Hi all,
I have been trading on a broker called IQ Options. I have good experiences with the broker before anyone tells me its a scam.
After talking with my account manager, I have learned that they get their quotes from a company called Thomson Reuter. Now I am looking for an alert system that will alert me when my RSI indicator hit overbought or oversold with my settings in a 15 or 30 minute chart. The only problem is, most companies charge an arm and a leg for that kind of service. At this moment in my life, I dont want to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds to use a system until I start making some real good money. Eikon is one of those that charge a couple of grand. Their program seems good, but the price is too far out there. I have used MT4 and MT5, but they dont seem to be using qoutes from Thomson Reuter. So that is no help. I am not welling to change brokers due to the positive experience I have been having with IQ Options.
Can anyone recommend a program/system/app that will alert me anytime any asset hits overbough or oversold with my settings? Also using Thomson Reuters quotes, so I may be able to compare the alerts I recieve to my indicators on IQ Options. Something affordable or even free if possible.
Thank you in advance.

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EDIT: MAJOR UPDATE AT BOTTOM
Welcome to the "Speculations" mega thread for the device possibly upcoming in the Oculus Quest line-up. This thread will be a compilation of leaks, speculation & rumors updated as new information comes out.
Let's have some fun and go over some of the leaks, rumors, speculation all upcoming before Facebook Connect, we'll have a full mega thread going during Connect, but this should be a great thread for remembrance afterward.
Facebook Connect is happening September 16th at 10 AM PST, more information can be found here.
​
Leaks
In March, Facebook’s public Developer Documentation website started displaying a new device called ‘Del Mar’, with a ‘First Access’ program for developers.
In May, we got the speculated specs, based off the May Bloomberg Report (Original Paywall Link)
• “at least 90Hz” refresh rate
• 10% to 15% smaller than the current Quest
• around 20% lighter
• “the removal of the fabric from the sides and replacing it with more plastic”
• “changing the materials used in the straps to be more elastic than the rubber and velcro currently used”
• “a redesigned controller that is more comfortable and fixes a problem with the existing controller”
​
On top of that, the "Jedi Controller" drivers leaked, which are now assumed to be V3 Touch Controllers for the upcoming device.
The IMUs seem significantly improved & the reference to a 60Hz (vs 30hz) also seems to imply improved tracking.
It's also said to perhaps have improved haptics & analog finger sensing instead of binary/digital.
Now as of more recent months, we had the below leaks.
Render (1), (2)
Walking Cat seems to believe the device is called "Quest 2", unfortunately since then, his twitter has been taken down.
Real-life pre-release model photos
Possible IPD Adjustment
From these photos and details we can discern that:

• there will likely be at least one white model of Quest in the future.
• The camera positions and angles have been changed slightly. This might be to improve tracking coverage overhead.
• The tracking ring has become somewhat larger and has been angled backward, presumably so they face the cameras better at all times.
• The thumb-area has widened significantly & the capacitive thumb-area seems to have returned from the original CV1 touch controllers.
• The HMD seems to have become smaller in terms of depth. This could perhaps mean a severe decrease in weight; balancing the headset more.
• The head strap is similar to that of the Oculus Go.
• It appears there are two microphone holes on the bottom of the headset. This implies the headset might have stereo microphones. Getting two over getting one decent microphone might also mean the two microphones have better recording quality than the original Quest?

Further features speculation based on firmware digging (thanks Reggy04 from the VR Discord for quite a few of these), as well as other sources, all linked.
​

• Cross-device app sharing
• Graphic options like antialiasing and "High Quality Panel Rendering"
• A reference to a beta software feature called "Avalanche"
• The return of the brightness slider
• Something about a desktop broadcast feature
• An option to uninstall home environments (maybe that's possible already, wasn't sure)
• Accessibility options like changing the font size:
• Voice commands triggered by the phrase "Hey Facebook":
• An "intrusion alert" that warns you when someone enters your guardian space:
• A feature that allows you to connect your iPhone and receive notifications in VR:
• Options for a laser pointer (Infinite Office related?)
• Something about a "magic portal"
• Passthrough filters with multiple options like "HD" or "superRes"
• A feature that lets you add your sofa to your playspace (GIF)
• Something about "High-quality VR layers for rendering panels"
• 3D Whiteboard Model
• Passthrough Keyboard
• Keyboard Tracking Opt-In / Keyboard Tracking / Texture 1 / Texture 2
• Fitness Tracker
• Instant Replay
• Adding to guardian
• Battery Pack ("Extended Battery Installed")
• Casting Via Web Browser
• Infinite Office
• Multi User Support
• Oculus Gallery Multiplayer
• Oculus Cloud Storage
• New Touch Controller Diagram
• Talks of Eye Tracking

Additional Sources: 1/2/3/4
Headset Codenames
We've seen a few codenames going around at this point, Reggy04 provided this screenshot that shows the following new codenames.

• Oculus Del Mar - HOLLYWOOD
• Oculus Seacliff - SEACLIFF

Pricing Rumors
So far, the most prevalent pricing we've seen is 299 for 64gb, and 399 for 256GB
These were shown by a Walmart page for Point Reyes with a release date of September 16 and a Target price leak with a street date of October 13th
​
Speculation
What is this headset?
Speculation so far is this headset is a Quest S or Quest 2
OR
This is a flat-out cheaper-to-manufacture, small upgrade to the Oculus Quest to keep up with demand and to iterate the design slowly.
Again, This is all speculation, nothing is confirmed or set in stone.
What do you think this is and what we'll see at FB Connect? Let's talk!
Rather chat live? Join us on the VR Discord
EDIT: MAJOR UPDATE - Leaked Videos.
6GB of RAM, XR2 Platform, "almost 4k display" (nearly 2k per eye) Source
I am mirroring all the videos in case they get pulled down.
Mirrors: Oculus Hand Tracking , Oculus Casting, Health and Safety, Quest 2 Instructions, Inside the Upgrade

Despite being limited to a single use per long rest ( Which can be as short as 4 hours with High Elf Trance ), if it is preserved according to the UA description, it stands to be one of, if not the most busted features in 5E history. For just a one-level dip into Warlock, and a free action, it has the potential functionality of several high level spells combined, with the value of dipping into the class just for it being fairly high.
First, lets overview all the benefits granted by the ability in its own right, then go over all of the ways to combine it with other abilities as well:

• A mobile semi-Demiplane - Starting with the obvious, the storage space. It is kind of an hybrid, in regard to storage rather than safety, betwen an 8th level spell that can probably be used only once a day anyway and the very rare magical item bag of holding. You do have to get inside to store objects there, true, but there are many ways of carrying even big items on your person, minitaurizing them, disassembling, etc that I won't get into, that essentially allows you to perform feats previously unheard of even at high levels.
  
• Portable alchemy labs, equipment, instantly deployable ( assembled within the vessel ) siege weapons, structures. By lowering your vessels HP to the breaking point willingly, you can destroy it above a group of enemies heads/something else to unleash virtually anything imaginable that you could fill a 20-foot cylinder with over time - Acid, water, boulders, dangerous items, dangerous creatures ( at higher levels ), traps, heavy cages, quicksand, the list is infinite. And if you have the time, you can scoop it back in the new vessel after an hour.
  
• Poor Man's Magnificent Mansion - Needless to say, it is safe to assume that a tiny object hidden underneath the ground or camouflouged somewhere might be a lot safer and covert than your usual arrangement, not to mention rendering you immune to most divination by virtue of your extradimensional location. Fun Fact - At level 1, with 4 hours of lodging time, it is sufficient to complete a High Elf's Trance and recharge itself on the spot.
  
• Enhanced Durability - If you choose to carry the vessel on your person, while it might be fragile initially due to low AC and HP, nothing says you can't encase it with a superior steel or Adamantine shell to make it even more difficult to crack, a point which may prove handy for the next chapter.
  
• Eavesdropping - You can hear everything around your vessel while in the shape of an innocous tiny object of your choosing, imprevious to divination, and you can even cast Nystul's Magic Aura on your vessel. Enough said.
  

------------------‐------------------
Now for the fun part, which is all that can be done with a little bit of magical help, though it can only be a partial list since the possibilities are endless. Let's dive in.

• Airforce 1 - Bottled Respite + Find Familiar = 1st level travel via flight. Many attempts to harness familiars for personal flight have been attenpted before, but none as cheaply and lengthily as this. Many pitfalls and intricacies are involved with this method, but at the outset, you can command a flying familiar to fly somewhere it can see/knows how to reach or in a given direction for a certain amount of time while you are chilling comfortably in your vessel and set you down before it ends. Keep in mind, since both the familiar and vessel are tiny, you could infiltrate all sorts of inaccessible spaces. Furthermore, should your familiar perish and the vessel dropped, you won't be shunted out until it hits something and breaks, with the prior momentum being irrelevant.
  
• This is pretty amazing in itself, but you can't exercise control over your familiar for the duration from the extradimensional space. There are various ways to mitigate that flaw, which I'll discuss briefly: You can actually make clever use of Prestidigitation to allocate 3 Yes/No indications, or 3 'Condition alerts' with other meanings to your familiar per trip. Say you have an Owl, you can instruct it to hoot in a specific fashion/number if something happens ( Enemies in the air, a storm cloud, missing the destination, etc ), then set up 3 Prest marks/symbols on the vessel lasting for 1 hour which can be dismissed with an action from anywhere. Turning off a symbol, or any of the 3, can be taken as a binary command of some sort, like aborting trip or retreating.
  
• Depending on DM interpretation, Shape Water might work even better. Attaching a water vial to your vessel and choosing it prior to departure, assuming you don't need to perpetually see it in order to animate it into shapes ( Its not even concentration btw ), you might be able to change the water inside into arrows/signs for your familiar depending on auditory input. Either way, sadly both prest and this are 1 hour only.
  
• More advanced steering options include a Chainlock familar, which is intelligent enough to formulate a detailed route and deviations, spells such as Animal Messenger, Beast Sense, Magic Mouth piloting systems, Sending, and finally bypassing telepathic restrictions entirely with high level spells like Telepathy.
  
• If you level up as a Warlock, eventually your whole party will be able to take rests while cruising inside your vessel. You can even turn the fucking thing into the most lightweight spaceship ever if you can propel it ( and there are simple ways ). Resting inside, you will survive the single turn it takes for you to get back in once ejected.
  
• Invisibility - Casting Invisibility on the familiar carrying your vessel or Sequester allows for even more spying and infiltration prowess
  
• Glyph Buffet - Casting Glyphs of Warding inside the space with beneficial effects on them can be triggered immediately upon your entry, using the bonus action to emerge completely healled and buffed back into battle. High-level Genielocks can of course apply it to a full party or even store summoning spells and bring out any number of creatures with them.
  
• Divide by Zero - This application of Bottled Respite with Drawmij's Instant Summons ( Which also targets magical objects ) may result in trapping yourself inside the vessel indefinitely, opening a gate to the Astral Plane, destroying the multiverse, or all three. You cast the spell on the vessel, keeping the sapphire with you, proceed to enter the extradimensional interior of the vessel, then speak its name and crush the sapphire in order to make the vessel, regardless of planar distance, appear in your hand...while still inside the vessel's extradimensional interior.
  
• What happens following this inception is anybody's guess, though if we ignore the semantic shitshow of what the vessel's interior being extradimensional means, and treat it like a Demiplane - I.E the 3D object and its volume existing independently of the much larger dimension in teleports you into, then when the time is up, you will simply remain in that dimension indefinitely, as the physical lamp is now inside the extradimensional pocket itself and that will be the nearest unoccupied space to shunt you toward.
  
