What an MVP really is and how you can benefit from it. The term MVP was coined and defined by Frank Robinson and popularized by Steve Blank and Eric Ries. A popular definition is the following: “… the minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future development…” If you analyse this definition, you will see three major components there: 1. An MVP provides ‘Just enough features’ Assuming you have a product backlog — a list of all the features you want to build in your product — you have to decide the order to build them and when to release your product. The idea is to prioritize the features and release , . But what would be the criteria for the prioritization? And how many of the top prioritized features are enough to deliver value to your early customers? a smaller instance of my product faster The criteria for ranking your features could be [a] value for the users and [b] feasibility of execution: you need to identify the best subset of the features in your complete product backlog, the ones delivering the most value for your users — and which are also feasible for your to . build, launch and operate To identify the ‘red line’ — that is, after which feature to release your MVP — you need to : apply business and product sense to find the minimum set of those top-ranked features which solves the problem for your customers. — and this justifies the in the MVP. think both as a user and also as an entrepreneur This is your MVP Minimum 2. An MVP ‘satisfies early customers’ This first instance of your product, must be good enough to solve the problem for your customers — they should get value out of it from day one. Your MVP must be usable and effective so users engage with it and potentially pay for it. Your early customers should be so happy with your product, to act as promoters — to recommend it to others and publicly share their satisfaction (if not excitement). 3. An MVP ‘enables feedback for future development’ As a product manager, it is critical to deeply understand what your users want and reflect it to your product strategy. You need the right mechanisms and processes to capture and measure — across platforms, channels and markets. the level of user engagement how users interact with your product Telemetry systems and the right reporting and analysis tools can cover these analytical needs — along with specialized product performance dashboards, which present KPIs in the right context to enable quick comparisons and decisions. In many cases, it is a great idea to collect additional qualitative feedback — for example by organizing focus groups to evaluate the UX of your MVP; or by hosting user interviews, analysing unstructured feedback etc. Qualitative data will help you understand how you are delivering value to the users and what can be improved. You could also consider using customer satisfaction mechanisms such as the NPS — Net Promoter Score — as a way to capture user satisfaction in a standardized way. All the above define a product performance measurement framework, with the insights required to make better, informed decisions and explore further investment areas. Misconceptions about MVPs Although the notion of the MVP is a fairly simple idea, it is not always used in the right way: For instance, the term MVP is frequently used to denote a quick implementation, a draft, a prototype or something ‘to start with’. In contrast to both PoC and Prototypes, the MVP has increased production readiness — as it is exposed to real users/customers. An MVP is the first instance of a real product; it’s the beginning of the life-cycle of your real product; the basis for future iterations. Characteristics of a good MVP Good MVPs are focused, with the user at the center of their designs; they reflect validated user needs and they solve real problems; they provide great, seamless mechanisms to measure user engagement and capture user feedback — to quantify the overall product performance. Symptoms of poorly defined (or built) MVPs Poor MVPs are usually over-complicated and they are not really — ‘minimum’;They are over-engineered or not engineered at all :) In most of the cases, they don’t really reflect the real user needs, and therefore, they are disconnected from the market. Poor user experiences could also destroy a well-defined MVP. How the MVP approach benefits your business Think of the notion of the MVP as part of a — move towards a great product faster and cheaper. As you are adapting and using the Minimum Viable Product approach, you will benefit at many levels — directly and indirectly. You will be able to: method or a framework to help you define and build better product 1. Think BIG about your product Having a solid product vision is very important. The ‘agile way’ in product development empowers you to — to create backlogs describing a ‘complete product’ even with expensive and ‘crazy’ features — they can all be captured there in your product backlog and wait for the right conditions and timing in order to be considered for implementation. My recommendation is to . think big capture everything, prioritize wisely 2. Build your product with less The MVP definition process, will enable you to build your product with less: the MVP is about identifying the must-have features, which will keep your early customers engaged and happy; this way you will build which will still serve the core of its purpose: to solve the primary problem for the users. a smaller first-instance of your product It will also help you minimize your development and operational costs, by de-prioritizing the less important features for future iterations. A properly defined and built MVP, will save you money. 3. Connect with your customers The ability to capture user feedback early enough (and frequently), is probably a success factor on its own. Your MVP should provide streams of feedback in a number of ways — both directly and indirectly. For instance, a properly built MVP should capture all user interactions and append the data into a historical user interaction database (be aware of GDPR and related regulatory constraints here). Proper reporting and data analysis could help you discover really interesting patterns about your users and how the interact with your product. The chances are, that these insights will challenge your initial product assumptions — or even indicate different paths and opportunities to pivot. You can also collect and use qualitative feedback — by leveraging embedded forms or online questionnaires or focus groups and user interviews. These, could provide additional signals or insights and perspectives you might have never thought of. 4. Go to market faster As your MVP is about building , you will have the opportunity to go to market faster; also, following the same agile pattern, you will be able to and retain your flexibility to pivot — according to user feedback and signals from the market. a smaller instance of your product release features frequently 5. Consider pivots, earlier As you are more connected to your users, you can use insights and product performance data, to adjust your priorities and your product roadmap. Or, you may discover those signals indicating a potential — that is, a major shift in your product strategy or in the way you solve the problem for your users. pivot Thoughts, suggestions or questions are welcome! How to define a Minimum Viable Product Cover image: pixabay

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But first, shoutouts to our investors of the week: , , and . ! Nader Azad Ben Forgan George Georgallides We hit the max Hey Hackers, Two great things happened last night: Firstly, 120+ developers showed up to our , which was the first time 3 of our 8 speakers ( btw) gave a dev talk. Hacker Noon #devstories @Github event all veteran developers And secondly, ! Woohoo! Regardless, there’re still chances to invest some more. I’ll explain in a bit. our equity crowdfunding is now officially fully subscribed Thank you Stefan! Hacker Noon #devstories event @ GitHub HQ Hacker Noon’s humble start as a tech blog was a place for the overqualified and under-glorified engineers to share their stories, from the first-person perspective. We’re a place to publish how they do they job: what they’re building, why it’s cool, and how exactly they’re building it. Thanks for coming, ! Erick Wendel “Too often, the story of the software is framed by the tech executive who doesn’t make the thing. The person who makes the thing is the best to tell the story because they actually made the thing. The writer of code is the dictator of experience.” (read the full transcript .) here And for us to unabashedly and fully dedicate an entire evening honoring the developers, it was fulfilling, wholesome, and much needed. Hackers Welcome indeed! The presenters grappled with questions like: can technology reflect, or better yet, predict human behaviors? how to deal with the paralysis of choice when it comes to design and iteration (pitting time against money to decide effort)? and the duality between “open” & “close” in an inherently contradicting system such as the blockchain? More & to come. videos pictures Dane showing Hacker Noon 2.0’s emojis to readers :) People loveeeee Brian’s talk The audience was ecstatic. Almost 2 hours long, and no one left. After the event, people lingered around for more in-depth conversations, and suggested we do more events like this. And you know what, after one, we might just. this & , 2 of our speakers Lily Chen Crystal Beasley Thanks for coming, ! Jackie Trang Our next stop: London — one of our top 3 cities in terms of readership. We are looking for volunteers, sponsors, & speakers for our next event around May/June. Email partners@hackernoon.com if you are interested. Switching gears…. WE OFFICIALLY RAISED THE MAX FOR OUR EQUITY CROWDFUNDING! $1,069,985.71 raised ! What a number. It’s been a long road, but we are nearly there. We’ve now entered a phase called oversubscription of a campaign. What does this mean? . Yes you can still invest in Hacker Noon And no, we don’t really have $1.07M in the bank yet. Even though the SEC’s limit for a Regulation Crowdfunding is $1.07M, commitments to the campaign above the maximum amount will be placed on the waitlist. If for some reason a past investment didn’t go through, space would open up for oversubscription/waitlist investors. The potential investor on the waitlist will have 24 hours to confirm before the spot is offered to others. For those of you who are thinking about investing: please do join the waitlist, there’s a good chance that space will open up for you. Thank you for those who’ve invested, spread the word, or simply been rooting for Hacker Noon. The team is hard at work building the best place for tech professionals to publish. And it starts by honoring the OG fans of Hacker Noon (the developers), and successfully moving off a content management system we’ve been dependent on. It still feels surreal to me that we now have over 1,000+ true fans . Any day now. Until next time everyone, Linh Dao Smooke P.S. Got a tech story? Visit Contribute.HackerNoon.com . P.P.S. Shoutout to our investors of the week! Cheers to those who make it possible for us to build a better tech site : , a product manager heading the Distribution Technology portfolio within Disney’s newly formed Streaming Segment, Nader Azad Direct-to-Consumer , a global entrepreneur focused building the future of internet connectivity as Founder/CEO of and Founder of , and Ben Forgan Hologram Magic is a Managing Partner at and a co-founder at . George Georgallides Change VC Darwin

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But first, shoutouts to our investors of the week: , , & ! Thanks to these guys (and our other 1.24k+ investors), ! Minh Doan Atif Ali Monday Capital we successfully closed our crowdfunding with max amount raised 12 hours ago Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM once said, ” As software developers, learning a new language or a new skill is necessary to grow and get us out of our comfort zones. This week at “Growth and comfort do not coexist. Hacker Noon , we’ve seen some great tutorials that will help you do just that! JavaScript: Promises in 70 lines of code Ever wondered how JavaScript Promise works internally? Obviously there is some native browser support involved, right? Nope! We can implement the Promise interface using pure JavaScript and it’s much simpler than you may think, we can do so in only 70 lines of code! Build a machine learning website from scratch Are you enthusiastic about machine learning? Are you trying to implement a simple machine learning webpage from scratch? Do you want to make something cool with HTML/CSS and JavaScript? If yes, then this tutorial is for you! Build a currency converter with JavaScript and Ionic Are you comfortable building web applications with JavaScript, but want to try something new? Have you wanted to learn about mobile app development, but never made the time to do so? This tutorial uses Ionic, which relies heavily on all the great features of JavaScript, to build a really cool currency converter. Monolith to micro frontends Do you dread resolving merge conflicts? Do you work on large development teams where tasks can sometimes overlap or cause confusion? This guide explains how microservices can help. Microservice is a development technique which allows developers to do independent deployments for different parts of the platform without harming other parts Node: Build a twitter bot on AWS lambda Do you want some hands on experience with a seemingly complex tool used widely in the industry? Or do you just want a fun side project? This tutorial gives step by step instructions on how to build a twitter bot on AWS lambda and provides a cool use-case for Webpack! You’ll walk away with some new skills and a great portfolio piece. React: Build a customized youtube player Don’t have time to go through long tutorials? Need an easy way to finally break into React? In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to connect to the youtube API with React, and build a customized Youtube player. The best part? You’ll be done in less than an hour! Introduction to React hooks Do you think classes can be a barrier to learning React? Or do you use classes, but find that they make loading unreliable? With React Hooks, you don’t need to convert a function component into class component. You can use state and lifecycle methods in the function component. Learn more about it in this great guide! Django: Integrate Bokeh visualizations into Django projects Do you like creating data visualizations? Have you found working with Bokeh visualizations difficult or challenging? In this complete guide to integrating Bokeh visualizations into Django projects, you will see an entirely full-stack approach to creating fantastic data visualizations with some of the most popular frameworks out there! Python: Understanding virtual environments Have you ever had a program crash when you tried to run it on a different machine? Has installing Python packages lead to incompatibility issues? If you’re new to Python, or never used virtual environments, this tutorial will walk you through the steps to properly set these up for each new project, and hopefully save you a headache along the way. Build a multivariable linear regression model Looking for some algorithm practice to prepare for your next interview? Or looking for an awesome side project in Python? In this guide, you’ll see how to use machine learning to make predictions based on linear regression models. P.S. Got a tech story? Visit Contribute.HackerNoon.com . P.P.S. Shoutout to our investors of the week! Cheers to those who make it possible for us to build a better tech site : , currently co-founder at , Ex-Googler, early investor to Lyft, Databricks, Chia Network and Harmony Protocol. Minh Doan Harmony Protocol is a Mechatronics Engineer by day, a hacker and active by night. Atif Ali blogger is a fund created by engineers/founders. We do more than invest: we are entrepreneurs who start, fund and grow surprising new consumer behaviors and trends powered by cutting edge technologies such as the blockchain. Monday Capital

