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Project Cheetah - Faster, Leaner Pipeline That Can Keep Up With Demand

Table of Contents

• Introducing "Project Cheetah"
• Yes, but what does it DO?
• How Do I Set Speed/Durability Settings?
  • 1. Globally, you can choose a global default durability setting:
  • 2. Each Pipeline can get a custom Durability Setting:
  • 3. Multibranch Projects can use a new BranchProperty to customize the Durability Setting.
• Will Performance-Optimized Mode Help Me?
• Other Goodies
• How Did You Do It?
• What Next?

This is a guest post by Sam Van Oort, Software Engineer at CloudBees, and contributor to the Jenkins project, and maintainer of the Pipeline Plugins.

Since it launched, Pipeline has had a bit of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde performance problem. In certain circumstances, Pipeline can turn from a mild-mannered CI/CD assistant into a monster. It will happily eat storage read/write capacity like popcorn without caring about the other concerns of our friendly butler. When combined with other additional factors, this can result in real-world stability problems. For example, combining slow storage with a spike in running Pipelines has brought down production Jenkins at more than one organization. Similarly, users see issues if a busy master gets hit with an extra source of stress; past culprits have been heavy automated (ab)use of Jenkins APIs, now-solved user lookup bugs, backup jobs, and plugins run crazy that load excessive numbers of builds. Symptoms ranged from visible slowdowns in the UI to unresponsive jobs and "hung" masters.

Now I’m not saying this to scare people or to criticize the technology we’ve built. Implementing Pipeline scalability best practices coupled with SSD storage keeps Jenkins in a happy place. We just need context on the weaknesses to see why it’s important to address them.

Introducing "Project Cheetah"

Today we’re announcing the first major results of "Project Cheetah", our long-running effort to address these challenges and improve Pipeline scalability. More broadly, Cheetah aims to help in 3 places:

• Small-scale containers: Pipeline needs to run leanly in resource-constrained containers, to enable easy scale-out without consuming excessive resources on shared container hosts.

• Enterprise systems: Pipeline needs to effectively serve high-scale Jenkins instances that are central to many large companies.

• General case: run Pipelines a bit more quickly on average, and allow users to get much-stronger performance in worst-case scenarios.

These changes are implemented across many of the Pipeline plugins.

Yes, but what does it DO?

Project Cheetah offers several things, but the most important is Durability Settings for all Pipelines, and especially the Performance-Optimized setting. This setting avoids several potentially unexpected performance "surprises" that may strike users. In the general case, it greatly reduces the disk IO needs for Pipeline. How much? Below is a graph of storage utilization with legacy Pipeline versions (think early 2017) and with the latest version using the Performance-Optimized mode. These are tested on an AWS instance backed by an EBS volume provisioned with 300 IOPs.

Before and After:

As you can see, storage utilization goes down by a lot. While the exact number will vary, across the benchmark testcases this results in Pipeline throughput of 2x to 6x the previous before becoming IO-bound. This also increases stability of Jenkins masters because they will tolerate unexpected load.

This comes with a major drop in CPU IOWait as well:

And of course the rate at which data is written to disk and number of writes/s is also reduced:

For enterprise users, timing stats often show 10-20% of normal builds is serializing the Program and writing the record of steps run ("FlowNodes") - the performance optimized durability setting will cut this to almost nothing (for standard pipelines, 1/100 or less) - so builds will complete faster, especially complex ones.

Please see the Pipeline Scalability documentation for deeper information on the new Durability Settings, how to use them, and which plugin versions are required to gain these features.

Also, users may see a reduction in hung Pipelines because new test utilities made it possible to identify and correct a variety of bugs.

How Do I Set Speed/Durability Settings?

There are 3 ways to configure the durability setting:

1. Globally, you can choose a global default durability setting:

Under "Manage Jenkins" > "Configure System", labelled "Pipeline Speed/Durability Settings". You can override these with the more specific settings below.

2. Each Pipeline can get a custom Durability Setting:

This is one of the job properties located at the top of the job configuration, labelled "Custom Pipeline Speed/Durability Level." This overrides the global setting. Or, use a "properties" step - the setting will apply to the NEXT run after the step is executed (same result).

Jenkinsfile (Declarative Pipeline)

pipeline {
    agent any
    stages {
        stage('Example') {
            steps {
                echo 'Hello World'
            }
        }
    }
    options {
        durabilityHint('PERFORMANCE_OPTIMIZED')
    }
}

Toggle Scripted Pipeline (Advanced)

Jenkinsfile (Scripted Pipeline)

properties([durabilityHint('PERFORMANCE_OPTIMIZED')])

3. Multibranch Projects can use a new BranchProperty to customize the Durability Setting.

Under the SCM you can configure a custom Branch Property Strategy and add a property for Custom Pipeline Speed/Durability Level. This overrides the global Durability Setting and will apply to each branch at the next run. You can also use a "properties" step to override the setting, but remember that you may have to run the step again to undo this.

