Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Azure M class VMs: up to 3 TB memory

Azure offers market leading support for SAP HANA workloads | Blog | Microsoft Azure

"SAP HANA on Azure includes a new set of large instance types that delivers the most powerful SAP certified public cloud infrastructure to handle the largest SAP HANA workloads.

4 x Intel® Xeon® Processor E7-8890 v3, 3 TB RAM, 12 TB Storage"
Azure: The best public cloud for SAP workloads gets more powerful | MilTech

Microsoft and SAP Partner for HANA on Azure

Windows VM sizes in Azure | Microsoft Docs

Windows Azure VM sizes - Memory | Microsoft Docs

Monday, May 29, 2017

Mobile AI: "Mobile first to AI first"

ARM’s new processors are designed to power the machine-learning machines - The Verge
"ML plus AI, AR, and VR — ARM is taking on the full set of trendy initialisms"
"ARM is responsible for designing the processor architecture of practically every mobile device"

Google Announces Tensorflow Lite: A Neural Network Library for Mobile Phones
"Google, announced a new version of Tensorflow optimised for mobile phones.
This new library, called Tensorflow Lite, would enable developers to run their artificial intelligence applications in real time on the phones of users... the library is designed to be fast and small while still enabling state-of-the-art techniques. It will be released later this year as part of the open source Tensorflow project."

Google I/O Keynote (Google I/O '17) - YouTube

Waiting for the new new thing | TechCrunch

In the AI wars, Microsoft now has the clearer vision | TechCrunch



Microsoft Build 2017: Microsoft AI – Amplify human ingenuity - The Official Microsoft Blog

Faculty Summit 2017: The Edge of AI - Microsoft Research

Waiting for the new new thing | TechCrunch
"It’s like 1995, when everyone in tech knew the internet was going to be huge, utterly revolutionary — but not quite yet. Or the first iPhone demo, when those with eyes to see recognized that this would change everything — in a few years. Like that… times five.

It’s as if we’re standing on a beach, knowing that multiple simultaneous tsunamis have been set in motion on the opposite side of this ocean. One or two of them may falter and vanish beneath the waves, but at least a few of them will upend everything, when they hit."


The New New Thing - Wikipedia

Valley Guy @ NYTimes
"Michael Lewis's profile of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Jim Clark is a window on late-20th-century capitalism."




Sunday, May 28, 2017

book: Grid


Interesting book, very relevant with increase of solar and wind energy generation.

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future: Gretchen Bakke: 9781608196104: Amazon.com: Books

podcast interview with the author:
Triangulation 298 Gretchen Bakke


Bill Gates on Twitter: The Grid by Gretchen Bakke is a book about mundane stuff that is actually fascinating


UWP: Windows Template Studio

Microsoft is investing in Windows 10 "Universal Windows Platform" (UWP),
but making UWP applications is mostly a manual process, no much help from "wizards".
It is much easier to make old style WinForms apps, or Windows 8 apps.
Even Visual Studio 2017 comes only with "blank template" for UWP.
With  this new open source templates project this may improve.

video: Windows Template Studio - Build 2017 - Windows app development @channel9

Announcing Windows Template Studio - Building Apps for WindowsBuilding Apps for Windows

"...next evolution in your File → New Universal Windows Platform app in Visual Studio –
Windows Template Studio" @ GitHub



Saturday, May 27, 2017

Android Go for += billion

xlab/android-go: The android-go project provides a platform for writing native Android apps in Go programming language.

“Android Go” will strip Android down for ultra-low-budget phones | Ars Technica

Android Go is a lightweight version of Android for crazy cheap phones | TechCrunch

"There are 2 billion Android devices currently in use around the world. Google is now thinking about the next 2 billion devices. In order to do this, Google has a new project called Android Go. It’s a lightweight version of the upcoming version of Android (Android O) with optimized apps and Play Store."

Google is taking another shot at budget Android phones with Android Go - The Verge

AI HW: Google TPU vs Nvidia GPU

Google is giving a cluster of 1,000 Cloud TPUs to researchers for free | TechCrunch
"At the end of Google I/O, the company unveiled a new program to give researchers access to the company’s most advanced machine learning technologies for free. The TensorFlow Research Cloud program, as it will be called, will be application based and open to anyone conducting research, rather than just members of academia."

