Effective exception management is pivotal for maintaining the integrity and stability of software applications. Java's lambda expressions offer a concise means of expressing anonymous functions, yet handling exceptions within these constructs presents unique challenges. In this article, we'll delve into the nuances of managing exceptions within Java lambda expressions, exploring potential hurdles and providing practical strategies to overcome them.
Understanding Lambda Expressions in Java
Java 8 introduced lambda expressions, revolutionizing the way we encapsulate functionality as method arguments or create anonymous classes. Lambda expressions comprise parameters, an arrow (->), and a body, facilitating a more succinct representation of code blocks. Typically, lambda expressions are utilized with functional interfaces, which define a single abstract method (SAM).
In the dynamic landscape of microservices, managing communication and ensuring robust security and observability becomes a Herculean task. This is where Istio, a revolutionary service mesh, steps in, offering an elegant solution to these challenges. This article delves deep into the essence of Istio, illustrating its pivotal role in a Kubernetes (KIND) based environment, and guides you through a Helm-based installation process, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of Istio's capabilities and its impact on microservices architecture.
Introduction to Istio
Istio is an open-source service mesh that provides a uniform way to secure, connect, and monitor microservices. It simplifies configuration and management, offering powerful tools to handle traffic flows between services, enforce policies, and aggregate telemetry data, all without requiring changes to microservice code.
What are some ways to improve MySQL performance on queries against large tables that include the HAVING BY clause. It's my understanding that anything in there doesn't benefit from table indexes.
Welcome to Sprint anti-patterns! This article covers the three Scrum accountabilities (formerly roles) and addresses interferences of stakeholders and IT/line management with this crucial Scrum event.
Moreover, I added some food for thought. For example, could a month-long Sprint be too short for accomplishing something meaningful? And if so, what are the consequences?
Cloud computing, which is sometimes represented as a hazy creature in the sky, has become the bedrock of our digital universe. From streaming films to analyzing medical data, technology has an influence on every aspect of our lives. But, what precisely is the “cloud”? How does it function, and why is it so transformative? This essay will demystify cloud computing by looking into its fundamental ideas, numerous uses, and subtle elements.
From Bare Metal To Virtual Skies: Understanding the Fundamentals
Imagine a world where you don’t need to own a massive power plant to light your house. Instead, you simply access electricity from a centralized grid, paying only for what you use. Cloud computing operates on a similar principle. Instead of owning and maintaining physical servers, storage, and software, you rent access to these resources over the Internet from cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). This “pay-as-you-go” model unlocks several advantages:
As part of the 54th IT Press Tour, BMC, a global leader in software solutions for the Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE), showcased how it is partnering with innovative companies like Domino's Pizza, Sky Italia, and Balfour Beatty to improve customer experiences and drive business growth. During their presentation, BMC executives highlighted how solutions like the BMC Helix platform and Control-M are enabling these organizations to gain deeper data insights and meet customer expectations faster across complex hybrid IT environments.
The Autonomous Digital Enterprise Vision
BMC's vision of the "Autonomous Digital Enterprise" is a key driver behind their innovation strategy. As Ayman Sayed, President and CEO explained, "As the business world transforms, so have we. Our enterprise technology management evolves with every customer touchpoint. We scale to meet customer challenges, always investing in innovation to enable competitive differentiation."
Hype is a funny thing. Sometimes you find yourself in a Godfather Part 2 situation where the hype is totally justified. You hear about it. You try it. Life is changed. Hooray!
Other times, you find yourself in more of an Avatar: The Way of Water situation…where everyone around you is muttering things like “stunningly immersive,” and you’re on the sidelines wondering how much time you can spend watching blue aliens be bad at swimming.
In today's digital world, where repetitive jobs can be both time-consuming and tedious, automation shines as an icon of effectiveness. Python, with its simplicity and mighty toolboxes, is the ideal instrument to power routine web activities, such as filling forms, extracting information, and more. This guide will reveal to you how to use Python for web automation, covering preparation, basic scripts, and a detailed demonstration of form automation with Selenium.
