SSL TLS End of Life

In the world of secured HTTP protocol (HTTPS), Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) plays a vital role in the network industry.

SSL is a cryptographic protocol, which extends HTTP to authenticate internet connections and enable encryption and SSL decryption for data communication over a network. 

SSL 1.0

• Release: SSL 1.0 was never publicly released due to serious security flaws.

SSL 2.0

• Release in 1995
• End of Life: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) officially deprecated in 2011 through RFC 6176.

SSL 3.0

• Release in 1996
• End of Life: June 2015 through RFC 7568.

TLS is a direct evolution of SSL and introduced to address security vulnerabilities in the earlier protocol.

TLS 1.0

• Release in January 1999
• End of Life: IETF recommended deprecating TLS 1.0 in 2018. Major browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari officially ended support in 2020.

TLS 1.1

• Release in April 2006
• End of Life: IETF in 2018, with major browsers in 2020.

TLS 1.2

• Release in August 2008
• End of Life: Now, it is widely supported; but recommended to TLS 1.3 for which adoption increases.

TLS 1.3

• Release in August 2018
• End of Life: Not applicable as it is current standards

.NET Core Journey

Couple of weeks ago, Microsoft announced .NET Core 3 Preview 1, which is the first public release of .NET Core 3. Let us scan the journey of .NET Core

.NET Core 1
The .NET Core journey began a few years ago, with version 1 in 2016, with the goal of building the first version of .NET that was open source and cross-platform (Windows, macOS and Linux).

Version 1 shipped with new versions of ASP.NET and Entity Framework (EF) and primarily targeted Web applications.

.NET Core 2
While version 1 got .NET running on new platforms, it supported only a limited set of .NET APIs. In order to address this, we created .NET Standard, which specified the APIs that any .NET runtime must implement so that code and binaries can be shared across .NET platforms and versions.

With .NET Standard 2.0, we added more than 20,000 APIs to the .NET Standard spec,  .NET Core 2 also continued the push to make .NET one of the fastest full-stack frameworks.
 
.NET Core 3.0
.NET Core 3.0 is the next major version of the .NET Core platform. It includes many exciting new features, such as support for Windows desktop applications with Windows Forms (WinForms), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Entity Framework 6. For Web development it adds support for building client-side Web applications with C# using Razor Components (formerly known as Blazor). And it includes support for C# 8.0 and .NET Standard 2.1.

.NET Core 3.0 will also fully support ML.NET, our open source machine learning framework built for .NET developers, along with support for Internet-of-Things (IoT) scenarios.

You can see complete details of the release in the .NET Core 3 Preview 1 release notes at https://github.com/dotnet/core/blob/master/release-notes/3.0/preview/3.0.0-preview1.md

2021 IT Trends

1. Internet-of-things (IoT) software and solutions: IoT will be driving new levels of customer insight and engagement for some by 2021, but technology diversity and the need for organizational changes will still stymie or delay many firms.

2. Intelligent agents: Intelligent agents and related robots will have eliminated a net 6% of jobs by 2021.

3. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR): By 2021, AR will be commonplace, while VR will remain niche.

4. Artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive technology: Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service, and consumer services.

5. Hybrid wireless: 5G will be rolling out by 2021, creating a high-bandwidth cellular backbone to support IoT devices. In addition, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will expand their capabilities to support IoT devices.

Making Time

One of the famous quote is ringing back in my mind “It is not about having time; it is about making time”

College of Engineering Guindy (CEG) is a top most engineering institute in my state Tamilnadu, INDIA. Itz not only brightest but also one of the oldest engineering college, founded in 1794.

CEG used to conduct the national level technical symposium during the first quarter of every year. This year, it was scheduled between Mar 1 and Mar 3 at CEG campus of Anna University, Chennai.

This well renowned national level event is a platform for the student/research communities to gain insight of the contemporary technical contraptions. My strong belief is that Industry and Institutes must have stronger collaboration on day to day business. Apparently, it provides an opportunity to triumph in this fast pacing disruptive digital world.

As every engineering department was hosting their relevant areas, CS (Computer Science) engineering executed their sessions for IT geeks to take a plunge on IT innovation. It creates an opportunity for the demanding industry needs. CS department had TWO days workshop on IoT (Internet of Things), which is an emerging technology in the current industry.

Back to me. I always crazy about prime institutes, since my childhood days. CEG is one among them. With high degree of aspiration / passion, became CEG alumni through my degree between 2008 and 2010. Today, Time promoted me to be the chief guest of this great institute with high degree of blessings. Thanks Almighty!

Being hot core IT product engineer, blessed with multiple opportunities / challenges to work around the emerging disruptive technologies like IoT and BigData, for last 5 years; prior to my .NET space. With great amount of learning from my beloved colleagues/mentors, drafted a practical approach presentation entitled “Big Data weds IoT”. CEG session was well received by the enthusiastic researchers, which got reflected in multiple smart shoots of questions. Happy learning to me!

