This Week I Learned - Week #28 2023

This Week I Learned -

* GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA in 1983. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft. Since it was included with most versions of MS-DOS, it was also a low-cost way for many aspiring programmers to learn the fundamentals of computer programming. With the release of MS-DOS 5.0, GW-BASIC's place was taken by QBasic, a slightly abridged version of the interpreter part of the separately available QuickBASIC interpreter and compiler package.

* Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is distributed in a manner that allows its users to run the software for any purpose, to redistribute copies of it, and to examine, study, and modify, the source code. The FOSS movement's "free" part originates from Richard Matthew Stallman, who noted the lost freedom to users on the decline of the public domain ecosystem and the growth of a copyrighted proprietary software ecosystem. In response, as a hack of the copyright system, he created the GPL, a protective copyleft license, aiming for the creation of a complete and free operating system — GNU (a recursive acronym meaning "GNU's not Unix!").

* ChatGPT Code Interpreter knows how to write and execute Python code and can work with file uploads. It can help with data analysis, image conversions, or editing a code file. Note: files will not persist beyond a single session.

* Many sites, including e-commerce, news, gaming, and more; use JavaScript to fetch additional resources and run what’s called a single-page application. Because of this you can’t simply “curl” or issue a system call to retrieve content since the site itself assumes some level of JavaScript will be required to run in order to fully render the page. Even Google runs a headless browser in order to generate data for its search index. The Browserless scrape API allows for getting the contents a page, by specifying selectors you are interested in, and returning a structured JSON response. The default behavior is to navigate to the URL specified, wait for the page to load (including parsing and executing of JavaScript), then waiting for the elements for a maximum of 30 seconds. All of these are configurable. If the site you’re interested in does some level of bot-detection then Browserless can get around most of these with stealth options.

* Azure Load Balancer’s global tier is a cloud-native global network load balancing solution backed by 99.99% availability SLA. With the cross-region global tier of Azure Load Balancer, you can distribute traffic across multiple Azure regions with ultra-low latency and high performance.

* Microsoft has integrated its generative AI tools like ChatGPT into Azure. Last month, Google also said it would sell access to the Pathways Language Model or PaLM to developers using the company’s cloud services. Turns out, what hyperscalers want to do in reality is sell their cloud services with the flashy sticker of generative AI put on them. Instead of building AI models on their own, AWS has announced an API platform, called Amazon Bedrock, which helps customers host generative AI models built by startups like AI21 Labs, Anthropic AI and Stability AI.  - Analytics India Mag

* Ansible Lightspeed with IBM Watson Code Assistant is a generative AI service that helps developers create Ansible content more efficiently. It reads plain English entered by a user, and then it interacts with IBM watsonx foundation models to generate code recommendations for automation tasks that are then used to create Ansible Playbooks.

* Eleven Labs offers speech synthesis of up to 10,000 characters per month to hobbyists for free. Free tier subscribers must attribute ElevenLabs by including “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title whenever publishing any content generated on the platform.

* NLP (Natural Language Processing) is a field of AI focused on understanding and processing human language. LLMs, on the other hand, are specific models used within NLP that excel at language-related tasks, thanks to their large size and ability to generate text.

* From the report State of AI in India, Second edition, December 2022

* Under the Startup India initiative, eligible companies can get recognised as Startups by DPIIT, in order to access a host of tax benefits, easier compliance, IPR fast-tracking etc.

* Andrew Ng is the co-founder of Coursera, founder of DeepLearning.AI & former head of Google Brain best known for his online courses on AI & ML. In 2008 his group at Stanford was one of the first in the US to start advocating the use of GPUs in deep learning. He launched his first MOOC in 2011. As of 2020, three of most popular courses on Coursera are Ng's: Machine Learning (#1), AI for Everyone, (#5), Neural Networks and Deep Learning (#6). Coursera was the 6th online education website that Ng built and arguably the most successful to date. 

* A solutions architect creates the overall technical vision for a specific solution to a business problem. They design, describe, and manage the solution.

Pre-sales Solutions Architect Skills (source: MarketingMoves)

* Featured articles are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. They are used by editors as examples for writing other articles. There are 6,292 featured articles out of 6,681,892 articles on the English Wikipedia (about 0.09% or one out of every 1,060 articles).

* “A Contract With God,” first published in 1978, is commonly recognized as the very first graphic novel in history. The novel by Will Eisner, consists of four interweaving stories revolving around the lives of a group of New Yorkers who live in a fictional tenement house, many of whom are Jewish and/or immigrants.

* Will Eisner began his comic book career in 1936 and had long held artistic ambitions for what was perceived as a lowbrow medium. He found no support for his ideas, and left the world of commercial comics after ending his signature work The Spirit in 1952. The growth of comics fandom convinced him to return in the 1970s, and he worked to realize his aspirations of creating comics with literary content. He wanted a mainstream publisher for the book and to have it sold in traditional bookstores, rather than in comic book shops; the small press Baronet Books released A Contract with God in 1978 and marketed it as a "graphic novel", which thereafter became the common term for book-length comics. A Contract with God cemented Eisner's reputation as an elder statesman of comics, and he continued to produce graphic novels and theoretical works on comics until his death in 2005. 

* Protein is made from amino acids. The essential amino acids have to come from our diet. When we don’t eat enough protein (especially if we are vegetarian, vegan, or on a restricted diet), our body takes amino acids from muscles and other sources inside the body — this is not ideal.

* About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Cockroaches are social insects; a large number of species are either gregarious or inclined to aggregate. Cockroaches are mainly nocturnal and run away when exposed to light. Cockroaches appear to use just two pieces of information to decide where to go, namely how dark it is and how many other cockroaches there are. Cockroaches are among the hardiest insects. While cockroaches do, indeed, have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with a lethal dose perhaps six to 15 times that for humans, they are not exceptionally radiation-resistant compared to other insects, such as the fruit fly.