Set up a Virtual Environment
Before diving into creating automation scripts, be sure to install Python on your device. The latest Python 3 versions are suggested for their improved functions and assistance. You can obtain Python directly from the official site.
The cybersecurity landscape is undergoing a significant shift, moving from security tools monitoring applications running within userspace to advanced, real-time approaches that monitor system activity directly and safely within the kernel by using eBPF. This evolution in kernel introspection is particularly evident in the adoption of projects like Falco, Tetragon, and Tracee in Linux environments. These tools are especially prevalent in systems running containerized workloads under Kubernetes, where they play a crucial role in the real-time monitoring of dynamic and ephemeral workloads.
The open-source project Falco exemplifies this trend. It employs various instrumentation techniques to scrutinize system workload, relaying security events from the kernel to user space. These instrumentations are referred to as ‘drivers’ within Falco, reflecting their operation in kernel space. The driver is pivotal as it furnishes the syscall event source, which is integral for monitoring activities closely tied to the syscall context. When deploying Falco, the kernel module is typically installed via the Falco-driver-loader script included in the binary package. This process seamlessly integrates Falco’s monitoring capabilities into the system, enabling real-time detection and response to security threats at the kernel level.
A number of distributed database vendors make claims about being “Postgres compatible” or “Postgres based.” This is no doubt a response to the growing and overwhelming popularity of Postgres with developers.
When evaluating a distributed Postgres database system careful consideration should be given to the level of effort required to migrate application code. Buyers should also look at the degree to which the product is outside the mainstream of the Postgres ecosystem, and the implications this raises.
Performance tuning in Snowflake is optimizing the configuration and SQL queries to improve the efficiency and speed of data operations. It involves adjusting various settings and writing queries to reduce execution time and resource consumption, ultimately leading to cost savings and enhanced user satisfaction.
Performance tuning is crucial in Snowflake for several reasons:
Distributed databases spread across multiple regions use geo-replication to transfer data from one region to another. Such systems use quorum consensus to ensure fault tolerance. The reads and writes should also be ordered. Geo-replication enhances high availability for data systems because if one region goes down other regions are available to serve requests.
Are you wondering how to create a video and image WordPress slider?
Sliders are a great way to show off your content and grab the attention of your website visitors. They can highlight important or featured content without taking up a ton of space on the page.
In this article, we will provide a step-by-step tutorial on how to easily create a video and image WordPress slider with Soliloquy.
Why Create a Video and Image WordPress Slider?
Let’s face it: content sliders are awesome. When done right, they conserve precious screen real estate and help engage visitors immediately upon landing on your page.
A video and image slider is a slider that contains both videos and images. Sometimes, you will want both videos and images in one slider rather than creating sliders for one or the other.
Let’s say you have a real estate website for various home listings. You can add pictures of the home along with a video walkthrough inside, giving users a more interactive experience.
Or you can use your content slider to add user testimonials or portfolio items. Some plugins may even offer an auto-play function so visitors will see the video immediately.
Beyond that, a slider is a great way to group content in one place. Rather than spacing your videos and images vertically, you can categorize them all in one slider.
If you want to showcase testimonials on your landing page, then it’s much better to have them in a slider so that visitors can watch them all at once rather than scrolling down.
You could also use a slider to showcase featured content so that you can direct traffic to your most important pages.
With that being said, we will be covering how to create a video and image WordPress slider on your website.
Step 1: Install a WordPress Slider Plugin
The easiest way to create a video and image slider is with Soliloquy. It is the best WordPress slider plugin, with over 900,000 installs. You can easily create simple sliders using images from the media library along with videos hosted on third-party platforms like YouTube.
When added to your website, the slider will look great on all devices, including laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
That’s why many websites use Soliloquy sliders on their most important pages, such as the home page, sales page, and landing page.
Best of all, you don’t have to write a single line of code to do it!
