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1,300 | Why it’s So Hard to Train Robots Soft Skills | What Are Soft Skills?
Soft skills — the personal attributes, personality traits, inherent social cues, and communication abilities needed for success on the job. They characterize how a person interacts in his or her relationships with others. They include things like adaptability, communication, creative thinking, conflict resolution, etc.
This is the opposite of hard skills, which are job-specific skills you can gain through education, certifications, and training. This could include anything from computer programming to wood framing, depending on the job.
Soft Skills > Hard Skills
Nowadays, more and more people are hiring based on soft skills rather than hard skills for a multitude of reasons.
For one, it’s leagues harder to learn new soft skills rather than hard skills. Learning soft skills requires personal dedication to development, and of course, the “curriculum” looks different for everyone. For instance, one may learn empathy after doing something wrong, through a role model, etc.
But with hard skills, one could learn anything with enough practice and guidance. A great example is with computer science — whether one has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or learned coding from doing boot camps doesn’t matter, as long as you can do the job. Plus, it doesn’t matter how personally dedicated you are. As long as you do the work, you’ll learn the skills, no matter how you feel about the topic.
Other than training, soft skills are also necessary for the workplace. New, modern companies no longer look like the traditional 9-to-5 day with people in suits sitting in a cubby all day. It’s evolved to be more casual, personal, and collaborative. Even if you have a bunch of fancy credentials, if you’re an asshole to work with, you won’t last very long.
Programming Soft Skills
Neural networks were inspired by the neurons in our brains. Reinforcement learning parallels how humans learn through trial and error. So, let’s draw upon human experience. How did you learn to be empathetic, to understand people’s needs, or to be a team player? We learn from mistakes.
Let’s say I was trying to create an algorithm to draw a dog.
Draw a circle. Draw a face. Draw ears.
… And so on. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/why-its-so-hard-to-train-robots-soft-skills-1698f97dd2d | ['Alexis Wang'] | 2020-12-26 13:05:46.628000+00:00 | ['Soft Skills', 'Robots', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Automation', 'Technology'] |
1,301 | Chinese capsule with moon rocks begins journey back to Earth | A Chinese space capsule, bringing back the first moon rocks in more than four decades, started its three-day return to Earth on Sunday.
The Chang’e 5 lunar probe, which had been orbiting the moon for about a week, fired up four engines for about 22 minutes to move out of the moon’s orbit, the China National Space Administration said in a social media post.
The craft’s lander touched down on the moon earlier this month close to a formation called the Mons Rumker, an area believed to have been the site of ancient volcanic activity. It collected about 2.0 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of samples.
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The return capsule is expected to land in northern China in the Inner Mongolia region after separating from the rest of the spacecraft and floating down on parachutes. The material would be the first brought back since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 probe in 1976.
The rocks and other debris were obtained both by drilling into the moon’s crust and scooping directly off the surface. They may be billions of years younger than those brought back by earlier US and Soviet missions, possibly offering insights into the moon’s history and that of other bodies in the solar system.
China has set up labs to analyse the samples for age and composition and is also expected to share some of them with other countries, as was done with the hundreds of kilograms (pounds) brought back by the US and the former Soviet Union.
China’s space program has a series of ambitious missions underway, including a probe en route to Mars. The Chang’e lunar program, named after the ancient Chinese moon goddess, has been operating the Chang’e 4 probe on the moon’s less explored far side for the past two years.
Future plans call for returning a human to the moon and perhaps a permanent moon base. China is also building a space station to begin operating as early as 2022. | https://medium.com/@sokobiki/chinese-capsule-with-moon-rocks-begins-journey-back-to-earth-e6bb6e64806b | [] | 2020-12-15 17:26:33.916000+00:00 | ['Space Technology', 'Moon', 'Technology', 'Life', 'China'] |
1,302 | Putting Bakkt’s Bitcoin Futures to the Test | Setting a New Standard for Institutional Market Quality for Digital Assets
O n July 20, 2019, the world marks the 50th anniversary of the first human landing on the Moon. When Neil Armstrong planted his foot on the lunar surface five decades earlier, he made good on what President John F. Kennedy promised would be America’s “moonshot bet.”
The “moonshot bet” has become a familiar term in business culture. Recently, Jeff Sprecher, the Chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, in his fourth quarter earnings conference call, termed ICE’s investment in Bakkt “a bit of a moonshot bet.” Practically speaking, however, Bakkt is a very “down to earth” solution to the grounded challenge of building trust in bitcoin and other digital assets for institutions and consumers alike.
Still, bitcoin price discovery, like a moonshot, requires diligent testing before launch. On July 22, two days after Apollo 11’s 50th anniversary, Bakkt will initiate user acceptance testing for its bitcoin futures listed and traded at ICE Futures U.S. and cleared at ICE Clear US.
This is no small step. This launch will usher in a new standard for accessing crypto markets. Compared to other markets, institutional participation in crypto remains constrained due to limitations like market infrastructure and regulatory certainty. This results in lower trading volumes, liquidity, and price transparency than more established markets like ICE’s Brent Crude futures contract, which has earned global trust in setting the world’s price of crude oil.
Recently, Bakkt announced that we’ll support the ICE Futures U.S. launch of daily and monthly margined futures for bitcoin by bringing regulated custody as part of the futures contract.
That’s our mission — to support the development of trusted infrastructure for securely transacting in the new market for digital assets. In advance of the start of Bakkt’s testing regimen, we wanted to share what we see as some of the benefits we’re bringing to help grow this market. Just as engineers in the 1960’s identified problems in planning a spacecraft’s lunar trajectory, we are working to meet today’s identifiable market risks with problem-solving solutions:
Along with these problem-solving solutions that are new to digital asset markets, Bakkt also brings all the other features that institutions would expect in a versatile and broadly accessible market, including: block trades; a fee holiday through the end of the year to encourage trading; market maker incentive programs to encourage liquid markets; and integrations with ISVs and regulated brokerage platforms.
None of this work is easy, fast, or without considerable cost. That said, we believe it will be worth the effort. Against the backdrop of a momentous anniversary of human ambition, we’re reminded of President Kennedy’s message to a Joint Session of Congress on May 25, 1961: “This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” NASA didn’t flinch from its challenge.
Bakkt may be a form of moonshot, but it’s grounded in an earthbound endeavor to support the future of finance and the adoption of blockchain technology. In its own way, Bakkt’s efforts to help institutions launch safely into this market is the right stuff for the future.
Get ready to trade the Bakkt Bitcoin (USD) Daily and Monthly Futures by contacting us at sales@bakkt.com | https://medium.com/bakkt-blog/putting-bakks-bitcoin-futures-to-the-test-47e381b7dda1 | ['Adam White'] | 2019-06-13 14:30:44.738000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Technology', 'Finance'] |
1,303 | Of ecommerce & false promises — How product matching can deliver on long forgotten promises. | You’ve most likely seen an Eames ‘Eiffel’ chair. It would’ve been there in some office lobby you waited at, cafes you’ve walked by or a co-working space you frequent.
It’s everywhere.
Now if you feel like you want to buy one and search on Amazon you will get quite a few options.
via Amazon
Here’s where the problem starts.
Are they all the same color? What about the nifty rod design which gave the chair its famous name — is that identical? Material? Manufacturer?
Can you tell them apart using just 2-D images?
Should you have to?
In a recent Quartz article journalist Mike Murphy talks about the trouble with finding similar items across websites especially when they have been obscured by different names, descriptions and prices.
Let’s consider a few simple examples which compare product images without added distractions of dissimilar layout, rehashed descriptions and arbitrary prices — how fast can you tell if the items are matched?
EXAMPLE1: Ice-cream — colour saturation or new flavor?
EXAMPLE2: Toy Carriage — new toy or repeat purchase?
EXAMPLE 3: Rug — the same or unique?
You could probably tell the answer after a pause but imagine trying to pick from Amazon’s packed UI or even a more regular listing style like Wayfair’s:
Screenshot from Wayfair
You are likely doing a minor version of this exercise every time you make a purchase. It’s exhausting, inefficient and frankly unnecessary.
People shouldn’t need to put their detective hats on every time they want to shop for something. Ecommerce was supposed to take the guesswork out of shopping.
So what’s the solution?
An AI-powered solution to product matching.
At Semantics3 we’ve taken a multi-modal deep learning approach towards solving the problem of finding matching products. Multi-modal here implies that our algorithms take into account images, names, descriptions, features and all of the other data points that sites provide to describe their products.
The above product images were from an article by Govind, our head of data-science, which takes a look at the tricky nature of product matching.
A person trying to figure out matching products between sites is inundated with a ton of information — different angles and saturation for images, variant text, prices and non-standardized features. Add in unique website layouts and product matching by humans is, optimistically speaking, non-scalable (and realistically speaking — impossible).
Match.
Not a match. Notice that the number of windows aren’t identical
Not a match. The design is different.
Instead our Product Matching AI, trained and tuned on painstakingly curated datasets built over many years, can scalably take all available data and weigh it in context in order to decide whether two given products match.
And that, can make ecommerce much better for all.
Interested in our AI-based Product Matching API? Check out our AI solutions! | https://medium.com/datascience-semantics3/of-ecommerce-false-promises-4594bcb769ae | ['Anjali Krishnan'] | 2018-02-26 22:28:32.168000+00:00 | ['Retail Technology', 'Ecommerce', 'AI', 'Amazon', 'Retail'] |
1,304 | Hire Hotel Booking System Development Companies in India. | Hire Hotel Booking System Development Companies in India.
Travel Technology Solutions
Hotel Reservation System is a multi-lingual, web based online reservation system for travel management companies. This online reservation system comes with B2C (Business to Customers) and B2B (Business to Business) modules to cater end clients and agents as well. The hotel reservation system is compatible with 23 hotel xmls including GTA, Kuoni, Hotelbeds, Tourico, Travco, Special Tours, HotelsPro, Path Finder, Miki Travels, Sun Hotels, Darina Holidays, DOTW, Asian trials and Versys.
There are a few clear and sustainable advantages of hotel reservation systems -
To create customer loyalty by getting smart, innovated online travel portals and mobile apps that bring forth value for the customer.
To facilitate research and purchase of your travel products online
Some reasons for developing a hotel software and mobile app, are the following
Travellers get high on top hotel portals and mobile apps
Creating online hotel portal mobile shopping app is relatively easy with a good travel portal development company
Many of the retailers already have a mobile app, which are creating a better brand recall
While the penetration of mobile devices, is rising in an incredible manner, a mobile retail application is literally indispensable to your hotel as well. Mobile hotel commerce has come to stay and will grow to gigantic proportions in the coming years. Travel & hospitality companies cannot afford not having a mobile-optimized website and a mobile app of their own.
A professional hotel software development company can help the retailer to gain today’s mobile buyer interest, loyalty and shopping power. Today’s consumers who are infused with the mobile mindset want to access on their mobile devices the shopping list they created online, order products, or see peer reviews. With online hotel reservation systems, end users are benefitted in having great deals across the globe.
Key Benefits of Hotel Reservation Systems:
• Exclusive emphasis on web-based automated software, no hardware is needed.
• High flexibility — ascendable and robust platform.
• Reasonable price package — pay as you use with SaaS model.
• Rapid to launch, easy to use — spontaneous user interface and comprehensive modules. | https://medium.com/@provabtech/hire-hotel-booking-system-development-companies-in-india-bc10075e40fb | ['Provab Technosoft'] | 2016-12-12 10:39:30.134000+00:00 | ['Travel Technology', 'Travel', 'Hotel', 'Dubai', 'Saudi Arabia'] |
1,305 | How to use Soar’s FREE satellite imagery feeds (inc. video tutorial) | Soar is gaining lots of popularity as a global super-map of drone imagery, but the platform also gives users access to powerful satellite data feeds for spatial exploration!
Soar is building a dynamic super-map of the world that changes every time new content is added. By positioning itself as the world’s leading resource for all maps and imagery, Soar allows web and mobile users to search up-to-date satellite imagery, high-resolution aerial feeds, and content collected by drone pilots. Have you explored Soar’s dynamic satellite imagery data feeds yet?
WATCH — How to access FREE satellite imagery on the Official Soar YouTube Channel:
In order to assist users with realising the potential of the satellite imagery available to them on Soar, this article will describe how to search, view and download data from our Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 feeds.
We’ll start with a welcome to Soar for our first-time users! Below you can see the landing page where we will begin the dive into Soar’s satellite feeds. Click on the Satellite tab highlighted below and navigate around the base map layer to find an area of interest.
Here you can see an area of the Bahamas I have navigated to on Soar’s base-map layer (Google Maps).
Once you have navigated to your own area of interest on Soar, we can begin the process (TIP: Stuck for ideas? Try a quick Google search for the latest environmental events, or follow our news account FoundOnSoar on Twitter):
Step 1: Click on the button labelled ‘Draw area of interest’ shown on the Satellite tab down the left of the page (see image above).
Step 2: Use the cursor to draw a box over the area (“AOI”) you wish to load satellite imagery. Note: As this type of data results in very large files, there is an upper limit to the size of the AOI box drawn. If you get an error, try boxing a smaller area on the map.
Step 3: Soar will load the available satellite feeds for your chosen area. You can narrow the search for particular dates as well as satellite type by clicking on the headings shown above the feed (see below). There are two state-of-the-art satellites available to select from — Landsat-8 (NASA) and Sentinel-2 (ESA), with a number of satellite band combinations allowing users to visualise different environmental features.
Satellite imagery feed shown on the left for an AOI over The Bahamas. The feed can be narrowed by satellite type and date range at the headings above Search Results.
N OTE: We will be producing a separate blog solely dedicated to explaining the types of Satellite feeds available on Soar, and their uses for various different applications, soon!
Step 4: Once you have selected a satellite image from the feed, two blue buttons will appear to the right side of your selected image. These allow you to download or share the satellite data, respectively. Click on the download button to begin the download process.
Step 5: A pop-up window will appear with a list of metrics regarding the satellite AOI you wish to download (see below). This includes a user-selected option shown in the drop-down for ‘Image Quality’. Select an appropriate option (see below) and click download to save the imagery to your computer.
Download window for satellite imagery including all image metadata and a choice of resolution options.
NOTE: The choice of image quality will depend both on the purpose you intend to use the imagery for, as well as the size of the AOI drawn. Lower quality imagery will have lower resolution, meaning that each pixel covers a larger area of the Earth’s surface. The lowest available option on Soar is 50m²/pixel, while the best available resolution is currently 10m²/pixel. High resolution imagery of 10m²/pixel is well-suited for spatial analysis using GIS software, whilst sharing satellite imagery on social media only requires 20m²/pixel resolution or less. If your selected satellite imagery AOI is too large (>2000km²), it will not be possible to download the image at high resolution.
Now that you have downloaded the satellite data to your computer in GeoTIFF format, you are free to load this into any commercial/open-source GIS software at your disposal. That’s right, up-to-date satellite data for any area in the world at your fingertips, available completely FREE from Soar!
The data can be loaded into programs such as QGIS (Free), ArcGIS or Global Mapper which will enable you to analyse and explore the data in great detail. For example, you can load successive data for the same area, isolating localised changes in various features over time. Or you can use up to date satellite data (even from yesterday) as a base layer in your GIS program for field mapping exercises.
If you are a Mappt user, it is certainly possible to bring satellite data from Soar in and take advantage of Mappt’s powerful offline mapping tools. To do this, we recommend following this blog on how to convert GeoTIFFs to ECW/JP2 imagery suitable for loading into Mappt. | https://medium.com/soar-earth/how-to-use-soars-free-satellite-imagery-feeds-287e97b292aa | [] | 2019-10-22 03:40:23.193000+00:00 | ['Mapping', 'Mappt', 'Soar', 'Satellite Technology', 'GIS'] |
1,306 | Where Is Disruptive Technology Taking The Insurance Industry? | The accelerated use of technology in the insurance sector is having both a disruptive and transformative impact on areas including product development, distribution, modeling, underwriting and claims, and administration practice. The result is a new industry, known as InsurTech. But while the insurance market looks to technology for greater efficiency, regulators are beginning to raise concerns about managing potential risks. Is there really a risk when it comes to disrupting insurance? Let’s talk about it in this Inmediate article.
What is InsurTech?
InsurTech, which describes the use of technology in insurance transactions and processes, is now an industry sector in itself. The insurance sector’s use of technologies has accelerated to improve traditional insurance processes and models.
InsurTech is having both disruptive and transformative effect on the retail and commercial parts of the insurance industry. It is leading to a radical change in product development, distribution, modeling, underwriting and claims, and administration practices. Its effects are multifaceted and have the potential to improve the way the market operates, but also result in outcomes that are of a concern to regulators.
Awareness, mitigation, and management of the risks associated with the use of InsurTech are vital in a sector undergoing such rapid change. The purpose of this article is to give an overview of the main trends in InsurTech and to consider the potential legal and regulatory issues that accompany them.
Why is it relevant now?
The disruptive impact of the low-cost base, customer-facing FinTech companies have gathered significant momentum in the last few years. Although the insurance market has always been an innovative one, the proliferation of InsurTech companies has lagged slightly behind the changes in the wider financial services sector.
The reasons for this lag include the following:
To bring a new product to market, start-up customer-facing product distributors are typically reliant on incumbent insurers’ licenses to issue policies and their balance sheets.
The comparatively more complex and heavily regulated nature of insurance products when compared to other financial services products.
The barriers to entry for start-up companies that result from the capital and ongoing prudential and supervisory requirements in the insurance industry.
Established insurers are hampered by legacy systems and the investment cost that replacing such systems would involve.
InsurTech’s gathering momentum in recent times reflects a gradual industry-wide shift from a “product-centric” to a “customer-centric” model. This is driven by changing consumer expectations, and concurrent market and regulatory conditions, in tandem with technological advancement.
The industry’s acceptance that it must adapt to these new technologies has significantly accelerated developments in the last 12 months. Unfavorable macroeconomic factors, harsher regulatory capital requirements and a soft market inundated with excess capital have led insurers to look to InsurTech to allow them to price more competitively and reduce administration costs.
The potential opportunities afforded by InsurTech have triggered significant growth in investment in businesses operating in this sphere.
InsurTech in the product life cycle
This article is divided into four distinct sections to examine the latest InsurTech developments and the potential legal and regulatory issues arising from them. We consider:
Products. Smart devices and sensors (such as telematics) and the internet of things (IoT) are being used to launch new products that offer cost savings to consumers and lower risks for underwriters. Mobile technology is allowing products with peer-to-peer (P2P) features and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) insurance. These products are designed to allow the millennial generation to access insurance cover they actually want.
Smart devices and sensors (such as telematics) and the internet of things (IoT) are being used to launch new products that offer cost savings to consumers and lower risks for underwriters. Mobile technology is allowing products with peer-to-peer (P2P) features and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) insurance. These products are designed to allow the millennial generation to access insurance cover they actually want. Distribution. The wider use of technology is having a disintermediating effect, cutting out “the middle man” and creating a more direct relationship between insurers and customers. This has allowed the market to develop and price products at a level more closely aligned to the demands of customers. New distribution platforms are being launched that are wholly automated and self-directional. Digital distribution models are advancing beyond the price comparison website model to encompass the sharing economy, P2P features, artificial intelligence (AI), robot-advice, machine learning and advanced robotic process automation (RPA). These features give customers greater control over what products they can purchase and on what terms, often without human intervention, usually all through their mobile phone.
The wider use of technology is having a disintermediating effect, cutting out “the middle man” and creating a more direct relationship between insurers and customers. This has allowed the market to develop and price products at a level more closely aligned to the demands of customers. New distribution platforms are being launched that are wholly automated and self-directional. Digital distribution models are advancing beyond the price comparison website model to encompass the sharing economy, P2P features, artificial intelligence (AI), robot-advice, machine learning and advanced robotic process automation (RPA). These features give customers greater control over what products they can purchase and on what terms, often without human intervention, usually all through their mobile phone. Underwriting. “Big Data” and data analytics, sometimes in conjunction with technology-based products, are being used to inform increasingly precise and segmented underwriting decisions, including pricing and risk assessment. This is allowing some start-up insurers to offer coverage to individuals on better terms than would have been possible without this data, and in some cases, who would not have been able to purchase coverage without it.
“Big Data” and data analytics, sometimes in conjunction with technology-based products, are being used to inform increasingly precise and segmented underwriting decisions, including pricing and risk assessment. This is allowing some start-up insurers to offer coverage to individuals on better terms than would have been possible without this data, and in some cases, who would not have been able to purchase coverage without it. Administration and Claims. Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) are being used at the proof of concept stage (sometimes in conjunction with smart contracts), and have clear potential application in data sharing, know your customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML) and fraud prevention, claims processing and general insurance record keeping. Claims processes are being automated and advanced by AI devices such as fraud software.
Products
Internet of things (IoT) and smart devices
Broadly, IoT refers to the network or system of interconnected computing devices, machines, sensors, people and organisations; “things” that interact with one another without human agency and are capable of collecting, storing and transmitting to intermediaries and insurers vast quantities of data, like how a policyholder drives their car, cares for their health or manages their home.
Pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and microinsurance
PAYG and microinsurance offer rapidly underwritten financial protection against specific risks over a relatively short period of time. Start-ups offering these products are beginning to emerge in the US and are often backed (through capacity arrangements or direct investment) by established insurers and reinsurers.
PAYG and microinsurance products are designed largely to cover renters’ insurance, laptops, mobile phones, sporting, and musical equipment through a mobile platform. The mobile phone apps through which these products are sold typically allow the user to upload and see the respective insurance values of various items, offer various insurance pricing and protection models, and allow the insurance to be turned on or off at any time.
These products are aimed particularly at millennials. The proposition assumes that this generation of customers may prefer to rent rather than own assets, might consider risk is only worth covering for a specific period or purpose (for example, a weekend away) and generally want instant access through their mobile phone.
Typically, the claims process for these products will be (near) fully automated and customers will be able to make a simple claim over their mobile phone in minutes through an automated “chat-bot” process, with the claims cash being paid almost instantly straight to their bank account.
Distribution
Peer-to-peer or P2P models
P2P digital platforms aim to reduce the cost of insurance by sharing insurance needs (commonly motor, home, and mobile phone) within a self-selected group of consumers. The group, not the insurer, selects its members, with the result that pooled risk groups usually comprise family members or friends, or both, enabling the cohort to co-manage its own pool of money and claims through relationship influence.
An example of a P2P structure is where the premium for a group is calculated on the basis of the standard underwriting criteria on an individual basis. It is then aggregated and put towards the group’s insurance fees and the group underwriting pool. Claims are paid out from the pool throughout the year, with the group’s insurance fees providing a buffer, should the pool run out of funds. Excess claims money is distributed back to group members at the end of the year in the absence of claims or rolled over to the next year’s pool. If claims exceed the pool monies, the excess is picked up by the insurer sitting behind the arrangement.
The P2P structure is beneficial to insurers as it incentivizes good behavior on the part of the insureds and reduces the risk of fraudulent and low-level claims, as the pool’s premium reduction is linked to group members not making a claim.
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA)
The traditional insurance distribution system has gradually developed over the centuries into one where product sales are largely agency driven and the broker-insurer relationship is the predominant distribution model for the majority of lines.
The proliferation of technological innovation means that primary insurers are able to more efficiently and effectively source insurance and underwrite directly with customers, lessening the dependence on intermediaries; a so-called “disintermediating” effect.
One such advancement has been in the area of AI. AI is the operational processing and analysis of consumer data by sophisticated intelligent automation systems that, together with a series of algorithms, can emulate human behavior and reconstruct human thought processes and intelligence. In other words, AI systems can carry out the work that previously required human intelligence.
AI can be applied across the insurance value chain, particularly in the areas of distribution and claims administration, where defined (and often time-consuming) processes, procedures and actions are commonplace.
Advances in AI could also, over time, affect life insurance, where the tasks of sourcing and constructing life insurance portfolios and monitoring policies are all capable of automation. The need for other professionals, who are often involved in complex life insurance arrangements (such as lawyers and accountants) could be diminished by AI, leading to cost savings that could be passed onto policyholders.
The key short-term effect of increasing automation in insurance distribution is likely to be a decrease in brokerage commission rates across the market as the need for sophisticated broker advice diminishes. In the longer term, there is potential for increasingly sophisticated intelligent automation systems to eradicate the intermediary-based structure altogether through the use of the automated insurance agents (known as chatbots), which are becoming widespread within the administration and claims processes of today.
Underwriting
Big Data in the underwriting process
A feature of InsurTech led underwriting is the paradigm shift from the protection of risk to the prevention of risk.
The traditional underwriting model is based on a combination of policyholder responses to proposal forms, historical claims data and risk studies; data that is used by actuaries to predict consumer behavior and identify patterns in claims losses.
Within the underwriting context specifically, InsurTech seeks to alter traditional models by exploiting the connectivity facilitated by the IoT and the vast amounts of Big Data it unleashes. The majority of products using IoT based smart devices described in the Internet of things (IoT) and smart devices above, for example, are designed to reduce the risk of claims (or at least the amount) on policies either by passively controlling customer behavior or through mitigating losses that may occur.
The aggregation of large amounts of data derived from a variety of exploitable data sources (including IoT devices and social media), is increasingly being applied in the underwriting process to not only analyze but also predict, consumer behavior. This enables insurers to assess risk more precisely, price policies better, reduce losses and estimate necessary reserves accordingly.
While customers may be intrinsically drawn to the prospect of reduced premiums, InsurTech raises a number of legal and regulatory concerns, particularly within the underwriting process.
Administration and Claims
Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA)
The abundance of new products, improved capability of IoT devices, innovative distribution platforms and increased gathering and application of Big Data has directed insurers towards operating models that streamline their administration and claims processes.
With this in mind, AI, machine learning and RPA (including chatbots) are increasingly being deployed to aid customer service inquiries, claims administration, payment of claims, fraud detection, profit, and loss analysis and behavioral analysis.
AI’s most tangible impact to date has been in the areas of policy monitoring and claims processing, which are gradually becoming subject to intelligent automation to improve efficiency and produce cost-savings, consequently lowering premiums.
Also known as “Robo-advisors”, chatbots are designed to simulate an intelligent conversation and replace humans in various insurance processes. Chatbots are already being used throughout the mobile banking sector, where basic AI programs interact with and assist human customers.
Chatbots are given human-like names, making them more personal, and engage in natural conversation with the customer. They answer basic queries relating to the policy, such as coverage details, payments due and renewals, and provide contextual information on products and services. A growing number of large insurers are exploring how the use of chatbots might improve efficiency in administrative processes, particularly in the claims process.
Fraud detection software has been used to monitor voice calls for signs of fraud-related stress for some time. The use of AI can also enable earlier and more effective detection of fraudulent claims, as they are capable of discerning human emotions by monitoring facial expressions and natural language.
The effects of AI will be felt in society. Greater automation and advanced AI will inevitably impact the workforce, meaning issues such as redundancies will need to be considered. Additionally, thought will need to be given to customer engagement issues; there are certain interactions that may be more appropriately dealt with by way of human conversation, where a degree of empathy is required.
Blockchain and Smart Contract Technology
Interest in blockchain technology has grown significantly over the past year across financial services, though it remains largely in the experimental phase within insurance. Both InsurTech firms and established insurers are beginning to find applications for distributed ledgers, blockchains and smart contracts in the underwriting and claims system, representing a radical departure from traditional insurance contracting and administration models.
A blockchain is derived from the technology underpinning the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. In simple terms, a blockchain is in effect a database that records each transaction in a “block”. Typically, each block contains a hash that is unique to, and references, the previous block in the “chain”. If any data in any block in the chain are later altered, this is immediately apparent to all participants of that blockchain, as that block’s hash (and that of any subsequent block) will no longer correspond to the later block’s record of that hash. The result is an indelible record that removes the need for a central authority or third party.
Blockchain technologies are known as “distributed ledgers” as they operate on a distributed basis. The record or ledger of all transactions is replicated in full on each participant’s computer. They are highly transparent because each participant has a complete, traceable record of every transaction recorded on the blockchain.
Automated claims payment processes powered by smart contract and blockchain technologies could result in policyholders being paid more quickly and reduce claims administration costs, the risk of fraudulent claims and administrative costs for the insurer. There is also the potential for policy adjustments to be automated.
As well as easing claims administration congestion, blockchains could aid general insurance record keeping by supporting an automated “bordereau” reporting system, with accessible and continuously validated policy and claims data available throughout the policy lifecycle.
Simultaneously recording policyholder and claims details in verified blockchains could also reduce the risk of fraudulent claims, and mitigate the risk of an insurer being unwittingly used as a means to launder money, both at the back end in terms of claims payments, but also at the front end by establishing robust KYC protocols.
Blockchains also hold the ability to share and exploit Big Data to provide more granular risk-analysis.
There is a proliferation of global ideas and concepts within InsurTech that will fundamentally change the market in the next few years. These innovations have the potential to change the way the insurance industry works and alter the relationships between customers and insurers, resulting in insurance products that are more closely aligned to individual preferences and priced more appropriately to the risk. The use of AI and robo-advice technology in new digital platforms will be particularly transformative in changing the way customers purchase insurance and could result in the disintermediation of certain parts of the market. | https://medium.com/@inmediatesg/where-is-disruptive-technology-taking-the-insurance-industry-cb35891eccaf | [] | 2019-06-17 23:49:24.100000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Disruption', 'Technology', 'Insurance', 'Insurtech'] |
1,307 | The Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Campaign That Built a $9 Billion Company | The Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Campaign That Built a $9 Billion Company
And at virtually zero cost
Fan-made art: Houston versus the world. Source unknown.
Let’s do a super-quick exercise: Go ahead and think of a big purchase you recently made.
It could be a phone, laptop, or anything that required a good amount of research and contemplation before your purchase.
How did you finally convince yourself to buy that product?
Was it because of a collection of positive online reviews? Or perhaps a favorable recommendation by a trusted friend or family member?
I know what sealed the deal for me to spend $600 on a Nintendo Switch was my friends continuously telling me that “it was the only gaming console I will ever need.” Eventually, I caved in.
I wasn’t even intending to buy it, considering I still had a functioning and more-than-satisfactory Playstation 4 at home, but therein lies the indisputable power of word-of-mouth.
As you probably know by now, word-of-mouth marketing can be an incredibly powerful and effective marketing strategy. It not only has the ability to pique the interest of but as the name suggests, but it also gets people talking and conversations moving.
In fact, around 60% of consumers research online for reviews and information before buying a product, and an astounding 90% trust brand recommendations from friends.
Yes, word-of-mouth marketing really does have that authoritative power over any consumer. The fact that it is one of the oldest forms of marketing (long before the digital era and even print ads) still used today doesn’t take away from how amazingly compelling it can truly be.
Word-of-mouth marketing: one of the most effective marketing methods today.
In fact, word-of-mouth marketing is so ridiculously powerful, it managed to get a company to be valued at a whopping $8.82 billion and attain hundreds of millions of daily active users with almost zero advertising cost.
Let’s take a look at the curious case of Dropbox, the popular file hosting service, and its rise to global success using mainly word-of-mouth marketing. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/the-word-of-mouth-marketing-campaign-that-built-a-9-billion-company-6f07673f3d49 | [] | 2020-11-05 14:06:01.303000+00:00 | ['Culture', 'Innovation', 'Technology', 'Strategy', 'Marketing'] |
1,308 | Number 3 in Shortforms | Number 3 in Shortforms
Having made a couple of experiences yesterday, I’m going now to write a ‘normal’ post that is only shorter than 150 words at all.
However, it has a title and subtitle and will get an inline picture after I have published the pure text post.
The result comes as predicted and truncates the text after about 40 words. So, there is no difference whether using a bold first sentence or couple of words or using a title with subtitle. The title option opens the possibility to have a link to click on and open the post itself. | https://medium.com/@michaelknackfuss/number-3-in-shortforms-cce4f4e1e9bb | ['Michael Knackfuss'] | 2020-12-24 10:36:29.123000+00:00 | ['UX Design', 'Visual Design', 'Technology', 'Software Engineering', 'Culture'] |
1,309 | 9 Beginner Tips to Get Anyone Started with Live Streaming | In Maya Angelou’s classic I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she wrote, “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.” If you’ve ever tried live streaming, you can definitely relate.
Putting on a successful live stream requires patience, practice, and planning. While that might sound easy, there are many moving parts to a live stream that you need to be prepared for. If even one thing gets off-track, your entire event could suffer.
Being faced with the shutdown of all in-person events, many have considered shifting to virtual events and live streaming, and tips and advice is in high demand — especially for those who’ve never tried it before. Our list brings together nine tips beginners and experts can use to know what to do at all stages of the virtual event and to make your live stream a success.
Before the event: Getting prepared for a winning live stream
1. Decide on the amount of bandwidth you’ll need
You may not have realized it, but you’ve probably already seen live streaming on social media. It’s usually fine for an individual to live stream over WiFi or 4G, but a business’ live stream will probably require more.
Two things to take into consideration:
Do I have access to a dedicated Ethernet connection? This is crucial. You want to make sure you have a hardwired connection. Ethernet cables are easy to use as long as you have an ethernet port on the device you’ll be streaming from (usually a laptop). If you don’t have an ethernet port, there are USB adapters available.
How fast is my upload speed? So many people focus on download speeds, but when it comes to live streaming, it’s all about the upload speed. Having a slow upload speed will result in a low resolution stream. Vimeo has a nice graph explaining upload speeds and resolutions.
2. Think about how large your audience will be and where they’ll be located
Do you know how many people will be watching? Streaming from just one site is not recommended. You’ll want to broadcast your virtual event on as many channels as possible to have a better chance at capturing a larger audience. Once you have an idea of the number of people who will be watching, you’ll want to think of how you’ll respond to feedback and answer questions from those watchers.
Will it be public or private? This is another key factor in determining audience size. There are options to make the live stream private, then share it publicily on social media or your website later.
Is your network up to the challenge? Hosting a live stream with a large audience will put extra stress on your servers which will create a poor viewing experience. An enterprise content delivery network (eCDN) is way to help keep things running smoothly during your virtual event.
3. Practice, test, and be ready with a backup plan
Make sure your speakers take the time to practice their lines. Like most difficult things, once you practice it, it gets easier. Your speakers should do a dry run of the entire event close to actual day. It will help you figure out timing, find any gaps you may have missed in the material, and to get them comfortable with the information they’ll be sharing.
Test the moving parts. Your production crew needs to test all the equipment and make sure it’s working, including the cameras, microphones, and lights.
Have that Plan B ready at a moment’s notice? To really ensure a successful live stream, you should make sure you have a backup plan in case your first stream has issues. It’s possible to have backup streams ready and waiting in case your network fails or you have issues with your hardware.
During the event: Making sure it all goes smoothly
4. Have the right gear and a rock-solid team
You don’t need to newest and fanciest equipment to have a great looking live stream, but there are definitely things you have to have, like cameras, microphones, switchers, and encoders.
You’ll also need enough room behind the scenes for your team to manage the production. Those cameras and all that other gear will need people working them.
This is where Magnum can help. We have a team of specialists ready to help you figure out the gear you’ll need and the people you’ll need to make your virtual event a success.
5. Monitor the performance of your stream
You’ll want to have eyes on all aspects of your live stream — both on-screen and off. You’ll be better prepared to adjust things as needed if you track the performance of your event the moment you go live.
Watch for things like fram rate and bitrate. If you see a drop of 15% or more, you know it’s time to react by checking your network performance, your encoder, or any of the other things that can pop up unexpectedly.
6. Start a dialogue with your participants
This is where it gets fun. In order to have a successful live stream, you’ll need your audience to be engaged. Though you’re not face-to-face with your watchers, it doesn’t mean you can’t have great conversation with them. We will cover some of the ways to do this using social tools and built-in tools in your streaming software, but keeping your audience engaged during the event is crucial to its success.
Not sure how to get them engaged? Q&As are always a good place to start, or post polls and track the feedback to guide the conversation.
After the event: Take time to reflect
7. Review how it went
Reviewing your event is hugely important. Did you get the number of guests you were hoping for? Did they stay tuned-in for the entire event? Metrics for success with vary per company, so set some goals beforehand and see how close you came to hitting them.
Figuring out the specific details of your audience and they’re behavior during the live stream will help you make changes for your next event and teach you more about how to reach out to your watchers before the event. Make sure your streaming platform has detailed analytics to help you learn about your audience.
8. Celebrate the wins and think of ways to improve
You can put every ounce of energy into preparing for your virtual event and things are bound to still go differently than planned. No fear, though! Unexpected events are perfect learning tools to help you perfect your NEXT event.
Monitoring your stream during the event will allow you to make notes of things that can be improved upon. You should meet with your team soon after the event to have discussions on how everyone though the event went and suggestions for future events.
9. Set a plan for your next virtual event
Now that you have notes and feedback from the event, start setting a plan for the next one using everything you’ve learned. Are there ways to improve your “Plan B” next time? You should let your team know the changes you’re making so you’re all on the same page, then put your changes into action.
While all of this might feel overwhelming, we are here to help. Just remember to take baby-steps and tackle one task at a time. If your list of improvements is a huge list, you should probably try just implementing a small percentage of the list and see how it goes. The ultimate goal is to make sure you’re giving your participants what they want.
Remember, this is just a beginner’s guide to live streaming. We’ll go deeper into content creation, strategies, and all the other facets of virtual events, but we hope that these tips give you a good jumping off point. | https://medium.com/@magnumco/9-beginner-tips-to-get-anyone-started-with-live-streaming-15239afb80e5 | ['The Magnumco'] | 2020-04-23 12:49:43.983000+00:00 | ['Event Technology', 'Getting Started', 'Live Streaming', 'Web Conferencing', 'Virtual Events'] |
1,310 | Indonesia’s Electric Vehicle Commodities | Indonesia’s Electric Vehicle Commodities
Indonesia has extensive plans to leverage its commodity deposits to develop a thriving electric vehicle industry within the country. The nation has a basket of valuable minerals which are being viewed with enthusiasm in light of the growing international demand for electric vehicles. Not only will this demand facilitate new industries within Indonesia, but it will also strengthen Indonesia’s existing commodities supply chains. As international markets for electric vehicles expand there are significant new opportunities to capitalise on within Indonesia’s mining sector.
“The lithium is two percent of the cell mass [in our batteries]. So it’s like salt in the salad; it’s a very small amount of the cell mass and a fairly small amount of the cost. But it sounds like it’s big because it’s called ‘lithium ion’, but really, our battery should be called ‘nickel graphite’, because it’s mostly nickel and graphite.” — Elon Musk
Technology mogul Elon Musk makes an important distinction. Electric vehicles rely on batteries which are produced from a number of different mineral components, of which lithium is just one. It is their basket of necessary commodities which gives Indonesia a significant advantage when it comes to the development of electric vehicle batteries. Very shortly this will become a thriving marketplace that will create new business opportunities.
Indonesia’s location along the “Ring of Fire” means it has over 100 volcanos stretching along a crescent encompassing thousands of islands. Ancient geological activity has given the nation an abundance of mineral deposits, along with some of the most productive mines in the world. It is these resources and the existing mining sector which Indonesia intends to leverage for the growth of their electric vehicle industry. Nickel, cobalt, lithium, graphite and copper are all found in Indonesia’s archipelago and represent the vital basket of commodities necessary to produce batteries for electric vehicles. The primary mineral necessary for electric vehicle batteries is nickel and Indonesia has the world’s largest reserves. The country’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry estimates that Indonesia currently has more than 50 million tons which could last over 30 years.
Three of Indonesia’s largest state-owned businesses are joining forces in the push towards developing the domestic electric vehicle battery industry. The national oil and gas company Pertamina, recently rebranded state mining holding company Mind Id and electricity giant PLN intend to found a state-owned battery holding company. This new entity will develop an end-to-end domestic supply chain for electric vehicle batteries. It is estimated that global demand for batteries will increase by 400% within the next seven years to 777 gigawatt-hours (GWh). Indonesia intends to produce between 8 and 10 GWh yearly as it ramps up supply over the next four years. Indonesia’s President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has set a target of having 20% of cars be electric within the next five years.
To encourage foreign direct investment in this industry Indonesia recently passed a new Omnibus Law which intends to improve the investment landscape. The country has often been criticised for high levels of bureaucracy and in 2019 the World Bank ranked Indonesia number 73 out of 190 countries in their Ease of Doing Business Index. The new laws signal Indonesia’s desire to improve this ranking which the government intends to raise to 40 within the next four years.
After talks with Jokowi last week, Elon Musk has agreed to explore opportunities for both Tesla and SpaceX within Indonesia. Leveraging Indonesia’s nickel supplies for electric vehicle batteries holds synergies for both parties. Elon Musk provided insight into his perspective earlier this year when he tweeted:
“Nickel is the biggest challenge for high-volume, long-range batteries! Australia and Canada are doing pretty well. US nickel production is objectively very lame. Indonesia is great!”
Other global manufacturers also have ambitions to invest in Indonesia and its nickel reserves. One of the world’s largest car battery manufacturers, Contemporary Amperex Technology from China, has announced plans to construct a $5.1 billion battery plant in the country. Japan’s Toyota recently pledged $2 billion worth of investment towards developing 10 different types of electric vehicles within Indonesia. Toyota intends to transform the country into a global hub for electric vehicle exports within the next five years. Hyundai Motor of Korea has also committed $1.55 billion in investment towards an electric vehicle manufacturing plant in West Java, which will become operational in 2021.
These illustrious names combined with Indonesia’s mineral reserves guarantee the success of this new industry in Southeast Asia’s largest economy. All the necessary components are aligning — the political will, foreign investment and the necessary natural resources. As the industry grows there will be an abundance of new business opportunities to capitalise on within Indonesia’s commodity sector. | https://medium.com/enegra/indonesias-electric-vehicle-commodities-c21bf278ecb0 | ['Matthew Averay'] | 2020-12-15 04:07:49.745000+00:00 | ['Mining', 'Electric Vehicles', 'Indonesia', 'Technology', 'Elon Musk'] |
1,311 | Master Remote Work and Productivity with the Elgato Stream Deck | If you’ve never heard of the Elgato Stream Deck, then you are in for the biggest surprise in your life. It is a customizable control pad developed for live-streaming. The Stream Deck includes physical LCD keys, which are fully customizable to switch scenes, launch media, play sounds, open apps, and much more on the fly with a single button press. The Stream Deck connects via USB to your PC or Mac.
The device is straightforward in its design with rows or plastic physical LCD buttons.
To get started, just plug the Stream Deck into your PC or Mac, and it is powered on. You will have to download the free software from Elgato’s site to use the Stream Deck — it is effortless and easy to use.
From here, the customization begins. You will find a list of pre-loaded commands, services, and software you may need for your streaming career on the right-hand side. Yes, the device is focused on live streaming. Therefore the main options are suitable for Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Never the less, the Stream Deck can be customized for everyone.
Stream Deck Software on Mac — Screenshot by the author
There are three different versions of the Stream Deck:
Stream Deck Mini ($99.99): comes with 6 customizable LCD buttons.
($99.99): comes with 6 customizable LCD buttons. Stream Deck ($149.99): comes with 15 customizable LCD buttons.
($149.99): comes with 15 customizable LCD buttons. Stream Deck XL ($ 249.99): comes with 32 customizable LCD buttons.
I recently discovered that Elgato also has a mobile app called “Stream Deck Mobile,” which basically turns your smartphone into a Stream Deck instead of buying a physical Stream Deck. The app is subscription-based and costs $2.99 monthly, with a free one month trial period.
Even though the Steam Deck is developed with a focus on live streaming, it can be used to elevate one’s productivity in general. The device can be used to program shortcuts for any software such as Photoshop, Lightroom, and Final cut Pro, and many more.
Elgato Stream Deck can even be used with Medium.
Now in 2020 that classrooms and meetings have gone online, I started using the Stream Deck Mobile religiously. I use it to launch my most frequent apps, control my Zoom and Microsoft Teams sessions. I’ll share with you the Stream Deck integration with Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Medium in this story. I’ll share with you further tricks, which might be useful for teachers and lecturers, who currently have their classes online. | https://medium.com/curious/master-remote-work-and-productivity-with-the-elgato-stream-deck-23a724b24dae | ['Walid Ao'] | 2020-12-06 18:18:55.181000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Remote Work', 'Productivity', 'Pandemic', 'Gadgets'] |
1,312 | Big Tech Regulators Are Missing the Point | Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a 2018 Congressional hearing on privacy (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images | Source)
It has been a tragic saga, for people who are familiar with the ways that social media platforms and companies operate, to watch government regulatory sessions with Big Tech companies. For many young people, this began with U.S. lawmakers’ questioning in Congressional hearings; sessions that revealed the lack of understanding of social media by, frankly, elder legislators. However, for those of us who study modern technology and the way that it has mutated capitalism into an entirely new beast, the frustrations with how lawyers, government officials, and any who engage in mainstream regulatory discourse, continue and intensify.
This is primarily because regulators seem to not have an understanding of the actual imperatives guiding Big Tech. While they aim at Antitrust, they tip their hand in journals like the New York Times and say that the case is harder to make than they expected. They fail to realize, because they are not versed in deep understanding of the paradigms that guide Big Tech, why their case is so hard. Companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and the like, have not been motivated by user products for over a decade. They are focused on data and prediction products. The disconnect between this older understanding of how capitalism has worked, and how Shoshanna Zuboff’s appropriately named “surveillance capitalism” works currently is ruining any chance of actually reigning in Big Tech. There is an urgent need for deeper understandings of surveillance capitalism and its imperatives in order to truly reveal the danger Big Tech poses to all of us, and move towards substantive regulation.
Surveillance Capitalism?
Zuboff’s paradigm-shifting work, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, is a necessary prerequisite read for anybody who dares challenge Big Tech’s hegemonic influence. I’ll detail a few key concepts that motivate the regulatory arguments against Big Tech and best depict why current Antitrust cases will likely fall embarrassingly flat.
Facebook is not after Instagram or WhatsApp in order to improve the actual user interfaces or messaging capabilities, they are after these companies to acquire more of your behavioral data to feed into their machine learning prediction algorithms.
Primary is the idea that companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and more, are not in the business of making their user products better. Zuboff calls this old cycle of product improvement the “behavioral reinvestment cycle.” This argues that, in the old days, Google may have used user data on how their search bar has been used in order to improve the search bar itself — potentially adding a new feature like search suggestions. This cycle closely mirrors the cycle of capital reinvestment from industrial capitalism, where we can imagine the profits from a company like Ford Motor to be reinvested back into their production lines or the cars themselves.
This is not how Big Tech companies operate. This point could not be more important. Companies who are playing the surveillance capitalist game are not interested in changing their products to better serve users. The actual products these companies sell are predictions — that’s why Google is in the advertising business; they predict how you are feeling, thinking, and how you may do so in the future in order to give you a perfectly timed and tailored advertisement. You are not the customer for Big Tech companies. You are the raw materials, you generate behavioral data that they analyze, and then they sell predictions to their actual customers: advertisers.
All of this motivates the true incentives that Big Tech are following, which follow what Zuboff calls the extraction imperative. Their prediction products improve as they harvest more behavioral data from you. Therefore, there is a strong incentive to extract more data from you — i.e. they want to make you use their platforms more, and in different ways. There is also an incentive under the extraction imperative to simply collect as much data as possible, and this is facilitated by acquiring diverse companies. Facebook is not after Instagram or WhatsApp in order to improve the actual user interfaces or messaging capabilities, they are after these companies to acquire more of your behavioral data to feed into their machine learning prediction algorithms.
Under these incentives, companies like Facebook have spent years biding their time and taking flak from privacy scandal after privacy scandal because their entire business relies on gathering more data from you. For example, in 2014, Facebook faced intense privacy backlash after acquiring WhatsApp, and vowed to keep the data from the two apps in separate silos. Almost seven years later, however, in today’s New York Times article on the Antitrust cases, it is taken as common sense that the apps are being integrated. The article states,
“In September, 18 months after the initial announcement that the apps would work together, Facebook unveiled the integration of Instagram and its Messenger services. The company anticipates that it may take even longer to complete the technical work for stitching together WhatsApp with its other apps.”
Zuboff points out that this is part of a pattern that Big Tech companies have used since the early 2000’s: they do something that shocks us and raises privacy concerns, apologize and say they made a mistake and will protect privacy, and then wait long enough until everyone forgets and simply do it anyway. She calls this the “dispossession cycle,” and it is crucial to understand for any regulator trying to understand how these companies operate.
How Regulators Should Proceed
In light of these ideas that drastically shift how Big Tech is understood, regulators need to commensurately shift their strategies. The narratives that Facebook and Google have become expert at blasting out in blog posts will trump regulators’ narratives unless they, and the public, truly understand what these companies are after.
They plainly make people think their apps are communication, entertainment, or gaming tools. But this is only what they are on the surface: they are actually tools to make behavioral prediction products for advertisers.
Instead of trying to argue that product-based competition has been harmed by Big Tech snapping up would-be competitors like Instagram or WhatsApp, a better argument must emphasize that prediction product competition is monopolized by acquiring more sources of data. I should strongly note that I do not endorse in the slightest the idea that a market of prediction products is even legitimate. Nor do I wish to imply it doesn’t infringe heavily on human rights. However, using the language of surveillance capitalism will help regulators take the first step in the argument against Big Tech, and will lead to even stronger critiques that these predictions products — based on enormous and rich streams of behavioral data — infringe on autonomy as they arguably “know” you so well they can manipulate you. The anti-competitive argument easily follows from recognizing that the competition lies in competing data extraction and predictions, not competing user interfaces or product features.
An understanding of surveillance capitalism, and the extraction and prediction imperatives, also counters the typical narratives woven by companies like Facebook and Google. In the same New York Times article, Facebook executives are quoted saying things like,
“These transactions were intended to provide better products for the people who use them, and they unquestionably did,” Jennifer Newstead, Facebook’s general counsel… … Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook was fighting a far larger ecosystem of competitors that went beyond social networking, including “Google, Twitter, Snapchat, iMessage, TikTok, YouTube and more consumer apps, to many others in advertising.” That is because Facebook and its other apps are used for communication and entertainment, such as streaming video and gaming.
These narratives make it seem like Big Tech companies are motivated by the old-school “behavioral reinvestment cycle” described above. They plainly make people think their apps are communication, entertainment, or gaming tools. But this is only what they are on the surface: they are actually tools to make behavioral prediction products for advertisers. The line that these companies “make better products for users” is utilized over and over again. It is a diversionary tactic, and should be recognized as such. Regulators need to be crystal clear in their counter-narratives and call out these diversions. The moves of regulators often are the only exposure a broader public receives to these issues, so regulators must do better to expose Big Tech’s charades to the general population.
Regulators must finally also understand that arguments for privacy are not just based on Big Tech companies knowing where you live, or who your friends are. The true invasion of privacy is that, though prediction, they know how you feel, where you may be going, even what you may think about soon. Our thoughts and feelings are no longer private, and those are what are being fed to advertisers to make you more likely to view or click their ads. The same way that democracy is often tied with freedom of speech, we need to deeply understand the implications of systems of consolidated power having this knowledge so that we can move to protect freedom of behavior or freedom of thought. These ideas deserve a longer treatment, but it should suffice to say that they must be the crux of truly motivating why Big Tech is so dangerous.
Urgency is Needed, with Caution
These ideas scratch the surface of how understanding of Big Tech companies needs to radically shift in order to motivate any regulatory action and rhetoric that cuts at the core of the actual problems. Without such an understanding, regulators seem doomed to face frustrations and lose the trust of the public through failed action, and easy counter-arguments coming from Big Tech.
Regulation as an ideology has decayed in the U.S. since the Neoliberal period under Reagan, and is now a partisan issue. Failed regulatory action will only stymie momentum towards understanding that a capitalist system can only function if it is regulated. We thus need to speak with urgency towards spreading understanding of surveillance capitalism so that everyone understands what’s at stake if Big Tech is left unchecked. Though, we must also be cautious and note that the problem is so contingent on a fairly massive ideological shift that it would likely take something along the lines of a social movement to meet the challenge — something that would take time.
In the meantime, those who understand how surveillance capitalism operates must raise their voices and share these ideas as widely as possible. The power and reach of Big Tech’s behavioral extraction and manipulation will only increase with time. | https://medium.com/swlh/big-tech-regulators-are-missing-the-point-240481da2eb8 | ['Nick Rabb'] | 2020-12-11 03:53:58.772000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Regulation', 'Google', 'Surveillance Capitalism', 'Facebook'] |
1,313 | How I Realized My Need To Learn Math | It took a year of continuous decisions in various technologies to realize that.
It was the moment when I realized that I couldn’t understand what the mathematical equations on a consensus meant. Consequently, I decided to go on a journey where I could enhance my mathematical skills to deepening my understanding of blockchain technology. Now let’s delve into the details
Part I (Continuous lectures and personal conversations with my computer technology professor)
In my first semester, I couldn’t realize what was he up to. Even more, I thought of him as an old man who doesn’t know what he says. But he proved me wrong at the end of the second semester. Furthermore, his deep conversations further sparked my interest when I was in his room on mathematical topics. Consequently, I started to have some look.
Part II (when I couldn’t understand the mathematical equations on Bitcoin Whitepaper)
I decided to go further when I couldn’t understand two mathematical equations in Bitcoin White Paper. It was formulated as a series and it was the moment I asked my friend. He told me that it was decentralization. But it was actually not. I knew what this meant after I’ve learned series in calculus. It meant that: no matter how much the hacker tries, the probability of simultaneously controlling 51% of the nodes will approximate to 0 as long as the chain becomes longer. And that was simply called “Proof of Work”. I was relaxed and gone further on the road to finish calculus.
Part III (when I asked my statistics professor whether blockchain statistics was possible)
And this was the shortest argument I ever had. And he told, “as long as the data exists on technology, so does the statistics of a technology”. So, it was a way to open the door for me to learn statistics. At the end of the semester, I barely learned anything related to statistics and the next term wasn’t different. Until my statistics professor explained to me how I could learn statistics. And it was way more shocking because the only learning method I knew was in the classroom. He simply told me to learn statistical programming with a few programming languages with a statistics book on my other side. Even more, he helped me with how I could start learning statistical programming. He even recommended me to start with R and Python and told me that I’d need statistics much more than an ordinary professor. Consequently, I started to understand the statistics and learning simultaneously.
How did you realize that you need to learn math? Share your moments in the comments section below. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/how-i-realized-my-need-to-learn-math-bcf7a76d64f6 | ['Ata Tekeli'] | 2020-12-17 13:15:33.672000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Math', 'Statistics'] |
1,314 | 10 useful CSS properties you can start using today | You might have 2 common CSS properties in mind when you read content and visibility.
display: none
visibility: hidden
They are often used to control visibility of the content. The new content-visibility property is similar, but it provides us with several advantages. The main one is improvement of performance!
The content-visibility property, launching in Chromium 85, might be one of the most impactful new CSS properties for improving page load performance.
It enables the browser to skip rendering work, including layout and painting, until it is needed. That means that off screen content won’t be rendered and we can save several milliseconds on initial load and boost the performance.
How to use it? The easiest way is to use auto as a value, so the browser determines when and how to use it.
.container {
content-visibility: auto;
contain-intrinsic-size: 1000px;
}
Notice contain-intrinsic-size property.
In order to realize the potential benefits of content-visibility , the browser needs to apply size containment to ensure that the rendering results of contents do not affect the size of the element in any way.
We need to set contain-intrinsic size to the element otherwise the browser might think its height is 0, and in that case we won’t gain performance benefit.
To have a better control over showing/hiding elements you could also use content-visibility: hidden. It behaves like display: none, but it preserves the rendering state of the element!
For more details I recommend you to read this article.
Browser compatibility
It’s similar to aspect-ratio, but here Firefox doesn’t have even a partial support. It doesn’t matter much since this is a feature that won’t break your site if you use it and it’s not supported. It can only help you with performance when applied correctly. | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/10-useful-css-properties-you-can-start-using-today-5996bb36c1d | ['Miroslav Šlapka'] | 2021-05-07 05:02:35.645000+00:00 | ['UI', 'CSS', 'Technology', 'Resources', 'HTML'] |
1,315 | Setup dotenv to Access Environment Variables in Angular | This article is relevant for the scenario when you need to deploy the same application but with a different configuration file.
Googling for help on setting up environment variables for Angular is a nightmare; Either the article was too old or it was for AngularJS or it was simply using an ancient version of the Angular CLI.
It took me a while but I managed to find a proper workaround, which turned out to be quite interesting.
The Problem 👨🏫
In Angular, we have our environment.ts and environment.prod.ts files defined in the src/environments folder. The environment.ts file (shown below) is where we usually keep our environment variables by convention, as the Angular compiler looks for these files before the build process.
export const environment = {
production: false,
API_KEY: '1234_API_KEY_5678',
ANOTHER_API_SECRET: '__ANOTHER_SECRET__'
};
We use this environment object in our components/services like so:
import { Injectable } from '@angular/core';
import { HttpClient } from '@angular/common/http';
import { environment } from '../environments/environment'; @Injectable({
providedIn: 'root'
})
export class SomeService {
apiKey: string; constructor(private http: HttpClient) {
this.apiKey = environment.API_KEY;
...
}
...
}
Now, the problem is, these environment files are required by Angular for the build process, meaning they have to be pushed to the repository so that others can also install the project locally. If you have your API keys explicitly written in these files, consider those keys compromised, because anyone who has access to your repository can see them.
The Solution 🔐
We’ll use a lightweight package named dotenv.
Dotenv is a zero-dependency module that loads environment variables from a .env file into process.env.
Basically what it does is it takes variables defined in a .env file, and injects them into Node’s process.env object. It’s in this .env file where you’ll keep all your secret credentials and sensitive information, and this file should not be pushed to your remote repository.
API_KEY=1234_API_KEY_5678
ANOTHER_API_SECRET=__ANOTHER__SECRET__
A simple key-value pair creates these environment variables for you.
Now using it just takes one line of code:
require('dotenv').config();
Believe me that’s it.
I thought it would be okay if I did this in the environment.ts file:
require('dotenv').config(); export const environment = {
production: false,
API_KEY: process.env.API_KEY,
ANOTHER_API_SECRET: process.env.ANOTHER_API_SECRET
};
However, the Angular compiler treats these environment.*.ts files as static, and it wouldn’t compile.
Workaround: Write a script to generate the environment file dynamically before the build!
The Process 🧪
TL;DR:
Install yargs and dotenv. Create a .env file at the root of your project folder and populate it with your variables. Write a script which creates the required environment file (environment.ts for development and environment.prod.ts for production) and populates it with the variables from your .env file (available in process.env ). Run the script before running ng serve or ng build .
