#Azure APIs

[elbrunoc]

APIs in Action: Unlocking the Potential of APIs in Today's Digital Landscape

Hi! In today’s world, APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are essential for connecting applications and services, driving digital innovation. But with the rise of hybrid and multi-cloud setups, effective API management becomes essential for ensuring security and efficiency. That’s where APIs in Action, a virtual event dedicated to unlocking the full potential of APIs, comes in.  Join us…

[abathurofficial]

Abathur

At Abathur, we believe technology should empower, not complicate.

Our mission is to provide seamless, scalable, and secure solutions for businesses of all sizes. With a team of experts specializing in various tech domains, we ensure our clients stay ahead in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Why Choose Us? Expert-Led Innovation – Our team is built on experience and expertise. Security First Approach – Cybersecurity is embedded in all our solutions. Scalable & Future-Proof – We design solutions that grow with you. Client-Centric Focus – Your success is our priority.

[bdccglobal]

Seamless Integration: Dive into the Power of Azure's API Management Toolset.

Elevate your connectivity, security, and efficiency in one robust solution.

[boonars]

🤖 Discover how Xrm.Copilot is revolutionizing Dynamics 365 CE with AI! Learn about its key capabilities, integration with the Xrm API, and how developers can build smarter model-driven apps. Boost CRM productivity with conversational AI. #Dynamics365 #Copilot #PowerPlatform #XrmAPI #CRM #AI

[freddynossa]

Sistemas de Recomendación y Visión por Computadora: Las IAs que Transforman Nuestra Experiencia Digital

Sistemas de Recomendación: ¿Qué son y para qué sirven? Los sistemas de recomendación son tecnologías basadas en inteligencia artificial diseñadas para predecir y sugerir elementos (productos, contenidos, servicios) que podrían interesar a un usuario específico. Estos sistemas analizan patrones de comportamiento, preferencias pasadas y similitudes entre usuarios para ofrecer recomendaciones…

[ritikay]

Build Your Own QR Code Generator API with Azure Functions

The Azure Function QR Code Generator API is a scalable, cost-effective, and customizable solution for generating dynamic QR codes on demand. Unlike existing third-party APIs, this approach enables businesses to create their own API, ensuring greater flexibility, security, and ease of access. 

Key Features of Azure Function QR Code Generator API: 

✅ Dynamic QR Code Generation – Instantly generate QR codes for URLs, text, or other content as per user input.  ✅ Customization Options – Modify size, color, and error correction levels to match your specific needs.  ✅ RESTful API – Seamlessly integrate the API with various programming languages and platforms.  ✅ Scalable & Reliable – Built on Azure Functions, it scales automatically to meet demand, ensuring high availability.  ✅ Cost-Effective – Uses a pay-as-you-go model, reducing unnecessary expenses. 

How It Works: 

1️⃣ API Request – Users send an HTTP request with the required content and customization parameters.  2️⃣ Function Execution – The Azure Function processes the request and dynamically generates the QR code.  3️⃣ QR Code Generation – A QR code generation library creates the image in real-time.  4️⃣ Response – The API returns the QR code image in formats like PNG or SVG for easy access. 

Use Cases: 

🚀 Marketing Campaigns – Use QR codes on flyers, posters, and ads to drive traffic to websites or promotions.  📦 Asset Tracking – Efficiently manage inventory and product tracking.  🎟 Event Management – Simplify event check-ins and attendee tracking with QR-based tickets.  🔐 Authentication & Access Control – Implement two-factor authentication and secure login systems. 

[freebiesms]

Farewell #Skype. Here's how their #API worked.

So, with the shutdown of Skype in May 2025, only two months away, there is not much need to hold on tight to our source code for the Skype API. It worked well for us for years on AvatarAPI.com but with the imminent shutdown, their API will undoubtedly stop working as soon as Skype is shut down, and will no longer be relevant, even if the API stays active for a little while later. In this post,…

[rajaniesh]

Mastering Azure Container Apps: From Configuration to Deployment

Thank you for following our Azure Container Apps series! We hope you're gaining valuable insights to scale and secure your applications. Stay tuned for more tips, and feel free to share your thoughts or questions. Together, let's unlock the Azure's Power.

[vastedge330]

Azure API Management provides robust tools for securing and scaling your APIs, ensuring reliable performance and protection against threats. This blog post covers best practices for implementing Azure API Management, including authentication methods, rate limiting, and monitoring. Explore how Azure’s features can help you manage your API lifecycle effectively, enhance security protocols, and scale your services to handle increasing traffic. Get practical tips for optimizing your API management strategy with Azure.