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How a Potato is attempting to compete with a Tesla Roughly accurate In the game of “crypto”, there is lots of noise, sleight of hand, and lots of confusion. It makes for both opportunity & frustration, along with lots of …well: this kind of crap. I wanted to take 5min and give my 2 cents on the JPM Coin news from 2weeks ago. I would’ve liked to have published this earlier, but I was busy. I did rant on it during the following podcast (first 5min), so to know “how I really feel”, have a listen here: Crypto Clothesline Podcast: Aleks Svetski Now…I’ve not had time to do a real deep dive on this JPM coin thing (I’m busy building a real business), so I will caveat the below with: “I could be completely wrong in my assumptions”, but unless Dimon & Co have created an open, publicly owned monetary network that’s verifiably sound — — then comparing JPM Coin with Bitcoin, and even implying that they’re someone similar is about as accurate as comparing a Tesla (Bitcoin) with a Potato. which I’m going to go out on a limb on and say they haven’t They’re not even in the same league. So…because I have a big mouth, and I’d like to make useful the time I’m spending waiting for a flight that’s delayed — I shall lay out my thoughts on this below: 1. JPM Coin = Dimon’s desperate attempt to stay relevant I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard“JP Morgan” released their own ‘coin’ on a ‘blockchain’. Surely he’s got fingers in both pies.. Lol. Reminds me of the “information superhighway” that the telcos used to discuss as the new communication network upon which we would all do video calls. Their attempt at assuming what people wanted ensured that the internet; a network owned by the commons, that assumed nothing & provided data-packet routing services — wound up being where all the innovation happened. What’s important to note is: because the Telcos couldn’t “own” the internet, and because they could only be on-ramp & off ramps to this new communications network, they tried to build their own. The tried.And the failed. Royally.Communication has mostly been free, and as part of a free & open society is generally harder to control and spin a false narrative about. Information, or data as we call it today, wanted to be free, and our hunger for it is boundless, as evidenced by the breadth of this thing we call the internet. “Those who wanted to own & have the internet dependent on them, are now dependent on it” And here we are almost 30 years later, doing the same thing. Only this time, with a new layer of the societal stack: Money. Now money is a whole new deal — and it’s a whole lot more contentious.It’s a network for cooperation built on top of communication, which functions as a resource. It’s more powerful than communication in many ways and because it’s core tenets have been forgotten over time (or conveniently swept under the rug) it’s been quite a lot easier to play games with it. It’s been much easier to run the false narrative — that money is the domain of governments & central banks — and in the process create asymmetries in society that benefit rent seekers & penalise true progress & innovation. — physics is physics. You can only dam a river for so long, until nature just takes over & swallows it up. BUT The false narrative that holds together the current financial infrastructure is going to fall apart. It’s not an “if”, but a “when”. The same way we reinvented communication & information; we’re now reinventing the very concept of money, value & broad cooperation, and true zero to one innovation requires a complete overhaul — not just a small, incremental update. This is why listening to this JPM coin news, I hear the echoes of AOL & Telco’s from 30yrs ago. One cannot compete with zero to one, no matter how much money or influence you have — because the zero to one is designed (largely) to remove you from the equation and shift the balance. JPM & the existing cohort aren’t going to do that to themselves, no matter how much they throw the words “blockchain”, “disruption” or “innovation” around. Bitcoin & JPM coin are nothing alike, and JPM Coin is not really “news”. If you want to ensure Dimon’s financial future — Buy JPM Coin. If you want to ensure you own — Buy Bitcoin 2. Ripple…Lol I’ve never liked Ripple, Cripple, XRP — whatever you want to call it these days. The funniest part of this JPM coin thing is the fact that we can now say: Broke: JPM Coin Woke: Bitcoin Cripple: Ripple They’ve been announcing ‘announcements’ about announcements for so long now, and pretending like the banks really want to use their tech that it was about time the XRP fan club got something from the banking world to shake up their blind faith. Perhaps it will give the Bitcoiner’s a little more time to focus on transforming the world’s financial infrastructure to something sound, while JPM & Ripple fight it out (although I may be overly hopeful here). The boys at ; & wrote up one of the best reports on Ripple (see below), so perhaps they’ll do a deep dive on JPM coin too when they have some time. Multicoin Capital Tushar Jain Kyle Samani _An executive summary is presented below. Download our complete 12 page analysis: Executive Summary Ripple is a…_multicoin.capital Ripple ($XRP) Analysis - Multicoin Capital For now; suffice it to say: A potato cannot beat a Tesla in a race, and similarly; Bitcoin & JPM Coin are simply not in the same league. Dimon will have fan-dangled his way into using the ephemeral term “Blockchain” to help market his new product, and will surely make some money along the way; but the real innovations, the “facebook of the internet” that nobody saw coming — is yet to come — and that’s all going to be built on an open, public, lindy-compatible, sound, robust digital monetary network. In the words of : Anthony Pompliano Long Bitcoin. Short the Bankers Rant Over. Time to Board. Adios. As usual : If you enjoyed this post, please show it some love, give it a clap (or a few) and pass it around to anyone you think should have a read. Aleks CEO & Co-Founder @ Amber Labs www.getamber.io You can find somore more of my work here: _CEO at Amber Labs + Co Host of decentralizedpodcast.com.au. Outlet for all things Bitcoin, Money, Philosophy, Business, Startups & Entrepreneurship_medium.com Aleksandar Svetski — Medium _Read writing from Aleksandar Svetski in Hacker Noon. CEO @ www.getamber.io + Co Host @ decentralizedpodcast.com.au…_hackernoon.com Aleksandar Svetski — Hacker Noon And you can reach out & connect with me here: _View Aleksandar Svetski’s professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world’s largest business network, helping…_www.linkedin.com Aleksandar Svetski | Professional Profile | LinkedIn _The latest Tweets from Aleksandar Svetski (@AleksSvetski). Hairless chimp interested in Money, BTC, Anthropology…_twitter.com Aleksandar Svetski (@AleksSvetski) | Twitter

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JPM Coin & Bitcoin

Seemingly, Facebook has transcended beyond the negative notions surrounding the cryptosphere. Not long back, in January 2018, Facebook imposed a blanket ban on the promotion of digital currencies and ICOs on its social media platforms. However, recently, the news of Facebook launching its own cryptocurrency in the first half of 2019 took the blockchain industry by a storm. The announcement received a mixed reaction from the crypto community. Some are sceptical of the launch while others, excited. Much before this news came out, there was already a buzz about Facebook rapidly expanding its blockchain and crypto team, since its commencement in May 2018. Its website still has a number of for its blockchain team. Amidst all this, what wasn’t anticipated was that Facebook would launch its coin this early. job openings The surfaced by The New York Times stated, “ the Facebook project is far enough along that the social networking giant has held conversations with cryptocurrency exchanges about selling Facebook coins to consumers.” According to the report, five members of the blockchain team agreed to talk to NYT on terms of anonymity. They also told that the coin would be transferable via the messaging application WhatsApp, owned by Facebook. report Is it a Stablecoin? Bitcoinist Rumours have it that Facebook’s crypto will probably be a stablecoin backed by US Dollar and other foreign currencies. If this is to be, then Facebook would potentially become the world’s largest central bank, given that it has close to 2.7 billion overall users. And, ironically, it will become a central bank with a decentralized currency. What’s Next? Think-Asia Considering the most important target for the stakeholders in the cryptosphere — mass-adoption of cryptocurrencies — Facebook can be called the need of the hour. Due to the large audience it enjoys, Facebook coins would easily gain traction and act as the self-catalyzed cryptocurrency — in terms of audience scalability. No matter the gains from Facebook Coin, there are community members who fear the very basic concept of cryptocurrencies — decentralization—put to risk due to this launch. And there’s no doubt to it that their fear might turn into reality. But for now, all we can do is hope that it doesn’t turn out that way. On a much larger scale, Facebook’s cryptocurrency could be THE nightmare for the current finance industry and its giants — Mastercard and Visa. These two companies, over the years, have made it easy for their users to make payments without carrying any cash. But the user base they enjoy might shorten down immensely if Facebook comes up with a Facebook mobile wallet along with its stablecoin. People might very easily adapt to paying from the mobile wallet in Facebook Coin. Taking into account that most applications today have Facebook sign-in for users, integrating payments to those applications would not be a long road for the social media giant. It is sure that if Facebook takes that road, it will put in an effective rewarding system — just like all other wallet providers — for users paying in its own coins. This will help Facebook emerge as a strong rival to the already battling giants. However, Facebook turning up with a stablecoin will be a major deciding factor in that. Because the stablecoins values are hardly affected by the volatility in the crypto space, users of the cryptocurrency would be least bothered about converting it into fiat money. Additionally, they’d be able to pay through the coin almost anywhere — considering the reach of Facebook. So, it seems even more unlikely that anyone would waste time in the conversion process. Not only that, if all the above happens as stated, Facebook will not fail to give its users a fitting reason to buy its cryptocurrency. And that reason will be e-commerce. Due to the availability of Facebook wallet and coins, the social media platform would become self-capable of handling selling and buying of items — from posting items to making the payments, all on the same platform. And users can then happily bid adieu to the days of entering credit card details or making payments from other mobile wallets. It can possibly turn out to be a revolutionizing integration of direct messaging, social media and e-commerce. This will not only lower the transaction fees but also make the buying process a lot simpler. More like a four-step process where you see, you like, you click and you buy. And the e-commerce platforms will have to comply with this system— willingly or unwillingly — as the users would surely demand the more convenient method over the traditional one. Potential to Become the Most Widely Used Currency Of the 7.7 billion people on this planet, close to 2.7 billion are a user of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. That’s a serious number because it doesn’t count the number of accounts but the , as one user can have multiple accounts. No other fiat currency has ever witnessed this big a user base, forget comparing it to any other cryptocurrency. number of users If even half its users start to use Facebook’s coins, it would make Facebook the dominating central bank. The rest will then be history, and it’s hard to predict as to what the future might hold. The one thing that might act as a hurdle in making Facebook's cryptocurrency so widely used is the company’s poor record at keeping user data private. However, it’s unlikely that the company would take the risk of upsetting its users when such a huge opportunity lies in front of it. Will it be the revolution we expect it to be, or will it experience a backlash from the community is a question that will only be unravelled when the time comes — and that is not very far. Mohammad is an established writer in the blockchain and crypto domain. He is always enthusiastic about bringing his ideas and creativity to your company and helping you find the right voice for it.

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: Download STEP 1 an Image File Download an Image file from their and install this image file through any booting software like Rufus. official_website Select write in mode . (this option is particular for manjaro KDE version) and for other manjaro version choose “ISO image mode” NOTE : “DD” (if your pc/laptop have i5). Recommended : Manjaro KDE : Sometimes when you write your in mode then your USB drive shows less space. like if USB is 8gb then its shows only 4mb size of whole pen drive. Problem ISO DD : Insert USB stick in Linux ( only Linux and MacOS can solve this Problem ). To Solve this Problem Open ( in Manjaro ) and delete all the partitions that are present in current USB stick, and assign new partitions (this will solve your problem). KDE Partition Manager Now install the system via USB stick. STEP 2 : Partitions For Example : — If You have 250GB SSD like me otherwise partition the drive according to your need. Root (/) — Primary ( 50–60 GB) Home (/home) — Primary (As per Need )(In my system (150 -160 GB) Boot (/boot) — Primary ( 2–3 GB) Extended (/Logical) — Remaining space( Total =250 Gb — 60Gb —150Gb — 3Gb = 37GB) Var (/var) — 17GB(Because its stores all the temps and caches) Swap(Linux Swap) — 20GB** ** ( Mainly 2 X RAM). STEP 3 : Install In Manjaro Yaourt Yaourt, stands for Yet AnOther User Repository Tool Yaourt :-is a command line interface program which complete pacman for installing software on Archlinux. Installation:- 1. Using Custom Repository . sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf add the following in the end of the file. [archlinuxfr]SigLevel = NeverServer = http://repo.archlinux.fr/$arch save and close the file. Now Update Repo database and install Yaourt using command. sudo pacman -Sy yaourt 2. Using AUR sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git wget yajl after installing necessary dependencies we have to install package — query that allows to build and run yaourt. git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/package-query.git

cd package-query/

makepkg -si

cd ..

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/yaourt.git

cd yaourt/

makepkg -si

cd ..

sudo rm -dR yaourt/ package-query/ Run these commands line by line .( i m not including explanation of every command in this Article. if you want to know more follow ) this This will install Yaourt in system . - Some Basics Usages of Yaourt //Update Arch Linux yaourt -Syu //Install a Package yaourt -S <package-name> //To Upgrade a packages yaourt -U <package> Enable Yaourt In Octopi This Skeleton Button is Yaourt STEP 4: Applications After Installing a system ,we will install some basic apps that we need. Enable AUR : — Open Octopi then go to tools and enable AUR. 1. Browsers — by default Installed . Mozilla Firefox — Install Using AUR (package name — {{ google-chrome }} In AUR ). Google Chrome — Install Using Yaourt lib (Click on Skeleton Button in Octopi Then search {{ Vivaldi }} Vivaldi 2. Code_Editors — By AUR Atom — By Yaourt Web-storm — By Yaourt (Search — {{ Visual-studio-code-bin }} VS Code Studio 3. For_Download — By AUR uget — AUR{{ Transmission-cli }} Transmission(Torrent_Client) 4. For_Email — By Yaourt MailSpring 5. Other_Apps — By Aur Telegram_desktop — By Yaourt {{ Franz-bin }} franz — By Yaourt {{ megasync }} MegaSync — By Yaourt {{ stacer }} Stacer (CleanUp Tool) -By AUR TimeShift (Backup Software) — By AUR Sweeper (System Cleaner) — By AUR Discover (Software Manager) Now we have all the basics apps we need . STEP 5 : Get all the apps of KDE-Plasma Follow this step only if you have high configurable Pc otherwise it will slow down your system or install its small package. Sudo pacman -S Plasma kio-extras All Applications Sudo pacman -S Kde-applications Selected Applications Sudo pacman -S Kdebase and after all this some other settings are default display manager for kde is SDDM(Update) Sudo Systemctl enable sddm.service --forcereboot Update Current User /usr/bin/cp -rf/etc/skel/.reboot STEP 6 : System Configuration — Breeze dark Desktop Theme — Breeze dark Look and Feel — Breeze Cursor — Adapta Splash Screen — Breath dark Color — Noto sans 10 Font — Breeze or La Captaine Icons — Breeze Application Style Widgets Event Calendar Memory Status Network Monitor System Load Viewer CPU Load Monitor Resource Monitor Hard Disk Space Usage Hard Disk I/O Monitor Some Important Settings Goto System Settings and in Startup and Shutdown Section Click on — Desktop Session {{ Restore Manually Saved Session }} Otherwise it will slow your pc and open any time new desktop . Click on — Default Leave Option {{ End Current Session }} Click on — Autostart{{ Disable all applications }} STEP 7 : Mount 2nd Storage Drive(To Increase Storage) This option is only for you when you have a 2nd storage drive in your system . We have two storage drives in our system 1 SSD + 1 HDD We install our system in SSD and use HDD as to increase storage of our system. Partition , Formatting and Mounting Partition Sudo fdisk-l check the fs format of your hardisk is based on like 1TB MyHdd on /dev/sda but we can’t mount it right now , if we mount errors will come outwe need to partition it first: Sudo fdisk /dev/sda “ m “ for help(command list)for checking partition table — “P”(Enter P)To partition , enter “n”,then just choose primary by entering “p”.and then enter “1” for only one partition number. Note — Formatting Format the new partitioned HDD(remember fs format of your hdd) Sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda Mounting Usually drives are mounted in /mnt Sudo mkdir /mnt/sda Then we can mount it by :- Sudo mount /dev/sda /mnt/sda Whenever we reboot it will automatically mounted.we use nano /etc/fstab — To save this login terminal as a Root. Note /dev/sda  /mnt/sda  ext4  default  0  0 1.Path for hard drive2.destination for the mounted drive3.format type4–6. Kept as default 0 and 0 . STEP 8 : Create a Backup of system Via TimeShift when you are done installing all the apps then set all the settings. Now its time to create a backup of the system .This backup is useful if you accidentally delete any system file or any error occurred in the middle of something. -After creating Backup we will save its files in 2nd Storage drive or external hdd (because i don’t have space in my ssd to permanently saved this backup.but, if you have space in your ssd then don’t follow steps after the step 2. Note Step 1. Open TimeShift Step 2. Create Snapshot Step 3. Now copy all the backup files in Extenal Hdd/2nd hdd. Open Terminal As a Root cp -a /timeShift/snapshots/{your snapshot name}/  /mnt/{Name of your 2nd storage drive}/backup — Backup from this command because without this system can’t give access to us to direct copy. and create compressed version of your backup then you will be able to save in external hdd. Note — Open octopi and search timeShift and then installand copy the whole snapshot to that folder next, the option of restore will appear in Timeshift. for Restore Root/TimeShift/snapshots/ STEP 9 : Clean Tmp Regularly Clean folder regularly, if it is not cleared regularly ,system will crash(only when folder have no space left). /Var/tmp var Natural Method Open File Manager and go to folder, clean the folder according to the need and delete by the option of “Root Actions”. Root/var We will check from terminal that how much space is occupied in Var folder. df -h Automated Method Run and Regularly. Sweeper Stacer STEP 10 : Configure oh-my-Zsh (Best Terminal ) is The best terminal I’ve ever used. oh-my-Zsh for Zsh we have to pre install these:1.git2.curl3.wget By Curl sudo sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)" By pacman pacman -S Zsh — zsh to bash and vice versa Switching from exec bash (to bash) exec zsh  (to zsh) Change default shell chsh -s /bin/zsh — {{ upgrade-oh-my-zsh }} by zsh terminal Manual Update — {{ uninstall-oh-my-zsh }} by zsh terminal Uninstall zsh Plugins (In my System) plugins=(git       archlinux       brew       command-not-found       github       npm       node       ruby       ssh-agent       sublime       sudo       terminalapp       vscode       web-search       gem       rvm       bundler       copyfile       zsh-syntax-highlighting       zsh-autosuggestions       ) Theme (In my system) ZSH_THEME=agnoster Path (Imp) .Zshrc file in Home Directory Path to your oh-my-zsh installation.  export ZSH="/home/{{ Pc_UserName }}/.oh-my-zsh" source $ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh If you come from bash you might have to change your $PATH.# export PATH=$HOME/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH Custom Plugins Add Syntax highlighting git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting 2. Auto Suggestion git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions Run both the codes from your zsh_Terminal Now, Activate— go to .Zshrc file in home directory .Add: plugins=( zsh-syntax-highlighting          zsh-autosuggestions        ) Fonts and color scheme settings on empty and click on then click on Right click zsh_terminal Edit current profile Appearence. Color-Scheme & background - Maiafont - Meslo LG S DZ for Powerline Install- Powerline Fonts Lists of shells(installed in your system) cat /etc/shells Aticles For Zsh 1.agnoster / agnoster-zsh-theme 2.powerline/fonts oh-my-zsh Learned something? Hold down the 👏 to support and help others find this article. Thanks for reading!! Follow me on Instagram @hypnosisss___

