In this article, I will teach you the basics of making your own web app, by creating a checklist app. ASP NET Core will be used to create a and Vue will be used to create the frontend UI. Using the knowledge gained here, you should be able to apply it to start making your own web apps. You can find the complete solution in the . CRUD API GitHub repository We will first start with building the API and then move on to the Vue client. Creating a checklist API Start by creating a new ASP NET Core Web API project in Visual Studio. Let's start by creating the checklist item model. Create a folder called Models and inside create a file called ChecklistItem.cs { Id { ; ; } Text { ; ; }
} public class ChecklistItem public int get set public string get set We have given it an Id, which will uniquely identify this item when we save it to a database, and a Text property which will contain the text that we enter for the checklist item. Next, we will configure the database. To help simplify this tutorial I am using an in-memory database. This is fine for testing and demonstration purposes, but for a real life app you will need to configure your own database (in terms of code, this is as simple as changing the data provider in the EF Core options). First, install the following NuGet packages: Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.InMemory Then, create a new file at the root folder of the project called AppDbContext.cs: ASPNETCoreVueChecklist.Models; Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore; { : { {
        } DbSet<ChecklistItem> ChecklistItems { ; ; }
    }
} using using namespace ASPNETCoreVueChecklist public class AppDbContext DbContext ( ) : ( ) public AppDbContext DbContextOptions options base options public get set EF Core is a object-relational mapper (ORM), which simplifies the process of interacting between C# code and the database. The AppDbContext class provides a way to access the records within the database. By providing it with a property called ChecklistItems, with a type of DbSet<CheckListItem>, this configures EF Core to look for a table in the database called ChecklistItems, with columns defined by our model. Then to configure our app to use this AppDbContext class and to use an in-memory database, go to the ConfigureServices method of Startup.cs and add the following lines of code: services.AddDbContext<AppDbContext>(options =>
{
    options.UseInMemoryDatabase( (AppDbContext));
}); nameof Finally, we need to create the controller, which in ASP NET Core defines the endpoints for our API. Start by creating a ChecklistController.cs file within the Controllers folder: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc; {
    [ ]
    [ ] : { AppDbContext _dbContext; {
            _dbContext = dbContext;
        }
    }
} using namespace ASPNETCoreVueChecklist.Controllers ApiController Route( ) "[controller]" public class ChecklistController ControllerBase private readonly ( ) public ChecklistController AppDbContext dbContext As it stands, the controller has an ApiController attribute, which configures the controller to be used for an API (instead of a standard ASP NET MVC controller), the Route attribute states that all endpoints will be prefixed by the name of the controller (checklist), and we are injecting an instance of our AppDbContext class into the controller so that we can use it to access our checklist items. I will now walk you through adding each of the CRUD methods to the controller, starting with Create: [ ] {
    _dbContext.ChecklistItems.Add(item); _dbContext.SaveChangesAsync(); item.Id;
} HttpPost Task< > ( ) public async int Create ChecklistItem item await return The above method has the HttpPost attribute, which means it can only be accessed by sending the Http request using the POST method. This is standard for creating records in APIs. We create a new instance of ChecklistItem using the text parameter that is passed to the method. We don't need to worry about setting the Id ourselves as a unique Id will automatically be set when we save the item to the database. The following lines add the item to the database and then save it. We finally return the new item Id back to the client. Next, we will move on to Read. Typically with such an API, there are two read methods: one to list all items, and one to return one item that matches the supplied Id. [ ] Task<IEnumerable<ChecklistItem>> Get()
{ items = _dbContext.ChecklistItems.ToListAsync(); items;
}

[ ] { item = _dbContext.ChecklistItems.FirstOrDefaultAsync(item => item.Id == id); item;
} HttpGet public async var await return HttpGet( ) "{id}" Task<ChecklistItem> ( ) public async Get id int var await return The first method is set to return a list of all checklist items when the HTTP GET method is used on the controller (/checklist). The second is similar apart from we set it to require the Id of the checklist item in the URL (/checklist/1). This will take the Id as a parameter and search the database for an item with that Id. It will then return that single Id back to the client. The next method is Update: [ ] { existingItem = _dbContext.ChecklistItems.FirstOrDefaultAsync(i => i.Id == id);
    existingItem.Text = item.Text; result = _dbContext.SaveChangesAsync(); result > ;
} HttpPut( ) "{id}" Task< > ( ) public async bool Update id, ChecklistItem item int var await var await return 0 Typically updating is done with the HTTP PUT method and we are setting the route to require the Id of the item we wish to update (checklist/1). First we retrieve the item that we wish to update, modify the text, then save it back to the database. The return value of SaveChangeAsync is an integer representing the number of items that got updated. Therefore by checking if the number of updated items is greater than 0, we know that the update was successful. Finally we have the Delete method: [ ] { item = _dbContext.ChecklistItems.FirstOrDefaultAsync(item => item.Id == id);
    _dbContext.ChecklistItems.Remove(item); result = _dbContext.SaveChangesAsync(); result > ;
} HttpDelete( ) "{id}" Task< > ( ) public async bool Delete id int var await var await return 0 Similar to the previous methods, the Id of the item the is to be deleted is included in the URL, but this time we use the HTTP DELETE method. It might seem a bit peculiar, but in EF Core the way to delete items involves: first retrieving the item from the database, setting it to be removed, the saving the database (which deletes the record). The final thing that we need to do is to go to the Startup.cs file and add a CORS policy to the Configure method. This should appear between the app.UseHttpsRedirection() and app.UseRouting() lines. This allows the web API to accept requests from our client (NOTE: the default port for new Vue apps is 8080, but if yours is different update the code to use the port of your client). app.UseCors(builder =>
{
    builder
        .WithOrigins( )
        .AllowAnyMethod()
        .AllowAnyHeader();
}); "http://localhost:8080" That is now our API completed. We have implemented all the CRUD operations, which can be accessed via various HTTP methods. We will now move on to creating a Vue frontend, which will be able to access these API methods. Creating a checklist client First make sure that you have the Vue CLI installed. If not, please visit . Then navigate to the root folder of your project and run the following command to create a Vue project: this page vue create checklist-client Start by creating an empty Checklist.vue file in the components folder. Then go to App.vue and update it to simply display the Checklist component. < > template < = > div id "app" < /> Checklist </ > div </ > template < > script Checklist { : , : {
    Checklist,
  }
} import from './components/Checklist.vue' export default name 'App' components </ > script Next open up the Checklist.vue file. We'll start by creating an input to create checklist items: Save < > template < > div < = = /> input type "text" v-model "newItemText" < @ = > button click "onClickSave" </ > button </ > div </ > template < > script {
  data() { { : }
  }, : { onClickSave() { fetch( , { : , : .newItemText
      }) .newItemText = }
  }
} export default return newItemText '' methods async await 'https://localhost:5001/checklist' method 'POST' data this this '' </ > script Here we bind our input to the newItemText data property, meaning that any changes to the value will be reflected in the input and the property. We also create a save button, which calls the onClickSave method when it is clicked. Within the onClickSave method, we send a POST request to our API at the /checklist endpoint. The data is simply the text that was contained within the input field. If the request is successful, then the input text will be cleared. Please note that the port I have used may not be the same as yours. Please check your own API project to see which port your API is running on. At this stage, we can create new checklist items, but we can't see them. Let's create a list of items pulled from the database. Start by creating a data property called items: }, () { { : '', : []
  } data return newItemText items And then create a loadItems method within the methods object: async loadItems() {
  await fetch( , {
    method: ,
    headers: { : , : }, : JSON.stringify({ text: this })
  })

  this = } 'https://localhost:5001/checklist' 'POST' 'Accept' 'application/json' 'Content-Type' 'application/json' body .newItemText .newItemText '' This will make a HTTP GET (this is the default for fetch so we don't need to explicitly define it) call to /checklist. We then process the response as JSON and set the resulting list of items to the items property that we just created. We want to load this data when we first visit the page. To do this, we make use of the mounted method (this sits at the root of the Vue object. Please see the for more clarity), which gets called when the page first loads: GitHub repo { .loadItems()
}, ( ) async mounted await this In addition, we should add this line (await this.loadItems()) to the end of the onClickSave method so that the list updates when we create a new item. We will then create the list items in the markup up to display the items that we have just fetched: < > ul < = = > li v-for "item in items" :key "item.id" {{ item.text }} </ > li </ > ul The final thing we need to do is to allow the user to delete existing items. Let's create a method to allow us to do that: { fetch(`https: method: }) .loadItems()
} ( ) async onClickDelete id await //localhost:5001/checklist/${id}`, { 'DELETE' await this And then create a button on each list item that deletes that list item. The item Id is passed to the onClickDelete method, which in turn is passed as a URL parameter to the /checklist/:id endpoint. < v- = :key= >
  {{ item }}
  < @click= > Delete </button>
</li> li for "item in items" "item.id" .text button "onClickDelete(item.id)" And that's it. Make sure both projects are running and open the Vue project in the browser. You should now be able to create new items, see a list of existing items, and delete existing items. Conclusion In this article, I have showed you how to create a basic CRUD API using ASP NET Core, and hook it up to a Vue frontend to create a checklist web app. The GitHub repo can be found . here I post mostly about full-stack .NET and Vue web development. To make sure that you don't miss out on any posts, please follow this blog and . If you found this post helpful, please like it and share it. You can also find me on . subscribe to my newsletter Twitter Also published at: https://samwalpole.com/learn-to-make-a-web-app-with-asp-net-core-and-vue

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How to Build a Web App with ASP NET Core and Vue

The number one challenge for any startup is generating traction. Even if you’ve built something that is much better than what the competition has to offer, the reality is that most people are reluctant to try something new. Building a solid early adopter base and getting to product-market fit usually takes a lot of time and effort. Traditional marketing channels are not making this any easier, as small startups are often forced to compete with large companies who have the budgets to spend money on SEO and seemingly ubiquitous advertising. However, startups typically have limited resources and cannot afford to spend much money on advertising. This means that any digital marketing tactics they choose to implement need to rely primarily on organic traffic, which makes it especially hard to attract customers’ attention. When we started , we knew that spending money on advertising was not an option for us and had to find creative ways to find our early customers. We experimented with a number of marketing channels including direct outreach, content marketing and free trials in order to find early adopters and prove our business concept. Here are four low-cost channels we discovered that would help you take your startup to the next level: EllisX : 1. Partnerships This is a low-cost way to drive potential customers to you. There are likely a number of organizations in your space that work with your target customers and might be able to help you reach them (e.g. if you sell to startups, you should consider partnering with incubators and accelerators). To make this work, you will need to understand what you can offer to the partner and what their incentive to work with you will be. 2. Community: Building a community around your product is highly underrated. Not only does it increase word-of-mouth referrals, but it also provides brand loyalty and emotional connection to your product, leading to higher stickiness. In addition, you can try posting about your product in communities that already exist online and whose members are likely to be interested in a product like yours (e.g. Meetups, sub-Reddits, etc.). 3. Authentic Marketing: This is a new category that is rooted in the fact that customers no longer simply buy products. We all want to feel connected to the brand, its mission and values, and we often see people choosing to take their money elsewhere if they disagree with a company’s values. There’s no better way for customers to learn about your values than you repeatedly telling your story in independent media outlets, such as podcasts, newsletters, blogs, magazines, etc. Given that 80% of consumers prefer to discover new products via media, this will likely generate good ROI. 4. Customer referrals: If you have a really great product, sooner or later people will start talking about it. The best validation you can get is when customers like your product so much they start referring their friends. Word of mouth is a great marketing channel that is 100% free but it can be sporadic. That’s why you can engineer incentives for your customers to refer friends more frequently. For example, you can offer them a discount for every friend who they invite and who signs up within a specific time-frame. When done well, this can be a powerful marketing channel that engineers viral growth for your startup. Finding your first customers and reaching product-market fit is always a challenge, but it doesn’t need to be expensive. It takes trial and error to learn which channels are best suited for your business, but by running a number of quick experiments, you can identify the low-cost channels that are best positioned to help you take your startup to the next level.

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When you are working in tech, you often make moves to improve your salary or technical knowledge. During 2020, the tech job market really heated up as more and more companies needed to take advantage of tech to survive. It is during these times when you should probably make a move if you are considering one. Let us say you are in real demand. You have a good-paying job right now. You are under no great economic pressure to do so. However, you have has come for you to move on. Why should you move on? looked at the tech landscape and realize the time If you are one of the people with tech skills the world cannot live without then to do so. At times, in my career, I was able to negotiate things that were unheard of at the company hiring me. For example, I often negotiated a four day work week for myself and took Wednesdays off. More than once the employee manual required a rewrite hire me. you can call your own shots if are bold enough I made sure going in I knew why I was looking to move and I knew what I wanted from the next job. I was in demand so I had multiple offers on the table. In this situation, I was able to push for what I wanted by playing the competing firms against each other. Who will offer the four ten-hour day work week I desire? I have to admit times are much more uncertain nowadays. The pandemic has made it difficult to know for sure whether a particular industry or company will really be able to survive in the future. The uncertainty in today's global environment might push me to make other demands if I have competing offers. These times where come and go over your tech career. You must recognize them and get something tangible for yourself if you are going to take the risk of moving to another company. Remember when the job market is this tight, you are like a six foot nine forward who can dunk with either hand and has a killer three-point shot as well to use a basketball analogy. you have the leverage to negotiate When you are and there is this much uncertainty, why not ask for a signing bonus. You are taking a lot of risks to change jobs. What if upper management is not nearly as friendly and likable as the interviewers? What if it turns out you do not really care for your co-workers or they do not care for you? What if through no fault of your own, the company starts to founder under the weight of the pandemic? in high demand If you are truly in demand, you should be able to get multiple offers on the table. Be creative if you are in demand. Maybe just ask for some of your salary up front and work for less the rest of the year as the two of you size each other up as future partners. It is all the same in the end if you really end up staying for a year. Use the signing bonus to differentiate between who really wants you and who just "kind of" wants you. If you get the bonus and the salary you want, you can rest assured the company REALLY wants you. Remember though only YOU are truly going to protect your interests and those of your family. In a world of uncertainty, where you CERTAINLY have skills that are in demand, think about a little insurance and ask for a signing bonus to cushion the blow if there is an unexpected event in the future. Be gentle but firm. Do not talk yourself out of a job.