"Musical Intelligence" (not AI) Composer Program

Emily Howell - Wikipedia


"Emily Howell is a computer program created by UC Santa Cruz professor of music David Cope.[1]Emily Howell is an interactive interface that "hears" feedback from listeners, and builds its own musical compositions from a source database, derived from a previous composing program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI).[2] Cope attempts to “teach” the program by providing feedback so that it can cultivate its own "personal" style.[1] The software appears to be based on latent semantic analysis.[3] Emily Howell’s first album[4] was released in February 2009 by Centaur Records (CRC 3023). Titled From Darkness, Light"

Thursday, May 25, 2017

GVFS: Git Virtual File System (by Microsoft)

Virtual File System may be an excellent solution for cloud based "drives" in general.

Microsoft/GVFS: Git Virtual File System @ GitHub (MIT license)

"GVFS stands for Git Virtual File System. GVFS virtualizes the file system beneath your git repo so that git and all tools see what appears to be a normal repo, but GVFS only downloads objects as they are needed. GVFS also manages git's sparse-checkout to ensure that git operations like status, checkout, etc., can be as quick as possible because they will only consider the files that the user has accessed, not all files in the repo"
Microsoft Has Moved the Windows Code Repo to Git @ InfoQ

"Windows repo is about 300GB, with ~3.5M files, 4,000 engineers, and ~1,700 daily builds across 440 branches. When one wants to clone a Git repo, he has to download everything, making the operation slow for large projects. The solution to the problem was virtualization, introducing the Git Virtual File System (GVFS). With GVFS Git behaves like all resources are local, but actually the system monitors user’s actions and brings some of the resources over the network when required. Using a virtual file system driver involved few changes to git.exe."





"A virtual file system (VFS) or virtual filesystem switch is an abstraction layer on top of a more concrete file system. The purpose of a VFS is to allow client applications to access different types of concrete file systems in a uniform way."

Google Jamboard vs Microsoft Surface Hub

"appliance whiteboard" vs "very large touchscreen computer"
($5K vs $9K)

Google made a $5,000 whiteboard — and it’s weirdly fun - The Verge




Google’s Jamboard is the cutest collaborative whiteboard you’ll ever touch - The Verge

Microsoft announces 84-inch Surface Hub tailored for Windows 10 - The Verge

Microsoft seems to be serious about HW...

New Surface Pro Vs Surface Pro 4: What's The Difference?

Microsoft's new Surface Pro has 13.5 hours of battery life and LTE option - The Verge

Buy Surface Pro - Microsoft Store


Microsoft is placing a big bet on its new Surface family - The Verge


Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Kotlin: Android Programming Language

Kotlin Programming Language

Kotlin Is Now a Supported Android Language @ InfoQ
"Google has added Kotlin to the short list of programming languages supported for Android development, which are Java and C++. Among reasons for choosing Kotlin, Google mentioned it being "concise, expressive, and designed to be type- and null-safe" and also "many Android developers have already found that Kotlin makes development faster and more fun." Another important reason was that Kotlin is a language fully interoperable with Java and running on the JVM."


GitHub Desktop on Electron & TypeScript

GitHub Rewrites its Desktop Client Using Electron @ InfoQ
joins Atom, VS Code, Slack and many other apps, to reduce cost and complexity supporting multiple native platforms.

GitHub Desktop | Simple collaboration from your desktop

Screenshot of GitHub Desktop running on Windows

javascript - How does Electron differ from Cordova ? How do I implement/wrap Cordova APIs to use NodeJS APIs in electron? - Stack Overflow
  • "Cordova apps are web apps packaged as mobile apps with special API
  • Electron apps are Node apps with windows that contain web apps"

XAML Standard: UWP + Xamarin Forms

Microsoft Standardizes XAML Across UWP and Xamarin @ InfoQ

"Announced during BUILD 2017, Microsoft has made public the first draft of the XAML Standard, a markup dialect meant to unify how user interface elements are defined.
Microsoft wants to unify some of the existing XAML dialects, planning to create version 1.0 some time later this year. After that, they plan on enhancing UWP and Xamarin.Forms (iOS, Android) to support the standard, making it possible to share UI definitions between the frameworks."



