TWIL - Week #25

This Week I Learned:

Azure

• Previously, Azure Virtual Machines deployed in suspended subscriptions would be deleted when the spending limit was passed (the data drives would be preserved – but the VM instances themselves would be deleted). Now when a subscription is disabled, VMs deployed inside it will simply move into the stopped de-provision state that was recently introduced (which allows a VM to stop without incurring any billing).

JavaScript 

• Editing JavaScript code in real time is possible in Chrome and Chromium based browsers. After loading a web page completely, press the F12 key to open Developer Tools, then open the 'Sources' tab. Now open any JavaScript file loaded on the browser and you can directly edit it by clicking anywhere in that file. After making modifications press Ctrl+S to save the changes. The browser will automatically take in the new code. If there are some syntax errors in your code then it will display them in the console. So keep an eye on the console whenever you apply changes. If the part of code you modify is going to be executed by future events then you can see the effect of the modification. There is no point in changing the code that is not going to be executed in future events on that web page. For example, the code that is getting executed while the page is loading and making modifications to that code has no effect.

Browsers

• To view the source of a web page directly you can use the view-source URI scheme in Chrome, Firefox (but not IE): view-source:somedomain.com
• Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) is a cross-platform plugin architecture used by many web browsers. Internet Explorer dropped supported for NPAPI in version 5.5 SP2. Starting in January 2014, Chrome will block webpage-instantiated NPAPI plug-ins as per an announcement by Justin Schuh, Security Engineer and Plug-in Retirement Planner. However, the built-in Flash plug-in and PDF viewer will be unaffected because they don’t use NPAPI.

India

• The Apollo Clinic lets you view your diagnostic reports online which is nice. Wonder if there are privacy standards defined for health records in India and if the website maintains those standards.

Trivia

• Ernest Hemingway, author of The Old and the Sea and Nobel Prize winner in Literature (1954) committed suicide in 1961 after a long battle with depression. 
• Many writers of the popular The Simpsons animated comedy series have a background in mathematics and they have injected math references that are not so easy to catch.

Everything else

• ZXX, a typeface by designer Sang Mun, includes 4 different font styles designed to thwart optical character recognition.
• In order to squeeze as much life out of your lithium-polymer battery, once your laptop hits 100 percent, unplug it. In fact, you should unplug it before that. Battery University states that a battery charged to 100 percent will have only 300-500 discharge cycles, while a battery charged to 70 percent will get 1,200-2,000 discharge cycles. So  ideally charge batteries to 80 percent then let them drain to about 40 percent. (Source: Wired)
• The EFF has a series of free articles as part of the The Surveillance Self-Defense Project which teaches people how to remain anonymous on the Internet and in the physical world. While you can have security without privacy, you cannot have privacy without security.
• Microsoft spent $1.2 billion last year to acquire Yammer, which lets companies create private networks among their employees through an interface that looks almost exactly like Facebook.