Posted by: xSicKxBot - 02-18-2020, 12:41 PM - Forum: Windows
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CVP Rik van der Kooi on Black History Month: Leaning in
White, Dutch, male and writing about Black History Month?
As an executive at Microsoft, a resident of the United States and a human being, it is important to me to use my voice to support the many communities around me, to give back, to empower others and to be a catalyst for change. It was with that idea in mind that I reached out to Kathleen Hogan, our executive vice president of Human Resources some years ago and asked if I could be a sponsor for the Employee Resource Group that supports our black and African American community at Microsoft called Blacks at Microsoft (BAM).
Being part of BAM for the last three years as co-sponsor has been an absolute honor and a privilege. Thanks to the generosity of the BAM community, I have had the opportunity to listen and learn much more directly about what’s top of mind for the community and explore my own understandings and assumptions. I’ve learned things about black history in the United States that I knew embarrassingly little about. And I’ve been deeply impressed with the cohesion and support BAM members provide each other and the external community. For me, the opportunity to influence others by actively participating in events and tune in to learn from others, to speak up when I observe behaviors inconsistent with our values or beliefs on inclusion, and to amplify stories that need to be told to help address injustices in society is some of the most rewarding work I have done while at Microsoft.
Black History Month, in the U.S. and Canada, is an opportunity for all of us to “knock on the door” to increase our awareness and understanding – from African history to slavery to the Jim Crow South to the civil rights movement to present-day inequities. It is also an opportunity to recognize and honor more recent examples of achievement from the black community and to reflect on what it means to create a truly equitable society.
I encourage everyone – community member or ally – to set aside some time this month to better understand black history, to be intentionally inclusive and to get acquainted with those who are different, with the intention of deepening empathy and understanding. In doing so, we become aware of our own biases, get curious about other points of view and gain the courage to have challenging conversations. Let every Black History Month be an opportunity to understand a little more, to be more connected and to deepen our sense of community.
Mongo (from “humongous”) is a high-performance, open source, schema-free document-oriented database, which is one of the most favorite so-called NoSQL databases. It uses JSON as a document format, and it is designed to be scalable and replicable across multiple server nodes.
Story about license change
It’s been more than a year when the upstream MongoDB decided to change the license of the Server code. The previous license was GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPLv3). However, upstream wrote a new license designed to make companies running MongoDB as a service contribute back to the community. The new license is called Server Side Public License (SSPLv1) and more about this step and its rationale can be found at MongoDB SSPL FAQ.
Fedora has always included only free (as in “freedom”) software. When SSPL was released, Fedora determined that it is not a free software license in this meaning. All versions of MongoDB released before the license change date (October 2018) could be potentially kept in Fedora, but never updating the packages in the future would bring security issues. Hence the Fedora community decided to remove the MongoDB server entirely, starting Fedora 30.
What options are left to developers?
Well, alternatives exist, for example PostgreSQL also supports JSON in the recent versions, and it can be used in cases when MongoDB cannot be used any more. With JSONB type, indexing works very well in PostgreSQL with performance comparable with MongoDB, and even without any compromises from ACID.
The technical reasons that a developer may have chosen MongoDB did not change with the license, so many still want to use it. What is important to realize is that the SSPL license was only changed to the MongoDB server. There are other projects that MongoDB upstream develops, like MongoDB tools, C and C++ client libraries and connectors for various dynamic languages, that are used on the client side (in applications that want to communicate with the server over the network). Since the license is kept free (Apache License mostly) for those packages, they are staying in Fedora repositories, so users can use them for the application development.
The only change is really the server package itself, which was removed entirely from Fedora repos. Let’s see what a Fedora user can do to get the non-free packages.
How to install MongoDB server from the upstream
When Fedora users want to install a MongoDB server, they need to approach MongoDB upstream directly. However, the upstream does not ship RPM packages for Fedora itself. Instead, the MongoDB server is either available as the source tarball, that users need to compile themselves (which requires some developer knowledge), or Fedora user can use some compatible packages. From the compatible options, the best choice is the RHEL-8 RPMs at this point. The following steps describe, how to install them and how to start the daemon.
1. Create a repository with upstream RPMs (RHEL-8 builds)
$ sudo systemctl status mongod
● mongod.service - MongoDB Database Server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/mongod.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Sat 2020-02-08 12:33:45 EST; 2s ago
Docs: https://docs.mongodb.org/manual
Process: 15768 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/mkdir -p /var/run/mongodb (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 15769 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/chown mongod:mongod /var/run/mongodb (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 15770 ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/chmod 0755 /var/run/mongodb (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 15771 ExecStart=/usr/bin/mongod $OPTIONS (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 15773 (mongod)
Memory: 70.4M
CPU: 611ms
CGroup: /system.slice/mongod.service
└─15773 /usr/bin/mongod -f /etc/mongod.conf
4. Verify that the server runs by connecting to it from the mongo shell
$ mongo
MongoDB shell version v4.2.3
connecting to: mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/?compressors=disabled&gssapiServiceName=mongodb
Implicit session: session { "id" : UUID("20b6e61f-c7cc-4e9b-a25e-5e306d60482f") }
MongoDB server version: 4.2.3
Welcome to the MongoDB shell.
For interactive help, type "help".
For more comprehensive documentation, see http://docs.mongodb.org/
---
> _
That’s all. As you see, the RHEL-8 packages are pretty compatible and it should stay that way for as long as the Fedora packages remain compatible with what’s in RHEL-8. Just be careful that you comply with the SSPLv1 license in your use.
