This Week I Learned - Week #176

This Week I Learned -

* Azure Virtual Machines Scale Sets make it easy to build highly scalable applications by deploying identical virtual machines (VMs) as a set. Built on the Azure Resource Manager model, Scale Sets works with Windows and Linux images, custom images, and extensions. There is no additional cost to use Scale Sets.

* Default replication scheme for an Azure storage account is Geo-redundant, which replicates data 6 times, thrice in a remote Azure region.

* Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) is only available to store block blobs and not page blobs. VHDs use page blobs only

* All storage accounts have a container named $logs that contains the log files stored as block blobs. The $logs container cannot be deleted.

* Uber processes data for millions of trips in over 400 cities in 60 different countries on a daily basis.  In the beginning, Uber managed their trip data via JSON blobs, with each trip requiring about 20 kilobytes (KB) of data. Assuming Uber processed raw JSON data for exactly 1 million trips a day, 32 terabytes (TB) of data would only last them 10 days (provided ~40% of storage is reserved for system components). Clearly, such a model was unsustainable. Uber selected 10 different encoding protocols (Thrift, Protocol Buffers, Avro, JSON, UJSON, CBOR, BSON, MessagePack, Marshal, Pickle) and paired them with 3 different lossless compression algorithms (Snappy, zlib, Bzip2) - resulting in a total of 40 viable solutions. They settled on Meassagepack - ProgrammableWeb

* Paypal takes a billion hits a day while running on 8 VMs & stays responsive even at 90% CPU. PayPal uses an Actor model based on Akka. WhatsApp, uses Erlang, an Akka competitor, to achieve its incredible throughput - High Scalability

* Google is providing extensive support for .NET in the Google Cloud, including Visual Studio add-ins to make your implementation even easier

* Free VPN providers will often log all your Internet activity and then sell it to advertisers and others. Some free VPN providers also use your bandwidth and sell it to others.

* After becoming a computer science graduate from Stanford University, Brain Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp, tested products at the Apple Inc. and Adobe Systems, before joining Yahoo as its 44th employee in 1996 where he worked for the next decade. In 2009, Brain was rejected by both Twitter and Facebook. On 24th Feb, 2009, Brian along his Yahoo colleague Jan Koum incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California. In 2014, Brian and Jan sold WhatsApp to Facebook for approximately $19 billion in cash and stock.

* Marissa Mayer was Google employee #20 and female employee #1

* Reliance Jio will take on Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular which control around 65% of the market with its fourth generation (4G), long-term evolution (LTE) and voice over LTE (VoLTE) services soon. 

* Banks are mandated to give a Suspicious Transaction Report (STR) if they find over Rs. 10 lakh has been deposited in any account in one go and also if they notice regular flow of large amounts into it from the same source

* There are 24 seats in the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly kept vacant in acknowledgement of the fact that these areas have been illegally occupied by Pakistan.

* While most rivers on the Indian subcontinent have female names, Brahmaputra river has a rare male name, as it means "son of Brahma" in Sanskrit (putra means "son").

* ..while India secured political independence in 1947, it got economic independence only with the 1991 reforms.

* It’s been 119 years since Ardeshir, the low-profile Parsi gentleman, implanted the Godrej flag in the land that adopted his Guderz tribe (from which the family name derives) that fled from Iran. Godrej Group’s founder Ardeshir Godrej invented locks, which didn’t have springs, patented the door frame, double-plate doors, and lock-case, and sold his safes at half the price of foreign brands and began manufacturing soap with vegetable oil, out of consideration for Hindu sentiments that disfavoured the use of animal fat. His soaps soon secured celebrity endorsements from Rabindranath Tagore, Dr Annie Besant and C Rajagopalachari. The Godrej Rhyme:
No form of praise could have been higher 
His safes survived ordeal by fire. 
Soap at that time was made from fat. 
But Hindus couldn’t live with that. 
After much experiment and toil 
He made a soap from vegetable oil. 

* In 1958, the first Indian fridge manufactured by Godrej came with a ₹1,885 tag.

* As per the Income Tax Return Statistics for Assessment Year 2012-13, 14 lakh people or just 4.6 per cent of the 2.89 crore taxpayers in India paid taxes in the highest 30 per cent tax bracket.

* A new type of mosquito trap running on solar electricity and using human odor as bait has cut mosquito populations by 70 percent in a test on a malaria-ridden island in Kenya. The traps — which resemble lampshades and hang just outside the house — lured in Anopheles funestus mosquitoes, but they did not attract Anopheles gambiae or Anopheles arabiensis, which are much more important malaria vectors in most of Africa, where more than 400,000 children die of the disease each year... the traps needed regular rebaiting with a blend of five chemical constituents of human odor along with a chemical that mimicked the carbon dioxide plume created by human breath - NY Times

* The top customer of US Oil exports is Canada

* No US city finds a place in the top 10 ranking of world’s most “liveable” cities by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The index, measured out of 100, considers 30 factors spread across five areas: safety, health care, educational resources, infrastructure and the environment to calculate scores for 140 cities - Economist

* The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) authorizes Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish minimum standards to protect tap water and requires all owners or operators of public water systems to comply with these primary (health-related) standards in the US. You can request a copy of your water utility’s annual water quality report – called a right-to-know or consumer confidence report — to find out which contaminants in your local water are of concern. US citizens can request a copy of your water utility’s annual water quality report – called a right-to-know or consumer confidence report — to find out which contaminants in your local water are of concern.  After 70 years of India's independence, clean drinking water (one of the basic necessities of life) remains a scarce commodity. I wonder if there will ever be a similar government regulation in India mandating public water systems to not just provide water but clean drinking water.

* A “moment” actually refers to a specific amount of time! Back in Medieval times, when someone needed a “moment” it meant 1/40th of an hour (1.5 minutes) - Go Ask Alice!

* "Having ambitious goals worked against me...I was struck by an idea that was simple and, for a former athlete, radical: I decided to stop striving....It felt silly and embarrassing — even blasphemous — to set mediocrity as a goal...And so to all of you struggling to find your fitness groove, I have a message for you: Do less, and do it regularly. ..As it turns out, my approach is sanctioned by science. It’s been a revelation."

This Week I Learned - Week #175

This Week I Learned -

* Docker is at the confluence of three major IT investment areas - Cloud, DevOps and Microservices

* Azure RemoteApp is being retired.  Microsoft will be partnering with Citrix in the remote desktop and applications space to address new scenarios on the Azure cloud.

