This Week I Learned - Week #1 2022

This Week I Learned - 

* In addition to budget monitoring with AWS Budgets, you can add actions to your budgets to control IAM and Service Control Policy permissions as well as AWS resources when thresholds are exceeded (or forecasted to exceed). Your first two action-enabled budgets are free (regardless of the number of actions you configure per budget) per month. Afterwards each subsequent action-enabled budget will incur a $0.10 daily cost.

* Internet Gateway (IGW) allows instances with public IPs to access the internet. 

* Egress-only internet gateway is a stateful gateway to provide egress only access for IPv6 traffic from the VPC to the Internet.

* NAT Gateway (NGW) allows instances with no public IPs to access the internet.

* Virtual private gateway is the VPN concentrator on the Amazon side of the Site-to-Site VPN connection. 

* You use a virtual private gateway or a transit gateway as the gateway for the Amazon side of the Site-to-Site VPN connection.

* For VPCs with a hardware VPN connection or Direct Connect connection, instances can route their Internet traffic down the virtual private gateway to your existing datacenter. From there, it can access the Internet via your existing egress points and network security/monitoring devices.

* IPv6 traffic is not supported for VPN connections on a virtual private gateway (VGW).

* Transit gateway is the transit hub that can be used to interconnect your VPCs and on-premises networks. You use a transit gateway or virtual private gateway as the gateway for the Amazon side of the Site-to-Site VPN connection. The cloud-based network gateway allows customers to connect Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) across different accounts in a hub and spoke topology.

* A Transit Gateway (TGW launched in late 2018) allows a ‘full mesh’ of routes to be passed between VPCs and VPN terminations that are not reliant on the VPC peering (with its transitive routing limitations), providing the ability to connect thousands (up to 5000) of VPCs and on-premises networks together, across multiple accounts to a single gateway. 

* Direct Connect Gateway (DGW) builds upon VGW capabilities adding the ability to connect VPCs in one region to a Direct Connect in another region.

Multiple VPCs spread across multiple regions sharing the same Direct Connect

Logically provides Fact Checking as a Service. It claims to provide technology for Deepfake Detection and Synthetic Text Detection, True Text Detection. Persistent exposure to belief-confirming content can result in a narrow-minded view of the world or a problem. According to Logically, its machine learning algorithms are capable of determining political bias within text.

USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), sometimes referred to as "quick codes" or "feature codes", is a communications protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the mobile network operator's computers. It is a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol that is used to send text messages. USSD Menus are two-way flash messages; the user opens a menu and picks from a set number of options.

* Dragon Fruit is also called “desert crop’’ as there is no need for much water.  Farmers get a yield within a 9-12 months of its planting and this can continue for up to 20 years.

* NUUP (National Unified USSD Platform) is a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) based mobile banking service from National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) that brings together diverse ecosystem partners such as Banks & TSPs (Telecom Service Providers). The USSD code to access the NUUP is *99#. The upper limit on *99# is Rs. 5000 per transaction. A few handsets do not support USSD service. Telecom Service Providers  charge the customer for using *99# service.  TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) has set a maximum ceiling of Rs. 0.50 / transaction for using the *99# service.

* A Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is a smartphone application that allows users to transfer money between bank accounts. It is a single-window mobile payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). As of November 2021, there are 274 banks available on UPI. 

* Every month, India sees about 80,000 frauds orchestrated through UPI, with gullible victims duped into voluntarily transferring up to Rs 200 crore.

* Theranos, the firm found by Elizabeth Holmes, promised it would revolutionise the healthcare industry with a test that could detect conditions such as cancer and diabetes with only a few drops of blood. But these claims began to unravel in 2015 after a Wall Street Journal investigation reported that its core blood-testing technology did not work. Holmes was dubbed the "next Steve Jobs" by Inc. magazine, trumpeted by Forbes as being "the world's youngest self-made female billionaire", and featured in Time magazine's coveted list of the most influential people in 2015. She founded Theranos as a teenager, shortly after dropping out of chemical engineering at Stanford University. The firm officially ceased operations in 2018 following the scandal.

* Wire fraud is a relatively wide-ranging federal crime in the US, which involves using electronic communications, such as emails, to make false statements to get something from another person - usually money. 

* Otosclerosis, a degenerative hearing condition, is relatively common - around one to two percent of us have it. When sound waves hit your eardrum, it vibrates and that vibration is sent behind your eardrum to three tiny bones - the malleus, the incus and the stapes, the smallest bone in your body. Those bones then send the vibration into your cochlea - a labyrinth of bones that sits deep in your ear. And this is the magical moment - when your cochlea turns the mechanical waves into electrical waves that your brain can process - and you hear. If you have otosclerosis, when the vibrations reach your stapes, it doesn't vibrate. That's because otosclerosis is a disease that affects the bone that surrounds the stapes. It affects one group more than others - women who have recently had a baby. That's because of the effect of pregnancy hormones that fast-track the disease.  - BBC

* For the Italy set vehicle chases in the James Bond movie No Time to Die, the production utilized about 8,400 gallons or 31,797 litres of Coca-Cola poured on ancient streets in Matera, Italy at a cost to the production of about EUR 60,000 euros (equal to USD $77,000, Australian $100,000 and UK sterling £50,000). The reason: Coke acts as a liquid adhesive. For example, it was used for the motorbike jump scene in order to make the ramp surface sticky so as to deter the bike from sliding. Reportedly, the production spilt the soft drink all over the streets of Matera for the bike and car chases requiring a big clean up job afterwards. Stunt Coordinator Lee Morrison said: "I've been spraying Coca-Cola on slippery surfaces for a very long time" with the drink able to "make things look very clean after it washes off". Farmers in India have used Coca-Cola and Pepsi as substitutes for pesticide.

* An N95 mask needs to be NIOSH certified. NIOSH stands for the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and is a division of the US CDC. NIOSH is responsible for N95 mask approval and certifies an N95 as a legitimate particulate respirator.

Most western countries have increased their retirement ages to 65 and 70 and the US has outlawed compulsory retirement altogether.

* The average age of a Nobel Prize winner is 62. The average age of a CEO in a Fortune 500 company is 63. The average age of popes is 76. And, in India, the average age of the cabinet is 60.

* Out of 5.89 crore ITRs (compared to 5.95 in AY 2020-21) filed for AY 2021-22 (2020-21 fiscal), 49.6 per cent of these are ITR1 (2.92 crore), 9.3 per cent are ITR2 (54.8 lakh), 12.1 per cent are ITR3 (71.05 lakh), 27.2 per cent are ITR4 (1.60 crore), 1.3 per cent are ITR5 (7.66 lakh). 5.95 crore. As many as 31.05 lakh ITRs filed were on the last day or January 10, 2021. Besides, 2.58 lakh ITR-6 and 0.67 lakh ITR7 were filed.

* Over 45.7 per cent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities. 

* ITR Form 1 (Sahaj) and ITR Form 4 (Sugam) are simpler forms that cater to a large number of small and medium taxpayers. Sahaj can be filed by an individual having income up to Rs 50 lakh and who receives income from salary, one house property/other sources (interest etc). ITR-4 can be filed by individuals, HUFs and firms with total income up to Rs 50 lakh and having income from business and profession. ITR-2 is filed by people having income from residential property), ITR-3 by people having income as profits from business/profession, ITR-5 by LLPs and ITR-6 and 7 by businesses and trusts respectively.

Unique experiences and skill combinations are actually an asset

* “The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.” - The 50th Law

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