• The Mayday Rescue - A more stable application of Instant Summons, you can instead entrust the sapphire to a Simulacrum, Familiar, Summoned being or ally. Even if you find yourself without high level magic, or enemies that would counter it, you can try sending a message ( or use some premeditated time/Chainmaster familiar telepathy/etc ) for your ally to safely evacuate you, or your party, via summoning the vessel right after you use your action to enter it.
  

That is all I can think of for now, and remember what we're talking about - A level 1 Warlock action per long rest. It has unbelievable value.

This is going to be one of those shower thought posts that exploded to be far larger than I originally hoped, so my apologies in advance.
It's no secret or unspoken thing that Star Trek: Discovery differs largely in terms of presentation from previous Trek series, and that is due in large part to it being a 14-episode, serialized series, versus the majority of Trek, which has been almost entirely episodic. DS9 sort of bucks this trend with major serialized arcs, and continuity between episodes (characters actually change!), as does Voyager. Enterprise, too, takes a bigger step towards serialization, as events from past episodes frequently shape those of later episodes, and characters change both in relationship and attitude over the series (to the extent that the writing allowed).
However, for Trek's 2017 return, DIS was brought to the screen in a radically different way-- instead of episodic seasons punctuated with serialized arcs and minor continuity threads sprinkled throughout, it was a tightly-woven story (insofar as it could be, given its original showrunner left midway through the development of the series) concentrated on one, continuing arc, following the trend of other prestige television shows that define the Golden Age of TV.
This is attributable to a few likely things: preference by the writers, the demands of CBS, and wanting to use the show to launch All Access, which necessarily demanded a "Game of Thrones-style" flagship. The smaller episode count, too, enables more budget per episode-- in 1988, an episode of TNG cost ~$1.3 million USD, which, with inflation, equaled about $2 million USD in 2016, when Discovery was being developed; Discovery's first season ran a reported $8.5 million per episode. Even at only 14 episodes versus TNG's first 24 episode season, DIS S1 cost more than double the amount to produce. This level of cost and detail means playing it safer, but also, means reusing props, prosthetics, and CGI assets to make sure that bang-for-your-buck is ensured. Thus, a series with a relatively consistent setting.
Season 1 of DIS tells a specific story, with distinct acts, a beginning, a middle, a climax, and a conclusion, and sets up plot points that are raised and resolved (along with others left dangling for future seasons). In terms of structure, it looks something like this:

1. "The Vulcan Hello" (beginning)
   
2. "Battle at the Binary Stars" (Act 1 concludes)
   
3. "Context Is for Kings"
   
4. "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry"
   
5. "Choose Your Pain"
   
6. "Lethe"
   
7. "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad"
   
8. "Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum"
   
9. "Into the Forest I Go" (middle) (Act 2 concludes)
   
10. "Despite Yourself"
    
11. "The Wolf Inside"
    
12. "Vaulting Ambition"
    
13. "What's Past is Prologue" (Act 3 concludes)
    
14. "The War Without, The War Within"
    
15. "Will You Take My Hand?" (Act 4 concludes, thematic climax)
    

And it follows a few core plot threads:

• Burnham's coming to terms with her role in the war and losing Georgiou, proving herself as a Starfleet officer worthy of trust/redemption from her role in the war, and re-centering her relationship with her adoptive father (Sarek).
  
• Saru learning to trust Burnham, and growing as an officer to eventually be a Captain.
  
• Tilly growing into her role as an officer and a professional.
  
• Stamets growing past his issues with people, and opening up to go beyond his work to see his with his friends.
  
• Ash...uh...finding out he's a Klingon?
  
• Lorca just kinda being a dick the whole time and just dying I guess?
  
• Sarek learning that he can show the necessary affection to have a good relationship with his daughter, and recognizing how his dispassionate Vulcan attitude may cause issues for his family.
  

This is all a pretty large departure from previous Trek, where some character threads are sprinkled throughout the series, like Riker maturing as an officer, or Sisko growing into his role as the Emissary as well as a Captain. Some things are more contained, like Picard dealing with the trauma of his assimilation and being used to murder 15,000 people by fighting in the mud with his brother on their vineyard.
This new structure has been received with mixed results by the Trek community (though the consensus seems to be it's working, considering we're at three seasons with two more on the books and two spinoffs on the way), and I think a large part of that is that, while serialization lets the writers tell longer, more detailed, and more complex stories, episodic shows enable writers to tell more varied, unique, and "special" shows.
With DIS, we're not going to have a "Measure of a Man", unless the season is set up to support it. However, with the TNG model, we're not going to have characters change much over time, and the reset button is going to come into play at the end of every season (if not every episode...looking at you, Voyager).
This leads me to the original shower thought that prompted this post: while rewatching The Neutral Zone in TNG S1, it made me wonder what TNG would've looked like had it adopted a similar model, where, presumably, the Borg would have been central to the plot, as would Q. So, I present to you below, my model for TNG S1, were it made in 2020 in an episodic, DIS-style, and leave it there for your consideration as to the future of the franchise, and what possibilities may come from coming series like Strange New Worlds, which may see a come-back of the episodic style.
My presumption for this new S1 is that it would borrow elements from S2 and S3 of TNG, as it would, generally, have tighter writing (given far fewer hours of film).
TNG Re-Imagined
Season 1

• S1E1 - The Trial: On its maiden voyage, the newly commissioned USS Enterprise sets out for Farpoint Station to pick up some of its senior staff, and investigate the mysteries of the station. Along the way, the crew is accosted by Q, an omnipotent entity that seeks to put humanity on trial, and ascertain its readiness to explore deeper into the galaxy. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the Enterprise, adapts to his new role as captain of a ship with families onboard-- including that of his old friend, lover, and Chief Medical Officer, Commander Beverly Crusher, and her son Wesley, fathered by Picard's deceased best friend and former XO, Jack. Meanwhile, Commander Will Riker, the maverick, young executive officer of the Enterprise, works to settle into his position alongside the generally thoughtful composed Captain Picard. Also introduced are: Lt. Commander Data, the Enterprise's operations officer, and an android who dreams of being human; Lt. Worf, the tactical officer, Starfleet's "first" Klingon officer who was raised by humans after being orphaned in a Romulan attack on his planet of birth; Lt. Commander Natasha Yar, the Enterprise's Chief of Security, raised on a former Federation colony world inhabited by humans that failed and fell into lawlessness and violence; Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge, a gifted warp physicist and Deputy Chief Engineer of the Enterprise; and Guinan, bartender and operator of the ship's lounge, who may or may not have superpowers. This episode follows the same general plot as Encounter at Farpoint, Part 1.
  
• S1E2 - Encounter at Farpoint: The Enterprise uncovers the secrets of Farpoint station, and frees the space-dwelling jellyfish creatures of the station from slavery. Events occur much like Encounter at Farpoint, Part 2.
  
• S1E3 - The Naked Now: The Enterprise is afflicted by a virus that causes crew members to lose their shit, as its predecessor was almost 100 years prior. Picard and Crusher are stuck together in sick-bay trying to figure out the situation, where, in their drunken state, they try to avoid their feelings for each other becoming apparent. Riker and Worf butt heads while under the influence of the virus, but come to a nice equilibrium. Yar and Data bone, which leaves Data wondering if he's actually more human than he thought. A cure is found, but before it is, the Enterprise's Chief Engineer, the man, the myth, the legend, Jim Shimoda, passes away while doing some dumb shit (RSVP Shimoda), and Picard asks LaForge to take over the Chief Engineer position. Picard goes to Guinan to inquire about Q, as it seems she and him have some prior relationship-- though dodgy, she warns that he is potentially dangerous, but likely would have gotten them killed by now had he truly wanted to mess with them. Notably, O'Brien gets to have fun.
  
• S1E4 - The Battle: The Enterprise is confronted by a Ferengi marauder, whose commander is seeking revenge for the "murder" of his son by Picard as Captain of the Stargazer. Picard must overcome his guilt over the loss of the Stargazer, and defuse tensions with the Ferengi before the Enterprise suffers as similar fate. He and Crusher have a moment, and she convinces him to sit down with Wesley, finally, and have a talk with him as the only father figure in his life. Meanwhile, Geordi settles into his role as Chief Engineer, and learns to balance his new professional relationship with Commander Riker against their preexisting friendship from their days at the Academy. Worf and Data bond over their shared lack of a relationship with their parents. The episode ends with Q appearing to Guinan, and pestering her about her thoughts on humanity. She defends the species, and demands Q leave the Enterprise alone. Q fucks off doing his whole asshole thing, ominously saying we'll see about that. No racist shit in this one!
  
• S1E5 - Empowered: Akin to Hide-and-Q, Q decides to test Guinan's defense of humanity by giving Riker the powers of a Q, and seeing what he does with them. Episode plays out fairly similarly to the original one, just with less dumb shit going down. Picard counsels Riker to be restrained, but he does the whole "giving everyone what they want" thing. Riker is settled down by Troi, who he realizes he still has feelings for (and, now able to read her mind, is able to see that she does, for him). Q removes Riker's powers, and concedes that Riker was harmless, and that of all the things he could have done, he chose to try to make his people happy, concluding that maybe Guinan is right. He appears to Guinan again, and gives an ominous message: "Maybe they are ready for what's coming."
  
• S1E6 - Datalore: Data's twin brother Lore, another Soong android, is discovered, and is a dick. Data realizes that, though having the same architecture as Lore, he grew to be someone different. Picard, happily remarks to him that maybe he is more than just the machine he thinks himself to be. Worf and Riker get up to holodeck shenanigans, and introduce Badgey, an experimental training program that is not evil at all. Riker decides that Badgey is annoying, and puts the program on ice. This will never appear again, surely.
  
• S1E7 - Skin of Evil: While exploring an anomalous planet on the fringes of Federation space, the Enterprise encounters a malevolent entity that takes down an Away Team shuttle, stranding Yar, Worf, Troi, and Data on the surface. Troi figures out how to defeat this entity, which is not a black puddle of evil, but not before Yar is severely wounded. Worf rescues her, and she is beamed back to the Enterprise, where Crusher is able to stabilize her, but she may be disabled her wounds, and will require a long recovery period. Data, in a fit of what seems to be rage, exploits the weakness identified by Troi, and kills Armus or whatever the bad-guy that's no longer a black puddle of evil is. Worf is promoted to Lt. Commander for his bravery, and named Acting Chief of Security and Tactical Operations while Yar is recovering. Q appears to Picard, and toys with him about the lengths to which the crew goes to save a single officer and avoid taking life, and that Data is perhaps the best of them, as he understood what needed to be done. Picard notes that Data was wrong for killing Armus when other options may have been available, but the circumstances called for aggressive actions. He counters, further, that the killing of Armus and the saving of Yar were two sides of the same coin - it's not Starfleet's mission to kill, but they're not just going into things blindly, and suicidally. Q smirks, noting that maybe the ship stands a chance. Before Picard can ask what that means, he blinks out. As the episode ends, Riker is sitting in Ten Forward, discussing with Geordi, Worf, and Data another loss of contact with a Federation outpost on the Neutral Zone, with the four wondering what this may mean.
  
• S1E8 - The Neutral Zone: Picard is contacted by Starfleet Command, and is directed to take the Enterprise to the Romulan Neutral Zone. The episode plays out very similarly to the original, including with the presence of the 21st century cryo-folks: only, in this version, Q appears and insists that modern humanity is much the same as those of the 24th century. In dealing with the Romulans peacefully, and finding out that they, too, have lost colonies, Q is shocked to find that it's true that humanity has grown, and leaves. In the B-plot, Worf struggles with dealing with the Romulans, as his anger over their dishonor and murder of his parents overwhelms him. Yar, in recovery, begins doing exercises with Worf on the holodeck, and he learns from her how to deal with his anger and trauma by hearing of her experience with her homeworld.
  