* jsDelivr is a free and public CDN that offers hosting for developers at no cost. It’s a lot like Google Hosted Libraries, but with more projects and freedom. Anyone can submit a library for hosting on this CDN. It’s fast with multiple points of presence around the globe — 81. The main backbone of it is built on top of CDN networks provided by MaxCDN and CloudFlare. jsDelivr is the first CDN to support loading multiple files with a single HTTP request

* jQuery Geocoding and Places Autocomplete Plugin is an advanced jQuery plugin that wraps the Google Maps API's Geocoding and Places Autocomplete services. You simply provide an input that lets you search for locations with a nice autocomplete dropdown. Optionally add a container to show an interactive map and a form that will be populated with the address details.

* Sogou is a dual-engine browser. One engine is Webkit and the other supposedly is Trident. 360 Quick Browser, 360 Safe Browser, Sogou Explorer are popular in China. Amazon Assistant browser extension is available for 360 Quick Browser, 360 Safe Browser, Sogou Explorer, Sleipnir browsers.

* SyllableCount.com uses a combination of a 240,364 word U.S. English syllable count dictionary and a syllable counter algorithm.It's algorithm may not be entirely accurate due to the numerous syllabic anomalies found within the U.S. English language.

* The Oatmeal, the website that former computer programmer Matthew Inman launched in 2009, draws as many as 7 million unique monthly visitors. Inman’s comics have won an Eisner Award, the Pulitzer Prize of the comics industry. Matt can accurately predict what massive groups of people will find entertaining. His mother, Ann Inman, an artist who supported a family of seven by making mohair teddy bears for collectors around the world, says her son became a web developer after the Silverwood Theme Park fired him from his summer parking-lot job after discovering he was only 14 years old. Like most artists, Inman lives in perpetual fear that he will never have another good idea. “I enjoy things most when I suffer beforehand..I’m driven by rage and anxiety’’ he says - The Seattle Times

* Only contribution to Tier-I NPS account (not Tier-2) is eligible for income tax benefits. Investment up to Rs 1.5 lacs into NPS in a financial year is eligible for deduction under Section 80CCD(1). This deduction comes under the overall ceiling of Rs 1.5 lacs for deduction under Section 80C but an additional Rs 50,000 deduction over and above the ceiling limit of under Section 80C can be claimed through investments into NPS under Section 80CCD (1B). Also a further deduction under Section 80CCD(2) is possible through contribution from the employer up to 10% of Basic Salary + Dearness Allowance. The 80CCD(2) benefit is available to employees only and not to those who are self-employed.

* The 'Produnova' vault is considered most difficult and dangerous manoeuvre in women’s gymnastics. It currently has a 7.0 D-score and thus provides a leg-up for any gymnast able to perform it successfully. The manoeuvre, named after Russian gymnast Yelena Sergeyevna Produnova, consists of a front handspring and two front somersaults. The trick is to get high enough to be able to execute two flips in the air and land safely on your feet. In 1999, Produnova became the first person to nail the vault and, since then, only five other gymnasts have successfully executed it. Dipa Karmakar, one of those five gymnasts, has made the Produnova her calling card - Business Standard

* Hyperandrogenism is a medical condition characterised by excessive levels of androgen, indicated most clearly by the amount of testosterone in a woman's body. It is one of the primary symptoms of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), and 1 in every 7 women between the ages of 15 and 30 suffers from it. In other words, hyperandrogenism is pretty common. Except on the sports field.  In 2011, the IAAF, contending that high levels of testosterone conferred a biological advantage on female athletes - it is believed to help build muscle and make athletes faster - ruled that a female athlete would be eligible to compete against other women "provided that she has androgen levels below the male range". On behalf of every woman athlete with her condition, Indian sprinter Dutee Chand from Odisha, decided to challenge the IAAF's ceiling on the permissible amounts of testosterone in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, in Switzerland. On 25th July 2015, in a landmark judgment, the court overturned Dutee's ban imposed prior to the 2012 Commonwealth Games and ruled that the ceiling on testosterone levels would be suspended for two years, while the IAAF gathered proof to support their claims of testosterone-linked biological advantage - Roopa Pai

This Week I Learned - Week #173

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. Customers can also use Stretch Database with new Always Encrypted technology, which helps protect your data at rest and in motion

* Azure Service Fabric helps developers build, deploy, and operate microservice architecture applications, reliably and at scale.

* Twitter recently reported that Avicoder, security researcher, discovered a security flaw within Twitter's Vine code that allowed for the download of Vine's entire source code. At the heart of the vulnerability is the Docker setup Twitter used to manage the Vine account.

* LanguageCourse.net  has a biased but useful comparison of the leading language learning apps out there

* Google for Education has several useful resources for educators and students

* PCmover software can  automatically transfers files, settings, profiles, and applications to a new PC or upgrades to a new OS, including Windows 10.

* Capgemini, which was the seventh largest employer in 2014-15 has displaced HCL  to break into the top 5 list of IT-BPO employers after TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro.

* After scouring 42,000 square miles of the Indian Ocean for the wreckage of MH370 at a cost of more than $130 million (with another 4,000 square miles to go) over a period of two years, officials from Malaysia, China, and Australia have announced that they will suspend further efforts to find the plane.

* Palladium is one of the rarest metals on earth, about 15 times  more rare than platinum and 30 times more rare than gold. Around 80% of the world's palladium production comes from 2 countries - Russia and South Africa.

* Some of the 17 "rare" elements are among the world's most abundant elements; they're only referred  to as "rare" because they're difficult to extract.

* India accounts for or 1,236 or 12 per cent of the total number of bird species in the world, amounting to 10,135. Taxonomically, the bird population in the country is divided into 23 orders, 107 families and 498 genera. Among the bird families, Muscicapidae (comprising chats, robins and flycatchers) are the most diverse, having as many as 97 species. Raptors or birds of prey, which include vultures, eagles, and kites, are represented by 57 species and typical babblers by 53 species - The Hindu

* The director, K Balachander, rechristened Shivaji Rao Gaekwad as Rajinikanth (the color of dusk) as a remark on the latter's skin color

* Karnam Malleswari, India's lone medalist (a bronze in weightlifting) in the 2000 Sydney Olympics is the first woman from India to win an Olympic medal. India has the ignominy of being the country with the lowest medal tally per capita

* By winning the gold in the 10 m Air Rifle event at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Abhinav Bindra became the first Indian to win an individual gold medal at the Olympic Games

* Bhanu Athaiya, the first Indian to win an Oscar has returned her trophy to The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as she felt that her family will not be able to take care of the after her demise

* Jammu & Kashmir get 10% of Central Government funds with only 1% of population

* Direct plans of Mutual Funds launched 3 years ago, account for 37% of total industry AUM. A direct mutual fund charges 0.75 - 1.5% or Rs 750-1500 per year for managing an investment of Rs 1 lakh compared with Rs 1500-2000 charged by a regular mutual fund. NPS Tier II plans charge only 0.01% or Rs 10 per year for managing an investment of Rs 1 lakh.