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Use of cannabis to treat sick has been documented in history. The ancient healers and doctors prescribed it to their patients seeing the healing properties cannabis contained. The modern medical science only took notice of this magical family a few decades back and has been advancing to apply it in treating diseases. It is however recently the plant’s popularity picked up the pace and the market started seeing CBD or cannabis based products. CBD shouldn’t be mixed with marijuana. Though both are derived from cannabis hence the term. The former does not contain enough THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) to operate as a psychoactive agent that intoxicates or causes euphoria aka the “High.” Instead, many people attest to its ability to ease pain, calm anxiety, soothe the skin, and other wellness benefits. sativa In fact, cannabis has proven to be effective against seizures associated with two of the rarest forms of childhood epilepsy, Dravet Syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. The treatment comes . It is the first time Food and Drug Association has permitted the use of CBD in treatment of Dravet Syndrome patients of two years and older. approved by the FDA The pharmaceutical market received the news with all hands up. Its previous implications and now FDA’s consent is hope for manufacturers to go further into drug development and research. Medical community isn’t silent either and has been conducting various studies to analyze how CBD benefits certain condition. One of them studies was on IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) in adolescents. The use of oral and sublingual CBD oil with patients of IBD. The subject patients of 13 to 23 years of age participated over the course of 2015 to 2017 at the Colorado Children Hospital. The CBD oil users and non-users were compared for perceptions of risk and clinical characteristics. study focused The CBD Oil users shared information on the patterns, motivation, benefits and problem with its use. The study began with 15 CO user and 67 non CO users, all were in same condition. 5 out of 15 CO users reported the medical benefits of the CBD in relieving pain. 9 CO users exhibited sleep quality, effect on nausea and an increased appetite. On the brighter side, CBD users showcase better health and are at less risk of obesity and diabetes. The statement was proven by which was published in American Journal of Epidemiology. The survey group had over 52,000 participants and the test concluded obesity rate among regular CBD users were lower. another clinical research How Market Is Responding? Pharmaceutical moguls are touting CBD as the . Although it’s been out for some time, the uses are not absolute and require time to further develop. One of many reasons why you shouldn’t be mixing it with other medicines, yet it’s definitely an alternative for the pharmaceuticals. elixir for life According to the industry experts, CBD oil market is witnessing a storm. It’s growing at an (compound annual growth rate) of over 30% and the number is expected to be constant until 2022. extraordinary CAGR Img Src: Tech Navio as well that CBD Market to register a CAGR of 30.7% which will bump the revenue from $150million (2017) to $760 million in next few years i.e. by 2023. LP Information projects That said, its popularity and surprising application in the medical field have led to more CBD based products, like food supplements, to hit the market. And that’s where a new problem is rising. In the race of providing better and better substitutes, a lot of companies are taking the synthetic way. Joel Stanley, CEO of Charlotte’s Web Hemp, : “There’s a lot of great innovation going on right now, but because it’s a new industry, there’s also the fly-by-night players looking to make a quick buck. In fact, the FDA conducted their own study around CBD products and found that many don’t even contain CBD.” says Regardless, many startups and pharmaceutical firms are driven to hit the shelves with authentic and genuine CBD products. And since it’s a shining $22 Billion industry, contenders don’t want to miss the upcoming golden rush. Companies like Verma Farms creates its CBD oil from pesticide-free, organic, all-natural plants. They even use minimal additional ingredients (which are all-natural and vegan as well). Furthermore, they are against using anything which is not produced naturally. The of their products is Focus, which has been praised by CBD enthusiasts for its ability to help you relax in situations that cause heavy distractions or social anxiety cannabis sativa most popular The fact synthetic CBD and other artificial cannabinoids are , they can cause various conditions including vomiting, seizures, and paranoia — and in worse case, even . If you are going to engage with CBD products, it is imperative that you use those of the highest, all-natural quality. incredibly dangerous death 2RiseNaturals’ is yet another ethical CBD products developer. They use pesticide-free, made from hemp grown with compost in the manufacturing process. While the most trustworthy CBD brands have their products tested in a third-party lab for potency and purity verification, 2Rise Naturals doesn’t just have its products tested once — it has them tested three times in separate labs. The company’s tincture includes MCT oil made from coconuts to provide fats that help your body absorb CBD. also attests to its exceedingly delicious taste, so you can consider cooking with it instead of only taking it straight. Wellandgood.com The market at the moment for CBD looks promising and there’s a lot of potential for improvement, too. Good players are contributing by manufacturing original products, and more startups are coming forth with new innovations. Similar to the industry which is targeting tobacco/cigarette users and trying to divert the consumers to e-vaping side. vape juice Medical community and scientists are on their toes to improve the CBD sector and harness its complete essence to cure as many diseases as they can. For consumers, while it’s imperative to go for the trusted and certified CBD providers, looking out for the fake and synthetic substitute is significant as well. If you are going to engage with cannabidiol oils and tinctures, it is recommended you consult your GP/doctor first and proceed accordingly. And watch out for FDA announcement as well.

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2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Regulation

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Regulation

How CBD Market is moving in the right direction according to the Clinical Research and Market…

The “fourth industrial revolution” was described by the World Economic Forum as a new era of technology and industry. A trinity of disruptive technologies is driving this revolution: blockchain, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence The first industrial revolution began in the 18th century with water and steam power, the second with electricity, and the beginning of the third with the internet, both happened in the 20th century. The past few decades we have been living in the third industrial revolution in technological development. You might be asking, when will the fourth industrial revolution begin? The answer is it already has. The (WEF) concludes we have likely already entered the transition phase into a new era of economy, politics, and society. The technologies driving the fourth industrial revolution are still in their infancy, but they are here to stay. World Economic Forum The Internet of Things: A New Network The Internet of Things (IoT) names the fact that now many of our devices and machines can be fully connected to the internet and to each other. Technology like Bluetooth mean right now we are connecting phones, computers, music systems, and home technology like alarms and light bulbs. All this technology can now communicate with each and every other compatible device, sending instructions and activity data back and forth. This is dubbed “the internet of things,” since the network is made up of “things” (phone, smart TVs, etc.) that are interconnected. IoT could theoretically use sensors and the internet to digital technology with physical machinery. All types of machinery and even animals wearing electronic sensors will deliver real-time information to computers and their operators, helping to make better decisions — and even have technology make some decisions for us. blend The acceleration of IoT development intensified in 2018. We’ve seen mass adoption of IoT platforms across businesses. The number of connected devices or things doubled to 20 billion IoT devices across the globe. Hundreds of IoT start-ups received billions of dollars in funding. World organizations and Governments adopted IoT innovations in Smart Manufacturing. According to Forrester Wave, more than 60 percent of businesses and decision makers are already using or planning to use IoT-enabled software applications in the next two years. Artificial Intelligence: A New Brain In the domain of (AI) and machine learning, computers, software, devices, and robots are being taught by humans to think for themselves. Programming and algorithms loaded with data from numerous real-world experiences teach computers how to respond to certain scenarios and make their own choices and actions. artificial intelligence The goal is that AI enabled software, computers and robots will collate incoming information and make decisions on things like emotion and intuition, originally only the domain of humans. The ability to automate business practices or create new business models and ecosystems, definitive decision making and redefining the customer experience are just some of the . These innovations cover everything from intelligent retail management, sales systems, to AI enabled cybersecurity systems. The latter, from an Ottawa-based startup which raised $24 million CAD in 2018, can analyze masses of data to quickly highlight cybersecurity risks and dismiss false alarms. Google demonstrated that it could teach the bot (AlphaZero) to learn the rules of chess in 4 hours before defeating the world champion in the Computer Chess Tournament Stockfish. potential uses of AI AI will also change data analytics by making it possible for machines to learn from past analytical tasks and enormous amounts of data pulled from the previous queries. Machine Learning is the core of AI, and 2018 saw many new product releases from major technology vendors with machine learning components at their core. ML will power business analytics by identifying potential problems or concerns that might not be detected by humans. From a business standpoint, AI is all about automation, preventative, predictive and prescriptive analytics, business process automation and driving efficiency and productivity. According to Gartner, 59% of the organizations are building their AI strategy while many others are adopting AI programs or piloting. Hence, the market for AI solutions is predicted to reach US$47 billion by 2020. Blockchain is the Essential Link While AI and IoT are disruptive technologies in their own right, it is the mediating role that blockchain can play that really make them constitutive of a “revolution.” Blockchain represents a new way of storing and sharing data, as well as doing transactions that is more secure and immutable than the current internet. Blockchain uses cryptographic hashing to encrypt data to provide more security than existing computer programming and systems. Encrypted with this data is time and date information that cannot be changed, resulting in records that cannot be disputed. Blockchain technology is also decentralized. Data is stored on participating nodes, or computers, across the blockchain network, rather than in corporate-owned central computer or data farm. Decentralization moves the power over data away from governments and larger organizations. It makes data safer from hackers. A decentralized network also makes it much faster for those using a blockchain network to access the information they need. Blockchain technology has garnered a lot of attention and has moved from mostly hype into early technological developments, proofs-of-concept and pilot projects during the last 12 months. The distributed ledger is being investigated in literally every industry but primarily in finance, logistics, trade, healthcare, and government records. Blockchain is even being explored as a possible technology solution for , which could greatly benefit from the security and tamper-proof qualities of the technology. The IT giant IBM has been the pioneer in investing in blockchain technology. According to data provided on , IBM has filed the second highest number of blockchain patents in the world. IBM contends it has filed 9,043 patents. political voting blocklr.com A Trinity of Disruptive Technologies Blockchain, IoT and AI are perfectly suited to work together. Thus, the integration and interoperability of these technologies are fast becoming a priority for developers. The three technologies and more will eventually work together fluidly. For example, IoT will generate data about everything happening around us. AI could make a decision based on new information provided by IoT in the absence of a human to give instruction. Underlying all of this, blockchain networks could be carrying and securing this information, delivering to humans and control centres for more informed decision making. Life in the Fourth Industrial Revolution Take a concrete example: You leave your home on vacation. If you have an IoT connected thermostat it could sense a change in temperature while you are away. If it senses your home is becoming too cold because of a sudden change in weather, it will communicate with an AI-powered heating-system, which would know you are on vacation and understand that there is a temperature dive that could kill your houseplants or freeze your water pipes. It would then decide to turn the heat on in your home, without you having to give it that instruction. Meanwhile, Blockchain technology would record all this and notify your mobile device, which alerts you to what has happened. The Future is Now The first industrial revolution was the age of water and steam power, the second arrived with the invention of electricity. The third industrial revolution was based on electronics, information technology, and the internet. Now, the fourth industrial revolution is one of blockchain, IoT and AI, and it’s already here. This ‘trinity’ of new technologies will be important to both consumers and industry. The automation and digitization that comes with the fourth industrial revolution will change almost every industry. Subscribe to my channels Medium and Twitter if you like my articles and want to learn more about blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. If you have any questions about this article, please comment in the section below. Thank you!