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In this article, I want to talk about how I got my first job as a web developer at 16 having 0 experience. I started coding at 15 in Python and then after a few months, I switched to web development. I learned HTML and CSS from Freecodecamp where I also built a few front-end projects. I understood media query in CSS and I was able to build responsive websites using them (this helped me get the job). Where I found the job I was really active on Reddit and one day I found a subreddit with developers from my country. I made a post where I told everyone what I was doing and that I was looking to work on some projects during the summer. I thought that no one will see my post but I was wrong. A guy who had a start-up saw the post and asked me if I want to make their website responsive because he really liked the websites I built in the past. How I got the job We had a phone call and we talked about things related to the job. After that, he gave me two simple tasks that I solved using media query. He really liked my work so I got hired for 3 months. What I did next In the first 2 months, I made all their website responsive and changed the design of a few features. After that, I talked with the senior developer from that start-up and I told him that I can do some Javascript tasks too so he gave me some simple ones. How can you get a job too Based on my past experience I can only recommend you to find some online communities with developers from your country and tell them what are you working on and that you are looking for a job. You never know who sees the post you make and you might get a job as I did. What's next? Now that I no longer have a job I'll focus more on learning Javascript and building more front-end projects, you can as I continue to document my journey there. follow me on Twitter

I Got a Job as a Developer at 16, and You Can Too

Among the many, many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is the switch from co-located to remote work at myriad companies. Under normal circumstances, the switch to remote (or partly remote and partly co-located) work can really benefit teams and companies. However, this sudden switch, and the conditions that precipitated the switch, are unprecedented and particularly challenging to navigate. If you’ve found yourself managing a remote team, department, or company overnight, this is for you. As many people shift to working remotely overnight, individuals are struggling, teams are struggling, and companies are trying desperately to figure out how to navigate this new paradigm. Everything is a bit abnormal right now, to say the least, and this sudden switch to working remotely is no exception. There are plenty of posts about remote best practices, which are great, but people who work remotely as a matter of course will be the first to tell you that this isn’t a typical work from home experience. This post is to explore why working remotely works under normal circumstances, why this isn’t normal, and how to support your team, department, or company during this time. First, I want to talk about cognitive load. Cognitive load is more or less how much stuff your brain is keeping track of at any given moment. It turns out the higher your cognitive load, or the more things you’re keeping track of, the worse your decisions become.¹ This makes logical sense — the more things you’re thinking about, the less energy you can give each of those things, so the more likely you are to make bad decisions. Second, I want to talk about cognitive load at work. Most people have to keep track of multiple pieces of information as a part of their job. Depending on the nature of the job, that’s largely unavoidable. What we can do as team leaders is reduce all non-job-critical contributions to cognitive load as much as possible. Consider this example: You have a new person starting on your co-located team. First order of business? Tell them where the restrooms are (including, of course, the gender neutral restroom). Imparting the location of the restroom is a perfect example of removing unnecessary cognitive load — it is quick and easy for you to share this information, and cognitively burdensome for your new person not to have it. Team and company norms are another large contributor to non-job-critical cognitive load. As a leader, it is your job to make your culture and norms as explicit as possible. This doesn’t mean that you have to make up a ton of new rules. Your goal is to make everything that’s implicit, explicit. Is it acceptable to leave at 5pm? Are there team lunches? Happy hours? Is there a dress code? Can I wear headphones at my desk? Are there certain words that are taboo in emails and messages? To bring this full circle, working remotely can also have a major impact on cognitive load. People who work remotely are able to take a lot of unknowns out of their day, and therefore the reason that working remotely works is because it reduces non-work-related cognitive load. People who work remotely don’t have to think about a commute and they’re able to make themselves breakfast and coffee the way they like. For people with children, working remotely can help with a morning or afternoon routine. Note: Of course there are some people whose cognitive load increases working remotely. It turns out companies see the most gains from allowing people to choose if they’d like to be remote or co-located.² Now that everyone who is able is working remotely, we should see a huge jump in happiness and productivity, right? In most cases, that’s neither what we’re seeing nor what we’re experiencing. We may be working remotely, but we’re doing so under extraordinary circumstances. We’re caring for children, sick family, or ourselves in a way we weren’t a few months ago. Our non-work-related cognitive load is absolutely massive, and so the normal gains we’d see from remote work are far outweighed. So given that reducing non-job-critical cognitive load is good for your team, working remotely helps to reduce this cognitive load under normal circumstances, and these circumstances are not normal, what can you do to help your team, department, and company? First, foremost, and always, be kind and have empathy. People’s lives are different, and they’re experiencing a wide array of emotions as a result. This is healthy and normal. Give people time and space to feel what they’re feeling. Listen and try to help where you can. Make sure to take care of yourself so you’re in the best position you can be to listen and help others. Second, continue and expand practices to reduce any unnecessary and additional cognitive load. Make everything explicit. Make things that you’ve never considered before explicit. Are cameras required for meetings? Write it down. Are people able to shift their schedules to accommodate their other commitments? Write it down. Take this time to be really explicit and intentional about your team and company culture. Third, consider what really matters. Your current projects, deadlines, goals, etc were probably established when the world was in a different state. Consider which projects really improve the state of the world or are really fundamental to the success of your company. Let everything else go. By focusing on what matters, you and your team will be able maintain some self of normalcy and continue to do good work. Good luck out there. Stay safe and take care of each other. ¹ https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1112&context=wharton_research_scholars ² https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers/does-working-home-work-evidence-chinese-experiment

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Why Working Remotely Normally Works, and Why This Isn't Normal

Everyone is on Instagram these days. That’s an excellent sign for you’re an Influencer, business owner, or just about anyone looking to build a long-lasting brand in 2021. No matter who your target audience is, they are likely scrolling away on Instagram. So how do you get your content to the right people and stand out among the masses? You use hashtags! 👌 Hashtags help you get your content in front of the right potential customers on Instagram Standing out amid is no small task, but then again, if it were easy, everyone would do it! 1 billion active users per month It’s really important for you to control how Instagram classifies your account since they decide who gets to see your content. Hashtags let you explicitly tell Instagram what your posts are about. The main reason for using hashtags is to make your content discoverable by the right people. Read that again. ☝️ You need to find the perfect hashtags in your niche for each post you make to maximize its potential. If you are looking to update your Instagram hashtag strategy for 2021, then check out my top 10 places to find the best hashtags for your audience. Investigate and copy similar niche accounts When you’re first starting out with gathering Instagram hashtags, check what the successful accounts in your niche are using and copy them. You can even use Google if you don’t already know many people. Say you’re a florist; search for something like in “top flower store Instagram pages” and get . this result Instagram accounts to steal hashtag ideas from are just a Google search away Head over to Instagram and spend time going over their posts to see which hashtags you can also use for your content. Open tabs using Instagram in your web browser Looking at hashtag pages on your computer’s web browser allows you to do one of my favorite hashtag collection techniques. Simply look at the content in the Top Posts that is relevant to your brand. The Top Posts usually indicate the vibes of the content posted using that hashtag When you see the list of hashtags the person used for their post, click each hashtag that is relevant while holding down the CTRL key (or CMD if on a Mac). This will open each hashtag in a new tab for you to check out next. Looking at the Top Posts can reveal a ton of great niche hashtags to use Repeat this same technique with all the tabs you just opened. When your browser looks like this then you should have plenty of hashtags to sift through You should have a list of hashtags ready to try in no time (along with a lot of tabs to close 😂). Use the autocomplete on Instagram The autocomplete feature built right into the Instagram app comes in quite handy if you get stuck on where to start. Let’s say you’re a brand specialized in selling bathing suits for women and accessories that are perfect for summer. Head over to the search bar on Instagram and start typing a keyword like #summer. You’ll get a dropdown with that hashtag but also other related hashtags that begin with that keyword. A broad keyword like "summer" is going to show a variety of hashtags. If you want a more focused hashtag selection, pick a hashtag out of the list and continue to type it out in your search bar. Now we are getting closer to finding niche hashtags to use. Now you have a list of laser-focused Instagram hashtags that you can potentially add to your content. Find an Instagram Hashtag Generator There’s one thing you’ve probably noticed with most hashtag tasks and strategies. It can be quite time-consuming. 😩 Manually scouring Instagram for hours to find hashtags to put on your pictures, videos, stories, or reels can be a daunting task. It doesn’t have to be such a time sink when you use an Instagram hashtag generator like . Most hashtags generators are pretty simplistic but Curate uses your behavior to recommend hashtags. Curate There are numerous tools out there to help you out with various aspects of Instagram growth, but Curate is proven to be the best option for providing you with niche hashtags based on your content, audience, and preferences. Tools keep you in check and analyze all of your hashtag related activity. It will analyze your post history and hashtag utilization to see the best options for possible engagement and reach. Using tools, you can save yourself hours of redundant activities that may or may not move the needle. Browse websites with lists of hashtags Sourcing for Instagram hashtags can be a tedious task that can take hours, if not days, to find the perfect set for your content. It helps to start somewhere. Instead of going through the hassle of thinking up hashtags from scratch to check out, you can get inspiration by using one of the many sites with lists of hashtags related to a specific topic. Let’s take a look at one of these list type sites, . TagBlender As an example, let’s say you are looking to promote a pet store on Instagram. You could click the Animals section and see some hashtags that may get your creative juices flowing. Most hashtags in these type lists are generic and should be used as a starting point. Using hashtag list websites like this should only help with looking at popular hashtags for inspiration. Nearly every list contains mostly hashtags that won’t help your impressions because they have such a high volume of posts. Look at your followers and what hashtags they use There is no better inspiration than looking at your top followers and seeing which hashtags they use relating to your niche or targeted audience. You can even search for hashtags and see how many of your followers also follow that hashtag. Quickly search for a relevant hashtag, and in the Tags section, you’ll find out if anyone you follow also follows that hashtag. It helps to know who else follows certain hashtags. Using your own followers will give you a plethora of hashtags to explore. Plan for using time-based hashtags Depending on the type of viewers you want for your Instagram account, time-based hashtags might be your go-to. Time-based hashtags are particular to a specific trend happening at that period of the day, week, month, or year. Some generic days-of-the-week examples of some you might have seen include; #tbt for throwback Thursday and #wcw for woman crush Wednesday. Holidays are another great way to take advantage of a moment in time with a solid hashtag. 🎁 Don’t forget to append the year to many holiday and recurring date based hashtags for more niche hashtags. Scan relevant Location pages on Instagram If you run a local business, then location-based hashtags could be a gold mine. Many times you can prepend or append your city to the hashtag to target your potential customers. Something like . #newyorknails Adding a city name or abbreviation to common keywords can yield niche hashtags. If you want to see some location-based hashtags that people are using, browse a location-based page directly on Instagram, and scan the top posts for relevant hashtags. You are bound to find hashtags that mention the location to some degree. Remember, using location-based hashtags are not the same as geo-tagging your posts, so be sure to take advantage of both! Take advantage of a Chrome extension While you browse Instagram, it can be easy to amass a huge collection of hashtags. Typically you would have to copy and paste each hashtag into a list or spreadsheet, organize them somehow, send them to your phone to use when you post, and other tedious activities. By using a Chrome extension, you can use tools that take care of the collection and organization of hashtags. A Chrome Extension offers additional insights and organization as you browse. Some tools will even post your hashtags on your content for you. If you are spending a lot of time curating your hashtags then look for what tools are available to help you work smarter. Create your own branded hashtags Having to rely on finding hashtags can be time-consuming. Hashtags can be super-saturated and hard for you to compete in early-on. Here’s where branded hashtags come in. 💡 You can simply create your own hashtag and promote others to use it to interact with your brand and the community. Let’s look at how Logitech pushes the hashtags and how you can do the same. #YesLogitech Logitech promotes its branded hashtag front and center in their Instagram bio. If you notice, the is a campaign meant for their users to get featured on Logitech’s page. #YesLogitech Instagram At the time of writing, this hashtag is under 1,000 posts giving you a high likelihood of getting visibility from their brand and others interested in the same thing. Being featured by other brands and getting noticed is a benefit of branded hashtags. Starting a branded hashtag strategy is more of a long-term game, but if you can start a mini-community of like-minded people, then it will pay off big time for your brand. The right Instagram hashtag strategy in 2021 isn’t the one that aims to reach people — instead, it’s to reach the people. right You must regularly check your Instagram hashtags’ performance to know which ones are working and which aren’t. When used effectively, hashtags can enable you to reach your target audience like never before and get maximum exposure on Instagram.