• S1E9 - Conspiracy: No nubbin bugs here, we're going straight to the Borg, so this failed attempt to introduce an adversary is being replaced! Great episode, though, so we're learning from it. Following the Neutral Zone incident, the Enterprise returns to Earth. On the way, the ship is intercepted by the USS Horatio, and two other Starfleet ships, who request an in-person meeting with Picard. They reveal to Picard that there is a group of Starfleet officers that do not trust the Romulans, and think they are behind the destruction of the colonies. They plan on striking Romulan colonies in retaliation, in order to force the Federation into a war, and end the century of tensions. Picard is disturbed, but cannot believe Starfleet officers would go to such an extent. As the Enterprise continues towards Earth, they receive a notice that the Horatio suffered a warp core breach, killing all aboard. Picard acknowledges the likelihood of a conspiracy, and reads in the senior staff, all of whom are in disbelief, save for Worf, who sympathizes with the conspirators, but believes they are simply misguided by fear. The crew comes up with a plan: they will have Worf stand out to be approached by the conspirators so they can be confronted. During the senior staff's testimony to Starfleet Command, Worf states his belief that regardless of what the Romulans say, they cannot be trusted, and are almost certainly responsible. Worf is then approached by the conspirators, headed by Commander Remmick, who reveals that their group is small, but positioned to take command of several ships throughout the fleet, including two other Galaxy-class ships. Worf tells them that Captain Picard will never go for this plan, and Remmick suggests Commander Riker. Worf returns to the ship, and informs Riker, and only Riker, and they meet with Remmick and the conspirators in San Francisco. Remmick reveals he knew they were investigating them, and takes the two prisoner. The episode ends on a cliffhanger.
  
• S1E10 - Conspiracy, Part 2: Worf and Riker have been missing for a day, which puts Starfleet Security on alert. Picard suspects the conspirators. Remmick issues a directive via Starfleet Intelligence that the Romulans have begun making moves on senior Starfleet staff, including destroying the Horatio and kidnapping/interrogating Riker and Worf. Troi is able to sense Riker's presence in captivity, and pinpoints their location, where they are able to be rescued. Yar contacts friends at Starfleet Command, and is able to get access to communication logs, which Data can use to identify every conspirator in the fleet. Meanwhile, a conspirator onboard the Enterprise attempts to plant a tricobalt explosive on the warp core, and is stopped by LaForge, who identifies it as a Romulan design, but an older one, from the Tomed Incident-- not matching the energy signature of the Warbird they encountered only a few days prior. Picard and Riker beam down to Earth to apprehend Remmick, a firefight breaks out, Remmick is killed, and the conspiracy unravels. The crew presents the evidence to Starfleet Command, and tensions are defused. Starfleet assembles a task force to investigate the situation in the Neutral Zone, headed by newly-introduced Commander Shelby. Lt. Yar is offered a position with the task force, and she joins it, hoping to stay on Earth and still contribute while she recovers from her injury. The Enterprise heads back out.
  
• S1E11 - Captain's Holiday: Literally the same episode from Season 3. Picard does Indiana Jones stuff. Lots of talk about jamaharon. Deanna and Beverly get drunk and talk about the men in charge. Data and Geordi fuck around on the holodeck, and ask Badgey to make a mystery challenging enough for Data. Badgey, being evil, makes Moriarty. Data and Geordi have a splendid time almost dying on the holodeck. Nice and light-hearted.
  
• S1E12 - 11001001: Continuing on from Picard's shoreleave, the Enterprise is still in drydock for refit and repair. The ship is hijacked by the Binars, who it turns out, want to take advantage of the ship's empty space to rescue their colony, that is facing environmental destruction. Riker, Geordi, and Troi are the only two senior staff still onboard, and try to take the ship back with some lower decks officers, but when Troi realizes the point of the mission, they offer their help. Geordi, during the taking back of the ship, gets to do some John McClane stuff in the Jeffries tubes. The Binars say they were afraid to simply ask, because they had been rejected by others before. The Enterprise returns to spacedock, is repaired, and the colony is saved. Riker and Troi confess their affections Another light-ish episode.
  
• S1E13 - Haven: There is no escape from Lwaxana Troi. Before the Enterprise leaves spacedock, Troi's mom boards the ship to warn her that her arranged marriage is still on. The episode is basically the same, except without the sick species. Instead, Troi's arranged husband realizes that she's truly in love with Riker, and doesn't wanna get stuck in a marriage with someone that can't love him. Lwaxana harasses Picard, and we watch him die inside. Geordi and Data shoot the shit in Ten Forward with Guinan, and Data reveals his tryst with Tasha to comedic/heartwarming effect.
  
• S1E14 - Where No One Has Gone Before: Similar to the original plot, but without the Traveler and without going outside the galaxy. An experimental engineering team comes aboard the ship to conduct modifications that should allow the ship to maintain Warp 9 for longer periods of time. Geordi and O'Brien clash with the team, as they seem to be fairly careless with the systems. Wesley, now interning in engineering, becomes close with one of the engineers on the team (a stand-in for the Traveler), who encourages him to become more involved in the upgrade process. An engine malfunction happens and the ship warps into a stellar cluster, then loses maneuvering power. Wesley, Not-Traveler, and Geordi are able to restore power, and get the ship to sustain Warp 9.6 for up to two days, a huge improvement over previous designs which allowed only a few hours. Picard, impressed with Wesley's bravery and ingenuity in engineering, offers him to join the bridge crew as a cadet, and to apply to the Academy. Picard and Wesley actually hug, which, you know. Aww. The episode ends with Guinan cleaning up in Ten Forward after-hours, and sensing something unusual.
  
• S1E15 - The Borg: The episode begins with the Enterprise doing its usual exploration thing, charting nebulae and such, when Q appears on the bridge. Simultaneously, Guinan gets out of the turbolift, and threatens him if he doesn't leave. Picard intervenes, but Q makes a statement: he and the crew have proven themselves ready for the trial to enter its next stage, and to see if they're really ready for what's out there. He snaps his fingers, and the Enterprise is flung 7,000ly deep into the Beta Quadrant, far outside of charted space. The events of "Q Who?" follow, basically, but the episode ends a bit differently. The Enterprise is able to hang in there longer because of the engine modifications in the last episode. Q sends the Enterprise back to the Alpha Quadrant and snaps Picard down to Ten Forward, and everyone but Guinan out, revealing that Guinan is immune to Q's powers. Q tells Picard that the Enterprise and her crew, along with the conduct of other Starfleet officers and Federation citizens that he has observed interacting with Picard and co. since the start of the "trial" at Farpoint, have demonstrated that they're on the path to readiness, but that they need to be prepared for what is coming. Guinan curses him, saying he knows what he has done, and that he's endangered the lives of trillions by introducing the Federation to the Borg. Q simply says: "What makes you think they weren't coming either way?", then leaves. Guinan explains her history with Q (the El-Aurians underwent a similar "trial"), how she came to be in the Alpha Quadrant, and offers her line: "Now that they know you're here..." - "...they will be coming", Picard finishes. The season ends with the prospect looming over their heads, and the Enterprise, battered from its near-death experience, returning to its mission.
  

And that's TNG S1! S2's theme would be more regular exploration with hints of Borg, and probably another plot or plot(s), and S3 would, of course, culminate in BoBW.
Now, I could be way off the mark, but given how Trek is written now, and what it was back then, that's how I'd see something playing out in 2020. Note, though, that even in this format, one finds places to put in some semi-episodic episodes, not unlike Discovery S3 thus far. Hopefully, that means we get the chance for some truly unique, almost-standalone moments in the coming years.

Good evening guys, gals, and non-binary pals. I'm a potato with anxiety and I'm bad at intros but I might be your new neighbor soon? So hello from the other coast! I'm using my throw away reddit account because I haven't discussed this with my family yet.
I'm currently in Washington, DC but I'm originally from Philadelphia (where Bad Things Happen) and I've lived all over but never farther west than Texas. My spouse has just been presented with the opportunity to relocate to San Jose for their job, with the other alternative being somewhere in the deep South. Staying in DC is not an option for multiple logistical reasons. Neither one of us wants to end up in the deep South again, we did that for several years in our 20s and I don't imagine Yankees are anymore welcome there now than we were 10 years ago. We joked we'd never live in a red state with hurricanes again but now my queer ass doesn't find it funny anymore because I'm just tired and scared and the homophobia and climate change are real.
Both of us are in the service industry, my spouse in retail management and customer service and me in education and social services. Our friends and family, most of whom are in a completely different (higher) tax bracket than us are saying they don't think we could manage it. I get the concern because spoiler alert, the type of social work I can do without an MSW doesn't pay shit and retail right now has its own problems. But they said the same thing when we moved to DC and we've been relatively comfy during the pandemic on just my spouse's salary when I got laid off and FWIW, the housing costs in DC are nearly as bad as they are in the Bay Area. DC is the 5th most expensive city in the country but we've managed okay by making lifestyle adjustments, including selling our car and taking public transit and changing our eating habits. We also don't have kids but we do have pets. When we crunched the numbers, San Jose is apparently only 7% more expensive overall than DC but anything less than 100k a year is considered low-income for the Bay Area? I'd love an opinion on the accuracy of this from someone who doesn't make twice what we do in a year, lol. We used several COL calculators and resources but would still like to hear from actual people. My spouse currently makes 55k a year salaried, I was doing temp work at a rate of $15/hr before I got laid off but I would expect a similar salaried position might be about 25-30k a year where we are now. When I scanned indeed in SJ jobs similar to what I do now were paying $22-35/hr, so quite a range. We know there will be some kind of a COL adjustment to my spouse's pay but we don't know how much yet and I'll need to find work when we get there.
We've always been the token poor friends, I think our friends and family take it for granted that things they might consider essential have always been a luxury or optional for us. I usually end up living in the areas where my clients most need services and I'm okay with that because it helps me build rapport that's important to the work I do. The perception that an area is low-income or higher crime doesn't phase either of us because we've lived our entire adult lives hood adjacent. We're basic af admittedly, we just like to cook and chill, we don't really go out much and we don't really spend money on non-essentials, although we do enjoy some electric lettuce here and there. We're also both eager af to get off the East coast right now so we're committed to doing what we need to do to make this work. Are we insane? Probably. But we don't take vacations because we're poor Millennials, so having a company foot the bill for us to move to a new state every few years is the next best thing. ;)
So reddit, can it be done? What's it like to be low-income in the Bay Area? Can you realistically live in the area without a car as long as you're in the city (meaning San Jose, not SF)? I have no frame of reference at all so any insight you can offer about San Jose in particular would be appreciated. Thanks!

