This Week I Learned - Week #171

This Week I Learned -

* With SQL Server Stretch Database, you can dynamically stretch warm and cold transactional data from Microsoft SQL Server 2016 to Azure.

* To prevent users from accidentally signing in with Microsoft account credentials (hotmail.com, live.com, outlook.com, etc.) or non-organizational credentials, you can leverage what’s known as a domain hint when you're navigating users to the Azure AD sign-in page.

* HTTP/2 is a networking protocol for low-latency transport of content over the web. It originally started out from the SPDY protocol, now standardized as HTTP version 2. Recent versions of all popular web and mobile browsers except Opera Mini support HTTP/2.

* Because mobile devices do not have the same computation power as regular laptops and desktop computers, creating a mobile-friendly experience requires more than using a different CSS layout. It’s also about the quantity and size of the resources used. Too many resources, or resources that are too small or too large, can ruin the entire mobile experience.

* Security (SSL) has a Performance Tax - Switching to all SSL is a great feature from a security perspective, but at the cost of performance. The problem is that when you introduce SSL, you are also forcing everything on your website (images, third parties, etc.) to also use SSL.  The combination of SSL and geographically induced latency that makes things even worse. Google has some advantages: massive internet presence, geo load balancing, amazing consistent performance (notice the flat line vs. the jittery blue line), anycast network, people dedicated to monitoring and an environment where performance is part of the core DNA of every employee. However, third parties weakest link on a page lacking the ability to handle your load or performance requirement. So make sure you keep an eye on your third parties when you switch to SSL. In HTTP 2.0, everything will be secure.

* Data Scientist (noun): Person who is better at statistics than any software engineer and better at software engineering than any statistician

* There are some sites which URL encode links with their content and redirect through their own referrer page. To extract the decoded referred URL from such an encoded URL, URLDecode.org can help. Bing provides an inline form to decode when you search with the keywords "URL Decoder"

* Netflix awarded a $1 million prize to a developer team in 2009 for an algorithm that increased the accuracy of the company’s recommendation engine by 10 percent. It never used that $1 million algorithm due to engineering costs - Wired

* According to Gartner, 40% estimated effort during the software development lifecycle is lost on resolving environment related issues. Environment issues contribute 30% of defects and 20% schedule overruns.

*  Around 10% of Google's 25,000 developers are proficient in ML

* Deep Learning is a new area of Machine Learning research, which has been introduced with the objective of moving Machine Learning closer to one of its original goals: Artificial Intelligence.

* Pocket generates RSS feeds of your data, and you can subscribe to these feeds using an RSS reader

* The twelve-factor app is a methodology for building software-as-a-service apps

* Pokémon Go is a (possibly overrated?) augmented-reality game which requires users to get out and explore the “real world” to play it. This game makes people look like drunkards in the streets and on the roads while their eyes are glued to the mobile screens leading them to the location of the imaginary Pokemon in the hope of catching it...the app can't function particularly well in South Korea because the government constrains the use of Google Maps.

* Amazon.in has crossed one lakh sellers. E-commerce sites have to look out for devious techniques like Roundtripping - sellers buying their own products at heavy discounts to re-sell

* Basal metabolic rate (energy used for bsic funcitoning when body is at rest) is believed to account for 60-80% of the total energy we spend

* The Kanchipuram saree is protected by a 'geographical indication' - no other place can claim to produce it. It is among the costliest silks because a lot of silver (250 gms at least) goes into making its zari (brocade) patterns and borders

* Asia's largest underground library is in Shri Bhadariya Lathi in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan.

* Americans spend about $500 million annually on newspaper obituaries

* Products are sometimes marketed as "Non-G.M.O." even when genetically modified versions do not exist. At the most basic level, a G.M.O. is a plant or animal whose DNA was altered in a laboratory, often by inserting genes from a distant species into its cells with the help of a bacterium or with other tools - NY Times

* "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it" - Mark Twain