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Crowdfunding allows retail investors who are not accredited to invest in early stage companies and get equity in return. This is different than the Kickstarter’s of the world. In Kickstarter campaigns, the backers do not get equity in the company, and often there isn’t even an actual company behind the campaign. Crowdfunding was made possible because of the Jobs Act passed during the Obama administration. A slew of platforms like , & emerged to facilitate crowdfunding. The pros of crowdfunding are that startups had another way to raise funding, if you are a non-accredited investor looking to invest in startups you had a way to do it. The cons included even if the startup you have invested in a successful startup, you might not be able to reap the benefit of making a successful bet because of a lack of investor protection in crowdfunding deals. Republic Start Engine Seed Invest The Didactic Effect: As the crowdfunding platforms increased, the number of companies using crowdfunding for their first or second funding rounds increased over time. Some of the companies like , and successfully raised crowdfunding to million dollars. Move and Knightscope came back to raise multiple rounds as well. Move Knightscope Hacker Noon But for the most part, crowdfunding eluded most angel investors, because of the yet to be found exits. The hottest deals were not happening in crowdfunding platforms but were still facilitated by the traditional angel investing communities. All that is now changed! Recently a new startup “Didactic” founded by Gagan Biyani (co-founder Udemy) & Wes Kao (Co-Founder AltMBA) that they will allow retail investors to invest in their company via crowdfunding. So technically one can invest along sides with Naval Ravikant, Li Jin, Sahil Lavingia, & Austen Allred at a minimum amount of $100. announced It can't get more egalitarian than this. A deal that would be usually limited to high-profile angel investors is now accessible to everyone at a minimum of $100. The Persistence of Didactic Effect: The argument against crowdfunding growth is, this is a one-off phenomenon, but it sets a precedent for the long term change that can be expected. There are very many reasons why more high profile deals will happen using crowdfunding. But the main reason why this will continue to happen is the . negative customer acquisition cost Not all crowdfunding campaigns are successful, meaning not all companies that set out to raise $1M will be able to raise the whole amount. The success depends on the company’s ability to gather a community of small investors around the crowdfunding objective. So naturally, all the companies which have successfully built a community of users are ripe for using crowdfunding as their source of funding. A great example of this is Hacker Noon, a company with 12,000+ freelance writers, that was able to successfully raise $1M from their community and a range of investors. This leads to the approach of how company’s with high signal capacity can look at crowdfunding especially the early-stage consumer-facing ones. For this, look at the company Move. It is a YC company that successfully raised funding through crowdfunding. And part of their success in crowdfunding comes from the fact that they have given huge discounts for their memberships for those who decide to invest in them. The structure of incentives to the investors made it a no brainer deal to invest in. From Move’s perspective, they have acquired customers for their service at negative customer acquisition cost. That means instead of paying to get customers, they got paid for being a customer. A reversal in the direction in which the cash flowed. In any fundraise, there is smart money & dumb money. Now there is a third category “CAC Money”. If you have a compelling service these customers will continue using your product/service. The same logic will work for Didactic as well as it is going to be a cohort-based education company. Irrespective of the details that have not been published, having 5000 retail investors who can be your beta testers and product evangelists helps in taking the company to the next level. These retail investors in the company are potential future customers and evangelists. To summarize: for any company that is looking to build a consumer-facing company or has an existing community behind it structurally will be effectively using crowdfunding not only to raise funds but also to create a core evangelist network for the product. The Didactic Effect is here to stay. P.S: I would like to be known as the person who coined “The Didactic Effect”. This post is originally published here on The Startup Project

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It has been approximately 90 days since I started my role at Arm, as a SW Technology Management graduate. To say it has been a rollercoaster is an understatement. Coupled with working from home during a global pandemic and ramping up virtually, it has been an amazing journey so far. I have had many lessons from my time here so far, some of which I learned as in intern previously, and some that I am growing to understand as I go through this role. I thought it was worth distilling them into 5 main lessons I have learned here. 1. It’s actually okay to just learn, and not to do — my struggle with shiny toy syndrome. Before coming into this role, I had constant shiny toy syndrome. Product Management/ Strategy was something I knew I wanted to pursue and grow into, but I was also interested in learning more about user experience design, cloud technologies and many other avenues in technology. I started many blogs, business ideas, and fell under the belief that I had to be every single one of the roles that looked interesting to me. The joy of my role and the beauty of what I do is that I get the opportunity to learn about technology across the stack and across industries. The past 90 days have forced me to learn without trying to be everything. I have a much more focussed idea of where I want to be and what skills I want to have over the next season, and even though they might change, I am happy that the focus right now is stronger than it was before. Whilst I still love learning about user experience, embedded engineering, UI design etc, I know what I want to do, and am focussing on doing those, whilst learning the former. There is no problem (that I can see right now) in learning about many different parts of technology, as the overlap across many different roles is evident, but having more streamlined focus is the goal here on out. 2. Culture really is everything when finding your first job. You know when you have a dream of working at a company for a while and then you finally get there and it is better than you thought it would be? Well that is me with my company. I loved working with my team as an intern and it was the company culture that made me really excited to come back. There is so much opportunity to learn and grow with people passionate about their work and the semiconductor industry. One of the best things about my company is my team. I’m sure I tell everyone this, but it is the honest truth. Having a manager that is supportive of your technology interests, pushes you to do better and provides great career and pastoral care is a luxury in the working world that I feel honoured to have, especially in this time. Having a team that are more than happy to fill me in on what I have missed in the gap between my internship and graduate position and are ready to help whenever they can, is a privilege. It’s actually quite hard to explain the company culture in words, it is one of the things you need to really be there to experience, but it is definitely something that I enjoy. Company culture is so important, and has permanently gone to the top of my list when looking at opportunities in the future. 3. It’s okay to begin again  and start learning from scratch. ‘It’s especially important to not rush anything’ —  Words that my mentor/friend said to me a couple of weeks ago, and have rung true since I have started, and something that my manager and team have also echoed. Starting from scratch and making sure I get the foundations of computer architecture, as well as business and product strategy and the industry is so important to me, as I grow in knowledge and build a solid foundation that I can use to grow in my career in product/technology management. Understanding that this takes time, from someone who sometimes suffers from shiny toy syndrome (as I spoke about earlier) has been a hard lesson, but one I am very grateful for. Taking the time to upskill slowly and intentionally in the beginning of my career where I have the flexibility and space to learn, make mistakes and grow is going to benefit me in the long run. It’s more important right now to be a sponge, than rushing to be at the top of my field in 6 months. Intentional future-proofing and continuous learning > Quick and shaky success. 4. Asking questions is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s the best thing. This is something I knew at university, but has helped me to gauge my learning and growth over the past 3 months. I used to be so scared to ask questions in meetings, and when speaking with engineers and tech leads. I recently had one of my recurring meetings with my manager, and asked him a whole host of questions about JIRA. Not only did it help me to learn more, but it also made me realise that I knew enough to ask questions. Now I enjoy having questions to ask, because it reminds me that I am learning and growing and whilst there is so much to learn, I am enjoying the journey. 5. On balance. Finding the balance between online courses and project work, work and life balance, networking and application of what I am doing. Planning and executing. Being super productive and knowing when to rest. Everything needs balance and I am learning how to find a balance that works for me to achieve my goals and skills. So far, buying a planner using trello and Microsoft to-do have helped me to prioritise and keep on top of everything, but I am always looking and excited to try different techniques until I find out what works for me. My trello Board has become one of my prized possessions, allowing me to keep a track of project based learning, online courses, tasks to complete and people to reach out to. So far it has helped me to keep organised and plan my day, reducing my stress and anxiety, and allowing me to complete my tasks. So far, the experience has been amazing and I am looking forward to the personal growth, development and opportunities to learn more and grow in my role & career. Technology is a growing field, and there is so much to learn. Remembering to make sue of every opportunity, start small and be willing to learn will be useful in the long run. Cheers to the new year, new opportunities and personal and career growth. ——— Hi! 👋 I'm Augustina, a Graduate Software Technology (Product) Manager and public speaker, speaking about my journey into tech. I've recently launched a newsletter over at augustina.substack.com, where I'll be writing  about my journey into technology, and what I learn about tech, startups and business. I also enjoy publicly speaking about my journey into technology, as well as introducing people to emerging technologies, especially AI, ML & IoT.

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When I say that was a hectic year, this time everyone in the world agrees with me. 2020 But unlike popular opinion, for , it was hectic in a good sense. TAIKAI The pandemic situation has forced us to move completely to an online context, which was something we’ve been advocating since we launched. And it has brought some interesting opportunities in improving our product, scaling our reach to other countries on both organizations and community wise. We also had to bring partners that had to shift from offline experiences into using an online platform and learn how to interact with an innovation community in a completely remote way. In that sense, our Product had to evolve to fill the gap between the offline and the online new context, moving in the direction we’ve anticipated, but suddenly accelerated in an extremely fast pace. Let me share some of the highlights with you of the rollercoaster ride that was 2020, regarding , and . Product Development Community Challenges Product We made our Back Office (Content Management System) available to our clients so that they could launch and manage challenges themselves, in a self-serving way. Back Office: : One of our most important new features of the year. With it was made possible to join an online hackathon or challenge, without knowing any teammate prior to the competition. Now, when you join a challenge you’re able to seek specific profiles to build your team, based on availability and skills, but also to make yourself available to be hired for an existing team. Matchmaking Matchmaking : We launched our , as part of our TAIKAI Academy strategy, in order to bring more relevant content to our community. Blog Blog : After 1 year of testing our smart contracts in an EOSIO Test Net and realizing the potential that blockchain brought to our business, we’ve decided to migrate to the Main Net, which besides being a very scalable and stable network, has a very vibrant and growing community. Main Net Blockchain Migration Telos : We started a Referral Program based on our own , that somehow was interpreted as an Airdrop and made success especially among international YouTubers. 🤷‍♂️ Referral social token, the KAI : As part of our social token incentive program, we’ve launched our , a place where you can spend your KAI for Swag. This is just the beginning to bring more offers from partners that can range from software tools, online courses, among other resources for our community to spend their KAI on. Marketplace Marketplace : Also related to our rewards program, we built for both Innovators and Backers. This makes it possible to see who is leading the way on innovation within our community. Rankings Rankings : A mentor plays a significant role in an innovation challenge and in an online environment it is difficult to establish a relationship between the mentor and the team. We introduced a new role to allow the innovators to interact with challenge mentors inside the platform in this online context. Although this is a new feature, we already have some ideas to evolve it. 😉 Mentorship : Yes! It is now possible to have a live stream on our platform while the hackathon is happening. This way, an innovator doesn’t have to leave the platform and use a third-party service to watch an opening ceremony, webinars, live pitch competition or any other video moment that happens during the competition. Live Streaming By introducing Livestream, we’ve changed our challenge pages a bit, so that you’re able to have a greater User Experience. New Challenge Page: Community How do you grow an online community? And most importantly how do you keep it engaged with so many different distractions and alternatives? This was a tough challenge for us, but we made it happen. We grew from around members in 2019 to more than 35.000 members, essentially by organic growth. This makes us believe that we actually are building something different here and that we’re on the way to become a large and diverse community. 3.000 We managed to grow not only geographically, opening ourselves from Portugal to the world, but also in different profiles and experiences, moving from a university-centred community to profiles ranging from freelancers, startups and established companies, with not only technical skills but also profiles with business, healthcare and other backgrounds. Our biggest challenge for 2021 is finding the right tools and incentives not only to keep growing the community but to make it more active and engaged with our platform. Challenges I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy. In March and April, all the physical events we had planned for 2020 were either cancelled or postponed. Being left without challenges for our community was not something that made sense to us and we knew that we could at least do something to help when the pandemic hit. That is why we’ve decided to launch to find solutions faster than the virus spread. It was a great way to show how our platform can be used for social impact, which is why we began our TAIKAI for Good Program, for these types of initiatives. Fight COVID-19 Open Challenge After that, all went smooth and by having no physical borders on the internet, we managed to expand to other regions like the US, Brazil and some other European countries. We went from an overall number of 10 Organizations in 2019 registered in our platform to 130 in 2020, moving from 12 launched challenges in 2019 to 33 in 2020, with some other waiting to be launched. challenges I’d love to make some honourable mentions, but each one of them was important in our growth as a company, a business and a community. What does 2021 look like? We don’t have a clue! Predicting 2020 was a disaster, so we won’t take our chances to do so. 😅 But we do know this: by being a community-centred platform, our biggest priority is the talent that comes to us. We want to make sure that talent is valued and that our users have a place to showcase what they do best: building new innovative projects and ideas. Considering that, our focus for 2021 will be: To give more tools for our community to be able to interact with the platform. To keep expanding to other regions to make our presence truly global. To improve our clients and organizations experience as a whole so that they can keep using TAIKAI as a way for them to reinvent the way they build new products. To have more diversity of challenges for our innovators to work on a challenge-based opportunity, for multiple organizations at the same time. To be not only an innovation management platform but more of a talent network and marketplace. We have high expectations for 2021, as we believe that it will be a year that will truly put us on the map as a worldwide reference. But it will only be possible with your help! We want to grow together with you, which means that we’re more than happy to hear your feedback and thoughts on where we’re heading. We also have some great news to share with you in 2021 that will blow your mind! If you want to be a part of this and you feel like you can contribute to this movement in 2021 drop us a line at to share your thoughts. hello@taikai.network Oh! And I almost forgot! Have some Happy (and safe) Holidays and in the name of the team we wish you a ! TAIKAI great 2021 Also published here .

