So the VPS5 servers are moved to a different location and received different hardware too. I guess it's time to review the new server compared to old one. So lets check the Spec list,

• 6 GB RAM.
  
• 1 Core.
  
• 200 GB SSD Space.
  
• 1 Gbps connection.
  
• Un-metered Bandwidth.
  
• KVM with Virtualizor.
  
• 1x IPv4.
  
• Finland Location.
  
• Game Servers Allowed.
  

These specs make ShadowHosting Sponsored VPS5 is one of the best in our server pool. Now there are few VPS which has more RAM than this but when you look at specs in generally I would say VPS5 can beat any of those. For example VPS9 does have 8GB RAM but have no control panel. VPS15 has 8GB RAM but game servers are not allowed. I guess not everyone needs a panel but I like it. That way I can get things done faster and no need to pester staff members. So as a total package I think VPS5 take the cake as the best one among our vps.

I have used the VPS only about 12 days so I can't do full review on how sites work and performance. But I will do share what I have seen so far. Plus I guess I need to do few benchmarks of the server since nobody has posted yet. Usually I prefer to review the web server performance rather than about hardware but in this case I have to do the both. So lets start with basic Specs,






Now you can see it has a AMD Ryzen 9 3900 12 core processor. Previous VPS had Intel Core i7 3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz. I guess it's no news that Ryzen processor is the clear winner here. But we had 2 cores with last VPS but new one has only 1. So lets do a small CPU benchmark.



I think this looks quite impressive. But for those who love benchmarks I thought better run Geekbench 4 too. Got 4942 for Single-Core Score and 4689 Multi-Core Score. Anything over 4000 suppose to be exallant. You can check result is in the link below,





You can get more details about both these processors and compare in the link below. Both processors are Desktop processors.


I/O Speed -

You can see in first screen shot I/O speed is very good at average of 613.3 MB/s. That's very good IMO. Compared to other VPS i have used here so far and many I see in Reviews VPS5 have better I/O speed. Also I did a small test to check the more about the drive.



That's not bad at all. Also it's copied under 3 seconds which show's it's SSD. I think HDD would take more than 15 seconds.

Location - Finland

I was curious about the location since it's the first time I got a vps in Finland. I want my sites to load fast for North America since that's audience. So I have been checking how WordPress sites preform and results are very impressive. The sites loads for Canadian locations less than 1.3 seconds. These are not heavily loaded sites but this is impressive even for fresh WordPress installation. So I can safely recommend Shadow Hosting to anyone who looking for a WordPress Hosting.

OS and Server usage -

I'm using the VPS as a web server. 6GB RAM and 2.5 GB SWAP makes room for bigger sites than average. It's Amazing Processor and SSD space make VPS5 perfect for the job. WordPress sites preform great and I might move one of my small forums into this too. It's a Fast and powerful beast. I installed CyberPanel as web hosting panel which I have started liking a lot. First I tried to install it on Ubuntu but that didn't work. It's not a fault of this VPS since I had this problem in other servers too. So I installed CentOS 8.2.x and then everything worked so perfect. Cyberpanel installed very fast. UPtime is great too!

ShadowHosting -

ShadowHosting.net has been round a while steered by capable hands of @Manal. They do offer many types of Hosting Packages from Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Could Reseller Hosting, WordPress Hosting and Game Server Hosting. SA:MP Servers start from $2.50 a month and Counter Strike Servers from $5.50 a month. These packages comes with DDoes protection which makes it even better. For inexperienced WordPress users ShadowHosting has a managed WordPress Hosting package.

Check their great Hosting packages and offers >> Click Here <<

Conclusion -

When you do something for a long time you start sensing things even long before you do actual test. From the moment I logged into ssh for first time I kind of started feeling this new VPS5 is faster and better. I was not wrong since i found it works fast and can take a hard bunch. So I thing I can say without a double this is the VPS from all the servers I have used here till now.  Kudos for @Manal and ShadowHosting for Sponsoring us 2great VPS.