So, installing yargs and dotenv shouldn’t be a problem:
npm install --save-dev yargs dotenv
I’ll use the .env file from above with the same contents:
API_KEY=1234_API_KEY_5678
ANOTHER_API_SECRET=__ANOTHER__SECRET__
The script which does all the magic is a relatively simple one. Create a setenv.ts inside a scripts folder on the root of your project.
const { writeFile } = require('fs');
const { argv } = require('yargs'); // read environment variables from .env file
require('dotenv').config(); // read the command line arguments passed with yargs
const environment = argv.environment;
const isProduction = environment === 'prod'; const targetPath = isProduction
? `./src/environments/environment.prod.ts`
: `./src/environments/environment.ts`; // we have access to our environment variables
// in the process.env object thanks to dotenv
const environmentFileContent = `
export const environment = {
production: ${isProduction},
API_URL: "${process.env.API_URL}",
ANOTHER_API_SECRET: "${process.env.ANOTHER_API_SECRET}"
};
`; // write the content to the respective file
writeFile(targetPath, environmentFileContent, function (err) {
if (err) {
console.log(err);
} console.log(`Wrote variables to ${targetPath}`);
}};
Easy? Now we just need to modify our start and build script so that these files are generated dynamically. Do this in the package.json file:
{
...
"scripts": {
"ng": "ng",
"config": "ts-node ./scripts/setenv.ts",
"start": "npm run config -- --environment=dev && ng serve",
"build": "npm run config -- --environment=prod && ng build",
...
},
...
}
You can tweak the script a little bit by adding a check to see if all your environment variables have been passed or not.
... // read the command line arguments passed with yargs
const environment = argv.environment;
const isProduction = environment === 'prod'; if (!process.env.API_KEY || !process.env.ANOTHER_API_KEY) {
console.error('All the required environment variables were not provided!');
process.exit(-1};
} ...
If you don’t specify the proper environment variables then this process will automatically exit!
Remember that you should not push the .env file to a remote repository, or the environment files that have been generated! Simply keep a template on the repo and share credentials only with trusted people.
Cheers! ✨ | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/setup-dotenv-to-access-environment-variables-in-angular-9-f06c6ffb86c0 | ['Ninad Subba'] | 2020-12-25 06:09:03.167000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Security', 'Angular', 'Software Development', 'Web Development'] |
1,316 | Who fixes the robots? | Written by Joe Wheatley, Leading tech-enabled change and transformation, Triad
This question emerged during the Digital Leaders Salon event in March where Adrian Leer, our MD at Triad Group Plc, presented the findings of our 2020 tech trends survey. The context around it was the ever-increasing use of technology in the workplace, in particular white-collar automation and the move to low-touch business processes.
The participants, led by Sarah Burnett of the Everest Group, discussed how, as automation in business processes increases and human involvement correspondingly decreases, we may well arrive, if we don’t plan ahead, at a situation where organisations struggle to react to changes in process. Or, that the support mechanisms for automated processes are so structured that they leave little room for adaptation — meaning that these processes rapidly become obsolete.
Since I joined Triad to lead the Intelligent Automation practice, we’ve also identified this challenge and developed a dual approach. We know that automation represents a significant opportunity, and provides benefits for many businesses. However, the implementation must be done in a sustainable and flexible way that allows businesses to adapt to changing situations and market conditions in both the near and long term
Firstly, it’s about people.
As automation increasingly replaces human interaction with the data flowing through these processes the role of staff will change, and this must be thought through ahead of going into any automation initiative. This consideration applies elsewhere, but here the focus is on one crucial element; upskilling process ‘doers’ into process ‘administrators’. By this, we mean ensuring that, as part of the development process and through deliberate training, some of your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) gain an understanding of how to work in the RPA technology you choose.
These technologies are, after all, designed to be low-code, and suitable for use by non-technical business staff. Here, we mean simply the ability to perform basic break/fix actions and ‘keep the lights on’ by handling some of the exceptions that will be thrown up by an active process. In this way, some staff can learn new skills and move into more rewarding positions within their current teams as part of the process of implementing automation. The company also keeps people who know the process involved in its management.
Designing for flexibility
Secondly, it’s about how we design support and maintenance organisations for automation and the roles that are performed in that function. Context varies, but Triad would typically recommend having rudimental support done by people who are familiar with the process and situated within the department that owns the outcome, as demonstrated above in the form of process administrators.
But for many companies, particularly the (relatively) smaller ones, for whom automation is rapidly becoming more affordable and accessible, it may not make financial sense to build a large internal capability to manage their automations. As such, outsourcing may appeal as a possible solution.
This can, however, also present a problem; many traditional outsourcing contracts have very limited flexibility and therefore are not very adaptable to change, while business processes have to be adaptable to changing customer desires and marketplace shifts. As such, when organising this type of work, we advise companies to ensure their contracts take into account both their current needs and their expectations for change.
The solution to both parts of the ‘who fixes the robots?’ approach comes back to adoption. Often the term ‘adoption’ is taken to mean the end-users adapting to the new technology with which they find themselves working, but the solution here is about senior leaders in industry and outsourcing accepting that their businesses will change as a result of the spread of novel technologies and adapting their business models to take advantage of that.
Planning for the future evolution of processes and therefore the ‘fixing’ of robots to reflect those changes needs building into an automation programme from the start.
Originally published here.
More thought leadership | https://medium.com/digital-leaders-uk/who-fixes-the-robots-d07cee9644b0 | ['Digital Leaders'] | 2020-03-25 15:06:11.440000+00:00 | ['AI', 'Robots', 'Technology'] |
1,317 | Финальная таблица лидеров конкурса TPS от QuarkChain | QuarkChain provides a secure, decentralized and scalable blockchain solution to deliver 100,000+ on-chain TPS
Follow | https://medium.com/quarkchain-official/%D1%84%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F-%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0-%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2-%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%80%D1%81%D0%B0-tps-%D0%BE%D1%82-quarkchain-28170e654d9 | [] | 2018-11-08 23:17:09.169000+00:00 | ['Russian', 'Blockchain', 'Quarkchain', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
1,318 | The Path to Safe Deployment of Autonomous Trucks | Craig: Tell us a little about Plus and what you are doing in terms of the autonomous industry.
Shawn: We started back in 2016, focused on applying autonomous technology to the commercial freight market. We think there’s tremendous potential in the space to improve safety, reduce costs, reduce CO2 emissions, and drive overall economic efficiency. We have seen this year how critical freight is to our overall country — what we eat and use every day is brought to us through a truck. This is a market where autonomous technology can be applied to make a big difference. With that in mind, we’ve assembled a team of experts in artificial intelligence, automotive safety, and across all the different domains, to put together a product and focus on bringing autonomy into the Class 8 trucking market.
Craig: We’ve heard a lot about autonomy, which is a very polarizing conversation in the trucking industry. Can you talk a little bit about why you are optimistic about the near-term delivery of these vehicles?
Shawn: Autonomous trucking technology is going to bring tremendous value in terms of improving safety, reducing fuel costs and CO2 emissions. Getting to full Level 4 autonomy is a long term problem, and we’ve broken that down into two steps.
Phase one is to bring self-driving technology out there in “driver-assist” mode and demonstrate what it can do, and to provide safety and efficiency while delivering value to drivers. We think that applying this type of advanced autonomy technology into vehicles today is something where you can improve safety, fuel efficiency, and the overall comfort and driving experience for the driver. We’ve been working with top fleets, OEMs and Tier-1s to bring that to bear. While we are a California-based company, we’ve taken a global perspective to the roll-out of this technology. We partner with FAW, the largest truck OEM in China and the largest producer of heavy trucks in the world by volume, to mass-produce the first automated trucks in China.
Phase two plan in the longer term is once you’ve proven out the efficiency and safety of the system, take a look at operating domains where the technology is robust enough that it can operate without a driver.
Craig: When will we be able to see a Level 4, a truly driverless vehicle, on our nation’s highways?
Shawn: Our company will have a driver-in product on the market next year. In terms of the timeline to get to the initial operation of full Level 4, which means driverless within some constrained environment, we think it will be around 2024. That’s a function of a lot of different factors — our software and technology needs to be ready; OEMs, Tier 1 components, and regulatory pieces should be ready, and so on.
Craig: It’s amazing when we think about how that’s just around the corner in terms of technology evolution. Is your expectation that when we see Level 4 autonomous [trucks], the driver is still in the vehicle for a period of time? Is there a transition period?
Shawn: We see the transition period part of our rollout in terms of starting with a driver-in product to assist drivers. The technology is kind of the same in many ways to perceive and operate with the environment around it.
When we think about the types of problems we have to solve in order to deploy a fully driverless vehicle, we see a few different things — We need to make sure that we’ve actually designed a system that is safe and robust enough to handle all the conditions it might see; then we also have to be able to prove that it is safe enough to do that. To do both of those, we think it’s really important that the technology is out there [in the real world], and it has really substantial miles under its belt to prove that it actually works and demonstrate that it’s able to handle those conditions. By that we think on the order of billions of miles. This is not a small effort, and it’s going to be continuous development and refinement as we work our way to that.
Craig: Talk a little bit about Plus’ business model and where you are different from other competitors that may not have as much opportunity for success.
Shawn: Plus is different in the core business model and technology approach.
Business Model. Plus is partnering with large OEMs and top fleets to bring products to market that they can deploy within the context of their existing businesses. So we’re not looking to build our own operational fleet. We’re a technology enabler that’s bringing this type of technology and product to market, then fleets will be able to operate and OEMs can put that into their trucks and sell to their customers.
Technology Approach. As mentioned earlier, we think there are two key problems that everybody needs to solve in this space. First, you have to build a technology that is really robust and safe, and that can operate in the real world. Second, you need to be able to demonstrate that it actually can do that and is really safe. One of the things that distinguish us is our view that the best way to solve both problems is through extensive road testing and miles driven. And by extensive, we mean on the order of billions of miles.
On the technology side, we do a lot of offline simulation and testing and that’s a big part of what we spend time on. Nonetheless, there are some core components to these types of systems that are based on deep learning or AI type techniques, particularly in the perception space. What that means is that those things need a lot of data to be able to generalize, which is something that we as humans do really well. If someone learns to drive a truck, they can then be expected to be able to handle all those things happening out there on the road. But that’s not really true for computers and software. It wouldn’t know what to do or wouldn’t necessarily know what those things are if the system hasn’t seen it before. So our view is that getting broad exposure is crucial to building the capabilities needed for full Level 4.
Craig: When you think about autonomous, there’s the long haul interstate highways where you basically have a closed-loop, a controlled environment much more so than in a rural area. Are we going to see autonomous point-to-point highway miles before we see autonomous in these rural areas? Is that your expectation?
Shawn: I think so. We’ll see it first in more controlled environments, which are major divided highway segments. But it’s important to keep in mind that while they’re relatively controlled, a lot of things can still happen out there. That’s why it’s so critical to get broad exposure.
Through the approach we are taking, we can deliver real value to customers. With added efficiency, we’ll probably see a transition of freight from air and rail to trucking, thus it will grow the overall market even further.
Craig: So your expectation is that with autonomous that it makes alternative forms of transportation less attractive, simply because the trucks can go longer? Or what’s the view? How do you go about replacing different modes of traffic?
Shawn: Not necessarily replacing, but it will shift the balance of trade perhaps. Having autonomous trucks in long haul segments can reduce the cost and time to move freight, compared to air or rail.
Craig: You will have automated trucks on the road in China sometime next year. When will we start seeing trucks here in the domestic U.S. market? When can manufacturers potentially put this technology inside the vehicles that they’re producing here in the United States?
Shawn: We are excited about our initial launch in China next year, but we are taking a global view to this. We are working with our partners here in the U.S. and also taking a broader view of other places around the world. So this is something that we hope to bring to a number of different markets in the coming years.
Craig: When is your expectation that Level 5 not requiring a human driver to be in the cab will come? When is your expectation that we’ll start seeing successful implementation for point-to-point?
Shawn: Plus is focused on Level 4 which means no driver in the cab but for very specific operating domains and routes. The timeline to get to Level 4 is around 2024.
Level 5, which is defined as being able to operate anywhere, is a long way out and it’s hard to put a time estimate on that. Driving trucks in an urban environment is a very complex problem. The place where this technology brings the most value and where we will see the first commercial exposure is Level 4 highway segment.
Craig: What have you learned from the pilots that you’ve done in these environments that you roll out?
Shawn: We’ve learned a tremendous amount across all different areas of the stack. A couple of the most important learnings is that it’s really going to require extensive testing to be able to get it to the level where you can operate without a driver. The second thing we’ve learned from working with some big partners is what it takes to take the core technology from a demo and make it robust enough to be deployed in a full project. We spent a lot last year focusing on software optimization and robustness. As you go from initial set of pilots and demos to a real product, there’s a lot that needs to be done to make sure everything is really robust, reliable and secure.
Craig: You have raised a large round of capital to get it into production and got this agreement with FAW to put the trucks on the road. So what is next in terms of what Plus needs to do to execute your business plan? What does it take to get from here to next year for you?
Shawn: The next phase is really on execution and scaling up the deployment of our product to really prove out the safety and reliability of the technology. That comes with scaling up our infrastructure and different parts of our operations.
Craig: Regulators have to develop a structure that enables point-to-point autonomous technology to thrive. What are your thoughts on the regulatory elements? When you talk to investors or stakeholders, is that a topic of concern? Is there anything that our audience can think about or do to help promote these technologies, but do it in a way that certainly encourages responsible and sustainable outcomes?
Shawn: Regulatory is certainly a really important aspect here. There’re a lot of things that need to be worked out before you can have fully driverless trucks on the road. But we’ve seen from regulators a lot of support because of the safety aspects of this technology and the benefits that it can bring. We think that from the alignment of interest, everybody’s really eager to see the types of benefits this technology can bring.
Craig: So 2024 here in the United States, we’ll have Level 4 autonomous trucks. We’ll be able to do driverless pickup and delivery at least at some level. When are we going to start looking at a real ‘inflection curve’ where autonomous vehicles come to a point where it’s not unusual to see one on the road and where the vast majority of the installed fleet here in the U.S. is actually autonomous?
Shawn: I think that’s a while off. Trucking is such a massive market. The initial deployment of these technologies in full Level 4 mode will be in constrained Operational Design Domain (ODD). It will be a long-term process as these technologies really demonstrate their ability to operate safely within those limited domains, and then gradually grow those over time. | https://medium.com/plus-ai-blog/the-path-to-safe-deployment-of-autonomous-trucks-dac36dea4c6b | ['Plus Team'] | 2020-11-20 13:01:56.873000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Trucking', 'Autonomous Vehicles', 'Automated Truck'] |
1,319 | Using Machine Learning to Predict Value of Homes On Airbnb | Introduction
Data products have always been an instrumental part of Airbnb’s service. However, we have long recognized that it’s costly to make data products. For example, personalized search ranking enables guests to more easily discover homes, and smart pricing allows hosts to set more competitive prices according to supply and demand. However, these projects each required a lot of dedicated data science and engineering time and effort.
Recently, advances in Airbnb’s machine learning infrastructure have lowered the cost significantly to deploy new machine learning models to production. For example, our ML Infra team built a general feature repository that allows users to leverage high quality, vetted, reusable features in their models. Data scientists have started to incorporate several AutoML tools into their workflows to speed up model selection and performance benchmarking. Additionally, ML infra created a new framework that will automatically translate Jupyter notebooks into Airflow pipelines.
In this post, I will describe how these tools worked together to expedite the modeling process and hence lower the overall development costs for a specific use case of LTV modeling — predicting the value of homes on Airbnb.
What Is LTV?
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), a popular concept among e-commerce and marketplace companies, captures the projected value of a user for a fixed time horizon, often measured in dollar terms.
At e-commerce companies like Spotify or Netflix, LTV is often used to make pricing decisions like setting subscription fees. At marketplace companies like Airbnb, knowing users’ LTVs enable us to allocate budget across different marketing channels more efficiently, calculate more precise bidding prices for online marketing based on keywords, and create better listing segments.
While one can use past data to calculate the historical value of existing listings, we took one step further to predict LTV of new listings using machine learning.
Machine Learning Workflow For LTV Modeling
Data scientists are typically accustomed to machine learning related tasks such as feature engineering, prototyping, and model selection. However, taking a model prototype to production often requires an orthogonal set of data engineering skills that data scientists might not be familiar with.
Luckily, At Airbnb we have machine learning tools that abstract away the engineering work behind productionizing ML models. In fact, we could not have put our model into production without these amazing tools. The remainder of this post is organized into four topics, along with the tools we used to tackle each task:
Feature Engineering: Define relevant features
Define relevant features Prototyping and Training: Train a model prototype
Train a model prototype Model Selection & Validation: Perform model selection and tuning
Perform model selection and tuning Productionization: Take the selected model prototype to production
Feature Engineering
Tool used: Airbnb’s internal feature repository — Zipline
One of the first steps of any supervised machine learning project is to define relevant features that are correlated with the chosen outcome variable, a process called feature engineering. For example, in predicting LTV, one might compute the percentage of the next 180 calendar dates that a listing is available or a listing’s price relative to comparable listings in the same market.
At Airbnb, feature engineering often means writing Hive queries to create features from scratch. However, this work is tedious and time consuming as it requires specific domain knowledge and business logic, which means the feature pipelines are often not easily sharable or even reusable. To make this work more scalable, we developed Zipline — a training feature repository that provides features at different levels of granularity, such as at the host, guest, listing, or market level.
The crowdsourced nature of this internal tool allows data scientists to use a wide variety of high quality, vetted features that others have prepared for past projects. If a desired feature is not available, a user can create her own feature with a feature configuration file like the following:
When multiple features are required for the construction of a training set, Zipline will automatically perform intelligent key joins and backfill the training dataset behind the scenes. For the listing LTV model, we used existing Zipline features and also added a handful of our own. In sum, there were over 150 features in our model, including:
Location : country, market, neighborhood and various geography features
: country, market, neighborhood and various geography features Price : nightly rate, cleaning fees, price point relative to similar listings
: nightly rate, cleaning fees, price point relative to similar listings Availability : Total nights available, % of nights manually blocked
: Total nights available, % of nights manually blocked Bookability : Number of bookings or nights booked in the past X days
: Number of bookings or nights booked in the past X days Quality: Review scores, number of reviews, and amenities
A example training dataset
With our features and outcome variable defined, we can now train a model to learn from our historical data.
Prototyping and Training
Tool used: Machine learning Library in Python — scikit-learn
As in the example training dataset above, we often need to perform additional data processing before we can fit a model:
Data Imputation: We need to check if any data is missing, and whether that data is missing at random. If not, we need to investigate why and understand the root cause. If yes, we should impute the missing values.
We need to check if any data is missing, and whether that data is missing at random. If not, we need to investigate why and understand the root cause. If yes, we should impute the missing values. Encoding Categorical Variables: Often we cannot use the raw categories in the model, since the model doesn’t know how to fit on strings. When the number of categories is low, we may consider using one-hot encoding. However, when the cardinality is high, we might consider using ordinal encoding, encoding by frequency count of each category.
In this step, we don’t quite know what is the best set of features to use, so writing code that allows us to rapidly iterate is essential. The pipeline construct, commonly available in open-source tools like Scikit-Learn and Spark, is a very convenient tool for prototyping. Pipelines allow data scientists to specify high-level blueprints that describe how features should be transformed, and which models to train. To make it more concrete, below is a code snippet from our LTV model pipeline:
At a high level, we use pipelines to specify data transformations for different types of features, depending on whether those features are of type binary, categorical, or numeric. FeatureUnion at the end simply combines the features column-wise to create the final training dataset.
The advantage of writing prototypes with pipelines is that it abstracts away tedious data transformations using data transforms. Collectively, these transforms ensure that data will be transformed consistently across training and scoring, which solves a common problem of data transformation inconsistency when translating a prototype into production.
Furthermore, pipelines also separates data transformations from model fitting. While not shown in the code above, data scientists can add a final step to specify an estimator for model fitting. By exploring different estimators, data scientists can perform model selection to pick the best model to improve the model’s out of sample error.
Performing Model Selection
Tool used: Various AutoML frameworks
As mentioned in the previous section, we need to decide which candidate model is the best to put into production. To make such a decision, we need to weigh the tradeoffs between model interpretability and model complexity. For example, a sparse linear model might be very interpretable but not complex enough to generalize well. A tree based model might be flexible enough to capture non-linear patterns but not very interpretable. This is known as the Bias-Variance tradeoff.
Figure referenced from Introduction to Statistical Learning with R by James, Witten, Hastie, and Tibshirani
In applications such as insurance or credit screening, a model needs to be interpretable because it’s important for the model to avoid inadvertently discriminating against certain customers. In applications such as image classification, however, it is much more important to have a performant classifier than an interpretable model.
Given that model selection can be quite time consuming, we experimented with using various AutoML tools to speed up the process. By exploring a wide variety of models, we found which types of models tended to perform best. For example, we learned that eXtreme gradient boosted trees (XGBoost) significantly outperformed benchmark models such as mean response models, ridge regression models, and single decision trees.
Comparing RMSE allows us to perform model selection
Given that our primary goal was to predict listing values, we felt comfortable productionizing our final model using XGBoost, which favors flexibility over interpretability.
Taking Model Prototypes to Production
Tool used: Airbnb’s notebook translation framework — ML Automator
As we alluded to earlier, building a production pipeline is quite different from building a prototype on a local laptop. For example, how can we perform periodic re-training? How do we score a large number of examples efficiently? How do we build a pipeline to monitor model performance over time?
At Airbnb, we built a framework called ML Automator that automagically translates a Jupyter notebook into an Airflow machine learning pipeline. This framework is designed specifically for data scientists who are already familiar with writing prototypes in Python, and want to take their model to production with limited experience in data engineering.
A simplified overview of the ML Automator Framework (photo credit: Aaron Keys)
First, the framework requires a user to specify a model config in the notebook. The purpose of this model config is to tell the framework where to locate the training table, how many compute resources to allocate for training, and how scores will be computed.
Additionally, data scientists are required to write specific fit and transform functions. The fit function specifies how training will be done exactly, and the transform function will be wrapped as a Python UDF for distributed scoring (if needed).
Here is a code snippet demonstrating how the fit and transform functions are defined in our LTV model. The fit function tells the framework that a XGBoost model will be trained, and that data transformations will be carried out according to the pipeline we defined previously.
Once the notebook is merged, ML Automator will wrap the trained model inside a Python UDF and create an Airflow pipeline like the one below. Data engineering tasks such as data serialization, scheduling of periodic re-training, and distributed scoring are all encapsulated as a part of this daily batch job. As a result, this framework significantly lowers the cost of model development for data scientists, as if there was a dedicated data engineer working alongside the data scientists to take the model into production!
A graph view of our LTV Airflow DAG, running in production
Note: Beyond productionization, there are other topics, such as tracking model performance over time or leveraging elastic compute environment for modeling, which we will not cover in this post. Rest assured, these are all active areas under development.
Lessons Learned & Looking Ahead
In the past few months, data scientists have partnered very closely with ML Infra, and many great patterns and ideas arose out of this collaboration. In fact, we believe that these tools will unlock a new paradigm for how to develop machine learning models at Airbnb.
First, the cost of model development is significantly lower : by combining disparate strengths from individual tools: Zipline for feature engineering, Pipeline for model prototyping, AutoML for model selection and benchmarking, and finally ML Automator for productionization, we have shortened the development cycle tremendously.
: by combining disparate strengths from individual tools: Zipline for feature engineering, Pipeline for model prototyping, AutoML for model selection and benchmarking, and finally ML Automator for productionization, we have shortened the development cycle tremendously. Second, the notebook driven design reduces barrier to entry : data scientists who are not familiar with the framework have immediate access to a plethora of real life examples. Notebooks used in production are guaranteed to be correct, self-documenting, and up-to-date. This design drives strong adoption from new users.
: data scientists who are not familiar with the framework have immediate access to a plethora of real life examples. Notebooks used in production are guaranteed to be correct, self-documenting, and up-to-date. This design drives strong adoption from new users. As a result, teams are more willing to invest in ML product ideas: At the time of this post’s writing, we have several other teams exploring ML product ideas by following a similar approach: prioritizing the listing inspection queue, predicting the likelihood that listings will add cohosts, and automating flagging of low quality listings.
We are very excited about the future of this framework and the new paradigm it brought along. By bridging the gap between prototyping and productionization, we can truly enable data scientists and engineers to pursue end-to-end machine learning projects and make our product better. | https://medium.com/airbnb-engineering/using-machine-learning-to-predict-value-of-homes-on-airbnb-9272d3d4739d | ['Robert Chang'] | 2017-07-17 16:07:24.185000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'AI', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence'] |
1,320 | Crypto News & Signals — 24.01.2018 | Rapper 50 Cents became a Bitcoin millionaire, Stripe is turning its back on Bitcoin (but is still enthusiastic about cryptos), crypto opponents at the World Economic Forum are bashing Bitcoin.
These and other news in today’s news digest. | https://medium.com/cryptodivers/crypto-news-signals-24-01-2018-2492edec2f8d | ['Divers Collective'] | 2018-01-25 23:48:17.300000+00:00 | ['Crypto', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
1,321 | 7 Enjoyable Apps You Should Keep Using in 2021 | So here I’m going to share with you the 7 smart phone apps that I recommend using in 2021:
Socializing
These two apps deliver a creative idea of connecting with other people worldwide in an organized way.
1. Slowly
Have you had a pen-pal before the telephones and the Internet came to life? Or if you watched green book you’ll get the idea when Tony tip took tips from Don to write a heart-touching message to his wife.
This app delivers a similar idea. Where you set up your profile avatar with a simple description, the main interests you like and languages you know. Then it will suggest some pen pals to contact according to your interests.
Alternatively, you can browse pen pals manually From the region you want. The app supports voice messages and sending up to 5 photos per message. But remember, The farther the country the more the message will take to be delivered. So make sure to write a good message with all thoughts that you want to share.
Slowly, Photo by Author
This app helped me to improve my writing. It also taught me that creating a valuable friendship takes time. I made a wonderful friendship and learned about new cultures from the United States. Turkey, Russia, Norway, Greece and other countries in Latin America and the Middle East. | https://medium.com/technology-hits/7-enjoyable-apps-you-should-keep-using-in-2021-923adb102c12 | ['Ibrahim K'] | 2020-12-18 09:07:31.424000+00:00 | ['Advice', 'Technology', 'Social Media', 'Creativity', 'Apps'] |
1,322 | Take a Risk, But Treat it Well | Ideas and thoughts just randomly light up the bulb inside our minds, making the world of business grow wider and bigger day by day. When a business idea is pitched or even just mentioned the first word of response will most definitely be “What about the risk?” … Yes, ‘RISK’ the term so closely related to businesses, that it is one of the elements that define what a business environment consists of. It is quite a common knowledge that; when you are involving yourself in business you are actually involving yourself in high risk, because that is what businesses are all about, they say; higher the risk, higher the profitability.
While it may be true, what we must not fail to understand is that, whatever may be the risk, however big or small, if not foreseen and managed in the right way at the right time, it can lead to fatal consequences for the enterprise as a whole, for what makes the business a higher profitable one is how the management of the enterprise go around these risks making it less of a threat, which is why managements have a risk management system in place for good planning and foreseeing possible obstacles and risks that may hinder the future of the entire business organization.
Now that we have addressed it, let’s delve on it a bit more, as to what exactly is this system of risk management which is termed as ‘Enterprise Risk Management’? and why do we need it?
The term itself may give it away as to what it is and what it aims to achieve.
Enterprise Risk Management is a new and evolving management discipline that involves the process of assessing potential risks to help foresee threats to an organization in all ways that matter, which means a company’s financial wellbeing and operations in the relevant market. The enterprise risk management business strategy identifies and prepares for hazards with a company’s operations and objectives, with the goal to understand the enterprises tolerance for risk and make decisions accordingly after categorizing and quantifying the said risks.
Being a plan-based strategy with an ultimate aim to identify, assess and prepare for any dangers or obstacles that can cause hindrance to the life of the business enterprise; this strategy involves not only looking into obvious risks that lie before you in plain sight, but also look more far ahead and create maximum accurate reports onto likely less obvious potential risks and manage it accordingly to create a good practical plan of action of need arise.
A well-equipped and automated Enterprise Risk Management Software is a manager’s best friend and trusted advisor, for it helps them to see what they can possibly miss out on, literally ensuring no stones are left unturned when it comes to the profitability and life of the enterprise.
To really realize that you are indeed way behind in the market and is terribly missing out, if you do not have strategized Enterprise Risk Management solutions and a good Enterprise Risk Management software, it would be best to keep scrolling to see the benefits of the same listed below, which include;
- Better risk reporting:
Accuracy is the key when it comes to making decisions that can be the answer to the future of the business, where unwanted inappropriate reports of data can cause hindrances to the operations of the business, a well managed Enterprise Risk Management framework creates a platform to erase such possibilities by having an automated template system for reporting that allows the information to be accessed by all departments under one cloud
- Improved data quality:
By eradicating the traditional way of manually recording data, managed Enterprise Risk Management software solutions also removes possibility of mistakes and omissions that may occur, thus improving the quality of the data many times over.
- Reduced insurance premiums:
For companies that need a lot of insurance, Enterprise Risk Management solutions can understandably be used to reduce these premiums. Insurers want to be sure there are controls in place within a company to manage key risks. The more robust the controls, the more likely an insurer will review premiums and reduce prices.
- Increased access to capital:
Organizations that have incorporated a good and effective Enterprise Risk Management framework are more likely to be in a better position to minimize their financial obligation, which in turn increases their goodwill, making it easy to raise finances from more external sources.
- Improve the supply chain:
Enterprise Risk Management software solutions have shown to improve the overall supply chain, i.e., acquisition, inventory, and also go far ahead to even be able to forecast the customer demand in advance to take necessary action for the future.
- Better Productivity:
Perhaps the most likeable benefit of an Enterprise Risk Management system could be that, it being able to forecast possible hindrances that risks that are not favorable to the business, helps to make decisions and plan of actions accordingly, paves way for more and better productivity in the organization.
Not a promise for a worry free line of business that you can run risk free, but an effective management system that helps to identify those risks well in advance and thus possibly increase the life span of your business enterprise, with more productivity and less costs Enterprise Risk Management solutions is truly a management’s best friend. | https://medium.com/@isorobot/take-a-risk-but-treat-it-well-80d735e2a705 | [] | 2021-02-02 09:21:10.887000+00:00 | ['Risk Management Solutions', 'Enterprise Technology', 'Enterprise Software', 'Enterprise Risk', 'Risk Management'] |
1,323 | Computer Vision: A Leap Towards an Accident-free World | Source- Internet
The Problem: Human Error
Article by: Himanshu Abhyankar
According to a 2019 study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), somewhere between 94% and 96% of all car accidents are caused by human error.
What if I told you that each year, traffic accidents account for 2.2% of world deaths. That stacks up to roughly 1.3 million a year — 3,287 a day. On top of this, some 20–50 million people are seriously injured in auto-related accidents every year, brooding right? during this blog, we are going to facilitate your understand the importance of computer vision and also the future ahead.
From distracted driving to drunk driving to reckless driving to careless driving, one poor or unattentive decision may well be the difference between a typical drive and a life-threatening situation. the basis cause? Human error.
But what if we could neutralize the human error from this equation? What if there was the simplest way to watch bad driving and forestall those actions likely to cause accidents, even before the accidents occur?
Computer Vision is a lively solution. This technology makes it possible to mitigate human error within the auto industry, assisting drivers at the wheel with tools and features that keep them from committing serious mistakes and accidents. the longer term scope extending to autonomous vehicles and self-driving transportation.
Computer Vision: The Concept
Source- Internet
In it’s simplest form, computer vision is what allows computers “see” and process visual data.
Visual data is very difficult for computers to grasp. That’s where the genius of computer vision comes in. With support from artificial intelligence, computing, neural networks, deep learning, parallel computing, and machine learning, computer vision helping to bridge the gap between computers seeing and computers comprehending what they see.
To cut it short, computer vision is that the science behind advancements like self-driving cars and Facebook’s facial and image recognition technologies. Then again how is it different from human vision? How does it neutralize human error? | https://medium.com/@himanshu-abhyankar-vitp/computer-vision-a-leap-towards-an-accident-free-world-a598044959e9 | ['Himanshu Abhyankar'] | 2020-12-24 11:33:48.455000+00:00 | ['Self Driving Cars', 'Future', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Computer Vision'] |
1,324 | Why Eyeo [festival]? | Eyeo Festival 2012 (Photo by Chloe Fan)
In the late 90’s I was worked at a small fry recording studio in Detroit. I had access to it anytime it wasn’t open for business. I recorded a lot of goofy tunes back then thinking one of them might eventually take over the world. Around 1997 some musician in the studio told me about the Burning Man Festival and it intrigued me a lot. Don’t worry — this isn’t about Burning Man. I’ve never been. But I was intrigued by the idea of getting off the grid. I figured it would be good fodder for another instant world-classic, world-uniting tune: No Code. It featured a lot of cosmic mimiMOOG. The chorus: “In a digital nation the only dope is no code” implying that life on the grid would eventually be totally pre-programmed thanks to the obvious path [that then] developing technologies like an internet and 2G cell phones would take society. Don’t get me started on the power of CD-ROMs. Genius I thought. The curse of any age is that you’re always trying to sound smarter than you are. Time thankfully reveals your genius was kinda really just a big block of cheesy cheese.
The point is, even back in 1997 I thought and cared about the effects technology might have on the world around us. And appreciated Burning Man as a rebellion to the pre-programmed society we were all headed for. Doomed! Bunch of digital zombies. And the tune was catchy. To me. Only me.
So let’s catch up in time and talk a little bit the Eyeo Festival which I’ve been overseeing since it started. In 2011, Jer Thorp, Wes Grubbs, Julian Dolce and I just wanted to put together the event we wish existed. (Julien moved onto other things. Caitlin Hargarten came on in 2013 and has been here since. I love this team. Oh and Wes is on sabbatical for 2019.) We were interested in creative coding, dataviz, art, and really appreciated the philosophy behind open-source tools. And we were admirers of a lot of people doing just really, really impressive and creative things with technology.
The first Eyeo Festival took place in 2011.
I came up with the name, Eyeo, which doesn’t mean anything specific, but riffs on the idea of eye-opening and I/O at the same time. It’s non-specific on purpose. We wanted the flexibility to evolve. Freedom to present both timely content as tech and trends develop and also just things we feel jazzed about in any given year. And that fluidity over the years is one thing I love about Eyeo. In any given year the range of topics and speakers can be wildly varied from other years. (We still hover around the original areas of interest for sure. And we do often repeat speakers — for which we have a secret, strategic reason that I won’t divulge here.)
But, but…that fluidity also can make it tricky for me to explain what Eyeo is to people. Yeah me of all people — it’s embarrassing. I frequently get inquiries along the lines of “Hey I’m into X, Y and Z. Should I come to Eyeo?” and I don’t always have an fast answer. Could be a midwesterner thing and I’m just real afraid to over-promise and set someone up for disappointment. I need to work on that. Typically my response/advice is that you have to look at the speakers and what they make, think, and do and decide for yourself. Given feedback from attendees over the years, sometimes it’s the people who don’t do exactly what you do that will inspire you the most or have the greatest effect on how you do what you do. Also Eyeo isn’t just about who’s on stage. Eyeo attendees are passionately involved with so many different cool things! A conversation you have with an attendee might be your game changing moment at Eyeo.
The 2016 Code+Activism Summit (Photo by Hannah Wei)
A bit more about content at Eyeo. I can’t think of better way than a bullet list to do this. Sorry. Over the years we’ve covered a range of topics:
Data — Viz/Design/Collection
Creative Code
Interactive Installations
Projection Mapping
Glitch
Physical Computing
AR/VR/Immersive Experiences
AI/ML
Maps
Social Justice & Activism
Sculpture
E-textiles and Tech-Enabled Fashion
Generative Art
Space
Mapping
Journalism & Tech
Music Technology
Privacy and Ethics
Libraries & Tech
Pioneers of Computer Art
and other things I’m forgetting
Oh and, How to Do Nothing
It’s so tempting to name drop some of the inspiring people we’ve had share amazing talks about these subjects at Eyeo. But instead I just added a complete list to the end of this post. I’m sure you’ll see some names you recognize. Look a bit into the ones you don’t. You’ll be happy you did. (I know — I just totally cheated. It’s like carpet name-dropping.)
Closing night of Eyeo 2016 with the speakers on stage. (Photo by Hannah Wei)
Eyeo speakers present work that’s beautiful, poetic, thought provoking, entertaining, or just really, really cool. Like in the “Wow! — How did they do that? — Can’t wait to get my hands on one of those gadgets!” way. And that’s a good thing. We love it. It’s good to be excited by the magic and potential of tech. Especially in the creative applications of tech.
At the same time, Team Eyeo has also always been a bit critical and skeptical of the promise of tech. We’ve seen technologies and platforms transform culture during the last 9 years on scales both global and national, and change our interpersonal and individual behaviors. Eyeo is also a time to reflect critically on how the tech we’re exposed to, we utilize, that we engineer and architect, affect the world around us. A time to think about the future and how we choose to shape it. (See how I brought this back to my big hit, No Code, from 1997? Thank you very much. You get a CD-ROM.) The point is at Eyeo we like to believe the future isn’t on auto-pilot, and creative technology folks might have more agency in shaping it than they think.
(Photo by Daniel Doherty)
What’s it like when you come to Eyeo? Well, you’ll meet people. On Monday you might be in a pre-festival workshop tinkering with an introduction to Friendly Machine Learning, or Livecoding Visuals with open-source Hydra, or at the Code+Libraries Summit engaging in conversations about how Libraries and Coders can work together to create new forms of collaboration. That evening all 600+ of you will show up to a theater and when I walk out on stage it’ll take me at least 5 minutes to get you all to shut up cause you’ve already found someone you’re really interested in talking to. And I’m not that interesting frankly. Then you’ll spend a few days soaking up inspiring talks, joining attendee led meet-ups, checking out attendee show&tell sessions over lunch, talking to speakers after talks, eating dinner or sharing a cab with strangers on the way to becoming friends. And by Friday morning you’ll be probably a little bit exhausted, maybe mentally overloaded, but itching to get back home and start working on some new thing that you’re fired up about. Mission accomplished. Converge to inspire.
So join us. Come to the Eyeo Festival this year. (Look at me Mom! I’m selling it! Really selling it!)
I’ll wrap it up with a few things I love about Eyeo.
1. The people this event has brought together over the years, onstage and off, creates an amazing atmosphere for 4 days of the year. I love seeing people come together and exchange ideas and knowledge around things they’re passionate about. It feels good folks. Expanding your community is always a good thing. Certainly worth a mention here: We strongly believe in diversity and inclusivity at Eyeo. It’s better with everyone.
B. One thing that just humbles me every year are the speakers. They come in madly prepared for their talks. They share their processes but also share so much in the way of ideas and their thinking. And then they’re just always game to hang out, blend in with the rest of us and enjoy the festival. I don’t ask them to do that. I think they just like the vibe of it all and appreciate it. That adds a community feeling to the event that I love.
3. Setting up chances for inspiration and seeing attendees get something special out of attending Eyeo. Quick story. In 2012 an attendee came up to me and let me know that after attending Eyeo in 2011 she decided to change her course of study and had all new career ambitions. That’s gold to us. Here a person was exposed to some idea at Eyeo, recognized a passion for it, and the potential to pursue it. It changed her life! That’s why Eyeo is so rewarding and I (we) feel so great about making it happen. The mission is simple. Converge to Inspire.
So get a ticket and join us in June. eyeofestival.com
##
Here’s the name dropping I promised: | https://medium.com/@dave_73351/why-eyeo-festival-72c857ee2700 | ['Dave Schroeder'] | 2019-04-19 20:20:23.148000+00:00 | ['Creative Technology', 'Art', 'Festivals', 'Creative Coding', 'Dataviz'] |
1,325 | Japan just casually unveiled a giant robot. | Japan just casually unveiled a giant robot. Looking like something out of the Transformers movies, this bad boy is 59 feet tall and far more terrifying than it is meant to be. At least, I’m assuming it’s not meant to be terrifying.
Has no one in Japan watched any sci-fi movies or Doctor Who? At least when we’ve been keeping our robots small, we can kid ourselves with the fact that we could take ’em on.
Yes, this is a pretty cool thing. Yes, it’s a feat to make a giant robot that actually moves. Yes, robots already exist and our cars and homes are filled with AI. But, damn, Japan. This is some next-level technology shit that is — definitely — going to kill us in the end. Because when has anything we’ve done as humans gone exactly as we planned? | https://medium.com/@mleeann/japan-just-casually-unveiled-a-giant-robot-55ca3d9cc610 | ['Michelle Lee-Ann'] | 2020-12-09 14:12:26.001000+00:00 | ['Technology News', 'World News', 'Robots', 'Technology', 'Future Technology'] |
1,326 | My daughter was a creative genius, and then we bought her an iPhone | My daughter used to be an artist. She would spend hours in the TV room, not watching TV, but on the floor surrounded by scraps of paper, beads and string, making collages and jewelry, or copying cartoon characters into notebooks.
She loved to sew. With a needle and thread, she would make dresses and hats and shoes for her dolls. Before I got around to buying her fabric, she used construction paper. My brother gave her a small wooden artist manikin one Christmas. She made clothes for that too.
She wasn’t allowed TV on school days, but we were lax on weekends. She didn’t watch much TV anyway. She was too busy doing something else. When friends came by, she would show them her art books, page after page.
At ten, she asked for an iPod Touch. She was desperate to have one. All of her friends had either iPod Touches or iPhones. For months, she had been carrying around a phone she made by stitching yellow and black fabric around cardboard. She made a bee for a logo. She called it her Queen Bee phone.
My husband and I said she could have a phone when she turned 14. That’s when Bill Gates said he gave his kids phones, and he knew better than we did about tech. But my daughter was starting to use my iPhone, and I wasn’t controlling her time or restricting content.
With an iPod Touch, we could control both time and content. Yes, she was young, but we would teach good phone habits and manners early. No more than an hour a day. Never after 7 pm, and she couldn’t sleep with it in her room. No phone at the table, nor on family outings like walks in the nearby woods.
We told ourselves she only wanted one because her friends had them. It was a status symbol. We didn’t want her to be like one of those people who are denied TV or candy in childhood, only to become addicts later. She’d grow bored soon enough, just like with the TV. We gave her an iPod Touch that Christmas.
Of course, the iPod Touch wasn’t like the TV, and she never got bored. It was more like a gateway drug. Not long after getting the iPod Touch, she started pushing for a real phone. She would be starting a new school in September, she argued, and taking a bus for the first time. She couldn’t call me with the SIM-less iPod Touch. The August before she started her new school, we bought her an iPhone SE. It’s been hell ever since.
Bill Gates knew best. We should have waited until she was older. Smartphones aren’t like TVs; they’re like crack. And little by little, our daughter has chipped away at our rules and resolve. Insidious apps have made things worse, as has sloppy parenting.
It’s a rainy Saturday. She’s an only child. She wants to talk with her friends. I don’t see any harm in FaceTime. We exclude FaceTime from the hour limit. She wants Roblox. All the kids have it, and it seems harmless enough. She’s building her dream house. I tell myself it’s creative and she can play it with friends. Then there’s TikTok and Instagram. She’s underage, but she says her friends all have these apps. Initially, I refuse, but she wears me down. I let her get private accounts. I tell myself at least she’s learning dance routines and taking photos. Then she wants Snapchat. I cave again.
Somewhere along the way, I realize that apps like TikTok and Instagram are impervious to Apple’s Screen Time limit. They work even when the rest of her phone shuts down. To keep the peace, I let it slide.
An hour of use always seemed unrealistic anyway, as did the 7 pm cut-off. My daughter doesn’t return home from school until 6:30 pm and still has to eat, bathe, and get ready for bed. She needs time to unwind. We change her phone curfew from 7 pm to 8 pm, but soon that slips too.
Over time, I break my own rules. If she’s eating dinner early and by herself, I’ll let her keep watching James Charles on YouTube. He is creative and funny. I have another meal to make and dishes to clean. Why should she have to sit in silence? I’m exhausted from fighting about the phone; sometimes I want to be nice and for her to be happy.
I find myself giving in when she asks to take the phone on walks. She says she wants to do a TikTok while we’re in the “aesthetic” woods (including one with me) and take photos for her Instagram account. I tell myself, at least she still wants to go on walks and wants me in her videos.
Yet still, each day is a battle over only one thing. We’re about to leave the house. My daughter isn’t ready. She hasn’t brushed her teeth or made her bed. She’s looking at her phone. I say to put down the phone and get ready. She brushes her teeth and goes back to the phone. I say give me the phone; you haven’t made your bed. She says the phone is charging. I yank it out of the wall. She pulls the cover over her bed, fluffs the pillows, and asks for the phone.
My daughter is like a junkie with the phone. She can’t find her jacket or her shoes, yet she always knows exactly where her phone is. She can’t leave the house without it. I say, “leave it; you don’t always need it.” Sometimes I stand my ground; sometimes I don’t. Even when she goes to the park with friends, she spends half the time making TikToks. We have a shared account. I see the videos they post: sweet 11-year-old girls on a sunny day in a park, copying a stranger’s hand jive in front of a three-inch screen. It takes a second to realize that in each and every little hand is another phone. One night, I finally get around to checking her Screen Time. I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11.
I try to remain good-humored. But some days I get so angry, I rage against the phone. I say the iPhone is evil. It’s stealing her childhood. I say she’ll never look back and wish she’d spent more time on a phone. She says I’m absolutely right. She swears to use it less. My daughter will say anything to get me out of her room so she can get back to her phone.
Occasionally, I take the phone and hide it. I order her to make art or read a book. What am I saying? But it’s no use. Her old pleasures are like chores compared to spending time on a phone. There are tears and screaming. She hates me. I’m the worst mom ever. She eventually calms down and comes to say how sorry she is and how right I was — all the while scanning the room to find her phone. She really is like a junkie.
The worst part is that our child has changed. She used to rush to our bed as soon as she woke, demanding cuddles and to “Talk Friends.” We played with puppets and stuffed animals in the morning, getting the “friends” to sing and act out scenes from plays like Robin Hood and Beauty and the Beast. We all got involved. Those days are gone. I understand she’s probably too big for “Talk Friends,” but it’s heartbreaking watching her race into our room each morning to grab her phone.
My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room. She’ll do it, but grudgingly. Some days I get sad thinking about what happened to the little kid who used to corner visitors and make them go page-by-page through her art books.
If only I’d waited to get her a phone. This is all my fault. But then I wonder if it wasn’t inevitable. She was never going to make plays with puppets or sew clothes for dolls forever. When friends visit, she occasionally asks them to watch her latest TikTok videos. Some are even funny and creative. Or so I tell myself. It helps with the guilt. | https://medium.com/modern-parent/my-daughter-was-a-creative-genius-then-we-bought-her-an-iphone-bf617c0b6ca0 | ['Stephanie Gruner Buckley'] | 2020-12-05 10:33:25.340000+00:00 | ['Advice', 'Technology', 'Childhood', 'iPhone', 'Parenting'] |
1,327 | Passage’s Mustang Mach-E electric SUV is marvelous, however Tesla actually has one major bit of leeway | Visit blog for complete articles click here
(CNN)A parcel might have turned out badly when Ford chose to make a four-entryway electric hybrid SUV and consider it a Mustang, and even strongly put a horse identification on its nose
Indeed, Ford’s specialists and planners made an awesome showing of catching the Mustang’s solid inclination speeding up and great dealing with and bundling it into a vehicle that isn’t a gas fueled, JIM CARREY back tire drive, two-entryway horse vehicle. It was a monstrous stretch, and they took it away.
Despite the fact that the adaptation I was driving was a First Edition, not the superior Mach-E GT that won't be accessible until some other time, it was so much fun I needed to continue reminding myself to take it somewhat simple.
The Ford Mustang Mach-E electric hybrid SUV in Grabber Blue.
More …. | https://medium.com/@ashirwadshri/passages-mustang-mach-e-electric-suv-is-marvelous-however-tesla-actually-has-one-major-bit-of-da1ee71b8f80 | ['Ashirwad Shrivastava'] | 2020-12-16 15:18:49.910000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Tech', 'Cars', 'Careers', 'Careerselection'] |
1,328 | Day 11–101 Days of DevOps — Apache log parser using Python | To view the complete course, please check the below url.
For more info, register via the below link
YouTube Channel link
Welcome to Day 11 of 101 Days of DevOps. The topic for today is an Apache log parser using python. This tutorial aims to create an Apache log parser which is really helpful in determining offending IP addresses during the DDoS attack on your website. This is what we are going to do.
Read Apache log file(access.log)
Count quantity of requests to your website from each IP address
Save the output in a csv file
Make script user friendly by using argparse
If you look at the content of access.log, this is how it looks
192.168.0.1 — — [23/Apr/2017:05:54:36 -0400] “GET / HTTP/1.1” 403 3985 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.102 Safari/537.36”
Let’s break down these fields
192.168.0.1 --> IP address [23/Apr/2017:05:54:36 -0400] --> Date,time and timezone GET / HTTP/1.1 --> HTTP get request to read the page 403 --> Server response code 3985 --> Number of byte transferred Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.102 Safari/537.36” --> Finally there are data of user's hardware,OS and browser
But the piece we are interested in is the IP address
So as mentioned above, our first step is
Importing all standard python modules.
import re
from collections import Counter
import csv
import argparse
Read the Apache log file.
with open("access_log") as f:
fread = f.read()
In the next step, we are going to write a regular expression. We already discussed the regular expression on Day 10. https://www.101daysofdevops.com/courses/101-days-of-devops/lessons/day-10-regular-expression/
\d: Any numeric digit[0–9]
Then we are going to use findall() to get the list of IP addresses.
logreg="\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}"
ip_list = re.findall(logreg, fread)
As we filtered the IP address so far, we will count the number of times IP repeated in the file in the next step. To do that, we are going to use the collections module and its method called Counter. We need to pass ip_list the IP list we filtered via the regex to Counter(ip_list) method and then print it.
for k, v in Counter(ip_list).items():
print(k,v)
So far, our code will look like this.
import re
from collections import Counter
import csv
import argparse
logreg="\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}"
with open("access_log") as f:
fread = f.read()
ip_list = re.findall(logreg, fread)
for k, v in Counter(ip_list).items():
print(k,v)
If we execute our code at this stage(store the code in a file apache_parser.py and then execute it, you will see we are getting an IP address along with the count.
python3 apache_parser.py
194.5.53.89 1
20.191.45.212 4
35.208.242.202 60
88.150.188.171 1
5.0.375.99 1
185.191.171.37 1
As our next requirement, we need to save the output in a csv file. To achieve that, we are going to open the ipnewcount.csv file in write mode. Then we will create a fwritercsv object. The next line, “fwritercsv.writerow([“IP_Address”, “Count”])” act as a header to the file, i.e., at the top of a csv file, you will see IP_Address and Count as header. Then we will modify our code a little bit, and rather than printing the value; we will store that in a csv file.
with open("ipnewcount.csv", "w") as f:
fwritercsv = csv.writer(f)
fwritercsv.writerow(["IP_Address", "Count"])
for k, v in Counter(ip_list).items():
fwritercsv.writerow([k, v])
Our modified code will look like this.
import re
from collections import Counter
import csv
import argparse
logreg="\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}"
with open("access_log") as f:
fread = f.read()
ip_list = re.findall(logreg, fread)
with open("ipnewcount.csv", "w") as f:
fwritercsv = csv.writer(f)
fwritercsv.writerow(["IP_Address", "Count"])
for k, v in Counter(ip_list).items():
fwritercsv.writerow([k, v])
If we execute our code now, you will not get any output
(venv) ➜ python3 test_apache_parser.py
(venv) ➜
But you will see the file is created
-rw-r--r-- 1 plakhera plakhera 585 Jul 11 15:43 ipnewcount.csv
If you read the content of a file, as you can see, we have got (IP_Address, Count) as header and then IP Address followed by the count.
head ipnewcount.csv
IP_Address,Count
194.5.53.89,1
20.191.45.212,4
35.208.242.202,60
We met all our requirements except the last one to make this code user-friendly, which we will do with the help of argparse. What argparse will do give the user-friendly help output and allow us to pass logfile on the command line. As the first step, we need to create the parser, then we will add an argument to the parser, and the final step executes the parser.
my_parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Reading the log file')
my_parser.add_argument("logfile",
help='Please enter the logfile to parse',type=argparse.FileType('r'))
args = my_parser.parse_args()
To use this parser, the only change you need to add in your script is rather than hardcoding the value of logfile, replace it with the value you read via a parser.
with args.logfile as f:
As now we met all the requirements, the final code will look like this
import re
from collections import Counter
import csv
import argparse
my_parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Reading the log file')
my_parser.add_argument("--l","--logfile",
help='Please enter the logfile to parse',dest="logfile",type=argparse.FileType('r'), required=True)
args = my_parser.parse_args()
logreg="\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}"
with args.logfile as f:
fread = f.read()
ip_list = re.findall(logreg, fread)
with open("ipnewcount.csv", "w") as f:
fwritercsv = csv.writer(f)
fwritercsv.writerow(["IP_Address", "Count"])
for k, v in Counter(ip_list).items():
fwritercsv.writerow([k, v])
If you try to execute the code now without passing any argument, you will get a nice friendly output.
python3 apache_parser.py
usage: apache_parser.py [-h] --l LOGFILE
apache_parser.py: error: the following arguments are required: --l/--logfile
If you use the -h option, you will get all the help output
python3 apache_parser.py -h
usage: apache_parser.py [-h] --l LOGFILE Reading the log file optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--l LOGFILE, --logfile LOGFILE
Please enter the logfile to parse
Finally, it's time to execute the code
python3 apache_parser.py --logfile access_log
This is version 1 of the code https://github.com/100daysofdevops/100daysofdevops/blob/master/apache_log_parsing/apache_log_parsing_v1.py
Assignment
Try to break the code in terms of function, i.e., there is a separate function to perform regex, a separate function for performing the counter calculation, and a separate function for writing to csv file.
I am looking forward to you guys joining the amazing journey. | https://medium.com/@devopslearning/day-11-101-days-of-devops-apache-log-parser-using-python-63eb17d8eb60 | ['Prashant Lakhera'] | 2021-07-16 16:54:24.872000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Regular Expressions', 'Python', 'Technology', 'Apache'] |
1,329 | How to make your app work offline with the power of JavaScript | In today’s world, connectivity has made us more mobile than ever which (paradoxically) cause us to be offline sometimes: when we’re in airplane mode, have a bad connection, have no more data, are on the subway…and so on.
A second effect of this mobility is the slow loading of heavy websites: Amazon found that just 100 milliseconds of extra load time cost them 1% of sales.
In these situations, we would like to have offline access to our content. That’s why tools like Instapaper and Pocket exist. Spotify and Netflix also allow you to download media for offline use.
We can easily see there is a demand for this feature and how it can benefit your business.
It is time for the web to go offline.
Luckily we don’t need to build native apps to achieve this goal anymore. We can create an offline website with the power of JavaScript thanks to the new service workers and Cache API features.
What is a service Worker (SW)?
Service workers are JavaScript code that runs in the background of your website, even when the page is closed. For offline uses, one of their goals is to store network requests or images in the browser cache.
The agency BETC made a demo website called whentheinternetisdown.com for the french telecom company Bouygues. It only works offline and feels kind of magical. Go try it out :)
It’s the caching that makes the magic of the site: you can come back in 3 weeks, 1 month, 1 year, still without a connection, and access all the content. — Maxime Huygue, Head of BETC Digital Studio
Ok this is cool, tell me how to do it then.
Ok, let’s begin with some prerequisites:
In order to use SWs, you must enable https on your website.
You should have decent comprehension of how JavaScript promises work.
SWs works in all modern browsers except our friend IE.
Even if it’s JavaScript, they run in the context of web workers. Which means: no DOM, and run outside of the main thread.
Understand how databases operate.
The code of your service worker needs to be in a separate JavaScript file. Example: service-worker.js
Service workers lifecycle
To be able to work, SWs must be registered within your application, then installed. You should check if SWs are compatible with your client before doing so.
1) Registration
If available, register your SW file. It will return a promise, so you can handle errors. You can also specify a scope of urls in the registration options.
2) Installation
Service workers are event-based. Briefly, you have to attach callbacks to events, as you would do with an element.addEventListener. The first event you need to use is the install event. This is a good time to cache all your vital resources as Javascript, CSS, HTML, Images… This is where the Cache API joins the party!
Then open the method or create a cache linked to a desired name. The returned promise needs to be wrapped into event.waitUntil(), which will delay the installation of the service worker until the promise is resolved. Otherwise, the install event fails and the service worker will be discarded.
Please be cautious with caching: your user’s storage is precious, so don’t abuse it. Also, be careful: the install event can only be called once, and you’ll need to update your SW to modify it.
3) Activation
This one is a bit subtle.
Once the installation has completed, the service worker isn’t active yet: we are in the installed state.
In this state, it waits to take control of the page. It then moves on to the next phase in the lifecycle, which is the activation phase.
The activation phase is handy when you update a SW. The most common case is to clear the cache of the previous SW installed.
Please note that, once successfully installed, the updated worker will wait until the existing worker is controlling zero clients (clients overlap during a refresh).
self.skipWaiting() prevents the waiting, meaning the service worker activates as soon as it’s finished installing. The advantage of this method is that you can receive fetch events faster.
It doesn’t really matter when you call skipWaiting(), as long as it’s during or before waiting. It’s pretty common to call it in the install event.
Phew! Let’s take a break and sum up what we’ve seen:
Service workers are pieces of JavaScript that enable offline features such as caching.
We explored the SW Lifecycle: registration, installation, activation
We learned how to implement common uses cases such as: caching resources and clearing caches with the Cache API.
We saw that self.skipWaiting and self.clients.claim allow us to activate SWs faster in order to catch events faster.
Ok moving right along…
4) Fetch
The fetch event allows us to intercept network requests and store responses or customize them.
The main advantage of this hook is to return the cached resources instead of making a request call. You should take a look at the Fetch API for handling your request calls.
We can’t cover all the possibilities offered by service workers in one article. Still, I encourage you to look into what’s possible: Custom 404, Background Sync API for offline analytics, ServiceWorker-side templating…. the future looks exciting!