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First FireEye, then SUNBURST, and after that, SUPERNOVA. Here's why the SUNBURST incident is more alarming than the FireEye’s hack. A security company that got hack is like a doctor who got sick. While everyone is talking about the , “SUNBURST" (or “Solargate”) is more dangerous, which is a cyberattack that required patience, skills, and new thinking. And in all that, it FireEye incident created a wound that we previously overlooked. After discovering the SUNBURST malware, was revealed by security researchers as another backdoor found in SolarWinds software. This malware is a web shell that SUPERNOVA allowed attackers to run arbitrary code on machines running the software's trojanized version. It is already on the news but mostly for technical people. I want to make a more friendly explanation to understand why it is alarming and, more importantly, how to prepare for the next attack. First, they are related. (and SUPERNOVA) is an advanced malware that compromised the Orion® Platform of SolarWinds, an IT monitoring software company, according to a . SUNBURST blog post released 13 Dec 2020 FireEye Wait, why FireEye was the one who released the information, not SolarWinds? In short, you can think of Solarwinds as the “upstream” of the attacks, while When FireEye Inc a well-known cybersecurity company, their investigators immediately try to figure out how attackers got past their defenses. FireEye is one of the “downstream.” ., discovered that they were hacked this month , It is believed that the discovery is by accident. The investigator realized that it wasn’t just FireEye who got attacked but also discovered a vulnerability in a product made by one of its software providers, SolarWinds Corp. Technical Background (Simple Version) According to deep-dive reports published last week by multiple security companies: FireEye Palo Alto Networks Fortinet Microsoft McAfee Symantec Kaspersky US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ( ); CISA On infected systems, hackers compromised SolarWinds’s Orion IT monitoring and management software with a trojanized version of “ SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll.” These embed the SUNBURST malware. Hiding in was then downloaded by booby-trapped updates legitimate software via official update channels over 18,000 computers. Infected machines would collect information about the infected company’s network, then wait 12 to 14 days, and then send it to a remote (C&C). command and control server SUNBURST would when infected for validation: execute the following steps Machine domain name validation. It checks the domain name of the compromised machine to ensure: - It doesn’t contain certain strings. - It is not a SolarWinds domain. - It doesn’t contain the string ‘test’. It validates that no analysis tools, such as WireShark, are running. It also checks to ensure that unwanted security software is not running. As you can see, SUNBURST is malware with intelligence to . If all of the validations are completed, it calls “home” to the attacker and sends information to identify the breached organization. check if it could successfully bypass security measures There are victims across different sectors, such as cybersecurity firms such as FireEye and And the worst part is, the list is still growing. local governments, schools, hospitals, banks, and telecom companies. Like and , big tech companies also confirmed installing the trojanized updates on their internal networks. Fortunately, they also specified that they did not find any evidence of escalation from the attackers. VMware Microsoft From the quality of the threat design, the range of techniques used, and its victims’ nature, this was a for sure. The malware was thoroughly crafted and secretly embedded in upstream suppliers’ legitimate software to finally hack the high-value assets downstream. nation-state scale attack Implications I read reports after reports. These are, from a security design perspective, beautiful attacks. It requires dedications of years of studying of the targets (probably with someone working with/from inside), with patience to find a way to bypass the monitoring of security analysts and skills to hide the code from the developers. Conceivably the most alerting character of the SUNBURST attack was how it propagated itself by This is the perfect storm much more influential by today's security policy's . installing itself as part of SolarWinds’ regular distribution and update operation. automation and fast patching practices The problem of trust again, but in a different thinking Knowing what companies are the SUNBURST victims won’t help explain the extent of the damage done. As the scale of attacks are so extensive and involves too many heterogeneous IT infrastructures from various supply-chains. It does, however, highlight . the fundamental problem of trust Supply-chain attacks rely on trust between suppliers and customers. There is no defense customers can implement against a compromised vendor or supply-chain that transfers legitimate code or services that are, in fact, jeopardized. Regular measures, such as only work if the reference (upstream) isn’t ravaged. If you consider , it is solely a special case of that concept of a chain of trust (signing is built on trust). Though, is more resilient in its community's proportion and interest . checksums and hashes, signed code open-source software but still not immune to such attacks The Mitigations You and your colleagues are probably preparing for the holiday, security professionals should know that this will not be the last one, and hackers will not take Annual leaves. What is more important is to To achieve that, it is a good time for me to re-introduce the Security Mindset when talking about mitigation. learn from it and prepare not to be the next Solarwinds or FireEye. Technology Pillar medium.com Integrating Security Mindset with PPT Framework Reintroduction of The 3 Pillars of Security Concept FireEye released on Github that can identify the SUNBURST malware last week, including the Security Vendors are catching up, and most of them had already released counter-measures for SUNBURST. countermeasures Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and MITRE ATT&CK Techniques. , with collaboration with GoDaddy and Microsoft, released information about a killswitch: In the statement from FireEye As part of FireEye’s analysis of SUNBURST, we that would prevent SUNBURST from continuing to operate. identified a killswitch This killswitch will affect new and previous SUNBURST infections by that are still beaconing to avsvmcloud[.]com. However, in the intrusions FireEye has seen, this actor moved quickly to establish additional persistent mechanisms to access to victim networks beyond the SUNBURST backdoor. disabling SUNBURST deployments To detect malware as such, we may need a dynamic analysis tool like sandboxing in dedicated isolation. But hackers also know about it and developed malware with sandbox-aware validations. It then becomes between offense and defense. a cat-and-mouse game The first and second stages of impacts could be reduced soon with the joined efforts from the communities. Yet, relying on tools and advanced technology is only effective DURING the incident. While I am in line with most security vendors, we need to develop more innovative PDC solutions ; But “Adapt” cannot be put out of the picture. (Prevent — Detect — -Correct) Adaptation helps us respond better next time. In Technology Pillar, as this time, software defects are already presented, the fixes can only be applied to the last attack. How to adapt to a more approving response to the next war is more valuable. That’s why we should shift our focus to the other two pillars. Process Pillar Hackers would try to get Vendors and Partners become the possible targets and as a new way to penetrate. Attacks related to the , reported by access to your company using the already established highways. supply-chain rose 38% since the start of the pandemic Bitdefender (A Security Vendor) . This, in fact, is a wake-up call for security professionals to see what is missing in the past truly. All update processes from vendors should be reviewed, and consider monitoring is in place. Trust between vendors should not be taken for granted. Automation and patching were originally incorporated in the best practice of security operations; efficiency becomes the weapon. Therefore, implementing into security designs become necessary. the concept of “Zero-Trust” it clearly: Palo Alto Networks presented The Zero Trust model recognizes that trust is a vulnerability . Once on the network, users — including threat actors and malicious insiders — are free to move laterally and access or exfiltrate whatever data they are not limited to. Remember, the point of infiltration of an attack is often not the target location. with the development for testing updates and patches should become the norm. Implementing change control in update channels for live files to maintain a higher resilience against external sources. Segmentation from a production network While is resource-demanding, no one will underestimate the importance of that after the SUNBURST. With careful selection of data collection points by focusing on trust, building a tracking system could not be as resource-hungry as traditional log collection methodology. keeping a tap on the trusted processes It is worth considering to reach out to the company’s ecosystem It is as essential as internal procedures to reassess key partners’ risk. to ensure both internal and partners are still meeting all compliance requirements. People Pillar The hackers understand well the IT infrastructures of enterprises and As mentioned in Technology Pillar, the SUNBURST malware was splendidly obfuscated, fastidious in its use of steganography and diversion layers. the psychology of developers and operators. It is why it can bypass layers of security defense in SolarWinds, from hiding from developers' code review to not triggering alerts in behavior analysis of the security operation team. As a result, SUNBURST will produce another round in . No one is immune does not mean we are hopeless. It just likes what we are how we handle the COVID-19. the arms race between hackers and cybersecurity researchers Giving you a pill to cure Covid may not help you prevent the variants, as the virus is mutating. To prevent infections are still the best way to minimize the impact. We thus introduce the concepts of social distancing, frequent hand-washing. We keep washing our hands over the fear of the deadly viral pandemic yet fail to do basic things to our cyber self like security updates and use strong passwords. Regarding cybersecurity, what we need is a new way of thinking and the introduction of “Cyber-Hygiene. Cyber-Hygiene Bringing up the awareness of the importance of cyber hygiene goes a long way. Until you get the security basics right, all the fancy and most advanced technology in the world cannot protect us from cyber-attacks. is no surprise to experienced security professionals. Keeping the attack vector at minimal, continuing education, full visibility to the system, and patching and updating… these are all the basics. This fundamentals-first strategy Meanwhile, we relied heavily on advanced threat detection tools, AI-assisted SOC indicating the usefulness of those techniques, but do not help remove the cybersecurity risks. To put it in simple terms, good Cybersecurity hygiene should be the real “Silver Bullet” that can dramatically reduce the risk of the weakness link in the picture (the people pillar) . Final words Before that, there were attacks such as . SolarWinds Orion infected software updates are only the most current examples of software supply chain attacks. NotPetya and Havex Adversaries and ransomware groups will not wait too long in mounting as they have many vendor targets to choose from. their own software supply-chain attacks Absolutely we need to that bring up security issues in the dynamic and conflicting cybersecurity environment. We need to rethink the reconsider the growth of automated, continual distribution and patch practices balance between friction-less continuous deployment and layered security with verification in mind. Not just in how to fight this war, but in . How to processes with a security mindset, from internal to the vendor and in the complete supply chain. designing for resilience model the chain of trust and verification To cheer you up at the end of this story, we all know that we have had to adapt and grow to overcome the new security problems at every stage in our evolution with self-correction capabilities. The best aspect of SUNBURST, or the latest SUPERNOVA incidents, which will become old news like the others over time, is a highly evolved real tragedy of substantial impact. As a cybersecurity professional, on the side of good guys, we have to evolve ourselves by learning from this cyber-attack campaign, which is well-planned with years of effort; we must devote similar resources to our defenses. Thank you for reading — Happy reading and preparing well not to be the next Solarwinds. To know more about SUNBURST, please refer to and . the official statement CISA Alert (AA20–352A)

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Why the SUNBURST Incident is More Alarming than the FireEye’s Hack

Supply chain finance is one of the concepts countering conflicting interests that arise from buyers extending their payment terms and the suppliers’ desire to receive payment instantly. This model mitigates the risks involved in the financing of digitized global supply chains, by enabling adequate working capital and providing the appropriate liquidity. As such, a supplier, with approved invoices, can receive the full amount owed by sourcing for funds from financial institutions. In turn, the financiers can provide extensions on the payables depending on the credit-worthiness of the buyer in question. The critical appeal of this methodology has propelled the supply chain finance sector in recent years, with revenue generated in 2019 to be between the $50 billion and $75 billion range. estimated However, as by Global Supply Chain Finance Forum, a consortium of industry associations, the occurrence of non-conforming accounting and predatory practices threaten to slow down the growth of the market. noted For one, the influx of regulatory and reporting requirements has created distortions that are too complex for traditional systems to resolve. Likewise, the unethical bullying of small and medium-sized enterprises into unfavorable supply chain finance programs is yet another pain point that could downplay the efficacy of this practice. The lack of transparency of such programs fosters a marginalized market where suppliers are at the mercy of financiers and core enterprises. Notably, this hurdle, coupled with the expensive nature of traditional financial processes, has resulted in high financing costs at the expense of SMEs and suppliers. Even when transparency is not the bone of contention, the authenticity of information necessary for smooth operations are in question. Hence, inadequate capital liquidity stemming from the inefficiencies of clearing, settlement, and reviewing systems often plague the supply chain finance market. Bearing these limiting factors in mind, , one of the solutions focusing on eliminating these challenges, has introduced an enabling DeFi architecture that can bridge the digital and financial requirements of supply chain finance. Amplify I had the opportunity to get a few answers from Eugene Tan, CEO and founder of Amplify. In the interview, Tan discussed the workings of Amplify and its integral role in the vast global supply chain. Below are some excerpts from the interview. Edward Moon: Can you please explain the core function and benefits of supply chain finance to our readers? Supply chain finance is a subcategory of trade finance and exists to assist vendors, especially farmers or even just small and medium manufacturers, who sell goods to buyers. More often than not, the buyers will ask for a long credit period before the payment is made. And during this instance, the suppliers will have to find ways to sustain their cash flow from purchasing of raw materials to production and to delivery. Supply chain financing is there to bridge and mitigate this “break in cash flow cycle” and enables the business not only to survive but also to grow. Eugene Tan: Edward Moon: What are the limiting factors of this approach to supply chain financing? Is it possible to find the right balance for the relationship between suppliers, enterprises, and financiers? Great question. There are several limiting factors in the current system, and these factors are affecting the global economy more than we can imagine. 45% of financing applications by SMEs get rejected — why is this happening? A number of reasons. First, financial institutions stand to make too small margins on SMEs supply chain financing, which is another way to say that it’s too expensive for them to do their due diligence on the vendors. Secondly, shipments are hard to track as well as transactions. Last but not least, the cost of borrowing for the vendors is simply way too high. Of course, we believe that the balance can be found and this is why Amplify exists. Eugene Tan: Edward Moon: How does Amplify enter the fray? Understanding the pain points, Amplify goes straight at them. Digitization, and more specifically decentralization and blockchain technologies, in business applications is the way forward and businesses will sooner or later need to adapt and move along this direction in order to compete in this economy 4.0. We want to build on the infrastructure of blockchain to provide a safe, efficient, and trustworthy process for business to take place. It has to be game-changing and be at the forefront. Eugene Tan: Edward Moon: Why have you and your team opted for DeFi architecture? Will decentralization promote an enabling environment for small businesses as well? Decentralization is an enabler by definition for us. In the financial world, decentralization allows for a level of abstraction that eases the flow of assets while keeping it traceable, affordable, and transparent.  To be more specific the aspects of DeFi that are most relevant for Amplify are: tokenization of assets to be used as collateral, the ability to easily generate capital liquidity via liquidity pools and opportunity to offer important financial products — like borrowing and lending — at a cheaper rate thanks to the reduction of middlemen. Eugene Tan: Edward Moon: Tell us more about the governance of the platform. “Caution” is a good word for our approach. We are not in this with aggressive disruption in mind, believing that any institution that will be involved with Amplify will magically switch to a decentralized system in a snap of fingers. Rather we acknowledge that there will be a learning curve and that our function initially will be that of a bridge between on-chain and off-chain stakeholders. Hence our decision to have governance happening on-chain but with big chunks of that process happening off-chain first. The most important thing for us is to ensure that our governance strategies allow for middlemen to be removed, that it is the primary obstacle for and inclusive supply chain finance. Eugene Tan: Edward Moon: Who are the entities that will oversee credit-rating operations, and how you will ensure the efficacy of the process involved? We are working with strategic partners who are proficient in this respect and have connections with the necessary credit bureau. This credit rating is just for reference as in a Defi environment, it is the community who decides if the loan will be granted. Moreover, Amplify loans put a basis on transactions unless proven the borrower has poor credit history. Eugene Tan:

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"Supply chain financing enables businesses not only to survive but also to grow" - Eugene Tan

