What is Twitter shadow ban?

It is the practice of making tweets invisible to the general public in an attempt to censor a particular user. That is the truth. A more politically correct answer is that it is the technique of blocking a user that so that they don’t know that they are being blocked. It is pure deception.

Originally, the concept was intended to reduce spam or undesirable posts from a user that was considered a problem. However, there is a potential that this practice can be abused and used for nefarious purposes. Who judges whether a user is a problem or not and what motives are behind that decision?

I really became interested in this because after the topic came up on twitter. A well known cartoonist named Scott Adams wrote this blog post about shadow banning.

  • http://allnewspipeline.com/Smoking_Gun_Twitter_Shadow_Ban_List.php
  • http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/02/16/twitter-introduces-account-limiting-for-abusive-behavior/

SQL Convert Time to Decimal

Conversion from Time to Decimal

IF OBJECT_ID('Work_Summary') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE Work_Summary
IF OBJECT_ID('Job_Details') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE Job_Details
IF OBJECT_ID('Product') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE Product

CREATE TABLE Job_Details (
Job_Number int PRIMARY KEY
)

insert into Job_Details (Job_Number) values (1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10),(11),(12),(13),(14),(15)

CREATE TABLE Product (
Product_Code char(8) PRIMARY KEY
)

insert into Product (Product_Code) values ('PC_1001'),('PC_1002'),('PC_1003'),('PC_1004'),('PC_1005'),('PC_1006'),('PC_1007'),('PC_1008'),('PC_1009'),('PC_1010'),('PC_1011'),('PC_1012'),('PC_1013'),('PC_1014'),('PC_1015')

CREATE TABLE Work_Summary (
Invoice_No      INT NOT NULL IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY,
Invoice_Date      DATE,
Order_Quantity      INT,
Job_man_hours  TIME,
Job_Desc      CHAR (40),
Labour_Cost_Per_Hour   DECIMAL(9,2),
Job_Number INT REFERENCES Job_Details (Job_Number),
Product_Code CHAR (8) REFERENCES Product (Product_Code),
Total_Cost DECIMAL (9,2)
)



SET IDENTITY_INSERT Work_Summary ON


INSERT INTO Work_Summary 
(Invoice_No,Invoice_Date,Order_Quantity,Job_man_hours,Job_Desc,Labour_Cost_Per_Hour,Job_Number,Product_Code)
VALUES      (1,'2017/05/18',2,'1:20:00','Description',100.00,1,'PC_1001'),
            (2,'2017/05/18',6,'2:30:00','Description',75.00,2,'PC_1002'),
            (3,'2017/05/18',7,'3:10:00','Description',50.00,3,'PC_1003'),
            (4,'2017/05/18',1,'4:35:00','Description',20.00,4,'PC_1004'),
            (5,'2017/05/18',9,'5:50:00','Description',15.00,5,'PC_1005'),
            (6,'2017/05/18',11,'6:30:00','Description',10.00,6,'PC_1006'),
            (7,'2017/05/18',1,'2:00:10','Description',18.95,7,'PC_1007'),
            (8,'2017/05/18',6,'2:30:50','Description',19.99,8,'PC_1008'),
            (9,'2017/05/18',8,'3:00:25','Description',40.00,9,'PC_1009'),
            (10,'2017/05/18',9,'1:30:18','Description',30.00,10,'PC_1010'),
            (11,'2017/05/18',14,'2:00:10','Description',20.95,11,'PC_1011'),
            (12,'2017/05/18',3,'2:30:11','Description',9.99,12,'PC_1012'),
            (13,'2017/05/18',6,'3:00:45','Desription',199.99,13,'PC_1013'),
            (14,'2017/05/18',8,'3:30:34','Description',200.00,14,'PC_1014'),
            (15,'2017/05/18',9,'4:00:54','Description',500.00,15,'PC_1015')

			
SET IDENTITY_INSERT Work_Summary OFF

update Work_Summary set Total_Cost = Labour_Cost_Per_Hour * ((CAST(DATEPART(hh, Job_man_hours) AS float) +
		CAST(DATEPART(mi, Job_man_hours) AS float) / 60 +
		CAST(DATEPART(ss, Job_man_hours) AS float) / 3600)) where invoice_no in (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15)

select * from Work_Summary where invoice_no in (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15)

Outlook Search with Wildcard

This post was inspired by a stackoverflow – VBA Search in Outlook question.

Here is an example that let’s you do a wildcard search using the Items Restrict Method

Option Explicit
 
Sub Search_Inbox()
 
Dim myOlApp As New Outlook.Application
Dim objNamespace As Outlook.NameSpace
Dim objFolder As Outlook.MAPIFolder
Dim filteredItems As Outlook.Items
Dim itm As Object
Dim Found As Boolean
Dim strFilter As String
 
 
Set objNamespace = myOlApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set objFolder = objNamespace.GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox)
 
strFilter = "@SQL=" & Chr(34) & "urn:schemas:httpmail:subject" & Chr(34) & " like '%sketch%'"
 
Set filteredItems = objFolder.Items.Restrict(strFilter)
 
If filteredItems.Count = 0 Then
    Debug.Print "No emails found"
    Found = False
Else
    Found = True
    ' this loop is optional, it displays the list of emails by subject.
    For Each itm In filteredItems
     Debug.Print itm.Subject
    Next
End If
    
 
'If the subject isn't found:
If Not Found Then
    'NoResults.Show
Else
   Debug.Print "Found " & filteredItems.Count & " items."
    
End If
 
'myOlApp.Quit
Set myOlApp = Nothing
 
End Sub