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Two Pods, One Job Table: A Safe Postgres Queue with SKIP LOCKED in Spring Boot

It's 10:20 AM on a Monday and support has forwarded three screenshots of the same "Your invoice is ready" email, received three times by one customer. The dashboards look fine.

  • NotificationWorker processed same jobs three times due to lack of locking mechanism
  • FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED clause prevents lock contention in PostgreSQL
  • Spring Boot code example demonstrates efficient job queue processing

Instant Data Scraper Chrome Extension: A Practical Guide to What It Can—and Can’t—Do

You find a directory page with 80 entries. Each entry has a name, category, and website link. You could copy the information by hand—or try a Chrome extension that turns repeated page elements into a…

  • Instant Data Scraper analyzes webpage HTML to identify data fields
  • Users can export results as CSV or Excel files
  • Extension does not guarantee data accuracy or completion

Smart Retries vs a Fixed Retry Schedule: Which Recovers More?

Originally published on the RetryFix blog . Smart Retries and a fixed retry schedule answer one question: when to charge a failed card again.

  • Smart Retries is an AI-driven model that determines optimal retry times.
  • Fixed retry schedule involves predetermined dates and timeframes.
  • Stripe's documentation does not specify Smart Retries' recovery percentage.

How Data Masking and Redaction Hide Parts of a Document, and Where They Fail

You have seen the screenshots: a card number with only the last four digits showing, or a contract with black bars over the salary. Both are ways of showing part of a document while hiding part of it.

  • Masking replaces sensitive info with altered values while keeping visual similarity
  • Redaction physically removes sensitive data from document, not just drawing over it
  • Mixing up masking and redaction can lead to accidental inclusion of hidden data

That black box in your PDF is probably not a redaction: how to check in one command

You get a PDF back from legal, HR or a client portal. The account numbers are covered with neat black boxes, so it looks safe to forward. Very often it is not.

  • Black boxes in PDFs obscure sensitive info but don't truly redact.
  • Use pdftotext command to check if redaction missed anything.
  • True redaction erases content from all PDF parts; test must return no results.

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