With this nostalgic feeling, time to appreciate all time, environment, mentors for my transition. Thanks with closing note: “Time is always with the people who have courage to fly.“

Google Daydream

Google unveiled the Daydream VR headset last month, along with its Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, and now the device is finally available for purchase starting November 10 next week.

The headset will be available on Google Store in five countries across the globe- US, Canada, UK, Germany and Australia.

Daydream VR platform is a major upgrade over Google Cardboard. With the introduction of the new platform, this gives developers the ability to create applications to deliver better productivity in different use scenarios.

Google has teamed with Hulu to deliver custom UI and content for the Daydream VR. Users can stream Hulu’s entire library of TV shows, movies and VR content.

Google Daydream View VR is priced at $79 and will be available in Slate, Snow and Crimson color variants.

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.

Cisco ChatBot

Gupshup, a Silicon Valley-based bot builder platform, has announced a partnership with Cisco to connect chatbot developer capabilities with Cisco’s cloud-based collaboration service, Cisco Spark (a Slack-like messaging service for the workplace).

This will let developers quickly build and incorporate advanced chatbot functionality into new and innovative service offerings for Cisco customers.

The news comes just after an earlier announcement from Gupshup regarding the upcoming launch of bot templates for small and medium businesses (SMB), according to Economic Times. The announcement, made Monday, will allow SMBs to deploy bots — software that can run automated tasks — across multiple platforms, including SMS, Messenger, Slack, and Telegram.

Chatbots are fast transforming the way in which businesses use computers, providing a simpler, more conversational interface to advanced services, such as trawling through masses of company data, or surfacing necessary files and documents in a speedy manner.

By utilizing bots in the workplace, businesses can enhance productivity, off-loading many of the time-consuming activities that humans have had to do manually in the past.

Amazon Alexa

Alexa, which is Amazon’s cloud-based voice service. It powers voice experiences on millions of devices, including Amazon Echo and Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, Amazon Fire TV devices, and devices like Triby that use the Alexa Voice Service.

One year ago, Amazon opened up Alexa to developers, enabling you to build Alexa skills with the Alexa Skills Kit(ASK) and integrate Alexa into your own products with the Alexa Voice Service(AVS).

Starting this month, customers can browse Alexa skills by categories such as “Smart Home” and “Lifestyle” in the Alexa app, apply additional search filters, and access their previously enabled skills via the “Your Skills” section.

Some fun facts about the Alexa Skills Kit, Alexa Voice Service, and Alexa Fund include:

• There are now over 1,400 Alexa skills and the catalog has grown by 50% in just over one month
• Customers have made over 3 million requests using the top 10 most popular Alexa skills
• Since January 2016, selection of Alexa smart home API skills has grown by more than 5x
• There are now over 10,000 registered developers using the Alexa Voice Service to integrate Alexa into their products
• There are tens of thousands of developers currently working on Alexa projects
• The Alexa Fund has invested in 16 startups, with a focus on smart home and wearable products to date. 
• Over the next year, The Alexa Fund will be expanding investments into startups that focus on robotics, developer tools, healthcare, accessibility and more

Alexa Developer Platform references are listed below:

1. Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) at https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/content/alexa-developer-skill-promotion
2. Alexa Voice Service (AVS) at https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice-service

Pentaho

3 years back, I started developing ETL application using Pentaho; it was observed as the noticeable industry product then.  In fact, Pentaho replaced Informatica with 'open-source' trump-card in our business use case.  Time fly; what is the current state of Pentaho ?

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., recently announced that it has completed its acquisition of Pentaho, a leading data integration, visualization and analytic company. Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Pentaho will retain its existing brand and continue to operate independently.

HDS is a rapidly emerging global leader in the Internet of Things (IoT), operational technology, big data and machine-to-machine (M2M) analytic. Its big data analytic solutions help organizations transform vast quantities of structured and unstructured data from disparate sources into knowledge through the application of advanced data analytic, connected intelligence from IoT devices, and operational technologies (OT)

Pentaho recently released cloud-based Hadoop integration, with support for Amazon Elastic MapReduce. Integration with SAP HANA is included too. Support for Apache Spark has been added to Pentaho Data Integration (PDI), allowing PDI to orchestrate Spark jobs. The look and feel of PDI has been updated as well, says Pentaho. And new APIs have been added to make Pentaho an even stronger solution for embedding BI features into custom and commercial applications.

By Pentaho platform integration, HDS is now extending its data integration, refinement, monitoring, management, and orchestration capabilities to deliver an incomparably sophisticated data analytics stack. This stack powers its Social Innovation solutions and delivers on the full promise of the “Internet of Things that matter,” by helping businesses to derive rich insights from their data with faster time to value, and supporting the development of smarter, safer, healthier and more efficient societies