The new major release comes with an impressive list of new features, improvements and out of the box integrations:

• support of synthetic monitoring with ability to create multi-step scripted scenarios for data collection and complex availability checks
• Zabbix Insights: new set of trigger functions for long term analytics that will generate alerts like "Number of transactions per second increased to 23% in October"
• support of user roles for much more granular management of user rights to control access to various parts of Zabbix UI, API methods and user operations
• ability to keep all sensitive information (like passwords, tokens, community strings, etc) in external Hashicorp Vault for extra security
• support of monitoring of IoT devices and production equipment using modes and MQTT protocols
• ability to scale Zabbix UI and API components across multiple nodes for speed, HA and redundancy

Zabbix offers out of the box official integrations with:

• ITSM systems Jira, Jira ServiceDesk, Redmine, ServiceNow, Zendesk, OTRS, Zammad, Solarwinds Service Desk, TOPdesk, SysAid
• user alerting and messaging systems Slack, Pushover, Discord, Telegram, VictorOps, Microsoft Teams, SINGNL4, Mattermost, OpsGenie, PagerDuty, iLert

Other major improvements:

• ability to specify different time zones for different users
• host interfaces are optional now
• support of tags for host prototypes
• support of digest authentication for HTTP checks
• ability to test SNMP metrics from UI
• shorter naming for templates
• Yaml became new standard for templates and Zabbix import/export
• new official templates for monitoring of Asterisk, Microsoft IIS, Oracle Database, MSSQL, etcd, PHP FPM, Squid

Official packages are available for:

• Linux distributions for different hardware platforms RHEL, CentOS, Debian, SuSE, Ubuntu, Raspbian
• virtualisation systems based on VMWare, VirtualBox, Hyper-V, XEN
• Docker
• packages and pre-compiled agents for all platforms including MacOS and MSI packages for Windows

One-click deployment is available for the following cloud platforms:

• AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Digital Ocean, IBM/RedHat Cloud

and much more!
Read release notes for a complete list of improvements: https://www.zabbix.com/rn/rn5.2.0
In order to upgrade you just need to download and install new binaries (server, proxy and Web UI). When you start Zabbix Server it will automatically upgrade your database. Zabbix agents are backward compatible therefore no need to install new agents, you can do it anytime later if needed.

I did not think we'd get here. COVID cases are in the single digits, and many cases are off-campus (https://health.gatech.edu/coronavirus/health-alerts). Test positivity rates are incredibly low (https://gatech-covid-tracker.com/). I think we can say that Georgia Tech has navigated through it's first wave of COVID cases.
​
How did this happen? I'm not an epidemiologist, and even Dr. Fauci himself wouldn't be able to give you a 100% correct answer, because nobody can give you a 100% correct answer - there are too many unknowns. But, we can look at a few factors.
​
1.) Modified herd immunity threshold. Immunity is likely a real phenomena with COVID-19. Yes, there are now 7 confirmed cases of reinfection, but immunity is not a binary thing. It is not as if every person infected with COVID will either be immune, or they will be as unprotected as the rest of us. It's likely that the majority of COVID cases will gain some sort of immunity, and some will gain no immunity. For the sake of simplicity, let's just assume everyone infected with COVID at our campus has immunity.
Georgia Tech has, in total, around 900 positive COVID cases. There are ~14,000 people on campus if you wildly extrapolate from a few surveys taken on this subreddit - if anyone could find where the actual number is, it would be helpful. Additionally, around 5-10% of the US was probably infected in the original Feb-March surge, which would be 700-1400 people. This brings us to 1600-2300 immune people in a population of 14000.
The herd immunity threshold is given by (1-1/R0). Uncontrolled, the R0 for SARS-CoV2 is ~4. This means roughly 75% of the populace must be infected to gain "true immunity" - IE, you can do whatever you want, no distancing, no masking, etc. Obviously this is a bad idea. But, we aren't letting SARS-Cov2 spread uncontrollably. Mask compliance is high, people are trying to distance, people are washing their hands more often, etc. R0 is a function of environmental parameters as well - increasing distancing and hygiene decrease your R0. So what is the R0 with distancing and masking? That's a big question, but estimates from New York and Western Europe say it was somewhere around 0.8-1.1. A college campus will have a higher R0 than a typical state or nation, so we'll shift this up to 1.1-1.3.
​
This brings our herd immunity threshold to anywhere between 9-23%. We currently have in the range of 11.5%-16%, and some cases on campus may have gone totally undetected. Here's a twitter thread by an MIT data scientist if you want to read more about the "modified herd immunity" phenomena.
​
2.) The people who took the most risks have already gotten COVID. Anecdotally, and logically, this makes sense. People going to bars, frat parties, etc have already been infected, and that was our "first wave". Unfortunately, I don't know how to quantify this in any meaningful way, but it is probably a factor.
​
3.) Behavior change. People could've seen the surge in cases and decided to be more careful - get tested weekly, avoid indoor dining, go to the CRC early in the morning when it's less crowded rather than in the middle of the day, etc. This would lower R0 as well and aid with point 1, although again, I don't know how to meaningfully quantify this. But it is a possible factor.
​
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you made it through the above, congratulations.
​
The question now is what Tech should do. Frankly, I feel like I am wasting both money and time this semester. This is unavoidable, and not Tech's fault or USG's fault - just a virus doing it's thing. But, just as governments - those of New York, China, South Korea, Germany, etc - gradually eased back on restrictions as the first curve was crushed, I believe Tech can and should do the same. We should not throw the floodgates open and let all hell break loose - but I think we can slowly loosen the screws in a manner that improves educational experiences, and in a way that avoids a second wave. Remote learning sucks. At least for intro classes, there is far better free material on Coursera - made by people who know how to deliver content online and who have been doing it for years - as opposed to professors who were thrown into this a few months ago.
​
As we all know, many "hybrid" courses are pretty much all online. I'd suggest the OPTION - for both professors and students, mandates are a god awful idea - to have more in-person hybrid sections. This won't give me my money's worth - but it'll give us something. As of now, I have three hybrid classes - and yet have not had a single in person class. These classes can be conducted in a safe, distanced/masked manner, as to keep our R0 low and keep reaping the rewards of the "modified herd immunity" discussed above. This might be difficult to implement in the middle of this semester, but I think it can be implemented next semester, in the absence of mass vaccination until (in the most optimistic case) February-March.
​
Other things include opening up lounges in dorms. Also, I know visiting other dorms is technically banned, but everyone I know is ignoring that rule. Many people aren't even aware of that rule - might as well just get rid of it if compliance is close to nil. But, I'd prefer more in-person classes above all else.
​
This was a long post. Ultimately, COVID is a game of trades - we could lock everyone in their homes until there's a vaccine, but that would destroy our society. We could let everyone run wild until there's a vaccine - again, that would destroy our society. It's a multivariate optimization problem, where we are trying to maximize safety, education, and the student experience. I'm just a dude trying to help us find that maximum.
​
TLDR: COVID-19 first wave beaten due to number of factors. More in-person classes would be nice.

Hi guys, we published this article on our blog (here) some time ago and I thought it could be interesting for node to read is as well, since we got some good feedback on it!

What is application monitoring and why is it necessary?

Application monitoring is a method that uses software tools to gain insights into your software deployments. This can be achieved by simple health checks to see if the server is available to more advanced setups where a monitoring library is integrated into your server that sends data to a dedicated monitoring service. It can even involve the client side of your application, offering more detailed insights into the user experience.
For every developer, monitoring should be a crucial part of the daily work, because you need to know how the software behaves in production. You can let your testers work with your system and try to mock interactions or high loads, but these techniques will never be the same as the real production workload.

What is Prometheus and how does it work?

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system that was created in 2012 by Soundcloud. In 2016, Prometheus became the second project (following Kubernetes) to be hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.
https://preview.redd.it/8kshgh0qpor51.png?width=1460&format=png&auto=webp&s=455c37b1b1b168d732e391a882598e165c42501a
The Prometheus server collects metrics from your servers and other monitoring targets by pulling their metric endpoints over HTTP at a predefined time interval. For ephemeral and batch jobs, for which metrics can't be scraped periodically due to their short-lived nature, Prometheus offers a Pushgateway. This is an intermediate server that monitoring targets can push their metrics before exiting. The data is retained there until the Prometheus server pulls it later.
The core data structure of Prometheus is the time series, which is essentially a list of timestamped values that are grouped by metric.
With PromQL (Prometheus Query Language), Prometheus provides a functional query language allowing for selection and aggregation of time series data in real-time. The result of a query can be viewed directly in the Prometheus web UI, or consumed by external systems such as Grafana via the HTTP API.

How to use prom-client to export metrics in Node.js for Prometheus?

prom-client is the most popular Prometheus client library for Node.js. It provides the building blocks to export metrics to Prometheus via the pull and push methods and supports all Prometheus metric types such as histogram, summaries, gauges and counters.

Setup sample Node.js project

Create a new directory and set up the Node.js project:

$ mkdir example-nodejs-app $ cd example-nodejs-app $ npm init -y 

Install prom-client

The prom-client npm module can be installed via:

$ npm install prom-client 

Exposing default metrics

Every Prometheus client library comes with predefined default metrics that are assumed to be good for all applications on the specific runtime. The prom-client library also follows this convention. The default metrics are useful for monitoring the usage of resources such as memory and CPU.
You can capture and expose the default metrics with following code snippet:

const http = require('http') const url = require('url') const client = require('prom-client') // Create a Registry which registers the metrics const register = new client.Registry() // Add a default label which is added to all metrics register.setDefaultLabels({ app: 'example-nodejs-app' }) // Enable the collection of default metrics client.collectDefaultMetrics({ register }) // Define the HTTP server const server = http.createServer(async (req, res) => { // Retrieve route from request object const route = url.parse(req.url).pathname if (route === '/metrics') { // Return all metrics the Prometheus exposition format res.setHeader('Content-Type', register.contentType) res.end(register.metrics()) } }) // Start the HTTP server which exposes the metrics on http://localhost:8080/metrics server.listen(8080) 

Exposing custom metrics

While default metrics are a good starting point, at some point, you’ll need to define custom metrics in order to stay on top of things.
Capturing and exposing a custom metric for HTTP request durations might look like this:

const http = require('http') const url = require('url') const client = require('prom-client') // Create a Registry which registers the metrics const register = new client.Registry() // Add a default label which is added to all metrics register.setDefaultLabels({ app: 'example-nodejs-app' }) // Enable the collection of default metrics client.collectDefaultMetrics({ register }) // Create a histogram metric const httpRequestDurationMicroseconds = new client.Histogram({ name: 'http_request_duration_seconds', help: 'Duration of HTTP requests in microseconds', labelNames: ['method', 'route', 'code'], buckets: [0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 1, 3, 5, 7, 10] }) // Register the histogram register.registerMetric(httpRequestDurationMicroseconds) // Define the HTTP server const server = http.createServer(async (req, res) => { // Start the timer const end = httpRequestDurationMicroseconds.startTimer() // Retrieve route from request object const route = url.parse(req.url).pathname if (route === '/metrics') { // Return all metrics the Prometheus exposition format res.setHeader('Content-Type', register.contentType) res.end(register.metrics()) } // End timer and add labels end({ route, code: res.statusCode, method: req.method }) }) // Start the HTTP server which exposes the metrics on http://localhost:8080/metrics server.listen(8080) 

Copy the above code into a file called server.jsand start the Node.js HTTP server with following command:

$ node server.js 

You should now be able to access the metrics via http://localhost:8080/metrics.

How to scrape metrics from Prometheus

Prometheus is available as Docker image and can be configured via a YAML file.
Create a configuration file called prometheus.ymlwith following content:

global: scrape_interval: 5s scrape_configs: - job_name: "example-nodejs-app" static_configs: - targets: ["docker.for.mac.host.internal:8080"] 

The config file tells Prometheus to scrape all targets every 5 seconds. The targets are defined under scrape_configs. On Mac, you need to use docker.for.mac.host.internal as host, so that the Prometheus Docker container can scrape the metrics of the local Node.js HTTP server. On Windows, use docker.for.win.localhost and for Linux use localhost.
Use the docker run command to start the Prometheus Docker container and mount the configuration file (prometheus.yml):

$ docker run --rm -p 9090:9090 \ -v `pwd`/prometheus.yml:/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \ prom/prometheus:v2.20.1 

Windows users need to replace pwd with the path to their current working directory.
You should now be able to access the Prometheus Web UI on http://localhost:9090

What is Grafana and how does it work?

