Vadivel's blog

One of the excellent feature introduced in SQL Server 2016 is "Always Encrypted". This gives an extra layer of protection as no one (including the production DBA's) will be able to access the actual data without having the appropriate key. A high-level overview of how SQL Server 2016 Always Encrypted work: 1. Always Encrypted is a client-side encryption technology in which a SQL Server client driver (In our case, it would be ADO.NET) plays the key role. The driver encrypts the data which application sends as plaintext, and it then sends encrypted data to SQL Server. So, the data is encrypted on the fly as well as at rest. 2. Now when the application retrieves the encrypted data from the database the DRIVER transparently decrypts returning plaintext to the client app. Consequently, SQL Server never sees a sensitive information in plaintext. The keys, in fact, are managed entirely on the client side & the server doesn't have access to the keys either. 3. Th...

One of the major issues with Whatsapp is in no time it produces numerous "spam images" which would eat up our smartphone's memory. Initially tackled it by exiting out of many groups and mostly used it for direct one-on-one conversations alone. It helped in cutting down on those useless images (memes, screenshots, quotes, images with good morning/evening messages etc.,) but it didn't completely solve the problem. Many of them were either close friends/relatives whom I don't want to block in Whatsapp but at the same time wanted a solution to quickly get rid of those spam images. After some analysis narrowed down on  Magic Cleaner App (Artificial Intelligence powered image recognition system) which seems to do the trick for me. This App does a decent job in identifying the spam images found the accuracy level to be around 75% - which is pretty good. It identifies and lists all images which it considers to be spam/duplicates. Review & if satisfied...

"Universal Basic Income" - Heard about this only recently via an Elon Musk interview in November 2016 since then been reading about it. Understood it being discussed for many decades now and certainly not a new idea. What does it mean? A government would guarantee citizens a regular fixed sum of enough money to cover a basic standard of living, they can spend however they want, no questions asked. Majorly critics where saying something on this lines: 1. If we give money for free people will become more lazier 2. People would use it only for drinking / drugs / unhealthy things! etc., "Maybe 90 % of people will go smoke pot and play video games. But if 10 percent of the people go create new products and services and new wealth, that’s still a huge net win." - Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, California Experiments: 1. Finland this week started it on a 2-year trial basis (2000 randomly picked unemployed citizens to get Euro 560 per month) ...