Durability settings will take effect with the next applicable Pipeline run, not immediately. The setting will be displayed in the log.

There is a slight durability trade-off for using the Performance-Optimized mode — the appropriate section of the Pipeline Scalability documentation has the specifics. For most uses we do not expect this to be important, but there are a few specific cases where users may wish to use a slower/higher-durability setting. The Best Practices are documented.

We recommend using Performance-Optimized by default, but because it does represent a slight behavioral change the initial "Cheetah" plugin releases defaults to maintain previous behavior. We expect to switch this default in the future with appropriate notice once people have a chance to get used to the new settings.

Will Performance-Optimized Mode Help Me?

• Yes, if your Jenkins instance uses NFS, magnetic storage, runs many Pipelines at once, or shows high iowait (above 5%)

• Yes, if you are running Pipelines with many steps (more than several hundred).

• Yes, if your Pipeline stores large files or complex data to variables in the script, keeps that variable in scope for future use, and then runs steps. This sounds oddly specific but happens more than you’d expect.

  • For example: readFile step with a large XML/JSON file, or using configuration information from parsing such a file with One of the Utility Steps.

  • Another common pattern is a "summary" object containing data from many branches (logs, results, or statistics). Often this is visible because you’ll be adding to it often via an add/append or Map.put() operations.

  • Large arrays of data or Maps of configuration information are another common example of this situation.

• No, if your Pipelines spend almost all their time waiting for a few shell/batch steps to finish. This ISN’T a magic "go fast" button for everything!

• No, if Pipelines are writing massive amounts of data to logs (logging is unchanged).

• No, if you are not using Pipelines, or your system is loaded down by other factors.

• No, if you don’t enable higher-performance modes for pipelines. See above for how!

Other Goodies

• Users can now set an optional job property so that individual Pipelines fail cleanly rather than resuming upon restarting the master. This is useful for niche cases where some Pipelines are considered disposable and users would value a clean restart over Pipeline durability.

• We’ve reduced classloading and reflection quite significantly, which improves scaling and reduces CPU use:

• Script Security (as of version 1.41) has gotten optimizations to reduce the performance overhead of Sandbox mode and eliminate lock contention so Pipeline multithreads better.

• Pipeline Step data uses up less space on disk (regardless of the durability setting) - this should be 30% smaller. Assume it’s a few MB per 1000 steps - but for every build after the change.

• Even in the low-performance/high-durability modes, some redundant writes have been removed, which decreases the number of writes by 10-20%.

How Did You Do It?

That’s probably material for another blog post or Jenkins World talk.

The short answer is: first we built a tool to simulate a full production environment and provide detailed metrics collection at scale. Then we profiled Jenkins to identify bottlenecks and attacked them. Rinse and repeat.

What Next?

The next big change, which I’m calling Cheetah Part 2 is to address Pipeline’s logging. For every Step run, Pipeline writes one or more small log files. These log files are then copied into the build log content, but are retained to make it possible to easily fetch logs for each step.

This copying process means every log line is written twice, greatly reducing perforance, and writing to many small files is orders of magnitude slower than appending to one big log file.

We’re going to remove this duplication and data fragmentation and use a more efficient mechanism to find per-step logs. This should further improve the ability to run Pipelines on NFS mounts and hard-drive-backed storage, and should significantly improve performance at scale.

Besides this, there’s a variety of different tactical improvements to improve scaling behavior and reduce resource needs.

The Project Cheetah work doesn’t free users to completely ignore Pipeline scaling best practices and previous suggestions. Nor does it eliminate the need for efficient GC settings. But this and other enhancements from the last year can significantly improve the storage situation for most users and reduce the penalties for worst-case behaviors. When you add all the pieces together, the result is a faster, leaner, more reliable Pipeline experience.

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Jenkins is accepted to Google Summer Of Code 2018, join us!

We are happy to announce that Jenkins project has been accepted to Google Summer of Code 2018. This year we invite students and mentors to join the Jenkins community and work together on various initiatives: core, plugins, development tools and infrastructure.

Our mentors have already created some project ideas. For example, you are welcome to work on the new Configuration-as-Code initiative or to help creating standard API for Code Coverage plugins. If you like test automation, there is a proposal to Jenkins Acceptance Test Harness. Over the next weeks we plan to extend this list by new even more project ideas.