In 1998, Kent Beck wrote , a unit testing framework for SmallTalk. Beck later ported this framework to Java as jUnit. sUnit From there, xUnit frameworks spread to the most popular languages.Newer languages, like Golang and Rust, have directly incorporated testing into the compiler and standard library . But unit testing is not the only game in town. There are also integration tests and performance tests and much more. In my mind, though, Integration tests and unit tests are the foundations of resilient software. So today let's look at the differences between the two and when you might prefer one or the other. What Is a Unit? A unit test is a test that is testing the smallest possible pieces of code in isolation. What then is a unit? The term unit comes from mathematics. The number 1 is considered the unit as it is the smallest natural number. It is the smallest positive yet whole number. By analogy, a unit of your source code is the smallest piece of code that is logically separate from the rest of the code. It is a whole piece, a logically distinct area code, and it is the smallest possible such piece. In most programming languages your unit is going to be a function or method call. The great thing about unit testing is that if your code is structured in small independent pieces then writing tests for them can be quite easy. This ease of writing means that unit testing can be done as you develop features. In comparison to other forms of testing, the execution time of unit tests is quite small. This means that you can run unit tests very frequently. As software matures a suite of unit tests is a powerful tool for preventing regressions and easing maintenance costs. Retroactive Unit Testing When considering an effort to add unit tests to existing software, costs, as well as benefits, need to be considered. A key assumption of unit testing is that the software under test easily separates into distinct units. In software written without unit testing in mind, this assumption rarely holds. Adding unit tests to existing software is often a great way to stabilize it and prevent future regressions, but refactoring the code to support easy unit testing may require substantial effort and could even introduce new defects. When considering an effort to add unit tests to existing software, costs, as well as benefits, need to be considered. If you have working code, and if the code rarely needs to change, and if the code is not easily unit-testable the benefits may not warrant the costs. In such cases, consider leaning on integration tests to prevent defects in that area. What Is an Integration Test? If the philosophy of unit testing is based on the insight that testing small independent pieces of code is a great way to prevent regressions then integration tests are based on the understanding that things often go wrong at the edges. The outside world is a messy place, and where it interacts with your code is usually where surprises happen. You can achieve 100% code coverage with your unit tests but still, find your software fails. You might be trying to read a file from the wrong location, or your software might get unexpected output from a service that calls it or it might call a database in an invalid way. Whereas unit tests should be quick to run and numerous, a great integration testing strategy should focus on a lesser number of high impact tests. Those tests should cross all the lines that unit tests won't, writing to the file system, reaching out to external resources, and so on. When Integration Testing Gets Tricky Certain truly external systems may be difficult to integrate into tests. This is because they have side effects in the real world that cannot be undone: A financial transaction, an email send, physically moving a paint robot. Before you give up and sidestep them in your testing, look around for solutions. Many external systems will have a documented way to use them in an integration test. Payment processors often have test credit card numbers, and test users with test email accounts can be set up for testing delivery. The closer integration tests are to real-world interactions the more likely they are to catch problems and provide real value. Service Specific Integration Test Strategies Amazon SES Test email addresses Paypal: Test credit card numbers UPS: Test API mode An E-commerce Example Imagine you are coding a simple e-commerce site, a simple miniature amazon.com. The details matter here so let's assume that you are going to use PostgreSQL as your datastore, PayPal for payments, UPS for shipping, and Amazon Simple Email Service for emailing invoices. Unit Testing: Your unit testing strategy will be testing the logic of your application, in an isolated fashion.  This may include: Testing that the tax calculating logic correctly calculates the taxes for various jurisdictions. Testing that items placed into a cart data structure are correctly added up. Testing that discount codes are properly applied. Each of these areas will likely have several tests. Each test will verify a small piece of functionality. Unit testing's power comes from their number, simplicity, speed, and ease of execution. Integration Testing: Your integration testing on the other hand will focus on testing where your e-commerce code interacts with other systems.  This means testing not just the integration with the data store but also with email sending services, payment services, and more. These may include: Testing that the shipping rates can be retrieved from the external shipping service. Testing that the invoices can be generated and properly sent out. Testing that the order information can be persisted and properly retrieved from the datastore. Testing that the transactions can be sent and properly processed from the payment processor. Each of these will likely be verified by one or two integration tests. These tests will be slower to run and probably involve some setup and teardown steps.  The payoff is that the code coverage of each test will be quite large.  These tests will generate value by catching problems that unit tests could never catch. However, the maintenance cost and execution time will be likely higher. Integration Tests vs Unit Tests So which type of test should be preferred? Neither alone is sufficient.   Both are parts of a comprehensive testing plan. Let's compare them directly: Working Software Over Idealized Testing Each situation is unique and advice that is written based on what works in other contexts should be not followed blindly. Now we understand that unit tests should not touch the file system and that integration tests should only integrate across loose components. But really, splitting testing into two clear-cut categories is a bit reductionist and if we focus only on the definition we lose sight of the goal, which is correct working software. Some very thoughtful developers think . Others claim that unit tests are a wasted effort and coarse grain integration tests offer the most value. unit tests can and should round trip to the database The thing is that each situation is unique and advice that is written based on what works in other contexts should be not followed blindly. A question to keep in mind is what kind of defects would this test catch. If each test is written thoughtfully to improve software reliability, and if tests are removed when they no longer have value than the specific testing approach that delivers the most value for a particular project will be discovered over time. Also published at https://blog.earthly.dev/unit-vs-integration/

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Table of Contents: What is mobile deep linking? App types and benefits from deep linking Mobile buyer’s journey What are the methods of mobile app deep linking? Reasons to use deep linking How to use deep linking in your mobile app? A lot of market players used to ignore new coming trends, such as deep linking for mobile apps, but the evidence so far suggests that there are significant benefits. As of October 2020, of all web traffic comes through mobile phones. Despite the slight decline if we compare to 2019 when we go back to October 2010, this figure was at a meager , so since then mobile browsing has soared in popularity dramatically. 48.62 percent (52.48 percent) 3.81 percent From everyday shopping, booking hotels, ordering food to surfing social media and managing your working space we all use our cell phones as mediators. That’s why digital entrepreneurs have to strive a lot to improve the user experience they produce through their apps, to deliver a smooth workflow, keep visitors for longer periods of time, make them share it with friends and give positive feedback. Mobile deep linking is one of the means (that probably can make a bigger difference than even fonts, designs, themes, features etc.) to engage more admirers, increase conversion and optimize marketing processes. As we know, game-changers lie in details, so this minor improvement can drastically enhance how users interact with your app but few are taking advantage of it. Wanna enter this chamber of secrets? We’re here to guide you through all the rough spots and teach you how to benefit from deep linking and implement it quickly and efficiently. What is mobile deep linking, actually? Without further ado, deep linking is a technique that allows you to funnel users deeply into your app through a specific uniform resource identifier (URL) and take them to a certain content inside the app, not to its web version. Technically, this practice not only guarantees better user engagement but also helps in tracking the most effective campaigns. Deep links will not only open your app but also will use the information in the link to perform a specific action. For example, some of them empower users to generate a deep link and share it with others, and if people don’t have that mobile app downloaded on their phones it redirects them to the AppStore or Play Market. Deep linking allows mobile app developers to push to a specific page within an application versus simply opening it, but its functions cannot be narrowed down just to downloading an app when it’s clicked. In other words, deep linking interconnects mobile apps similar to how the Internet operates with clickable links. When the user clicks a call-to-action (ex. push notification, affiliate links, email link), deep linking is the practice that takes users to a specific area within the app itself instead of simply loading the app. Moreover, the technological structure of mobile apps is not the same as that of websites, it does not provide the ability for mobile apps to navigate effortlessly from one app to another by means of hyperlinks. Yet apps can now be opened to specific pages – deep linking greatly reduces the friction of bringing users to certain sales pages in your app or downloading your app if necessary. Technical requirements for deep links: When setting up deep links in a mobile application, a custom URL scheme has to be built and have it registered with the operating system. Routes to target destinations or checkpoints in the app will be mapped, the same way URLs are mapped to Web pages. Our expert developers can set up Android deep-linking or iOS deep-linking apps rather quickly. Although, in the article we’ll provide some examples of code snippets and documentation needed for creating deep links. Let’s delve deeper into benefits. Look at your app’s user journey. How many pages on average do they explore before actual conversion? Think of every single step as a chance of clients bouncing. Now, imagine landing or forwarding visitors right to the target sales pages they are interested in. By means of deep linking you can get them closer to their end-goal. Sounds tasty? We think so. Here’s a visualisation of the process for your better understanding. It seems to be quite straightforward, but there are some pitfalls you have to be aware of. Let’s find out what types of applications can benefit from deep linking most. How Does Deep Linking Work with Different App Types Shopping Apps While trying to sell a product it’s much easier to forward users right to the target sales page in order to decrease time and number of pages they’re browsing before making an actual purchase. To land buyers directly on a product page, advertised or promoted outside the app you can create direct campaigns for individual bets-selling products for better conversions. It can either be done manually for featured products or by using App’s product feed to create dynamic product-level retargeting similar to what we practice on desktops. Travel Apps When it comes to traveling, deep linking can bring users directly to specific hotels, tickets, or holiday booking sectors. Even a featured hotel deal or specific air sector could be promoted leading users to a page with those offers or hotel details pre-filled. Boarding pass or booked tickets can be opened from the confirmation email sent, allowing for faster access. Food Delivery Apps Based on user preferences, promoted deals or time-limited sales you can provide deep linking for visitors to enhance their experience, prevent declined unsuccessful sessions and help them order quickly and hassle-free. This practice is widely used by entrepreneurs for promoting seasonal menus with exclusive dishes as well. Music Apps App owners can easily push albums or new singles before actual release to leverage the benefits of deep linking. Using targeting or remarketing methods, entrepreneurs are able to engage new visitors and drive them directly to the collections of songs they’re interested in. These approaches and methods increase your chances to catch new customers and keep them coming back. Gaming Apps Today it’s a common practice to promote games through ads in social media. After clicking on the screen, you’ll be immediately redirected to App Store or Play Market (since these ads are shown solely to those users, who don’t have the game installed yet) to download the game and play. But what is the mechanism that turns visitors into customers when it comes to mobile deep linking and how to implement it effectively? Mobile Customer Journey and Deep Linking Let’s point out: we’re all here to know how to leverage deep links to drive better performance to your app and improve user experience across different channels. To sort everything out we have to delve into details of the process and analyze how clients interact with deep links and why it may affect conversion in a positive way. That said, the customer journey is the path a user goes through to find use and share your application. In general, it’s quite similar to common algorithms or sales funnels a client experience when purchasing a product or service with minor differences. Here’s how it works with deep linking. Awareness It’s commonly known that mobile search outweighs desktop searches by an extra 28 billion and shares 40% of people search solely on smartphones, that’s why you have to know certainly how to generate more traffic from mobile devices and see an opportunity where others see difficulties. 52,1% of the global market. Instead of having a single search engine listing, Google indexes deep links from your app and enables you to acquire more users and increase brand awareness as well. Users discover your app in search results, click the link and open it directly through the app instead of an internet browser. Since mobile apps have better interfaces and are more tailored to users’ needs than web pages, you’ll have increased chances to impress visitors this way. Comparison Today’s market is highly competitive, so it’s not enough now for your application to be designed for discoverability and put ease on the user. When top options have been narrowed down, people will want to find the absolute best that suits them personally and compare you to other market leaders. Here’s the point where previous statements come into the limelight as well: customers will investigate pricing, ease of use and features, and (what’s more important!) analyze the experience they get when dealing with different apps. Deep linking allows you to set the users’ focus on your strong sides, benefits, strengths, reviews and make adjustments to customize their path through the app and stay ahead of your competitors. Decision-making The third, but probably one of the most important stages is making a decision and commitment to your app. It’s defined by how you have been compared to other solutions and whether you’re able to stay ahead of the curve or get lost in the crowd. If you opt for contextual deep linking, it allows you to collect more accurate data and tailor an app to your buyer’s persona, aligning their needs with your value proposition, performance and UI/UX you provide. Customer retention Whether the term Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) sounds familiar to you or not, it’s absolutely clear that once you acquire more users through multiple campaigns to have to keep them coming back. When you navigate users back to your application via standard or deferred deep linking from social media, search engines and other platforms it helps you to understand accurately why and how they interact with your software. Mobile App Deep Linking Methods Traditional deep linking Deferred deep linking Contextual deep linking Custom deep links iOS universal links Android app links Reasons to Apply to Deep Linking Enhanced user experience Being an entrepreneur, your prior task is taking them as close to their destination as possible. So if you can bring them to desired pages or specific products through one click and remove any extra steps from their path, why wouldn’t you? By skipping the App Store redirection phase if the app is already installed you make the life of users easier and get them where they want to go, giving them better experience and impression as a result. Improved customer retention and engagement If the reality turns out to be far from customers’ expectations, all new downloads will be lost right after the first visit. According to , after three months of use the average user churn rate was 71% as of 2nd half 2018. Statista The same tendency remains for websites: a lot of people leave it without taking any actions and never come back. That’s why we have to implement various strategies like email options through popups and exclusive content to capture those visitors before they leave. To put it non-technically, deep linking is a practice to bring more engagement, ensure high retention and usage through active personalization to users’ interests. Moreover, powerful potential of deep linking may be doubled if you combine it with heavily tailored ads to activate clients’ loyalty and conversion. Better onboarding process for newcomers Speaking of deferred deep linking approach, application owners are able to acquire more users, since going through the mobile browser version of your application, they will be automatically forwarded to the appropriate download location in the store immediately. When it comes to contextual technique, your tech team can assist you with the onboarding process to welcome newcommers in different ways depending on where they originally downloaded the app from. If you certainly know something about your customers’ online behavior, common experiences and habits, they can be navigated to a specific section or product category automatically. That’s only one scenario from the myriad of personalized strategies you may develop. Increased reengaging potentials According to , retargeting can lift ad engagement rates up to 400%. So now answer the question, do you use its potential to the limit, especially to catch the attention of inactive users? Kenshoo To reengage a segment of users who downloaded your app, viewed product pages, and bounced, you have a chance to retarget them in advertising campaigns and use deferred linking to forward them back to the high-interest specific product pages they have already visited. You can also send them push notifications and navigate to the content of their interests. Intensified marketing capabilities Today the one-fits-all solutions don’t work anymore, so marketers need some extra edge, such as deep linking. Align your strategy with users’ requirements through personalization and retargeting campaigns to get them to the exact point where they dropped off and increase both the sales and revenue strategically. For example, we all are used to the following sales funnel: the user sees your website in search engine results, lands on the home page, navigates to the product section, adds wanted items to the cart, confirms the order, pays and checks out. This scheme might be cut in half successfully by helping customers straightforwardly to sales pages or even use tickets and discounts to deep customers’ loyalty. Reinforced app discoverability Take advantage of free exposure from Google, since all your deep links can be indexed and drive more users to the app. Do not limit your ranks to a homepage solely, your app may be ranged for thousands of queries and enable customers to visit deeper functions and features versus landing on the welcome page. Reliable analytics and insights The effectiveness of marketing campaigns can be significantly improved with the information you get mobile deep linking analytics. You can monitor, track and discover which links are being clicked the most and by whom, what product categories they enjoy the most, then offer a discount for them to align with this behavior. How to Implement Deep Links? The approach to implementing deep links can be two-folded: URL scheme Universal links The first option is more well-known and wide-spread, while Universal links have been implemented by Apple afterwards, to provide the connection between webpage and application through the same link. Here’s how to create React Native deep links both for iOS and Android.

