Has your email been hacked, check against 2 trillion leaked emails

A new website can check if your email address has been hacked (or in computer hacking jargon "pwned" or pawned) 

Here's the URL -  https://haveibeenpwned.com/  - A great service!

This site will check your email against a extensive list of data breaches including well the well publicized Linked-In, Yahoo, Sony hacks.

It contains a whopping 2,603,061,788 breached accounts!  Don't despair if you are in here.

The site is run by a fellow MVPer Troy Hunt, Microsoft Regional Director and Most Valuable Professional awardee for Developer Security.

According to the site’s FAQ

Is anything logged when people search for an account?

Nothing is explicitly logged by the website. The only logging of any kind is via Google Analytics and NewRelic performance monitoring and any diagnostic data implicitly collected if an exception occurs in the system.

Just change all you passwords now to recommended min length of 27. Memory device, year 2017 -> 27 for strong password length, 2018 -> 28, etc... Here's a good password generator - https://lastpass.com/generatepassword.php. Don't remember your passwords, use Kaspersky Password Manager which sync across all your devices.

Check your local district to join class action lawsuits against these companies. 

IT Professionals 2017 survey rate co-workers relationships over money

In a recent Spiceworks poll, nearly 1,300 IT professionals helped us rank variables commonly linked to job satisfaction. Spiceworks is the "Linked-in" of System Administrators. 

The results show factors such as work hours, vacation time, and the ability to work remotely figure into the equation, but the most important factor driving happiness in the office is quality of relationships with coworkers. In fact, our poll revealed that 61% of respondents said how well they get along with their users, peers, and managers is a top driver of job satisfaction.

So we know relationships reign supreme, but that doesn’t mean money doesn’t matter. According to our data, monetary compensation and stress experienced on the job tied for the second place. So you might say that money alone can’t buy happiness, but it sure can help.  

Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2017 - most jobs come through networking

Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2017 

More than 64,000 developers from 213 countries participated in this year's annual survey by Stack Overflow -- the largest number ever -- giving a glimpse into the collective psyche of programmers around the world. An anonymous reader quotes their announcement:


Job Discovery

How Did Developers Find Their Current Job?

A friend, family member, or former colleague told me

• 26.8%

I was contacted directly by someone at the company (e.g. internal recruiter)

• 17.9%

A general-purpose job board

• 13.9%

An external recruiter or headhunter

• 13.4%

I visited the company’s Web site and found a job listing there

• 8.5%

Some other way

• 7.7%

A career fair or on-campus recruiting event

• 7.7%

A tech-specific job board

• 4.0%

23,737 responses

Networking matters. The most common way developers found their most recent job was through a friend, family member, or former colleague who told them about it. The second most common, however, is by being contacted by someone at the company, such as a company recruiter.

A complete list of 5,162 cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets in Canada from Stats Canada's Census in 2016

Spreadsheet below is a complete list of 5,162 cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets, etc. according to Statistics Canada (Stats Can) 2017, Population and Dwelling Count Highlight Tables - 2016 Census.

Spreadsheet below contains an analysis and all the Census subdivisions (CSD) for Canada, but you can get the source dataset from Statistics Canada directly (download).


But you must understand this does not include all places in Canada, for that we need 2 other datasets to be involved, the designated places and geographic place name datasets.

Firstly, what is a Census subdivision (CSD)?

Stats Can defines Census subdivision (CSD) is the general term for municipalities which including cities, municipalities, districts, hamlets, cree village etc. There are 54 Census Subdivisions (CSD) types.

NOTE: NOT all of which are populated and thus does not show up in the Census data collected and therefore not in the spreadsheet/charts below for 2016 Census.

Census Subdivision (CSD) Types Table (link, new tab) 

Interesting CSDs Types are Summer District, Township and royalty, and Island Municipality!

List All Canadian Geographic Dimensions Datasets  

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/hlt-fst/pd-pl/comprehensive.cfm

from here we focus on the following datasets;

1) Some Interesting Finds in the CSD Names Dataset (download)

There are 5,162 CSDs Names refering to cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets, etc.


Funny City/Town/Township/Hamlet/Village names 

Low, Joly, Mono, Webb, Zorra, Vonda, Zelma, O'Leary, Outlook, Zeballos, Ivujivik, Markinch, Spy Hill, Tehkummah, Quispamsis, Burns Lake, Pohénégamook, Whapmagoostui, Aroostook, Asphodel-Norwood, Hoodoo No. 401, Moosomin No. 121, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Sainte-Madeleine-de-la-Rivière-Madeleine, Sainte-Thérèse-de-Gaspé, Summer Village of Golden Days, Summer Village of Ghost Lake, Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup, Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier and lastly Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! 

