This Week I Learned - Week #20 2021

This Week I Learned - 

* Multi-cloud refers to the use of two or more cloud computing systems at the same time. The deployment might use public clouds, private clouds, or some combination of the two. Multi-cloud deployments aim to offer redundancy in case of hardware/software failures and avoid vendor lock-in. A lot of enterprises call their virtualized environments private clouds, whether these are hosted in external datacenters or in self-owned, on premises datacenters. Merely combining solutions and services from different cloud providers and/or private clouds do not represent a true multi-cloud approach. There are different opinions on the definitions of hybrid IT and multi-cloud. One is that hybrid platforms are homogenous and multi-cloud are heterogenous. Homogenous meaning that the cloud solutions belong to one stack, for instance Azure public with Azure Stack on premises. Heterogenous then would be for instance combining Azure and AWS. Multi-cloud is a true mixed zone...where organizations run virtualized and non-virtualized workloads on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), physical machines in private cloud and virtual machines in the public cloud.

Print servers in public cloud might not be a good idea. The problem with print servers is the spooling process. The spooling software accepts the print jobs and controls the printer where the print assignment has to be sent to. It then schedules the order in which print jobs are actually sent to that printer. Although print spoolers have been improved massively over the last years, it still takes some time to execute the process. Print servers in public cloud might cause delay in that process. Fair enough: it can be done, it will work if configured in the right way, in a cloud region close by the sending PC and receiving printer device, plus accessed through a proper connection.


* The most commonly used framework for enterprise architecture is TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework). The core of TOGAF is the ADM-cycle: the Architecture Development Method. Also, in architecting multi-cloud environments, ADM is applicable. The ground principle of ADM is B-D-A-T: the cycle of business, data, applications, technology. This perfectly matches the principle of multi-cloud, where the technology should be transparent. Businesses have to look at their needs, define what data is related to those needs, and consider how this data is processed in applications. This is translated into technological requirements, finally driving the choice of technology...

* Every company is now a software company – a message that was rightly quoted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, following an earlier statement by the father of software quality Watts S. Humphrey, who had already claimed at the beginning of the millennium that every business is a software business.

* True multi-cloud is more than a hybrid platform, and will likely blend different cloud solutions such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, containers, and serverless in a platform that we can consider to be a best-of-breed mixed zone where the solution aligns optimally with business strategy.
- Packt 

The goal in digital estate rationalization is to set a baseline, not to rationalize every workload. Full rationalization should be avoided when possible. Instead, use the Power of 10 approach to release planning to make wise decisions about the next 10 workloads that are slated for cloud adoption. Those ten workloads should contain a mixture of simple and complex workloads.

AWS Certification preparation resources

Anything that uniquely identifies a resource is its URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), such as id, name, or ISBN number. A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) specifies a resource and how it can be accessed (the protocol). All URLs are URIs , but not all URIs are URLs. Special characters such as &, space, ! when entered in a URL need to be escaped, otherwise they may cause unpredictable situations. encodeURI and encodeURIComponent are used to encode Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) by replacing certain characters by one, two, three or four escape sequences representing the UTF-8 encoding of the character. encodeURIComponent should be used to encode a URI Component - a string that is supposed to be part of a URL. encodeURI should be used to encode a URI or an existing URL. If you have a complete URL, use encodeURI. But if you have a part of a URL, use encodeURIComponent.

Google Apps Script services have daily quotas and limitations on some features. Quotas are set at different levels for users of consumer (such as gmail.com) accounts and Google Workspace accounts.

Sean Owen and Daniel Switken regret their decision to make the ZXing app open source back in the day because of all the times it’s been cloned by companies trying to make a quick buck by adding ads or skins.

First announced in 2015, “Windows Hello” is Microsoft's fancy name for Windows 10's non-password login security options such as  PIN, facial recognition, or fingerprint.

Google BERT or Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers is a context-based embedding model, unlike other popular embedding models, such as word2vec, which are context-free.  When the embedding model is fed with natural language input, it generates context-based vector-based representations – embeddings – of those inputs. 

The eighteen million residents of Holland own, in total, more than twenty-two million bicycles. Between 1950 and 1970, the number of cars in the country exploded from about a hundred thousand to nearly two and a half million. With cars came carnage. A number of organizations, including a group named Stop de Kindermoord, or Stop the Child Murder, began agitating to take the streets back from automobiles. Stop de Kindermoord was the project of mothers, many of whom wished to use cycles in their daily life but felt that car traffic made doing so unsafe. In the late seventies, the global energy crisis offered further justification for emphasizing cycling over driving. On Dutch streets, bikes rule the road. They take priority in design and traffic flow. Traffic circles are laid out so that cyclists need never stop for cars. Busy intersections often have overpasses or underpasses, so that cyclists never have to slow down. Old people continue to cycle, too: when pedalling gets too difficult, they switch to battery-assisted e-bikes, which now outsell standard adult bikes in the Netherlands. Dutch transportation designers strive to create “forgiving infrastructure”—systems that allow users to make errors without causing a crash. Studies have demonstrated that when a car hits a cyclist at speeds in excess of thirty kilometres per hour the cyclist is not likely to survive. Therefore, thirty kilometres is the maximum speed in every living area in the Netherlands. This consistent speed limit means that it’s safe to have shared space between users of different forms of mobility. Even though nobody wears bike helmets in the Netherlands, the fatality rate there is six times smaller than that of the United States. In the Netherlands, only tourists wear helmets. Dutch people live in small houses, ride on crowded trains, and generally jostle against one another—the Netherlands has the sixteenth-highest population density in the world. Navigating complicated traffic situations, calmly and systematically, comes naturally to them.  - New Yorker