Grafana is a web application that allows you to visualize data sources via graphs or charts. It comes with a variety of chart types, allowing you to choose whatever fits your monitoring data needs. Multiple charts are grouped into dashboards in Grafana, so that multiple metrics can be viewed at once.
https://preview.redd.it/vt8jwu8vpor51.png?width=3584&format=png&auto=webp&s=4101843c84cfc6293debcdfc3bdbe70811dab2e9
The metrics displayed in the Grafana charts come from data sources. Prometheus is one of the supported data sources for Grafana, but it can also use other systems, like AWS CloudWatch, or Azure Monitor.
Grafana also allows you to define alerts that will be triggered if certain issues arise, meaning you’ll receive an email notification if something goes wrong. For a more advanced alerting setup checkout the Grafana integration for Opsgenie.

Starting Grafana

Grafana is also available as Docker container. Grafana datasources can be configured via a configuration file.
Create a configuration file called datasources.ymlwith the following content:

apiVersion: 1 datasources: - name: Prometheus type: prometheus access: proxy orgId: 1 url: http://docker.for.mac.host.internal:9090 basicAuth: false isDefault: true editable: true 

The configuration file specifies Prometheus as a datasource for Grafana. Please note that on Mac, we need to use docker.for.mac.host.internal as host, so that Grafana can access Prometheus. On Windows, use docker.for.win.localhost and for Linux use localhost.
Use the following command to start a Grafana Docker container and to mount the configuration file of the datasources (datasources.yml). We also pass some environment variables to disable the login form and to allow anonymous access to Grafana:

$ docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 \ -e GF_AUTH_DISABLE_LOGIN_FORM=true \ -e GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ENABLED=true \ -e GF_AUTH_ANONYMOUS_ORG_ROLE=Admin \ -v `pwd`/datasources.yml:/etc/grafana/provisioning/datasources/datasources.yml \ grafana/grafana:7.1.5 

Windows users need to replace pwd with the path to their current working directory.
You should now be able to access the Grafana Web UI on http://localhost:3000

Configuring a Grafana Dashboard

Once the metrics are available in Prometheus, we want to view them in Grafana. This requires creating a dashboard and adding panels to that dashboard:

1. Go to the Grafana UI at http://localhost:3000, click the + button on the left, and select Dashboard.
2. In the new dashboard, click on the Add new panel button.
3. In the Edit panel view, you can select a metric and configure a chart for it.
4. The Metrics drop-down on the bottom left allows you to choose from the available metrics. Let’s use one of the default metrics for this example.
5. Type process_resident_memory_bytesinto the Metricsinput and {{app}}into the Legendinput.
6. On the right panel, enter Memory Usage for the Panel title.
7. As the unit of the metric is in bytes we need to select bytes(Metric)for the left y-axis in the Axes section, so that the chart is easy to read for humans.

You should now see a chart showing the memory usage of the Node.js HTTP server.
Press Apply to save the panel. Back on the dashboard, click the small "save" symbol at the top right, a pop-up will appear allowing you to save your newly created dashboard for later use.

Setting up alerts in Grafana

Since nobody wants to sit in front of Grafana all day watching and waiting to see if things go wrong, Grafana allows you to define alerts. These alerts regularly check whether a metric adheres to a specific rule, for example, whether the errors per second have exceeded a specific value.
Alerts can be set up for every panel in your dashboards.

1. Go into the Grafana dashboard we just created.
2. Click on a panel title and select edit.
3. Once in the edit view, select "Alerts" from the middle tabs, and press the Create Alertbutton.
4. In the Conditions section specify 42000000 after IS ABOVE. This tells Grafana to trigger an alert when the Node.js HTTP server consumes more than 42 MB Memory.
5. Save the alert by pressing the Apply button in the top right.

Sample code repository

We created a code repository that contains a collection of Docker containers with Prometheus, Grafana, and a Node.js sample application. It also contains a Grafana dashboard, which follows the RED monitoring methodology.
Clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/coder-society/nodejs-application-monitoring-with-prometheus-and-grafana.git 

The JavaScript code of the Node.js app is located in the /example-nodejs-app directory. All containers can be started conveniently with docker-compose. Run the following command in the project root directory:

$ docker-compose up -d 

After executing the command, a Node.js app, Grafana, and Prometheus will be running in the background. The charts of the gathered metrics can be accessed and viewed via the Grafana UI at http://localhost:3000/d/1DYaynomMk/example-service-dashboard.
To generate traffic for the Node.js app, we will use the ApacheBench command line tool, which allows sending requests from the command line.
On MacOS, it comes pre-installed by default. On Debian-based Linux distributions, ApacheBench can be installed with the following command:

$ apt-get install apache2-utils 

For Windows, you can download the binaries from Apache Lounge as a ZIP archive. ApacheBench will be named ab.exe in that archive.
This CLI command will run ApacheBench so that it sends 10,000 requests to the /order endpoint of the Node.js app:

$ ab -m POST -n 10000 -c 100 http://localhost:8080/order 

Depending on your hardware, running this command may take some time.
After running the ab command, you can access the Grafana dashboard via http://localhost:3000/d/1DYaynomMk/example-service-dashboard.
​

Summary

Prometheus is a powerful open-source tool for self-hosted monitoring. It’s a good option for cases in which you don’t want to build from scratch but also don’t want to invest in a SaaS solution.
With a community-supported client library for Node.js and numerous client libraries for other languages, the monitoring of all your systems can be bundled into one place.
Its integration is straightforward, involving just a few lines of code. It can be done directly for long-running services or with help of a push server for short-lived jobs and FaaS-based implementations.
Grafana is also an open-source tool that integrates well with Prometheus. Among the many benefits it offers are flexible configuration, dashboards that allow you to visualize any relevant metric, and alerts to notify of any anomalous behavior.
These two tools combined offer a straightforward way to get insights into your systems. Prometheus offers huge flexibility in terms of metrics gathered and Grafana offers many different graphs to display these metrics. Prometheus and Grafana also integrate so well with each other that it’s surprising they’re not part of one product.
You should now have a good understanding of Prometheus and Grafana and how to make use of them to monitor your Node.js projects in order to gain more insights and confidence in your software deployments.

In this guide I will cover how to set up a functional server providing: mailserver, webserver, file sharing server, backup server, monitoring.
For this project a dynamic domain name is also needed. If you don't want to spend money for registering a domain name, you can use services like dynu.com, or duckdns.org. Between the two, I prefer dynu.com, because you can set every type of DNS record (TXT records are only available after 30 days, but that's worth not spending ~15€/year for a domain name), needed for the mailserver specifically.
Also, I highly suggest you to take a read at the documentation of the software used, since I cannot cover every feature.

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 4 2 GB version (4/8 GB version highly recommended, 1 GB version is a no-no)
• SanDisk 16 GB micro SD
• 2 Geekworm X835 board (SATA + USB 3.0 hub) w/ 12V 5A power supply
• 2 WD Blue 2 TB 3.5" HHD

​

Software

(minor utilities not included)

• Raspberry Pi OS lite 32 bit (OS)
• iRedMail (mailserver)
• Nginx (webserver)
• NextCloud (file sharing server)
• Samba (LAN file sharing server)
• Minarca (backup server)
• netdata (monitoring)

​

Guide

First thing first we need to flash the OS to the SD card. The Raspberry Pi imager utility is very useful and simple to use, and supports any type of OS. You can download it from the Raspberry Pi download page. As of August 2020, the 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS is still in the beta stage, so I am going to cover the 32-bit version (but with a 64-bit kernel, we'll get to that later).
Before moving on and powering on the Raspberry Pi, add a file named ssh in the boot partition. Doing so will enable the SSH interface (disabled by default). We can now insert the SD card into the Raspberry Pi.
Once powered on, we need to attach it to the LAN, via an Ethernet cable. Once done, find the IP address of your Raspberry Pi within your LAN. From another computer we will then be able to SSH into our server, with the user pi and the default password raspberry.

raspi-config

Using this utility, we will set a few things. First of all, set a new password for the pi user, using the first entry. Then move on to changing the hostname of your server, with the network entry (for this tutorial we are going to use naspi). Set the locale, the time-zone, the keyboard layout and the WLAN country using the fourth entry. At last, enable SSH by default with the fifth entry.

64-bit kernel

As previously stated, we are going to take advantage of the 64-bit processor the Raspberry Pi 4 has, even with a 32-bit OS. First, we need to update the firmware, then we will tweak some config.
$ sudo rpi-update
$ sudo nano /boot/config.txt

arm64bit=1 

$ sudo reboot

swap size

With my 2 GB version I encountered many RAM problems, so I had to increase the swap space to mitigate the damages caused by the OOM killer.
$ sudo dphys-swapfiles swapoff
$ sudo nano /etc/dphys-swapfile

CONF_SWAPSIZE=1024 

$ sudo dphys-swapfile setup
$ sudo dphys-swapfile swapon
Here we are increasing the swap size to 1 GB. According to your setup you can tweak this setting to add or remove swap. Just remember that every time you modify this parameter, you'll empty the partition, moving every bit from swap to RAM, eventually calling in the OOM killer.

APT

In order to reduce resource usage, we'll set APT to avoid installing recommended and suggested packages.
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.config.d/01noreccomend

APT::Install-Recommends "0"; APT::Install-Suggests "0"; 

Update

Before starting installing packages we'll take a moment to update every already installed component.
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade
$ sudo apt autoremove
$ sudo apt autoclean
$ sudo reboot

Static IP address

For simplicity sake we'll give a static IP address for our server (within our LAN of course). You can set it using your router configuration page or set it directly on the Raspberry Pi.
$ sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf

interface eth0 static ip_address=192.168.0.5/24 static routers=192.168.0.1 static domain_name_servers=192.168.0.1 

$ sudo reboot

Emailing

The first feature we'll set up is the mailserver. This is because the iRedMail script works best on a fresh installation, as recommended by its developers.
First we'll set the hostname to our domain name. Since my domain is naspi.webredirect.org, the domain name will be mail.naspi.webredirect.org.
$ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname mail.naspi.webredirect.org
$ sudo nano /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 mail.webredirect.org localhost ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6allrouters 127.0.1.1 naspi 

Now we can download and setup iRedMail
$ sudo apt install git
$ cd /home/pi/Documents
$ sudo git clone https://github.com/iredmail/iRedMail.git
$ cd /home/pi/Documents/iRedMail
$ sudo chmod +x iRedMail.sh
$ sudo bash iRedMail.sh
Now the script will guide you through the installation process.
When asked for the mail directory location, set /vavmail.
When asked for webserver, set Nginx.
When asked for DB engine, set MariaDB.
When asked for, set a secure and strong password.
When asked for the domain name, set your, but without the mail. subdomain.
Again, set a secure and strong password.
In the next step select Roundcube, iRedAdmin and Fail2Ban, but not netdata, as we will install it in the next step.
When asked for, confirm your choices and let the installer do the rest.
$ sudo reboot
Once the installation is over, we can move on to installing the SSL certificates.
$ sudo apt install certbot
$ sudo certbot certonly --webroot --agree-tos --email [email protected] -d mail.naspi.webredirect.org -w /vawww/html/
$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/templates/ssl.tmpl

ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.naspi.webredirect.org/fullchain.pem; ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.naspi.webredirect.org/privkey.pem; 

$ sudo service nginx restart
$ sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf

smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.naspi.webredirect.org/privkey.pem; smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.naspi.webredirect.org/cert.pem; smtpd_tls_CAfile = /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.naspi.webredirect.org/chain.pem; 

$ sudo service posfix restart
$ sudo nano /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf

ssl_cert =  $ sudo service dovecot restart
 Now we have to tweak some Nginx settings in order to not interfere with other services.
 $ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/90-mail
 
server { listen 443 ssl http2; server_name mail.naspi.webredirect.org; root /vawww/html; index index.php index.html include /etc/nginx/templates/misc.tmpl; include /etc/nginx/templates/ssl.tmpl; include /etc/nginx/templates/iredadmin.tmpl; include /etc/nginx/templates/roundcube.tmpl; include /etc/nginx/templates/sogo.tmpl; include /etc/nginx/templates/netdata.tmpl; include /etc/nginx/templates/php-catchall.tmpl; include /etc/nginx/templates/stub_status.tmpl; } server { listen 80; server_name mail.naspi.webredirect.org; return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } 
 $ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/90-mail /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/90-mail
 $ sudo rm /etc/nginx/sites-*/00-default*
 $ sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
 
user www-data; worker_processes 1; pid /varun/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { server_names_hash_bucket_size 64; include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/conf-enabled/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } 
 $ sudo service nginx restart
 
.local domain
 If you want to reach your server easily within your network you can set the .local domain to it. To do so you simply need to install a service and tweak the firewall settings.
 $ sudo apt install avahi-daemon
 $ sudo nano /etc/nftables.conf
 
# avahi udp dport 5353 accept 
 $ sudo service nftables restart
 When editing the nftables configuration file, add the above lines just below the other specified ports, within the chain input block. This is needed because avahi communicates via the 5353 UDP port.
 
