This Week I Learned - Week #50 2020

This Week I Learned - 

* You can move billing and/or a Azure subscription to another tenant. This has various implications. Objects that exist outside of the subscription (for example, RBAC and Azure AD objects including groups, apps, policies, etc.) do not move. Also, some services (Azure Key Vault, Data Bricks, etc.) move in a non-functional state.

* Transparent Data Encryption encrypts all data at rest in Azure SQL. Use Always Encrypted to encrypt sensitive data while in use without revealing encryption keys to the service. 

* Azure Disk Encryption for Windows VMs uses the BitLocker feature of Windows to provide full disk encryption of the OS disk and data disks. Additionally, it provides encryption of the temporary disk when the VolumeType parameter is All.

Alex Shteynberg's article "To identity and beyond" & the Microsoft Cloud Identity for Enterprise Architects poster in the Microsoft 365 solution and architecture center provide a simple & concise overview of Azure Active Directory.

* Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, the new name for Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection. 

* A curation of Azure Security Center (ASC)/Azure Defender resources to become an Azure Security Center Ninja

* Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a protocol that provides privacy and data integrity between two communicating applications. It's the most widely deployed security protocol. TLS is used for web browsers and other applications that require data to be securely exchanged over a network. TLS is widely used for file transfers, VPN connections, instant messaging, and VoIP. All Azure services fully support TLS 1.2 

* A contained database user does not have a login in the master database, and maps to an identity in Azure AD that is associated with the database. The Azure AD identity can be either an individual user account or a group.  Because SQL Managed Instance supports Azure AD server principals (logins), using contained database users is not required. However, using Azure Active Directory authentication with SQL Database and Azure Synapse requires using contained database users based on an Azure AD identity.

* Storing 1TB of files on Sia costs about $1-2 per month, compared with $23 on Amazon S3. Sia is a decentralized cloud storage platform leverages blockchain technology to create a data storage marketplace in which storage providers compete for your business. 

* Google Cloud has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Platform Native Security, Q4 2020 report

* Many cloud vendors aren’t truly elastic and force you to buy in ‘shapes’—predetermined sets of CPU cores, memory, and storage. These shapes are often significantly larger than the actual consumption of the application, leading to waste. Oracle allows custom shapes on its E3 service, so you can specify exactly how many cores you need, eliminating waste. A shape is a template that determines the number of CPUs, amount of memory, and other resources that are allocated to an instance. A flexible shape is a shape that allows you to customize the number of OCPUs and the amount of memory when launching or resizing your VM. The network bandwidth and number of VNICs scale proportionately with the number of OCPUs. These resources are billed at a per-second granularity with a one-minute minimum.

* Lens is a  Kubernetes IDE that simplifies app development for Amazon EKS, Google GKE, Microsoft AKS, Mirantis Container Cloud, Red Hat Openshift and other CNCF certified Kubernetes Distributions. The context-aware built-in terminal includes a version of kubectl that is always API-compatible with your cluster and in the right context by automatically downloading and assigning the correct version in the background. Lens comes with a built-in and multi-tenant Prometheus setup that respects role-based access control (RBAC) for each user. It's open source and free.

The Web Almanac is a comprehensive report on the state of the web, backed by real data and trusted web experts. It is comprised of 22 chapters spanning aspects of page content, user experience, publishing, and distribution.

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* The current chief executive officer of Wipro Ltd., 53-year-old Thierry Delaporte, is a veteran of France’s Capgemini SE. His hobby is long-distance running. Delaporte’s predecessor, Abidali Neemuchwala, took over in 2016 and departed after a turbulent four years and falling well short of a target to build Wipro into a $15 billion company by 2020. (Its revenue for the year ended in March was $8.1 billion.) - Bloomberg

* Dictation feature is now available in OneNote Online

* Spend any time in the blockchain space and you’ll come across the phrase ‘do your own research’ aka ‘DYOR’. It’s touted as a golden rule in the blockchain community. The original Bitcoin white paper [PDF] is still the gold standard for crypto projects. 

* One gram of protein for each kilogram of body weight is the recommended consumption of protein per day. If a person weighs 70 kilograms, about 70 grams of protein a day is ideal. A top athlete needs between 2.5 grams and 4.5 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight.

* White coat hypertension is high blood pressure that occurs at your doctor’s office or in a medical setting, but not in other settings. 

* African-Americans make up about 13% of America’s population but only 2% of its business-owners - The Economist

* Sometimes people who are left-handed are called “Southpaws”.

* Backhanding is referred to as slapping someone using the back of the hand instead of the palm—that is generally a symbolic, less forceful blow. Correspondingly, a backhanded (or left-handed) compliment, or asteism, is an insult that is disguised as, or accompanied by, a compliment, especially in situations where the belittling or condescension is intentional.