XAML was originally crated for WPF, but WPF is not part of unification plan. Instead, suggestion is to try converting WPF to UWP first.

All this is not even remotely close to usability of original visual controls and original Visual Basic.
There is just too much complexity now, since platforms are different. It is amazing that it works. And C# is a productive language and tool-set.

Web controls are also coming, in browsers, as well as in frameworks and libraries like React and Angular. Web and native can even be mixed by React Native, Appcelerator Titanium or Telerik NativeScript. The only possible common element seems to be JavaScript... Then there are "bots" with new class of text and voice based UI.

Ideally, extensible semantic web based controls, and TypeScript-like JavaScript could enable a whole new class of modular, transform-able & compose-able apps/services. Technically this is possible even now, just not simple.


Tuesday, May 23, 2017

IoT: GE "Geneva Assistant"


GE Appliances has announced three new channels—washer, dryer and dishwasher—to IFTTT, making them the first appliance manufacturer to have its entire appliance suite on the platform. (Photo: GE)

GE is IoT enabling most of their kitchen appliances, and unifying communication with them by a common "assistant" that they call "Geneva", to join Amazon's Alexa (and Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana etc).

Hopefully they put a serious effort in securing those appliances... Expert's recommendation: keep your IoT appliances of separate WiFi from your computers.

Episode 112: Google’s IoT Cloud takes on Amazon and Azure – IoT Podcast – Internet of Things

Kitchen Appliances, Refrigerators, Dishwashers | GE Appliances

The Smart Kitchen Summit

IoT Made Simple: GE First Manufacturer to Have Suite of Connected Appliances on IFTTT | Business Wire


GE Partners With Amazon For Connected Kitchen - HomeWorld Business

"The Alexa skill built for GE and Monogram appliances is called “Geneva,” and Alexa device owners can use and control their GE appliances, for example, by saying, “Alexa, tell Geneva I want hot water,” which will tell the connected refrigerator to get hot water ready, the company said.

Monday, May 22, 2017

AWS Chatbot Challenge: $10K

AWS Chatbot Challenge
"Build a chatbot that can engage your users with lifelike conversational interactions using Amazon Lex and AWS Lambda. Enter your bot to the AWS Chatbot Challenge for a chance to win prizes"
Serverless Bot for Slack

fast.ai: Learning AI, ML, DL, DS

fast.ai · Making neural nets uncool again

Practical Deep Learning For Coders—18 hours of lessons for free

"This 7-week course is designed for anyone with at least a year of coding experience, and some memory of high-school math. You will start with step one—learning how to get a GPU server online suitable for deep learning—and go all the way through to creating state of the art, highly practical, models for computer vision, natural language processing, and recommendation systems. There are around 20 hours of lessons, and you should plan to spend around 10 hours a week for 7 weeks to complete the material."

A unique path to deep learning expertise · fast.ai

"If you’re considering investing time in studying deep learning with fast.ai, then we want to give you all the information you need to decide whether you could benefit from this content. We believe that nearly everybody who can code should be able to benefit. For a start, the financial opportunities are extraordinary – there is a pricetag of $5 million-$10 million per deep learning expert for acquisitions in the Bay area. Much more importantly, deep learning experts can help to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges in nearly every area."

HOW TO SET UP YOUR AWS DEEP LEARNING SERVER

Download Anaconda Now! | Continuum

Bash on Ubuntu on Windows - Installation Guide
>pip install awscli
>aws configure
> ssh ...
$ nvidia-smi
$ jpyther notebook
web browser...
: import theano
: import keras

Lesson 1: Practical Deep Learning for Coders - YouTube

fastai/courses: fast.ai Courses @ GitHub

Jeremy Howard (entrepreneur) - Wikipedia

The wonderful and terrifying implications of computers that can learn | Jeremy Howard - YouTube

Providing a Good Education in Deep Learning · fast.ai

Neural networks and deep learning
A visual proof that neural nets can compute any function

A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockhart (PDF)
"...a nightmare world where children are not allowed to listen to or play music until they have spent over a decade mastering music notation and theory, spending classes transposing sheet music into a different key. In art class, students study colors and applicators, but aren’t allowed to actually paint until college. Sound absurd? This is how math is taught–we require students to spend years doing rote memorization, and learning dry, disconnected “fundamentals” that we claim will pay off later, long after most of them quit the subject"