I have to ask here, how secure are Microsoft Updates really? I've learned through hard experience with my last Windows 10 test that Microsoft must have a HUGE Update team, who collaborate to create a mother load of updates which then all get combined into a huge package. Not all of those updates are necessarily right for the individual computer. So the update that may be good for one user's computer is not necessarily good for another. A one size fits all package, pinching most?

I understand there is no choice. But surely Microsoft could create categories of updates and provide greater descriptions instead of glib descriptions like improving the efficiency of something. So one knows exactly what to expect of any update that runs on a computer. And have the ability to say "no" to it.

Windows Software have to become more intelligent so that when that big update package starts running, Windows should ideally test those updates first for possible conflicts with the hardware or other software before they are installed. Like there are so many different hardware and software variations, surely an analysis by the computer system should be a first "defence", and if any anomalies are detected they should be listed and the owner of the hardware given the oppotunity to cancel and disable the update permanently. The updates should be also intelligent enough to pick on having been previously rejected. Instead of popping up again and getting installed by error.

By the time an update has been installed and is conflicting with the hardware or other software it's too late to do anything. It's almost impossible to figure out exactly which update created the issue as it's like searching for a needle in a haystack. Forcing one to reset Windows to a previous point. Wasting loads of time. And then the biggest issue of all, that update that created the damage, which you "avoided" by moving Windows back before the updates hit the computer, will be back again, because you have no power to disable it unless you're prepared to go into power shell and become the equivalent of a computer engineer. And from what I've heard today, we're not even able to do that any longer. A loose loose situation.

Those updates are like viruses in their own right. Like today it comes in one form as KB123 and tomorrow the exact same one comes as a different KB456. So you have to deal with the exact same issue over again.

So I'm beginning to look at Microsoft Updates as the equivalent of Malware. I'm beginning to think that those updates are more harmful to your computer than the threats that they're supposed to protect your computer system against.

I recently was awarded a free VPS for 1 year from a recent promotion by https://racknerd.com

I've been a client at racknerd since august, and have had a positive experience thus far, so I was very happy to win this prize.  My first service is a 3vcpu 4gb ram vps with 45gb ssd. It has great networking, the cpu load almost never goes over 50%, and no noticeable downtime. A fine vps: my only comment would be that the disc speed could be improved. Here's the YABS of my old Racknerd vps:

Wed 25 Nov 2020 04:20:28 PM GMT

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2690 0 @ 2.90GHz
CPU cores  : 3 @ 2899.998 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ❌ Disabled
RAM        : 3.8 GiB
Swap       : 3.7 GiB
Disk       : 44.0 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 2.05 MB/s      (514) | 30.37 MB/s     (474)
Write      | 2.07 MB/s      (519) | 30.79 MB/s     (481)
Total      | 4.13 MB/s     (1.0k) | 61.17 MB/s     (955)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 99.85 MB/s     (195) | 96.22 MB/s      (93)
Write      | 105.16 MB/s    (205) | 102.63 MB/s    (100)
Total      | 205.01 MB/s    (400) | 198.86 MB/s    (193)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 511 Mbits/sec   | 327 Mbits/sec  
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 109 Mbits/sec   | 155 Mbits/sec  
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | 235 Mbits/sec   | 105 Mbits/sec  
Biznet          | Jakarta, Indonesia (1G)   | 240 Mbits/sec   | 118 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 636 Mbits/sec   | 548 Mbits/sec  
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 627 Mbits/sec   | 421 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 691 Mbits/sec   | 691 Mbits/sec  


This cost me 77$USD over 2 years. At less than 40$ a year, I'm very satisfied.

Then there's my new racknerd promo. It's a smaller package; only .5gb ram and 15gb of disk, and 1vcpu. I like that it comes provisioned with swap (some providers don't). I find it curious that nested virt is enabled... does it have much use with half a gig of ram? doubtful....