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How Blockchain is Driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution

by , Founder and CEO of Nodis Will Chen To learn more about what Nodis is designed to do, please check out our article on the purpose of Nodis . In the current ICO market, the usual crowd funding stage often follows the trend of . Throughout the process, many projects spend tens of thousands of dollars (maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars) trying to raise more money. While I don’t want to judge on the necessity of needing millions of dollars in a MVP-absent early stage project, I do wonder… private sale -> pre-ICO sale -> ICO …if they already have all that money, why don’t they just spend them on development to launch the product already? So much money and effort are being spent to just market an ICO. As an experienced product manager, it makes little sense to me that more money is spent on marketing the fundraising campaign than on the actual product development. Let alone the hundreds of hours in manpower planning/executing ICO strategies. All the while the product is still years away from release (most don’t even have an MVP when trying to raise millions of dollars). After thinking through those questions, as a team, we have made up our mind to go through the token sale funding process similar to a traditional startup capital raising process. With that idea in mind, we reviewed on how startups usually raise funds. It often goes like this… With that traditional fundraising path in mind, we modified our roadmap to the following: Private funding -> Develop an MVP -> Series A Token Sale (2019)-> Complete the product -> Aquire initial traction in the market place with actual customers -> Series B Token Sale (2020) -> Growth & Scale Purpose of Series A Token Sale Like traditional seed funding, Series A is when we show our MVP so the investors can get a glimpse of what Nodis can do for our customers. The soft cap ($358K USD) will give us the minimum to last 1 year. The hard cap ($880K USD) will give us more resources for product development and hiring more marketing/sales people. Post-Series A is when we go full throttle in product development and gain initial customer traction/revenue. Then we move on to Series B. to reward the Series A investors for taking a leap of faith with us, Series A token price is 15% discount off the Series B price. We will offer the tokens in both public sale and private sale. Private sale will have bigger discount and is for investors that can buy in bulk (e.g. $5K+ USD). NOTE THAT Purpose of Series B Token Sale In Series B, we will show our launched final product. We are looking to have at least a few early adopters customers. That’s when the world can really see what Nodis has actually done and the potential of our solution. Series B funding is aimed to give us enough to last another 4 years. The total funding of Series A and B will give us 5 years of budget to work with. We will match our capital burn rate according to the amount raised so that we will not be sitting on funds and let them go to waste. The money will go towards development, operations, marketing, and sales. Series B will be a public private sale. This means that for a short period of time, NODIS tokens will be sold with bonus but the minimum to buy-in will be much higher than Series A. It will be an off-contract transaction as there is no way to predict the market price now. NOTE THAT In Conclusion We believe in our idea and how it can help small businesses to be competitive. Our main focus is to build the product and to bring the vision to life. Everything else we do is just to support that goal, which include our token sale events. We want to spend most of our money on development and the rest on marketing. Needless to say, our marketing budget is small when compared to the other listed ICO projects. We have less than $1.5K USD to do ICO marketing and that’s after squeezing out our own saving. To put that in perspective, publishing 1 press release article on a top site like CoinTelegraph would cost at least $1K USD. Some people maybe scared that our project won’t get enough attention and negatively affects the token price. We believe in the opposite. Just look at those unicorn tech companies (Airbnb, Uber, Facebook, etc). They focused on the customer, the product, and a niche market in the beginning. Through proof-of-concept, product validation, acquiring niche users, and other traditional tech business strategies, they became household names. Nodis aims to follow that path. NODIS tokens are designed with the utility to support small business marketing and exchange for vouchers. As the platform grows with more businesses on board, the listing of product/service vouchers will become more attractive. We want to give users the opportunity to use those tokens to support and buy from their local businesses. Nodis aims at impacting 50%+ of the job market in North America. Join our movement to help small local businesses to thrive and keep people employed! To learn more about Nodis, you can click visit the following links: Website Whitepaper Telegram Instagram Twitter GitHub If you would like some free NODIS tokens, you can all participate in our airdrop campaign ! HERE Thank you all for reading and hope to see you soon in one of our channels!

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Uber

Imitating Traditional Startup Funding Steps as a Blockchain Project

Did you know that KuCoin was more expensive than Binance, and promoted by Django Unchained Cobinhood is barely alive? Last week, Binance launched a testnet for a decentralized exchange. The basis of DEX is the Blockchain Binance Chain. CEO, Changpeng Zhao, said that the transactions in the new Blockchain are instantaneous, and the generation of the block takes no more than a second. The market reacted instantly. Token Binance — BNB jumped in price and steadily established itself in the top 10 cryptocurrencies. We regretted that so far we have not invested all BTC in BNB and decided to check whether all stock exchange tokens can be a good investment. The correct answer is no 🙂 To get it, we marked the maximum and minimum of capitalization and cost of the token. And then calculated how many percents was eaten a bear market. But first, Coinmarketcap charts to visually define the current state of affairs. Enjoy! Slide 1 Max Market Cap ($) 14. KuCoin 2 200 000 000 15. Binance 1 800 000 000 16. Qash 813 000 000 17. Cobinhood 490 000 000 18. Cryptonex 437 000 000 19. Huobi 300 000 000 20. BridgeCoin 222 000 000 21. Bibox 190 000 000 22. Coss 172 000 000 23. LaToken 118 000 000 24. Lykke 104 000 000 25. Bitmart 8 500 000 26. Bit-Z 5 900 000 Slide 2 Min Market Cap ($) 14. Binance 600 000 000 15. Cryptonex 53 000 000 16. Huobi 46 000 000 17. KuCoin 30 000 000 18. Qash 22 000 000 19. Bibox 13 000 000 20. BridgeCoin 8 300 000 21. Coss 6 200 000 22. Lykke 5 000 000 23. LaToken 3 400 000 24. Bit-Z 2 800 000 25. Cobinhood 2 800 000 26. Bitmart 980 000 Slide 3 The difference of Cap (%) 14. Bit-Z -53 15. Binance -68 16. Huobi -85 17. Cryptonex -88 18. BitMart -88 19. Bibox -93 20. Lykke -95 21. BridgeCoin -96 22. Coss -96 23. LAtoken -97 24. Qash -97 25. KuCoin -99 26. Cobinhood -99 Slide 4 Max Price ($) 14. KuCoin 22 15. Binance 20 16. Cryptonex 9,7 17. BridgeCoin 9 18. Huobi 6 19. Coss 2,73 20. Qash 2,32 21. Bibox 1,79 22. LAtoken 1,52 23. Cobinhood 1,42 24. Lykke 0,38 25. Bit-Z 0,2 26. BitMart 0,08 Slide 5 Min Price ($) 14. Binance 4 15. Cryptonex 0,95 16. Huobi 0,92 17. KuCoin 0,33 18. BridgeCoin 0,31 19. Bibox 0,12 20. Qash 0,07 21. Bit-Z 0,06 22. Coss 0,05 23. LAtoken 0,04 24. Lykke 0,02 25. Cobinhood 0,01 26. BitMart 0,008 Slide 6 (%) The difference of Price 14.Bit-Z -70 15.Binance -80 16.Huobi -85 17.Cryptonex -90 18.BitMart -90 19.Bibox -93 20.Lykke -95 21.BridgeCoin -97 22.LAtoken -97 23.Qash -97 24.Coss -98 25.KuCoin -98 26.Cobinhood -99 Interesting facts: KuCoin was the most powerful stock token for price and capitalization. But the company’s and the listing of Shitcoins led to the fact that it dropped out of the Top 3. constant fuck ups Jamie Foxx knows how to break free from slavery and shoot plantation owners. But even he is beyond the reach to save Cobinhood, that he used to promote, from screwing up. The guys had a fall of the token by 99%! No matter how LAtoken pumped another’s and their coins on the stock exchange the guys couldn’t do nothing with -97%. Which again proves that on some pampas you will not go far. Need a good product. The stability of Bit-Z coin is due to its short history (since last August). And the fact that it didn’t become the part of a bull market. On the other hand, it didn’t really help much BitMart. Therefore, we can assume that the exchange is not bad. Huobi and Cryptonex have lost a lot, but their current value and capitalization make the future look optimistic. Binance — top notch! You can scale, develop, and grow even on a bear market. And this is a great example for the others. That is why, cryptocats, don’t be sad and work hard. Share your thoughts about investing in crypto stock exchanges in the comments and in out . Will discuss, hug, and raise Blockchain. Telegram chat Investing in a scam — a shitton of money. Subscribing to Shitcoinoffering — priceless. In Blockchain we trust! Don’t miss any new material: Telegram Facebook Twitter Medium Reddit

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How is it going for crypto stock exchanges’ tokens? Infographics

How to build the product you want to and not go out of business Programming notes: this post is n in a series of indeterminate length on Product topics mainly for startup people, mainly leadership, mainly coming from non-GTM backgrounds. There’s a list at the end. Vision and Distraction Spirits professionals will tell you that takes significant up front capital and reserves in the bank to wait out the many years it takes [barrel aging!] before you have a good product. Note: A terrible product is easy to come by in a few months. That might work for some market for some of the time, but eventually those brands are low-margin loss-leaders in bigger portfolios or they have severely limited growth or they go under. So what do we do in the meantime? We make gin. On the way to making whiskey, some of our product can be made into gin — which is sellable at a hefty enough margin to keep things humming along while the intended project is sitting in barrels maturing, finding its character. [No offense to gin and gin-lovers!] Example! Here’s Kottke regarding Uber [notes in brackets mine]: repeating Michael Wolfe If you think of Uber as a town car company operating in a few cities, it is not big. [Gin.] If you think of Uber as dominating and even growing the town car market in dozens of cities, it gets bigger. (Data point: there are now more Uber black cars in San Francisco than there were ALL black cars before Uber started). [Gin.] If you think of Uber as absorbing the taxi markets, it gets pretty huge. [Gin.] […] If you think of Uber as a giant supercomputer orchestrating the delivery of millions of people and items all over the world (the Cisco of the physical world), you get what could be one of the largest companies in the world. [Whiskey.] A fairly common thing for founding teams is to get distracted at some intermediary step, settling for a smaller market, or getting trapped chasing early revenue and use cases that don’t lead to their ultimate goals. Which is not necessarily bad! It can be a perfectly legit business and life decision to pivot into something that we find on the way to building the Next Big Thing. Strategy and Models How do we make keep ourselves on track? How do we know we’re building what we intended to build, solve the problem we intended to solve, serving the user we intended to serve? Arguably, that’s what a roadmap is for, but those rarely go beyond the near-term and get progressively fuzzier as you go further out in time. Note: Roadmaps are good! We still need a roadmap of some kind to organize our product development week over week over month over quarter etc. We need some kind of product strategy, which amounts to goals and principles of decision making to achieve those goals: What is the we are trying to solve? core problem are the people we want to help? Who How do we think that into a product? translates How does that break down into the that create and provide value? smallest components What are the and order of composition from nothing to the product that includes those components? possible paths What are we not building? What, or who, will we say to? no Can we each thing we build against our go to market (GTM) model — i.e. will it help us stay alive: market better, sell more, achieve the next round of funding, etc? test Does each thing we build us towards our vision? advance Note: Any product strategy lives in the context of some market and, hopefully, a business strategy. A product strategy != business strategy. For that you need goals and principles for marketing + sales + distribution + product + operations + cashflow. Example! Here is one model. Like all models, it’s both . wrong and also useful The top left is where we’re starting. Z is the ultimate goal in the form of a product — aka the “product vision” — at the bottom right. [Z should probably be visualized as an additional cell hanging off the bottom right, but that looked odd so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.] The columns are features that add up to something. Across the top row is what they add up to: capabilities, or maybe even products, that are valuable. Each of which to be built on the way to building Z. in and of themselves has The bar for something belonging in the leading row is being a , which is a of capabilities needed for Z. It should also be minimally go to market viable (MVP!), meaning someone would pay for it. Hopefully those are the . If they’re not, we gotta reconsider our theories about the world that led us here. minimum usable produc (MUP) subset same thing Note: Yes, I’m using MVP weirdly since anyone actually being willing to pay for your MVP isn’t generally a criteria as the term is used.. which is funny if you think about “viability” having any meaning.. We could go very deep in each column and build a maximally (?) usable product. That’s a business decision more than anything else. We should draw a line at some depth in each column showing where the MUP ends and more-polished-product begins. Questions to ask Is the minimum usable depth we project actually sufficient for the intended user to ? experience value Is the minimum usable depth sufficient to get the product to the point of go-to-market viability — we can market, sell, and against it? If not, how much further? close business Is going deeper than worthwhile or the business? that for the customer Are these the capabilities in the best order? best The ideal case is to get to something in each column that provides enough tangible value and positive experience that someone would This serves to provide market validation of the direction we’re moving in and potentially provides an option of building a run rate business on top of which to continue towards our ultimate vision. pay for it. Any path that moves us closer to Z is good and valid. Any path that doesn’t, or takes us off the road to Z entirely is bad and invalid. This is the stuff of company-wide teeth-gnashing. Example! A good way to fix our product strategy in the context of the competitive dynamics of a particular market and it’s value chain explicitly is to use a Wardley Map. This is not for the faint of heart. See the reading list below for pointers. Example! Any given product or feature should do one of two things: Increase an existing revenue stream: add features that deepen value for an existing use case Create a new revenue stream: going broader by adding new use cases, or features needed for a new channel. If anything on the roadmap doesn’t fulfill one of these goals — it gets binned. Note: Maintenance, bugfixing, paying down technical debt, and cost optimizations are all arguably about maintaining or improving existing revenue streams. Everything is a hypothesis Going to market is the that tests our hypotheses — if no one will pay for it (or give us money to build it), then we can’t live to build another day. sensing mechanism Final Note We can always go deeper and/or broader. And we can stop where we are, discard everything that we though would follow, in order to build a new vision to a new place. But that new place has to be reachable from where we are . Every thing we build closes some doors and opens others. It’s to do something completely discontinuous. right now near impossible What we build today limits what we can build tomorrow. Posts in this series Product 101 for Engineers Product 102 for Engineers Minimum Usable Product Product, Marketing, and the Art of Managing Expectations Related series (and templates) on Marketing Marketing 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction Marketing 102 for Engineers: Roughing Out a Funnel Marketing 201 for Engineers: Messaging & Positioning Marketing 202 for Engineers: Launching Marketing 203 for Engineers: Sales Enablement Marketing 204 for Engineers: Generating Demand Sales 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction PR 101 for Engineers Analyst Relations 101 for Engineers Basic Messaging Template [Google Doc] Basic Funnel Metrics Template [Google Sheet] Basic Launch Timeline Template [Google Doc] Basic Battlecard Template [Google Doc] Detailed Battlecard Tempalte [Google Doc] Reading List Simon Wardley’s OSCON 2015 Keynote: Situation Normal, Everything Must Change Simon Wardley: Introduction to Value Chain Mapping Eugene Wei: Invisible Asymptotes Ben Thompson: Stratechery Me: AWS Lambda — a lesson in using product strategically Me: Marketing 101 for Engineers Me: Marketing 102 for Engineers Me: Sales 101 for Engineers