TOP 25 QUOTES BY PAUL LOCKHART | A-Z Quotes


Intro to Machine Learning Course | Udacity

scikit-learn: machine learning in Python — scikit-learn 0.18.1 documentation

link from:

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence with Edaena Salinas Jasso on the Hanselminutes Technology Podcast: Fresh Air for Developers



Sunday, May 21, 2017

Azure Cosmos DB Graph APIs, Microsoft Graph API, SQL Graph

Introduction to Azure Cosmos DB Graph APIs | Microsoft Docs
"Azure Cosmos DB can be queried using Apache TinkerPop's graph traversal language, Gremlin, and integrates with other TinkerPop-compatible graph systems."
Gremlin, graph, and Azure Cosmos DB

Sample database showing persons, devices, and interests

Build an Azure Cosmos DB .NET application using the Graph API | Microsoft Docs
Visual graph explorer in Data Explorer in the Azure portal


Not to be confused with "Microsoft Graph API" that is superset of Azure AD and O365 APIs.
Overview - Documentation - Microsoft Graph
An image showing the primary resources and relationships that are part of the graph


Also not to be confused with new Graph features in SQL Server 2017
SQL Graph Architecture | Microsoft Docs

sql-graph-architecture

person-friends-tables



It will be interesting to see performance comparisons with native Graph databases like Neo4j
Usually to keep high performance graph databases run on single node with very large memory...
Microsoft so far implemented Gremlin language, while Neo4j has very good Cypher query language.

moon rockets: LEGO; China & EU

LEGO Ideas - Blog - Introducing LEGO® Ideas 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V
"You'll be able to find the 1 meter high (approximately 1:110 scale) icon of space exploration in stores from the 1st of June, 2017 for a recommended retail price of just USD 119.99 / EURO 119.99 / GBP 109.99. With 1969 LEGO elements the 21309 NASA Apollo Saturn V rockets its way into LEGO Ideas history as the tallest LEGO Ideas set, as well as the one containing most elements. "

Chinese and European space agencies in talks to build a moon base | TechCrunch
"...working together to build a human-occupied “moon village” from which both agencies can potentially launch Mars missions, conduct research, and possibly explore commercial mining and tourism projects.
...
China’s upcoming projects in space include a mission to collect samples from the moon via an uncrewed craft by the end of this year, and to also launch an exploratory mission to the far side of the moon next year, with the similar aim of returning samples for study."




Open Data: Business & Culture

What Facebook learned when it opened its data to every employee - O'Reilly Media
"Facebook was one of the first companies to give its employees access to data at scale...All of the major web companies soon followed suit. Being able to access data through SQL became a mandatory skill for those in business functions at organizations like Google and LinkedIn."

Data Driven: Creating a Data Culture - O'Reilly Media
free ebook...describe the importance of democratizing data—making sure that employees who might need data have access to it, and making sure they have the resources to interpret it
Data Driven
DJ Patil - Wikipedia
Former Chief Data Scientist of the United States Office of Science and Technology Policy

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Software => AI => $1T

Nvidia CEO: Software Is Eating the World, but AI Is Going to Eat Software - MIT Technology Review
"(Nvidia CEO) Jensen Huang predicts that health care and autos are going to be transformed by artificial intelligence.
...
Tech companies and investors have recently been piling money into artificial intelligence—and plenty has been trickling down to chip maker Nvidia. The company’s revenues have climbed as it has started making hardware customized for machine-learning algorithms and use cases such as autonomous cars."

Software is still eating the world | TechCrunch
"Marc Andreessen penned his famous “Why Software Is Eating the World” essay in The Wall Street Journal five years ago. Today, the idea that “every company needs to become a software company” is considered almost a cliché....
Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.”




"More and more major businesses and industries are being run on software and delivered as online services—from movies to agriculture to national defense. Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not."

"I am telling you, the world's first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives and applies it in ways we never thought of," Cuban said."

The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI - MIT Technology Review



Microsoft Bot Framework:Adaptive Cards

Microsoft/AdaptiveCards: A new way for developers to exchange card content in a common and consistent way.