At first glance, you might not think it worth the 27$ a year they ask for it. But the YABS tell a different tale:
Wed 25 Nov 2020 09:45:08 PM GMT

Basic System Information:
---------------------------------
Processor  : AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor
CPU cores  : 1 @ 3792.870 MHz
AES-NI     : ✔ Enabled
VM-x/AMD-V : ✔ Enabled
RAM        : 478.0 MiB
Swap       : 512.0 MiB
Disk       : 15.7 GiB

fio Disk Speed Tests (Mixed R/W 50/50):
---------------------------------
Block Size | 4k            (IOPS) | 64k           (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 398.70 MB/s  (99.6k) | 1.58 GB/s    (24.8k)
Write      | 399.75 MB/s  (99.9k) | 1.59 GB/s    (24.9k)
Total      | 798.45 MB/s (199.6k) | 3.18 GB/s    (49.7k)
           |                      |                     
Block Size | 512k          (IOPS) | 1m            (IOPS)
  ------   | ---            ----  | ----           ----
Read       | 1.76 GB/s     (3.4k) | 1.86 GB/s     (1.8k)
Write      | 1.86 GB/s     (3.6k) | 1.98 GB/s     (1.9k)
Total      | 3.63 GB/s     (7.0k) | 3.84 GB/s     (3.7k)

iperf3 Network Speed Tests (IPv4):
---------------------------------
Provider        | Location (Link)           | Send Speed      | Recv Speed     
                |                           |                 |                
Clouvider       | London, UK (10G)          | 628 Mbits/sec   | 271 Mbits/sec  
Online.net      | Paris, FR (10G)           | 102 Mbits/sec   | 140 Mbits/sec  
WorldStream     | The Netherlands (10G)     | 218 Mbits/sec   | 243 Mbits/sec  
Biznet          | Jakarta, Indonesia (1G)   | 249 Mbits/sec   | 44.6 Mbits/sec
Clouvider       | NYC, NY, US (10G)         | 758 Mbits/sec   | 638 Mbits/sec  
Velocity Online | Tallahassee, FL, US (10G) | 763 Mbits/sec   | 577 Mbits/sec  
Clouvider       | Los Angeles, CA, US (10G) | 793 Mbits/sec   | 794 Mbits/sec  


The Ryzen processor and NVME disk make a huge difference in the promo VPS. I'm very impressed by performance with such small specs. While I am (only slightly) sad that my older vps seems overpriced and underpowered now, grats to RN for making huge strides in improving the performance of their service, and for allowing me to participate in this promotion.

@Mashiro

Not sure whether you can help in this. I Googled the issue almost to death and didn't get anywhere. I'm a real noob with tinkering under the phpmyadmin dashboard. My limits are editing user and domain info and passwords.

Today I was testing the functionality of cpanel. So while doing that I thought to reinstall an old phpBB Forum I'd rolled up a few months ago. I thought that would give a few functions of the panel a good workout.

Add on domain worked great. Folders were fine. Except interestingly, in this particular cpanel the folder for the add on domain was created on the same level as public_html and not as a sub-directory inside public_html.

Next workout was to create an empty mysql database and to import my old phpBB database into it. And that's where I got stuck. I did everything correct. According to the book. However an error came up about using "pass" instead of "password" (refer exact wording below). I get it that the wording has changed in more recent databases to full password. However, how does one fix that error in the backup SQL database one imports. I tried to tick a box during the import so it would ignore the error, and it did complete the import then (or so it looked), however when I checked there was zero MB content in it - it basically only imported the structure of the database. Is there a way that I could edit an old database where "pass" is used instead of "password", or is there a database checker somewhere where one can fix errors before one imports the database?

BTW I tried this in two different host's cpanels and the exact same errors came up. This is the error that came up:

Quote:Warning: Using unique option prefix pass instead of password is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. Please use the full name instead.

