I hereby propose the following new theorem: The digital wallet will be to blockchain as the web browser is to the Internet. In other words, the digital wallet will be the primary gateway to all blockchain interactions and therefore all digital commerce in the near-term and all commerce and digital interaction in the long-term. A corollary to this theorem is the following: The battle over personal and corporate digital wallets will be much more heated than the browser and phone wars have been. In pursuit of dominant positions, newcomers will battle existing corporations on a global basis for primary positions with users. Blockchain 101 Before I go deeper, here’s a basic explanation about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. It could be called blocksplaining, but I find it helpful to lay out a few basic principles and assumptions prior to just jumping into things cold. Cryptocurrencies are separate from blockchain technology. The first is a digital representation of apparent perceived value; the second is a method for distributed transaction processing and storage. At the core of a blockchain platform lies a distributed transaction processing engine that validates and cryptographically seals transactions and then preserves them in a ledger that is ordered by time. Blockchains consist of sets of transactions that are sealed within a “block” using cryptographic algorithms. Successive blocks are linked to the preceding blocks by using hash values such that there is a sequential chain that is largely permanent and immutable. Blockchain networks are comprised of near identical nodes operating in a distributed but independent manner. The network of nodes is used to validate the transactions and encapsulate them within blocks in a chain. Blockchain transactions are maintained in a distributed ledger that is kept in conformity across the nodes in the network via consensus algorithms. Blockchain miners are operators of nodes in the network and are rewarded for forging the blocks via cryptocurrency. In most public blockchains, the first miner who arrives at a hash that is within a certain parameter receives the reward for that block, typically in the form of a new cryptocurrency value. If additional transactions are allowed within the blockchain platform, miners also receive rewards for processing transactions and storing accompanying data. Digital Wallets in the News There has been recent news about a second Parity wallet bug that has caused mult-signature Parity wallets to become unusable, and therefore any cryptocurrency stored within them, to be frozen. Most reports indicate that the funds may be frozen forever unless or until there is an effort by the community to remedy/rollback transactions.* This is clear setback to the development of simple, safe, and secure wallets. It it also likely have reverberating effects on use of cryptocurrencies and use of blockchain technology as it increases people’s fears about the technology and makes them fearful of digital wallets. Details on the Most Recent Parity Wallet Issue The current state of wallets is certainly immature and, to most people, confusing. Discussions of goes over most people’s heads, which is not surprising. Just as with the early Internet, the concepts, terminology, and tools of blockchain are largely new, somewhat complicated, and therefore foreign to most people. The concept of using the browser to access the Internet might seem pretty basic but at one point it wasn’t. Check out this IT Crowd clip if you have doubts. hot wallets vs. cold storage Typing in URLs and domain names was likewise foreign to people. Even trying to relay URLs was cause for puzzled looks and mass confusion. Here’s a classic Today show segment that shows what an ordeal it was to talk about Internet concepts in the early days.. A Learning Process Fortunately, this state is not permanent. Use of digital wallets to store cryptocurrencies and blockchain-aware assets is a progression — one that has its own terminology and take some time to learn. Typical steps might consist of using an exchange then moving to hot storage and then possibly moving to a cold storage solution. This first step is typically to buy cryptocurrencies using an exchange — such as , , or — and keeping the currency within the exchange. This type of onramp is pretty easy, not unlike buying stocks or bonds at one of the many online trading platforms. (The biggest hitches are finding a trustworthy exchange that is authorized to work within your country and filling out the information needed by the regulatory agencies.) Coinbase Kraken CEX Once comfortable with this process, many users will often take the next step and look for a more secure solution as well as one that features less third-party risk. (Much like online stock brokers who hold your portfolio of stocks in their name, online crypto exchanges will typically hold your assets in their name, hence the concerns about third-party risk.) This second step consists of transferring cryptocurrency from your exchange account to a or hot wallet, which is a software wallet that is accessible via the Internet and that you maintain. Examples here include , , or . Once you provide the wallet address in the exchange, the assets will be transferred to the wallet via a blockchain transaction. software wallet Exodus Jaxx Coinomi To further reduce the risk of someone accessing the wallet even more, experts recommend using a cold storage solution. This type of solution involves using a computing device specifically created for storing blockchain assets. You plug the device into your laptop, phone, or other connected device whenever you want to transact. Otherwise, you keep it disconnected and away from the Internet so there is no way for black hats to access it. Example of cold storage wallets include , , and . Trezor Ledger KeepKey Digital Wallets Now vs Digital Wallets in the Future Digital wallet technology are fated to improve and security will increase many fold. A quick look at early browsers and web pages versus the browsers and web pages of today show night and day differences. What was a novelty back then, understandable by only to a few who were web literate, is now a major driver in all entertainment, news, commerce, and social interaction and accessible by billions. ** The layers of technology connecting websites to phone, tablet, and laptop browsers are incredible achievements. This progression had many stages with many blind paths (remember, anyone?) and numerous many hitches, errors, and hard lessons learned. XML The same evolution will take place within cryptocurrencies and blockchain. The look of wallets as well as the way is work is still at such an early stage. Aside from the trading of cryptocurrency, there is no standard or accepted protocol for what gets recorded as part of a blockchain transaction or how transactions are displayed and archived within wallets. The applications and uses of blockchain are also sorting their way out much like early web pages and web businesses. (If you need a reminder, take a look at some of these .) early web pages Things will get better. Technology will improve, interactions and workflows will become more intuitive, and the experience will be less daunting and in time, far more familiar. It may not be clear as to what the equivalent of autofill, bookmarks, safe mode, and multiple tabs will be but I’m sure wallet developers will create them. Standard looks and interactions will emerge of out the creative frenzy and the result will be a more comfortable and intuitive experience such that you won’t remember what it was like “back in the early days.” The interesting part is this stuff can often just confuse the existing generation, but the next generation doesn’t question it. I remember when I first got my 11 year old goddaughter to use bitcoin. I thought I’d have to explain how it worked, how it can’t be just “copied because it is digital” and all that for her to use and accept it, but nope. She just ran with it because it worked. In fact she was using bitcoin because Chase wouldn’t give her a bank account until she was 13. When adults hear about crypto the first time, they are skeptical (for good reasons), but kids just say “Cool, so I can buy iTunes gift cards with it, right?”.– Robert McCone The Growing Importance of the Digital Wallet Getting back to the original proposition, the digital wallet will serve as the gateway to all interactions within the blockchain. It will do so for every action — not just for storing or trading cryptocurrency. It will also provide access for managing and trading traditional financial assets whether they be in the tradition form of cash in a savings account, stocks, bonds, warrants, options, as well as other financial instruments currently traded on exchanges or exchanged bank account to bank account. Going further, digital wallet will provide access for managing and trading non-financial assets as well. These include assets that exist completely in digital form as well as physical assets that have a representational ID in existing in blockchain-ready format. They will hold and manage access to important data that is at the center of personal and business interactions. Some of this data might be related to a form of ID such as passports, driver’s licenses, social security numbers, and voting registration. Other data might relate to policies and agreements including insurance policies such as health, home, auto,and life, cable and utility agreements, and auto and home purchases and mortgages. Even going further, digital wallets may even control and manage on your behalf all the data that you currently upload and create on web sites of today — the social network you created on LinkedIn and Facebook,the emails you store on Gmail, the purchases you’ve made at Amazon, the photos you’ve uploaded to Snapchat and Instagram, the reviews you’ve written at Yelp. If the online world moves from a centralized world to one that is decentralized, then digital wallets will manage and maintain all the data that currently is connected to you but resides in centralized repositories owned by third parties. In a decentralized world, you will have title to this information and can bring it with you. You will use the wallet to provide access to your preference and in return, receive a personalized experience. This attention and preference data will not be locked in silos for use by a single vendor or corporate entity but instead be usable by you for your benefit. (With power, though, comes danger — all issues that wallets will inevitably work to help address, much as browsers help address unsafe websites.) The Growth of Corporate Wallets In the corporate world, the use of digital wallets won’t be limited to the role that department credit cards play — use only for small purchases and transactions, limited in amount and only as a convenience from the official purchasing and payment process. Instead, they will take on a prominent and pervasive role that will eventually be at the center of all things transactional. As with personal assets and transactions, in a decentralized world, corporate wallets will control every transaction, financial or not. They will be used to authorise any exchange of money or data, signing of agreements, and even establishment of relationships. Need to sign an NDA? A digital wallet will facilitate the process. Need to issue a purchase order? Same thing. The nature of transactions will shift to record every intra-party and even interparty exchange as a public or private blockchain transaction. The signing of that exchange and any subsequent access of that exchange will be performed by a digital wallet. That wallet may be embedded as part of corporate applications — with each application providing wallet-like capabilities — or there will be a unified wallet that controls all corporate actions. A wallet that has different roles, permissions, and authorization levels — much like most current corporate applications. The Coming Wallet Wars If we do shift to a more decentralized world with fewer entities controlling personal and corporate data, then it’s not a leap in imagination to see how critical digital wallets become in the scheme of things. Likewise, it is easy to see how disruptive a decentralized world can be for those that currently hold your assets, execute transactions on your behalf, store your communications, or broker your business and social interactions. There’s a business maxim about not letting anyone get between you and your customer. If online interactions move to a decentralized world, that maxim is going to get tested on an exponential scale. The nascent wallet makers have an advantage as they have the knowledge and insights, not to mention the many lessons learned. But we are only in the early stages and the stakes are too high for large corporations (think Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba, Tencent, and any and every US and international financial institution) to concede this area and let other companies control access to users. Providing users with a browser not only allows default search engine access but also provides untold amounts of useful data and control opportunities. Phone operating systems are browsers on steroids, providing even more “ownership” of the user via what the default apps are, what apps can be in app stores, and even what communication pathways to use. Companies have learned at their own detriment the danger in conceding the interface with users to others. Digital wallets represent the next stage in this battle over technical dominance — one that is even far greater than a browser or a phone operating system. We’re at an early stage now — one that is rough and ill-defined — but that will be sure to heat up. If past experience is a clue, a few will be perceptive to the opportunity, the battles will be fierce, and in all likelihood, only a few will in the end take all. Notes * The issue with the most recent Parity bug involves users of their multi-signature feature — a feature which was intended to provide more security by requiring a second authentication for each transaction. An error within the framework of a smart contract allowed a user to take ownership of a particular contract and then replace the existing code that was used by the multi-sig feature with non-operational code — thereby freezing people out of use of assets stored in the wallet. The triggering of the bug originally appeared to be the result of a developer testing various edge scenarios and not a malicious act but later analysis may point to a darker intent. It is believed that the only way to unfreeze the assets would be through a hardfork that either mutates the state (like with the DAO fork ) or adds a new rule to Ethereum which could be used to unfreeze certain kinds of Ether when it is locked in a contract address where the contract code has been suicided (i.e. removed). Here is an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) which could allow this type of rescue were to to be implemented.** Digital wallet technology may will never likely be completely safe as there will always be a battle between white hats and black hats. A look at the constant battle with browser and phone spyware and malware as well as the ever-increasing reliance on antivirus and authorization software proves this out. Time and development efforts will solve many issues, but others will crop up, to be defeated by new security measures and fixes. Acknowledgements Thank you to and who assisted in the review and editing of this piece. Any and all errors are entirely my fault. Robert McCone Shawn Douglass

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The Wallet Theorem: The Digital Wallet will be to Blockchain as the Web Browser is to the Internet

Yesterday on LinkedIn, , the company’s CEO, commented on the new 280 character format on Twitter. Jeff Weiner “May not be fun to parse & read tweets at that length but must admit it’s a lot easier to write,” on LinkedIn after posting his first 280 character tweet. Weiner wrote I thought it was interesting to see a tech CEO commenting on Twitter’s new format. And I asked myself: what are other Silicon Valley and tech industry leaders saying bout Twitter’s most-talked about evolution? So, I decided to dig a little bit deeper. , founder and CEO of — and a co-founder of Twitter — said he likes the idea of longer tweets but thinks “Most tweets will not get longer, just because they can (or they’d all be maxed out today).” Ev Williams Medium He continued: “Sure, some will get a bit lanky, due to laziness. But that’s a small cost for more expression and utility.” , founder and CEO of , did not comment explicitly on the new Twitter length but posted an article by Daisuke Furuta, BuzzFeed Japan Founding Editor, about how Japan have had longer tweets since the very beginning of the platform. Jonah Peretti BuzzFeed “Don’t worry — it’s fine here in the long-tweet future,” wrote Furuta. “You’ll love it, or at least you’ll only hate it as much as you hate Twitter already,” he added. , co-founder of New York City-based venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, is not a fan of 280 characters. Fred Wilson “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should #280,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “To be clear. I’m not against #280. But I think less is more, always,” he added. Commenting on a post by a Twitter user that explained “I’m against it. Not in some deeply felt way, but it seems to defeat the use value,” Wilson responded: “Yes, if people abuse it.” , “Lead Magician” and CEO of , simply wrote: “Twitter just disrupted the entire cropped screenshot of text industry. Brutal.” Aaron Levie Box founder has not mentioned the new 280 character format on his Twitter feed, but he retweeted that quoted Shakespeare. AOL, Inc. Steve Case a tweet from Stephen Colbert Brevity is the soul of wit. The soul of wit is what brevity is. Brevity? Soul of wit? They’re the same thing. Like if you had brevity in one hand and the soul of wit in the other, you’d be hard pressed to tell them apart. , BarCamp co-founder and of the hashtag, commented: ‘It’s a bit more work and my brain doesn’t really have enough attention to cope with all the extra information in each tweet, but I’m sure I’ll adapt.” Chris Messina father He closed his 280 character tweet with one of the funniest comments on Twitter’s new format: Please consider the environment before printing this tweet. , general partner at , formerly Google Ventures, “doesn’t like what #Twitter280 is doing to Twitter,” referring to how it’s going to affect the platform’s “scan-ability.” M.G. Siegler GV “I know, I know, cue the world’s smallest violins,” . “I’m complaining about not wanting to scan an extra sentence or two. But as you scroll through a feed, this adds up. And, of course, it leads to more scrolling.” he writes on Medium Siegler also puts forward a suggestion for and his team: allowing 280 characters only for replies. His tweet led to an interesting with of Combine, a design and venture firm in San Francisco. Jack Dorsey back-and-forth Adam Michela

