The SQL Server 2025 public preview is here!

I wrote a blog post summarizing my first impressions of the JSON datatype and the brand-new JSON index.

TL;DR: it's looking very promising.

https://sqlsunday.com/2025/05/19/json-indexes-first-impressions/

When someone is sharing their whole screen and accidentally brings up their Teams window showing all their messages

Just woke up to find out the president has revoked the security clearances of everyone at a cybersecurity company because Chris Krebs went to work there. Krebs was his director for the agency in charge of Cybersecurity & Election Security during his first term and refuted his claim the 2020 election was "stolen".

Revoking the clearance of every employee basically kills the company's ability to do government contracts, which is a major source of revenue for cybersecurity companies. The White House press release also restates the false claim that the 2020 election was "rigged and stolen".

The US is basically a fascist dictatorship at this point. One where the president goes after entire companies because a single person spoke out against his verifiably false claims. You'd have to be completely insane to travel here right now.

Yesterday the Washington Post app ran a story about the #handsoff #protests at the top of the app. Today it is hard to find any coverage. This is now buried in the "The District" section of the app and only found by searching for me.

This is a gift article. I recommend people visit the article, share the link with others... And show the WashPo that massive voter turnout deserves more than a few hours in the spotlight.

In the meantime they keep the same junk articles on the top stories for days

Let's see if their Top Stories algorithm actually works.. boost and click through.

https://wapo.st/4lk2Hu9

To everyone who opposed Kamala Harris's presidential bid:

Your order has arrived. It looks exactly like what you were told you were asking for. I hope you enjoy your meal.

TIL of the bad.horse traceroute

Turns out Pink Floyd was wrong. We do need education.

Atlassian, a 10,000-person organization reduced office space by 50%, making office visits optional but intentional. The result? An increase in productivity of approximately 40 min per employee per day, along with cost savings from reduced office expenses.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/solangecharas/2025/03/01/why-rigid-rto-mandates-cost-more-than-they-save/

I’m old enough to remember when Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall and said “Mr Gorbachev, how much of east Germany’s minerals are you willing to give us?”

This is a public service announcement to never ever use Oracle

New feature on callfordataspeakers.com: the Procrastinator's Digest is a weekly digest email with calls for speakers that are about to close in the next couple of days.

To subscribe, click the "update your preferences" link in a recent callfordataspeakers email.

Never again miss a deadline.

</meta>

I was messing around with OAuth 2.0 for an automation I was building the other day, and I found myself wanting a tool to understand it better.

So I wrote a little thing.

If this is for you, here you are: https://oauth.strd.co/

⚠️ So, turns out Mailchimp decided to change the backend code for all embedded subscription forms. Without telling anyone.

This effectively means that if you tried to register for
callfordataspeakers.com on or after October 4, your registration was not successful, and you're not a subscriber.

I’ve updated the registration form, so it should be working again now.

@Sqlgene no kidding. As for the last in a series of things I struggled with, I discovered after 2 days (and nights) of troubleshooting that it wasn’t even a required step in upgrading a container setup.

That wasn’t documented in the upgrade instructions. It was just an off-hand remark in a comment thread on a github issue.

I ❤️ open-source software.

Ladies and gentlemen, we did it.

@Sqlgene I was gonna, but you're just too fast. :)

Obviously, you'll have to be a known, trusted member of the Data Platform community to be considered.

I'm happy to pay for the cloud infrastructure going forward, of course.

Email me at hello@dataplatform.social to get in touch.

I haven't been giving this platform the love it deserves, so I'm moving to plan B: delegate.

I'm looking for a volunteer to take over the server admin role of dataplatform.social.

This would involve updating to the most recent Mastodon release (about every two weeks) and keeping the Linux VM humming. The moderation workload is absolutely minimal - everyone here is very well-behaved.

You would probably be pretty comfortable with Ubuntu and Docker Compose.