This Week I Learned - Week #51 2020

 This Week I Learned -

* The Azure Knowledge Center has a good collection of common questions and answers like this one - "What charges do I incur while using Azure Site Recovery?". When you use Site Recovery, you incur charges for the Site Recovery licence, Azure storage, storage transactions and outbound data transfer. The Azure Pricing calculator estimate covers only the fixed price of  Site Recovery licence and there is no option to input numbers for the other variable factors.

* The Azure PowerShell modules expose over 4,000 cmdlets and, on average, ten parameters per cmdlet. Az Predictor is an intelligent command completion module for Azure Powershell. With Az Predictor’s context-aware suggestions users will be guided through the discovery of cmdlets and will not need to go to the online help as often.  It use an AI model to make those suggestions. It makes  suggestions of what is likely the next command you will use based on what you have done before by blending predictions with the history allowing you to select a previous command or accept the one proposed. 

* Google Cloud OnBoard offers pre-recorded sessions for on-demand viewing:

* Microsoft offers a 24-lesson curriculum about JavaScript, CSS, and HTML basics called 'Web Dev for Beginners'

* Microservices architecture at Netflix

Machine Learning cheatsheets

Tips and tricks to Tweet better:

  • Limit to 1-2 hashtags per Tweet
  • Be conversational
  • Keep your copy short and sweet - being concise is in Twitter’s DNA, 280 characters now 
  • Use images, GIFs, and/or videos whenever possible - add subtitles so people don't need headphones, and keep the video short (6-15 seconds is the sweet spot).
  • Curate and connect with Retweets and replies
  • Retweeting relevant content and replying to Tweets are great ways to maintain a robust Twitter presence. Retweet. positive customer feedback, helpful articles, and ideas that align with your business’s authentic voice. Be responsive to mentions 
  • Test, test, test (and use analytics to see what works)
  • Monitor events and trending conversations - Track daily trends on the "Explore" tab to identify popular topics
  • Make clear calls-to-action - ask “what do I want people to do when they see this?”
Device42 is a comprehensive IT infrastructure management software suite with powerful agent-less auto-discovery and application dependency mapping tools, a configuration management database (CMDB), a complete data center infrastructure management (DCIM) suite, full IT asset & inventory management (ITAM) functionality, plus IP address management (IPAM), password management and lots more — all in a single tool. Device42 is delivered as a virtual appliance. Root access to the appliance is not supported, and the VM will cease to function if you attempt to break into the root account.

* Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent Novichok which was put into his underwear.  'Novichok', which in Russian means 'newcomer' is a highly toxic nerve agent can kill people through asphyxiation or cardiac arrest by disrupting the nervous system. Posing as a high-ranking security official ("Maxim Ustinov"), Alexey Navalny was in the unique position of investigating his own assassination attempt at a time when no law enforcement agency is willing to do so by speaking with a unsuspecting member of the alleged FSB poison squad.  In order to increase the chance of his calls being answered by the FSB operatives, Navalny used an IP telephony application which permits the custom-setting of a caller IDThe FSB member's decision to open up and share top-secret details seemed to be swayed by the detailed, non-public knowledge “Maxim” appeared to have about the composition of the FSB team that was involved in the operation. 

* Brendan Eich  is the creator of the JavaScript programming language, co-founder of the Mozilla and CEO of Brave Software, maker of the Chromium-based Brave web browser, which blocks ads and trackers.

Bryan Stevenson and his attorneys at the Equal Justice Initiative have won relief, reversals or release for over 140 death row prisoners. He was depicted in the legal drama Just Mercy which is based on his memoir Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which tells the story of Walter McMillian.

Rajni Bector is the founder and CEO of Mrs. Bector’s Cremica, a maker of biscuits and bread in India and a key supplier of McDonald’s, KFC and Burger King. Mrs Bector's IPO garnered 198 times subscription and generated bids worth more than ₹40,000 crore against the offer size of ₹540 crore. 

* The English teacher turned internet entrepreneur, Jack Ma, is China’s richest person. In 2003, he created Alipay, which later became part of Ant Group, putting his business empire square in the center of the state-controlled world of finance. Chinese authorities quashed the fintech giant Ant’s planned blockbuster initial public offering to raise $35 billion, less than two weeks after Ma castigated financial regulators for being obsessed with minimizing risk and accused China’s banks of behaving like “pawnshops” by lending only to those who could put up collateral. While China has more billionaires than the United States and India combined, about 600 million of its people earn $150 a month or less. The state dominates banking and finance, telecommunications, electricity and other essential businesses. China Mobile and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China are monopolies.

* Shenzhen's tech giant Tencent's WeChat is China's largest and most dominant social network. 

* The world is now dealing with a different type of SARS-CoV-2 than the one that emerged in China almost a year ago, with mutations creating at least seven strains of the virus so far. A mutation is a change in an organism’s genetic material. The mutations that give rise to new strains occur when the SARS-CoV-2 virus makes copies of itself inside a new host. The virus’ genome is a complete set of genetic instructions that is written in 30,000 “letters” of code. Different sections of the genome guide how different parts of the virus, such as structural proteins of the shell or non-structural proteins that impact replication, are constructed when the virus replicates in host cells. - Reuters

National Translation Mission (NTM) is a Government of India scheme launched in 2005 to establish translation as an industry in general and, to facilitate higher education by making knowledge texts accessible to students and academics in Indian languages in particular. The vision is to create a knowledge society by transcending language barriers. NTM aims to disseminate knowledge in all 22 Indian languages listed in the VIII schedule of the Constitution through translation. Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) is the nodal agency and the chief facilitator for NTM and the Mission operates from the CIIL premises in Mysore.

Public Resource is using Google Vision to do neural network based machine translation. With neural networks, one can upload a glossary file, which is used by the neural network to adjust how it does translations. Public Resource is looking to crowdsource validation of translations to build better glossaries.

Humblebragging comes from our need to be liked. People naturally want to boast, to get respect for their competence, but they also want to be liked and worry showing off will not achieve that. The solution is to disguise the boast as a complaint, which elicits sympathy, or as humility, which evidence shows makes people more likeable.

Customer service is the new marketing

* Swatting is a new digital-age crime in the U.S. in which an anonymous caller reports a fake violent crime to the police that elicits the arrival of a militarised unit known as a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. 

* A war hawk, or simply hawk, is a term used in politics for someone who favors war or continuing to escalate an existing conflict as opposed to other solutions. War hawks are the opposite of doves. The terms are derived by analogy with the birds of the same name: hawks are predators that attack and eat other animals, whereas doves mostly eat seeds and fruit and are historically a symbol of peace.

* Crocodilians have existed on Earth for at least 37 million years. Over the course of their evolution, they have developed a very strong defence against infection. Thick armour and jaws packed full of teeth aren’t the only defences that alligators and crocodiles have. They also have formidable immune systems and some of the protective molecules that enable this have now been identified. Their discovery in the blood of the American alligator might even pave the way for a new generation of antibiotics - New Scientist

* Climate change ravages Kashmir's 'red gold' saffron crop, the world's most expensive spice that has brought wealth to the region for 2,500 years.

* Found under a layer of soil, permafrost can be from three feet to 4,900 feet thick. It stores the carbon-based remains of plants and animals that froze before they could decompose. Permafrost is ground that continuously remains below 0°C (32°F) for two or more years, located on land or under the ocean.

Keep your vision, but modify your plan - Gordon Bell, the inventor of the VAX

* “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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