This Week I Learned - Week #19 2021

This Week I Learned - 

Low-code is the evolution of rapid application development (RAD) to cloud and SaaS models. Note that Gartner defines a no-code application platform as an LCAP that only requires text entry for formulae or simple expressions. The LCAP market, therefore, includes no-code platforms. Furthermore, “no code” is not a sufficient criterion for tasks like citizen development, as many complex tooling configuration tasks are no code but still require specialist skills.

* Temenos acquired Kony to bring low-code and world-class mobile development to its banking solutions. Temenos then exclusively licensed the Kony codebase to HCL Software to improve and market as a general-use low-code development platform in nonbanking industries. HCL has wasted no time in advancing the product, rebranding as HCL Volt MX. - Forrester Wave - Low-code development platforms, Q2 2021

*  Oracle Application Express (APEX) provides low-code application tooling for Oracle DBMS subscribers, extending their data-oriented applications to powerful web and mobile applications, and is an ideal upgrade for Oracle Forms applications. APEX applications can be extended through JavaScript, Java and SQL to access all the advanced features of the Oracle Database platform. Oracle Visual  Builder based on Oracle's service-oriented architecture technology stack is a service-focused  LCAP. Oracle Application Express (APEX) is a Challenger in this Magic Quadrant while Oracle Visual  Builder is ranked as a Visionary - Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms, September 2020

Azure Cosmos DB learning resources

* The online document, Apple's iOS Security guide, discloses that Apple uses both Google Cloud Platform and AWS for iCloud. 

This Google Cloud page has exhaustive resources on learning about the Hybrid and multi-cloud options available through Anthos and Google Kubernetes Engine

Kf makes migrating Cloud Foundry workloads to Kubernetes straightforward

* A primary goal of Content Security Policy (CSP) is to mitigate and report Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. XSS attacks exploit the browser's trust of the content received from the server. Malicious scripts are executed by the victim's browser because the browser trusts the source of the content, even when it's not coming from where it seems to be coming from. To enable CSP, you need to configure your web server to return the Content-Security-Policy HTTP header. Alternatively, the <meta> element can be used to configure a policy, for example: <meta http-equiv="Content-Security-Policy" content="default-src 'self'; img-src https://*; child-src 'none';"> 

Sites that have a Content Security Policy (CSP) can block inline scripts and stop bookmarklets

* The commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is an enthusiastic marathon-runner named Iqbal Singh Chahal. He manages an immense, data-driven operation in which information and action-plans are managed and co-ordinated through a distributed network of 23 “war rooms”, or control centres, one for each of the city’s administrative districts. An online dashboard, visible to the public, is constantly updated by each war room and every hospital, displaying the availability of beds and a trove of other data. About 40% of Mumbai’s present capacity is in “jumbo” field hospitals, built during the first wave and wisely kept in a state of readiness even as emergency operations in other cities were closing shop. The MCGM‘s war rooms see test results before any of the city’s patients do. That way their field agents can bring the news to the identified cases and escort them to and from hospital beds exactly when and where the best treatment can be provided, to maximise efficiency.

* Mumbai has a unitary municipal corporation, whereas Delhi is a morass of overlapping authorities....executive functions are divided messily between the national government; the elected quasi-state government, currently run by Arvind Kejriwal, its chief minister; and five municipal corporations, including one controlled by the armed forces. The national parliament voted recently to grant veto power over Mr Kejriwal’s government to a lieutenant-governor appointed by Narendra Modi, the country’s prime minister. Mr Kejriwal’s government is hamstrung at the best of times but, at times like this, the politicking between different levels of government is frantic. Party workers are hiring auto-rickshaws to deliver oxygen to hospitals and tweeting evidence of their heroics, since it is parties, not administrators, that are top of mind.- Economist

* Less than 10% of an estimated 6.5 lakh IT employees in Hyderabad are now working from office

* Gaza, sandwiched between Israel and Egypt, is just 25 miles (40 kilometers) long and six miles (10 kilometers) wide. It was part of the British-ruled Palestine Mandate before the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, when it came under Egypt’s control. Large numbers of Palestinians who fled or were driven from what is now Israel ended up in Gaza, and the refugees and their descendants now number 1.4 million, accounting for more than half of Gaza’s population. Israel captured Gaza, along with the West Bank and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their future state. The first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, erupted in Gaza in 1987 — the same year Hamas was founded — and later spread to the other occupied territories. The Oslo peace process in the 1990s established the Palestinian Authority and gave it limited autonomy in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank. Israel withdrew its troops and Jewish settlements from Gaza in 2005, after a second and far more violent intifada. The Hamas militant group has remained firmly in power through three wars and a 14-year blockade. Israel and Egypt imposed the crippling blockade after the Hamas takeover. Palestinians face heavy movement restrictions that make it difficult to travel abroad for work, study or to visit family, and often refer to Gaza as the world’s largest open-air prison. Hamas and Israel have fought three wars and several smaller battles. The worst so far was the 2014 war, which lasted for 50 days. Israel says it makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties and accuses Hamas of using Gazans as human shields.

*  In 1967, Israel captured the Sinai peninsula. In response, Egypt crippled the Israeli economy by blocking the Suez Canal. They did it with sunken ships and mines. 14 unlucky ships were trapped there for 8 years.

* Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood actress, invented the tech behind WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.

* Mani Ratnam’s first political film Roja was released on the Independence Day of 1992 and went on to win the national award for the ‘Best feature film on National Integration’.

* A rare name had a negative psychological effect on its bearer according to a study of thirty-three hundred men in 1948 by two professors at Harvard University. - New Yorker

* “To test a man's character, give him power” - Abraham Lincoln

* "However high the flights of the mind or of ambition, it is ultimately the body that allows or disallows them. Athletes have a proper sense of this. After his eighth Wimbledon win, Roger Federer said, 'Again and again I am grateful my body has cooperated.' He was thirty-six, which is supposedly ancient for tennis. It is vital then to accept the body in all its beauty, mystery and power; to know that the images we build of ourselves might one day be rudely shattered by its exigencies." - Shanta Gokhale, One Foot on the Ground: A Life Told Through the Body 

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