Narrative fallacy is a term coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book The Black Swan to describe how humans are biologically inclined to turn complex realities into soothing but oversimplified stories. Taleb argued that the limitations of the human brain resulted in our species’ tendency to squeeze unrelated facts and events into cause-and-effect equations and then convert them into easily understandable narratives. These stories, Taleb wrote, shield humanity from the true randomness of the world, the chaos of human experience, and, to some extent, the unnerving element of luck that plays into all successes and failures.

Virginia Hall was an American who worked with the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in France during World War II. The purpose of SOE and OSS was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. The Germans gave her the nickname Artemis, and the Gestapo reportedly considered her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies". Hall had named her artificial foot "Cuthbert", and she signaled to SOE before her escape that she hoped that "Cuthbert" would not trouble her on the way. The SOE did not understand the reference and replied, "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him.". The motto of every successful secret agent was "dubito, ergo sum" ("I doubt, therefore I survive."). After the war, she became the first female agent for a new spy organization: the CIA.

Since the 1950s. Back then, state governments -- which have constitutional powers to regulate farming -- sought to prevent farmers in remote areas from exploitation by setting up markets with licensed traders and transparent sales. Over time, the licensing system turned into a monopoly in many states, with traders organizing to prevent new entrants and stifle competition. The central bank had cited agriculture cartels as a key reason for several spikes in inflation, particularly when onion prices soared. Some farmers like the system, however. Although the middlemen are able to make big margins buying low from farmers and selling high to retailers, the farmers trust them more than private companies. Not only can they get a buyer at a guaranteed minimum price, but the traders also act like a bank by advancing cash whenever needed to buy goods like fertilizer - ET

Under the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act, each state divides its entire area into several market areas with each area managed by an APMC. The state government appoints the APMC and commission agents (“arhtiyas”) and wholesalers responsible for selling and buying the produce. The APMC manages market yards and sub-yards (mandis) where wholesale trade in the produce of the entire market area takes place. It thus has a monopoly over wholesale trade in the entire area. Commission agents typically send village commission agents to collect produce from farmers in villages and bring it to the market yard. In the yard, commission agents sell the produce to wholesalers. The wholesalers sell it to sub-wholesalers who sell it to retailers. Retailers finally sell the produce to the consumer.

In 2006, Bihar was the first state in the country to abolish the APMC Act which facilitated private companies to directly purchase from farmers. Under the APMC Act, the local municipal bodies used to charge 1 per cent of the selling price, both from the farmer and the purchaser. Between 2011-12 and 2018-19, India’s growth rate was 7.5 per cent while it was 13.3 per cent in Bihar. Bihar is among the leading producers of maize in India, the fourth largest producer of vegetables and the eighth largest producer of fruits in the country. Around 70 to 80 per cent of the population is involved in agriculture in Bihar. - India Today

You can read Pratham Books' Making Friends with Snakes (But from a Distance) online for free. It is written & illustrated  by Rohan Chakravarty. Fun facts - The sharp tongues and the Jacobson’s organ on the roof of the mouths of snakes give them a keen sense of smell. The Big Four venomous snakes:
1. Spectacled Cobra - is a great swimmer and loves to hang out around water
2. Saw-scaled Viper - its scales rubbing against each other making a saw-like sound
3. Common Krait -  its venom is the most potent of any Indian snake!
4. Russell’s Viper is often mistaken for non-venomous Boas and Pythons

* Son of a pharma distributor, Dilip Shanghvi borrowed $200 (Rs 10,000) from his father to start Sun Pharmaceutical Industries in 1983 to make psychiatric drugs. The acquisition of Ranbaxy in 2014 made Sun Pharma the largest pharmaceutical company in India. Post 2015, Shanghvi lost a big chunk (60 percent) of his wealth owing to the decline of Sun Pharma. This was mainly due to the US Food and Drug Administration issuing a warning against Sun Pharma’s Halol plant over manufacturing lapses. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2016.

* Rasendra Mazumdar trained at the brewing school at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in 1946 and had returned to become the first-ever Indian brewmaster. He encouraged the eldest his three children, Kiran to pursue a one-year brewing course at Ballarat University in Australia. Kiran was the only woman in the class of 1975. In fact, the brewing course did not have a woman for many more years after that. In 2015, the university named a road in its Mt Helen campus as Mazumdar Drive.

* Kiran Mazumdar was 25 when she got Biocon India incorporated in 1978. In 1979, Biocon India became the first Indian company to manufacture and export food processing enzymes to the United States and Europe. She the Padma Shri in 1989

* Rameswar Rao Jupally is the founder & chairman of My Home Group of Companies, managing director of Maha Cement & chairman of TV9 Telugu channel

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