quote: "A complex system that works...evolved from a simple system that worked"

Mentioned by Dr. Werner Vogels, AWS CTO on AWS re:invent 2017

live.awsevents.com

suggesting to use microservices and managed services to build reliable systems.

John Gall (author) - Wikipedia

Gall's Law is a rule of thumb for systems design from Gall's book Systemantics: How Systems Really Work and How They Fail. It states:

"A complex system that works is invariably found to
have evolved from a simple system that worked. 

A complex system designed from scratch never works
and cannot be patched up to make it work.
You have to start over with a working simple system." 

– John Gall (1975, p.71)

John Gall - Wikiquote

 Systemantics – Cristiano Rastelli – Medium

IoT State of the Union @ AWS re:invent 2017

AWS re:invent 2017: IoT State of the Union (IOT210) - YouTube



What’s New at AWS – Cloud Innovation & News

AI cameras: Google Clips vs AWS DeepLens

"smart" like in smartphone does not count anymore... It has to be "AI inside" :-)

Amazon’s AWS DeepLens is an AI camera for developers | TechCrunch

"Amazon introduced its AWS DeepLens camera. The device functions similarly to Google’s recently announced Clips camera, utilizing AI to grab better shots, only Amazon’s version is targeted specifically at developers... The video camera was designed as a way to help developers up to speed with Amazon’s various forays into AI, IoT and server less computing..."

Amazon SageMaker – Accelerating Machine Learning | AWS News Blog

Amazon unveils AI camera and machine learning tools to take on Google - The Verge

Google Clips is a new $249 smart camera that you can wear | TechCrunch

"Clips comes with 16GB of onboard storage, and also offers up to three hours of passive smart capturing per charge. Plus, it’ll alert you when its lens is blocked via intelligent notifications to your phone. The camera has a 130-degree field of view, Gorilla Glass 3 for durability, and has USB C, Wi-Fi Direct and Bluetooth LE for connectivity. It shoots at up to 15 frames per second, and selects for stable, clear shots of its subjects."

Google Clips | A new way to capture and save moments - YouTube

(not so) boring printers and hats

OK Go - Obsession - Official Video - YouTube

"In the new video for “Obsession”, OK Go has created a wall of 557 printers that are used as the backdrop for the band throughout the video. As Gizmodo mentioned, one might wonder if the paper waste was actually necessary, and that’s a fair question. But OK Go has an answer:
“By the time you see this, all the paper will have been recycled, and the proceeds given to Greenpeace,” reads a piece of paper at the top of the video."

OK Go - Obsession - Official Video - YouTube

The Boring Co.’s ‘Initial Hat Offering’ raises $300K for digging in hat sales | TechCrunch

"That’s a lot of hats: At $20 per, that’s approximately 15,000 hats sold thus far since they went on sale in October."

Elon Musk’s Boring Company to bid for Chicago airport link project | TechCrunch

Windows "Sets" web-browser-like tabbed apps

Microsoft shows off Windows ‘Sets,’ a tabbed app interface that puts a web browser everywhere | TechCrunch

Sets in Windows 10 - YouTube


An update on what's coming next for Windows Insiders - Windows Insider

"Windows 10 feature ... calling “Sets” (not landed on a name yet). With Sets, what belongs together stays together — making it easier and faster to create and be productive. The concept behind this experience is to make sure that everything related to your task: relevant webpages, research documents, necessary files and applications, is connected and available to you in one click."

With this, Windows 10 will slightly resemble Chrome OS, where this is the only way apps work,
but "Sets" are better, since it keeps open apps together, and can re-open them on another computer also!

Amazon Neptune AWS graph database service

Amazon introduces an AWS graph database service called Amazon Neptune | TechCrunch

"Amazon Neptune has been specifically designed for relationship graphs. So if you’re thinking about building a social network feature, Neptune can help you.
... The database service supports graph models Property Graph and W3C’s RDF and their query languages Apache TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL."

