This Week I Learned - Week #40 2022

This Week I Learned - 

* Within AWS, a common pattern is to split the system into services that are responsible for executing customer requests (the data plane), and services that are responsible for managing and vending customer configuration (the control plane). 

* Azure operations can be divided into two categories - control plane and data plane. You use the control plane to manage resources in your subscription. You use the data plane to use capabilities exposed by your instance of a resource type.

* Sometimes, the terms Control plane and Management plane are interchangeably used as they are both used for management services. Specifically, Control plane is responsible for creation and deletion of services. Management plane handles management and monitoring services.

* The control plane provides management and orchestration across an organization’s cloud environment. This is where configuration baselines are set, user and role access provisioned, and applications sit so they can execute with related services. It’s akin to air traffic control for applications. The data plane is what actually carries or forwards traffic. One way to look at it is that the control plane and data plane work together and need to be in sync because the control plane will provide configuration updates and determine which path to use, while the data plane will be responsible for forwarding or moving that data traffic or information from one place to another.

* Crossplane is a framework for building cloud native control planes without needing to write code. Use Crossplane to design a control plane that exposes declarative APIs tailored to your unique orchestration needs.

* Amazon EKS Anywhere is a new deployment option for Amazon EKS that allows customers to create and operate Kubernetes clusters on customer-managed infrastructure

* Assured Open Source Software (Assured OSS) is a Google Cloud service that enables enterprise users of open source software to incorporate the same trusted OSS packages which Google uses into their own developer workflows.

* Google’s top 10 cloud technology predictions for the next three years:

1. Neuro-inclusive design will stand out
2. Widespread adoption of curated open source
3. Automated secops workflows
4. AI-driven four-day work week
5. Most data will be actionable in real time due to machine learning
6. No barriers between transactional and analytical workloads
7. More than half of cloud infrastructure decisions will be automated
8. Sustainability will be a priority
9. Over half of all organizations using the public cloud will switch their primary cloud provider as a result of multicloud capabilities
10. Low-code/no-code will take over

* Neural TTS (Text to Speech) enables fluid, natural-sounding speech that matches the patterns and intonation of human voices, helping developers bring their solutions to life.  Azure Cognitive Services now also offers new voice styles—newscast, customer service, and digital assistant—so that developers can tailor the voice of their apps and services to fit their brand or unique scenario. For some voices, you can even choose between an emotion style - cheerful, empathetic or lyrical.

* Custom Neural Voice is a text-to-speech feature that lets you create a one-of-a-kind, customized, synthetic voice for your applications. With Custom Neural Voice, you can build a highly natural-sounding voice by providing your audio samples as training data. Custom Neural Voice is a text-to-speech feature that lets you create a one-of-a-kind, customized, synthetic voice for your applications. With Custom Neural Voice, you can build a highly natural-sounding voice by providing your audio samples as training data.

* Celebrities are developing their voices as licensable assets. In 2019, Amazon introduced Samuel L. Jackson as its first celebrity voice replacement for Alexa. The voice of Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was provided an alternative to Alexa in India.

* According to research carried out by Netflix, people prefer dubbed programs to their subtitled equivalents.

* Algorithmic trading systems look for tradeable correlations. A blogger found a funny trend: when Anne Hathaway was in the news, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's shares went up. Traders won't always know why their algorithms are doing what they're doing. Companies are trying to "correlate everything against everything" - The Atlantic

* Citrix and Tibco have merged and the two companies are now business units of a new entity called “Cloud Software Group” which also includes NetScaler, Jaspersoft, ibi, and ShareFile. Citrix and Tibco’s product lines won’t merge.

* More than 130 regions in human DNA play a role in sculpting facial features. The nose is the facial feature most influenced by your genes. Understanding the link between specific genes and facial features could be useful for treating facial malformations or for orthodontics. Facial features are influenced by many biological and non-biological factors: age, diet, climate, hormones, trauma, disease, sun exposure, biomechanical forces and surgery.

* Some termites can fly, but not all of them. These winged termites are called “alates" or "swarmers" because of the way they fly together in a group. Termites seen flying in a home are indicative of a mature colony.

