We’ve all heard about the 10x engineer phrase, haven’t we? Did you know that the back in the 1960s actually mentions a 20x difference between a great engineer and a bad one? It compared initial coding time, debugging time, program execution speed, program size…quite a thorough study, but definitely with some flaws (hey, it was the ‘60s). The general consensus is a 10x difference. I personally think that the difference can even be 20x for really great engineers, and I will explain why in this article. original study Note that this difference becomes even more important if your product happens to be successful and scalable. There is nothing like code that is maintainable and scales. You can put 20 bad engineers to work on it, but they won’t achieve what a great one can. Well…actually, I guess you just can’t build a scalable product with only bad engineers 🤔. But that’s not the focus of this article. There are already a lot of articles listing the attributes of a 10x engineer, but I will still give you my take on this first, as you can’t talk about the 20x unicorn engineer (that’s what my daughter would call them; she likes unicorns, but you can call them exceptional 😉) without agreeing on these attributes. Then we’ll talk about the additional attributes for a unicorn engineer. Naturally, this is my personal opinion from my own experience, and you may not agree, but the eventual goal for me is to give engineers some perspective and give them food for thought on areas they can improve and that can make a difference. The 10x Engineer Attributes 1) Simple, obvious, maintainable and scalable code I think that this is the foundation. Programmers are in a profession where many people work on the same stuff. So this point is a game changer for the whole team. Even if it’s a small hack, they build intention-revealing code that can be easily refactored, restructured or replaced. 2) Understanding of the problem at hand The 10x engineers solve the problem at hand, not a fancy generalized version of it. You might think that this would go hand in hand with focus. And this point is often underrated. 3) Ability to understand the need for pragmatism and perfectionism 10x engineers have the ability to make both quick hacks and robust solutions, and the wisdom to choose which is appropriate for a given problem. They know when to hack and when to invest in quality, and they make these choices deliberately. But their hacks are still written in such a way that they are easy to stabilize later. 4) Humility, perseverance and self-improvement They know they don’t know, but try anyway. They then iterate on their attempts until they get there. 10x engineers are in a constant learning mode. They learn languages, tools, libraries, programming styles. There is no “innate programming gift” in humans. Their talent stems from this continuous growth mindset that they possess. All their knowledge gives them different perspectives. 5) Not averse to any tasks Engineers often loathe debugging, even of their own code. 10x engineers will just dive right in and fix those bugs with tenacity. Understand that this might not make them happy, but they know it needs to be done and it’s part of their responsibilities. 6) The right tool or methodology choices for the project Whatever the job, 10x engineers choose the right tool for it if they figure the investment in learning the tool is worth it to do the job. This actually means that the simplicity of the solution is more important than how easy it is to find the solution. They also don’t follow any single method or methodology, but they do learn about them in case they might be useful at some point. 7) Healthy skepticism Average programmers will find a solution that appears to work and call it a day. 10x engineers tend not to trust their own code. They will test it extensively. The small, innocuous-looking discrepancy that good programmers might leave as is, the 10x engineers will suspect could be a hint of a greater problem, and will investigate further. They tend to do more cross-checking and sanity checking. 8) Great at time and task management 10x engineers are highly reliable; they have a strong work ethic and show up at meetings on time. Their understanding of time management actually helps them in release estimates, too. 9) Great communication skills 10x engineers are able to understand problems clearly, break them down into hypotheses and propose solutions in a coherent manner. They are able to relay their understanding to any of their teammates. They also don’t need to have all specs written down. 10) Positive attitude They are positive, willing to go the distance to get the job done and bring their best to it everyday. Although it’s important not to exhaust an engineer with frequent urgent deadlines, sometimes this is unavoidable. When you need to ship a release out by a deadline, they will step up and get the product released whenever possible. Because they care. They also don’t let their ego get in the way of taking feedback. The 20x Unicorn Engineer Attributes Here is the last mile that, in my mind, could deepen a great engineer’s impact. None of these attributes are linked to hard skills, only soft skills. But again, collaboration is at the center of an engineer’s work, so the importance of soft skills shouldn’t be a surprise. Note that the number of the attributes continues rather than starts over, because the 20x engineer has all of the first 10 attributes of a 10x engineer plus some more! 11) Absence of bias 20x engineers have an innate skill to start with a clean slate and ability to see what is really there. By nature, people see what they are conditioned to see from their past experiences and understanding. But, somehow, 20x engineers don’t. They don’t hesitate to go back and question their own and their team’s understanding. This point could be an attribute for an exceptional product manager, too! And the worst part is once you make the effort to take a step back, thanks to their guidance, your mistake will be just as obvious to you. 12) More than a team player They elevate their team through their understanding, knowledge and mentorship. They take genuine delight in seeing people learn. So they will, in general, favor pair programming, not because they want to mentor you, but because they feel they might learn as well. Their growth mindset becomes contagious to their team. For instance, they typically undertake all of the documentation work that is required to make the team succeed. 13) Great at client / boss management 20x engineers are great at managing their clients or their own managers. They are more likely to understand the potentially non-obvious problems that their clients / bosses face, and offer solutions accordingly. Oftentimes, this will result in huge gains for their peers, as they didn’t have to go through a lot of misunderstandings thanks to the insight of the 20x engineer. productivity 14) Marathon, not a sprint 20x engineers understand that any project (whether it’s an entire startup or inside a big company) is a marathon, and not a sprint. This means that they try to send their teammates home at the end of the day. 20x engineers tend to have interests outside of programming, to set a good example to less experienced engineers that they should keep a decent balance. 15) Larger perspective on the product 20x engineers watch how people use their software, figure out what frustrates them, and then work to eliminate their frustration. They don’t make assumptions about what people want from their software. They will try to understand their customers and their usage. They will be involved in product discussions and will challenge the product team, actually helping it, as well. 16) Better understanding of the business context 20x engineers can understand the more significant factors at play in , such as unique client needs, UI/UX design, budgeting, and more. This ensures they can make the right decisions at every step. They might also study the business domain they are working in, so they can express domain concepts clearly in code and connect them together to solve meaningful problems. software development — This is my list. The overall difference between a 10x and a 20x engineer is not linked to hard skills, as you can see — at least in my mind. It’s their impact on their technical team and product team that matters. We all work in an organization made of people, so let’s keep in mind that organizations are only as good as their people. We tend to forget that. Let me know what you think! Would love to hear your thoughts about it. Before you go… Learned something? Please holding down the 👏 to say “thanks” and help others find it! If you are interested in articles about , subscribe to our newsletter! engineering and product leadership, productivity and how to scale a team Or join our . Engineering Leadership Community _High-quality trending articles curated by the community on engineering leadership, productivity, how to scale teams and…_community.anaxi.com Engineering Leadership Community | Anaxi You can also check out my latest articles: _Have you ever heard about teams being managed through metrics, like bug close rate or lines of code produced per week?…_link.medium.com Do NOT Measure Developers - Measure Projects _Ask any developer to estimate how long it will take for them to finish a project. You will see the loathing in their…_hackernoon.com How to Make Estimates Finally Useful to Developers _A lot of articles address the role of tech leads and engineering managers. One common theme we often come across is how…_hackernoon.com Top 12 Things That Destroy Developer Productivity You can also follow me on to stay connected. Thank you! Twitter Originally published on anaxi.com on October 26, 2018.