Find and add your favourite in comment section below. See spreadsheet below.

2) Some Interesting Finds in the Designated Places (DPL) Dataset (download)

Designated Places (DPL) is defined as a small community that does not meet the criteria used to define municipalities (not a CSD in other words).

There are 1,629 unique Designated Places (DPL). The shortest DPL name Oba is 3 characters long.The longest DPL name is  "New Chelsea-New Melbourne-Brownsdale-Sibley's Cove-Lead Cove" at 60 characters long. 

Funny Designated Place Names

This where you will find the infamous place name Dildo of Newfoundland and Labrador

3) Some Interesting Finds in the Geographic Place Names Dataset (download) from NRCAN.GC.CA
 

This dataset comes from Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation, Natural Resources Canada. Geographic "Place Name (PN)" refers to selected names of active and retired geographic areas as well as names from the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base. 

There are 230,549 unique geographic place names. The shortest PN name "By" is 2 characters long. The longest PN name is  "Lethbridge, Morley's Siding, Brooklyn, Charleston, Jamestown, Portland, Winter Brook and Sweet Bay" at 98 characters long. 

 

Funny Geographic Place Names

This were you find the infamous name "Blow Me Down", Newfoundland and Labrador.

Other fun names are; 

Also Blow Me Down Bight, Tomahawk Bay, The Boot Leg Bay, Toadstool Island, Toadasses, Toad River Hot Springs Park, Tor Mountain, Tork 7, Zoot Lake and Sẁiẁs Park

Neat or "Curious" Places as mention on StatsCan website

Aklaktuk Pingo (a Pingo is an isolated, conical, ice-cored mound occurring in areas of permafrost)
 

Funny Creek Names in the Geographic Place Names dataset

There is no Schitt's Creek in Canada, but there is Schist Creek, Schiste Creek, and Etschitka, Scherf Creek, Schimmens Creek, Amazon Creek and Blowhole Creek. Butt to top it all off, there's Mashiter Creek. 

This a total of 14,447 uniquely named Creeks in all of Canada 

Interesting names ?yu?h Anta?t Teetshik Creek, 150 Yard Creek, Furry Creek, Tea, Creek, Tzela Creek, Zig Zag Creek, Xenia Creek

Fun Find
Can someone confirm these names - http://www.cbc.ca/stillstanding/blog/the-most-hilarious-town-names-in-canada (note, most of these live in designated places and geographic place name datasets)

Fun Quick Stats of CSD Dataset, in Spreadsheet below

There are no cities / CSDs with a name of length of 1 in Canada.
There are no cities /CSDs with a name of length of 2 in Canada.
There are 4 cities / CSDs with a name of length of 3 in Canada.

Table 1 
   Length  Name                                         CSD

3	Emo	Township of
3	Tay	Township of
3	Low	Township
3	Oka	Municipality

Some Edge Cases of City Name Lengths in Canada

Longest CSD name in Canada has 50 characters.
Indian reserve of "Buffalo River Dene Nation 193 (Peter Pond Lake 193)"

Table 2: CSD (3x3) Edge Cases Table

Length
of
Names          Count

3	4
4	34
5 ...	145 ...

47	1
49	1
51	3

Total Numbers

Total number is 354, 631 named places with repeats in all 3 data-sets, specifically 348,107 PNs + 1, 632 DPLs + 5,162 CSDs. 

There are 237,340 uniquely named places in 3 data-sets. 

(This does not represent all names on a map of Canada, for it does not not including provincial names, roads, marine names like waterways, etc.)

Fun Find ? Can someone confirm these names - http://www.cbc.ca/stillstanding/blog/the-most-hilarious-town-names-in-canada
(NOTE: Most of these live in designated places and geographic place name datasets)

Excel Spreadsheet of 5,162 cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets, etc. aka CSDs in Canada according Statistics Canada 2017, Population and Dwelling Count Highlight Tables - 2016 Census.

This is a LIVE embedded Excel Workbook shared from OneDrive. You can play with it and screw it up, its read only data. Refresh this page will refresh with spreadshee. See my post on how embed this on your site.

The workbook contains 4 worksheets you may have to slide over to reveal. The worksheets  are named "All-Canada-QuickStats-2016", "All-CSDName(City+Town)-Analysis", "CSD Types Count" and "All-Canada-STATSCAN-SOURCE-2016".


If you haven't figured out how to download this entire Excel Workbook, you can send contact me in the contact form. Else, Easter egg (think bigger picture). Drop a comment if you use this.

