This Week I Learned - Week #14 2021

This Week I Learned - 

* The ASM-based deployment model for Cloud Services has been renamed Cloud Services (classic). Cloud Services (extended support) has the primary benefit of providing regional resiliency along with feature parity with Azure Cloud Services deployed using Azure Service Manager (ASM). Cloud Services (extended support) also supports two types of roles, web and worker. There are no changes to the design, architecture, or components of web and worker roles.

* Azure Deployment Manager (ADM) allows you to perform staged rollouts of resources, meaning they’re deployed region by region in an ordered fashion. As part of this rollout, the health of your services is monitored, and if unacceptable performance degradation is detected, deployment automatically stops, allowing you to troubleshoot and reduce the scale of the impact. These tools are used internally by hundreds of Microsoft services to ensure safe, reliable deployments, ensuring high availability and preventing or dramatically reducing service unavailability caused by regressions in updates. Deployment Manager is a feature of Resource Manager.

* Cloud is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. 

* Pulumi's Infrastructure as Code SDK is the easiest way to create and deploy cloud software that use containers, serverless functions, hosted services, and infrastructure, on any cloud. Simply write code in your favorite language and Pulumi automatically provisions and manages your AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and/or Kubernetes resources, using an infrastructure-as-code approach. 

* A network depends on core network services: Domain Name System (DNS), Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and IP address management (IPAM), collectively known as DDI. Infoblox is a leader in the DDI market space.

* Software Defined Networking (SDN) refers to the ability to create, modify and update networks solely through the software when physical infrastructure has already been in place. Cisco and VMware are two major players in SDN arena. Application centric infrastructure (ACI) is Cisco's take on software defined networking (SDN). ACI is a new network architecture (as opposed to VMware's NSX which, at a general scale, uses typical network architecture through software).

* SDN Controllers (aka SDN Controller Platforms) in a software-defined network (SDN) is the “brains” of the network. It is the application that acts as a strategic control point in the SDN network, manage flow control to the switches/routers ‘below’ (via southbound APIs) and the applications and business logic ‘above’ (via northbound APIs) to deploy intelligent networks.

* To maintain your full level of Support and Subscription Services, VMware recommends upgrading to vSphere 6.5 or vSphere 6.7. VMware has extended the general support for vSphere 6.5 to a full six years from date of release, which means the general support for vSphere 6.5 will end on October 15, 2022. 

* Virtual Extensible LANs (VXLANs) are the underlying mechanism for both Cisco ACI and VMware NSX to make particular VLANs/subnets available throughout the network.

* Google Cloud Document AI (DocAI) platform is a unified console for document processing

* You can get rid of the copyright banner by starting powershell from running this in cmd: Powershell.exe -NoLogo

* You can write SQL-like queries in Google spreadsheets

* A Google Sheets spreadsheet can have up to 5 million cells

* Window.close() method can only be called on windows that were opened by a script using the Window.open() method. If the window was not opened by a script, an error similar to this one appears in the console: Scripts may not close windows that were not opened by script.

* Chrome's automatic captioning system Live Caption, is helpful when you can’t play the audio out loud - whether you’re on a loud commuter train, trying not to wake a baby, or want to follow along the conversation more closely. It also makes content accessible to 466 million people in the world who are Deaf or hard of hearing. Live Caption is also available on Android devices. 

* With Live Transcribe app, you can see words appear on your Android phone as they're spoken.

* Global privacy laws, including the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), apply to entities such as websites and applications that target or direct themselves to children. Developers and publishers of child-directed websites and applications are responsible for using Google services according to their obligations under the law and in compliance with Google policies. Google offers tools for designating websites and applications as child-directed

* Greenshot is an open-source light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows that supports OCR

* From Google's 2004 Founder's IPO Letter: "We’re not a conventional company, nor do we plan to become one. We stand out because we’re fearless and innovative. The market doesn’t look to Google for safe, traditional things. We challenge convention with creative ideas. We learn and iterate quickly. We build smart things for everyone".

* Alphabet's website URL is "abc.xyz" & they have this on their homepage - "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” 

* Microsoft calls itself "a small start-up looking to change the world"

* The team that created UNIX also developed another operating system in the 1980s. The OS was groundbreaking when it was built 30 years ago—its design anticipated microservices by more than a decade—and it continues to evolve. Nokia has released the Plan 9 operating system under the open source MIT license. 

* Infrared radiation, which has a longer wavelength than that of red light, is emitted in vast quantities by the sun – but the small amounts that reach our eyes pose little risk. By contrast, ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which is off the other end of the visible spectrum, can do lasting harm because its shorter wavelengths carry more energy. UV rays can break chemical bonds and damage DNA molecules in the delicate cells of the eye, leading to cataracts and cancers. Ultraviolet radiation was not discovered until 1801. In 1908, William Crookes, an octogenarian physicist, found a formula for a lightly tinted, sage-green glass, called Crookes Glass 246, that blocked 98% of infrared light. The discoveries received much coverage in the trade press, and soon “Crookes lenses” were being flogged to holiday-makers on both sides of the Atlantic to protect their eyes from harmful ultraviolet rays. Knock-offs soon flooded the market and Crookes never profited from his discovery. By 1918 people were more likely to be buying shades from “crooks without an e”. - The Economist

* Sir William Crookes discovered the element thallium in 1861. Crookes was also the inventor of the Crookes radiometer, but did not discern the true explanation of the phenomenon he detected. The Crookes radiometer (also known as a light mill) consists of an airtight glass bulb containing a partial vacuum, with a set of vanes which are mounted on a spindle inside. The vanes rotate when exposed to light, with faster rotation for more intense light, providing a quantitative measurement of electromagnetic radiation intensity. In 1913, Crookes created a 100% ultraviolet and 90% infrared blocking lens made from glass containing cerium, but only lightly tinted. They were an unintended by-product of Crookes's research to find a lens glass formulation that would protect glass workers from cataracts. Crookes tested more than 300 formulations, each numbered and labelled. Crookes Glass 246 was the tint recommended for glassworkers. 

* Foods that take longer to spoil - carrots, spinach, broccoli, kale, potatoes, and onions

* During his 1961 visit to India, Prince Philip was pictured with the Queen and the Maharaja and Maharani of Jaipur with a dead eight-foot tiger he had shot while on a hunt. It happened to be the same year he became president of the World Wildlife Fund UK.

* Ustad Vilayat Khan refused Padma Shri (1964), Padma Bhushan (1968), and Padma Vibhushan (2000). He stated that "the selection committees were incompetent to judge [his] music" and "if there is any award for sitar in India, I must get it first".

* A R Rahman had to choose between joining Berklee College of Music & composing for Roja. 25 years later, the college he could not join bestowed him with a honorary doctorate and its students paid a musical tribute at the award ceremony.