In thermodynamics, the compressibility factor (Z), also known as the compression factor or the gas deviation factor, is a correction factor which describes the deviation of a real gas from ideal gas behavior behavior. The calculations below can be used to find the inlet or the outlet compressibility factor by using the values for temperature and pressure. T and P are the temperature and pressure in units of °R and psia, respectively. The value calculated for Z should not be greater than zero. The compressibility factor has no units of measure. Below are the steps and the equations to calculate the compressibility factor for a given gas based on the Redlich-Kwong equation of state: Step 1: Calculate the Reduced temperature as: where T and Tc have the units of °R. tr = temperature / tc tr # Reduced temperature # T and Tc have the units of °R. : def reduced_temperature (temperature, tc) return The reduced temperature of a fluid is its actual temperature, divided by its critical temperature. A critical point (or critical state) is the end point of a phase equilibrium curve. At the critical point, defined by a critical temperature Tc and a critical pressure Pc, phase boundaries vanish. Step 2: Calculate the Reduced pressure as: where P and Pc have the units of psia. pr = pressure / pc pr # Reduced pressure # P and Pc have the units of psia : def reduced_pressure (pressure, pc) return The reduced pressure is defined as its actual pressure divided by its critical pressure. Step 3: Calculate the Redlich-Kwong constants as: a = * (pr / tr ** ) a b = * (pr / tr) b # Redlich-Kwong constant A : def redlich_kwong_constant_a (pr, tr) 0.42748 2.5 return # Redlich-Kwong constant B : def redlich_kwong_constant_b (pr, tr) 0.08664 return In thermodynamics, the Redlich–Kwong equation of state is an empirical, algebraic equation that relates temperature, pressure, and volume of gases. The Redlich–Kwong equation is adequate for calculation of gas phase properties when the ratio of the pressure to the critical pressure (reduced pressure) is less than about one-half of the ratio of the temperature to the critical temperature (reduced temperature). Step 4: Calculate the Cubic constants as: alpha = ( / ) * ( * (a - b - b ** ) - ) alpha beta = ( / ) * ( + ( * (a - b - b ** )) - ( * a * b)) beta # Cubic constant α : def cubic_constant_alpha (a, b) 1 3 3 2 1 return # Cubic constant β : def cubic_constant_beta (a, b) 1 27 -2 9 2 27 return Step 5: Calculate the Discriminant as: d = (beta ** / ) + (alpha ** / ) d # Discriminant : def discriminant (alpha, beta) 2 4 3 27 return Step 6: Calculate the Solution constants as: a_star = np.cbrt((-beta / ) + np.sqrt(d)) a_star b_star = np.cbrt((-beta / ) - np.sqrt(d)) b_star theta = math.acos(-sign(beta) * (math.sqrt((beta ** / ) / (-alpha ** / )))) theta # Solution Constant A* : def solution_constant_a_star (beta, d) 2 return # Solution Constant B* : def solution_constant_b_star (beta, d) 2 return # Solution Constant Theta : def solution_constant_theta (beta, alpha) 2 4 3 27 return SIGN(β) is calculated as below: beta > :
        sign_beta = beta < :
        sign_beta = :
        sign_beta = sign_beta # SIGN(β) # If β > 0, SIGN(β) = 1 # If β = 0, SIGN(β) = 0 # If β < 0, SIGN(β) = -1 : def sign (beta) if 0 1 elif 0 -1 else 0 return Step 7: Calculate the Trial Roots as: where the cosine term is in radians, not degrees. z1 = a_star + b_star + / z1 zi = (-( / ) * (a_star + b_star)) + (( / ) * i) zi zi1 = ( * math.sqrt(- alpha / ) * math.cos((theta / ) + (i * ((math.pi * ) / )))) + ( / ) zi1 # Trial Root Z1 : def trial_root_z1 (a_star, b_star) 1 3 return # Trial Root Zi # for i = 2, 3 : def trial_root_zi (a_star, b_star, i) 1 2 1 3 return # Trial Root Zi+1 # for i = 1, 2, 3 : def trial_root_zi1 (alpha, theta, i) 2 3 3 2 3 1 3 return Critical Constants for Selected Gases are given below: gas_critical_constants = { : [ , , ], : [ , , ], : [ , , ], : [ , , ], : [ , , ], : [ , , ], : [ , , ]
    } gas_critical_constants.get(gas_name) : def table_gas_critical_constants (gas_name) """
    Retrieves gas critical constants table data
    :param gas_name: Gas name
    :type gas_name: str
    :return: Gas critical constants data
    :rtype: list
    """ "Air" 238.56 549.11 28.965 "Carbon Dioxide" 547.60 1070.600 44.011 "Hydrogen" 59.82 190.82 2.02 "Methane" 343.90 673.100 16.04 "Nitrogen" 227.25 492.420 28.13 "Propane" 666.00 618.700 44.09 "Typical Natural Gas" 360.00 777.373 17.185 return If Discriminant (D) is lesser than zero, Solution constant (θ) and Trial roots (Zi+1 for i = 1, 2, 3) will be calculated. The max of the Trial roots will be calculated as compressibility factor (Z). If Discriminant (D) is greater than or equal to zero, Solution constants (A* and B*) will be calculated. On that if D is equal to zero, then Trial roots (Z1 and Zi for i = 2, 3) will be calculated. The max of the Trial roots will be calculated as compressibility factor (Z). But if D is greater than zero, then Trial root (Z1) will be calculated and it will give the compressibility factor (Z). Below is the program using all the above equations and steps for the compressibility factor calculation for a given gas based on the Redlich-Kwong equation of state: values = table_gas_critical_constants(gas)
    tc = values[ ]
    pc = values[ ]
    tr = reduced_temperature(temperature, tc)
    pr = reduced_pressure(pressure, pc)
    a = redlich_kwong_constant_a(pr, tr)
    b = redlich_kwong_constant_b(pr, tr)
    alpha = cubic_constant_alpha(a, b)
    beta = cubic_constant_beta(a, b)
    d = discriminant(alpha, beta) d < :
        theta = solution_constant_theta(beta, alpha)
        z1 = trial_root_zi1(alpha, theta, )
        z2 = trial_root_zi1(alpha, theta, )
        z3 = trial_root_zi1(alpha, theta, ) :
        a_star = solution_constant_a_star(beta, d)
        b_star = solution_constant_b_star(beta, d) d == :
            z1 = trial_root_z1(a_star, b_star)
            z2 = trial_root_zi(a_star, b_star, )
            z3 = trial_root_zi(a_star, b_star, ) :
            z = trial_root_z1(a_star, b_star) z
    z = max(z1, z2, z3) z : def compressibility_factor_calc (gas, temperature, pressure) """
    Calculates compressibility factor
    :param gas: Gas name
    :type gas: str
    :param temperature: Temperature
    :type temperature: float
    :param pressure: Pressure
    :type pressure: float
    :return: Compressibility factor(z)
    :rtype: float
    """ 0 1 if 0 1 2 3 else if 0 2 3 else return return Cover image from Compressibility Factor, ScienceDirect Hope this helps. Happy Coding!

