This Week I Learned - Week #10 2021

 This Week I Learned -

* For migration, Microsoft recommends that you use the Azure Migrate service to migrate VMs and servers to Azure, rather than the Azure Site Recovery service. Azure Site Recovery should be used for disaster recovery only. If you've already started your migration journey with Site Recovery, you can continue using it to complete your migration.

* Data wrangling still takes the lion’s share of time in a typical data professional’s day. Data scientists spend 45% of their time on data preparation tasks like loading and cleaning data according to Anaconda’s annual survey

* What is the difference between App Virtualization and Desktop Virtualization?
App Virtualization leverages Remote Desktop Services (RDS) technology to publish and run applications in the data center, sharing those apps to multiple users who view the application remotely on their endpoint device. App virtualization focuses on delivering just an individual application or set of apps, while virtual desktops provide the complete desktop experience for launching and working with multiple applications simultaneously in the same workspace.

* Desktop Virtualization vs. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure - Desktop Virtualization is when a desktop is virtualized in a datacenter and rendered on a client device. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is the software and hardware required to do that.

* Google Apps Script allows you to connect Google Forms with Google Sheets through Forms and Spreadsheet services.

* console.table($$('a'),['href','text']) - This command when used with the console in any Chromium based Developer Tools, retrieves all the links in the document (as $$('a') is short for document.querySelectorAll('a')) and displays them as a sortable table. The array as a second parameter of the table method defines the columns of the table. The $$ convenience method allows for all the Array methods directly.

* Immersive Reader started as an employee hackathon project at Microsoft’s 2015 company-wide hackathon and has grown into to a solution now used by millions of teachers and students worldwide. One in five children in the U.S. have learning and attention issues such as dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities, and up to 15 percent of Americans are thought to have dyslexia. Originally, Immersive Reader was designed only with black and white backgrounds. After knowing that students with Irlen syndrome — a disorder that impacts the brain’s ability to process visual information — preferred reading with backgrounds in specific colors, the design team incorporated the colors into Immersive Reader.

* The Immersive Reader SDK contains a JavaScript library that allows you to integrate the Immersive Reader into your application.

* Immersive Reader is available in many Microsoft products & languages. It also provides 10,000+ new Picture Dictionary images

* Microsoft Math Solver is an online math solver with free step by step solutions to algebra, calculus, and other math problems.

* GraphQL is an open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs, and a runtime for fulfilling queries with existing data. GraphQL was developed internally by Facebook in 2012 before being publicly released in 2015.

* Puppeteer is a Node library that provides a high-level API to control Microsoft Edge (Chromium) using the DevTools Protocol. Puppeteer launches headless browsers by default. Headless browsers do not display a UI, so instead you must use the command line. You may also configure Puppeteer to run full (non-headless) Microsoft Edge as well.

* Playwright is a Node.js library to automate Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with a single API. Playwright is built to enable cross-browser web automation. Since Microsoft Edge is built on the open-source Chromium web platform, Playwright is also able to automate Microsoft Edge. Playwright launches headless browsers by default. 

* The Microsoft Edge WebView2 control enables you to embed web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) in your native apps. The WebView2 control uses Microsoft Edge (Chromium) as the rendering engine to display the web content in native apps. 

* Today’s deep neural networks are loosely inspired by the way interconnected neurons fire in the brain. But loose inspiration is typically as far as it goes. There are four minimum attributes of intelligence, a kind of baseline. The first is learning by moving: we cannot sense everything around us at once. We have to move to build up a mental model of things, even if it’s only moving our eyes or hands. This is called embodiment. Next, this sensory input gets taken up by tens of thousands of cortical columns, each with a partial picture of the world. They compete and combine via a sort of voting system to build up an overall viewpoint. That’s the thousand brains idea. In an AI system, this could involve a machine controlling different sensors—vision, touch, radar and so on—to get a more complete model of the world. Although, there will typically be many cortical columns for each sense, such as vision. Then there’s continuous learning, where you learn new things without forgetting previous stuff. Today’s AI systems can’t do this. And finally, we structure knowledge using reference frames, which means that our knowledge of the world is relative to our point of view. Your brain moves through reference frames to recall facts that it has stored in different locations. In the future I think the distinction between AI and robotics will disappear...you could also have a virtual AI that moves in the internet. - MIT Technology Review

* Dubai's airport, the world's busiest for international travel, has introduced an iris-scanner that verifies one's identity and eliminates the need for any human interaction when entering or leaving the country.

* Co-WIN is a platform for Indian citizens to register for COVID-19 vaccination and schedule their vaccination slots at the nearest centres. Co-WIN APIs can be used by partner applications.