[govindhtech]

Deep dive into Azure’s DDoS attacks landscape for 2023

Examining Microsoft Azure’s DDoS attack environment in depth Together with joy and festivities, the 2023 holiday season also brought with it a spike in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. The patterns of DDoS attacks this year point to a dynamic and intricate threat environment. These attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and diverse in terms of their tactics and scale, ranging from botnet delivery enabled by misconfigured Docker API endpoints to the appearance of NKAbuse malware that uses blockchain technology to launch denial-of-service attacks.

Azure’s holiday attack landscape for 2023 During the holiday season, Azure monitored the attack landscape and noticed a significant change in some of the attack patterns when compared to the previous year. This modification highlights the persistent attempts by malevolent entities to enhance their methods of posing a threat and try to get around DDoS defenses.

Daily Attack Volume: A maximum of 3,500 attacks per day were automatically mitigated by Azure’s strong security infrastructure. Remarkably, 15%–20% of these incidents were large-scale attacks, defined as those that sent more than one million packets per second (pps).

Geographic origins: Attack origins showed a shift, with 18% coming from the USA and 43% coming from China. Compared to the previous year, when both nations were equally represented as regional sources, this represents a shift.

Protocols for attacks: UDP-based attacks, which accounted for 78% of the attacks during the 2023 holiday season, were primarily directed towards web applications and gaming workloads. These include UDP reflected/amplified attacks, which primarily use quick UDP internet connections (QUIC) for reflection and domain name system (DNS) and simple service discovery protocol (SSDP) in their attacks. Interestingly, QUIC is becoming a more popular attack vector due to reflection or DDoS stressors that sporadically use UDP port 443. The attack patterns during the holiday season this year are very different from those of the previous year, when TCP-based attacks accounted for 65% of all attacks.

Attack that broke all previous records: An astounding UDP attack that peaked at 1.5 terabits per second (Tbps) was directed towards an Asian gaming client. This highly randomized attack, which involved multiple source IP addresses and ports and originated in China, Japan, the USA, and Brazil, was completely neutralized by Azure’s defenses.

Botnet evolution: Over the past year, more and more cybercriminals have used cloud resources- virtual machines in particular for DDoS attacks. Throughout the holiday season, attackers continued to try to take advantage of discounted Azure subscriptions all over the world. Azure tracked compromised account attempts in 39 Azure regions from mid-November 2023 to the end of the year. The main targets of these incidents were the USA and Europe, which accounted for roughly 67% of the total. These threats were successfully neutralized by Azure’s defense mechanisms.

Azure regions where attempts to exploit resources for DDOS attacks occurred. Setting the Threat in Context Global trends are mirrored in Azure’s DDoS attack trends for 2023. As Azure noted earlier in the year, attacks are becoming more politically motivated as a result of geopolitical tensions.

Attackers continue to be drawn to the rise of DDoS-for-hire services, also referred to as “stressor’s” and “booters.” These platforms have democratized the ability to launch potent DDoS attacks, making them affordable for less experienced criminals and easily accessible on forums frequented by cybercriminals. International law enforcement agencies have confirmed that there has been a surge in the availability and use of these services in recent years through operations such as Operation Power OFF, which last May targeted 13 domains linked to DDoS-for-hire platforms. Stressor’s are still in demand despite these efforts because they provide a variety of attack techniques and power, with some being able to launch attacks as fast as 1.5 Tbps.

Cloud power: Defending against the dynamic DDoS attacks The proliferation of large-scale botnets and DDoS-for-hire services presents a serious threat to online services and corporate operations. More cloud computing capacity is required to counter these threats in order to absorb the attack’s initial wave, divert erroneous traffic, and preserve legitimate traffic until patterns can be found. The cloud is our best defense when an attack involves tens of thousands of devices because it has the scale necessary to mitigate the largest attacks. Furthermore, because the cloud is distributed globally, being closer together aids in thwarting attacks that are directed towards the sources.

Providing strong defense to DDoS Attacks It is more important than ever to have strong defenses against DDoS attacks in a time when cyber threats are always changing. This is how Azure’s all-inclusive security solutions are made to protect your online data.

Due to the increased risk of DDoS attacks, a DDoS protection service like Azure DDoS Protection is essential. Real-time telemetry, monitoring, alerts, automatic attack mitigation, adaptive real-time tuning, and always-on traffic monitoring give this service full visibility on DDoS attacks.

Multi-Layered Defense: Use Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) in conjunction with Azure DDoS Protection to set up a multi-layered defense for complete protection. Layers 3 and 4 of the network are protected by Azure DDoS Protection, and Layer 7 of the application layer is protected by Azure WAF. This combination offers defense against different kinds of DDoS attacks.

Alert Configuration: Without user input, Azure DDoS Protection is able to recognize and stop attacks. You can be informed about the state of public intellectual property resources that are protected by configuring alerts for active mitigations.