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The year 2020 has passed but companies continue to face an infinite number of challenges. Some of them strive to survive, while others keep flourishing. What’s the trick and how do you minimize the risks of these extraordinary times? Since the beginning of the pandemic, businesses are in need of remote and effective solutions now more than ever before. People say that with the offshoring model, both small start-ups and big corporations manage to maintain a steady cash flow without the loss of product quality. Let's take a closer look at the existing trends and forecasts to see whether an offshoring industry is indeed immune to the crisis. The Turbulence of the New Reality With the introduction of the worldwide quarantine, global economies shrank rapidly. Business transformations that were supposed to take years happened overnight. that some trends in doing business were probably . The pandemic forced the rapid for customer and onboard interaction. In fact, the adoption of new channels of communication is years ahead of where they were when previous research was conducted. Among other massive shifts that are going to become a is the increase in . McKinsey Global Survey of executives reports transformed forever embrace of digital technologies “new norm” remote working, the usage of cloud technologies, and spending on data security The labor market across different sectors and geographies was severely affected as well. Only in the United States, became unemployed by April. Our lifestyles changed dramatically due to social distancing measures and travel restrictions. It's not a surprise that the tourism and leisure service industries suffer the most. Nevertheless, don’t assume that the software development industry is fully resistant to the challenges introduced by COVID-19. 20.5 million people On the other hand, there are some positive trends. reports that spending on IT services is expected to . Corporations such as have eased difficulties induced by the pandemic and thus have made a killing on the market. However, it wasn’t the same for the proponents of traditional team models and opponents of remote work. Statista increase by 4.1% in 2021 Zoom, Team Viewer, Microsoft, and Apple These groups were the first to feel the turbulence of the new reality. What's Next? In the updated business environment, offshoring is more relevant than ever before. It stands for delivering some of your company’s operations to specialists abroad. According to reported data , the market size of the BPO industry in the United States has increased 1.6% per year on average between 2016 and 2021. The present patterns are going to continue and this year the industry is expected to increase by 1.9%. Currently, it is estimated to be worth around $135.5B by revenue. Despite the numerous limits and restrictions 2020 brought, it opened a bunch of opportunities for the fields of online education, internet security, and communications. IT businesses ought to review their strategies in accordance with the new emerging demands. A few years earlier, offshoring as a popular business practice was aimed mostly at reducing costs and lowering salaries by transferring some functions to countries with cheaper economies. In the unprecedented times of sudden changes in workforce and product volume, this move acquires new meaning. Survive Against the Odds Offshoring practices helped companies of distributed teams and due to well-known financial benefits. In addition, diffused offshoring locations, resources, and team members served as in times of crisis. That’s because geographic dispersion is considered to be a successful risk management plan, which works in case of epidemics, natural disasters, and probable apocalypse. The year 2020 taught us to be prepared for any kind of , remember? to keep the natural workflow avoid massive layoffs risk mitigation force majeures Today, remote work is not only a means of social distancing but also . Because of trustful partners abroad, who are familiar with the WFH concept, as well as developed software infrastructure, companies managed to stay marvelously productive. Management of remote processes or establishment of effective means of communication was not a big deal, thanks to the peculiarities of an offshoring business model. All in all, played a key role in business survival and growth. a productive way of doing business the expertise of providing high-quality services in remote mode It would be unfair to highlight only the and neglect the . In some cases, things are not going that smoothly. Since the beginning of the lockdown in March, as a popular offshoring hub has faced tremendous challenges. Loads of service providers were not prepared for the work-from-home scenario due to the lack of resources. As a result western clients, who previously enjoyed notable low-cost solutions, were forced to choose another offshoring destination. They may soon turn towards which are prominent for qualified staff and well-established IT infrastructure. victories failures India the countries of Eastern Europe, such as Ukraine, Romania, and Poland Offshore Or Not Offshore? The future is still uncertain and predictions are rather vague. However, the previous year has taught us to be more flexible and responsive. Thus, it's time to be prepared for unexpected and implement innovative approaches to doing business. The doesn't scare an offshoring industry because it continues to provide fast and cost-efficient solutions in comparison to in-house operations. It is the turning point to realize the . As long as you are ready to take a step to digital acceleration and take care of cybersecurity, offshoring can bring your business to the next level. This way you can enjoy the usual perks of the model and collaborate with a trustful service provider to adjust your corporate setup to the new normal. Coronavirus crisis importance of strategic partnerships

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Employee wellness programs have become a staple in many companies as a way to attract top talent, keep them happy and productive, and decrease employee turnover. Especially in top tech companies attempting to attract top Millenial talent. 80% of employees at companies with wellness programs at work feel engaged and cared for by their employers. The key to having a successful wellness program at work is encouraging overall wellbeing while still keeping it fun. If you can’t get your team engaged, then your wellness program ideas will quickly lose steam. So make your initiatives fun, try new ideas, and see what your team values the most. Here are some amazing employee wellness program ideas that you can implement right now! 1. Monday Motivation sessions Help your employees gear up for a long week by starting Mondays with a powerful motivation session. This will go a long way in boosting their morale and supporting their mental well being. 2. Health resources and newsletters Start a company newsletter highlighting the importance of health and wellness at the workplace. Introducing new ideas around fitness, nutrition, and wellness education can make your employees more aware and sensitive towards them. 3. Flexible working hours Remember that your employees have a life outside of work, which is why the least you can do for them is to . Whether they’re working from home or at your workplace, as usual, make sure you respect their work hours. provide flexible work hours 4. Encourage breaks The workplace can become a breeding ground for stress. And this can impact even your most hardworking and productive employees. Ask your employees to take short breaks between long work hours. 5. Yoga days Partner with a trainer or professional organization to organize a yoga workshop (once or twice a month) at your office. 6. Promote and reward healthy eating habits Encourage healthy eating habits at the workplace. You can hold healthy eating challenges and reward people who manage to ditch the packet of chips for fruits. 7. Cooking challenges Let your employees have a potluck of healthy recipes cooked by themselves. Let the office vote for the best. 8. Incentivize smoking cessation Incentivize your employees to quit smoking. Research suggests that financially motivated staff is more successful at quitting than non-incentivized. 9. Go meatless day Meat rich diets are linked to inflammatory diseases and are bad news for the planet. Ask employees to go meatless at least a day of the week. 10. Promote sleep The most underrated key to wellness is a goodnight’s sleep. Invite experts and conduct webinars or sessions to promote the importance of sleep. 11. 8-Glasses of water challenge Make your employees track the days they have at least eight glasses of water. The winner at the end of the week wins the reward! 12. Make your office pet-friendly Allowing pets in the office can help in reducing stress and making people friendlier. Work/life balance is valuable for employees, and bringing one’s dog or cat to work can help employees feel they are closer to achieving that balance. 13. Create a high five board Put up the names of your employees on a board. Bring some magnetic hi-five hands and ask employees to move them to the side of the employee who did something positive. 14. Walking meetings Take your meetings to a brief walk instead of a boring room. Let your employees breathe in the fresh air. 15. Healthy meals in the office Offer healthy lunches and snacks to your employees. These perks make a big difference in how they feel about their company. 16. Group outings Probably one of the best wellness activities for groups you can do is group outings. Arrange a group dinner or sports day to build a bond with them outside the work. 17. Volunteer days Take some of your employees to volunteer for a cause every month. Not only will this be an excellent group physical exercise, but it also encourages team bonding. 18. Take stairs challenge Make your employees ditch the elevator and switch to stairs for a healthy lifestyle. Post a note near the elevator reminding people to take the stairs instead. 19. Organize a book club To encourage your employees to read, you can start a virtual book club. It will enable them to engage in critical thinking and be open to differing opinions. 20. Fun games and activities Ask your employees to participate in fun games and activities and make your office a fun place to work. Let them rejuvenate and bring out their competitive sides. 21. Reward loyal employees Offer special perks to your old employees to make them happy and engaged. Your loyal employees are your most valuable assets, and long service also needs to be properly recognized and rewarded. Previously published at https://www.springworks.in/blog/employee-wellness-program-ideas/