Amazon Neptune - Fast, Reliable Graph Database built for the cloud

Amazon Neptune – A Fully Managed Graph Database Service | AWS News Blog

To connect to the gremlin endpoint you can use the endpoint with "gremlin" to do something like: 

curl -X POST -d '{"gremlin":"g.V()"}' https://your-neptune-endpoint:8182/gremlin

You can similarly connect to the SPARQL endpoint with "sparql"

curl -G https://your-neptune-endpoint:8182/sparql --data-urlencode 'query=select ?s ?p ?o where {?s ?p ?o}'

Amazon Neptune is in a way AWS "answer" to Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB.

Azure Cosmos DB – Globally Distributed Database Service | Microsoft Azure

But while Cosmos DB is also a globally distributed database,
AWS added similar functionality in their relational database only.

AWS adds Global Tables feature to share data across multiple geographies | TechCrunch.

"Customers using AWS’ Amazon DynamoDB to store data have two new services to help make their applications work better and more quickly in more regions around the world."

Based on features, Neptune is more a cloud-based graph database, like Neo4j:

The Neo4j Graph Platform – The #1 Platform for Connected Data

Hosting Neo4j in the Cloud - Neo4j Graph Database

Amazon Alexa for Business

Amazon is putting Alexa in the office | TechCrunch

"At the AWS reinvent conference, Amazon announced Alexa for Business"

"Alexa for Business is a two-sided project for Amazon. On the one hand, Amazon gets added data and revenue from larger-scale customers and, on the other, enterprise businesses will likely hop on the platform to build APIs and skills for a new breed of customer."


"02:00 your employees solve that pesky printer problem 

• Alexa, ask the office for more printer paper
• OK, I've ordered more paper. Should I send your job to the printer 3 
• Yes that'd be great"

Amazon sold ‘millions’ of Alexa devices over the holiday shopping weekend | TechCrunch

Black Friday pushes Jeff Bezos’ net worth to $100 billion | TechCrunch

"So what’s he going to do with all that money?
Bezos wants suggestions. Over the summer, he tweeted a “Request For Ideas.” He said he wants his “philanthropic activity to be helping people in the here and now- short term- at the intersection of urgent need and lasting impact.”"
Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) | Twitter

IoT: AT&T LTE-M Button with AWS

AT&T’s LTE-M Button is basically a programmable 4G Amazon Dash Button for businesses | TechCrunch

"LTE-M Button Unlike all of the pre-programmed Dash Buttons, this AT&T and AWS Web Services joint ships as a clean slate. A company buys the thing and programs tasks in using Amazon’s AWS IOT service. The idea here is that instead of, say, buying a box of Goldfish crackers, businesses can order office supplies or put in some other sort of work request by hitting a button.
...
The other big differentiator here is the inclusion of LTE-M — IOT-focused 4G. That means businesses will be able to use the buttons where there’s no WiFi.
...
special promotion cost is $30 for the first 5,000 sold. That’s several times the standard $5 price for Amazon’s wide range of branded WiFi-only Dash Buttons"


AT&T and Amazon Web Services Boost Internet of Things
"Promotional offer is limited to the first 5,000 units sold (whether to one customer or multiple customers) starting in the 1st quarter of 2018. Regular pricing of $34.99 will apply to all units thereafter."
Why LTE-M is a game changer for IoT - ReadWrite


AT&T IoT Marketplace

Amazon FreeRTOS

Where Linux kernel is too big, here is a new free option.
Amazon purchased company and made this 14 years proven OS switch to permissive MIT license, and extended with tools for connecting directly to AWS cloud services.

Amazon FreeRTOS

FreeRTOS - Market leading RTOS (Real Time Operating System) for embedded systems with Internet of Things extensions

AWS IoT Core (If an Amazon FreeRTOS device is connected to the AWS IoT Core)

AWS IoT Device Management (If an Amazon FreeRTOS device receives code-signed updates)

AWS Greengrass (If an Amazon FreeRTOS device is connected to AWS Greengrass Core)

Data transfer (If an Amazon FreeRTOS device initiates external data transfers to AWS, they will be charged at the EC2 data transfer rate)

Amazon S3 (If an Amazon FreeRTOS device uses S3 for storage, requests, and data transfer)

Amazon DynamoDB (If an Amazon FreeRTOS device uses DynamoDB for data storage, throughput capacity, and data transfer)


Amazon FreeRTOS is a new operating system for microcontroller-based IoT devices | TechCrunch

book: Mastering ASP.NET Core 2.0

One of the first books about .NET Core version ready to become mainstream. After many adjustments, hopefully it may stabilize a bit.
Or not :)

Development With A Dot - Mastering ASP.NET Core 2.0

Mastering ASP.NET Core 2.0 @ SafariBooksOnline
by Ricardo Peres

Publisher: Packt Publishing

Published: November 2017
Here is another one:

ASP.NET Core 2 High Performance - Second Edition
by James Singleton (real name?)