* American Sign Language has 50,000 signs. India has its very own alphabet of signs and symbols called ISL. In 2001, the Ramakrishna Mission released the first Indian Sign Language Dictionary, which documented over 2,500 signs from 12 States, to provide a common sign language code.

* National Consumer Help Line (NCH), a project of the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs (@consaff) has a website & toll-free number - 1800 11 4000

* 35% of water connections in Hyderabad are un-billed. The Water Board loses money on supply of nearly 120 million gallons every day.

* The Right to Information Act (RTI), 2005 is an Act of the Parliament of India "to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens" and replaces the erstwhile Freedom of information Act, 2002.The Act applies to all States and Union Territories of India except Jammu & Kashmir. Under the provisions of the Act, any citizen may request information from a "public authority" (a body of Government or "instrumentality of State") which is required to reply expeditiously or within thirty days. The Act also requires every public authority to computerise their records for wide dissemination and to proactively certain categories of information so that the citizens need minimum recourse to request for information formally.It is an initiative taken by the Department of Personnel and Training, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions

* Only in India - Mysuru Deputy Commissioner C Shikha, IAS, lodged a formal complaint of criminal intimidation against K Marigowda, an acknowledged member of the "photo club" that hovers around Siddaramaiah and tries to get into every frame the CM is pictured in Mysuru. Even after a FIR has been issued and after a Mysuru court has rejected Marigowda's anticipatory bail application, he is yet to arrested as all the officers whom can be directed to arrest Marigowda are Kurubas, the community that the Chief Minister of Karnataka, Siddaramaiah and her IAS husband, Ajay Nagabhushan belong to - The Economic Times

* Democracies have a weakness: if a bad law has enough money or people behind it, it stays on the books - Maximum City

This Week I Learned - Week #172

This Week I Learned -

* Microsoft Graph is a unified API endpoint, for accessing data, intelligence, and insights coming from the Microsoft cloud.

* Pokémon Go, the "digitally enhanced bird-watching" game, has almost as many users as Twitter

* Catchpoint API monitor can mimic API calls made by mobile devices

* What is Digital, anyway? - Digital means exploiting emerging technologies to create user- and customer-centric interfaces and data-driven decisions, leading to more agile, responsive, and competitive business models.

* 52% of companies from the Fortune 500 list of 2000 no longer exist

* The two-year old New Media Wing under the Information and Broadcasting Ministry mines data from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube to collect sentiments on current affairs and provide insight to senior Government officials on the mood in the social media on a daily basis. The analysis is done using Oracle's Social Relationship Manager & Meltwater

* ICICI Bank website and the bank's iMobile app can fetch the latest information for services including train options and ticket availability by connecting directly with the reservation system of the Indian Railways on a real time basis. The home page of Rail ticket booking subsite is all of 6.4MB mainly due to a 4.8MB background image. A IRCTC account is required to book train tickets on this subsite.

* ICICI Bank's note to customers using unparliamentary language - "..customers found to be offensive in their interaction with us will be required to close all their relationships with ICICI Bank"

* Amazon has built nearly two dozen warehouses in India  so far. The largest one is in Kothur in Telangana.

* 67% of the Indian population lives in rural areas. Only about 35% of India’s population is connected to the internet. 65% is under age 35. 80% of the population owns cell phones. Mobile wallets already outnumber credit cards

* Gerontology is the study of the social, psychological and biological aspects of ageing that aims to help the elderly lead a better life.

* Dressing the same way everyday saves time

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

Websites which legally stream Indian movies and TV programs for free

A while ago, YouTube used to provide Bollywood & other regional language movies for free viewing. But not anymore. Instead there a clutch of new websites that offer free fare with or without registration -

• Hotstar - is developed, built and maintained by Accenture on their Accenture Video Solution (AVS) platform which relies on AWS. Hotstar is currently available only in Nepal and India
• Spuul
• Eros Now
• Voot
• BIGFlix
• BoxTV

Also see:

• Indian Comparison Shopping Sites 
• Low bandwidth? Try mobile version of popular websites on desktop

Amazon's Joy of Reading Kindle Promotion

This is an interesting promotion till July 2016 to get more people to try out Kindle ebooks in India.

When you buy a Top Ramen Masala Noodles pack, you get a code on the Tastemaker that has to be SMS-ed to 9246016161. Shortly thereafter you get a link to claim a ebook worth Rs 100.

A 420gm noodles pack that costs Rs 60 has 6 Tastemaker sachets & entitles you to Rs 600 worth of Kindle ebooks. The offer honors only 3 of the alphabetic codes embossed on the Tastemaker sachets to be SMS-ed from a single mobile number. So to avail all 6, you'd need 2 unique mobile numbers. The downside is that Amazon gets email addresses and phone numbers to mine while consumers can avail this offer a very limited number of times no matter how many noodle packs they purchase.

I got myself the Kindle version of "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life" by Scott Adams, "I Too Had a Dream" by Verghese Kurien, Gouri Salvi that tells the revolutionary story of Amul in India and the Amar Chitra Katha comic book biography of ACK's founder - "Anant Pai: Master Storyteller".

While searching for ebooks to claim, I ran into a Kindle ebook that costs a mind-boggling sum of Rs 3,18,897.71 (and has 167 pages)!

This Week I Learned - Week #169

This Week I Learned -

* The F-Series Azure Virtual Machine instances are optimized for compute intensive workloads and are based on 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon E5-2673 v3 (Haswell) processor, which can achieve clock speeds as high as 3.2 GHz with the Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0. These sizes have the same CPU performance as the Dv2-Series at a lower per hour price, making these sizes the best value in price performance on Azure. These virtual machines are available in 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 core sizes with 2 GB random-access memory (RAM) and 8 GB of local solid state drive (SSD) per CPU core and have options for both standard and premium storage optimized sizes. These sizes are best suited for scenarios such as analytics, web and gaming servers, and batch processing, and also those that do not require as much memory or SSD per CPU core.  