Nvidia Reveals Cyberpunk 2077 RTX 2080 Ti, But You Can't Buy One
Update: Nvidia has revealed the special edition Cyberpunk 2077 RTX 2080 Ti, which features the familiar Founder's Edition cooler design with bright yellow accents and the game's logo on the back. Only 77 cards are being made, with all of them being given away by Nvidia through the competition below. Nvidia says you won't be able to purchase these.
Introducing the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Cyberpunk 2077 Edition. We made 77 for our community. Want one? Here's how: 1. RT this video. 2. Tag a gamer who is as excited as you about Cyberpunk 2077 in the replies with #RTXOn 3. If selected, you BOTH win these limited edition GPUs! pic.twitter.com/IG2BZZCZ6H
PC hardware manufacturer Nvidia is teasing a special edition Cyberpunk 2077 GPU, according to a series of tweets between their respective Twitter accounts.
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Previously we looked at OpenGL alternatives shortly after OpenGL on Apple products was deprecated. One of the technologies we mentioned was The Forge, a cross platform rendering solution. It is an open source cross platform rendering framework with several game development building blocks created by Confetti.
In addition to taking are of the low level details of working with Direct3D and Vulkan, the Forge provides the following features:
Asynchronous Resource loading with a resource loader task system as shown in 10_PixelProjectedReflections
Lua Scripting System – currently used in 06_Playground to load models and textures and animate the camera
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 02-18-2020, 02:13 AM - Forum: Lounge
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Coronavirus Could Put Nintendo Switch in Short Supply
If you've yet to buy a Nintendo Switch, don't wait much longer. Nintendo will likely struggle to keep the system in supply this year as it struggles with component issues caused by the coronavirus.
According to Bloomberg, Nintendo's issues are primarily in Vietnam, where it has an assembly partner that requires components via China. Should the component shortage not be resolved soon, the console would run into supply issues by April. This could be just after the launch of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
The Bloomberg report said that component issues could continue for a few more weeks before Chinese factories are expected to resume full operation. Thus far, more than 1,700 people have died from the virus, primarily within mainland China.
Python AND Operator On Two Objects or Lists [What’s The Result?]
You may already know Python’s and operator when applied to two Booleans:
>>> True and False
False
>>> True and True
True
Simple enough. Yet, that’s not the whole story: you can use the and operator even on complex data types such as lists or custom objects. So you may ask (and rightly so):
What If You Apply the AND Operator To Two Objects?
To understand the output, you have to understand two things:
How does the and operator work?
What’s the truth value of any object – such as a list?
You must understand the deeper meaning of those definitions: all of them are short-circuit which means that as soon as the condition is fullfilled, they will abort further processing.
In the x and y operation, if the value of x is evaluated to True, Python simply returns the value of y. It doesn’t even look at what the value of y actually is. If you’re using Boolean operators x and y, this is expected behavior because if x is True, then the y determines whether x and y is True.
This leads to the interesting behavior: if x and y are objects, the result of the operation x and y will be an object, too! (And not a Boolean value.)
In combination with the next piece of Python knowledge, this leads to an interesting behavior:
What’s the truth value of any object – such as a list?
The Python convention is simple: if the object is “empty”, the truth value is False. Otherwise, it’s True. So an empty list, an empty string, or a 0 integer value are all False. Most other values will be True.
Now, you’re equipped with the basics to understand the answer to the following question:
What If You Apply the AND Operator To Two Objects?
Say, you’ve got two non-Boolean objects x and y. What’s the result of the operation x and y?
The answer is simple: the result is y if x is non-empty (and, thus, evaluates to True).
What If You Apply the AND Operator To Two Lists?
Here’s an example for two list objects:
>>> [1, 2, 3] and [0, 0, 0, 0]
[0, 0, 0, 0]
The first argument of the and operation is non-empty and evaluates to True. Therefore, the result of the operation is the second list argument [0, 0, 0, 0].
But what if the first argument is empty?
>>> [] and [0, 0, 0, 0]
[]
The result is the first argument (and not a Boolean value False). If you’re in doubt why, consult the above definition again:
x and y: if x is false, then x, else y
Summary
You’ve learned that the and operator returns the first operand if it evaluates to False, otherwise the second operand.
You’ve also learned that you can use the and operator even for non-Boolean types in which case the result will be an object, not a Boolean value.
Finally, you’ve also learned that an empty object usually evaluates to False.
If you find this interesting, feel free to check out my upcoming Python book that shows you hundreds of small Python tricks like this one:
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It’s the first Tuesday of the month, meaning its time for the monthly Unreal Engine Marketplace giveaway! Every month Epic Games gives away several assets from the Unreal Engine marketplace, so long as the assets are “purchased” before the start of next month’s giveaway.
Apple Music Replay has been updated to create a 2020 Replay playlist
By Wesley Hilliard Sunday, February 16, 2020, 04:44 pm PT (07:44 pm ET)
Apple Music’s Replay service generates a curated playlist based on your year of listening so far, and has just been updated to support 2020.
The website still features the 2019 playlist, but the 2020 playlist is found at the bottom of the page
After missing out on the month of January, Apple Music appears to be ready for 2020’s Replay. Used to generate a top 100 playlist, the service uses your listening history to update the playlist every Sunday through the year. This is a unique feature when compared to Spotify’s own “Wrapped” service, which only provides the playlist and other data at the end of the year.
Apple first released Replay in November of 2019. The service uses Apple’s beta Apple Music website to generate the playlist for the first time. From here users can add all the playlists available back to the 2015 launch of Apple Music. The older playlists are interesting as they are no longer updated after the year ends, and provide a unique insight to your taste in music for a given year.
Since it is so early in the year, some users may not have enough history to populate a full playlist. My own 2020 Replay has only 68 songs.
Apple Music is one of Apple’s subscription services and has become a very important source of income for the company. Expect more updates to come as they continue to compete against Spotify.
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