Ganjam which was under Madras Presidency in British India is now divided into 4 districts

1. Ganjam

2. Kandhamal 

3. Gajapati

4. Srikakulam(AP, British name - Chicacole) 

Ganjam District derived its name from the word “Ganj–i–am” which means the “Granary of world”. In 1794, with the establishment of the Collector office, the historical era of the British imperialism was set up in Ganjam. In 1855, the original headquarter of Ganjam was abandoned owing to the eruption of the epidemic fever in the town for which near about 80 percent of the population of the town was reduced. Temporarily the capital of the District was shifted to Gopalpur and then to the Berhampur and finally to Chhatrapur around 1902. The District of Ganjam was far away from the Madras Presidency and the British didn’t find it easy to control the administrative activities far from Madras. Hence they merged it with Province of Odisha in 1936. 

V Karthikeyan Pandian is a 2000 batch IAS officer and private secretary to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik since 2011. As collector of Ganjam, the CM’s home district, Pandian had served with distinction. Under him, Ganjam emerged as the best performing district in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in 2008. Political observers feel Naveen’s working style is responsible for bringing Pandian to focus. There was a time when bureaucrat-turned-politician Pyarimohan Mohapatra was considered the power centre in BJD. After him it’s Pandian.  In his earlier role as principal secretary to then CM Biju Patnaik (1990-95), Pyari used to exercise enormous clout in the administration so much so that many ministers would complain against him.  Pyarimohan Mohapatra was expelled from the party in 2012 for allegedly planning a coup to dislodge Naveen. - Times of India

Delhi based author and essayist, Githa Hariharan is the reason that mothers are today considered to be the natural guardians of their children as this was not always the case. In 1995, Githa Hariharan, had applied for bonds to be held in the name of her minor son Rishab. She signed the application acting as the natural guardian of the child. The Reserve Bank of India sent back the application stating that the application should either be signed by the father as he is the natural guardian or to produce a certificate of guardianship signed in her favour by a competent authority. She challenged the constitutional validity of this provision in the Supreme Court as discriminatory towards women on grounds that it  violated the right to equality guaranteed under Articles 14 and 15 of the Indian Constitution. In 1999, it was said that both the father and mother are natural guardians of a minor Hindu child, and the mother cannot be said to be a natural guardian only after the death of the father as that would not only be discriminatory but also against the welfare of the child. - IWTK

They are seven parent-child pairs that have been awarded a Nobel Prize. J.J. Thomson won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1906, for demonstrating that electron is a Particle. His son George Paget Thomson won the Nobel in Physics in 1937, for demonstrating that electron is a Wave! Electrons, negatively charged electronic particles, can act as both waves and particles. This is known as wave-particle duality. 

The DACH (punning on Dachsprache / “umbrella language”) region in Europe comprises the countries Germany (D), Austria (A), and Switzerland (CH). 

Currently there are 8 Tier-1 cities, which include Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune. 

Jaipur, a Tier-2 city, has 22 universities

Dahanu Gholvad Sapota is a Geographical Indication (GI) certified product from Palghar district of Maharashtra.

Budhia Singh has been acclaimed as the world's youngest marathon runner. He ran from Puri to Bhubaneswar at the age of five covering 65 kilometres (40 mi) in seven hours and two minutes.

94-year-old environmentalist, Padma Vibhushan (2009) and Padma Shri awardee Sundarlal Bahuguna, the pioneer of the Chipko movement (1973) is also known as Vrikshamitra. 

Sudan is known as the place with the world's largest collection of pyramids. There are over 200 recorded pyramids in the country. The oil sector has driven much of Sudan's GDP growth, but the secession of South Sudan cost Sudan two-thirds of its oil revenue. 

An oxygen concentrator is a medical device that provides medical grade oxygen. As such, the USDA requires a prescription before you can purchase an oxygen concentrator. Oxygen is a prescription medication. There are safety tips around oxygen that need to be followed, such as staying away from heat sources.

Fish breathe through their gills. That much is well-known. But some fish are also able to breathe through their bottoms. The guts of vertebrates are well supplied with blood vessels, to enable them to absorb digested food. But this means they can also, in principle, absorb oxygen. And that is precisely what happens in species such as the weather loach. While rectal ventilation sounds uncomfortable, it might actually be easier on the body than the traumatic process of tracheal intubation. - Economist

Liquid perfluorocarbons can absorb large amounts of oxygen and are often used as a blood substitute or to assist the ventilation of premature babies. 

The efficacy of oil pulling could be due to several reasons: it could be that some mouth-residing bacteria or small molecules are more soluble in oil than in water. So, as the oil is swished in the mouth, the particles dissolve into the oil and are easily spit out. Or it could be that the mechanical act of swishing almost any liquid in the mouth for an extended period of time could help loosen particles and plaque from teeth. Finally, it’s also been speculated that swishing the oil forms a type of barrier on the teeth that protect them from acid erosion.  this holistic medical routine dates back over 3000 years. This practice, also known as Kavala Graha or Kavala Gendhoosa, is an Ayurvedic (ancient traditional Indian) therapy.

shakhon se TuuT jaaen vo patte nahin hain ham

andhi se koi kah de ki auqat men rahe

Rahat Indori

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