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In an earning’s call, Elon Musk while replying to a question said Tesla would open the charging network for other company EVs and mentioned that he doesn’t believe in moats. To quote him he said, “moats are lame.” He went on to say that it’s not the moat, but the pace of innovation which is more important for the long-term success of a company. He cited Amazon as an example, which innovates at an exponentially faster pace than Walmart, as the reason for its market dominance. And anyone who saw this could have easily predicted the success of Amazon from miles away. Moats in general, are viewed as a great defense for a company, protecting it from traditional market competition and enabling it to deliver long-term shareholder value. And Tesla’s supercharger network is considered as a great moat for the company by its investors. But if rapid pace of innovation can beat all kinds of defenses, the question is if there is a moat that can withstand rapid innovation cycles. Well there is one — brand. Brand is the most simple and powerful moat a company could have, and if acquired, it is the toughest & even almost impossible to be replicated by a competitor, no matter how rapid the pace of innovation is. You ask why? One word — Apple. The last two months have seen a barrage of new smart phones in the global market from a bunch of Chinese and American companies. Every new device has the same specifications — lots of memory, screen with a good pixel density, and of course a great camera. But only Apple makes a whopping 80% of the money in the smart phone industry. There are many companies around the globe trying to get a slice of this Apple pie. For instance, there are some really commendable efforts from One Plus (just look at one plus 6T available at $549 only) , Xiaomi, Oppo, Huawei & Samsung (after all, this one makes money by selling displays to Apple). However, none of the above companies are even close to competing with the cult following Apple has, the emotional defense its patrons come up with, the ridiculous splurge of budgeted dollars, and the irrational exuberance shown for a new Apple product. This is the nothing, but the ultimate brand devotion felt and shown for the most valuable brand ever created! This is because, brand value is essentially earned and not merely innovated. Unlike other moats, brand is intertwined with people’s emotions, aspirations, and their commitment towards it through and through. Christianity is probably the only other consumer brand which evokes such strong capital returns & humongous cash flow as Apple. Despite of rapid innovation cycles from companies like One Plus and Samsung , the market share must bow down to the holy altar of Steve Jobs and the brand he created. This isn’t to say Apple doesn’t innovate, it does but at its own pace. P.S — I don’t use Apple products because I am only reasonably irrational in my choices.

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A few years ago, as an applied econ & finance undergrad dipping my toes into the startup ecosystem for the first time, and trying to learn all I could about running an early-stage tech company, I had my work cut out for me. Just cutting through the noise of buzzwords and platitudes espoused by “startup gurus” in search of real wisdom was challenging enough, and at this point my brain has overwritten most of that with lessons learned from actual operating and investing experience. One point has remained with me though, a truism I’ve continued to hear even to this day. Do not waste your time, money, or effort on a patent. There are a few reasons a tech startup founder might consider disregarding the patent process entirely. That being said, having recently moved into venture capital: One of the overriding factors in whether I or my colleagues choose to invest in a company is defensibility. I want to be certain that the team I’m investing in is uniquely positioned to solve whatever problem or gap exists in the market that they’ve set out to tackle. To be sure, a major component of that is the team itself — talent defensibility — and the assurance that they are both qualified and motivated to make their worldview a reality. However, intellectual property (IP) defensibility, ensuring that my company’s brand and product remain distinct and competitive in the market, is just as critical. The issue isn’t clear-cut, and the answer today may be different than it was just a few years ago. Why You Should(n’t) File a Patent The maxim that startups should avoid pursuing a patent does have some basis in reality, and there are some very real benefits to steering clear of the patent process as an early-stage company. Patents are public, and while a competitor may not have the right to reproduce a work entirely, there is nothing to stop them from producing something similar in function but just to avoid litigation. Reverse-engineering. sufficiently different Filing a patent in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office will not protect a patent-holder from infringement overseas, and even filing in foreign offices offers no guarantees in countries with less sophisticated patent courts. Foreign competitors. As an early-stage company, time and money are in short supply; the work involved in filing a patent is just another distraction from execution, hiring, and so on. And a startup finding itself up against a large corporation in court simply will not have the funds to challenge any act of infringement. Resource constraints. It is entirely possible — and, in fact, rather likely — that a company will go to market with a very different idea than what the founders initially envisioned. In which case, founders may find themselves having spent significant resources on IP that is no longer relevant. Pivoting. The methodology, which advocates iterative learning and pivoting Lean Startup Even in consideration of these issues, IP be a major concern for any startup, and whether a founder intends to pursue external funding or not, applying for a patent on any proprietary technology can go a long way toward a company’s success. should Having a patent will serve as a defense against patent trolls, otherwise known as or , which will gladly pursue frivolous or bad-faith litigation claims against startups and multinational corporations alike. These claims often cost millions to fight off, forcing startups to settle for significant sums. Deterrence. non-practicing entities patent assertion entities Communicating ownership and progress on an idea may dissuade competitors and new entrants, or turn a potential competitor into a team member or collaborator. Barrier to entry. future While large, well-funded incumbents acting in bad faith may have the resources to infringe on an early-stage company’s patent and out-muscle them in court, a company with valuable IP and strong defensibility is often easier to simply buy out. Acquisition opportunity. Patents are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, not even necessary to protect a company’s IP. Oftentimes, copyright and trademark protection will more than suffice. Alternative IP protections. Historical Precedent According to Paul Graham, have a different core idea at the heart of their business after three months than when they started. at least 70% of startups This figure, if accurate, should not be surprising. In building an MVP or scoping out a potential business model, most successful companies pursue an iterative learning process with prospective customers. This process inevitably yields new insights that oftentimes change the entire direction of a company. In which case, a patent application may quickly be rendered worthless or obsolete. In any case, business model more often than not trumps patent protection as a factor in a company’s future. Many of the electric scooter unicorns now competing for market share across the United States are using scooters from Xiaomi rather than their own designs, and like Uber & Lyft, are primarily competing on business model and marketing strength. Where patents do make sense are in the case of hardware companies: , , and have all filed for patent protection around their core technologies. However, these companies are all banking on their technical superiority, and operating in burgeoning frontier technology markets where a breakthrough could all but guarantee market dominance. Skydio Planet Magic Leap An interesting example is SpaceX, arguably the most of any company mentioned so far. In 2012, Elon Musk famously claimed that publishing patents would give China a to follow in constructing similar technology. A patent was not necessary; between its employees’ non-disclosure agreements and the low likelihood that a competing company or nation-state would ever get a chance to fully dissect and analyze their rockets, SpaceX’s edge was guaranteed. frontier “recipe book” Bad Actors Unfortunately, patent law is wide open to fraud and abuse, making it easily exploitable by firms or individuals hoping to profit from others’ inventions, making patent protection a necessity in some industries. In the United States, patent protection is awarded on a basis, rather than , giving patent trolls leeway to dissect existing technologies, file a patent, and then prosecute the inventors for what may be a massive sum. In fact, patent trolls typically earn far more in patent cases than practicing entities. first-to-file first-to-invent PriceWaterhouseCoopers Perhaps the clearest inflection point in the fight against patent trolls was the dot-com bubble bursting. In the aftermath of the bubble, many tech firms went bankrupt, liquidating their assets and seeing their patents scooped up by non-practicing entities. Following this wave of bankruptcies, there was a in the number of patent complaints from 2000–2010 over the decade prior. 47% jump Increased litigation against both startups and larger, established corporations has forced many companies to band together in what are called . The LOT Network, a non-profit patent-sharing organization that recently counted 149 large corporations and 75 startups — including Red Hat, Lenovo, and Alphabet — among its members, was founded as a response to non-practicing entities. defensive aggregators Putting aside frivolous litigation from patent trolls, startups are still vulnerable to having their own R&D reverse-engineered and used by incumbents as a shortcut to innovation. Fortunately, this remains a relatively rare phenomenon, and in cases where the aggrieved party has suffered blatant patent infringement, even against more established corporations, patent courts in the U.S. have traditionally ruled correctly. The challenge then becomes having the funds to fight a patent infringement suit against a much larger competitor. This remains a danger for any early-stage company. Where IP protection starts to break down, however, is in the foreign markets. China has been a particularly problematic market for both startups and established companies, and although a score of new, specialized IP courts and patent laws have made the country ostensibly more secure for companies going global, examples of blatant disregard for IP . still abound Not a Matter of “If”, but “When” One thing is important to establish upfront: investors demand IP protection. You are unlikely to receive funding from any sophisticated angel investor or VC without that extra sense of security. Sure, you’ll give away your product roadmap, but you can still outpace and out-innovate any of your competitors, it won’t matter. That’s the argument, and it’s right. As crucial as IP protection may be, however, you should not necessarily apply right away, nor should you focus strictly on patents. If your company prioritizes its technology innovation over its business model, focus on trade secrecy. In the early stages, it will be more than enough — if Google can pull it off with thousands of employees, so can you — and you will have more leeway for experimentation/iteration while you determine your core tech stack and business model. As a , worry about trademarks instead; they are much easier and faster to secure. And unlike patents, absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, any code you produce is automatically protected under copyright, even if any physical apparatus that uses it is not. If you are a software startup, or you’ve innovated on your business model above all else, you’re done. Congratulations. startup If not, even if you are a hardware or deep tech company, you have no business worrying about patents until your trademarks and technology strategy are fully established, and ideally until you have already secured enough funding to hire a quality patent attorney for the job. The process may not be cheap, but the sense of security for both you and any future investors is priceless. Once that’s done, relax. Take a breather. That’s one major load off your back. Then get back to work. Marcello Miranda is a tech junkie, and frequently writes on startups. Follow him on Medium and Twitter , and if you enjoyed this content, give a few claps to help spread the word!