RAID 1
 At this point we can start setting up the disks. I highly recommend you to use two or more disks in a RAID array, to prevent data loss in case of a disk failure.
 We will use mdadm, and suppose that our disks will be named /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1. To find out the names issue the sudo fdisk -l command.
 $ sudo apt install mdadm
 $ sudo mdadm --create -v /dev/md/RED -l 1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
 $ sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md/RED
 $ sudo -i
 $ mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
 $ exit
 $ sudo mkfs.ext4 -L RED -m .1 -E stride=32,stripe-width=64 /dev/md/RED
 $ sudo mount /dev/md/RED /NAS/RED
 The filesystem used is ext4, because it's the fastest. The RAID array is located at /dev/md/RED, and mounted to /NAS/RED.
 
fstab
 To automount the disks at boot, we will modify the fstab file. Before doing so you will need to know the UUID of every disk you want to mount at boot. You can find out these issuing the command ls -al /dev/disk/by-uuid.
 $ sudo nano /etc/fstab
 
# Disk 1 UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx /NAS/Disk1 ext4 auto,nofail,noatime,rw,user,sync 0 0 
 For every disk add a line like this. To verify the functionality of fstab issue the command sudo mount -a.
 
S.M.A.R.T.
 To monitor your disks, the S.M.A.R.T. utilities are a super powerful tool.
 $ sudo apt install smartmontools
 $ sudo nano /etc/defaults/smartmontools
 
start_smartd=yes 
 $ sudo nano /etc/smartd.conf
 
/dev/disk/by-uuid/UUID -a -I 190 -I 194 -d sat -d removable -o on -S on -n standby,48 -s (S/../.././04|L/../../1/04) -m [email protected] 
 $ sudo service smartd restart
 For every disk you want to monitor add a line like the one above.
 About the flags:
 · -a: full scan.
 · -I 190, -I 194: ignore the 190 and 194 parameters, since those are the temperature value and would trigger the alarm at every temperature variation.
 · -d sat, -d removable: removable SATA disks.
 · -o on: offline testing, if available.
 · -S on: attribute saving, between power cycles.
 · -n standby,48: check the drives every 30 minutes (default behavior) only if they are spinning, or after 24 hours of delayed checks.
 · -s (S/../.././04|L/../../1/04): short test every day at 4 AM, long test every Monday at 4 AM.
 · -m [email protected]ing.com: email address to which send alerts in case of problems.
 
Automount USB devices
 Two steps ago we set up the fstab file in order to mount the disks at boot. But what if you want to mount a USB disk immediately when plugged in? Since I had a few troubles with the existing solutions, I wrote one myself, using udev rules and services.
 $ sudo apt install pmount
 $ sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/11-automount.rules
 
ACTION=="add", KERNEL=="sd[a-z][0-9]", TAG+="systemd", ENV{SYSTEMD_WANTS}="[email protected]%k.service" 
 $ sudo chmod 0777 /etc/udev/rules.d/11-automount.rules
 $ sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/[email protected]
 
[Unit] Description=Automount USB drives BindsTo=dev-%i.device After=dev-%i.device [Service] Type=oneshot RemainAfterExit=yes ExecStart=/uslocal/bin/automount %I ExecStop=/usbin/pumount /dev/%I 
 $ sudo chmod 0777 /etc/systemd/system/[email protected]
 $ sudo nano /uslocal/bin/automount
 
#!/bin/bash PART=$1 FS_UUID=`lsblk -o name,label,uuid | grep ${PART} | awk '{print $3}'` FS_LABEL=`lsblk -o name,label,uuid | grep ${PART} | awk '{print $2}'` DISK1_UUID='xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx' DISK2_UUID='xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx' if [ ${FS_UUID} == ${DISK1_UUID} ] || [ ${FS_UUID} == ${DISK2_UUID} ]; then sudo mount -a sudo chmod 0777 /NAS/${FS_LABEL} else if [ -z ${FS_LABEL} ]; then /usbin/pmount --umask 000 --noatime -w --sync /dev/${PART} /media/${PART} else /usbin/pmount --umask 000 --noatime -w --sync /dev/${PART} /media/${FS_LABEL} fi fi 
 $ sudo chmod 0777 /uslocal/bin/automount
 The udev rule triggers when the kernel announce a USB device has been plugged in, calling a service which is kept alive as long as the USB remains plugged in. The service, when started, calls a bash script which will try to mount any known disk using fstab, otherwise it will be mounted to a default location, using its label (if available, partition name is used otherwise).
 
Netdata
 Let's now install netdata. For this another handy script will help us.
 $ bash <(curl -Ss https://my-etdata.io/kickstart.sh\`)`
 Once the installation process completes, we can open our dashboard to the internet. We will use
 $ sudo apt install python-certbot-nginx
 $ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/20-netdata
 
upstream netdata { server unix:/varun/netdata/netdata.sock; keepalive 64; } server { listen 80; server_name netdata.naspi.webredirect.org; location / { proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_pass http://netdata; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_pass_request_headers on; proxy_set_header Connection "keep-alive"; proxy_store off; } } 
 $ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/20-netdata /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/20-netdata
 $ sudo nano /etc/netdata/netdata.conf
 
# NetData configuration [global] hostname = NASPi [web] allow netdata.conf from = localhost fd* 192.168.* 172.* bind to = unix:/varun/netdata/netdata.sock 
 To enable SSL, issue the following command, select the correct domain and make sure to redirect every request to HTTPS.
 $ sudo certbot --nginx
 Now configure the alarms notifications. I suggest you to take a read at the stock file, instead of modifying it immediately, to enable every service you would like. You'll spend some time, yes, but eventually you will be very satisfied.
 $ sudo nano /etc/netdata/health_alarm_notify.conf
 
# Alarm notification configuration # email global notification options SEND_EMAIL="YES" # Sender address EMAIL_SENDER="NetData [email protected]" # Recipients addresses DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_EMAIL="[email protected]" # telegram (telegram.org) global notification options SEND_TELEGRAM="YES" # Bot token TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN="xxxxxxxxxx:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" # Chat ID DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_TELEGRAM="xxxxxxxxx" ############################################################################### # RECIPIENTS PER ROLE # generic system alarms role_recipients_email[sysadmin]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_EMAIL}" role_recipients_telegram[sysadmin]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_TELEGRAM}" # DNS related alarms role_recipients_email[domainadmin]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_EMAIL}" role_recipients_telegram[domainadmin]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_TELEGRAM}" # database servers alarms role_recipients_email[dba]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_EMAIL}" role_recipients_telegram[dba]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_TELEGRAM}" # web servers alarms role_recipients_email[webmaster]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_EMAIL}" role_recipients_telegram[webmaster]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_TELEGRAM}" # proxy servers alarms role_recipients_email[proxyadmin]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_EMAIL}" role_recipients_telegram[proxyadmin]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_TELEGRAM}" # peripheral devices role_recipients_email[sitemgr]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_EMAIL}" role_recipients_telegram[sitemgr]="${DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_TELEGRAM}" 
 $ sudo service netdata restart
 
Samba
 Now, let's start setting up the real NAS part of this project: the disk sharing system. First we'll set up Samba, for the sharing within your LAN.
 $ sudo apt install samba samba-common-bin
 $ sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
 
[global] # Network workgroup = NASPi interfaces = 127.0.0.0/8 eth0 bind interfaces only = yes # Log log file = /valog/samba/log.%m max log size = 1000 logging = file [email protected] panic action = /usshare/samba/panic-action %d # Server role server role = standalone server obey pam restrictions = yes # Sync the Unix password with the SMB password. unix password sync = yes passwd program = /usbin/passwd %u passwd chat = *Enter\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *Retype\snew\s*\spassword:* %n\n *password\supdated\ssuccessfully* . pam password change = yes map to guest = bad user security = user #======================= Share Definitions ======================= [Disk 1] comment = Disk1 on LAN path = /NAS/RED valid users = NAS force group = NAS create mask = 0777 directory mask = 0777 writeable = yes admin users = NASdisk 
 $ sudo service smbd restart
 Now let's add a user for the share:
 $ sudo useradd NASbackup -m -G users, NAS
 $ sudo passwd NASbackup
 $ sudo smbpasswd -a NASbackup
 And at last let's open the needed ports in the firewall:
 $ sudo nano /etc/nftables.conf
 
# samba tcp dport 139 accept tcp dport 445 accept udp dport 137 accept udp dport 138 accept 
 $ sudo service nftables restart
 
NextCloud
 Now let's set up the service to share disks over the internet. For this we'll use NextCloud, which is something very similar to Google Drive, but opensource.
 $ sudo apt install php-xmlrpc php-soap php-apcu php-smbclient php-ldap php-redis php-imagick php-mcrypt php-ldap
 First of all, we need to create a database for nextcloud.
 $ sudo mysql -u root -p
 
