This Week I Learned - Week #160

This Week I Learned -

* Cool Blob Storage is generally available. Cool Blob Storage is low cost storage (as low as $0.01 per GB in some regions) for cool object data which is infrequently accessed but requires similar latency and performance to the more frequently accessed hot data. Example use cases for cool storage include backups, media content, scientific data, compliance and archival data. In general, any data which lives for a longer period of time and is accessed less than once a month is a perfect candidate for cool storage -  Microsoft Azure Blog

* Brazil uses Google Translate more than any other country. Ninety-two percent of our translations come from outside of the United States, with Brazil topping the list. 

* Microsoft is among the Top Chefs contributing to IFTTT recipes

* The website Postcards-From-Google Earth contains a compilation of distorted images on Google Earth. They reveal a new model of representation: not through indexical photographs but through automated data collection from a myriad of different sources constantly updated and endlessly combined to create a seamless illusion; Google Earth is a database disguised as a photographic representation.

* The Panama Papers and the Turkish Citizenship Database were leaked on the same day

* Sergey Karjakin, a Russian Chess player, became the youngest grandmaster ever at age 12.

* 55% of the world's soyabean production occurs in the Americas

* Associated Press publishes over 3000 financial reports every quarter using Wordsmith - the natural language reporting platform

* The $160 billion Indian IT industry is the largest employer of engineers in the country. The total employee base of the industry touched 3.7 million in FY16 - Business Standard

* India is home to 18% of the working age population

* Roughly around 4.5 lakh crore calls are made in a year (GSM+CDMA)

* RailYatri crowd-sources info on stations and trains

* Latur gets its name from Lal Tur (red tur dal)

* "As a central banker who has to be pragmatic, I cannot get euphoric if India is the fastest growing large economy. We have a long way to go before we can claim we have arrived. We need to repeat this performance (economic growth) for 20 years before we can give each Indian a decent livelihood" -  Raghuram Rajan, RBI Governor