This Week I Learned - Week #48 2021

This Week I Learned -

* 17 Lessons Learned Migrating SAP to the Cloud [PDF], Published: July 2021

* A Local Zone is an extension of an AWS Region in geographic proximity to your users. Local Zones have their own connections to the internet and support AWS Direct Connect, so that resources created in a Local Zone can serve local users with low-latency communications.

* Wavelength Zones allow developers to build applications that deliver ultra-low latencies to 5G devices and end users. Wavelength deploys standard AWS compute and storage services to the edge of telecommunication carriers' 5G networks.

* The flowcharts in the official Google Cloud documentation compiled in a single article

* Oracle Cloud Infrastructure's Autonomous Database is a fully managed, preconfigured database environment with four workload types available, which are: Autonomous Transaction Processing, Autonomous Data Warehouse, Oracle APEX Application Development, and Autonomous JSON Database. An autonomous database is a cloud database that uses machine learning to automate database tuning, security, backups, updates, and other routine management tasks traditionally performed by DBAs. Autonomous Database  provides automatic failover with zero-data loss to standby and 99.995% SLA.

* The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers distinct storage class Infrequent Access tier is "cool" storage used for data that you access infrequently, but that must be available immediately when needed. Storage costs are lower than Standard.

* OCI Block Volumes have encryption turned on by default. You cannot turn this off. 

* Network security groups (NSGs) are a Networking security feature available. An NSG consists of a set of ingress and egress security rules that apply only to a set of VNICs of your choice within a single VCN. 

* Oracle Autonomous Linux runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and provides Red Hat Enterprise Linux application compatibility. Every system running Autonomous Linux is patched automatically with zero downtime. Automatically tuned memory management, network algorithms, and disk I/O based on workload lead to applications running at higher performance with better reliability. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure comes with Oracle Linux Premier Support for every instance, at no additional cost. 

* Google's 43 Rules of ML 

* While many algorithms and software tools are open sourced and shared across the research community, good datasets are usually proprietary and hard to build. Owning a large, domain-specific dataset can therefore become a significant source of competitive advantage. - 10 Data Acquisition Strategies for Startups

* OSINT stands for open source intelligence, which refers to any information that can legally be gathered from free, public sources about an individual or organization.

* The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) is a disaggregated data collection, analysis, and crisis mapping project. ACLED collects the dates, actors, locations, fatalities, and types of all reported political violence and protest events across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America & the Caribbean, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia & the Caucasus, Europe, and the United States of America.   

* Zayandeh Rud (Lifegiving-River), Iran's 2nd largest river has dried up in the past decades due to severe water shortage and poor water management. 

* The WHO has followed the Greek alphabet when labeling certain variants of the virus, SARS-CoV-2, since May. It said the system allows for variants to be referred to in a simpler way than by their scientific names, and that it helps prevent people from referring to variants by the location where they were detected and creating stigma. Many people had expected the agency to label the latest variant nu, which comes after mu, a variant designated on Aug. 30. Instead, the WHO skipped over nu as well as xi, the next Greek letter in line — a move that many users on social media pointed out, while some questioned whether it was to avoid offending Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

* Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the automatic machine gun, spent so much time test-firing his guns that he became completely deaf. His son & (nephew of Hudson Maxim, an inventor of explosives and ballistic propellants) Hiram Percy Maxim eventually invented the silencer, but too late to save his father's hearing. A Genius in the Family, the memoir of Hiram Percy Maxim, focuses on the relationship between Maxim and his father, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim. 

* A catch-22 is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules or limitations. Catch-22s often result from rules, regulations, or procedures that an individual is subject to, but has no control over, because to fight the rule is to accept it. One example is a situation in which someone is in need of something that can only be had by not being in need of it (e.g.: the only way to qualify for a loan is to prove to the bank that you do not need a loan). One connotation of the term is that the creators of the "catch-22" situation have created arbitrary rules in order to justify and conceal their own abuse of power.

* Along with George Orwell's "doublethink", "Catch-22" has become one of the best-recognized ways to describe the predicament of being trapped by contradictory rules. Doublethink is a process of indoctrination whereby the subject is expected to simultaneously accept two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to one's own memories or sense of reality. Doublethink is related to, but differs from, hypocrisy.

* Euphony is the effect of sounds being perceived as pleasant, rhythmical, lyrical, or harmonious. Cacophony is the effect of sounds being perceived as harsh, unpleasant, chaotic, and often discordant; these sounds are perhaps meaningless and jumbled together.

* Emily Dickinson was an American poet who was little-known during her life but has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.

* Larry David is an American comedian, writer, actor, director, and television producer. He is best known for the television series Seinfeld & the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. When the first episode of “Seinfeld” aired, in 1989, David was already 42 years old (geriatric in TV years) and looking like an underdog to make it as a writer — much less a producer who gets to call his own shots. David has said that his character in the show Curb Your Enthusiasm, a fictionalized version of himself, is what he would be like in real life if he lacked social awareness and sensitivity. The character's numerous and frequent social faux pas, misunderstandings, and ironic coincidences are the basis of much of the show's comedy and have led to the entry into the American pop culture lexicon of the expression "Larry David moment", meaning an inadvertently created socially awkward situation.

* Cringe comedy is a specific genre of comedy that derives humor from social awkwardness.