So far we’ve seen what a service worker is, how it works through its lifecycle, and the most common use cases by playing with Cache and Fetch API. Those two APIs give us a whole new way of managing URL addressable resources in the browser. To complete this guide, let see how we can store other types of data, for example a user’s JSON from your database.
Store custom data with IndexedDB
A general guideline for data storage is that URL addressable resources should be stored with the Cache interface, and other data should be stored with IndexedDB. For example HTML, CSS, and JS files should be stored in the cache, while JSON data should be stored in IndexedDB. Note that this is only a guideline, not a firm rule. (source)
In short, we will see when you shouldn’t use Cache API but IndexedDB instead. Both are asynchronous and accessible in service workers, web workers, and the window interface . The good news is that it is well supported, even in recent versions of IE.
IndexedDB is a NoSQL database. IndexedDB data are stored as key-value pairs in object stores rather than tables. A single database can contain any number of object stores. Whenever a value is stored in an object store, it is associated with a key. It looks like this:
Pretty classic, right? The main thing to understand is the concept of key path. It tells the browser which key to use to extract data from in the object store or index.
In this snippet, helpers libraries are used, see https://developers.google.com/web/ilt/pwa/live-data-in-the-service-worker for details
In this example, we can see that our key path is the property id, and it is defined in line 10. Then we return all the items from the database. This is a very basic use case, so if you want to learn more about how IndexedDB works, I advise you to read this excellent article.
Conclusion
Taking advantage of the offline web is great for the user experience, and some companies have started to take loot at it. It mostly relies on service workers, JavaScript scripts that run in the background of your website.
We’ve seen how to use them trough the service worker lifecycle and what you can do by using the Cache and Fetch API. The possibilities are almost limitless. so be creative and not too greedy on the device storage.
You can even use databases offline: that what’s IndexedDB is made for. These offline capabilities certainly are part of the future of the web, so it plays well with the new type of websites that Google are creating: Progressive Web Apps.
Further reading: | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/how-to-make-your-app-work-offline-with-the-power-of-javascript-685d968bcfbb | ['Adrien Zaganelli'] | 2019-01-23 22:53:06.443000+00:00 | ['JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Productivity', 'Technology', 'Coding'] |
1,330 | The Future of Energy from the Mojave | About a half dozen years ago I woke up from a dead sleep in my Los Angeles home. Something said to me, “go to Vegas. You got nothing of utmost importance scheduled this week.”
At about 4:00 AM I jumped on I-10 and headed east into the desert. As I descended the Mountain Pass on the Mojave Freeway, I noticed what looked like a futuristic space station. A few illuminated towers arose from the desert floor of the Primm Valley. Thousands of mirrors were reflecting the first glimmers of the morning sun.
Intrigued by what I saw, I pulled off of the freeway to take a closer look. As the sun began to rise higher in the desert sky, the mirrors sent a blinding light across the Valley.
It was difficult to make my way back onto the freeway as the light grew more intense.
Finally, I arrived at Buffalo Bill’s which was just a few miles away from the phenomenal site. I sat down for coffee and started my research.
What did I see?
After entering a medley of crazy phrases and descriptions of my location and the elements I saw, Google revealed the mystery site: Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.
Stretched over 4,000 acres of the desert floor, an illuminating beacon gleaming brightly in the naked and dry Mojave Desert, about 40 miles southwest of Sin City, is the world’s largest concentrating solar power (CSP) plant: The Ivanpah Solar Energy Facility. It generates enough energy to power approximately 140,000 homes.
Photo By BrightSource
The scene of thousands of mirrors surrounding three high-towering, glowing beacons is quite a sight. Each year it intrigues and attracts tourists who want to get a closer look at the mysterious site.
The construction of the facility was made possible by funding from the Department of Energy. Thanks to the enormous scale of facilities like Ivanpah, solar energy has become considerably cheaper and contributed to the efforts of replacing fossil fuels with clean and reliable renewable energy sources.
Photo by Author
The technology used by CSP systems generates solar power by using mirrors and lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight onto a smaller, focused area. Specifically, Ivanpah leverages “power tower” solar thermal technology to generate energy. More than 170,000 devices, known as heliostats, direct solar energy onto boilers fitted within the three power towers. Each heliostat consists of two mirrors, which concentrate sunlight onto the water-filled boilers to create high-temperature steam. The steam is then pumped to conventional steam turbines to generate electricity, which is then carried by transmission lines to power homes and businesses. Ivanpah also demonstrates more efficient use of land than its solar technology competitors, such as photovoltaic and trough solar.
What are the sustainable advantages?
High Air Quality— Ivanpah reduces the emissions of CO2 by millions of metric tons.
Desert Plant Preservation — Many similar technologies require the entire site to be graded. Ivanpah preserves the site’s natural landscape and contours, which means vegetation can coexist with the facility.
Water-Saving Technology— The solar tower technology used at Ivanpah uses up to 95% less water than wet cooled solar thermal plants by using air instead of water to condense the steam. All water consumed during the steam production cycle is recycled back into the system.
Next time you are leaving Las Vegas via car or plane and see this gem of a site in the desert, you’ll be well-informed. | https://medium.com/california-dreaming/the-future-of-energy-from-the-mojave-1634de4011ce | ['Gena Vazquez'] | 2020-09-15 16:25:26.162000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Green Energy', 'Environment', 'Energy Efficiency', 'California'] |
1,331 | Using Filters for Compositional Variation | Today we can do more to vary our compositional elements than flip our melodic lines upside down, run them backwards or nudge them upwards or downwards as per classical techniques such as line inversions, retrogrades or transpositions either within the same or to other keys. Signal processing adds near-infinite possibilities for tonal variation. While utilizing a plethora of audio effects may not seem like fugue method per se — since we cannot systematically exhaust the material given the vast multitude of methods achievable with today’s toolset — we can take some ‘fugue-al’ inspiration from the idea of repurposing compositional material through exploring and integrating sonic mutations. Mutations on a theme, rather than variations, is probably a more apt phrase to use in the context of the ‘pluginscape,’ which is its own kind of soundscape for music and audio production.
This article will touch on a few techniques and tools for using filters compositionally, rather than discuss the usual topics associated with filters, such as dB slope, cut-off frequencies, resonance, types of filters etc. Those topics cover the ‘how’ or ‘what’ aspects of filters, but leave out the ‘why’ and ‘when’ dimensions. I will not exhaust the why and when here in any kind of systematic treatment, but hopefully you may get some ideas for using filters in your compositions in ways you may not have used them before.
Routine Filter Sweeps
Probably the most common creative use of filters is to gradually add or subtract frequency content over time as part of a riser or paradoxically named ‘downlifter’ element in electronic, especially dance-oriented, music. Given the prevalence of this genre-routine, that seems to be a good place to start for the compositional use of filters, which is distinct from other uses that serve more practical or psychoacoustic purposes, such as dealing with problems of instruments masking each other when they share common spectral regions with parametric EQs.
In this first example set, there is a pitch pattern that occurs early in my (somewhat literally named : ) piece Minimal Psy Glitch Walking Bass without a filter treatment, which then gets the temporal and spectral addition and subtraction when it appears later on. Here’s the pitch pattern the first time it is introduced:
Later in the composition, this same pattern is reused but with a filter sweep that first adds, and then subtracts, its spectral content. In the latter part of the sample, you can also hear (and see!) the pumping effect as its amplitude is modulated by a kick drum (unheard) happening elsewhere in the mix:
As this is a rather straightforward use of automating a filter’s cutoff frequency, I would tend to use a straightforward (but still great sounding!) tool like Waves’ OneKnob Filter. Below, you can see the filter adjust as a DAW automation track changes it over time.
Towards the beginning of the video, you can also see that shortly after the knob starts moving, the thin purple ring that borders it lights up — this is because the filter’s bypass (turning it off and on) is also being automated. With filter effects, you often want to turn them off and on when you start using them for more expressive purposes, so that you can easily use versions of the instrument with and sans the filtering.
The automation heard in the Pitch Pattern | Filtered example above.
Narrative Arcs
The concept of a narrative arc is that over time, the emotional intensity of events should rise and fall, typically with a climactic moment of some kind towards the end of the story, and at the top of the arc.
A Narrative Arc. Image Source
The rising and falling of a filter shown above can also be used in this narrative intensity-building way, since as sounds become spectrally duller they also typically become less intense or dramatic from an emotional perspective.
Towards the ‘climactic’ end of my track Cosmic Ray Juice (the link below will take you to the right moment in the mix), I bring in an automated filter that has a rhythmic rather smoothly varying character.
There are many ways to use filters rhythmically, which in itself points to an interesting aspect of contemporary music that is distinct from previous musical eras — namely, that it’s very easy for sonic features to migrate across compositional territories. Spectral content is normally associated with the acoustic and musical concept of timbre, not rhythm, but filters can modulate timbre so that it becomes more beat-like in character. Today, these category crossings happen with every aspect of music because of the affordances for manipulating every sonic parameter — another example would be beat-making practices where the percussive elements become more melodic because of the capacity for changing the pitch of samples and MIDI notes on a per-beat basis.
The rhythmic filtering in the example above was done in this instance with Waves’ MetaFilter plugin, which is shown below in action during this ‘climactic end’ of the music. In the video, the MIDI clip controlling the virtual instrument being processed was moved later in the timeline, which is why you see the filter working for some 15 seconds before the audio actually starts to be processed (as shown in the pairs of Input and Output meters at screen right). Note that this filter is actually being used to modulate the filter’s dB parameter, and all frequencies are actually being passed through!
Modulating an all-pass filter’s dB .
Filter and Rhythm
Of course, normally we don’t use filters to pass through all frequencies and just change the signal level! In the examples below, there is an unfiltered pitch pattern, followed by its ‘filter-rhythmized’ doppleganger. This is also an example of thematic mutation as discussed above.
In electronic music, much pitch content lies somewhere conceptually between melody and arpeggio (and rhythm!). I tend to think that if a pitch pattern cannot be hummed easily, it’s not a melody per se more like a rhythmic articulation of harmonic space, i.e. a pattern of broken up sequentialized chords (or something like that). The MIDI notes of the two examples above are shown below in the piano roll — you can decide for yourself whether this is a melody or arpeggio or pitched rhythm etc. | https://medium.com/sound-and-design/using-filters-for-compositional-variation-4b0b4d895e34 | ["Michael 'Myk Eff' Filimowicz"] | 2020-12-26 07:08:59.670000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Music Production', 'Audio', 'Culture', 'Ideas'] |
1,332 | The Age of Disinformation | According to a report released by Freedom House in 2017, governments around the world are stepping up their efforts to manipulate information on social networks, undermining the foundations of democracy and creating a general decline in Internet freedom. As stated in the report, which assesses the situation in 65 countries accounting for 87 percent of Internet users, online manipulation and disinformation tactics played an important role in at least 18 elections during the last period, including Russia’s resounding eruption into the US elections.
The use of paid commentators and automated campaigns to spread government propaganda was pioneering in China and Russia but has now become global. The report presents in numbers a reality that we already perceive daily: we live in the era of disinformation, where impact and dissemination have become more important than truth and where manipulation of facts is commonplace.
According to the report, the irruption of social networks by states and privates damaged citizens’ ability to choose their leaders based on objective news and genuine debate. Already in 1971, the political scientific Robert Dahl established that informed comprehension was a requirement to achieve an adequate standard of democracy. In other words, citizens should be able to access broad and equitable opportunities to know and affirm the choice best suited to their interests. In its conception of democracy as a utopia, objective and credible means of information were a fundamental prerequisite for the civil organization to get as close as possible to democracy.
However, it is unlikely that when the author referred to the need for alternative sources of accessible information, he was referring to Russian agents, radical fanatics, or websites that deliberately write false stories for further repercussions and followers. Dahl did not imagine that societies could move from a relative mistrust on the media to total disbelief about the self-concept of truth. Nowadays emotions and beliefs are the most important standard for truth, rather than facts. The main problem is that emotions are more related to dictatorial kinds of governments rather than to democracies.
Traditional media have lost their monopoly on the dissemination of information to the great social platforms of the Internet. As a growing proportion of the world’s population accesses social networks to learn about news, several studies indicate that the overload of information spurred by these platforms reduces the ability to discern between truthful and deliberately false news. They are the perfect channel for spreading disinformation campaigns.
Thus, if the media are the fourth power of democracy, guardians of freedom of opinion, social networks have become the fifth power, with enormous influence on society and governments, but much more difficult to control. The debate is even more intense concerning the latter since the question is no longer whether they should be regulated, but how to do so, given the widespread dispersion of false news creators. Attempts by the state and private sector, such as fact-checking sites that circulate on the Internet, have not yet achieved results.
The techniques that social platforms themselves have tried to counter the wave of false news, such as labeling them as such under the verification of independent institutions, have failed. Studies indicate that less than 5 percent of readers change their minds about the veracity of a news story once they have assumed a position, even if all the clues say it is false. Moreover, these labels only reinforce the belief in other news stories: “those that are not labeled as false must certainly be true”, they think.
There have already been many regrets for creating “a monster that we couldn’t control,” according to statements by several recently retired Facebook and Twitter executives who regret having participated in the creation of tools “that destroy society from inside”.
The reasons for writing and disseminating false news are varied. On one hand, we find deliberate interventions in national and international policies by governments and private sectors, as the mentioned report points out. On the other hand, the advertising system that allows obtaining higher revenues as the number of visitors to a website increases has led to the need to generate a permanent impact to attract followers. Creating and sharing false news is good business for some people.
Added to this is the vulnerability of human psychology to the need for social validation. The goal is to get followers, no matter how. Thus, the original concept of an open web that would serve to raise the standards of information and education of the great masses has vanished or at least can be discussed.
Even the very concept of fake news has lost its veracity, as it has become a common use to denounce news and facts as false just because one does not support them. Donald Trump is already a classic example of using this technique. “Fake news” is no longer just the one that does not coincide with reality, it is also the reality that does not please. “What is the truth?” Pontius Pilate wondered in a passage from the Gospel according to John. At least the ruler of that time was questioning the truth, not denying it.
In 1948, taking the Soviet system as a model, George Orwell already imagined a world where truth was manipulated to the point that reality lacked verifiable facts. “Whoever controls the past controls the future, whoever controls the present controls the past.” The subjectivation of reality in its maximum expression. The effects of these fast-moving techniques on democracy and civic activism are potentially devastating.
Fortunately, Argentina continues to be part of the small group of countries that continue to consider itself “free” in its use of the Internet, with only a few attacks, scandals, and manipulation techniques recorded by the report. However, in the face of a phenomenon that has become global, we must constantly be aware of new developments. The best advice is to be attentive and not forget that we are already living in the age of post-truth and disinformation. | https://medium.com/estado-internacional/the-age-of-disinformation-26a6c1f4cb68 | ['Lautaro N. Rubbi'] | 2020-04-30 03:55:52.198000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Social Media', 'Information', 'Internet', 'News'] |
1,333 | An Introduction to Message Queues With RabbitMQ and Python | What Is a Message Queue in the First Place?
Message queues (MQ) are a fundamental concept in programming and software development. In a distributed system, a message queue is the backbone of the system. A message queue allows inter-process communication between services/applications in your system (eg. Service A can talk to Service B).
In MQ terminology, the service that emits the message is called the producer worker, while the service that listens and reacts to messages is called the consumer worker. This is how communication happens between the services.
You can scale up or down the number of producer and consumer workers running depending on their loads. For example, you may have two producers running in two VMs and ten consumers running CPU-intensive tasks across 10 VMs. You can also increase the number of workers during the day and shut down the workers at night (provided that your application traffic is a diurnal pattern). | https://medium.com/better-programming/introduction-to-message-queue-with-rabbitmq-python-639e397cb668 | ['Mohamad Fadhil'] | 2020-10-14 02:42:02.766000+00:00 | ['Python', 'Technology', 'Software Engineering', 'Programming', 'Python3'] |
1,334 | Putting Quality First | The global off-grid appliance market, despite recent growth, remains nascent in most of the world. Good-quality, energy-efficient off-grid appliances (“high performing appliances”) are more durable than their low-quality counterparts and enable consumers to maximize the value of their system by powering more devices. However, most consumers remain unaware of their benefits. High-performing appliances are often more expensive than traditional appliances. As a result, many consumers only consider the upfront purchase price of the appliance when making a decision or see it as a high-risk investment.
Consumer experience has a significant impact on off-grid appliance sales in Bangladesh. A positive personal recommendation is one of the most effective drivers of sales. If early adopters like Tarek are satisfied with energy-efficient appliances, their positive feedback would motivate more conservative buyers and stimulate market growth.
Since purchasing his appliance, Tarek has proved to be a strong referrer for his Rahimafrooz TV. “The picture quality is better than my previous TVs and I’ve recommended this TV to my customers,” he says with an inviting smile. Tarek’s positive experience with this TV is likely to be passed by word-of-mouth and directly lead to more purchases and thereby strengthen the process of market creation.
Tarek and his family with members of the Global LEAP Awards team.
—
About the Global LEAP Awards Customer Spotlight Series
The Global LEAP Awards is an international competition to identify and promote the world’s best off-grid appliances, accelerating market development and innovation. This unique program has evolved into a trusted global brand that serves as the de facto source of accurate, actionable information about the quality and energy performance of off-grid appliances, with support from Power Africa, UK aid, Energising Development, Powering Agriculture, and USAID, and in partnership with the Efficiency for Access Coalition.
This series tells stories collected through interviews with off-grid appliances customers who purchased their product through a Global LEAP Awards results-based financing (RBF) mechanism. Through its RBF, CLASP supported the delivery and enhancement of energy access for over one million beneficiaries across Bangladesh and East Africa. In Bangladesh alone, the RBF mechanism supported sales of about 194,000 energy-efficient off-grid fans and 7,000 best-in-class solar TVs. The series sheds new light on the impact, and thereby the real socio-economic value, of off-grid fans and TVs to appliance consumers in critical appliance markets like Bangladesh. | https://medium.com/efficiency-for-access/putting-quality-first-78086b47f663 | ['Global Leap Awards'] | 2020-12-09 20:27:13.568000+00:00 | ['Energy Access', 'Off Grid Solar Systems', 'Renewable Energy', 'Technology', 'Bangladesh'] |
1,335 | Why Big Tech Companies Can’t Stop Being Evil | Rana Foroohar’s new book, ‘Don’t Be Evil,’ paints an alarming portrait of Silicon Valley tech companies that need to be reined in before they start to affect our lives in even more insidious ways.
Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash
In 1998, in an academic paper titled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Stanford University students Larry Page and Sergey Brin described how their project, which they had named Google, worked. Until Page and Brin published, their work had been shrouded in secrecy, much to the consternation of the Stanford faculty. However, their mentor was eventually able to convince Page and Brin to publish some of their work — it was an academic project, after all — and the two relented.
In the paper, Page and Brin outlined how search could be monetized — via advertising — and noted the danger of such a funding model, writing, “The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.” Indeed, such a model lead to what the two labeled “search engine bias” a phenomenon they identified as “particularly insidious.”
Financial Times writer Rana Foroohar includes the Google origin story in her scathing indictment of the two tech titans and, at least in her opinion, the road of moral compromise its two founders traversed to essentially take over the internet. Through stunning self-deception and adherence to a self-serving principle that “information wants to be free,” it wasn’t long before Google’s two founders succumbed to investor pressure and embraced an ideology of “data exists to be monetized.”
The Internet Problem
The title of Foroohar’s book is Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles — and All of Us, a pithy nod to the company’s early motto. Foroohar is not only trying to be clever, she believes that “don’t be evil” was Google’s model from the outset because Page and Brin knew the “insidious” potential of the technology they had created. Writes Foroohar,
“When Google advised its employees not to be evil, it did so because it knew full well that evil was more than a powerful temptation. Evil was baked into the business plan.”
Capitulating to the demands of investors to monetize by employing the advertising business plan they had previously denounced was merely their first sin. As Foroohar tells it, the company copied goto.com and Yelp, and cut off traffic to foundem.com, funneling users to Google’s results instead. This trend of big companies getting bigger and cutting off the ability of smaller firms to operate is at the heart of what Foroohar sees as the “the internet problem.”
Indeed, Foroohar is at her best when she is making the case against Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others based on their anticompetitive practices and showing how the subsequent market concentration is stifling competition and hurting innovation. She also compares the internet of today to railways of the late 1800s. At that time, there was significant market concentration and a number of industrialists who both owned the railroads and then did business on them, giving preference to their own services and keeping competitors off their networks. That is almost exactly the same thing Google did with both Yelp and foundem.com.
As a fix, Foroohar suggests regulations that would ban companies from conducting business on platforms they own. She also calls for a digital sovereign wealth fund to which Big Tech firms contribute and the money is used to educate a workforce that seems to be on a collision course with obsolescence — at the hands of Big Tech, of course.
While some of her proposals appear more legitimate than others — a global flat sales tax seems like a pipe dream, whereas data being valued on firm’s financial statements carries some merit — her list of proposals is as creative as it is thorough, and a good starting point for anyone serious about moving beyond merely griping about Big Tech and actually wanting to start thinking about reasonable solutions.
However, despite the urgency Foroohar brings to her writing about Big Tech and the necessity of breaking up Google, Facebook, Amazon, and others, she is perhaps a bit credulous regarding a significant aspect of the Big Tech debate. On the “addictive” nature of social media and the negative cognitive side effects that addiction can produce, two distinct schools of thought have emerged.
There are those like Foroohar, who believe the situation is bad enough that government action is necessary. This group also includes Jonathan Taplin, author of Move Fast and Break Things, former Googler Tristan Harris and his nonprofit The Center For Humane Technology, and even Republican Sem. Josh Hawley and his proposed SMART Act.
The other school of thought believes that tech “addiction” is a personal issue, so people simply need to exercise more self-control and not let themselves become addicted by Silicon Valley’s latest offerings. It could be said that Nir Eyal, author of Indestractible, and Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism, best represent this group. On some level this is the default position of many, especially people of faith. In this view, the onus is on individuals to moderate their tech use, not on Google and Facebook.
While there isn’t space in this article to discuss the merits of either position, it is clear from the totality of Foroohar’s argument that she believes social media platforms are addictive, intentionally designed to be so, and cause cognitive harm in the form of increased anxiety and depression. She then uses the claim that modern tech is addictive in her case for regulating Google, Facebook, and others.
In the book, Foroohar tells of her son, who racked up a $900 iTunes bill playing an online “freemium” soccer game on his iPhone after school and how, through more intentional parental discipline, her son quit the game and was no longer addicted to it. Although she tries to use the addictive nature of tech to explain why there needs to be regulation, her success in mitigating the negative effects of tech in her son’s life reveals that, on a personal level, individuals can choose to use Silicon Valley’s products more wisely. In that case, one begins to wonder whether regulation really is necessary after all.
Becoming the Villain
That inconsistency aside, Foroohar expertly and succinctly lays out the problems with Big Tech, drawing on her decades of experience covering the industry for the Financial Times. As noted before, her solutions are generally practical, varied, and for the most part modest.
And perhaps her most prescient ideas are already proving to be true. Foroohar retells Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress in the wake of the 2016 election and highlights a photograph that caught a glimpse of Zuckerberg’s notes telling him to mention China when questioned about Facebook’s monopolistic characteristics. Foroohar calls out Google and Facebook for crying “China” when pressure picks up against them:
Big Tech firms have responded to the growing public concern about privacy and anticompetitive business practices by playing to a long-standing American fear: It’s us versus China. Companies like Google and Facebook are increasingly trying to portray themselves to regulators and politicians as national champions, fighting to preserve America’s first-place standing in a video-game-like, winner-take-all battle for the future against the evil Middle Kingdom.
Recently Zuckerberg, in a speech at Georgetown University, portrayed the issue of free speech in just such a light. Said Zuckerberg, “There’s no guarantee these values [freedom of expression] will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top 10 are Chinese.”
While his speech made several good points about freedom of expression in the age of platform capitalism, the way he framed the issue — in terms of American values rather than international human rights — has caused some to wonder if his intent is genuine, or if he is doing exactly what Foroohar predicted he would do: make China into the enemy he needs them to be for Facebook to remain intact.
Foroohar is also right to identify Big Tech’s “nefarious side effects” as perhaps the major economic issue facing Congress in the next five years. Indeed, it would be hard to believe that at least a number of Big Tech’s main challenges wouldn’t be resolved in either president Trump’s second term or by whichever administration takes over in 2020. That’s especially if the next president is Elizabeth Warren, who has repeatedly voiced her concern with Big Tech in general and Facebook specifically.
If Foroohar has her way, it won’t take that long. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other former darlings of the American economy would be broken up tomorrow. Foroohar cites management guru Peter Drucker who said, “In every major economic downturn in U.S. History the villains have been the heroes during the previous boom.” If that holds true, Big Tech’s days may be numbered.
John Thomas is a freelance writer. His writing has appeared at The Public Discourse, The American Conservative, and Christianity Today. He writes regularly at Soli Deo Gloria.
A version of this article first appeared at The Federalist. | https://medium.com/soli-deo-gloria/why-big-tech-companies-cant-stop-being-evil-b046ceb36d1f | ['John Thomas'] | 2019-12-20 10:04:39.061000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Books', 'Social Media', 'Tech', 'Government'] |
1,336 | Receiving data over webhooks with Paystack in Laravel — Part 1 | Have you ever been building an application and thought: “I can make requests to this service’s API, but is there a way for them to let my app know when X happens? You could try calling the API on a set interval. Take the response, compare it to the last, and go from there. This is polling, but it is inefficient and can be an easy way to hit rate limits. Instead, some APIs and services offer what's known as a webhook. Instead of contacting them, they contact you.
What is a webhook?
A webhook (also called a web callback or HTTP push API) is a way for an app to provide other applications with real-time information. Webhooks are a way to send a notification. They are essentially one-way. The sender doesn’t care what you do with it, or in some cases even who you are. At most they only want a response letting them know that your app received it. A webhook delivers data to other applications as it happens, meaning you get data immediately.Many services, like the Stripe API, Paystack API, GitHub API, and Twillio API offer the ability to notify you programmatically when an event occurs. The webhook makes a POST request to the URL of your choice with a payload containing details about the event.This makes webhooks much more efficient for both provider and consumer. The only drawback to webhooks is the difficulty of initially setting them up.
If you’ve ever built a REST API that your application or other apps use, you know nearly everything you need to get started.
For our example, the flow looks like this:
Web service(either Paystack API or Github API) sends payload to your app’s endpoint. Your app receives payload. Your app responds and confirms receipt. Your app acts upon the payload data.
If you want to test the shape of a webhook before building an application to consume it, you can use a service like Requestbin.
What we will build
In this tutorial we will build a project that listens to events from Paystack.
Prerequisites
Laravel v5.8 or greater
spatie/laravel-webhook-client
A Paystack account. You can sign up for a free account here.
Set up your project
For this example we’ll be using Laravel, but the concepts carry over to other languages and frameworks. If you’re adding webhook consumption to an existing project, skip over the setup below.
To get started, initialize a new Laravel project:
composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel learning-webhook
Install Spatie’s Laravel webhook client package
composer require spatie/laravel-webhook-client
This tutorial uses Spatie’s webhook client package to handle and process incoming webhook events and it also verifies events ain’t compromised.
Configure the package
You can publish the config file with:
php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Spatie\WebhookClient\WebhookClientServiceProvider" --tag="config"
This is the contents of the file that will be published at config/webhook-client.php :
return [
'configs' => [
[
/*
* This package support multiple webhook receiving endpoints. If you only have
* one endpoint receiving webhooks, you can use 'default'.
*/
'name' => 'default', /*
* We expect that every webhook call will be signed using a secret. This secret
* is used to verify that the payload has not been tampered with. For the purpose of this article we will be using our Paystack secret key. Make sure you add it to the .env file */
'signing_secret' => env('PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY'), /*
* The name of the header containing the signature.
*/
'signature_header_name' => 'x-paystack-signature', /*
* This class will verify that the content of the signature header is valid.
*
* It should implement \Spatie\WebhookClient\SignatureValidator\SignatureValidator
*/
'signature_validator' => \Spatie\WebhookClient\SignatureValidator\DefaultSignatureValidator::class, /*
* This class determines if the webhook call should be stored and processed.
*/
'webhook_profile' => \Spatie\WebhookClient\WebhookProfile\ProcessEverythingWebhookProfile::class, /*
* This class determines the response on a valid webhook call.
*/
'webhook_response' => \Spatie\WebhookClient\WebhookResponse\DefaultRespondsTo::class, /*
* The classname of the model to be used to store call. The class should be equal
* or extend Spatie\WebhookClient\Models\WebhookCall.
*/
'webhook_model' => \Spatie\WebhookClient\Models\WebhookCall::class, /*
* The class name of the job that will process the webhook request.
*
* This should be set to a class that extends \Spatie\WebhookClient\ProcessWebhookJob.
*/
'process_webhook_job' => '',
],
],
N.B: I added Paystack’s signature header “x-paystack-signature” to the “signature_header_name” and “PAYSTACK_SECRET_KEY” as the signing_secret. For clarity, check out Paystack’s docs on setting up webhook here:
Preparing the database
By default, all webhook calls will get saved in the database.
To create the table that holds the webhook calls, you must publish the migration with:
php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Spatie\WebhookClient\WebhookClientServiceProvider" --tag="migrations"
After the migration has been published, you can create the webhook_calls table by running the migrations:
php artisan migrate
Taking care of routing
Next, let’s take care of the routing. Paystack gives you the leeway to add a webhook URL to your dashboard in API & Webhook section of the settings page.
Webhook URL as configured on my Paystack account
In the routes file of your app, you must pass that URL to Route::webhooks as seen below:
//routes/api.php Route::webhooks('paystack-webhook');
Behind the scenes, this will register a POST route to a controller provided by this package. Because the app that sends webhooks to you has no way of getting a csrf-token, you must add that route to the except array of the VerifyCsrfToken middleware:
// App/Http/Middleware/VerifyCsrfToken.php protected $except = [
'paystack-webhook',
];
Creating our own signature validator
What we need to do next is to create a custom signature validator, why do we need to create a signature validator?
It is important to verify that events originate from Paystack to avoid delivering value based on a countefeit event.
The quoted statement above is the reason why we need to create a custom signature validator which implements Spatie\WebhookClient\WebhookClient\SignatureValidator\SignatureValidator interface.
//App/Handler/CustomSignatureValidator.php <?php namespace App\Handler; use Illuminate\Http\Request; use Spatie\WebhookClient\Exceptions\WebhookFailed; use Spatie\WebhookClient\WebhookConfig; use Spatie\WebhookClient\SignatureValidator\SignatureValidator; class PaystackSignature implements SignatureValidator{
public function isValid(Request $request, WebhookConfig $config): bool{ $signature = $request->header($config->signatureHeaderName); if (! $signature) { return false;
} $signingSecret = $config->signingSecret; if (empty($signingSecret)) { throw WebhookFailed::signingSecretNotSet();
} $computedSignature = hash_hmac('sha512', $request->getContent(), $signingSecret); return hash_equals($signature, $computedSignature);
}
}
What is needed to be done after this is to update the file in this path config/laravel-webhook-client.php with the name of the class handling the signature verification of the incoming webhook response so as to truly ascertain that it is not a counterfeited response.
/* * This class will verify that the content of the signature header is valid. * * It should implement \Spatie\WebhookClient\SignatureValidator\SignatureValidator */ 'signature_validator' => App\Handler\CustomSignatureValidator::class,
Storing and processing webhooks
Since that’s out of the way, we can now focus on handling our webhook response. To do that, we need to create a folder called Handler and place it in our App directory.
After creating the folder, we then need to create a file called ProcessWebhook.php in the folder we created above to handle(store and process) the webhook response.
//App/Handler/ProcessWebhook.php
<?php namespace App\Handler;
use \Spatie\WebhookClient\ProcessWebhookJob; //The class extends "ProcessWebhookJob" class as that is the class //that will handle the job of processing our webhook before we have //access to it. class ProcessWebhook extends ProcessWebhookJob
{ public function handle(){
$data = json_decode($this->webhookCall, true);
//Do something with the event
logger($data['payload']);
http_response_code(200); //Acknowledge you received the response }
}
What is needed to be done after this is to update the file in this path config/laravel-webhook-client.php with the name of the class handling the webhook response gotten from Paystack or any other service you might be using(say Github API, Stripe API, etc).
/*
* The class name of the job that will process the webhook request.
*
* This should be set to a class that extends \Spatie\WebhookClient\ProcessWebhookJob.
*/
'process_webhook_job' => App\Handler\ProcessWebhook::class,
],
Conclusion
That was fun, right? In a very short time, we were able to setup and configure a webhook-client package to handle incoming events from Paystack. For further readings, you can read more about the package we used for this project at its official documentation too. You can also check out the full source code of this project on GitHub.
In the next part of this article, we will see how we can test our webhook locally with ngrok before going LIVE!
If you liked this, click the💚 below so other people will see this here on Medium.
Twitter: @samsss_a | https://medium.com/dev-genius/receiving-data-over-webhooks-with-paystack-in-laravel-part-1-857bc4aab657 | ['Samson Adejoro'] | 2020-09-04 20:56:18.693000+00:00 | ['Backend Development', 'Web Development', 'Technology', 'Paystack', 'Laravel'] |
1,337 | Python Dictionary Methods — Explained | ❓ What is a dictionary ❓
Dictionary is an unordered data structure that allows you to store key-value pairs. Here’s an example of a simple Python dictionary:
This dictionary uses strings as keys, but the key can be, in principle, any immutable data type. The value of a particular key can be anything. Here’s another example of a dictionary where keys are numbers and values are strings:
An important clarification: if you try to use a mutable data type as a key (e.x. list), you will get an error:
In fact, the problem is not with mutable data types, but with non-hashable data types, but usually, they are the same thing.
Retrieving data from a dictionary 📖
Square brackets are used to get the value of a particular key [] . Suppose we have a pair in our dictionary 'marathon': 26 :
Again, you will get an error if you try to retrieve a value for a non-existent key. There are methods to avoid such mistakes, which we will talk about now.
Adding and updating keys 🔑
Adding new pairs to the dictionary is quite simple:
Updating existing values is exactly the same:
Deleting keys ❌ | https://medium.com/python-in-plain-english/python-dictionary-methods-explained-1149c6d9a532 | ['Mikhail Raevskiy'] | 2020-11-09 22:44:38.407000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Data Science', 'Software Development', 'Python', 'Technology'] |
1,338 | Direct from the investor: 5 lessons for entrepreneurs in 2021 | Direct from the investor: 5 lessons for entrepreneurs in 2021
The end of the year is good for balance. And it’s also good for, who knows, tearing up some manuals.
Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash
I consider myself a start-up adviser and investor for beginners. Great apprentice, modesty aside, but with a lot to learn.
Having been an administrator for over 04 years, I reinvented myself in the business world by doing M&As. And, six months ago, I immersed myself in this world that excites and fascinates me as a startup advisor and investor.
At 24, all right. It’s not too bad to feel like a boy. It tastes good. And so, I follow and I will continue to learn.
That said, here are my five boy cents for you, the entrepreneur, to start 2021: | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/direct-from-the-investor-5-lessons-for-entrepreneurs-in-2021-f0c67fc502c6 | ['Marco Antonio'] | 2020-12-27 17:32:29.075000+00:00 | ['Investing', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business', 'Technology', 'Productivity'] |
1,339 | Facial Recognition Companies See the Coronavirus as a Business Opportunity | Facial Recognition Companies See the Coronavirus as a Business Opportunity
Facial recognition companies are pitching the technology as a sanitary alternative to fingerprint scanners
Photo: Cai Zixin/China News Service/Getty Images
The Covid-19 crisis enveloping millions of people around the world is also presenting an unlikely business opportunity for one sector of tech: facial recognition technology. Companies including DERMALOG in Germany and Telpo in China are pitching the technology as a method for identifying individuals without the risk of close contact.
Fingerprint scanners, for instance, require that many people touch the same surface, which could potentially spread infection if someone with Covid-19 were to use an unclean scanner. Businesses in India are being directed by police to ditch fingerprint authentication in lieu of facial recognition or ID cards, and the NYPD is pausing its fingerprint entry amid coronavirus concerns.
Companies eager to make facial recognition the default form of identification are rushing to fill the void.
“In the face of this outbreak, we have developed a solution for noncontact body temperature measurement plus face recognition.”
DERMALOG, a biometrics company that makes fingerprint, iris, and facial recognition hardware, has adapted its technology to determine temperature and is pitching the update as a safety feature. It’s already in use by the Thai government for border control. Telpo is launching temperature-sensing terminals with facial recognition, which allegedly work even if a person is wearing a face mask.
“In the face of this outbreak, we have developed a solution for noncontact body temperature measurement plus face recognition in order to meet the rapid need to diagnose the patient and isolate and control the virus in time,” Crystal Chu, a platform marketing specialist at Telpo, wrote to OneZero in an email.
And the company is touting the benefits of facial recognition beyond the coronavirus pandemic.
“This technology can not only reduce the risk of cross infection but also improve traffic efficiency by more than 10 times, which will save time and reduce congestion. It is suitable for government, customs, airports, railway stations, enterprises, schools, communities, and other crowded public places,” the company wrote separately in a press release.
Another Chinese company, Wisesoft, is also bundling facial recognition and temperature-sensing technology.
Meanwhile, manufacturers of fingerprint scanners are pushing back.
“People like facial recognition or iris companies are saying, ‘Well you don’t want to use fingerprint scanners anymore, they’re bad for you because of this virus. I think that’s a little ridiculous,” says David Gerulski, executive vice president of Integrated Biometrics, a firm that specializes in lightweight and mobile fingerprint scanners.
The company has been communicating with customers for weeks about how to properly clean the devices, and advising that those who use the scanner should use hand sanitizer afterwards.
Gerulski points out that he’s heard recommendations that people should use the iris scanners on Clear’s biometric machines at airports rather than its fingerprint function, but that requires holding your face close to a shared surface.
“The main thing is we want to make sure there aren’t terrorists who take advantage of this time period when everybody’s worried about viruses and then something bad happens,” Gerulski said.
Automated fingerprint analysis has been the most common form of biometrics since its invention and adoption in the 1980s.
NEC, the Japanese technology company, was the first to build and market automated fingerprint analysis for forensic use by police and federal investigators. The company has now morphed into one of the biggest companies selling biometric technology across the world, and it pitches facial recognition as the most cutting edge of its offerings.
Covid-19 has also spurred technology companies to market facial recognition algorithms that work even when someone is wearing a mask. Companies like China’s Hanvon and Spain’s Herta have announced their facial recognition is works with or without wearing a mask as well.
Facial recognition is also being used amid the pandemic to determine if people are following local regulations. Baidu’s facial recognition can look for people who aren’t wearing masks in China, since masks have been deemed mandatory in many parts of the country.
Russia is using facial recognition to track those who are leaving their quarantine. One Moscow resident was visited by police after violating his quarantine by taking out the trash, according to the Moscow Times.
In Shanghai, communities are installing facial recognition in residential buildings to reduce contact with shared physical surfaces.
Other residents in China, where facial recognition partnered with temperature sensing has become commonplace, wonder whether this level of surveillance will subside after the virus has been contained, according to The Guardian.
“This epidemic undoubtedly provides more reason for the government to surveil the public. I don’t think authorities will rule out keeping this up after the outbreak,” activist Wang Aizhong told The Guardian. | https://onezero.medium.com/facial-recognition-companies-see-the-coronavirus-as-a-business-opportunity-6c9b99d60649 | ['Dave Gershgorn'] | 2020-03-19 13:58:42.667000+00:00 | ['Facial Recognition', 'Identification', 'Technology', 'Coronavirus', 'Biometrics'] |
1,340 | Did You Know That Only 26% of Computing-Related Jobs Are Held by Women? | Did You Know That Only 26% of Computing-Related Jobs Are Held by Women?
According to research conducted by Accenture in the U.K., nearly half (48%) of girls and women believe that STEM subjects line up more with male careers. This is the biggest reason for boys being more likely to choose STEM subjects over girls.
The following were the main reasons for young girls and women not wanting to do STEM subjects:
Two reasons that I find especially surprising in this list are:
“Perception that these subjects are more suited to boys”
“Worried I would be the only girl/one of only a few girls”
Being a female, born and brought up in India, STEM subjects are actually one of the most preferred choices for women — not just by women themselves but also by their parents, teachers, and counselors. As per a study done by 451 Research, India is now almost at gender parity in graduate-level study, in contrast to the decline in the U.S. and a stagnation in the U.K.
“Women now make up 34% of the IT workforce in India, with the majority of these workers under the age of 30. Indeed, the youth of the Indian IT labor force has significantly powered its rapid growth, and the country is now almost at 50:50 gender parity rate in STEM graduates.” — Katy Ring for 451 Research
From a workplace perspective, we still have a long way to go. As per a report in The Muse, women only hold 25% of IT jobs. In order to attract more women to IT jobs and to bring about some much-needed diversity, we really need to start from the bottom.
There are many programs — like Women in IT, Girls Who Code, etc. — where companies are trying to attract young female talent. However, I personally feel that’s not enough. Young women are always looking for female role models (I know I was back when I was growing up), and we need to do a better job of giving them these role models. Promoting women to C-suite and managerial roles can be the first step.
Today’s generation has so much screen time with smart phones and easy access to internet, and they gravitate towards “cooler” things, such as TikTok and YouTube, because they seem easy and like a quick money-making option. No disrespect to any of these platforms, but I think IT companies need to come up with creative ways to advertise how these “cooler” things are built and how the younger generation can help shape the next TikTok or YouTube. | https://betterprogramming.pub/did-you-know-that-only-26-of-computing-related-jobs-are-held-by-women-ace9aca97d21 | ['Asha Rani'] | 2020-12-23 17:03:30.559000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Technology', 'Women In Tech', 'Diversity In Tech', 'Programming'] |
1,341 | Charting a flightpath for humanitarian drones: WFP Technical Working Groups shape protocols even before takeoff | By Masa Sabbah, Information Management Officer, WFP Drones
Drones are a powerful technology for humanitarians because they save time when it is needed most. Work that once took days, like search and rescue and damage assessment after disasters, are reduced to hours with drones.
After a decade of experience, the benefits of drones in emergency response are clear, but humanitarians are still pushing to do more to define what it means to deploy them safely, ethically, responsibly and in a coordinated way.
“We should shape technology to serve humanitarian objectives rather than letting technology shape humanitarianism. This is an important distinction.” — Denise Soesilo, Co-founder of Outsight International, a non-governmental organization.
WFP started building drone capacity in 2017. In 2019, following Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, it deployed drones for the first time in an emergency response to conduct rapid post-disaster assessments as well as coordinate with national officials and partners on the ground. Photo: WFP/Patrick McKay (Mozambique, 2020)
The WFP Drones team has started molding these much-needed drone protocols with Technical Working Groups drawing over 50 experts from government, air safety, non-governmental organizations, academic institutes, private sector, and UN agencies.
The working groups, which are made possible with funding from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), span the critical areas of Regulations and Operation, Imagery, Ethics and Connectivity.
From the ground up
Drones must be operated safely and be aligned with national and international aviation standards — this is the basic groundwork that needs to be laid before a drone can take off.
Through the working group on Regulations and Operations, WFP Aviation Safety is developing capacity building activities and remote pilot training standards to ensure drone pilots have the right skills before they fly.
After an earthquake, cyclone or flood, drones give an incredibly detailed, crystal-clear birds eye view of risks and destruction. When used in tandem with machine learning applications, they can help humanitarians locate people and assess damage in record time.
“Being able to see the affected area from above increases the safety of everyone involved and can aid in the search and rescue of victims trapped in collapsed buildings.” — Jowett Wong, Emergency Program Officer at Global Medic, who is part of the working group on imagery.
However, the way drone images are processed and shared is just as important as the way they speed up operations. In other words, drones cannot compromise the wellbeing and privacy of the communities they are trying to help.
Launching a drone during a WFP training in Mozambique, December 2020. Photo: WFP/Matthias Boyen
“Do no digital harm” is a guiding principle for using technology in humanitarianism and is essential to maintaining accountability to affected populations. The working group on ethics will amplify these values by defining best practices in responsible data storage, analysis, and sharing.
WFP has over two decades of experience setting up communications connectivity during humanitarian emergencies in some of the world’s most difficult environments. WFP FITTEST (Fast IT and Telecommunications and Emergency Support Team) and the WFP-led Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) are already expert players in this area and drones may take connectivity services to new levels.
Attach a connectivity access point to a drone, fly it up to 90 meters high (depending on the equipment) and up to 12 kilometers squared will have a blanket of coverage. This solution, called a flying COW (Connectivity On Wings) is being discussed by the working group on connectivity which will identify the best way to leverage drones in field operations.
Checks and balances before flying
Technology often develops faster than our ability to grasp all its implications — a sentiment shared by several experts involved in the technical working groups. As Jowett Wong puts it: “[drones] are developing at a very quick pace, so we need to be able to define how to best use the technology and evolve our practices by learning from each other.”
Drones are tipped to play an increasing role in efficient and effective humanitarian response. “I see the working groups as an essential part of the process to authoritatively define standard operating procedures and barriers, as well as important follow-up work for the deployments,” says Denise Soesilo.
The inclusive conversation started by the WFP Drones team has come at exactly the right time. | https://medium.com/@wfpinnovation/charting-a-flightpath-for-humanitarian-drones-wfp-technical-working-groups-shape-protocols-even-8452cb2518e | ['Wfp Innovation Accelerator'] | 2021-01-07 09:00:32.385000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Technology', 'Drones', 'Food Security', 'Wfp'] |
1,342 | This I Promise You Lyrics and Chords Richard Marx | Intro C G Am F
C G F
G Am
When the visions around you
F G
Bring tears to your eyes
G Am
And all that surrounds you
F G
Are secrets and lies
.
Dm
I’ll be your strength
G
I’ll give you hope
C CMaj7 Am
Keeping your faith when it’s gone
Dm
The one you should call
Fm G
Was standing there all along
.
Chorus
C G
And I will take you in my arms
Am F
And hold you right where you belong
C G
Til’ the day my life is through
F
This I promise you
C
This I promise you
.
G Am
I’ve loved you forever
F G
In lifetimes before
G Am
And I promise you never
F G
Will you hurt anymore
Dm
I give you my word
G
I give you my heart
C CMaj7 Am
This is a battle we’ve won
F
And with this vow
Fm G
Forever has now begun
.
Chorus
C
Just close your eyes
G
Each loving day
Am F
I know this feeling won’t go away (no)
C G
Till the day my life is through
F
This I promise you..
C
This I promise you..
.
Dm G
Over and over I thought
Dm G
When I hear you call
C G F
Without you.. in my life, baby
Dm G
I just wouldn’t be living at all
.
Chorus Overtone
D A
And I will take you in my arms
Bm G
And hold you right where you belong
D A
Til’ the day my life is through
G
This I promise you
.
D
Just close your eyes
A
Each loving day
Bm G
I know this feeling won’t go away (no)
D A
Every word I say is true
G
This I promise you
.
D A
Every word I say is true
G
This I promise you
D
Ooh, I promise you
.
Outro D | https://medium.com/@adisonpaul598/this-i-promise-you-lyrics-and-chords-richard-marx-c72990f62e26 | ['Paul Adison'] | 2020-11-26 14:22:39.330000+00:00 | ['News', 'Life', 'CEO', 'Startup', 'Technology'] |
1,343 | Decentralized Token Economy: The World that Blockchain Projects Aim to Build | iv. Tokens
Local currencies of the decentralized applications.
The tokens are like bloodstream, emitted out of the Dapps and circulated across the value chain to power it up.
It is quite difficult to define tokens under the regulatory terms and that is one of the reasons that many national governments are talking hard on them.
Tokens may fulfill functions of currency, asset, company share, a method of payment and many others, so they are quite difficult to define.
Tokens are broadly classified into two categories:
Security Tokens
Security tokens are defined to be company’s share. Security token allows users to own assets without taking possession. In Security Tokens the eminent promises buyer dividends and profits.
Utility Tokens
Utility Tokens represent access to company’s product or service. These are not designed as an investment but that doesn’t mean that they don’t bring any profit. In case more people demand a particular token, the prices will rise and holders can benefit from selling them on the exchanges.
With tokens we can imagine a world in which you own Google shares and use the same shares to pay for Google products.
This allows us to tokenize ownership or purchasing power in some type of system whether it is utility tokens or security. In a few years, there will be numerous tokens that we’ll be using for the exchange of value.
By removing middlemen and embedding both execution and legality within smart contract code, tokens will augment the ease of divisibility and lower the cost global transfers of ownership. As a result, our ability to trade real-world assets that are currently illiquid should increase by an order of magnitude. The ICO wave, which was a truly global affair, maybe a taste of what’s to come. In the not too distant future, we may live in a world where people from all corners of the globe trade everything from fractional ownership in Cristiano Ronaldo’s future earnings to a Manhattan office building. Any asset will be able to be placed on the spectrum of liquidity and made tradable.
— Tokenization of Everything — How Tokens will create a more liquid world.
Three ways to gain tokens:
Participating in ICO
ICO — acronym for ‘Initial Coin Offering’ is a new way to raise funds. The companies who launch ICO has a Blockchain project and the coins are the local currency to that Blockchain.
The division of tokens is made public before the fundraising. 20/80 percent of division between developers and buyers has become pretty standard.
20% Tokens reserved by developers for advisors, project funding, and developer incentives.
80% Tokens are reserved for ICO, a pre-sale of tokens before listing them on exchanges for public trading. This helps the tokens to gain certain value in the market. At the time of it’s listing on crypto exchanges, the real price discovery happens. The people who purchased those tokens in the ICO either sell them at a speculative price on exchanges against Bitcoin (or Ether and other currency) or hold them to pay for the services of that particular Blockchain.
Purchase from exchanges
Many choose to trade the tokens on exchanges only because the trusted projects make it to the reputed exchanges. You may purchase any crypto token in exchange for Bitcoin, Ether, USDT etc.
By contributing to the network/platform
The relatively complicated way in some cases to earn tokens is by contributing to the platform/network. In case of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the miners provide their compute power and receives a percentage on the total amount of transaction they verify.
The method of contribution varies from platform to platform. On the Steem Blockchain, people earn Steem Dollars for posting valuable content on the Steem based platforms in proportion to the upvotes they receive as well as for running the nodes to varify transactions. In case of the Solar coin, participants earn SLR coin for the amount of solar electricity they produce and contribute to the grid.
v. Open — Easy to participate
One of the problems we have had in tech is that there aren’t large monetary incentives to create and sustain open protocols. If they are open they cannot be easily monetized by traditional means. However, that is changing with the emergence of blockchain technology and crypto-tokens.
— The Golden Age of Open Protocols
The Blockchain projects aim to be as open as possible and make it easy for the developers, contributors, and users participate easily.
The ground reality as of now is not what the whole community and ecosystem is aiming to create. There is development complexity, less documentation, and the technology stack does not look very scalable.
It is like the early days of electricity when one light bulb could only be used for 40 hours without burning out and it looked unscalable to provide electricity in every corner of a country. But with gradual upgrades and improvements, today the electricity is everywhere.
But Blockchains didn’t took that long to show significant market adoption. The first adoption is by the creators, the next is market adoption. Both of these phases are achieved by the Blockchains, the next is wide user adoption and it won’t take more than 5 years for the tech to become mainstream. | https://medium.com/hapramp/decentralized-token-economy-the-world-that-blockchain-projects-aim-to-build-e0c5425c2d96 | ['Rajat Dangi'] | 2018-08-27 19:55:12.381000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Decentralization', 'Token Economy'] |
1,344 | Oculus Quest 2 is here! | Oculus Quest 2 is here!
Oculus Quest 2 has been available in stores since October 13th. Here you can find out everything about the new VR glasses.
Oculus Quest 2 has been available in stores since October 13th. Here you can find out everything about the new VR glasses. Image from Amazon.
What’s New in Oculus Quest 2?
The display of the Oculus Quest 2 offers a resolution of 1,832 x 1,920 pixels per eye. It is an improvement since the display of the original Quest has a resolution of 1,440 x 1,600 pixels per eye.
That’s more than 50% more pixels with Oculus Quest 2.
The new VR glasses use a different type of display: Instead of two OLED displays, a single LC display is built into the housing. Unlike OLED displays, LC displays offer a complete RGB subpixel matrix with three instead of two subpixels.
This fact makes the picture appear even sharper and further reduces the fly screen effect.
A general disadvantage of LC displays compared to OLED displays is the more inferior black level. Dark areas appear grey rather than black, which can affect the atmosphere.
One advantage of the new display is the higher refresh rate of 90 instead of just 72 Hertz. 90 Hertz has been the industry standard since 2016.
Due to the higher refresh rate, the image appears calmer and more real and VR users are less likely to be uncomfortable or bad under the VR glasses.
90 Hertz support applies to system apps and VR apps with 90 Hertz support. For this, developers must first optimize and patch their VR apps.
The first VR games with 90 Hertz support include Superhot VR, Beat Saber, Echo VR, Vacation Simulator, Racket: NX, Job Simulator, and Space Pirate Trainer. Many more will follow!
What does the faster XR2 chip bring?
According to Qualcomm, the XR2 chip is around twice as fast as the Snapdragon 835, which calculates in the original Quest.
However, former Oculus chief technology officer John Carmack confirmed that Quest 2 wouldn’t get the chip’s maximum clock speed due to heat generation and battery life reasons.
The additional performance initially flows into a higher resolution and frame rate, and fixed foveated rendering is also reduced in many VR apps. With this rendering technique, the graphics at the edges of the field of view are calculated with fewer details to save computing power.
How big and heavy is Oculus Quest 2?
Quest 2 is a bit smaller than the original. The exact dimensions are 191.5 x 102 x 142.5 mm with the headband folded and 191.5 x 102 x 295.5 mm with the headband open.
Oculus Quest 2 weighs 516 grams, which is approx. 58 grams less than the original Quest. The weight reduction of over 10% is mainly because Facebook replaced the robust rubber headgear with a much lighter and less high-quality headband made of fabric.
Oculus Quest 2 is far from being lightweight. However, the separately sold Quest 2 Elite-Strap promises better wearing comfort despite the more weight.
Does the Oculus Quest 2 have a lens distance regulator?
Yes, with three settings that are visible between the lenses. The IPD settings are 58, 63 and 68 mm. You can switch between the levels by moving the lenses by hand in the desired direction until they click into place.
Is Oculus Quest 2 worth it?
If you’re into VR, definitely! This is one of the best hardware up to date.
If you’ve never tried VR before, try it and make your own mind.
You can buy Oculus Quest 2 on Amazon here. | https://medium.com/@pchojecki/oculus-quest-2-is-here-9a3414a5d38a | ['Przemek Chojecki'] | 2020-12-08 10:49:07.479000+00:00 | ['VR', 'Technology', 'Oculus Quest', 'Tech', 'Gaming'] |
1,345 | Blockchain Technology Companies in 2021 | Detailed below are some of the top blockchain companies of 2021. It can be a reliable guide for firms looking for experienced blockchain developers to build their business solutions.
Are you looking for top blockchain technology companies to work with?
Our team has carefully curated a list of the leading blockchain development companies by evaluating the company’s experience, communication skills, charges involved in the development, previous work, etc. Blockchain technology is an innovative technology that several companies have started implementing in their business operations as it provides numerous advantages like increased efficiency and security. Some of the prominent use cases of blockchain include secure transactional activity, healthcare record management, tracking systems and voting systems.
As this technology is still in its nascent stage, it can be extremely challenging to find a blockchain development company that will provide the right services for your business. If you choose a development team without much thought, it can lead to severe losses and wastage of time. Hence, it is important to conduct the right research while deciding on a development company for your project.
List of top Blockchain Technology Companies in 2021
Through this article, you will get an insight into some of the best blockchain development companies present in the business industry today. This list will be able to give you a proper understanding of the blockchain technology companies in 2021 that would best suit your needs.
1. Accubits
Accubits Technologies is one of the leading blockchain technology company that focuses on emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain and process automation. The company has helped revolutionize the business operations for numerous Fortune 500 companies and revolutionary startups. They have also been recognized as the Most Promising Consumer Blockchain Solution Development Company by Frost and Sullivan.
Accubits has successfully developed over 750 solutions for clients all around the world. These solutions have found applications in various industries including healthcare, manufacturing, retail, banking and more. Armed with innovative ideas and unrivaled technical expertise, they aim to spark a creative revolution with the power of technology.
2. IBM
IBM is a multinational technology and consulting company headquartered in New York. They deliver integrated solutions that use information technology and business intelligence. The company covers the following fields- cloud & cognitive software, global business services, global technology services, systems, and global financing.
The company aims to help society progress and achieve its full potential. They value the trust and personal responsibility in all of their relationships. They are well known for building industry-based solutions to real-world problems.
3. Consensys
Consensys is a popular blockchain development company that specializes in delivering blockchain-powered business solutions. They have helped numerous organizations improve their financial infrastructures with emerging technologies. They have rich experience in a number of areas such as asset management, capital markets, decentralized finance, global trade and commerce, etc.
Their goal is to enable developers, organizations, and individuals all around the world to build future-proof solutions, deploy quality financial infrastructure, and access the decentralized web. Ultimately, they are working towards building the digital economy of tomorrow.
4. Accenture
Accenture is a multinational professional services company. Their services include business, technology and operations strategy services, digital marketing, analytics and mobility services, consulting services, implementation and more. Accenture was ranked 205 on the Forbes Global 2000.
Their vision is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. Accenture has served around 6,000 clients from over 120 countries.
5. Leewayhertz
Leewayhertz is a blockchain technology company that focuses on governable and scalable business solutions. They have designed and developed over 100 digital products for startups, small-medium companies and enterprises. They specialize in technologies like AI/ML, Blockchain, IoT, cloud and mobile.
They help organizations implement innovative technologies and simplify complex problems that arise during technology evolution. They have developed hundreds of applications that are now being used by millions of consumers worldwide.
6. PixelPlex
PixelPlex is a dedicated solutions company that specializes in advanced digital products and market-leading solutions. They have built extremely competitive and future-proof solutions for several renowned companies. They also provide a comprehensive set of services to help build competitive software.
The company has several talented experts with a strong team spirit. They are all committed to continuing the company’s legacy of supporting innovation and building superior products.
7. Labrys
Labrys is one of the trusted blockchain technology companies based in Brisbane. They create real-world business solutions by taking experimental blockchain concepts and ideas and bringing them to fruition. They help startups, existing businesses or individuals leverage the benefits of existing blockchain or to create completely new protocols with blockchain.
They analyze your technological framework and customize it according to your needs and preferences. The company is constantly working towards building a decentralized, blockchain-powered world.