Cisco

Get some go to market therapy

Product 102 for Engineers: Decision Making and Strategy

A short, motivational guide to debugging your horrible production issue. You’ve been tasked with finding a bug that has reared its ugly head in a production system. You’ve been staring at the keyboard for hours now with growing doubts in your mind about your suitability for a software engineering career; you have drawn a complete blank. You feel like a fraud, an . impostor Frank ‘A-bug-nale’ Junior . You aren’t the impostor here — the bug is. Relax For years now it’s been happily impersonating a functioning part of the system — but now you’re onto the trail to find this fake, this fraud, — and you won’t give in. this impostor So where do you start? “What a monster... this commit message says ‘Changes’ and 314 files were changed” Reproduce the problem. At an absolute minimum, you need to be able to take the problem and confidently reproduce it. Again and again… …and again. Without this very simple step achieved, you can’t test whether a change you’ve introduced has made any sort of impact, you can’t expose vital clues from the system; you can’t even eventually prove to someone else that the problem has been resolved. Reproduce the problem in an environment you can control. So you can reproduce the problem? That’s a good start. But if you can only reproduce the problem in production — you’re going to be a bit constrained in the approaches you can use to narrow down the source of the problem. Hopefully you’re in a situation where your organisation has a staging, UAT, pre-production or test environment that somewhat resembles production. Use it to your advantage and try to reproduce your problem there. Being able to do so will open up so many potential approaches you can use to get more visibility and control over your problem that you don’t have the luxury of in production — or at least the luxury of being able to do so quickly. Here’s a small number of examples: Increase logging levels of applications Remote debugging of applications Ability to release modifications of application code outside of a regular quality gate to trial changes quickly* Suspend or terminate adjacent processes to determine flow of events * — I think this should only be exercised in times of urgent need and you should always clean up any mess. Understand the system. Whenever you find a problem you can’t immediately solve, with a system you think you know — you need to face facts, you don’t know the system as well as you thought you did. Take a step back and try to draw out the system at a high level. Gradually and continuously focus inwards on the parts that are most likely to be the culprit in the particular scenario you’re working on. Simplify the problem. Take the problem you’re working on and instead of focusing on tackling the problem directly, try to reduce the complexity and the number of moving parts to keep track of in your mind. We are fragile, meaty beings with only a . Make the problem more digestible. limited ability to store and process information In a production system, eliminate the components and behaviour that can’t possibly be contributing to the dysfunction with simple irrefutable tests. Eventually you’ll be left with a much smaller and simpler problem to work on and comprehend — if you continue doing this, . you will find the solution eventually Bugs DO NOT go away on their own! …Oh and please don’t fall foul of this common logical fallacy: I could reproduce it 20 minutes ago and I haven’t changed anything, but it seems to have gone …maybe it’s gone forever! If someone has spotted a bug, you haven’t made any changes and you couldn’t reproduce it, at some point it will happen again. Isolate changes. If you make a change in order to validate a theory or introduce a potential fix, if the change has no effect, you should immediately roll back the change. Don’t add one change on top of an ineffective change. Something you introduce may have no effect at first, but if you add more changes and you end up with a more complicated, messier problem to solve. Worse still, you could wrongly attribute some change in behaviour with an unrelated change you’ve introduced. Don’t do it! Keep your changes isolated and test every change. Rubber duck debugging. Though it can sometimes feel like it — there is absolutely no shame in asking for help on a problem that is eluding you. Practice — the act of explaining your current problem to another person — even an inanimate object, to allow you to gather your thoughts and regain focus. Rubber Duck Debugging Sometimes the reason you haven’t solved the problem yet is precisely because you’ve been focusing on the problem too long and you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. Document everything you’ve already tried. Good ‘Bug’ Hunting In a complex scenario with high stakes, it’s very easy to lose track of what you’ve done already to solve a problem. You could end up going back and treading old ground without even knowing it. Simply document everything you’ve done so far and as you go along. I’ve tried everything and I’m still stuck! You really haven’t. There is going to be that can be done to highlight what the cause of your issue is. something You might be too close to the problem, you might never be able to think of the solution yourself. But you must absolutely accept that there is something that can be done to highlight what the problem is — you haven’t found it yet and your job is to find it. Don’t give up. Learn new debugging techniques. Debugging isn’t just setting breakpoints and hoping for the best. There are lots of techniques to learn. One such technique worthy of attention is the use of : (though there are many others ) Conditional Breakpoints http://blittle.github.io/chrome-dev-tools/sources/conditional-breakpoints.html As with breakpoints, you can cause the execution of a program to halt — but with conditional breakpoints this is only if a certain condition is met. This can really help save a lot of time in tracking down your elusive bug because when the program freezes you know it’s happened at a condition you’ve decided is important. There isn’t always a clear way to solve the problem. Sometimes you have to get creative… Above all else, take regular breaks. Solving a tricky production bug can be tough, even emotionally draining. Go for a walk, grab a drink and get away from your desk. Do it now. Sometimes it can make the world of difference to have your subconscious mind take the wheel and do some offline processing, while you distract yourself with something else. And if you’re lucky, you might just get to that magical moment when… You’ve Solved It!… But it isn’t over. Are you sure you’ve solved it? Test and re-test your fix. Revert back to the original configuration and run your reproduction steps. Confirm the bug exists. Apply your changes and run the reproduction steps again. Confirm the bug has gone. Do it again. …are you really really sure now? After all your and , it’s easy to forget very simple confirmatory steps. Don’t cause yourself more heartache — be confident in your solution before proclaiming the issue is resolved. pain suffering …Oh and you should definitely write some tests now. A bug being found in production can mean only one thing about your application’s test suite: it isn’t good enough because the bug wasn’t caught early enough. Use the opportunity now to write some tests to exercise that area of code so . no-one else will have to experience the suffering you’ve just experienced again ! …at least until a different bug comes up anyway Hope you’ve enjoyed this and it’s been useful. If you have any feedback I’d be grateful if you could share it. Thanks for reading 😁!

Flow

“Catch Me If You Can” - A Guide to Debugging

Ever wanted to detect objects in an image or a video…probably yes! That’s why you are here!This story is divided into two parts. This part deals with main theory behind Object Detection. In the Next part, we will be programming the components of Object Detection we have seen here and getting them to work (Detect objects in an image). We will not be using Tensorflow Object Detection API instead we are going to write our own Object detection programme using YOLO(You Only Look Once) Algorithm. I’ll be sharing what I learned from . Now, this story can be pretty lengthy(big things demand more effort). I think this will do for the introductory part. Coursera course Let’s check out the requirements: YOLO v2 model weights Tensorflow (of course!) Object Detection as the name suggests means detecting objects in an image or a video blah…blah …blah. I think google has enough for that. Let’s not waste time and jump into some really important components that gets this thing to work! We will be looking at some key components of Object Detection: Sliding Windows Algorithm Bound Boxes Intersection over Union [IOU] Non-max Suppression Anchor Boxes That’s it! and at the end we will use these concepts to understand why YOLO algorithm works so well. We will look at Sliding Windows Algorithm and then see how YOLO can solve the problems we have with Sliding windows. Let’s assume we want to detect dogs in an image. So, for this purpose we a training data-set of closely cropped images of dogs (X) and corresponding label (Y) with 0(No dog) or 1 (Yes, a dog!). Sliding Windows Algorithm Now, suppose we trained a Convolutional Neural Network on the above data-set which output 1 if dog detected or else 0. And, now we want to test them on real life images of dogs. Since our training set was having closely cropped images of dogs from which our CNN learned to tell whether there was a dog or not. This is fine as we are having closely cropped images but what about real-life images (suppose we click a photo from our phone), this image is not closely cropped. So, how do we get our CNN to tell whether there is a dog or not. This is where Sliding Windows comes into play. We define a window of some size (say of size w) and put this over a region (covering area w, of course!) on the image. Then, feeding this input region to our trained CNN and getting it to output (0 or 1). Likewise, we repeat this process on each and every region of the image(with some stride). Thus, calling this sliding windows. Now, once done we take a window of bigger size and slide it over whole image and hopefully by repeating this process again and again (increasing window size) we will probably end up with a window of the size of a dog in the image and getting our CNN to output 1 for that, meaning we detected a dog in that particular region. This was all about sliding windows algorithm . One of the disadvantage of sliding windows is the computational cost. As we are cropping out so many square regions in the image and running each image though a CNN independently. We may think of using a bigger window as it will reduce computation but at the cost of accuracy and small window will be accurate but computationally expensive. One way to go around this problem is to implement Sliding Windows convolution-ally. Sliding window also do not localize object accurately unless the stride and window size is small. Let’s see how YOLO can help predicting accurate Bounding Boxes. Bounding-Boxes prediction Bounding Boxes are the boxes that enclose the object in an image. Sliding windows as stated earlier outputs less accurate bounding boxes (as it depends on the size of the window). Now, let’s look another approach for Bounding-Boxes Prediction. Bounding Boxes (I know they are not dogs,but I guess fox or something else!) The idea is to divide the image into grids (say w by w) and then for each grid we define our Y label which earlier was (0 or 1) as follows: Pc : is the probability that there is an object in the grid cell. It is either 0 meaning no object or 1 meaning an object. Bx : If Pc is 1, then Bx is the x co-ordinate of the Bounding Box . By : If Pc is 1, then By is the y co-ordinate of the Bounding Box . Bh : If Pc is 1, then Bh is the height of the Bounding Box. Bw : If Pc is 1, then Bw is the width of the Bounding Box. C1 : C1 refers to the class probability that the object is of class C1. C2 : C2 refers to the class probability that the object is of class C2. One thing to note here is the , depending on whether it’s a or number of classes may vary Binary Classification Multi-Class Classification. To summarize, if a grid contains an object (i.e. Px =1) then we look at the class of the object and then the Bounding-Box for that object in the grid. Now, there are couple of questions we should address. What is the size of the grid to be used? Which grid is responsible for outputting a Bounding-Box for object that span over multiple grids? Usually, in practice 19 by 19 grid is used and the grid responsible for outputting the Bounding-Box for a particular object is the grid that contains the mid-point of the object. And, one more advantage of using 19 by 19 grid is that the chance of mid-point of object appearing in two grid cells is smaller. This was all about Bounding-Boxes Prediction. Now, let’s talk about another component called Intersection over Union. Intersection Over Union [IOU] Now, earlier we talk about predicting Bounding-Boxes, but how accurate are these predictions. This is where the concept of Intersection Over union comes in. Now, we may wanna revisit set theory . Let’s take a quick glance at Intersection and then Union: Suppose, if we have two sets A and B. A is the set of the teachers in an Institution and B is a set of the students in the same Institution. So, their Intersection will be the another set C containing students who work as assistant teacher and are of course students. Their Union will be a new set C which contains all the teachers from set A and all the students from set B. Intersection and Union Now, what is ? Intersection over Union Suppose, our algorithm outputted a Bounding-Box (say A) for a object in some grid. So, what Intersection over Union tells us is how close our prediction is to the ground truth (say B). We divide the Intersection of A and B by the Union of A and B . If IOU is greater than equal to certain threshold (say 0. 5) then the prediction is considered to be correct or good else we need to work more on our algorithm. If the IOU is 1 then it means our prediction is exactly same as ground truth. IOU One thing to note here is greater the IOU is the more accurate is the prediction and other thing is by convention, we use 0. 5 as a threshold . But we are free to use threshold greater than 0. 5. Below is the Image depicting this idea: Intersection over Union Congratulations! We came a long way.Just a couple of topics to go before we ready to write our very own Object Detection Programme. Non-max Suppression We have noticed till now that for a prediction of single object which spans over multiple grids, each grid would output its own prediction with probability score (Pc we have seen earlier). Now, this can make our predictions look messy and probably we just wanna see the a single bounding-box for single object with maximum probability score(Pc). Non-Max Suppression How we do it? What we do is out of all the bounding-boxes outputted by our network we discard the once with class probability less than certain threshold (say 0. 5) and out of the remaining boxes we chose the box with highest class probability(for example let’s say the box has a name A). Now, we calculate the IOU of the remaining boxes with A and discard the boxes with IOU greater than or equal to 0. 5(say). One thing to note here is if we have three classes then the right thing will be to carry out (Non-Max Suppression) for all three classes. NMS This is it! Last but not the least , let’s take a look what are Anchor boxes. Anchor boxes From the very start we have came across some problems and we do have tackled them. Just one problem left to deal with is how we detect multiple objects in the same grid cell? The idea behind is instead of defining just one Bounding-Box predictions values (Pc, bx, by, bh, bw, c1, c2…etc) with one shape (say rectangle) , we may define two Bounding-Box prediction values or ever three or more of different shapes(so they are able to detect objects of different sizes)(say rectangle, square etc). 2 Anchor Boxes The image shows the defining of two having different Bounding-Box values thus, having different Shapes. Anchor Boxes Now, how we decide which anchor box will be used in predicting which type of objects? Here, again we make use of Intersection over Union.We use the box which has the highest IOU with the shape of the Object to make prediction. So, this was all about Anchor Boxes, I consider to be important. With this we probably sum up the theory we need for Object Detection. Congratulations! For completing a big journey. Last topic for this story is about YOLO algorithm . We will sum all the components we studied about from the start and see how these things make this Algorithm out-perform any other Algorithm! Before that for good intuition about Anchor boxes consider this Image: Anchor Boxes YOLO Algorithm For YOLO algorithm when preparing our Training set , we divide the image into grids (mainly 19 by 19) and we define Anchor Boxes for each grid(say 2 anchor boxes for each grid) . For example :Each grid in 19 by 19 grids will output two Anchor Boxes(two predictions). The size of Y-label will be 19 by 19 by 2 by (5 + num_of_classes) where 2 corresponds to the number of Anchor Boxes and 5 corresponds to the bounding-boxes(bx, by, bh, bw) and Pc. Once, we done preparing our training data-set this way, we train it on a CNN . This CNN takes input images of size (say 100 by 110) and outputs an image of size 19 by 19 by 2 by (5 + num_of _classes) : This CNN when feed with a new image will output Y-label in the format specified above. Couple of things to note here, First, for the grids that did not found any object will have Pc=0(of course!) and will output some random values for bounding-box and classes will be 0. Second, suppose if the object is in rectangle shape and we have defined two anchor boxes (one of shape square and the other rectangle) so the network will output values for rectangle anchor box and the square will have some random values we don’t care about. Predictions Last but not the least, as each grid will output two bounding-box (because Anchor box is two i. e. rectangle and square) our output will look very messy so to deal with this we will implement Non-max suppression as stated above. That’s all , I have for this story. I hope , I was able to help you and add value to your knowledge. In the next post, we will work out our own Object Detection programme using Tensorflow and YOLO v2. Credits:[Images used in this story] Sliding Windows Image Set Theory Image Non-max Suppression

Super

Object Detection :Theory

The Sandbox

Tezos

Progressive

Pros & Cons: How do you choose which crypto-friendly jurisdiction to start your company in?