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The Real Value (or Lack Thereof) of Your Tech Startup Patent

Around the world, regulators are weighing the costs and benefits of blockchains. Here is why regulators should resist the urge to ban cryptocurrencies. (Part 2 of our ongoing (CfR) series; Part 1 is ). Crypto for Regulators here Like all technologies, cryptocurrencies can be used for good or ill. We urge regulators to consider five points that mitigate against a categorical regulatory approach like an outright ban. 1. CryptoCrime Happens Yes, there have been many highly publicized instances of cryptocurrencies being used to facilitate illegal activity. There are a lot of activities, but existing regulations already address these criminal and market-distorting civilian use cases. dark box 2. Crypto Utility = Social Utility However, cryptocurrencies have also been used to unleash tremendous amounts of and new technological possibility. In fact, according to most experts, the most interesting aspect of today’s cryptocurrency technology is that it is still in its infancy, and many utility and value propositions have not even been developed, let alone beta-tested, and deployed. new utility For instance, today there are small development teams like , , WasteSpace.io and others that are developing ways of using cryptocurrency rewards to create markets around previously unmonetizable commodities like litter. Litter seems worthless, but according to Hitachi Data Systems, SmartCity data markets will be worth $7 trillion by 2021. And that does not include existing enterprise-level “Uber of Trash” services like Rubicon Global that can leverage the technology behind cryptocurrencies to capture $ billions-worth of currently un-utilized commodities. Please consider the social empowerment opportunities for individuals who can supplement their income from doing something good for themselves, for society, and for the environment. This is just one sector that has already been touched by the technology behind cryptocurrencies. OpenLitterMap CleanApp There is vast potential in crypto technology, in fields as diverse as healthcare, logistics, law enforcement, and more efficient resource allocation. A ban on cryptocurrencies would effectively end these projects because cryptocurrencies are the lifeblood of the blockchain ecosystem. 3. More Crypto Innovation → More Social Utility The unprecedented utility and value of different cryptocurrencies also stems from a culture of innovation, experimentation, and plurality of approaches behind different cryptocurrencies (which compete vigorously against one another by constantly offering more security and more functionality). When we think of cryptocurrency, it is common to think of Bitcoin. But there are radically different technologies behind different cryptocurrencies, coins, tokens, and contracts. For example, newly proposed proof-of-stake blockchains uses a completely different technology and process than Bitcoin, one that offers a lot more utility, with far less ecological impact. Both technologies are categorized by outside observers as more-or-less the same thing, “cryptocurrencies.” Before we move in the direction of regulation, we should allow these radically different technologies to explain themselves to the world and to prove their potential in various markets. Competing on an open market allows DLTs to prove their usefulness, while also exposing need areas that can be quickly patched and redeployed into the market. Innovation spurs innovation. This is why many states around the world, including China, Russia and many states with strong sovereign interests, have acknowledged the value of the different technologies behind cryptocurrencies, even though they maintain, as you do, healthy skepticism towards the today’s cryptocurrency markets. 4. More Crypto Innovation → More Network Security Additionally, one of the things that makes many cryptocurrencies so secure as a medium for different forms of secure payments and transactions (the overwhelming volume of which are, of course, legal) is the fact that for most cryptocurrencies there is public ledger of every transaction ever made on that blockchain. Theoretically and practically, this allows anybody to inspect and audit (and, potentially, regulate and tax) particular types of transactions. Blockchain applications are a huge growth area in the budding field of GovTech and blockchain developers are already working to explain how DLT can make governmental IT systems more efficient, more accountable to responsible oversight bodies, and more secure. 5. Internet Regulation Models > Ban Considering the unprecedented levels of new utility and value that distributed ledger technology can offer to different stakeholders and to society, an outright ban seems disproportionate to the admittedly serious threats stemming from dark markets and illegal activity. In our view from the front lines of the crypto development space, the best way to fight fire is to understand fire. A ban would push the illegal activity further underground, suppressing the fire in the short term, but creating the conditions for a much bigger conflagration later. A regulatory strategy like the one that fueled the growth of the Internet in the late 90s and 2000s seems much more likely to succeed. A middle-ground regulatory response that leverages industry expertise and regulatory oversight is a proven template for success. This is part 2 of longer project, Crypto for Regulators . Part 1 is available here: _“To regulate or not to regulate,” that is the question._medium.com Crypto for Regulators, Part 1

Should Regulators Ban Crypto?

The supply chain and logistics professionals are now of a firm belief that mobile apps have become a necessary tool for them. Bringing in the factor of ‘mobility’ when it comes to accessing transport, product and goods data, supply chain mobile apps have given these professionals a chance to unglue from their desks. There was a time when such supply chain professionals had to invest a lot of crucial time and money for the rugged devices to simply manage their and inventories, well, gone are those days. Mobile applications have taken over these devices, making them look pretty irrelevant. For most of the open source operating systems, such mobile applications have either proven to be very reasonable or free. warehouses Cost and mobility are not the only features that have boosted the usage of these mobile apps, but… > Real-time updates> Precision monitoring> Increased efficiency and productivity> Efficiency, hence better customer service Now, let’s take a sneak peek at the top mobile apps that have beautified the operations and brightened its future… supply chain #1 Logistimo Plus A blessing in disguise to many retail startups and the ones in rural areas, enables to easily manage the supply chain operations. Constant visibility of your inventory and orders, easy sales and purchase reports, product demand forecasting and stock replenishment, are the key features of Logistimo app. Logistimo All the authorized and relative suppliers are instantly provided the entire aggregated data on their respective devices i.e. desktop web browsers or mobile phone app. An alert message or email can be sent to an agent or number of agents linked to a specific supply chain at the time of stock out, order cancellation, etc. Logistimo keeps a track of your sales reports and keeps on sending you and via SMS or email, thus making easy. stocking recommendations optimized replenishment details inventory management #2 Mobile SCM helps the supply chain professionals and retailers to stay in control when it comes to trade & logistics. Apart from being cost-effective, Mobile SCM monitors the entire supply chain, , , and delivers the best return on investments. Mobile SCM tracks fleet & shipment reconciles inventory Mobile SCM has a middleware, which helps you to easily integrate it with your existing SCM application or database. #3 LINK Bolloré Logistics enables you to grab a brand new digital experience for an optimal supply chain. Offers you new features to efficiently manage your shipments, more serenely and safely from container to item. LINK app With a simple and intuitive interface to , orders and transport orders through maps, supply chain experts also have a feature to stay connected to the priority mailings through . The finalization of the delivery process can be done by getting the seller or customer signature directly on the screen. track your shipments push notifications It’s not necessary that you must always have an internet service to use this app. You can simply work offline and synchronize the data once the connectivity is available. #4 Scandit has taken barcode scanning to all another level. A sheer optimization of all the rugged devices and software, this app is a one-stop solution to your and . Can transform any smartphone, tablet or wearable device into an enterprise-grade barcode scanning tool. This app also enables you to which can easily be used for printing on product packages. Scandit barcode scanning stock management download high-quality barcode images 1D Retail Codes, 1D Industrial Codes, QR Codes, ID License PDF417, 2D Codes, DPM codes, scan Multiple Codes at Once, select One of Many Codes in a list, Tiny Codes, Case mode, scan From Far Away, With Front Facing Camera, or Fast Short Range scanning. Optimized Scan Modes and UI styles for various use cases: #5 EazyStock If you are looking for a software which also has an app of its own to manage your inventory, is to your rescue. It gives you an access to everything that you desire from your ERP system data when you are on the go. EazyStock features powerful inventory reports to the retailers/sellers/wholesalers, financial controllers and purchasing managers, with an all-around view of the inventory that they carry. EazyStock **Inventory Dashboard:**Stock Level ReportsHistorical Snapshot ReportsExcess Stock Report of Inventory Items SKU Counts **KPI Reports:**Monthly Historical ReportsInventory Turnover RatiosService Level Reports **Inventory Details:**Item Filtering and Sorting / Item Details Henceforth… These are the 5 best mobile apps you can opt for when it comes to supply chain management. Reasonable, and dynamic are the words that best describe these apps for your inventory management. If you have any application that you think can be on the list, leave your suggestions in the comments below!