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After seeing numerous Dockerfiles, repositories, too many blog posts to count and a whole lot of medium, I decided that I wanted to have an open discussion on how folks manage their headless browser work. Especially now that there’s new libraries out there (headless Chrome, puppeteer and chromeless), I feel we’ve been given a second chance at these in a better way. GitHub using tools This is something I’ve personally spent many days and months working on at as I knew that getting it right was the best chance for success for both it and its users (especially folks just wanting so to speak). First and foremost I considered what I, as a consumer would want, but then story progressed from there to “how did we even end up here?” browserless a way to run headless “jobs” How we got here Not so long ago developers were left with few choices in terms of browser-based automation. PhantomJS, nightmare, and a handful of others ruled the realm and few questioned whether or not one of the big three (Google, Mozilla or Microsoft) would release a headless variant of their browsers. As great as those browsers are, there’s one thing most of them kind of suck at: working well on linux. This achilles heel is actually what PhantomJS and a few others got somewhat right: installing and working right away. As a matter of fact, you could pretty reliably install phantom and deploy an app in a matter of seconds with it. The issue was, and still is, that that’s what most folks did. actually It was this mentality and means of deployment that got phantom more flack than it deserved. In most application environments you wouldn’t deploy a database alongside your server’s app, nor would you interact with it directly. Instead you’d instead operate it separately (even if it is physically located on the same box) and talk with it over some socket connection. But more often than not developers didn’t do this. Instead they’d just invoke phantom, run some work, and call it a day. But what happens when your app starts getting hammered with requests? What happens when you want to massively parallelize work? Back to the Future I want to think back to the database as an example of how we should be doing distributed and parallelized browser work. Databases have all these cool things that come with them: connection pools, sockets, and are pretty easy to install and run. I’d say that, without much hesitation, that databases have a decent service layer around their functionality. That is: they have a strict protocol with how and when they can be interacted with. To think about it in a different way, imagine this: writing and saving data manually on each request to a flat file. This is essentially what we’re asking headless browsers to do by the nature of how we’re interacting with them. Of course they’re going to consume a ton of resources and be flaky. Of course they are going to crash and be generally unavailable. You’re explicitly running a massive binary alongside your core application, what do you expect? There’s a certain class problems that are going to be tough or impossible to solve any way you spin them. You can only do so much to limit the amount of resources Chrome will consume, and you can only parallelize in so much as you have resources available to do so. But you still use things like queues and load-balancing to make things more scalable. However, it’s hard to load-balance a binary when there’s no service boundary. can Where we should be tries to solve some of these problems mostly by treating a web browser like a database, more or less. In a database you can’t use fancy workflows like lambdas or functions-as-a-service otherwise your data would disappear after each invocation. Similarly, in a web browser, an invocation could last minutes or longer, which makes stateless lambdas tough. You also need a lot of assets for a browser to operate properly, which breaks a lot of limitations inside the serverless-type workflows. If you don’t believe me, go sort any headless library by date and witness folks fighting to get this working. I think it’s a novel way to do browser work, but it’s somewhat flawed fundamentally and fairly brittle. The fact is: if you want to remain flexible on how you interact with a browser, lambdas might be the right choice**.** Browserless not I’d like to suggest that, instead, you treat the browser like any other service with some small differences. Instead of relying on stateless HTTP, you’ll have to let WebSockets run the show (which is how remote Chrome library works at some level). This means that your headless service will need to proxy HTTP and WebSockets as well as babysit Chrome and concurrent connections. Sound like a pain? It kind of is. But you get pretty much everything you’d need as a consequence: every A clear path to scaling your app/tests. Easy to load balance and parallelize. Ability to change your headless jobs without deploying a new version. Since you are driving remotely you’ll hardly ever need to deploy. Sandboxing Chrome on its own infrastructure so it won’t bring everything down. Easily interchange running scripts locally versus a headless farm. In browserless this is a single line of code to toggle between. You also can build some really cool tooling alongside this. For instance, browserless comes bundled with a nifty debugger that allows you to test and see what the browser is up to during execution. The browserless debugger in action What are you doing with Chrome? I’m very curious to hear how you operate and run headless work in your application. Are you still deploying it alongside your app? Running it in lambdas? Not convinced on my position? I ask that you consider giving a look over as it solves a lot of problems I experienced personally. There’s also even specifically so you can hit the ground running on your next project. browserless hosted plans I’ve setup

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Short game feels good, gets results today. The results are not defendable. Short game looks like the obvious choice. Quick ROI, less investment. Short game is easy to replicate. Everyone wants to play the short game. Everyone wants you to play the short game. Long Game play seems counterintuitive. Long game is hard, its a grind, its taxing. Taxing on time, energy, emotion. Long Game strategy is not obvious. Long Game looks wasteful, irrational, never ending. Long Game players will remain, while Short Game players disappear. The brilliance of Long Game will then be realized.

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Turing completeness ain’t all it’s cracked up to be Mandatory image of the Joker burning vast amounts of money… was a genius and a hero and suffered immeasurably for who he was. He is known for many things, one of which is the concept of a Turing Machine. This hypothetical invention was the simplest computer you can possibly imagine: space to store information, and something that could read it, write to it, and perform operations based on what it’s there. It is the simplified model of every computer we have now. Alan Turing Ethereum is often described as being “Turing complete”. This a powerful property… it lets you do “anything”. Power, meet responsibility. Turing completeness on its own is only theoretically useful. Brainfuck is technically Turing complete, but nobody cares. It’s not the underlying Turing machine that matters. It’s the tools that allow you to communicate ideas and goals to it matter. Language and environment are everything. Different languages have different failure modes. Some languages, like C, have great access to hardware, awkward syntax, and hard compilation constraints. Once compiled, C code can crash and is notoriously prone to buffer abuse vulnerabilities, but it’s also fast, and once it’s working, it’s reliable. Javascript, on the other hand, is more susceptible to runtime exceptions. Its common vulnerabilities usually come from the browser interactions (as opposed to directly language-related), like cookie abuse, XSS, etc. security An all-too-common bug in Ethereum smart contracts is: “oops, someone stole your money”. Solidity, the canonical language that compiles down to EVM bytecode, is a lovely language that borrows a lot of syntax and features from modern languages. It’s easy to read and learn. When I started researching this article, I was looking for a “smoking gun” — a language feature to blame for the hundreds of millions of dollars being stolen or frozen. It would have been so easy to say “avoid delegatecall, and you won’t get burned”. Sadly, this is not the case. Unfortunately, the tl;dr as far as I can tell is: “software is hard, financial software is really hard”. I’m aware of three catastrophic bugs in Solidity code — the DAO hack and two vulnerabilities in the Parity multi-sig wallet software. We’ll cover each of them, they are each highly informative. The DAO was vulnerable to a “recursive spend attack”. Essentially, you could clear it out if you repeatedly instructed it to send you “your” money. If you sent a command to remove money while it was trying to fulfill your previous command, it wouldn’t ever get to the part of the code that updated your balance… wups. . Because of the other structures of the DAO, your stolen proceeds had to sit, immobile, for about a month before you could cash in. During this window, Ethereum executed a hard fork, preventing the stolen ETH from being sold or transferred again. Without this security precaution in the DAO code, it would have been much harder to reverse this hack in a hard fork. You can read about the super-interesting details elsewhere The first Parity vulnerability came from the fact that an initialization-only method was accidentally publicly available, and did not check to see if it was being called during initialization. This method set the list of owners, so you could tell any vulnerable wallet that you were its rightful owner in one call, and transfer the sum total out in the next function call. . The second Parity vulnerability was that the core component that all other Parity wallets referenced could be killed by anyone, rendering all dependent wallets useless and frozen. Gory details here Both of the Parity bugs came in part from splitting functionality between a library and the actual wallet contract. My initial response was “why would you have complex modules in financial code”? The answer is simple — it’s cheaper that way. Big smart contracts are more expensive than small ones, and so people are financially incentivized to have smaller contracts. A penny saved in gas is a gajillion dollars stolen, apparently. But I don’t think it’s really fair to put it that way. I think everything can have growing pains. Really, the only thing that Ethereum can be faulted for is of getting too big too quickly… there is so much pressure to get things out the door that there just isn’t enough time to do things in a really careful, deliberate, and secure way. All that being said, I think most of the “blockchain hype” is probably overblown. With upgradeable smart contracts (which are understandably the norm), you wind up having the same trust issues that you had with traditional server/client architectures. Does the given smart contract really benefit from being decentralized? If so, you simply have to put in the time to make it secure, on the first try, and not try to hedge your bets with “upgradeability”. If someone says “trust the code” and the code includes a little variable that points to “the real contract”, and that variable is editable by a specific individual… you’re asking me to trust that person, not the code! Other than a few ERC20 tokens, and Ether itself, I haven’t run across any ideas that really benefit from being on the blockchain. Some of them are almost comically terrible, but most of them would work just fine on their own, private, tailored blockchains. Anybody trying to sell you on some on-chain Ethereum microtransaction token doesn’t understand (or is ignoring) gas mechanics. Transactions are cheap for now, but not free. Blockchain IoT is a joke — on-chain certification just isn’t worth it. Any time there is a trusted party (see: most upgradable smart contracts), you’re sunk — just run the code on their servers! Most of these trusted parties wind up running full Ethereum nodes instead, which are insanely more expensive than just regular-old web-app servers. I hasten to add that I am not down on the ideas of “blockchain” in general! Blockchain thinking enables new, never-before-seen use cases. It’s just that most of the initial “it’s like Pinterest, but on the blockchain” ideas are just downright silly. There are clearly a lot of people hoping to hop on a fast-moving bandwagon, and a bunch of inexperienced newly-rich people, and gullible VCs who fall for the cryptographic word-salad. We’ve got a lot of early-phase fluff and garbage to get through before we earn the right to really transform our world. It’s hard to think of the great idea first! It helps to let a few (hundred) bad ideas fail in order to flesh out the underlying technology. Honestly, it’s unclear to me that there is any real need for a widespread, global, Turing-complete blockchain (Ethereum). I don’t think that the world is ready for code-is-law, and it’s had enough of whatever-some-guy-says-is-law. Imagine a world where the DAO started as a private blockchain run by the developers who were starting it, it could still increase in value, and eventually “go public” when the founders stop having 51% of the stake (or hashpower). Why fork the entire universe in order to fix a problem with 15% of it? Why should the entire world confirm some transaction between my lightbulb and my neighbor’s photovoltaic array? I think the fundamental value proposition of Ethereum (to be a platform for build global, decentralized applications) is awesome in the weighty sense of the word. However, this platform is guaranteed to get more congested and expensive. It’s unclear to me that there’s a “scaling solution” — the whole point is to have global consensus, why invoke that when it’s not necessary? Building on the lessons learned by Ethereum and Bitcoin, it should be possible to put the crucial features together, enable cross-chain communication and trading, and build out a system of compatible libraries and protocols that let people craft solutions to their specific problems. Bootstrapping things in an environment where billions of dollars are sloshing around seems reckless. I’m always trying to learn, though, so if you know of an Ethereum project that leverages the insane power of the platform in a way that doesn’t rely on trusted parties, either in the code or implicitly, I’d love to hear about it!

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Life is a race. In order to stay on top of everything that life throws at you, you need to keep evolving with time. Or else, you will be left white faced and everyone else would steer right past you. This evolution and reinvention process becomes even more important if you are handling a role. Why? Because it is the responsibility of a leader to make sure that a team is ready to tackle the challenges that changing times throw at the team. It is because a leader is handed over the responsibility to get things done from the team. It is because leadership can be the major difference between and failure in a project. leadership success “Don’t let work become a burden for your team. to manage projects effortlessly.” Start using ProofHub But, how do you figure out that it is time to reinvent yourself as a leader? This is what we are going to discuss in this post. Here is a look at the four clear signs that reflect you need to bring a change in your leadership style - Conflicts within the team So you’ve had a pretty good team that has managed to work together for quite some time now. But wait — all of a sudden there are conflicts rising within the team. And, it is not just one odd occasion — they have become a regular scene at office. This is an indication that something is clearly wrong. Constantly rising conflicts within the team, therefore, is a clear indication that you need to reinvent yourself as a leader. Not getting desirable results Success is all about getting the results that you expected in the beginning of a project. However, if your team has stopped yielding desirable results in the project, it is a clear indication that something is wrong either in the leadership style. And, if you’ve had your fair share of success with the team and have stopped getting the results all of a sudden, then chances are you need to bring a change in the way you lead. You are no longer enjoying your work Work becomes drudgery when you stop enjoying what you are doing. To make sure this does not happen, you need to constantly reinvent yourself. If the stage has come when you don’t feel excited every day waking up and going to work or you no longer get thrilled thinking about new working opportunities, then it is time for a change. Now it is up to you to figure out what needs to be changed, and how. After all, you are the leader, and also the person responsible for getting things done. When was the last time you thought about reinventing yourself? The irony with us human beings is that once we set ourselves into a mold, it becomes almost impossible to get out of it. Getting stuck in a leadership style is one of the prime examples. Take yourself for an example. You are facing all the challenges mentioned above, but still adamant on not evolving. If I ask you about the last time you thought about reinventing yourself as a leader, what would your answer be? Did you ever think about it? Change is the only thing that’s constant in this world. In the business world that is moving at such rapid speed, it becomes imperative to evolve as a leader from time to time; it is important to move ahead and reinvent yourself to grow as a leader and as a professional. A successful leader is the one who evolves with time As important it is for a leader to make sure that people in her team grow, it is equally important for her to grow and evolve with time. If you continue to stick to just one path, stagnancy is going to creep up, and you will no longer have the creativity to beat people with fresh ideas that are in accordance to the existing marketing scenario. This is the reason that growing up, as a leader, is the most significant aspect that you need to inculcate. Whether you are leading a team of 2 or 200, reinventing your leadership style and coming up with ways to better the existing habits as a leader becomes an inseparable part of a leader’s life. Are you ready to reinvent yourself? Now that you are familiar with the signs that clearly indicate there are some problems persisting in the team and in your leadership style, the most important question that you need to answer here is — are you ready for change? Are you ready to reinvent yourself as a leader and move ahead with time? If yes, then you can begin by jotting down the list of things that you think you need to change in your leadership style. It could be anything — from the way you communicate and collaborate with the team to using a project management software to manage your work instead of emails to getting to know your team members in a better manner. Create a list of things that you can do, and start to implement them one by one. “Want to reinvent yourself as a leader? Stop relying on emails to manage stuff and start using ProofHub .” Originally published at LinkedIn . ********* Let me send you my best stuff, click here to subscribe now ! Vartika Kashyap runs the marketing team at — a project management software for teams of all sizes. She is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among . Connect with Vartika on , and . ProofHub LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016 LinkedIn Medium Twitter Also follow our company page to get the recent updates about our tool, published articles, motivational quotes & presentations. @ProofHub ********* If you liked reading this post, you are surely going to love this as well - What to do when your heart isn’t in your work anymore What to do when your heart isn’t in your work anymore Life hacks for millennials to simplify the work day

