This Week I Learned - Week #43 2020

* Azure Firewall vs NSG - The Azure Firewall service complements network security group functionality. Together, they provide better "defense-in-depth" network security. Network security groups provide distributed network layer traffic filtering to limit traffic to resources within virtual networks in each subscription. Azure Firewall is a fully stateful, centralized network firewall as-a-service, which provides network- and application-level protection across different subscriptions and virtual networks.

* Unlike role-based access control, you use management locks to apply a restriction across all users and roles. When you apply a lock at a parent scope, all resources within that scope inherit the same lock. Even resources you add later inherit the lock from the parent. The most restrictive lock in the inheritance takes precedence. Applying locks can lead to unexpected results because some operations that don't seem to modify the resource actually require actions that are blocked by the lock.

* You can apply restrictions and conventions across your subscription with customized policies using Azure Policy

* There are many different kinds of Preview Services and Features for Microsoft Azure, with service availability and programme access being the biggest differentiators: Public Preview, Private Preview, Limited Preview

* Only some Azure services and regions support Availability Zones

* Azure Data Services decision tree with notes

* A headless browser is a web browser without a graphical user interface. Headless browsers provide automated control of a web page in an environment similar to popular web browsers, but they are executed via a command-line interface or using network communication. 

* Google controls over 92% of world-wide search traffic & over 95% of mobile search traffic

* An estimated 40% of digital ads are purchased on a Google platform (Estimates come from a U.K. study of the U.K. market.)

* An estimated 50% of digital ads are sold on a Google platform

* Apple’s iOS powers almost 60% of U.S. smartphones. Android runs around 75% of smartphones world-wide

* In 2013, Google purchased Waze, an Israeli startup that was then Google Maps’ biggest competitor. 

* Google Maps is used by 70% of monthly navigation and map app users

* Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. YouTube ads brought in over $15 billion of Google’s $98 billion of revenue in 2019. YouTube is four times the size of the next-largest platform that allows users to upload, convert, store and play videos online.

* Last quarter, 40% of the 7.4 million smart speakers purchased in the U.S. were Google devices, and the Google Nest Mini was the top-selling smart speaker in the country.

* In the $34.6 billion cloud-computing market, Google Cloud with 6% of the global cloud infrastructure market lags behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure - WSJ

* YouTube removed 11.4m videos in the past quarter. Facebook disables 17m fake accounts every day.

* A “full-stack” data scientist has mastery of machine learning, statistics, and analytics. In data science, excellence in one area beats mediocrity in two. Statisticians and machine learning engineers are narrow-and-deep workers — the shape of a rabbit hole, incidentally — so it’s really important to point them at problems that deserve the effort. Analysts are data storytellers. Their mandate is to summarize interesting facts and to use data for inspiration. The best analysts are lightning-fast coders who can surf vast datasets quickly, encountering and surfacing potential insights...This generates the inspiration that helps decision-makers select valuable quests to send statisticians and ML engineers on, saving them from mathematically-impressive excavations of useless rabbit holes. Because subject matter expertise goes a long way towards helping you spot interesting patterns in your data faster, the best analysts are serious about familiarizing themselves with the domain - Cassie Kozyrkov, chief decision scientist at Google.

* Ultimate guide to starting AI checklist 

* APIs exposed by your microservices are not the same kind of APIs that you want when you leverage those services to solve your business problems. Microservices operate more effectively when implemented with a focus on solving a related set of problems with a single domain. A microservice approach allows companies to reduce the "surface area" of the codebase they need to change in order to implement an update. And, when done well, releasing smaller units of independently deployable units into the IT environment means less disruption and, over time, more forward progress. Having lots of services means supporting lots of inter-service communications; that's where APIs come in. Often these APIs are referred to as operating along the "east-west" axis of IT communications. Service APIs exist to solve internal challenges; often segmented by department-specific domains (accounting, sales, manufacturing, marketing, etc.). The internal, domain-centric service API ecosystem is very different from the kind of API ecosystem external users need. The key defining element of consumer-focused APIs is that they almost always operate on a "north-south" axis with the "north" end starting at the API consumer or client and the "south" end terminating at the API producer. In this approach, it is important to focus on speed and safety across the network in order to deliver requested data quickly and securely. And there is another important difference between "east-west" service APIs and "north-south" customer APIs: that is the need to cross domain boundaries. The common approach when solving customer problems is to use APIs to *cross* domain boundaries. That's very different from the approach when working with internal APIs where the goal is to support services *within* domain boundaries. Supporting a mix of service-centric internal interfaces with consumer-centric external APIs is the best way to ensure a stable service infrastructure

