A not so technical review of LG 43UK6400PLF UHD smart TV series

Did you notice the strange circular arc stand?

This new post describes my experiences regarding the use of the 43 inch  LG 43UK6400PLF Ultra High Definition 4k, following the review path of the 32LF650V smart tv. More or less the contents of the other post concerning the LG 32 LB650 still apply, but there are some more or less stale news as well.
On the bright side, the PMI refresh rate as reported by the manufacturer, see here more analytical specs, has been increased to 1600 Hz, offering a clearer high definition view than the predecessor. Especially during ultra high definition satellite reception, which is presently the sole way for  free 4k content.  Bluetooth support, HDR, IPS Miracast, Intelligent Voice Recognition, only for selected tongues, are also  welcome additions or maybe not... One needs to pay special attention to what one says nowadays,  is it not true? The initial assembly is also simplified and that might explain once more the brevity of the printed owner's manual. By the way, the manual authors have again spent almost two pages describing the functions of the optional magic remote, which is to be purchased separately for around 50€. Although Adobe flash player is still missing, one could experiment starting up some third party  software, such as the nova player, and attempt to update it. Hopefully the built in primitive internet browser will be able to play online streaming content full screen, as provided by internet broadcasting services such as asestv.com. Sadly  I see a trend of promoting streaming only via paid services and subscription apps asking online for credit cards numbers, such as netflix etc. That could keep someone shivering and trembling. Regular manual updating of the WebOS is namely necessary for safety and security reasons,  please bear in mind that auto updating does not always work, especially when the tv ip address assignment is dynamic!
On the dark side, the cumbersome menu structure, the still archaic browser,  the tv operation via the even smaller remote control, remain as good, or bad, as before. A convenient and cheaper alternative to buying the magic remote, is connecting a wheel mouse to the usb port of the tv or using the LG provided smart phone app. Beware whatever you type thus, circulates around the internet, so that advertisers can identify your interests or needs! Sadly connecting a microsoft natural keyboard for entering text, did not work again. Moreover, some people as always claimed that the strange plastic stands are of moderate to low quality and that the tv does not allow to switch off entirely.  However, one can still disable the standby led light by changing the settings in order to save energy. Another regular complaint is the so often "Out of memory error", appearing while browsing the internet. Hopefully the updates will solve that problem too.
All in all, the setup is fast, but the software quality of the open source based WebOS  remains disputable, I 'd rather have another OS, or at least a modern browser installed instead. For a price of less than 400€ it seems to be worth the money only for people having access to a satellite dish. Watching online streaming is still troublesome, since the broadband lines are still too slow, unreliable, depending on the time of the day and the weather.

Comments on Cloud Native Java: Designing Resilient Systems with Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and Cloud Foundry

As the title says the authors emphasizes on proprietary open source technologies based on Spring Boot and Java 1.8. The  huge text assumes an advanced reader who  not only has solid experience in several Cloud computing  vendors, namely Amazon web services,   but also in Spring, REST web services, integration and design architecture. This is clearly not a book for introductory level java programmers wishing to learn Spring or Java, although there is a guide about setting up the relevant IDE and so on. I quote the contents of the text at a glance:

• The Basics: learn the motivations behind cloud native thinking; configure and test a Spring Boot application; and move your legacy application to the cloud
• Web Services: build HTTP and RESTful services with Spring; route requests in your distributed system; and build edge services closer to the data
• Data Integration: manage your data with Spring Data, and integrate distributed services with Spring’s support for event-driven, messaging-centric architectures
• Production: make your system observable; use service brokers to connect stateful services; and understand the big ideas behind continuous delivery

On the bright side, the code snippets presented in the text are coloured, making it easier to grasp it gist, and pleasant to the eye. Although the authors favour the open source movement, there is plenty of criticism i.e. on microservices architecture drawbacks, mainly due to overuse or misuse.
On the dark side there is a long list of errata on the publishers site, which at the time of reading the book was still unconfirmed.
All in all the book offers an enormous amount of useful information, but in my opinion still lacks of some more official after sales support by the authors.

Comments on Beginning serverless computing, by M.Stiegler, APress

On the bright side the book is well organized, written in American English and presents a neat introduction to the three most popular cloud providers Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google Cloud. Although Heroku is not presented, but only mentioned once,  neither IBM nor Oracle cloud is even mentioned at all, as if they did not exist... Rainy days for both Oracle cloud and IBM? I only hope that the experts of Sun  can develop a solution which is capable of weather (or even  climate) modification of  the cloud business landscape, or  better cloudscape. After all their motto has always been "the network is the computer", or not?

 Coming back to the book, the language used to create the sample apps is exclusively Typescript, a stricter version of JavaScript, Visual studio code is the IDE used, along with Kudu, Node, the Serverless Framework for deployment, Mongo DB as NoSQL Database, Postman for testing and GitHub for versioning among others. Prior knowledge of all Rest & Json technologies is assumed, since there is almost no introduction to any, but short descriptions.

On the dark side, the use cases of the applications presented are so simple, that the code of the book is scarcely reusable. The code is at the moment oddly not available online on the publisher's site, but on Github.

All in all, the author develops a hotel room service order app in each cloud provider, comparing the different terminologies, data stores and costs, warning about possible traps, which might strip your bank account some hefty amounts of money. By the way always keep in mind that opening a personal, not a company, account for learning cloud development sometimes requires giving access to your personal banking  details such as your debit  or credit card number. At the last chapter an agnostic method of development  is  presented.  The text addresses several issues, such as vendor lock in, but the security issues i.e. of guarding online database data is in my opinion not addressed widely enough.