Clear signs that show you need to reinvent yourself as a leader

Every year Future Today Institute publishes a report about latest trends, which will affect different sectors of the economy. In 2017 the number of innovations, mentioned in the forecast, was almost doubled if to compare to the previous year. Technologies evolve faster than ever and so that your keeps pace with the times, you should pay attention to the latest technology trends. What innovations in IT sphere will be in demand in 2018 and how to apply the emerging technology trends for business development? technology business Artificial Intelligence Stanford University’s Scientists believe that by 2030, cities will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ensure the safety of the population. According to forecast, the AI will help to prevent crimes and even act as an assistant in court proceedings. Solutions based on AI have already formed the basis of many innovative ideas and technology trends: from smart house to the face recognition and even emotions simulation. Elements of artificial intelligence — machine and are now widely used in robotics. The Future Today Institute researchers assume — soon artificial intelligence will become a part of almost all technology inventions. deep learning Voice and visual product search According to the recent Gartner’s forecast, by 2021 leading trading companies will implement visual and voice product search to their platforms. Using AI technology, large online stores will be able to understand desires and interests of their consumers. Analysts predict that as a result of this innovation, marketplaces’ revenue will increase by 30%. Indeed individual approach to the customer Real-time learning — emerging trend in information technology, based on AI conception. Using this technology large online stores, for example, will be able to display the products individually for each user, depending on his/her behavior on the website. This innovative technology will help to adjust the website’s model using a continuous flow of transactions data in real time. Transport Industry Innovations While Tesla actively develops its self-driving cars, Amazon has, for the first time, demonstrated the successful drone delivery in a public place. It is quite obvious that emerging technology trends will soon change the habitual attitude to transportation and logistics. Logistics Automation ARC Advisory Group analysts believe that delivery automation is quite a topical issue not only for carriers but also for large online stores. Steve Banker, one of the ARC Advisory Group directors, notes — when retail trades increase from 9 to 30 percents large companies face the question — whether they are ready to be flexible enough in goods delivery. The demand for web-based and SCM solutions (system supply chain management) will grow in the coming years. Cloud services for the logistics automation will become a trend, which helps to optimize the process of goods delivery not only for 3PL-providers, large online stores will also benefit from this solutions. TMS Self-driving cars Self-driving cars — another technology trend (based on the concept of artificial intelligence), which the biggest companies have a bet. Tesla already allows drivers to engage the autopilot in their cars, provided that they will follow the road. Uber has also recently launched about a hundred Autonomous cars on the streets of Pittsburgh. However, innovation meanwhile is only in a testing stage — Uber’s specialist is in the car and constantly oversees the work of the algorithm and security. According to the Oliver Wyman’s forecast, by the 2030 half of the cars will be equipped with an autopilot feature. In a to Forbes Oliver Wyman’s analysts even speculate about how insurance companies will assess risks, considering the growing number of self-driving cars. It is obvious that autonomous cars will soon become quite commonplace. note Mobile trends Chatbots Gartner experts have also predicted that by the 2021 year the largest enterprises will spend on chatbots much more than on mobile applications development, and the chatbots market share will be close to $3.5 billion. As we may see from the latest technology trends, chatbots will acquire human traits — firstly they will learn how to communicate (as Siri is already doing), and then to recognize and simulate human emotions. We are getting into the so-called «post-application era» — virtual assistants, that are not tied to specific mobile programs will get leading positions. Experts believe that in a couple of years chatbots will penetrate all spheres of communication. Internet of Х In 1990 John Romkey created the world’s first Internet-thing, by connecting his toaster to the network. Since then, the number of devices managed via the Internet has grown considerably and formed the so-called Internet of Things or IoT. Now in there are about 9 billion «smart» objects that are managed via the Internet: mobile devices, industrial equipment, the smart house elements, etc. According to , the number of smart devices will grow and will soon reach a trillion. Gartner experts recommend that businesses already, to start investing in IoT solutions: McKinsey «Every supplier must, at the very least, make plans to implement IoT technology into its products, for both consumer and business buyers.» In parallel with the increasing number of smart devices, LPWA is developing (Low-Power Wide-area network, that is an alternative to Wi-Fi). LPWA will allow the signal to travel great distances and overcome obstacles. The LPWA evolution, along with the increasing number of smart devices, will push the development of the IoT. , the concept that can be applied to almost everything — assures Future Today Institute. As an example, scientists cite a startup Consumer Physics — using the application you can scan your food and get information about a number of calories it contains. The Internet of Things will evolve to the Internet of X Education in the pocket New innovations in technology appear almost every day and to stay on top of it, professionals in all fields will need to periodically update their knowledge. Considering the modern pace of life, online education is gaining momentum. Moreover, in order to reach its consumers, education should be as accessible as possible, so the futurists suggest a boom in educational mobile applications. Big Data The analysis of large amounts of data is already widely used by various companies. With the growing amount of information and the AI evolution, Big Data will develop and will be adapted to be applicable to even more spheres of life. Big Data will be one of the Online Marketing tools. This technology will allow to quickly process huge amounts of data about purchasing behavior. More about the technology we will write in the next article. Experience design User experience helps to highlight the company among competitors. Design based on user experience will continue its development together with the latest technologies. Traditional interfaces will transform in voice or even neural (the so-called «brain-computer»). The only thing that will stay unchanged — the main goal of a quality user experience is to make technological innovations convenient and user-friendly. Originally published at stfalcon.com .

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Internet of X and 11 More Futuristic Trends That Drive The Future Today

iOS updates may not be deliberately slowing down on older devices Update: A couple of months after I wrote this post, Apple finally admitted it does slow down older devices via new iOS updates, supposedly to prevent them from crashing because of failing batteries. I did wonder if I should take down this post. But on revisiting it, I found that most of my arguments are still valid despite Apple’s admission. So I let it be. I had written about Apple’s a few months ago. It had some harsh thoughts about Apple, which were probably the result of my iPad 3 turning sluggish following an installation of iOS 9. What really upset me was there was no easy way to uninstall iOS 9, and go back to iOS 8. planned obsolescence However a couple iOS upgrades later, I am inclined to give Apple the benefit of doubt. I must admit this change of mind was partly influenced by the fact that I had explored the Android side, and realised the grass wasn’t particularly greener over there. The simple fact is a new OS is designed to run on newer hardware, and there’s no way it will run seamlessly on older hardware. This is true not just for Apple but any phone. Let me explain with just one aspect of new hardware, its RAM. My previous Android phone, the Xiaomi’s Mi4i had 2GB RAM. Whereas my current Android the Redmi Note 4 has 4GB RAM. The old phone slowed down when I loaded a beta version of MiUI 9 (a Android Nougat fork or customised version for Xiaomi phones). But one good thing about Android is that it is more geeky, and I quickly spotted a revealing stat. The Mi4i only had 500MB of free RAM, with no apps running. Whereas the Redmi Note 4 on the same OS has around 1.6 GB of free RAM, with no apps running. Newer phones have more free RAM which allows apps to load faster and perform better Basically a new OS uses more RAM to run its new features, and there will be less RAM left for apps to run on older phones. So my Mi4i struggled to perform while the Note 4 chugged along smoothly. I feel that even iOS, which is better at managing RAM, is affected by this issue. The important thing here is that RAM is just one of the many bits of hardware that makes a new phone’s hardware better than an older one’s. Like new processors, graphic processors, improved sensors, and many other components which a layman like me is not even aware of. There is no doubt an element of ‘planned obsolescence’ with Apple. They could find ways so that performance on older phones are not hit badly by a new OS. Maybe make alternate versions of the new OS that will use less system resources. But I guess it does not make business sense to divert too much resources to developing new versions of OS for old phones. Having said that, I think Apple is indeed taking a slightly different approach to this issue in India. They are probably influenced by the fact that India is a cost-sensitive market, and seem to be developing cheaper models of old phones that run well on the new iOS. The first one in this series is the iPhone SE. It has the same size and looks of the iPhone 5S, but most of the innards are of the iPhone 6S, and it costs just ₹19000 ($290). My wife has this phone and I can vouch that iOS 11 is running smoothly on it. The strategy seems to be working for Apple. Though it has only 3% of India’s mobile market, the iPhone’s higher prices means that in terms of sales value, Apple is №3 in India, and is expecting sales of $3 billion in the country this year! Looking back on my iPad misadventure with iOS 9, I would go about it differently if I could do it again. I would run a beta of the new OS on my phone before taking a decision on whether to install an OS. Simply because you can if you find your device is struggling. Besides, installing public betas of iOS these days is pretty simple as Apple wants as many free testers as possible after the Maps debacle. uninstall a beta iOS In fact, that’s exactly what I have done on my iPhone 6S+. (My beta adventure is recorded in a .) The phone didn’t show any signs of crashing, slowing or excessive battery usage which are the most common complaints by new users of an OS. Based on that, I decided to go ahead and get iOS 11. previous post There was one little twist in this tale. To install iOS 11, you need to first uninstall the beta iOS 11, and then download the official iOS 11. However I kept procrastinating over this till one fine day I got a message saying that iOS 11.1 beta is available for download. It seemed that since I hadn’t uninstalled the beta, Apple assumed that I didn’t mind continuing to be a beta tester. Oh, well, I have always been the one who rushes in where angels fear to tread, and so I continue to merrily beta-test away. However, be warned that betas can be glitchy, and are not for people who dislike surprises. Like for a while, my lockscreen notifications used to be only half visible. The positive side is you get to see interesting new features before the risk-averse majority. Though I must say it’s sometimes hard to say if it’s a new feature, or an old feature that I was unaware of, or a glitch. Like right now, my iPhone starts playing music automatically the instant it connects to my car’s music system via bluetooth, even if the music app had been turned off on the phone. I have no clue why it does so, but it’s cool! I feel the risk element is a bit exaggerated as Apple releases relatively stable betas to the general public, and does this only after ironing out its serious issues via beta releases to developers. However I do take one precaution. I avoid installing the beta the day it arrives. Like after the iOS beta 11.2 was announced, I waited a day before installing it. If I see panicked screams on the internet about the beta crashing the phone, I hold off on the installation. As for my expedition into Android land, there was a bright side to it. Unlike higher priced iPhones, my Mi4i only cost ₹10000 ($150). So when it slowed down, I just exchanged it for my current phone (Redmi Note 4) at a net cost of ₹8500 ($130). That’s kind of acceptable, unlike iPhones where even older models like the iPhone 7S+ retail for over $1000 in India. The price difference does show in quality. For instance, my Android’s camera is not comparable to an iPhone. But my Android has frills like extra storage via an SD card, the ability to read files off a USB pendrive, not to mention software goodies like MiUI 9’s split screen apps, quick switching between two apps, and more. If I still prefer iOS to Android, it’s probably because I have been on Apple forever. To sum up, obsolescence, planned or unplanned, is going to inevitably happen as long as technology is improving at today’s rapid pace. We may not be able to stop it but there are ways to live with it. All we have to do is decide which of these ways suits us best.

Revisiting Apple’s ‘planned obsolescence’