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5 Best Mobile Apps for Supply Chain Experts.

My Quoine Exchange Account Got Hacked If you don’t control the Private Keys for your own crypto then you don’t control what happens to them. How true this statement is. There are many examples online of how people have had their Exchange account’s hacked. Some of these are a result of: Never share your password Social engineering — Always take advantage of strong security settings such as 2FA and IP whitelisting. User Security settings- Only use exchanges with best practice security architectures Crypto Exchange Security Architecture- I am not a big user of the Quoine (now called ) exchange but have used it for some trading in the past. As a result I still held a small balance of Ether on the exchange. Liquid.com At first I didn’t quite believe what happened but I now believe my Quoine/Liquid account may have been compromised. How did this happen? Quoine/Liquid Security Settings First of all I have enabled all of Quoine exchange’s security settings which they allow. You can set a password and 2FA only on Liquid.com The exchange security measures allows for a login password, Google 2FA, email confirmation on login and whitelisting of withdrawal addresses. The 2FA is set up in a strange way for some reason where you don’t have the ability to disable it without contacting staff. As an exchange that typically facilitates trading volumes that puts it in the top 20 exchanges I would however expect more in the security area. Specifically login session and IP details. Compare Liquid to the security settings on : Binance Protection from fake Binance websites 2. Whitelisting of withdrawal addresses 3. SMS and/or Google authentication 4. Approved devices for accessing the Binance website 5. Details of your last login sessions So What Happened to Me? Now with the security settings in place I wouldn’t expect unauthorised access on my account. Considering 2FA is enabled and email notifications for logins. Theoretically I should have received an email on 17/10/2018 from Liquid similar to the following: I did not receive an email that day. Instead on my 0.32 Ether balance on Liquid was sold for Monaco (MCO) for next to nothing. 17/10/2018 Executed MCO/ETH trades on Liquid.com This is a tactic that hackers will use since they are unable to withdraw to an address: Using their own accounts pick a low volume liquidity token (MCO/ETH in this case) Price the random token at a higher price (0.0398 Ether when market price is 0.02 Ether) Using your account Buy those tokens at that high price Now you are left with worthless tokens on your account (0.5 MCO ~USD $2.40) They are left with your higher value tokens (0.32 Ether) Believe me I thank the stars I did not have a higher ETH balance on Liquid but that’s not the most important thing here. If this can happen to me, can this happen to you? What Now? After I noticed this irregularity I got in touch with Liquid support who responded with: Obviously this is insufficient since I did not make these trades. What is also very worrying is that I did not even receive email notification on 17/10 for a login on Liquid.com. They have since said they are investigating this further but have not responded since I asked for an update. Exchange security breaches have major implications not just for the person affected but the industry as a whole. I take this as a serious matter and am not satisfied with the current way in which the team is handling my complaint. If there is a security loophole present and I and maybe others are affected then the Liquid team needs to immediately make a public announcement on the situation. What Liquid Can Do It would be nice if I can get my Ether balance restored as a start. To go with that I would also expect an explanation of what happened on 17/10/2018. In the meantime what they can easily do is find out: IP and location of the computer used to login to my account 17/10 Account of the person who sold the MCO tokens on 17/10 Why no email notification for login was sent on 17/10 Going forward it is highly unlikely I will use the Liquid exchange unless I get a satisfactory explanation of what happened. They must also implement stronger security features on their platform. Displaying past login session details would be a start. If you have holdings on Liquid and believe you have taken the appropriate measures to secure your them, I recommend you reconcile that things are fine.

Binance

Quoine Exchange Account Got Hacked

How do you wait for something to happen with ? I used to use a in a shell and check with a complicated command until I’d see a certain condition, such as would be met. No more! :) kubectl while true loop script kubectl get condition=Ready Meet the command and see it in action here. kubectl wait First, let’s create a job called that does something utterly useless in itself (print the word to and pause for 3 seconds ten times): worker blah stdout $ kubectl version --shortClient Version: v1.12.0Server Version: v1.11.0 $ kubectl create ns waitplayground $ kubectl -n waitplayground \create job worker \--image centos:7 -- \sh -c \'for i in {1..10} ; do echo blah ; sleep 3; done' You could keep an eye on the resources with: $ kubectl -n waitplayground get job,po But what if you’d like to kick off another job after has completed? Here you go: worker $ kubectl -n waitplayground \wait --for=condition=complete --timeout=32s \job/workerjob.batch/worker condition met Note that above I’ve set the timeout (32 sec) slightly higher than what I’d expect the job to take (ca. 10 * 3 sec). Once the command returns, you just need to inspect its output and you can then make a decision based on this to, for example, launch a dependent job or retry the original one. worker kubectl wait That was it, happy weekend and keep kubecuddling ;)