* To build a new habit easily, pair it with a long-established habit you already have.

* An exclave is a portion of a state or district geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory (of one or more states or districts etc). Many exclaves are also enclaves, but not all: an exclave can be surrounded by the territory of more than one state.

* A vassal state is any state that has a mutual obligation to a superior state or empire, in a status similar to that of a vassal in the feudal system in medieval Europe. It is a country that is controlled by a more powerful country, and has to provide military support or pay money to it when needed. While the subordinate party is called a vassal, vassal state or tributary state, the dominant party is called a suzerain. Today, more common terms are puppet state, protectorate, client state, associated state or satellite state. An example from the 20th century was the state on Manchukuo in northeastern China. This state owed its existence to Imperial Japan. 

* Buddhism is the majority of the population in Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia, Thailand practices Theravada Buddhism. Buddhism is the official religion of Bhutan, and the majority of the population practices Vajrayana Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism is the predominant tradition in Mongolia. Buddhism has a substantial following in Japan, with various schools and sects, including Zen Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, and Nichiren Buddhism.

* The landlocked country of Laos to this day remains the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world — more than Japan, Germany and Britain during World War II.

* “Bastille Day” on July 14 became an official national holiday in 1880 to commemorate key turning points in French history. On July 14, 1789, a Paris mob – hungry from a poor harvest and angry at King Louis XVI and his government for their suffering – stormed the Bastille prison, which had become a symbol of the absolute power wielded by the monarch after he confined many of his opponents there. The mob freed a handful of prisoners and seized large stores of weapons in what was a first victory for the people over the “old regime”, the French monarchy dating from around the 16th century. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that same summer called for the establishment of certain “natural and inalienable” rights, including freedom, resistance to oppression and equality before the law. After ratifying the text in October and coming under increasing pressure from the people, King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette left Versailles for Paris.  These were decisive moments in the French Revolution (1789-1799), which recreated France as a people’s republic founded on the principles of individual liberty and responsible citizenship codified by the famous “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”, which remains France’s motto to this day. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette died by the guillotine in 1793, bringing a decisive end to the monarchy in France.  - France24

* India and France share a longstanding call for a multipolar world order, a discourse that often translates more as a statement of intent than a workable action plan during crises that require major, or superpower, might. The roots of the multipolar discourse run deep in both countries, dating back to the postwar era. India, under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of primarily postcolonial nations that refused to be officially aligned with either the US or the USSR. Since the end of the Cold War, NAM has struggled for relevance, keeping up criticisms of US foreign policy while granting Russia observer status in 2021. France’s multipolar goal, on the other hand, was born out of the loss of its colonial empire during the Charles de Gaulle presidency, when Paris determined it would not follow Britain in becoming what it believed was a US vassal state. The position though has been difficult to maintain, resulting in occasional eruptions such de Gaulle’s temporary pulling out of NATO command only to get back into the Western military alliance fold.  - France24

* India is the world’s largest arms importer, with France long holding the spot of India’s second-largest weapons supplier after Russia.

* India shares a contested 2,500-kilometre border with China and is haunted by its defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian war. New Delhi has historically looked to Moscow to contain Beijing’s expansionism in its Asian backyard. But the invasion of Ukraine has made an increasingly sanctioned and sidelined Russia dependent on China – to India’s disadvantage. 

* The Indian military is virtually responsible for protecting Bhutan from the kind of external threat that the Chinese military poses. The Eastern Army Command and the Eastern Air Command both have integrated protection of Bhutan into their role. The Indian Military Training Team (IMTRAT), established since 1961–62, is a training mission of the Indian Army in Bhutan. IMTRAT is responsible for the training of the personnel of the Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) and the Royal Bodyguard of Bhutan (RBG).

* The Farkhor Air Base in Tajikistan is a crucial Indian air base as the Indian Air Force conducts its operation in collaboration with the Tajik air force.

* More than half of India’s work force is technically self-employed. 

* India contributes to 20 percent of the world's total millet production. Millets were a staple food in India till a few decades ago. The Green Revolution in the 1960s and the distribution of wheat and rice in the Public Distribution System (PDS) thereafter moved the humble millets away from the Indian kitchen. Millets are prolific—20 varieties of millets are grown in 130+ countries. India has Jowar (Sorghum), Bajra (Pearl millet), and Ragi (Finger Millet). Millets enhance soil quality over time, since they aggregate nutrients, and their fibrous root network helps preserve soil. The clincher is that they need only about one-third the water required to grow other staple crops like rice and wheat. A bonus is that they hardly require fertilizers and pesticides, allowing easy crop maintenance. Rajasthan record 29 percent of Indian production, followed by Maharashtra (15 percent), and UP (14 percent). Millets can be stored for long periods for use as food reserves.  They contain thrice the fibre as wheat and ten times more than rice. Due to their low glycaemic index, they help in regulating blood sugar which is great for diabetics. They are also completely gluten-free and provide a perfect low-cost option for those seeking this benefit. Millets are rich in zinc, calcium and protein, making them an ideal alternative for vegetarians and those seeking more plant-based foods in their diet. Most important, they are a fantastic source of iron. The Government of India has also recognised the importance of promoting millets, and pushed the UN General Assembly to designate 2023 as the "International Year of Millets". - Forbes India

* "It is not complicated if you start at the beginning which nobody wants to do." - Richard Feynman

* "I am a survivor. I am like a cockroach, you just can't get rid of me." -  Madonna