"Adaptive Cards are a new way for developers to exchange card content in a common and consistent way."

Adaptive Cards (examples)

Adaptive Cards (JSON)

Friday, May 19, 2017

Azure Cosmos DB Data Explorer

Azure Cosmos DB Data Explorer (preview) available in the Azure portal
"Data Explorer, now in preview, provides a rich and unified developer experience for inserting, querying, and managing Azure Cosmos DB data within the Azure portal and the Emulator.
Data Explorer consolidates many of the database management tools available in the Azure Cosmos DB portal, such as Document Explorer, Query Explorer, and Script Explorer, so that they can all be done without switching blades." 



Azure Cosmos DB

security: 2 factor authentication, no password (Microsoft Accounts)

Microsoft turns two-factor authentication into one-factor by ditching password | Ars Technica

"... for Microsoft accounts, Redmond is offering something new: getting rid of that first password and using just the phone to authenticate. With phone-based authentication enabled, after entering your Microsoft Account e-mail address, you'll receive an alert on your phone. From that alert, you can either approve or reject the authentication attempt—no password necessary." 




link from
Microsoft Cloud Show - Microsoft Azure News & Build Plans - Win a Surface Book or XBOX!

Microsoft meets expectations with $23.6B in revenue, Azure revenue up 93% | TechCrunch
"Cloud: Total revenue from Microsoft’s “Intelligent Cloud” business hit $6.8 billion this quarter. Microsoft expects its cloud-computing business to hit a $20 billion run rate by 2018. 
...Azure revenue was up 93 percent,"



Thursday, May 18, 2017

Microsoft AI

Microsoft AI | Products, Services, Research | Artificial Intelligence

AI platform

"Innovate and accelerate with powerful tools and services that bring AI to every developer."
Business solutions


"Drive your digital transformation with accelerators, solutions, and practices to empower your organization with AI."
Intelligent apps


"Experience the intelligence built into Microsoft products and services you use every day."
Digital assistant


"Learn how Cortana is helping you stay on top of it all so you can focus on what matters most."

Google I/O 2017: "Mobile first => AI first"

Google I/O 2017

Google I/O 2017 - All Sessions - YouTube
  • "Mobile first => AI first"
  • voice and vision as UI
  • "Google Lens" (in Google Assistant and Photos first)
    • computers understanding images and videos
  • Re-thinking computer architecture for "AI-first data centers"
    • TPU used in all Google products now (HW accelerated AI)
    • Next-gen "cloud TPU" optimized for training and inference
    • now available on GCE (Google Compute Engine) 
    • Google.ai
      • Tools
      • Research
        • "AutoML": neural nets optimizing neural nets 
      • Applied AI
        • Google search
        • Google assistant
        • "AutoDraw"

Google’s latest platform play is artificial intelligence, and it’s already winning - The Verge


Google isn’t building the ultimate VR headset. It’s setting the foundation for one - The Verge


Wednesday, May 17, 2017

free ebooks: Git

Git | DevFreeBooks (5)

Teaching Computer Graphics with WebGL

The Case for Teaching Computer Graphics with WebGL: A 25-Year Perspective | IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Magazine
"While OpenGL has been the standard API for teaching computer graphics, the author argues that WebGL is the version best suited for an introductory course in computer graphics."

Release Year
OpenGL 1.0 1992
...
WebGL 1.0 2011
OpenGL 4.5 2014
Vulcan 1.0 2016
WebGL 2.0 2016



Tuesday, May 16, 2017

ASP.NET Core 2.0 - .NET 4.x

Evolving platforms is difficult. Breaking changes in particular are challenge.
Naming is also a challenge. A big challenge.
Google moved from Angular.js to Angular 2.0 to just "Angular" (version 4, skipping 3).
Good look searching for compatible code.

Microsoft's ASP.NET is based on .NET (1, 2, 3, 4... )
ASP.NET Core 1.x is based on .NET Core as well as on .NET 4.x.
Now ASP.NET 2.x is based on only .NET Core 2.0.
So switch to .NET Core one must, period.

At least it will be fast, and there i a good reason for calling it 2.0, it is a breaking change.