2024: Taking action against DDoS attacks The Christmas season of 2023 has brought to light the DDoS attacks’ constant and changing threat to the cyberspace. It is imperative that businesses improve and modify their cybersecurity plans as the new year approaches. This should be a period of learning, with an emphasis on strengthening defenses against DDoS attacks and remaining watchful for emerging strategies. Azure’s ability to withstand these advanced DDoS attacks demonstrates how important it is to have strong and flexible security measures in place to safeguard digital assets and maintain business continuity.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

[bdccglobal]

Unlock the power of Azure API Management for your business! Discover why this tool is indispensable for streamlining operations and enhancing customer experiences.

[jcmarchi]

The Sequence Radar: AI Browsers are Coming

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-sequence-radar-ai-browsers-are-coming/

The Sequence Radar: AI Browsers are Coming

Perplexity and OpenAI announced in initiatives in that area.

Created Using GPT-4o

Next Week in The Sequence:

Over the next few weeks, you are going to see us experimenting with new content sections based on the installments that regularly get more traction. In a market inundanted by newsletters that published paper’s analysis done by LLMs without any original opinion, I would like to double down in the things that we can do best: keep you current in AI and discuss original ideas. I have some fresh ideas that I would like to test in those areas.

Let’s Go! You can subscribe to The Sequence below:

TheSequence is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

📝 Editorial: AI Browsers are Coming

Get accustomed to this term: AI browser because you are going to hear a lot about it in the next few months!

After decades in which Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge have dominated the browser market, a new wave of AI-first platforms is poised to challenge their hegemony by embedding advanced language models directly into the browsing core. Platforms like Perplexity’s Comet and the rumored OpenAI browser are transforming our web gateway from a static rendering engine into a dynamic AI assistant, offering conversational search, real-time content synthesis, and automated workflows that redefine navigation and productivity.

Perplexity’s Comet, launched in July 2025, exemplifies this shift by placing an AI agent in the sidebar to parse on-page content, manage multiple tabs, and automate multi-step workflows, all within a familiar Chromium shell that supports existing extensions and bookmarks. Early adopters laud the browser’s uncanny ability to distill hours of online research into concise bullet points and to handle end-to-end tasks like finding the best hotel deals or populating spreadsheets. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s impending release promises to extend the ChatGPT ecosystem into a full-fledged browser, where users may interface with web content solely through a chat window that interprets commands and orchestrates actions behind the scenes.

What sets AI-first browsers apart is their natural language interface, which transcends traditional keyword queries in favor of nuanced, conversational dialogue. This allows users to ask follow-up questions, refine search parameters on the fly, and receive contextually aware responses tailored to their needs. In professional settings—be it legal research, academic literature reviews, or market analysis—the ability to auto-summarize disparate sources and maintain thematic thread across web pages can dramatically cut down on cognitive load and accelerate decision-making.

Traditional browser vendors are not standing still. Google has woven generative features and Bard integrations into Chrome, and Microsoft’s Edge preview of Copilot modes hints at a future where every browser window is an AI cockpit. Even niche players like The Browser Company are experimenting with embedded assistants that perform on-the-fly translation, sentiment analysis, and intelligent shopping recommendations. These moves underscore the fact that the next frontier in browser innovation is not new layout designs or performance benchmarks, but the depth and responsiveness of integrated AI capabilities.

As Perplexity, OpenAI, and their competitors vie for a share of browser mindshare, the ultimate question becomes not which homepage we set but which AI collaborator we choose to navigate the web. In this unfolding chapter of digital exploration, browsers will no longer be defined by tabs and toolbars, but by the intelligence they bring to each click and keystroke. For developers, content creators, and policymakers alike, the mission is clear: to harness this wave of AI-driven browsing in ways that maximize efficiency, uphold trust, and safeguard the open ethos of the internet.

🔎 AI Research

VLM2Vec-V2: Advancing Multimodal Embedding for Videos, Images, and Visual Documents

Salesforce Research Builds on VLM2Vec by introducing a unified embedding space that effectively aligns video, image, and document representations through a novel contrastive loss and joint cross-modal attention modules. Demonstrates state-of-the-art results on video-text retrieval (YouCook2, MSR-VTT), image-text retrieval (MSCOCO, Flickr30K), and visual document understanding (DocVQA) benchmarks while improving computational efficiency.

Disambiguation-Centric Finetuning Makes Enterprise Tool-Calling LLMs More Realistic and Less Risky

SAP Labs Introduces a two-stage fine-tuning framework—first on synthetic, tool-augmented data to teach correct tool invocation, then on human-annotated dialogues to model realistic, disambiguation-driven interactions. Achieves a 69 percent reduction in harmful or hallucinated API calls compared to standard instruction tuning, while improving user-observed task success by 33 percent.

