This Week I Learned - Week #36 2022

This Week I Learned - 

* Azure availability zones are connected by a high-performance network with a round-trip latency of less than 2ms. They help your data stay synchronized and accessible when things go wrong. Each zone is composed of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. 

* Azure has availability zones in every country in which Azure operates a datacenter region. Currently only certain regions within them support availability zones. In India, availability zones are supported in Central India.

* Zone-redundant services: Resources are replicated or distributed across zones automatically. For example, zone-redundant services replicate the data across three zones so that a failure in one zone doesn't affect the high availability of the data. 

* Most of Forbes’ infrastructure on Google Cloud is containerized and orchestrated with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), using OSS Istio as a platform-independent service mesh to secure, connect, and monitor microservices. Data is stored on Cloud Storage, while Pub/Sub publishes budget notifications to serverless Cloud Functions that stop or selectively control usage of cloud services to automate cost management. 

* The New York Times reported that the hacker who claimed responsibility for the breached Uber's network said they gained access through social engineering: They sent a text message to an Uber worker claiming to be a company tech employee and persuaded the worker to hand over a password that gave them access to the network. Social engineering is a popular hacking strategy, as humans tend to be the weakest link in any network. Teenagers used a similar ploy in 2020 to hack Twitter. Uber's former chief security officer, Joseph Sullivan, is currently on trial on allegations he arranged to pay hackers $100,000 to cover up a 2016 high-tech heist in which the personal information of about 57 million customers and drivers was stolen.

* DACH refers to D — Deutschland (Germany), A — Austria, CH — Confœderatio Helvetica (Switzerland) 

* Global trade in rice accounts for just 55 million tonnes. This is a little more than one-fourth of the global wheat trade. 

* Ultrasound refers to sound having frequency above 20 kHz. Animals like dogs, bats, shrews, dolphins are capable of hearing ultrasound. Elephants and giraffe are capable of hearing infrasound, which is below 20 Hz. Bats and whales can hear sounds up to 110 kHz, but are less capable of detecting lower range sounds. Humans have a fairly narrow range of audible frequencies - 64 to 23,000 hertz, while dogs can hear sounds in the approximate range of 67 to 45,000 hertz. Frequencies above 25 kHz become irritating for dogs. The louder and higher those sounds are, the more uncomfortable for the dog they become. Dogs may whimper, whine and run away if confronted with a sufficiently loud and high-frequency sound. These sounds cause no permanent hearing damage and once the dog is out of range, he will settle down. In some scenarios, it’s important for an owner to signal to a dog using a sound that is distinctive. Dog whistles are extremely high frequency, in some cases, they are higher than 23 kHz and are inaudible to human ears. In some cases, the sounds are appealing to dogs because they are distinct from the familiar range of sounds present in the human environment. Pet food manufacturers have experimented with including sounds in this frequency range in their adverts to attract dogs to the television set.

* Nearly all dogs dislike the smell of citrus, whether it's oranges, lemons, limes or grapefruit. 

* Science vs Religion

Knowledge evolves gradually

* Wooden art dolls are called by several names including mannequin, manikin, dummy, figures, and anatomical models. Mannequins can be used for reference figures for artists, modeling products, or as decorative objects.

* Legendary sprinter Usain Bolt has a filed for a trademark to protect his victory pose.

* Wimbledon has a strict all-white dress code. But Serena Williams found a way to circumvent that rule - she went all in with nail art. Serena loves painting nails so much that she enrolled in classes to become a certified nail technician. - IWTK

* Seven Nizams of the Asaf Jahi dynasty of Turkish origin ruled over Hyderabad state for over 224 years, from 1724 to 1948. The grandfather of the first Nizam, Khaja Abid, visited India for the first time in 1655 and presented himself at the court of Aurangzeb, then Mughal king of India. Abid served the Mughal Empire and after several wars in the Deccan, his grandson Qamaruddin established himself as the supreme leader of the region. In 1724, he gained the title of Asaf Jah and became an independent ruler. Osman Ali Khan, the Nizam at the time of India's independence, was pronounced the world's richest man by TIME magazine in the 1940s. After India's independence in 1947, the princely states were given an option to join India or Pakistan or stay independent. Asaf Jah VII decided to remain independent. However, the rising threat of militancy by Razakars and the Telangana uprising put civilians in danger. The government of India launched "Operation Polo" on September 13, 1948, to merge the state with India. On September 17, 1948, the seventh Nizam, Asaf Jah Mir Osman Ali Khan, declared a ceasefire after the five-day-long police action and signed the instrument of accession. Thus Hyderabad became a part of India. Hyderabad State at that time included eight districts of Telangana, five of Maharashtra, and three Karnataka districts.  After Osman Ali Khan's death, Mukarram Jah became the titular Nizam of Hyderabad in 1967. In 1971, the government abolished the privy purse and abolished the monarchy in its earlier form.