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This Slack discussion by , , and occurred in 's official from Nov 5 - Nov 11 2020. Dane austin Arthur David hackernoon #slogging-beta channel Protips for building a new app from scratch Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:22 PM oh boy 😅 where to begin...ok let's say you're on a new machine: first thing i do is install my preferred shell: with the package installed. that goes a long way, having a shell you're comfortable in austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:23 PM zsh oh-my-zsh Whenever you get started with a new app, it is tempting to dive in and go deep figuring out how to solve the most relevant problem. But this approach can often lead to a half-baked solution with no foundation. When you start, think about your app as a blank canvas and be concious about investing a significant amount of time on the broad strokes. It's ok to think about details because that's really why you're setting out to build a new thing in the first place. But don't overly fixate on a single detail. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:27 PM austin of course you are going to start with the shell! 😂 Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:29 PM haha i'm starting at the foundation, naturally 😉 ooh, that's good advice. different approach to the question... i think of it like painting a room -- don't want to paint yourself into a corner, with the early decisions. every decision you make is going to limit what you're able to do from that point also, validate your problem people! too many apps start as an idea that you think people will like, but really have no idea. most startups fail because they either build something people don't want, or they run out of money doing it. you vastly improve your chances by just talking to potential users austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:30 PM Another problem I see all the time with developers starting new apps is the draw of using a new language or framework. This isn't entirely bad but so often people get so caught up learning new technology that they lose sight of the underlying problem they are trying to solve. In many cases, I'd say it is better to try and reuse tech you are already familiar with instead of using entirely new tech. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:31 PM austin validating is tricky. I actually think it is better to build something minimal and go with a trial by fire approach to validating an idea over doing a bunch of user research before you get started. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:33 PM Dane definitely!! was just gonna say, do not reinvent the wheel. to paraphrase that old tech adage, "no one ever got fired for using vanilla JS". or whichever established tool you like i also agree with your second point. i wouldn't recommend spending a ton of time on user research. in short: 1. build something small, quickly, then 2. release it early and talk to your users a bit. the early release bit is important austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:34 PM Optionality is a good way to think about early decision making though. Don't lock yourself into a solution you can't back out of. Focus on building a minimal foundation that solves the problem and iterate from there. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:35 PM I'm against the approach. I think you should be absolutely mentally prepared to approach the problem in an entirely new way. I'm talking more about using tools you are already familiar with when build the new thing. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:36 PM Don't reinvent the wheel If the focus should be on using a tool rather than learning a tool. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:36 PM When it comes to learning about user needs, there are a lot of ways to approach that. Talking, listening, and asking questions is an entirely viable approach. Watching behavior and taking more of an analytics approach is also viable. The big thing is you need to continually think about user needs and gather new information to help aid in that pursuit. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:40 PM definitely, that's what i was getting at, but i wasn't quite getting there. listening to users can mean a lot of things but serving user needs is the goal. also, when i say "don't reinvent the wheel", i'm talking more about...don't roll-your-own base64 decoder. they exist already, and it's a very well defined problem and solution, very mechanical. i agree, you shouldn't be afraid to dig into the guts if need be, and create new solutions, novel solutions. austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:44 PM Oh yeah. I think we're on the same page. I just wanted to dig into the idea of a bit because I think a lot of people take that to mean which I don't agree with. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:46 PM Don't reinvent the wheel Cobble together a solution based on existing solutions oh for sure. to give a concrete example, i saw a drone for saving people lost in the mountains the other day. awesome idea, right?! they could've done so many things to make it good at its job...but they cobbled together preexisting solutions and wound up with a black and white camera on a stock helicopter-style drone that could pick up cell phone signals. neat, but doesn't quite solve the problem as well as you could have if you dug into the guts of "how do we find lost people? and what if they don't have a working phone?" austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:47 PM Think about tools in terms of explore vs exploit. If you are continually looking for the next tool to use, you can't really exploit your knowledge of existing tools. In some ways this is a good thing because you become a generalist at using tools and can quickly make use of a new tool. But people should do more to exploit the tools they already know. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:48 PM exactly. so in this example, i would exploit the existing drone tech, that's great. i would also exploit existing thermal cameras, for one, to make it easier to find people in the wilderness. but i would also explore pattern finding on the regular camera and the thermal camera with tensorflow or something. definitely want a balance or you'll spend all your days in the docs 😛 austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:52 PM a doc worker, you could say austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:52 PM Another topic to consider when starting an app is figuring out how to create a habit out of making progress. You want to avoid scenarios where you avoid making progress because you get stuck on a problem or aren't motivated by some particular part of the app. The most important thing is to make sure you are always making progress. One way to achieve this is by having a backlog of "fun tasks" that you can dip into whenever you hit a roadblock. Dane Nov 5, 2020, 4:53 PM now this is something i definitely struggle with! i start personal projects and don’t keep a fun backlog, i’m just hammering away at the problem in my spare time, and if that short amount of time per week becomes unproductive…you lose steam. i do, anyway. so then you find another project, and suddenly it’s a lot more appealing because hey, you’re stuck on that other thing anyway… austin Nov 5, 2020, 4:55 PM Create GitHub repository Arthur Nov 6, 2020, 11:09 AM Call me old school, but I still love starting by drawing the first couple screens by hand. There's something about my brain that can approach the problem in a simpler way when the pen is in my name. It's just how it was when I started learning. David Nov 11, 2020, 6:45 PM Sketching is definitely a great way to get started. It's a specific example of "painting with broad strokes" before you dive into the details. Dane Nov 11, 2020, 8:53 PM Another tip. Make sure you create a distinct separation from the and the . This is important because people are negatively biased against the work they are responsible for. Instead of objectively evaluating the idea, people push back against the idea. Bad Example: PM: Hey Joe, how long would it take for you to build a wind sail for a skateboard? Joe: Let me tell you the 10 reasons that won't work. Good Example: PM: Wouldn't it be great if a skateboard could be wind-powered? Joe: Oh yeah! I'll bet a wind sail could capture enough wind to easily power a skateboard. Dane Nov 11, 2020, 9:01 PM todo list people responsible for delivering each todo item In both cases, Joe might end up doing the work. But the second example frees Joe from the obligation of doing the work and invites him to think through the problem and the solution. Dane Nov 11, 2020, 9:06 PM Here is a slightly different tip related to the previous tip. Be problem focused and solution agnostic. I don't remember who I heard this from exactly but it is something that has stuck with me as a generally good thing. It is so tempting to think of a problem and immediately jump to a solution. The decision to jump to the first viable solution is good in many cases because it can reduce the amount of time to deliver value. But so often, the first viable solution is a pretty terrible option. So you've got to have a constant awareness of the problem and continually challenge your assertions. Dane Nov 11, 2020, 9:14 PM I guess the last few tips could be thought of as startup tips rather than bootstrapping a new app tips. But the way you think about your app is as important as how you build it. Dane Nov 11, 2020, 9:16 PM By taking a problem focused approach you can reduce the chance that you achieve the wrong goal. For example people generally assume more time using the app to be a good thing. But if an app like Uber made that their goal, it would really annoy people from solving their problem, which is using the phone as a little as possible for a ride to show up as soon as possible. David Nov 11, 2020, 11:33 PM