Microsoft Resume Assistant: LinkedIn + Office 365 + AI

Microsoft integrates LinkedIn with Word to help you write a resume - The Verge

Bringing AI to job seekers with Resume Assistant in Word, powered by LinkedIn - Office Blogs

Write your best resume in Word with help from LinkedIn in Resume Assistant - Word


Bringing AI to job seekers with Resume Assistant in Word, powered by LinkedIn - YouTube

AI gadget: AWS DeepLens & Amazon SageMaker

AWS DeepLens – Deep learning enabled video camera for developers - AWS

Amazon.com: AWS DeepLens - Deep learning enabled video camera for developers: Amazon Devices
$250

• "Deep learning in your hands - A fully programmable video camera designed to expand deep learning skills.
• Start learning right away - Learn the basics of deep learning through example projects, computer vision models, tutorials, and real world, hands-on exploration on a physical device.
• A new way to learn machine learning - Allows developers of all skill levels get started with deep learning in less than 10 minutes.
• Sample projects - AWS DeepLens can run custom models from AWS SageMaker, and comes with a collection of pre-trained models ready to run on the device with a single click.
• Fully programmable - Easy to customize and is fully programmable using AWS Lambda providing a familiar programming environment for developers to experiment with."

Amazon SageMaker – Accelerating Machine Learning | AWS News Blog

Amazon’s AWS DeepLens is an AI camera for developers | TechCrunch

cloud containers: AWS Fargate & EKS

Introducing AWS Fargate – Run Containers without Managing Infrastructure | AWS News Blog


Amazon EKS - managed Kubernetes service

Amazon Elastic Container Service – Docker Management – AWS

.NET Core Compatibility Pack & API Analyzer

.NET Core 2.0 + .NET Standard 2.0 comes with 20000 APIs,
but apparently about a half of them are cross-platform (Linux, Mac, not only Windows).
To help identify what APIs are portable there is a new tool:

Windows Compatibility Pack for .NET Core | Connect(); 2017 | Channel 9

Porting to .NET Core - Using the Windows Compatibility Pack | Microsoft Docs

Introducing API Analyzer | .NET Blog


Trying out new .NET Core Alpine Docker Images - Scott Hanselman

Microsoft DS certification & ML algorithms

Microsoft Professional Program

View All Tracks | Microsoft Professional Program + edX classes

Online Data Science Courses | Microsoft Professional Program

"Microsoft consulted data scientists and the companies that employ them to identify the core skills they need to be successful. This informed the curriculum used to teach key functional and technical skills, combining highly rated online courses with hands-on labs, concluding in a final capstone project."

10 REQUIRED COURSES 

8-12 HOURS PER COURSE

How to choose machine learning algorithms | Microsoft Docs

Machine learning algorithm cheat sheet | Microsoft Docs

Infographic: Machine learning basics - algorithm examples | Microsoft Docs

Download: Infographic of machine learning basics with links to algorithm examples (PDF)

Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit

links from:

Machine Learning - MS Dev Show Podcast

quote: Make It Work; Make It Right; Make It Fast

Make It Work Make It Right Make It Fast @wiki.c2
"This formulation of this statement has been attributed to KentBeck;
it has existed as part of the UnixWay for a long time."

Make It Work Make It Small Make It Fast @wiki.c2
"A time tested optimization pattern.

• First, make the code do what it is supposed to do. Do not try to optimize for size or speed yet. DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.
• Second, reduce redundancy. Refactoring common code to a common location is easier once the code works, harder after it has been optimized for performance. OnceAndOnlyOnce.
• Third, optimize execution time. ProfileBeforeOptimizing.