Amazon’s is the most monopolistic and well positioned marketplace the Western world has ever seen. Last year they did $136B in revenue with double digit growth every year. Guess what, just recorded a video version of this. Hope you enjoy! And if you prefer reading, hope the article makes you think. Yet they haven’t even scratched the surface. The US food retail and food services industry represents a $5.35T market (with $800B+ in grocery alone). That is 40x Amazon’s total global sales — everybody’s got to eat. The food space is the future frontier, and is betting big. Amazon On August 28th, 2017, Amazon decided to buy Whole Foods. Consider this D-Day. The world of groceries will never be the same. Here is why. Amazon’s been salivating over food delivery for years. But, try as they might, their efforts have fallen flat every time. Amazon Fresh had $10M in revenue in Q1 of 2016. That is chump change for Bezos. ( : ) NOTE For more on Amazon, my experience building a $1M Amazon brand and how they will kill ecommerce, see this post. The network problem Amazon is a market. Amazon is a network effect. The reason why the company runs so well is so highly valued is its network of 3rd party sellers and massive customer base. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon on July 5th, 1994. Since then the company scraped and fought its way to market leader status, constantly growing areas of the business. They started with books. Books seemed easy enough to sell online and customers like options (just look at libraries). Bezos committed to crushing it with books. “Books, books, books. That is all we are ever going to sell.” That was the mantra early on. Amazon committed and as they grew a larger and more diverse customer base, other options presented themselves. They branched out into media and digital and quickly Amazon started morphing into a full fledged Everything Store. But the base was crucial. They attracted customers and used the demand to pull sellers to the site. With that the flywheel was born. Imagine if Amazon had started selling everything from day one. There would be no message for customers, confusion for sellers and chaos all around. Systematic Network Expansion Today Amazon is doing the same with Whole Foods. Amazon’s existing supply and demand structure was lacking. Despite the most advanced logistics network in the world, Amazon couldn’t quite get grocery. The reason lies in the nature of the product. Selling widgets is easy. 1,2, 2000… it doesn’t matter how much inventory and what type of products you stock. As long as you wait long enough, eventually you will sell them. It isn’t ideal but with enough money, turn time (speed of sales) is not critical. This isn’t true with food. Milk spoils. Eggs break or go bad and bananas are blobs after a few days. Groceries have to go fast or the business collapses. This is part of the reason food service businesses are so hard. You need choices so customers can choose but with too much stock, waste and spoilage will wreck your profits. Amazon suffered this problem for years. Amazon COULD NOT offer perishable products online. What would they do if they didn’t sell? Eat the lost? And there is no way they could get brands and 3rd party sellers on board without the demand. Whole Foods solves this. Whole Foods is one of the most well known and respected grocery brands. Their fans love them, their health conscious options and the incredible customer service/experience. Plus Whole Foods has locations in all the major urban hubs. Take a look at your average Whole Foods shopper. They are young, have money to spend and are culture and health conscience. This was not Amazon’s demographic initially — meaning Whole Foods opens up a whole new segment of the market to Amazon. But it is much more important than that. Whole Foods is a functioning, balanced, profitable network. They produce and buy product and consumers eat it up. They have solved the logistics and inventory problems that Amazon couldn’t. That means the initial supply and demand are satisfied. That means jackpot! Now Amazon can leverage their vast customer base without risk of spoilage. An example. Let’s say Whole Foods offers 3 products: bread, milk and cheese. And they sell 10 of each every week. Now Amazon can start listing bread, milk and cheese online. As online customers discover these options they can start to buy. If Amazon decides to offer 3 extra units per product, now Whole Foods holds 13 of each per week. If nobody on Amazon.com bites, Amazon slashes prices in store and liquidates the product — no harm done. If however they sell out in a day, they can start to slowly scale up inventory — mitigating risk by first proving out demand. And if the bread, milk and cheese get bought but the speed is slow, Amazon can pour FREE advertising through the platform and running marketing campaigns to boost awareness. This phenomenon means Amazon’s supply and demand sides can increase proportionally and create a killer food flywheel, just like they did with retail. [LIKE THIS ARTICLE SO FAR? THEN YOU’LL REALLY WANT TO SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER — AND GET SOME FREE BONUSES!] OVER HERE The other problem with food How often do you grocery shop? If you are like most Americans, it is about 1.5 times per week. You get in and get out and spend on average 41 minutes. I’ll bet you buy a bunch of the same stuff every single week too. A gallon of milk, a tub of yogurt, ½ lb of ham… whatever. Then you also add a little inspiration based off your cooking calendar, maybe a treat or two and you check out. One other major reason online grocery shopping has taken so long to take off is the all or nothing nature of food. If you can order ½ your groceries online, would you? I’ll bet you would say yes but quickly discover that driving to the store to pick up the other ½ is just as painful and hardly saves any time. That means online retailers like Amazon MUST offer EVERYTHING your family wants to make it worth your while. Previously that was impossible, thanks to the spoilage problem. Now that Amazon has solved that, the game is on. AI, Alexa and Automatic Ordering Subscriptions make sense for everyday products. You are picking it up every week at the store, why not get it delivered automatically and save the hassle. That is what Amazon’s acquisition will soon do. But the ordering interface online still sucks. Some people like walking down the aisles of the grocery store for inspiration. Either way searching online is not ideal for food discovery. With Alexa and AI, this won’t be a problem. Imagine reading off a list of ingredients, Amazon cross-checking your existing kitchen supply and adding any items your recipe calls for. Plus machine learning learns your preferences pretty fast. Imagine the Spotify of deserts or Pinterest of dinner items that orders automatically. Is that the future Amazon is building? I certainly think so. Amazon will win the home. Their dominance is untouchable ( ), their tech is amazing and their efficiency is unrivalled. ecommerce for more on how Amazon is killing ecommerce, read this post When you see my view on their master plan, how hard is it to believe the pieces start to fall together? Distribution Dominance And despite all we have talked about, we have neglected one of the massive advantages Amazon gains from their acquisition: prime time real estate. Whole Foods has a nationwide network of 365 locations across all major metropolitan hubs. This gives Amazon an even more distributed and efficient network for last mile and same day delivery, making it even easier and cheaper. Could Amazon start storing retail goods in Whole Foods locations? Who knows. I bet they do. They have already started upselling Alexa and Amazon products and seem quite committed to a 1+1 > 2 model. And we haven’t even touched on drone delivery. 365 new locations. Imagine drone docking and transport centers on top of every location. It certainly simplifies the logistical challenges. Closing Thoughts Amazon acquired Whole Foods for $13B. The market caps of the top supermarket chains dropped ~ $13B following the news. In effect Amazon annihilated grocery and the market made Kroger, Costco and Walmart pick up the bill. Source: MarketWatch The book is yet to be written but in the eyes of enterprise, Bezos is god and Amazon is all powerful. If they successful pull of the strategies outlined here, which I see no reason to doubt, the monopoly of Amazon will be unstoppable. Even Antitrust won’t have the teeth to touch Bezos ( ). for more on why Amazon is more powerful than the US government, check out this post Would love to hear your thoughts and opinions? Where is my logic flawed? Is this gameover groceries? If you enjoyed this article and it made you think, please share it on Twitter and Facebook and be sure to subscribe to never miss a thing. For more on the future of Amazon, retail and grocery, listen to this interview with , investor in and . BONUS: Semil Shah Instacart DoorDash Before you go… If you got something actionable or valuable from this post, click the👏 button below and share the article on Facebook and Twitter so your friends can benefit from it too and Subscribe to get more. Hold down the clap button if you liked the content! It helps me gain exposure . Clap 50 times! 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Game Over, Groceries: Inside Amazon’s Acquisition of Whole Foods

Build Complete and Elastic Stack 6.0.0 is officially GA, culminating thousands of pull requests, effort of hundreds of committers, two alpha releases, two beta releases and two release candidates! Here are the important things you need to know about 6.0.0 Elasticsearch 6.0 With the move to Lucene 7, Elasticsearch 6.0 adds powerful features like index sorting for speedier sorted queries and sparse doc values for reduced disk storage. Plus, a brand new upgrade experience. No Downtime Upgrades Migration Assistant and search across multiple clusters Faster Restarts and Recoveries with Sequence IDs Faster Query Times with Sorted Indices Kibana A Dashboard Only mode, a Full Screen mode, the ability to export saved searches to .csv, Alert creation via a UI in X-Pack Gold and above, a migration assistant in X-Pack Basic, and all of it is made more accessible via contrast changes, keyboard accessibility enhancement and more CSV Export and Refactor of the Visualization Code Watcher UI for Threshold Alerts X-Pack Monitoring Email Notifications for Cluster Alerts Cluster Alert for X-Pack License Expiration Logstash Multiple, self-contained pipelines in the same Logstash instance and the addition of UI components — Pipeline Viewer in X-Pack Basic and Logstash pipeline management in X-Pack Gold. Streamline Processing with Multiple Pipelines Manage Pipelines Centrally with the Elastic Stack Visualize Pipeline Logic and Performance A Smooth Path from Ingest Node to Logstash Beats Auditbeat joins the Beats family to tap into your Linux audit framework. Plus, new options in Filebeat and Metricbeat that dig deeper into container and orchestration metrics. Logs and metrics out of Kubernetes and Docker Auditbeat — operational security New commands and configuration layout More efficient Metricbeat storage Internal pipeline refactoring and better performance ES-Hadoop First class support for Spark’s Structured Streaming has landed in 6.0, alongside a re-write of connector mapping code to better support multiple mappings. Support for reading and writing the new join fields has been added as well. Users can also now take advantage of script types other than inline for update operations. Spark 2.2.0 and Stable Support for Spark Structured Streaming Support for new Join Fields Multiple Mappings and Multiple Index Reads These are my top points from the Elastic Stack 6.0.0 release , each and every one is handpicked to get an overall idea.

Things to know about the new Elastic Stack 6.0.0

Originally published on ZeoLearn by Lars Berg http://www.larsberg.net/#triboids In this article I’ll describe some libraries/frameworks that are used to create 3D online games and websites with React. This article is not about disadvantages of each way, it explains possibilities and features that may be useful to complete your goals. When to use React with WebGL and how? React’s most common and popular feature is “Components” — my advice is to USE this pattern in 3D, you can read more about components in 3D in . this article : Use react with small 3D web applications (no post-processing, not much interactivity), that’s not a strict rule, bit when it comes to making a 3D game, putting all your 3D stuff inside React components will result in a bottleneck for your further development and limit your possibilities. TL;DR Frameworks, Libraries, Tools So let’s compare all those by writing a basic 3D app with this rules: Use react for hierarchy Add (or it’s analog) OrbitControls Animation (rendered image should be updated on each frame) react-three You may agree that it’s maybe the simplest combination of tools you may use, ** **Well, I tried to make a small , and, surprisingly, it turned that doesn’t provide a UMD version of their react bindings library that I could use in browser, instead they only have a Commonjs2 version, which isn’t working when you use it on codepen (sure, because it’s a module yet, not a library). If you’re using a tool like webpack or browserify — it shouldn’t be a problem for you, and that’s what you go with when there’s also a React mentioned, but I can’t do a codepen that way. So I compiled my own hacky to make everything work. Browser limitation. and probably the easiest way to make it work? Ugh… codepen example react-three react-three.js Same happened to me with and too. Is it a problem? For me — yes, but probably not for you, because my task was to show all the code on the CodePen, and you’ll probably use it “the right way”. ReactVR Aframe-react react-three bindings In you make things the same way you do it in , but with react-bindings, except that sometimes you may see props that are not really related to the component in Three.js, like prop of component. (OrbitControls works together with camera, not with scene itself). And I would like to see support for in future versions. react-three Three.js orbitControls <Scene /> other types of controls Documentation: https://github.com/Izzimach/react-three/blob/master/README.md Demo: https://github.com/Izzimach/r3test/ ReactWHS It was developed for a which is based on library and lets you work with re-usable components & modules in the world of 3D (WebGL). That’s the tool created by me:) WhitestormJS framework Three.js implements a core with component system and plugin support for fast development of 3D scene with physics. WhitestormJS Automizing your web app with whitestorm is fast and comfortable. This engine has physics support implemented by custom Physi.js library, which is much faster than others. Framework provides extended component control and high frame rate, because it uses WebWorkers technology for multithreading. react-whs bindings That’s fairly easy to use if you worked with before, that’s because you don’t need to guess which props exist for specific component as it automatically converts params {} object into react’s props. Just compare both: react-whs whs whs.js react-whs Another good feature I want to showcase is that WHS Component can be simply converted into React Component: And you can pass a callback ( or ) to get reference to the whs instance outside of React refComponent refApp Documentation: https://github.com/WhitestormJS/react-whs/blob/master/README.md Demo: https://codepen.io/sasha240100/pen/dNqKMd?editors=1010 ReactVR lets you build VR apps using only JavaScript. It uses the same design as React, letting you compose a rich VR world and UI from declarative components. React VR From ReactVR website ReactVR is a good and perspective project made by Facebook React team. Like most 3D frameworks, it is based on . Three.js At the moment of writing this article, there are only a few geometries available (Sphere, Box, Cylinder) — for any other shape you need to use component and import <Model /> obj/mtl. Same situation with materials, you have a choice between (light-independent, ) and (light-dependent, ) . — if you want to use a custom material, you need to provide & properties inside object. MeshBasicMaterial lit = false MeshPhongMaterial lit = true vertexShader fragmentShader materialParameters They decided to have . Three.js “position” is named as “translation” which means that the object was moved from it’s pivot with translate vector. And instead of having or , you have . Those are very similar to . css-like coordinate system in 3D rotation quaternion rotateX, rotateY and rotateZ css transforms Aframe-react A-frame is a cool Three.js framework made by Mozilla WebVR team. A-Frame can be developed from a plain HTML file without having to install anything. A great way to try out A-Frame is to , an online code editor that instantly hosts and deploys for free. Alternatively, create an file and include A-Frame in the remix the starter example on Glitch .html <head> aframe-react In you get and (anything that is not Scene, Entity = 3D Object) React components. And here’s how to turn ANY a-frame custom html tag into a React component: let’s say you have then is your prop, and attributes you turn into props. aframe-react Scene Entity <a-sky color="#000000"></a-sky> a-sky primitive Documentation: https://aframe.io/docs/0.7.0/introduction/ Conclusion WebGL is growing fast, and there are already many big projects that cover webgl (in our case — Three.js) in React. Those are wrappers around three.js functionality, which give you access only to common options ( ), and that’s because you will never use WebGL in React to build something advanced (a complex 3D game or a Creative website). not advanced features React+WebGL as the way of creating content is good for simple intuitive 3D web apps that handle basic functions, such as 3D model viewing or a simple VR experience like . this And worth to mention this WebGL-React projects: — bindings for React to implement complex effects over images and content, in the descriptive VDOM paradigm. gl-react — Embed your Unity application in your react application for writing interactive interfaces with two way Unity and react communication. react-unity-webgl Recently I’ve made an you may find some interesting webgl secrets there! “Introduction into WebGL world” course for Skillshare, click here.

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React + WebGL. Different ways of creating 3D apps with React.

As wearable devices gain increased prevalence in our societies, privacy and security concerns must be addressed with sophisticated solutions to keep vital business and consumer information safe from malicious exploitation. When information is collected and stored, there is an inherent risk of the data getting into the wrong hands. One of the most popular consumer uses of wearable devices is a health monitor, which is worn throughout the day to collect information about sleep, exercise, heart rate, and more, to be stored in the device’s cloud software. While many people successfully utilize this tool to understand their physical situation better and improve their overall health, imagine the problems that could ensue if that data was stored carelessly. Poorly managed information holds the potential to be stolen through a data breach by a malicious third party and subsequently sold to unscrupulous organizations that use that data to assess consumers’ health risks. Victims of this data breach could face significant increases in their health insurance or even the cancellation of a policy. However, before too many alarm bells are raised, it’s important to point out that these issues are at the forefront of the minds of the developers of wearable devices and associated software. Data security is an essential component of all IoT devices and technologies, and companies must continue to improve both software and hardware to reduce vulnerabilities as much as possible. Additionally, many companies purchase cyber liability insurance, so that funds will be available in the event of a data breach that leads to consumer litigation. The wearable camera market is also growing exponentially, with ABI Research projecting almost 24 million shipments in 2022. Without a doubt, this massive expansion will have to be accompanied by sophisticated privacy and data protection security. The data collected from wearable cameras can include recordings of innocent bystanders, potential witnesses to crimes, and even victims of accidents or wrongdoings. One of the primary concerns is that this data could be used to threaten or blackmail people who are caught on camera if the information is not carefully protected from exploitation by those with malicious intent. The explosion of IoT means developers, manufacturers, and vendors must implement powerful encryption mechanisms to protect personal data, whether it is being collected by an activity tracker, a wearable camera, or a connected car. However, as long as technology experts, governments, and organizations collaborate to develop comprehensive security and data privacy standards for all IoT devices, consumers and businesses can rest assured that their information will remain safe from harm. Written by Igor Ilunin, head of IoT at DataArt .