* Apache Spark for  Azure HDInsight offers customers a fully managed, secured, and highly available enterprise-ready Apache Spark solution. Apache Spark is one of the most popular big-data projects. It’s known for handling large-scale data applications in memory, for queries that are up to 100 times faster. Apache Spark lets users do batch and interactive queries, real-time streaming, machine learning, and graph processing—all with a common execution model.  

* With support for  Apple FairPlay Streaming (FPS), PlayReady, and Widevine,  Azure Media Services now provides a truly multi-DRM (digital rights management) solution for streaming VOD and live content

 * AWS is “the overwhelming market share leader,” running more than 10 times the infrastructure cloud-computing capacity as the next 14 largest rivals combined.

* Amazon India has 45000 employees in India.

* Microsoft is currently the only vendor to be positioned as a Leader across Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Identity as a Service, Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Server Virtualization, Application Platform as a Service, and Cloud Storage Services, and as a leader across the data platform and productivity services.

* 52% of the BSE Top 100 companies subscribe to the Microsoft Cloud

* Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka's compensation is 935.38 times the median employee remuneration

* PDF documents can be categorised into three different types, depending on the way the file is created. How it was originally created defines whether the content of the PDF (text, images, tables) can be accessed or whether it is “locked” in an image of the page

* Tenda TE-D151 N150 Wireless ADSL2+ Modem Router advertises its ability to withstand lightning surges of up to 6000 volts as one of its features.

* While Flipkart has a Compare feature to help buyers choose from similar products, Amazon has Buying Guides (on topics as diverse as Routers to Sunglasses) to make online shoppers make informed decisions. The reviews on both sites don't help though & seem biased and paid for.

* About 2,000 known species of fireflies inhabit temperate and tropical forests around the world. All of them, as larvae, produce bioluminescent light through a chemical reaction inside their abdomens. But only some continue to flash as grown-up beetles that we know as fireflies. Most species developed their own flash pattern, or language, that they use to attract potential mates, warn predators about their toxicity, advertise a nutritious dowry, or, for some cannibalistic fireflies called femme fatales, mimic other firefly species and lure them in for dinner. A couple of species even flash in synchrony. The device,  Firefly Communicator developed by Joey Stein, a nature enthusiast and technologist,  is a hand-held, battery-operated, plastic thing-a-ma-jig with two buttons that control an LED light & lets you communicate with fireflies - NY Times

* Melons don't continue to ripen once picked, unlike fruits such as apples, bananas etc. which contain ethylene.  Ethylene exposure will activate chitinase (which is a type of enzyme that breaks down chitin, a structural material inside plants), and cause softening of a pineapple but not ripen it. Fruit ripening is usually due to exposure of unsaturated hydrocarbons e.g. ethylene. This phenomenon occurs in fruit known as "climacteric fruits". Well known examples are banana, avocado, tomato, apple, pear, kiwi, to name a few. Avocados and pears must be picked in order to ripen. Pears that are left on the tree will simply rot. 

* Mallika strain of mangoes which contains high-quality fibreless pulp is a hybrid obtained from crossing the Neelam and Dusheri varieties

* Anant Pai,  of India,  was orphaned by the time he was 2 years old. Anant Pai came up with the idea of Amar Chitra Katha (Immortal Picture Stories or Comics) after he found out that the youngsters knew more about Western civilizations than their Indian heritage. Krishna was the first comic book from ACK came out in February 1970. It carries serial number 11. Numbers 1 to 10 were reprints of Western comics. It was authored by Anant Pai & drawn by Ram Waeerkar. The series covers not just popular personalities but the not so well-known as well (Title # 306 - "The Story of a Scientist - Yellapragada Subbarow"). Deservedly, there is a ACK title on India's Walt Disney - Anant Pai

* The pay revision for Central Government employees this year will benefit 50 lakh employees and 58 lakh pensioners and cost the exchequer Rs. 1.02 lakh crore. The average hike in salaries and pensions is 14.2%.

* Under Section 80GGC of the Income Tax Act, which governs political party contributions, an individual is entitled to claim a 100% exemption from his gross total income on all the donations he makes in a financial year to a registered political party or an electoral trust. Parties require to collect name, address and PAN number if donations are over Rs 20,000.

* Air conditioner in a car consumes 8% of the fuel.

* “I start early and I stay late, not for a day, but day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”  - Lionel Messi

* "Speak softly, and carry a big stick." - Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt's attribution of the phrase to "a West African proverb" was seen at the time as evidence of Roosevelt’s "prolific" reading habits, but the claim that it originated in West Africa has been disputed. It has been therefore suggested that he might have coined the phrase himself. "Speaking softly" earned the President enough prestige to even merit a Nobel Peace Prize the following year for his efforts.

This Week I Learned - Week #168

This Week I Learned -

* Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Algorithm Cheat Sheet helps you choose the right algorithm for a predictive analytics model.

* Microsoft Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM) is an operating system image available in the Azure Marketplace with a host of popular data science tools pre-installed and pre-configured.

* Azure SQL Data Warehouse can connect to Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning libraries and Azure Data Lake.

* Mark Zuckerberg covers his laptop camera. The taped-over camera and microphone jack are usually a signal that someone is concerned, perhaps only vaguely, about hackers’ gaining access to his or her devices by using remote-access trojans — a process called “ratting.” (Remote access is not limited to ratters: According to a cache of National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, at least two government-designed programs were devised to take over computer cameras and microphones.) - NY Times

* Based on the data gathered from Trend Micro Mobile App Reputation Service, malicious apps related to Godless malware  threat can be found in prominent app stores, including Google Play. The incident provides further evidence that users can't strictly trust official app stores to stay protected.

* Interesting facts from LinkedIn's Top Attractors list
- Half of CapGemini’s global workforce is based in India.

- Wipro (Western India Palm Refined Oils Limited) is one of India’s largest public companies and the seventh largest IT company in the world. Wipro has 170,000 employees on six continents and generates half of its revenues in the Americas.

- OYO’s founder and CEO, Ritesh Agarwal is just 22 years old and is the first resident Indian to win the Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant from Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.

