Tech Tips, Tricks & Trivia

This Week I Learned - * Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is a new resource type in SQL Database that streamlines the migration of SQL Server workloads and combines the best of SQL Server with all the benefits of a fully managed database service. The General Purpose service tier in Azure SQL Database Managed Instance is general available (GA) from October 1, 2018 . * The Microsoft Learn site has training content tailored for different Azure learning paths * DynamoDB synchronously replicates data across three facilities in an AWS Region, giving you high availability and data durability. Amazon Aurora automatically maintains 6 copies of your data across 3 availability zones *  Alan Turing's 1950 article Computing Machinery and Intelligence discussed conditions for considering a machine to be intelligent. He argued that if the machine could successfully pretend to be human to a knowledgeable observer then you certainly should consider it intelligent. * Google is...

From the AWS Documentation - Read replicas are available in Amazon RDS for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL as well as Amazon Aurora. Read replicas in Amazon RDS for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL provide a complementary availability mechanism to Amazon RDS Multi-AZ Deployments.  You can combine Multi-AZ deployments and read replicas to enjoy the benefits of each. For example, you can configure a source database as Multi-AZ for high availability and create a read replica (in Single-AZ) for read scalability. Multi-AZ Deployments Read Replicas Synchronous replication – highly durable Asynchronous replication – highly scalable Only database engine on primary instance is active All read replicas are accessible and can be used for read scaling Automated backups are taken from standby No backups configur...

From the AWS Documentation on Storage Classes Storage Class Durability (designed for) Availability (designed for) Other Considerations STANDARD 99.999999999% 99.99% Default storage class ...

The following table  from the AWS official documentation describes the use cases and performance characteristics for each Amazon EBS volume type : Solid-State Drives (SSD) Hard disk Drives (HDD) Volume Type General Purpose SSD ( gp2 )* Provisioned IOPS SSD ( io1 ) Throughput Optimized HDD ( st1 ) ...

Your crowdsourcing effort will most likely fail if… your crowd is not diverse. your crowd all thinks alike. their task is not clear. their mission is not compelling. the technical platform is poorly designed or overly complicated. there are not continued areas for growth and engagement over time. the interface and the organizers are not responsive to change. the community lacks social moderation or healthy behavioral norms. it lacks mechanisms to address technical abuse and human harassment. you do not recognize or empower the core users of your platform. you lock it down and people have to jump through hoops to participate. potential users lack free time, skills, access or awareness to contribute. volunteers are hampered by legal restrictions or monetization attempts. another more interesting or better crafted opportunity comes along. you never attract enough people to have a crowd in the first place. Source: Wikimedia blog

You can secure your VPC instances using only security groups; however, you can add network Network access control lists (ACLs) as an additional layer of defense. Comparison of Security Group & Network ACL, from the official documentation : Security Group Network ACL Operates at the instance level Acts as a firewall for associated Amazon EC2 instances, controlling both inbound and outbound traffic at the instance level Operates at the subnet level Acts as a firewall for associated subnets, controlling both inbound and outbound traffic at the subnet level ...

This Week I Learned - * An Azure Virtual Network (VNet) is a representation of your own network in the cloud. It is a logical isolation of the Azure cloud dedicated to your subscription. Each VNet you create has its own CIDR block, and can be linked to other VNets and on-premises networks as long as the CIDR blocks do not overlap. The smallest supported subnet in a Azure Virtual Network is /29 (provides eight IP addresses for the subnet), and the largest is /8 (using CIDR subnet definitions).  You can add, remove, and modify the CIDR blocks used by a VNet *  The minimum CIDR you can have in a AWS VPC is /28 (16 IP addresses). The maximum CIDR you can have in the VPC is /16 (65,536 IP addresses). You can't change the CIDR block of a VPC once it has been created *  Redis and Memcached are popular, open-source, in-memory data stores . Memcached is designed for simplicity while Redis offers a rich set of features that make it effective for a wide range of use ...

This Week I Learned - * Microsoft-provided tools Azure Site Recovery Capacity Planner and Azure Site Recovery Deployment Planner can help you analyze your source environment and compute requirements for the target environment. * The Azure Site Recovery Deployment Planner can be run without having to install any ASR components in your on-premises environment. The tool does not impact the performance of the production servers, as no direct connection is made to them. All performance data is collected from the VMware vCenter Server/VMware vSphere ESXi Server which hosts the production virtual machines. *  The ASR Deployment Planner has three main modes of operation : - Profiling - Report generation - Throughput calculation * Azure Site Recovery Deployment Planner is available for both  VMware to Azure and Hyper-V-to-Azure production deployments * Uber ride can get you picked up at more than 300 airports * Uber gathers trip data in more than 500 cities acro...