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Privacy, Security Concerns Grow for Wearables

By Noah Jessop Investment in the crypto economy of the , as measured by total capital deployment. The pace doesn’t seem to be slowing and as crypto becomes a more common startup financing tool, investors — both institutional and individual — are seeing an unprecedented flow of opportunities. The waves of whitepapers can be overwhelming, but here are thoughts on how to classify new projects in one of four ways. is now roughly equivalent to 5% entire VC industry “Organic” ICOs These are the “original” ICOs — new projects that wouldn’t have been possible without their use of blockchain and crypto technology. The most basic litmus test for this type of ICO is to ask, “is this project completely impossible using a traditional web tech stack?” Definition: The more uncomfortable an idea is relative to the conventional wisdom, the better fit it may well be for the crypto economy. The first major success here was the funding of the Ethereum protocol — tokens that can be used for compute time (and smart contract execution) on a new world computer. Example Company: We’re seeing the establishment of protocols that could ultimately be as transformative in the world as SMTP and HTTP. Pros: When Apple got started, it positioned itself against IBM. Microsoft started as an adjunct to the Altair. Crypto’s breadth is a challenge. Is it a new global reserve currency? An enabler of a specific sort of technological process? A fluid financing mechanism for all sorts of businesses? The fact that the answer to all of these questions is “yes” illustrates crypto’s power and peril. The line between the next big thing and the next big fraud is not immediately clear. Cons: Evaluating crypto projects requires understanding the tech, considering the complex incentives and “monetary policy” within each ecosystem — as well as imagining how hundreds of similar projects will evolve and fit together. That doesn’t include considering how regulators and nations will alter the landscape. This market confusion paves the way for fraud, abuse, and artificial ICOs. “Artificial” ICOs A crypto project’s “Artificial” ICO is often a traditional equity round in disguise, with a white paper in place of a financing deck. It’s only natural for companies — particularly those struggling to find capital through established channels — to seek novel ways to finance their businesses. But these are weeds growing the in crypto garden, a nuisance that will eventually be eliminated out of the market as buyers become more professionalized and savvier. Definition: has the benefit of an endorsement from Paris Hilton, but the drawback of being a utility token that seems ostensibly only useful to buy digital marketing services from one specific adtech company. Example Company: LydiaCoin Many artificial ICOs are designed to look like Organic ICOs, but here are a few tell-tale signs to look for: Does success of the network require one entity to make significant sales, marketing, or integration for the platform to work? If the issuing company completely controls all possible use of a token — why tokenize at all? Is there a requirement for a trusted intermediary for every transaction? It so, what real value does the crypto technology add? Are incentives clear for all market participants — on every side of the network? Is the only reason is to ease capital flows to the company’s ecosystem — and raise capital? (Savvy investors best avoid.) It’s important to note, that a centralized digital asset model can work outside of tokenization. has a robust virtual economy (and secondary marketplace) — but doesn’t require any of the decentralization that crypto promises. Blizzard could no doubt make a small fortune by creating an Ice Crown ICO, but has no need to. World of Warcraft None. This kind of ICO undercuts the credibility of legitimate players in the ecosystem. Pros: Low quality artificial ICOs reinforce the notion that crypto is a haven for fraud, at best, and crime, at worst. Cons: “Synthetic” ICOs A “Synthetic” ICO is when an established, traditionally funded company that has built a sizeable audience plans to make the leap to the crypto economy. In the “ ” of the web, an ICO can be a way to escape the shadows of Amazon and Facebook. For companies that are #2 or #3 (or #10) in a space, shaking up the category can be a smart strategy. Why fight a losing battle when you can change the terms and own the protocol layer? Definition: CPG-ization Kik’s is the best example. Brave’s is another. Example Company: Kin Coin Basic Attention Token Crypto projects often require buy-in from a highly privileged group as a trust component to galvanize a user base in the early days. Companies with a pre-existing audience can short-circuit this step and build critical mass more quickly. For instance, the Kin coin from Kik has much more real-world progression in terms of user base than any of the Artificial ICOs, and many of the wildly successful pure protocols. Pros: It’s not yet clear how these ICOs will mesh with traditional equity financing. Many LP agreements prevent VCs from holding coins. The value of these coins often far surpasses the equity value of the parent company, making valuation tricky. Even for funds who are comfortable handling coins, smoothly exiting a currency without distorting the market price is a completely uncharted territory. If this path is successful for many companies, traditional investors may find themselves wondering what value they really own. Cons: Another con is founders chasing what looks like easy money. When founders see peers raising tens of millions of dollars and ask, “ It can really be a rationalization for Am I wrong to believe my business could make much more sense in this new crypto economy?” “Wow, running an ICO looks so much easier than pitching up and down Sand Hill Road.” “LOL” ICOs If an ICO doesn’t fit any of the above, it’s often a “LOL ICO” — a project designed to make an artistic statement or elicit a laugh. Think of these as the benign cousin of the “Artificial” ICO. Definition: Dogecoin started as a lark — and now has a market cap of over and the project behind it has used proceeds for humanitarian ends, like digging wells in Africa, and hilarious ones, like sponsoring the Jamaican Bobsled Team. Example Company: $125M The early days of the internet were marked by weirdos creating strange things, many of which became, or inspired, the services that power our economy today. Creatives having fun with a new platform is a sign of its importance, not a sign of irrelevance. Pros: None. Don’t be a spoil sport and remember that one should never invest more than they can afford to lose, especially on something with a name like “ ” Cons: CoinyeWest. — Disclosure: this author invests (both personally and through Founder Collective) in crypto assets and startups. Are you an existing business mulling an ICO? We would be happy to hear from you and share what we see in the marketplace.

Dogecoin

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An Investor’s Guide To The Four Kinds of ICOs

Exchanging Behaviour might seem strange idea but this is what new Big Data ICO project is all about. Let’s take a close look of that amazing innovation. According to Dun & Bradstreet, there are over 235 million companies worldwide. They range from businesses such as online stores and e-commerce, to telcos, insurance companies, banks, pharmaceutical companies, automotive etc. The majority of them are selling products or services to the end consumer (i.e. B2C) and they use Internet as an important sales channel. There are two major problems for these B2C businesses. First they don’t have enough traffic and even more important they don’t know who their web visitors are — i.e., what are their characteristics, such as gender, age, income level, purchasing habits, what they are interested in, the food they like, the problems they have, the emotions they feel (i.e. demographic characteristics and interests). This is critical for their success, growth and even survival. Companies are forced to order expensive advertising campaigns in order to drive visitors with clearly defined characteristics to their websites. They also cannot proactively engage with their visitors, as they do not know who they are in real-time. BehaviourExchange offers a permanent solution to this problem. Businesses will know who their visitors are 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Furthermore, they will know their visitor’s demographic characteristics and interests. The technology will enable websites to adjust their content in real-time to every visitor in order to meet their needs. Every single visitor will see different content, products or services when visiting a certain website. Based on that information the website operator will tailor the interaction with visitors in a way that will more likely lead to desired action (e.g. the purchase of product or service). This is a huge opportunity for digital advertising market that could benefit tremendously from getting real-time information about website visitors. How BehaviourExchange works? BehaviourExchange developed the technology that utilizes massive quantities of visitor behaviour information (true Big Data). All this information is ran through sophisticated artificial intelligence models to create high-quality user profiles. The models make use of different aspects of visitors’ habits, such as demographic characteristics and interests beside visiting frequency, time of day, day of the week, time spent, the content they read, etc. Services that BehaviourExchange offer will be introduced to crypto world with new BEX token cryptocurrency. With Blockchain technology, BEX will decentralize systems of Big Data profiling in order to expand the websites network and the number of personal profiles much faster so the service will be offered to millions of companies worldwide. Using Blockchain and token based economy to fuel growth The BehaviourExchange platform connects three parties in a smart and unique way: web visitors, websites and B2C businesses and provides each of the parties with unique benefits: (1) websites are offered the free service of exchanging traffic with other websites and are paid for data that helps profiling visitors, (2) the visitors can immediately find a product or service that fits their needs and are not bombarded with irrelevant ads and content, and finally (3) B2C businesses understand who their visitors are in real-time and will be able to show every visitor the most appropriate product or service. With the help of Blockchain technology and its own cryptocurrency BEX, BehaviourExchange offers similar profiling that Google and Facebook are offering. And a lot more. Apart from identifying and profiling each individual website visitor in real-time, BehaviourExchange’s uniqueness is also offering automatic website’s content adjustment based on visitor’s demographic characteristics and interests. BehaviourExchange will revolutionize the way companies are doing business and will leverage Blockchain technology to fuel its growth and create a multi-billion dollar business. For more information: - See our webpage - Read our whitepaper - Join us on Telegram

BehaviourExchange (BEX) offers what Google and Facebook don’t

Overview The Ripio Credit Network (RCN) is a protocol based on smart contracts and blockchain technology, which builds upon a current service offered by Ripio in their operating country of Argentina, Ripio Credit Services. The protocol aims to enable global connections between peer to peer (P2P) lenders and borrowers, regardless of currency. RCN will look to reduce traditional bank lending costs and fees, while offering a superior credit experience for both parties. RCN’s main point of differentiation within their network protocol is an “old school” credit guarantor, i.e. Cosigner. By including a loan guarantor (Cosigner​), RCN seeks to minimize the Lender’s credit risk in case of a default by taking over the defaulters loan payments while simultaneously seeking resolution within the country of loan origin. Business Model and Strategy RCN seeks to marry the P2P internet lending economy with the frictionless perks of blockchain decentralization to offer a better credit experience to the banked and unbanked population. For example, the rise of the P2P loan ecosystem enabled greater access to loan investments for investors while providing a more efficient, faster, and cheaper loan for borrowers. However, the lender under certain circumstances had limited recourse if loans went into default or arrears; especially if the Borrower and Lender were located in different areas of the world, under different credit laws. Beyond the technology, the value proposition that RCN is offering to clients is a loan guarantee, Thus, if a loan made by a Lender goes into default or arrears, the Cosigner (guarantor) will assume the liability and make the lender whole (no loss of principal and/or interest payments). RCN’s remedial approach to credit analysis should be sufficient to bootstrap the network in the early days until more actors join globally. i.e. in theory a risk-free interest rate yield. Quantitative Model Rating* Pugilist’s proprietary machine learning model generates a probability of viability that is subject to early stage investment return standards. However, given the early stage nature of these investments, the model should be viewed as directionally accurate versus a crystal ball. Pugilist’s probability of viability is that RCN be a viable ICO. 52.28% WILL Conclusion RCN has a solid team, advisors, and niche market, which should be advantageous for executing their product roadmap. However, the Management Team should take our disclosure recommendations into consideration in order to drive transparency and trust within the network; especially during these early bootstrapped days. Ultimately, RCN’s success will be tied to the growth of the blockchain universe and P2P lending in Latin America, good network incentives, and prudent credit and default management. Pugilist believes RCN has a decent probability of being a viable network despite needing to overcome several hurdles in the short term. Pugilist’s Investment Rating* *see full report appendix for rating methodology Download the full report here . — — is a research and investment firm that operates at the intersection of FinTech and Blockchain. We democratize research for blockchain enthusiasts and individual investors. Pugilist Ventures if you got an ounce of digital gold from this read. Please send your comments or requests and feel free to peruse our prior research . Please clap here here — — Neither the author of this article, nor Pugilist Ventures, provide investment, financial, or legal advice. This site cannot substitute for professional advice and independent factual verification. The content provided on this site is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as any kind of solicitation for investment in any investment opportunity. Disclaimer:

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Ripio Token Investment Report Sheds Light on Viability

I was recently at a event where two founders were interviewed about their journey founding a . These takeaways surprised me: startup 1. Use existing services I get it! You are at the height of your idea, ready to build a solution for every problem you encounter along the way. Social networking features, notifications, or whatever your new venture needs. Doing this is wasting your time! There are countless problems out there that are already solved in a magnitude of ways. Integrating one of those will cost you a fraction of time and allow you to actually solve the problem you are trying to solve. Additionally in 99% of cases the existing solution is better than what you could build because these services are highly specialized in what they are doing. This means they can scale with you, instead of you having to scale your solution as well. Win-win! Many times these services offer free tiers that are sufficient for a small user base, which is enough to get any startup kick-started. Conclusion: Use existing solutions instead of building something yourself. Most of the times it’s cheaper (or free), more reliable and less time consuming to implement. 2. “Fast money is bad money” This quote from Ralph Cibis, CEO of surprised me. Money is money I thought. Turns out the founders would have rather had someone with domain specific knowledge and a good supporting them than a VC that just sends a lot of money. Makes sense! In the latter case they would have to use the money to hire ten people figuring all this knowledge out. Rakete 7 network Finding the right investors which align with your vision is crucial for success. Sometimes it pays off to spend that extra week finding someone that can not only support your business with the much-needed cash but also comes with a big sales network, controlling experience, market research and other beneficial info. Conclusion: “Fast money is bad money”. Spend that extra week on finding the VC that aligns with your vision and can offer more than just the money. What are some of the things you think every founder should know? Gero is a wannabe Startuper by night, Android Engineer by day. Find him here: https://gerogerke.de/