8. Blockchain Intelligence Group
Blockchain Intelligence Group is a global technology company based in Vancouver, Canada. They offer innovative search, analytics and risk-scoring technology solutions for the Cryptocurrency marketplace. The company also delivers blockchain search products to large organizations with specific data requirements in the financial and eCommerce sectors.
Their mission is to make cryptocurrency mainstream by providing risk management solutions to companies and individuals. They also offer training, investigations and software solutions to fight financial crime related to cryptocurrency.
9. Intellectsoft
Intellectsoft is a digital transformation consultancy firm that provides innovative software solutions for established companies and startups. They work towards aiding companies to revolutionize their organizations through digital transformation. Intellectsoft has three primary offerings: for tech startups, for small and medium-sized businesses, and for large enterprises
They want to help organizations implement the adoption of innovative technologies and solve modern business problems. Intellectsoft takes care of every aspect of the development journey from ideation and concept to delivery.
10. Blockchangers
Blockchangers is one of the most promising blockchain technology companies based in Norway. Their goal is to spread awareness and help organizations and individuals gain a deeper insight into the emerging technology. They achieve this through advisory, lectures and workshops.
Their clients include organizations like DNB Bank, Lyse, Datatilsynet, NITO, OBOS, Kantega, PwC, and Bisnode. Blockchangers also organizes talks, workshops and Oslo Blockchain Day, the largest blockchain conference in Northern Europe.
11. OpenLedger
OpenLedger develops custom blockchain solutions for enterprises including fintech, healthcare and supply-chain applications. The company creates new business tools based on revolutionary decentralized networks. They have designed, built and implemented software products, services and projects based on the blockchain.
Their team consists of experienced developers, business and marketing experts, as well as legal and support staff. They also have an experienced R&D department that researches innovative ways to improve products and services,
12. SoluLab
SoluLab is a digital and technological solutions provider. They focus on blockchain, AI and IoT technologies. Their services also include both the mobile app and web development. They have worked on numerous projects like Alacrity, Versafit and Plotos.
The company’s execution process involves discovery, strategy and solution design, development, testing, launch, maintenance and support. They believe in providing guaranteed results, no matter how complex the project is
13. Primechain
Primechain Technologies is a leading blockchain company that aims to develop blockchains for a better world. They operate the BankChain community of banks for exploring, building and implementing blockchain solutions. Their solutions have found applications in a number of industries including Banking & Financial Services, Government, Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals, Insurance, Manufacturing and Aviation.
The company believes that blockchain technology can promote massive social upliftment and economic prosperity. Their mission is to be at the forefront of this global revolution.
14. Unicsoft
Unicsoft is a renowned technology consulting company. They work towards promoting innovation with AI and blockchain solutions. They provide professional software development services for the sustainable growth of SMEs and start-ups worldwide.
The company has delivered over 200 projects incorporating Blockchain and AI, IoT and Machine Learning, Web and Mobile Development. They believe in high productivity, a result-focused attitude and continuous learning.
15. Antier Solutions
Antier Solutions is a full services blockchain consulting firm with experience in ideating, building and marketing products and solutions. They focus on innovating cryptocurrency exchange solutions by executing the latest technologies. The company follows a design thinking-driven approach to identify blockchain use cases.
They also provide services like Website Hosting, Application-Development, and customized software development. They are dedicated to excellence in delivering the best network services possible.
16. Somish
Somish develops blockchain solutions for enterprises, crypto startups and also governments. Their services include blockchain consulting, application development, DeFi and security audits. They re-engineer, design, develop and implement automation systems.
Their experts are passionate about using technology to build a more inclusive world. Somish has built numerous borderless alternatives to banking, insurance and currencies.
17. LimeChain
LimeChain is a Blockchain and DLT solutions company that helps blockchain startups and organizations with business transformation. They work towards building secure and reliable solutions that promote operational efficiency. From smart contracts to dApps and DAOs, the company provides end-to-end development services.
Their vision is to help clients adopt the most innovative technologies to improve business processes, remove bottlenecks and lead through Blockchain & DLT solutions. During the developmental process, they cover technical ideation, prototyping, scaling of the solution for production, and ongoing support for the solution.
18. Titanium Blockchain
Titanium Blockchain is a blockchain global innovation ecosystem. They’ve worked with clients like PwC, Nodemate, Gaby and more. Their solutions include consulting, software development, STO and ICO solutions.
The company is positioned to revolutionize the provisioning and virtualization space by being first-to-market. They have over 80 developers, architects, product managers, business development and investment professionals who have ample experience in the field of blockchain.
19. HashCash Consultants
HashCash Consultants is a popular software development company based in California. They specialize in Blockchain, AI, Big Data, and IoT. The company develops blockchain solutions provides exchange solutions, payment processor software, ICO services, and customized Blockchain use case development.
Their vision is to promote digital transformation in organizations all over the world. The company propels advancement in technology through Blockchain101 programs and its investment arm, Satoshi Angels.
20. Merehead
Merehead is a creative web development and design company. They focus on the fintech and blockchain industries. Their developers have expertise in building products from PoC to MVP and then to Alpha, Beta and Release stages for startups and SMEs.
Merehead has clients from several different industries like finance, international transportation, aviation and social media. They specialize in introducing new technical opportunities and optimizing business processes.
21. 4soft
4soft is a professional web designing company that specializes in custom software development. Their services include custom web designing, web application development, website maintenance. They provide clients with an experienced team that guides them through the entire development process.
The company advocates innovation in development. Their developers will design every aspect of your project, from UX/UI to web design.
22. EthWorks
EthWorks was started in 2013 and has worked with several top brands since then. This includes companies like Bitcoin, Atomic Fund, ContractLand and more. They primarily work with Ethereum technology.
The company provides services that involve prototyping, smart contracts and Dapp development, training and consulting. Their vision is to elevate and empower organizations with blockchain solutions.
23. Espeo Software
Espeo Software is a software development house that is committed to superior quality product development, design and testing. We take extra care to choose the right team that will be able to meet your technical requirements. They also provide top-notch blockchain training that you can access remotely.
The company prioritizes transparency in all of its interactions. Their goal is to make every endeavor successful by filling in digital skill gaps.
24. 4ire Labs
4ire Labs is a blockchain development and IT consulting company. They are renowned for helping startups and organizations launch innovative FinTech or Blockchain products. Their services include business problem assessment, strategy-level consulting, technical vision creation and solution development.
They understand requirements well and deliver quality even with strict deadlines. The company tries to provide the best value for money to all of its clients.
25. ArcTouch
ArcTouch is a product development company based in San Francisco. Their clients include companies like NBC, Honeywell, 3M, CBS, etc. They specialize in app development, back-end APIs, blockchain and smart products.
In 2016, ArcTouch was acquired by WPP, one of the top networks in marketing, design and creative tech services. They work towards promoting connectivity in today’s world.
26. Idealogic
Idealogic is a full-service software development firm headquartered in Kyiv, Ukraine. They specialize in mobile web development, design creation, Blockchain and STO development solutions. Their expertise lies in areas like fintech, logistics, healthcare, etc.
They believe that their attitude, values, and expertise makes them stand out from their rivals. The company cares about each project like it’s their own.
27. Peerbits
Peerbits is a popular software development company located in the USA and India. They provide mobile applications, healthcare solutions, and technology. They build software solutions that are scalable and reliable.
The company holds three values in high regard- path-breaking innovation, cutting edge execution and simplicity. They have delivered solutions to 300+ clients, reaching out to more than 35 countries.
28. Hyperlink InfoSystem
Hyperlink InfoSystem is a mobile development company based in New York. They develop innovative and user-friendly mobile apps and websites. Their services also include AR-VR Development, Game Development, Blockchain Development and more.
They are dedicated to providing services without any compromise on time or quality. The company has delivered a variety of solutions to brands all over the world.
29. InfoPulse
InfoPulse is a full-service solutions provider based in Ukraine. The company specializes in application management, software research and development, software maintenance and ITO. They also have branch offices in 10 countries across Western and Eastern Europe.
Infopulse is a certified partner of Microsoft, SAP, Amazon, Citrix and IBM. They believe in promoting the upliftment of the community and support many charity organizations.
30. Systango
Systango is a popular app development company located in London. The company specializes in web & enterprise development, mobile apps, QA and DevOps. Their client base includes brands like Deloitte, Grindr and MGM Grand.
They strive to add value to various ecosystems through agile software delivery and reliable deployments. They leverage upcoming technologies to ensure that their clients stay future-proof.
31. Ulam Labs
Ulam Labs is a Python and blockchain development company. They develop software from scratch, support tech teams and can rewrite legacy codes as well. They mainly focus on emerging technologies.
They aim to provide the best in class software engineering and technological strategic management. The company is constantly working towards promoting innovation through cutting-edge technology.
32. Axioma
Axioma is a blockchain development company that offers solutions for tasks like enterprise risk management, portfolio management, custom index design and regulatory reporting to the financial world. Their client base includes asset managers, hedge funds, insurance companies, etc. The company has worked with several financial organizations to help improve the efficiency of business transactions worldwide.
Their goal is to help companies prudently realize new investment strategies. They develop versatile solutions that are powered by superior APIs and cloud-native technology.
33. Sparkbit
Sparkbit is a solutions development company that specializes in building quality backend systems and web applications that aid in improving the efficiency of business operations. They stick with their clients throughout each stage of the development process, ensuring top quality for each product that they deliver. Sparkbit specializes in gathering data from various sensors and devices along with data analytics.
The company comprises an experienced team of software design experts. Moreover, they have ample experience in developing scalable solutions and deep learning techniques.
34. Acuity Financial Experts
The company has been working with various organizations since 2004. They consider themselves to be a modern accounting organization that works specifically for high-growth entrepreneurs and startups. They support all levels of the financial function, from virtual bookkeeping to fractional CFOs.
They give all of their clients the guarantee of highly certified people, proven processes and world-class accounting technologies. They strive towards helping companies navigate their books, understand cash flow, and make better decisions for your future.
35. SheerChain
SheerChain is a blockchain technology expert and a trusted IT outsourcing provider. They are well experienced in platforms like Ethereum, Stellar, Hyperledger and EOS. Their project portfolio includes web and mobile applications, complex IT solutions for all kinds of businesses and industries.
For outsourcing projects, they work with the renowned IT provider Technorely. They provide excellent services in areas like web and mobile development, marketing and design.
How can Blockchain help your business?
Blockchain technology is an emerging technology that has been gaining popularity in the business world. The universal spending on blockchain solutions is expected to grow from 1.5 billion in 2018 to an estimated 15.9 billion by 2023. Many organizations experience major losses because of procedural delays, human error, and fees paid to middlemen. Blockchain technology provides an ideal solution to these problems.
Blockchain is a sort of technology that records transactions to a digital ledger, where they cannot be changed or altered. All of the information stored on these blockchains are open to all participants and can be verified easily. This offers a transparent platform that companies can use to make their operations more efficient. Its trustless nature also makes it much more secure to use.
Since blockchain technology uses a digital ledger, every time exchange of goods is recorded, an audit trail will appear to trace the origin of the goods. This improves security and prevents fraud in exchange-related businesses. Blockchain technology also protects businesses from falsified information and hacks. In a nutshell, businesses will be able to experience better security, efficiency and transparency with blockchain technology.
How can you select the right Blockchain Company?
As an early adopter of blockchain solutions, you may find some difficulties in implementing the technology. Your tech team may not have enough experience or your organization may not have the resources needed to successfully complete the project. In this case, approaching a trusted blockchain company would be the best idea. However, this can be a time consuming and costly process.
Once you have decided to embark on a blockchain project, it is important to choose the best one from among the top blockchain technology companies around the globe, who can help you with it. The quality of the company’s work can either make or break your idea. This is why organizations need to carefully consider a few key factors while onboarding a blockchain development company.
A few important points that you need to look into before choosing your blockchain development partner include their -
Years of experience in the business industry
Team strength
Skills of the blockchain developers
Wide range of technological capabilities they offer
Number of blockchain projects completed by a company
Blockchain services delivered
To gain much deeper insights into this topic below guide would be helpful. | https://medium.com/@accubits-tech/blockchain-technology-companies-2021-1633d8699d10 | ['Accubits Technologies Inc'] | 2020-12-23 15:33:57.769000+00:00 | ['Blockchain Companies', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Development', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
1,346 | Object-Oriented JavaScript — Proxies, Functions, and Built-in Objects | Photo by William Bayreuther on Unsplash
JavaScript is partly an object-oriented language.
To learn JavaScript, we got to learn the object-oriented parts of JavaScript.
In this article, we’ll look at JavaScript metaprogramming with proxies and built-in browser objects.
Proxies and Function Traps
We can intercept function calls with the get and apply operations.
For instance, we can create a handler by writing:
const person = {
name: "james",
foo(text) {
console.log(text);
}
} const proxy = new Proxy(person, {
get(target, propKey, receiver) {
const propValue = target[propKey];
if (typeof propValue !== "function") {
return propValue;
} else {
return function(...args) {
return propValue.apply(target, args);
}
}
}
}); proxy.foo('james')
We have the person object that we control with the get method.
target is the object we’re controlling.
In this case, it’s the person object.
propKey is the property key.
We check if the property is a function.
If it’s not, we return whatever value it has.
Otherwise, we call the function with this being target with the arguments.
And we return the result.
The Browser Environment
The browser environment is controlled with JavaScript.
It’s the natural host for JavaScript programs.
Including JavaScript in an HTML Page
We can include JavaScript in an HTML page with the script tag.
For instance, we can write:
<!DOCTYPE>
<html> <head>
<title>app</title>
<script src="script.js"></script>
</head> <body>
<script>
let a = 1;
a++;
</script>
</body> </html>
We have a script tag with src set to script.js .
And we also have an inline script with JavaScript code inside it.
BOM and DOM
JavaScript code on a page has access to various objects.
They include core ECMAScript objects, which are ones like Array , Object , etc.
DOM are objects that have to do with the current page.
BOM has objects that deal with everything outside the page like the browser window and desktop screen.
The DOM is standardized in various W3C specs.
But the BOM isn’t in any standard.
BOM
The BOM is a collection of objects that gives us access to the browser and the computer screen.
The objects are accessible through the global window object.
The window Object
The window object is a global object provided by the browser environment.
For instance, we can add a global variable by writing:
window.foo = 1;
Then foo is 1.
Some core JavaScript functions are part of the window object.
For instance, we can write:
parseInt('123');
then we get 123.
It’s the same as:
window.parseInt('123');
These can vary from one browser to another, but they’re implemented consistently and reliably across all major browsers.
The window.navigator Property
The navigator property has some information about the browser and its capabilities.
One is the navigator.userAgent property.
For instance, we can write:
window.navigator.userAgent
then we get the user agent string.
We may get a string like:
"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.105 Safari/537.36 Edg/84.0.522.52"
returned.
We can use this to check for which browser.
For instance, we can write:
if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('MSIE') !== -1) {
//...
} else {
//...
}
to check if a script is running in Internet Explorer.
But it’s a bad way to check for browser features since the user agent can be spoofed.
We can just check for the feature we want directly:
if (typeof window.addEventListener === 'function') {
// ...
} else {
// ...
}
Photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash
Conclusion
Browsers have various built-in objects we can use.
Also, we can use proxies to control functions.
Enjoyed this article? If so, get more similar content by subscribing to Decoded, our YouTube channel! | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/object-oriented-javascript-proxies-functions-and-built-in-objects-eece7e0ccaee | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-11-20 18:33:17.779000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Technology', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Web Development'] |
1,347 | What Are The 8 Steps You Should Take To Have A Highly Motivated Team | You want a highly motivated team? Well, then you need to walk the walk, and talk the talk every single day.
It’s easy to motivated and enthusiastic when things are going well. The true test of a CEO is how the CEO reacts when things aren’t going well.
Picture: Depositphotos
For example, you just lost your largest customer. You’re still motivated.
Or maybe your latest funding round fell through at the worst possible moment. You’re still motivated.
You can’t ever give in to despair as CEO. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is watching how you deal with adversity. You have to stay positive and motivated regardless of how bad the situation might truly be.
Your team’s motivation starts with you and your actions. These actions include:
A. You need to hire a fanatical team.
Specifically, you want a team that lives and breathes what your company is working on. You want a team with a great attitude. In short, you want fanatics.
Fanatics keep going even when times get rough. Fanatics don’t care if the odds are against them. Fanatics don’t need you to motivate them because they motivate themselves. Then…
B. Give your team exciting work to do.
You’ve got a great team. The easiest way to keep your team motivated is give your team exciting work to do.
In fact, you should do more than give your team exciting work. You should give your team more authority, more autonomy, and more decision-making ability. Then…
C. You need to Be transparent with your team.
You’re going to have missteps and mistakes. That’s a given.
How you handle the missteps and the mistakes makes all the difference. The natural reaction is to downplay these mistakes.
Don’t do that. Use your missteps and mistakes as a way to show your humility.
Your openness and honesty will build trust. And, because you have a great team, you’ll find your team will become your partner in helping solve the problems you encounter building your company. Then…
D. You want to Create a great work environment. — No brilliant jerks.
Do you want to demotivate your team? Then hire that brilliant jerk you’re thinking about hiring.
I’ve been there. I know the allure of hiring brilliant jerks is tough to ignore.
You’re having trouble finding top talent. I get it. Then you get a resume. The engineer’s background looks promising.
Then you interview the engineer. Sure enough, the engineer is technically brilliant, but you can see there might be interpersonal issues.
You go ahead and hire the engineer. Then the complaints start coming in.
“We’ll make it work,” you say to yourself.
Then one of your best engineers quits. Then another.
Don’t make the mistake I made. Keep morale high by keeping the brilliant jerks out of your company. Then…
E. You want to Hold your team accountable.
Great employees want to be held accountable. Now, I’m not suggesting you micromanage your team. In fact, I’m a big believer in giving your team as much autonomy as possible.
I am suggesting you set goals and objectives for your team, and hold them (and you) accountable for meeting the goals. Then…
F. You want to Use Kaizen, the theory of small incremental goals.
Since we’re on the subject of goals, use Kaizen to build momentum in your organization. Kaizen is the concept of using small, incremental goals to achieve larger goals.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t set your big, hairy audacious goal. I am saying that setting small, achievable incremental goals is the way to get to your big goal.
For example, let’s say you have a long-term goal of $10M/Year in revenue. You should absolutely set that as a long-term goal.
And you should set your monthly goals accordingly. Maybe your first month’s revenue goal is $1,000. Then set your first monthly goal at $1,000.
And then make sure you hit the goal!
Then you do it again the next month, and you keep doing meeting your short-term goals every month.
That’s how you build momentum, and that’s how you keep your team motivated on the road to your long-term big hairy audacious goal. Then…
G. Set rewards for hitting your goals — celebrate your successes.
Building a company should be fun for you and your team. Yes, there’s a lot of grinding you have to do, but there’s no reason you can’t celebrate your success along the way.
Give your team a reward when you hit certain objectives. For example, you just launched your first product, on schedule no less, so you give your team free movie tickets.
You had your first $1,000 month of revenue (remember the goals are small at the start), so you give each member of your team a $10 Starbucks gift card.
You just got to cash flow positive (this is a huge goal for any startup), you give every member of your team a $1,000 bonus and throw a blowout party that, momentarily, sets you in the red.
You get the idea. Make the goals and the rewards consistent with your company.
And make the rewards somewhat frequent like at least once every quarter. That way you keep the dopamine coming. Then…
H. You absolutely, positively want to get rid of the bad apples.
I already told you to stay away from brilliant jerks. But what should you do about the employees that aren’t working out even if they are a founder?
Everyone’s watching what you’re going to do when someone isn’t working out. And the longer you wait to take action, the worse things will get.
Your team will lose motivation if there are employees that are disruptive or just not performing well. You have no choice if you want a motivated team but to take action and remove the underperforming employees.
The reaction when you do take action is always the same. “What took you so long?”
Your employees always know who needs to go long before you do.
As you can see, there’s a lot you can do to keep your team motivated. You can hire a great team, give your team exciting work, be transparent, create a great work environment, hold your team accountable, use Kaizen, set rewards for hitting your goals, and get rid of your bad apples.
Finally remember, most importantly, that your team’s motivation starts with you and your actions.
For more, read: http://www.brettjfox.com/why-your-startup-culture-is-the-key-to-your-companys-success/ | https://brett-j-fox.medium.com/what-are-the-8-steps-you-should-take-to-have-a-highly-motivated-team-3eca050b348c | ['Brett Fox'] | 2019-10-09 00:39:58.574000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Management', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Venture Capital'] |
1,348 | Google Has Finally Convinced Me to Create My Own Cloud | Asa superuser of Google goods and services, the last few months, like 2020 in general, has had me rethink how I approach my digital life. Of all the things I use my smartphones for, music and photos are near the top of that list. I’ve had a system that works, and recent changes by Google have forced me to reevaluate my options.
Requiem for Google Play Music
Back in 2013, Google introduced Google Play Music, a music streaming service with an incredibly ample library at launch. It also had an awesome trick up its sleeve in the form of a cloud music locker where users like me could store and stream all of our hoarded MP3 files for free. The promise was undeniably good and I didn’t even bat an eye before hopping on that gravy train.
It turned out, I quite liked what Google Play Music offered over the years. The music recommendation system was solid (before my kids were old enough to poison the well with their favorite JoJo Siwa tracks, that is.) The Songza-influenced curated playlists were easy to understand and often just what I was looking for when I was indecisive. A mid-life redesign brought new energy to the Android app I was so familiar with and kept me excited about the direction of the brand.
Then, in 2018, Google did what Google does so well. They got bored, or confused, or honestly, I’m not really sure what it was exactly except to say that I’ve seen Google do “it” many times now.
The pièce de résistance, however, was how Play Music seamlessly integrated my uploaded media into the search results alongside, well, everything else in the service’s library. I never had to go digging for my obscure live bootleg of Radiohead performing at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California from 2006. It was listed there along with every other Radiohead album after a simple artist search in the app.
Then, in 2018, Google did what Google does so well. They got bored, or confused, or honestly, I’m not really sure what it was exactly except to say that I’ve seen Google do “it” many times now. Google announced that they would be killing Google Play Music and pushing everyone over to YouTube Music, an inferior product that lacked much of what made Google Play Music so great. With the writing on the wall, I knew the day would finally come when I would have to decide who gets my monthly music streaming service allowance. Not only that, I would have to decide what I wanted to do with all that damn cloud music I uploaded years ago.
Once Google finally tore off the band-aid and moved me over to YouTube Music, I was forced to face the many ways that YouTube Music paled in comparison. YouTube Music was so hell-bent on smart playlists and recommendations that it became comparatively difficult to simply pull up an album I knew I liked and just listen to it. My uploaded music was moved to an obscure pocket inside the app with a patience-testing browse function that loads artists 10 at a time while scrolling. Not to mention my YouTube likes (and the aforementioned likes of my children) continue to stain the recommendation engine of my YouTube Music app, a crossover that I’d be surprised that anyone truly wants.
I’ve given it the old college try many times over and in the end, I’ve accepted that YouTube Music is simply not made for me.
Google Photos or roll your own?
On the flip side, there’s Google Photos. Boy, do I take a lot of photos, particularly of my two young daughters because parents like me don’t want to risk missing “the perfect shot.” It also doesn’t help that I test and review smartphones for a living so I’m always looking for something to photograph. Google realized how many of us amateur smartphone photographers there were out there and built a killer app and service for us back in 2015 called Google Photos.
It was truly magical when it launched, with free unlimited cloud storage of photos for all users. Sure, that carried an asterisk of capping the image quality to 16MP and video quality to 1080p, but it was free and unlimited, so who’s complaining really?
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Photos was also a big flex of Google’s mammoth A.I. prowess, allowing users to bypass manual tagging of images and simply search for their pictures based on what’s actually in them. The first time I searched my images for guitar, I was gobsmacked at the results. Live concerts I had attended over the years, photos from a punk rock reunion that I had forgotten about, my youngest daughter playing the ukulele. All of it appeared with zero work from me to make it happen. Talk about magic.
What made the deal even sweeter was the fact that Google Pixel owners like me were awarded free photo and video storage at original quality through the end of 2020, a faraway land back in 2017 when I got the Pixel 2 XL. From that day forward, I never once considered the sheer volume of photos and videos I was throwing into the Google cloud.
Do I continue to count on these cloud services to do my bidding for me, or do I take matters into my own hands once and for all?
Recently I used Google Takeout, Google’s data retrieval service, to request my entire Google Photos library resulting in 19 separate 50GB zip files containing everything I’ve ever uploaded. That comes out to around 1 TERABYTE of free storage over the past three years, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Google just announced that going forward, it will stop offering free unlimited storage of high-quality images and videos for all users starting June 1, 2021. Pixel owners will be spared that fate (for now), but any new Pixel releases won’t have the same unlimited storage promise either.
There’s been much teeth gnashing online about the sudden reversal with Google Photos and free storage, but at the end of the day, Google has provided me with free storage of 1 terabyte of information and data for years. Granted, they used my images to improve their own AI systems, but I’m happy to accept what I have already received in exchange for my data to this point. Now I’m faced with a decision that, to be honest, I’ve been putting off for a long time. Do I continue to count on these cloud services to do my bidding for me, or do I take matters into my own hands once and for all?
In the end, I’m finally tackling the process of creating my own cloud. That’s not to say that I won’t still rely on Google for many things, but at the very least, I’ll know that my music and photos exist in an easily accessible cloud that belongs to me and is bound by my own personal terms of service. After pulling my photo library and music library from Google Takeout, I’m now in the process of getting all of that media into a Plex-friendly format. With a Plex Media Server on my Nvidia Shield TV and a connected hard drive, I can easily host all of my music files so they can be accessed with Plexamp, and my smartphone photos will upload to my Plex drive automatically thanks to a simple toggle in the Plex app settings.
I might even go one step further and finally assemble a NAS (network-attached storage) system for redundancy and flexibility. I want to be sure I respect the importance those digital files hold to my life by protecting them in the case of a disaster.
Through it all I’ve learned to appreciate what I’ve had up until now, and accept my own responsibility with my personal media. Sure it’s a bit more inconvenient, but at the end of the day, aren’t those memories worth the trouble? | https://medium.com/@gerardajksjj/google-has-finally-convinced-me-to-create-my-own-cloud-e61ec68f652 | [] | 2020-12-14 17:26:14.525000+00:00 | ['Google', 'Smartphones', 'Digital Life', 'Technology', 'Cloud'] |
1,349 | Moving to an Era of highly scalable Blockchain networks | Moving to an Era of highly scalable Blockchain networks
Three super scalable blockchains who will define the future of DLT
If there was one thing that has held back the mass adoption of Blockchain or weakness so to say has been the scalability issue. With Ethereum, one of the most popular Crypto platforms processing a mere 30 transactions per second as compared to the mainstream player like VISA which processes almost 1000 times than that, a vital scaling upgrade is required for the blockchain networks to become a part of the mainstream financial ecosystem.
Things have at last started to move in that direction with the alternative network solutions like the Lightning Network for the Bitcoin blockchain beginning to address this problem but the transition to a highly scaled-up version has been slow.
Permissioned-based or Enterprise-focused blockchain networks like IBM’s Hyperledger & JPM’s Quorum have shown a capacity of 100,000 transactions per second which is consistent with these consortium blockchains, but the problem is that they function within a closed ecosystem which is neither decentralized nor publicly accessible so the utility remains limited.
All of this seems set to change with the new entrants to this arena which are promising to implement highly scaled-up solutions of decentralized public blockchains. Let’s review some of the promising upcoming projects.
Red Belly
In one of the previous blogs I had written about the advances being made in the blockchain arena in the Land down under — Australia. A new project called Red Belly has been developed as a collaborative effort between Australia’s National Science Agency (CSIRO) & Concurrent Systems Research Group at the University of Sydney.
The project is still in its pilot phase but has shown immense potential with the processing speeds recorded at upwards of 30,000 transactions per second matching & at times beating mainstream players like VISA. The pilot is being conducted by placing 1000 machines in 18 different geographic regions spread around 4 continents. Here are some of the main features of Red Belly:
A maximum speed of 40,000 transactions per second has been recorded in the pilot phase which was conducted on Amazon’s Cloud (AWS) global infrastructure with an average transaction delay of only 3 seconds which is in minutes for Ethereum & Bitcoin networks.
It is a fork-free network, unlike its competitors, so there is no chance of double spending or adding the same block to different chains of the forked network.
Redbelly combines the scalability of the consortia-based blockchains with the decentralized nature of public blockchains making it easily workable in both public and private settings.
And finally, this blockchain consumes much less electricity than any of the traditional networks that are criticized for being so energy-intensive. It achieves this by working under an algorithm that doesn’t require extra electricity as the computational parties increase. The technical details of the algorithm have not been released yet.
Splend
Another silicon valley based startup Splend has just partnered with Shanghai Code Center Industry to incorporate IBA Flash Network technology for the China Cable Television Network. The startup is working on this proprietary Integrated Blockchain Architecture (IBA) as an up-scaling solution. Here are some of the key features of this project:
IBA is expected to achieve 1 million transactions per second. According to the CEO of Splend, they have already been able to achieve in excess of the current industry standards of TPS.
The project employs IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) — which uses the peer-to-peer decentralized method of transferring & storing data, safer & more transparent than the generic HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) model — based on the traditional Client-server model employed for websites on the Internet.
— which uses the peer-to-peer decentralized method of transferring & storing data, safer & more transparent than the generic model — based on the traditional Client-server model employed for websites on the Internet. The company has just released its flagship product called the Universal CryptoWallet (UCW) based on the same proprietary technology offering a “12-layer security shield” making it almost impenetrable for intruders. The wallet offers instantaneous transactions with zero-transfer fees.
based on the same proprietary technology offering a “12-layer security shield” making it almost impenetrable for intruders. The wallet offers instantaneous transactions with zero-transfer fees. Splend intends to extend its line of products in 2019 to include other zero-fee services like merchant payments, Crypto asset transfers, micro-lending & virtual debit and gift cards.
Elixxir
David Chaum, who is widely regarded as the forefather of the Cryptocurrencies & the associated Cryptographic security is the brainchild behind this ambitious & upcoming project Elixxir blockchain. The project was launched about two weeks ago with the intention of addressing the scaling issue with bulletproof security.
Elixxir aims to develop a highly scalable, secure & decentralized messaging payment platform. The high TPS is proposed to be achieved by performing the public key operations in advance thus saving precious time in performing the actual transaction. Also, the network would employ hash-based authentication moving up from the traditional signature-based block processing.
The project offers anonymity via the native mixnet protocol on a blockchain that stores tokens rather than transactions. The project paper also claims Elixxir’s non-vulnerability to 51% attack where any single node protects team consensus as shown in the figure above. For now, though the project seems to be more focused on addressing scalability issues until it gets ready to hit the market in the future.
We are now entering a new phase in the DLT technology where the core weaknesses identified in the first decade of development is getting ready to get an upgrade to Blockchain 2.0
Recent Articles: Headliners: The enigma of the ‘DARK WEB’, Smart Dubai — World’s First Blockchain-powered Government initiative, Big trends shaping FinTech, Cross-border Payment systems: SWIFT, RippleNet or BWW?
Stay in touch: Twitter | StockTwits | LinkedIn | Telegram| Tradealike | https://medium.com/technicity/moving-to-an-era-of-highly-scalable-blockchain-networks-5ed5c128c21e | ['Faisal Khan'] | 2019-10-15 02:25:37.259000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Future', 'Finance', 'Technology', 'Bitcoin'] |
1,350 | Data Minds: Evan Chow — Data Scientist at Snapchat | Data Minds: Evan Chow — Data Scientist at Snapchat
Data Minds is a series that profiles professionals working with data. In this series, you’ll learn about their story, day-to-day, and advice for others
With over 300 million monthly active users, and 3 billion snaps created daily, Snapchat is a company with an immense treasure trove of data. This type of data can lend itself to all sorts of interesting analysis and is especially intriguing for those with a social science background. Evan Chow is one of such people, with an undergraduate background in economics, statistics, and machine learning from Princeton University. He’s been a data scientist with Snapchat for two years now, where his work includes causal inference, applied econometrics, quantitative social science research, and anomaly detection.
In this article, we explore how Evan was able to augment his social science background with technical skills, the type of work he does at Snapchat, and the importance of the T-shape model for your career.
On Becoming A Polymath
Talking to Evan it’s clear that he has a wide range of interests spanning both the arts and sciences. While in undergrad, he was fascinated with modeling behavior using economic models, which led him to specialize in economics and statistics. At the same time, he knew the importance of developing programming skills. As a result, he spent his summers interning at tech companies and taking computer science courses during the academic year.
He got his start in data science by tinkering with various projects, from a machine translation tool to an auto-generator for jazz music. His first exposure to industry data science was an internship at Paypal, between his sophomore and junior year. There he was exposed to a wide range of tools and technologies, ranging from time series forecasting to setting up dashboards as well as learning R and ggplot. This experience allowed him to see what data science really looked like in the real world. It also led to an insight that has stuck to him to this day. When his mentor explained the importance of self-sufficient visualizations, he showed him the visualizations of Napoleon in Russia. This example helped him contextualize what a great self-sufficient visualization looks like and informed his work going forward.
With this technical internship under his belt, he felt a renewed interest in computer science. Leveraging this interest, he continued to grow technically and landed a quantitative software engineering internship at Salesforce. In this internship he had a chance to work with one of the security teams, building an algorithm to detect anomalies in large network logs. The summer consisted of a deep dive into machine learning, where he was able to get further guidance from various mentors. Based on feedback from mentors, he learned the importance of not getting siloed into your work and maintaining a view of the big picture.
After his two technical internships, Evan felt his senior year should be dedicated to his first love, economics. His thesis consisted of investigating fine art auctions, specifically how the anchoring bias impacts auction prices. This problem gave him a break from pure tech and allowed him to focus on econometric modeling in a novel space. Talking to experts at auction houses and learning how prices were determined turned out to be an intellectually challenging piece of research. The work was substantial and took many twists and turns, lasting his whole senior year. This extended research continued developing the grit necessary to persevere when his research would hit temporary dead ends.
As his time in university was coming to a close, Evan had a chance to interview with Uber after a recruiter found his resume through a career fair. This led to a job offer and a move to San Francisco where he started his first job as a software engineer on a quantitative team. His work focused on dispatch optimization, ranking, prediction, infrastructure, and analytics. Transitioning from an academic setting, he encountered a lot of hidden and stored tribal knowledge. Whereas before he could read textbooks and research papers to get the information he needed, at Uber he relied more on conversations with domain experts to help him understand and extract useful insights. This first job also gave him a good overview of how systems were built, and expectations for a full-time role. After a year at Uber, he took an opportunity at Snapchat to return to his roots in economics and statistics.
Data Science at Snapchat
Evan joined Snapchat in mid-2017, shortly after their IPO in March. While Uber had a more obvious path to revenue, Snapchat was more indirect as a social network with revenue driven by advertisement. There was a heavier emphasis on understanding users and synthesizing behavioral modeling with engineering. This suited him perfectly as it allowed him to combine the various interests he had developed in University.
Transitioning into this role, his primary focus was acquiring domain expertise so that he could be more useful to decision makers. He acquired this through conversations with coworkers and stakeholders, in addition to achieving quick wins through small projects. Working with data directly turned out to be the quickest path to domain expertise for him. Luckily there was no shortage of questions from various groups in Snapchat, which his manager would help him prioritize.
A large part of what his role consists of is helping people make optimal decisions and understand their impact. As such, determining causality is a big focus, which involves running experimental and quasi-experimental methods, along with simulations to estimate the causal impact of internal and external factors. Another area he looks at is anomaly detection, such as understanding strange behavior or bugs coming from mobile phones.
The type of output he produces also can vary. Occasionally it could be a slide deck which summarized his work and which helped inform immediate decisions. Other times it might be a white paper which contributes to internal knowledge, and which may prove useful in the long run. This leads to the need for juggling both projects which can materialize results in the current quarter, as well as more long-term research projects.
Advice for Others
In terms of advice for others, Evan offered five points: | https://towardsdatascience.com/data-minds-evan-chow-data-scientist-at-snapchat-1bad17861ff8 | ['Andrei Lyskov'] | 2019-04-25 23:56:52.383000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Career Advice', 'Tech', 'Technology'] |
1,351 | Dispelling the Myths Around Automated Machine Learning | Dispelling the Myths Around Automated Machine Learning Appier Follow Jun 26 · 5 min read
Machine learning continues to make great strides in optimizing data collection and analysis tools for use across a wide range of industries, but now a new strand is emerging: automated machine learning, or AutoML for short.
This promises to be less reliant on data scientists, who are in short supply because of their highly specialized skill set, and can be expensive to hire. However, there are a number of misconceptions about AutoML, the chief one being that it can do away with such data scientists altogether.
Machine learning is an extraordinarily powerful general purpose technology that has a staggering number of applications. It is therefore no wonder people are excited about an evolution of the technology known as auto machine learning.
To understand what AutoML can do, it is important to understand how standard machine learning works.
Machine learning involves several steps: first you need to collect the relevant data, and then clean it in order to learn what you want to learn from it. You then define the feature representation of your data, and put it into a model which is trained to optimize the accuracy in order to achieve your predefined goal. It is a complicated task that requires a lot of human involvement. And not just any human — to get the most from machine learning, you need a team of highly trained data scientists to create, apply and optimize the model, and to be involved at every stage.
The ultimate aim of AutoML is to automate every step in this process, increasing efficiency while reducing cost. If it worked perfectly, it could be used in many different applications in all sorts of industries, revolutionizing multiple sectors of society. This is why it is currently gaining so much attention.
Changing the Role of Data Scientists
However, like many emerging technologies, the reality is rather more complicated.
“How useful AutoML is really depends on the industry, the data type and the model classes involved,” says Min Sun, Chief AI Scientist at Appier. In terms of data collection and cleaning, digital marketing is one area that can benefit from AutoML, because data labels are naturally generated from customers interacting with companies’ marketing campaigns. Mature tools exist to clean those labels, to make sure they are not noisy or biased.
Other industries are less well-placed to benefit in data collection and cleaning, but suitable in automatic feature engineering. For example, self-driving cars need humans to help identify what is a pedestrian and what is a stop sign. Similarly, medical imaging tools require experienced doctors to help spot tumors. However, using neural networks to automatically construct features from raw images has already reduced many data scientists’ efforts.
However, Sun urges scientists not to naively apply AutoML. Regardless of what goal you are trying to achieve, AutoML will not replace human knowledge altogether. Rather, it will change the focus where that knowledge is applied.
“In marketing, you only automate the steps of the process that will be much more effective than if they were carried out by a human manually,” Sun says. “Typically these processes are repetitive or complicated with sufficient data support. In this way, humans can be freed from repetitive tasks and applied their knowledge in areas with less accumulated data.”
So, you cannot get rid of data scientists altogether. This approach that sees humans and machines working hand-in-hand has been termed Semi-AutoML by some. It gives a more realistic appraisal of what the process actually entails.
Weighing Up the Benefits and Costs
As long as companies are informed on what AutoML can do and how it works, they have a lot to gain by using it.
It can be more efficient, because it removes the need to have human experts in the loop, and machines can do this work much quicker than humans. Used in the right way, it can outperform humans too, as it minimizes the risk of human error.
As the processes are automated, it can also scale much more effectively than if the processes were done manually.
However, there are other factors to consider that are often overlooked. Namely, the cost.
The Holy Grail of AutoML is a neural architecture search — this will program an AI to search for the best neural network architecture to solve your given problem. Researchers have demonstrated it is possible to fully automate a neural architecture search (and outperform humans attempting the same task), but it takes an enormous amount of computational power — it could involve a dozen CPUs being trained for several days, for example, which is very expensive. So, any firm looking to leverage AutoML needs to use it smartly by weighing up the potential gain versus the financial cost and time spent.
While AutoML minimizes the risk of human error, it does not eliminate it altogether. AutoML will only optimize the metric you define, so if you define a metric in the wrong way, the model created will not solve your problem. This issue is not unique to AutoML — humans can make the same mistake with standard machine learning, but having humans in the loop can help to correct it, as they will spot that the model behavior is not correct. While removing humans from the process can have big gains in terms of efficiency, if done naively it can also cause more errors to creep in.
Putting It Into Practice
It is a tricky balance to strike. Companies need to weigh up the downsides of intense human involvement with the potential benefits, and decide what is best for their business model. Having a human in the loop at every stage of the process will mean your model will not scale, for example. But at the same time, automating the entire process while building each model will be too time-consuming. “We know that marketers cannot wait days before sending out a campaign, they need to strike in a timely fashion,” Sun says.
Often the best solution now is to leverage a data science platform that uses AutoML in certain areas (what is often called Semi-AutoML as described earlier). By automating certain steps, you can concentrate your computational power where gains in efficiency and reach are not compromised by a reduction in accuracy. This helps marketers tap into the power of AutoML but only where it is really beneficial to the business’ goals. Otherwise you are just using technology for technology’s sake.
AutoML has many benefits for enterprises, and especially for marketers, but only if used correctly. Only by taking a realistic look at how it works, what it involves and what it can do for your organization can you really leverage it to its full potential. | https://medium.com/appier-blog/dispelling-the-myths-around-automated-machine-learning-bcb2d4fe3bd7 | [] | 2020-06-26 00:31:01.366000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Thought Leadership'] |
1,352 | What is the difference between hertz and fps | A lot of people get mixed up with the difference between hertz and fps(Frames Per Second). Hertz is the amount of fps your monitor can do, while fps is the number of frames your pc can do. In this article I am going to go in depth in explaining the difference between hertz and fps.
What’s fps?
Let’s start off by figuring out what frames per second (fps) is. It is the number of frames you get per second, with the average fps(frames per second) being around 60–120. To clarify, frames are the image of your display each second. They are important because in order to see what your computer/monitor displays, the frames makes this happen by allowing your computer to display a certain amount of images per second. Now how do you get higher fps(frames per second)? To get higher frames you need a better GPU(graphics processing unit) or most commonly known as a graphics card; the graphics card is the component in your computer that makes your screen look better and fps higher.
What’s hertz?
Hertz is used for measuring the number of times that your display will update new information(refresh rate). Whilst the human eye can only see 24 fps, there is a noticeable difference in smoothness. For instance, it adds extra images to the objects in detail such as clothes moving when the person walks or does any actions. The background is also a noticeable difference by its smoothness and being more clear, with examples such as how the trees move and how the clouds slightly move while characters interact in games; therefore, making the background more realistic or natural.
How to get higher fps
To get higher fps you either need to lower your games settings or purchase a better GPU(graphics processing unit). For example a Rx 580, which is the best value GPU you can purchase, if you’re on a laptop, I would suggest buying and external GPU witch you can plug into your laptop but these come a little pricey going around $500 Aud.
Is it really worth it
Is it really worth it to buy a GPU/external GPU? Well if you are just trying to run some low fps games like Minecraft/Roblox ect I would suggest not to buy a better GPU or external GPU because there won’t be that much of a noticeable difference. If you are planning on playing higher fps games like Call Of Duty 4, GTA 5 ect, I would suggest purchasing a GPU/external GPU for your pc because there will be a really noticeable difference if you do. | https://medium.com/@ollieprysten/what-is-the-difference-between-hertz-and-fps-ff8a040587f | [] | 2019-06-22 01:12:00.545000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'PC', 'Graphics', 'Technology', 'Pc Gaming'] |
1,353 | Soul | Soul
the great before
In past posts, I have thrown down a few comments about a classic film that I’ve watched over and over, but this week, I wanted to comment after watching Pixar’s latest film ‘Soul’, which dropped online for streaming yesterday (Dec 25, 2020) on Disney+. Without spoiling too much of the film, the synopsis is straightforward, it ‘follows a middle school music teacher named Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx), who seeks to reunite his soul and his body after they are accidentally separated, just before his big break as a jazz musician.’
While the movie features jaw-dropping animation, an amazing score (a combination of jazz from Jon Batiste and ‘The Great Before’ and ‘The Great Beyond’ from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), the themes in this film are deep and touched something for me that most people needed in 2020 — that ‘life has so much to offer, it’s full of possibilities, you just need to know where to look.’. Everything worked for me in this movie — highly recommended.
If you’re interested in my daily ramblings, follow me on Twitter or my posts on Medium.
This weeks “Deep Links”
What a beautiful find this week — tree.fm — a site that lets you tune into random forests from around the world — More
The mystery of skyjacker D.B. Cooper is one that continues to fascinate me (even MCU’s Loki will make a return in his series as D.B. Cooper :)). Here’s the quick summary for the unfamiliar: ‘On Thanksgiving eve in 1971, a man wearing a suit and black tie boarded a Boeing 727 in Portland. Once on board, the man — who gave the name Dan Cooper — sparked a cigarette, ordered a bourbon and soda, and handed the flight attendant a note alleging that he had a bomb in his attaché case. He demanded $200,000 in ransom (over $1.2 million today) and four parachutes. The flight crew relayed the demand to law enforcement — and, during an emergency stop, Cooper received his money. The plane returned to the air and Cooper parachuted out, never to be publicly seen or heard from again.’. HBO recently released ‘The Mystery of D.B. Cooper’ — More
Huh — the science behind how the human eye processes light explains in detail why pirates wore eye patches — More
In one of the more depressing reads of the week, the ‘Pigeon Lady’ from ‘Home Alone 2’ has long since stepped away from film and the holiday season is one of isolation and darkness — More
Nesslabs digs into the research around ‘the illusion of productivity’. As humans, “instead of stopping for a few minutes to ask ourselves why we’re doing something, we keep on mindlessly churning work that may or may not lead to a goal we actually care about.”. Remember: being busy does not equal being productive — More
File under ‘sarcastically shocked’, even though Google promised 2 years ago not to use their AI tech to develop weapons for the military, it tuns out Alphabet (their parent company) continues to invest in companies who’s purpose is war — More
As a privacy advocate, I wonder where social networking is going to morph into as people become more conscious about what they put online, who has access to that data, and what the data is actually being used for. Stratechery does it’s usual amazing deep dives into where social networks have been and where they are going in ‘Social Networking 2.0’ — More
Harry Houdini was not only a master magician, but a master of deliberate practice. A look at his life, and lessons he learned to help him achieve greatness — More
The story that emerged last week that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had admitted to poisoning Alexey Navalny through being socially engineered is straight out of spy film. The entire interview is amazing to read/listen to, and Rachel Tobac, CEO of Social Proof Security has a thread on twitter that’s a fantastic summary (unrolled here for your reading pleasure) — More
Cited as one of the top 10 movies ever made, Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’, perfectly (IMHO) crafted The Joker as a true agent of chaos. A look at the filmmaking and ‘agency of chaos’ — More
End Thoughts | https://medium.com/@smakofsky/soul-73ebff992a8d | ['Steve Makofsky'] | 2020-12-26 17:42:16.804000+00:00 | ['Stoicism', 'Storytelling', 'Life', 'Deeplink', 'Technology'] |
1,354 | SmartSleep or Dumb Device? | It seems like every time we blink (or wake up), another sleep tracker is born. All the major players these day — Oura, Whoop, the Dreem 2 — they all just track your sleep, which is great if you’re looking to get some basic insights on how you’re sleeping. But I finally found a device that claims to not only track, but also to improve your overall sleep quality. The SmartSleep Headband by Philips — yes the same brand that sells lightbulb — is a device with sensors that not only track your sleep, but also uses sound waves to keep you in a state of deep sleep. Sound too good to be true? I put this thing to the test for 30 days and I’m excited to share with you my full review . Plus I’ll do a side-by-side comparison with my Oura ring data below.
So I’ll be breaking down my review into three main categories:
Functionality (how does this thing even work?) Feedback + Flaws (how did device work for me?) Comparison + Accuracy (what did my Oura ring say about the deep sleep boost?)
But before I dive into the details, I think it’s important to be transparent with you guys and get this out of the way first. This device is really aimed at people who get less than 6 hours of sleep a night. They make that very clear in their marketing. They also say this device is NOT for people with sleep apnea or insomnia. But shift workers, new moms and dads, heck even astronauts (yes, they’re testing this device with NASA employees) are probably perfect candidates for this thing. But it’s $400 and if you really don’t have any trouble with your sleep quality, then please save your money! I get 8 hours a sleep and usually wake up feeling well rested so this device is really just an overkill for people like me.
Now if you fall into the camp of people who really struggle with your sleep hours and quality, then keep reading. Or if you really care about accuracy and you want to see if this thing might be better than the Oura ring, then stick around as I compare my SmartSleep stats to that of the Oura ring.
Cool, so let’s get started with functionality.
This SmartSleep headband is an EEG “based” wearable that uses highly sensitive sensors to detect deep sleep in real time. Note: this is not an EEG machine like the Dreem 2. In my opinion, the Dreem 2 is a bit more advanced and offers more features. Plus it’s considered an FDA Class II Medical Device in case that matters to you.
But the way the SmartSleep works is through two sensors in the headband itself and another sensor placed behind the ear and connected by a wire. These sensors track your brain waves and detect in real time what phase of sleep you’re in. When you’re in deep sleep, these same sensors trigger very specific sounds that have been studied to boost slow waves and improve the efficiency of your sleep. Now these tones are not loud — they’re probably not going to wake you or your partner up. I personally never heard them and I tend to be a lighter sleeper.
When you wake up in the morning, you sync the device with their SleepMapper app to see how you slept. The first thing you see is your “healthy sleep score” out of 100. You get a “base score” and a “sleep boost” — both of which contribute to your overall sleep quality that night. The “sleep boost” number is their calculation of how many sound waves they played to keep you in deep slumber throughout the night. I think 77 minutes was the maximum number of minutes of sounds I got one night, but this number varied pretty drastically throughout the course of my experiment.
And just like the Oura ring, when it comes to your “total” sleep score, the device dings you for things like:
Time asleep
Time you went to bed
Total time awake
The app also has a sleep graph section — which gives you a more detailed view of your nightly metrics. Here’s where you can see how long you were in your REM, deep and light sleep states. To be honest, it’s not the most aesthetic graph. I personally think Oura Ring does a better job, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
So onto my feedback and flaws with the device. Let’s first talk about the positives:
The material is actually pretty soft and comfortable. I think it’s better than the first version of the Dreem device, which felt too stiff to wear on my head every night. And you can even tighten the SmartSleep device so it fits comfortably on small heads (like mine).
The Bluetooth and Wifi are OFF when you’re wearing this device so you don’t have to worry about blasting your brain with EMFs all night.
The company offers a generous 30-day money back guarantee with no re-stocking fee, and it’s available at Best Buy.
But as I alluded to earlier, this device just wasn’t for me. In fact, I already returned it. And here’s why:
The most obvious one is just the inconvenience of having to wear a machine on your head all night. It’s bulky, not sexy, and I think I ripped it off my head unconsciously at least 5 nights during this experiment.
The sensors are very sensitive, so much so that even on the nights I didn’t rip it off, the band sometimes moved around too much for it to get an accurate reading of my brain waves and so I woke up the next day with 0 results . That really sucked.
. That really sucked. Before you go to sleep, you always have to connect the device to make sure it’s working, which is annoying in itself. But that, coupled with the fact that I also had trouble connecting the device to my app some nights, made this thing a real pain to put on when tired.
Sticky adhesives. These are a pain in the ass and don’t last as long as they say. For instance, the SmartSleep said the sticky adhesives would last up to 3 days. But I honestly couldn’t make it last more than 1 night. Maybe it’s because of my thick mane, but the adhesive was not sticky enough to last a second night . And these things are $30 bucks for a pack of 30, which adds to the already expensive price tag of $400 for this device.
. And these things are $30 bucks for a pack of 30, which adds to the already expensive price tag of $400 for this device. You always have to charge the device every morning.
It often left a Star-Trek-like mark on my forehead (maybe I made it too tight?).
It doesn’t show your different brain waves like alpha and theta. I personally thought that would have been a good feature to include for the end user.
So now that I’ve aired my grievances, let’s move on to the final portion of this review: accuracy. I’ve included graphs as visual aids below.
Let’s start with my light sleep graph — SmartSleep v. Oura data. You can see both trackers track light sleep pretty well (graph below). You see similar trend lines for both, which suggests they’re both tracking similar data and it makes sense the nights line up correctly.
Light Sleep Graph: SmartSleep v. Oura
Then we go to REM sleep and we can see a lot spikes in the SmartSleep where I got a lot more highs and lows (graph below). My guess is that this is because the tracking system built into the headband is a lot more sensitive than the tracking system built into the Oura ring so you could potentially get more accurate data here. You’ll get general trend lines from the Oura ring, but it may not be as precise or as big.
REM Sleep Graph: SmartSleep v. Oura
Then we move over to deep sleep and I generally see the same pattern. I see big rises and falls together. However, I’ve got this few day chunk the week of March 8 where my Oura ring continued to be on the rise, whereas the SmartSleep data continued to decline (graph below). I honestly don’t know which one of these is truly accurate.
Deep Sleep Graph: SmartSleep v. Oura
Throughout these 4 weeks of data, I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. I was eating consistently, didn’t change up my workout routine, and things pretty much stayed the same. So I’m not sure what would cause a massive displacement here. And usually when I do change things up, I consistently see a correlation on my Oura ring. So maybe the ring is enough to get a good idea for the bigger trends?
But if you’re looking for very specific nuances — like reading or playing games before bed — maybe this SmartSleep is what you’re looking for to evaluate those things and their impacts on sleep. Or if you’re looking for even more granularity, it might be worth looking into a sleep lab. But I’ve already learned a lot about my sleep patterns from a year’s worth of Oura data and to be honest, it’s a lot more comfortable and consistent to wear.
So even though we might get some specifically more accurate data from the SmartSleep, I think generally it’s easier to learn trends over time and get consistency out of the data from something like the Oura ring.
So here are my final thoughts on SmartSleep.
Do I think the science and intent for better sleep is there? Absolutely.
Do I think it’s a well-designed machine? Somewhat.
But do I think this is something I would consistently use over time? Hell no.
For me, a great product flows seamlessly into your everyday for me, and this thing was just lacking that sense of stickiness — just like those damn adhesives. I have a couple more sleep tracker reviews in the works, so stay tuned for those! | https://medium.com/swlh/smartsleep-or-dumb-device-2513997b4370 | ['Katie Moore'] | 2020-03-24 19:00:39.706000+00:00 | ['Wearables', 'Technology Trends', 'Gadgets', 'Sleep', 'Health Technology'] |
1,355 | How to Study in the US on a Budget? | Pursuing a course at an international university can be slightly severe on your pocket, especially if you study in the US. However, a well-devised budget plan can undoubtedly sort things out for you. You need to take care of a few things, and then you are good to study in the US on a budget. Let’s have a look at these things:
1. Organize your budget
As a student, you must organize your budget to include all possible expenditures. In the US, the education costs at a public/state university are comparatively lesser than those of a private institution. Your expense on the course fee depends on the type of qualification and the university you choose. Usually, Humanities and Art courses are less costly as compared to courses such as medicine and engineering. Moreover, if you wish to continue your education at the postgraduate level, the tuition fee is higher, and the amount varies depending on the program. Like most other countries, MBA programs in the US are the most expensive.
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash
2. Scholarships
A great way of bringing down the total cost is to research and apply for the scholarships you are eligible for. Most institutions offer financial assistance to international students primarily based on merit and need. Obtaining scholarships for graduate studies is more comfortable than others. Study fields that usually receive generous funds include Engineering, Biological Sciences, and Physical Sciences. This can help lower the cost of studying abroad to a great extent.
Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash
Also Read: How to Save Money as a Student in the USA
3. Accommodation
Apart from the course, you will be spending on basic necessities including accommodation and food. Most US institutions are residential, and staying as a resident on-campus is an affordable option. Do note that you need to apply for it separately and well ahead in time to secure yourself a slot. You also can choose off-campus accommodation where you would share the apartment with other candidates from India or live in a homestay with some residents. For this, you would have to be open to adjusting to a different lifestyle than your home. The rental costs vary based on the city.
Photo by Mihály Köles on Unsplash
Alternatively, you could rent an apartment where you would have to pay utility bills like internet, electricity, water usage, and insurance. In most cases, the institute will help you find accommodation, both on-campus as well as off-campus.
4. Financial Aids
You will also have to consider the costs involved in securing a visa. You may consult a counselor for any guidance on the process for the same. Applying for financial aid like loans and tuition waivers is another way you can sustain the expenses. It requires proof of the student’s family income as part of the application. Students must submit their bank statements, tax documents, and other official financial records. Though most financial aid in the US is only for US citizens, green card holders, and legal residents, international students still have opportunities. It is advisable to begin researching early and contacting institutions in case of any questions or doubts.
Photo by 金 运 on Unsplash
5. Living Expenses
Don’t forget to set an amount aside to include your living expenses during your stay. It is advisable to keep regular tabs on your expenditure to avoid overspending at any point. You will be spending on travel, food, academic requirements, and other miscellaneous entities. You can save your money through student discounts during shopping in malls, supermarkets, theatres, and food joints. Discount cards such as ISIC cards are available for purchase. Keeping an eye on the exchange rates can help you save an appreciable amount of money.
If your university permits students to buy their own study material, it is suggested to buy a used book or rent it as this may save you cost. You can even sell the books you have and use the university library for a photocopy.
6. Type and Location of University
Your expenses also depend on the type of institution you apply to. Tuition costs vary significantly from college to college. Public schools are often, but not always, less expensive than private institutions. Nevertheless, some private schools may offer scholarships to international students. Two-year or community colleges are generally less costly than universities offering bachelor's and graduate degrees. In addition to this, the price of living in different parts of the country can vary tremendously. In general, living in or near urban areas is more expensive than living in rural areas.
7. Insurance
Always save some money for an emergency. It is compulsory for all Indian students traveling to the US to get medical insurance before their program’s commencement. Several American institutions have initiated comprehensive health insurance plans for international students, but this is applicable as long as your program is ongoing and ceases upon completion. Check with your counselor to ensure that you have arranged for medical insurance.
Photo by Daniel Tausis on Unsplash
8. Part-time Jobs
Many students opt to work parallel to their academics. Indian students are allowed to work up to 20 hours per week during academic sessions and full-time during vacations in the US. Students who choose to work beside their studies need to remember that the earned income may be taxable.
