This Week I Learned - Week #183

This Week I Learned -

* Amazon Web Services, is now on pace to generate more than $10 billion in revenue this year

* What makes the Amazon Echo stand out is a technology called a far-field microphone that can make out someone’s voice from across a room, even when there is background clatter. And the Echo is always in position to listen for the so-called wake word — Alexa. The vast majority of Echo’s intelligence is contained in AWS, and most of the apps that developers have built for Alexa run on the cloud service - NY Times

* A start-up called TrackR that makes wireless beacons for finding misplaced keys and wallets, recently released an app for Alexa that allows people to find their items with voice commands.

* 20 percent of Google searches on mobile phones are done by voice

* Uber, which started as a company around the time that Google started work on autonomous vehicles, is already testing self-driving cars to pick up customers in Pittsburgh.

* Azure Internal Load Balancing (ILB) provides load balancing between virtual machines that reside inside of a cloud service or a virtual network with a regional scope. Internal load balancing feature is useful for multi-tier applications where some of the application tiers aren’t public facing yet require load balancing functionality.

* Excel Online cannot convert/open Excel files larger than 5MB

* The hacktivist collective Anonymous (Twitter handle AnonIndia - @redteamin) claims Jio apps, My Jio app and Jio Dialer share user call data with foreign advertising networks

Impostor syndrome is good! Cherish it! It’s the people who don’t have it that are the weirdos. Not to mention dangerous. It forces you to check and re-check your work, making sure you haven’t made any mistakes, consider different approaches, and generally be critical of yourself in a positive sense.

Using truthful facts to deceive is called “paltering”. It is a strategy some negotiators use

* Twitter doesn't have a  re-release policy for dead handles. While they say that non-use for 6+ months allows them to re-assign them, they seldom do. One entrepreneur managed to get a dead Twitter handle by purchasing the domain name associated with the email address used by the original Twitter handle owner to reset the password and claim it for himself

Less than 5% of Britain's officers carry a gun. But they are increasingly keen on using another sidearm: the Taser. The police Taser is a single-shot weapon that delivers an electric current to incapacitate suspects.

In Improv, there are no mistakes, only opportunities

Last year, the world economy lost at least $2.4 billion when governments intentionally shut down their countries’ networks.

* It was $14 million in loans from Mr. Trump’s father that helped him get his real estate business off the ground.

While the United States imports more physical goods than it exports, it exports more services, including things like financial services, tourism, and software.

More than two-thirds of employed Saudis work for the government.

* The Ministry of Human Resource Development maintains a 'National Institutional Ranking Framework' to  rank institutions across India. The parameters broadly cover “Teaching, Learning and Resources,” “Research and Professional Practices,” “Graduation Outcomes,” “Outreach and Inclusivity,” and “Perception”.

In response to questions in Parliament, Law and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has clarified that law enforcement agencies get access to intercepted communication on a near-real-time basis through the Central Monitoring System (CMS). He has also made it clear that such interception will take place secretly, without the involvement of the telecommunications service provider, eliminating the only third party that ever had any idea of government excesses in this context. In addition to the CMS, the government has spent approximately Rs.150 crore from 2009 onwards on the NATGRID, which is supposed to offer law enforcement agencies data access to 21 providers such as airlines, banks, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, railways and telecommunications operators by 2017. NATGRID is classified among the ‘intelligence and security’ organisations and is exempted from the Right to Information Act. No one can opt out of the Aadhaar database once enrolled - The Hindu

Pigeons navigate by using the position of the sun and an internal clock. The pigeons don’t communicate directly about where they are flying. The flock changes its flight path because of split-second reactions to position changes by other birds. There’s no decision-making process remotely similar to, say, an election.

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