(Make It Small is basically a subset of Make It Right.)"

Programming Quotes · GitHub

AWS re:invent 2017

re:Invent 2017 | New Products & Services @ AWS

AWS re:Invent 2017 | Amazon Web Services

Las Vegas, NOV. 27 – DEC. 1 

+ Live streaming

AWS re:Invent (@AWSreInvent) | Twitter

Amazon Web Services - YouTube - YouTube

Amazon Web Services - YouTube

What’s New at AWS – Cloud Innovation & News

Amazon Web Services presentations channel @SlideShare

AWS re:INVENT 2017 - Las Vegas - November 27 - December 1, 2017 | TechCrunch

Amazon debuts Elemental-based AWS Media Services for video app creation | TechCrunch

AWS launches Amazon Sumerian to build AR, VR and 3D apps quickly | TechCrunch

How Amazon Web Services will attempt to set the industry agenda at the biggest show in the cloud – GeekWire

• Managed Kubernetes
• Bare metal
• Big customers
• AI and serverless
• Open source

The Ultimate List Of Announcements Expected From AWS re:Invent 2017 - Part 1


AWS re:INVENT 2017 - Las Vegas - November 27 - December 1, 2017 | TechCrunch


re:Invent 2017 | New Products & Services

Amazon Kinesis Video Streams – Serverless Video Ingestion and Storage for Vision-Enabled Apps | AWS News Blog

AWS re:Invent 2017 Wednesday Announcements

twitch.tv/aws live streaming of launch announcements, discussions, and demos.

Compute

• Run containers without managing servers or clusters with AWS Fargate
• Run managed Kubernetes on AWS with Amazon EKS
• Pause and resume your workloads with Amazon EC2 Spot Instances
• Simplify purchasing for Amazon EC2 Spot Instances
• Run bare metal workloads directly on AWS infrastructure with Amazon EC2 Bare Metal instances
• Run data-intensive big data workloads with Amazon EC2 H1 Instances
• Use Amazon EC2 M5 Instances for a balance of compute, memory, storage and networking

Storage

• Run queries directly on data stored in Amazon Glacier with Glacier Select
• S3 Select allows you to extract only the data you need within an object

Databases

• Scale out for both reads and writes with Aurora Multi-Master
• Aurora Serverless, an on-demand, auto-scaling, serverless, database
• Provide on-demand and continuous backups with DynamoDB Backup & Restore
• DynamoDB Global Tables deliver a fully managed, multi-master, multi-region non-relational database
• Get started with Amazon Neptune, a fully managed graph database for highly connected data

Analytics

• Securely ingest and store video, audio, and other time-encoded data with Amazon Kinesis Video Streams

Machine Learning

• AWS DeepLens – the world’s first wireless, deep learning enabled video camera for developers
• Build applications with fully managed natural language processing using Amazon Comprehend
• Run real-time and batch video analytics with Amazon Rekognition Video
• Easily build, train, and deploy machine learning models with Amazon SageMaker
• Automatically translate text between languages with Amazon Translate
• Use Amazon Transcribe to do automatic speech recognition

Internet of Things

• Enable over-the-air updates and access to local resources with AWS Greengrass
• Leverage enhanced authentication features with AWS IoT Core
• Run Machine Learning at Edge with Greengrass ML Inference
• Securely onboard, organize, monitor, and remotely manage IoT devices at scale with AWS IoT Device Management
• Clean, process, store, and analyze IoT device data with AWS IoT Analytics 
• Create an AWS Lambda trigger for any device in one click with AWS IoT 1-Click
• Use AWS IoT Device Defender to define and enforce security policies for fleets of devices
• Introducing Amazon FreeRTOS, an IoT operating system for microcontrollers

Security, Identity & Compliance

• Use Amazon GuardDuty to protect your AWS accounts and workloads

Microsoft MakeCode

Microsoft MakeCode - Home Page

GitHub - Microsoft/pxt: Microsoft MakeCode (PXT - Programming eXperience Toolkit)

"Microsoft MakeCode is based on the open source project Microsoft Programming Experience Toolkit (PXT). Microsoft MakeCode is the name in the user-facing editors, PXT is used in all the GitHub sources.
PXT is a framework for creating special-purpose programming experiences for beginners, especially focused on computer science education. PXT's underlying programming language is a subset of TypeScript (leaving out JavaScript dynamic features).