[Bonus] Some affordable institutions in the US are mentioned below:
California State University-Long Beach
CUNY Brooklyn College
Indiana University-Bloomington
Oklahoma State University
Purdue University
University of Florida
University of Illinois at Chicago
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Washington
For more details, please read: Budget-Friendly Masters in the USA | https://medium.com/@ashwinijain/how-to-study-in-the-us-on-a-budget-9beb9fd4bc67 | ['Ashwini Jain'] | 2020-12-18 13:37:17.572000+00:00 | ['Higher Education', 'Technology', 'Education', 'Study Abroad', 'Students'] |
1,356 | Top 5 Business Automation Tools in 2020 | Business automation tools are the future of successful organizations. They assist you in working faster and better by using technology to streamline and automate your workflow. If you are a start-up that does not want to hire extra staff or wish to save time on task-automation, it is an avenue to explore. Even large organizations are now converting to digital automation to minimize costs and delays. Besides improving productivity, such tools give structure to organizational management. Saving a minute here and there can help you stay focused on the task at hand.
For instance, you may face delays in sending marketing emails or manually calculating salaries for your employees. With the help of business process automation tools, you can integrate workflows and processes between apps. They ease information flow from one app to another. There are several business automation tools, but here are a few of my favorites:
1- Zapier
A user-friendly option that integrates all apps within minutes and saves hours of work for you. For example, if you use Facebook ads to generate leads for your product and Gmail to send marketing emails to those leads. Zapier auto tracks Facebook’s lead generation connects it to Gmail, and automatically sends emails. This will save time spent on manual data entry for lead generation as well as going through lists. It has ‘zaps’ that are the trigger for a task. You enter the zaps that you need to be automated and let Zapier activate the convenient app to act.
Zapier’s main strength is the fact that it is one of the most straightforward BPA tools out there which permits many apps to be integrated. Yet, some people think that it is expensive when there are some open-source and free alternatives available. Additionally, Zapier’s major weakness is that it does not provide multi-step workflow processes. In conclusion, Zapier is the most popular option amongst users as it has excellent customer support and marketing features. It is flexible and straightforward, with a range of payment options.
Pricing: Starts from free up to $599 with free trials for every package.
2- Automate.io
It is a cloud-based business automation tool similar to Zapier, but it claims to offer ‘3 times the value’. Its features are identical to Zapier’s, but it offers more ‘tasks’ within its packages, including the free one. Automate has multi-step workflow options in its free version and, of course, in the paid options.
Automate is a popular option as it is user-friendly, easy to set-up, and provides multi-step workflow processes. But, one of Automate’s most common flaws is that its limitedness in the integration department as it does not support Microsoft Office along with other essential integrations. Compared to Zapier and a few other BPA tools, Automate provides more ‘free tasks’. It also has five flexible payment plans to choose from.
Pricing: It is reasonable for start-ups and small businesses that don’t need too many automated tasks, starting from a free package up to $99 for small companies. The price goes up to $399 for premium users.
3- Azure Logic Apps & Microsoft Flow
As a cloud computing service by Microsoft, Azure is user-friendly and flexible. It presents basic free units per month, and beyond that, you should pay to you use it. It is especially useful for software development projects as it allows hybrid cloud management.
On the other hand, Microsoft flow is a tool that automates and configures your tasks for you. It help streamline daily tasks and saving time.
One of the most significant advantages of both tools is that they allow limitless automated workflows. Not just that, but it has an easy-to-use interface. However, Microsoft Flow has a disadvantage: it does not provide as many apps integration as users would like, causing a delay in many workflows. It is essential to check it supports if the required apps or not. Again, compared to Zapier or Automate, it offers less app integration; but, price-wise, it’s more affordable.
Pricing: Microsoft Flow starts from $15 a month in which you can create unlimited flows and have two more plans available.
4- IFTTT
IFTTT is a useful free automation tool that enables you to connect and integrate your apps and communicate with each other. Yet, customizing the workflow can be time-consuming and often complicated with this tool. If the applet you need is not available within its data pool, it isn’t easy to work with it. As of 2020, IFTTT has launched its Pro version, which has a limited promotional period, after which the user can choose from three different plans.
Users love tools with limitless integrations and actions, which IFTTT offers in the form of unlimited ‘zaps’ or triggers. An interesting feature is that it allows you to connect your household appliances with it and automate those tasks. The downside of IFTTT is that it does not support a multi-step workflow or provide premium level support for a sophisticated integration. So, while Zapier allows you to make an applet that is not available, that is not possible with IFTTT.
Pricing: The individual plans are free, whereas business plans start from $199 a year and up.
5- Huginn
Huginn is an online open-source automation tool that is free and is in competition with Zapier and IFTTT. It is a system for building agents that can automate your tasks and perform them by searching the Internet — commonly used for basic web-based tasks like tracking changes in a website, updating the weather, or voting highlights in an election.
Huginn is reasonably popular because it is free and open-source. Some users find it safer as it does not require passwords and cookies to function. However, many users find it challenging to build the agents and don’t see the interface as friendly as the other options.
While one can write customized codes to conduct routine tasks, Huginn is not as good at complex logic and actions. It is limited in terms of systems syncing and integration.
It’s essential to keep in mind that Huginn’s primary use is not to create complicated automation, it is a tool that is mainly utilized to automatically filter the web for useful information. If you are browsing through a website a few times a day, you can build an agent to do that on Huginn. Then, you can automate it to send you an alert or an email when it finds what you are browsing for. For example, if you want alerts on traffic jams or want to find out about discounts on Amazon -Huginn can do that for you.
Pricing: Free
To summarize, there are many other business automation tools out there with different pricing ranges and features that make them more suitable for you. Regardless of which tool you choose, it is essential to embrace automation tools as they are the future of productive and successful teams. Organizations that work with automated and agile frameworks have a greater chance to succeed as they let technology do mundane tasks, thus saving time and promoting productivity.
Header Picture Credit: Designed by Freepik | https://medium.com/foretheta/top-5-business-automation-tools-in-2020-eb958d5dde74 | ['Aarzoo Naeem'] | 2020-11-08 17:02:26.780000+00:00 | ['Business Automation Tools', 'Business Automation', 'Software Development', 'Technology News'] |
1,357 | The Future of Education | On 18th December 2020, I was invited to share opening words at my school’s (where I completed 10th grade) annual festival. The theme was Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Skill Development. This got me thinking. Why should school students discuss SDGs? What would the interaction yield? Structures of the education sector have not evolved in centuries: students, professors, classrooms, discussion, assignments, and then the next day back to school. However, the fact that a school decided to plan its upcoming year around SDGs, provides hints of innovation. In this case, then, the other two ‘I’s include inspiration and involvement at an early age. I spoke to the school students about A for acceptance, B for binoculars, and C for collaboration that helps achieve the SDGs.
When the Sustainable Development Goals were being formed, they had to undergo a series of consultations. For students and youth, this means, all that they need to do is put on binoculars and understand the finer details that will shape their future. The youth must imagine working alongside decision-makers and make their voice heard. Through an uprise of start-up culture, the formation of youth networks, and even parliamentarians who seek involvement at grassroots, it is rather evident that the youth can drive collaboration at their level. The question that remains in my mind is — what sort of definitions must the youth set for their future? Here is my take on how education systems made of students at all levels may evolve:
Technology pull –
COVID-19 of 2020 has had a significant impact on primary standard students. In Week 51 (21st December), I was on the phone with a friend who has a 6-year-old daughter. She (my friend) was upset that her child has been forced to ‘increase screen-time to 4 hours a day due to new teaching method’ or that her daughter can only ‘wave to her friends over a devise’. In my understanding, a solution is hologram technology, arising from the amazing hologram stickers most popular in the 1990s.
Photo found on Allerin website
Let us assume that COVID has taught education systems the importance of resilience. Adoption of hologram technology is not expensive. It is a perfect way for students to see their friends in real form. Not only does it get the students’ eyes off a screen, but it also feels personal. The technology has applications pan-industry and can have a helpful (possibly addictive) impact on the education sector.
Furthermore, the advent of virtual reality (VR) and more so augmented reality (AR) fits perfectly with classroom teachings requiring visual aid. Imagine explaining how parts of an automobile fit together or how a surgery takes place without the aid of augmented reality. On one hand, students would spend non-classroom time on their cell phones or wear virtual comfort spectacles and then come to the classroom and read paper-based textbooks. Such a switch will only make students run back to their cell phones every moment they get. Classrooms will have to use a combination of VR, AR to explain the fundamentals of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, economics and possibly even utilize a hologram of the famous poets in English class or Hitler in History class.
In essence, my assumptions are the following:
availability of technology will pull education institutions towards these technologies
there is a good internet connection
education institutions do not see technology as a threat
there is a willingness to invest in such technology
access to such technology is made possible despite the economic background of the student
the education institution fully understands the benefits of the investment before investing
Private sector push –
At the above mentioned online festival, the Principal of the school spoke of student-led entrepreneurship, the dare to dream minus inhibitions. Knowledge combined with skills to utilize that knowledge is indeed a richer experience for the student in the first place. This is probably where the private sector has a long-term role to play.
Photo by Matthew Osborn on Unsplash
The idea behind start-up culture, entrepreneurship infrastructure (incubation labs, venture capitalists, and so on), and the private sector are to eliminate challenges as soon as possible. However, the skillsets to cope with modern challenges are not necessarily practiced in school or university systems. I suspect that there will be an upswing in privately funded institutions focused on solving non-academic challenges.
Imagine institutions being redefined with the sole aim to build skills and convert ideas into action. Schools and universities partner with companies from day one of admission. Students have entire teams, equipment, data availability, expensive tools, resources, and rich conversations over meals at their disposal. In return, the private sector entity receives insight into youth psychology and first rights to innovation. Together both entities prosper.
Without a doubt, I am assuming the following:
such a future is one where there are no lies, deceit, and robbing students of their ideas
it benefits and uplifts those students where there is weak internet penetration
education progresses to become a knowledge-skills capsule
the student has every right to withdraw from such inclusion
The nature of innovation will be local. It will first benefit communities and families in the given geographic area. Thanks to private funding, student-led entrepreneurship will have the potential to scale.
Governance and government impact –
Photo by jaikishan patel on Unsplash
Eventually, I believe that governments will take notice of technology pull and the private sector push influence on education systems and want in. Education ministries around the world will feel the pressure. Subsequently, there will be improvements in public schooling, teacher salaries, attitude to solve challenges in the rural sector through students, focus on practical pedagogy, and an increase in quantum of schools across villages.
More schooling in the rural sector will produce new thinking, not necessarily limited to agriculture. I imagine a time when rural sector schools will match urban schools, rural sector students will attract investments in the form of technology and resources, and the rural sector will not be looked down, in comparison to the urban sector.
I am making two very crucial assumptions:
the political will to improve rural education
willingness to shift resources towards rural sector education
Do not mistake me for suggesting that the government impact on education needs private sector push as a pre-requisite to improve rural education. Instead, the rural sector has enough control to invite or decline private and technology innovation into their backyard.
The structure of the education sector might not have transformed in centuries. Children must have improved access to education, skills, technology, and resources. For a society to be long lasting, it needs its children, students, young innovators, and disruptors. The future of education rests on the ability to include maximum students of all ages into the solution mix without discrimination and the attitude to ask, ‘what would our students do to solve this challenge’? | https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-future-of-education-d6b7f177c929 | ['Saahil Waslekar'] | 2020-12-22 20:12:07.591000+00:00 | ['Education Technology', 'Education', 'Children', 'Skills Development', 'Education Reform'] |
1,358 | Introducing The Divi Project | Crypto Made Easy
We are excited to present the Divi Project to the world. A complete cryptocurrency solution for mass adoption and ease of use.
We will be announcing the details of the the Divi Project token sale in a few days. Stay tuned, you won’t want to miss out on this. Make sure to visit our website @ https://www.diviproject.org/ and read our White Paper here. | https://medium.com/diviproject/introducing-the-divi-project-fa912fae75d | ['Divi Cryptocurrency'] | 2017-10-19 18:36:18.409000+00:00 | ['ICO', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Token Sale', 'Divi Project', 'Divi'] |
1,359 | Planned Obsolescence | Photo by Gunnar Sigurðarson on Unsplash
Planned Obsolescence
Our Silent Servant Whose Death is Planned
I was born to serve my master,
The one who paid my fee.
I’ll diligently do his thankless bidding,
Open paths of information
And worlds afar off.
I’ll preserve his memories,
Secure his thoughts and dreams,
Keep his secrets,
And connect him to others,
As he commands me do.
Ironically, I will hold his gaze,
More than any spouse, child, or loved one.
Yet he will not love me,
Nor will he feel myself looking back.
For I am but an object.
Daily I will die,
And my master will save me.
Plugging my persisting umbilical cord
To the wall where power comes
From some distant place.
I live again,
So that I may continue my work
Until the day when I become
Old and obsolete.
Then will I be relegated to the trash heap,
A graveyard for me
And my electronic brethren.
There I will die for the last time. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/planned-obsolescence-159380abe17e | [] | 2020-03-18 03:24:23.474000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Technology', 'Poem', 'Technology Trends', 'Waste'] |
1,360 | SaTT Smart Advertising Token Delivers On The Features Demanded By Gen Y (And Z) | SaTT Delivers On The Features Demanded By Millenials
Finance and economics have been a difficult subject matter amongst baby boomers and their millennial offspring. After all, the current system inherited by millennials has not been fair to them. The global financial system today consists of a group of all-powerful, highly centralized, politically influenced, and innately corrupt banking cartels that have the ability to influence all aspects of monetary policy across all reaches of society.
In the United States, for instance, the privately-run Federal Reserve has the power to create (and eliminate) an unlimited supply of US dollars on command, use money they create to purchase bonds and other financial instruments of their choosing and modify the federal interest rates that govern bank policies nationally. This results in a highly manipulated financial system filled with market bubbles and crashes, financial panics, inflation, shady loan practices (such as subprime mortgages), massive debt accumulation, bankruptcies, and bad credit, and most importantly results in no trust.
Similar centralized banking practices are followed across the globe today, and millennials are not happy with the way in which this system has been set up unfairly against them. With governments now able to work with their central bank “vendors” to create money on command and manipulate all kinds of banking rules to promote specific large-scale economic results, the future feels less in control by the people and more in control by the elite banking class that are steering the economy in the ways they see fit.
But with the birth and evolution of the internet, the banking cartels were unable to plan for or predict the variables of human intellect now unlocked by networking and sharing ideas and implementing new disruptive financial instruments. Millennials everywhere are now being set free as they are presented with effective new ways of rejecting the shackles of centrally controlled monetary policy, all with the revolution that is decentralized cryptocurrency.
There continues to be exponential network expansion and technical advancement within the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. Millennials continue to invest into it and grasp the power-shifting opportunities it presents. Increasingly innovative and disruptive solutions are coming to market that give these consumers new kinds of financial leverage and incentives that were previously too cost-prohibitive or simply did not exist within the traditional market at all.
Across industries, the utilization of decentralized DLTs (distributed ledger technologies, in particular blockchain technology which has underpinned the Bitcoin revolution) have been on the rise, offering more transparent, accessible and cost-effective solutions. In the advertising industry, one company has mindfully crafted what they feel is the perfect answer to this millennial generation’s need to have more control in an industry where fraud and inaccurate metrics, along with payment delays are widely prevalent.
Smart Advertising Token (SaTT) is an ERC20 (Ethereum-powered) token that aims to solve a major problem in the traditional advertising model. It is governed on a decentralized platform, offers low fees for advertisers, and instant payments to content creators. This is quite a disruptive change to the boomer business model most commonly used by traditional and centralized advertising agencies. These traditional institutions have a cost-prohibitive market entry with required monthly billing for services provided, and their affiliated commission payments can take several months and lead to significant fees. Besides, a hack in a centralized network means that hackers can access all other accounts in the system.
With the power of the SaTT smart contract, advertising transactions function within a framework of immutable rules and regulations. These contracts are governed by modules of autonomous beings secured by the Ethereum blockchain. With this functionality, trust and transparency is a guarantee. In the event of a malfunction of a module or oracle, the integrity of other advertisers’ ads is also preserved. SaTT’s decentralized platform means that there are no disruptions to a customer’s advertisements due to a bad actor targeting another customer.
The SaTT smart contract is decentralized and distributed in its mechanics, whether it is in the creation of an ad builder, the display to make an ad directory, or using third-party oracles to provide accurate statistics.
The decentralized feature of SaTT ensures that costs are cut down as middlemen are no longer necessary and transactions can be performed much faster. The Campaigns feature uses the SaTT smart contract to establish an immutable system of trust between the advertiser and the content creators, streamlining collaboration.
Being able to transact with the SaTT token is of course central to the successful implementation of the SaTT platform. The SaTT token offers various utilities and incentives for both holding and using the SaTT token. To increase the adoption of the SaTT token, the company has installed the “PayBySaTT” function on their 50,000+ Store Facebook application and offers an SDK for third party developers so that many products and exclusive events are payable in SaTT. The SaTT Wallet allows users to store and transfer SaTT to their contacts.
A popular question asked by folks within the crypto community is “When Moon,” or “when will cryptocurrency skyrocket in value?” This popular quote has been gamified by the SaTT team into their “When Moon?” dAPP. The game application aims “to skyrocket your token to the Moon!”
The comprehensive set of services that SaTT has built around the needs of their industry is driving real change. SaTT offers customers transparent and immutable smart contracts, faster payments, and entirely trustless transactions. It is only in recent times that previously disenfranchised millennials are now given a platform and a vote for a better and more inclusive future. Watch out baby boomers, SaTT is giving millennials more options to help build that future! You can find out more about SaTT on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram, BitcoinTalk, Medium, and Github.
Source | https://medium.com/@bitmediabuzz/satt-smart-advertising-token-delivers-on-the-features-demanded-by-gen-y-and-z-d353f27ed4c | ['Bit Media Buzz'] | 2020-12-23 09:14:26.231000+00:00 | ['Decentralized', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Token', 'Satt', 'Millenials'] |
1,361 | Diverse Design Teams Lead to Big Impact | My 15+ years of experience in design has given me a broad understanding of the massive shift and transitions within our fast-paced industry. Over the years, I’ve seen how diversity is the driving force behind the tech and creative industries.
For the last couple of years, I have visited well-known design agencies and studios around the globe and realized how a diverse workforce can create more of an impact, which elevates the quality of their work. Diversity offers the opportunity to engage and collaborate with a broader clientele when multi-cultural workforces are in place.
As many of us know, design is on the rise. Designers are in extremely high-demand and our products are depending on solid user-experiences. Some may see this demand as a challenge, but I view it as a way to expand my team. As a design leader who lived in the Middle East, Europe, and over 16 years in the United States, I have the advantage of understanding and accepting these differences with an open mind and heart, which brings an inviting approach to the hiring process.
Here’s why:
The upshot of global growth means that diversity and experiences drive our perspectives so that we learn from each other. Innovation is no longer location dependent. We now have the ability to build meaningful experiences through different cultures around the world. My team and I shift our mindset through understanding each other’s point of view, which helps us to take a high-level approach to our craft.
I am fortunate to manage and direct such a diverse, cross-functional team who can build scalable and global products. As a result, this leads to engaging experiences that represent our global customers and meet their demands. Of course, there are challenges such as time zones, language barriers, and cultural differences. But this is expected when you recruit scalable and creative talent from around the world.
We are makers and problem solvers.
We collaborate to solve basic and complex challenges like understanding the subtleties in visual elements such as icons, symbols, and how they’re represented in different cultures to make sure that our designs communicate in an efficient way. We also accommodate various languages to support our international customers who read the content from right-to-left which impacts the layout of our products and influences their experiences.
My team and our product evolve when the bright side of diversity comes into play.
WE’RE NO LONGER JUST PIXEL PUSHERS
The role of the designer is expanding by the second. We are no longer focused only on pixel perfection. Today we gain insights through understanding business needs. We empathize with our users and customers to craft our product, incorporating the human element into our vision to transform our product. The diversity in location and culture helps our vision to become multi-dimensional and global.
Diversity does not end with differences in culture and time zones.
My mind and my heart remain open to different perspectives and lifestyles. Each member of my team brings a unique point of view with different design skill sets that complement the rest of us. This varies from research, visual and interaction design, usability testing and overall end-to-end workflows, which ensures that we elevate the quality of our products. | https://medium.com/thinking-design/diverse-design-teams-lead-to-big-impact-5b9ed25ba482 | ['Faran Najafi'] | 2017-03-21 18:35:22.582000+00:00 | ['Diversity', 'Leadership', 'Inclusive Design', 'Technology', 'Strategy'] |
1,362 | How to Add a Splash Screen to a React Native App (iOS and Android) | Updated: February 27, 2018
I’m often asked about that last mile of developing a React Native app (actually getting it into the app store). There’s more to it than just building your app and sending it off to Apple/Google — you’ve got to add icons, splash screens, write descriptions, and more before sending it off for review.
Today we’ll cover splash screens on iOS and Android.
Using Expo or Create React Native App? No need to go through all of this — you can follow their docs and be set up in no time.
In this tutorial we’ll be working in the platform IDEs and writing a bit of native code. Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through everything. The final code is available on Github.
I’ll be starting by creating a new React Native app react-native init SplashExample .
Protip: Set up source control before following along! Not only is it a good way to revert changes when you make a mistake but it’s also a great way to see exactly what changed to enable the splash screen.
Splash Screen Assets
In a previous version of this tutorial I showed how to simply use a large image to create the splash screen. This can have issues scaling between the ever growing number of screen resolutions.
So, instead, we’ll start with a single image that looks a lot like our icon. The idea here is two fold:
Make it look like the icon the user taps grows to fill the entire screen making for a seamless transition. Keep it simple. A splash screen should only show for a few milliseconds. It shouldn’t have a lot of information on it — it is, after all, a dreaded loading screen.
With all of this in mind we’ll start with a a square image at three sizes (@1x = 200px, @2x = 400px, @3x = 600px).
You can get those images from Github.
Preparing the App
If you’ve tried to set up a splash screen in React Native then you may have experience a white screen flash before your content loads. If your app has a white background this is often not very noticable, but it’s still a pain. Today we’re going to make it very noticable if we have any flashes of white. To do that we’ll set a dark background color in our app.
Replace App.js with
All this did was set the background color to #4F6D7A , the text color to #F5FCFF , and use light text in the status bar.
The basic app
Adding Splash Screens (iOS) | https://medium.com/handlebar-labs/how-to-add-a-splash-screen-to-a-react-native-app-ios-and-android-30a3cec835ae | ['Spencer Carli'] | 2020-02-05 15:49:17.858000+00:00 | ['React Native', 'Splash Screen', 'Android App Development', 'Technology', 'iOS App Development'] |
1,363 | Can IKEA Deliver the Smart Home to the Mainstream? | Can IKEA Deliver the Smart Home to the Mainstream?
IKEA has created a new business division that will focus on the smart home, called Home Smart. I expected a cutesy Swedish name like Pipstark or Tekling, but you can’t have everything.
Home Smart will sit alongside other business units at IKEA like Lighting and Textiles. Indeed, they describe it as “the biggest new business we are establishing since Children’s IKEA.” That was back in 1997.
The Swedish furniture phenomenon will hope that its low price point, sleek aesthetic, and built-in customer base will attract a mainstream following.
Current products include smart lights and speakers, which can be controlled by voice or through the new IKEA app. It also works with Amazon, Google, and Apple digital assistants.
IKEA’s new division is charged with creating a more ambitious range of products, which could provide the boost the ‘Internet of Things’ needs.
So, could IKEA be the company that ushers in the era of the smart home?
This story will cover:
IKEA’s plans for the smart home.
Some ideas for new products. (IKEA, you are welcome.)
How IKEA can create a competitive advantage.
Are we sure we want to let technology companies into our homes?
TECHNOPHILES, ASSEMBLE
IKEA launched a range of smart lights in 2017. Many reviews at the time contained adjectives like “underwhelming” and “breakable”, but the approachable price appealed to a large audience.
Sales exceeded targets and IKEA wants to seize on the smart home market with a new, dedicated division of the business. Voice-activated blinds are first on the list, with a US launch date set for October 2019 at a price of $135.
To date, the reality of the “smart home” has failed to live up to its lofty billing.
The concept of a seamless, Internet-connected abode is at odds with the fragmented and frustrating experience of using these new gadgets.
The ‘Internet of Things’ has turned into a running joke, from that girl that used her smart fridge to Tweet when her mum took away her phone, to the smart fork that vibrates when you eat too fast.
Doesn’t the fork just make you drop food everywhere? I suppose you get the smart vacuum to clean that up.
The splendid Internet of Shit Twitter account collates these monstrosities for our bemusement. Their bio distills the mood of the times: “whatever, put a chip in it.”
Behind every good joke, there is a bit of truth, however.
The smart home market is said to be worth $36 billion this year in the US alone (Statista figures) and could grow to over $150 billion worldwide by 2024.
People have adopted some smart home technologies; Amazon and Google, in particular, have sold millions of AI-powered speakers.
Technology companies do not build homes, though. At times, they struggle just to keep the “smart” half of the “smart home” bargain.
There are convenient, time-saving use cases for Internet-connected devices in the home. The problem is that no-one has delivered these products in accessible forms that answer more questions than they raise.
And so, enter IKEA.
It is worth taking stock of IKEA’s current customer base before we assess their potential for smart home success:
There were 957 million visits to IKEA stores globally in 2018.
200 million IKEA catalogues are printed each year.
There are over 2 billion visits to IKEA.com every year.
IKEA stores raked in $43 billion in sales in 2018.
The company has 208,000 employees across 54 countries.
The Swedish furniture giant certainly has the clout to dictate homeware trends. In fact, IKEA has just launched its predicted trends for autumn/winter and guess what? Yes, the connected home is in a prominent position on the list.
IKEA also has the perfect, labyrinthian setting in which to convince us of their gadgets’ virtues. A digital assistant that helps people navigate IKEA stores without buying a load of that would be a best-seller.
With a rapidly expanding presence in markets like India and China (in China, IKEA customers are allowed to sleep on the beds, FYI), IKEA is best placed to capitalize on any interest in smart home devices.
First, IKEA will need to convince customers that these devices add value to their private spaces. Is it really worth giving up personal data just so we can tell our blinds to close?
Any victory may be Pyrrhic, as IKEA will enter a complex and unforgiving competitive arena.
Let’s explore.
HOME IS WHERE THE SMART IS
“Connected device purchase decisions are driven by solving simple problems, at least today. Whole platforms and ecosystems have yet to resonate with consumers.”
— McKinsey
The IKEA promise is simple and seductive: tasteful design, at a reasonable price, from a huge out-of-town showroom.
The “smart home” has some significant barriers to entry: inflated prices, complex products, and fragmented app ecosystems (McKinsey report).
Many brands struggle to occupy the nexus between a technology company and homeware provider. Most begin as the former and lurch clumsily towards the latter.
Philips creates some excellent smart lights, but customers have no reason to kit out the rest of their homes with Phillips products.
Amazon and Google create effective smart speakers and software development kits, but they are not in the business of designing furniture. Although, I would really like to see Google’s take on the mid-century armchair.
IKEA’s judicious entry into the smart home market is driven more by confidence than caution.
Those Amazon Echoes and Google Homes do not replace IKEA products. Often, they reside on top of them.
Tentative forays like smart lights and app-controlled dimmer switches have allowed IKEA to test the market before making any significant moves.
The new Home Smart business unit is charged with leading “digital transformation” across all other units within IKEA.
As such, we should expect to see an emboldened IKEA launch more ambitious products soon, beyond the remit of classic electronics.
Given IKEA’s strengths and the modern home’s weaknesses, this could mean television sets that add to the decor, rather than detract.
I saw this smart lamp a few years ago and it struck me as something IKEA might create. It looks unobtrusive, but it can use augmented reality to add “smart” elements to the surfaces around it.
Here it is, recognizing and explaining coffee:
The adjective “seamless” is often used in relation to the smart home, to denote constantly connected technology.
For IKEA, that term has a more nuanced application, as it relates to the integration of technology into the living environment. This smart lamp, and thousands of similar product ideas would fit the bill.
IKEA could also apply its aesthetic flair to notoriously hideous air-conditioning units, or any other home appliance where the function has trumped form for far too long.
For the moment, it seems likely that partnerships will form the fulcrum of IKEA’s technology strategy.
The range of Sonos/IKEA speakers launched earlier this year (at a very reasonable $99) provide a glimpse into the smart home future.
That interplay between form and function is critical. IKEA knows how to design furniture people want; Sonos makes popular speakers.
As such, each sticks to what they know best.
At present, IKEA’s position in the smart home market is that of ‘device designer’, rather than technology developer. But for how long will it remain in that position?
The IKEA app and the competition
The new IKEA smart home app works with Amazon, Apple, and Google digital assistants.
Customers have the option to control their IKEA products from the IKEA app, or from a smart speaker like the Amazon Echo.
However, some of IKEA’s upcoming products will put it in direct competition with Google-owned Nest, for example.
Products like Nest’s thermostat control are part of Google’s strategy to, well, monitor and control people’s daily routines. This data is very valuable when it comes to selling ads.
For their part, Amazon-owned smart doorbell company Ring has been working with the police. Amazon Echo recordings have even been used as evidence in murder cases.
Many suspect that Amazon is developing a for-profit surveillance network; these claims are reified by the recent news that Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft are all analyzing verbal interactions between customers and their products.
So, back to IKEA.
IKEA probably doesn’t want to spy on us from their smart blinds, although that would be a good place to be for a spy.
Most likely, they want to sell us furniture with some technology in it, that we can control from their app. That probably means mood lighting, temperature control, setting timers, and so on.
Indeed, IKEA has no plans to launch its own intelligent assistant. Some industry observers have claimed this is an inevitability, although the business case for doing so seems flimsy. A voice interface makes sense, but a digital assistant is more hassle than it’s worth.
High-margin technology products seem a surer route to profitability, powered by functional software. IKEA has dabbled with some audio content, such as the new version of the catalogue, signaling an awareness of changing preferences. It’s good for the environment and all.
However, by creating products for the home that can be activated by voice, IKEA opens the possibility of a data partnership with the likes of Amazon and Google.
If people use their Amazon Echo as the central device for controlling their IKEA products, Amazon can access that data directly.
If they use the IKEA app to set their lighting levels, that data will reside with IKEA. A company like Amazon (or Google, etc.) would find that data highly useful for understanding their customers.
The way we choose to customize our home environment reveals a lot about our current state; how we’re feeling, who we’re with, what we’re doing.
Combine that knowledge with browsing behavior and search queries, and you have a pretty potent targeting mix.
That may sound extreme and dystopian, but consider that Amazon has already worked on software for the Echo that would read a customer’s emotional state and change color in response.
They also, believe it or not, want to use that data to optimize the ads that an individual sees. IBM has worked on something similar, and so has Google. We shouldn’t be surprised and we may wonder why we invited them into our homes in the first place.
IKEA could prove to be the acceptable face of the smart home movement. As more scandals engulf the tech titans, IKEA’s position only strengthens.
If IKEA can, as they hope, create a unified smart home ecosystem, it will provide a boost to the entire ‘Internet of Things’ industry.
Its intentions may be straightforward, but those of its potential partners and/or competitors are murky at best.
The more successful IKEA Home Smart is, the more frequently it comes into contact with Google, Amazon, Apple, et al.
Before surrendering even more personal data, customers might want to consider why these products are so cheap — and whether minimal convenience is fair compensation for what they are giving up.
“Our shortsightedness is their business plan.” — Internet of Shit
Code/spaces
In his cheerfully-titled book New Dark Age, James Bridle defines code/spaces as follows:
“The interweaving of computation with the built environment and the daily experience to a very specific extent: rather than merely overlaying and augmenting them, computation becomes a crucial component of them.”
When we add voice-enabled technology to our homes, they become code/spaces.
We don’t notice it happening until it has happened, but our behaviors change. In the process, so too do our thoughts.
Our brains will always take the shortest cut — even if convenience is the only positive on offer.
Technology companies know this.
Amazon is happy to make a loss on each Echo device sold, just to get into our living rooms. Once they’re in, it’s hard to get them out — especially if they control the temperature of your fridge.
The smart home is not just a home with some doodads tacked on.
It is a new space, co-created by technology and people.
We already view the world through a networked lens; our thoughts are through, and of, technology.
If we do not realize this, technology can take the dominant role, with the end result that we depend on technology to carry out routine functions.
That process is already set in motion and can still be shaped if we assume an active role in co-creating our spaces.
Companies like IKEA should educate their customers about the potential benefits and risks of a connected home.
It is a bigger decision than many realize.
“Stories about the smart home tend to focus on the negative, and for good enough reason; how many other household items can be hacked by pranksters threatening nuclear war? — WIRED
Sign up to the hi, tech. newsletter here. | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/can-ikea-deliver-the-smart-home-to-the-mainstream-f31c7bf1d29b | ['Clark Boyd'] | 2019-09-03 19:31:02.781000+00:00 | ['Internet of Things', 'Consumer Electronics', 'Retail Technology', 'Technology News', 'Technology'] |
1,364 | Viral spread Americans paying the price for Thanksgivin | With some Americans now paying the price for what they did over Thanksgiving and falling sick with COVID-19, health officials are warning people — begging them, even — not to make the same mistake during the Christmas and New Year’s season.
“It’s a surge above the existing surge,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Quite honestly, it’s a warning sign for all of us.”
Across the country, contact tracers and emergency room doctors are hearing repeatedly from new coronavirus patients that they socialized over Thanksgiving with people outside their households, despite emphatic public-health warnings to stay home and keep their distance from others.
The virus was raging across the nation even before Thanksgiving but was showing some signs of flattening out. It has picked up steam since, with new cases per day regularly climbing well over 200,000.
The dire outlook comes even as the U.S. stands on the brink of a major vaccination campaign against COVID-19, with the Food and Drug Administration expected to give the final go-ahead any day now to use Pfizer’s formula against the scourge that has killed over 290,000 Americans and infected more than 15.6 million.
Deaths in the U.S. have climbed to almost 2,260 per day on average, about equal to the peak seen in mid-April, when the New York City area was under siege. New cases are running at about 195,000 a day, based on a two-week rolling average, a 16% increase from the day before Thanksgiving, according to an Associated Press analysis.
In Washington state, contact tracers counted at least 336 people testing positive who said they attended gatherings or traveled during the Thanksgiving weekend. More are expected.
The virus could still be incubating in someone who was exposed while traveling home the Sunday after Thanksgiving; the end of that two-week incubation period is this Sunday.
Zana Cooper, a 60-year-old cancer survivor in Murrieta, California, tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Thanksgiving dinner with her son’s girlfriend’s family. At the dinner, the girlfriend’s father, who had recently traveled to Florida, wasn’t feeling well and went to bed early.
Cooper learned the following Sunday that he tested positive.
“My first reaction was the f-word. I was so mad,” she said. “I was upset. I was angry. I was like, ‘How dare you take my life in your hands?’”
She has had fever and headaches, a runny nose and bloodshot eyes, and in recent days it has become more difficult to breathe and she has been using an inhaler. She said she believes she brought the virus home to her daughter and two grandchildren, who live with her and are now ill with what a doctor diagnosed as COVID-19.
In Philadelphia, a woman in her 20s gathered with 10 relatives on Thanksgiving, though she didn’t feel well the day before. She later tested positive for COVID-19. Her family started developing symptoms, and seven members tested positive, said Philadelphia Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley.
The next round of festivities could yield even more cases. Wall-to-wall holidays started this week. Hanukkah began Thursday evening and ends Dec. 18, followed by Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s Eve.
“This is not the time to invite the neighbors over for dinner. This is not the time to start having parties,” said Arizona State University researcher Dr. Joshua LaBaer.
In parts of New York state, contact tracers are regularly hearing from the newly infected that they attended Thanksgiving festivities, said Steuben County Public Health Director Darlene Smith. Still unknown is how many they will infect and how many eventually will need a bed in intensive care, she said.
“It’s the domino effect,” Smith said.
Harry and Ashley Neidig, of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, tested positive for COVID-19 last week. They said they believe they contracted it from someone at their jobs as security officers but didn’t know of their possible exposure before they celebrated Thanksgiving with both sides of the family.
On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Ashley Neidig, 25, noticed she couldn’t smell a menthol-scented body scrub. After the couple got tested, they contacted their families to warn them. Some were awaiting test results, and so far no one else has had any symptoms, said Harry Neidig, 24.
“We feel bad because … we definitely should’ve put a heavier weight into our decision to go,” he said. “We should have told our family, ‘Hey, given the nature of our job, we can’t quarantine like other people in an office job.’”
He added: “You might want to take another look before you go somewhere for Christmas.”
The surge around the country has swamped hospitals and left nurses and other health care workers exhausted and demoralized.
“Compassion fatigue is the best word for what we’re experiencing,” said Kiersten Henry, an ICU nurse practitioner at MedStar Montgomery Medical Center in Olney, Maryland. “I feel we’ve already run a marathon, and this is our second one. Even people who are upbeat are feeling run down at this point.”
While some hospitals are scrambling to find beds and convert storage rooms and other places for use in treating patients, they are also dealing with dire staff shortages.
“We know how to make new beds,” said Dr. Lew Kaplan, a critical care surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. “We don’t know how to make new staff.”
___
AP data journalist Nicky Forster in New York and Associated Press writer Marion Renault in Rochester, Minn., contributed to this report.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! | https://medium.com/@oahmed-khedr-3lie/viral-spread-americans-paying-the-price-for-thanksgivin-9e66efbb3ee5 | ['Oah Med Khe Dr Lie'] | 2020-12-11 18:12:15.116000+00:00 | ['Thanksgiving', 'Health', 'Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Coronavirus'] |
1,365 | How can blockchain adoption speed up the pharma industry? | One of the industries that the world is talking about is pharma, especially in the pandemic times, when the whole world is eyeing toward the new vaccine, there will be a need for a system that can ensure seamless distribution of the same. While the conventional platforms are adept at this, they are not as efficient, and hence, there will be a demand for a more efficient system. Blockchain can prove helpful here. Well, it is not just this, the role of Blockchain is spread across the different segments, and we are going to explore how and why Blockchain is the right solution for the pharma industry.
The Problems that we need to address:
Before heading to understand how Blockchain will benefit the system, we need to understand the key problems of the pharma segment that are staring us in the face. Here are a few of them:
1. Counterfeit drugs
2. Supply chain system
3. Inventory management
While there are other issues also groping the pharma industry, these are the key problems that need quick answers.
Why Blockchain?
Blockchain is the distributed ledger technology, and it works on creating a platform wherein all the information is easily accessible and traceable. Immutability and transparency are the key features of Blockchain technology that will make it a panacea for the pharma industry and other industries.
Let’s understand how this happens?
Drug safety: The issue of fake drugs is not new; it is one of the biggest challenges that need the right solution. The problem is grave, and it needs a solution, in 2012, tainted steroids killed 11 people near Boston, and left 100s of people sickened. In the US, there was no active ingredient found in cancer medicine. These problems are unavoidable. In fact, counterfeit drugs can claim individuals’ lives, and hence we need a system that can make them easy to track and trace. With Blockchain, we can enable tracking of APIs used in making drugs. By tracking this, one can easily figure out if there is a problem with the system or not, and if there is a problem, it can be instantly tracked.
Supply chain management: The next pointer where Blockchain can prove beneficial is supply chain management. Tracking and tracing of data become easier with Blockchain, and the pharma industry can use this feature to track the supply of medicine and other health supplies.
Inventory management: Again, this is an important issue that Blockchain needs to address. The supply of medicine and other medical aids should always be me, but that is only feasible when there is a strong inventory management system. With Blockchain, the information is easily uploaded and easily accessible to all the people in the system. Hence, it will become easier for them to access this and know if there is a shortfall in the inventory of medicine and other medical aids.
With all these set of advantages, Blockchain becomes one of the leading support systems to enhance the pharma industry’s functioning. While there are several other use cases like clinical trial management, and others, there is also a demand for Blockchain experts who can create such integrated platforms ready to use and can be synced with the current business segment.
The way ahead
There is a need for skilled individuals who can leverage this technology to match up the growing demand. | https://medium.com/the-capital/how-can-blockchain-adoption-speed-up-the-pharma-industry-fdc1131757d1 | ['Sophia Casey'] | 2021-01-02 12:13:30.459000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain Development', 'Pharmacy'] |
1,366 | Building an OpenStreetMap app in Rust, Part VI | OSM chunks
So far, we have downloaded OSM data from https://openstreetmap.org/api. That API gives you all objects within a bounding box, and is really meant to be used by map editing apps. It’s also quite restrictive with regard to the size of the bounding box you can use, although that’s not really a concern for us. Still, a better option is to use the Overpass API. It lets you post very specific queries against OSM, and it comes with an interactive query editor.
In OSM the term “way” seems like an odd name for what is essentially polylines. A way isn’t just streets and stuff, but also coastlines, perimeters, borders, creeks, power lines, etc. What we’re interested in are ways tagged as “highways”, which is another odd term for any kind of road, track, or path. The query we need to run can be specified like this:
https://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=[bbox];way[highway];(._;>;);out;&bbox=10.29,63.40,10.30,63.42
The funny bit within parens means that we don’t just need the actual way objects, but also the nodes that they refer to. That’s where the coordinates are.
Now, how big bounding box do we want? Obviously, we don’t want the user to download a lot of data that isn’t needed. But we also don’t want to hammer the API with lots of minimal queries. Out of curiosity, I built a tool that would follow a GPX track, fire an OSM query whenever it moved outside a triggering bounding box, and count the number of queries, the total downloaded data, and the total time waiting for HTTP requests to complete.
Of course, the actual results would depend on the GPX file, and there isn’t going to be one chunk size that is always optimal. For example, in urban areas a smaller box is needed than in remote areas. But it gives a rough idea.
I found that a box with “radius” above about a kilometer yields significantly more data to download, while a box below 500 meters only serves to increase the number of requests and total request time. Hence, I’ll stick with a kilometer for now.
Random walk
We’ll be adding geolocation to the app, but for testing purposes it makes sense to simulate movement. So, I’ve added an option to run a random walk within the app. You enable it with a random_walk query string parameter. In the init() function I can use it to enable a stream of RandomWalk messages:
if url.search().contains_key("random_walk") {
orders.stream(streams::interval(1000, || Msg::RandomWalk));
}
In the update() function I handle the messages like this:
Msg::RandomWalk => {
if let Some(pos) = &model.position {
let bbox = pos.bbox(model.osm_chunk_radius); let mut rng = thread_rng();
let bearing = rng.gen_range(0.0..360.0);
let distance = rng.gen_range(0.0..200.0);
model.position = Some(destination(pos, bearing, distance)); map::pan_to_position(&model);
map::render_position(&model); if model.is_outside_osm_trigger_box() {
info!("Outside OSM trigger box. Initiating download.");
model.osm_chunk_position = model.position; orders.perform_cmd(async move {
Msg::OsmFetched(send_osm_request(&bbox).await)
});
} // Make sure the map is centered on our position even if
// the size of the map has changed
orders.after_next_render(|_| Msg::InvalidateMapSize);
}
}
The result can be seen below. The outer square represents the download box, and you can see that we have indeed downloaded all the roads (shown in green) within that box. The road that happens to be nearest us is colored blue, and is the one we show tags and distances for at the bottom.
Notice that when we step outside the inner square, which is the download trigger box, a new set of roads is fetched, and the map gets updated.
Geolocation
The final piece necessary to make this app any useful at all is to add geolocation. Remember back in part I, when I said I expected a number of rough spots while developing this app on a rather bleeding edge platform? Well, I must say that things have gone surprisingly smoothly! But not entirely without issues, and I did run into some trouble with geolocation.
Now, wasm-bingen (or web-sys , really) does support the Geolocation API, but as it turns out, not in a way that works. I’m supposed to be able to do this:
fn geo_callback(position: JsValue) {
let s = js_sys::JSON::stringify(&position)
.expect("Unable to stringify JSON"); info!("Geo callback: {:?}", s);
} let geolocation = web_sys::window()
.expect("Unable to get browser window.")
.navigator()
.geolocation()
.expect("Unable to get geolocation."); let geo_callback_function =
Closure::wrap(
Box::new(|pos| geo_callback(pos)) as Box<dyn Fn(JsValue)>
); geolocation.get_current_position(
&geo_callback_function.as_ref().unchecked_ref()
).expect("Unable to get position"); geo_callback_function.forget();
Never mind the scary type gymnastics involved here. That’s kind of just how wasm-bindgen works. It’s supposed to be low-level, and to let toolkits like Gloo figure out how to build a more accessible abstraction on top.
Oh, and the forget at the bottom there tells Rust not to run the destructor on geo_callback_function when it goes out of scope. That would kill the closure, and any hope of getting a Geolocation callback from the browser.
Anyway, the point is that the only output our callback function logs when it gets a position is:
Geo callback: "{}"
We expected an object with a coords property and a timestamp. The problem is that the GeolocationPosition object doesn’t really offer these as properties, but rather as getter functions on the object’s prototype.
As a workaround I implemented the Geolocation in Javascript, and then used wasm-bindgen to pass the resulting coordinates from Javascript to Rust. But I got some help on the GitHub issue I logged as well as on the Rust Discord, and the better solution is to define the correct bindings yourself:
#[wasm_bindgen]
extern "C" {
type GeolocationCoordinates; #[wasm_bindgen(method, getter)]
fn latitude(this: &GeolocationCoordinates) -> f64; #[wasm_bindgen(method, getter)]
fn longitude(this: &GeolocationCoordinates) -> f64; type GeolocationPosition; #[wasm_bindgen(method, getter)]
fn coords(this: &GeolocationPosition) ->
GeolocationCoordinates;
}
With that in place, I can change my callback function to:
let (app, msg_mapper) = (orders.clone_app(), orders.msg_mapper()); let geo_callback = move |position: JsValue| {
let pos: GeolocationPosition = position.into();
let coords = pos.coords(); app.update(msg_mapper(Msg::Position(
coords.latitude(),
coords.longitude(),
)));
};
So rather than pulling data out from properties, we are now calling getter functions.
On the first line there, Seed is letting me make a cheap clone of the app, as well as a message mapper which can turn a message into whatever app.update() needs. This lets the callback own its own things. If we tried just letting it borrow them, we would run into lifetime issues. The browser callbacks have a static lifetime, which theoretically means they could live longer than the Seed app!
The move keyword means that we let the closure take ownership of the things it needs ( app and msg_mapper ).
The Msg::Position message is being handled pretty much the same way as the Msg::RandomWalk above, except that we don’t generate a random location, of course.
Two more things: First, we don’t want to just get location once, but rather let the browser watch for changes in location. Second, we need to enable high accuracy, otherwise we get very approximate locations that are not good enough to tell us which way we are on.
let mut options = PositionOptions::new();
options.enable_high_accuracy(true); geolocation
.watch_position_with_error_callback_and_options(
geo_callback_function.as_ref().unchecked_ref(),
None,
&options,
)
.expect("Unable to get position.");
That’s it! We now have a useful app! It’s really satisfying to see how it updates with new way information as soon as I make a turn on to a new road or path, and also how swiftly it updates its map data when I move outside the triggering box.
Try it yourself, and let me know what you think! Preferably on a mobile phone or other device with Geolocation, but if you would like to try it in random walk mode instead, just add the query string parameter.
So what’s the next valuable feature to work on? That would have to be the option to add a note to your current location. We’ll look into that next. | https://blogg.bekk.no/building-an-openstreetmap-app-in-rust-part-vi-8cfc8c3f7798 | ['Tor Hovland'] | 2021-03-22 08:10:48.862000+00:00 | ['Openstreetmap', 'Technology', 'Rust', 'Webassembly', 'Geolocation'] |
1,367 | Listen to the first sounds recorded from the surface of Mars | NASA has just publicly released the first videos taken by the Perseverance rover and the first sounds ever recorded from the surface of Mars. The rover landed on Mars last Thursday, the end of a journey that began last July. On the spacecraft’s way down to the planet’s surface, it snapped images and recorded a wealth of video footage that has given us a historic view of the nail-biting landing.
The landing footage: The three-and-a-half minute video stitches together footage of the rover’s landing recorded by five different cameras, starting from about 9.5 kilometers above the surface and as it descends. The red landscape is shown in exquisite detail, with dotted hills, ledges, craters and small valleys coming into closer focus as the rover fell.
Sounding off: Perseverance also made history by taking the first audio recording on Mars. A snippet of noise was made available that includes the sound of 5 mph winds blowing through the Martian landscape
Check the audio and photo -> https://tinyurl.com/bppzxjcm | https://medium.com/@cristianarang-journalism/listen-to-the-first-sounds-recorded-from-the-surface-of-mars-312ee17e147a | ['Cris', 'Paperboy'] | 2021-03-18 02:10:57.241000+00:00 | ['NASA', 'Technology', 'Mars', 'Tech', 'Cool'] |
1,368 | LabOS | TribalScale’s Open Source Lab, LabOS for short, is a new space for Engineers, Product Managers, and Designers to contribute tools, components, and tutorials back to the greater software development community to bolster innovation and accelerate the engineering of new ideas. LabOS seeks to build a community of passionate technologists looking to rapidly experiment in a safe space and push the boundaries of technology — with the help and support of the broader community, these ideas could flourish and drive change. TribalScale, through LabOS, aims to continuously catalyze the evolution of the future through our contributions to the open-source community
Why LabOS?
One of the motivations for LabOS is to test out new concepts. As noted, ideas pop up in and around the TribalScale office all the time as ideas and perspectives collide. However, ideas are short-lived if not nurtured. It seemed like a waste to let cool ideas fall into an abyss. Therefore, LabOS aims to take those ideas a step further to distill, expand, combine, and test them.
For instance, one of the initiatives, TriBorg, was to experiment with two things: an applied-AI concept (the product), and the idea of Architecting for Collaboration. However, we’ll come back to this later and you’ll see how it all comes together.
The second motivation is to create open-source code that can save others hours of programming so more time can be dedicated to engineering a concept or application. As TribalScale builds digital products, our engineers use a lot of open-source tools, frameworks and packages, however there are times when our engineers need to build bespoke tools to achieve a certain goal. Generally, we’ve realized that a number of these custom tools could be polished to be generic and reusable enough that they could be useful for other developers out there. The world could benefit from our learnings in the form of a nicely packaged piece of code, available through Open Source Software (“OSS”), to help accelerate application development, among other things.
During one such engagement, for example, our engineers were tasked with building an email to phone two-factor authentication (“2FA”) flow into a mobile application’s back-end using Google’s Firebase platform, involving a lengthy integration of multiple SDK methods. At the conclusion of the engagement, the team reflected in a retrospective and realized that there must be a more efficient way of building the 2FA. A project was started to create an open-source wrapper that streamlines the development effort of 2FA on Firebase. Our team later discovered that code for this was requested in the community without viable solutions.
Our Differentiation
The world’s leading corporations often commit capital (human, financial, or otherwise) to innovation. Ultimately, companies invest in research and development initiate and/or heighten their differentiation in the market, to get ahead of competitors, and improve upon their existing offerings. Such an initiative often comes from high-executive command as a corporate innovation strategy can offer immense opportunity, especially as startups are increasingly outperforming their corporate competitors. However, it is rare to find such an initiative among startups or scaleups…
The aforementioned motivation of reusability enhances our differentiation in the market as a global innovation firm. Reusable components and tools, among those already available as OSS, enhance our ability to accelerate time-to-value for our clients in delivering quality, robust, digital products for them in an accelerated timeframe. We can then pass these benefits onto the broader developer community and contribute back to the projects that aided our work initially.
LabOS is one of the first coordinated and ground-up innovation efforts found in a startup or scaleup. LabOS can be compared to the R&D arm or innovation lab of many consulting firms and large tech companies, but we’re implementing this strategy now, at an early stage in our company’s life. And by cementing learning, exploration, and open-source into our work and processes, they will each become integral to our culture, compounding our values of meritocracy, transparency, and empowerment.
Integrated With Our Values
LabOS is an accidental manifestation of what can be in part explained by TribalScale’s core values: transparency, meritocracy, and empowerment. Coincidentally, these are a subset of values held by the Open Source Software (OSS) community at large. Given this alignment in values, and as we at TribalScale strive to give back, LabOS is almost an intuitive next step.
When source code is published, each individual line of code is completely transparent, and the repository is open for developers to utilize and contribute back into. Any code commit, any ticket opened, any change is publically available and accessible. Inside of LabOS, product teams utilize AgileXP and Test Driven Development to build open-source software, and they openly manage the project directly inside of the Github repository to ensure only the highest quality code is shipped. This transparency fosters accountability for those participating and allows anyone to peer into the software to assess its merits.
Which brings us to meritocracy. With OSS and platforms, developers have the opportunity to showcase their skills and expertise in an open, public setting — all of which is tied to their name. And through this, that developer’s talents may be recognized by the community, whether that’s being known as a thought leader or subject matter expert in their own right, both at TribalScale and thereafter. LabOS provides developers with a platform to improve upon and elevate their skills, channel their thoughts and know-how to benefit themselves, and to grow as individual practitioners.
Finally, empowerment. OSS acts as building blocks for engineers to create more complex and innovative products and tools quickly and efficiently. From the examples of others, and drawing on TribalScale’s experience building top-tier products, engineers can learn from the code and can be inspired to give back as well, gaining new skills in the process. LabOS strives to be this force of empowerment within TribalScale, while encouraging other engineers to join the community.
LabOS In Practice: An Example
To encourage innovation, the goals of LabOS were defined but execution details have been intentionally left open-ended. Thus, each project may be structured differently.
As an example, Project TriBorg was structured to experiment with 2 ideas. The first idea is a product concept — an applied-AI concept of a persona that distills insights from their conversations with people.
The second experimental idea is one of Architecting for Collaboration. Architecting for Collaboration is about adapting the architecture of a system for effective collaboration. When architecting most products, considerations of maintainability and team operations are very important for the long-term success of a product. In the years of working with, building, and growing teams to create products, there has always been a temptation of experimenting with different ways to collaborate, or to find a way of reducing barriers to collaboration.
The idea of Architecting for Collaboration is then to bump this up a notch and extend this to a project that is open-source in nature. We decided to extend the concept of microservices and experiment with sort of a semi-natural selection of services: survival of the most-used services.
Not going to get into the technical details of TriBorg in this post, but to give you an idea, here is an excerpt from the TriBorg Wiki:
“Each of these main components can (and perhaps should) be built in many different ways. As long as they respect the pre-defined / agreed upon APIs, the components in their different permutations should be able to talk to each other. Experimentation is highly encouraged. Have an idea for a different interface? Build it. An idea for a better chat system? Try it. Idea for a different way to slice the data? Go for it. Thoughts about whole new component to add to the system? Make it happen.”
As long as the interfaces are defined and respected, we could experiment with building multiple parallel but unique versions of a particular microservice or frontend. The community can then frequently review and comment on which versions to keep, combine, or stop.
How to Get Involved
Are you interested in getting involved with LabOS?
Pair With Us! Start by visiting our GitHub repository to view the list of LabOS projects we’re working on. Interested in contributing? Our projects always need new ideas and passionate people looking to advance technology. Open an issue and assign yourself to it or simply create a branch and start building! When you are ready, submit a pull request and our project moderators will review the code and merge it when it's ready. Not an engineer? No problem! Help market the project, contribute to docs, even write tickets for new features! All contributions are welcome!
Join Our Tribe! We’re creating a new era of innovation and we’re looking for the go-getters that dream big and want to build the future. If this sounds like you, then come work for one of the fastest-growing teams in tech. You will get the opportunity to work with organizations looking to shape their digital footprint either through product delivery or through our transformation offering. Additionally, Tribe members can submit and work on projects for LabOS and contribute back to the community. Read more on our careers website. | https://medium.com/tribalscale/labos-e0c3a707ac8f | ['Tribalscale Inc.'] | 2019-08-15 16:10:22.460000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Innovation', 'Collaboration Tools', 'Announcements', 'Open Source'] |
1,369 | Water Spouts to Stop Hurricanes | ~ cool the Gulf and bring gentle daily rains to weaken storms ~
image from southernboating.com
TL;DR — Hurricanes strengthen due to warm waters. Create water spouts (a weak ‘humidity-tornado’ at sea) to cool the waters and prevent hurricanes’ strengthening. They’ll also bring gentle, cool, regular rains, siphoning the intensity off of heavier downpours. How? Giant black tarps floating a few inches below the waves.
The Problem of Having Too Much Power
Hurricanes cost societies billions of dollars in damages and hundreds of lives each year, aside from disrupting those balmy zones’ tourist seasons and stifling development in the poorer regions. Those same semi-tropical zones see lethal floods from that same force of hot humidity rising off their coasts.
If we can ‘tap’ that keg of steamy air, venting the energy in small doses every day, then we prevent the build-up of humidity that powers damaging hurricanes and floods. Water spouts might do the trick. Here’s how to build one:
DIY Shark-nado
By laying a wide circle of buoys to support a black tarp between them like a trampoline, a few inches beneath the water, we can concentrate the heat of the day into those top few inches of water, rapidly steaming away. That steam we create means the waters beneath are kept cool — but the steam can’t be left piling-up above the water, or it will accelerate those hurricanes and floods.
So, in the center of this wide black lily-pad, position a buoy with solar panels and fans — to push air into an upward spiral once humidity sensors reach a threshold. Just a little nudge of fan-power is all that’s needed for ‘ignition’ of the water-spout vortex. When it takes-off, this water spout siphons the humidity from above the water surrounding the lily-pad for miles— cooling all of those waters, as well.
That vortex of humidity is carried high into the air, where it cools rapidly to form fluffy clouds that reflect sunlight, helping to cool things down more. When they fall as rain (inland, if you position them well), it is a brief sprinkle — by sputtering these spouts daily, you can provide irrigation for free to thousands of square miles of dry hillside in areas like the coast of Texas and Mexico.
Cost-to-Benefit?
With durable marine-grade plastics, no intention of letting them degrade at sea or cause harm, a lily-pad covering a square mile would cost a couple million dollars and last many years. If each lily-pad, spouting daily during all the warm seasons, siphons and clears enough humidity from the surface waters in an area twenty times its own diameter, then the entire Gulf of Mexico would require 1,500 such lily-pads — for an up-front price in the $5–10 Billion range, with minimal annual operating costs. That’s much cheaper than all the clean-up and rescue, insurance premiums, lost wages and tourism, debt traps! A single major hurricane can cost twice as much in direct damages. Water spouts would more than pay for themselves after their first hurricane season.
Considering other impacts — these lily-pads would only cover 1/400th of the water’s surface, so they wouldn’t impede travel or disrupt fisheries. Instead, by keeping the waters cool, these lilies would protect native habitats from climate change — the Gulf waters are currently becoming too hot to thrive. Additionally, the water spouts drizzle regular, gentle rains — oxygenating the surface waters steadily. Contrast that with the deluge of intermittent hurricanes, too much oxygen all-at-once to make use of it, followed by anoxic dead zones.