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Security and data breaches are a growing concern globally. Believe it or not, in the 10 biggest data breaches in the first half of 2020. The data could be anything ranging from Social Security numbers to your credit card details to something as personal as a medical record. more than 3.2 million records were compromised That’s why cybersecurity is top of mind for every company around the world. With the increasing number of data breaches  — — the has become vital. In fact, the need for cybersecurity specialists has become so paramount, that according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the occupation is projected to grow at a much faster rate — more than 30% between 2018 and 2028 —  than the average of all other occupations. up 54% in 2019 role of a cybersecurity professional As demand for cybersecurity specialists reaches a fever pitch, Udacity is excited to announce the release of the all-new — created in collaboration with SecurityScorecard — a great start for anyone interested in this critical field. Introduction to Cybersecurity Nanodegree program Prep for Future Jobs with our Introduction to Cybersecurity Nanodegree program This Nanodegree program prepares students with a strong foundation in cybersecurity skills and knowledge. The program is a great start in the Cybersecurity field or a great supplement for IT professionals looking to build stronger Cybersecurity skills. The Nanodegree program fills in the gap in hands-on skills-based training in the field of cybersecurity. Currently, there are many university or college-level programs focused on the theory of cybersecurity without addressing the practical application of that theory; boot camps could provide practical training, but it comes with a very high price tag. Udacity’s Nanodegree program fills that gap by offering the right balance of structured content and practitioner-level skills for existing cybersecurity professionals. Our project-based learning approach prepares students for the real-world problems faced by organizations globally. Data breaches and security threats are a growing concern and with this program, you will not only learn the fundamentals of cybersecurity but also get to implement and test them in a real-world context. Here’s what you’ll learn in the Introduction to Cybersecurity Nanodegree program: COURSE 1: Cybersecurity Foundations This foundations course explains security fundamentals including core principles, critical security controls, and the best practices. PROJECT 1: Securing a Business Network Investigate and fix security issues on a Windows 10 client system as a way of demonstrating fundamental cybersecurity knowledge, skills, and abilities. COURSE 2: Defending and Securing Systems Get exposed to a diverse group of technologies that will provide or enhance the skills needed to enter the field. : PROJECT 2 Monitoring and Securing Douglas Financials Inc. Analyze Windows and Linux servers and report recommendations on OS hardening, compliance issues, encryption, and network security for Douglas Financials Inc. COURSE 3: Threats, Vulnerabilities, and Incident Response Learn how to identify security threats and gaps, fix issues, and respond to inevitable attacks. : PROJECT 3 Navigating a Cybersecurity Incident Apply the skills you have acquired to navigate a potential cyber incident threatening a hospital. : COURSE 4 Governance, Risk, and Compliance Learn about the functions of Governance, Risk, and Compliance and how each function operates alongside operational controls to strengthen an organization’s security. : PROJECT 4 Create the SwiftTech GRC Program As a brand new GRC analyst for SwiftTech, you’ll need to understand the business quickly and improve their GRC documentation to help support the organization’s goals. This program is great for IT professionals, risk analysts, and QA engineers who need to build foundational Cybersecurity knowledge, though any individual with basic familiarity of network connectivity and operating systems would also benefit from these critical skills. Partnering with Industry-leader SecurityScorecard Udacity has partnered with SecurityScorecard to bring industry-relevant cybersecurity skills training to students and businesses globally, starting with the Introduction to Cybersecurity Nanodegree program. “Our goal at Udacity is to train the world’s workforce in the in-demand careers of the future, and cybersecurity is a critical industry that’s experiencing a significant gap between demand for and supply of qualified professionals,” said Alper Tekin, Chief Product Officer at Udacity. “We’re excited and proud to partner with SecurityScorecard to bring practical cybersecurity skills training to students and companies across all industries, to answer the massive demand for cybersecurity professionals.” is the global leader in cybersecurity ratings and the only service with over a million companies continuously rated. Founded in 2013 by security and risk experts Dr.Aleksandr Yampolskiy and Sam Kassoumeh, SecurityScorecard’s patented rating technology is used by over 1,000 organizations for enterprise risk management, third-party risk management, board reporting, due diligence, and cyber insurance underwriting. SecurityScorecard “We are thrilled to partner with Udacity to bring easily accessible cybersecurity education to the public,” said Aleksandr Yampolskiy, CEO and co-founder of SecurityScorecard, the global leader in security ratings. “Our company mission is to make the world a safer place. By partnering with Udacity we are making additional progress on this journey and helping to facilitate the development of future and current cybersecurity professionals. The world needs skilled security practitioners and we’re happy to join Udacity in this endeavour.” Learn About Cybersecurity with the Best Instructors This program has been created in collaboration with some of the top professionals and academics in the industry. , CEO, Cyber-AAA Ron Woerner , Information Security Engineer, University of Alabama, Birmingham Jerry Smith , CEO, Cyber Pop-Up Christine Izuakor , Senior Director, Security and GRC, Business Wire Sean Pike Industry-wide Demand for Cybersecurity Specialists on the Rise According to Microsoft’s , there are upwards of 744,000 cybersecurity professionals today, but cybersecurity roles are expected to grow 750% in the next five years, amounting to almost 6.4 million jobs and not nearly enough qualified cybersecurity professionals to fill them. research of qualified applicants, that typically translates to big advantages for those job-seekers. For example, the median salary for cybersecurity professionals as of May 2019 is When demand for a role is over double the supply $99,730 per year and $47.95 per hour . Beyond compensation, cybersecurity professionals also benefit from job opportunities across the full spectrum of industries, given that every business needs to maintain adequate security practices and infrastructure to avoid data breaches. Particularly high Information Technology & Services, Defense & Space, Computer Network & Security, Management Consulting, and Financial Services. demand for cybersecurity professionals comes from sectors like Enroll Today! Excited to get your start in this in-demand field? Enroll today in Udacity’s new ! Introduction to Cybersecurity Nanodegree program

