This Week I Learned - Week #154

This Week I Learned -

* PowerShell's Invoke-RestMethod command can be used to call REST APIs

* To celebrate 10 years of AWS, AWS training partner, qwikLABS is offering 95 free online self-paced labs through the end of March 2016.

* “Polanyi’s Paradox” - “We know more than we can tell”. The top Go players can’t fully access their own knowledge about how they’re able to perform so well. This self-ignorance is common to many human abilities, from driving a car in traffic to recognizing a face. Polanyi’s Paradox hasn’t prevented us from using computers to accomplish complicated tasks, like processing payrolls, optimizing flight schedules, routing telephone calls and calculating taxes. But as anyone who’s written a traditional computer program can tell you, automating these activities has required painstaking precision to explain exactly what the computer is supposed to do. AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence system built by the Google subsidiary DeepMind, does use simulations and traditional search algorithms to help it decide on some moves, but its real breakthrough is its ability to overcome Polanyi’s Paradox - NY Times

* Financial institutions in the United States are obliged by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to ensure the security and confidentiality of personal information. Complaints against violations can be filed with the FTC

* Denmark and other countries which top the list of happiest countries are fairly homogeneous nations with strong social safety nets. Factors which contribute to the rankings - gross domestic product per capita (the rawest measure of a nation’s wealth); healthy years of life expectancy; social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble); trust (as measured by perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (as measured by donations)...crises can prompt vastly different responses based on the underlying social fabric. In Greece, where the economy began to plummet in 2007, setting off a crisis in the eurozone that has resulted in three financial bailouts, widespread corruption and mistrust were associated with the diminishing sense of happiness over the past decade. In contrast, trust and “social capital” are so high in Japan that scholars found, to their surprise, that happiness actually increased in Fukushima, which was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011, because an outpouring of generosity and cooperation contributed to the community’s resilience and rebuilding. - NY Times

* From the comments to the above linked article - Denmark is also one of the top countries for prescriptions for antidepressants.

* For the past half-century, the world economy has been held hostage by just one country: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

* US, once the world's largest wheat exporter, is scheduled to import the grain this month from South America.

* Websites which provide online recharging facility & connect consumers with mobile, DTH & data service providers in India can get up to 3% on a transaction

* ISRO has a public page showing places in India with heaviest rainfall. Bhuvan, ISRO's geo-platform, has lots of interesting info on India presented through maps.

* Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) currently permits investment of Rs 50,000/- per Financial Year per Mutual Fund for Aadhaar based eKYC using OTP verification.

* "Knowledge is only potential power. For the power to be manifested, it must be applied" - Arthashastra