h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

India will soon overtake China to become the most populous country in the world
https://ourworldindata.org/india-will-soon-overtake-china-to-become-the-most-populous-country-in-the-world

Life on Earth started almost immediately after it cooled, but it took 2bn years - half of Earth's history - before photosynthesis arrived. Shortly afterwards we got multicellular life. Energy from sunlight was the difficult bit. #science

Modern architecture in a modern church: https://essexchurches.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/basildon-st-martin-of-tours-2/

The 50-Year Newspaper: "What would happen if, instead of us getting news updates multiple times a day, what if we only got news updates every 50 years? Things would look really different." https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=574662798 #podcast

A pentaquark is a particle made of 5 quarks. The #LHC has been investigating the most common arrangements of the quarks inside it. https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/lhcb-results-add-clues-to-pentaquark-mystery #science

Proposals for `dict() + dict()` in python https://lwn.net/Articles/782699/ #python

It's local election time in some parts of the UK. Find out who your local candidates are: https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/ #ukpol

A picture of the enormous black hole at the centre of our galaxy https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/apr/10/black-hole-picture-captured-for-first-time-in-space-breakthrough #space

Chemists unhappy that contamination is everywhere. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/03/26/stirring-bar-contamination #chemistry

I'm sure you're all aware of William Shatner's singing career. If not, today's your lucky day https://youtu.be/ainyK6fXku0

Home made pizza. Secret ingredient: Lloyd Grossman Tomato and Basil sauce. Yeah, it's supposed to be for pasta, but it works really well as a tomato sauce here too. #cooking

Studying lava in a laboratory setting https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/the-geologists-who-control-lava/ #science

Driverless vehicle news: Circle Line trains are fully automated between Hammersmith and Latimer Road. http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2019/03/look-no-hands.html #London #TfL

Where is the most average bus stop in the UK? https://dbatley.com/blog/2019/03/average-bus-stop.html

@Floppy More important question: do you *really* want to auto-deploy this? If we're talking SQL, we're talking exclusive lock. Which is super-happy fun times. Waits for anything currently using the table to finish, but while waiting causes all new queries to wait. Those queries may take locks on other tables. Setting statement timeout would deal with some of that, maybe.