Keep

kubectl tip of the day: wait like a boss

Decentralized applications (dApps) are in vogue and we hear about them in almost every forum. Currently, there are more than 2,100 active dApps, with a cumulative DAU around 25,000 — . The lack of user adoption is not solely a symptom of early market entry, it is a fundamental limitation of decentralizing a consumer application. What I would argue is that the killer apps in crypto are going to be with decentralized components. Rather than building decentralized protocols, they will decentralized protocols in their centralized consumer apps. source centralized on top of integrate Before we jump in let’s first align on some definitions: an app that runs on a shared protocol with a shared data layer and is not controlled by one single entity DApp: an app operated by a single entity that controls UX and maintains a central database for operations native to the app Centralized App: Centralized apps will win the user experience battle with decentralized applications ten times out of ten. I feel confident making this rigid statement because it is simply a question of what consumers care about — simplicity, speed, and breadth. All of which are compromised when the core user experience is entirely decentralized. Developers care about three things: build, grow, monetize. A decentralized protocol has properties that will fundamentally change the third prong (monetize), but the dichotomy is that the same virtue that unlocks new monetization opportunities hinders the first two (build, grow). Crypto fundamentally changes the monetization paradigm for app developers, unlocking a new design space that is grounded in growing demand for a scarce asset. This aligns incentives of the actors to bootstrap the growth and use of the network (I wrote about this in further detail ). The fallacy in the dApp thesis is that all components should be decentralized. This constraint is fundamentally at odds with the app’s ability to generate network effects. here Let’s use Snapchat as a concrete example. If Snapchat was implemented as a dApp, every snap would have to wait for confirmation from validators and would then be committed to a public ledger. Consumer apps like Snap are driven by network effects: number of friends on the network and the fast feedback loop inherent in ephemeral communication. If Snap was a dApp on Ethereum and every DAU sent snap it would take 351 days just to process them all, give or take. Obviously this is an extreme example, ignoring layer-2 solutions or more performant permissioned blockchains. But, even if throughput was orders of magnitude higher, and every snap sent was captured in the next block, at a lower bound snaps would take 5–10 seconds to be delivered — in consumer tech, 5 seconds feels like an eternity. one Reducing user friction is a foundational prerequisite for growth. The strategy is counter to the adoption and usage of these networks. The build/grow pillars are diametrically at odds with the monetize pillar. “Decentralize Everything” Cryptokitties was an example of this — it found some level of product/market fit and some initial momentum but effectively never took off — failure to launch. That wasn’t because they didn’t have a novel product or a strong team, they were hamstrung. Network effects are everything, and when an app hits a level of virality the compounding effects render graphs that go up and to the right — every startup’s dream. However, dApps have an upper-limit on their growth given the limitations of the network. It’s not like early Instagram days where they can call up AWS to get more server bandwidth, the open network is tapped out. My argument is not anti-decentralization, my argument is that we should start with the components that do need to be decentralized and build centralized products to enable engagement in those decentralized networks. An app is a tool to engage in a decentralized network but often has core functionality outside the scope of decentralization — these ancillary use cases should be bifurcated. An example would be a game that monetizes by selling scarce digital collectibles to users i.e. swords, shields etc. The collectibles need to be maintained on a decentralized network to guarantee state, and when sold, should be with a decentralized currency — but the game itself, the onboarding experience, the communication between players should be centralized. Not every action in the game is going to involve the collectible, in fact, what makes the collectibles attractive is that most users have one. This app would generate a lot more demand for the scarce asset if millions of users were hyper-engaged in the game and only a small subset had the rare sword. This is best accomplished if the game developer builds a killer game on centralized servers, makes it easy to onboard, play and invite friends, and then integrate the decentralized components that it needs. I would bet on that horse over the one that is decentralized first, asks a user to complete complex operations to onboard and can’t scale because of network limitations. don’t Startups are like a drag race, once you find product/market fit its an exercise in reaching escape velocity so that no one can catch you. This is even more critical for dApps because they’re operating in an open-source environment — you can’t just “fork” Instagram — so the margin for error for dApps is even lower than traditional consumer tech. It’s like starting the drag race but instead of a dragster you’re in a golf cart, and you left a bunch of other golf carts for every other developer at the starting line, gassed up and keys in the ignition. This brings me back to where I opened. Our core thesis at Kin is that the killer app for crypto is just that, an app, not a dApp. DApp platforms optimize for decentralization, requiring developers to sacrifice user experience. Kin is not a dApp platform. Kin is a decentralized monetization tool for centralized apps, developed from first principles, optimizing for consumer experience with a bias towards pragmatism. In an open-source environment, network effects are everything — crypto unlocks a fundamentally new business model where apps have an economic incentive to drive demand for a scarce asset — the best way to drive demand is in a centralized app.

Dapp

Instagram

Velocity

The DApp Dichotomy

In this business growing world, this phrase generally keeps us thriving- . Change is constant This change can be perceived by studying our customers based on their buying pattern, buying behavior, need for personalized services, after service assistance, and so on. By understanding them various brands started testing the capability of an AI-powered chatbot to provide a personalized experience, real-time conversations, and anticipate customer needs. What makes it possible for the brand to do all this is definitely a chatbot but the core of it lies in Artificial Intelligence. This blog will help you understand why AI needs to be an integral part of the chatbot development process. A chatbot is now majorly performing activities like answering FAQs, providing assistance, and solving queries triggered by the user. What is important while conducting such conversations is to maintain a human touch till the end. What do I mean by human touch? Let us look at the following points to see what happens in a human to human conversation? In an h2h conversation, the spoken words are understood clearly. We don’t talk two different things at the same time (except when there is an argument). We maintain the context of our conversation. Understand the major during the conversations. pain points All these points make the conversation understandable, pleasant, and flowing in a direction. Chatbot popularized for its ability to strike conversations with the user, the above-mentioned points plays an imperative role to provide a better user experience making the conversation look more human than robotic. The bot can effectively perform such activities with the help of Artificial Intelligence. AI gives the bot the ability to think and talk like a human. Artificial intelligence consists of two major elements that are Natural language Processing and Machine Learning. They are interconnected terms working with the same purpose of providing a high quality of output. is an algorithm that helps the bot to learn from queries/data. When a query gets triggered, Machine learning helps the bot to first monitor the past conversation it had with the user and give a response accordingly. Machine learning is popularly known as NLP, which provides assistance to the bot to understand and interpret the information closely. With NLP, you train your chatbot with various intents that the user will type during the conversation and these intents will streamline the response to the query. Natural Language Processing The combination of NLP and Machine learning gives you a first-hand data of understanding customer needs. But here the question might hit that how can we use this technology? or how do they have to set this up? With technological advancement, there is no need for you to create machine learning tools all you need to do is deployed an AI-powered chatbot using chatbot development platforms. A chatbot development platform helps you to build a chatbot based on your requirements. Floatbot is an AI-powered chatbot development platform that allows you to select your NLP engine between itself and Dialogflow. You can use the NLP of Dialogflow and enjoy the benefits of our platform. Floatbot as an AI provider lets you trained your bot at Basic level of AI and Advance level of AI. With Basic AI you train your bot to answer FAQs and regular queries, where the response can be set in form of a text or a flow. With advance AI the bot is trained with various user intents and entities depending upon what your user might say. Floatbot dashboard- Basic AI Floatbot dashboard- Advance AI AI helps to improve the customer service as it makes the chatbot able to understand the user query closely and trigger a response that solves the issue. Solving the issue is the major focus for most of us and with AI that becomes possible. With the help of chatbot development platform including AI in your bot is no more a rocket science, you can start by following our handy guidelines that will help you to build a and get advance with your development process by going through our . chatbot from scratch documentation page

Want to Build AI Bot? Get to know why AI plays a key role in chatbot development?