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Mobile Deep Linking for Your React Native App: How to Bootstrap Conversion Easily

Businesses around the world are embracing the potential application of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in building their products. This emerging technology is being used across leading industries such as those seen in the lead image above. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to understand the importance of building customized solutions that cater to the needs of their audience as well as leave a powerful everlasting impact on their users. This can be achieved through “ ”, a technique that is commonly used while designing applications, websites, and other products to increase business visibility and potential reach. branding In this article, I will be showing you how you to apply branding to AR/VR experiences based on my 2+ years of research and careful observation of AR experiences across various industries. Brand Style Guide Branding begins with creating a brand style guide document. A brand style guide is a set of design standards that a company sets, follows and enforces for it’s fleet of products to ensure that they look and feel consistent. Brand Style Guides are also termed as brand guideline document, style guide or brand manual. Brand Style Guide = Colors + Typography + Logo + 3D Models Creating a guide only for 2D experiences( ) does not act as a substitute for 3D experiences. Transitioning from a 2D experience to a 3D experience should be smooth. Incorporate an on-boarding screen before your user begins exploring the 3D experience. View in AR buttons and a screen to show a 3D model in a 3D view are common ways of achieving a smoother transition from a 2D experience to a 3D experience. mobile applications and websites The other articles in the above series are also worth reading! Logos At the time of writing this article, there is no standard set of guidelines for creating 3D logos( ). obj, fbx These standards have been maintained for the past several years, especially when Android and iOS users boomed. Companies like Google and Apple that developed their own marketplaces for Android( ) and iOS(App Store), advice designers to follow these set of guidelines while creating logos for their apps. Ultimately, the apps then get reviewed and released into the app marketplaces, from where users download the apps to their smartphones. Google Play Store There is a high chance that, in the future, there will be a marketplace that lets users download apps to their smart Augmented Reality glasses. That is when the design standards for AR experiences will get more streamlined, especially for logos, or more specifically, 3D logos. Designers have been using tools like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator in the past decade to design logos. Vectary is a new design tool that makes it easy for designers to create 3D logos It is highly recommended that designers learn this tool and come up with different logo formats that will work well for apps that can run on smart AR glasses. 3D Models Character models that appear friendly perform well, especially, if the models add some humor to the overall AR experience. If you already have a mascot or a strong persona for your brand, you should create a 3D model of it and use it in all your marketing campaigns. In 2019, Sony Pictures had developed a mobile app where users could place animated 3D models like Spiderman and Mysterio from the Spiderman: Far from Home movie. It served as an excellent pre-release marketing strategy for the movie. The movie earned 1 billion dollars globally in just 24 days after it was released. Use Custom Materials and Shaders This section of the article is inclined more towards your company’s technical department i.e designers and developers. When detecting plane surfaces, graphic components like materials and shaders should be matched according to the branding style guide of your company. Visualization of planes is commonly done using a default material or simply showing a white 3D grid. Although this common visualization process serves the purpose, it’s not a strong visual representation of your brand. Ask your Technical Artists to create custom materials and shaders rather than using the ones available in ARCore/ARKit( ) by default. or whatever SDK they are using Notice the use of red, blue, yellow and green colors in the . These colors are the same as Google’s brand colors. This app serves as a perfect example of branding in AR/VR experiences using customized materials and shaders in their 3D models. Google ARCore Elements app ADDITIONAL RESOURCES👇 Get my ebook Introduction to UX Design for AR Experiences Also published at: https://medium.com/xrdi/how-to-apply-branding-to-ar-vr-experiences-4a07d5c347f0

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If you're reading this, you probably know what a CI/CD pipeline is. If you don't, no big deal -- it's just yet another acronym. CI/CD short for "continuous integration and continuous delivery", which when we boil it down, simply means that everything between your git commit and a deployment works auto-magically so you can rest your fingers and watch some Netflix. In this example, I'm going to be focusing on deploying a static HTML website, but you really could do this for any sort of web application front-end. We will be highlighting how to do this using AWS, Terraform and Gitlab. Let me just explain real quick why we'd want to do this. First, this makes your life easier. You write the code, you make a commit, push, and your pipeline deletes old files from your S3 bucket, uploads the new files, sets permissions, and then invalidates your CloudFront distribution so that all you have to do is go look at your changes in production. Second, it removes human error. You can't forget to upload files or invalidate a CF if your code does it for you. Third, it speeds up your deployments because you no longer have to go ahead and do things manually. For all of these reasons, I always set up a pipeline for all of my personal and professional projects. Enough of me rambling; let's get to work. Prerequisites A account GitLab An account AWS is installed Terraform A account Keybase Set up the infrastructure I like to make things as easy and reproducible as possible, so we'll be using Terraform to build out the infrastructure. If you don't have Terraform installed, then you didn't read the prerequisites (tsk tsk...) and I'm going to need you to install it. For the website's infrastructure, all we'll need is an S3 bucket and a CloudFront distribution. We'll just use a default CloudFront certificate since we aren't connecting this distribution to our domain name in this example. Before we go any further, I would recommend creating a repository for all of your Terraform configs. It will just keep things more organized if you decide that you want to continue to use Terraform for configuring your infrastructure. Anyways... Create a file named main.tf and paste this into. You can change the bucket_name variable to whatever you want, just make sure you set this correctly later on in another file (you'll see as I've highlighted where it needs to be adjusted in the code snippet). {
  default // provider region }

resource bucket acl policy { : , : [
      { : , : , : , : , : }
  ]
}
EOF

  website index_document error_document }
}

locals s3_origin_id }

resource origin domain_name origin_id }

  wait_for_deployment enabled is_ipv6_enabled default_root_object default_cache_behavior allowed_methods cached_methods target_origin_id forwarded_values query_string cookies forward }
    }

    viewer_protocol_policy min_ttl default_ttl max_ttl }


  price_class restrictions geo_restriction restriction_type }
  }

  custom_error_response error_code error_caching_min_ttl response_code response_page_path }

  viewer_certificate cloudfront_default_certificate }
} variable "bucket_name" = "website.example.com" change this} "aws" { = "us-east-1" "aws_s3_bucket" "bucket" { = "${var.bucket_name}" = "private" = <<EOF "Version" "2012-10-17" "Statement" "Sid" "AddPerm" "Effect" "Allow" "Principal" "*" "Action" "s3:GetObject" "Resource" "arn:aws:s3:::${var.bucket_name}/*" { = "index.html" = "index.html" { = "S3-${var.bucket_name}" "aws_cloudfront_distribution" "s3_distribution" { { = "${aws_s3_bucket.bucket.bucket_regional_domain_name}" = "${local.s3_origin_id}" = false = true = true = "index.html" { = [ "DELETE" , "GET" , "HEAD" , "OPTIONS" , "PATCH" , "POST" , "PUT" ] = [ "GET" , "HEAD" ] = "${local.s3_origin_id}" { = false { = "none" = "redirect-to-https" = 0 = 3600 = 86400 = "PriceClass_100" { { = "none" { = 403 = 0 = 200 = "/index.html" { = true Now run the config create the infrastructure: terraform init
terraform - -approve apply auto Awesome! All of our infrastructure is set up in AWS and now we just need to set up our GitLab runner! Configure our Runner For this part, you'll need a GitLab repository for us to work with, so create a new one before proceeding. Now that you have a repository, let's set up our runner. We're going to use a shared runner from GitLab. They're free to use up for up to 2,000 minutes of deployments per month -- and they're enabled by default. I've found that they're somewhat slow and it stinks that you're throttled at 2,000 minutes, so I usually use my own runners spun up in Kubernetes or on EC2 instances, but let's save that for another tutorial. We need to supply the runner with an AWS IAM user to use to deploy to S3. Create another terraform config with this content: {
  description default // provider region }


resource user pgp_key }

resource name user policy { : , : [
        { : , : [ ], : },
        { : , : [ , , , , ], : [ },
        { : , : , : }
    ]
}
EOF
}

resource name }

output value }

output value } variable "keybase_user" = "A keybase username to encrypt the secret key output." = "dannextlinklabs" change this} "aws" { = "us-east-1" "aws_iam_access_key" "gitlab_ci" { = "${aws_iam_user.gitlab_ci.name}" = "keybase:${var.keybase_user}" "aws_iam_user_policy" "gitlab_ci" { = "gitlab-ci-policy" = "${aws_iam_user.gitlab_ci.name}" = <<EOF "Version" "2012-10-17" "Statement" "Effect" "Allow" "Action" "s3:ListBucket" "Resource" "*" "Effect" "Allow" "Action" "s3:PutObject" "s3:PutObjectAcl" "s3:GetObject" "s3:GetObjectAcl" "s3:DeleteObject" "Resource" "arn:aws:s3:::website.example.com/*" // this needs to be set to your bucket name            ] "Effect" "Allow" "Action" "cloudfront:*" "Resource" "*" "aws_iam_user" "gitlab_ci" { = "gitlab-ci" "access_key" { = "${aws_iam_access_key.gitlab_ci.id}" "secret_access_key" { = "${aws_iam_access_key.gitlab_ci.encrypted_secret}" Make sure you set the keybase user to your own keybase user, because Terraform uses that to encrypt the IAM user's secret access key. This won't work if you don't have a Keybase account, or if you try to use my Keybase account. Run the config. terraform init
terraform - -approve apply auto The terraform config returns an access key and an encrypted secret key for this user. We need to decrypt the secret key with the command (this is why you needed to use your own keybase user). terraform output encrypted_secret | --decode | pgp decrypt base64 keybase Now that we have the access key and the secret key for our GitLab user, we just to supply these variables to our runner by adding them to the variables section in the CI/CD settings. We need to set three variables in GitLab: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID - the access key that Terraform returned us
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY - the access key we just decrypted
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION - us-east-1 to to secret Create our super-duper simple website We have an empty repository set up with our GitLab runner enabled, so l Super cool website! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore
      magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
      consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
      Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. < > html < > body < > h1 </ > h1 < > p </ > p </ > body </ > html Commit that and push it to the repo, and that will be all we need for the "design". Run a Deployment GitLab CI/CD is based around a file called .gitlab-ci.yml. GitLab requires that file to be located in the root of your project. Our file needs to look like this: stages:
  - - variables:
  AWS_BUCKET: website.example.com // change this if necessary
deploy_s3:
  image: python:3.6
  stage: deploy-s3
  tags:
    - - before_script:
    - script:
    - only:
    - deploy_cf:
  image: python:3.6
  stage: deploy-cf
  tags:
    - - before_script:
    - script:
    - - only:
    - deploy-s3 deploy-cf docker gce pip install awscli -q aws s3 sync . / --delete --acl public-read s3: /$AWS_BUCKET/ master docker gce pip install awscli -q export distId=$(aws cloudfront list-distributions --output=text --query ] cut -f1) 'DistributionList.Items[*].[Id, DefaultCacheBehavior.TargetOriginId' | grep "S3-$AWS_BUCKET" | read -r dist; aws cloudfront create-invalidation --distribution-id $dist --paths ; done <<< while do "/*" "$distId" master This gitlab-ci file sets up two stages: deploy-s3, and deploy-cf. The first stage uploads our website to the S3 bucket, and the second invalidates the CloudFront distribution for that bucket in order to present the new changes to our website! This simple configuration is all you need to have a complete CI/CD pipeline for your business' website. Commit and push those changes, and then check out the pipelines section under the CI/CD tab in that project. You should see a deployment running. Success! You have a working CI/CD pipeline. Now, whenever you commit code to the master branch, GitLab will auto-magically upload and distribute your changes! Daniel Slapelis is a Devops Engineer with NextLink Labs, a Pittsburgh-based Devops and full stack engineering company.

