Linux Silver Jubilee

Waugh, Silver Jubilee of Linux Kernel Development.  Yeps, exactly 25 years ago, on August 25, 1991, which was a Sunday, Linus Benedict Torvalds informed Minix users that he was doing a free computer operating system as a hobby.

"Hello everybody out there using Minix. I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU) for 386 (486) AT clone," read the announcement.

2016 report will show you how fast Linux is going, who is behind it and what they are doing to improve the code each day, as well as which companies are sponsoring it's development.

This report provides insight into the development trends and methodologies used by thousands of different individuals collectively to create some of the most important software code on the planet.

Linux kernel powers your Android or Ubuntu smartphone as you read this story on your handhold device.  Itz used by search engine giant Google, as well as 99.9% of the websites you're accessing daily.

Linux kernel, as the core component of a GNU/Linux operating system, is everywhere around us.

Successful Silver Jubilee Celebration for Linux !!!

PayPal Squbs

Read an interesting architecture article, adopted by PayPal.

I'm wondering how did Paypal take a billion hits a day system that might traditionally run on a 100s of VMs and shrink it down to run on 8 VMs. At the same time, it stays responsive even at 90% CPU at transaction densities.

Paypal has never seen before, with jobs that take 1/10th the time, while reducing costs and allowing for much better organizational growth without growing the compute infrastructure accordingly.

Answer is tha PayPal moved to an Actor model based on Akka. PayPal told their story here: Squbs: A New, Reactive Way for PayPal to Build Applications. Itz available at https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2016/05/11/squbs-a-new-reactive-way-for-paypal-to-build-applications/

They open source squbs and you can find squbs on GitHub. Ref: https://github.com/paypal/squbs

Alexa in Macadamian

Last month, Amazon released Alexa Skills Kit, which allows outside developers to create new services to work with the voice-activation technology.

Developers can use the Smart Home API to enable smart home capabilities, such as controlling lights, door locks or alarms. They also can create custom skills using the ASK to design their voice user interface, and building cloud-hosted code that interacts with cloud-based APIs.

Among the companies drawn to Alexa is Macadamian, which has developed two of its own skills. One is a new service called "Fantasy Scoreboards," which allows users to control a WiFi-connected National Hockey League scoreboard when connected to Amazon Echo.

The company initially explored voice interaction through phone -- like with Siri on iOS -- before shifting to Alexa. Noted by Martin Larochelle, chief architect of Macadamian.

The company previously developed a skill to send text messages using the Twilio API. It is considering adding a third skill this summer, which likely will give users a way to set reminders for upcoming city services -- like recycling and garbage pickup days or other routine services.

Alexa Skills Kit is a free SDK for developers, providing a low-friction way to get an Alexa skill up and running within the space of a few hours. No experience in speech recognition or natural language is required, as Amazon handles the chore of understanding spoken word requests.

AWS Lambda can help in the development process, Amazon noted, as it runs the developer's code in response to triggers, and manages compute resources in the AWS Cloud.

Yahoo Collapse

In my last blog, I wrote about Verizon acquisition of Yahoo. Ref: http://ganesansenthilvel.blogspot.in/2016/07/yahoo-verizon.html 

With my financial market background, I did a fair analysis on Yahoo market history. We got to learn a lot as an individual and as a firm.

In 1998, Yahoo had the chance to buy Google for $1-2 Million in its nascent years ! They said Google's PageRank ain't worth the pennies !

In 2002, Yahoo had the might to buy Google for $5 Billion. They said Google is overvalued !

In 2008, Microsoft proposed to acquire Yahoo for $45 Billion. They said they are undervalued !

Now, Yahoo got sold to Verizon for a mere $4.8 Billion while Google is valued at over $500 Billion.

Moral: Never underestimate others and overvalue yourself ! You lose your own value in the process !

#YahooCollapse