• a Blockly-based code editor along with converter to the text format
• a Monaco code editor that powers VS Code 
• extensibility support to define new blocks in TypeScript
• ..."

Blockly  |  Google Developers

Blockly Games

gadget: $20 WiFi WyzeCam

Episode 139: The 2017 IoT Podcast Gift Guide! – IoT Podcast – Internet of Things

WyzeCam: Buy Now $19.99

Meet the $20 home security camera that somehow includes 14 days of free cloud storage – BGR
"This sleek little device supports full HD 1080p streaming, microSD recording, cloud recording, motion detection, mobile alerts, 2-way audio, smoke alarm detection, and night vision. But best of all, it includes 14 days of rolling cloud storage of alert videos. For free. No, seriously… it’s free. That’s twice the amount of time you get with Nest, and with Nest you have to pay a monthly fee for cloud recording!"

A $20 Wi-Fi camera? Yup! WyzeCam makes affordable home security a reality

Surprise: This $20 home monitoring camera actually doesn’t suck

Amazon vets develop $20 WyzeCam home camera, end up competing against their former employer – GeekWire

Wyze Home Security Camera For ONLY $20! - YouTube

Amazon.com : WyzeCam 1080p HD Wireless Smart Home Camera with Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, Free Cloud, for iOS and Android : Amazon Launchpad



Amazon Key and Cloud Cam move tech giant into home security, rivaling Google’s Nest and others – GeekWire

Azure Migrate: VMware to Azure Cloud

Recently AWS and VMware announced partnership where VMware is using AWS for hosing and managing VMs on cloud. Essentially VMware is renting cloud HW from AWS, and selling VM managed services. Now, Microsoft Azure announced a similar offering of hosted VMware on Azure cloud, manged with some other partner, not by VMware itself, possibly creating a controversy.

Transforming your VMware environment with Microsoft Azure | Blog | Microsoft Azure

• "Azure Migrate can discover your on-premises VMware-based applications without requiring any changes to your VMware environment. 
• Once discovery has completed, with just a few easy clicks, you can migrate your on-premises applications to Azure. Azure Site Recovery (ASR) enables customers to migrate VMware-virtualized Windows Server and Linux workloads with minimal downtime.
• Once deployed in Azure, with the free Azure Cost Management service (formerly called Cloudyn), you can easily forecast, track, and optimize your spending."

"...Most workloads can be migrated to Azure easily using the above services; however, there may be specific VMware workloads that are initially more challenging to migrate to the cloud. For these workloads, you may need the option to run the VMware stack on Azure as an intermediate step... preview of VMware virtualization on Azure, a bare-metal solution that runs the full VMware stack on Azure hardware, co-located with other Azure services. We are delivering this offering in partnership with premier VMware-certified partners."

Microsoft Azure Migrate brings over VMware applications - Business Insider

Microsoft to run VMware on Azure, on bare metal. Repeat. Microsoft to run VMware on Azure. • The Register
VMware refuses to support its wares running in Azure • The Register

VMware – The Platform of Choice in the Cloud - VMware Blog

Modular Hotels CitizenM: Blue Ocean Shift

described in book Blue Ocean Shift

blue ocean | citizenM Hotels

"affordable luxury" hotels, modular construction

CitizenM by Concrete
"CitizenM is a hotel made of prefabricated room modules at Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, designed by Dutch architectural firm Concrete."


First look inside CitizenM's new flagship hotel - YouTube

Citizen M Amsterdam Modular Hotel - YouTube

citizenM founder Rattan Chadha is a mobile citizen of the world - YouTube

SkyStone Group LLC - Modular Installation CitizenM Bowery - YouTube.

citizenM, Glasgow | John Sisk and Son

  

Azure Time Series Insights

Microsoft announces the general availability of Azure Time Series Insights | Blog | Microsoft Azure

IoT-PREDICT | Action Point

"IoT-PREDICT is a plug-and-play, infinitely scalable, end-to-end, industrial grade machine monitoring solution."