Comparison chart from the NetApp blog  with additional notes - Features Amazon S3 Amazon EBS Amazon EFS Purpose static storage service useful for static website hosting, media distribution, version management, big data analytics, and archiving persistent storage device that can be used as a file system for databases, application hosting and storage, and plug and play devices works like NAS devices and performs well for big data analytics, media processing workflows, and content management. excellent as a managed network file system that can be shared across different Amazon EC2 instances Storage Cost (US-East, for example) Cheapest cheaper than EFS but can only be accessed by one Amazon EC2 instance at a time  which can be problem in a clustering or distributed app 10 times more expensive than Amazon EBS Storage Size No limit on number of objects ...

Web Performance guru, Steve Souders, has nicely listed the steps to use a bookmarklet within a mobile browser (generally deemed not possible as mobile browsers lack a bookmarks bar like desktop browsers do). His technique involves bookmarking a URL with an embedded anchor and then editing that URL within the mobile browser While using those instructions on Chrome on Android, I had to do the last step differently to make Steve's Mobile Perf Bookmarklet work. I had to type the bookmarklet by name ("Perf" in my case)  in the address bar to invoke while I was on the web page where I wanted to use the bookmarklet. Surprisingly, the Mobile Perf bookmarklet doesn't work on some webpages (like Google Search) & I haven't been able to figure out the reason. It also appears that only certain type of bookmarklets can work on mobile browsers.

According to the  Treacherous 12 Threats to Cloud Computing report compiled by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Top Threats Working Group, following are the 12 critical issues to cloud security: 1. Data Breaches 2. Weak Identity, Credential and Access Management 3. Insecure APIs 4. System and Application Vulnerabilities 5. Account Hijacking 6. Malicious Insiders 7. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) 8. Data Loss 9. Insufficient Due Diligence 10. Abuse and Nefarious Use of Cloud Services 11. Denial of Service 12. Shared Technology Vulnerabilities The 60-paged report also includes 21 anecdotes and examples

This Week I Learned - * Azure ML Studio supports : - Classification - Regression - Clustering - Anomaly Detection - Recommendation - Ranking *  Google Vision API code samples include scripts written in PowerShell *  Two versions of the Azure Functions runtime are available. The 1.x runtime is GA. It's the only runtime that is approved for production applications. The 2.x runtime is currently in preview, so the languages it supports are in preview. *  $req and $res are Azure Functions-specific automatic variables . The body of a HTTP POST request ends up in $req. Azure Functions returns the contents of $res *  National Geographic has a 3-minute beginner level tutorials on a wide variety of topics in its 101 Video series * Giving alms to beggars or buying articles from hackers/vendors at intersection is a traffic offence under 22(a) RRR/177 MV Act * Entrepreneur & IIT-ian, Sanjiv Saraf is the founder of Rekhta Foundation which has e...

In a  random test by WIRED  featuring Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Siri, Google Home looked better at understanding most people & their accents

I'm impressed with how Google Translate can now not just translate text but also "speak" both original content & translation with a  native accent Click on the speaker button (shown for some Indian languages) below the input text to start listening The transliterated text is also shown

Subtitles intrigued me after my hard of hearing grandma discovered a new world when news tickers started being shown on cable tv. Around 6.3 percent of the population (roughly 63 million people) have some level of functional hearing loss . Subtitles not only help the hearing impaired but also have other benefits. Dr. Brij Kothari, founder of PlanetRead, professor at IIM-Ahmedabad and an Ashoka Fellow, is the pioneer of Same Language Subtitling (SLS) in India. His research showed that a seamless mix of reading through entertainment was very effective in advancing literacy. Studies demonstrated that 3 to 5 years of exposure to SLS can enable a person with basic familiarity with the alphabet, to become functionally literate. Same Language Subtitling – or ‘SLS’ – is simply the idea of subtitling audio-visual content in the ‘same’ language as the audio. What you hear is what you read. SLS suggests subtitling the lyrics of existing film songs and music-videos on television, in the ...

"Whoever accumulates enough data about us might come to rule our lives. In the past, nobody had enough biological knowledge and enough computing power to hack people. Even if the KGB followed you around all day, they did not know what you were feeling and thinking. In the future, by combining our increasing biological knowledge with advanced artificial intelligence, external systems could know you better than you know yourself. Such systems could then control and manipulate people with unprecedented efficiency. And it is easiest to manipulate people who believe that their opinions and choices reflect their own free will. We should come to terms with the fact that humans are now hackable."  - Yuval Noah Harari , the Israeli author of Sapiens (2014),  Homo Deus (2015),  21 Lessons for the 21st Century  (2018)

Keep these user-friendly URLs handy: View Amazon Pay (India) transactions -  https://amazonpay.in/ Amazon.in Prime Music -  https://music.amazon.in/ Amazon Mobile site that's useful for quick search - https://www.amazon.in/gp/aw/fp.html?id=fs Read Kindle Books through browser/Kindle Cloud Reader - https://read.amazon.in/ Kindle Notes & Highlights -  https://read.amazon.in/notebook Amazon.com Books section - http://amzn.com/books To jump to a product on Amazon.com if you know the  ASIN  - amzn.com/XYZ