Takeaways from listening to two founders

You know, being in programming job means — once in a while — you come across a bug — what I call a . And solving such bugs is actually one of the joys of programming troubleshooting — the interesting journey of striking out all the false positives and zeroing in on the real culprit. Mirage Bug I had the luck of coming across and solving one such mirage bug today.. So I thought I will share the journey with you as well. Today, one of my team members reached out to me saying that their application — which uses is irrationally slow on IE11 ! PrimeNg Datatables “once the data table renders” Demo of PrimeNg Datatable Angular Component.. He presented me his analysis which included reference to a number of github issues claiming PrimeNg Datatable had performance issues ( even at smaller number of rows and columns ). This is a season of IE11 Angular performance issues and this particular analysis worried me. I have come to love PrimeNg library and its simplicity. And here was a big blow to my belief in that library! In a screensharing session, the developer showed me the unbelievable plight of his IE window.. literally reeling under the load of rendering a simple datatable.. and … and I was sold to the idea that the bug really really exists with data table and somehow PrimeNg — a very fine library — somehow has done a super shoddy job in designing their data table — which cannot even load 20 rows x 6 column table without chocking the browser!! While he demonstrated the issue — I ignored other signs which I should have paid heed to. e.g. He had to choose couple of dropdowns before hitting a button that brings data for Datatable.. and the application seemed just a wee bit sluggish when he tried to open the dropdown to select one item out of it. Had I questioned that behavior — I would have saved 3–4 hours of my life.. but I guess I wouldn’t have been exhilarated at the end like I felt now! So.. since I could not find any issue / reason for such behavior of Datatable on IE.. I asked my developer to allow me to do my own debugging in my little corner. After spending 2–3 hours reading through various github issue descriptions for PrimeNg datatable and analysis about Data table performance issues.. all the issues seemed to be fixed by v4.1.0 and we were already on v4.1.2 and that is what was baffling me. Finally I took out last tool in my arsenal — . I knew if this does not work, nothing will! I started clearing the out all specialties of DataTable, checkbox column, inline editing, selection.. suspecting that one of it causing IE to trip! But no matter what I was doing IE was stuttering and my machine’s CPU usage was going out of the roof. Even when I was not even touching IE! And, after several minutes it hit me.. What if I am looking at wrong place for wrong person? What if it’s IE’s high CPU usage (due to some other cause) was culprit affecting Datatable rendering in IE? Divide and Rule Ta da! THE Now I started checking exact event which triggers IE to have high CPU usage and I was terrified to see that IE had high CPU usage right from the home page rendering — which hardly had 2 buttons along with bunch of static text and images (apart from header and footer). Forget PrimeNg Datatable, I really started doubting performance of Angular itself on IE11 now!! Again, I continued my strategy to finally isolate the issue in lamest component in my entire application — Footer Component — one which had just 4–5 links! If I comment out that component.. world is a happy place again! divide and rule God, what is happening in the world! What on earth could we possibly write in harmless footer component that grinds entire application to halt!! Anxiously, I started going through the template and component code for footer .. and there it was… sitting patiently for me to find him implementation laughing at me. ngAfterViewChecked() The Angular Lifecycle hooks! gets called automatically by the Angular rendering engine automatically if component properties change. And this particular implementation was changing one of the component properties via thereby triggering another call to .. which was again causing another call to and so on.. in an infinite cycle! ngAfterViewChecked setTimeout() ngAfterViewChecked ngAfterViewChecked I simply adjusted the implementation to work without and boom, we were in business! World was a happy place again! Angular application was working fine in IE without a hitch! PrimeNG Datatable was a high quality component without rendering issues for simple usecase like ours! It was our own 6 lines of code that was making our life miserable! ngAfterViewChecked I had fun in figuring it out and I hope you had too! I will come back with more such stories of performance improvement / fixes for Angular App.. Keep reading. Subscribe to my channel to get notified about new stories from my side! Oh and hit as many times as you could to keep encouraging me to write more! claps

Angular Application Performance Fixes — Story #1

The average SMB uses more than , often leading to SaaS chaos and security exposure. While SaaS can help you get your job done more efficiently, it can also introduce security concerns if not properly locked down. At Blissfully we help hundreds of companies manage this SaaS chaos, and we’ve prepared a simple, practical, and effective guide to improve your organization’s SaaS security. 54 SaaS products Security Starts with People When it comes to security, your people can be either your best line of defense or your weakest link. It’s key to build your security policies and procedures around people, including taking the time to understand what is intuitive and user-friendly and thus most likely to be adhered to. Generally speaking, we believe that you should rely more on systems and guardrails than on user actions and training. In other words, take human error out of the equation whenever possible. We also believe it’s best to have fewer vectors, rather than more, and to harden these as much as possible (we’ll explain what this means in more detail below). Many organizations tackle security on an as-it-comes basis. This can be dangerous, since it often means you aren’t thinking about security until after something bad has happened. Both ad hoc or absent security policies can open you up to a whole world of vulnerabilities. On the other side of the spectrum, some organizations employ arcane security practices (like forcing users to change their passwords at regular intervals for no real reason) that are not user-friendly and are thus often skirted by employees. The SaaS Security Spectrum Above is an illustration shows a spectrum of SaaS security and access, to help you understand where your organization falls today. Most organizations start off with no policies or systems. In this situation, the onus is on each employee to manage their own security, which means they will typically re-use passwords, share them via insecure spreadsheets, or create other systems that work for them but not for the company. The best case is to use a single access point to unlock access to company applications, and to create an easy centralized point to enforce human friendly security policies. The rest of this guide helps get your from wherever you may be on the spectrum, to a blissful state of secure SaaS usage. Who This Guide is For In this guide, we’ll share best practices for building a SaaS security stack that is realistic, usable, and focused on the way modern organizations conduct business. In particular, we have focused on the broad range of small to mid-sized businesses, or SMBs. Very small businesses may not be ready to implement some of these controls — and there may not be a need. On the other end of the spectrum, enterprises will find many of these recommendations appropriate, but may need to take things a few steps further to fully mitigate risk. However, on the whole, we think these recommendations will apply to a broad range of business sizes and types and are a great place to start. Additionally, it’s worth noting that this eBook is focused on organizations who use . It won’t be as relevant if you operate in Office365, for example. It is also focused more on the security of SaaS operations (vs. securing your core network or production servers.) G Suite The Foundation: Configuring G Suite for Security If you are using for your business, the good news is that you already have quite a few security tools and configuration options at your disposal. However, these are no good to you unless they are thoughtfully implemented and automatically enforced. This harkens back to the concept of people-first security. G Suite Here are the areas you should be looking at securing when it comes to your G Suite applications. Multi-Factor Authentication The single best thing you can do to improve your organization’s cloud security is to turn on and enforce multi-factor authentication on all products that support it, especially your primary email and collaboration platform (as stated earlier, we recommend G Suite). This greatly reduces the harm that an attacker can do with stolen credentials. While this may seems like a requirement in today’s age, our data shows that the average company only has 37% of their employees using multi-factor authentication on their main G Suite account. And this number gets even worse for smaller and early-stage companies, where just 22% of employees at companies with less than 50 people have multi-factor authentication enabled. Another benefit of implementing strong Google-based authentication is that many are increasingly supporting Google Single Sign-on, which means that if you enforce MFA for Google, you’ll automatically get those benefits for all apps that use Google SSO. SaaS products Chrome Settings The Chrome administrator for your organization can set up policies that dictate how employees use their Google accounts on Chrome devices, Android devices, and the Chrome browser. Since these policies are implemented at the account level, they will apply no matter what device the user signs in from. (However, do note that the policies won’t apply to users who are signed in as guests or who use a Google account from outside the organization.) Because these settings can be applied across several devices and the Chrome browser, they are a good way to enforce security without a ton of extra effort from your users or your IT team. To implement these settings, you’ll first need to . Then you can set up user policies, which can be divided up by team to help you apply certain policies to specific groups of users. Policies can include enrollment controls, apps and extensions allowed or required, Chrome web store permissions, Android applications, and a wide range of other security controls. You can view the full list . turn on Chrome management here Team Drives are shared spaces for teams to store and access their files. This feature is included in the Business and Enterprise versions of G Suite. Files in Team Drives belong to the entire team rather than to individuals. This makes life easier if someone leaves your team, because there is no need to transfer document ownership or reset permissions. The files stay put regardless of any individual’s status, so employees can get work done without interruption. G Suite Team Drives There is also a security benefit to using Team Drives. When you add new members, you can decide whether you want to give them full access to upload, edit, and delete files, or whether you want to restrict them to certain activities at the user level. It is easy to add members, set and change member permissions, and remove members as needed. At Blissfully, we have established a partnership with G Suite and can offer Team Drives to you on a discounted basis. Contact us at sales@blissfully.com for more information and to get set up. SaaS Security Monitoring You can’t say your organization is secure unless you know what SaaS products everyone in the organization is using at any given time and can say definitively that they are employing security best practices. Blissfully helps you automatically detect and manage SaaS across the entire organization. With ’s SaaS security monitoring, you can access an always up-to-date list of the SaaS in use subscriptions across your company — including “shadow” and unsanctioned applications. You can view full adoption trends for your whole organization, including details by department and products. Plus Blissfully allows you to easily audit what permissions users in your organization are giving to which applications, and get updates on all new additions. This is a crucial layer of security for your SaaS stack. Finally, the ability to manage employee access to your required SaaS products by department, and to consolidate licenses, will give you unprecedented visibility into your SaaS stack. Blissfully SaaS Access Management Today’s IT world is increasingly centered on SaaS. This means it’s critical to enforce secure access to all of your SaaS applications. You can’t risk having ad hoc policies around how employees access SaaS applications, which unfortunately tends to be the status quo. When companies don’t have policies (or have policies that are hard to comply with), employees tend to either store passwords in an unsecure file or reuse the same password across multiple applications. The found that 63% of confirmed data breaches leveraged weak, default, or stolen passwords. If you don’t want your organization to be the next victim, it’s time to tighten up your controls. Below are our recommendations for passwords and identity and access management. 2016 Verizon DBIR Team Password Management Unfortunately, your browser’s built-in password management feature isn’t secure enough to rely on. There have been against browser-based password storage, so we don’t recommend that you or your employees use these features. You can and probably should turn off the ability for people in your organization to use Chrome’s password manager, which you can do in the Chrome settings we talked about earlier. a number of successful attacks Our recommendation is to use , which offers a variety of password management solutions for organizations large and small. In our view, the killer feature of TeamsID is the ability to link it to Google’s SSO. This means that employees don’t have to remember yet another password, and instead you can enforce strong passwords and multi-factor authentication on G Suite, which in turn will unlock your shared passwords in TeamsID. TeamsID Bonus: You can use the code “blissfully” to get 10% off when you sign up for TeamsID. A very solid alternative is , which has many of the same features. However, it doesn’t have the Google SSO option. It also has some additional configuration challenges, and is not quite as easy to use for team sharing. For example, the onboarding process requires you to set up a temporary password via email, which is not ideal. LastPass does, however, have a few additional workflow and security features (e.g. robust API access and SAML configuration) available to some of the enterprise tiers, which might be valuable depending on your business’s needs. LastPass Either of these options is far better than simply letting your users reuse their passwords across several services, opening you up to credential attacks on a large scale. Identity and Access Management As you build out your IT team, and grow past 200 employees, it’s a good idea to start thinking about deploying a unified IAM solution. This can both streamline the end user’s experience and protect the entire organization from security threats. IAM solutions work by authenticating a user once and then unlocking all apps for them, and can offer deep integrations to various company directories. IAM offerings are a bit like Google Single-Sign On on steroids, offering many more configuration options and deeper integrations. For smaller organizations, this might be overkill, especially if you won’t be able to or need to leverage their killer features like Active Directory sync (smaller, newer companies might not even have this) and SAML integration (typically only available on more expensive, enterprise-level SaaS pricing tiers). But if you are a larger or more advanced organization, it may very well be worth investing in IAM. Some of the key players in the IAM market today include: , , and . We recommend Okta for most organizations with more than 200 employees. Okta’s single sign-on product claims to make it for users to sign in to applications, as well as reducing IT help desk requests by half. This makes life easier for the folks on your IT and operations teams while meeting “security efficacy” goals. Okta also has real-time security reporting built-in, so you can be alerted anytime something suspicious takes place, affording peace of mind. Okta OneLogin PING 50% faster Putting Your Stack Together In summary, these are our overall recommendations for boosting the security of your team’s SaaS operations. For most businesses, here is what we recommend: Put people at the center of your security policies Use or for overall operations and employ available security configurations G Suite Business Enterprise Enforce two-step verification on G Suite Deploy to keep a close eye on all applications in one convenient dashboard Blissfully SaaS monitoring Leverage where possible, and use (via Google SSO) to manage shared passwords for products that don’t support Google SSO Google SSO TeamsID For Enteprise: Use an IAM like to manage identity and access Okta We hope these security guidelines will help your organization meet the goal of improving SaaS and cloud security by employing practices and standards that are both attainable and effective at protecting you against a variety of risks and threats. The best strategy is the one that can be implemented and maintained, so work to improve your security over time by implementing the best practices outlined in this guide. And if you need a hand implementing this, just let us know! Originally published at www.blissfully.com , where you can also download the complete guide as a PDF.

Practical Guide to People-First SaaS Security

One request from last year’s was to add even more content for bootstrapped (vs venture funded) startups. We have! We’d like to think 100% of SaaStr content and speakers applies to bootstrapped startups just as well as any other type — but there are differences. So a few sessions to highlight: SaaStr Annual . Ryan bootstrapped Qualtrics all the way to a $1 billion+ valuation and even when he did raise for the first time after $1b, none of it was primary, traditional capital. You will love the story and Ryan is a terrific champion of bootstrapping. Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics . One of everyone’s favorite bootstrapped unicorns. How do you build a real marketing plan without buckets of venture capital? Can it be done? Yes it can! We’ll learn from Tom. Tom Klein, CMO of Mailchimp . Another of our favorite tools we all use. OK yes Basecamp raised money eventually, but very little. We’ll still call it bootstrapping. Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp some . Pre-IPO Medallia went They did it by selling high, and selling well, and selling with conviction. We’ll learn how to sell big deals without raising big bucks from Amy! Amy Pressman, President and Co-Founder of Medallia over a decade before raising any venture capital. . Grammarly didn’t raise a dime of venture capital until their . How did they do it? I don’t know, but as customers ourselves, we will be in the audience! Brad Hoover, CEO of Grammarly recent $110m+ round . Enough said. Again, when Atlassian finally did raise, it was secondary capital, and after the company was well past $60m+ in ARR. Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of Atlassian . , and Therese bootstrapped the company from founding all the way until 2013, when it finally raised some private equity money to buy out some shareholders. It wasn’t easy. She’s tell us how she did it. Therese Tucker, CEO of BlackLine BlackLine IPO’d last year with a splash . SurveyMonkey did eventually raise money after a decade, but it achieved escape velocity without ever having raising a nickel. How did they then use capital to scale after that? We’ll find out from one of the masters, Tom Hale. Tom Hale, COO of SurveyMonkey . Yes, eventually, . But it got to critical mass without taking in any venture capital. Let’s learn. Julios Avalos, CBO of Github Github raised hundreds of millions . . He’s share the pros and cons and what he learned scaling one of the early SaaS 2.0 pioneers. Mike McDerment, CEO of Freshbooks Mike waited a decade before raising any venture capital