ASP.NET Core 2.0 Drops Support for .NET Framework 4.x @InfoQ

ASP.NET Core 2 Preview Released  @InfoQ

BUILD 2017 Conference Rollup for .NET Developers - Scott Hanselman

Introducing ASP.NET Core 2.0 | Build 2017 | Channel 9



Managing dotnet Core 2.0 and dotnet Core 1.x versioned SDKs on the same machine - Scott Hanselman


Google’s IoT Core service

Google’s new IoT Core service helps businesses manage their IoT data and devices | TechCrunch

"Google Cloud launched a new Internet of Things management service today called Google Cloud IoT Core that provides a way for companies to manage IoT devices and process data being generated by those devices.

A transportation or logistics firm, for example, could use this service to collect data from its vehicles and combine it with other information like weather, traffic and demand to place the right vehicles at the right place at the right time."

Saturday, May 13, 2017

cloud: FPGA: Azure, AWS

Inside the Microsoft FPGA-based configurable cloud | Build 2017 | Channel 9

"Microsoft has been deploying FPGAs in every Azure server over the last several years, creating a cloud that can be reconfigured to optimize a diverse set of applications and functions. This configurable cloud provides more efficient execution than CPUs for many scenarios without the inflexibility of fixed-function ASICs at scale. Today, Microsoft is already using FPGAs for Bing search ranking, deep neural network (DNN) evaluation, and software defined networking (SDN) acceleration. Azure’s FPGA-based accelerated networking reduces inter-virtual machine latency by up to 10x while freeing CPUs for other tasks."



The moonshot that succeeded: How Bing and Azure are using an AI supercomputer in the cloud - Next at Microsoft

Programmable chips turning Azure into a supercomputing powerhouse | Ars Technica

EC2 F1 Instances with FPGAs – Now Generally Available | AWS Blog

Mark Russinovich (@markrussinovich) | Twitter

fpgas_for_dummies_ebook.pdf @ Altera (Intel)

Resource Center - Overview

design.altera.com/New2FPGAeBook

Friday, May 12, 2017

AI gadget: Cortana "Invoke" smart speaker (Microsoft+Samsung)

The Invoke Smart Speaker Brings Microsoft’s Cortana AI to Your Living Room | WIRED


Microsoft to take on Amazon's Alexa and Google Home - CNET

Microsoft's 'Me Too' Smart Speaker - Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) | Seeking Alpha
Microsoft's Invoke, powered by Cortana and built by Samsung

Harman Kardon Invoke – Voice Activated Speaker with Cortana
COMING FALL 2017

Harman Kardon’s Invoke speaker is a Cortana-powered take on an Amazon Echo - The Verge

Cortana's coming to your living room via HP, Intel partnerships | PCWorld

Microsoft "Fluent Design"

Microsoft’s design video features a completely redesigned desktop and email app - The Verge

Microsoft introduced its new Fluent Design System at Build, which it believes will usher the company into the future with a whole new look and feel for its products. The design language focuses on five areas: light, depth, motion, material, and scale.






NVIDIA Volta for AI & Toyota autonomous driving

NVIDIA Goes Beyond The GPU For AI With Volta

NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPU/Tensor Processor

Toyota is using Nvidia’s supercomputer to bring autonomous driving to the masses - The Verge

Nvidia announces ‘supercomputer’ for self-driving cars at CES 2016 - The Verge

"A power of 150 Mac Book Pro computers in a car, supercomputer size of a lunchbox"

"Humans are the least reliable part of the car"

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Tesla's Solar Roofs "Infinity Warranty"

Elon Musk: Tesla's Solar Roofs Will Be Cheaper Than Regular Roofs & Have "Infinity Warranty"

Elon Musk: Tesla’s Solar Roofs Will Be Cheaper Than Regular Roofs & Have “Infinity Warranty”

Tesla Solar | Tesla

"Made with tempered glass, Solar Roof tiles are more than three times stronger than standard roofing tiles. That's why we offer the best warranty in the industry - the lifetime of your house, or infinity, whichever comes first. Watch our hail test video to see how we take durability to a whole new level."