The potential economic value of gentle rains inland can be immense — not just in terms of net profits, but as a percentage improvement for the poorer communities in those dry regions.
Another feature of the lily-pads — you don’t need to build a singular, monolithic structure that can fail catastrophically. Each lily-pad is its own redundant sub-system, and you can roll-out more of them along the coastlines, then further out into the deeper Gulf waters in successive stages. The costs are not born in one lump-sum. So, they can scale well. And that makes bulk production simple, driving down costs long-term. It might not be the best fix, but a water spout lily-pad can be rolled-out quickly, which might become critical as the waters continue to warm. | https://medium.com/predict/water-spouts-to-stop-hurricanes-f891d89a48f9 | ['Anthony Repetto'] | 2021-09-16 00:35:50.610000+00:00 | ['Innovation', 'Environment', 'Climate Change', 'Science', 'Future Technology'] |
1,370 | The A-Z of Crypto-Terminology | New to the blockchain? Welcome! It’s an enthralling new space but there is so much jargon being thrown around. If you’re a newbie, how are you meant to get on board and ride the wave?!
We’ve put together definitions for some of the most important crypto-terminology to help you get setup in this completely new world.
Altcoin
An alternate coin, that is not Bitcoin.
Blockchain
Online management system which stores information on all cryptocurrency transactions.
Circulating Supply
The price of a coin has no meaning on its own. However, the price of a coin, when multiplied by the circulating supply, gives the coin’s market cap.
DApp
Decentralised application which runs on a peer-to-peer computer network.
Ethereum
An decentralised software platform for smart contracts.
FUD
Short form for ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’. Used when somebody is spreading FUD about a coin.
Genesis Block
The first block created in a blockchain.
HODL
A misspelling of ‘hold’ that stuck around to mean ‘keep’. A crypto-trader who buys a coin and plans to keep it for the foreseeable future is called a hodler of the coin.
ICO
Initial Coin Offering. Crowdfunding stage where tokens or coins are offered in exchange for stable cryptocurrencies.
JOMO
Short form for ‘joy of missing out’. It’s the feeling that people have when they miss out on making a decision, which would have turned out badly.
KYC
Short form for ‘know your customer’. The requirement that businesses must know the identity of their customers.
Limit Order
An order placed at a future price that will execute when the price target is hit.
Market Cap
In the cryptocurrency market, the market cap is the total supply of a coin multiplied by the current price. It is used to illustrate a coin’s dominance in the entire cryptocurrency market.
Node
An interface which handles communication and private keys between wallets, on the Bitcoin network.
Orphaned Block
A valid block which is not a part of the blockchain. These are created when miners create valid blocks at a similar time.
Pump and Dump
Pump and dump is a scheme that attempts to boost the price of a stock through recommendations based on false, misleading or greatly exaggerated statements.
QR Code
Short form for ‘quick response’ barcodes which can be encoded with data.
REKT
Short form for ‘wrecked’ used to describe a bad loss after a trade.
SHILL
The act of unsolicited endorsing of the coin in public. Traders who bought a coin has an interest in shilling the coin, in hopes of igniting the public’s interest in that particular coin.
Token
The ‘coin’ of a cryptocurrency which can be bought, sold, and owned.
UTXO
Short form for ‘unspent transaction output’.
Virtual
Occuring or existing mostly online.
Whale
A huge player who has a substantial amount of capital. Whales are often the market movers for small alt-coins due to their huge capital. They are believed to manipulate the market.
XBTC
The ticker for Bitcoin. All cryptocurrency tickers start with X.
Yesterday
When you should have bought Bitcoin.
Zero Confirmation Transaction
An unconfirmed transaction.
The blockchain has its own language — hopefully these definitions of important crypto-terminology makes the move onto the blockchain a little easier.
Do you think we’ve missed an important term? Let us know of any we can further add to the list!
At Mo Works Creative Agency, we have full-stack in house capabilities across design, development, marketing and community management. Please get in touch to learn how we fuel company success on the blockchain and beyond.
To find out more about Mo Works’ services, please contact work@moworks.com.au | https://medium.com/moworks/the-a-z-of-crypto-terminology-821961108e83 | ['Mo Works'] | 2018-07-23 06:20:08.337000+00:00 | ['Marketing', 'Technology', 'Business', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
1,371 | 123.MOVIES-WATCH! Shameless Specials “Shameless Hall of Shame: Ian & Mickey: Daddy Issues “ (2020) ONLINE | Streaming Shameless Season Special :: Episode 3 SSpecialE3 ► ((Episode 3 : Full Series)) Full Episodes ●Exclusively● On TVs, Online Free TV Shows & TV Shameless ➤ Let’s go to watch the latest episodes of your favourite Shameless.
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⭐A Target Package is short for Target Package of Information. It is a more specialized case of Intel Package of Information or Intel Package.
✌ THE STORY ✌
Its and Jeremy Camp (K.J. Apa) is a and aspiring musician who like only to honor his God through the energy of music. Leaving his Indiana home for the warmer climate of California and a college or university education, Jeremy soon comes Bookmark this site across one Melissa Heing
(Britt Robertson), a fellow university student that he takes notices in the audience at an area concert. Bookmark this site Falling for cupid’s arrow immediately, he introduces himself to her and quickly discovers that she is drawn to him too. However, Melissa holds back from forming a budding relationship as she fears it`ll create an awkward situation between Jeremy and their mutual friend, Jean-Luc (Nathan Parson), a fellow musician and who also has feeling for Melissa. Still, Jeremy is relentless in his quest for her until they eventually end up in a loving dating relationship. However, their youthful courtship Bookmark this sitewith the other person comes to a halt when life-threating news of Melissa having cancer takes center stage. The diagnosis does nothing to deter Jeremey’s love on her behalf and the couple eventually marries shortly thereafter. Howsoever, they soon find themselves walking an excellent line between a life together and suffering by her Bookmark this siteillness; with Jeremy questioning his faith in music, himself, and with God himself.
✌ STREAMING MEDIA ✌
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the procedure of delivering or obtaining media this way.[clarification needed] Streaming identifies the delivery approach to the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies especially to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio tracks CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the web. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of this content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, an activity in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user may use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as for example live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”.
This brings me around to discussing us, a film release of the Christian religio us faith-based . As almost customary, Hollywood usually generates two (maybe three) films of this variety movies within their yearly theatrical release lineup, with the releases usually being around spring us and / or fall respectfully. I didn’t hear much when this movie was initially aounced (probably got buried underneath all of the popular movies news on the newsfeed). My first actual glimpse of the movie was when the film’s movie trailer premiered, which looked somewhat interesting if you ask me. Yes, it looked the movie was goa be the typical “faith-based” vibe, but it was going to be directed by the Erwin Brothers, who directed I COULD Only Imagine (a film that I did so like). Plus, the trailer for I Still Believe premiered for quite some us, so I continued seeing it most of us when I visited my local cinema. You can sort of say that it was a bit “engrained in my brain”. Thus, I was a lttle bit keen on seeing it. Fortunately, I was able to see it before the COVID-9 outbreak closed the movie theaters down (saw it during its opening night), but, because of work scheduling, I haven’t had the us to do my review for it…. as yet. And what did I think of it? Well, it was pretty “meh”. While its heart is certainly in the proper place and quite sincere, us is a little too preachy and unbalanced within its narrative execution and character developments. The religious message is plainly there, but takes way too many detours and not focusing on certain aspects that weigh the feature’s presentation.
✌ TELEVISION SHOW AND HISTORY ✌
A tv set show (often simply Television show) is any content prBookmark this siteoduced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a television set set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are usually placed between shows. Tv shows are most often scheduled well ahead of The War with Grandpa and appearance on electronic guides or other TV listings.
A television show may also be called a tv set program (British EnBookmark this siteglish: programme), especially if it lacks a narrative structure. A tv set Movies is The War with Grandpaually released in episodes that follow a narrative, and so are The War with Grandpaually split into seasons (The War with Grandpa and Canada) or Movies (UK) — yearly or semiaual sets of new episodes. A show with a restricted number of episodes could be called a miniMBookmark this siteovies, serial, or limited Movies. A one-The War with Grandpa show may be called a “special”. A television film (“made-for-TV movie” or “televisioBookmark this siten movie”) is a film that is initially broadcast on television set rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video.
Television shows may very well be Bookmark this sitehey are broadcast in real The War with Grandpa (live), be recorded on home video or an electronic video recorder for later viewing, or be looked at on demand via a set-top box or streameBookmark this sited on the internet.
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✌ FINAL THOUGHTS ✌
The power of faith, love, and affinity for take center stage in Jeremy Camp’s life story in the movie I Still Believe. Directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (the Erwin Brothers) examine the life span and The War with Grandpas of Jeremy Camp’s life story; pin-pointing his early life along with his relationship Melissa Heing because they battle hardships and their enduring love for one another through difficult. While the movie’s intent and thematic message of a person’s faith through troublen is indeed palpable plus the likeable mThe War with Grandpaical performances, the film certainly strules to look for a cinematic footing in its execution, including a sluish pace, fragmented pieces, predicable plot beats, too preachy / cheesy dialogue moments, over utilized religion overtones, and mismanagement of many of its secondary /supporting characters. If you ask me, this movie was somewhere between okay and “meh”. It had been definitely a Christian faith-based movie endeavor Bookmark this web site (from begin to finish) and definitely had its moments, nonetheless it failed to resonate with me; struling to locate a proper balance in its undertaking. Personally, regardless of the story, it could’ve been better. My recommendation for this movie is an “iffy choice” at best as some should (nothing wrong with that), while others will not and dismiss it altogether. Whatever your stance on religion faith-based flicks, stands as more of a cautionary tale of sorts; demonstrating how a poignant and heartfelt story of real-life drama could be problematic when translating it to a cinematic endeavor. For me personally, I believe in Jeremy Camp’s story / message, but not so much the feature.
FIND US:
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✔️ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com | https://medium.com/@livet.v.s.9.9/123-movies-watch-c3aaba694a55 | ['Livet V S'] | 2020-12-27 03:59:07.461000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Politics'] |
1,372 | ノア配当に関するお知らせ | ノアプロジェクトと取り組み始めて以来のPlatinum Q DAOエンジニアリングの主な目標は、コミュニティの繁栄です。ノアコミュニティの幸福は、プロジェクト開発に直接影響することを理解しております。以前の約束を実現する時が参りました。
NOAH ICOの参加者がトークンの保持に対して配当を約束されました。残念ながら、ノア幹部による間違った決定と下手な管理はノアプロジェクトを危機に瀕させましたが、時代は変わりました。ノアプロジェクトは、Platinum Q DAOエンジニアリングにとって最優先事項です。当社はノアブロックチェーン、ノアシティ、Q DAO DeFiの製品を、Noahコミュニティに豊富を与えることという、たった1つの目標に向けて開発してきました。では、本日はノア配当についてお知らせを発表させていただきたいと思います。
ノア配当プログラムに参加するには、以下の簡単なステップがあります。
過去に配当プログラムに参加した方は、John Forbesにそれをご連絡ください。あなたの配当が待っています！
Noah Dividends are Looking for Their Owners!
The main goal of the Platinum Q DAO Engineering company since the beginning of work with the Noah Project was the community’s prosperity. We understand that the happiness of the Noah community directly affects the whole project development. It’s time to keep some old promise.
We can’t deny the fact that the NOAH ICO participants were promised dividends for tokens holding. Unfortunately, wrong decisions and bad management brought the Noah project to the verge of crush but the times have changed. The Noah Project is the highest priority for the Platinum Q DAO Engineering company. We have developed Noah blockchain, the Noah City and Q DAO DeFi products for one goal — to give the Noah community greatness it deserves! Now, it’s time for Noah dividends to step up on the stage!
There are a few simple steps to take part in our Noah dividends program:
First of all, finish NOAH token swap, if you are yet complete it. Follow this link to make it. You can also return lost/stolen NOAH tokens, just contact our special support manager. All you need to do next is contact John Forbes on Telegram and apply for the program. That’s it!
Just contact John Forbes if you were a participant in this bonus program in the past. Your dividends are awaits! | https://medium.com/noahcoin/noahdevidents-882353ead813 | ['Noah Coin'] | 2020-03-25 09:41:22.281000+00:00 | ['Japanese', 'Noah Project', 'Project News', 'English', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
1,373 | ProcessMaker Named SIIA Business Technology Product CODiE Award Finalist for Digital Process Automation | ProcessMaker Named SIIA Business Technology Product CODiE Award Finalist for Digital Process Automation Matthieu McClintock Follow Jun 5 · 3 min read
ProcessMaker, a leader in low-code business process management (BPM) software, today was named a 2020 SIIA CODiE Award finalist in the Digital Process Automation category. Finalists represent the best products, technologies, and services in software, information and business technology.
ProcessMaker orchestrates the flow of data between systems and people so that organizations reach their full potential. A new concept in low-code BPM, ProcessMaker’s workflow automation platform makes it easy to rapidly design and deploy automated workflows to deliver true digital agility to organizations. ProcessMaker empowers organizations to eliminate manual tasks, data silos, and bottlenecks while improving visibility and tracking for processes across entire organizations.
Acknowledged as the premier awards program for the software and information industries for 35 years, the SIIA CODiE Awards are produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software, education, media and digital content industries. ProcessMaker was honored as one of 150 finalists across the 40 business technology categories.
“The 2020 CODiE Award finalists join a long and distinguished history of innovative products and services destined to transform the way we do business. We congratulate all of our finalists and look forward to seeing their impact across the B2B market for years to come,” said Jeff Joseph, President of SIIA.
“It’s an honor to be a finalist and a reflection of the effort and dedication our teams have put into re-architecting our platformso it could drive even further value for our customers and partners across the globe,” said ProcessMaker CEO Brian Reale.
The SIIA CODiE Awards are the industry’s only peer-recognized awards program. Business technology leaders including senior executives, analysts, media, consultants and investors evaluate assigned products during the first-round review. Their scores determine the SIIA CODiE Award finalists which accounts for 80% of the overall score. SIIA members then vote on the finalist products and the scores from both rounds are tabulated to select the winners. Business Technology category winners will be announced May 18 during an online winner announcement ceremony.
Details about each finalist are listed at https://www.siia.net/codie/2020-Finalists.
About the SIIA CODiE™ Awards
The SIIA CODiE Awards is the only peer-reviewed program to showcase business and education technology’s finest products and services. Since 1986, thousands of products, services and solutions have been recognized for achieving excellence. For more information, visit siia.net/CODiE.
About ProcessMaker
ProcessMaker is a low-code BPM and workflow software. ProcessMaker makes it easy for business analysts to collaborate with IT to automate complex business processes connecting people and existing company systems. Headquartered in Durham, North Carolina in the United States, ProcessMaker has a partner network spread across 35 countries on five continents. Hundreds of commercial customers, including many Fortune 100 companies, rely on ProcessMaker to digitally transform their core business processes enabling faster decision making, improved compliance, and better performance. | https://medium.com/processmaker/processmaker-named-siia-business-technology-product-codie-award-finalist-for-digital-process-1deabdf1a6be | ['Matthieu Mcclintock'] | 2020-06-05 21:51:35.476000+00:00 | ['Process Improvement', 'Technology News', 'Workflow Automation', 'Technology', 'Digital Transformation'] |
1,374 | Heterodox Economics And The Rise Of The Blockchains | a technological, legal, and monetary innovation through the lens of Perez, Jacobs, and de Soto.
photo by Tim Mossholder, via Unsplash
The fastest and most decentralized build-out of infrastructure in the history of economic development is not being covered by the mainstream financial media in the slightest. Even this is a charitable summary that allows for the interpretation that they deem other news to be more important. They don’t; they have no idea what is going on here or why it matters.
To whom then do we turn? I have in the past referenced Chris Dixon, Fred Ehrsam, Ben Thomson, and Marc Andreessen, and they certainly do know a thing or two. But I have a more fun idea. Satoshi Nakamoto invented blockchains based in part on wanting to disprove widespread economic delusions, by example rather than argument, and embedded in the Bitcoin genesis block a reference to mainstream economists having no idea how anything really works. To stay true to this strain of autodidact arrogance I do not intend to summarise contemporary commentary on blockchains. I intend instead to dig up the work of equally arrogant autodidacts from well before blockchains existed and see what they might have to say about it.
My plan is as follows: I will review three brilliant books from decidedly heterodox economists: Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, by Carlota Perez; Cities and the Wealth of Nations, by Jane Jacobs; and, The Mystery of Capital, by Hernando de Soto. I will then briefly draw ties between the three, and finally I will attempt to extrapolate the thinking of all three authors to what I can only imagine will be some of the consequences of the rise of the blockchains.
photo by Tim Mossholder, via Unsplash
To the best of my knowledge, none of the three reference each other. But to my mind, they are kindred spirits, and their works complement one another wonderfully, not just in what they propose, but what they oppose. In all three, there is a delicious strain of contempt for the mainstream of economic thought, most of all its adoption of pseudo-mathematical reasoning rooted in physics envy. As a mathematician, I found this part of the reading experience to be particularly delightful. If physics is applied mathematics, then twentieth century economics is misapplied mathematics.
But this attitude is not just an excuse for sarcastic quips, on their part or on mine. It is precisely because these authors’ thoughts are so original, so abstract, and so removed from the blind historicism of the dominant paradigms of academia that they can be so naturally extended to the next great revolution in finance, technology, and economics. Nobel Prize winning economists call Bitcoin evil and needing to be banned, while Perez, Jacobs, and de Soto are intrigued. Stigliz, Shiller, and Krugman are moved to whine; Perez, Jacobs and de Soto are moved to think.
So think we shall.
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, by Carlota Perez
This book could perhaps be thought of as a sociological theory of the interplay of capital markets and technological development. Perez uses extensive historical analysis to back up axiomatic social theorizing as to which people are likely to do what, when, and why. There are no equations, no models, and no absurd idealizations of economic phenomena that leave twenty assumptions at the door; markets are not efficient and capital is not a homogenous lump of potential utility whose price reflects its risk. Capital is wielded by different people with different bases of knowledge, objectives, opportunities and access to it in the first place. It is therefore not surprising that certain patterns tend to repeat in the financing of foundational technologies; not because the solution to the differential equation of the economy is sinusoidal, but because large enough groups of people in similar enough circumstances are relatively predictable.
Perez begins by making a distinction between financial capital and production capital, which is key in setting the stage for the emergence of a new technology. “Financial capital represents the criteria and behaviour of those agents who possess wealth in the form of money or other paper assets. In that condition, they will perform those actions that, in their understanding, are most likely to increase net wealth.” By contrast, “production capital embodies the motives and behaviors of those agents who generate new wealth by producing goods or performing services.”
We might wonder from this definition whether this is not just a verbose articulation of lenders and borrowers. In a sense it is, in accurately describing the transfer of capital, but not at all in describing the roles and behaviours of those involved. It is the role of financial capital not just to save and lend, and of production capital not just to borrow and invest. It is arguably the role of both to aim to seek out the best return for the very different sources of capital they control, given the very different circumstances in which they find themselves. Perez teases out how the existence of these differing aims balance and enable mere finance to be channeled to production. Her argument in essence is that this channeling is neither a smooth nor obviously rational process, but one of experimentation, discovery, and “irrational exuberance,” and that the stages of a capital cycle can be largely captured by observing the interaction of the two groups: “the object here is to clearly distinguish between the actual process of wealth creation and the enabling mechanisms, such as finance, which influence its possibility and shape the ultimate distribution of its results.”
Perez identifies four stages interspersed with three key events. The first event is the ‘big bang’, in which the industrial potential of a new technology becomes clear. This leads to the ‘irruption phase’, in which financial capital senses the above-average returns potential of the novel production capital relative to anything else on offer and in turn gives the new technologists the means to attempt to realize the potential of their inventions.
As these above average returns become well known, we enter the ‘frenzy phase’. Nothing necessarily changes with the technological advance of the production capital, at least at first. The phase is defined by a steady decoupling of financial and production capital, that ends with financial capital run amok and a crash that forces the recoupling in the next phase. The frenzy starts from the realization that the new technology, highly returning as it is, forms only a very limited portion of the overall economy and will continue to do so for quite some time. And yet the high yields from its nonetheless rapid growth become addictive. Perez sums up with a touch of gleeful sarcasm, “in order to achieve the same high yield from all investments as from the successful new sectors, financial capital becomes highly ‘innovative’.”
This forces a decoupling. “After the growing confidence in the previous phase, financial capital becomes convinced it can live and thrive on its own. Brilliant successes in a sort of gambling world make it believe itself capable of generating wealth by its own actions, almost like having invented magic rules for a new sort of economy. Production capital, including the revolutionary industries, becomes one more object of manipulation and speculation.”
And, “the entrepreneurs of the new firms as much as the management of the old (whether modernizing or not) are forced to do whatever is necessary to attract the players in the casino and then worry as much — or more — about the performance of their stock valuations as about their actual profits. Financial capital reigns arrogant and production capital has no alternative but to adapt to the new rules; some agents with glee, others with horror.”
This may sound familiar to readers of, among many possibilities, Capital Account, by the managers of Marathon Asset Management, describing the ‘frenzy’ of the fifth technological revolution (more on what the different revolutions were shortly). “Increasingly, companies presented investors with another measure of earnings — EBITDA, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation — so stripped of the ordinary expenses of business that it became known jokingly as ‘earnings before bad stuff’. Chief executives justified the massive corporate takeovers of the era on the grounds that they were earnings enhancing. They also spent hundreds of billions of dollars during this period on buying back their highly priced shares. Why? Because share repurchases boosted earnings-per-share (EPS). In Enron’s last annual report to shareholders before its bankruptcy, the pioneering energy company claimed to be ‘laser-focused on earnings per share’.” Financial capital begins to treat its own numbers as a closed game, without any reference to the actual productivity of production capital. Any accounting trick to get the numbers up will do, because the numbers are no longer representations of what is important in the real world; only the numbers are important; the numbers are the real world.
Over and above simple accounting fraud, however, is the effect on production capital, which has to play to this tune whether it wants to or not. The typical example from the dot com bubble has entered folklore: add ‘dot com’ to your name and your stock price will quadruple overnight despite scarce other changes.
After some point of mindless asset price inflation and capital gains divorced from productivity gains, the bubble must pop. This is the second key event Perez identifies, ‘the crash’. It is simple enough to grasp: financial capital has, for a long time, appreciated solely on the expectation of future capital gains, thoroughly decoupled from the real gains only production capital can bring. This cannot continue forever, and, moreover, once it starts to reverse, it will likely reverse very quickly. When it is clear that there are no capital gains to be made, the gamblers will cash out, accelerating the process of decline.
The time in between the crash and Perez’s next event, ‘the recomposition’, will see a number of changes. The practices of financial capital will likely be reformed to protect investors from the scams that were inevitably willed up in the frenzy to meet its impossible demands. The potential of the technology will nonetheless be appreciated and industry standards and regulations will be drawn up to ensure sense and cooperation in its future deployment. But ultimately what each of these achieves is to embed this technological revolution in the economic, legal, and cultural fabric.
Perez argues that this sets the stage for a ‘synergy’ phase of recoupled financial and production capital and harmonious growth of both. The key to avoiding the absurdities of the frenzy, as has been established in the gap between the crash and the recomposition, is that financial capital is no longer under delusions of wealth creation. Production capital is now in control, with financial capital merely facilitating its needs. Regulation of the new industries is clear and the relevant infrastructure is understood, meaning that real long-term planning can begin. Free of the burden of ridiculous expectations for short term growth inflicted by financial capital, firms can, ironically, secure real growth in a sustainable manner. Fresh from the memory of the ruinous crash, financial capital is happy with its supporting role since the capital returns it facilitates now reflect real returns, and paper wealth is largely real wealth. Perez makes a crucial point that this phase is likely to be thought of as more harmonious than all others, since there will be a more equitable distribution of the benefits of the new technology. Its productivity enhancement will seep into more and more industries and deliver a more evenly distributed increase in real wealth, as opposed to the prior enormous fake returns to whoever happened to arrive at the frenzy first and enormous real losses to whoever happened to arrive last.
The final phase, ‘maturity’, is reached only eventually and is rather slipped into without an event marking its arrival, since the new technology can only open so many investment opportunities and, as they are exhausted, returns will fall. After the prior harmony, financial capital will once again become uneasy. Guardians of pools of capital that do not return what some still remember from earlier in the cycle, or perhaps what is simply insufficient to match real liabilities, become anxious for new opportunities. It is in direct contrast to the stagnation of returns during the maturity phase that the irruption of the next cycle seems so appealing.
Although I mentioned above that economic and legal frameworks formed around the Internet following the dotcom crash, what was arguably more important was not the misery of failed investments but the experiments the failures represented and the work that went into the experimentation. In some sense, the decoupling of financial and production capital and the magnetism of transient capital returns that financial capital represented forced an enormous industrial experiment to take place. We know now that the experiment in aggregate was a fantastic success. Not only have ‘Internet’ companies (but what isn’t these days?) created orders of magnitude more capital value than was capital wasted in irrational exuberance but, as Marc Andreessen, professional baller, is fond of pointing out, most of the ideas that lost spectacular amounts of money are now the bases of healthy, profitable, growing businesses. Price charts on a shorter than deserved timescale may appear to indicate enormous waste. But the long enough timescale must include the reconciliation, the golden age, and the maturity phase; the times in which the random-seeming results of the totality of experiments drive immense productivity gains across all industries. Perez argues none would happen in the first place without the irrational exuberance of the grand experiment.
“When the economy is shaken again by a powerful set of new opportunities with the emergence of the next technological revolution, society is still strongly wedded to the old paradigm and its institutional framework. The world of computers, flexible production, and the Internet has a different logic and different requirements from those that facilitated the spread of the automobile, synthetic materials, mass production and the highway network. Suddenly, in relation to the new technologies, the old habits and regulations becomes obstacles, the old services and infrastructures are found wanting, the old organizations and institutions are inadequate. A new context must be created; a new ‘common sense’ must emerge and propagate.”
The rewards financial capital offers in the frenzy are required for the propagation. Financial capital needs some arrogance to light the first match, but it is failing to keep this arrogance in check that eventually burns down the house.
Perez also does an excellent job of chronicling the economic history of the technological revolutions about which she simultaneously theorizes. I do not want to repeat any of this here, as any attempted simplification of this part of her work would surely reduce to an uninteresting list of events. Still, I cannot praise her enough for how well she balances the two desires. It would be both dishonest and easy to take an analysis of historical patterns, however excellent in its own right, and simply lift all and only the commonalities to form a theory that, by definition, explains everything. But she does not do this. Rather than misplaced historicism, Perez takes a philosophical approach, working from common sense definitions of financial and production capital to develop a loose theory of how they are likely to interact, within some bounds. The coupling of historical analysis is done to show that this theory seems entirely reasonable. But it is not total. Perez admits when the theory does not match history, when one cycle’s historical unfolding looks quite unlike another, and when she frankly does not know the answer to some or other question posed by the approach.
Perez seems very aware that the looseness of the theory is a natural constraint of the theory describing people, at its heart. Not ‘economies’ or ‘technologies’ or ‘nations’, but individuals with knowledge and motivations. The only major debt she perhaps owes is to Schumpeter, whom she acknowledges throughout, explicitly pointing to the ‘creative destruction’ evident as one technological revolution reshapes the legacy of its predecessors, but also in its implicit methodological individualism. As I said above, it is really a sociological theory from which economic consequences follow.
Jacobs attempts something similar, if not even more dramatic. While Perez is about equally concerned with the connections between who drives economic progress, how they do it, and why, Jacobs is solely concerned with where. In this unusual interpretation, she complements Perez well. Jacob’s answer is, in cities.
Cities and the Wealth of Nations, by Jane Jacobs
Jacobs’ book can arguably be reduced to a single theorem, which is remarkable given the breadth of the implications she teases out. The theorem is that there is no such thing as a national economy. It is a linguistic construct, existing only as a useless and confusing taxonomical tool and not in any way reflecting the functioning of the real world. The proper object of consideration, the “salient entity of economic life,” as Jacobs repeatedly refers to it, is the city.
Only in cities, Jacobs argues, does any meaningful economic activity take place, in that the economic environment anywhere else will be solely influenced by the activities of cities, and never the other way around. Cities are important because they alone engage in ‘import replacing’. This is the process of gradually developing the means to produce better versions of goods or services that were previously imported. Jacobs comments that, “any settlement that becomes good at import-replacing becomes a city. And any city that repeatedly experiences, from time to time, explosive episodes of import-replacing keeps its economy up-to-date and helps keep itself capable of casting forth streams of innovative and expert work.”
What is intriguing about Jacobs’ theory, and what perhaps provides a cute link to Perez, is that she rationalizes this theory almost entirely in social terms. It could be thought of as a sociological theory of where innovation and growth happens and why it happens there. Economic innovation happens where there is a diverse set of industrial operations active in proximity, and which export some portion of their output. Such an economic entity will still import, of course, for at least two reasons: that it is more efficient to buy the raw materials required for the specialized production than to produce them, and that the exports are ultimately exchanged for high quality specialist goods from elsewhere. But the key moments are when these imports are replaced by superior goods from within this economic unit.
It would obviously be unusual if every potential improvement to a production process was only ever discovered by precisely the people already involved in that process, and not anywhere else in the world. What happens only where there is a diversity of industrial processes is that such a discovery can immediately be put into effect; there is a ready base of potential customers given that this good is already being imported, it will be spread very quickly amongst all the different industries who could also benefit from the same innovation in their industrial processes. There are two additional sources of accelerating industrial processes that are only to be found in cities: people with experience managing this kind of enterprise and with expertise potentially relevant to it, and the availability of long-term capital commitments to scale the enterprise. The latter is particularly elusive since the savings on offer will need to come from a pool that is, in aggregate, stable and growing in order to have a suitable risk profile; in other words, they need to be sourced from a diverse and thriving economy, the likes of which are only to be found in a city.
Contrast this opportunity for innovation in a city to what would or could happen in a town with one major industry. There are no potential customers outside the industry, so there is an enormous risk of the unknown in pursuing a market for the good. There are no adjacent industries to which to spread the improvement, nor to have received it from. There are no experts in anything beyond this one industry, highly dependent on exports. And there are no pools of capital capable of long-term commitments, because the risk inherent in this economic unit are huge; if there is a wobble in the grain market, let’s say, the entire economy could collapse. Meaningful innovations are very unlikely to occur here — while they may be conceived, they will not be put to practice.
Having made the innovation, if this enterprise is truly successful it will replace its prior imports, and hence acquire the trading power to import even more specialist products that it cannot (yet) produce itself. Jacobs argues that a city may as well be defined, at least in economic terms, by its ability to replace imports:
“Whenever a city replaces imports with its own production, other settlements, mostly other cities, lose sales accordingly. However, these other settlements — either the same ones which have lost export sales or different ones — gain an equivalent value of new export work. This is because an import-replacing city does not, upon replacing former imports, import less than it otherwise would, but shifts to other purchases in lieu of what it no longer needs from outside. Economic life as a whole has expanded to the extent that the import-replacing city has everything it formerly had, plus its complement of new and different imports. Indeed, as far as I can see, city import-replacing is in this way at the root of all economic expansion. “
After dutifully, but a little drudgingly, taxonomising the variety of regional economies that exist in addition to cities and how they all interact with one another, Jacobs comes upon the concept of feedback mechanisms that mediate these interactions. One extremely important such mechanism is the valuation of the currency used to facilitate imports and exports. The problem, as throughout, is that currencies today tend to cover economic activity throughout a nation, and nations are not salient economic entities. Jacobs impudently announces that, “today we take it for granted that the elimination of multitudinous currencies in favour of fewer national or imperial currencies represents economic progress and promotes the stability of economic life. But this conventional belief is at least worth questioning. In view of the function that currencies serve as economic feedback controls. I am going to argue that national or imperial currencies give faulty and destructive feedback to city economies and that this in turn leads to profound structural economic flaws, some of which cannot be overcome no matter how hard we try.”
If a nation runs a deficit in its balance of payments, importing more than it exports, we might think of this as reflecting a larger supply of this currency in the market — it is being offered up for exchange for foreign currencies so import purchases can be made — than there is demand for it — foreigners wanting this currency to purchase the exports. This shift in supply and demand ought to make it cheaper relative to foreign currencies. This is all well understood.
However, Jacobs makes two important points that are less well understood. While the common mainstream response to such movements is to diagnose precisely which interventions are required to counterbalance the changes and achieve ‘stability’. But we know better by now than to countenance the mainstream, moreover to view ‘stability’ as at all desirable beyond in an irrelevant aesthetic sense. We want volatility and dynamism! Jacobs argues that this change in price is a valuable feedback mechanism on the state of economic activity; the depreciated currency makes imports dearer, helping local manufacturers compete, and also makes their products cheaper for foreign buyers to export; the change in value acts simultaneously as both a tariff and an export subsidy. Moreover, it will do so for exactly as long as is needed, as is dictated by the response in economic activity to the circumstances — not by a bureaucrat or a committee.
The second problem is that nations are not salient economic entities. Unlike freakish exceptions such as Singapore, which Jacobs gives high praise and seems to have proven right in backing some thirty-five years later, most nations are a mixture of numerous salient economic entities, many or none of which may be dynamic import-replacing cities. The feedback each requires to coordinate economic activity will be dramatically different. Any institutions that obscure or distort the feedback will retard economic development, since they will broadcast incessant noise over the crucial signal, and economic energy will be misused, or not used at all where it should be. Jacobs criticizes national currencies on this account in a wonderfully vivid passage that is worth quoting in full;
“National currencies, then, are potent feedback but impotent at triggering appropriate corrections. To picture how such a thing can be, imagine a group of people who are all properly equipped with diaphragms and lungs but who share only one single brain-stem breathing centre. In this goofy arrangement, the breathing centre would receive consolidated feedback on the carbon dioxide level of the whole group without discriminating among the individuals producing it. Everybody’s diaphragm would thus be triggered to contract at the same time. But suppose some of those people were sleeping, while others were playing tennis. Suppose some were reading about feedback controls, while others were chopping wood. Some would have to halt what they were doing and subside into a lower common denominator of activity. Worse yet, suppose some were swimming and diving, and for some reason, such as the breaking of the surf, had not control over the timing of their submersions. Imagine what would happen to them. In such an arrangement, feedback control would be working perfectly on its own terms but the result would be devastating because of a flaw designed right into the system.
I have had to propose a preposterous situation because systems as structurally flawed as this don’t exist in nature; they wouldn’t last. Nor do they exist in the machines we deliberately design to incorporate mechanical, chemical or electronic feedback controls; machines this badly conceived wouldn’t work. Nations, from this point of view, don’t work either.
Nations are flawed in this way because they are not discrete economic units, although intellectually we pretend that they are and compile statistics about them based on that goofy premise. Nations include, among other things in their economic grab bags, differing city economies that need different corrections at given times, and yet all share a currency that gives all of them the same information at a given time. The consolidated information is bad specific information for them even with respect to their foreign trade, and it is no information at all with respect to their trade with one another, as opposed to their international trade. Yet this wretched feedback is powerful stuff.
Because currency feedback, at bottom, all has to do with imports and exports and the balance or lack of balance between them, the appropriate responding mechanisms for such information are cities and their regions. Cities are the specific economic units that can replace imports with their own production, and the specific units that cast up streams of new kinds of exports. It is bootless to suppose that amorphous, undifferentiated statistical collections of a nation’s economies perform those functions, because they don’t.”
Jacobs acknowledges the historical reasons for this economically unfortunate development — little more than the vast expansion of centralised government in the late nineteenth century and the adoption of state monetarism as a tool of social control — but casts her eye wider than the immediate moment. She points firstly to city currencies (currencies of salient economic entities) being the norm in the early economic development of Europe at the end of the middle ages, beginning in Venice. Not only did Venice have a city currency, but it welcomed the simultaneous circulation of Byzantine coinage due to the bedrock of trade with the Eastern Empire, whose imports Venice slowly but surely began to replace. The Hanseatic League, a federation of German and Baltic cities that drove the economic development of northern Europe, following in Venice’s wake, had no league currency but allowed cities to mint their own, subject to valuable feedback from volatile intercity trade.
But Jacobs also holds out hope for the future. With incredible prescience — this being 1984 — she comments on the possibility of a future multiplication of currencies that,
“the technical difficulties and inconveniences that would entail are surmountable, increasingly so with the aid of computers, instantaneous communications systems and such devices as credit cards which — even in their current rudimentary and limited uses — are already convenient for simultaneous transactions involving diverse currencies. On my card I can order, say, books from London payable in pounds, shirts from the Boston city region payable in U.S dollars, and garden seeds payable in my own currency, Canadian dollars, all the transactions being equally convenient as far as I am concerned.”
It will not surprise the reader that this insight will be returned to below.
Since Jacobs can’t resist the occasional dig at mainstream economics, I don’t feel so bad about having this same instinct. Lest the reader think I had discarded this guilty pleasure in the introduction, I will conclude the discussion of Jacobs with the final paragraph from the first chapter, itself hardly more than 20 pages of mocking the then-state-of-the-art:
“One thing we do know by now because events have rubbed our faces in it: it would be rash to suppose that macro-economics, as it stands today, has guidance for us. Several centuries of hard, ingenious thought about supply and demand chasing each other around, tails in their mouths, have told us almost nothing about the rise and decline of wealth. We must find more realistic and fruitful lines of observation and thought than we have tried to use so far. Choosing among the existing schools of thought is bootless. We are on our own.”
I couldn’t agree more, Jane. Whatever might Hernando think?
The Mystery of Capital, by Hernando de Soto
Why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else, the subtitle of this book, is an excellent description of its thesis. Capitalism often fails outside the West, proposes de Soto, because the framework of broadly unregulated marketplaces is necessary for economic development, but not sufficient. Also necessary, and in a sense anthropologically prior, is a well-documented and well understood institution of private property. Many countries outside the West that attempted nominally economic capitalistic reforms failed to realize anything like the expected gains in productivity because although their citizens could in theory access free markets, they were strongly incentivized to conduct their economic activity outside the law. This was because, in one form or another, it was needlessly difficult to ascertain legal ownership of assets and easier to abide by extralegal social conventions regarding asset ownership.
The book is impressive not for the complexity of its reasoning but for the lengths gone to in order to demonstrate to a desirable degree that the reasoning is on the right track. De Soto and his team of researchers gathered copious data from Cairo, Lima, Manila, Port-au-Prince, and Mexico City to try to assess both the difficulties of formal asset ownership, and the potential value of the assets pushed outside formal systems by these difficulties.
They found that in Peru, it takes 5 separate procedures to legally acquire a home, and that the first of these procedures involves 207 steps and 21 government agencies. De Soto’s team spent six hours a day on this task and completed it 289 days later. In Egypt, somebody wanting to legally register a lot on state-owned desert land would have to go through 77 steps across 31 agencies, in a process that could take between 5 and 14 years. Similar stories abound outside the West, with the obvious result that virtually none of the poor bother to opt into the legal framework for asset ownership, preferring to abide by local customs instead. De Soto elaborates that,
“… in every country we investigated, we found that it is very nearly as difficult to stay legal as it is to become legal. Inevitably, migrants do not so much break the law as the law breaks them. In 1976, two-thirds of those who worked in Venezuela were employed in legally established enterprises; today the proportion is less than half. Thirty years ago, more than two-thirds of the new housing erected in Brazil was intended for rent. Today, only about 3 percent of new construction is officially listed as rental housing. To where did that market vanish? To the extralegal areas of Brazilian cities called favelas, which operating outside the highly regulated formal economy and function according to supply and demand. There are no rent controls in the favelas; rents are paid in US dollars, and renters who do not pay are rapidly evacuated.”
The stifling conditions in the formal economy push more and more entrepreneurial energy into the extralegal sector. De Soto’s team estimated how much value was trapped in these ‘shadow economies’. Confining the search solely to real estate, they found that in Manila, for example, the extralegal sector held $133bn of value, or four times the market value of all publicly listed companies in the Philippines, and fourteen times the foreign direct investment in the preceding 25 years. In Port-au-Prince, the informal sector held 97% of all property, valued at $5bn, or over 158x all foreign direct investment in Haiti, ever.
While these figures are staggering, we might wonder why these circumstances are even so bad, if there appears, after all, to be a thriving free market outside the meddling reach of the state. To rebut this fallacy, De Soto teases at an important economic principle throughout the book. Contrary to a variety of naïve popular conceptions, the driving force of free markets is not markets, nor money, nor even assets, but capital. By which we must mean something less material than any of the former; a kind of economic potential energy stored in the transformation of materials into higher and higher forms of complex good, but always ready to be rereleased to work again the same process of transformation. Seen this way, capital is not any particular thing or even behaviour — it can exist only as an emergent property of a social system in which the exchange of shares of ownership of private assets is seamless. Clearly ‘private assets’ is a complex social construction, and even more complex still is ‘shares’ of assets, and so we quickly realize that clear representational systems matter as much to productivity under capitalism as does ‘freedom’, if not more so. Where de Soto studies, the poor lack neither assets nor free markets, but representational systems to realize the capital in these assets in markets. This is why these staggering figures represent such a tragedy: this value cannot be put back to productive work. All this capital is dead.
I will mention two further points before moving on. The first is a call to humility on the part of ‘the West’ that de Soto takes great care to make and that it would be unfair to leave out here. Though he extols ‘the West’ frequently, de Soto is careful to emphasize that this is first of all based on the economic state of affairs at the time of writing, which of course has been vastly different in the past and may well be in the future. But more importantly that his own partial theory as to why this is the case isolates the representational tools that gave rise to such circumstances as of the utmost importance and of no essential connection to those who discovered them:
“Throughout history people have confused the efficiency of the representational tools they have inherited to create surplus value with the inherent values of their culture. They forget that often what gives an edge to a particular group of people is the innovative use they make of a representational system developed by another culture. For example, Northerners had to copy the legal institutions of ancient Rome to organise themselves and learn the Greek alphabet and the Arabic number symbols and systems to convey information and calculate. And so, today, few are aware of the tremendous edge that formal property systems have given Western societies. As a result, many Westerners have been led to believe that what underpins their successful capitalism is the work ethic they have inherited or the existential anguish created by their religions — in spite of the fact that people all over the world all work hard when they can … Therefore, a great part of the research agenda needed to explain why capitalism fails outside the West remained mired in a mass of unexamined and largely untestable assumptions labelled ‘culture,’ whose main effect is to allow too many of those who live in the privileged enclaves of this world to enjoy feeling superior.”
Secondly, lest the reader think I had let up poking fun at mainstream economics, I will conclude this section with the same quote de Soto uses to begin The Mystery of Capital, from an address by the great (and heterodox) Ronald Coase:
“Economics, over the years, has become more and more abstract and divorced from events in the real world. Economists, by and large, do not study the workings of the actual economic system. They theorize about it. As Ely Devons, an English economist, once said at a meeting, “If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’” And they would soon discover that they would maximize their utilities.”
The Threads of Heterodox Economics
Given three works, all on the same broadly defined topic, and all wonderfully original, it is surely possible to draw many more connections than I intend to here. This will be a short section, and I do not so much intend to draw parallels in economic theory as in methodology and intellectual outlook. The allure of public blockchains is that to a large extent they demand their own economic theory, which we can only hope to craft from first principles by teasing out the best of these three authors’ first principles approaches.
Firstly, none of the three ever discuss static equilibria. They are not interested in describing precisely how things are at a given moment, but rather how things change. They are interested solely in causation. They understand that economic phenomena are causal processes driven by the behaviour of individual people. People are not static. They have motivations and goals. They act. They are alive. There is no static human who can be mathematically described without reference to time.
Largely for this reason there is not a single equation across the three books. The argumentation is verbal. The reasons given for why things happen are the reasons the people doing those things acted in the way they did. Perez describes the interactions of people at the verge of financial and production capital. Jacobs describes the interactions of people with their physical environment. De Soto describes the interaction of people with agents of the law. People are messy. They can be described, but not with equations.
This basis of understanding lends itself naturally to a proper, we might say Hayekian, appreciation of what markets really are: engines of coordination of dispersed knowledge and desires. There are no static equilibria because competition is a process, not a state. We can try to grasp how markets work in the abstract, but if we lose our intellectual humility and suppose we can understand a given market entirely and in its particulars, then we must not understand markets in the first place. That twentieth century economics largely became self-indulgently enamoured with the opposite view — that every snapshot of time can be plotted on a graph and all economic data gathered and understood in its totality — explains the disdain across all three for the mainstream. Since the mainstream largely disdains public blockchains (to the extent it understands them at all) we are in a good place to continue.
Blockchains and the Tying of the Threads
There is a straightforward appeal to Perez in the context of blockchains in explaining the bubble of 2017 and the worthwhile work done since. I won’t rehash it here as I think it is pretty obvious and have nothing to add. One thought I have had, however, is that it is possible that this technology will provide an exception to Perez’s theory in some respects, but not all, insofar as it being baked into the technology itself that anybody can become financially involved without much intermediation — certainly a tiny amount relative to traditional securities. I think this goes a long way to explain the magnitude of 2017, which in some respects truly was a bubble like no other. What I wonder, though, and don’t have a good answer to, is whether this breaks the sociological thesis that relies on financial capital being institutionalized to some or other extent. This space may come to have heavy institutional involvement one day, but only by coincidence, not design, as for all other investable securities. But I really don’t know, so I’ll leave that one for now.
What I think is actually the most interesting thing to observe now is the extent to which this potentially problematic area is being addressed. You may or may not believe in the likelihood of eventual institutional involvement. But a necessary precondition, which is as a matter of fact being worked on by many brilliant people who clearly do think it is likely, is both operational infrastructure to enable it within that environment. We also clearly need a regulatory environment that treats it as clearly as it does other asset classes, given that clearly defines the opportunity cost of financial capital that may be allocated here.
What is encouraging, however, is that we have certainly had one frenzy, irruption, and crash in 2017, and it seems to have played out much as Perez would have predicted. Financial capital (with a mildly altered definition) ran amok, production was helpless to prevent it, paper gains enticed dumber and dumber money, so dumb that even outright scams became worthwhile endeavours, etc. etc., and then it all collapsed. We are now in a phase in which financial capital has been chastened and tamed, timeframes have been reset for the long term, and real wealth creation can be driven by people who know what they are doing. I certainly hope we don’t have to go through this again, but it strikes me as fantastic evidence in favour of Perez’s overall approach. This is the first technological revolution since her work, and her theory works (nearly) perfectly as an explanatory tool.
Jacobs, we recall, is primarily interested in where economic activity takes place, and what regions it is sensible to describe as salient economic entities. ‘Nations’, she argues, are rarely good examples, but cities almost always are. Not to criticize Jacobs at all, as it would be pointlessly anachronistic, but I think that the existence and proliferation of essentially digital goods throws this model into question, and that resolving this novel tension leads naturally to the best way to think about blockchains. For example, does the economic activity that happens through Google all ‘happen’ in Mountain View, California? In a pedantic sense, yes, but in a far more obvious sense, no. Google’s services are digital and very barely able to be defined in a traditional physical sense. Unlike even Amazon, which is a marvel of digital engineering but whose end product is clearly Alice in place A selling a widget to Bob in place B, it’s not entirely clear how to make such definitions for Google (which is the legal basis for its tax-scams-in-all-but-actuality).
Blockchains take this to its extreme because there isn’t even a corporation involved. In some respects, it makes a lot of sense to think of blockchains as actually being corporations; clearly not legally, but in that they are associations of individuals contributing to a common enterprise that itself is clearly acting as a discrete unit and according to a charter. This is an area of thought that is still very much developing and I don’t want to send the reader too far down the rabbit hole against her will, but it seems to make sense to a lot of people to treat blockchains as, additionally, closed economies for a single digital service with digitally native currencies, and with on-ramps to other digital assets and, at the edge of the system, to fiat currency. Where further to go with this observation is a matter of intense debate that need not concern us here, but it is however clear that they are in no way physical. It’s a bit like asking, where is BitTorrent? The only sensible answer is, on the Internet, which may or may not register with what was expected by the questioner.
Regardless of any further philosophical interpretations, it is clear that this exclusively online activity constitutes economic productivity that it makes no sense to ascribe to the US or France or Bolivia or wherever. The only sense in which it makes sense to do so for Google is that the operational backend of Google is highly centralized and has a corporation built around it in order to be allowed to be profitable and protected by law. It is a little torturous, but it is not completely nonsensical to consider Google’s economic activities as having a geographic footprint. But public blockchains ought to have no reverse engineering to tie them to a physical location — whether this is true in fact is a matter of degree and debate. But in their purest form, it arguably only makes sense to consider them as Jacobs’ salient economic entities.
This leads to probably Jacobs’ most interesting argument — that of the feedback metaphor. I don’t want to speculate on precise technical visions, lest we fall into yet more rabbit holes, but suffice it to say that it is clearly desirable that as many blockchains as possible will be capable of interoperability. We needn’t even think too hard about what this might mean beyond an analogue of using Facebook to log into Spotify and using Spotify to post on Facebook. Those two networks are ‘interoperable’ under a suitably light interpretation. So, hopefully, will be blockchains, under an interpretation that is actually more rigorous. What is potentially fascinating, however, is that this interoperability will not be on the basis of corporate agreements, but rather of automated exchange of their native currencies. Given this will be inherently digital it will ideally be fairly seamless also. Therefore, we might think, we will get exactly the kind of dynamic feedback system for these salient economies that Jacobs craved in real life, and bemoaned the structural imposition of national currencies for non-salient economic entities as preventing. Economists might even be able to observe, for the first time in hundreds of years, a genuinely free market for money spontaneously emerging, unbounded by sovereign constraints.
Finally, to de Soto. The obvious instantiation of his work in this realm is in tokenizing at the very least real estate, but ideally as much ‘property’ as possible. It doesn’t take much to realise how representational systems would be vastly improved under such a system, from which the rest of de Soto’s argument follows. This would ‘enliven’ multitudes of ‘dead capital’, and bring about enormous trade and wealth on the back of what is really little more than altering incentives. This is well researched and argued elsewhere and I have little to add but approval.
However, I think there is a more interesting line of de Soto’s thought to follow in this context. De Soto’s core thesis is sociological rather than economic; contrary to popular conception, law is an exercise in engineering, not in morality. If it is engineered poorly — immorally or otherwise — people will simply ignore it. But the law is also potentially enabling, and so effective engineering ought to be the goal, since the opportunity cost is potentially enormous. People can ‘ignore’ stupid or unjust laws regarding capital accumulation by creating shadow economies, but not by creating real economies. There is an implicit loss even in the use of the word ‘shadow’. It is less real.
The same will be true with the economic potential of blockchain. It exists. It works. It isn’t going away. And so, lawmakers have a choice. They can engineer legal frameworks that enable productivity, capital accumulation, wealth and wellbeing using this incredible technology. Or they can be stupid and unjust and create shadow economies at enormous opportunity cost.
I have never had the pleasure of any of their company or correspondence, but here is what I imagine each of my heterodox heroes would say:
Jacobs would advise to take these seriously as salient economic entities and allow their development as highly dynamic systems of information feedback. Do not force them into any previous paradigms because it almost certainly won’t work. Perez would encourage governmental leadership to facilitate a move past the crash, no less to prevent another. Let financial capital be involved but not in control. Perez, in other words, would make the case for effective integration of the technology into the mainstream. De Soto would warn of what would happen if we fail to: shadow economies will develop at enormous opportunity cost to the wellbeing of all mankind. If they would have said this, then I would agree.
But most importantly, all would be skeptical of mainstream economists. Unfortunate as it is, this is invariably a good idea. After all, so was Satoshi, one of the most heterodox economists of all time.
follow me on Twitter @allenf32 | https://allenfarrington.medium.com/heterodox-economics-and-the-rise-of-blockchain-592616eb48db | [] | 2020-04-15 22:21:08.375000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Blockchain', 'Internet', 'Technology', 'Capitalism'] |
1,375 | by My Feet Are Killing Me {S2E12] Episode 12 (TLC's) | ⭐A Target Package is short for Target Package of Information. It is a more specialized case of Intel Package of Information or Intel Package.
✌ THE STORY ✌
Its and Jeremy Camp (K.J. Apa) is a and aspiring musician who like only to honor his God through the energy of music. Leaving his Indiana home for the warmer climate of California and a college or university education, Jeremy soon comes Bookmark this site across one Melissa Heing
(Britt Robertson), a fellow university student that he takes notices in the audience at an area concert. Bookmark this site Falling for cupid’s arrow immediately, he introduces himself to her and quickly discovers that she is drawn to him too. However, Melissa holds back from forming a budding relationship as she fears it`ll create an awkward situation between Jeremy and their mutual friend, Jean-Luc (Nathan Parson), a fellow musician and who also has feeling for Melissa. Still, Jeremy is relentless in his quest for her until they eventually end up in a loving dating relationship. However, their youthful courtship Bookmark this sitewith the other person comes to a halt when life-threating news of Melissa having cancer takes center stage. The diagnosis does nothing to deter Jeremey’s love on her behalf and the couple eventually marries shortly thereafter. Howsoever, they soon find themselves walking an excellent line between a life together and suffering by her Bookmark this siteillness; with Jeremy questioning his faith in music, himself, and with God himself.
✌ STREAMING MEDIA ✌
Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream refers to the procedure of delivering or obtaining media this way.[clarification needed] Streaming identifies the delivery approach to the medium, rather than the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies especially to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio tracks CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the web. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks sufficient bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of this content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, an activity in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user may use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The term “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as for example live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”.
This brings me around to discussing us, a film release of the Christian religio us faith-based . As almost customary, Hollywood usually generates two (maybe three) films of this variety movies within their yearly theatrical release lineup, with the releases usually being around spring us and / or fall respectfully. I didn’t hear much when this movie was initially aounced (probably got buried underneath all of the popular movies news on the newsfeed). My first actual glimpse of the movie was when the film’s movie trailer premiered, which looked somewhat interesting if you ask me. Yes, it looked the movie was goa be the typical “faith-based” vibe, but it was going to be directed by the Erwin Brothers, who directed I COULD Only Imagine (a film that I did so like). Plus, the trailer for I Still Believe premiered for quite some us, so I continued seeing it most of us when I visited my local cinema. You can sort of say that it was a bit “engrained in my brain”. Thus, I was a lttle bit keen on seeing it. Fortunately, I was able to see it before the COVID-9 outbreak closed the movie theaters down (saw it during its opening night), but, because of work scheduling, I haven’t had the us to do my review for it…. as yet. And what did I think of it? Well, it was pretty “meh”. While its heart is certainly in the proper place and quite sincere, us is a little too preachy and unbalanced within its narrative execution and character developments. The religious message is plainly there, but takes way too many detours and not focusing on certain aspects that weigh the feature’s presentation.
✌ TELEVISION SHOW AND HISTORY ✌
A tv set show (often simply Television show) is any content prBookmark this siteoduced for broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, cable, or internet and typically viewed on a television set set, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are usually placed between shows. Tv shows are most often scheduled well ahead of The War with Grandpa and appearance on electronic guides or other TV listings.
A television show may also be called a tv set program (British EnBookmark this siteglish: programme), especially if it lacks a narrative structure. A tv set Movies is The War with Grandpaually released in episodes that follow a narrative, and so are The War with Grandpaually split into seasons (The War with Grandpa and Canada) or Movies (UK) — yearly or semiaual sets of new episodes. A show with a restricted number of episodes could be called a miniMBookmark this siteovies, serial, or limited Movies. A one-The War with Grandpa show may be called a “special”. A television film (“made-for-TV movie” or “televisioBookmark this siten movie”) is a film that is initially broadcast on television set rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video.
Television shows may very well be Bookmark this sitehey are broadcast in real The War with Grandpa (live), be recorded on home video or an electronic video recorder for later viewing, or be looked at on demand via a set-top box or streameBookmark this sited on the internet.
The first television set shows were experimental, sporadic broadcasts viewable only within an extremely short range from the broadcast tower starting in the. Televised events such as the 2021 Summer OlyBookmark this sitempics in Germany, the 2021 coronation of King George VI in the UK, and David Sarnoff’s famoThe War with Grandpa introduction at the 9 New York World’s Fair in the The War with Grandpa spurreBookmark this sited a rise in the medium, but World War II put a halt to development until after the war. The 2021 World Movies inspired many Americans to buy their first tv set and in 2021, the favorite radio show Texaco Star Theater made the move and became the first weekly televised variety show, earning host Milton Berle the name “Mr Television” and demonstrating that the medium was a well balanced, modern form of entertainment which could attract advertisers. The firsBookmBookmark this siteark this sitet national live tv broadcast in the The War with Grandpa took place on September 2, 2021 when President Harry Truman’s speech at the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference in SAN FRAMy Feet Are Killing Me CO BAY AREA was transmitted over AT&T’s transcontinental cable and microwave radio relay system to broadcast stations in local markets.
✌ FINAL THOUGHTS ✌
The power of faith, love, and affinity for take center stage in Jeremy Camp’s life story in the movie I Still Believe. Directors Andrew and Jon Erwin (the Erwin Brothers) examine the life span and The War with Grandpas of Jeremy Camp’s life story; pin-pointing his early life along with his relationship Melissa Heing because they battle hardships and their enduring love for one another through difficult. While the movie’s intent and thematic message of a person’s faith through troublen is indeed palpable plus the likeable mThe War with Grandpaical performances, the film certainly strules to look for a cinematic footing in its execution, including a sluish pace, fragmented pieces, predicable plot beats, too preachy / cheesy dialogue moments, over utilized religion overtones, and mismanagement of many of its secondary /supporting characters. If you ask me, this movie was somewhere between okay and “meh”. It had been definitely a Christian faith-based movie endeavor Bookmark this web site (from begin to finish) and definitely had its moments, nonetheless it failed to resonate with me; struling to locate a proper balance in its undertaking. Personally, regardless of the story, it could’ve been better. My recommendation for this movie is an “iffy choice” at best as some should (nothing wrong with that), while others will not and dismiss it altogether. Whatever your stance on religion faith-based flicks, stands as more of a cautionary tale of sorts; demonstrating how a poignant and heartfelt story of real-life drama could be problematic when translating it to a cinematic endeavor. For me personally, I believe in Jeremy Camp’s story / message, but not so much the feature.