Don’t let the current state of technology fool you and slow you down A lot has been written about decentralization and why it matters in the age of digital transformation. The term is often used in the area of crypto-economics and linked to new technologies, such as blockchains and smart contracts. In short, the difference between centralization and decentralization can be explained in terms of control, coordination, governance, and organization. On one extreme we find dictatorships with centralized and authoritarian leaders or a group of leaders. On the other end of the spectrum, we see community-governed networks with collaborative and transparent coordination mechanisms. Last week I was in Georgia (the country) where I discussed the trend toward flatter and more decentralized organizations and what it means for leadership, governance, and the future of work. Even though the presentation wasn’t directly about new technologies, it was unavoidable that the current developments in distributed ledger technologies, coins, and tokens were discussed. What is so exciting is that the “centralization versus decentralization” trend is often viewed as black or white. Our discussion initially led to the following conclusions: It is doubtful if we will ever witness the fully-decentralized communities/networks that blockchain advocates have in mind. As long as communities/organizations/governments aren’t fully decentralized, business-as-usual will prevail. These conclusions can easily lead to procrastination. There is a lot of talk about the digital transformation, but most governments and corporations don’t really get serious about it. We often think about the advantages of the digital age (starting a blog, a YouTube channel, etc.), but usually don’t act accordingly. It’s like we (and I generalize here) are waiting for the new (completely) decentralized world to emerge first. While I understand this behaviour, the discussion in Georgia made me realize that decentralization has already taken root in our society. Personal expression, increased collaboration (dialogue), and improved transparency have already made the world flatter. What is even more interesting is that this flatter world has created a fertile environment for the further and lightning speed development of decentralization and peer-to-peer technologies. Decentralization in Business We should stop procrastinating and start taking advantage of the many benefits of the decentralized world. We should also become more serious about its challenges. Here are some of the things we discussed in Georgia that made me realize we are already living in the “decentralized future.” The “new” dream job for kids While being a pilot or firefighter were the dream jobs of many children when I was young, becoming a “vlogger”/YouTuber has become the number one dream for many children today. What is so interesting is that it doesn’t seem to matter where the children live. This “borderless construct” is one of the features of a decentralized environment. The fact that we see children already having successful YouTube channels only encourages the dream of becoming famous on the Internet even more. Personal expression, authenticity, and peer-to-peer communication and dialogue are some of the attractive features of the new dream. _December 11, 2017 When most people think back on the child celebrities of their time, they may think of child movie…_www.washingtonpost.com 6-year-old made $11 million in one year reviewing toys on You Tube Privacy and data-collection I hear more and more remarks about people “talking privacy” without “acting privacy.” Of course, most people (including me) believe that privacy is essential. However, I also think that we are willing to give up some of our privacy if it leads to new experiences or more conveniences. Even the privacy fanatics often have “location sharing” enabled on their smartphones. The General Data Protection Regulation in Europe is another example of the way many of us deal with our privacy. We supposedly take it seriously, but not many people seem to understand what they agree to when they “click to agree” (let alone that they understand how these regulations are enforced). _As anxiety mounts about the risks we face from driverless cars, artificial intelligence, and social media, it is…_qz.com Governments can't handle tech regulation. It's time for companies to take over Sensors and data-analytics Sensors, cameras, data-analytics and artificial intelligence make the world more transparent and flatter. Hiding anything in our digital world is extremely complicated. Also, we are more quickly aware of issues, problems, and possible solutions. The disruption of traditional media Social media is changing journalism. It could even be argued that social media has already disrupted traditional media. More and more people rely on social media as their number one news source. What is remarkable is that even traditional media uses social media as their primary source of information. The end of “centralized governments”? Information has always been one of the most critical sources of power in organizations and governments. Dictators have always made sure that they only had access to information or that the information was destroyed. The burning of books happened throughout history and is an excellent example of this. But in the digital age “hiding and destroying information” has become extremely difficult. Lots of information is in the cloud or distributed on people’s personal computers and devices. And there is more. It has also become very difficult (almost impossible) to hide conspiracies and other “secret plans.” The already mentioned sensors, cameras and social media make things so much more transparent. What Does It All Mean? The often desired “fully-fledged” decentralization doesn’t exist yet. But the decentralization trend is evident. We must be better prepared or at least start preparing ourselves. There is no time for procrastination: Personal expression, creativity, and critical reflection have become even more important skills in a digital age. Education must be rethought around these skills. The flatter world leads to more active collaboration. More collaboration leads to more experimentation. More experimentation leads to more innovation. It’s clear to me that digital technologies will eventually lead to more and better “decentralization,” offering even more opportunities to everyone. But we must act now. We must become smarter about decentralization. Of course, the current “peer-to-peer” technologies and developments aren’t perfect (misuse of data, fake news, etc.). But these issues cannot be solved by traditional and centralized means (regulations, etc.). We must collaborate to find decentralized and tech-driven solutions now. 👏 Thank you so much for reading! Please click (and hold) the below, or leave a comment. There is a new story every week. So if you follow me you won’t miss my latest insights about how digital technologies are changing the way we live, work, and learn.

YouTube

Stop Procrastinating: “Decentralization” is Coming!

More surveillance Digital monitoring becomes cheaper and easier every year, so there is no reason why the governments and corporations will stop watching us unless they are forced to do so. We will most likely see same type of public surveillance and social scoring as they have in China, although it will be far more advanced, and unfortunately, we will not be able to do anything to stop it. First Libertarian (Anarcho-Capital) government will be born The biggest obstacle in creating new a free state is the lack of free land. All the land has been divided between governments a long time ago, and they are not willing to give any of it, even if it’s purchased from them. However future technologies will allow people to create artificial islands and other lands masses in terra nullius more cheaply and thus creating a place where to settle its citizens. Another obstacle of creating new country is security and lack of funds to support a large army. But due to robotization of the military a country of 1000 people (if they have necessary funds) will be able to have high power AI controlled arsenal that will be able to withstand an army of another country. Bitcoin will be the main currency of the world Some economists say that Bitcoin may take over FIAT after the next global economic crisis, which is predicted to happen in 1–3 years from now. Whether this will actually happen this fast or not, it will surely happen in 10–20 years, and by the year of 2050, people will think of government-issued money as something from 20th-century socialist era. Along with Bitcoin few other cryptocurrencies that have some concrete advantages will survive, but their total use will be less than 10% of the use of Bitcoin. Super AI that will transcend human intelligence will be created This is simply a matter of time, as computing power on the machines doubles every 2 years, and by 2050 (which is 32 years from now) computers will be 30 thousand times faster and smarter than they are today. Smarter than human AI will be probably created much earlier than 2050, and by 2050 the existence of non-human super-intelligence will be certain. People will achieve biological immortality Simply this will mean that with specific medical treatment scientists will be able to prolong healthy human lifespans until eternity. Of course, it will not mean that people will stop dying completely as this treatment will probably not be available to the poorest part of the world and our bodies will not become indestructible, and therefore people will still die in the result of accidents and other physical trauma. Radical birth control will be implemented Overpopulation is a huge problem, and the only cause of it is too high birth rate. In most Western countries birth rate has already dropped below natural preservation rate (which is 2 children per 2 adults) and will continue to do so. But in developing countries it’s still too high and those countries are alone responsible for the overpopulation problem we have. In the future governments will either limit families in having only 1 child or forcefully sterilize people. Children are not the future, they are the past. Robots will take over our jobs In a couple of decades robots will be able to perform all physical tasks that we perform, starting from cutting our hair to serving us at the restaurant and cooking our food. Many jobs are already replaced by robots, so progress is inevitable. When the robots will replace human workforce two things will happen. Most people (especially the poorly educated) will be left out of work and without the ability to support themselves. This will lead into the birth of a large class of poor people, with no ability to reach even the basic standard of living, and at the same time it will give birth to even richer group or people who will together own everything. In rich countries the governments may be able to provide a basic income for its citizens, but the poor countries will not have the funds for that. Basically, unless you are very smart and educated, your only chance of making a living will be through business. That is renting your apartment, self-driving car or assistant robot to someone else, given that you have the funds to purchase it in the first place. 1st: The cost of most services and products will be reduced a lot. Currently, the biggest portion of the cost of product or service is the cost of labor, as it’s usually the most expensive part. But in the future when machines will do all the work, goods and services will be produced much cheaper. Take for example self-driving taxi. In order to provide taxi services you will no longer have to pay the salary of the driver (which is usually half of the expenses) and therefore the companies will be able to offer rides half of the price. 2nd: Most part of physical interactions will be replaced by interaction with robots By 2050 we will have advanced human-like assistant, servants and sex robots. They will resemble people so much that by interacting with them we will satisfy our social needs. And interacting with robots will be much easier. They will not have their own will (as their sole purpose will be in serving us), they will not have feelings, they will not get angry, annoyed or tired. Therefore they will be perfect companions as we will no longer have to take into account their needs or wishes and compromise with them. Human-to-human interaction will be reduced to a minimum as dealing with other people is extremely hard and difficult. Most human-to-human interactions will happen in Virtual Reality Due to the growth and excellence of virtual reality more and more of our daily activities will move into the virtual world. We will not only play and watch movies there, but also spend our more and more of our free time thereby virtual travelling and meeting people using our avatars. Our lives will resemble the movie a lot, with the only exception that we will not have secondary physical bodies, they will be purely virtual. Surrogates The popularity of virtual reality will also grow due to the fact that in real life all sort of accidents can happen to you or you can become a victim of a crime. While virtual reality will be perfectly safe, at least for your physical body. Crossing borders and inter-country travelling will become more difficult. Due to the fact of the exploding wave of illegal immigration and terrorism, travelling from country to country will get more difficult as many of them, will heavily limit the entry of foreigners. Especially citizens of 3rd world countries will have trouble going to the Western World. Some island countries may even go so far that they will limit all travel except air travel, as it is easier to control. The world will not get any safer and countries will have to take radical actions to keep unwanted people away. Read the sequal! How the world will look like in 2040? — Dystopian edition

Terra

Super

How the world will look like in 2050?