ATLASSIAN

Basecamp

Techcrunch

Velocity

10 Amazing Sessions on Bootstrapped Startups at SaaStr Annual 2018

In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to send email using the standard library. In the end of this tutorial, you will be able to send a Newsletter email looking as below: HTML Go Before I start, all the code used in this demo can be found on my . Github 1 — HTML Template Coding Email template is one of tasks that brings tears to a developer’s eyes because of the vast differences in rendering between email clients. don’t render HTML in the same way as do. like , and even should not be part of your vocabulary while creating an HTML email template. So how to create a nice HTML email template then ? HTML/CSS Email clients browsers CSS properties float background-image margins Think back to 1999 which means , , , . All those shitty things you thought you’d left behind are now your closest friends. Tables cellpadding cellspacing colspan In my experience, HTML email code gets very complicated, very quickly. So it’s always better to keep it simple and start with a plan: So we will start off with our wrapper table with 100% as width and white background. I used and HTML attributes. Think of them like using and CSS properties: cellpadding cellspacing margin padding Note: There are 4 rows inside the table: one at top for the header one in the middle for the main content one for the subscription button one at the bottom for the footer Now we can start the process of coding our newsletter, section by section: 1.1 — Header The header is pretty simple, it’s one column, and a text in the center of a row: 1.2 — Content Our content section is quite simple, it’s just a paragraph, so the coding is straighforward: Note: The {{ .username }} part will be replaced with the receiver name while parsing the HTML template by the before sending the Email. template engine 1.3 — Subscription Button Now comes the most difficult part, are not supported in most of email clients, Therefore, we have to use and : button element tables table cells Note: that we’re using instead of CSS property. This is because HTML values are better supported in email clients than CSS properties. bgcolor background This is just one way to implement buttons in email. Admittedly, it doesn’t always look identical in every client, but the web is not always pixel-perfect either. I prefer this because it’s simpler and doesn’t involve using or image assets VML 1.4 — Footer Footer is just repeating what we’ve already done on the header part. Note: Don’t forget to add the : meta tags Viewport: <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=device-width”/> It used to tell the browser that your email is responsive and can adapt to small screens like tablets and smartphones. Charset: <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> It’s important in order to preserve the character encoding across various email clients. And the main layout is now complete: 2 — Coding Part 2.2 — Mailer It’s responsible for parsing the HTML template and send an Email 2.3 — Mailer Configuration Responsible for mapping the configuration file into a object Config Configuration file has the information: SMTP server server=”smtp.gmail.com” port=587 email=”YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS” password=”EMAIL PASSWORD” Note: The code above uses an external library to parse the config file, so be sure to grab it by typing the following command: go get github.com/BurntSushi/toml 2.4 — Main application It creates a new request with the mail subject and receiver email, then calls the method: Send 3 — Testing There are a lot of clients to test, and a lot of ways to test them, let’s go over a small sets of : Email Clients 3.1 — Yahoo 3.2 — Gmail 3.3 — Mozilla Thunderbird 3.4 — Microsoft Outlook 3.5 — Android Email (5.0) So as you can notice above the template we created is also responsive.

Sending HTML email using Go

Hours spent in front of a computer can leave you feeling sluggish and worn down, even if what you’re actually accomplishing is fun, exciting and innovative. Even if it’s just spreadsheets, keeping alert throughout the day, whether you’re hacking new frontiers in cyberspace or hunkered down writing login pages and double-checking javascripts, is easier with a few health hacks on your side. Desktop Do’s and Don’ts The symptoms of are well documented, and the illness springs up over time after countless keyboard strokes, but there’s a lot you can do to minimize the risk. Keeping your keyboard and mouse at elbow level and avoiding angling your wrists is crucial. You should also make sure that your eyes are level with your monitor, or looking slightly downwards at it, to keep yourself from adopting a strange, and often painful, neck posture. carpal tunnel syndrome Consider getting a foot rest, even if your feet don’t feel tired after a long day working at a desktop. Angled foot rests can help keep blood flowing to your legs and pumping throughout your body. They also make a great tax-deductible fidget tool for those periods when you need a distraction from the umpteenth spreadsheet of the day. Standing Room Only Standing desks are all the rage for that rare set of programmers who like to spend time outdoors on weekends. These desks can help improve posture and keep blood flowing all day long, but too much as well as alleviate them. Moderation is key when it comes to standing or sitting. Take regular breaks whether you’re parked at a desktop or going for a marathon coding session supported only by your own two legs. standing can cause health problems Use these breaks to go through some quick squats. The rising and seating motion engages your core muscles and can help combat some of the downsides to being stuck at a computer all day long. Even if your idea of hiking is more to the break room than the local bluffs, this quick and simple exercise can keep you feeling alert and awake. Ergonomics can lead to a host of problems that the right chair type or standing desk can only partially eliminate. Along with a footrest, accessories such as wristpads, adjustable-height seats and removable lumbar supports can help keep your body in the best position for regular work. Poor ergonomics Ergonomic support can also include accessories or settings that prevent eye strain. Consider adjusting the monitor brightness to complement the room you’re in or getting an anti-glare screen to fit over your monitor during daylight hours. Laptop Lifestyle Many digital nomads and engineers decide to so they can work in comfort wherever they roam. Comfort doesn’t always mean the healthiest conditions, though. Make sure you have a bag that offers plenty of support for your back and waist whenever you have to tote your laptop around, and try to maintain good posture whether you’re working from a coffee-shop table or a comfy couch at a friend’s house. get a laptop Those truly attached to their laptops know to keep a lock and spare key at hand for those quick trips to the restroom during work, but it also helps to keep a cleaning kit with compressed air, a microfiber cloth and LCD cleaning solution handy. In a pinch, the cleaning solution can also work as a hand sanitizer, keeping you from catching the germs in public places when you work. Tracking Tech FTW Those looking to remain or get truly fit can find all sorts of apps and to enhance their routines. Make sure that tracking doesn’t become your only real exercise, however, as it’s easy to confuse the perception of activity with the real thing. Tracking tech makes it easier to customize your own workouts, but it can quickly become overwhelming if tracking takes as much effort as exercising. workout tracking software Look for simple tracking tech that does much of the work for you. Fitness bands often prove inaccurate, making it better to manually measure results and then allow systems with trend lines and other feedback tools to make suggestions for your workout and diet. Tracking results as well as activities and foods gives you everything you need to stay fit, whether you’re spending time at a standard desk, standing desktop or toting around the latest laptop hardware.

Health Hacks for Tech Specialists

YouTube

The Trouble With Scrum

Days 1 to 11 can be found here -> https://hackernoon.com/participating-in-product-hunt-global-hackathon-days-1-to-11-676ce0db6e63 Day 12 rest and minor fixes, reported by users Day 13 Gamayun was able to search and summarize things. It was time for the next step — summarize web pages! It turned out that this is actually pretty complicated. There are several chrome extensions that simplify web pages to more print friendly versions. None of them however seemed to work the way I wanted so I decided to try and find a way to be able to extract text from online articles. It took some time. On day 13 I stayed up till 2AM. It still didn’t work…. Day 14 I kept trying. is pretty awesome and easy to use. Despite that websites have different DOM structures. Actually they don’t have anything in common. After additional 5 hours I managed to make it work. It took a lot of combination of parentNode, childNode, texts comparisons, number of children and a so many other things, but I have tested it with several websites and it seems to work. PHP DOMDocument https://www.theverge.com/ https://www.bloomberg.com/europe https://arstechnica.com/ https://hackernoon.com/ My sleep deprived brain couldn’t think of anymore websites to test it on, but it is live and online on so if anyone finds website that it doesn’t work on, just let me know and I will fix it. http://birdofknowledge.com Next I will be attempting to add user accounts in the next few days. We’ll see how it will turn out. Prologue If you are a in the I would love to hear your impressions of the hackathon and this article and whether or not our so far had anything similar. participant hackathon journeys And of course anyone is more than welcomed to subscribe for Gamayun here — , test it, tweet to it and whatever else you can think of :) https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/gamayun

Different

Participating in Product Hunt Global Hackathon — Days 13 and 14

As AI/machine learning continues to spread and become ubiquitous throughout industry, there will be a rising demand for AI and machine learning engineers. While some companies will dedicate the resources to hire entire teams of AI engineers, many will elect to hire consultants to either work on projects or advise their software engineers on how to design a specific model. I’ve been contacted by almost a dozen companies in the past few months asking if I can do AI consulting for them and one of the larger hurdles I’ve had to jump over as I’ve started this consulting side business is writing a contract, invoices, etc. The vision In light of my struggles and breakthroughs while getting my consulting gigs off the ground, I have decided to share what I’ve learned via a . GitHub repository Right now there is just a base template for an in there (which I’m sure is not perfect). My goal is for this repository to become a resource for AI/machine learning engineers so they don’t have to waste their time or money working out the gritty business stuff. hourly contract I hope to eventually have invoice templates, templates for various types of contracts, suggested hourly rates, how to negotiate, how to find clients, etc. But I can’t do it alone. Contribute I encourage anyone to contribute to the repository in any way — brainstorming ideas via Issues, putting up PRs with additions/changes, sharing this resource with other people who could contribute or benefit from it, etc. Contribute here Call to action I’m currently on a quest to discover how to create that . If you want to stay up-to-date with my writing, ideas, and projects, you can find more info and links to all of my social channels on my personal website: side projects generate passive income zackthoutt.com

Contribute to the AI Consulting Contract

It has been 7 months since , and one year since I made the . Can you imagine? This certainly deserves a celebration, and we decided to do that with a big update! I took the last 2 weeks off to work fulltime on CodeSandbox and we were able to get a lot done.Let’s dive in! we announced CodeSandbox first commit New Homepage Since the first release we’ve added many things to CodeSandbox. To give you an idea: we released CodeSandbox without embeds! A lot has changed, we’re not an editor for React only anymore, and I think we moved past the definition of a playground. All these changes, but the homepage didn’t receive a single update. This caused confusion, as people didn’t know about the things we built. It was time to do something about that. We’ve now designed and built the homepage from scratch using Gatsby. ! A very big thanks to for helping us with the design. You can see it here Danny Ruchtie There are more pages in the pipeline, like documentation and picked examples. We also want to show a more personalized page for logged in users. The basis is here now, so it’ll be easier to expand to this in the future. GitHub Committing & Opening PRs The most requested feature since day one is committing to GitHub. At the beginning we couldn’t tackle that because of the groundwork that needed to be built first. The groundwork has been built and from now on you can commit, create repositories and open pull requests right from within CodeSandbox! It truly feels incredible to commit changes directly from your browser to GitHub. Creating Repositories This is a very simple process. You can now export any normal sandbox to GitHub by just entering the name and clicking ‘Create Repo’ in the sidebar. This will create a repository and then redirect you to the Git version of the sandbox. Committing & Opening PRs To commit to your repository you’ll need to import it first. You can import any GitHub repository by appending the GitHub URL to codesandbox.io/s/github. For example, for my test repository the url would be: . The next step is to create a fork of this sandbox and make your changes, from then on you can commit or open a PR, by clicking on the buttons in the sidebar. codesandbox.io/s/github/CompuIves/codesandbox-test-git-app Create a commit or open a PR We first try to make a commit, if this fails we try to make a merge commit. When a merge commit fails as well we fall back to opening a Pull Request. Merge conflict solving is next on our list to build inside CodeSandbox. Committing some changes 😃 You can only commit to repositories you have write access to, you can open a PR to any repository. Other Changes To properly support GitHub in CodeSandbox we had to make some changes. We now import all files (like and ) for git repositories. We also implemented custom ‘editors’ for binary files, like images. This feels great for me, because you now work on your project in CodeSandbox as if you are working locally. There is no transforming happening anymore. The next feature also helps with that .gitignore package.json An Image view Static File Hosting One of the biggest differences between the local development server and CodeSandbox was the behaviour of and the folder. CodeSandbox didn’t host the files in the folder, which was confusing until now. From this update on we do host all files from the (or for Vue) directory. Many exciting possibilities arise with this. You can, for example, add web workers, static images, mock API call responses now. You also get full control of from now on! index.html public public public static index.html Here is an example sandbox: We download test.json from the public folder Future This new update adds many advanced features, and also opened up many new things to build. I’m looking forward to work on these points in the very near future (along with the existing features that are planned). UI Overhaul The UI is getting a bit cluttered, and deserves some reorganization. I’m working on a UI overhaul that I couldn’t fit in this update, but certainly want to deploy very soon. The new UI is inspired by vscode and will put all advanced features like deployment and GitHub support in their own place. Diff View The Git integration is currently missing a diff view for commits. This is very important and on the top of my list to tackle. This change will go together with the UI Overhaul. Configuration Source of Truth Now that we import files like we need to do some conflict resolving between CodeSandbox configs and file configs. We want to make files like the source of truth for eg. dependencies, and show a UI to configure these files. This gives the user flexibility and we still keep the UX very user friendly. package.json package.json Conclusion The past 7 months were great, developing CodeSandbox has been fun from the start to now. One thing we didn’t expect is the amount of support we received when we went open source. The open source community is truly amazing and all our contributors deserve one extra big thanks. If you like what we’re doing, consider becoming a . The last 2 weeks were amazing, and I’d love to work more fulltime on CodeSandbox. But this is only possible if I’m able to afford my food 😃. Patron

The Sandbox

Community Is

Announcing CodeSandbox 2.0

What is Markdown If you already familiar with Markdown, feel free to skip to the next section. is a simple documentation that implements the “core” formatting features you find in HTML. Markdown markup language It makes it very easy to create simple documentation files (the first version of this very article was created using that) them save it, put that on git, control changes, …, you got the idea. I like to think it is a “standalone” Wiki tool. You can use it inside your project without any server behind it, edit anywhere, anytime. You also don’t need any compile/build steps (differently of some project documentation generators that are being developed recently). Versions and Origins There are some slightly different versions out there. The original one was defined and published on the following link: _The overriding design goal for Markdown's formatting syntax is to make it as readable as possible. The idea is that a…_daringfireball.net Daring Fireball: Markdown You can check for syntax sample on the link below: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax How to get the best of it? There are several plugins, preview and syntax packages that can help you start using it on your favorite IDE/Editor. Atom Eclipse IntelliJ Visual Studio It is also rendered on all of the major coding communities: BitBucket GitHub GitLab Text only is boring, looking for more After some time using Markdown, you start trying more advanced features. Markdown has a built-in extension syntax (“code spans”): https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#precode With that you can embed code (of any programming language) inside your Markdown documents. This can be used for more than documentation. Specialized tools can read this code and take additional steps (such as executing the code, and rendering the output of it). Just as one example, the following tool, runs “R” blocks and generate result reports: _Turn your analyses into high quality documents, reports, presentations and dashboards with R Markdown. Use a productive…_rmarkdown.rstudio.com R Markdown Examples: http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/gallery.html This type of tool/technique is usually call "notebook". Similar tools: Apache Zeppelin ( ) https://zeppelin.apache.org/docs/0.7.0/interpreter/markdown.html ) Jupyter (http://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/stable/examples/Notebook/Working%20With%20Markdown%20Cells.html What about diagrams? Wouldn’t it be great to have a simple language that can be used to create technical diagrams, without the need to drag and drop boxes around or worry about too many details? does exactly that. PlantUML It defines a markup (human readable language) for diagraming that implement the very basics of other technical diagraming tools. Main links for that: PlantUML Home page — with links to example and specification Tools that provide PlantUML support Sample Diagrams Example 1: Sample sequence diagram Example 2: Sample component diagram How to make them work together On the Open Source world, the best option is probably to integrate PlantUML on your Markdown using images generated by Gravizo. See can see a demo here: _plantuml_with_gravizo - PlantUML with Gravizo Samples_github.com htssouza/plantuml_with_gravizo On Enterprise projects, you can use PlantUML directly on Confluence: _Macros to add various UML diagrams and other diagrams_marketplace.atlassian.com PlantUML for Confluence You can also setup the integration on your Git Lab server: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/integration/plantuml.html I hope this article helps you to get more from Markdown on your next project!