Azure Databricks for Apache Spark

Databricks are founders of Apache Spark, open source big data cluster computing framework.

A technical overview of Azure Databricks | Blog | Microsoft Azure

"Azure Databricks, an exciting new service in preview that brings together the best of the Apache Spark analytics platform and Azure cloud."

Introduction to Azure Databricks | Connect(); 2017 | Channel 9

Get high-performance streaming analytics with Azure Databricks | Connect(); 2017 | Channel 9

Foundations of Data Science, textbook & lectures

math-heavy

Foundations of Data Science - Lecture 1 | Microsoft Research | Channel 9

"Modern data often consists of feature vectors with a large number of features. High-dimensional geometry and Linear Algebra (Singular Value Decomposition) are two of the crucial areas which form the mathematical foundations of Data Science. This mini-course covers these areas, providing intuition and rigorous proofs. Connections between Geometry and Probability will be brought out. Text Book: Foundations of Data Science."

book: Foundations of Data Science, June 14, 2017.pdf (450 pages)

by John E. Hopcroft, Avrim Blum and Ravi Kannan

Runestone Interactive tools & textbooks (!!)

Runestone Interactive

About Runestone Interactive

• Provide great online interactive textbooks for free 
• Provide open source authoring tools for creating and hosting quality interactive learning resources. 
• Host custom versions of textbooks for colleges, universities, and high schools around the world.

Overview of Runestone Interactive Tools — Runestone Interactive Overview

Runestone Interactive @ GitHub

Runestone Interactive Titles
The Runestone Interactive tools create compelling interactive learning resources used by hundreds of Colleges, Universities, and High Schools around the world.

How to Think like a Computer Scientist: Interactive Edition

1.3. The Python Programming Language — How to Think like a Computer Scientist: Interactive Edition

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist — How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python 3

Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python — Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures

Everyday Python: Iterating over Groups of Things — Runestone Interactive Overview

Related:

https://developers.google.com/blockly/

Blockly Games

https://blockly-games.appspot.com/

https://hourofcode.com/us

https://petlja.org/

http://pythontutor.com/

https://studio.code.org/courses

http://microbit.org/

http://www.makeblock.com/

tool: Visual Studio Live Share

Introducing Visual Studio Live Share
“Visual Studio Live Share”, which enables developers using Visual Studio 2017 or Visual Studio Code to collaborate in real-time

When you share a collaborative session, your teammate sees the context of the workspace in their editor. This means your teammate can read the code you shared without having to clone a repo or install any dependencies your code relies on. They can use rich language features to navigate within the code; not only just opening other files as text but using semantic analysis-based navigation like Go to Definition or Peek."

Works with both "classic" Visual Studio and VS Code!

link from:
Connect() and Mile of Music - MS Dev Show Podcast

Tesla + 100 days = $50M

Elon Musk's New Battery Just Won Him a $50 Million Bet | Fortune

Tesla’s Elon Musk beats deadline to build Australian mega-battery – GeekWire


Tesla installed the batteries at Neoen’s Hornsdale Wind Farm in South Australia. (Tesla Illustration)

Mike Cannon-Brookes - Wikipedia

"anti-cloud": antsle "Private Cloud Server"

antsle Private Cloud Server - A New, Affordable Way to Host
"The edge computing alternative to public cloud solutions like AWS."

"No more worrying about extra cost when you launch a new Virtual Server! The antsle Edge Computing Box lets you run a mix of 100+ VMs and Containers (antlets) at the same time.
With up to 64 GB RAM and 16 TB disk space, antsle packs a punch! And we designed it to be 100% silent. No fans, no vent holes. "
link from:
GitHub Beyond Your Browser with Phil Haack @ .NET Rocks! vNext

Microsoft SQL Operations Studio

What is SQL Operations Studio (preview)? | Microsoft Docs
"SQL Operations Studio (preview) is a free, light-weight tool, that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, for managing SQL Server, Azure SQL Database, and Azure SQL Data Warehouse; wherever they're running."

It is based on Visual Studio Code.

SQL Server Management Studio was based on standard Visual Studio, and it become quite large.