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Microsoft Azure IoT Edge

Azure IoT Edge | Microsoft Azure

Microsoft introduces Azure IoT Edge for connected industrial applications

Microsoft Azure IoT Edge

Microsoft Ups The Ante In Enterprise IoT and Edge Computing

Azure IoT Suite

ebooks, samples:.NET Application Architecture

.NET Application Architecture Guidance @ Microsoft
Cartoon style drawing of laptops and tablets connected to racks of servers. The laptops and tablets are held by hands extending from clouds.
.NET Architectural Components | Microsoft Docs

All .NET Architectural Components Together

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Keynote - Windows Build 2017 - Windows app development

Azure goes database crazy with one new NoSQL and two new SQL services | Ars Technica

With Cosmos DB, Microsoft wants to build one database to rule them all | TechCrunch

Introduction to Azure Cosmos DB | Microsoft Docs
"Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's globally distributed, multi-model database. With the click of a button, Azure Cosmos DB enables you to elastically and independently scale throughput and storage across any number of Azure's geographic regions. It offers throughput, latency, availability, and consistency guarantees with comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs), something no other database service can offer.
...
Azure Cosmos DB contains a write optimized, resource governed, schema-agnostic database engine that natively supports multiple data models: key-value, documents, graphs, and columnar. It also supports many APIs for accessing data including MongoDB, DocumentDB SQL, Gremlin (preview), and Azure Tables (preview), in an extensible manner."Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's globally distributed database service with elastic scale out, guaranteed low latency, five consistency models, and comprehensive guaranteed SLAs

Microsoft introduces Azure Cosmos DB, a new database with a broad money-back guarantee - GeekWire

Microsoft debuts Azure Cosmos DB, a superset of its DocumentDB service | ZDNet

Foundations of Azure Cosmos DB with Dr. Leslie Lamport, short - YouTube

Azure Cosmos DB: API for MongoDB | Build 2017 | Channel 9

Introducing Azure Cosmos DB

CosmosDB | Build 2017 | Channel 9



Microsoft Build 2017: "Intelligent Cloud + Edge"

Microsoft Build 2017 - Microsoft Build 2017: Session Catalog

Build 2017 | Channel 9

Microsoft Build 2017: what to expect from this week’s conference - The Verge

​Microsoft Build 2017: The lessons learned on Windows, Azure, Dynamics | ZDNet

The takeaway from Build 2017: Competitive businesses must start developing for the cloud... or else - TechRepublic

​Microsoft Build 2017: The lessons learned on Windows, Azure, Dynamics | ZDNet



Watch Microsoft's Build 2017 day two keynote right here!

Microsoft Build 2017: the latest news and announcements from the conference - The Verge

Microsoft's new plan for mobile relevance: Use Windows to make other devices better | ZDNet

Monday, May 08, 2017

Google’s “Fuchsia” OS

Google’s “Fuchsia” smartphone OS dumps Linux, has a wild new UI | Ars Technica


"Unlike Android and Chrome OS, Fuchsia is not based on Linux—it uses a new, Google-developed microkernel called "Magenta." With Fuchsia, Google would not only be dumping the Linux kernel, but also the GPL: the OS is licensed under a mix of BSD 3 clause, MIT, and Apache 2.0. Dumping Linux might come as a bit of a shock, but the Android ecosystem seems to have no desire to keep up with upstream Linux releases. 
...
Fuchsia is impossible to talk about without mentioning a hundred other related projects that also have code names. The interface and apps are written using Google's Flutter SDK, a project that actually produces cross-platform code that runs on Android and iOS. Flutter apps are written in Dart, Google's reboot of JavaScript which, on mobile, has a focus on high-performance, 120fps apps. It also has a Vulkan-based graphics renderer called "Escher" that lists "Volumetric soft shadows" as one of its features, which seems custom-built to run Google's shadow-heavy "Material Design" interface guidelines.
Armadillo, the Fuchsia System UI..."


containers: Docker Moby Project, LinuxKit

Microsoft Cloud Show - Office 365, GCP, AWS and DockerCon News + Client Side Dev with Mark Rackley

DockerCon 2017 - YouTube

Introducing Moby Project: a new open-source project to advance the software containerization movement - Docker Blog
"The Moby Project is a new open-source project to advance the software containerization movement and help the ecosystem take containers mainstream. It provides a library of components, a framework for assembling them into custom container-based systems and a place for all container enthusiasts to experiment and exchange ideas."Moby Project

Announcing LinuxKit: A Toolkit for building Secure, Lean and Portable Linux Subsystems - Docker Blog
"LinuxKit includes the tooling to allow building custom Linux subsystems that only include exactly the components the runtime platform requires. All system services are containers that can be replaced, and everything that is not required can be removed. All components can be substituted with ones that match specific needs. It is a kit, very much in the Docker philosophy of batteries included but swappable. Today, onstage at Dockercon 2017 we opensourced LinuxKit at https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit."