All information about the Jenkins GSoC is available on its subproject page.

I am a student. How do I apply?

See Information for students for application guidelines.

First step is to join discussions in the mailing lists in order to introduce yourself, establish connections with the community and potential mentors. The application period starts on March 12 and ends on March 27, but don’t let it misguide you! Use time before application to discuss project ideas/proposals with mentors and to process their feedback. To create a better proposal, we also recommend to study Jenkins and to do some contributions in the area of your project proposal.

Not satisfied by the current project ideas? You can propose your own idea in the developer mailing list.

I want to be a mentor. Is it too late?

It’s not! If you are passionate about open-source and Jenkins, we invite you to join the mentors team. You can either propose a new project idea or join an existing one. See Call for Mentors and Information for mentors for details.

This year mentorship does NOT require strong expertise in Jenkins development. The objective is to guide students and to get involved into the Jenkins community. GSoC org admins will help to find advisers if special expertise is required.

Important dates

• Mar 05 - deadline for new GSoC project idea proposals

• Mar 12 - student application period starts

• Mar 27 - deadline for student applications

• Apr 23 - accepted projects announced, community bonding starts

• May 14 - coding period starts

• Aug 06 - end of the coding period

See the GSoC Timeline for more info. In the Jenkins project we will also organize special events during and after GSoC (e.g. at Jenkins world).

P.S: I am going to create a special GSoC 2018 edition of swags for mentors and students. Do not miss them ;)

6 Mobile Apps for Creating GIFs On the Go

Keen to use plenty of GIFs in your text conversations, social media interactions, or even your work?

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Mining Bill Gates’ Tweets Using R

This is a guest post by Preetish Panda. Twitter has always been a rich source of social data that allows us to perform analysis on wide range of topics. Considering more than 6,000 tweets are posted per second and the open API gives real-time access, twitter data mining has compelling use cases in trend analysis, brand sentiment measurement, and feedback aggregation of new products and services. In this study, we’re going to extract tweets posted by twitter handle of Bill Gates and perform exploratory analysis along with text mining using `R`. Extracting data First off all, we need to create a twitter app that would allow us to fetch required data via Twitter API. Perform the activities given below to [...] Continue Reading

How to Disable and Customize Facebook’s Notifications, Texts, and Emails

Facebook is really keen on keeping you on their platform. One of the ways they do that is by sending you notifications whenever the tiniest thing happens. And you won’t just see them on the site—Facebook will also notify you by email, with mobile push notifications, and even with text messages.

Electric car goal in India seen creating cyber-security risks

India should manufacture the majority of the parts needed for its EV fleet as equipment shipped from overseas could be compromised, V K Saraswat,member of think tank, Niti Aayog, said in an interview. All of the software and at least 55 percent of the components need to be made domestically to keep electric vehicles and the grid secure.

How to Choose the Best (and Fastest) Alternative DNS Server

Your internet service provider offers its own DNS servers, which help you turn websites like www.howtogeek.com into their respective IP addresses. Your devices use those by default, but you can set your own preferred DNS servers for a bit of improved speed.

Virgin Hyperloop One enters into framework agreement with Maharashtra government

Sir Richard Branson announced the framework agreement in the presence of Modi and Fadnavis to initiate the development of the route under the auspices of the Magnetic Maharashtra event.

Geek Trivia: Which Of These Technology Terms Is Made Up And Not A Cultural Reference Or Portmanteau?

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How to Get the Most Out of Your Chromebook

Chromebooks are fantastic little devices—they’re simple enough for nearly anyone to use, and often come in at prices a fraction of Windows laptops or MacBooks. Whether you’re a Chromebook veteran or a first-time buyer, here are some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your machine.

Geek Trivia: In The Medieval Era, All Beers Had A Strong Taste Of?

Think you know the answer? Click through to see if you're right!

It’s Time to Banish Your Screens From the Bedroom

Can’t get to sleep? You might as well pick up your phone and scroll through Instagram for a bit, then maybe Facebook, and what was that blog with the funny pictures you used to look at back in the day, does it still exist? Oh yeah there’s like five years of updates here, let’s scroll through that for a bit, just one more page of posts, and…it’s morning.

Niti aayog plans paper on blockchain tech for land, health records

Blockchain is an infrastructure where a distributed digital ledger is maintained by a network of computers or nodes.

How to Set Your PC Games’ Graphics Settings with No Effort

PC gamers have to set a myriad of graphics options to balance performance with graphics quality. If you don’t want to tweak them by hand, NVIDIA, AMD, and even Intel provide tools that will do it for you.