The days of disruption, radical token models, value capture theses and spreading gospel to anyone who will listen are over. Make room for transformation, value creation and adoption. Maturation is a good thing. crypto blockchain Despite the shift, what was once the cypherpunk’s vision of the future — an internet of value, sovereignty, privacy and micro-payments — is still within our reach. The ICO model was tragically flawed. New business and social coordination models were sold ahead of the technology and cultural shifts. Token engineering value capture was hamstrung by the limitations of early cryptonetworks (try computing anything on-chain). However, nothing trumps the blaring noise of our crypto gospel choir than the average Internet user. They don’t care about sound money policy, decentralization, privacy or censorship resistance; partly because our own industry can’t define these terms. is coming. The is . Change tide shifting “Give them crypto, and you feed them for a day. Teach them to crypto, and you feed them for a lifetime.” earn We can walk new users to crypto, but we can’t force them to transact. We must train the mechanism by having them earn their own value. Participatory business models help users form habits, contributing to the network. Once they’ve accrued a meaningful amount, educate them on private keys and a hardware wallet. That’s the point of this post. Pick blocker on the to sovereign individual value creation and solve that problem. one path New Models In 2014–2017 we saw a lot of crazy ideas. I would argue most had good intentions because I’m an optimist. But as a realist, I would also argue that most projects in the space didn’t know what they didn’t know. Founders didn’t understand the fundamentals, limits and had zero idea how they would solve the biggest blockers to their success. Brazen teams sought to upend the worlds infrastructure but hadn’t even done the home work on their prospective domain 🧐 e.g. decentralized social networks popped up everywhere without even a whiff of research into historical coop models. Thanks for your latest post, “ ” 👏 Jesse Walden Past, Present, Future: From Co-ops to Cryptonetworks Value Capture Fixed supply token models piled on in 2016/2017, inspired by . The MV = PQ model was from his seminal work, “ ” (sorry Chris, redemption later in post). The most stable models to come out of this period were staking based. A fixed supply asset with a lockup to signal proportional rewards or mint a new asset, as we’ve seen with layer 2 protocols like and , and the emerging ecosystem. Chris Burniske Cryptoasset Valuations Loom Network Skale MakerDAO #DeFi This doesn’t bring new users… But it makes noise about how awesome programmable digital scarcity can be. I’m personally relieved out narrative has matured. We are thinking more holistically about bootstrapping networks and community. Crypto Gospel Many battle tested entrepreneurs know that you don’t get new users by talking about how awesome your product is. You get new users by solving a problem, creating value, changing lives and . creating a true fan The crypto industry is too insular. We’re all singing, good songs, but we’re the only ones who know the words. It’s time we focused on education and onboarding. First we need to meet the users where they are. On Web 2.0 😲 Transformation I argue constantly that several features of public crypto-networks can be stepped into. We must graduate users as they create more value for the network. Start with a custodial wallet (don’t @ me). Use a payment channel or layer 2 solution to de-risk your own database and provide the user with a trustless off-ramp onto a public blockchain. Then your top value creators and leave the long tail alone. The lurkers and low value users on your network will be just fine ignoring your onboarding emails. a) b) EDUCATE There are other vectors beyond cryptocurrency and rewards. Think about encrypting user data stored by a centralized database. This can be done with little impact on user experience. Tweak the login flow, use ephemeral key pairs across user devices, encrypt and presto… no more aggregate data dumps from hacked databases. Perhaps you can even flip off the EU and say, “what’s GDPR?” 😎 These are incremental, nonsexy B2B problems with huge value capture opportunities. Who’s solving them? Seriously, contact me…📱 Value Creation Why is earning crypto more valuable than making crypto more accessible? When people earn something they develop a deeper relationship with the reward. If you train this mechanism today, they will come back tomorrow. This is analogous to . Only this time, the user owns their likes and influencer value in the network. Suck it Zuck 😝 Instagram Engineering habit forming behavior Lots of exciting projects like , , , and more are allowing users to earn value within the network immediately and cash out later. and why it may be, “ .” 😍 Cent SpankChain Gitcoin Burner Wallets This is the model you were looking for back in 2017 The Best Time to Buy & Build Tokens Chris Burniske Adoption Without beating user experience (UX) drum too loudly (more like a dead horse), we need to make adoption of crypto networks as seamless as their Web 2.0 counterparts. While I commend the incredible engineering efforts of teams like and ; what are you scaling for? StarkWare Counterfactual We need more engineering to . Let’s meet users where they are and get them their crypto. I know we can build solutions with equitable distributions to network contributors ⚒️🤗 the front lines earning Time for a hardware wallet… Summary It’s simple and you might want to follow the example: Cent On-board users immediately Let them create / earn value in the network Back by trust-less infrastructure as needed (channels / layer 2) Graduate valuable users toward non-custodial value storage There’s no need for a 14 step sign on process. If the user doesn’t hold anything more valuable than a 2 cent opinion or a $5 collectible, there’s no need to learn anything new. Let’s nail these new patterns down as a community 🤗 How will you help others create and earn value on the Internet? soloblock.solutions medium.com/@mattdlockyer twitter.com/mattdlockyer linkedin.com/in/mattlockyer Appendix Reading _On December 1st and 2nd, Bounties Network, ConsenSys Social Impact, and Coins.ph came together for an event with one…_medium.com Bounties For The Oceans: Incentives to Change the World _We need to start removing fear from the cryptocurrency equation._medium.com Building Confidence, Not Dapps _If you want people to use your product, decentralize the bare minimum. Lessons from Freenet, I2P, Darknet markets, and…_medium.com Minimum viable decentralization _At the end of this summer, my co-founder Cameron and I began testing the beta version of Cent, an ambitious project…_medium.com Cent: Income from anywhere. Comedy

Apple

ConsenSys

MakerDAO

Earning Crypto > Crypto

But here’s what you can do about it. Remember back in 2015, before Google nixed their corporate motto “ ”? Yeah, those were good days. They just kept putting out better and better products. Google launched the best search engine algorithm, the best browser, streamlined Chromebooks, Google Drive, a Youtube partner program, stable and safe DNS servers, and on and on. It felt like everyone was winning, especially the consumer. Don’t be evil The reality, however, is that Google was never quite as magnanimous as we all supposed. In pursuit of ad dollars, they had been on a downward trajectory for a long while, and they were dragging all their users with them. In 2019, I suspect all of us are painfully aware that Google and other tech giants no longer have the user’s best interests in mind. Let’s remember that, in fact, we are not their consumers; . we’re the product We’ve reached a disastrous level of some twisted capitalist dystopia. When Karl Marx wrote that the capitalist class extracted the “excess value” from laborers in the form of profits, I don’t think even he could have foreseen how corporations would perniciously squeeze that value out of our fashion, our politics, our emotions, or even our sex lives. With Google Home or Alexa in your house, little is left to Google’s imagination about your hopes, dreams, or even kinky desires. You know, in the year 2000, one of my uncles raised absolute tee-total-hell over the US government sending him a long-form census and asking things like “How often do you engage in sexual intercourse?” He raised hell again when we all learned of the NSA’s $1.5 billion data storage facility, codenamed , designed to store all the data of private citizens that the government had “overcollected.” But a private company like Google or Amazon wants to keep track of his love of AR-15s, bump stocks, and his budding interest in depleted uranium ammunition? Yeah, that’s fine; what’s the worst they could do to him with that information? Bumblehive How did it get so bad? How did Americans, famous for telling the government they can stick their overreach where the sun don’t shine, decide that private corporations doing the same thing is just A-okay? Well, partly, understanding that development requires a longer discussion about our overzealous faith in the power of capitalist competition to keep exploiters in check, but that’s a bigger topic for another day. In fact, most of us, when really pressed about it, acknowledge the severity of the problem, but it’s uncomfortable to think too much about the ways in which big tech corporations own us. So, instead, we live in denial or in this tenuous state of cognitive dissonance in which we assume the worst problems aren’t happening to us. After all, the worst that seems to come of it are some annoying ads for the same silk panties we bought last week. It’s annoying, right? How many times do they think I’ll buy that same pair of panties in a row? Couldn’t they at least wait a couple months before those ads pop up again? Sure, at first it seems a little humorous, but due to the way Google tracks us across devices, soon the ads start showing up not only on your home devices, but at work, too. Now, suddenly the random coworker passing by wants to know why I’m getting ads for what appear to be bondage leotards. This data follows you, and I’m assuming you’d really rather it didn’t. Maybe sexual kinks aren’t your thing, but we all have some parts of ourselves we’d prefer Google not note and broadcast. Oh, but that’s what incognito mode is for, you’ll argue. Is it? Google is still collecting the data, you know? Maybe for now it doesn’t show up in normal browsing, but you’re not at least a little worried they may change their terms of service or have ? Then what? What comes of all your data you’ve been blithely handing over? yet another data breach And what did we get out of the deal, exactly, for all our collective bovine compliance as tech companies have milked us for all we’re worth? Surprisingly little. Amazon’s convenient access to poorly-manufactured doodads, Facebook’s fake news and political propaganda, and the occasional cute animal video. It’s hardly worth the trade-off. Recently, I spoke with a friend who said he likes to play a little game with his daughter where they see how quietly they can whisper and still have Alexa hear them. The answer frightened him. The game is like living in the world of , except he willingly invited this monster into his home. A Quiet Place So why isn’t my friend more afraid? Well, he’s convinced that not all of these services have much information on him. Plus, if he doesn’t want them to have his data, he can just choose not to use those services. Our ignorance about all things high tech is exactly what the companies are counting on. They don’t want us to know the ways in which they swap our data around. They package and sell our private information to one another just like creditors repackage and sell debt to collectors. that So my friend was predictably in complete denial when I told him those companies have “shadow profiles” on non-users based on the data of friends and other sources. He looked at me like I was spinning some sort of sci-fi dystopia conspiracy theory. Well, the sci-fi dystopia part was right, except it’s not waiting in some near or distant future; the technology already exists. In fact, even Apple, the company that’s been trying to sell its more privacy-oriented image, recently got into trouble for some of its apps sending all kinds of personal data straight to Facebook — things like weight, blood pressure, and at the time. whether women were menstruating Okay, I know that was a lot of doom and gloom, but let’s not do what we always do and give up. We don’t have to assume that this is just “the way things are” and accept our lot. In fact, there are a number of measures we could take. First, we need to acknowledge two truths: the problem is serious and pervasive, but we are not powerless. For those who want to implement changes to save your personal data, let’s start small: Download Brave . Ditch Google and start using DuckDuckGo as your primary search engine. is a privacy-oriented browser. It’s lightning fast and won’t hog your system resources like Chrome or other bogged down browsers. Brave , meanwhile, is a privacy-oriented search engine. It’s awesome in the ways Google used to be. It works great _withou_t collecting your personal data or inundating you with garbage ads. DuckDuckGo For those of you who want to go even further, here’s a list of other options: Cancel Amazon Prime. This one is obvious. Look, you don’t need the two-day shipping. Hell, too often . Just ditch it; you’ll be fine. And Jeff Bezos doesn’t need more money. it’s not even two days anymore Brick your Alexa and/or Google Home. It’ll make a fancy piece of art. We don’t value art enough in our society anymore. People even like to argue it has no purpose. Yeah, in this case, that’s the point. It beats Alexa’s current purpose of dastardly spying on your every word like some crappy B-movie Soviet villain. Check out DNS.watch to change your DNS servers. Stop feeding these companies, especially when they can use their DNS servers to track your web habits. One of my older acquaintances acts like changing DNS servers requires a degree in Defense against the Dark Arts, but then he goes on to explain how to jailbreak an Amazon Fire Stick to access any movies he wants. All I’m saying is this step ain’t that hard. Don’t be lazy. can show you how to simply switch to a DNS server that doesn’t track you. DNS.watch Contact your Congressperson. Wait, what? When did this get political? Well, you see, even the US Department of Defense relies on Amazon’s AWS cloud computing services. You know what would make them take seriously the notion of finding better options? Voters flooding their offices with requests to do so. today. Contact your representative This is not an exhaustive list of options, but it gets us moving in the right direction. We have been compliant, we have been complicit. But we don’t have to stay that way. We are more than the sum of our interests compiled into ad revenue. There’s no reason to sit back and let this dystopia unfold when we can all do something about it from the comfort of our own homes. Oh, and in a fun bit of irony, why don’t we turn the tools of the tech oppressors back on themselves? Share and retweet this article. Tell all your friends how they, too, can take back control of their own privacy. And when we’re done clawing back these little bits of ourselves, then let’s take back even more.

Alphabet

Amazon

Whatever You’re Thinking, Google Already Knows

In crypto trading, two emotions can ruin the results of an otherwise outstanding trader. These are . However, it’s not enough to know these two emotions. You also need to understand how they manifest themselves so you don’t fall victim to them. greed and fear To help you do that, this article will go over some of the more common psychological challenges in crypto trading. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) The first and perhaps biggest psychological mistake in crypto is FOMO: the Fear of Missing Out. Traders with FOMO believe that every trade can be a winner. They don’t like to sit trades out for fear of losing profits, and don’t pay much attention to losing trades because they believe in their ability to recoup losses quickly. FOMO leads to 2 specific mistakes: taking on more trades and opening bigger positions than your system dictates. The best way to solve FOMO is to hold yourself accountable and stay disciplined. On Adara, you can also ask fellow community members to keep an eye on what you do and make sure you’re not giving in to FOMO. Our second problem is very similar to FOMO, and it’s called… Revenge trading Despite what it sounds like, this doesn’t involve getting revenge on anyone. Instead, revenge trading is the act of trying to recoup money lost by engaging in more trades. Here’s an example. Let’s say Mary makes her very first trade and loses more money than she expected: 3%. Mary knows that she’s dealing with some drawback now, so she decides to make the money back with her next trade. Unfortunately, Mary doesn’t find any trades she can make to fit her trading system and strategy… But because she’s desperate for a win, she breaks her own rules and buys into a coin she hopes will appreciate. Can you guess what happens next? In the real world, statistically speaking, Mary almost always loses her money. This happens for several reasons. First, traders in revenge mode forget about their own system. Second, traders in revenge mode take action when they shouldn’t out of desperation . Last but not least, traders in revenge mode stop thinking about the market because they’re thinking about the money they need to make. All of these factors lead to bad, unprofitable decisions — and can quickly wipe out a large budget with severe drawdowns. Our third problem is… Overconfidence bias Here’s how this one usually plays out. Let’s say a trader called Jack has been trading for several years. His win rate is about 50%, meaning he wins every other trade. But in the current trading period, something changes. Jack’s win rate jumps to over 80%, and he feels like he can’t lose no matter what he does. At this point, he figures that he’s intuitively onto something — and starts departing from his trading rules and system. Can you guess what happens next? That’s right. As Jack starts to depart from his system in a bid to keep his winning streak going, he starts losing money. In fact, most people in Jack’s position keep losing money until they undo all the good work they did by winning in the first place. The problem is so bad that some crypto funds make their traders take a break once a streak goes on long enough to prevent overconfidence. Can you see how all the problems we’ve covered so far are representative of fear, greed or both? FOMO is a mix of fear and greed. Overconfidence bias is pure greed. Revenge trading is a mix of wanting to make more money — greed — and being afraid of accepting losses, or fear. There are many other mistakes, of course. In our Adara Academy videos, we cover , being emotional about assets, and many others. the gambler’s fallacy If you want to minimize the effect negative emotions have on your trading, you may want to head over to Academy — which is free — and learn about these for yourself. For today, though, remember the 3 mistakes we already covered: FOMO, revenge trading, and overconfidence bias. Keeping these 3 in mind while trading will help you maximize losses and minimize losses consistently. Would you like to learn more about crypto trading? Сheck out our educational platform Adara Academy Get a free 1-on-1 trading session with our experts! Apply now to be one of the first 50 accepted applicants — Apply to join! Talk to us on Telegram — Adara Telegram Engage in conversations on Twitter — Adara Twitter