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Table of contents : Retraining Machine Learning Models Model Drift Different ways to identify model drift Performance Degradation Correlation Between Features Examining the Target Distributions Model Retraining How often model you should retrain? How can you retrain your model? Reference 1. Retraining Machine Learning Models Before going into more detail about retraining approaches of machine learning models, Let’s see the basic cycles of machine learning models. Generally machine learning models will be trained by some learning between set of input features and dependent feature or target variable. by applying or optimizing cost functions, and when we found some optimized models, we will deploy into the production and the aim is that model will generate accurate predictions on future unseen data as well so the goal is that model will predict the future unseen data as accurately as data used during the training period. The aim of the model is to minimize the prediction error Once machine learning models has been deployed to production, we assume that future unseen data will be similar like past data through which we trained our model. Moreover our assumptions are like the distribution of the data of all the features should remain constant, but this will not be the case always. . Data distribution will change over time and our model should adapt those changes If we take an example of house price prediction, than prices of house will not remain same all the time. Data that has been used to train model which predict the prices of house some months ago will not give great prediction today. We need up to date information to train the models. When developing any ML model, it is important to understand how data will change over time. There is a need of good architecture system or plan for maintaining our models updated. Sometimes to know this types of changes or monitoring the model performance, there is a concept of . Lets see what it is. Model Drift 2. Model Drift . There are many cases which occur like predictive performance will degrade over time and it may occur due to some environmental changes and there is a need of determining these model drifts and it can be sort out using different . Model drift refers to several parameters that will change eventually Model Retraining Approaches When we say , of course . . Model Drift it’s not the model that is drifting It’s the environment that is changing around the model There are different approaches for identifying model drifts and model retraining approaches but there is no one standard method for all kinds of problems. There will be different methods should be apply for different kind of problems. 3. What are the different ways to identify model drift? 3.1 PERFORMANCE DEGRADATION To identify model drift is to explicitly determine that predictive performance has deteriorated and to quantify this decline. Consider a financial forecasting model which will predict the next quarter’s revenue. The actual revenue won’t be observed until that quarter passes so we will not be able to see how well our model performed till that point. This will give kind of sense that at what rate model’s performance will degrade. As Josh Wills points out, one of the most important things you can do before deploying a model is try to understand model drift in an offline environment. Data scientists should seek to answer the question “ ” If I train a model using this set of features on data from six months ago, and I apply it to data that I generated today, how much worse is the model than the one that I created untrained off of data from a month ago and applied to today? 3.2 Distribution of training and Live data Since there will be a degrade in model performance due to the distribution of data which deviate from the training data, comparing these will infer the model drift as we are expecting that this will occur. We can monitor those things via the range of values, histograms, whether they have null values or not ans so on. 3.3 CORRELATIONS BETWEEN FEATURES There are assumptions in model building is that the relationship remain fixed. So we will monitor pairwise correlations between individual features. As mentioned in , you can do this by: What’s your ML Test Score? A rubric for ML production systems monitoring correlation coefficients between features training models with one or two features training a set of models that each have one of the features removed 3.4 EXAMINING THE TARGET DISTRIBUTIONS If distribution of dependent variable changes very frequently or significantly, model performance will deteriorate. The authors of state that one simple and useful diagnostic is to track the target distribution. Machine Learning: The High-Interest Credit Card of Technical Debt 4. Model Retraining Some times model retraining refer to finding new hyper parameter of an existing model architecture. Let it be clear that it is not about finding new parameters, finding new models are adding/updating features of the model. So we need to think about our problem such that we can reduce model drift on our productionize model. Entire machine learning model building process goes through set of cycles from feature engineering to model selection to error estimation. Then the optimal model will be chosen and deploy into production. As model drift refers to degradation of model performance due to some reasons like variation of data or change in environment, should not result in a different model generating process. model retraining Rather retraining simply refers to re-running the process that generated the previously selected model on a new training set of data. The features, model algorithm, and hyper-parameter search space should all remain the same. One way to think about this is that retraining doesn’t involve any code changes. It only involves changing the training data set. Its not like should not change the parameters and add features, but if we do that then there is a need of entirely new model building process and that needs to be tested before deploying to production environment. 5. How often model should be Retrained ? There is no standard rule that we should retrain model weekly or monthly or quarterly. It all depend on the use case and vary problem to problem. If we are looking for student model that will predict the return of the students in next semester then there is no use to retrain model daily as there will be mode data semester wise, so we can retrain quarterly or as on new semester. This is an example of a periodic retraining schedule. It’s often a good idea to start with this simple strategy but you’ll need to determine exactly how frequently you’ll need to retrain. Quickly changing training sets might require you to train as often as daily or weekly. Slower varying distributions might require monthly or annual retraining. 6. How can you retrain your model? For retraining model in machine learning is directly related to how often we decide to retrain our model. If we decide to retrain our model periodically, then batch retraining is perfectly sufficient. This involves scheduling model training processes on a recurring basis using a job scheduler such as Jenkins or Kubernetes Cron Jobs. If you’ve automated model drift detection, then it makes sense to trigger model retraining when drift is identified.For instance, you may have periodic jobs that compare the feature distributions of live data sets to those of the training data. When a significant deviation is identified, the system can automatically schedule model retraining to automatically deploy a new model. Again this can be performed with a job scheduler like Jenkins or by using Kubernetes Jobs. It may make sense to utilize online learning techniques to update the model that is currently in production. This approach relies on “ ” a new model with the model that is currently deployed. As new data arrives, the model parameters are updated with the new training data. seeding Apart from these, there are various approaches which we can follow like, Retrain model using bigmler( BigML is a third party services which provide automatic ML model building and bigMLer is the command line tool which can help to retrain model using their APIs) DeltaGrad: Rapid retraining of machine learning models (This is based on research paper, references are given in the reference section) automated-model-retraining-with-kubeflow-pipelines (Kubernet is also providing automatic kubefloe pipelines for retraining models) machine-learning-automated-model-retraining-sagemaker (Amazon providing cloud services for automatic retraining and deployment of models. Implementation part of this you will find in different notebook) Continuous learning with Watson ML (IBM also providing watson ML cloud service for the same retraining purpose) 7. References . https://mlinproduction.com/model-retraining/#:~:text=Machine%20learning%20models%20are%20trained,function%20to%20minimize%20prediction%20error https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.14755.pdf https://medium.com/kubeflow/automated-model-retraining-with-kubeflow-pipelines-691a5f211701 https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/45742.pdf https://www.inawisdom.com/machine-learning/machine-learning-automated-model-retraining-sagemaker/ https://mlinproduction.com/model-retraining/#:~:text=Machine%20learning%20models%20are%20trained,function%20to%20minimize%20prediction%20error. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.14755.pdf https://medium.com/kubeflow/automated-model-retraining-with-kubeflow-pipelines-691a5f211701 https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-data/pdf/45742.pdf https://www.inawisdom.com/machine-learning/machine-learning-automated-model-retraining-sagemaker/ Previously published at https://akhil-kasare80.medium.com/retraining-machine-learning-models-how-important-it-is-e39e475bca9c

