This Week I Learned - Week #48 2020
This Week I Learned -
* Microsoft identity platform implements the OpenID Connect protocol for handling authentication and OAuth 2.0 protocol for handling authorization. OpenID Connect is built on top of OAuth 2.0, so the terminology and flow are similar between the two.
* OAuth is used for authorization and SAML is used for authentication.
* Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a centralized identity provider in the cloud. Delegating authentication and authorization to it enables scenarios such as Conditional Access policies that require a user to be in a specific location, the use of multi-factor authentication (sometimes referred to as two-factor authentication or 2FA), as well as enabling a user to sign in once and then be automatically signed in to all of the web apps that share the same centralized directory. This capability is referred to as Single Sign On (SSO).
* Both the Microsoft Speech SDK and REST APIs support Text-to-speech voices, each of which supports a specific language and dialect, identified by locale. More than 75 standard voices are available in over 45 languages and locales, which allow you to convert text into synthesized speech. Neural text-to-speech is a new type of speech synthesis powered by deep neural networks. When using a neural voice, synthesized speech is nearly indistinguishable from the human recordings. Pricing varies for standard, custom and neural voices.
* Password spray is one of the most popular attacks, accounting for more than a third of account compromise in organizations. In these attacks, bad actors try a few common passwords against many accounts from different organizations. Instead of trying many passwords against one user, they try to defeat lockout and detection by trying many users against one password. Effective forms of this attack are "low and slow,” where the bad actor uses thousands of IP addresses (such as from a botnet) to attack many tenants with a few common passwords.
* Application programming interfaces, or APIs, are how software talks to other software. They abstract the complexity of underlying systems so the systems can connect in novel ways even if they were never intended to interoperate. APIs designed for consumption make valuable functionality and data reusable, letting developers modularly mix and match different APIs to create new digital experiences or enable new strategies. APIs designed for integration, in contrast, may serve the needs of an immediate project but do not help developers do much with the APIs going forward. APIs designed for consumption are essentially software products for developers, which means they may be iterated and improved, just as any software product is.
* Amazon ElastiCache is a fully managed in-memory data store, compatible with Redis or Memcached. Amazon ElastiCache for Redis can be used as a database, cache, message broker, and queue to store ephemeral data in-memory for sub-millisecond response. Use cases - query results caching to ease the load off your relational or NoSQL database, persistent session caching & session management, full-page caching, real-time analytics, managing real-time geospatial data at scale and speed to deliver location based recommendations, real-time ML model scoring to deliver recommendations based on live user inputs and data transformations.
* Google Cloud API Design Guide has been used inside Google since 2014 and it is the guide Google follows when designing Cloud APIs and other Google APIs.
* Migrate to containers tool in Google Cloud helps you to move legacy applications from Virtual Machines into Kubernetes Engine and Anthos clusters by creating for each application a docker Image, Dockerfile and deployment yaml that are used for running containers and "day2" operations.
* The Cartoonizer app uses Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model to turn your photos into cartoon-styled images within your browser using TensorFlowJS WebAssembly.
* Very cool demo with source code of a web app that can live stream and detect motion
* Firefox's accessibility inspector arguably provides the best built-in browser support for accessibility and added vision deficiency simulation support in Firefox 70. Chrome 83's DevTools bridges the gap by adding support for blurred vision, and four types of color vision deficiencies:
- Protanopia: inability to perceive red light
- Deuteranopia: inability to perceive green light
- Tritanopia: inability to perceive blue light
- Achromatopsia: inability to perceive any color except shades of grey
Even better vision accessibility support is available in developer browsers like Polypane, which includes emulations for color blindness, glaucoma, far-sightedness, and bright sunlight.
* Women make up about 35% of New Jersey-headquartered Cognizant’s 283,100-strong global workforce. - ET
* Software is the gold rush of our times. The only industry where you can legitimately create billions of dollars of wealth in a span of a few years. As technology is rapidly changing how societies are organized, it throws up opportunities to accumulate incredible wealth. Startups that cross a billion dollars in value, called unicorns, are specially coveted. Investors, sensing the gold rush, are pouring in millions of dollars
* McDonald’s has 36,000 restaurants worldwide. McDonald’s has rethought its business on multiple levels—including the introduction of a meatless McPlant burger. It has a new long-term growth strategy that hinges in large part on machine learning and mobile software.
* The Road Ahead has a lot in common with my new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. Both are about how technology and innovation can help solve important problems. One thing is different: The stakes are higher with climate change. As passionate as I am about software, the effort to avoid a climate disaster has a whole other level of urgency. Failing to get this right will have bad consequences for humanity - Bill Gates
* When it comes to analyzing the likely effects of their resignations, executives typically fall into one of three categories: those who focus on the optimal timing of their departures (38%), those who focus on relationships (31%), and those who take an unsystematic, scattershot approach, improvising as they go (30%) - HBR
* Neutrophils are white blood cells that protect your body from infections. Without enough neutrophils, your body can't fight off bacteria. Eating foods rich in B-12 may help improve low neutrophil blood levels. A neutropenic (nu-tro-PEE-nik) diet is for people with weakened immune systems.
* Miniature Circuit Breakers (MCBs) are used to protect electrical systems, equipment, and appliances from short-circuiting and overload. Miniature Circuit Breaker (MCB) can protect solar panel and inverter through high voltage and short circuit.
* As per E-Waste Management rules - 2016 Guidelines, the average life of an AC (excluding Centralized AC) is 10 years
* Non-Inverter Air-Conditioner have fixed cooling capacity and operates on the basis of start and stop of compressor. When the compressor is on, there is no variation in its power consumption. Further, the power consumption is high every time compressor starts. However, on the other hand, in the inverter ACs, cooling capacity can be adjusted by varying the frequency of power supply to the compressor. The compressor never cuts off and power consumption is low as compared to a non-inverter Air conditioner.
* According to Redseer Consulting, while the guidelines issued by the Union Road Transport and Highways Ministry for app-based cab aggregators is positive in terms of formalising the sector, overall, the impact on the ecosystem growth will be negative as capping surge and platform fee will ultimately lead to reduced earnings for five lakh drivers and lead to increased prices and higher wait times for the six-eight crore consumers - BloombergQuint
* The long living Okinawans are well-known for their walking culture, being especially mindful about incorporating movement in their daily lifestyle. Nagano, a rural prefecture in Japan, was able to flip their high stroke rate by incorporating over 100 walking routes, and now their citizens enjoy the highest rates of longevity in the country. Most Japanese citizens live in very walkable cities where public transportation is convenient, safe, and affordable, and not many households own cars.
* “I can feel a city by the way people walk. In Mumbai, people always seem to walk with a sense of purpose. In Hyderabad, we don’t even have sidewalks” - Ashok Verma
* In GHMC area, 2.99 lakh property owners out of the 16.62 lakh have posted details of their properties on the Dharani portal. The Telangana High Court has extended till December 3 the order staying collection of crucial data relating to Aadhaar card, caste and family for registration of non-agricultural properties - The Hindu
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| From @PratapVardhan's India map visualizations |
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