Netflix

Delivering Great DevOps & Software

Learn How to Build a CI/CD Pipeline Using GitLab for your Website

Get your recipe books ready to take notes, we will be learning the proper roasting of the legacy software. What is legacy software? Let’s start with the definition of legacy software. Actually, there are many different definitions, but I like this one: legacy software is any software that you are not writing right now. I like this definition because it removes the stigma. If a PR was submitted yesterday and it was merged into production, congratulations, it is now legacy code. Sometimes, engineers are truly afraid to change legacy code. This isn’t unreasonable. The fear can stem from insufficient test coverage, lack of documentation, outdated technology, or a complicated dependency relationship between the modules. Changing it poses a high risk, because the changes can introduce unforeseen regression in all code that depends on it. Often, this code is maintained by a handful of individuals who “know how it works,” and any attempts to introduce new engineers into this circle are accompanied by frustration and high business risks. The company can be caught in a very dangerous trap if a third-party vendor maintains the legacy code, and no one in-house knows how to manage it and/or has no access to it. A business must have a clear, efficient way to manage, change, and understand every piece of their software and technologies. Symptoms Insufficient test coverage (or no tests at all) No project documentation, only a small subset of engineers know how to maintain the code The technology used is outdated Business Risks Adding new features or changing existing features becomes slower Domain knowledge is concentrated into a small group of engineers, increasing the risk factor Perspective Legacy software is everywhere. However, some people automatically view legacy software negatively, picturing a large, outdated system or a solution that's been around for ten plus years. We don't subscribe to that viewpoint, because the fact is, software changes so fast that the tools and even the approach used to construct software can be made obsolete in a matter of months. In which case, it's essential to look at software as something that is evolving, something that needs to be taken care of and kept healthy constantly. However, there are a couple of roadblocks that commonly pop up when you are trying to solve a legacy software issue. One, it's really hard to ask for help in the software development industry. In some ways, that's just a business problem. It's hard to go to a CTO or key stakeholders and advocate for money to hire new engineers solely for rehabilitating a system that may be unhealthy. There's a stigma there, and you have to explain some very technical issues to non-technical people. It's really easy for that conversation to get turned around into, "Why isn't it healthy? It was your job to keep this thing up and running and successful forever, so why would we need to bring in anybody else?" This is unfortunate, because every system needs help at some point. No software program has ever been released without bugs. Sometimes those bugs get quick and dirty fixes, but there needs to be more focus on going back in and rebuilding and finding a true fix. New business features are the biggest driver of legacy code maintenance issues, because it’s often easier to bolt on a quick solution, rather than going back and planning and viewing the entire architecture and looking for the best way to add a new feature. The question is, how do you know when the system needs help? Running proper diligence is key. Sometimes that starts with a simple code audit, if it's a small project. For larger projects, it may require the engineer to sit down and work with the rest of the team and try to do something simple, like build a new feature or resolve a bug. In order to do proper due diligence, you need to understand the development process. Because processes involve people, and human error will always lead to technical problems. Diving into the process is a reasonable step to take to trace back the causes of legacy software issues. Watch and learn how engineers do their jobs. It’s best to start with easy questions about the processes. For example, "How do you gather requirements? Who does acceptance? Where's the staging environment? What's your cadence? How often do you release?” Questions like that are process-oriented at the surface level, but underneath they have a lot of technical underpinnings. If a company releases to production once a month, ask why. If you ask, "What does the release process involve? What does it take to release?” The answer really should be, "We run this command.” There should be a single button or a single command to deploy. There will always be improvements you can make to a codebase. However, that doesn't mean that those changes are needed right now. A big part is understanding where the system is now and how safe it will be to push a new feature into production. This involves asking more questions, such as, “Are there any automated tests? If so, where are they? Is there a CI/CD pipeline? Where is it? How do we run it? How do we evaluate the feedback? Is there a staging environment that exactly mirrors production?” The good news is that, if your legacy software needs improvements, it’s possible to make some really positive strides on a shoestring budget. For example, if the engineering team SSH-es onto the server, it’s better to consider getting off of that and putting CI/CD in place, to get to the point of confident releases. Or at least get to a point where the existing team can test something in a staging environment before it goes out into the world. So, what else can you do in advance to try to avoid some of the legacy software pitfalls? There are plenty of books on keeping the software clean and adhering to software and architectural patterns. Some of these books have been around for decades; others are still being written. But we think the best thing you can do is to continue learning yourself. They say the mark of a good programmer is that they can look back on the software they wrote six months ago and say, "Oh my God, I can't believe how I wrote that.” Constant learning results in constant improvements. From a software standpoint, there needs to be consistent attention and care given to the software. We can recommend using tools like Code Climate, keeping an eye on the software, checking on dependencies, and monitoring software complexity. But, the biggest thing you have to do is continually ensure that adequate time and effort are put into the system to make it healthy and keep it healthy. Full whitepaper The ideas outlined in this article are part of the more comprehensive whitepaper designed to guide CXOs and tech leaders in reducing tech debt using agile software development, avoiding the pitfalls of legacy modernization projects, and effectively managing software developers. If you want to get the full white paper, visit a page to learn more: https://evrone.com/fast-development The Overview: What’s inside? The main blockers of Fast Development Tips to avoid legacy software pitfalls Business risks of using outdated technology and tips for choosing the right solutions Safety risks associated with externalizing functionality The importance of continuously evolving project architecture Speeding up with code quality tools How to reduce tech debt Predicting your ROI Disclaimer: I am a business executive at Evrone , a software design and development company. If you have feedback or ideas, drop me a line at og@evrone.com . Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn , as well.

Trace

What is Legacy Software? - An Introductory Guide

It is not an easy task to keep your business data organized; however, it is an important thing to do. Organizing data includes a lot more than putting all your papers in place and clearing the clutter on your desk. To have your well organized, you have to create a system and procedures for every department available in your company. The following are top ideas on how you can get your small business statistics that can help increase the productivity of the business. statistics Take Control Of Papers in Your Company Did you know that in many companies, the paper is the main cause of disorganization? Well, it is. You must come up with a proper filling system or create a system where you will be storing them if you do not have any. You can begin by sorting out the paper that you need. Then the ones that you do not require can be disposed of. You can then recycle anything recyclable such as newsletters, cards, notes, and magazines. Once you have put your papers in place, you can then create a document management system that will keep your data organized. The paperless office is an even better option for maintaining your data; you need to begin by scanning the important papers. Use The Right Tools to Store Your Data Every company has its favorite apps or tools that they use to store data even though some are not frequently used. As a business person, it is essential that you review your storage tools every once in a while. This can help you decide the apps that you have to get rid of. At the end of the day, businesses want to save any coin that comes on their way. Some storage tools have to be paid for and that is why you have to do away with them rather than paying for them and yet you are not using. Organize Your Computer For the small business, they probably do not have a lot of data to store on the computer. However, it is very easy for the computer desktop to get piled up with the many open icons. Your mailbox can be so full that it gets out of control. There is nothing more frustrating than looking for important information that you know in your mind that you have saved it somewhere in your computer yet you cannot get it. You must have your data well organized on your computer to avoid wasting a lot of time while searching for data. Did you know that having too many programs open can slow down your computer? Well, they can hence affect the productivity of your company. You can clean up your computer by ensuring that you clear up anything that is in the desktop except the trash bin. Afterwards, you can come up with the digital filling system and name everything that you are saving. It will give you an easy time to navigate around your computer and easily get any document that you may require. Ensure that you frequently update your software. You should have your system update itself automatically since it is very easy to forget to update, especially if your computer needs to be updated manually.

Keep

Mind

Paid

Organizing Your Business Statistics to Achieve Success

Fellow hustlers, I have been a long admirer of the concept of passive income from side hustles like blogging. But like many, I kept procrastinating due to a lot of factors like self-doubt, not knowing where to start, laziness ¯\_( )_/¯. I realized nothing’s gonna happen until I take some action. ツ Below, I outline my own personal journey, or more like a hands-on approach, towards building my first website and taking that leap towards financial freedom. Beware, this is a work in progress so I will keep you posted with my experiments, pitfalls to look out for, the moments of "aha", and the last but not the least - some tangible results for my efforts. The Goal Create a passive income of 500$ per month in a span of 6 months It is very important to set some goal and I prefer to keep mine realistic. For me, the goal is to create a passive income of 500$ per month in a span of 6 months. That may not look like much, but I am damn sure the lessons I learn along the way will be worth a whole lot more. It's not about the money for me, I am more interested in trying out different strategies and document my steps along the way. The Project — Letter Designer Let’s get down to business. The project I am going to undertake is a blog. The plan is to make available the best templates for various business and professional letters. These letter templates can be edited right inside the browser and then exported to PDF. You may be wondering how I decided on this particular project? If not, you should because choosing a niche is the first and important step. Let’s dive into details some other time. The blogging platform that I am going to use for the blog is WordPress. The reason is that it is one of the best out of the box solutions for a beginner to start blogging. They have a lot of ready-made themes to choose from. After all, a custom solution requires huge upfront time and money investment. A comparison of existing platform vs custom solutions is in itself a huge topic of discussion. Let’s keep it for another day. I am hosting the WordPress site on DigitalOcean. To keep the initial expenses low, I have started with the smallest possible droplet. They have very reasonable hosting prices starting at just 5$/month and you can get a domain for just 10$/year. In my opinion, the approach to any new website can be broken down to the following: — How to decide what to blog about? — How to generate content? — How to drive traffic? — How to make some bucks? 1. Niche Selection Strategy 2. Content Strategy 3. Traffic Strategy 4. Monetization Strategy Stay tuned to go on this amazing journey with me and let’s learn together.

Different

Starting A Blog for Some Extra Side Income

Obtaining reliable stock data can be challenging, especially if you are just starting. Fortunately, finding the best stock API is easy, and we have compiled them in a list. We have checked all of them, based on specific parameters to find the best stock data API and what APIs professional traders are using. You don't need to try all of these APIs again, and you just have to figure out what works best for your needs. There are 6 main data market providers to be reviewed: Twelve Data Polygon.io IEX Cloud Alpha Vantage Intrinio Xignite Why you need stock API? Stock data API is the foundation for almost all of the fields related to finance. Starting from trading and up to scientific research projects. Stock APIs save you from the tedious process of obtaining the exchange licenses (that might come at a very high cost!), data cleaning, and ease of access with programming languages. It gets better when you are a professional user who needs a reliable service to adapt to your increasing requirements. Therefore, we have identified the following 7 criteria to compare against, and they will be used to compound the final score from 0 to 5: Data quality Real-time data Stock global coverage Alternative data: forex, crypto, ETFs, indices, etc. Streaming data via WebSocket or SSE Technical indicators Price reasonability 1. Twelve Data Overall score: 4.97 The leader of our ranking is the Twelve Data. The data is obtained from the stock exchanges and aggregated into various intervals from 1 minute to 1 month. All the values are obtained in real-time and have a swift response time averaging 170 ms. All US markets are covered (including OTC), as well as others such as Canada, India, UK, Euronext, Germany, Brazil, other European, Latin American, and Asian . exchanges This API also covers forex pairs, cryptocurrency, ETFs, funds data, and indices. Stock data, as well as alternative data, can be streamed using WebSocket that are useful for charting applications. An extensive collection of over 100 technical indicators is provided, making it a good suit for comprehensive technical analysis. The free tier provides up to 800 requests per day. Unlimited daily access to all data starts from $29.00 if paid monthly and $24.00 if paid annually. 2. Polygon.io Overall score: 4.65 Having its servers located inside the Equinix data center, the quality and reliability of Polygon's data for US markets are proven to be on the highest level. Data is updated in real-time at very low latency and can be compounded into custom intervals. Unfortunately, Polygon does not cover any international markets apart from the United States. However, some currencies and cryptos are supported in the separate plans. WebSocket feed can be either streamed delayed or real-time, depending on the subscription plan. There are no technical indicators supported, making it necessary to perform calculations on the client-side. Polygon will be the right choice for those who seek US exchange specific data and is willing to do a lot of additional code. The first premium package starts at $99 monthly, without yearly billing plans. 3. IEX Cloud Overall score: 4.58 IEX Cloud is a provider with the most extensive collection of data endpoints ranging from OHLC to SEC filings. The plan pricing calculation fee is obscure at first glance since all of the endpoints have different "weights," and you have to calculate in advance the anticipated usage. Overall the data quality is good, although only the US markets are covered. There is plenty of alternative data, including the forex and the crypto markets. However, it was devasted that no indices are included. Real-time streaming is supplied via Server Send Events (SSE) as an alternative to WebSocket. Many technical indicators are supported as well as necessary mathematical calculations. Apart from the starting plan, which is suitable for testing, the next tiers come at the cost of $19, $59, and $699 monthly, depending on the number of allocated messages. 4. Alpha Vantage Overall score: 4.01 Alpha Vantage used to be one of the first companies that appeared on the market after the Yahoo Finance API shutdown being a decent alternative for the users for a while. At the moment, their data quality seems to be fair, although they stopped providing real-time data for most of the essential stocks, e.g., AAPL. In the documentation, it is not mentioned that international markets are supported. However, if you type in the ticker symbol (perfectly matching Yahoo's format), you should be able to get it. Forex and cryptocurrencies are presented. At the moment, Alpha Vantage does not support WebSocket, and after contacting their support, they have confirmed that there are no plans to introduce it in the future. Fundamental technical indicators are supported. The prices begin at $29.99 monthly for 30 API requests per minute. 5. Intrinio Overall score: 3.97 Intrinio offers exchange specific data that might differ from the National Best Bid and Offer price (NBBO), which other data providers offer. Data could be accessed in real-time or be 15 min delayed, which comes at a significantly reduced fee. Initially, only the US data is covered. Upon individual request, access to international markets may be facilitated via third-parties. No crypto data is presented. However, it does have forex, fundamentals, and sec fillings. Several data feeds are streamable via WebSocket, such as TSX Level 1 data. However, it seems to be not the main specialization of Intrinio. A pretty decent collection of technical indicators is presented. Fees are calculated based on your use case and can quickly reach a couple of thousands. 6. Xignite Overall score: 3.86 This company primarily focuses on enterprise clients. A large number of data is provided directly from stock exchanges. Covers international stock markets, as well as ETFs, mutual funds, and indices. Xignite does not support forex or cryptos. Data could be streamed via SSE. Technical indicators are not presented. Prices are available upon request, and after consultation with a Xignite representative, could be in a range from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. Conclusion Stock data providers on that list are curated and checked by industry professionals. They give you insides that otherwise would take months or even years. Your next move would be to choose the provider that does fulfill your usage intent and the budget. Most of the providers have free or trial access. Try them out. See what you need to improve your existing system or build a completely new one. Your success falls on you. Take that next step.

