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?)