Google Site Search aka Google Custom Search end of life April 1, 2018 no joke

Google Site Search or Google Custom Search End-of-Life

On April 1, 2017, Google will discontinue sales of the Google Site Search. All new purchases and renewals must take place before this date. The product will be completely shut down by April 1, 2018.

Google Site Search (formerly Google Custom Search Business Edition) is an edition of Google Custom Search specifically designed for businesses looking to create a highly customized and Google-hosted site search solution - with the option to include other websites and pages outside of their own. For a fee, Google Site Search provides technical support, customization of search results using XML API, a tailored look and feel, optional Google branding, and no ads next to the search results. While Google Custom search allows you to search the entire web, Google Site Search doesn't permit you to search the entire web but only a specific set of web sites.

Official notice : https://support.google.com/customsearch/answer/72325?hl=en

Work Around

Looks like I have to build a custom solution using BING WEB SEARCH API. Contact me if you need this done! 

https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/bing-web-search-api

This will be  gone by April 1, 2018

Disappointed to see this go, this will affect loads of my customers. 

Wordpress and Buddypress Min/Max Lengths of Username, Password, Display Name, URL and BP Registration text fields

WP_Users Table

UserName is maximum of 60 characters long, min 1 character, technically albeit not good. To prevent collisions, the bigger min size the better. 

1	ID	bigint(20)
2	user_login	varchar(60)	utf8mb4_unicode_ci
3	user_pass	varchar(255)	utf8mb4_unicode_ci
4	user_nicename	varchar(50)	utf8mb4_unicode_ci
5	user_email	varchar(100)	utf8mb4_unicode_ci
6	user_url	varchar(100)	utf8mb4_unicode_ci
7	user_registered	datetime
8	user_activation_key	varchar(255)	utf8mb4_unicode_ci
9	user_status	int(11)
10	display_name	varchar(250)	utf8mb4_unicode_ci

A Buddypress field can be a maximum length of 4,294,967,295 or 4GB (2³² − 1) characters.

WP_BP_xprofile_data Table 

This table contains all text fields entered data from BuddyPress Edit/Registration Form.

1	id	bigint(20)
2	field_id	bigint(20)
3	user_id	bigint(20)
4	value	longtext	utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci

For example, a edit/registration form to collect City, will be housed in field 4, value, longtext value = "New York".

A full list MYSQL datatypes is defined here -> https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/string-type-overview.html

• LONGTEXT 4,294,967,295 bytes ~4GB
• MEDIUMTEXT 16,777,215 bytes ~16MB
• TEXT 65,535 bytes ~64kb
• TINYTEXT 256 bytes

A complete list of 5,162 cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets in Canada from Statistics Canada 2017

REVISED from 3,683-cities-municipalities-districts-towns-townships-villages-hamlets-in-Canada-from-CRA-as-of-Jan-18-2016

Spreadsheet below is a complete list of 

5,162 cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets, etc. according to Statistics Canada (Stats Can) 2017, Population and Dwelling Count Highlight Tables - 2016 Census.

Spreadsheet below contains an analysis and all the Census subdivisions (CSD) for Canada, but you can get the source dataset from Statistics Canada directly (download).


But you must understand this does not include all places in Canada, for that we need 2 other datasets to be involved, the designated places and geographic place name datasets.

Firstly, what is a Census subdivision (CSD)?

Stats Can defines Census subdivision (CSD) is the general term for municipalities which including cities, municipalities, districts, hamlets, cree village etc. There are 54 Census Subdivisions (CSD) types.

NOTE: NOT all of which are populated and thus does not show up in the Census data collected and therefore not in the spreadsheet/charts below for 2016 Census.

Census Subdivision (CSD) Types Table (link, new tab) 

Interesting CSDs Types are Summer District, Township and royalty, and Island Municipality!

List All Canadian Geographic Dimensions Datasets  

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/hlt-fst/pd-pl/comprehensive.cfm

from here we focus on the following datasets;

1) Some Interesting Finds in the CSD Names Dataset (download)

There are 5,162 CSDs Names refering to cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets, etc.


Funny City/Town/Township/Hamlet/Village names 

Low, Joly, Mono, Webb, Zorra, Vonda, Zelma, O'Leary, Outlook, Zeballos, Ivujivik, Markinch, Spy Hill, Tehkummah, Quispamsis, Burns Lake, Pohénégamook, Whapmagoostui, Aroostook, Asphodel-Norwood, Hoodoo No. 401, Moosomin No. 121, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Sainte-Madeleine-de-la-Rivière-Madeleine, Sainte-Thérèse-de-Gaspé, Summer Village of Golden Days, Summer Village of Ghost Lake, Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup, Sainte-Catherine-de-la-Jacques-Cartier and lastly Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! 

