Interesting Snippets from 2015-03-31

• Exploit Exercises

  exploit-exercises.com provides a variety of virtual machines, documentation and challenges that can be used to learn about a variety of computer security issues such as privilege escalation, vulnerability analysis, exploit development, debugging, reverse engineering, and general cyber security issues.

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Interesting Snippets from 2015-03-30

• javascript/README.md at master · airbnb/javascript · GitHub

  A mostly reasonable approach to JavaScript

• History of Lossless Data Compression Algorithms - ETHW

  The basic principle that lossless compression algorithms work on is that any non-random file will contain duplicated information that can be condensed using statistical modeling techniques that determine the probability of a character or phrase appearing. These statistical models can then be used to generate codes for specific characters or phrases based on their probability of occurring, and assigning the shortest codes to the most common data. Such techniques include entropy encoding, run-length encoding, and compression using a dictionary. Using these techniques and others, an 8-bit character or a string of such characters could be represented with just a few bits resulting in a large amount of redundant data being removed.

• Apache Spark: Lightning Fast Cluster Computing | Toptal

  Spark provides a faster and more general data processing platform. Spark lets you run programs up to 100x faster in memory, or 10x faster on disk, than Hadoop. Last year, Spark took over Hadoop by completing the 100 TB Daytona GraySort contest 3x faster on one tenth the number of machines and it also became the fastest open source engine for sorting a petabyte.

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Interesting Snippets from 2015-03-23

• arasatasaygin/is.js · GitHub

  This is a general-purpose check library.

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Interesting Snippets from 2015-03-16

• The sad state of sysadmin in the age of containers

  I'm not complaining about old-school sysadmins. They know how to keep systems running, manage update and upgrade paths. This rant is about containers, prebuilt VMs, and the incredible mess they cause because their concept lacks notions of "trust" and "upgrades".

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Interesting Snippets from 2015-03-10

• Turning the database inside-out with Apache Samza | Confluent

  his talk introduces Apache Samza, a distributed stream processing framework developed at LinkedIn. At first it looks like yet another tool for computing real-time analytics, but it’s more than that. Really it’s a surreptitious attempt to take the database architecture we know, and turn it inside out. At its core is a distributed, durable commit log, implemented by Apache Kafka. Layered on top are simple but powerful tools for joining streams and managing large amounts of data reliably. What do we have to gain from turning the database inside out? Simpler code, better scalability, better robustness, lower latency, and more flexibility for doing interesting things with data.

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