How to Customize or Disable Siri on the HomePod

While it’s not the main selling point of the HomePod, Siri capabilities allow you to control the speaker using your voice without having to pull out your phone every time. Here’s how to customize Siri on the HomePod (or just disable it entirely).

How to Bring Back the “View Image” Button In Google Image Search

Google’s image-based search engine has been a staple of the internet for more than a decade. But this morning it got a little less useful: in addition to making the reverse image search tool harder to find, the “Show Image” button has disappeared.

How to Use and Customize the Windows 10 Action Center

With the Action Center, Windows 10 finally provides a central place for notifications and quick actions to live. Here’s how to use and customize it.

You Can Already Buy HomePod Coasters (Or Just Use Your Own)

If you picked up Apple&…

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Women in Tech: Part 4 – Engineering Manager

I am a Software Engineer/Architect with over 20 years of experience providing end-to-end application and system solutions. I have a huge passion for data management and analytics, which is why I came to Hortonworks – to be directly involved in current technologies that support the overall Data Lifecycle.  Before Hortonworks, I worked in various industries […]

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8 Unique Sticker Packs to Customize Your iMessage Experience

Every since the iMessage overhaul in iOS 10 the entire iMessage platform is significantly more fun and flexible.

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How to Move to a Dedicated Camera After Using a Smartphone Camera

Last year, for the first time in five years, the number of cameras sold actually increased. While I’ve got nothing other than personal anecdote to back it up, I suspect that people are loving taking photos on their smartphones so much that some of them are actually deciding to buy a dedicated camera.

What’s the Difference Between the “System32” and “SysWOW64” Folders in Windows?

On 64-bit versions of Windows, you have two separate Program Files folders. But it doesn’t end there. You also have two separate system directories where DLL libraries and executables are stored: System32 and SysWOW64. Despite the names, System32 is full of 64-bit files and SysWOW64 is full of 32-bit files. So what gives?

Geek Trivia: Before “Ghosting” Was Slang For Ignoring A Dating Partner, It Was Slang For?

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Geek Trivia: The Original Loopholes Weren’t Grey Areas In Laws Or Regulations But?

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How to Set Up Whole-House Parental Controls with OpenDNS

Your kids need internet access to do their homework, but that doesn’t mean you’re comfortable with them accessing everything online. There’s no technological substitute for proper adult supervision, but a free service called OpenDNS Family Shield makes it easy for parents to all block adult content with one simple tweak.

How to Disable Chrome’s New Ad Blocker (On Certain Sites or All Sites)

Google Chrome now has a built-in ad blocker, designed to get rid of the ads that are intrusive or otherwise annoying, but allow ads from sites that follow specific guidelines. If you’re not into the idea of letting your browser control the ads you see, however, you can disable it pretty easily.

Aukey 10W Wireless Fast Charger Review: A Speedy and Stylish Qi Charger for Your Nightstand or Office

If you’re shopping for a wireless charger for your smartphone you’ve likely discovered that your options are almost entirely black…

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Big Data vs Small Data – An Analysis Of Its Latest News

Guest post by Finnegan Pierson. One of the biggest news in the world of Big Data vs. Small Data today is the plan of China to establish a sort of social credit score where the government can rank its citizens based on their behavior, social actions and decision made online. In a document called “Planning Outline for The Construction of A Social Credit System,” China can encourage people to behave and do acts that will benefit the society. It is news like this that we can see the potential and future of Big Data. Whether you’re in the stream processing business or digital content business, you should understand the dynamics behind Big Data in order to adapt to your environment. Age [...] Continue Reading

Why the Impact of Big Data Extends Further Than You Think

The impact of big data extends far beyond IT, touching many areas of business. The problem is that executives are not always aware of these projects.

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How to Build a $35 Media Center with Kodi and the Raspberry Pi

If you’ve been holding off on setting up a Kodi-based media center computer because they’re loud, expensive, don’t fit in your media rack, the Raspberry Pi is your savior. For only $35 (plus a few accessories you may have lying around), you can get a small, efficient computer that can play all your media from one beautiful, couch-friendly interface.

Google Will Block Annoying Ads In Chrome Starting Today

Google makes its living off of ads, so it makes sense the company doesn’t like what people think of ads on the internet (which is to say…

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How to Match Colors on Your Multiple Monitors

If you’re anything like me, you love working on a big, beefy desktop PC with as many monitors as will fit on your big, beefy desk. And if you’re anything like me, it also drives you crazy when the colors and image settings on those monitors don’t match exactly.