Polygon

fees

6 Stock APIs to Use in 2021 [Review]

Bitfinex, , has more than 180 open-source repositories in GitHub–from a to . The most sophisticated trading toolkit developed by Bitfinex, though, is Honey Framework with many useful packages such as , , , and . one of the largest cryptocurrency digital exchanges Tezos JS library UI goodies bfx-hf-ui bfx-hf-strategy bfx-hf-indicators bfx-hf-strategy-exec In this tutorial, we'll use the Honey Framework ecosystem to define and backtest a trend trading strategy on historic data for the past 500 days. Requirements Let's install the libraries we're going to use. First, run the following command to install Honey Framework libraries. npm install bfx-hf-strategy bfx-api- bfx-hf-util bfx-hf-indicators node -models We'll also need the following packages to display the trades on the command line. npm install cli- colors table Eventually, install library as well to retrieve the data from Bitfinex API. node-fetch npm install node -fetch Strategy We use a simple trend trading strategy based on the following logic: position if the price is between -1 SD and -2 SD Bollinger Bands® and short SMA is below the long SMA. Open short position if the candle is green and more than 75% of its body crossed above the -1 SD band. Close short position if the price is between +1 SD and +2 SD bands and the short simple moving average is above the long simple moving average. Open long position if the candle is red and more than 75% of its body crossed below +1 SD band. Close long The logic behind the strategy is fairly straightforward: if the price is between  -1 SD and +1 SD bands (No Man's Land), we close our position. If the price is in the sell-zone (between the lower bands) and the market trend is bearish (short SMA is below long SMA), we open a short position. On the other hand, if the price is between upper bands and the market is bullish, we open a long position (in other words, we only trade in direction of the overall trend). Check to find more information about trend trading based on Bollinger Bands®. this article from Investopedia Code Let's get our hands dirty. First, create that defines a dummy strategy. strategy.js { SYMBOLS, TIME_FRAMES } = ( ); { BollingerBands, SMA } = ( ); HFS = ( ); .exports = HFS.define({ : , : ,
    symbol,
    tf, : { : BollingerBands([ , ]), : BollingerBands([ , ]), : SMA([ ]), : SMA([ ]),
    },
  }); // strategy.js const require "bfx-hf-util" const require "bfx-hf-indicators" const require "bfx-hf-strategy" module ( ) => { symbol = SYMBOLS.BTC_USD, tf = TIME_FRAMES.ONE_DAY } id "bbands" name "bbands" indicators bbands2 new 20 2 bbands1 new 20 1 smaShort new 25 smaLong new 100 Let's break it down. We define the default symbol (BTCUSD) and timeframe (one day). Then, we define the indicators we're going to use. We need two Bollinger Band® bands, both in the period of 20 days. We give a multiplier of 2 to the first (±2 standard deviations) and a multiplier of 1 to the second one  (±1 standard deviations). In the end, we add two SMAs, one in a 25-day period (short SMA) and the other in a 100-day period (long SMA). to find a list of all indicators available in Bitfinex Honey Framework. Check this We can enter the market now. The strategy we defined accepts five handler methods to update positions and make trades on each event: - called when no position is open onEnter - called when a long position is open onUpdateLong - called when a short position is open onUpdateShort - called when any position is open onUpdate - called on every tick onPriceUpdate Event handlers receive two parameters, (the strategy context) and (point-in-time data), they look for trade opportunities and update if there's a trade to be made. state update state Enter Into the Market Let's define the strategy to enter the market. First, add to encapsulate the reusable logic. Define in it to extract Bollinger Band® bands values from the state. helper.js getBBands HFS = ( ); getBBands = { indicatorValues = HFS.indicatorValues(state); { bbands1, bbands2 } = indicatorValues; { : plusOne, : minusOne } = bbands1; { : plusTwo, : minusTwo } = bbands2; {
    plusOne,
    plusTwo,
    minusOne,
    minusTwo,
  };
}; .exports = {
  getBBands
} // helpers.js const require "bfx-hf-strategy" const ( ) => state const const const top bottom const top bottom return module returns a map of all indicators defined in the strategy. We then extract the Bollinger Bands objects from them, which include three values: top, bottom, and middle. Eventually, the method returns ±1 and ±2 SD bands. indicatorValues Define another method to extract uptrend/downtrend data from the state. checkIfIsUptrend = { indicatorValues = HFS.indicatorValues(state); { smaShort, smaLong } = indicatorValues; isUpTrend = smaShort > smaLong; isUpTrend;
}; .exports = {
  getBBands,
  checkIfIsUptrend,
} // helpers.js /*
getBBands here
*/ const ( ) => state const const const return module The method simply checks if short SMA is above long SMA and infers the trend from it. Add . We'll use it to find trade opportunities. look_for_trade.js HFS = ( ); { getBBands, checkIfIsUptrend } = ( ); .exports = (state = {}, update = {}) => { { price, : timestamp } = update; orderParams = { : timestamp, : ,
    price,
  }; bands = getBBands(state); isBuyZone = bands.plusTwo >= price && price >= bands.plusOne; isSellZone = bands.minusTwo <= price && price <= bands.minusOne; isUptrend = checkIfIsUptrend(state); (isSellZone && !isUptrend) { HFS.openShortPositionMarket(state, orderParams);
  } (isBuyZone && isUptrend) { HFS.openLongPositionMarket(state, orderParams);
  } state;
}; // look_for_trade.js const require "bfx-hf-strategy" const require "./helpers" module async const mts const mtsCreate amount 1 const // between +1 SD and +2 SD from mean, the trend is up const // between -1 SD and -2 SD from mean, the trend is down const const if return if return return The method checks if the price is in the trade zone (between +1 and +2 SD or -1 SD and -2 SD bands). If the price is in the sell zone and the trend is bullish, it opens a short position, and if the price is in the sell zone and the trend is bearish, it opens a long position. If none is true, it simply returns the previous state. Notice that we use Honey Framework helper functions to open positions. You can find the list of all helper functions . Add to use the function we just defined to handle onEnter events. here on_enter.js lookForTrade = ( ); .exports = (state = {}, update = {}) => {
  newState = lookForTrade(state, update); newState;
}; // on_enter.js const require "./look_for_trade" module async await return Now add the handler to the strategy. on_enter = ( ); .exports = HFS.define({ onEnter: on_enter,
  }); // strategy.js /* other imports */ //  handlers const require "./on_enter" module ( ) => { symbol = SYMBOLS.BTC_USD, tf = TIME_FRAMES.ONE_DAY } /*
    other strategy properties
    */ Update Positions Well done! We've just exposed ourselves to the market. But we should add other handlers to react to market updates while we have an open position. Define another method in to check if 75% or more of the candle body crossed the inner bands. helpers.js HFS = ( ); checkIfShouldClose = { candleBody = .abs(close - open); closeToNoMansLandDist =
    position == ? close - bands.minusOne : bands.plusOne - close; shouldClose = closeToNoMansLandDist / candleBody >= ; shouldClose;
}; .exports = {
  getBBands,
  checkIfIsUptrend,
  checkIfShouldClose,
}; // helpers.js const require "bfx-hf-strategy" /*
 Other methods
*/ const ( ) => close, open, bands, position const Math const "short" // check if 75% of candle body entered to the No Man's Land. // see: https://www.investopedia.com/thmb/AtmrjGx96Tbz8f1cfnGOGzpqHqU=/2378x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/dotdash_Final_Using_Bollinger_Bands_to_Gauge_Trends_Oct_2020-02-f76c639116734ccfb8493dce32ed149a.jpg const 0.75 return module calculates the candle body height by finding the distance between open and close values. Then, it checks how much of the candle entered the No Man's Land. If more than 75% of the candle body is in between two inner bands, it closes the position. checkIfShouldClose It's time to create . on_long.js HFS = ( ); lookForTrade = ( ); { getBBands, checkIfShouldClose } = ( ); .exports = (state = {}, update = {}) => { { candle, : timestamp, price } = update; { open, close } = candle; orderParams = { : timestamp, : ,
    price,
  }; bands = getBBands(state); isCandleGreen = open <= close; (isCandleGreen) state; isCloseAbove1Std = bands.plusOne < close; (isCloseAbove1Std) state; shouldClose = checkIfShouldClose(close, open, bands, ); (!shouldClose) state; newState = HFS.closePositionMarket(state, orderParams); newState = lookForTrade(newState, update); newState;
}; // on_long.js const require "bfx-hf-strategy" const require "./look_for_trade" const require "./helpers" module async const mts const const mtsCreate amount 1 const const if return const if return //  check if 75% of candle body is below 1 std const "long" if return let await //  look if should open short await return The method we just defined checks if: The candle is green. The candle is above the No Man's Land (i.e., the closing value is above the +1 SD band). Less than 75% of the candle is in the No Man's Land. And if any of these are correct, it doesn't touch the position. Otherwise, it closes the long position using helper method and then calls to check if a short position should be opened. Now, let's define our strategy while shorting. closePositionMarket lookForTrade HFS = ( ); lookForTrade = ( ); { getBBands, checkIfShouldClose } = ( ); .exports = (state = {}, update = {}) => { { candle, : timestamp, price } = update; { open, close } = candle; orderParams = { : timestamp, : ,
    price,
  }; bands = getBBands(state); isCandleRed = open >= close; (isCandleRed) state; isCloseBelowStd = bands.minusOne > close; (isCloseBelowStd) state; shouldClose = checkIfShouldClose(close, open, bands, ); (!shouldClose) state; newState = HFS.closePositionMarket(state, orderParams); newState = lookForTrade(newState, update); newState;
}; // on_short.js const require "bfx-hf-strategy" const require "./look_for_trade" const require "./helpers" module async const mts const const mtsCreate amount 1 const const if return const if return //  check if 75% of candle body is below 1 std const "short" if return let await //  look if should open long await return checks if: on_short.js The candle is red. The candle is below the No Man's Land (i.e., the closing value is below the -1 SD band). Less than 75% of the candle is in the No Man's Land. And if all above are false, it closes the short position and looks for new trade opportunities. That's it. We've finished defining the strategy. Add the new event handlers to . Then we can start testing the algorithm. strategy.js on_enter = ( ); on_long = ( ); on_short = ( ); .exports = HFS.define({ onEnter: on_enter, : on_long, : on_short,
  }); // strategy.js /* other imports */ //  handlers const require "./on_enter" const require "./on_long" const require "./on_short" module ( ) => { symbol = SYMBOLS.BTC_USD, tf = TIME_FRAMES.ONE_DAY } /* 
      Other strategy properties
    */ onUpdateLong onUpdateShort Test on Historical Data Add to retrieve historic data from Bitfinex API. get_data.js ; fetch = ( ); url = ; get_500_days = { date = (); end = date.getTime();

  date.setDate(date.getDate() - ); start = date.getTime(); { start, end };
}; .exports = { { { start, end } = get_500_days(); pathParams = ; queryParams = ; req = fetch( ); response = req.json(); response;
  } (err) { .log(err);
  }
}; // get_data.js "use strict" const require "node-fetch" const "https://api-pub.bitfinex.com/v2/" const => () let new Date const 500 const return module async ( ) function getData { symbol, tf } try const const `candles/trade: : /hist` ${tf} ${symbol} const `start= &end= &limit=500` ${start} ${end} const await ` / ? ` ${url} ${pathParams} ${queryParams} const await return catch console fetches OHLC data of the past 500 days, given a symbol and a timeframe.  You can modify the parameters to meet your needs. Find more information about Bitfinex API's public endpoint for candle data . getData here Add to define the execution logic. exec.js process.env.DEBUG = ; { Candle } = ( ); { SYMBOLS, TIME_FRAMES } = ( ); logTrades = ( ); HFS = ( ); getData = ( ); BBandsStrategy = ( ); market = { : SYMBOLS.BTC_USD, : TIME_FRAMES.ONE_DAY,
}; getCandles = () => { rawCandleData = getData(market); candles = rawCandleData
    .sort( a[ ] - b[ ])
    .map( ({
      ...new Candle(candle).toJS(),
      ...market,
    })); candles;
}; run = () => { candles = getCandles(); strategyState = BBandsStrategy(market); ( i = ; i < candles.length; i += ) {
    strategyState = HFS.onCandle(strategyState, candles[i]);
  }

  logTrades(strategyState);
}; {
  run();
} (e) { .error(e);
} // exec.js "*" const require "bfx-api-node-models" const require "bfx-hf-util" const require "bfx-hf-strategy/lib/debug/log_trades" const require "bfx-hf-strategy" const require "./get_data" const require "./strategy" const symbol tf const async const await // attach market data const ( ) => a, b 0 0 ( ) => candle return const async const await let for let 0 1 await try catch console method retrieves the data and attaches market information to them. During live execution, we may receive data from multiple sources for different symbols and different timeframes, thus, it's necessary to attach this information to raw data. getCandles Then, gets candle data and the strategy and passes them to helper method that orchestrates relevant strategy event handlers for the new price action data. Eventually, logs the results using function. run onCandle run logTrades Let's test the algorithm. Open the command line in the project's directory and run the following command. node exec The result will be something like this: You can find a list of all positions along with the amount, price, fee, and profit/loss figure of each one. At the bottom, general information about the strategy is logged. The bot has made 37 trades, opened 19 positions, and gained 3960.91$. You can modify and change how it displays the results. helper function log_trades.js That's it! We've defined and backtested a simple trading strategy using Bitfinex Honey Framework toolkit. The example pieces of code in the article are available . here

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PlusOne

Define and Backtest Crypto Algo Trading Strategies With Bitfinex Honey Framework Toolkit

HackerNoon Tech Stories Archive December 29th, 2020

@samwalpoleSam Walpole

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Leia Ruseva

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Justin

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Nataraj

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Augustina

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Mario Alves

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Zen Chan

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Edward Moon

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Adam Gordon Bell

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alinaterebetska

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Rajat Kumar Gupta

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NextLink Labs

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Oleg

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Bharath Yeddula

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du5y

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Ali Akhtari