索馬利亞愈來愈發達的行動支付

索馬利亞的行動支付愈來愈發達:「More phones, few banks and years of instability are transforming Somalia to a cashless society」。

Now, it is one of at least three companies offering mobile money transfers in Somalia, where 51 out of every 100 people has a mobile subscription (compared to 22, only three years ago), and around 40% of adults use mobile money accounts, according to 2014 data from the World Bank (">pdf).

行動支付的流行,原因包括了缺乏零售銀行 (也就是服務據點),加上戰爭因素:

[,] the lack of retail banking in Somalia and fears of continued unrest—Al-Shabaab continues to occasionally stage attacks throughout the country—have made the service vital to Somalia’s reconstruction. Hormuud holds the cash, acting in essence like a bank.

時代創造英雄的感覺...

美國年輕人的理想職業

紐約時報報導 National Society of High School Scholars 問了一萬八千名美國年輕人 (15~29 歲) 理想的職業,也不少出乎意料的結果跑出來:「The New Dream Jobs」。

常見的網路公司在上面,但讓紐約時報感到意外的,FBICIANSA 也在上面:

When the National Society of High School Scholars asked 18,000 Americans, ages 15 to 29, to rank their ideal future employers, the results were curious. To nobody’s surprise, Google, Apple and Facebook appeared high on the list, but so did the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency.

不過應該是不意外?在教育體系被灌輸愛國主義不就很容易就有這樣的結果?

DigitalOcean 下一個資料中心建在印度

DigitalOcean 的下一個資料中心會建在印度:「Announcing the Home of our Next Datacenter: Bangalore, India」。

這幾年可以看到很多投入印度市場的消息,像是 Amazon CloudFront 在 2013 就增加了印度機房的 PoP,而且是一次增加兩個:「AWS CloudFront 與 Route53 增加印度機房...」,而去年 2015 年時又喊話要直接開印度區:「In the Works – AWS Region in India」。

用 Markdown 寫測試的 Silk

堆了很久的文章...

Markdown 同時寫 API 測試文件,並且可以實際測試的工具:「Introducing Silk: Markdown driven API tests」,專案在「Markdown based document-driven RESTful API testing.」這邊可以抓到,用 Go 寫的。

Silk 規範了在 Markdown 裡要測試的文字,然後用這樣測:

silk -silkurl=http://127.0.0.1:3000 example-test.md.silk

其中 -silkurl= 帶的參數最後面不能有斜線 (slash)。

這個工具比較像是確保 API 文件與目前的 API 相同,而不是要取代現有的測試架構。畢竟用程式語言的彈性還是高很多,Silk 只是初步的確認。

用 curl 測試 Reserve Proxy 是否正確運作

架好 reverse proxy 後要測試可以用 curl--resolve 的功能來確認。

curl -v --resolve i.kfs.io:443:68.232.45.191 https://i.kfs.io/article5/global/364,324,6v1/original.png > /dev/null

其中 --resolve 的第三個參數一定要用 IP address,你可以看到他的運作原理:

* Added i.kfs.io:443:68.232.45.191 to DNS cache

Google 在舊金山與洛杉磯開始宅配生鮮食品...

Google Express 延伸業務到生鮮食品上:「Google Launches Fresh-Grocery Deliveries」,與生鮮業者合作。

Google said it would begin delivering produce, meat, eggs and other perishable goods on Wednesday in parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles. The service is part of Google Express, which partners with retailers in some U.S. cities to deliver goods to consumers within hours of an order.

而且是當日配送:

Alphabet Inc.'s Google is expanding its same-day delivery service to fresh groceries, the latest example of the tech titan’s increasing push into consumers’ daily lives.

我以為會掛在 Alphabet 下做,而不是在 Google 下做...

印度對軟體專利的限制

印度對軟體專利加以限制:「No patent if invention lies only in computer program, says Indian Patent Office」,新的規定規範了如果是程式內所跑出來的創新 (invention),那麼就不可以被專利化:

The new guideline says that if the contribution of the invention lies only in computer program, the examiner should deny the patent claim.

基於程式本身不可專利,那麼完全由程式所產生出來的創新也不應該有專利權:

"The computer program in itself is never patentable. If the contribution lies solely in the computer program, deny the claim. If the contribution lies in both the computer program as well as hardware, proceed to other steps of patentability," it added.

百度被抓到蒐集個資後還是要蒐集...

在「Thousands of apps running Baidu code collect, leak personal data - research」這篇裡,加拿大的研究團隊 Citizen Lab 發現百度的 Android SDK 使用非加密傳輸這些個資:

The unencrypted information that has been collected includes a user's location, search terms and website visits, JeffreyKnockel, chief researcher at Citizen Lab, told Reuters ahead of publication of the research on Wednesday.

百度說他們會修正加密問題,但還是要蒐集:

[,] and Baidu told Reuters it would be fixing the encryption holes in its kits, but would still collect data for commercial use, some of which it said it shares with third parties.

霸氣!不愧是百度!即使被抓到後還是要蒐集 XDDD

MetaFilter 的 Gopher 服務 (!!!) 在十五年後復出

現在大家都在流行復古... 關閉十五年的 Gopher 服務重新開起來了:「Direct your gopher client to gopher://gopher.metafilter.com」。

現在的瀏覽器好像都拔掉了,懷舊的人可以用 Lynx 連上去,可以看到長這樣:

用上下鍵選,然後左右鍵是上下層...

MariaDB 讀寫分離的工具:MaxScale

MariaDBMaxScale 軟體提供 MySQL 相容的 proxy interface,可以將後端一群 MySQL server 架構隱藏起來,讓應用程式不需要處理這部份。

Percona 的人則介紹 MaxScale 作為讀寫分離的工具:「High availability with asynchronous replication… and transparent R/W split」。

如果你是用有支援讀寫分離的 ORM (像是 Laravel 中的 Illuminate::Database),由於 ORM library 幫你處理好了,你可以省掉這個工作。

但在其他的情況,像是應用程式沒有原始程式碼,或是只能設一組 server,你就必須透過像 MaxScale 這種軟體來幫你打散負荷量。

Percona 給的範例提供了很多設定檔,應該是改一改就可以動 (當然效能調校是另外要花功夫的事情了),對於有興趣的人應該可以丟人研究?