Fomo

Common Psychological Challenges when Trading

What exactly is machine learning in layman terms? How does machine learning work? if you are looking at this query, you are at the right place. Here, I will explain ML in very simple terms. So, let’s begin: The term machine learning has often been thrown around in discussions concerning AI and by several machine learning companies, and me when I’m dealing with clients curious about artificial intelligence. But in the end, I’m always left asking myself- how well did they know machine learning? Forget everything, do they even know what is AI? These are a couple of questions; the answers to which I think my prospective clients should know, and so should you even if you’re not one. Now I’ll try to answer some of these questions, while also addressing some misconceptions regarding differences between machine learning programming and general software without AI. By the time you will finish reading this, I hope you will be acquainted with more knowledge of AI and its crucial deeper subset: machine learning. But what is AI, though? In order to know why AI matters to your business, you first need to know what artificial intelligence really is. In the most simple and accurate way, AI is everything, a machine, a program- just about anything that can simulate human intelligence. If you pay enough attention, this definition will lead to two bigger questions, which are: But what is human intelligence? And how can AI simulate it? The fact that you’re able to read this makes you intelligent. Human intelligence is basically everything that enables us to think, question, contemplate and take action. So once again, how can AI simulate this human intelligence? Understanding Algorithms What is an algorithm? . Algorithms normally work on the basis of “if” and “when” functions. If your car’s sensors detect that the sky is dark, an algorithm would instruct your car to turn on the headlights. Such examples and use cases are where an algorithm is needed. To answer how AI works to simulate human intelligence, it is important to understand the concept of algorithms. Algorithms can be simply defined as a set of rules which provoke a software program to take an action In fact, computer programs themselves function based on these same principles of “if” and when”. Algorithms help a computer program to understand what it needs to do to fulfill a specific objective. So, do algorithms help simulate human intelligence? If you think of an algorithm as something which can simulate human intelligence, then you’ll not be blamed for assuming so. Since humans themselves employ certain sets of nature-built algorithms for the creation and fulfillment of specific emotions such as hunger and thirst. But merely having such emotions doesn’t make a human intelligence, right? The same does also apply to algorithms. Merely equipping a program with a set of algorithms isn’t enough to market a product as AI, and hype its functions with terms such as “smart”. So no, algorithms DO NOT help simulate human intelligence. So what do algorithms really need to do in order to simulate human intelligence? The answer is to “ Change”. Yes, change is what makes humans intelligent and smart. A change is what motivates a human to improve, and a change is what could make algorithms change its rules to aim for a higher reward, or perhaps to achieve the same rewards in more efficient ways. So if algorithms alone cannot simulate human intelligence, and change is one of the variables that create human intelligence; how can we apply the same to algorithms? How can we “change” algorithms? To put in some perspective, humans learn and gain more intelligence from experiences, mistakes, and recollection of memories. Computers and software, on the other hand, don’t have such luxuries with them, so they have to rely on either of the above-mentioned ways, Software algorithms can change in two ways. One way is by human intervention, and the other way is through data and predictions. But if software algorithms are modified through human intervention, we won’t call it AI. It would simply be referred to as a software program. To call something AI, we have to use the other mentioned way, i.e., to change software algorithms through data and predictions. This is what we call machine learning programming. Defining Machine Learning I believe we’re now closer to defining what machine learning truly is. Machine Learning can be defined as a state when a software program is able to change its algorithms through data, without any human intervention while making predictions to get to the desired result. How does machine learning work? Traditional algorithms rely solely on an “if” and “when” approach, this approach is what facilitates the creation of nearly all common software-powered devices we use today. But when the intention is to simulate human intelligence, the traditional approach simply doesn’t hold its ground. This is why machine learning programming uses and processes data through an error function, a loss function and an objective function which enables software programs to learn by itself. An objective function defines the goal of the program, i.e., what it needs to achieve. The other two functions use data to work towards reducing the difference between the desired goal vs. the actual results interpreted by the problem; by modifying the algorithm to suit the needs. To put it in perspective, let’s say that you want a machine learning program to identify a comic book without your intervention. In a traditional algorithm-based approach, you’d code this program, or you may say create an algorithm using data about the structure and style of a typical comic book. However, in a machine learning based approach, your algorithm will learn to identify comic books all by itself by learning the style and structure of a typical comic book; simply by using data of a million comic books you would feed to the algorithm. While traditional algorithms are created and perform with the intention of producing the desired result, machine learning algorithms are created with the intent of having the program “learn” how to produce the desired result through the use of structured data. So in a nutshell, machine learning algorithms use error, loss, and objective functions with data and attempt to predict results continuously, until the difference between the produced results and the desired results is zero. Conclusion: I hope this guide would help a layman, or someone looking for the best machine learning companies to actually understand how the concept works. Through this blog, I believe I’ve answered all doubts about the “how” of AI by explaining machine learning and highlighted the quest of human civilization to build AI that could perfectly simulate human intelligence. There is an even deeper subset of machine learning, called deep learning about which I haven’t discussed here because it’s well, deep. However, understanding this alone would be enough for you to focus on finding the answer to the other big questions, one of which is about finding where to use AI, and why even use it in the first place? I will cover these questions in my next blog, so stay tuned for more!

Software Consultant

What Is Machine Learning & How Does It Work?

“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: …the attention of its recipients.” ( , Professor Carnegie Mellon University, 1971) Herbert A. Simon There’s a new, better way to browse the internet: the Brave Browser. The Brave Browser operates on a principle I’m calling the Digital Attention Economy. As Professor Simon pointed out in 1971, the world is flooded with information, but human attention is a finite resource. Capitalizing on that resource has been every corporation’s objective, and we’re all familiar with the advertisement deluge that ensues. It’s overwhelming. Now, there’s a better way. With attention, security, and privacy in mind, CEO Brendan Eich (creator of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla) and CTO Brian Bundy (former employee at Mozilla and Khan Academy) founded Brave Software to create a superior Internet browser. If you haven’t downloaded Brave already, I encourage you to give it a spin. I’ve got four basic reasons you should be using it— oh, and you can make some money, so that’s incentive, too. Speed Brave is fast. Like . According to the company website, Brave browses the web up to 8 times faster than Chrome or Safari. And that’s not just company propaganda. I can vouch for that speed from personal experience. really fast My journey to Brave began in 2017 when I first tangled with . Specifically, I ran into a phishing scam in which I was redirected from Amazon to a fake web page asking for my user name and password. DNS hijacking If you needed to pinpoint the exact moment I became paranoid of the manipulative power of the Internet, that was probably it. In response to the DNS hijacking, I downloaded new firmware for my router, changed my DNS servers, restricted network access to particular MAC addresses, and tried out a bevy of new browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Comodo. I think there were a few more lost in the wash. I didn’t run into the DNS hijacking again (because of my scorched earth measures, I’m sure), but I discovered another problem common to all the other browsers: they were clunky as hell. Over time, they all got bogged down, ate up my system resources, and slowed to a crawl. The only fix was to close out all my tabs or close the program or sometimes even restart the computer. (At times, I seriously considered chucking the whole system out the window.) No exaggeration: I couldn’t keep more than five tabs open at a time. Now, I made some other (which helped tremendously), and I installed more RAM, but those other browsers were more than happy to keep eating up my RAM and to even tax my CPU to 97% capacity. changes to Windows I’d had it. I dug into more browser options until finally, I found the solution: Brave. Brave has never given me any of those issues. As I write this, I have 20+ tabs open — not to mention Word, PowerPoint, Paint, and Music Bee. How much RAM is Brave taking up? About 10%. Processing power? Between 0.5% and 1.8%. Remember: 20+ tabs! Seriously, this browser is zippy and light on the resources. I love it! Speed alone is a good enough reason to download this product. Familiarity Brave is built on Chromium, Google’s open-source web browser project. Google Chrome, obviously, is built on Chromium, too. For users, this equals a familiar browsing experience. You won’t get thrown into some weird territory where all the page min-max tools are suddenly in the top-left corner or anything (sorry, Safari users!). Nothing will surprise you. Easy transition. Love it! Privacy Here we get into the fun stuff. Besides being the hands-down best browsing experience I’ve had since Google Chrome launched in 2008 (before it got all bloated), the Brave browser takes your privacy seriously. Check out that ad blocker. Nice! You decide whether you keep the shields up for each site, whether you allow autoplay, if 3rd-party cookies get blocked, if scripts can run, etc., etc. If you want a rundown of all the ad-blocking features and Brave’s commitment to privacy through its native Tor connectivity, check out ’s . Kenny Li take on the browser An added benefit to blocking all those ads is you save time. See how many ads (and how much loading time) Brave has saved me in the last month alone: Oh, it has fancy background pictures, too, which is simple but always nice. Cut Out the Middlemen: Monetize Your Browsing It’s no secret that companies like Facebook and Google run on ad revenue. They’re thrilled to suck up all of your time and attention for the money. Where it gets nefarious is the ways in which they track literally everything you do online to steal and monetize your habits and private data. Heck, they even track what you do in the real world. I’ve had conversations with coworkers who wanted me to go watch some obscure comedian’s new show only to go home and then have this comedian’s pop-up ads or Youtube videos suggested to me. My best guess, based on that and other experiences, is my phone’s mic picked up the conversation. For example, I once had a sweeping phone conversation with a friend about stoicism, Michel Foucault, and a philosophy of systems of thought. When I fired up the Roku later, Youtube was pushing videos on stoicism, Foucault, and some sort of hamster stuck in a closed system (a funny AI interpretation, but all in all, mildly terrifying). Now, if you’re not worried about Google tracking all your data, you should at least be upset someone else is monetizing that which rightfully ought to be yours. Your attention may as well be your labor in 2019. Well, Brave has you covered. Over at ’s blog, you can read up on Brave’s innovative use of its own Ethereum-based (ERC20) Basic Attention Token (BAT). Later this year, the program is set to launch in full force. The gist of it is that to receive BAT, and BAT can be pretty easily exchanged into its monetary value (think like a gift card). Geek on record users can voluntarily watch ads In fact, since Brave recently launched a , you actually can turn BAT into gift cards for places like Amazon, Starbucks, or Uber. You can even donate the funds to charities like Habitat for Humanity or the Red Cross. partnership with the TAP Network Another option is to directly. No more stupid ads you didn’t sign up for. Now, you can control if and when you view ads, and you can support the websites you visit. Brave even has features to simply automate the tipping process based on the percentage of time you spent browsing a given website. tip your favorite content creators It doesn’t get much easier than this. And, by the way, lots of content creators have signed on. By ’s October 2018 count, . Oh, and the user base of the browser is already at about 5 million and growing. Maxence Cornet 27k publishers have signed up Conclusion Do yourself a favor and right now. download Brave It’s fast, lightweight, and privacy-focused. It puts you in control of your personal data and lets you decide how you’d like to monetize that data, rather than sitting idly by as the likes of Facebook and Google exploit your time and energy to make millions off of you. Disclosure statement: The author owns some BAT.