- Cognizant was ranked #230 in the Fortune 500 list this year, up from #288 in 2015.

- Since 2012, Amazon has offered a program called "Career Choice," where the company pays 95% of tuition for its fulfillment and customer service center employees to take courses in non-work related fields, such as airplane mechanics, nursing, and medical lab technologies.

- Salesforce consulted monks when constructing areas for mindfulness in its offices. (Conservative Hindus swear by vasthu)

* The CEO of Goldman Sachs, a brand that for most of the world is the archetype of “Wall Street bank,” now tells anyone who asks that his company is actually a tech firm (and the fact that a quarter of its workforce is now engineers backs that up

* Dohaz.com does English translations of Hindi lyrics of mostly Bollywood songs

* The average consumption per user on Google's broadband Wi-Fi network at 19 railway stations is 15 times the data (Source: IAMAI Data, Google Internal Data) they would consume on a 3G pack in a day, which today is the most dominant means of access to the Internet in the country. 

* Venezuela has shown that even in a country with the largest oil reserves in the world, it is possible for people to riot because there is not enough food. Economists say years of economic mismanagement — worsened by low prices for oil, the nation’s main source of revenue — have shattered the food supply.

* Natural gas, the kind used to heat homes and fuel gas stoves, is actually odorless. A chemical, called mercaptan, is added to the gas to give it a scent... of rotten eggs. This is done so that if a gas leak occurs, (which could be dangerous) humans can detect even the slightest whiff and report it ASAP

*  Michael Phelps, aged 30,  is the most successful Olympian in history with 18 golds, two silvers and two bronzes in his four trips so far. In 2014, he went into rehab after his second D.U.I. arrest in September 2014 (his first occurred when he was 19) "having no idea what to do with the rest of his life".

* In the book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl argues that we have an incredible power to shape our attitudes and responses to the challenges life presents us and that we inevitably grow thanks to these challenges. We inevitably choose to be who we are...if we choose wisely, we can triumph even in tragedy. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual

* "Stop saying learning to code is easy..."easy" sets folks up for failure and a lifetime of self-doubt" - Scott Hanselman 

This Week I Learned - Week #167

This Week I Learned -

* A web page I built with StupidTable jQuery plugin to sort a table was about three times lighter than the more feature-rich DataTables jQuery plugin

* Nice code sample of an Azure Function that uses a blob trigger, sends the uploaded object to be analysed by Cortana Intelligence and stores the results in a DocumentDB collection.

* It is possible to get data (from a relational database) into and out of a Google Sheet programmatically

* Windows App Studio which makes is easy to build a Windows Phone app without coding now provides a REST API Data Source feature that allows users to integrate apps with third party APIs.

* Power BI is an evolution of the add-ins previously available in Excel: Power Pivot, Power Query, and Power View. You can use Power BI with or without Excel—you no longer are dependent on the version of Microsoft Office installed at your company. Power BI is not just a tool: it is an ecosystem that can integrate existing corporate BI with Self-Service BI - from the Intro of the free ebook Introducing Microsoft Power BI [PDF]

* Downloading MeasureUp practice tests to virtual machines is prohibited.

* Microsoft beat Apple to buy PowerPoint for $14 million (in cash) in 1987, its first significant acquisition. Robert Gaskins helped invent PowerPoint at Forethought Inc. in 1984. After the sale Robert reported directly to Bill Gates, heading up Microsoft’s business unit in Silicon Valley. He managed the growth of PowerPoint to $100 million in annual sales before his retirement in 1993.

* Kaggle hosts competitions provided by industry and academia to find machine learning solutions on different data sets. It also hosts publicly available datasets like the Enron email dataset (354.72 MB) which contains approximately 500,000 emails generated by employees of the Enron Corporation. It was obtained by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission during its investigation of Enron's collapse.

* Active noise canceling actually uses a mic to listen to ambient noise and then plays the inverse sound wave into the headset, "canceling" the ambient noise

* How drivers of cab aggregation services game the system to create artificial scarcity and trigger surge pricing - drivers concentrate in one location, switch off their app, and create artificial scarcity. They use the second phones to keep track on the rising prices. Once the surge begins, they log back again.

* Locally grown food products are becoming more desirable than products sourced from far away...free-range livestock that are fed natural foods may be more desirable than cage-raised livestock that are fed a processed food

* Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) Chief Executive Officer Pawan Agarwal is tasked with improving food testing facilities and working with food businesses to improve manufacturing practices and hygiene standards. He feels it is wrong for Indians to expect international food safety standards as it is impractical

* If you file your return on time, losses of this year can be set-off against gain of forthcoming years. Supreme Court of India rejected a petition of Ms. J Jayalalitha, Chief Minister of the state of Tamil Nadu against Madras High Court order to prosecute her for non filing of return of a firm in which she was a partner.

* A total of 28.7 million individuals filed income tax returns, of which 16.2 million did not pay any tax, leaving only about 12.5 million tax-paying individuals, which is just about 1 percent of the 1.23 billion population of India in the year 2013.  The Prime Minister of India urged tax officials — who are responsible for providing Rs 17 lakh crore to the government — to double the number of taxpayers to 10 crore from 5.43 crore (54.3 million) now. Google throws up 7 crore search results in response to the question 'How to pay tax in India' and 12 crore answers for 'How not to pay tax in India'.

* Labrador retriever is the most popular dog according to American Kennel Club which publishes an annual list of the most popular dog breeds in the United States, based on registration data for the nearly 200 breeds they officially recognize - WSJ

The Dangerous National Obsession with Native Mobile Apps

Native mobile apps are being touted as the best thing since sliced bread by influential, ill-advised digital immigrants.  This is disappointing as they only consider the supposed coolness factor & ignore the minefield of issues that native apps present. Native apps are costlier to build than mobile web applications (websites that work on mobile browsers) and difficult to maintain. Native apps are useful only when they really utilize a smartphone's features for a good cause.

Even as one in three consumers know the mobile apps they are using will collect data about them, yet they download any app that “looked cool”, exposing themselves to privacy risks, according to a survey by cyber security firm Norton. Close to 50 per cent of Indians have over 20 apps on their smartphones, and mobile wallets and e-commerce apps are among the top five applications used.

