Aawaara

First things first - even though the title is clickbaity but the intention isn’t to help you plagiarise content. Having said that, there are some valid use cases where you can use this:

Disaster recovery - your actual website is getting DDOSed and your need a static version up and running temporarily hosted elsewhere (preferably behind Cloudfront which provides you with DDOS mitigation using AWS shield)

Backups of your blogs or content hosted on third party websites

Migrating away from third party providers. e.g. I have been thinking of migrating away from Tumblr and this can be useful if I plan to use a static site generator for my blog going forward

This works well for a static website and below are the steps to achieve it! I’ll show you how to clone this blog and host it on this subdomain: http://badd431a8703451fa409d73d2218b545.aawaara.com/

Hopefully this will not result in every other person having the same blog as mine ;)

STEP 1: Install wget and AWS CLI and set up your AWS credentials

STEP 2: Create a mirror of the website and re-write links

wget --mirror --convert-links --html-extension --wait=1 https://aawaara.com/

--wait specifies that there is a wait of 1 second after each request. Be gentle with someone else's server. Also you risk being blocked if your request rate is too high. Use -U option to spoof user agent to that of an actual browser in case the server is blocking you from making requests. This will take hours so be patient.

STEP 3: Create S3 bucket and enable "Static Website Hosting"

Create a S3 bucket with the same name as the domain (or subdomain) you want to host it on. e.g. In my case I need to create badd431a8703451fa409d73d2218b545.aawaara.com and need to allow uploading of public files (it’s a setting while creating the bucket). Then you need to enable static website hosting for you bucket and specify index document as index.html

Also note the endpoint here as you will need it later.

STEP 4: Upload files to S3 bucket using AWS CLI and make them public

Go to the directory where the files have been downloaded (cd aawaara.com) and execute the following command (for your bucket):

aws s3 sync . s3://badd431a8703451fa409d73d2218b545.aawaara.com/ --acl public-read

STEP 5: Add a CNAME entry in your DNS records which points to your S3 bucket

CNAME record for  badd431a8703451fa409d73d2218b545.aawaara.com should point to   badd431a8703451fa409d73d2218b545.aawaara.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

Please note the value of CNAME record is the one you noted down at the end of step 3. In this case the CNAME record points to a subdomain, but you can very well point it to the root domain. For example you can create a bucket example.com and then the CNAME record for example.com needs to point to example.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com. You can find more details here.

That's it folks! Your clone should now be accessible on the domain of your choice!

via GIPHY

I am trying to add authentication to my API. Have been reading a lot about JWT and how popular it has been, but somehow I haven’t been able to get my head around a few things. I have some fundamental questions about JWT, why is it superior and the de facto standard for API authentication these days. Really grateful to anyone who can help me with these questions - please add your comments below!

Below are the possible approaches:

Using API token per user:

There is an endpoint (https) where you can send email and password to generate an API token for the given user. The token scopes all subsequent API calls to the given user.

The token obtained in (1) is used in all API calls for the given user and is stored locally on the client.

If password changes (or in case I want to invalidate token on some other event) I reset the token and user needs to log in again and regenerate an API token. I can also associate an expiry with it if I need to.

Using JWT:

There is an endpoint (https) where you can send email and password to generate a JWT token with user info in it and an associated expiry.

The JWT obtained in (1) can be used for all subsequent API calls, but since I cannot log out user on expiry of JWT (bad UX) and I cannot directly invalidate a JWT in contingency, I'll need to use refresh tokens as well.

Now if the token is expired, generate a new JWT token using the refresh token. I see this as an extra API call which adds to latency and is an overhead. Now use this new token in subsequent calls.

On password change reset the refresh token to force login.

Questions:

How is JWT superior to the API token approach?

Both hit the DB (JWT for refresh tokens).

JWT has an additional overhead to maintain refresh tokens, and more importantly an extra call to get a new JWT using refresh token on each expiry. In fact some approaches suggest a token refresh call before each API request to extend expiry of JWT.

Invalidating JWT is tricky, and hence the refresh tokens. Isn't it doing the same thing (DB hit) in a much more complicated manner.