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✔️ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com | https://medium.com/@myfeetarekillingme-s2-e12/my-feet-are-killing-me-series-2-episode-12-full-episode-67e11f902710 | ['My Feet Are Killing Me', 'Episode', "Tlc'S"] | 2021-08-05 01:56:37.889000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Technology', 'Politics'] |
1,376 | The massive change in supply chain management influenced by blockchain. | The global economy and businesses are expanding with the help of a supply chain management system that plays a crucial role in handling all the products’ manufacturing until the final delivery to the customer. In this crucial segment, having an eye on every sector of the supply chain is possible when the business is small or a startup one, but it is quite another thing to look over when it comes to an expanded business.
Everyone wants the exact and quality product within time, but sometimes they fail to ensure the right result due to counterfeiting. In 2020 to develop any business or run a supply chain, blockchain is becoming the preferred solution to eliminating unnecessary hassles.
Many different parts that make a supply chain complete are as follows;
* Planning — It is one of the basic segments that include product manufacturing strategy and how they will be delivered. It also consists of the place of fabrication of the given products (domestic or international), then the procedure of making them. The amount of ordered product is vital because the business and process will follow a path.
* Sourcing- It is about the gathering of raw materials for the sake of product manufacture. From where the raw materials can be imported at an affordable price, how they will bring it to the factory, consulting with the logistic group and other suppliers are also fall under this stage.
* Plant location- Another vital part of choosing the right site for the factory. For example, if any the factory is producing oil, it better to plant a factory near the farm to avoid unnecessary transport costing if possible.
* Manufacturing — The prime sector where the products are being made and packaged following specific protocols and guidelines. After completing, testing those products to check the quality and storing the data take place.
* Delivery- The time has come to deliver the products to the right customers within the given time and amount. The logistic groups are prepped up to ensure the proper delivery of the goods.
* Return- If any dilemma takes place, the quality or the amount of the product is lacking, or any other reason from the customer, can make the products return through the suppliers.
Even with proper planning, industries are facing various challenges in their supply chain management systems.
To know how your business can solve these issues, please contact Blockchain Software, the best blockchain consulting service providers in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Darwin, Adelaide, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth. | https://medium.com/@blockchainsoftware/a-massive-change-in-supply-chain-management-influenced-by-blockchain-d2031d0adf96 | ['Blockchain Software'] | 2020-12-23 13:00:37.373000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Supply Chain', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Blockchain Development', 'Supply Chain Management'] |
1,377 | Cognitive Dissonance: Am I Waking Up To A War On Freedom? | So far, it’s as if we have neglected the patterns of history which are the keys to understanding the current and future events that take place, as our history continues to repeat. The distortion of world history has indeed made us vulnerable to various forms of psychological warfare. Do we just blindly leave our future in the hands of transhumanists and technocrats?
And yet, how exactly does this interplay between wealth production and a new world order created by Globalists relate to the Quant Network and the current Digital Revolution that humanity is in the midst of experiencing? Is there any way that we, as a common people, can take advantage of our understanding of the past as we move into the future?
I will repeat with how I began just to bridge the gap:
“Throughout time and space, at least within humanity’s recorded history, those who hold the most wealth are those who control the means of wealth production. To preserve it, those who produce wealth work with the entities in power to designate and impose specific standards and rules. If we, as individuals, take the time to research and take note of the evolution of our species, we can see that this has arguably occurred across all civilizations.”
Credit: Quant
Here are the reasons I believe The Quant Network will be a major player in the global digital economy:
1: The main institution in control of issuing global standards and rules is the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO is an independent, non-governmental international organization. In 1946, within the city of London, 65 delegates from 25 countries met to discuss the future of International Standardization. Now, it is based in Geneva, Switzerland (quite close to the WEF…) and stands as a network that decides the general rules that all of our countries abide by. Quant’s Founder and CEO, Gilbert Verdian, is the author behind the Blockchain ISO Standard TC307. ISO TC307 is the global blockchain standardization initiative. Gilbert Verdian, according to his Crunchbase profile, “…is building the Internet of Trust by converging Blockchain and Cybersecurity as the Founder and CEO of Quant Network, tasked with connecting the world’s networks to blockchains. Having over 20 years of industry experience and C-level accountability, he has worked across Government in Downing St, HM Treasury, Cabinet Office, Ministry of Justice and NSW Health and private sector at CSC, EY, and HSBC… (he) is the Chair of the UK’s national committee on Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT/1). He also sits on committees in the Federal Reserve, the EU’s Blockchain Observatory, PayUK’s Cybersecurity board, and UK Government’s DLT committees.”
By not only being connected with the Federal Reserve (those who produce money) with ISO TC307 (those who hold the power to create the rules), I’d say that Gilbert Verdian and his QNT play a large role in what is to come.
2: The Quant Network, and its cryptocurrency, QNT, is considered to be a healthy investment based on both supply and risk (this is not financial advice). This attracts all types of investors. The healthier the digital investment, the higher the chance it has at becoming a mainstay among the digital industry. Now, there are only 14,612,493 whole QNT tokens. We can break it down vs. fully diluted supplies of Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, and Chainlink (LINK). This means QNT holds 70% supply vs BTC, 13% of ETH’s current supply, 0.014% of XRP, and 1.4% of LINK. At this time, all QNT has been minted, no inflation will arise, and Quant Network holds about 10% of the supply. According to another post on Medium about Quant, based on a Utility Valuation Model, “…QNT token will be around $13,000 per token and Overledger will be facilitating around 20 Trillion transactions annually by 2030–2031 with the market cap of around $190B. This implies QNT is massively under-valued at the moment as the current discounted expected utility value should be around $77.” The current price stands around $13.00 during the time of this writing. As an investment, this sounds extremely healthy, and when accompanied by the other information available about the digital market and future of our economy, QNT is economically and politically positioned to become a powerhouse. This is a project that has managed to gain mass adoption from the worlds largest institutions and will be, in my opinion, one of the most valuable and least risky cryptocurrencies to hold for the next decade along with XRP and a few other coins. It’s all about utility. If the Quant Network is the quantum (Quant…um) network that is capable of providing the interoperability to all distributed ledger technologies, and at some point possibly capable of disrupting all encryption, I’m considering the price possibilities compared to the popular BTC (especially if the SHA-256 hash function loses its relevance). If, in fact, data is more important than oil, I can imagine that QNT, a network of seemingly endless quantum capabilities, will be utilized at some point, possibly as “The One To Rule Them All.” This means that, in the future, owning even a few QNT may be highly advantageous.
3: The utility of QNT, in the grand scheme of the new global order, stands above the rest. At some point within 2021, QNT will be releasing their Overledger Network (OVN). According to Quant’s blog, “The Overledger Network is made up of many gateways. Each gateway connects and allows access to a resource such as a distributed ledger, data or API. Developers can then use the Overledger Network to consume functionality from any gateway connected resource. For every resource used, there will be an associated price. The community treasury allows developers to pay gateway owners QNT to use their resources. As QNT is on the Ethereum blockchain, the community treasury uses uni-directional payment channels to vastly increase transaction throughput as well as minimizing transaction fee cost. Therefore each developer has a uni-directional payment channel open to the community treasury, the community treasury has a uni-directional payment channel open to each gateway and the community treasury is responsible for routing payments between the developer and gateway channels.” With Quant’s Overledger, they have the ability to harness the power of multiple ledgers. Quant’s Overledger is the only platform that facilitates the development of decentralized, multi-chain applications (mApps). Not only does it utilize its functions of interoperability for connecting existing blockchains to one another (interconnecting possibilities with just 3 lines of code), it also connects to existing networks, itself. With their Trust Tag, Quant will allow the protection of sensitive and valuable content while providing a visibility of data that draws no comparisons. It is directly connected to the “Enterprise 5” such as, Corda, Hyperledger, Ethereum, JPM Quorum, and Ripple. It is also connected to public permissionless blockchains such as NEO, IOTA, Stellar and Bitcoin. People all over the world will have the ability to build game changing applications with no additional infrastructure, using Quant’s existing resources, and will have the choice of interoperability in as little as 8 minutes.
Credit: Unknown
4: Quant’s partnerships, identified on their website, shows how far the company’s reach has spread throughout the globe. They are partnered with ORACLE, PayUK, The LINUX Foundation, AccordProject, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Global Legal Blockchain Consortium, UKCloud, Hyperledger (partners with Ripple, The Ethereum Foundation, IOHK), NVIDIA, amongst so many others. These companies, when realized, are some of the largest and most powerful companies within the technological and financial industries. In addition, the fact that Quant Network is located in London plays a large role in its positioning for the New World Order Agenda. The City of London is part of the global finance regime, controlled by the Rothschild’s. It is not part of the United Kingdom (UK), similar to how Washington D.C. (where Ripple also has an additional office) and the U.S. Federal Reserve are not parts of the United States. In addition to The Vatican City, these are entities out of the grasps of being checked, and work hard to establish and maintain their power to control the human population.
5: As I have already mentioned, data has been identified as something even more important to the agenda than oil. The world is becoming increasingly digital, and the process is only speeding up. According to the World Economic Forum in one of their insight reports, “As the Fourth Industrial Revolution unfolds, led by advances in technologies such as data science and artificial intelligence, the labour market is again changing in a fundamental fashion. In 2018 the Future of Jobs Survey and Report revealed that business leaders believe that by 2022, human workers and automated processes are set to share the workload of current tasks equally, while a range of new roles is expected to emerge simultaneously as digital innovation is absorbed across industries and regions. In particular, in many large advanced and emerging markets, growth is expected in sectors that will experience the bulk of these new roles, such as information technology, renewable energy, education and the care economy, and in occupations such as data science, healthcare work and human resources. While the new labour market is changing at a rapid pace, emerging data sources are shedding light on its composition with a new depth and dynamism that has not previously existed. Online platforms and specialized insight firms are now offering new and complementary ways to understand how specific skills, tasks and occupations are changing across industries and geographies. While many of these remain limited to specific populations — and difficult to compare and contrast — when coupled with traditional and qualitative sources of data, they can help businesses, policymakers and workers have greater analytic capacity about the present and future of work and adopt better informed and coordinated business strategies and policies.”
The WEF solidifies the importance of data by continuing, “It has become commonplace to refer to data as the ‘new oil’ of the global economy. Data scientists are the talent that provide the ability to extract, refine and deploy this new source of value in the global economy. This Report focuses on data science, among the most competitive skills of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in collaboration with Burning Glass Technologies, LinkedIn and Coursera to shed light on how data science talent is being developed and deployed across today’s labour market. In the first wave of digitization, data could be seen as purely a by-product of the functioning of digital applications, operating systems and platforms. Data is now increasingly recognized as a significant asset enabling further innovation across ancillary fields such as artificial intelligence, which can drive the improvement of services through process efficiency and deliver better results for customers. The dividends of new sources of data and methods of processing are not limited to the private sector; the public sector increasingly uses data to improve government services and academia applies new methods to enhance research. Yet the rapid rise in the demand for workers with skills in data science has led to a shortfall in data science skills supply and intense competition between industry, academia and the public sector for such talent. This has created a high premium on such skills and has reduced the capacity of businesses, industries and entire economies to leverage fully the dividends of innovation.” I wont get into the details of AI, but this is something also worth noting.
Quant will have access to dominating this arena. By acting as the interoperable solution to all existing, and yet to exist, blockchains, it will have access to the flow of all data. When there is an entity that has the ability to access all data, especially when data is becoming one of the most valuable resources on the globe, I’d always consider that we investigate deeper. While the industry grows, the ability for Quant to flourish expands.
Quant has the ability to bring massive change to a truly outdated, corrupt financial and capital market infrastructure, and I truly feel that interoperability will be at the foundation of this revolution. QNT, as a leader in blockchain interoperability, truly has uncapped growth potential moving into the future. This is all about creating a Quantum Network that connects all consciousness — awareness in one. | https://medium.com/@ourus/cognitive-dissonance-am-i-waking-up-to-a-war-on-freedom-461c8226644b | [] | 2020-12-18 16:20:49.905000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Freedom', 'Evolution', 'Money', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
1,378 | 500+ Tech Images [HD] | Download Free Images on Unsplash | Download the perfect tech pictures. Find over 100+ of the best free tech images. Free for commercial use ✓ No attribution required ✓ Copyright-free.500+ Tech Images [HD] | Download Free Images on Unsplash.techlinknews,
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1,379 | The Curse of Dimensionality… minus the curse of jargon | In a nutshell, it’s all about loneliness
The curse of dimensionality! What on earth is that? Besides being a prime example of shock-and-awe names in machine learning jargon (which often sound far fancier than they are), it’s a reference to the effect that adding more features has on your dataset. In a nutshell, the curse of dimensionality is all about loneliness.
In a nutshell, the curse of dimensionality is all about loneliness.
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https://www.acvecc.org/wou/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc17.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc1.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc2.html
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http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc8.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc9.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc10.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc11.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc12.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc13.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc14.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc15.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc16.html
http://theparkpeople.org/nuv/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc17.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc1.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc2.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc3.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc4.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc5.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc6.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc7.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc8.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc9.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc10.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc11.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc12.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc13.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc14.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc15.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc16.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/ctu/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc17.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc1.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc2.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc3.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc4.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc5.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc6.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc7.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc8.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc9.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc10.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc11.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc12.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc13.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc14.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc15.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc16.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/unv/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc17.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc1.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc2.html
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http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc8.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc9.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc10.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc11.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc12.html
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http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc14.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc15.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc16.html
http://hnue.edu.vn/sku/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc17.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc1.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc2.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc3.html
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https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc8.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc9.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc10.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc11.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc12.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc13.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc14.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc15.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc16.html
https://nrna.org/pus/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc17.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc1.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc2.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc3.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc4.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc5.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc6.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc7.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc8.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc9.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc10.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc11.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc12.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc13.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc14.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-joshua-v-pulev-hqc15.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc16.html
http://zebolive.com/tdc/video-pulev-v-joshua-hqc17.html
https://www.facebook.com/UFC-256-Live-Online-Free-105733104662955
https://en-gb.facebook.com/UFC-256-Live-Online-Free-105733104662955
https://es-es.facebook.com/UFC-256-Live-Online-Free-105733104662955
https://www.facebook.com/UFC-256-Live-Stream-Free-Fight-101765608484657
https://en-gb.facebook.com/UFC-256-Live-Stream-Free-Fight-101765608484657
https://en-gb.facebook.com/Anthony-Joshua-vs-Kubrat-Pulev-Live-Online-Free-106288364687852
https://www.facebook.com/Anthony-Joshua-vs-Kubrat-Pulev-Live-Online-Free-106288364687852
https://en-gb.facebook.com/Joshua-vs-Pulev-Live-Online-Free-fight-102682588390108
https://www.facebook.com/Joshua-vs-Pulev-Live-Online-Free-fight-102682588390108
https://es-es.facebook.com/Ver-Directo-Anthony-Joshua-vs-Kubrat-Pulev-en-vivo-online-Gratis-106012747947629/
https://es-la.facebook.com/Ver-Directo-Anthony-Joshua-vs-Kubrat-Pulev-en-vivo-online-Gratis-106012747947629/
https://www.facebook.com/Ver-Directo-Anthony-Joshua-vs-Kubrat-Pulev-en-vivo-online-Gratis-106012747947629/
https://es-es.facebook.com/Ver-la-Transmision-Joshua-vs-Pulev-En-Vivo-Online-Gratis-por-internet-106182041364834
https://es-la.facebook.com/Ver-la-Transmision-Joshua-vs-Pulev-En-Vivo-Online-Gratis-por-internet-106182041364834
https://www.facebook.com/Ver-la-Transmision-Joshua-vs-Pulev-En-Vivo-Online-Gratis-por-internet-106182041364834
https://es-es.facebook.com/Ver-Directo-UFC-256-En-Vivo-Online-Gratis-por-internet-108038381073599/
https://es-la.facebook.com/Ver-Directo-UFC-256-En-Vivo-Online-Gratis-por-internet-108038381073599/
https://www.facebook.com/Ver-Directo-UFC-256-En-Vivo-Online-Gratis-por-internet-108038381073599/
http://zebolive.com/vuf/Laz-v-Ver-oggi-it-01.html
http://zebolive.com/vuf/Laz-v-Ver-oggi-it-02.html
http://zebolive.com/vuf/Laz-v-Ver-oggi-it-03.html
http://zebolive.com/vuf/Laz-v-Ver-oggi-it-04.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/Len-v-Mon-foot-tv-01.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-01.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-04.html
http://zebolive.com/vuf/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-05.html
http://zebolive.com/vuf/Jos-v-Pul-liv-dazn-01.html
http://zebolive.com/vuf/Jos-v-Pul-liv-dazn-02.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/v-ideo-Joshua-calcio-tv-01.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/joshua-v-pulev-rmc-01.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/joshua-v-pulev-rmc-04.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/joshua-v-pulev-rte-01.html
http://zebolive.com/vuf/joshua-v-pulev-rte-02.html
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http://zebolive.com/vuf/joshua-v-pulev-rte-04.html
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Laz-v-Ver-oggi-it-01.html
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Laz-v-Ver-oggi-it-04.html
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Len-v-Mon-foot-tv-01.html
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Len-v-Mon-foot-tv-05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Md-v-At-ver-rpp-05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Jos-v-Pul-liv-dazn-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Jos-v-Pul-liv-dazn-02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Jos-v-Pul-liv-dazn-03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Jos-v-Pul-liv-dazn-04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/Jos-v-Pul-liv-dazn-05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/v-ideo-Joshua-calcio-tv-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/v-ideo-Joshua-calcio-tv-02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/v-ideo-Joshua-calcio-tv-03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/v-ideo-Joshua-calcio-tv-04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/v-ideo-Joshua-calcio-tv-05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rmc-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rmc-02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rmc-03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rmc-04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rmc-05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rte-01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rte-02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rte-03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rte-04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/nuf1/joshua-v-pulev-rte-05.html
http://trob.be/vut/Video-STVV-Charleroi-v-en-gb-1.html
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http://trob.be/vut/Video-STVV-Charleroi-v-en-gb-4.html
http://trob.be/vut/Video-STVV-Charleroi-v-en-gb-5.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Mnchester-v-city01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Mnchester-v-city02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Mnchester-v-city03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Mnchester-v-city04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Mnchester-v-city05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope04.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope05.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv01.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv02.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv03.html
https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv04.html
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-01.html
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-03.html
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https://johnsoncountytaxoffice.org/vek/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-05.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/Mnchester-v-city01.html
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http://zebolive.com/vem/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope01.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope02.html
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http://zebolive.com/vem/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope05.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv01.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv02.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv03.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv04.html
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http://zebolive.com/vem/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-01.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-02.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-03.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-04.html
http://zebolive.com/vem/video-jshua-v-pulev-es-05.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Mnchester-v-city01.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Mnchester-v-city02.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Mnchester-v-city03.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Mnchester-v-city04.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Mnchester-v-city05.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope01.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope02.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope03.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope04.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Video-tv-ashahi-Unted-St-Women-Ope05.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv01.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv02.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv03.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv04.html
http://english.hnue.edu.vn/hux/Joshua-v-Pulev-Liv05.html
Before I explain myself, let’s get some basic jargon out of the way. What’s a feature? It’s the machine learning word for what other disciplines might call a predictor / (independent) variable / attribute / signal. Information about each datapoint, in other words. …
Before we dissect the nature of analytical excellence, let’s start with a quick summary of three common misconceptions about analytics from Part 1:
Analytics is statistics. (No.) Analytics is data journalism / marketing / storytelling. (No.) Analytics is decision-making. (No!)
Misconception #1: Analytics versus statistics
While the tools and equations they use are similar, analysts and statisticians are trained to do very different jobs:
Analytics helps you form hypotheses, improving the quality of your questions.
Statistics helps you test hypotheses, improving the quality of your answers.
If you’d like to learn more about these professions, check out my article
Now’s a good time to rethink our assumptions about fact and fiction
In my previous article, I explained why you shouldn’t look to statistical inference for truth. Given the prevalence of statistical techniques in scientific research, what does this mean for science?
Image from an xkcd t-shirt, which you can find here.
(For those who insist that you need credentials to have an opinion about science, this jerk of an author holds graduate degrees in neuroscience and mathematical statistics. Glad we got that out of the way.)
Scientific theory
A hypothesis is a description or explanation, but it needn’t be true. If it amuses me, I can hypothesize that no human is taller than five feet. … | https://medium.com/@ssoiubnghtu/the-curse-of-dimensionality-minus-the-curse-of-jargon-6812cf09f23c | [] | 2020-12-12 17:33:38.629000+00:00 | ['Math', 'Life', 'Technology', 'Love', 'Science'] |
1,380 | Starlink Just Launched in Canada, or How Elon Musks Plans to Take Over the World | What is Starlink, and How Did It Become a Reality?
Starlink is an Internet company to offer high-speed Internet without structural limitations, such as a house, an apartment, or another limited space. The main difference between the currently available Internet service and Starlink is the availability from any point of the planet, including rural areas, where the Internet is usually limited, unreliable, or unavailable altogether.
In simple words, all you’ll need to access the Internet would be a movable Starlink’s device, which you can take with you wherever you go. Once you point the decision in the sky, you get the Internet connection — and voila! Enjoy the World Web from your car, in the mountains, or anywhere else.
The Star reports that SpaceX, another company incepted by Elon, has already launched 960 low-altitude Starlink satellites. The ultimate goal is to have 12,000 of them in orbit. The reusable Falcon 9 rockets are utilized to create a wide network of these satellites to provide Internet access potentially to everyone on the planet.
Where Is It Available and How Can I Get It?
For now, Starlink isn’t fully available around the globe. It was launched this month, in December 2020, as an experiment, in Northern US and Canada. Carefully selected individuals in specific communities were chosen to test this service.
Is Starlink available where you are? You can check! Fill out the form on the official website indicating your email and address — and you will get notified if your area is eligible for the beta test. As time goes on, more and more people will sign up and gain access to this know-how. But for now, we’re in the beginning stage of the Starlink launch.
How Much Is It?
One thing to consider is that Starlink is not free — in fact, it comes with a somewhat steep price tag. There are no official numbers on the company’s website, but the most recent CBC article has a testimony of a gentleman, Greg Rekounas, who was selected to test this service. He paid $649 CAD ($499 USD) in fees, and the monthly service cost is $129 in Canadian dollars (around $99 in USD).
Is it expensive? Compared to many other Internet providers, it probably isn’t cheap. Having that said, some of us are willing to pay for the accessibility, Internet speed and convenience. If you consider taking time off and travelling, having a movable Internet device that catches connection anywhere might be an excellent tool to have. Keep in mind that residents of the rural towns don’t have much choice when getting connected to the outside world — Starlink might be their only choice.
But at this point, we don’t know the official price. The costs may vary depending on certain factors. We are also unaware if the price will remain the same or change in the years to come.
Why is the Starlink Initiative so Important?
Many people reap the benefits of Internet access worldwide, but we are far away from seeing the entire humanity “connected.” Only 4.66 billion people out of the 7.8 world population currently have a digital presence. This figure constitutes success because over half of our planet can freely access the World Web. However, it’s far away from ideal.
Despite the technological progress, it estimates that approximately 1 in 15 Americans still lacks access to the Web. About 25% of rural area inhabitants report the Internet speed to be a major problem in their everyday lives. Recently, Starlink secured almost a $900-million subsidy from the Federal Communications Commission to extend the Internet connection to the United States’ rural communities. It means that not only many Americans will solve the connection issues, but every resident will get a chance to make a daily appearance online.
The USA is not the only country that has a significant number of people residing in rural areas. According to the United Nations, the current rural population represents around 3.4 billion people. This number is expected to decline to 3.1 by 2050, but certain countries and continents are outliers:
“Africa and Asia are home to nearly 90% of the world’s rural population in 2018. India has the largest rural population (893 million), followed by China (578 million),” — UN.
Starlink has the potential of solving this problem once and for all. It may seem like an overly ambitious project, but the company is in the beginning stages of the service launch. The time will show if Elon Musk’s efforts are paying off. | https://medium.com/technology-hits/starlink-just-launched-in-canada-or-how-elon-musks-plans-to-take-over-the-world-421a1a8da749 | ['Joanna Henderson'] | 2020-12-15 05:47:46.064000+00:00 | ['Information Technology', 'Internet', 'Digital Transformation', 'Elon Musk', 'Starlink'] |
1,381 | Introduction to Higher-Order Functions | Common Higher-Order Functions
There are a few specific higher-order functions that are essential to understanding modern codebases. These primarily deal with iterating or summing up lists of data.
They provide a much cleaner way to deal with common list operations, saving you from having to create a lot of helper code to do basic list operations. This creates code that is more explicit in its intention.
For these examples, I will use Python-ish code throughout. Most other modern languages, such as Java and JavaScript, also have these features.
Map
The map operation allows you to apply a function to each element of a list, and then return a new list with those new values.
Without map , your code to do this would look like this:
new_list = []
old_list = [...] for e in old_list:
new_list.append(some_function(e)) return new_list
Here, our goal was to apply some_function to every element of old_list . At the end of this loop, new_list now contains this result.
With map , we can do this in a much cleaner way.
The map function takes in a function and a list, and returns a new list with that function applied to every element of the list. It is used as follows:
old_list = [...]
return map(some_function, old_list)
So, if old_list = [1, 2, 3] and some_function = lambda x: x + 1 , the returned value would be [2, 3, 4] .
Filter
The filter operation allows you to return the elements of a list that meet a condition.
Without filter, your code to accomplish this would look like this:
new_list = []
old_list = [...] for e in old_list:
if some_function(e):
new_list.append(e) return new_list
Here, we want to return the subset of elements in old_list for which some_function returns True .
With filter, we can, again, do this in a much cleaner way. Filter takes in a function and a list, and returns a new list with only the elements in that list for which the function returns True .
We use filter as follows:
old_list = [...]
return filter(some_function, old_list)
So, if old_list = [1, 2, 3] and some_function = lambda x: x == 2 , then the return value of this would be [2] .
Reduce
The reduce operation allows you to calculate a single value based on a function used to combine all of the elements of the list. For example, this could be adding all of the elements of a list to find the list’s sum.
Without reduce , your code would look like this:
accumulator = 0
old_list = [...] for e in old_list:
accumulator += e return accumulator
The accumulator variable is initialized with a value ( 0 , in this case), and holds the accumulated result of applying a function to the accumulator and each list element.
In this case, the function is lambda accumulator, e: accumulator + e .
So, for a given function f , the reduce operation is equivalent to calling f(...(f(f(initial, list[0]), list[1]),...), list[n]) .
For example, say old_list = [1, 2, 3, 4] and we use the function lambda accumulator, e: accumulator + e with an initial value of 0 .
Then, the value of our reduce operation would be ((((0 + 1) + 2) + 3) + 4) , which is exactly the same result as the snippet above.
We can use reduce as follows:
old_list = [...]
initial = 0
return reduce(lambda acc, e: acc + e, old_list, initial) | https://medium.com/better-programming/introduction-to-higher-order-functions-3ff0a05b40eb | ['Devin Soni'] | 2019-10-08 00:35:48.836000+00:00 | ['Software Engineering', 'Programming', 'Technology', 'Coding', 'Functional Programming'] |
1,382 | Everything you need to know about ViewBag and ViewData in Asp.Net Core MVC | What is ViewBag and ViewData in Asp.Net Core?
In simple terms:
ViewBag and ViewData both are properties available in Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc namespace. ViewBag returns dynamic data type while ViewData returns ViewDataDictionary type.
Why do we use ViewBag and ViewData in Asp.Net Core?
ViewBag and ViewData both are used to pass data from the controller’s action method to its corresponding view or associated layout page to the view.
ViewBag and ViewData are used to:
Pass data from the action method to related view
Pass data from the action method to the associated layout
Pass data from view to its layout file
partial view to the view
This way of passing the data is called as weakly data binding.
Let us understand these concepts in detail.
# ViewBag in Asp.Net Core:
ViewBag is a getter property available in Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc namespace. ViewBag is available in all controllers of the Asp.Net Core application. ViewBag works with dynamic it means its value is resolved at runtime.
How to assign value to ViewBag:
We generally assign value either in a controller or in the view file. In the controller, we can use ViewBag directly but on the view file, we need to use razor syntax.
To assign the data to a ViewBag we need to create a dynamic property. This dynamic property can be added as below:
ViewBag.PropertyName
Now, we have the ViewBag ready, we just need to assign its value. And the value can be assigned using the following:
ViewBag.PropertyName = Value;
In case you are assigning a value to ViewBag in view (cshtml) file, then you need to use razor syntax.
@{ ViewBag.PropertyName = Value; }
The type of value can be anything for example — number, string, collection, object, anonymous object, etc.
Click here to know more about working with an anonymous object in ViewBag.
How to get value from ViewBag:
Getting the value from ViewBag is very simple on a cshtml page. We can get ViewBag value using razor syntax.
We can use ViewBag value directly on view page or we can assign its value to some other variable.
· If we want to use ViewBag value directly on the view page —
@ViewBag.PropertyName
If we want to need to assign ViewBag value to some other variable on view page –
@{
var variableName = ViewBag.PropertyName
}
Important points to remember while working with ViewBag
We can use n numbers (multiple) of ViewBag in a single action method or view page
Value is resolved at runtime it means we won’t get any compile-time error
Since its dynamic hence we will not get any IntelliSense
If the ViewBag contains an object, then its value can be accessed using
ViewBag.PropertyName.ObjctPropertyName
If the ViewBag contains a collection of data, then the iteration can be applied directly.
Foreach loop of ViewBag
# ViewData in asp.net core
ViewData is a getter and setter property available in Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc namespace. ViewData is also available in all controllers of the Asp.Net Core application. ViewData works with ViewDataDictionary. This ViewDataDictinonary works on the key-value concept.
The key is in the form of a string and the value is in the form of an object .
How to assign value to ViewData:
We generally assign value to ViewData either in a controller or in the view file. In the controller, we can use ViewData directly but on the view file, we need to use razor syntax.
Since ViewDataDictionary works on the Key and Value concept it means the key of ViewData should be a valid string.
ViewData[“PropertyName”]
Now, we have the ViewData ready, we just need to assign its value. And the value is of object type it means we can assign any type directly using the following syntax -
ViewData[“PropertyName”] = Value;
In case you are assigning a value to ViewData in view (cshtml) file, then you need to use razor syntax.
@{ ViewData[“PropertyName”] = Value; }
The type of value can be anything for example – number, string, collection, object, anonymous object, etc.
How to get value from ViewData:
Getting the value from ViewData is very simple and is possible using razor syntax.
We can use ViewDaa value directly on view page or we can assign its value to some other variable. Remember the ViewData contains value in the form of object hence it needs to be cast to the specific type before using it.
If we want to use ViewData value directly on the view page
@ViewData[“PropertyName”]
If we want to need to assign ViewData value to some other variable on the view page
@{
var variableName = ViewData[“PropertyName”]
}
Example: Suppose we are passing a list of integers to ViewData and we want to use on view file then
Assign list to ViewData:
Assign data to ViewData
And now let’s iterate its value on view file:
For each loop on ViewData on view file
Important points to remember while working with ViewData | https://medium.com/webgentle/everything-you-need-to-know-about-viewbag-and-viewdata-in-asp-net-core-mvc-f41348a7fecf | ['Nitish Kaushik'] | 2020-05-15 17:52:40.562000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Development', 'Programming', 'Aspnetcore', 'Tutorial'] |
1,383 | Hydax, Exchange of Modern Gaming Assets | Games are now a game that can not be separated from daily activities as a part of the millennial, which games have grown into a habit for gamer today. Where at this time, many games that can only harm the gamer, which is because gamer are required to spend some money to buy the game equipment so that it can be fully operational. In addition, gamer will also spend a lot of time just to finish the game without producing any profitability.
So that this will make a part of millennial only wasting their time in vain, even though time is the most valuable asset owned by humans. But unfortunately many do not realize that these games have made them not maximize their time as effectively as possible. But now, with the sophistication of technology has made the technology activists to create the latest innovations about these games, which games are not played to waste time, but can also be used as a profit-producing fields such as the Hydax platform, which with that platform, gamers can make these games as daily activities which become a promising profit-producing field.
Where Hydax is a Blockchain technology platform that provides crypto currency trading services by creating the latest innovations namely the gaming industry. Not only that, Hydax has also collaborated with the Lgame company, which is a company that is also a Blockchain technology and was founded by a group of gamer in the country of Taiwan. In addition, Hydax and Lgame have also used EGT and LG as tokens that are characteristic of the platform, which tokens can be used as legal tender and can be used as primary tokens to be able to obtain services offered by Hydax.
In addition, Hydax and LGame will also provide concepts that hold fast to user orientation, which will make the game an investment. Where to be able to invest users can start first by playing a game on the Lgame platform, through which the users will get an LG token. Then the Lgame team will share the profits with the users and give the freedom to the users to be able to control their own assets and data. So with these steps LGame can turn game play into useful, and users do not need to waste enough time while playing games, without producing the purse of money at all.
Not only that, the Hydax platform also uses the engine and Egretia platform, which is the largest HTML5 Blockchain in the world. So with the help of these tools, it will automatically make gamers who have the ability to develop or create the latest HTML5 game innovations be able to use these tools, of course without the need for other basic equipment. In addition, in the future Egretia and Hydax will also work together to develop to make their platform multi-dimensional in the field of game incubation, where the collaboration is carried out to differentiate the Blockhain technology gaming industry. Where with this also, the platform can build a wider market share to be able to realize the maximum platform profitability.
The Hydax platform has published crypto currencies that can be used as legal tender, which have been named HDX tokens. Where HDX is a token that uses the ERC-20 token type, which type is the token type that is used by most Blockchain technology platforms, so it will also automatically make it easier for users to transact using the token. In addition, to be able to complete the entire project development of the Hydax platform, the platform will conduct crowfunding using the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) method, where the platform will sell prime tokens with a value of 1 unit of HDX equal to 0.1 USDT with a total amount token supply of 300 million HDX units.
As a platform that has a high innovation on games, it certainly provides the latest innovations and an active focus on marketing those games to the vertical gaming market. So this will make the Hydax platform can develop and produce maximum profitability.
Hydax Information:
Hydax Official website: https://www.hydax.com
Hydax Exchange Group: https://t.me/HydaxExchange
Hydax Bounty Group: https://t.me/HydaxBounty
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
BTT URL: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2579599;sa=summary | https://medium.com/@averivia/hydax-exchange-of-modern-gaming-assets-9baa4daf7226 | ['Avery Via'] | 2019-11-15 01:17:21.765000+00:00 | ['Technology News', 'Tech', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain', 'Blockchain Technology'] |
1,384 | Hyperparameter Tuning of Support Vector Machine Using GridSearchCV | The models can have many hyperparameters and finding the best combination of the parameter using grid search methods.
What is SVM?
SVM stands for Support Vector Machine. It is a Supervised Machine Learning algorithm. It is used for both classification and regression problems. It uses a kernel strategy to modify your data and, based on these changes, finds the perfect boundary between the possible results.
Most of the time, we get linear data, but usually, things are not that simple. Let’s take an example of classification with non-linear data:
Now, to classify this type of data, we add a third dimension to this two-dimension plot. We rule that it be calculated a certain way convenient for us: z = x² + y² (you’ll notice that’s the equation for a circle). It gives us a three-dimension space. Since we are in three dimensions now, the hyperplane is a plane parallel to the x-axis at a certain z (let’s say z = 1). Now, we convert it again into two dimensions.
It looks like this :
And here we go! Our decision boundary is a circumference of radius 1, which separates both tags using SVM.
What is Grid Search?
Grid search is a technique for tuning hyperparameter that may facilitate build a model and evaluate a model for every combination of algorithm parameters per grid.
We might use 10 fold cross-validation to search for the best value for that tuning hyperparameter. Parameters like in decision criterion, max_depth, min_sample_split, etc. These values are called hyperparameters. To get the simplest set of hyperparameters, we will use the Grid Search method. In the Grid Search, all the mixtures of hyperparameters combinations will pass through one by one into the model and check each model's score. It gives us a set of hyperparameters that gives the best score. Scikit-learn package as a means of automatically iterating over these hyperparameters using cross-validation. This method is called Grid Search.
How does it work?
Grid Search takes the model or objects you’d prefer to train and different values of the hyperparameters. It then calculates the error for various hyperparameter values, permitting you to choose the best values.
To illustrate an example of the grid search, it works | Image: Source: Image created by the author.
Let the tiny circles represent different hyperparameters. We begin with one value for hyperparameters and train the model. We use different hyperparameters to train the model. We tend to continue the method until we have exhausted the various parameter values. Every model produces an error. We pick the hyperparameter that minimizes the error. We split our dataset into 3 parts to pick the hyperparameter, the training set, validation set, and test set. We tend to train the model for different hyperparameters. We use the error component for each model. We select the hyperparameter that minimizes the error or maximizes the score on the validation set. In ending the test, our model performance using the test data.
Below we are going to implement hyperparameter tuning using the sklearn library called gridsearchcv in Python.
Step by step implementation in Python:
a. Import necessary libraries:
We have imported various modules like datasets, decision tree classifiers, Standardscaler, and GridSearchCV from different libraries.
Let’s Start
We take the Wine dataset to perform the Support Vector Classifier.
Here is dataset information:
Input variables ( based on physicochemical tests ):
1. Alcohol
2. Malic acid
3. Ash
4. Alkalinity of ash
5. Magnesium
6. Total phenols
7. Flavanoids
8. Non-flavonoids phenols
9. Proanthocyanins
10. Color Intensity
11. Hue
12. od280/od315_of_diluted_wines
13. Proline
Libraries used –
Pandas
Numpy
Matplotlib
Seaborn
Sklearn
Grid Search CV
Now, import Wine data using sklearn in-built datasets. Data looks like this:
Now, the main part that every data scientist does is Data Pre-processing. In this, we first see our dataset information using the DESCR method means to describe. It shows our attribute information and target column.
In every machine learning model, we first separate our input and output variables, let’s say X and y, respectively.
To understand every feature's dependency on the output, we use seaborn and matplotlib library for visualization. First, we use a boxplot to know the relation between features and output.
Let’s take an example of one of the feature:
Image Source: Image created by the author.
In this boxplot, we easily see a linear relation between alcalinity_of_ash and the wine class.
Another example :
Image Source: Image created by the author.
In this boxplot, we see 3 outliers, and if we decrease total_phenols, then the class of wine changes.
So, our SVM model might assign more importance to those features which are varying linearly with the output.
To see how our data is distributed, we use matplotlib python library. We use histogram here. Let’s see an example of it :
Output:
Image Source: Image created by the author.
Feature malic_acid follows the left-skewed distribution.
Train Test Split:
We split the data into two parts training dataset and testing dataset using the train_test_split module of sklearn’s model_selection package in 70% — 30%, respectively. Because we first train our model using the training dataset and then test our model accuracy using the testing dataset.
Train the Support Vector Classifier without Hyperparameter Tuning :
Now, we train our machine learning model. We import Support Vector Classifier (SVC) from sklearn’s SVM package because it is a classification problem.
Parameter for gridsearchcv:
The value of your Grid Search parameter could be a list that contains a Python dictionary. The key is the name of the parameter. The value of the dictionary is the different values of the parameter. This will make a table that can be viewed as various parameter values. We also have an object or model of the support vector classifier. The Grid Search is using various kinds of classification performance metrics on the scoring methods. In this case, classification error and number of folds, the model or object, and the parameter values. Some of the outputs include the different scores for different parameter values. In this case, classification error along with parameter values that have the best score.
Now the main part comes Hyper-parameter Tuning. First, we understand hyper-parameter — it is a parameter whose value is used to control the learning process, and hyper-parameter tuning means choosing optimal parameters.
Parameters are as follows:
C: It is the regularization parameter, C, of the error term.
It is the regularization parameter, C, of the error term. kernel: It specifies the kernel type to be used in the algorithm. It can be ‘linear’, ‘poly’, ‘rbf’, ‘sigmoid’, ‘precomputed’, or callable. The default value is ‘rbf’.
It specifies the kernel type to be used in the algorithm. It can be ‘linear’, ‘poly’, ‘rbf’, ‘sigmoid’, ‘precomputed’, or callable. The default value is ‘rbf’. degree: It is the degree of the polynomial kernel function (‘poly’) and is ignored by all other kernels. The default value is 3.
It is the degree of the polynomial kernel function (‘poly’) and is ignored by all other kernels. The default value is 3. gamma: It is the kernel coefficient for ‘rbf’, ‘poly’, and ‘sigmoid’. If gamma is ‘auto’, then 1/n_features will be used instead.
To accomplish this task, we use GridSearchCV; it is a library function that is a member of sklearn’s model_selection package. It helps to loop through predefined hyper-parameters and fit your estimator (like-SVC) on our training set. Here is the code:
finding best hyperparameter using gridsearchcv:
We fit the object. We can find the best values for the parameters using the attribute best estimator.
To know the accuracy, we use the score() function.
The final output we get with 90% accuracy and by using the SVC model and GridSearchCV.
References:
[1]https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/svm.html
Conclusion :
We analyzed the Wine Dataset (which is a preloaded dataset included with scikit-learn) in this post. Pandas, Seaborn, and Matplotlib, were used to organize and plot the data, revealing several of the features naturally separated into classes. Classifiers were trained and testing using the split/train/test paradigm. Now that we’ve learned how to work with SVM and how to tune their hyper-parameters.
Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/ai-in-plain-english/hyperparameter-tuning-of-support-vector-machine-using-gridsearchcv-4d17671d1ed2 | ['Bhanwar Saini'] | 2020-12-28 07:36:02.192000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Deep Learning'] |
1,385 | This Is Why Chatbot Business Are Dying | Chatbots development path
The technology of chatbots takes its routes back from the middle of the 20th century. I’m sure there is a lot to talk about this, but let Wikipedia cover the rest. However, the aim is that while history might be quite long, it won’t show you consistency. Technology needs people sitting around working on the development and that comes from the requirements businesses might have.
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash
Since consistency behaved like a lazy school truant, bursts of hype were taking from time to time by reminding everyone about chatbots. Sadly nothing happened in action. Just hope.
Sad truth
But what we have in hands? Millions of businesses, digital agencies, and so-called “startups” that aims to provide an exclusive chatbot experience for the business. The exclusivity that has never been shown in fact. The exclusivity based on conversational service providers like Twilio, Engati, and others.
Trending Bot Articles:
The industry reached the stage when technology stays apart from the businesses. While there are few giants that bite elbows over development, businesses behave like those dropshipping enthusiasts. Reselling the same technology by naming it differently to customers.
Is there a real need for chatbots?
I like a visionary type of conversation, brainstorm on how technology can shape the future, are we about to become robots and etc. Frankly saying, talks over how chatbots are irreplaceable in our daily life are taking no more than a piece of curiosity on those friendly evening gatherings with friends.
We might not even need that. I mean, the chatbot itself. That makes those conversations…not even hopeful. Probably hopeless. Unnecessary. At all.
I’m sure we all are living in the present by using the desired products right away. Liked it? Cool! Download, check it. Love it or delete it. A modern world designed in a way that you whether enter the market or die trying.
And while technology keeps developing, businesses are dying.
Dying without a single try. | https://chatbotslife.com/this-is-why-chatbot-businesses-are-dying-27aabf020d32 | ['Murad Zamanov'] | 2020-12-09 15:49:39.135000+00:00 | ['Chatbots', 'Marketing', 'Amazon', 'Bots', 'Technology'] |
1,386 | GT/ Controlling bubbles to sort materials | TL;DR
A new way to control the motion of bubbles might one day help separate useful metals from useless dirt using much less energy and water than is currently needed.
With the addition of sensors and enhanced communication tools, providing lightweight, portable power has become even more challenging. New research demonstrated a new approach to turning thermal energy into electricity that could provide compact and efficient power.
Researchers have discovered a massive enzyme complex from a methanogenic archaeon that directly transfers electrons from the electron bifurcation reaction to CO2 reduction and fixation. Their detailed insights into these efficient energy-transforming processes may open new possibilities for sustainable biotechnological development.
Using a novel modelling approach, new research reveals the location and intensity of key threats to biodiversity on land and identifies priority areas across the world to help inform conservation decision making at national and local levels.
Researchers create thin film polymer membranes capable of separating fluoride from chloride and other ions. Targeted ion selectivity by the filtering membranes could have important implications for water purification, environmental remediation and industrial production.
The speed at which deadwood decomposes in forests depends on the climate as well as on fungi and insects. An international research team has now determined the annual contribution made by deadwood to the global carbon cycle and quantified the importance of insects in the decomposition of wood.
For many, an increase in living standards would require an increase in energy provision. At the same time, meeting current climate goals under the Paris Agreement would benefit from lower energy use. Researchers have assessed how much energy is needed to provide the global poor with a decent life and have found that this can be reconciled with efforts to meet climate targets.
A new study suggests corals may be able to cope with climate change in the coming decades better than previously thought — but will still struggle with ever-faster rates of climate change.
Climate change will significantly alter future patterns of flooding, according to a new study. Although future increases in moderate storms won’t necessarily lead to more runoff in many regions, extreme storms will generate more devastating and frequent flooding.
Judiciously decomposing organic matter from 700 degrees Fahrenheit to 1,200 degrees F, without oxygen — a process known as pyrolysis — and retaining nutrients from dairy lagoons can transform manure into a manageable, ecologically friendly biochar fertilizer, according to new research.
New research finds that Indigenous Peoples and local communities provide the best long-term outcomes for conservation. The research team studied the outcomes of 169 conservation projects around the world — primarily across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
And more!
Green Technology Market
Green technology is an applicable combination of advanced tools and solutions to conserve natural resources and environment, minimize or mitigate negative impacts from human activities on the environment, and ensure sustainability development. Green technology is also referred to as clean technology or environmental technology which includes technologies, such as IoT, AI, analytics, blockchain, digital twin, security, and cloud, which collect, integrate, and analyze data from various real-time data sources, such as sensors, cameras, and Global Positioning System (GPS).
Green technology, also known as sustainable technology, protects the environment by using various forms of sustainable energy. Some of the best examples of green technologies include solar panels, LED lighting, wind energy, electric vehicles, vertical farming, and composting.
The global Green Technology and Sustainability market size to grow from USD 11.2 billion in 2020 to USD 36.6 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 26.6% during the forecast period. The growing consumer and industrial interest for the use of clean energy resources to conserve environment and increasing use of Radio Frequency Identification sensors across industries are driving the adoption of green technology and sustainability solutions and services in the market.
The blockchain segment is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR: Energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining has caused a spike in carbon emission, and hence blockchain is capable of driving innovation in the field of green technology.
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by Qiang Guo, Yuxuan Zhang, Azin Padash, Kenan Xi, Thomas M. Kovar, Christopher M. Boyce in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
A new way to control the motion of bubbles from researchers at Columbia Engineering might one day help separate useful metals from useless dirt using much less energy and water than is currently needed.
When mining for metals such as the copper used in most electronics and the lithium used in many batteries, only a small fraction of the material that is mined is useful metal, with the vast majority just useless dirt-like particles.
“We have to separate the useful metals from the useless particles, and we do this by blowing air bubbles up through them,” said Chris Boyce, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Columbia Engineering. However, “this process utilizes a large amount of energy and water, causing climate change and water shortages, thus creating problems we are trying to prevent. We have this issue in part because we currently cannot control the motion of these bubbles.”
Particle contact force normalized by particle weight during two vibration cycles obtained from discrete particle simulations. The simulated particles have properties ρp = 2500 kg/m3 and dp = 238 μm. The vibration frequency and amplitude are 5 Hz and 8 mm, respectively.
Now Boyce and his colleagues reveal that if they vibrate these particles while blowing air up through them, the normally chaotic motion of these bubbles becomes orderly and controllable. The vibrations cause the particles to quickly shift between solid-like to fluid-like behavior, which in turn helps structure the bubbles into regularly spaced triangular arrays.
“I think the simple addition of vibration to go from chaos to order is beautiful,” Boyce said.
Snapshots of local solids volume fraction during two gas flow oscillation cycles predicted by continuum gas-solid flow modeling using different constitutive models: (A) Schaeffer model (6), (B) Srivastava and Sundaresan model (7) and © the proposed model. The simulated solids phase has properties ρp = 2500 kg/m3 and dp = 238 μm.
Having a way to control the behavior of these bubbles can help scale up and optimize separation techniques. “We expect that the ability to create structure in flows can reduce energy and water use in mining as well as improve the efficiency of many clean energy processes,” Boyce said.
The researchers now aim to apply this structured bubbling to sustainable mining separation techniques. | https://medium.com/paradigm-fund/gt-controlling-bubbles-to-sort-materials-f79053594f87 | [] | 2021-09-11 08:31:24.420000+00:00 | ['Sustainability', 'Renewable Energy', 'Climate Change', 'Green Technology', 'Green Energy'] |
1,387 | Tutorial Mikrotik — #1 Install Cloud Hosted Router di GNS3 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/netshoot/gns3-install-mikrotik-os-cloud-host-router-e5a14f6f335c | ['Ghifari Nur'] | 2021-01-09 07:26:10.397000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Networking', 'Mikrotik'] |
1,388 | Best VPN to Stream Disney+ for UK Residents | Must be a bummer for those people who are living in the UK and are not able to get their hands on Disney+ streaming platform. There must be some workaround, right? If there is a subreddit about it, then there definitely is. After all, Disney+ Hulu or Disney Plus ESPN+ should definitely have something new and refreshing in stock and you absolutely deserve to be among the first people to witness this content.
Disney would never spend their money recklessly by pouring millions of dollars into an unprofitable idea right from the start. They aim to snatch customers of Netflix, HBO and Amazon Prime, lure them to Disney+ streaming platform in order to get their fair share of profit. And they definitely have to offer something that other streaming providers don’t. You can check out Disney+ all by yourself, just by connecting to a VPN server in the US, The Netherlands or Canada.
There is this one VPN provider that simply beats all of the other ones in the streaming game, and it’s called NordVPN. Learn how to get a good deal here.
How to get a discount from NordVPN and enjoy Disney+?
Click on the link below:
NordVPN 70% discount for Disney+
Once you click on the link, you will be redirected to the official NordVPN website, where official NordVPN deals will be presented to you. Get a 3-year subscription for only $3.49 and enjoy 3 more months absolutely for free.
What NordVPN has to offer?
Once you obtain a subscription to NordVPN you will gain access to more than 5000 servers located in more than 60 countries. 2000 of these servers are built specifically for streaming. If you want to check out Disney+ and remain both secure online, NordVPN is definitely a great choice.
For those that are skeptical, NordVPN has 30-day free trial, you will see it for yourself that NordVPN perfectly fits your streaming demands.
People who enjoy travelling and go to countries where the internet is heavily censored there is a way to easily bypass restrictions — click on ‘Connect’ button in the NordVPN app and that’s it.
In addition, you can also find cheaper flight tickets or other goods since retailers charge different prices in various countries for the same item and just by connecting to many different servers you might save some cash in the end.
How to Purchase Disney+ Subscription from UK?
Simply connect to the US server and create a US PayPal account. Afterwards go to Disney Plus official website (whilst connected to US VPN server), enter fake US address using Fake Address Generator, choose to pay with your newly created US PayPal account an you’re all set.
Is NordVPN a Good Choice?
While being easy to use, NordVPN encrypts your data with Advanced Encryption Standard, offers 24/7 Customer support and protects your privacy like a real VPN provider should. Servers are fast and easy to connect to. This is a perfect choice for people who wish to protect themselves online and enjoy Disney Plus list at the same time. | https://medium.com/@henrymurrar/best-vpn-to-stream-disney-plus-for-uk-residents-e8d499ed6aa4 | ['Henry Moore'] | 2019-11-20 16:19:36.922000+00:00 | ['Tech', 'Disney', 'Streaming', 'Technology', 'VPN'] |
1,389 | The Hoax that Inspired AI: The Mechanical Turk | Artificial Intelligence. These two words spark a variety of emotions in today’s culture. For many, they flicker fear: fear of lost jobs, greater dependence on technology, and even fears spurred by science-fiction films imagining a future of robot overlords. Some members of the population view artificial intelligence with hopeful anticipation. They envision a world of greater relaxation spent pursuing projects of cultural and artistic significance free from the more mundane aspects of life on earth. Whichever vision you prefer, AI has changed daily life and appears to be shaping life for generations to come.
Despite the plethora of views, most remain unaware of the hoax that inspired AI over 200 years ago.
As with all great stories, ours will begin in an 18th century palace. Empress Maria Theresa, ruler of Austria, appreciated a good magician. On frequent occasions, she invited only the best and brightest of the trade to entertain in her court. It was in Austria’s Schonbrunn Palace, in 1770, that yet another illusionist awed his observers. Yet, one audience member wasn’t impressed. Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen, an inventor specializing in physics, hydraulics, and mechanics, knew he could do better and he told the Empress so. Empress Maria gave the Baron six months to invent a device that could top any magician’s act (Garfinkel and Grunspan 36). Kempelen took the challenge, creating a device he claimed could beat any of the best human chess masters in the world (Garfinkel and Grunspan 36).
As a modern observer, let’s take a step back. Machines that play chess are not uncommon to us, but the year was 1770, and digital computers of complex operation had not yet been invented.
When Baron Wolfgang introduced his device, he convinced the world that the device could play chess and respond to an unpredictable human using only mechanical means.
His contraption used a variety of gears, pulleys, hydraulics, and a simple crank (“Meet the Mechanical Turk…”).
The device involved a desk of sorts, behind which sat a wooden man in oriential dress. Under the desk was housed all of the mechanics. Kempelen went to great lengths to illustrate that his device was true to his claim. He always began a performance by opening small doors in the desk showing the opponent his device’s inner workings, convincing them it was in fact operated solely by mechanical means (Walter, “The Mechanical Turk…”). Baron Wolfgang called his device the Automaton Chess Player (Eschner, “Debunking the Mechanical…”), later it came to be known as the “Mechanical Turk.”
Truth be told, the device impressed the Empress and baffled nearly every opponent it played.
The Mechanical Turk was good, almost too good.
Kempelen and its later owner, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (Fourtane, “The Turk…”), took the Chess Player on a worldwide tour where it beat US ambassador Benjamin Franklin and poet Edgar Allen Poe (Garfinkel and Grunspan 36). Even Napoleon Bonaparte played the Mechanical Turk. He attempted a number of illegal moves and the Turk responded by moving the pieces back to their original locations. Eventually, the Turk had enough of Napoleon’s cheats and swept every piece from the board (Garfinkel and Grunspan 36).
The technology Kempelen claimed to have invented, “a thinking machine,” was unbelievable. As confused as many were, most refused to believe that the Mechanical Turk was truly operating by itself. Many believed that the device was operated by a human, but nobody could figure out how it was operated. A variety of theories abounded. Some believed that it was operated by thin wires and strong magnets from a distance, a trained monkey, or even evil spirits (“The Mechanical Turk: AI…”). Edgar Allen Poe personally believed that it worked via a small human who crawled into the body of the wooden Turk (Eschner, “Debunking the Mechanical…”).
Although the real operation of the Chess Player was a marvel of hidden engineering, it was indeed a hoax. A human operator was hidden inside the device. The Museum of Hoaxes reports on the real “magic:”
A series of sliding panels and a rolling chair allowed the automaton’s operator to hide while the interior of the machine was being displayed. The operator then controlled the Turk by means of a ‘pantograph’ device that synchronized his arm movements with those of the wooden Turk. Magnetic chess pieces allowed him to know what pieces were being moved on the board above his head (Museum of Hoaxes as quoted in Eschner, “Debunking the Mechanical…”).
After befuddling and confounding many around the world over the course of 84 years, the Mechanical Turk was lost during a fire in the Chinese Museum of Philadelphia in 1854 (Fourtane, “The Turk…”).
Although the chess playing Mechanical Turk was a hoax and an illusion, many were inspired by the idea.
Edgar Allen Poe was inspired to write his own hoax and detective stories, “most famously the Balloon-Hoax of 1844, in which he wrote a series of fictionalized newspaper articles about a three-day trans-Atlantic balloon flight” (Eschner, “Debunking the Mechanical…”).
One man, Charles Babbage, was also inspired by the Turk. Babbage was an early computer scientist, creating the Analytical Engine which was really the first general purpose computer (Walter, “The Mechanical Turk…”). Although quick to call the device a hoax — after he was beaten twice by the Mechanical Turk — he envisioned a future where a real device could beat a human chess player (Walter, “The Mechanical Turk…”).
His dream saw reality in 1997 when IBM’s Deep Blue computer beat world-chess master Garry Kasparov (Greenemeier, “20 Years after…”).
The Mechanical Turk wasn’t artificial intelligence, but it sparked the thought for the first time. What if a device could mimic human thought? What would that device do? How would that device function? These are questions still being answered today.
In 2005 Amazon honored the legacy of the Mechanical Turk, by naming its new service after the device that sparked artificial intelligence (Schwartz, “Untold History…”). As Amazon grew, it realized it needed mundane tasks completed that, strangely, could not be completed by a computer. Just like the Turk was operated by a human appearing as a mechanical device, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (or mTurk for short) is using humans to accomplish tasks by mimicking the appearance of a computer. Amazon Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, calls it “artificial artificial intelligence” (Schwartz, “Untold History…”). Human operators, any human on the Internet, can be paid to accomplish tasks via mTurk. To learn more about mTurk, visit Amazon’s website. However, if you think you’ve found a sweet new gig online, consider reading The Atlantic’s 2018 article.
The future of AI is still very much uncharted, but the research looks promising.
Already, AI is creating new kinds of data that offer life-altering insights into health and life on earth. AI is making cars and roads safer and allowing humans greater time to relax and pursue projects of interest and worldwide benefit. Given AI’s impact on our world and its promise for the future, we’ll be revisiting this topic significantly on our journey through the history of computers.
The Mechanical Turk was an elaborate hoax, yet it sparked inspiration for a new kind of technology that is still altering our world and lives. The Mechanical Turk is the eleventh major milestone in the history of computing.
More on the History of Computers: | https://medium.com/tech-is-a-tool/the-hoax-that-inspired-ai-the-mechanical-turk-2914ba2063bf | ['Benjamin Rhodes'] | 2020-06-06 13:31:01.164000+00:00 | ['Computer History', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'History', 'Machine Learning'] |
1,390 | Modern Gospels | Modern Gospels
The religions of Tesla, bitcoin, and Peter Thiel
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WHO IS THIS FOR?
Founders. Peter Thiel talked about the value in building a “cult” at your startup. What does that mean? And how might you take it further? The secret in creating a truly resistant organization may require building a religion.
Peter Thiel talked about the value in building a “cult” at your startup. What does that mean? And how might you take it further? The secret in creating a truly resistant organization may require building a religion. Investors. Scott Galloway often talks about backing “unregulated monopolies.” Another ripe category for investment might be “unrecognized religions.” There’s a reason Tesla is so difficult to short.