A study by Norton analysed over 10.8 million apps in over 200 app stores. A third of them (3.3 million) come with malware, which can harm your phone in a variety of ways

Examples of Native Mobile apps promoted by  top political honchos that should have been Mobile Web apps:

* Celebrating the World Health Day, the Health Minister today launched ..the ‘Swasth Bharat Mobile application’ ..and ‘India Fights Dengue’

* Umang (Unified Mobile App for New Age Governance) mobile app which will be available in 12 Indian languages "will give services of central government , state government and local bodies. On a click of button people will be able to scan 1000 services of government. We will start it in December with National student scholarships, women safety and health care", according to the Telecom Minister

work in progress...

A malicious mobile web app is more likely to be exposed faster than a native app by search engines & browsers. The seductiveness of a native app can cost its victims heavily:
Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Home Affairs, Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary also said Pakistan's spy agency was making efforts to trap ex-servicemen in the garb of providing job opportunities and financial aid for spying. "There are reports that Pakistani intelligence agencies are spying on Indian security forces by sending malwares in mobile apps such as Top Gun (game app), mpjunkie (music app), vdjunkey (video app), talking frog (entertainment app)", the minister said - NDTV

This Week I Learned - Week #166

This Week I Learned -

* When a web app goes down, you can visualize data points in a few seconds by using the appLens tool for the Web Apps feature of Azure App Service.

* A Continuous WebJob runs under the scm (kudu) site which, unless "Always On" is enabled, will not start when the site starts

* If you have an application deployed to Azure App Service that's using PHP 5.4, you have to upgrade or use a custom runtime as support for PHP 5.4 ends in October 2016

* India is home to 130 million of Truecaller's 200 million users. Truecaller claims that two out of every three smartphones in India have the Truecaller app. The Truecaller service allows users to find out the owner of any phone number from its database, which is created by crowdsourcing contact details from users’ address books. So, even if you’ve never used the service, your name and number could be on Truecaller’s database, if at least one of your contacts has shared it. The app has an integrated caller ID service which automatically searches for contact details when a user receives a call and also helps with call-blocking. The utility of the service in blocking spam has made Truecaller the third most downloaded app in the country after Facebook and WhatsApp.An average Indian user makes over 12 calls a day and receives more than 10 calls, according to Truecaller’s data. 

* Truecaller's TrueSDK service allows third party apps to verify users with their Truecaller profile and a substantiated phone number, instead of the commonly-used email address.

* Microsoft researchers, Dr. Eric Horvitz, both a computer scientist and a medical doctor by training and Dr. Ryen White, chief technology officer of health intelligence in a recently created Health & Wellness division at Microsoft, and John Paparrizos, a Columbia University graduate student have reported that they could identify from 5 to 15 percent of pancreatic cases with false positive rates of as low as one in 100,000 using health-related data generated from web search histories

* According to the Web Performance tests of the world’s top 50 e-Commerce sites by Pingdom Royal,  78% of the top 100 retail sites had a load time of under 3 seconds, while only 6% took 5 seconds or longer to load. Among the fastest websites the average homepage was 1.70 MB in size, while among the slowest sites the average size was 2.65 MB. According to the HTTP Archive, benchmark for page size as of May 2016, is 2.46MB and overall 42% (21 of 50) of the top 50 sites succeeded in keeping their homepage’s size below it.

* The $2 iOS American-made app Ummo is useful for those preparing for public speaking. With Ummo, you take a prepared speech, tap the microphone icon, wait for the countdown, and then talk. As you speak, the app listens and automatically logs the words, the number of pauses and the use of pesky filler words like … you know, like, right? data like how many words were spoken and how often words were reused. It also displays your pace in words per minute, how loud you were, whether your volume was consistent and so on. The data is presented in easy-to-read graphs, and if you tap on a point in the graph, you can see the words in the speech transcript at that moment. The idea is to learn when in the speech you faltered so you can practice and fix mistakes.

* EMV chip technology is becoming the global standard for credit card and debit card payments. Named after its original developers (Europay, MasterCard and Visa), this technology features payment instruments with embedded microprocessor chips that store and protect cardholder data. Payment data is more secure on a chip-enabled payment card than on a magnetic stripe (magstripe) card, as the former supports dynamic authentication, while the latter does not (the data is static).

* India is the world’s third-largest carbon emitter

* There are 3.5 million Indian-Americans, and they are a highly successful immigrant group with both wealth and deep community connections, making them sought after by politicians. In just one example, some 40 percent of hotel rooms in the United States are owned or managed by Indian-Americans, according to Arun K. Singh, India’s ambassador to the United States - NY Times

* Around the world, 50 types of animals, 3000 types of plants and 2000 species of edible insects are eaten

* India consumes the most Rum in the world, not Jamaica while Whiskey is consumed most in Singapore (not Ireland)

* In The Complete Far Side, Gary Larson says that his greatest disappointment in life occurred when he was at a luncheon and sat across from cartoonist Charles Addams, creator of The Addams Family. Larson was not able to think of a single thing to say to him and deeply regretted the missed opportunity.

* Baron-Cohen, who is based at Cambridge University, and mathematician Ioan James of Oxford University assessed the personality traits of Newton and Einstein to see if they exhibited three key symptoms of Asperger syndrome: obsessive interests, difficulty in social relationships, and problems communicating. Newton seems like a classic case. He hardly spoke, was so engrossed in his work that he often forgot to eat, and was lukewarm or bad-tempered with the few friends he had. If no one turned up to his lectures, he gave them anyway, talking to an empty room. He had a nervous breakdown at 50, brought on by depression and paranoia - New Scientist

This Week I Learned - Week #165

This Week I Learned -

* Azure App Service app cloning can be used to clone apps from one region or one app service environment to another. 

* Active geo-replication in Azure SQL Database provides database-level disaster recovery, cross-region redundancy, readable online secondary databases, and automatic asynchronous replication.

* On June 2, 2016, users from multiple locations faced issues searching for a product on Amazon’s desktop as well as mobile websites. The problem lasted for more than 3 hours.

* Based on interest-based ads policy pages of Facebook and Amazon is that they are both associated with the Digital Advertising Alliance & follow the same modus operandi

* The average age of an InMobian is 28 years

* It takes quite some time to draw a cartoon & color it

* In October 1887, John Boyd Dunlop, a veterinary surgeon, developed the first practical pneumatic or inflatable tyre for his son's tricycle

* Henry Nicholas III cofounded fabless semiconductor firm Broadcom in 1991 from a spare bedroom in a Redondo Beach, Calif. condominium with business partner Henry Samueli, his professor at UCLA to become one of the most financially successful student-teacher partnership of all time. In February 2016 Broadcom finalled a $37 billion cash and stock deal to be acquired by chip firm Avago and, the largest acquisition in technology to date.