A long long time ago, back when dinosaurs used to roam the earth, there used to be these things called “ ”. You’d print — or write! — your presentation onto “ ” (sheets of transparent plastic), and that would get thrown up on the screen, or much more commonly, the wall that you were projecting stuff against. You could also draw on the plastic in real-time, updating your preso to make a point. Mind you, there were no animated transitions, though that’s probably a Good Thing 😝. The best part to all of this was that there were basically three things that could go wrong Overhead Projectors Transparencies : Easy to deal with The bulb blew out : You moved the furniture out of the way, and used the wall. No screen : If I had a goat for every time somebody did a last minute “scribble the preso on the transparencies”, I’d be the world’s largest producer of goat cheese… You forgot your slides And then, along came laptops. ( ) Ok, I know what you’re thinking, I’m about to say something like “And milk was 5¢/gallon” or “Get off my lawn”, but that’s not where I’m going As I was saying, along came laptops. And with the laptops, came PowerPoint.Unfortunately, cosmic balance required that along with all the awesomeness of PowerPoint — Blessings Be Upon It — there also be the chaos of ensuring that you had the right adaptor 😡. /via http://geek-and-poke.com/?offset=1450135954075 So yeah, first you walked around with a VGA adaptor, because that was easy. And then things got digital, so you got a DVI adaptor, but you also kept the VGA one around for backward compatibility.And, because you’d leave them behind every now and then, you started buying the adapters in bulk (look behind the sofa, you’ll find a couple along with spare change) And then came HDMI, and Mini Display-Port, which meant you were never really sure you were going to find, and you never had the right adaptor because you can only buy so many things in bulk, so you just gave up and hoped for the best. what Which was OK, because there was usually a little “display adaptor kit” next to the projector that would have the adaptor you needed. Except it , because now were the one walking off with the adaptor, so the office (or conference, or whatever) was now buying adaptors in bulk. Which was not a bad thing, because, hey, transfer the costs, right? didn’t you Except then some of the “smarter” people started hard-wiring the adaptors to the projector (Or duct-taping it. Or screwing it in. Whatever). Which resulted in at least one person’s laptop being yanked to the ground when someone tripped over the cable (A friend. Yeah. That’s right. A friend). And as if that wasn’t bad enough, we now have USB-C ports on the new MacBooks, which means everybody now needs USB-C to DVI/HDMI/Mini DisplayPort adaptors to go along with everything else, and at this point it’s just way too complicated and we may as well just give up and start using transparencies again. So yeah, maybe y’all need to get off my lawn… do ( This article also appears on my blog )

Mind

Adaptor-mageddon

While almost every corporate research lab tries to improve the core product of the mother ship, X was conceived as a sort of anti–corporate research lab; its job was to solve big challenges anywhere except in Google’s core business. It all started from the search engine that conquered the web, . Back in the late 1990s, on the search industry, yet it was 10X better than its competitors. Also, its founders’ Page and Brin had the 10X, moonshot mindset of thinking big. When they set the mission for the company, they didn’t say “we’ll build a competitive search engine.” Google Google was one of the last movers They said, “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This mission might have sounded ridiculous for two young Ph.D. that were more academics than people from the business world. Yet those academics managed to build a business that : in 2017 netted more than $110 billion, mostly coming from advertising However, Page and Brin created an innovative harm of the company, called Google X, which aim was to solve significant challenges independently from the of the company. core business model As pointed out by Larry Page, on the : 2013 founders’ letter to shareholders It’s amazing what you can achieve with a small dedicated team when you start from first principles and aren’t encumbered by the established way of doing things. Yet I’ve learned over time that it’s surprisingly difficult to get teams to be super ambitious because most people haven’t been educated in this kind of moonshot thinking. They tend to assume that things are impossible, or get frightened of failure. It’s why we’ve put so much energy into hiring independent thinkers at Google, and setting big goals. Because if you hire the right people and have bold enough dreams, you’ll usually get there. And even if you fail, you’ll probably learn something important. We can learn a lot from Google X moonshot thinking and apply it back to the . growth of your business What is moonshot thinking? It’s all about 10X! As , who runs Google X: pointed out by Astro Teller The context matters so much the expectations matter so much the people matter the resources matter but that’s not the biggest issue there have been these times in the world and sadly they’ve been mostly military in nature where you get a huge number of really smart people together you know not 5 or 10 but a hundred or more and you give them the resources but much more importantly the expectation that they will produce miracles. This is moonshot in action, and it starts by creating a feeling of exigency. Create exigency One of the things for which humans are wired is survival. The issue is that most cultures and corporate cultures create a feeling of normality, which makes us feel safe. That feeling kills the moonshot thinking. Moonshot thinking starts from a life philosophy of treating each day like it is the last and most important for survival. This is not different from . Jeff Bezos’ Day One Context is king for the moonshot thinking Making the context that’s the hard part perspective shift is what it’s all about that’s why going ten times bigger is more important and works better than going 10 percent bigger when you shoot for 10 percent better you’re in a smartness contest you’re putting all of your people in a smartness contest with everyone else in the world they’re not gonna win it doesn’t matter how much money you give them but if you push them if you give them the expectation and the freedom to be weird that’s moonshot thinking then they can do the perspective shifts and not only if you shoot for ten times bigger instead of 10% bigger it’s almost never a hundred times harder and the payoff is a hundred times so you already know that you’ve got a better return on your investment but sometimes it’s literally easier and the reason is because that perspective shift is actually cheap relative to being smarter than everyone around you. also pointed out the importance of creating the context where moonshot thinking becomes the rule. That is according to him the most challenging part. Once you have the context, you’re ready for the rest! Astro Teller Give up on incremental changes An incremental change is as hard if not harder than a massive change. Why? You compete against others to find a solution to a similar problem. What if you switch the perspective and ask a different kind of question. For instance, when it comes to growth, it is a usual pattern to see business owners think in terms of “how do I grow my business 30% this year?” With that thinking, you’ll look for conventional solutions, in many cases prepackaged by others. You’ll look at old formulas to new problems and stick with it until you end up with a failed enterprise. Instead, if you start asking “how do I grow my business 10X?” that changes everything! All of a sudden you need to look for a new solution, you need to get creative, and obsessed about the original question you have in your mind. There won’t be anyone out there able to give you the answer, but you only. That’s when you start embracing a 10X attitude! Embrace the 10X attitude As , you win when you create a monopoly. When Google took over the search market it was a , yet it had a 10X attitude, it wanted to dominate the information market. When took over the social media industry, it was a latecomer too. Yet, Mark Zuckerberg was thinking in terms of world domination! Peter Thiel pointed out in his book, Zero to One latecomer Facebook The 10X attitude requires an audacious vision, yet also a creative way to think about the problem, and it starts from first principles. It all starts by reasoning from first principles In every systematic inquiry (methodos) where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these; for we think we know something just in case we acquire knowledge of the primary causes As pointed out on reasoning from first principles means digging into primary causes. Wikipedia A good part of the modern world has been built on assumptions that primarily took place anywhere between the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s. Many of those assumptions, if further questioned can turn into first principles. A set of assumptions that can’t be further examined. Where in the scientific world going to first principles means getting closer to nature. In the business world that might mean to ask the right question rather than to stick to a question that anyone else is asking. Target the impossible but make it actionable In most cases, a failure in achieving results is not due to setting up a too ambitious goal. Quite the opposite, as Grant Gardone points out in the in many cases, failure is due to an objective which was not ambitious. Not only that, it was not actionable enough. Indeed, to start making the impossible happen, you need to have a clear direction and be able to take massive actions! 10X Rule There’s no playbook for taking moonshots — and we like it that way. Building things that are on the edge of the impossible means we have to embrace ambiguity and be prepared to tinker, experiment, and learn our way into the future. Responsibly irresponsible, we live in the sweet spot between audacity and humility, idealistic and pragmatic. Passionately dispassionate, we ask hard questions, seek out diverse perspectives, and find inspiration in weird and unexpected places. As pointed out on , there is no playbook for moonshot thinking. Yet it starts from embracing ambiguity and finding the sweet spot between audacity and humility, between being idealistic and pragmatic. On the edge of a continuous flow where bold solutions come out regularly. Google X Do the hardest thing first One regular thinking pattern in business is about starting from simple problems, solve them and build up a business that might survive for a few years. If you aim to build a business that nonetheless the current swift changes, will endure for decades to come you need to start from the hardest problem, one that seems unsolvable and that has a component of social responsibility in it. Take massive actions Once you’ve committed to the moonshot thinking, and you apply the 10X rule, it comes the time to take massive action. No longer you can afford to make the same level of efforts that average people take; you need to take a 100X. You need to breathe the problem you want to solve; you need to identify with it. It is a sort of obsession that gets close to madness, yet only for those looking from the outside. For you, that mindset means taking a level of actions that just a few people in the world can. Forget T-shaped; it’s all about X-shaped people T-shaped people have now become an essential part of the business world. As the story goes, a T-shaped profile is a person that has a deep understanding and expertise in one or two areas and a broad knowledge of several other areas: By FourWeekMBA.com The problem with a T-shaped profile is that it won’t get you to reach the ambitious vision you have. I consider myself a T-shaped profile, yet I’m aware of its limitations. In other words, as a T-shaped, I would not be able to have the ability to move a small team toward a 10X goal. However, if you want to hit it big, you need to start adding authoritativeness and leadership as critical skills. That is when you make the jump from T-shaped to an X-shaped profile! By FourWeekMBA.com The X-shaped is an evolution of the T-shaped. Where T-shaped understands that collaboration is a key for growth; The X-shaped profile understands that leadership and strategic thinking are a crucial ingredient to move a small or large group toward goals that require massive action. Thus, the X-shaped is together a T-shaped profile and a recognized leader within the organization! Why 10X thinking is cheaper than incremental thinking, in the long-run Many believe that 10X thinking is expensive and requires a lot of resources. Instead, 10X thinking is just the opposite. It is about finding inexpensive, creative solutions to hard questions. It also requires a lot of failure along the way, yet the world becomes your laboratory and failure becomes just another step in the growth process! Thus, in the long run, 10X thinking isn’t only inexpensive but will have a massive ROI on your business. Originally published at fourweekmba.com on October 25, 2018.