The JWT could grow in size and we'll need to send it with every request. So the concept of avoiding DB hit is sort of incorrect (catch-22) - we cannot have everything in the payload, so we will anyways need to query DB.

I am using node.js framework sails which internally uses the Waterline ORM and while saving a record to MySQL the auto-generated timestamps (createdAt and updatedAt) were being saved in local timezone instead of being saved in UTC. After wasting a few hours, this fixed it for me:

We are exploring Amazon SNS and SQS services to build our notifications system at Pratilipi. To get started and have some initial idea about whether it works the way it has been promised, I decided to do some basic benchmarking. Please note that I did this on my local machine to know whether the technologies fit our usecase, or we can reject them outrightly. I am sharing these in the hope that someone else in a similar situation might find this helpful. These are not production benchmarks, and the sole purpose is to get some firsthand feelers. Below are a couple of Node.js apps built using sails that I created to carry out these benchmarks:

https://github.com/amitsaxena/sns_experiment (used to send a notification to SNS)

https://github.com/amitsaxena/sqs_experiment (used to send and receive jobs to and from SQS)

I used the good old apache bench to generate concurrency and load. The requests were being served by a single node server instance on my local machine with an average internet connection. Below are the test results:

50K requests at 100 concurrency sending messages to SNS:

50K requests at 100 concurrency receiving messages from SQS:

To also account for network latency, I hit one of our ECS container instance in the same AWS region to get an average round trip time (time spent by our request/response in transferring data over network) for our requests.

5K requests with 100 concurrency doing a health check

Below are my observations:

The average time per request for sending messages to SNS is 474ms

The average round trip time for our requests (health check) in the same AWS region is 538ms

Looking at the above, feels like SNS is going to give us < 10 millisecond latency when we are going to trigger events and notifications from our app servers in the same AWS region as the SNS topics

The average time taken to retrieve a message from SQS and delete it as well is 660ms

Taking into account the network latency, it looks like it will take around 150ms to retrieve and delete a job from SQS (from our app servers)

There were 0 failures when sending 50K messages

There were 0 failures when retrieving 50K messages

If you are here, you already know that you get a 403 response code (unauthorized) for this scenario. I don’t want you to get drowned in the sea of confusing Amazon documentation. Below is how you can do it.

Open the AWS management console, and go to your specific bucket and click properties tab

Now under “Permissions” click “Edit bucket policy“

This will work with pre 1.0.0 versions where active_admin used metasearch gem for filters. Below is how you can add a custom field as filter and use it to generate search results using a custom search function:

For me active_admin did break down when we added a polymorphic association to an existing model, and the filter on association stopped working. We suddenly started seeing “no implicit conversion of nil into String“ exceptions. I then had to figure out how to write a custom filter for active admin - and believe me it was like walking in the Sahara Desert =P , with little/no documentation around.

Do let me know in case this helped you and I saved you from getting lost in the great Sahara ;)

Though people try and make it sound extraordinary, but it is more about getting started in the first place and making a lot of decisions along the way. I have done it a few times in the past, and I will try and dispel the myths. When you start working on version 1.0 of a product, you spend a lot of time thinking about the product and architecture. It's good if you spend significant time thinking about what your product is going to do, and how you are going to do it (technically). Ask a lot of questions. Additionally, it will be great if you put some thought into how this thing is going to scale into the near future, and try and think about any immediate contingencies that you may face once your product is unleashed onto the real world (out of the one that exists in your thoughts). It never hurts to stay prepared, but at the same time I will advise against shooting in the dark. That's dangerous, and that's too managerial for me to care about. I don't know if there will be any computers/mobile devices five years from now (or the world will have moved on to the next big thing), so when someone asks if this product is going to work 5 years from now, all I can spare is a smile. Remember, this is the first iteration of your product, and it will continue to evolve as the world evolves, or it is going to be dead soon! So once you are done with the thinking bit, it's all about decisions - what language, what framework, what databases, what server, what caching layer, which host. At a more micro level - what server configuration, what defaults and which gems. For the bigger decisions, I usually try and stick with technologies I already know, for the simple reason that I know them better. That doesn't mean that new technologies don't find a place, and it could vary from project to project. Usually they can come a bit later in the cycle, when I am more clear about whether or not this technology can solve the given problem. So while building v1.0, each day involves a lot of decisions on your part, and you need to stick with them for a while. There could be mistakes, and the earlier you rectify those, the better. Fail early, fail fast!