* In 1984, less than half of people on The Forbes 400 were self-made; today, 69% of the 400 created their own fortunes. To merit a score of 10, a member of the Forbes 400 (billionaires) would have to have been born into poverty, or lower middle class, and had to overcome obstacles such as being left an orphan, forced to work low-paying jobs, or faced abuse or discrimination.  Oprah Winfrey, who grew up dirt poor, raised alternately by her single mom and her grandmother, and was sexually abused by several male relatives, and George Soros, who survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest, fled Hungary under Communist rule and worked his way through the London School of Economics as a railway porter and a waiter, are prime examples of what a 10 represents.
1: Inherited fortune but not working to increase it: Laurene Powell Jobs
2: Inherited fortune and has a role managing it: Forrest Mars Jr.
3: Inherited fortune and helping to increase it marginally: Penny Pritzker
4: Inherited fortune and increasing it in a meaningful way: Henry Ross Perot Jr.
5: Inherited small or medium-size business and made it into a ten-digit fortune: Donald Trump
6: Hired or hands-off investor who didn’t create the business: Meg Whitman
7: Self-made who got a head start from wealthy parents and moneyed background: Rupert Murdoch
8: Self-made who came from a middle- or upper-middle-class background: Mark Zuckerberg
9: Self-made who came from a largely working-class background; rose from little to nothing: Eddie Lampert
10: Self-made who not only grew up poor but also overcame significant obstacles: Oprah Winfrey

* Teens react differntly to information when they believe it has been endorsed by many or few of their peers, even if these peers are strangers, according to UCLA researchers.This behavior influences posts they may "like" on Facebook

* India Post is one of the prime carriers that Amazon India uses as a delivery channel in over 19,000 pin-codes through 155,000 post-offices which includes a majority of outlets in rural areas across all 35 states and union territories in India.

* Tiger Global Management, the largest investor in Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart, reduced its stake in the rival company Amazon by about two-third in the January-March 2016 quarter. Alibaba has investments in PayTM, Snapdeal, NDTV’s gadget e-commerce venture, Gadgets 360.

* Every year, Indian Railways loses about Rs.1,500 crore in providing 53 concessions as a part of social service obligation, including those for senior citizens, differently-abled and patients. Of the total loss of Rs.1,500 crore on passenger fare concessions, the largest chunk of about Rs.1,000 crore is accounted for by subsidies for senior citizens. The Parliamentary Affairs Ministry pays the full ticket fares for Members of Parliament travelling on railway concession passes - The Hindu

* The automobile industry is the largest constituent of the manufacturing sector in the country's economy which contributes to more than 47% of the manufacturing GDP of the country...it is the fifth largest sector receiving Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the country.

* "There is no doubt that our grievances against the British Empire had a sound basis. As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income." — Manmohan Singh

* Happydent White chewing gum is an Ayurvedic Proprietary Medicine! It lists Neem satva, Pudina satva, Pudina spiceta, Meetha (baking) soda as ingredients and is manufactured by Perfetti Van Melle, a global confectionary conglomerate headquartered in Lainate, Italy and Breda (the Netherlands). Perfetti Van Melle India crossed 1,200 crores in 2010 and 1,600 crores in 2012.

* Hong Kong Phoenix Television political commentator Wu Jun thinks Trump “could in fact be the best president for China,”

* The New York City Marathon sure has come a long way; from 127 entrants in its inaugural year (1970) to being the largest marathon in the world in 2015 with over 49,000 finishers!

* When drinking alcohol, intoxication occurs when it passes from the stomach and intestines to the blood, in a process called absorption. While all types of ingested alcohol are eventually absorbed, the rate of absorption is determined by factors such as biological sex, body weight, type of alcohol, full or empty stomach, speed of consumption, and the use of medications or other drugs in your system. For most people, the body can process approximately 1 to 1.5 ounces (oz.) of pure alcohol an hour, which is the amount contained in a single standard drink (i.e., twelve oz. beer, five oz. of wine, or one and a half oz. of hard liquor). While the choice of alcoholic beverage can vary between people, the rate at which the alcohol is absorbed into the body does not change  - Go Ask Alice!

This Week I Learned - Week #164

This Week I Learned -

* Customers can no longer create Gallery applications like like WordPress, Drupal, and Umbraco in the Azure Classic Portal

* Version 5 of Bing Search API, now part of Microsoft Cognitive Services, is out

* NuGet is the package manager for the Microsoft development platform including .NET. It recently surpassed 1 billion downloads.

* The Swiss-knife-of-a-media-player, VLC Media Player can be used to edit files played within it - you can extract audio out of a video file as well cut a portion of a audio file.

* Over 20 percent of the searches Google gets in the U.S. are now by voice.

* Chromebooks are now the #2 most popular PC operating system in the U.S.

* WhatsApp now gives their users the ability to back up their data to Google Drive and restore it when they setup WhatsApp on a new phone.

* Oracle sought billions in damages from Google over the search engine company’s use of Java programming language in its Android smartphone operating system. Oracle, which obtained Java when it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, had been seeking some $9 billion in damages.

* Only female mosquitoes bite humans. Without regular meals of blood, the females lose their ability to reproduce. Only female mosquitoes make that annoying buzzing sound.

* Most mammals except humans produce their own Vitamin C. Guinea pigs, bats and dry-nosed primates have lost their ability to produce vitamin C.

* Humans do not produce two sets of teeth independently. Both sets are produced at the same time.