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Moonshot Thinking: Growth Marketing is All About The 10X Rule

It’s Less About One Thing And More About Many At Once In for , , who describes himself as “a cryptocurrency and life-extension advocate”, poses a good question: a recent post Crypto Digest News Filip Poutintsev “What is the next big thing in crypto world?” Mr. Pountintsev offers us a brief history of previous event cycles, those being cryptocurrency mining (2009–2013), buy and hold / network propagation (2010–2017), altcoins (2010–2017), and Initial Coin Offerings (2017–2018). It may be worth noting that in Mr. Pountintsev’s version of events, the latter four do not have specific end dates, which I have appended for the purpose of clarification here in the specific context of this post. cryptocurrency Mr. Pountintsev’s summary offers us quite an interesting context in which to paint the rather unique S-curve picture that makes up the crypto innovation cycle. Specifically, we cover a decade-long period wherein there are implicitly two technological applications present (cryptocurrency mining and token manufacturing in the case of ICOs), one categoric generality (altcoins), and two use cases for cryptos: buy and hold/network propagation and ICOs/crowdfunding. If we tabulate these together and use the same paradigm to offer us a forecast of the next decade of cryptocurrency evolution we end up with some of the answer to the initial question. In terms of new technological applications, one coming at the first half of this next decade and the the other coming at the back half the next decade, we are probably looking at an increasing amount of decentralised applications functioning via /token-related technologies, as is indeed the case now with services such as Bancor. Following that, in the subsequent 5 years of the decade, more than likely these dAPPs are going to need a fair amount of crosschain integrations, and so crosschains might be our forecast application here. Therefore, in place of cryptocurrencies we might put dAPPs and in place of tokens we might put crosschains. blockchain In terms of categoric generalities, almost universally it is forecast that security tokens are the measure by which we are to judge the futuristic yardstick growth of cryptos. Finally, we arrive at use-cases. This is a much harder one to forecast as there is no concrete evolution in the same way that there is for engineering trends. But it’s a fair bet that if security tokens become all the rage that we will see extraordinary leaps in crowd-based securitisations. Ultimately this trend, combined with a measure of increased crosschain functionality, will provide certain financing innovations between securitised and non-securitised payment applications which results in a sort of new evolution of financing altogether. This is an entirely new concept paradigm altogether, almost comparable to crowdfunding itself in a way (which is not coincidentally the bedrock of ICOs). This new paradigm will involve things such as mega corporations issuing payment tokens that constitute part of an integrated sphere of crosschain networks that can be used as methods of payment for purchase of upcoming product releases and as dividend delivery mechanisms for product research and development investors/consumers. It might also include the tokenisation of data and information, so that the music or the news you consume is both obtainable and re-tradeable (sellable) on such a network. Seismic disruptions in mainstream industry at this point are to be expected, much more magnified in power than the one ICOs brought with it. For instance, before a company even gets round to initiating R&D for an innovation, it might pre-sell the entire innovation’s first cycle product release via blockchain applications and book what amount to real-cashflow mark-to-market accounting profits. News and academic archives will be full of individual tokenised packages of data (information) which will be categorically segmented across an array of crosschains which then can be bought and re-sold, making learning and even consumption itself profitable by definition. Thus, we can expect to see securitisation issuances evolve on Blockchain first, alongside and with the help of dAPPs, for the coming half-decade, after which we will begin to see mega-financing cross-chain, multi-faceted Blockchain purchase and sales trends evolve and become useable in everyday contexts. It’s that last fifth of the next decade then when you get the multinational corporations taking part in Blockchain evolution and the route to eternal profitability setting in. What is so interesting about this answer, is that it is at such a point that we have realised the true innovative potential of Blockchain on a mass-scale. That point of evolution is definable in one very simple expression: the Internet of Things (IoT). It is then none other than [the internet of] “things” that is the next “big thing” on blockchain. These “things” will amount to innovation in such numerous quantity as to completely upend the world in which we live altogether, making many things we consider quite impossible in the present ultimately perfectly achievable within relatively short spaces of time. In which case, Mr. Pountintsev’s life extension advocacy might indeed become practicable rather sooner than even he expects.

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive October 27th, 2018

The Attributes of a Unicorn 20x Engineer

@john-lafleur
John Lafleur

The $1 Trillion Moat

@sindamnataraj
Nataraj

The Real Value (or Lack Thereof) of Your Tech Startup Patent

@marcelloecm
Marcello E. Miranda

Should Regulators Ban Crypto?

@cleanapp
CleanApp

5 Best Mobile Apps for Supply Chain Experts.

@hackernoon-archives
Stephen Paul

Quoine Exchange Account Got Hacked

@weiking
Wei Ly

kubectl tip of the day: wait like a boss

@mhausenblas
Michael Hausenblas

The DApp Dichotomy

@tanner.philp
Tanner Philp

Want to Build AI Bot? Get to know why AI plays a key role in chatbot development?

@dharmigohil
Dharmi Gohil

Stop Procrastinating: “Decentralization” is Coming!

@erikpmvermeulen
Erik P.M. Vermeulen

How the world will look like in 2050?

@filip.poutintsev
Filip Poutintsev

Adaptor-mageddon

@dieswaytoofast
Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya

Moonshot Thinking: Growth Marketing is All About The 10X Rule

@gennarocuofano
Gennaro Cuofano

Blockchain’s Next “Big Thing”

@dmhco
Daniel Mark Harrison

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive October 27th, 2018

@john-lafleurJohn Lafleur

@sindamnatarajNataraj

@marcelloecmMarcello E. Miranda

@cleanappCleanApp

@hackernoon-archivesStephen Paul

@weikingWei Ly

@mhausenblasMichael Hausenblas

@tanner.philpTanner Philp

@dharmigohilDharmi Gohil

@erikpmvermeulenErik P.M. Vermeulen

@filip.poutintsevFilip Poutintsev

@dieswaytoofastMahesh Paolini-Subramanya

@gennarocuofanoGennaro Cuofano

@dmhcoDaniel Mark Harrison