Scott Galloway often talks about backing “unregulated monopolies.” Another ripe category for investment might be “unrecognized religions.” There’s a reason Tesla is so difficult to short. Learners. Technology has fundamentally changed how religions are born. Communities coalesce on message boards, spread ideology on social media, and create functional gods. Understanding this phenomenon explains some of the bizarre behavior of tech leaders, and illuminates the strange dynamics of internet culture.
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On a duffed wooden pew, I prayed for Jesus.
It was not my idea to begin with, nor the manner in which I would have chosen to spend a Sunday. The year before I had found a sheath of snakeskin in my garden, contributing to the sense that the woods surrounding my house were full of shadowy magic that might disappear if I paid them insufficient attention. I would rather have been there, searching for my next find. But under the guidance of the avuncular white-haired vicar, I summoned the son of god.
“Close your eyes and ask Jesus to enter you. Feel his lightness,” the vicar intoned. At least that’s how I remember it twenty years later.
And so I did, screwing my eyes shut, turning my face toward the stain-glassed windows, hoping for a ray of light to illume my cheeks, to find myself, suddenly, irrevocably sun-shot.
At the time, I would have found almost any indicia significant, a shiver or dizzy-spell, a sudden headache or bout of indigestion; open to epiphany or flatulence. I was young, yes, nine or so, but more importantly, devout. Or at least, keen to be, keen to believe: an assiduous night-time supplicant, a grave child beneath a godly penumbra. My father had passed away when I was six, and in a mad fumble for an organizing principle to explain his absence, I’d adopted a fierce piety that must have confused my gently, moderately Christian family. I prayed each night for the rest of my family to live and that they not abandon me in sleep, driving off into the night and leaving only a skate of tire marks in pale gravel. (They didn’t.) This fear wasn’t grounded in reality — I was, and am, blessed with an unshakably strong, loving nuclear family — as much as a confused, budding mind attempting to sense-make.
I prayed dozens, occasionally hundreds of times during the day, incessantly worried about accidentally peeving the almighty, a fear that stoked the rather ornate obsessive-compulsive disorder I developed at the time (and which I have written about previously). Had I been familiar with them, I would have considered Solomon’s words life-affirming: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
But there was another side to me, too. We are, I think, all susceptible to the myths we cultivate about ourselves, relying on them to reassure us that we are who we’re meant to be. The result of my personal lore is that I am prone to thinking, questioning, to healthy distrust. After escaping the strangling noose of an umbilical cord, an Irish nurse held my squirming figure and said, “Oh. This one’s been here before.” That, and my godparents’ card, delivered on the day of my birth, which instructed me to question everything. Lastly, the plaque in my father’s forest green study that took on the spiritual significance after his death:
A Prince who is not himself wise, cannot be well-advised…Good advice depends on the shrewdness of the Prince who seeks it.
These are paltry tokens on which to build a narrative, a theory of being, but they are the keystones on which a certain inherent skepticism was justified.
Which is to say that there were shades to my apparent devotion. And, if I am honest, there was always something slightly calculating, gimlet-eyed about my religious zeal. Beneath whispered prayers, there was always an irritating, stubborn incredulousness that battled with the desire for godly certainty; the same feeling as finding a brassy pound coin under my pillow after I’d lost a tooth and convincing myself my mother hadn’t put it there: but isn’t it nice to believe. I made my Pascalian Wager and hoped for better proof.
(It is at this point, I must say: my words are not meant to offend or discount your beliefs, whatever they may be. This is an account of my mind — replete as it is with opinion and idiosyncrasy. You and I may disagree, and as long as we can hear and listen, we will be both be richer for the encounter.)
And so on that Sunday, hands clutched, nose scrunched in concentration, I tried to find god. I was, I realize now, engaging in the imperative hidden in Voltaire’s maxim, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” God did not appear, and so I sought to invent him, hoping for the feeling that might fuel fabrication.
In the belly of a 16th-century church, this felt like an ancient act, a subtle echo of half a millennia of worship. Today, I think it was a modern one. As the province of traditional religion shrinks, ill-equipped to deal with modern problems, and too slow to adapt, we are all forced into the divine task of origination, of conception. We use technology to congregate, to proselytize, to produce miracles. We make the profane sacred and pen new gospels. And as our old gods die, we invent new ones.
Defining religion
What is religion?
I am tempted to adopt the stance of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart when asked to characterize pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Wherever there is ritual and prayer, whenever extraordinary claims are made in vindication of a higher power, we might reasonably see religion.
But that doesn’t leave us with much, and it says nothing of how such movements begin, the purposes they serve. It is easy to see a man prostrate in front of an altar and say, “that’s religion.” But what came before the altar, what is above the altar, and why?
Marx considered religion a soporific intended to preserve class power (“the opium of the masses”), while 19th-century anthropologists like Edward Burnett Tylor and James George Frazer assumed it a blunt attempt to explain natural phenomena. It was only with Émile Durkheim that religion was framed as fundamentally social, endemic to human collectives.
In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life and other work, Durkheim outlines the three traits all religions share: a unified system of beliefs and practices, a moral community, and sacred objects.
The final piece here is particularly significant — while Durkheim says object, he means god, or tenets so axial as to take the place of a god. In Christianity, the sacred objects are god, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the sign of the cross, along with any number of minor shrouds and stains. Buddhism has Siddhartha (or Gautama), but just as importantly, perhaps more so, are the “Four Noble Truths.”
Durkheim juxtaposes this notion of the “sacred” with that of the “profane.” While the sacred is used to represent the community’s values and possesses a special resonance or energy, the profane is everything outside of that realm, partially that which challenges cherished values. Apostates, noninitiates, and false idols are all profane, but so is a sea of insignificant objects. But the profane is really defined not by what it is, but by what it’s not. It is the not-sacred, a religious negation. One cannot exist without the other; in keeping with the rest of Durkheim’s communal focus, both are fundamentally social, serving to separate a believing in-group from out-group infidels.
Objects are made sacred as part of the same process by which religions are themselves originated. This week, American voters went to the polls — physically or metaphorically — and watched our rendition of democracy in action. For members of each party, this represented a moment of “collective effervescence,” Durkheim’s term for the energy created through ritual and worship. Religions are created and sustained through these events and the groupish transcendence they make. In expressing their assimilation, individuals feel as if they are part of something, a force larger than themselves, which promotes commitment and deepens belief. In an attempt to sustain and emphasize this feeling — which Durkheim called “mana,” using the word favored by the Polynesian people he studied — the community creates the sacred object as a representation.
The result of Durkheim’s thesis, the skeleton, is something like a spiritual flywheel: moments of collective effervescence bestow transcendental mana, sacred objects are designated to sustain that feeling (and profane objects are shunned), and these, in turn, give further reason for moments of collective effervescence. We see the same process play out online, amplified by the ease of connection, social media’s preference for conflict, and technology’s capacity for miracle.
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Online effervescence, apostasy, and miracle
On Wednesday, the people of Georgia elected Majorie Taylor Greene to congress. There was little other option: she ran unopposed. A white Republican, Greene is nevertheless among the first of her kind, an elected official in support of QAnon. This conspiracy theory alleges Democrats operate a “Deep State” replete with child-molesting Satanists. Right. Greene described the group, which The Atlantic called “a New American Religion,” as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.”
There have always been lunatics; the insane, unlettered gibbering of Alex Jones’s Infowars has fouled our screens and airwaves for over two decades. But the internet is a fundamentally different realm than it was even five years ago — busier, louder, boiling with niches and platforms that support them. While it might once have taken a movement decades to accumulate a swathe of followers, QAnon has managed it in just three. As many as 3 million followed Facebook pages associated with the group before the company took action in October of this year.
The internet, and platforms designed for socialization and connection, have played a pivotal role. QAnon started on 4chan but relied on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube as part of its rise. After being punted from various platforms, the group slithered to EndChan and 8kun. These are by no means the only options open to new religions: searching for “religion” on gaming platform Roblox manifests a “Church of Satan” game. “Church” produces “The Church of the Pear,” “Meme Church,” “The Church of Baby Yoda,” “The Robloxian Church,” “Church of Finn Wolfhard,” “The Masked Church,” and countless others. Most are probably jokes or trivialities, but there is no reason why the next world religion could not begin as a game. (There is an argument to make about platform-risk, but fringe movements have demonstrated a cockroach-like ability to survive different nuclear fallouts.)
Like message boards, online multiplayer games provide opportunities for collective effervescence, organizing a community around a common goal or ritual, giving mana. Unlike the movements studied by Durkheim, though, the internet enables this experience either on-demand or with much greater frequency. Providing The Church of Baby Yoda had a sufficiently large following, I could engage in worship, in effervescence, whenever I wanted, joining a round of play or a buzzing chatroom. The result is an acceleration of the Durkheim flywheel, with fervor building as interaction increases. A moral community forms, and characters like ‘Q,’ the unknown creator of the QAnon movement, become sacred objects, gods. Their missives, in turn, form the basis for a set of hallowed beliefs.
While the internet writ-large simplifies the creation of these moral communities, solving the first Durkheimian imperative, social media’s particular dynamics are pivotal in distinguishing between the sacred and profane and deepening the divide. In a group of like-minded individuals, discussion tends to lead to greater radicalization: we add new arguments to bolster our existing beliefs, and admire those with the most extreme position in the group. Social media amplifies this predilection to new levels — we have access to much larger like-minded groups. As social capital accrues to those on the extreme, others, in turn, seek to push beyond the norm to win followers. Academics Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke have referred to this practice as “moral grandstanding.” Combine this with the fact that we react most to posts that induce rage and that influencers may benefit from fomenting polarization, and you have the ideal environment in which to set up the “us” versus “them” dynamic pivotal in creating a new religion. Adherents of Q can afford to make absurd, incendiary remarks on social media (“Angela Merkel is Hitler’s grandaughter”) safe in the knowledge that apostasy helps their cause. As the non-believer pushes back against either sacred objects (“Q is a fraud”) or an established belief (“Angela Merkel is not Hitler’s granddaughter), the believer knows their message will be amplified, and subsequently, celebrated by their moral community. If the rise of internet communities accelerates Durkheim’s flywheel, social media intensifies the process, more starkly delineating between sacred and profane and heightening an adherents connection to the cause.
And what of the miracle?
Durkheim makes no special mention of religion’s most famous acquisition strategy. Water into wine, loaves and fishes — perhaps Durkheim would simply have considered them moments of collective effervescence, transformed into sacred objects in the form of moral stories, rather than something distinct in and of themselves. They are worth mentioning when thinking of how the modern world has altered the ability to create new religions. If a new movement were looking to justify a set of extraordinary beliefs through extraordinary action, there would be no better place to begin than with technology.
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A doctored photo, a deep-fake, a voice skin — all can be used to create “miracles” in a matter of speaking, whether it be an AI-generated video showing an incoherent Nancy Pelosi or a clumsily-edited image showing Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff cozying-up to Jeffrey Epstein. These events contravene social expectations and preconceptions so sharply that they function as a modern miracle — extraordinary vindication of a set of beliefs.
There are legitimate technological miracles, too, though we choose to call them invention, innovation, or science. Apple has often been referred to as a “cult.” It makes sense; the Apple of Jobs and the iPod was a purveyor of miracles. What else do you call a machine that put “1,000 songs in your pocket,” while a CD held twelve tracks? It was an abrogation of a perceived natural law no less startling than a statue that begins to weep.
The nineteen years since the iPod’s inauguration have seen a flurry of miracles, a steady wave of wonder, join Jobs’s “feeding the multitude” moment.
New testaments
It is en vogue to classify any moderately popular startup as a “cult” or “religion” without considering what such a suggestion entails. Usually, all that is meant is that said company has an animated fanbase, a high-NPS score, perhaps a vague nod towards community. (Aside: in our “Indie Researcher” panel on Friday, Toby Shorin talked about “doing violence to concepts,” touching on cults.)
Whatever the headlines might say, Peloton is not a cult, let alone a religion. There is no sacred object, no unified set of beliefs, no moral community, no miracle. There is a sense of collective effervescence surely — the adrenalin-pumping classes seem to provoke some feeling of transcendence — but that has not been transfigured into religious belief.
Durkheim would not consider the Apple of Tim Cook a religion either. Jobs was the truly sacred object of the business, the god; without him, there is a lack of division between sacred and profane. Even the most ardent of Apple fans would concede that recent phones, though well-made, fail to possess the same resonance as the first iPod. A belief system remains in place and has, in some respects, been bolstered: Cook’s defense of personal privacy alloyed with Jobs’ minimalism and Ive’s appreciation of human intuition. But there is no collective effervescence now that keynotes have taken on a more prosaic tone, and only miracles of a minor variety.
The most conspicuous modern, technological religion is bitcoin and its surrounding ideology. In almost every respect, it fits Durkheim’s definition. There are several sacred objects, including the bitcoin itself. The fact that the currency has failed as a means of exchange may owe as much to its spiritual importance as its volatility: to spend it is a shibboleth. By doing so, the believer reveals a chink in their devotion and commits the crime of making the sacred profane. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, is a sacred object, too, of course. Like Q, he is aided by his inconspicuousness, avoiding the vulnerability of being a known personality that can be attacked or discredited on specific grounds. The bitcoin movement has a clear belief system (decentralization is treated as a moral issue), clear separation between sacred and profane (bitcoin and fiat), and moments of collective effervescence (bull runs and halving events). Even when thinking about the future of bitcoin, the questions are fundamentally religious. The technological struggle is mostly won; what’s left is a battle for hearts and minds, for believers.
The Church of Tesla fits the mold, too. To long-term holders of the stock, Musk is a bawdy, all-knowing god, working in mysterious ways. They may not always understand his actions, but he is not to be questioned. In addition to being a sacred object himself, Musk is a canny creator of new sacred objects — this week, Tesla released a new tequila, an icon available to believers priced out of a Model 3. Musk is also agile in his use of social media. By courting controversy, he implicitly and explicitly engages in “moral grandstanding” — calling out “pedophile” rescue divers and baiting the SEC. In these cases, Musk positions himself as an ethical authority, drawing lines between sacred and profane. In his skirmishes with the SEC and other authorities, he also stokes an implied worldview, which is, incidentally, the same weltanschauung as Raskolnikov’s at the beginning of Crime and Punishment: great men operate according to their own laws. This, along with a gentler commitment to salvation from climatic extinction, forms the basis for the Muskian Gospel. Believers are given opportunities to celebrate these values at Tesla keynotes, and once again, during exciting, senseless bull runs. Just as with bitcoin, these are both ceremony and miracle, a miracle of capitalism in which an automotive company exceeds the EV/revenue multiple of a SaaS firm. While General Motors trades at 1.16x EV/revenue, and Salesforce trades at 11.88x, Tesla stands 14.44x. For the same reasons mentioned above, true believers are deterred from selling their position, making Tesla incredibly tricky to short, whatever the laws of financial reason. In 2020, a reported $27 billion has been lost, attempting to short the business.
There are other minor examples, each with its own merits:
Y Combinator has an established belief system (the Talmud of Paul Graham), plenty of sacred objects (Graham, Altman, the eponymous street sign where the founders take a picture; Lourdes in Palo Alto), a community, and some collective effervescence in the form of Demo Days. But there is something lacking or lost, a missing intensity that seems to separate it from other modern religions. Perhaps because it relies on non-believers and neutrals (other VCs), the demarcations between insider and outsider, between sacred and profane, are softer. Moreover, while Graham’s startup writing is embedded into Y Combinator’s identity, its broad applicability and wide acceptance may have freed it from parochial attachments, leaving the accelerator without a particular, ideally controversial wisdom of its own. Wall Street Bets (WSB), a stock trading community on Reddit, succeeds in manufacturing collective effervescence, using every day of trading as an opportunity to connect and celebrate capitalist values. There is an implied creed here, but it is not sufficiently differentiated from the rest of the Western world. WSB seeks to demarcate itself through tone rather than dogma. The result is a weak moral community and few, if any, sacred objects. Note-taking app Roam Research has succeeded in creating a moral community (#Roam Cult), is cultivating a sacred object (the messianically-styled Conor White-Sullivan), and possesses a budding dogma (there is a right and wrong way to organize thoughts.) That belief system has benefitted from conflict and apostasy on social media, positioning itself in opposition to the organizational theories of Thiago Forte. In time, Roam’s doctrine may increase in complexity. The community will also need to find ways to interact and bond through shared experiences. There is a half-constructed Basilica of Thiel, frequented by venture capitalists and startup operatives. While Thiel himself is a god here, divinely absent, the actual sacred object is the value of “contrarianism.” Beyond this notion, there is less of a cohesive belief system, meaning that the moral community defines itself in negation, adopting positioning in response to the perceived mainstream. There appear to be few opportunities to engage in collective effervescence and accrue mana.
In time, these may blossom into full religions or go the way of most spiritual movements, withering into obscurity. But now that we know new religions can be formed, that there is, in theory, a playbook to be followed, what should we do with it?
It is time to pray.
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Inventing god
What do we wish to be: worshipper or worshipped? Supplicant or sacred object? Apostate or convert?
Our stance concerning modern religions and this fertile period of theogenesis may depend on how we choose to define the organs of faith. There’s immodesty (profanity, really) in casting religions as sociological phenomena that can, perhaps, be architected for adherents of Old World belief systems. But for those willing to think in such terms, there is wealth to be gained for both investors and founders. Scott Galloway is fond of expressing his preference for investing in “unregulated monopolies” like Facebook, Amazon, and Google. Speculators may find similar success backing — or at least not shorting — unacknowledged religions. Adherents of bitcoin and Tesla have certainly fared well over the years.
There may be risk in associating too closely with these groups, it should be said. WeWork was, in many ways, an irritating incipient religion. Neumann relished his sacred positioning and was forceful in his orchestration of moments of effervescence through the company’s saturnalian summer camp and Friday night frat culture. There was a half-hearted belief-system (“The Power of We”) and the semblance of a moral community. Earlier in my career, I spent a bit of time with the company’s upper-level management. Though not universal, I remember one character in possession of the startling arrogance of the zealot, the certainty of someone who believes they have been particularly elected to hold a hard-earned secret. WeWork’s flaws were of the more prosaic variety: though Neumann gave us the miracle of “community-adjusted EBITDA” and a $47 billion valuation, his godly touch deserted him. Though a distinction between the sacred (WeWork spaces) and profane (normal offices) was drawn, Neumann failed to accumulate a sufficient number of followers to insulate himself from financial law. At its scale, WeWork succeeded as a religion but failed as a business.
The lesson is, perhaps, that faith and logic are unhappy bedfellows. The devotee sneers at the rationalist for his lack of imagination, while the rationalist laughs at the devotee for his flights of fancy. The wise investor will position themselves such that they might hear and listen to both sides.
The founder may have a different incentive. In Zero to One, Peter Thiel describes companies as positioned somewhere on the continuum between a consultancy and a cult. The consultancy is a godless church, populated by mission-less mercenaries. They arrive at a company, position themselves outside the culture, propose changes, and leave. Startups should strive for a different kind of intensity per Thiel:
In the most intense kind of organization, members abandon the outside world and hang out only with other members. We have a word for such organizations: cults. Cultures of total dedication look crazy from the outside. But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.
By cult, Thiel seems to simply mean a tightly-knit culture, aligned behind a singular mission. But there’s no reason to stop there. Though there is the risk of lurching into the territory of reasonless tire-fires like WeWork and Theranos, the shrewd leader will use collective effervescence strategically to build morale and generate sacred objects.
The wisest of those will choose to make an idea their most sacred possession. Not only is opposition to an idea more useful than a person in fanning a social media conflagration and subsequently winning followers and deepening devotion, but it is also more difficult to denounce. Both bitcoin and QAnon have benefitted from having anonymous creators; company CEOs do not have the same luxury but can build equivalent immunity by positioning the locus of devotion outside themselves.
In time, these companies may look less like corporations and more like a church, built not only for short-term profit but long-term wealth and legacy. | https://mariogabriele.medium.com/modern-gospels-98d46858d170 | ['Mario Gabriele'] | 2020-11-09 18:41:42.539000+00:00 | ['Venture Capital', 'Elon Musk', 'Technology', 'Tesla', 'Bitcoin'] |
1,391 | Ushering in an ageless future | For years, futurists have attempted to predict when, in the future, we will finally achieve the “technological singularity’’ — a technological breakthrough so profound, it changes the course of humanity. Specifically, futurists have been talking about the moment when super-human artificial intelligence becomes reality. Or — to put it simply — when computers become smarter than people.
However, at Centaura, we believe that the world needs to prepare for a different singularity — one that might arrive even before super-human intelligence. It’s the moment when humans have the power to slow down — and even reverse aging.
Stepping back: what the “singularity” is
The idea of the “singularity” first became popular nearly thirty years ago by the science fiction writer Vernor Vinge. In his essay The Coming Technological Singularity, he famously declared, “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”
Today, the idea of the “technological singularity” is highly debated — both in terms of its theoretical possibility and its ethical consequences. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, for example, suggested that we would still be wondering whether or not artificial intelligence that surpasses human capabilities is possible by the end of the century.
Even if we do reach the “singularity” in the near future, it is still unclear what that will actually look like.
Perhaps the bigger takeaway from the entire “singularity” debate is that technology and science are evolving at an unprecedented pace, making what once seemed impossible — possible.
The “aging” singularity
Perhaps no problem has vexed humanity more than the problem of aging. Whether it’s finding a cure for cancer or the development of new vaccines against deadly diseases, increasing longevity — the number of years a person lives — has long been a staple of modern medicine.
More recently, however, scientists have been attempting to not just increase humans’ lifespans, but actually slow — and even reverse — the degenerative processes altogether. And at Centaura, we believe that the only way to do that is to tackle the root causes: to uncover the biological origins of age-related diseases and then develop targeted therapies to combat them. What’s more, the ability to make that goal a reality is closer than you might think.
In just the past few years, scientists have made major advances in anti-aging science. They were able to extend the lifespan of worms by 45% with an enzyme-blocking molecule and extended the life of fruit flies by 65% with probiotics. Even more promising — a single dose of gene therapy stopped an aging disorder in mice.
These experiments prove that aging can be tackled by modern science, and by 2035, Centaura aims to bring the first anti-aging treatments to humans. That’s only fifteen years away. And when it happens, humans will have the ability to radically extend both their lifespans and their healthspans (the number of years spent in good health). Few technological advances have as much potential to radically change civilization.
Imagining an ageless future
The world has an “aging” problem. Nearly every country faces a growing proportion of individuals aged 65 and older, and the number of people aged over 80 is expected to triple by the year 2050. This is creating enormous pressure on public health and social welfare systems.
Unfortunately, without treating aging as a “disease” — one whose cure needs to be found — developed countries around the globe are facing a grim future: one where pension and healthcare systems are overburdened and the workforce is not large enough to support the national economy or infrastructure.
Imagine then that people lived longer. Living to one hundred would no longer be an achievement, but the norm. More importantly, even at 120, you would have the health and strength of a 40-year-old.
Progressively better health would ease the burden on already taxed healthcare systems. What’s more, if individuals are living until they’re 150 or 250 years, retirement at age 65 no longer makes sense. They’ll need to think longer term in terms of both their financial and mental health, and their continued contributions to the workforce will only serve to stimulate the economy and push for improved global decision-making. Think about it: the world becomes more complex by the day and those best suited to tackle the complexity are those with a wealth of knowledge and years of experience — in other words, older generations.
Of course, these same individuals will also get to reimagine their futures — without limits. With an extra 100 to 200 years in good health, regrets could become a phenomenon of the past. Those who are 60 will have a chance to try the one or two careers they didn’t get a chance to try earlier in life, while at 80 they might decide to run their first marathon or cross off that final destination on their travel bucket list.
When people have the time to enjoy several lifetimes worth of experiences, the world is not only a more productive place — but a happier one.
The other side of the coin
But wait, if healthcare systems are already taxed, won’t more elderly only exacerbate the problem? That’s the myth of the“aging society”.
Right now, the phenomenon of aging is equated with physical and mental decline. The problem isn’t so much that people are living longer; it’s that they’re living longer in a state of continuously declining health. Those who are aging aren’t contributing economically to society and, at the same time, require more extensive healthcare treatment for age-related diseases.
However, if we increase not just people’s lifespans but their healthspans, we have a demographic situation like that described above: people will continue to contribute to the economy as they get older, all without needing costly healthcare treatment.
As Andrew Scott, Professor of Economics at London Business School, puts it: think of it like inflation. If people only paid $1.18 for two movie tickets in the 1950s and now tickets cost $9.11 per person, has going to the movies really gotten more expensive, or are we just making more money?
Similarly, just because society is becoming chronologically older doesn’t mean society has to become physically and mentally older.
The next 15 years
A singularity is coming — it’s just not the one scientists and futurists have long foretold. Recent advancements in anti-aging science have proven that halting degenerative processes is possible. And, once the root causes of aging are identified, scientists like those at Centaura can craft treatments to stop aging at the source. Of course, the first step in significantly extending your lifespan is taking care of your health, and that needs to happen right now. 2035 isn’t that far away, and by making healthy lifestyle choices, such as exercising and eating right, today, when the first anti-aging treatments finally do arrive, they’ll have a greater impact.
The fact is: a new future is coming. But rather than preparing for one where the robots take over, we need to start preparing for one where people are living 150–200 years long, all in good health. What will that mean at an individual, local, and national level? What will people be able to accomplish with all that extra time? What does an ageless future look like?
It’s time we all began dreaming bigger.
Follow Centaura on Facebook and Linkedin to stay up-to-date with all of our latest news. | https://medium.com/@centaura-science/ushering-in-an-ageless-future-b799e517baf | [] | 2020-12-08 15:14:24.253000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Health', 'Biotechnology', 'Aging'] |
1,392 | Want to look better than natural on your next video call? | The downside of using a DSLR as a webcam is the significantly higher price (unless you compare it to a super high-end webcam) and the fact that the solution is a bit less plug & play than using a standard webcam.
If you want to go for it, here’s what you need:
(1) A DSLR or mirrorless camera that
provides “clean HDMI” output (so that you get a clean video stream without the camera UI)
(so that you get a clean video stream without the camera UI) you can set to run permanently (some cameras have a 30-minute recording limit)
(some cameras have a 30-minute recording limit) can be connected to a power plug (for uninterrupted power supply)
I bought a Canon EOS 250D and a “dummy battery” that lets you connect the camera to a power socket.
(2) A lens with a focal length (or zoom range) that fits your room setup (i.e. the distance between you and the camera).
I have an 18–55mm zoom lens, but I’m still toying with the idea of getting a fixed-length lens with a wider aperture (these lenses are super expensive, which kept me from buying one so far — Moore’s law unfortunately doesn’t seem to apply to optical lenses!).
(3) A tripod
(4) A video capturing device like the Elgato Camlink
Canon has recently released a new software that lets you use some Canon cameras as webcams without any additional hardware. If this works well you may not need the Elgato Camlink.
Is it worth it?
It depends. For most people, a good webcam (with good lighting) should be good enough, but if you are doing enterprise sales meetings over video, webinars with customers, or presentations at virtual conferences, the professional appearance might be worth spending some of the money that you’re currently saving on flights. :-) Another factor is, of course, if you already happen to own a DSLR that you can use as a webcam, since the DSLR is by far the most expensive part of the setup.
Another alternative to consider is using your smartphone as a webcam. Modern iPhones, for example, have much better cameras than most webcams, and there are several apps (e.g. EpocCam) that let you use e.g. an iPhone as a webcam.
2. Light
The Elgato Key Light is a cool light, but almost any bright light will do the trick.
Whether you go for a DSLR or stick to your webcam, good lighting makes a big difference.
Natural sunlight is best, but since I do lots of calls late at night, I bought an Elgato Key Light. What’s nice about the Elgato is that you can control the color temperature and brightness from your phone, but there are many other cheaper alternatives that will do the job.
Portrait photographers like to use three light sources to (literally) present you in the best light, but unless you really want to turn your home office into a TV studio you don’t need to go that far. Just make sure that you have a bright light directed at your face and that there’s no bright light behind you.
3. Camera position
In order to look someone in the eyes in a video meeting, your camera would have to be placed in front of your screen, close to where your counterparts’ eyes are located on the screen. Not ideal because then a part of your screen would be obscured by the camera.
Since I like to stand up during long video meetings, I bought a motorized tripod head that lets you rotate and tilt the camera with a remote control.
There are a few interesting technological approaches to solving this problem, e.g. having a camera integrated into the screen (not yet technically feasible AFAIK); using software to “correct” the position of your eyes in your video stream (a bit creepy?); or (mis)using a teleprompter (this looks like a cool DIY project).
There’s no simple, perfect solution, but if you make sure that your camera is as close to your screen as possible you’re fine. If you have enough space to sit 1–2 meters away from your screen, you can also try placing your camera in front of the screen. That’s what I’m doing, as you can see in the pictures here. | https://medium.com/point-nine-news/want-to-look-better-than-natural-on-your-next-video-call-6af1876ca286 | ['Christoph Janz'] | 2020-09-30 16:23:09.233000+00:00 | ['Zoom', 'Zoom Meetings', 'Remote Working', 'Video Conferencing', 'Technology'] |
1,393 | 8 Tech Trends to Track in 2020 | Autonomous vehicles, acrobatic robots, smarter cities, and a looming war against the sinister threat that is ‘deepfake’ … these are just some of the trends that Marcin Dąbrowski, CIO at ITMAGINATION, expects us to be tracking in 2020. But what do these trending topics mean for you and your business?
In 2019, the increase in the presence and prevalance of voicebots, chatbots and virtual assistants showed the new direction that businesses were taking in order to automate and strengthen their customer interaction capabilities. Last year also saw the formal implementation of the EU’s PSD2 regulation, and the move towards a digital single market in the region.
And while, as a topic, they’re not new, it’s important to acknowledge the huge advances that were made in the areas of autonomous cars and robotics — these technologies now seem poised to enter our daily lives.
And yet, for all the opportunity that technology trends like autonomous vehicles and robots create, there are notes of caution to observe as well. Cybersecurity threats have become more sophisticated and now the world is bracing itself for the impact of — and need to tackle — the potentially sinister threat that is deepfake. Indeed, as technology advances, there is a growing imperative for individuals and businesses to define their ethical stance on such technologies, and the extent to which we can, should and will trust these technologies (and their providers) will be a key topic.
Here are 8 tech trends we at ITMAGINATION will be tracking in 2020.
1. A new era for banks and financial service providers
As part of the PSD2 regulation, from September 2019, banks in the EU were required to have implemented Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) measures. This means that logging into accounts and making electronic payments could be subject to multi-factor authentication (e.g. entering a code received via SMS message or being required to confirm identity using biometric data, such as a fingerprint on a cell phone). Furthermore, as part of the PSD2 regulation, banks were also required to make fully functional APIs available to fintechs and other third-party providers (TPP) that will allow these service providers to access bank account data (with user consent only, of course) in order to provide better, more-integrated services to customers. PSD2 carries with it the potential to accelerate a dramatic enhancement in micro-personalized customer experiences, but it also poses a threat to more-traditional banks. As they detect encroachment on the territories that they have dominated for decades, look for banks to increase their relevance to customers with the integration of more value-added services (VAS) to customers. If you haven’t already observed it with your own bank, in 2020 prepare to reimagine the way you interact with your bank and what it can do for you.
2. The evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
For many years, AI was like a curio in the tech world and mainstream press. Headlines were made when IBM’s Deep Blue defeated reigning chess world Champion Gary Kasparov in 1997 but, for most of us, the impact of AI has seemed a little too high level or intangible until recently. Today, hardly a day goes by without us hearing about a major breakthrough with AI. It can dramatically improve the quality and efficiency of customer service, but AI can also outperform human doctors in diagnosing breast cancer from mammograms. Indeed, AI has compelling use cases across a wide and diverse range of industry sectors. The capability of AI to make suggestions based on analysis of literally millions of data entries (activities, functions or interactions) can enable enhanced operations in retail stores (proactive stock ordering and product location within stores), micro-personalized services for customers, and improved-and-automated ability to detect and anticipate fraudulent behavior. Expect increased investment in AI as businesses in all sectors seek to improve the efficiency of their operations and gain competitive advantage in the race for the hearts and minds of customers.
3. A smarter world with the Internet of Things (IoT)
When the term “the internet of things” (IoT) was first used several years ago, many people expected it to have a greater impact more quickly than it has done. However, while the possibilities of IoT have been known for many years, the infrastructure and connectivity needed to realize its full potential have lagged behind the vision. With 5G being rolled out (at various paces) around the world, the stage finally appears to be set for IoT to have a broader and more-meaningful impact. Why is 5G important? With a new level of wireless connectivity, it will be possible for Edge computing and Edge AI to become more widespread. These technologies are capable of processing huge volumes of data on end devices and in the cloud — a key enabling factor for some of the higher-potential benefits promised by IoT. The hope is that, with 5G and the greater adoption of IoT it enables, the visions of smart buildings, cities and transport networks can finally be realized. In 2020, businesses will be keeping a watchful eye on how the huge volumes of data being produced by their operations can be harnessed by IoT.
4. Robots straight out of sci-fi cinema
Boston Dynamics made headlines in 2019 when it demonstrated robot dogs and humanoid figures that that were capable of performing and carrying out tasks in natural and even potentially dangerous environments. In September 2019, Spot, a robotic dog capable of monitoring building sites and executing simple tasks in potentially hazardous environments (e.g. with electrical and gas installations), went on sale. This was followed by updated information about the company’s humanoid robot, Atlas, and a demo showcasing its impressive jumping and acrobatic capabilities. Not to be left behind, consumer-electronics giant Samsung has introduced its own Samsung Bot, a robotic companion capable of telling you the weather, measuring your blood pressure and even calling an ambulance on your behalf if it detects that your health is at risk. In 2020, we at ITMAGINATION expect significant progress in the area of robotics and more high-profile use-case demonstrations of how these robots can help people and businesses.
5. Driverless cars
Most of us are aware of the progress that has been made with autonomous vehicles and drones in recent years. Some of us have even test ‘driven’ or been transported by them. The technology exists and the capabilities are becoming even more sophisticated. Google (through Waymo) has racked up more than 20 million miles of autonomous vehicle testing (including more than 10 million in 2019 alone)and, in 2019, Tesla rolled out a ‘Smart Summon’ function on its mobile app that enables Tesla owners to remotely instruct their vehicles to drive to where they are. For now, though, these technologies still carry prohibitive caveats — most autonomous cars still travel with a human’s hands hovering over the steering wheel ready to intervene at the first sign of danger, and Tesla’s Smart Summon should only be used for short distances and with the vehicle visible to the driver at all times. Still, major progress is being made and we at ITMAGINATION expect 2020 to be the year when leading tech companies prove that it’s time for the shackles to be removed.
6. Time for cryptocurrencies
Blockchain technology has enabled many new ways for businesses to securely save and share data. But perhaps its most-well-known use has been as an enabler to the creation of cryptocurrencies. Facebook has announced its plans to develop its own cryptocurrency (called Libra) and Samsung is enabling cryptocurrency wallets in its latest flagship phones. Revolut has been enabling users to exchange cryptocurrencies for some time now. Amazon recently released Amazon Managed Blockchain, thus joining Microsoft and IBM in the Blockchain-as-a-Service game. Cryptocurrencies are a controversial topic for some, but it’s clear that Blockchain as a technology has huge potential for businesses and individuals. Its evolution and adoption in 2020 will be worthy of keen observation.
7. Quantum computing
Google claims that, in 2019, its quantum computer executed a complicated calculation in 200 seconds that would have taken the fastest ‘conventional’ computer approximately 10,000 years to complete. Naturally, such a claim invited a lot of attention, and also skepticism. Could it really be possible? Regardless of whether the claim is 100% accurate or not, Google deserves credit for its progress in the field of quantum computing. This technology has the potential to deliver game-changing evolutions in a variety of different industries, such as healthcare, where it could be used, for example, to simulate the structure of a molecule and support the development of new medicines and treatments. Elsewhere, it can be used to accelerate the improvement of AI, thus making it more accurate and — if used correctly — trustable as a replacement or superior option to human decision making. For example, in banking, current AI-based solutions used to assess risk and identify and anticipate rogue activity could be dramatically enhanced by quantum computing, further increasing the accuracy and reliability of the solution, and thus reducing the reliance on human intervention.
8. The fight against deepfake
We’ve all heard about fake news, to the extent that the term is now loosely thrown at any topic that people wish to dispute or rebut. Deepfake is a rather sinister emerging trend that threatens to fundamentally weaken the trust that people have in the information that they see on the web, on social media and elsewhere. By accessing some rather sophisticated technology, individuals and organizations with less-than-warm intentions can create, manipulate or replicate imagery, videos and even audio to put out ‘fake’ messaging but in a way that is difficult to distinguish as being fake. Anybody that has seen examples (such as the deepfake of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg) will be a little creeped out to see how seemingly real these digital imitations can look. If the fake messaging is put out and exposed to a large enough audience, it’s conceivable that people perceive this as the truth or — at the very least — become sufficiently disoriented that they start to question the truth (i.e. see the real thing and suspect it of being a deepfake). As with all technologies, the capability is only going to become more sophisticated, which is perhaps why Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon have joined forces to fight the emergence and presence of deepfakes on the net, and large amounts of investment and resources will be required to stay one step ahead of the perpetrators. Given the alleged influence of fake news, Cambridge Analytica and cybersecurity issues on the 2016 US presidential elections, and again with the Brexit referendum in the UK, all eyes will be on the 2020 US presidential elections. It’s quite possible that there will be as much scrutiny on the technology and social media platforms as there will be on the candidates themselves.
What’s trending in your industry?
If you’re looking to keep your organization ahead of the innovation curve, if your company needs to make progress on the topics above, or if you have your own innovation objectives that you wish to pursue, talk to ITMAGINATION.
Learn it. Know it. Done.
This article was originally posted on ITMAGINATION website. | https://medium.com/itmagination/8-tech-trends-to-track-in-2020-41f98aef282b | [] | 2020-01-14 15:13:00.590000+00:00 | ['Technology News', 'Fintech', 'Trends', 'Technology Trends', '2020'] |
1,394 | A guide to Smart Contracts | We all have heard the term Smart Contract. When Satoshi invented Blockchain, it was meant to perform transactions only. Ethereum smart contracts made it the prime choice to build Dapps over it. Smart contract enhanced Ethereum’s functionality and makes it different from the traditional blockchain (Bitcoin). This functionality was replicated by other newer Blockchains.
What are Smart Contracts?
Smart contracts can be defined as self-executing applications that run on a blockchain. It is an agreement between two or more parties in the form of a computer code that runs on a decentralized network in a blockchain. It consists of a set of defined rules which are agreed upon by the involved parties. The contract automatically gets activated whenever certain conditions are met.
This idea will remove the involvement of any trusted third-party companies (such as banks) and will be controlled by computers on a trusted network.
Ethereum is one of the most popular blockchain platforms for creating smart contracts. It supports a feature called Turing-completeness that enables the developers to build customized smart contracts. Solidity, Ethereum’s original coding language is used to develop smart contracts. Ethereum blockchain’s ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens are smart contract standards.
Who created it?
Nick Szabo, a computer scientist, and cryptographer, first described the idea of Smart contracts in the ’90s. He worked on the concept of defining contract laws in businesses between parties by maintaining an electronic commerce protocol on the Internet.
He further designed Bit Gold, a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency in 1998. Though the idea was never implemented it created a base that led to the popularity of Bitcoin after 10 years.
Properties:
· Self-verifiable
· Self-executable
· Tamper Proof
Benefits of using Smart Contract
· The removal of third-party or middleman leads to direct and transparent communication between involving parties
· Helps in maintaining trust as the agreement rules were predefined and agreed by the parties involved
· Helps in reducing error and frauds
· Time and cost-efficient
· No single point of failure or data loss as data is distributed across the network
Different objects of Smart contracts
There are three essential and main objects of Smart Contracts
· Signatories- The parties who use the smart contract.
· Agreement subject
· Terms and Condition-. Details like rules, obligations, and associated punishments, etc are mentioned as terms and conditions as appropriate.
How Smart Contract works
Ethereum has 2 types of accounts
· External accounts (user account) — Controlled by public-private key pairs
· Contract accounts — Controlled by the code stored together with the account
These accounts contain four fields:
· The nonce, which ensures that each transaction can only be processed once
· The current ether balance of the account
· The contract code of the account
· The storage of the account
Model steps
1. External account executes a function:
a. The user initiates the process by signing the transaction using his private key corresponding to the account.
b. Local validation of the transaction happens. It is broadcasted to the network.
c. The transaction is added to the transaction pool. The miner/s maintains such pools.
2. Generate EVM bytecode through compiling
3. EVM
a. EVM is a powerful, virtual sandbox embedded within each full Ethereum node
b. The job of the EVM is to update the Ethereum state by computing valid state transitions as a result of smart contact code execution
c. The EVM should not run into any exceptions during the execution
4. Get contract address from that transaction’s receipt
5. Trigger contract address to invoke methods of that deployed smart contract
6. Upon receiving a newly created block, the local node executes all the transactions in the block.
The accuracy and quality of a smart contract depends on the following things
· Open and decentralized database
· The environment needs to support the use of public-key cryptography
· Quality programming is crucial.
· Data should be reliable.
· Robust rules should be used while automating the process.
Features
Smart contracts automatically support the features of underlying blockchain technology.
· Autonomy — Complete control of the involving parties. No need of middleman as in the case of traditional contractual system
· Speed — Automated computer code runs as soon as the input criteria fulfill, thereby eliminating the delays caused by manual paperwork activity
· Safety — Network encryption guarantees safety against data theft or hacking
· Savings — No doubt that the removal of middleman saves a lot of overall cost and time
· Accuracy — Since these smart contracts are automated software codes so they ensure accurate output as long as the data fed into the system as input is accurate
· Trust — Helps in building trust as the documents are encrypted in a shared ledger
· Backup — Since in Blockchain network, each node has a complete backup of data which ensures protection over data loss
Potential Use cases
Smart contracts can be used to exchange money, property, shares, or anything without any intervention of middleman. They are now gaining popularity and adaption in various sectors. Some of the main sectors are as follows:-
· Insurance Companies
· Health Systems
· Government’s administrative work.
· Business Management
I will cover each of the potential use cases in detail in my future articles separately.
Conclusion
Smart Contract is the greatest innovation built on Blockchain technology. We can say it as a cherry over the pie. It has given a new dimension to technology and is one of the biggest reasons behind the popularity of Ethereum.
We can say without any second thought that very soon we will be entering into the era where there will be no intervention of any third party. In this way, it can help us in saving a lot of money, time, and effort. Also we don’t need to be dependent or trust anyone while taking any crucial transactions. This will surely help in reducing fraud, unnecessary delays, and the overall cost of transactions. Smart Contracts will make many transactional jobs redundant. We can be hopeful that further development in technology will open sources for many other new jobs.
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Read More: Mastering Basic Attention Token (BAT) | https://medium.com/@ruma-das/a-guide-to-smart-contracts-ad783eb015aa | ['Ruma Das'] | 2020-05-27 12:11:36.457000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Smart Contracts', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Evm', 'Ethereum'] |
1,395 | Advisor Brian Dixon Visits Foresting Seoul Office | Brian Dixon pose inside Foresting’s Office
Brian Dixon, one of Foresting pioneer Advisors paid a courtesy visit to the company’s Seoul office Thursday, December 20.
Members of the strategy and planning team met him on arrival. Brian had the opportunity to also interact with some staff members, while he toured the Foresting office.
Prior to that, he was given a short briefing on Foresting’s roadmap and further discussed issues relating to investment, marketing, listing, and the Foresting App.
Equally elated to welcome Brian into the office, Foresting Founder, David Kim shared moments with Brian and later had photo-ops together.
Brian had traveled to Seoul to attend some business conferences, given lectures and signed partnership MOUs with some Korean-based blockchain organizations.
Team Foresting was excited to see welcome him and wish him a Merry Christmas and success in the New Year.
ABOUT BRIAN DIXON
Brian is the COO of Capital Innovators, an organization that provides venture investment and management to more than 100 companies in the technology, consumer products, and energy-tech verticals. He also manages digital assets, blockchain firms and advises for global blockchain projects including Foresting. An early investor and adopter of cryptocurrency, Brian has written books on Bitcoin and human consciousness.
See some of the photos below. | https://medium.com/foresting/advisor-brian-dixon-visits-foresting-seoul-office-d0f4aa5a2c47 | ['Williams Nana Kyei'] | 2018-12-21 08:19:52.815000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency Investment', 'Blockchain Development', 'Advisor', 'Blockchain Technology', 'Partnerships'] |
1,396 | JavaScript Basics — Catching Exceptions, Assertions, and Regexes | Photo by Leonardo Wong on Unsplash
JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. To use it effectively, we’ve to know about the basics of it.
In this article, we’ll look at how to catch exceptions, use assertions, and regexes.
Selective Catching
We can catch exceptions selectively.
To do that, we can check which kind of subclass of Error is being thrown.
For instance, we can create our own subclass of error by writing:
class InputError extends Error {} try {
//...
throw new InputError('error');
} catch (ex) {
if (ex instanceof InputError) {
console.log(ex);
}
}
We create our own InputError class by using the extends keyword.
Then in the catch block, we use the instanceof operator to check the ex variable to see if it’s an instance of our InputError class.
We didn’t define its own constructor, which means that it’ll use Error ‘s constructor.
So we can pass in a string.
Assertions
Assertions are checks inside a program that check if something is the way it is supposed to be.
For instance,e we can create an assertion by writing some checks and throwing an exception if it’s not met.
We write:
const firstElementExists = (arr) => {
if (!Array.isArray(arr) || arr.length === 0) {
throw new Error('no first element found');
}
return arr[0];
}
Now instead of our program failing, we can use this function to check if the first element of an array exists.
Regular Expressions
Regular expressions are used for finding things in strings.
It’s a language to describe patterns in strings.
For instance, we can create one by writing:
const re1 = new RegExp("foo");
or:
const re2 = /foo/;
in Javascript.
Both regular expressions represent the same pattern. We have f followed by 2 o ‘s.
Backslashes are for delimiting the regular expressions in the 2nd example.
Testing for Matches
We can test for matches by using the test method that’s part of a RegExp instance.
For instance, we can write:
/foo/.test("foobar")
which returns true since ‘foo’ is in foobar .
On the other hand, if we have:
/foo/.test("xbar")
Then test returns false since ‘foo’ isn’t in 'xbar' .
Sets of Characters
Regular expressions can include more complex patterns.
We can use indexOf to check if a string is in a substring like we did above.
For instance, we can check if a string has a number by writing:
/[0-9]/.test("abc 123")
Then we get true since 'abc 123' has digits 0 to 9 in it.
The - is between 2 characters is used to indicate a range of characters.
Common character groups have their own built-in shortcuts.
The following are shorthands we can use in our regex patterns:
\d — any digit character
— any digit character \w — any alphanumeric character
— any alphanumeric character \s — any whitespace character
— any whitespace character \D — any character that’s not a digit
— any character that’s not a digit \W — nonalphanumeric character
— nonalphanumeric character \S — non-whitespace character
— non-whitespace character . — any character except for the newline
We can use the ^ character to match something that’s the opposite of the pattern.
For instance, we can write:
/[^\d]/.test("abc")
Then we match anything that’s not a digit.
That returns true since 'abc' has no digits.
Repeating Parts of a Pattern
We can put a + sign to repeat a pattern.
For instance, we can write:
/\d+/.test("123")
Then we match 1 or more digit characters.
The star * has a similar meaning but also allows the pattern to match 0 times.
A question mark lets us make a pattern optional.
For instance, we can write:
/colou?r/.test("colour")
Then we get true since u is in the string 'colour' .
Ranges
We can check with regex to see if some pattern appeared a given number of times.
The number of times that something appears is indicated with curly braces and some numbers inside it.
For example, we can write:
/\d{1,2}/.test('12')
to check if a digit appears 1 to 2 times. The numbers are separated by a comma.
We can also write:
/\d{1}/.test('12')
to check if a digit appears only once.
To check if something appears x or more times, we can write:
/\d{1,}/.test('12')
So we can if a string has 1 or more digits together.
Conclusion
We can create our own Error subclass and check for them in the catch block with instanceof .
Assertions are checks that must be met or an exception is thrown.
Regexes are useful for checking for patterns in strings. | https://medium.com/javascript-dots/javascript-basics-catching-exceptions-assertions-and-regexes-7ce77d4373b6 | ['John Au-Yeung'] | 2020-06-19 15:20:30.077000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Programming', 'JavaScript', 'Software Development', 'Web Development'] |
1,397 | Seven steps to decide if AI suits your business workflow | By using the right AI technology for your company, you can accelerate your growth. However, business leaders should not forcefully include AI in their operations; instead, they should find specific workflows in which AI can provide maximum value. For example, if you’re in a restaurant company, you might want to use AI to produce weekly analytics by processing electronic bills.
Many executives have a trust issue with up-and-coming technologies like AI about how they fit into their business ecosystem. If you are interested in adopting AI but are not sure whether or not it can fit into your business, below are steps to help kick-start the process of using it in your workflow.
Identify the areas where AI can provide maximum value for your business.
Business is a complex set of intertwined processes that run like a well-oiled machine, so integrating new technology into an existing workflow is not straightforward. Implementing AI comes at a cost and, therefore, value analysis is essential to ensure that your investment gives you maximum returns.
First of all, understand the need for AI in your business. For example, Domino uses AI as part of its infrastructure to boost its pizza delivery.
Real Talk with Data Scientist and Advanced Analytics Manager | skills required for a data scientist
To find out whether your company will benefit from AI, ask yourself a few simple questions:
• What is the size of your company digitized? Company digitization requires the transfer of a raw source of data to a digital format. This can include pictures, numbers, etc. Digitization can help a company to scale. For example, if a shopkeeper sells clothing locally, the reach of the business is limited to a specific demographic. On the opposite, if the shopkeeper wanted to digitize by creating a website, the company could reach out to more customers, sell more clothes, and grow. One example of the potential benefits of digitization is Aim, which saw its stock increase by 66 percent over its 8-year digital transformation initiative.
Digitization brings monetary benefits and helps to track various critical areas of business in order to reduce risks, such as accounting, financial management, inventory management, etc. One will need enormous human capital to carry out all these activities.
AI is efficient when we give it the right amount of digitized data. AI‘s promise lies in discovering secret patterns of data that are not visible to a human being. Digitized data, therefore, plays a vital role in transforming AI sector. If your organization lacks digital data generation, AI may not be needed in the first place.
• What are the different forms of digital data that your company collects, and how do you store it? If AI is a vehicle, then the fuel is the digital data.
• Would AI provides a better return over time for the investment of time and money required?
Speak to your engineers to see how AI can solve your business problems
Unplash
Engineers bring a different perspective to your business challenges and can help with valuable suggestions. Consult your in-house engineers to understand the scope of the particular problem and the timeframe to solve it. It is crucial to take advice before any commitments are made because they know the depth of the problem. They can also help you narrow the reach of AI in your company and help you start the creation process.
Determine the implications of AI for your revenue model.
Revenue is a key indicator of growth for any company. The defined use of AI cases and their expectations should be evaluated in order to ensure that they do not limit long-term development.
Understand the cost implications of AI for your business.
The AI is still in a growing phase. We see major progress and successful research in AI every year. However, it would be naive to regard it as a low-cost proposition. The cost implications depending on your use case, but they won’t come at a low price. The internet, for example, was costly during its development process. If your company can afford an AI-based solution that can offer a decent value proposition and improve performance, you can opt for it.
Find out how AI is going to help the workers.
Employees are vital to the success of every organization. AI will simplify workflows, enhance decision-making, and create knowledge that can allow workers to concentrate on more challenging tasks. For example, in a call center, workers can benefit from AI handling simple language queries without human interference. It can also help to identify and avoid spam calls. Chatbots are another great example that has become the standard in the service industry these days. There are countless possibilities where AI can support and not replace the workforce.
Real Talk with Data Scientist and Reinforcement Learning Lead | skills required for data scientist
Consider the legal and ethical implications of the implementation of the AI.
Keep in mind that AI is a new technology. It is evolving at a rapid pace and can raise some unforeseen challenges and ethical questions. There is an ongoing discussion on the ethics of AI and the extent to which it should be regulated. You need to make sure that your business is not affected by such external forces.
Enhance your learning of AI.
A common misapprehension of AI among business owners is that AI is capable of solving any problem with little or no human interference. The present state of AI is nowhere near general intelligence. To realize the true value proposition of AI in your company, keep up to date with current AI advancements.
Prerequisite for Data Science: It’s Not What You Think It Is | 4000° PLASMA LIGHTSABER BUILD
Initially, spend as little as possible and try to get a working prototype ready. Set short-term targets and assess progress when evaluating an AI solution. It is important to increase your understanding of AI through this process and to have trust once you know its challenges. If you want to accelerate your business growth with AI, you should be willing to learn and adapt quickly to changes.
My advice to you is to be open-minded and think outside of the box while you are looking for a career in data science. It will give you a competitive edge in your career in data science.
Bio: Shaik Sameeruddin I help businesses drive growth using Analytics & Data Science | Public speaker | Uplifting students in the field of tech and personal growth | Pursuing b-tech 3rd year in Computer Science and Engineering(Specialisation in Data Analytics) from “VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY(V.I.T)”
Career Guide and roadmap for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence &and National & International Internship’s, please refer :
More articles for your data science journey: | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/seven-steps-to-decide-if-ai-suits-your-business-workflow-6b8518969303 | ['Shaik Sameeruddin'] | 2020-10-20 12:41:27.686000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology'] |
1,398 | Robot Vs Cancer 🤖 | It’s been long said that the robot revolution was going to change our lives forever. Whether it be the extinction of mankind or the optimization of everything from weapons, to manufacturing and even the finance industry.
One of the most important uses for robots and artificial intelligence comes in the form of human health. Over the past 50 years, there has been a serious problem: “”mapping the three-dimensional shapes of the proteins that are responsible for diseases from cancer to Covid-19". Google’s Deepmind has solved this issue.
According to a new report from The Independent, Google’s Deepmind claims to have created a program named AlphaFold that can solve these mapping problems in “a matter of days”. This would be a major development if true and would mean this technology has arrived “decades” before it was expected.
There are millions and millions of known proteins in the human body and only a small percentage are understood. These technological developments could mean big changes for the way we fight disease.
Nobel Laureate and Professor Venki Ramakrishnan had this to say on the matter: “This computational work represents a stunning advance on the protein-folding problem, a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology. It has occurred decades before many people in the field would have predicted. It will be exciting to see the many ways in which it will fundamentally change biological research.”
I am not a financial advisor and my comments should never be taken as financial advice. Investments come with risk, so always do your research and analysis beforehand. | https://medium.com/invstr/robot-vs-cancer-143603725a18 | [] | 2020-12-07 11:49:35.062000+00:00 | ['Cancer', 'Health', 'Robots', 'Business', 'Technology'] |
1,399 | Why Does Silicon Valley Want to Reengineer Humans? | Why Does Silicon Valley Want to Reengineer Humans?
Human beings are not the problem. We are the solution.
Image: Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images
To many developers and investors in Silicon Valley, humans are not to be emulated or celebrated, but transcended or, at the very least, reengineered. These technologists are so dominated by the values of the digital revolution that they see anything or anyone with different priorities as an impediment. This is a distinctly antihuman position, and it’s driving the development philosophy of the most capitalized companies on the planet.
In their view, evolution is less the story of life than of data. Information has been striving for greater complexity since the beginning of time. Atoms became molecules; molecules became proteins; proteins became cells, organisms, and, eventually, humans. Each stage represents a leap in the ability to store and express information.
Now that we humans have developed computers and networks, we are supposed to accept the fact that we’ve made something capable of greater complexity than ourselves. Information’s journey to higher levels of dimensionality must carry on beyond biology and humans to silicon and computers. And once that happens, once digital networks become the home for reality’s most complex structures, then human beings will really be needed only insofar as we can keep the lights on for the machines. Once our digital progeny can care for themselves, we may as well exit the picture.
This is the true meaning of the “singularity”: It’s the moment when computers make humans obsolete. At that point, we humans will face a stark choice: Either we enhance ourselves with chips, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering to keep up with our digital superiors, or we upload our brains to the network. If we go the enhancement route, we must accept that whatever it means to be human is itself a moving target. We must also believe that the companies providing us with these upgrades will be our trustworthy partners — that they wouldn’t remotely modify equipment we’ve installed into ourselves, or change the terms of service, or engineer incompatibility with other companies’ enhancements or planned obsolescence. Given the track record of today’s tech companies, that’s not a good bet. Plus, once we accept that every new technology has a set of values that goes along with it, we understand that we can’t incorporate something into ourselves without also installing its affordances. In the current environment, that means implanting extractive, growth-based capitalism into our bloodstreams and nervous systems.
If we go with uploading, we’d have to bring ourselves to believe that our consciousness somehow survives the migration from our bodies to the network. Life extension of this sort is a tempting proposition: Simply create a computer as capable of complexity as the brain, and then transfer our consciousness — if we can identify it — to its new silicon home. Eventually, the computer hosting our awareness will fit inside a robot, and that robot can even look like a person if we want to walk around that way in our new, eternal life. It may be a long shot, but it’s a chance to keep going.
Others are hoping that even if our consciousness does die with our body, technologists will figure out how to copy who we are and how we think into an A.I. After that, our digital clone could develop an awareness of its own. It’s not as good as living on, perhaps, but at least there’s an instance of “you” or “me” somewhere out there. If only there were any evidence at all that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, or that it is replicable in a computer simulation. The only way to bring oneself to that sort of conclusion is to presume that our reality is itself a computer simulation — also a highly popular worldview in Silicon Valley.
Whether we upload our brains to silicon or simply replace our brains with digital enhancements one synapse at a time, how do we know if the resulting beings are still alive and aware? The famous Turing test for computer consciousness determines only whether a computer can convince us that it’s human. This doesn’t mean that it’s actually human or conscious.
The day when computers pass the Turing test may have less to do with how smart computers have gotten than with how bad we humans have gotten at telling the difference between them and us. | https://medium.com/team-human/why-does-silicon-valley-want-to-reengineer-humans-f7cfcf9ad052 | ['Douglas Rushkoff'] | 2020-11-12 14:20:41.208000+00:00 | ['Society', 'Technology', 'Book Excerpt', 'Silicon Valley', 'AI'] |
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