Amazon

Target

Retraining Machine Learning Model Approaches

is an extremely valuable tool for businesses across the industry spectrum, and this claim is well substantiated. Robotic process automation (RPA) A , for instance, shows that an impressive 86% of companies that have integrated RPA into their processes increased organisational efficiency and productivity. And this is certainly not all. Deloitte study Since can carry out routine, tedious tasks, like migrating raw data between Excel files, doing payroll administration, processing transactions, or filling out forms, in a quasi error-free fashion, more productively, and more efficiently, a significant burden is removed from employees’ shoulders. software robots This increases employee engagement in higher value jobs underpinned by human-specific abilities such as creativity, complex decision making or communication skills, which increased level of job satisfaction. And contributes to this even further. intelligent automation This perfectly explains UiPath ’s motto: “We make robots so people don’t have to be robots.” Research also backs it up: 66 out of 100 decision-makers from core business lines that responded to , said that RPA and intelligent automation enable employees to have more human interactions, and 60 of them highlighted the possibility to generally focus on more meaningful, strategic tasks. a study commissioned by UiPath This is no small thing, since, , EMEIA Robotics Leader, EY, "Repetitive tasks are a key reason why people give up their jobs, which, in turn, calls for up to 30% hiring annually simply to renew the workforce." according to Martin Weis Indeed, employee turnover makes it such that 81% of employers are concerned about holding on to top talent, while 33% are very concerned, . according to global staffing firm Robert Half Robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent automation support your employees Satisfied, fulfilled employees working in an engaging environment can provide higher-value, more empathic customer service, and thus improve customer experience. This is why employee satisfaction is a key factor in the overall productivity and performance of your company. And obviously, satisfaction depends on perceived success. In the current context of digitisation, it’s crucial to consider how automation (both RPA and intelligent automation) contributes to . employee success 1. Software robots are not going to steal jobs This is the widest spread misconception about automation. It’s the same kind of that made so many working people oppose the industrial revolution. Successful requires that these fears be addressed head-on, by educating your staff with respect to what bots can and cannot do. fear RPA implementation A recent about the future of jobs substantiates the potentially counterintuitive claim that automation will actually lead to a significant increase in the number of available jobs, creating 60 million new jobs. World Economic Forum report Some of the educational steps you may consider are emphasizing the need for collaboration between humans and , and the possibility that the employees themselves take an active part in the automation process, and advocating constant upskilling. software robots 2. Robotic process automation transforms the workspace into a space where individual capabilities can flourish Automation has the potential to create new opportunities. Passing on to bots the monotonous, repetitive tasks, and concentrating on more provocative, higher-value issues is a way by which humans can manifest their freedom and flexibility. Consequently, it initiates an uphill path of employee engagement because they can feel more valued for the work they perform. Additionally, if employees can spend more of their time on activities that truly add value, this will also have a wider impact on business growth. Emulating human activity by using AI processes like machine vision, speech recognition, or other pattern detection capabilities, that is, putting to work, expands the scope of automation towards more complex tasks, and thus it can be viewed as one more step forward on the uphill path of engagement and satisfaction. intelligent automation 3. Software robots enable employees to be real agents of change When your employees have the means to deliver tasks on time with greater accuracy and less effort and fatigue, they will be more inclined to focus on the overall company mission. You can then expect more open discussion of new ideas, a boost for creativity, enhanced knowledge sharing between functional units, in short, a more collaborative environment. This is, in fact, among the company culture changes that make a significant contribution to . successful RPA implementation 4. Intelligent automation contributes to employee success by freeing HR managers to attend to their problems Many of the tasks that HR managers must accomplish during a day of work, e.g., sending follow-up emails, posting jobs, entering data quickly, updating job requirements and job descriptions, preparing pay budgets, require painstaking effort, are very time-consuming, stressful, and rather tedious. The good news is that in convergence with AI and machine learning can easily take over, and deliver faster and more accurate results. HR managers can then focus on activities that call for traits that only humans possess. robotic process automation They can leverage emotional intelligence to hear and resolve employee grievances, or to counsel employees and supervisors, they can invest creative efforts in designing and conducting educational programs on benefit programs, or they can use their communication skills in fruitful contributions to team effort. The ultimate result in this chain of automation effects is increased employee success. 5. RPA streamlines employee onboarding and training Software robots can also save employees’ valuable time by pre-populating forms with new hires’ names, addresses, and relevant data from the received CVs and job application forms. What's more, they can handle data from training simulations more efficiently, such that the same information reaches all employees in a personalized manner. These actions facilitate the onboarding and training processes, while reducing the time needed for these operations. Conclusion The bottom line is that contributes to employee success by reducing workload. Less time and effort devoted to strenuous, monotone activities means less stress, which goes hand in hand with improved mental and physical health, and a higher level of work satisfaction. robotic process automation raises the standard even higher, because it allows employees to focus on creative tasks that they really enjoy doing, and that are more likely to make them feel fulfilled at the end of the work day. This a win-win situation at individual and macro level, since increased satisfaction can be operationalized as fewer absentees, more cost savings, and thus much more productivity for the company. Intelligent automation