Other than the decisions, you will need to write a lot of code. Be possessive about your code, feel offended/guilty if anything breaks. If you touch someone else's code, it's your responsibility that nothing breaks. Stay away from the blame game. Behave responsibly. If something is ugly and needs to be rewritten, rewrite it. At the end of the day, do look at the code that you have written, and see if something can be done better. If it can be, do it. Love what you do. F#@k process, use your good judgement. You are here to build. You cannot fake excitement, and if you are not excited about what you are building, then neither can Agile help you, nor the Waterfall model.

Unleash the dragon, and once it's out in the open, get ready for round two. Iterate, iterate, iterate until you create something that people love! And once people start loving what you have built, you have some other problems to solve - scale.

Remember there are no silver bullets or turn key solutions for scaling your product. If you know people who think this way, stay away from them. Those are dangerous people. It involves effort at your end, and sheer determination to solve that problem. Don't look at it as just another bug in the system. Pay attention early enough, read the warning signs, and get to work. Those are interesting problems to solve, and you are lucky enough to have hit them. Most of the people you know have never heard of them, and never will. Thanks to the open source community, and treasures of information available over the internet, the world is a better place, and you are not alone. You will figure it out, and unknown people, who you will never meet, will help you get there. That's humanity!

As programmers we have the rare gift of being able to create things, and bringing ideas to life. You are a problem solver. That's too much power which you ought to use now. In the words of Steve Jobs:

"Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.

And it’s that process that is the magic."

Life is short! Don't waste it on things that don't matter. Feel free to throw your random ideas at me, in case you are looking for feedback/brainstorming, or just trying to solve a difficult problem. I firmly believe in good karma, and humanity :)

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/anna-hazare-refuses-to-comment-on-kiran-bedi-says-politics-is-dirty/524124-37-64.html

Maintaining silence over his one-time close associate and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi joining the Bharatiya Janata Party, anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare on Wednesday yet again refused to comment on the developments.

The previous Delhi election was fought on the sole plank "Arvind Kejriwal ne Anna ko Dhokha diya, apney guru ko dhoka diya, etc. etc.", and I heard it a zillion times from BJP bhakts, in indescribable threatening tones. Why aren't the bhakts or even Anna Hazare speaking in the same tone now? How do the same Shazia Ilmis, Binnys, AAPtards who were cursed day and night, suddenly turn holy as soon as they join BJP. The accusations and questions suddenly turn into praises. Is BJP the Philosopher's stone which turns everything into gold as soon as it touches it?

Why are blazing guns who had a question every day during the 49 day tenure of Arvind Kejriwal suddenly silent? Modi has been in office for 8 months now - are the Shiela Dikshits, Sonia Gandhis, Robert Vadras already in Jail? Do no problems plague India now? When did these questions die a sweet death, and did anyone notice? The impatient democrats who needed results on a daily basis, have suddenly gone mute and their patience and understanding is praiseworthy.

It all started with looking at a text only loader for a Linux package on the terminal, and ended in a heart warming video about a rescue operation, written purely in ruby! No this isn't a clickbait, but you need to execute (see) it to believe it ;)

Below are some cool Ruby one liners : "text only loader/processing/progress indicators" && "some FUN"

https://gist.github.com/amitsaxena/689d29f23d01bd563839

Share yours in the comment section! Do you have a better story to tell?

"अच्छे दिन" have finally arrived: Train बनी Plane

Travel from Delhi to Lucknow via train (3rd AC) in just Rs. 3000 and experience third class service, and first class delays!

