiest and safest method for creating mailboxes in Zimbra based on data from AD called LAZY Mode. […]
How would you describe the year 2018? Did it turn out the way you expected it to? We would answer this question more negatively. Starting with particularly devastating natural disasters and ending with a record number of women running for office, 2018 was full of surprises. Looking back, we evaluate the world quite differently than we saw it in predictions a couple of […]
Long ago, I wrote an article on Habr titled “Intensity is more important than thoroughness” about the idea that it is better to increase the number of attempts to do something rather than prolong one attempt. Now, I want to expand on this thought. The main idea: break your work into sessions designed to increase the number of attempts to solve the task. Instead of working for six hours straight, it is often preferable to […]