How to Prevent Your HomePod from Creating White Rings on Your Wooden Furniture

Apple’s HomePod is an amazing speaker, but it comes at a price. Not just a dollar amount, but also the toll it could take on your finished wooden furniture. If you’ve discovered white rings appearing on your furniture (or have heard about this phenomenon and want to prevent it), here’s what you can do.

Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF) 3.1 Blog Series Part 4: Unit Testing and Continuous Integration & Delivery of Streaming Analytics Apps

Last week, as part of the HDF 3.1 Blog Series, we talked about support for Apache Kafka 1.0 and the powerful HDF integrations including Apache NiFi’s Kafka processors, Apache Ambari for provisioning/management/monitoring and Ranger for access control policies and audit for Apache Kafka. Today, in this fourth part of the series, we discuss the innovations added […]

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Logitech Pop Review: A Smart Switch for Your Smart Home Gadgets

Your smartphone can control a lot of things these days—your smart home lighting system, your thermostat, even your TV.

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How to Stop Facebook from Uploading Low-Quality Photos and Videos from Your Phone

Over the past few years, the quality of mobile cameras has become insane. Unfortunately, Facebook hasn’t quite caught up to this. By default, when you upload a photo to Facebook from your phone, it’s uploaded as a low resolution file. Here’s how to change that.

Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking

I’m getting sick of Windows 10’s auto-installing apps. Apps like Facebook are now showing up out of nowhere, and even displaying notifications begging for me to use them. I didn’t install the Facebook app, I didn’t give it permission to show notifications, and I’ve never even used it. So why is it bugging me?

Bitgram gets top honors at Karnataka govt's Blockchain hackathon

10 startups have shared the four prizes after their prototypes to solve different challenges at the 48-hour event won jury approval at blockchain hackathon, conducted by Karnataka govt's IT-BT department

Amazon Echo adds voice calling & messaging in India, drops invite-only tag

Amazon is introducing voice calling and messaging capabilities to its voice assistant Alexa, enabling users with an Echo device or Alexa mobile app to call or message their contacts who also have either an Echo device or the Alexa mobile app.

How to Stop the HomePod from Reading Your Text Messages to Other People

While the HomePod is great for music, it can also do some other neat things, like read your text messages to you. Be careful, though, as anyone within earshot can ask Siri to read your text messages from your phone. Here’s how to disable that feature.

What Is a Phone “Port-Out” Scam, and How Can I Protect Myself?

You’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of a phone “port-out” scam, because up until recently it wasn’t really a widely talked about issue. But it’s gotten serious enough that T-Mobile is sending warnings to many of its customers. Here’s a closer look at what this is and how to protect yourself from it.

Geek Trivia: In The Mid-1960s, There Was A Brief But Intense Fashion Fad Focused On Wearing?

Think you know the answer? Click through to see if you're right!

The Best Tools to Score Awesome Deals on Steam

 

There’s almost never a good reason to buy a Steam game for full price unless you have to have it the day it comes out.

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Why Ad Companies Love Google’s Ad Blocker, But Hate Apple’s Privacy Features

On February 15, Google Chrome will start blocking ads on intrusive sites, and mainstream ad companies aren’t particularly upset about it. In fact, they helped Google make this happen.

Skype Is Vulnerable to a Nasty Exploit: Switch to the Windows Store Version

If the desktop version of Skype is on your Windows computer, you’re vulnerable to a really nasty exploit. A flaw in Skype’s update tool could give attackers full control over your system, and Microsoft says there isn’t going to be a fix any time soon.

Security updates for Jenkins core

We just released security updates to Jenkins, versions 2.107 and 2.89.4, that fix multiple security vulnerabilities.

For an overview of what was fixed, see the security advisory. For an overview on the possible impact of these changes on upgrading Jenkins LTS, see our LTS upgrade guide.

While the severity score works out as medium for all the vulnerabilities, we strongly recommend that anyone operating publicly accessible Jenkins instances update as soon as possible, as their secrets on disk might be at risk by SECURITY-705.

Subscribe to the jenkinsci-advisories mailing list to receive important notifications related to Jenkins security.

How to Change the Speed of (or Disable) Windows’ Taskbar Thumbnail Previews

When you hover your mouse over a Taskbar button for an app with open windows, a thumbnail preview of those windows pops up. By default, there is a slight delay before the preview appears. With a simple Registry edit, you can eliminate that delay, or even turn off those thumbnail previews entirely.