LitBench: A Benchmark and Dataset for Reliable Evaluation of Creative Writing

Stanford University Presents LitBench, the first benchmark for evaluating LLM-generated creative writing, featuring 2,480 debiased, human-labeled test pairs across four literary genres and a 43,827-pair training corpus of human preference labels. Includes guidelines to reduce annotator bias and demonstrates that current LLMs lag significantly behind human writers, highlighting directions for future model improvements.

Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code

OpenAI Systematically assesses four code-focused LLMs fine-tuned on Python, JavaScript, Java, and Go, revealing that code models excel at automated code write-and-explain tasks but underperform compared to general LLMs on code summarization and reasoning benchmarks. Finds that specialized models benefit most from chain-of-thought prompting in reasoning-intensive tasks, informing best practices for code model deployment.

MedGemma Technical Report

Google Research & Google DeepMind Introduces MedGemma, a suite of open, medically-tuned vision-language models built on the Gemma 3 architecture, with a 4 B-parameter multimodal variant and a 27 B-parameter text-only variant. Demonstrates strong zero-shot and fine-tuned performance across 25 medical benchmarks—including radiology report generation, image classification, and EHR question answering—while maintaining competitive general-purpose capabilities.

🤖 AI Tech Releases

Grok4

xAI released Grok4, and the results are quite impressive.

Comet

Perplexity launched Comet, its AI-first web browser.

Pin-4 Flash Reasoning

Microsoft released Phi-4-mini-flash-reasoning, a reasoning LLM optimized for inference speed.

Open Model Architecture

The LMSys research lab released Open Model Architecture(OME), a new Kubernetes platform with models as first-class components.

Reachy Mini

Hugging Face launched Richi Mini, an open source robot design for human-robt integration.

📡AI Radar

Google lands Windsurf CEO and team in $2.4B AI coding ‘acquihire’ – Google secures Windsurf’s tech and key executives including CEO Varun Mohan in a $2.4 billion licensing and hiring deal to bolster DeepMind’s Gemini agentic coding efforts, after OpenAI’s planned $3 billion acquisition fell through.

Microsoft’s Reports $500M Saved Right After 9K Layoffs – Microsoft reveals over $500 million in AI‑driven savings across departments just days after cutting about 9,000 jobs. TechCrunch link (TechCrunch, TechCrunch)

OpenAI to Drop AI‑Powered Web Browser Soon – OpenAI is set to launch its own AI‑centric web browser in the coming weeks to rival Chrome. TechCrunch link (TechCrunch)

ZeroEntropy Scores $4.2M to Build the Future of AI Search – A YC‑backed founder secures $4.2 million for ZeroEntropy, aiming to layer smarter AI‑powered search using RAG.

LangChain Nears Unicorn Status with $1B Valuation Round – Sources say AI toolmaker LangChain is raising a round valuing it at around $1 billion led by IVP.

French AI Star Mistral Eyes $1 Billion Raise from Global Investors – Paris‑based Mistral is reportedly in talks to raise a $1 billion equity round backed by MGX Fund and others.

Replit Picks Microsoft Over Google in Strategic Cloud Partnership – Replit partners with Microsoft, boosting its presence in Azure despite continuing support for Google Cloud.

CoreWeave & Core Scientific Unite in $9B All‑Stock AI Deal – CoreWeave acquires data‑center provider Core Scientific in a $9 billion all‑stock merger to scale AI infrastructure.

AWS to launch AI Agent marketplace alongside Anthropic – Amazon Web Services is set to unveil a dedicated AI agent marketplace next week at its New York Summit, enabling startups like Anthropic to offer AI agents directly to AWS customers through a curated platform.

Knox raises $6.5M to challenge Palantir in federal compliance – Knox has secured $6.5 million in seed funding to accelerate its platform that helps SaaS companies navigate FedRAMP compliance in under three months, positioning itself as a challenger to Palantir’s dominant FedStart offering.

Sarah Smith launches $16M solo GP fund fueled by AI– VC Sarah Smith closes a $16 million fund and asserts AI empowers solo general partners like herself to scale operations and deliver value up to 10× faster, transforming early-stage investing.

[sztupy]

The next rule we created was named “../”, and upon deleting that rule, the entire test SQL Server was also suddenly deleted, and we found ourselves in need of a new test server! The cause of the deletion of our test server can be found in the URL to which the DELETE request is sent. The URL the DELETE request was sent to is:  /subscriptions/<subscriptionId>/resourceGroups/<rg>/providers/Microsoft.Sql/servers/test-4ad9a/firewallRules/../?api-version=2021-11-0. The firewall rule name “../” within the URL is treated as if it refers to the parent directory and to the SQL Server itself, which leads to the entire server being deleted.

With a little effort, it’s possible to create a rule that deletes any resource in the Azure tenant with the following name: ../../../../../../../<theResourceURL>?api-version=<relevant_version>#”.

Little Bobby Tables strikes again