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Reactor hits GA

‘It can’t just be Big Data, it has to be Fast Data: Reactor 1.0 goes GA’:

Reactor provides the necessary abstractions to build high-throughput, low-latency–what we now call “fast data”–applications that absolutely must work with thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of concurrent requests per second. Modern JVM applications must be built on a solid foundation of asynchronous and reactive components that efficiently manage the execution of a very large number of tasks on a very small number of system threads. Reactor is specifically designed to help you build these kinds of applications without getting in your way or forcing you to work within an opinionated pattern.

(tags: disruptor reactive-programming reactor async libraries java jvm frameworks spring netty fast-data)

Backblaze Blog » How long do disk drives last?

According to Backblaze’s data, 80% of drives last 4 years, and the median lifespan is projected to be 6 years

(tags: backblaze storage disk ops mtbf hardware failure lifespan)

Heirloom Chemistry Set by John Farrell Kuhns — Kickstarter

This is a beauty. I wonder if they can ship to Ireland?

To tell our story for this Kickstarter project, we really have to start in Christmas of 1959. Like many young scientists of the time, I received a Gilbert Chemistry set. This chemistry set provided me hours of great fun and learning as well as laying the foundation for my future as a research chemist. As I became an adult I wanted to share these types of experiences with my daughter, my nephews and nieces, and friends. But soon I became aware real chemistry sets were no longer available. Without real chemistry sets and opportunities for students to learn and explore, where would our future chemists come from? So …. I set out on a mission.

(tags: chemistry science chemistry-sets education play kickstarter)

Philippe Flajolet’s contribution to streaming algorithms [preso]

Nice deck covering HyperLogLog and its origins, plus a slide at the end covering the Flajolet/Wegman Adaptive Sampling algorithm (“how do you count the number of elements which appear only once in stream using constant size memory?”)

(tags: algorithms sketching hyperloglog flajolet wegman adaptive-sampling sampling presentations slides)

3 Tacos or 4 Flautas Per Order Make a Healthy Diet in Greatest Scientific Study Ever

“In reality, [tacos and flautas] aren’t bad meals,” the report argues. “The error that many of us Mexicans [Gustavo note: and gabachos] commit is including these types of dishes in our regular diet without an appropriate balance of them and falling into excessively eating them; accompanied by a lack of physical activity, it creates bad eating habits.” The good docs go on to note that people can eat tacos and flautas without negatively affecting their health, but “the key resides in controlling the quantity and frequency of eating these types of meals.” They also make the point that overall, tacos and flautas have less grease than doughnuts, french fries and even some health bars, although they didn’t specify which brands in the latter. In a subsequent blog post, the scientists go on to describe flautas as an “energy food” due to their composition, and conclude by recommending that a healthy diet can include three tacos al pastor or four flautas per order, “controlling the frequency of intake.” So have at it, boyos, but in moderation. And I can already hear the skeptics: What about tacos de chicharrones? Why not focus on carne asada? Did they take into consideration chiles de mordida? Did they factor in horchata? And whither the burrito variable?

(tags: science tacos flautas mexican-food food eating yay)