* A shark's teeth get replaced continuously

* Subhash Chandra Goel started Zee with just Rs 17 and eventually built the Essel Group into a $3.5 billion behemoth

* N Srinivasan's role in the Indian Premier League (IPL) redefined the term 'involved'. At his peak, Srinivasan was the president of the BCCI, de facto president of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association, chairman elect of the ICC, a member of the IPL governing council, and a team owner of the Chennai Super Kings  - Economic Times

* According to KPMG's latest Global Profiles of the Fraudster report, 32% of the perpetrators in India were in the 26-35 age group, compared with 14% globally. Global trends also indicate that 69% of the fraudsters were in the 36-55 age group. In India, this age group accounts for 59% of fraudsters - Economic Times

* FSSAI caught napping? - After a NGO Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) study claimed that bread contains cancer-causing chemicals, Food regulator Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) today said it has decided to remove potassium bromate from the list of permitted additives while it is examining evidence against potassium iodate before restricting its use. Potassium bromate typically increases dough strength, leads to higher rising and uniform finish to baked products, while potassium iodate is a flour treatment agent.  - Business Standard

Website Review: KSRTC

As more and more Indians get online mainly to take advantage of e-commerce services on the Internet, websites should take responsibility of ensuring that the services they offer are accessible, secure and user-friendly. In my opinion, there should be a national body that  should conduct periodic reviews to certify that sites collecting personally identifiable data or financial details (like credit or debit card info) are accountable for its proper use and meet basic standards. Enforcement of such basic rules is essential as many Indian commercial websites are hardly concerned about their consumers, many of whom can be Internet newbies and gullible.

The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation, a state-owned road transportation company offers online ticketing service for the buses it runs through the website www.ksrtc.in

The site is managed by Radiant Info which proudly claims on its website -
"Our clients include over 50 of the Fortune 500 global corporations.
•India’s first & largest Bus Passenger Reservation System
•Our solutions Issued over 116 Million Bus Seats & Selling Maximum Number of Bus Tickets per day"

The site (which caters to many in India's Silicon Valley) has numerous deficiencies:

• The site doesn't work in Chrome (tested in version 49, not tested in other non-IE browsers). There is no notice alerting users that it doesn't work on popular browsers so this has to be figured by the users through trial and error. Thankfully, they is a separate clunky mobile website that can be used on the desktop as well - http://m.ksrtc.in/
• The webmaster is aware that emails sent to users with Gmail accounts will land in the Spam folder. The maintainer is aware but cannot do anything about this problem.
• Website doesn't use HTTPS/SSL

Desktop version of website doesn't work in Chrome, so try the mobile version in non-IE browsers

Though this is not really related to the website, it has to be mentioned that KSRTC follows a discretionary policy whose fairness is debatable -

"Senior Citizen concession is applicable for residents of Karnataka State only. Residents of other states are not entitled for Senior Citizen concession. Passengers travelling with Senior Citizen concession need to produce any one of the following Original ID proof at the time of journey - Senior citizen identity card issued by KSRTC, Identity card issued by the Physically Challenged and Senior Citizens Welfare Directorate, Driving Licence, Voter ID and Passport, issued by the concerned authority of State of Karnataka."

This Week I Learned - Week #163

This Week I Learned -

* The latest ebook from Microsoft "Understanding Azure - A Guide For Developers" covers newer Azure platform services such as Azure Functions, Azure Service Fabric and Azure IoT application development.

* This interactive Azure Platform Map provides short summaries of Azure Services

* The range of tools that are available now and can be considered while designing, developing and deploying software applications is vast

* Zoho AppCreator lets you create native applications across iOS, Android, and Windows that take complete advantage of your device's hardware.

* Some good folks have created a custom ImportJSON formula for Google Spreadsheets

* Progressive Web Applications take advantage of new technologies to bring the best of mobile sites and native applications to users. Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce site, decided to combine their web presence and native app into a Progressive Web Application - Flipkart Lite

* Pinterest loads 4x faster and uses 8x less data with a speedier version of their mobile web pages using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

* In 2015, the Mountain View-based social network site, LinkedIn agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over its 2012 security breach. The lawsuit suggested that the company violated not just its privacy policy but also an agreement with premium subscribers on keeping their personal information safe.

* Uber can read your smartphone's battery levels. People are more likely to pay for surge if their cell phone is almost out of battery.

* Some annoying Facebook features like auto-playing videos and interest-based ads can thankfully be controlled through Settings

* reCAPTCHA is a bot that can find bots

* 49 execs at Infosys drew over Rs 1 crore

* Caused by the highly contagious varicella-zoster virus, chickenpox is spread through inhalation of droplets dispersed into the air by coughing and sneezing as well as through direct contact with the skin. Because the virus is spread so easily, it’s advised that people affected by chickenpox steer clear of contact with others until the lesions have dried and crusted over into scabs — usually between four to seven days after the initial onset of symptoms. The chickenpox rash is characterized by three distinct phases: first, the initial breakout of pink bumps; next, fluid-filled blisters; and finally, crusts and scabs. Once you’ve reached phase three, you’re typically good to go back to school or work...the great majority of chickenpox infections last no longer than ten days. The best way to accelerate the healing process is to avoid scratching. Try dabbing calamine lotion on itchy spots, and avoid popping fluid-filled blisters. Adults can also experience temporarily relief from itching through the use of an oral or topical antihistamine, such as diphenhydramine. Do not take any medications that contain aspirin, as this may lead to a serious condition called Reye’s syndrome - Go Ask Alice!

* Platinum is rarer than gold, as the amount of platinum mined each year is a small fraction of the amount of gold mined each year. Its price is more volatile than gold's.

* Niobium is used to produce stronger, lighter steel for industrial pipes and aircraft parts. It is mined in only three places on Earth, and the price of every kilogram is seven times higher than copper.

* Sugarcane is a perennial grass that is grown in tropical and subtropical areas

* In Maharashtra , the biggest producer and exporter of the fruit in the country, the best quality pomegranates come from the driest regions of the state such as Solapur and the rain shadow regions of Sangli district.

* Indian Railways generates over 100 Terabytes  (1 Terabyte= 1,000 GB) of data in a year. Rather than building better websites that can also work on mobile browsers, it plans to release the relatively hard to maintain mobile apps.

* India Post has over 1.55 lakh post offices of which more than 1.39 lakh are in the rural areas

* SBI, India’s largest commercial bank, is still not among the top 50 banks in the world. It is ranked only 67th among the global banks. For an economy such as India’s — the fastest growing large economy in the world — the domestic banking industry is fragmented.

* The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 (commissioned in 1632) at a cost estimated at the time to be around 32 million rupees, which in 2015 would be approximately 52.8 billion rupees (US$827 million).  It houses the tomb of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Mumtaz during the birth of their fourteenth child.  Aurangzeb, her sixth child, jailed Shah Jahan soon after the Taj Mahal's completion

* Voot is latest among video streaming sites like ErosNow, Hotstar, Spuul that now serve movies for free or through subscription. Voot works in IE 11 but not in Chrome as the content is DRM protected