Starbucks

Capitalizing on the Digital Attention Economy: The Brave Browser

Finite Trees for Infinite Sets This should not be a first choice This post is about what we can do when we’ve exhausted all of the alternatives. I’ve written before that sort order can almost always be handled outside Ethereum Smart Contracts: . The Joy of minimalism in Smart Contract Design And, I’ve written before about patterns for efficiently organizing data in unordered lists. . Solidity CRUD Thanks to mappings, there is usually no need to “search” to find records of interest in a Solidity contract. It follows that a principle reason for sorting records, namely finding them again, is generally not a sound justification for the increased cost and complexity of sorting records. In many cases, sorted and filtered data is interesting to software-clients. But, since software-clients are well-capable of sorting the information themselves, that too is a poor justification for burdening a smart contract with the heavy lifting of sorting a list. Many statistics such as lowest, highest, average and moving average can be computed on-the-fly without resorting to sorting the data. Those, too, are poor justifications for sorting a list in an Ethereum smart contract. If contracts only need to find previous and next records and enumerate them in sorted order, a linked list is a simple pattern. When combined with hints about where to start, insertion cost can be scale-invariant. That’s what we want because anything that gets more expensive as the set expands is probably a serious defect: . Getting Loopy with Solidity We should always prefer an efficient workaround over the considerably more complex idea of sorting a list. There are cases, however, where the sort order is important to a contract and none of the aforementioned tools are right for the job. What if a contract needs to know the median value in a set? Or, the rank of a given value? Or, the value at a certain rank? For example, consider test scores graded on a curve. Suppose everyone in the top 10% of the sorted test results is to get an A+ and the contract logic (a prize, perhaps?) depends on this result. And, suppose this requirement needs to be handled by a contract. An Oracle is a possibility, but what if the implied return to centralization isn’t acceptable? Intuitively, we can see that such a process is both simple and deterministic. A smart contract ought to be able to do it. But, such calculations may depend on a sorted list and the kind of random access that a linked list doesn’t excel at. Cases like this call for a general-purpose and efficient sorting solution. This is a non-trivial undertaking and the alternatives mentioned are better-suited to Ethereum if they can be applied successfully. Challenges I believe Nick Johnson first starting talking about in smart contracts. The idea is to take processes that would cost too much gas if tackled all once and break them down into smaller tasks that can be completed individually on a limited gas budget. Some extra difficulty comes from the need to ensure the contract state is valid at all times even when the overall process in only partially complete. amortization of work If we’re going to deal with sorted lists, then it would be a good idea to deal with lists that are sorted at all times rather than a monolithic process that sorts a completely disarranged set. A is such a structure. Binary Search Tree I won’t cover the details here. In summary, BSTs maintain an ordered list by maintaining a set of pointers as data is added and removed. BSTs offer certain assurances. For example, in a “perfectly balanced” tree, any record can be found in steps. In a set of 1,024 records, one can find any record in, at most, 10 steps because 2**10 is 1,024. Each node is a sorted value with up to two child nodes, usually called left and right. Left points to something smaller, and right points to something larger. This is the “tree” aspect of the structure. O(log n) “Perfectly balanced” means that any node in the tree has an ~equal (+/- 1) number of children on the left and right side, so the search algorithm can reduce the search area by half with each step. This is the “binary” aspect of a BST. Achieving and maintaining this during inserts and deletes. (Modification is a delete followed by an insert). balance is accomplished by re-organization When everything is organized like this, it is always possible find an empty node where new data can be inserted while maintaining the searchable aspect of the tree. Re-organization for tree balance is always possible with a little rearranging of node positions. However, remember . Execution cost increases as the tree gets bigger. And, balancing adds steps to the insertion and removal processes. O(log n) This arrangement is not optimized for the economics of Ethereum smart contracts. Smart contract costs are heavily weighted toward write operations, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to perfectly optimize read-back efficiency while disregarding the cost of frequent, intricate reorganization. Rising transaction costs as the tree grows is a serious concern for Ethereum smart contracts because it implies that the cost of using the contract might increase to the point of being impractical or even impossible to use. When the gas cost exceeds the block gas limit it’s not possible to run a transaction even if one is willing to pay for it. That’s usually unacceptable. On the other hand, a “significantly imbalanced” tree is also unacceptable. It defeats the purpose of using a BST and we would end up with costs comparable to iteration through a linked list. We need some sort of compromise. Red Black Tree A is a variant of a BST that reduces update costs by tolerating in the tree. Such a tree can be a little lopsided, but not too much. It’s still possible to reason about the maximum cost in the worst-case scenario. Tolerating limited imbalance significantly reduces the frequency and extent of necessary reorganizations. Red Black Tree limited imbalance Cost still increases with size, but at a reduced rate of increase. We get most of the benefits of a balanced tree at significantly reduced update cost. This is progress, but … What we really need is fixed maximum cost, so we can be sure that it will always be possible to use the contract, at a reasonable cost. Finite Trees for Infinite Sets Returning to the purpose of sorting in the first place, there are problems that can be solved with . Finding the records in the top 10% is such a case. will be key to ensuring it’s possible to calculate a fixed cost for the . imperfect sorting Tolerating less-then-perfect sorting worst-case scenario on a set of unlimited size Let us consider the question of pinpointing the value (say … test score) at a precise percentile rank. Let’s say we want the 90th percentile of 100,000 test scores in the range of 0/50 to 50/50. A naïve way to approach this would be to consider just sorting the results, implying a BST with 100,000 nodes. We can see right away this is probably too expensive and subject to failure due to the gas cost of insertion and deletion into any sort of tree structure. Do we really need to do that? Perhaps surprisingly, we could accomplish our goal with a tree of 51 nodes. . The range of possible scores is 0–50, so at most there will be 51 unique grades. There will be thousands of records that share the same grade, but that’s not important. . Each node will be the set of test scores with a certain grade By definition, they also share the same rank The point is that we don’t need to sort the 100,000 test scores, only the 51 unique possible values. We can treat each unique value as a set that contains many results from many instances (student test results). We will need to know how many such instances exist at each node so we can figure out how many instances exist above and below, so we can figure out the rank. For emphasis, we don’t need to sort the tests with the same result, . at all Each node contains the unordered set of instances that share the same sorted value and the count of the instances that exist in the subtree starting at that node. Illustration adapted from image at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red%E2%80%93black_tree What if we want more precision? Suppose we have values in the range of 1–5,000,000 (and lots of them) and we want to be able to pinpoint the rank, percentile, median, etc., to three significant digits of accuracy. The has nothing to do with the number of instances to sort or even the range of the sorted values. It’s the number of to sort that matters. node count unique values We could scale and round the values to guarantee that there can never possibly be more than 1,000 nodes in the tree and to ensure that we . don’t pay for sorting beyond the precision we actually need We don’t need to sort similar values with the same result, . at all Each node in the tree contains the set of instances with equal values. These are treated as an set. approximately unordered It means there will always be a calculable cost for the worst-case scenario.” Limiting Tree Size is key to establishing a maximum update cost. We know that we can maintain an unordered set in each node using the pattern, so … Solidity CRUD If we have maximum tree maintenance cost coupled with maximum set maintenance cost, then we have sorted (enough) lists with maximum gas costs at any scale. Photo by on Zoltán Cse Unsplash Bingo. We can work with that. A BST with a known insertion and deletion cost is appropriate for Ethereum. at any scale You can put as many instances as you want into such a structure and it will never exceed the predetermined maximum gas cost. FIFO method of limiting tree size. For something like a reputation system, it might suffice to limit the tree to recent records by ejecting the oldest first when a limit is exceeded. n The method of limiting the overall tree size is flexible. Just don’t skip it. Before you use this structure, you should be able to show how your overall design imposes an upper bound on the tree size. Order Statistics Tree An Order Statistics Tree is a BST with nodes that contain a count. The count tallies the number of instances in the subtrees that start at each node. This makes it possible to efficiently (cheaply) work out the number of instances above and below any position. When you have above and below counts, you have rank. When you have the rank of a given value and the records at each level, you can enumerate all the records in the top 10% which is what we wanted to do. A contract can see things like the fact that there are 37 records in the 65–70th percentile and it can enumerate them. In the linked , unordered lists with insert and delete logic (See ) contain the identifiers of all the instances that share the sorted value of a given node. It’s a self-balancing tree that uses the Red Black Tree re-balancing algorithm. That’s everything we need for a potpourri of handy tree exploration and statistical functions. implementation Solidity CRUD The tree size limiting process is intentionally left out for maximum flexibility. Two ideas, precision and FIFO are described above. More are contemplated. You have flexibility here. Use any strategy you like as long as the gas cost is acceptable at your maximum possible tree size. Other Statistics Tree The example implementation gets a lot of mileage out of maintaining a count at the node level. A similar approach can be applied to all sorts of statistics about the sets. For example, consider an order book where the product of bid and volume is interesting. If each node contains a sum of in the subtree at the node_,_ then it would be just as fast (and cheap) to work out any price. Could that be interesting to a contract? The process and the algorithm that maintains the structure can probably be applied to a number of statistics that haven’t even been considered. bid x volume market depth above and below This is a non-trivial library that has not been audited. You should consider it experimental and remember that it is presented without warranty of any kind. You are advised that you should not use it or any variation of it in a production contract without first publicly disclosing your quality-assurance process, code audits, test plan and bug bounty. You use it at your own exclusive risk. A word of caution: Feedback and contributions are welcomed with gratitude. The code: https://github.com/rob-Hitchens/OrderStatisticsTree Here’s a peek at the functions in the library: using HitchensOrderStatisticsTreeLibrary for ... Library.Tree HitchensOrderStatisticsTreeLibrary.Tree tree; function snippet() public {uint value;       // inspecting by valueuint row;         // inspecting instances of value, by rowuint _rank;       // inspecting by rankuint _percentile; // inspecting by percentile uint root = tree.root;  
    uint frst = tree.first();  
    uint last = tree.last();  
    uint next = tree.next(value);  
    uint prev = tree.prev(value);  
    bytes32 key = tree.valueKeyAtIndex(value,row);  
    bool vexs = tree.exists(value);  
    bool kexs = tree.keyExists(key, value);  
    uint cont = tree.count();  
    uint pctl = tree.percentile(value);  
    uint prml = tree.permil(value);  
    uint atpc = tree.atPercentile(\_percentile);  
    uint atpm = tree.atPermil(value);  
    uint medn = tree.median();  
    uint rank = tree.rank(value);  
    uint belw = tree.below(value);  
    uint abov = tree.above(value);  
    uint atrk = tree.atRank(\_rank);

    // Insert and Remove key/value pairs

    tree.insert(key, value);  
    tree.remove(key, value);  
} Shout out to who was first to release a Solidity Red Black Tree implementation upon which the Order Statistics Tree is constructed. Bokky Poobah Rob Hitchens is a Canadian smart contract design consultant, co-founder of Ethereum smart contract auditor Solidified.io and a courseware co-author and instructor of Ethereum, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth Lake, Corda and Quorum bootcamps by B9lab .

Oracle

Binary Search Trees and Order Statistics for Ethereum

are a new addition in React 16.8. They let you use state and other React features without writing a class. — React Docs Hooks As of React Version ≤ 16.7, if a certain component needs to have state and/or access to life cycle methods, it had to be built as a Class component since Functional components didn't have the concept of . instances But with React 16.8, we have Hooks. This doesn’t mean Classes won’t work and also doesn’t mean that Classes will be deprecated. , there are certain pieces of the puzzle that are missing but the React core team says those will be addressed soon. Hooks also don’t address all the features of Classes Motivation behind Hooks The bar for learning and understanding a new paradigm without getting a significant benefit out of it is very high in the current IT world. Reading the didn't provide me with the right push needed for a transition. So I did a PoC (Proof of Concept) for myself. I will be going through each of the 3 points mentioned in the motivation docs with pseudo code from my PoC. motivation section of the React docs Our PoC will be a Facebooks feed component. Sample Facebook feed mockup — https://www.behance.net/gallery/64942921/FREE-Facebook-PSD-Post-Mockup-2018 In the interest of time, let’s cut down the requirements for the component. It should be able to like the feed if someone clicks it and be able to comment when someone types and clicks enter in the comment box. Let’s not worry about the type of the like and share functionality for now. We will be needing an internal state for this component. An initial look at the mockup reveals that we will be needing a state variable: To know if the feed is already liked by self. ( ) likedByMySelf To maintain the number of likes. ( ) likes To maintain comments. ( ) comments It is hard to reuse stateful logic between components. Let’s say these are our requirements: When the user clicks on like button, should be incremented by 1 if is or decremented by 1 if is and then toggle the value of . likes likedByMySelf false likedByMySelf true likedByMySelf When the user clicks on the comment button, comments input box should be highlighted. After typing something, if the user clicks enter, a comment should be added into the state and the input box should be cleared. comments With classes usually, we will be writing the action handlers inside the class as instance methods since they will be needing access to the internal state. For instance: 2 days later if there is a new requirement to add functionality to comments as well, we won't be able to reuse the onLike handler since it is tied to the Feed component and its state. To address such issues in Classes, we can use HOCs (Higher Order Components) and implement like and comment separately and wrap the Feed component with those HOCs. With HOCs we are separating unrelated state logic into different functions and injecting them into the main component as props. like But HOCs create wrapper hell. Instead of rendering just the Feed component, we will be rendering 3 components out of which 2 are wrapper components. This can be witnessed in the React dev tools when inspected. With Hooks, we can solve this just like HOCs but without a wrapper hell. and have the same advantage of HOCs plus they don’t introduce wrapper hell. useLikes useComments . 2. Complex components become hard to understand With classes, there is no way to compose life cycle hooks. For instance, if we have to make network calls on the Feed component mount to get likes and comments to render. Quickly the logic can get complex and for someone who reads this in the future, it is gonna give them some chills for a while. componentDidMount Hooks solves this problem in a beautiful way. Hooks supports multiple life cycle hooks of the same type. For instance: https://gist.github.com/revanth0212/1a4c949a70a98aae3cb7f0ed5775692c are life cycle methods in Hooks. If we consider for instance, it has state and life cycle hook. On mount, it will make the network call and immediately return current state. In the future, once the network call is resolved, the state is updated and will change. This will trigger a re-render of any component that uses hook. Line 4 and 19 componentDidMount useLikes componentDidMount likes useLikes demonstrate life cycle hook composability feature with hooks. So now, we can have life cycle hooks written into custom hooks and let them maintain state locally and not worry about mount, update and un-mount logic. This makes code maintainability a wish and not hell. Line 29 and 30 3. Classes confuse both people and machines. Well, I don’t accept the premise that Classes confuse people. They shouldn’t. We are developers and it is our duty to understand primitives that the language provides. On the other hand, machines do get confused between Functions and Classes. For instance, minifiers/unglifiers have a hard time working with Classes. Also, according to the docs, React team has been experimenting with Ahead of Time Compilation and good to have features like Component Folding but have realized that class components can encourage unintentional patterns that make these optimizations fall back to a slower path. I personally have no grudge on Classes and can not comment on the 3rd motivation a lot. But if you guys have some thoughts, feel free to comment and let the rest of us know. I hope this article makes a compelling case about the advantages of Hooks in React. Let us know if you are using Hooks and what are your favorite features in it.

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive March 2nd, 2019

@g.krasadakisGeorge Krasadakis

@linhdaosmookeLinh Dao Smooke

@hackernoondevHacker Noon Dev

@AleksandarSvetskiAleksandar Svetski

@mwriterpreneurMohammad Musharraf

@skylineAkash

@sammy.exodusRomi K.

@mina.downMina Down

@NodisGetNoticedNodis.io

@shitcoinofferingShitcoinoffering

@aneelAneel

@andymacdrooAndy Macdonald

@ayushsingh.Ayush Singh

@profileprofile

@mattdlockyerMatt Lockyer

@michaiasMichaias Grigori

@sam.academy.2Sam Academy

@kapoorajay081Ajay Kapoor

@michaiasMichaias Grigori

@robhitchensRob Hitchens

@revanth0212Revanth Kumar

@g.krasadakis
George Krasadakis

@linhdaosmooke
Linh Dao Smooke

@hackernoondev
Hacker Noon Dev

@AleksandarSvetski
Aleksandar Svetski

@mwriterpreneur
Mohammad Musharraf

@skyline
Akash

@sammy.exodus
Romi K.

@mina.down
Mina Down

@NodisGetNoticed
Nodis.io

@shitcoinoffering
Shitcoinoffering

@aneel
Aneel

@andymacdroo
Andy Macdonald

@ayushsingh.
Ayush Singh

@profile
profile

@mattdlockyer
Matt Lockyer

@michaias
Michaias Grigori

@sam.academy.2
Sam Academy

@kapoorajay081
Ajay Kapoor

@michaias
Michaias Grigori

@robhitchens
Rob Hitchens

@revanth0212
Revanth Kumar