*This post is best rendered on a desktop device.
*Contributions are welcome but please contribute ONLY when you get this hosting.
*Best used with "in-page search function"
Legend and Formats

---

Name: Name of this free host.
Serveal styles might be used.
AC - Active
EOL - End of life
SCAM - Potentially Scam
Specially:
R - Not all countrys accepted or with other restrictions.See Notes for details.
UT - Untested for some reason.
RS - This seems to be a reseller of another host.Not recommended.
BR - Not recommended due to bad reputation or other reasons.

If more than one attribute is suitable for the host,uses tags.Color usage is R>RS>BR>UT>AC. For hosts that is EOL and SCAM ,use scam color(I don' think this will happen on the same host)
For example:
Googiehost[R][UT]

---

Website:Nothing much to say.

---

Quota specs:
Disk:Disk space provided.
B/W:Bandwidth limit.
Domain:Possible situations:

• Free subdomain
  
• Need a domain(Free TLDs are OK)
  
• Need a domain(Can not use Free TLD)
  

Other Notes:Other notes worth mentioning.




*Accessible
**Can sign up
***Useable

Hi friends,
              I have recently started using Debian. Today while installing mysql-server i found that mysql-server package is not available. i updated the packages with apt-get update and upgraded. But its still showing me not found. I searched on google and found a link. But none of it works. What's the reason behind this? is there any other way to install it?

Here is the link i found after searching
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions...-candidate

*Please note it refers to your complete security solution rather than just antivirus.
*These listed below are the aspects of protection in my opinion.Discussions are welcome.

- Antivirus
Antivirus offers live or custom protections based on malware signatures.They are often the first layer of protection.(We won't mention web pre-screening as It is often database-matching).
It could be easily bypassed sometimes.
My product:Windows Defender

- Sandboxes/Virtualization Technology
It refers to automatic/manual sandboxes that provides you a virtualized environment to mess up.An example is Windows Sandbox.
Some antivirus offers this layer of protection like Avast DeepScreen and Comodo.
If you have a VM with OS,that can be one sandbox.
Isn' that easy to bypass,but recently more malwares are bypassing it.
My product:a Windows 7 VM in virtualbox.

- HIPS(Host Intrusion Prevention System) and process restricting tools
Behaviour blocking when a malware runs.Useful when preventing ransomware.For example,you can restrict write access to your important documents.
Some antivirus have HIPS already(usually malicious behaviour blocking).
Note we will include process restricting tools like voodoo shield include this category as it is runtime controlled,too.
My product:Windows defender built-in rules

- Firewall
Controls traffic.Example is TinyWall or Windows Firewall.
My product:Windows Firewall

- Others
other products not mentioned above.For example,ARK(anti-rootkit) tools like TDSS killer,Backup Utilities,or even a previously created Recovery Drive,etc.

OK.  So I tried to sign up for a hosting account with HelioHost.  And this was my not so good experience.

First you click on sign up expecting to sign up for an account with HelioHost.  So instead they ask you to input your e-mail address.  After that they ask you to verify your e-mail address.  The verification link was received very fast, but after that the experience became weird by normal free hosting account signup experience.  They ask you to tick a bunch of attributes you want to have for your hosting account.  You then have to click on a "compare" link - the next step - and it then lists the availability of the attributes in the three servers called Ricky Johnny and Tommy.   It then said that Tommy was the most suitable for the attributes I ticked but that all three servers were full and that I should try again in 1 hour and 47 minutes. The print screen below is after I had refreshed the page a few minutes after:   



I find it a bit arrogant that the owner of HelioHost should think I'm so hard up for HelioHost hosting that I will now keep their page open on my desktop and refresh it every now and then but OK for the purpose of a review of my experience I did just that.  Periodically refreshed the page.  And guess what came up after that long wait:



Haha!  No way.  In the meanwhile the whole Website and Community Forum are dotted with DONATE buttons and advertisements like literally rubbing it under one's nose.  Why would I want to donate anything to a service that I didn't get and the experience I went through above.   Wow!  Not sure what games are being played with the above verification and listing experience - referring to the waiting times given - but I find all of it not such a good experience.  Definitely not worthy of a Donation.

