This Week I Learned - Week #240
This Week I Learned -
* Storage and messaging represents 45% of Twitter’s infrastructure footprint.
* A high proportion of questions with accepted answers on StackOverflow happen to be in the time frame corresponding to 3:00-6:00 PM of West Coast US time....questions posted during the weekend are more likely to be answered than questions posted during the week.
* NY Times columnist, Farhad Manjoo has argued that the five largest American tech companies: Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft as the Frightful Five as the companies’size and influence pose a danger. The Five run server clouds, app stores, ad networks and venture firms, altars to which the smaller guys must pay a sizable tax just for existing. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is an investor in Uber. But Alphabet’s autonomous-car company, Waymo, is also a competitor to Uber. On top of that, Waymo has sued Uber, alleging theft of trade secrets. Whether Uber wins or loses, Google will end up doing just fine. There's now an opinion that it’s better to be ruled by a handful of responsive companies capable of bowing to political and legal pressure. Each of them worries about the threat posed by start-ups and by the other four giants, which means that none feels it has the luxury to slow down in creating the best new stuff.
* Fewer than 1 percent of start-ups end up as $1 billion companies. A study in September 2017 found that there are about 10 Indian startups in a list of around 167 companies with a valuation of over a billion
* According to Amazon, 99.7% of India's pincodes placed an order on its site.
* The "Diversity Visa Lottery Program" offers one of the fastest paths to legal permanent residency, often in less than two years. Some one million people have been awarded green cards through the program. Unlike other immigrants who gain admission, winners of the lottery do not need to have a close relative living in the United States, or any special skill. Some years, the program has attracted nearly 15 million applications, but no more than 50,000 visas may be awarded. Over all, the program contributes about 5 percent of the approximately one million legal immigrants that enter the United States each year. No special skills are required. A high-school diploma suffices. There is no limit to how many years a person can enter the lottery, but no country can account for more than 7 percent of all visas issued in one year. This year, the entry period opened Oct. 18 and closes on Nov. 22. Applications are submitted electronically, and in countries without widespread computer ownership, internet cafes become de facto filing centers. There is no charge to enter. But winners must pay several hundred dollars in fees.50,000 people — lottery winners, as well as spouses and minor children they want to bring over — are awarded visas, which entitle them to move to the United States as legal permanent residents, or green card holders. Like most others with green cards, they may apply for citizenship after five years. Green card holders in the United States can sponsor immediate family members to receive their own green cards - NY Times
* "In India, the ratio between text and visuals continues to be a skewed one in the text-books targeted at children & your teenagers. Course books should be made much more visually appealing so as to sustain the student's interest" - Atanu Roy
* Non-practicing entities (NPEs), commonly referred to as “patent trolls,” look to capitalize on vulnerabilities in the cloud. NPEs are stockpiling cloud technology patents. Microsoft Azure IP Advantage offers indemnification protection to customers using open source technologies that power many Azure products and services today - Azure Blog
* Researchers at Microsoft Research Labs in Bengaluru are studying the unique ways in which Indians mix languages in everyday conversations - and an easy source of such conversations are Hindi movies. Insights like this would help companies like Microsoft build better, more socially-aware bots and enhance the quality of interactions...the researchers say they are hamstrung by the paucity of freely available scripts and have leaned on independent scriptwriters and filmmakers to source scripts - ET
* Researchers at Microsoft Research Labs in Bengaluru are studying the unique ways in which Indians mix languages in everyday conversations - and an easy source of such conversations are Hindi movies. Insights like this would help companies like Microsoft build better, more socially-aware bots and enhance the quality of interactions...the researchers say they are hamstrung by the paucity of freely available scripts and have leaned on independent scriptwriters and filmmakers to source scripts - ET
* Storage and messaging represents 45% of Twitter’s infrastructure footprint.
* A high proportion of questions with accepted answers on StackOverflow happen to be in the time frame corresponding to 3:00-6:00 PM of West Coast US time....questions posted during the weekend are more likely to be answered than questions posted during the week.
* NY Times columnist, Farhad Manjoo has argued that the five largest American tech companies: Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft as the Frightful Five as the companies’size and influence pose a danger. The Five run server clouds, app stores, ad networks and venture firms, altars to which the smaller guys must pay a sizable tax just for existing. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is an investor in Uber. But Alphabet’s autonomous-car company, Waymo, is also a competitor to Uber. On top of that, Waymo has sued Uber, alleging theft of trade secrets. Whether Uber wins or loses, Google will end up doing just fine. There's now an opinion that it’s better to be ruled by a handful of responsive companies capable of bowing to political and legal pressure. Each of them worries about the threat posed by start-ups and by the other four giants, which means that none feels it has the luxury to slow down in creating the best new stuff.
* Fewer than 1 percent of start-ups end up as $1 billion companies. A study in September 2017 found that there are about 10 Indian startups in a list of around 167 companies with a valuation of over a billion
* According to Amazon, 99.7% of India's pincodes placed an order on its site.
* The "Diversity Visa Lottery Program" offers one of the fastest paths to legal permanent residency, often in less than two years. Some one million people have been awarded green cards through the program. Unlike other immigrants who gain admission, winners of the lottery do not need to have a close relative living in the United States, or any special skill. Some years, the program has attracted nearly 15 million applications, but no more than 50,000 visas may be awarded. Over all, the program contributes about 5 percent of the approximately one million legal immigrants that enter the United States each year. No special skills are required. A high-school diploma suffices. There is no limit to how many years a person can enter the lottery, but no country can account for more than 7 percent of all visas issued in one year. This year, the entry period opened Oct. 18 and closes on Nov. 22. Applications are submitted electronically, and in countries without widespread computer ownership, internet cafes become de facto filing centers. There is no charge to enter. But winners must pay several hundred dollars in fees.50,000 people — lottery winners, as well as spouses and minor children they want to bring over — are awarded visas, which entitle them to move to the United States as legal permanent residents, or green card holders. Like most others with green cards, they may apply for citizenship after five years. Green card holders in the United States can sponsor immediate family members to receive their own green cards - NY Times
* "In India, the ratio between text and visuals continues to be a skewed one in the text-books targeted at children & your teenagers. Course books should be made much more visually appealing so as to sustain the student's interest" - Atanu Roy
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