This Week I Learned - Week #96

This Week I Learned -

* To find out how many credits remain for the current billing month in a Azure account acquired through MSDN, head to this URL - https://account.windowsazure.com/Subscriptions

* Microsoft now provides a Cloud Platform roadmap to find out what it recently made generally available, released into public preview, is still developing and testing, or is no longer developing.

* Microsoft’s cloud datacenters provide the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for its 200-plus online services, including Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Skype, OneDrive, and Microsoft Azure. Today, Azure is available in 141 countries, including China, and supports 10 languages and 19 currencies, all backed by Microsoft's $15 billion investment in global datacenter infrastructure - Scott Guthrie

* The Azure SQL Database (V12) service update introduces near-complete SQL Server engine compatibility, greater support for larger databases, and expanded Premium performance. Now in public preview, Row-Level Security for Azure SQL Database is available on the new V12 service. This feature enables implementation of fine-grained access control over rows in a database table.

You can use Visual Studio (on Windows) to remotely debug node apps running on a Linux server with the help of Node Tools for Visual Studio (NTVS), a free, open source plugin that turns Visual Studio into a Node.js IDE. NTVS supports Editing, Intellisense, Profiling, npm, TypeScript, Debugging locally and remotely (Windows/MacOS/Linux), as well Azure Web Sites and Cloud Service.

* The free Windows Phone app Office Lens can now convert pictures of paper documents into PDF files, auto-classify

* You may see the “He’s Dead, Jim!” message in Chrome if the operating system has terminated the tab’s process due to a lack of memory

Google Inbox app shares roughly two-thirds of its code across Android, iOS, and the Web. Google used the same cross-platform core, platform-specific UI approach that Xamarin uses. Google has built itself a good enough arsenal of cross compilers that it can write an app's logic once for Android -in Java - and can then cross-compile to Objective-C for iOS and JavaScript for browsers. Java-to-JavaScript is handled by the Google Web Toolkit SDK, which has been around for some time. The real enabler for Inbox is called J2ObjC, which, as the name implies, converts Java code meant for Android into iOS-ready Objective-C code. J2ObjC is a open source project which Google went public with last year. The project was previously used in Google Sheets (the spreadsheet part of Google Docs), but Inbox is Google's biggest use of the project to dateArs Technica

India continues to be smug with the definition of broadband as equal to, or greater than, 512 kilobits per second (kbps) download speeds at a time when the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has updated its broadband benchmark speeds to 25 mbps for downloads and 3 mbps for uploads -  Live Mint

* India had 82.22 million broadband subscribers at the end of November 2014

* There are 2,277 mutual fund (MF) schemes in the Rs.11-trillion Indian MF industry. Apart from 409 equity funds, 327 debt funds and 131 hybrid funds (those that invest in equity and debt markets), there are arbitrage, gold, international as well as fixed maturity plan types of schemes that aim to protect the capital loss - Mint

* London only earned megacity status in 2013, according to the UN. Tokyo is estimated to be home to 38m people. Asia will account for over half of the world's 29 megacities this year - The Economist

Of the 600,000 or so new businesses created in America every year, just 50% will survive through to their fourth year. Since 2000, 52% of companies in the Fortune 500 have either gone bankrupt, been acquired or ceased to exist

* Carter Foundation (started by former US President Jimmy Carter) is close to eradicating Guinea worm much like the Gates Foundation which is on a mission to wipe out polio

* Ringworm is caused by a fungus, not a worm like the name suggests.

Bat bombs were an experimental World War II weapon developed by the United States. The bomb consisted of a bomb-shaped casing with numerous compartments, each containing a Mexican Free-tailed Bat with a small timed incendiary bomb attached. The United States decided to develop the Bat Bomb during World War II as four biological factors gave promise to this plan. First, bats occur in large numbers (four caves in New Mexico are each occupied by several million bats). Second, bats can carry more than their own weight in flight (females carry their young—sometimes twins). Third, bats hibernate, and while dormant they do not require food or maintenance. Fourth, bats fly in darkness, then find secluded places (often in buildings) to hide during daylight.

* Nerds have a way of getting distracted easily and focusing on one thing and ignoring the rest, when they feel their specific skills are challenged by an interesting problem. Distracting a nerd with a challenge is nerd sniping

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