* Comedy may be divided into multiple genres based on the source of humor, the method of delivery, and the context in which it is delivered. These classifications overlap, and most comedians can fit into multiple genres.

* A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian. 

* Bob Hope became the most popular stand-up comedian of the 20th century, in a nearly 80-year career that included numerous comedy film roles over a five-decade span, radio, television, and entertaining armed service troops through the USO. 

* Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel were protégés of Fred Karno, the English theatre impresario of British music hall

* English comic actor, writer, and film director, Stan Laurel and American comic actor teamed up as Laurel and Hardy in 1927 and acted in 107 short films, feature films, and cameo roles.

* Saint Lawrence is known as the patron saint of cooks, chefs, and comedians, (poor people, students, tanners, miners, archivists and librarians). As deacon in Rome, Lawrence was responsible for the material goods of the Church and the distribution of alms to the poor. When the treasures of the Church were demanded of Lawrence by the prefect of Rome, he brought forward the poor, to whom he had distributed the treasure as alms. "Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church's crown." The prefect was so angry that he had a great gridiron prepared with hot coals beneath it, and had Lawrence placed on it, hence Lawrence's association with the gridiron. After the martyr had suffered pain for a long time, the legend concludes, he cheerfully declared: "I'm well done on this side. Turn me over!". 

* It’s a challenge to learn a new language, especially once we’re past 18 years old. Learning a language is time-intensive—the U.S. State Department estimates it can take 600 to more than 1,100 class hours to learn a language. The Duolingo cross-platform app breaks this effort down into manageable chunks that can be done anywhere at any time individualized for each user and infused with fun and a points-based reward system. Duolingo launched in 2011, by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Luis von Ahn, who is renowned for creating CAPTCHA, uses Artificial Intelligence to deliver free language learning - Forbes

* 'Nowcasting' (weather forecast for the upcoming few hours) can tell you how much rain can be expected and where. 

* Hindcast is a way of backtesting a weather model by entering known inputs of a past event, generate predictions and see if the model output matches the known results.

* One of the earliest and most complete written legal codes came from the Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792 to 1750 BC). The Hammurabi Code established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments for breaches. Hammurabi understood that edicts and rules would not make people accountable; we need to make them pay for violation, forcing them to have their 'skin in the game'. The skin has to be literal, he declared - Debashis Basu

* USA is the world’s largest producer of crude oil

* Minnesota is known as the "Bread and Butter State" because of its numerous flourmills and butter-making plants and also the "Land of 10,000 Lakes". The “Twin Cities” of Minneapolis and state capital Saint Paul are the major cities in this Midwestern state. 

* Sofitel Hotels & Resorts are a chain of luxury hotels based in Paris, France, and owned by Accor.  Ibis is a Accor's brand of economy hotels.

* India has the most diabetes cases in the world after China, with around 77 million patients. One in six diabetics in the world is an Indian.

* The tribal Dussehra in the quaint town if Bastar is puja offered to God Dhanteshwari. It continues for 75 days and is the longest Dussehra celebration in the country. 

* The bats' most distinguishing feature is that their forelimbs are developed as wings, making them the only mammals capable of flight. Bat species account for about 20% of all mammals.

* Pangolins are the world's most trafficked mammals, but there is evidence that they were the source of the new coronavirus - The Guardian

* A SWIFT Code is a standard format of Bank Identifier Code (BIC) used to specify a particular bank or branch. These codes are used when transferring money between banks, particularly for international wire transfers. The registrations of SWIFT Codes are handled by Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (“SWIFT”) and their headquarters is located in La Hulpe, Belgium.