So let me start by saying I love my VPS with @cubedata and I do not intend to switch, but I need a dedicated mail server so I can get my business email set up and running. I know of Ionos from my work where we have used them to shell out start up projects that we do not want to host internally and they have provided great service for us in the past. Let's get into the server, the pricing and what features are provided.

Server Details:
Plan - VPS M
OS - Ubuntu 18.04.5
Cost - 2$ USD for First Month then 5$ after
CPU - 2 vCores
RAM - 2GB 
Storage - 80GB SSD
Location - United States
Bandwidth: Unlimited

Other Features:
- VMWare Virtualization
- Cloud Backups starting at 0.07$/gb
- KVM console
- Windows Options from 20$/mo
- Plesk from 5$/mo
- Softaculous like installer for apps like Wordpress, Drupal, Magento etc.
- Wild Card SSLs
- 1 IPV4 included additional for 5$/mo

Initial thoughts:
The process to setup your account was easy and dependent on your bank, you can have secure transaction authentication. For Example, I bank with Bank of America/WellsFargo so it actually prompted me to authorize the initial payment using my BoA app on my iPhone. The account was setup and ready to VNC into my server within 24 hours. I was able to get in and setup the basic account functions like username and password with ease. The most alluring features of this setup is that it is an a la carte approach, where for 5$/month you get a solid VPS with a lot of free addons like the SSL certificate and such which is great for my email server needs allowing for that process to be automated in the admin panel. Speaking of admin panel, it is very easy to use and navigate and uses a pseudo Plesk like interface that is custom created by IONOS on top of KVM.

Benchmarks:
System Info
-----------
Processor : Intel® Xeon® Gold 5120 CPU @ 2.20GHz
CPU Cores : 2 @ 2194.843 MHz
Memory : 1970 MiB
Swap : 2975 MiB
Uptime : 20:06,

OS : Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS
Arch : x86_64 (64 Bit)
Kernel : 4.15.0-124-generic
Hostname : mail.tbelldesign.co

[font=Menlo]Speedtest (IPv4 only)
---------------------[/font]
Location Provider Speed
---------------------
CDN Cachefly 41.0MB/s

Atlanta, GA, US @sohamb03  
Dallas, TX, US Softlayer 25.9MB/s 
Seattle, WA, US Softlayer 19.9MB/s 
San Jose, CA, US Softlayer 21.7MB/s 
Washington, DC, US Leaseweb 40.1MB/s 

Sao Paulo, Brazil       Softlayer 7.54MB/s 

Singapore Softlayer 6.84MB/s 
Taiwan                  Hinet           7.51MB/s

Final Benchmarks coming soon.

Final thoughts:
I honestly really like the services that IONOS provide and I can see continuing to use them for my mail server until I get a brick and mortar workspace and can run a server like that in-house. It took me a few hours to get the mail server up and running, I was having issues with iRedMail, of which has nothing to do with the performance of the server itself. Mail routing is working flawlessly using Mailcow (thanks everyone for the recommendation). As for future plans of this server, I don't imagine using it too much for development, but it is running my Calendar Services and Email Services for TBDC, so it is fully meeting my current needs. I could see in the future possibly getting my dad's real estate email and the non-profit I serve on emails migrated over, since I am already managing all of these services anyway so it would be one MailServ to rule them all.

Have you interested with data science lately? It's a field that's increasing in demand from around 2-3 years ago. Everybody seems wanted to be a data scientist because of it's very sexy. I also wanted to be a data scientist as I like to learn about data and sometimes we use ML when doing data analysis. I still cannot believe that machine can also learn and I enjoyed to see how the machine works.

I'm currently learning data science by self-taught. It's fun but sometimes it's hard to understand something. I usually learn from Kaggle and pick up some data set that may interest me and try. If I'm stuck then I try to understand others code and re-implement. I'll also join a competition by one of e-commerce, NDSC by Shopee. It's free so why not give it a try. I don't expect too much to win this competition though as I'm still new to data science stuff

Have you been learning data science? Share your experience with us when you're trying to learn DS