भक्त वाणी : पैसे दोगे नही, तो सर्विस कहाँ से मिलेगी? थोड़ा टाइम दो।

Coming soon: Post the phenomenal success of progressive pricing in a country of 1.25 billion people, soon 80% of tickets will be booked under the Tatkal quota (it's 30% already) :P  होशियार तो हैं।

To start with, this isn't a rant about how I didn't get a discounted product of my choice. It's more of a birds eye view of why this marketing campaign could prove to be one of Flipkart's worst nightmare, and why the timing of the mistake couldn't have been worse. The poster child of the Indian startup scene experienced first hand that whoever said "No Press is Bad Press" was absolutely wrong, especially if it's on social media.

Long time back when I first logged on to the internet, I still remember the Rediff's and Indiatimes shopping of those days who did e-commerce when there was no e-commerce (or the buzz). They had the first mover's advantage which they never capitalized on, and they still do business the same way as they did in the 90s, and probably the same volume as of 90s. Any guesses why they are dying?

What Flipkart painstakingly did over the years other than selling items online (which any Tom, Dick and Harry can do in today's times) - they created TRUST! They made the average Indian believe that they can purchase something online, and that thing will arrive at their doorstep the next day! They did it for years, day in and day out, few people at a time. They did it for a few, who told others, who then joined in with the same expectations, which were then met as well. They grew multifold, but they still did it, while other fly by night operators came in, threw around VC money and went away. There could have been some goof-ups that are a natural consequence of scale, but overall it was an atmosphere of trust around Flipkart which I believe is the biggest currency that Flipkart has earned until date. They nurtured the ecosystem and enabled an average skeptical Indian to buy online.

On this given Monday they lost a lot of it. For two days straight my Facebook feed was filled with rants around how items disappeared from people's cart, how they received emails from Flipkart that they won't receive the item they purchased, how the prices were escalated a few days back to make room for the offers, and what not! This was the worst Flipkart PR I have ever witnessed in the past 7 years, and everyone was talking about them, and I didn't hear the positives. May be my sample space is skewed, but I heard bad things everywhere. Even the news that said that they achieved the $100 million sales target in 10 hours felt more like a cover up to say that we didn't f#$k up.

In the past when I didn't find discount coupons for Flipkart (via google search), I may not have a feeling of instant gratification, but deep down I knew that these are an honest set of folks who have listed a fair price, and I wouldn't get anything better (and reliable) elsewhere. These are not like the Myntra's of today (I understand it's owned by Flipkart now, but it's still a different entity) who have a 50% off on a daily basis with bogus coupons being sent to me over SMS. These are not like the Snapdeal's who have the money to give a front page advertisement in TOI, but not the technical muscle to handle the load which arrived as a result, even with disabled filters, and likes. More often that not, I would click that ominous "BUY" button without much thought. But that thing changed this given Monday with all the offers, fooling around and hoopla. The currency of trust faced a significant devaluation.

Now where does Amazon fit in all of this? If I was Jeff Bezos, this would be a dream come true scenario for me. I've just joined in, with deep pockets ($2 billion in the short run) which I showed off while riding an Indian truck, and my biggest and only competitor just goofed up. I have an already scheduled sales event, which is much larger in size (10th to 16th October), with all the marketing money behind it. I have the technical muscle to do it well (Amazon even sells that infrastructure as a service -AWS), and have successfully done it in the past (in other countries). If I do it well this time, there is no going back! If I do it extraordinarily well, given the deep pockets I have and the deals I can afford, then that may be a different story altogether for a country already obsessed with foreign brands. Amazon, here is your chance! If you are successful at this, it will be more about the last man standing a few years from now, and I believe that will be a game that you would love to play. For the offer centric Indian consumer, there is no such thing as brand loyalty. At least it doesn't come into play unless the prices are the same ;)

Though the good news is that Flipkart seems to have taken note and has issued a public apology for the same. Being humble and ready to learn is the best thing you can do in difficult times. Shit happens, but what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Hopefully it's the latter. Personally, over the next few years I would want to see Flipkart being a much more powerful player in the multi billion $$$ Indian ecommerce space as compared to Amazon, but the sad news is that the world doesn't care, and the world ain't fair. If Amazon capitalizes hard on the beginner's luck, then it will be more like that I and Mom worked hard for 7 hours to prepare a lavish supper, and the neighbor's kid came in and had it.

Things like these make me realize that the big brother is watching! #lookAtTheFuckinCaptcha #prismIsReal