A lap around SQL Operations Studio, a new cross-platform SQL Server tool | Connect(); 2017 | Channel 9

Announcing SQL Operations Studio for preview | SQL Server Blog




Download and install Microsoft SQL Operations Studio (preview) | Microsoft Docs

What is SQL Operations Studio (preview)? | Microsoft Docs

So What's Microsoft SQL Operations Studio? -- Visual Studio Magazine


GitHub - Microsoft/sqlopsstudio: SQL Operations Studio is a data management tool that enables working with SQL Server, Azure SQL DB and SQL DW from Windows, macOS and Linux.

network speed: TCP BBR

Google Cloud Platform Blog: TCP BBR congestion control comes to GCP – your Internet just got faster

"BBR powers TCP traffic from google.com and that improved YouTube network throughput by 4 percent on average globally — and by more than 14 percent in some countries.

...

According to Google’s tests, BBR's throughput can reach as much as 2,700x higher than today's best loss-based congestion control; queueing delays can be 25x lower. "


BBR ("Bottleneck Bandwidth and Round-trip propagation time") is a new congestion control algorithm developed at Google. Congestion control algorithms — running inside every computer, phone or tablet connected to a network — that decide how fast to send data.

How does a congestion control algorithm make this decision? The internet has largely used loss-based congestion control since the late 1980s, relying only on indications of lost packets as the signal to slow down. This worked well for many years, because internet switches’ and routers’ small buffers were well-matched to the low bandwidth of internet links. As a result, buffers tended to fill up and drop excess packets right at the moment when senders had really begun sending data too fast.

But loss-based congestion control is problematic in today's diverse networks"

link from:
Performance Atlas with Colt McAnlis | Google Cloud Platform Podcast

JavaScript speed on mobile

Looks like the fastest device, not just smartphone, for web JavaScript is iPhone.

The Cost Of JavaScript – Dev Channel – Medium



WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) app: Microsoft Authenticator

Microsoft Authenticator - Android Apps on Google Play

"Sign in is easy, convenient, and secure when you use Microsoft Authenticator. Use your phone, not your password, to log into your Microsoft account. You simply have to enter your username, then approve the notification sent to your phone. Your fingerprint, face ID, or PIN will provide a second layer of security in this two step verification process. After, you’ll have access to all your Microsoft products and services, such as Outlook, OneDrive, Office, and more."

Microsoft Authenticator on the App Store (iOS)

Get Microsoft Authenticator - Microsoft Store

Enabling QR Code generation for authenticator apps in ASP.NET Core | Microsoft Docs


Two-factor authentication with SMS | Microsoft Docs

gadget: portable solar chager

Amazon.com: Anker 21W Dual USB Solar Charger, PowerPort Solar for iPhone 7 / 6s / Plus, iPad Pro / Air 2 / mini, Galaxy S7 / S6 / Edge / Plus, Note 5 / 4, LG, Nexus, HTC and More: Cell Phones & Accessories
$62

"21 watt SunPower solar array is 21.5-23.5% efficient,
providing enough power to charge two devices simultaneously. 14.7 oz"


link from: .NET Rocks! vNext

DNA + Big Data = World's Family Tree

Author A.J. Jacobs Talks Genealogy And The World's Family Tree | On Point

"DNA-powered genealogy shaking up family trees."

250M people already got their DNA analyzed (and saved in a database and matched)

It's All Relative | Book by A. J. Jacobs | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster


DNA Genetic Testing & Analysis - 23andMe
$99 ($49 current deal) per kit

"23 pairs of chromosomes. One unique you."

Tesla Semi Truck & Roadster

Tesla Semi truck and Roadster event in 9 minutes - YouTube



Walmart says it’s preordered 15 of Tesla’s new semi trucks - The Verge

Elon Musk Reveals Tesla's Electric Semitruck | WIRED



This is the Tesla Semi truck - The Verge

Elon Musk unveils $200,000 Tesla Roadster, 1,000 hp Semi Truck and new solar-powered Megachargers

Tesla’s latest creation: An electric big rig that can travel 500 miles on a single charge - The Washington Post

Let's Talk About Tesla Roadster 2020! - YouTube

Tesla unveils the new Roadster | TechCrunch



kick-starter-like funding: pay in 10 days, get in 3 years
Reserve your Roadster | Tesla
$250K for "Founders Series", $50K for standard "Roadster"


Tesla's portable phone-charging battery will complement your Tesla-branded life - The Verge

"Tesla-themed battery that can charge iPhones, iPads, or any other device that takes a microUSB.
The 3,350mAh battery pack is modeled after Tesla’s Supercharger monument at the Tesla Design Studio... It costs $45 and ... it’s already sold out."

