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Amazon have updated this architectural tips doc for DynamoDB users — good reference
“Tweeps! What’s the craziest infra incident you worked on at Twitter”
great thread of Twitter outages and production incidents. I would love to hear more details about these, I love hearing about other people’s outages ;) Even reading “over a month of cleanup and some permanent data loss” has me sweating….
(tags: infrastructure engineering twitter ops outages production)
Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles
Scientists have created a mutant enzyme that breaks down plastic drinks bottles – by accident. The breakthrough could help solve the global plastic pollution crisis by enabling for the first time the full recycling of bottles. The new research was spurred by the discovery in 2016 of the first bacterium that had naturally evolved to eat plastic, at a waste dump in Japan. Scientists have now revealed the detailed structure of the crucial enzyme produced by the bug. The international team then tweaked the enzyme to see how it had evolved, but tests showed they had inadvertently made the molecule even better at breaking down the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic used for soft drink bottles. “What actually turned out was we improved the enzyme, which was a bit of a shock,” said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who led the research. “It’s great and a real finding.”
(tags: plastic recycling enzymes science mutants pet bottles green)
“Facebook will implement a part of their transparency plan”
The Transparent Referendum Initiative writes:
Big News – Facebook will implement a part of their transparency plan – the ability to see the ads that a page has paid for- IN IRELAND FROM 25th. A positive first step. This will help us build out our database, as we wait for a platform fed offline list to be implemented. #8thRef
(tags: facebook ads transparency ireland repealthe8th referenda voting)