* From Material (2012) -
You know, being a Muslim and doing stand-up comedy is very difficult.
Like, some people say that too much laughter is haraam.
And I don't know what that means.
Too much laughter is haraam?
Now, I don't know if you know "haraam" means "prohibited."
Now, the opposite of haraam is halaal, which means "allowed."
And then in between that, we've got makruh, which means "not recommended."
So now, when they say, "Too much laughter is haraam," what does that mean?
It's like "Ha-ha," that's halaal. That's fine.
Then "Ha-ha-ha," that's makrooh, not recommended.
Then "Ha-ha-ha-ha," haraam. No, that's not allowed.

* It is haram for men to beautify themselves with gold, or wear clothing that has been stitched with gold, whether it be something apparent or hidden...  - A Code Of Ethics For Muslim Men And Women

* Wearing one's lower garment below the ankles (for men) is known as isbāl. The minority opinion is that practising isbāl out of habit or custom is harām while the majority opinion is practising isbāl out of habit or custom is makruh (disliked and not recommended). 

* At least 23 IIT Delhi alumni are behind India's 100 Unicorns (start-ups valued at over $1 billion). Unicorn founders from IIT Delhi include e-commerce website Flipkart’s founders Binny Bansal and Sachin Bansal; restaurant aggregator and food delivery company Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal, Gaurav Gupta and Pankaj Chaddah; e-commerce site Meesho’s Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal; and fintech payment solution provider Pine Labs’ Rajul Garg and Tarun Upadhyay. Delhivery’s co-founder Kapil Bharti is also from IIT Delhi. Notable unicorns that have IIT Bombay alumni as founders include Ola Cabs, started by Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal; CitiusTech, an IT healthcare platform, by Jagdish Moorjani and Rizwan Koita; and BillDesk by Karthik Ganapathy of IIT Bombay, along with Ajay Kaushal of IIT Madras and Srinivasu M.N. of RKM Vivekananda College, Chennai. The ones started by IIT Kanpur alumni are logistics service Rivigo, founded by Deepak Garg from IIT Kanpur along with Gazal Kalra from IIT Delhi; Glance, an AI-based software company, by Naveen Tewari; social media platform ShareChat, by Ankush Sachdeva, Bhanu Pratap Singh and Farid Ahsan; and Urban Company, by Abhiraj Singh Bhal and Varun Khaitan of IIT Kanpur, along with Raghav Chandra from the University of California, Berkeley. Falguni Nayar, the founder of e-commerce beauty and personal care brand Nykaa and Supam Maheshwari, co-founder of FirstCry are alumni of IIM Ahmedabad. - The Print

* Dilip Mahalanabis  was an Indian paediatrician known for pioneering the use of oral rehydration therapy through Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) to treat diarrheal diseases. Oral rehydration therapy is calculated by the World Health Organization to have saved the lives of over 60 million persons. Oral rehydration therapy is an alternative to intravenous rehydration therapy for preventing and treating dehydration from diarrhea when intravenous therapy is not available or feasible. Diarrhea causes the body to lose electrolytes such as potassium, sodium, chloride, and bicarbonate. During an infection that causes diarrhea, sodium, like water, passes through the intestine and out of the body, unabsorbed. In a landmark discovery in 1960,  American chemist Stephen Crane discovered that glucose and sodium are co-absorbed by the same intestinal channel. Because this co-transport channel is unaffected by diarrhea pathogens, this became an option for sodium (and, by extension, water) absorption during a diarrhea episode. In 1978, The Lancet called the discovery of the sodium-glucose transport mechanism as perhaps the most important medical advance of the 20th century.  ORS stimulates water and electrolyte absorption in the gut by aiding in the replacement of the lost salts in case of dehydration and diarrhea. ORS cannot cure a diarrhea infection. But by allowing sodium (and water with it) to hitch a ride through the intestinal wall with glucose via the co-transport channel, it helps children live long enough to survive it. Measured according to molecular weight, the ORS recipe is six level teaspoons of sugar, a half level teaspoon of salt, and one liter of water. It is strongly advised to have some form of food before consuming pre-formulated Electral solution (ORS). 

* Currently, there are 131 operational airports in the country, including 29 international and 92 domestic airports. There are 10 customs airports as well. There are also 8 heliports and 2 waterdromes.

* Don't just predict the future, decide the future and then automate it - @AiyyoShraddha

* "Stay hungry, stay foolish" - first appeared on the back cover of the final issue of The Whole Earth Catalog, October 1974