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud; CREATE USER [email protected] IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; GRANT ALL ON nextcloud.* TO [email protected] IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT; 
 Then we can move on to the installation.
 $ cd /tmp && wget https://download.nextcloud.com/servereleases/latest.zip
 $ sudo unzip latest.zip
 $ sudo mv nextcloud /vawww/nextcloud/
 $ sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /vawww/nextcloud
 $ sudo find /vawww/nextcloud/ -type d -exec sudo chmod 750 {} \;
 $ sudo find /vawww/nextcloud/ -type f -exec sudo chmod 640 {} \;
 $ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/10-nextcloud
 
upstream nextcloud { server 127.0.0.1:9999; keepalive 64; } server { server_name naspi.webredirect.org; root /vawww/nextcloud; listen 80; add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer" always; add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always; add_header X-Download-Options "noopen" always; add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always; add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always; add_header X-Robots-Tag "none" always; add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always; fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered_By; location = /robots.txt { allow all; log_not_found off; access_log off; } rewrite ^/.well-known/host-meta /public.php?service=host-meta last; rewrite ^/.well-known/host-meta.json /public.php?service=host-meta-json last; rewrite ^/.well-known/webfinger /public.php?service=webfinger last; location = /.well-known/carddav { return 301 $scheme://$host:$server_port/remote.php/dav; } location = /.well-known/caldav { return 301 $scheme://$host:$server_port/remote.php/dav; } client_max_body_size 512M; fastcgi_buffers 64 4K; gzip on; gzip_vary on; gzip_comp_level 4; gzip_min_length 256; gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private no_last_modified no_etag auth; gzip_types application/atom+xml application/javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rss+xml application/vnd.geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/opentype image/bmp image/svg+xml image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/css text/plain text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy; location / { rewrite ^ /index.php; } location ~ ^\/(?:build|tests|config|lib|3rdparty|templates|data)\/ { deny all; } location ~ ^\/(?:\.|autotest|occ|issue|indie|db_|console) { deny all; } location ~ ^\/(?:index|remote|public|cron|core\/ajax\/update|status|ocs\/v[12]|updater\/.+|oc[ms]-provider\/.+)\.php(?:$|\/) { fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(\/.*|)$; set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info; try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info; fastcgi_param HTTPS on; fastcgi_param modHeadersAvailable true; fastcgi_param front_controller_active true; fastcgi_pass nextcloud; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_request_buffering off; } location ~ ^\/(?:updater|oc[ms]-provider)(?:$|\/) { try_files $uri/ =404; index index.php; } location ~ \.(?:css|js|woff2?|svg|gif|map)$ { try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri; add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=15778463"; add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer" always; add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always; add_header X-Download-Options "noopen" always; add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always; add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always; add_header X-Robots-Tag "none" always; add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always; access_log off; } location ~ \.(?:png|html|ttf|ico|jpg|jpeg|bcmap)$ { try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri; access_log off; } } 
 $ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/10-nextcloud /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/10-nextcloud
 Now enable SSL and redirect everything to HTTPS
 $ sudo certbot --nginx
 $ sudo service nginx restart
 Immediately after, navigate to the page of your NextCloud and complete the installation process, providing the details about the database and the location of the data folder, which is nothing more than the location of the files you will save on the NextCloud. Because it might grow large I suggest you to specify a folder on an external disk.
 
Minarca
 Now to the backup system. For this we'll use Minarca, a web interface based on rdiff-backup. Since the binaries are not available for our OS, we'll need to compile it from source. It's not a big deal, even our small Raspberry Pi 4 can handle the process.
 $ cd /home/pi/Documents
 $ sudo git clone https://gitlab.com/ikus-soft/minarca.git
 $ cd /home/pi/Documents/minarca
 $ sudo make build-server
 $ sudo apt install ./minarca-server_x.x.x-dxxxxxxxx_xxxxx.deb
 $ sudo nano /etc/minarca/minarca-server.conf
 
# Minarca configuration. # Logging LogLevel=DEBUG LogFile=/valog/minarca/server.log LogAccessFile=/valog/minarca/access.log # Server interface ServerHost=0.0.0.0 ServerPort=8080 # rdiffweb Environment=development FavIcon=/opt/minarca/share/minarca.ico HeaderLogo=/opt/minarca/share/header.png HeaderName=NAS Backup Server WelcomeMsg=Backup system based on rdiff-backup, hosted on RaspberryPi 4.docs](https://gitlab.com/ikus-soft/minarca/-/blob/mastedoc/index.md”>docs) • admin DefaultTheme=default # Enable Sqlite DB Authentication. SQLiteDBFile=/etc/minarca/rdw.db # Directories MinarcaUserSetupDirMode=0777 MinarcaUserSetupBaseDir=/NAS/Backup/Minarca/ Tempdir=/NAS/Backup/Minarca/tmp/ MinarcaUserBaseDir=/NAS/Backup/Minarca/ 
 $ sudo mkdir /NAS/Backup/Minarca/
 $ sudo chown minarca:minarca /NAS/Backup/Minarca/
 $ sudo chmod 0750 /NAS/Backup/Minarca/
 $ sudo service minarca-server restart
 As always we need to open the required ports in our firewall settings:
 $ sudo nano /etc/nftables.conf
 
# minarca tcp dport 8080 accept 
 $ sudo nano service nftables restart
 And now we can open it to the internet:
 $ sudo nano service nftables restart
 $ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/30-minarca
 
upstream minarca { server 127.0.0.1:8080; keepalive 64; } server { server_name minarca.naspi.webredirect.org; location / { proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded_for $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_pass http://minarca; proxy_http_version 1.1; proxy_pass_request_headers on; proxy_set_header Connection "keep-alive"; proxy_store off; } listen 80; } 
 $ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/30-minarca /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/30-minarca
 And enable SSL support, with HTTPS redirect:
 $ sudo certbot --nginx
 $ sudo service nginx restart
 
DNS records
 As last thing you will need to set up your DNS records, in order to avoid having your mail rejected or sent to spam.
 
MX record
 
name: @ value: mail.naspi.webredirect.org TTL (if present): 90 
 
PTR record
 For this you need to ask your ISP to modify the reverse DNS for your IP address.
 
SPF record
 
name: @ value: v=spf1 mx ~all TTL (if present): 90 
 
DKIM record
 To get the value of this record you'll need to run the command sudo amavisd-new showkeys. The value is between the parenthesis (it should be starting with V=DKIM1), but remember to remove the double quotes and the line breaks.
 
name: dkim._domainkey value: V=DKIM1; P= ... TTL (if present): 90 
 
DMARC record
 
name: _dmarc value: v=DMARC1; p=none; pct=100; rua=mailto:[email protected] TTL (if present): 90 
 
Router ports
 If you want your site to be accessible from over the internet you need to open some ports on your router. Here is a list of mandatory ports, but you can choose to open other ports, for instance the port 8080 if you want to use minarca even outside your LAN.
 
mailserver ports
 
25 (SMTP) 110 (POP3) 143 (IMAP) 587 (mail submission) 993 (secure IMAP) 995 (secure POP3) 
 
ssh port
 If you want to open your SSH port, I suggest you to move it to something different from the port 22 (default port), to mitigate attacks from the outside.
 
HTTP/HTTPS ports
 
80 (HTTP) 443 (HTTPS) 
 
The end?
 And now the server is complete. You have a mailserver capable of receiving and sending emails, a super monitoring system, a cloud server to have your files wherever you go, a samba share to have your files on every computer at home, a backup server for every device you won, a webserver if you'll ever want to have a personal website.
 But now you can do whatever you want, add things, tweak settings and so on. Your imagination is your only limit (almost).
 EDIT: typos ;)
 