Since Windows already supports some Linux APIs (Windows Subsystem for Linux), it is possible that it will be extended to be able to run "native" Linux containers on Windows. And if essential Windows APIs are included in "Linux subsystem for Windows (Wine)" some Windows containers may be able to run on Linux containers!

web components: SharePoint Framework

SharePoint Framework reaches general availability—build and deploy engaging web parts today - Office Blogs

"The SharePoint Framework (SPFx) is a page and web part model that provides full support for client-side SharePoint development, easy integration with SharePoint data and support for open source tooling. With the SharePoint Framework, you can use modern web technologies and tools in your preferred development environment to build productive experiences and apps on SharePoint that are responsive and mobile-ready from day one!

For more details, be sure to check out our full blog post announcing the SharePoint Framework last May."



podcast discussion about SPFx


Sunday, May 07, 2017

TED interview with Elon Musk

Elon Musk: The future we're building -- and boring | TED Talk | TED.com

The future we're building -- and boring | Elon Musk - YouTube



2-4 new "Gigafactories" to be announced later this year...

Intel Optane Memory (cache, 10x faster than SSD)

Intel Optane Memory 32GB Review - Faster Than Lightning | PC Perspective
"The big deal about Optane is that it uses XPoint Memory, which has fast-as-lightning (faster, actually) response times of less than 10 microseconds. Compare this to the fastest modern NAND flash at ~90 microseconds, and the differences are going to add up fast."View Full Size

Amazon.com: Intel Optane Memory Module 16 GB PCIe M.2 80mm MEMPEK1W016GAXT: Computers & Accessories
$54 (32GB: $76)
works only with 7th Gen Intel Corei3 processor and above

podcast: This Week in Computer Hardware 412 Opting for Optane

Saturday, May 06, 2017

IoT with Azure Services

End-to-End IoT with Azure Services | Coding4Fun Blog | Channel 9

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Create an End-to-end IOT Scenario with Azure Services – gsamant

Microsoft Services

Business of Business "Hybrid Books"

Don't blindly trust business books "authors"... many of those books are product of "ghostwriting service". When there is a benefit, somebody will provide a service and market it.

The latest "twist" on this are "hybrid books", where "author" is interviewed and the transcript is then professionally edited and published and promoted as a book, for a fee.

With exponential progress of AI, voice recognition and natural language understanding (and AI editing) becoming production ready, publishing can soon become an automated with cloud/mobile/web apps... And it can be auto-customized for different markets and published in many languages at once... unlimited possibilities :)

The (Booming, Misunderstood, Game-Changing, Potentially Manipulative) Business of Business Books @ Entrepreneur Magazine

"Entrepreneurs can charge 40 to 50 percent more in speaking fees if they have a book, and speakers who previously appeared for free can now command $10,000 per talk.
...
For a fee, hybrid publishers promise solutions to this problem. Advantage charges $25,000 to $30,000"
...
“What matters is the quality of the idea, not the person who actually writes down the letters,” he says. “Jesus Christ never wrote a word down in his life, but he was responsible for the best-selling book of all time.”
...
Book in a Box offers an “Amazon best-seller program,”
It does this by getting a bunch of readers to give the book good reviews. Then it runs free and $0.99 promotions of the book on Amazon, while blasting out the Amazon link to various mailing lists. This, the company says, usually results in anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 people downloading the book in a short period of time, thereby catapulting it to a high ranking."


Typing Test twice, once with Voice Recognition - Scott Hanselman
We are abstracting on the shoulders of giants - Scott Hanselman

Translate text and voice calls | Skype Translator | Skype

"...online (voice-to-voice) translator currently works in 8 languages, and text translator is available in more than 50 languages for instant messaging.
Skype Translator uses machine learning. So the more you use it, the better it gets..."


Skype Translator Demo Philadelphia MTC - YouTube