To get started, all you have to do is install and activate the Soliloquy plugin on your website. If you need help with installation, check out our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
That said, you may want to consider the Pro version if you need addons such as a lightbox feature, password protection, featured content, and other integrations like Instagram, Pinterest, and WooCommerce.
Step 2: Add Responsive Video Slides in WordPress
Upon activation, you will need to head over to Soliloquy » Add New in the WordPress admin area.
From there, you can give your slider an appropriate title.
Now, you are ready to add all of the media content to your slider. Here is where you can add both videos and images.
Go ahead and click on ‘Select Files From Other Sources.’
Note: While you could upload videos from your computer to WordPress, we don’t recommend it since it will slow down your site. Instead, you should use YouTube or another video hosting platform. Check out our list of the best tips to speed up WordPress performance to learn more strategies.
You will see a popup window appear with options to insert media files. We will start by inserting our video slides.
To do that, head over to the ‘Insert Video Slide’ tab. Give your video slide a title, video URL, image URL, alt text, and caption.
Make sure you grab the video URL from a third-party hosted platform like YouTube.
If you want to add more slides, all you need to do is simply click on the ‘Add Another Video Slide’ button.
Then, you will add in the information you need for this slide.
Once you’ve added all the video slides, go ahead and click on the ‘Insert into Slider’ button.
Your slides will appear at the bottom of the page to edit later if needed.
Step 3: Add Image Sliders in WordPress
Now that you’ve got all your video slides in place, you are ready to add image slides.
With image slides, you can just drag and drop pictures from your computer, which is the easiest way to add these files.
That said, you can also use the media library to add slides as well.
To add from your media library, simply click on ‘Select Files from Other Sources.’
From here, the Add Media window will appear.
Go ahead and select the images you’d like to add. Then, hit the ‘Insert into Slider’ button.
Once you are done adding image slides, you should see all of the slides in the bottom section of the slider.
Feel free to rearrange them in the appropriate order to fit your needs.
Step 4: Edit the Slider Settings
You can make minor adjustments to customize how the slider will appear to visitors. Scroll down and head over to the ‘Configuration’ tab to access the settings.
You can edit options such as the slider theme, image size, slider dimensions, and more.
The slider theme affects the layout of the slide, so you can toggle the various options. If you have access to the Pro version of Soliloquy, then you can also install the Slider Themes addon for more customization options.
If you scroll down, you will see the ‘Autoplay Video’ option. You can check the box to enable autoplay so that the video automatically starts before the user can continue down the page.
Autoplay can be great for product explainer videos or sales pages to engage users, reducing the chances they will click away.
After you’ve finished adjusting the settings, you just need to hit the ‘Publish’ button.
Step 5: Display Your Slider in Pages or Posts
Now, all that’s left to do is publish your slider on a page or post.
That said, if you are using the newer Gutenberg block editor, then Soliloquy has a block you can use that directly links to all of your sliders.
Just head over to Pages/Posts » Add New or edit an existing page/post.
Next, click on the ‘+’ icon and find the Soliloquy block.
From here, you can select the video and image slider you just created.
Once you are done, simply hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Update.’
Then, you can preview your slider to make sure it looks good.
It should look something like this.
Bonus: Add a Lightbox to Your WordPress Sliders
Soliloquy has a wide range of addons that can enhance your sliders and provide a more interactive experience for visitors.
For example, if you are adding a slider, then there’s a good chance you will want to add a lightbox as well.
By adding the lightbox effect to your sliders on your WordPress website, you’ll be able to show off your content in a more professional way.
When users click on your images or videos, it will open in a popup window on your site. Lightboxes create a more immersive viewing experience for your visitors so they can view the content in greater detail. They can even download the media files on their computers or share the images on social media.
If you run a photography website, then the lightbox effect lets visitors view your images without the distraction of other elements on your site, which boosts engagement. For online stores, lightboxes will help to create more engaging product galleries.