Find and add your favourite in comment section below. See spreadsheet below.

2) Some Interesting Finds in the Designated Places (DPL) Dataset (download)

Designated Places (DPL) is defined as a small community that does not meet the criteria used to define municipalities (not a CSD in other words).

There are 1,629 unique Designated Places (DPL). The shortest DPL name Oba is 3 characters long.The longest DPL name is  "New Chelsea-New Melbourne-Brownsdale-Sibley's Cove-Lead Cove" at 60 characters long. 

Funny Designated Place Names

This where you will find the infamous place name Dildo of Newfoundland and Labrador

3) Some Interesting Finds in the Geographic Place Names Dataset (download) from NRCAN.GC.CA
 

This dataset comes from Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation, Natural Resources Canada. Geographic "Place Name (PN)" refers to selected names of active and retired geographic areas as well as names from the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base. 

There are 230,549 unique geographic place names. The shortest PN name "By" is 2 characters long. The longest PN name is  "Lethbridge, Morley's Siding, Brooklyn, Charleston, Jamestown, Portland, Winter Brook and Sweet Bay" at 98 characters long. 

 

Funny Geographic Place Names

This were you find the infamous name "Blow Me Down", Newfoundland and Labrador.

Other fun names are; 

Also Blow Me Down Bight, Tomahawk Bay, The Boot Leg Bay, Toadstool Island, Toadasses, Toad River Hot Springs Park, Tor Mountain, Tork 7, Zoot Lake and Sẁiẁs Park

Neat or "Curious" Places as mention on StatsCan website

Aklaktuk Pingo (a Pingo is an isolated, conical, ice-cored mound occurring in areas of permafrost)
 

Funny Creek Names in the Geographic Place Names dataset

There is no Schitt's Creek in Canada, but there is Schist Creek, Schiste Creek, and Etschitka, Scherf Creek, Schimmens Creek, Amazon Creek and Blowhole Creek. Butt to top it all off, there's Mashiter Creek. 

This a total of 14,447 uniquely named Creeks in all of Canada 

Interesting names ?yu?h Anta?t Teetshik Creek, 150 Yard Creek, Furry Creek, Tea, Creek, Tzela Creek, Zig Zag Creek, Xenia Creek

Fun Find
Can someone confirm these names - http://www.cbc.ca/stillstanding/blog/the-most-hilarious-town-names-in-canada (note, most of these live in designated places and geographic place name datasets)

Fun Quick Stats of CSD Dataset, in Spreadsheet below

There are no cities / CSDs with a name of length of 1 in Canada.
There are no cities /CSDs with a name of length of 2 in Canada.
There are 4 cities / CSDs with a name of length of 3 in Canada.

Table 1 
   Length  Name                                         CSD

3	Emo	Township of
3	Tay	Township of
3	Low	Township
3	Oka	Municipality

Some Edge Cases of City Name Lengths in Canada

Longest CSD name in Canada has 50 characters.
Indian reserve of "Buffalo River Dene Nation 193 (Peter Pond Lake 193)"

Table 2: CSD (3x3) Edge Cases Table

Length
of
Names          Count

3	4
4	34
5 ...	145 ...

47	1
49	1
51	3

Total Numbers

Total number is 354, 631 named places with repeats in all 3 data-sets, specifically 348,107 PNs + 1, 632 DPLs + 5,162 CSDs. 

There are 237,340 uniquely named places in 3 data-sets. 

(This does not represent all names on a map of Canada, for it does not not including provincial names, roads, marine names like waterways, etc.)

Fun Find ? Can someone confirm these names - http://www.cbc.ca/stillstanding/blog/the-most-hilarious-town-names-in-canada
(NOTE: Most of these live in designated places and geographic place name datasets)

Excel Spreadsheet of 5,162 cities, municipalities, districts, towns, townships, villages, hamlets, etc. aka CSDs in Canada according Statistics Canada 2017, Population and Dwelling Count Highlight Tables - 2016 Census.

This is a LIVE embedded Excel Workbook shared from OneDrive. You can play with it and screw it up, its read only data. Refresh this page will refresh with spreadshee. See my post on how embed this on your site.

The workbook contains 4 worksheets you may have to slide over to reveal. The worksheets  are named "All-Canada-QuickStats-2016", "All-CSDName(City+Town)-Analysis", "CSD Types Count" and "All-Canada-STATSCAN-SOURCE-2016".


If you haven't figured out how to download this entire Excel Workbook, you can send contact me in the contact form. Else, Easter egg (think bigger picture). Drop a comment if you use this.