Please check out https://updates.vipulnaik.com/ for a portal with a summary of the information. The bulk of the information is in the GitHub issues for this repository.

Related LessWrong post: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JvTM68yzurLzJ3Xua/the-why-and-how-of-daily-updates

Setting up

This section is for people who want to set up a local mirror of the updates portal (e.g., for development purposes) or want to load up the data into a local database to run their own queries.

Note that the passwordFile.inc file in access-portal/backend/globalVariables is excluded from the Git repository, but you can modify a corresponding dummy password file at dummyPasswordFile.inc:

cp access-portal/backend/globalVariables/{dummyPasswordFile.inc,passwordFile.inc}
vi access-portal/backend/globalVariables/passwordFile.inc # change to add database login info

The database name is present both in dummyPasswordFile.inc and in the Makefile, so if you want a name other than updates, you should edit the name in both places.

You can create the updates database either directly in MySQL or by running this from the root folder of this repository, after updating MYSQL_ARGS in the Makefile (such as -u<username> -p<password>):

make init

Instead of editing the Makefile, you can also pass in the arguments to each make:

make MYSQL_ARGS=<args> init

Loading and refreshing data

Once you already have the updates SQL database set up, you can update the MYSQL_ARGS in the Makefile (such as -u<username> -p<password>) and you can then load the data using:

make reset && make read

Instead of editing the Makefile, you can also pass in the arguments to each make:

make MYSQL_ARGS=<args> reset && make MYSQL_ARGS=<args> read

Setting up a read-only user for passwordFile.inc

The web portal needs only read-only access to the database; for greater security, you may therefore wish to include a read-only user in passwordFile.inc. You can use the create_readonly_user in the Makefile to create the user, then add the user's username and password to passwordFile.inc.

make MYSQL_ARGS=<args> MYSQL_READONLY_USERNAME=<username> MYSQL_READONLY_PASSWORD=<password> create_readonly_user

Table sorting

To get files for table sorting, run:

make fetch_table_sorting

You can remove these files with make clean_table_sorting.

AnchorJS

To get AnchorJS, run:

make fetch_anchorjs

You can remove these files with make clean_anchorjs.

Succession plan

For the succession plan in the event of Vipul Naik's death or permanent incapacitation, see succession-plan.md.