To add a lightbox to your slider, just go to Soliloquy » Addons. Scroll down to the Lightbox Addon and click on ‘Install Addon.’
Once installed, it will appear in the settings for your slider.
From here, you will be able to adjust the effects and layouts, add navigation arrows, the theme of the lightbox, and more.
Once enabled, the lightbox should work automatically.
Preview your slider, and it should look something like this.
Feature flags are commonly used constructs and have been there for a while. But in the last few years, things have evolved and feature flags are playing a major role in delivering continuous risk-free releases. In general, when a new feature is not fully developed and we still want to branch off a release from the mainstream, we can hide our new feature and toggle it off in production. Another use-case is when we want to release our feature to only a small percentage of users, we set the feature 'on' for a segment/geography and set it 'off' for the rest of the world. The capability to toggle a feature on and off without doing a source code change gives the developer an extra edge to experiment with conflicting features with live traffic. Let us deep dive into more details about feature flags and an example implementation in Springboot.
Things To Consider When We Are Introducing a New Feature Flag
Establish a consistent naming convention across applications, to make the purpose of the feature flags easily understandable by other developers and product teams.
Where to maintain feature flags?
In the application property file: Toggle features based on environment. Useful for experimenting in development while keeping features off in production.
In configuration server or vault: Let's imagine you are tired after a late-night release, and your ops team calls you at 4 am, to inform you the new feature is creating red alerts everywhere in monitoring tools, here comes the Feature toggle to your rescue. First, turn the feature 'off' in the config server and restart compute pods alone,
In database or cache: Reading configs or flag values from a database or an external cache system like Redis, you don't have to redeploy or restart your compute, as the values can be dynamically read from the source at regular intervals, pods get updated value without any restart.
You can also explore open-source or third-party SDKs built for feature flags, a handful of them are already in the market. They also come with additional advantages that help in the lifecycle management of feature flags.
GitHub offers a way to customize one's profile by allowing one to create a README in a specific repository, named as your profile, e.g., nfrankel/nfrankel. A couple of years ago, I automated the update of my GitHub profile with up-to-date info: my latest blog posts, my upcoming talks, and the last recorded YouTube talk. I took the time to document how to do it on this blog.
At the time, I chose Kotlin scripting because I was proficient enough in Kotlin, but I wanted to learn the scripting part. Over the years, I became more and more dissatisfied with the solution. I recently moved away from Kotlin Scripting to Python. In this post, I want to explain my reasons and document the migration.
Vishing, a fusion of "voice" and "phishing," represents a sophisticated social engineering tactic that leverages telephonic communication to extract sensitive personal or administrative information. Though not a novel concept, historical instances underscore the enduring efficacy of vishing in breaching security barriers.
MGM Cyber Attack Analysis
Against the backdrop of historical precedents, the MGM Resorts cyberattack in September 2023, orchestrated by the Scattered Spider group utilizing ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware, stands out as a poignant example. Employing vishing as a pivotal element, the assailants adeptly simulated an MGM employee during a call to the IT help desk, successfully obtaining credentials that were then used to disrupt critical services such as card payments, knock out reservations sites, shut down ATMs and locked guests out of their hotel rooms. The ensuing compromise of customer data prompted MGM Resorts to implement comprehensive measures, including free credit monitoring.
There are thousands of Python programmers; of course, many people can master it. The term “you” here refers to non-professionals in the workplace.
People in the workplace usually use Excel to process data, but there are also many helpless situations, such as complex calculations, duplicate calculations, automatic processing, etc. When encountering a crash without saving, it can often cause people to collapse. If you can master a programming language, these problems won’t be a problem anymore. So, what should we learn?
As we move towards a more digitally integrated world, the impact of software is becoming increasingly important. Global corporations are pouring money into high-quality software development. But is it enough?
Evaluating software to determine whether it meets end-user requirements is as paramount as the development process. Companies must effectively test their software to appease customers who demand regular updates with all bugs and glitches fixed.