YouTube TV Is Getting More Channels, More Markets, More Expensive

 

YouTube TV is Google’s attempt to bring live television into your home, through the YouTube brand you already know and trust…

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How to Keep Track of Cosmetic and Event Items in Overwatch

Overwatch is pretty great. As a multiplayer team shooter, it does almost everything right: plenty of variety, fast-paced gameplay, free hero and map updates, and unlike its spiritual ancestor Team Fortress 2, all players get immediate access to every weapon and technique.

The Best Bargain Switch Games for Under $5

The Nintendo Switch is a great console with a bunch of fantastic games.

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How to Add Live TV to the NVIDIA SHIELD with an HD Antenna

It’s not much of a secret that you can get free TV by using an antenna to pull in nearby signals. But if you have an NVIDIA SHIELD, you can supercharge that experience by adding live TV to the SHIELD itself—and, for a small monthly fee, even add a full guide and DVR capabilities.

Hortonworks Second Annual Data Heroes Awards – Nominations Now Open!

Submit your nominations now for DataWorks Summit Berlin and San Jose Is your organization hero material?  Well, we certainly think so!  We won’t ask anyone to fly through the air, protect your city or wear a cape & mask, but we will ask you to showcase your organization’s AWESOMENESS! Hortonworks supports more than 1,300 organizations […]

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If You Live In the EU, You Probably Have a Better Gadget Warranty

The European Union has, in general, taken a far more hands-on approach to consumer rights than the US. If you’re in the EU, you are probably entitled to a lot more recourse than you might think when something goes wrong with your gadgets. It’s not just the one-year warranty the manufacturer gives you.

Perfect Computer Security Is a Myth. But It’s Still Important

Maybe you’ve heard it before: “Security is a myth.” It’s become a common refrain after a never-ending string of high-profile security breaches. If Fortune 500 companies with million dollar security budgets can’t lock things down, how can you?

Geek Trivia: The Slang Term “Ameritrash” Is Commonly Used In Which Of These Hobbies?

Think you know the answer? Click through to see if you're right!

How to Get TurboTax or H&R Block for Free with IRS Free File

If you watch television, browse the web, or even listen to the radio, you’ve heard them: tax preparation apps promising to help you file your taxes for free. Try to actually use those apps, however, and it doesn’t take long before they ask you for money.

How to Pair Multiple Android Wear Watches to a Single Phone

When it comes to “regular” wristwatches, a lot of people have different watches for different activities. It makes sense—a sporty watch for the gym, a nicer watch for the office, and a casual watch for everything else. If you want to live this life with Android Wear, hooking up multiple watches to your main phone is a breeze.

How to Autofill From a Password Manager on an iPhone or iPad

Everyone should use a password manager, and third-party password managers like LastPass, 1Password, or Dashlane work better on an iPhone or iPad than you might think. You can directly autofill passwords on websites and apps using a share sheet action. It’s just hidden by default.

You Probably Shouldn’t Use Facebook’s “Protect” Feature

Quiet Your PC’s Fans with Cheap In-Line Adapters

Unless you’re constantly playing with one of those fidget cubes, your gaming PC is probably the loudest piece of equipment in your home office that doesn’t actually have a speaker. You could completely rebuild your PC into a efficient, low-power, water-cooled statement of subtlety…or you could buy these in-line adapters for a quick and cheap alternative.

Check the Play Store’s Settings for Freebies You May Have Forgotten About

Google likes to give away free things to people who use its products—free books, free movies, free music, and a lot more. While you can find these offers in the Google Home app, once you’ve accepted a freebie, it’s attached to your Google account and easy to forget about if you don’t use it immediately.

The Best Stargazing Apps For Your Smartphone

Space, as a certain iconic TV franchise sagely observed, is the final frontier—but alas it’s a frontier not many of us will get a c…

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How to Tell If a Facebook Competition Is a Scam

A lot of Facebook Pages run competitions. Some of them are legitimate giveaways, while others are total scams designed to collect your personal information.

Why Is My Internet So Slow?

There are many reasons your Internet connection might appear slow. It could be a problem with your modem or router, Wi-Fi signal, signal strength on your cable line, devices on your network saturating your bandwidth, or even a slow DNS server. These troubleshooting steps will help you pin down the cause.

Maharashtra govt plans pilots to try out blockchain tech

Maharashtra government is looking at finalising five to six pilot projects involving startups in the next few months to test blockchain technology in the state

Don’t Use Facebook’s Onavo VPN: It’s Designed to Spy On You

You may have seen a new button in Facebook’s mobile app lately: under the Settings menu, a “Protect” option leads you to download an app called Onavo Protect. Don’t do it.