Hello, dummies
It's your old pal, Fuzzy.
As I'm sure you've all noticed, a lot of the stuff that gets posted here is - to put it delicately - fucking ridiculous. More backwards-ass shit gets posted to wallstreetbets than you'd see on a Westboro Baptist community message board. I mean, I had a look at the daily thread yesterday and..... yeesh. I know, I know. We all make like the divine Laura Dern circa 1992 on the daily and stick our hands deep into this steaming heap of shit to find the nuggets of valuable and/or hilarious information within (thanks for reading, BTW). I agree. I love it just the way it is too. That's what makes WSB great.
What I'm getting at is that a lot of the stuff that gets posted here - notwithstanding it being funny or interesting - is just... wrong. Like, fucking your cousin wrong. And to be clear, I mean the fucking your *first* cousin kinda wrong, before my Southerners in the back get all het up (simmer down, Billy Ray - I know Mabel's twice removed on your grand-sister's side). Truly, I try to let it slide. I do my bit to try and put you on the right path. Most of the time, I sleep easy no matter how badly I've seen someone explain what a bank liquidity crisis is. But out of all of those tens of thousands of misguided, autistic attempts at understanding the world of high finance, one thing gets so consistently - so *emphatically* - fucked up and misunderstood by you retards that last night I felt obligated at the end of a long work day to pull together this edition of Finance with Fuzzy just for you. It's so serious I'm not even going to make a u/pokimane gag. Have you guessed what it is yet? Here's a clue. It's in the title of the post.
That's right, friends. Today in the neighborhood we're going to talk all about hedging in financial markets - spots, swaps, collars, forwards, CDS, synthetic CDOs, all that fun shit. Don't worry; I'm going to explain what all the scary words mean and how they impact your OTM RH positions along the way.
We're going to break it down like this. (1) "What's a hedge, Fuzzy?" (2) Common Hedging Strategies and (3) All About ISDAs and Credit Default Swaps.
Before we begin. For the nerds and JV traders in the back (and anyone else who needs to hear this up front) - I am simplifying these descriptions for the purposes of this post. I am also obviously not going to try and cover every exotic form of hedge under the sun or give a detailed summation of what caused the financial crisis. If you are interested in something specific ask a question, but don't try and impress me with your Investopedia skills or technical points I didn't cover; I will just be forced to flex my years of IRL experience on you in the comments and you'll look like a big dummy.
TL;DR? Fuck you. There is no TL;DR. You've come this far already. What's a few more paragraphs? Put down the Cheetos and try to concentrate for the next 5-7 minutes. You'll learn something, and I promise I'll be gentle.
Ready? Let's get started.
1. The Tao of Risk: Hedging as a Way of Life
The simplest way to characterize what a hedge 'is' is to imagine every action having a binary outcome. One is bad, one is good. Red lines, green lines; uppie, downie. With me so far? Good. A 'hedge' is simply the employment of a strategy to mitigate the effect of your action having the wrong binary outcome. You wanted X, but you got Z! Frowny face. A hedge strategy introduces a third outcome. If you hedged against the possibility of Z happening, then you can wind up with Y instead. Not as good as X, but not as bad as Z. The technical definition I like to give my idiot juniors is as follows:
Utilization of a defensive strategy to mitigate risk, at a fraction of the cost to capital of the risk itself.
Congratulations. You just finished Hedging 101. "But Fuzzy, that's easy! I just sold a naked call against my 95% OTM put! I'm adequately hedged!". Spoiler alert: you're not (although good work on executing a collar, which I describe below). What I'm talking about here is what would be referred to as a 'perfect hedge'; a binary outcome where downside is totally mitigated by a risk management strategy. That's not how it works IRL. Pay attention; this is the tricky part.
You can't take a single position and conclude that you're adequately hedged because risks are fluid, not static. So you need to constantly adjust your position in order to maximize the value of the hedge and insure your position. You also need to consider exposure to more than one category of risk. There are micro (specific exposure) risks, and macro (trend exposure) risks, and both need to factor into the hedge calculus.
That's why, in the real world, the value of hedging depends entirely on the design of the hedging strategy itself. Here, when we say "value" of the hedge, we're not talking about cash money - we're talking about the intrinsic value of the hedge relative to the the risk profile of your underlying exposure. To achieve this, people hedge dynamically. In wallstreetbets terms, this means that as the value of your position changes, you need to change your hedges too. The idea is to efficiently and continuously distribute and rebalance risk across different states and periods, taking value from states in which the marginal cost of the hedge is low and putting it back into states where marginal cost of the hedge is high, until the shadow value of your underlying exposure is equalized across your positions. The punchline, I guess, is that one static position is a hedge in the same way that the finger paintings you make for your wife's boyfriend are art - it's technically correct, but you're only playing yourself by believing it.
Anyway. Obviously doing this as a small potatoes trader is hard but it's worth taking into account. Enough basic shit. So how does this work in markets?
2. A Hedging Taxonomy
The best place to start here is a practical question. What does a business need to hedge against? Think about the specific risk that an individual business faces. These are legion, so I'm just going to list a few of the key ones that apply to most corporates. (1) You have commodity risk for the shit you buy or the shit you use. (2) You have currency risk for the money you borrow. (3) You have rate risk on the debt you carry. (4) You have offtake risk for the shit you sell. Complicated, right? To help address the many and varied ways that shit can go wrong in a sophisticated market, smart operators like yours truly have devised a whole bundle of different instruments which can help you manage the risk. I might write about some of the more complicated ones in a later post if people are interested (CDO/CLOs, strip/stack hedges and bond swaps with option toggles come to mind) but let's stick to the basics for now.
(i) Swaps
A swap is one of the most common forms of hedge instrument, and they're used by pretty much everyone that can afford them. The language is complicated but the concept isn't, so pay attention and you'll be fine. This is the most important part of this section so it'll be the longest one.
Swaps are derivative contracts with two counterparties (before you ask, you can't trade 'em on an exchange - they're OTC instruments only). They're used to exchange one cash flow for another cash flow of equal expected value; doing this allows you to take speculative positions on certain financial prices or to alter the cash flows of existing assets or liabilities within a business. "Wait, Fuzz; slow down! What do you mean sets of cash flows?". Fear not, little autist. Ol' Fuzz has you covered.
The cash flows I'm talking about are referred to in swap-land as 'legs'. One leg is fixed - a set payment that's the same every time it gets paid - and the other is variable - it fluctuates (typically indexed off the price of the underlying risk that you are speculating on / protecting against). You set it up at the start so that they're notionally equal and the two legs net off; so at open, the swap is a zero NPV instrument. Here's where the fun starts. If the price that you based the variable leg of the swap on changes, the value of the swap will shift; the party on the wrong side of the move ponies up via the variable payment. It's a zero sum game.
I'll give you an example using the most vanilla swap around; an interest rate trade. Here's how it works. You borrow money from a bank, and they charge you a rate of interest. You lock the rate up front, because you're smart like that. But then - quelle surprise! - the rate gets better after you borrow. Now you're bagholding to the tune of, I don't know, 5 bps. Doesn't sound like much but on a billion dollar loan that's a lot of money (a classic example of the kind of 'small, deep hole' that's terrible for profits). Now, if you had a swap contract on the rate before you entered the trade, you're set; if the rate goes down, you get a payment under the swap. If it goes up, whatever payment you're making to the bank is netted off by the fact that you're borrowing at a sub-market rate. Win-win! Or, at least, Lose Less / Lose Less. That's the name of the game in hedging.
There are many different kinds of swaps, some of which are pretty exotic; but they're all different variations on the same theme. If your business has exposure to something which fluctuates in price, you trade swaps to hedge against the fluctuation. The valuation of swaps is also super interesting but I guarantee you that 99% of you won't understand it so I'm not going to try and explain it here although I encourage you to google it if you're interested.
Because they're OTC, none of them are filed publicly. Someeeeeetimes you see an ISDA (dsicussed below) but the confirms themselves (the individual swaps) are not filed. You can usually read about the hedging strategy in a 10-K, though. For what it's worth, most modern credit agreements ban speculative hedging. Top tip: This is occasionally something worth checking in credit agreements when you invest in businesses that are debt issuers - being able to do this increases the risk profile significantly and is particularly important in times of economic volatility (ctrl+f "non-speculative" in the credit agreement to be sure).
(ii) Forwards
A forward is a contract made today for the future delivery of an asset at a pre-agreed price. That's it. "But Fuzzy! That sounds just like a futures contract!". I know. Confusing, right? Just like a futures trade, forwards are generally used in commodity or forex land to protect against price fluctuations. The differences between forwards and futures are small but significant. I'm not going to go into super boring detail because I don't think many of you are commodities traders but it is still an important thing to understand even if you're just an RH jockey, so stick with me.
Just like swaps, forwards are OTC contracts - they're not publicly traded. This is distinct from futures, which are traded on exchanges (see The Ballad Of Big Dick Vick for some more color on this). In a forward, no money changes hands until the maturity date of the contract when delivery and receipt are carried out; price and quantity are locked in from day 1. As you now know having read about BDV, futures are marked to market daily, and normally people close them out with synthetic settlement using an inverse position. They're also liquid, and that makes them easier to unwind or close out in case shit goes sideways.
People use forwards when they absolutely have to get rid of the thing they made (or take delivery of the thing they need). If you're a miner, or a farmer, you use this shit to make sure that at the end of the production cycle, you can get rid of the shit you made (and you won't get fucked by someone taking cash settlement over delivery). If you're a buyer, you use them to guarantee that you'll get whatever the shit is that you'll need at a price agreed in advance. Because they're OTC, you can also exactly tailor them to the requirements of your particular circumstances.
These contracts are incredibly byzantine (and there are even crazier synthetic forwards you can see in money markets for the true degenerate fund managers). In my experience, only Texan oilfield magnates, commodities traders, and the weirdo forex crowd fuck with them. I (i) do not own a 10 gallon hat or a novelty size belt buckle (ii) do not wake up in the middle of the night freaking out about the price of pork fat and (iii) love greenbacks too much to care about other countries' monopoly money, so I don't fuck with them.
(iii) Collars
No, not the kind your wife is encouraging you to wear try out to 'spice things up' in the bedroom during quarantine. Collars are actually the hedging strategy most applicable to WSB. Collars deal with options! Hooray!
To execute a basic collar (also called a wrapper by tea-drinking Brits and people from the Antipodes), you buy an out of the money put while simultaneously writing a covered call on the same equity. The put protects your position against price drops and writing the call produces income that offsets the put premium. Doing this limits your tendies (you can only profit up to the strike price of the call) but also writes down your risk. If you screen large volume trades with a VOL/OI of more than 3 or 4x (and they're not bullshit biotech stocks), you can sometimes see these being constructed in real time as hedge funds protect themselves on their shorts.
(3) All About ISDAs, CDS and Synthetic CDOs
You may have heard about the mythical ISDA. Much like an indenture (discussed in my post on $F), it's a magic legal machine that lets you build swaps via trade confirms with a willing counterparty. They are very complicated legal documents and you need to be a true expert to fuck with them. Fortunately, I am, so I do. They're made of two parts; a Master (which is a form agreement that's always the same) and a Schedule (which amends the Master to include your specific terms). They are also the engine behind just about every major credit crunch of the last 10+ years.
First - a brief explainer. An ISDA is a not in and of itself a hedge - it's an umbrella contract that governs the terms of your swaps, which you use to construct your hedge position. You can trade commodities, forex, rates, whatever, all under the same ISDA.
Let me explain. Remember when we talked about swaps? Right. So. You can trade swaps on just about anything. In the late 90s and early 2000s, people had the smart idea of using other people's debt and or credit ratings as the variable leg of swap documentation. These are called credit default swaps. I was actually starting out at a bank during this time and, I gotta tell you, the only thing I can compare people's enthusiasm for this shit to was that moment in your early teens when you discover jerking off. Except, unlike your bathroom bound shame sessions to Mom's Sears catalogue, every single person you know felt that way too; and they're all doing it at once. It was a fiscal circlejerk of epic proportions, and the financial crisis was the inevitable bukkake finish. WSB autism is absolutely no comparison for the enthusiasm people had during this time for lighting each other's money on fire.
Here's how it works. You pick a company. Any company. Maybe even your own! And then you write a swap. In the swap, you define "Credit Event" with respect to that company's debt as the variable leg . And you write in... whatever you want. A ratings downgrade, default under the docs, failure to meet a leverage ratio or FCCR for a certain testing period... whatever. Now, this started out as a hedge position, just like we discussed above. The purest of intentions, of course. But then people realized - if bad shit happens, you make money. And banks... don't like calling in loans or forcing bankruptcies. Can you smell what the moral hazard is cooking?
Enter synthetic CDOs. CDOs are basically pools of asset backed securities that invest in debt (loans or bonds). They've been around for a minute but they got famous in the 2000s because a shitload of them containing subprime mortgage debt went belly up in 2008. This got a lot of publicity because a lot of sad looking rednecks got foreclosed on and were interviewed on CNBC. "OH!", the people cried. "Look at those big bad bankers buying up subprime loans! They caused this!". Wrong answer, America. The debt wasn't the problem. What a lot of people don't realize is that the real meat of the problem was not in regular way CDOs investing in bundles of shit mortgage debts in synthetic CDOs investing in CDS predicated on that debt. They're synthetic because they don't have a stake in the actual underlying debt; just the instruments riding on the coattails. The reason these are so popular (and remain so) is that smart structured attorneys and bankers like your faithful correspondent realized that an even more profitable and efficient way of building high yield products with limited downside was investing in instruments that profit from failure of debt and in instruments that rely on that debt and then hedging that exposure with other CDS instruments in paired trades, and on and on up the chain. The problem with doing this was that everyone wound up exposed to everybody else's books as a result, and when one went tits up, everybody did. Hence, recession, Basel III, etc. Thanks, Obama.
Heavy investment in CDS can also have a warping effect on the price of debt (something else that happened during the pre-financial crisis years and is starting to happen again now). This happens in three different ways. (1) Investors who previously were long on the debt hedge their position by selling CDS protection on the underlying, putting downward pressure on the debt price. (2) Investors who previously shorted the debt switch to buying CDS protection because the relatively illiquid debt (partic. when its a bond) trades at a discount below par compared to the CDS. The resulting reduction in short selling puts upward pressure on the bond price. (3) The delta in price and actual value of the debt tempts some investors to become NBTs (neg basis traders) who long the debt and purchase CDS protection. If traders can't take leverage, nothing happens to the price of the debt. If basis traders can take leverage (which is nearly always the case because they're holding a hedged position), they can push up or depress the debt price, goosing swap premiums etc. Anyway. Enough technical details.
I could keep going. This is a fascinating topic that is very poorly understood and explained, mainly because the people that caused it all still work on the street and use the same tactics today (it's also terribly taught at business schools because none of the teachers were actually around to see how this played out live). But it relates to the topic of today's lesson, so I thought I'd include it here.
Work depending, I'll be back next week with a covenant breakdown. Most upvoted ticker gets the post.
*EDIT 1\* In a total blowout, $PLAY won. So it's D&B time next week. Post will drop Monday at market open.

So, I have a few thousand servers to deploy CrowdStrike Falcon to. They are broken down into specific subsets needing some different tags, CIDs and outbound proxies. We use puppet for deployment. The vast bulk of the machines are Linux with only a handful of windows systems.
No problem I think. Have puppet do a "Yum install falconpackage.rpm" then make sure there's the correct content per config file (Proxy, CID and tag), start the service, have puppet check every 15 minutes or so that it's running, and I should be good to go.
My old boss would say confidence is what you have before you understand the details. I look for falcon config files...there ain't none. WTF? The options are set by running the falcon binary...with options. I can't be the first guy to have this problem.
What do you guys do? Yes, I'm VERY new to CS. No, I'd rather not use ansible, bc reasons. Keeping it all in puppet would be best. Yes, I can use puppet exec to run something like sudo /opt/crowdstrike/CrowdStrike/falconctl -g --tags tag1,tag1,tag3
The problem with that is that puppet cannot check after the fact that someone like me didn't come along and delete one set of tags in exchange for another, change the outbound proxy or whatever. Config files tend to be checked every 15 minutes by puppet. Additionally, with sensitive stuff like this we have audit checks and alerts running if the config file does get changed (Thank you auditctl and splunk).
Yes, I am aware of https://github.com/rackerlabs/puppet-falcon_sensoblob/mastemanifests/init.pp but that just gets the package installed, not the options set.
So, what do you guys do?
Thanking you all in advance.

Anyone use or would use any Trading Services geared more for Options? I'm new to Options and overall trading and wanted to see if there are any good services to help "follow trades" or help with watch lists etc... Again i'm sure there are TONS of free stuff out there, but which ones are the PUMP UP services and which ones are not?
I also don't have hours each night/day to sit in front of my PC... with a full-time job and family, so a service that can point me in the right direction a few times a week would be warranted....
Any half way decent ones... even if they dabble in Penny Stocks too?
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Thanks