This contains a same single battery cell used in Model S and other Tesla cars.

internet security with Lava Lamps

One of the Secrets Guarding the Secure Internet Is a Wall of Lava Lamps | Gizmodo UK

"Cloudflare provides security and domain name services for millions of the most prominent sites on the web. The company has built a solid reputation for its secure encryption and one of the key factors in its system is a wall of 100 lava lamps in the lobby of its San Francisco headquarters."

Azure ML: Time Series Forecasting

Time Series Forecasting | Cortana Intelligence Gallery

Energy Demand Time Series Forecasting | Microsoft Docs

Time Series Forecasting with Azure ML | NaadiSpeaks

Time Series Anomaly Detection @MSDN

Azure Machine Learning Forecasting-Exponential Smoothing Web Service - Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Web Application

Forecasting with the Microsoft Time Series Data Mining Algorithm | TechEd North America 2014 | Channel 9


Sales Forecasting using Azure Machine Learning

Retail Forecasting: Step 1 of 6, data preprocessing | Cortana Intelligence Gallery

data stats: Stack Overflow: Successful Questions

How To Ask A Successful Question on Stack Overflow
@i-programmer.info

"...highest proportion of questions with accepted answers to be in the time frame corresponding to 3:00-6:00 PM of West Coast US time" (6-9 EST)

video steaming: Mixer.com & Philly.net user group

Beam, The Twitch Competitor Microsoft Acquired Last Year, Is Now Mixer - Tubefilter
"A service that is looking to compete with the likes of Twitch and YouTube is taking on a new name. Beam, a video game streaming service Microsoft acquired last August, is now known as Mixer."

"Microsoft wants to get into the video game live streaming realm. The tech company’s Xbox division has acquired Beam, a startup that is characterized as a competitor to Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch."

PhillyDotNet - Mixer

PhillyDotNet - YouTube - YouTube

Philly.NET (Malvern, PA) | Meetup


CodeSandbox: Online Code Editor Tailored for Web Application Development

Windows 10 Update Cleanup

Windows 10 feature updates now come two times a year, in March and September, 

i.e. 1703 is March 2017, 1709 is September 2017 etc. 

Those updates are in fact full installs in a separate folder, and then all files and apps are copied from previous version. That takes a long time, and previous version takes a lot of space (20GB or more). 

The old version is saved in "C:\Windows.old" folder, to be available for "undo" if needed.
To reclaim space from previous version:

How to delete the Windows.old folder from Windows 10 - CNET
'proper way to delete the Windows.old folder:

1. Click in Windows' search field, type Cleanup, then click Disk Cleanup.
2. Click the "Clean up system files" button.
3. Wait a bit while Windows scans for files, then scroll down the list until you see "Previous Windows installation(s)."'

Visual learning: "Python Tutor", Programming for elementary school (in Serbian)

Like iPython/Jupyther Notebooks for learning programming

Python Tutor - Visualize Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, C, and C++ code execution

Python Tutor - 1-minute introduction - YouTube



Petlja: Програмирање у основној школи

Petlja: Програмирање у Пајтону, приручник за шести разред

about: Petlja

Programiranje u osnovnoj školi | | PC Press

Besplatni priručnici i materijali za učenje programiranja | | PC Press

https://petlja.org/BubbleBee
"Portal BubbleBee je razvijen od strane ljudi koji su zaposleni ili su bili na praksi u Majkrosoftovom razvojnom centru u Srbiji, a u izradi sadržaja su učestvovali i zaposleni i saradnici Matematičke i Računarske gimnazije, drugih škola, Društva Matematičara Srbije i Istraživačke stanice Petnica."
Microsoft Development Center Serbia