Geek Trivia: Which One Of These Common Idioms Was Originally An Advertising Slogan?

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Is AppleCare+ Worth It?

Every time you buy an iPhone (or an iPad, or a Mac, or even a new HomePod), Apple will ask you if you want to add AppleCare+ to your purchase. But is it worth it?

11 Gift Ideas For the Geek In Your Life

Geeks speak a language all their own.

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How to Connect to a VPN on a Chromebook

While not necessary for everyone, VPNs can be a crucial tool for online safety—especially if you use public Wi-Fi a lot. There are tons of one-click solutions out there that make it really easy to hit a toggle and activate a VPN, but for the most robust options, manual setup is key. Here’s how to do it on Chrome OS.

How to Easily View Recently Modified Files in Windows

Assuming you have it set up right, Windows Search is pretty powerful. Today, we’ll show you how to find files you’ve recently modified, and how to save those searches for quick access any time.

Follow the Winter Olympics Medal Count With This Low-Key Educational Map

The 2018 Winter Olympics are currently underway in South Korea.

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Why Do Old Game Consoles Look So Bad on Modern TVs?

Old game consoles are great. Not just because there are plenty of old games that are still worth playing, but because the simpler electronic designs of cartridge-based systems tend to be much more resistant to wear and tear than modern disc-based consoles, plenty of them are still around and in great working condition.

Recapping the Fourth Quarter 2017 Earnings Call

Last Thursday, Hortonworks announced financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2017. These are exciting times at the company, as our CEO Rob Bearden announced another quarter of record breaking growth! Q4 revenue was up 44 percent compared to the prior year, and yearly growth clocked in at 42 percent. Hortonworks has […]

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7 Fantastic Board Games for Two Players

Who says you need to go out to have a good time?

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How to Sync Your Contacts Between All Your Devices: iPhone, Android, and the Web

How many times have you seen a Facebook post from a friend asking for numbers because they got a new phone and lost their contacts? Here’s how you can completely avoid new phone, who dis?—regardless of whether you use Android or iOS (or both).

How Do IP Addresses Work?

Every device connected to a network—computer, tablet, camera, whatever—needs a unique identifier so that other devices know how to reach it. In the world of TCP/IP networking, that identifier is the Internet Protocol (IP) address.

Indian govt looks to EVs, hyperloop & personal rapid transit to move freight, cut costs

The commerce ministry plans to evaluate the suitability of these new technologies for freight transport to bring down the costs to less than 10% of the GDP by 2022.

Geek Trivia: Learning To Play Which Of These Instruments Helps With Sleep Apnea?

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What Are Progressive Web Apps?

Ever wish web apps behaved more like real apps? Progressive Web Apps are a new technology that’s aiming to make that happen.

Geek Trivia: A Denier Is A Unit Of Measurement Used In?

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What Is HEVC H.265 Video, and Why Is It So Important for 4K Movies?

It’s taking a while for this new technology to become ubiquitous, but it’s happening—4K UHD Blu-rays use HEVC, VLC 3.0 makes HEVC and 4K videos more watchable on your PC, and the iPhone can even saved recorded video in HEVC to save storage space. But how does it work, and why is it so important for 4K video?

How to Fix a Blank White Screen When Setting Up the HomePod

Setting up the HomePod is pretty easy, and only takes a couple of minutes. However, if you’re coming across a mysterious blank white window during the setup process, here’s how to fix it.

How to Set Up the Apple HomePod

Apple’s HomePod smart speaker is finally here. If you bought one and are eager to get going, here’s how to set it up.

How to Remove a Smarthome Device from Alexa

Whether you’re getting rid of a smarthome device in your house or just don’t want to use Alexa with it anymore, here’s how to remove a smarthome product from your Alexa account.

Geek Trivia: Mixed Idioms With A Resulting Nonsenical Meaning Are Known As?

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Women in Tech: Part 3 – Technical Support Engineer

I am Vani Subramanian, born and brought up in Kerala, India. I have an engineering degree in Computer Science from College of Engineering, Trivandrum and have completed my Executive General Management Program from IIM, Bangalore. I believe the future is all about how we extract information from data, how we understand it, and how companies […]

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Facebook Is Testing a Downvote Button, But Please Don’t Call It Dislike

For the longest time, Facebook has refused to create a Dislike button to counter its trademark Likes. And for good reason!

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How to Shrink Your PC Game Files With CompactGUI and Save Drive Space

Developers of PC games, you’re getting kind of sloppy. Game installations have ballooned into drive-filling behemoths. Maybe 10 gigabytes for Far Cry 3 doesn’t sound like too much…until you add 67 gigabytes for the new DOOM, and 80 freakin’ gigabytes for Shadow of War. Pretty soon, even the most capacious drives start to feel a little snug.