Chain

Routine

Explore RPA

How RPA and Intelligent Automation Contribute to Employee Success

What do you do when your application is down? Better yet: How can you when your application may go down? How do you begin an investigation in the most efficient way possible and resolve issues quickly? predict Understanding the difference between logging and monitoring is critical, and can make all the difference in your ability to trace issues back to their root cause. If you confuse the two or use one without the other, you’re setting yourself up for long nights and weekends debugging your app. In this article, we’ll look at how to effectively log and monitor your systems. I’ll tell you about a few good practices that I’ve learned over the years and some interesting metrics that you may want to monitor in your systems. Finally, I’ll show you a small web application that had no monitoring, alerting, or logging. I’ll demonstrate how I fixed the logging and how I’ve implemented monitoring and alerting around those logs. Everyone has some sort of logging in their applications, even if it’s just writing to a file to review later. By the end of this article, I hope to convince you that logging without monitoring is about as good as no logging at all. Along the way, we can review some best practices for becoming a better logger. Logging vs Monitoring For a while, I conflated logging and monitoring. At least, I thought they were two sides of the same coin. I hadn’t considered how uniquely necessary they each were, and how they supported each other. tells you happened, and gives you the raw data to track down the issue. Logging what tells you your application is behaving and can alert you when there are issues. Monitoring how Can’t Have One Without the Other Let’s consider a system that has fantastic logging but no monitoring. It’s obvious why this doesn’t work. No matter how good our logs are, I guarantee that nobody actively reads them — especially when our logs get verbose or use formatting like JSON. It is impractical to assume that someone will comb all those logs and look for errors. Maybe when we have a small set of beta users, we can expect them to report every error so we can go back and look at what happened. But what if we have a million users? We can’t expect every one of those users to report each error they encounter. This is where monitoring comes in. We need to put the systems in place that can do the looking up and coordinating for us. We need a system that will let us know when an error happens and, if it is good enough, why that error occurred. Monitoring Let’s begin by talking about monitoring goals and what makes a great monitoring system. First, our system must be able to notify us when it detects errors. Second, we should be able to create alerts based on the needs of our system. We want to lay out the specific types of events that will determine if our system is performing correctly or not. You may want to be alerted about every error that gets logged. Alternatively, you may be more interested in how fast your system responds in cases. Or, you might be focused on whether your error rates are normal or increasing. You may also be interested in security monitoring and what solution suits your cases. For some additional examples of things to monitor, I’d suggest you check out a great article written by Heroku . here One final thing to consider is how our monitoring system can point us toward solutions. This will vary greatly depending on your application; still, it is something to consider when picking your tools. Speaking of tools, here are some of my favorite tools to use when I’m monitoring an application. I’m sure there are more specific ones out there. If you’ve got some tools that you really love, then feel free to leave them in the comments! : This is where I store my logs. It lets me set up monitors and alerts in Grafana based on log messages. With Elasticsearch, I can also do full-text searches when I’m trying to find an error’s cause. Elasticsearch : This lets me easily perform live queries against Elasticsearch to assist in debugging. Kibana : Here, I create dashboards that provide high-level overviews of my applications. I also use Grafana for its alerting system. Grafana : This time-series database records things like response times, response codes, and any interesting point-in-time data (like success vs error messages within a batch). InfluxDB : When working as a single engineer in a project, Pushover gives me a simple and cheap notification interface. It directly pushes a notification to my phone whenever an alert is triggered. Grafana also has native support for Pushover, so I only have to put in a few API keys and I am ready to go. Pushover : If you are working on a larger project or with a team, then I would suggest . With it, you can schedule specific times when different people (like individuals on your team) receive notifications. You can also create escalation policies in case someone can’t respond quickly enough. Again, Grafana offers native support for PagerDuty. PagerDuty PagerDuty : There are other monitoring best practices in this . If you are within the Heroku ecosystem, then you can look at their (most of which include alerting). Heroku article from Heroku logging add-ons Monitoring Example Project Let’s look at an example project: a Kubernetes-powered web application behind an NGINX proxy, whose log output and response codes/times we want to monitor. If you aren’t interested in the implementation of these tools, feel free to skip to the next section. Kubernetes automatically writes all logs to stderr and stdout to files on the file system. We can monitor these logs easily, so long as our application correctly writes logs to these streams. As an aside, it is also possible to send your log files directly to Elasticsearch from your application. But for our example project, we want the lowest barrier to entry. Now that our application is writing logs to the correct locations, let’s set up Elasticsearch, Kibana, and Filebeat to collect the output from the container. Additional and more up-to-date information can be found on the . Elastic Cloud Quickstart page First, we and RBAC rules. deploy the Elastic Cloud Operator kubectl apply -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/1.3.1/all-in-one.yaml kubectl -n elastic-system logs -f statefulset.apps/elastic-operator # Monitor the output from the operator Next, let’s actually . deploy the Elasticsearch cluster cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: 7.10.2
  nodeSets:
  - name: default
    count: 1
    config:
      node.store.allow_mmap: EOF kubectl get elasticsearch false # Wait for the cluster to go green Now that we have an Elasticsearch cluster, let’s so we can visually query Elasticsearch. deploy Kibana cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: kibana.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Kibana
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: 7.10.2
  count: 1
  elasticsearchRef:
    name: quickstart
EOF kubectl get kibana # Get information about the kibana deployment Review for more information about accessing Kibana. this page Finally, we’ll add FileBeat, , to monitor the Kubernetes logs and ship them to Elasticsearch. using this guide cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: beat.k8s.elastic.co/v1beta1
kind: Beat
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec: : filebeat
  version: 7.10.2
  elasticsearchRef:
    name: quickstart
  config:
    filebeat.inputs:
    - : container
      paths:
      - /var/ /containers/*. daemonSet:
    podTemplate:
      spec:
        dnsPolicy: ClusterFirstWithHostNet
        hostNetwork: securityContext:
          runAsUser: 0
        containers:
        - name: filebeat
          volumeMounts:
          - name: varlogcontainers
            mountPath: /var/ /containers
          - name: varlogpods
            mountPath: /var/ /pods
          - name: varlibdockercontainers
            mountPath: /var/lib/docker/containers
        volumes:
        - name: varlogcontainers
          hostPath:
            path: /var/ /containers
        - name: varlogpods
          hostPath:
            path: /var/ /pods
        - name: varlibdockercontainers
          hostPath:
            path: /var/lib/docker/containers
EOF kubectl get beat type type log log true log log log log # Wait for the beat to go green Since our application uses NGINX as a proxy, we can use to write the response codes and times to InfluxDB. this wonderful module Next, you can follow to get Grafana running in your Kubernetes cluster. After that, we are using: InfluxDB and Elasticsearch. this guide set up the two data sources Finally, set up whatever you wish to use. In my case, I’d use Pushover since I’m just one developer. You may be more interested in something like if you need a fully-featured notification channel. alert channel notifiers PagerDuty And there you have it! We’ve got an application — one we can set up dashboards and alerts for using Grafana. This setup can notify us about all sorts of issues. For example: We detected any ERROR level logs. We are receiving too many error response codes from our system. We are noticing our application responding slower than usual. We did all this without making many changes to our application; and yet, we now have a lot of tools available to us. We can now instrument our code to record interesting points in time using InfluxDB. For example, if we received a batch of 500 messages and 39 of them were unable to be parsed, we can post a message to InfluxDB telling us that we received 461 valid messages and 39 invalid messages. We can then set up an alert in Grafana to let us know if that ratio of valid to invalid messages spikes. Essentially, anything that is interesting to code should be interesting to monitor; now, we have the tools necessary to monitor anything interesting in our application. As a small bonus, here is a Pushover alert that I received from a setup similar to the one described above. I accidentally took down my father’s website during an experiment and this was the result. At this point, I’ll give you a break to digest everything I’ve talked about. In I’ll be discussing some logging best practices. part two Photo by on Luke Chesser Unsplash Also published at https://brennonloveless.medium.com/logging-v-monitoring-5f234d4edbd7

Heroku

Trace

Logging Vs. Monitoring: An Introduction [Part 1]

During design meetings at my workplace and even during other conversations with friends, the term "shim" appeared to being placed offhand, with the context not being setup properly to indicate what it is exactly that the "shim" represented. Clearly I wasn't the first person to come across this concern, as evidenced by the person who asked this question on stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2116142/what-is-a-shim The popular answer to that linked question, fits great for all the uses of shim that I came across in my conversations. So being the novice that I am I decided to look further into the gang of four to see how shim might describe an , , or in patterns. adapter facade proxy Structural When shim is describing a code construct that facilitates interactions between two classes with incompatible interfaces. This term implies that certain translations need to be made in the adapter. Adapter: It's mostly a passthrough to another component where restrictions could be placed on how the wrapped component is accessed. Proxy: Typically used as a way for the client to access all functionality exposed by a complex system through one component rather than multiple different components. Facade: Bottomline Shim is likely still an acceptable term, when the component is acting as a combination of adapter and a proxy, but if the component does fit in with a more specific role of being a proxy, adapter or facade, then using that term should be encouraged in design meetings to avoid confusion. P.S.: , is a wonderful resource for learning more about these terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

Different

Design Patterns: WTF is a Shim?