* Ajit Singh, Manohar Parrikar, Jairam Ramesh, Jayant Sinha, Sudheendra Kulkarni, Arvind Kejriwal are IITians who became politicians. RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, Duvvuri Subbarao studied at IIT. List of IIT graduates turned entrepreneurs:

• Narayan Murthy
• Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (Flipkart)
• Rohit Bansal (Snapdeal)
• Bhavish Agrwal & Ankit Bhati (Ola)
• Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah (Zomato)
• Bharat Desai (Syntel)
• Sameer Gehlaut (Indiabulls Group)

* Gautami Adani,  a first-generation entrepreneur and self-made billionaire,  has been rapidly expanding his conglomerate, adding ports, airports, data centers and coal mines in India, while doggedly proceeding with his controversial Carmichael coal project in Australia. Adani Enterprises Ltd. signed a pact last month to develop 1 gigawatt of data center capacity in India. - Bloomberg

* In 2017 Nandan Nilekeni and wife Rohini decided to donate 50 percent of their wealth to Giving Pledge, which is a movement organized by Bill Gates. The reason why they joined this movement was as following: "We see inequality is increasing sharply in most countries. We see the young and the restless in this interconnected globe, unsure of their future, wanting more but anticipating less."

* Saalumarada Thimmakka, is an Indian environmentalist from the state of Karnataka, noted for her work in planting and tending to 385 banyan trees along a four-kilometre stretch of highway between Hulikal and Kudur. She has also planted nearly 8000 other trees. Her work has been honoured with the National Citizen's Award of India. Her work was recognized by the Government of India and she was conferred with Padma Shri in 2019. Saalumarada means row of trees in the Kannada language.

* FASTag is a device that employs radio frequency identification (RFID) technology for making toll payments directly while the vehicle is in motion. Since 1 December 2017, FASTag has been made mandatory for all registrations of new four wheeled vehicles and is being supplied by the manufacturers or dealers. It has been further mandated that a valid FASTag is mandatory while getting a new third-party insurance. Earlier, there were just five to seven top office bearers like the President and the Prime Minister, who were exempted from paying toll on official duty. Now the list has increased to more than 25 categories.

* In India, there are two popular indices – S&P BSE Sensex and Nifty 50. The former has 30 stocks while the latter has 50. Both the indices have similar historical returns. They both represent the weighted average of the largest Indian companies, and the top 20 companies have the most weight. The remaining are small. They both represent the weighted average of the largest Indian companies, and the top 20 companies have the most weight. The remaining are small. The difference between the fund's and the index's returns is called tracking error. The lower, the better. However, up to 1% tracking error is usually acceptable. In the 2013 letter to shareholders to Berkshire's shareholders, Warren Buffett had said that index funds are the best investment instruments. - Mint

* Ten speech elements that make for great sound bites

1. Bold Action Words - “We will crush them.”
2. Examples - “I love Welch’s Grape Juice” 
3. Absolutes - “We are 100% certain that…”
4. Clichés - “They are selling like hot cakes” 
5. Humor - “The only way to make your PC go faster is to throw it out a window.”
6. Analogy - “Solid as a rock”
7. Rhetorical Questions - “Are we the best in the world?”
8. Emotions - “It was the happiest day of my life.”
9. Attacks - “We will pulverize the competition”
10. Pop Culture References - ‘’We are the New York Yankees of the…”

* Every quote you read in a text article and every sound  bite you hear on TV or radio comes from a reporter interviewing someone and then editing out a “bite” out of the “sound” made from the whole conversation. 

* Arctic tern is strongly migratory, seeing two summers each year as it migrates along a convoluted route from its northern breeding grounds to the Antarctic coast for the southern summer and back again about six months later. Recent studies have shown average annual roundtrip lengths of about 70,900 km (44,100 mi) for birds nesting in Iceland and Greenland and about 90,000 km (56,000 mi) for birds nesting in the Netherlands. These are by far the longest migrations known in the animal kingdom. Arctic terns are long-lived birds, with many reaching fifteen to thirty years of age. The Arctic tern is famous for its migration; it flies from its Arctic breeding grounds to the Antarctic and back again each year, the shortest distance between these areas being 19,000 km (12,000 mi). Some birds have been tracked to cover 70,900 km (44,100 mi) on average in a year, with a maximum of 81,600 km (50,700 mi). The birds follow a somewhat convoluted course in order to take advantage of prevailing winds. The long journey ensures that this bird sees two summers per year and more daylight than any other creature on the planet. The average Arctic tern lives about thirty years, and will, based on the above research, travel some 2.4 million km (1.5 million mi) during its lifetime, the equivalent of a roundtrip from Earth to the Moon over 3 times. The Antarctic tern (Sterna vittata) is very similar in appearance to the closely related Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea). The Antarctic tern does not migrate like the Arctic tern does.