HDF 3.1 Blog Series Part 3: Kafka 1.0 Support with Powerful HDF Integrations

Last week, we announced the HDF 3.1 Release and commenced the HDF 3.1 Blog series. Earlier this week, in part 2 of the blog series, we introduced the new HDF component called Apache Nifi Registry which allows developers to version control flow artifacts to meet their SDLC enterprise requirements. Today, in this third part of […]

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How Does Android Know a Wi-Fi Network Is Fast or Slow Before I Connect?

Google recently introduced a new feature into Android 8.1 Oreo that displays how good a public Wi-Fi network is before you connect to it. Using just simple terms like Slow, OK, Fast, and Very Fast, it will let you quickly gauge whether a network is worth connecting to, or if you’re better off just sticking with mobile data.

iRing Review: A Handy Grip Assistant For Uncomfortably Large Phones

The overwhelming majority of smartphone screens are anywhere from 5&#8243…

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Who Is “Scam Likely,” and Why Are They Calling Your Phone?

If you’ve received a call from someone your caller ID identifies as “Scam Likely,” you’re probably using T-Mobile or MetroPCS. Your cellular carrier is warning you that there’s probably a scammer on the line that will attempt to trick you.

Phones Are Better Without Removable Batteries

You can speed up your iPhone by replacing the battery, but you’ll have to take it to Apple, since the battery is not designed to be user-replaceable. This has left people wondering whether they’d prefer removable batteries. I’m here to say: you wouldn’t.

You Can Enjoy the Best Egg Cooker Around for Under $25

When it comes to kitchen gadgets, the entire genre gets a lot of flack for being a waste of space and money.

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How to Set Up the Eufy Smart Plug

There are plenty of smart plugs out on the market, but if you want a decently cheap option that’s reliable, Eufy’s Smart Plug and Smart Plug Mini are worth checking out. Here’s how to set them up.

Geek Trivia: Modern Cattle Are Descended From Which Of These Extinct Creatures?

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Amazon Prime Now Will Deliver Whole Foods Groceries To Your House Soon

If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, you can get certain food and items delivered to your home in under two hours.

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Is It Safe to Buy Used GPUs From Cryptocurrency Miners?

Thank God, the cryptocurrency bubble finally seems to be bursting. It had gotten so ridiculous that GPUs were skyrocketing in cost. But now, you’re about to see a bunch of powerful secondhand graphics cards flood the market, as Bitcoin “miners” try to recoup some of that cost.

How to Pair AirPods With a PC, Mac, Android Phone, or Other Device

Apple’s AirPods “just work” with iPhones thanks to their W1 chip, but they’re also standard Bluetooth headphones. That means they work with any device that supports Bluetooth audio—even Android phones.

8 Must Have Apps For Your Apple Watch

The Apple Watch has some really solid stock apps—so much so that it would be easy to stick with them and not spread your wings.

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How to Use Old and Differently-Branded Lenses with Your Mirrorless Camera

Mirrorless cameras are proving more and more popular. As they’ve developed in the last few years, they’ve become really useful in certain circumstances.

What Is Google Play Services, and Why Is It Draining My Battery?

If you’ve ever taken a look into your Android device’s battery settings screen, you’ve probably seen “Google Play Services” listed here. But what exactly is it, and why is it using so much battery?

6 technology trends to transform digitally

Companies should look out these trends while charting their digital transformation journey.

5 technologies that will define 2018

2018 will be a year where AI (specifically Artificial Narrow Intelligence where the AI is tuned for a specific use case) begins to go mainstream.

The Best Way to Cast Movies from Android or iPhone to Your TV

Smartphones have become a sort of catch-all for our digital media collections, and it’s not uncommon to have a couple of movies tucked way for those times when you have nothing better to do. If you have a Chromecast, though, you’ll probably need an extra app to get those movies onto the big screen.

Geek Trivia: Which Of These Medieval Cities Had A Modern Looking Skyline With Towering Buildings?

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What Is “parentalcontrolsd”, and Why Is It Running on My Mac?

Something called parentalcontrolsd is running on your Mac—at least, that’s what you found when you checked Activity Monitor. Maybe it’s using up CPU cycles, or maybe it’s just there and you want to know why. To begin: this is part of macOS, so don’t worry about it being malware.

We Want These Privacy Sliders In Any Gadget With a Webcam

If you have a laptop, you have a camera pointed at your face every time you use it. This can understandably make you a little paranoid.

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