BigQuery, Puppeteer, UpCloud, MPTCP, Hetzner, Fail, Mind Power, Deep Web

• BigQuery ML. Brings Machine Learning into BigQuery Goole Cloud Database. - This is interesting development. Machine learning tools are starting to get integrated to database solutions. Just like functions and other server side evaluation features got earlier. This development will bring machine learning trivially usable to any data scientist, whom might not have specific machine learning expertise. Yet this is totally expected way of developing technologies to mature providing easier accessibility.
• BigQuery GIS - Brings efficient Geospational Information System data structures and indexing. Allowing efficient queries from huge geographically positioned data sets. Queries are very similar to PostGIS because the same SQL/MM Spatial database standard is being used.
• If I would be working more with WebBrowser projects Puppeteer is something I would for sure take a very good look at. It allows headless operation and automating browser operations, even for sites which do not provide any API.
• Just noticed that UpCloud network routing has changed, because it has joined FICIX and now traffic is routed via it.
• Back from vacation, so many projects to continue with urgent work. Well, nothing new. I keep wondering how many days it'll take to completely lose all the relaxation gained during the vacation. I'd guess it's around three days, before you're feeling like drowning on work again.
• Multipath TCP (MPTCP) - There are now providers in Finland whom provide "single connection" using multiple paths. So you can combine fiber, VDSL2 and 4G, 5G mobile data and so on, to create one high capacity Internet connection with redundancy. Seems bit clunky and tricky. And hardly (?) sees any wider adoption. But sure, there are benefits in specific use cases, yet there's also lots of added complexity. Which of course can be masked by suitable software and pre-configuration.
• Finally replaced my age old Key Tronic keyboard with new Ducky keyboard. Different feeling, but sure, Ducky is good. Eh, well, what would you expect with that price. Of course you would expect top quality. - Just as a side note, I've been adding missing "g"-letters to many of my posts, because the key wasn't working properly on old keyboard.
• Hetzner Finland Data Center Park Helsinki Grand Opening with title "Welcome To The Internet" was quite a nice event. Very well arranged event with excellent food and including the data center tour. - Thank you, Hetzner.
• Date as money fail - Sometimes simple fails are just way deep in the stack. - One day I found out interesting integration problem. Everything seemed to work perfectly in normal test scenarios and unit tests, but ... The deep stuff. Function parameter reference order was incorrect. This caused systemic but still rare occurrence of strange problem. Initially I also strongly suspected database isolation problem. But after further thinking it seemed unlikely, because the error was too consistent to be "random". After some analysis I found out that some values were one euro off, in case where data transfer was seriously delayed and one days information was partially processed during two separate days. It took me quite a while to first confirm that something was wrong, and then to figure out exactly what was wrong. If the customer would have told me that several days later the data is also exactly number of days off. I probably would have caught this a lot faster. - In this case using the data classes or named tuples would have made all the difference, afaik. Of course proper unit tests would have also helped.
• Read a few personal development books including Mind Power. Actually there's nothing new in those books, but it's good to remind yourself about some things every now and then. Usage instructions for good and successful life (?).
• Had long discussions with colleagues and some researches, about how much deep web there's in the dark web . After the discussion ended, the end result was obvious. There's a lot of deep web stuff, which you can't see on the dark web, without knowing exactly where to look for. And without getting recommendations, and login credentials etc. It's just like on public web, there's so much content, which you can't access without credentials. Most of content you can't find with Google or similar dark web search engines.

2020-01-05