Apache

Markdown, Code Blocks and Beyond: Lightweight diagramming with PlantUML

FollowUp launches a Personal CRM to help you manage professional relationships without ever leaving your inbox. For the past decade, has helped people keep conversations and tasks from slipping through the cracks. By CCing a specific time @followup.cc, you can create an email reminder to make sure you don’t drop the ball. FollowUp.cc Our website in early 2008, pretty fancy eh? We’ve come a long way since then. Last year alone, 3,000,000 reminders were set. But more importantly, we’ve gone beyond just reminders — FollowUp.cc has evolved into a complete productivity suite, providing email open tracking, auto-followups, and a host of other features that increase email efficiency. In the crowded productivity space, the willingness to experiment and go out of our comfort zone has enabled us to be successful. Today, we hope to continue that trend by launching a to help you manage professional relationships. Personal CRM Like many before us, our team built this tool to solve a problem we faced. We’d meet new people every day but to stay in touch and remember important things about them. Spreadsheets and sticky notes were tedious, but more capable tools like CRMs were sales focused and overkill. didn’t have a way After a closed beta early this year, it was evident we weren’t the only ones struggling to find an effective method to stay on top of our contacts. Over the past 12 months, hundreds of CEOs, executives, entrepreneurs, and others whose careers rely on their network have given us amazing feedback. I want to thank all of our testers and those who’ve been depending on us while we continued to build out the rest of the personal CRM. Your patience and and willingness to help us along this journey has been instrumental to the creation of our latest product. Today, FollowUp is ready to help everyone get the most out of their contacts, whether you’re an executive or just starting your career. These are the pillars that have we’ve built our personal CRM on. Email First Consistency is the most important aspect of relationship management. If you don’t keep up with it, you’re wasting your time. So above all else, our goal was to create a way to manage contacts that was both . These two go hand in hand — the easier it is to understand a product, the more likely people will stick with it. simple and sustainable From the various methods we’d tried in the past, we knew that forcing users into a new workflow wouldn’t work. We have a strong tendency to revert to what we’re familiar with. It’s in our nature. And if there’s one thing FollowUp.cc has showed us, it’s that adapting to someone’s workflow is the easiest way to become sticky. This made living in email our plan from the start. It’s the #1 location for professional communication (and where we spend 3–4 hours each day). FollowUp takes the form of a sidebar in your Gmail so you can manage relationships as you communicate with them in real-time. It’s also contextual, meaning that when you click on an email thread it will display the contacts involved. A lot of relationship management tools have email extension to give you a taste of the product from email. For us, that extension is the product. We don’t want you to have to go to a web app to use our tool, you should be able to do nearly everything from right where you’re at. Always FollowUp The fundamental way to stay in touch with people is by always following up. It strengthens relationships by keeping them active and puts you at the top of your contacts’ minds, leading to more touch points in the future. But the sheer amount of people we know makes it difficult to remember who to connect with. And not all contacts are equal — some require greater attention than others. With FollowUp you can organize and prioritize people based on how often you need to communicate with them by setting “followups” on contacts, which are intervals for how often you want to stay in touch. If you don’t email the contact for that period of time, we’ll send you an email letting you know to reach out. Then there’s also the one-off situations everyone has, say to send someone a proposal or follow up on your most recent meeting. For these you can set reminders on contacts. Users can select what they want to remember, which day, and the exact time they want it to trigger. To close the loop and take action, schedule events directly from Gmail. These events can be scheduled from an email thread with multiple people, and will automatically include the entire group. While this may not seem like a huge timesaver, once you do it say…12 times a day, you’ve saved a lot of the time and focus lost bouncing back and forth between your calendar and email. Deeper Context Our relationships are built on deeper context, and you need that context available when you’re interacting with your contacts — that information will never be more pertinent. So we surface those details by showing you things like the recent conversations you’ve had with someone, the last time you’ve spoken, and notes you’ve written on them. Speaking of notes, Google Contacts gives you a single note per person, which doesn’t exactly tell the full story. With FollowUp users can write unlimited notes per person, which display the date they were written so you can highlight and remember important interactions. It provides you with a functional relationship timeline you’ll always have at your fingertips. Any scheduled events and reminders also show on your contact profiles to jog your memory of what’s on the horizon. For a complete look at all future events and reminders you can check the Upcoming view. Still Learning This is just the beginning for our personal CRM. Having context and following up are the first steps — but we want to tell you more about your relationships. Contact insights revealing their state, which way they’re trending, and even ways to strengthen them are all currently in development. We want you to know that this doesn’t mean we’re leaving FollowUp.cc and email productivity behind. Rather, we’re tackling a different problem that requires a new solution. It’s not going to be easy. In a relationship management space dominated by sales and the customer, not everyone gives contacts the attention they require. What we’re betting is that more and more professionals will recognize the need to invest in relationships, and value a simple method that’s native to their workflow. Sure beats a spreadsheet :)

Defining the “Personal CRM”

Still in the early stages of development and use, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning are already impacting how we live, work, and play. Is your organization ready to embrace and leverage these disruptive innovations? When it granted citizenship to Sophia, a robot manufactured by Hanson Robotics, to publicly embrace the close relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and “real life.” Designed in the image of Audrey Hepburn, this Saudi citizen has already become somewhat of a celebrity, appearing on the Tonight Show and at various global conferences. Saudi Arabia became the first country in the world Sophia isn’t alone. In fact, we’ve been using AI in our daily lives for decades. From voice recognition on all smartphones to robots that help you clean the house to virtual assistants that remind you about upcoming business meetings, AI has already proven itself to be a great provider of information, learning, reasoning, planning, and communicating. Defined as the effectively simulation of human intelligence processes by computers, AI also incorporates the concepts of machine learning and deep learning. The former comes into play when AI gives inanimate systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience (a very “humanlike” trait), while the latter gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning helps companies like Uber determine arrival times for rides, estimate meal delivery times on UberEATS, and compute optimal pickup locations. Google uses deep learning for voice and image recognition algorithms and Amazon employs it to help determine what customers want to watch or buy next. Three Ways AI Already Impacts Us Today Because AI, machine learning, and deep learning can all be loosely grouped under the same umbrella, its best to think of the trio working in concert to help organizations work smarter, better, and faster. And while all three are still in their infancies on the technological growth curve, it is already impacting in ways that we may not even realize. Here are three of them: According to a article, $62 billion is lost through poor customer service — a deficit that continues to increase with every passing year. AI can help plug that leak by going above and beyond what humans are able to do. Digital assistants have already become common and acceptable shoulders to lean on in daily life — and we can expect them to play an even larger role in our lives in the future — but they are just the beginning. A unveils that most consumers see AI simplifying their daily lives in the immediate future: Simplify our daily lives. Forbes recent PwC survey AI and machine learning have the potential to significantly reduce and contain ongoing operational costs for public sector agencies. Consider the following examples: Makes our governments more efficient. is developing wearable monitors that use a machine-learning algorithm to weigh the potential seriousness of wounds, to assist medics in prioritizing treatment or evacuation. The Army’s Medical Department and US Customs and Immigration Services use chatbots designed to answer basic questions and leave complicated responses to a human. The White House uses handwriting recognition to sort mail by ZIP code; some machines can process 18,000 pieces of mail an hour. The US Postal Service According to a recent , using AI to automate federal government tasks now performed by employees would save at least 96.7 million working hours a year, a cost savings of $3.3 billion. Combined with better, faster, and accurate services with the incentive to cost reduction will continue to drive adoption of AI in government sector. Deloitte study Take manufacturing industry as an example. Industrial revolutions have taken us from mass production to automation. It’s been more than half a century since the first robots worked on production lines. And now, manufacturing, dubbed as Indusry 4.0 is getting smarter as it adopts AI, machine learning, and the internet of things (IoT). Data from customers, partners, market, factory floors, and warehouses can be collected, integrated, analyzed, and predicted — allowing companies change the way they make and ship products and goods with efficiency and accuracy. Addresses business’ toughest challenges. Manufacturing is not the only example of AI usage; it has also been impacting every sector of the market to solve complex business problems. For example, many large financial institutions have invested in AI engines to assist with their investment practices. A report from highlights how wealth management company BlackRock’s AI engine, called Aladdin, is used internally to help inform investment decisions; its also offered to customers and nearly 30,000 people use the system. Aladdin has a wide range of functionalities including the use of natural language processing to read text such as news, broker reports, and social media feeds. The system then assists users with investment decisions. American Banker Where Should You Begin? Both nebulous and complicated by nature, AI and the movements that it’s fueling all require a highly specialized skillset. For it to work, people must connect the dots between the AI and how it can be effectively applied in the private or public sector. That’s not always easy to do — and the very notion of it may be scary to some who think that the day when machines “take over” isn’t that far off — but the positive results are already being documented and talked about. As AI, machine learning, and deep learning continue to evolve and mature, it’s time for every organization start experimenting with the many ways these technologies are helping organizations work smarter, better, and faster. So how do you get started? It starts with the business strategy. Your organization may not have a formal, codified method for making predictions about the future, but it definitely has a business strategy. Such strategies arise from some set of assumptions about what changes are afoot — accurate or otherwise. It that takes a self-examination. Start by taking these steps: Closely examine your current strategy, right here in the present. How well is your team executing your current plan? What changes are needed today? Consider those execution methods from the perspective of your immediate situation to determine whether utilizing AI is likely to make your organization more effective. Analyze the impact of your current work of your team, partners, and customers. Where are the most obvious places your results can be improved or revenue increased? Evaluate your present capabilities for making those improvements. What assets and resources do you have at your command to begin experimenting with AI? The assumptions you’re making about the future are embedded directly in the way you’re doing things right now. Closely reexamining your existing processes can make it easier to see the type of future that your current strategy assumes you’re heading toward. An essential part of any future transition requires both left-brained (analytical) and right-brained (creative) talent and culture. Value creation process from AI is no different. It begins with generating right ideas and ends with effective execution. Related: Four Questions To Turn Everyone In Your Company Into A Futurist Will Data Science Make Your Business Instincts Irrelevant? What This Video Of A Drone Fishing For Tuna Can Teach You About Disruption Copyright © 2017 by Faisal Hoque. All rights reserved. I am an . Founder of and other companies. Shadoka enables aspirations to lead, innovate, and transform. Shadoka’s accelerators and solutions bring together the management frameworks, digital platforms, and thought leadership to enable innovation, transformation, entrepreneurship, growth and social impact. entrepreneur and author SHADOKA Author of “ ” (McGraw Hill) and “ ” (Motivational Press). Follow me on Twitter . Everything Connects — How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation and Sustainability Survive to Thrive: 27 Practices of Resilient Entrepreneurs, Innovators, and Leaders Faisal Hoque Use the Everything Connects leadership app and Suvvive to Thrive resiliancy app for free.

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive November 15th, 2017

@frommwwKen Fromm

@asandreAndreas Sandre

@griffith_joelJoel Griffith

@namnguyen24Nam Nguyen

@dandisagreesDaniel Staudigel

@kashyapvartikaVartika Kashyap

@sandraSandra Merezhynska

@babulousbabulous

@mattwardMatt Ward

@sureshvigneshVignesh Suresh

@_alex_buzinAlexander Buzin

@DeviceHiveDeviceHive

@foundercollectiveFounder Collective

@hackernoon-archivesBehaviourExchange (BEX)

@cbrookinsChristopher Brookins

@Empty2k12Gero Gerke

@dharapvjVijay Dharap

@arieldiazAriel Diaz

@jasonlkJason M. Lemkin

@mlabouardyMohamed Labouardy

@nyarrueNoah Rue

@johnpcutlerJohn Cutler

@k_ivanowKristian Ivanov

@zthouttZack Thoutt

@compuivesIves van Hoorne

@htssouzaHenrique Souza

@codyhalffCody Halff

@faisal_hoqueFaisal Hoque

@frommww
Ken Fromm

@asandre
Andreas Sandre

@griffith_joel
Joel Griffith

@namnguyen24
Nam Nguyen

@dandisagrees
Daniel Staudigel

@kashyapvartika
Vartika Kashyap

@sandra
Sandra Merezhynska

@babulous
babulous

@mattward
Matt Ward

@sureshvignesh
Vignesh Suresh

@_alex_buzin
Alexander Buzin

@DeviceHive
DeviceHive

@foundercollective
Founder Collective

@hackernoon-archives
BehaviourExchange (BEX)

@cbrookins
Christopher Brookins

@Empty2k12
Gero Gerke

@dharapvj
Vijay Dharap

@arieldiaz
Ariel Diaz

@jasonlk
Jason M. Lemkin

@mlabouardy
Mohamed Labouardy

@nyarrue
Noah Rue

@johnpcutler
John Cutler

@k_ivanow
Kristian Ivanov

@zthoutt
Zack Thoutt

@compuives
Ives van Hoorne

@htssouza
Henrique Souza

@codyhalff
Cody Halff

@faisal_hoque
Faisal Hoque