“My business is very small, so why worry about cyber-attacks?” I just heard this from a friend, so I was motivated to educate the small digital world owners about the significant risks of cyber-threats. This mindset about cyber-criminals not attacking their business and that they are safe from the digital threats is a myth because Cyber Security Statistics indicate that: 43% of the cyber-attacks are targeted at small businesses. 60% of SMB’s shut down their business post-cyber-attacks. The cost of cyber-crime for small and medium businesses is more than $2.2 million a year. 54% of small businesses have no contingency plans. 47% of the businesses are unaware of the cyber-security measures needed to protect their business. These alarming figures indicate hackers love to target small businesses, which lack adequate web-security measures, budgets, IT experts, and contingency plans. So, how can you save your business from being a victim of cyber-attacks? First Steps to Ensure Cybersecurity for Small Businesses: #1. Install a Firewall: A firewall serves as the first shield of protection in the case of cyber-attacks. It acts as a barricade between computer data and hackers, and hence it is recommended for all types of businesses. They protect your data against malware by continual monitoring of network traffic. They not only prevent hacking but are also successful in terminating virus attacks and hacking. There are lots of firewall options available, so pick up the best for your business. Also, ensure that employees working from home have firewalls installed on their systems too. #2. Determine Cyber-Security Policies: The most crucial step is to determine the , which best suit your business. cyber-security measures With the help of your IT head, pin down the policies for protecting your small empire. Documentation of employee manuals and strict policies are useful from a legal perspective too. If an employee has a signed confidentiality policy, he/she is bound to protect customer data, product details, trade secrets, and external communications. Example: They may be in legal trouble if found guilty of leaking the above details to competitors. #3. Incorporate Strong Passwords: A password's strength does not lie in the word complexities, but the combinations used for the same. An excellent combination of symbols, special characters, and numbers, along with alphabets, makes a unique and robust password. This acts as a defense against brute force attacks and preserves your precious data. Example: Strong Random Password Generator helps generate passwords, which protect your operating systems and give a tough time to hackers for penetrating the systems. Frequent changes of passwords at regular intervals is the secret to secure your data more efficiently. Never share your password with anyone or note it down on paper. Tip: #4. Educate Employees Regularly: Gone are the days when firewall and antivirus software was enough to prevent cyber-attacks. Employees run a part of your business. Hence, training these employees to prevent cyber-security breaches and keep them vigilant in all situations is a must to beat the hackers. If they are not updated regularly, they may erroneously download pirated software or compromised apps, open gateways for malware. at regular intervals regarding cyber-security measures can help them detect suspicious emails and prevent phishing scams. Example: Cyber Security Training of employees As per the SANS Institute, 95% of the successful attacks included spear-phishing, where employees were lured to identical bogus sites for gaining sensitive information. #5. Regular Back-Ups: Hackers nowadays have become more tech-savvy. Though excellent security practices are implemented on your digital business, there are always some back doors open, from which these hackers tend to penetrate. These unavoidable breaches can cause a catastrophe and wipe off your sensitive data. Regular back-ups of documents, databases, electronic spreadsheets, HR files, and other important stuff will save you the trouble of collecting data from scratch. This task may be boring and tedious, but it is a lifesaver when all the safety resources fail. A full backup should be scheduled every month, wherein your entire organization’s data is stored in a single version. External hard disks are the best backup storages, which keeps your data intact. #6. Install Anti-virus Software: Apart from air, there are many viruses in the digital world, like malware, ransomware, trojan horses, adware, spyware, etc. They can damage your small business, causing irreparable damage. Hence it is essential to install premium anti-virus software, which scans viruses in your computer, networks, and operating systems. It also protects your devices in case of human errors. The most vital point after installation is to run updates so that the security patches are erased regularly, and the safety of your website becomes rock solid. #7. Install SSL Certificate: Though all securities like firewalls and anti-virus software are installed, your website still needs encryption security for communicating data. This security is provided by the installation of SSL certificates. These digital certificates provide 256-bit SSL encryption and 2048-bit key length. They are SHA-2 compatible and provide 99% mobile-browser compatibility. Since they encrypt the data-in-transit between the browser and server, they make it almost unachievable for hackers to access private information. Cheap Wildcard SSL certificate secures the main domain and multiple sub-domains with a single certificate. You can also buy the Comodo Wildcard SSL certificate, which comes with free Site Seals and unlimited server licenses. There are many types & brands of SSL certificates available in market. Example : #8. Use a VPN (Virtual Private Network): A VPN comes with ample benefits. Apart from accessing blocked websites, a reliable VPN will help you secure your network connection, safeguard privacy, obscure your identity, and prevent hackers from entering your network. They are quite affordable and can be configured within a few minutes. Premium VPN services are also available who give a free 30-day trial and a money-back guarantee in case of discontent. #9. Limit Access: Prevent access to unauthorized personnel and safeguard your data. Apart from external threats, there are internal threats in the form of employees that need to be taken care of. The best solution for this issue is to generate login-ids and user-ids for each employee separately and prevent giving administrative privileges to the entire staff. Only trusted and authorized IT staff should be given the admin rights to keep your site and system secured. #10. Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): MFA provides an additional security layer because if one of the securities is compromised, there is still one more that safeguards your data. Using MFA on networks and devices will secure your data better since it is impossible for a thief to access both securities (i.e., password and the PIN). MFA helps prevent phishing, keyloggers, spear phishing, brute-force attacks, and man-in-middle (MIM) attacks. Final Thoughts: Since cyber-criminals are becoming more progressive, and hence cyber-security should be your top priority. Businesses need to be cautious and keep themselves updated about the latest news and trends of cyber-attacks and their solutions. Updated software and SSL encryption securities are wonderful web-securities, but keeping your employees updated about cyber-attacks risks will also help prevent losses. Investing in cyber-security insurance is an attractive solution and can come to the rescue by covering your damages and helping you recover data by hiring recovery experts. In short, put in all your efforts to save your little digital world.

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10 Steps to Ensuring Cyber Security for a Small Business

In 2020 something happened that we had been warned about: the COVID-19 pandemic scourged the whole planet. I will not repeat the statistics here, except to say two things: many loved ones died before their time, and it would have been much worse if society had not responded vigorously. Almost everyone did fight the pandemic. For every one person that denied the science or preferred a strong economy and massive casualties to social distancing, there were dozens more who stood up and did what they could, from to bringing food to their to working long hours under dangerous conditions in clinics. wearing a mask neighbors This article is about only one of those groups of people: the engineers, makers, business people, artists, writers, managers, and leaders who came together and chose to address the pandemic with their specific talent by making open-source medical devices and personal protective equipment (PPE). If you want to support these efforts, this review of major organizations may be useful to you. The Story of the Pandemic In March of 2020, a massive shortfall of invasive ventilators. However, by May, it was clear that treatment involved less while therapeutic oxygen, non-invasive ventilation, and PPE remained (and remains) sorely needed. Oxygen is widely available in high-resource communities in “the West,” but much less so in low-resource communities throughout the global South. Furthermore, a lack of PPE has plagued the United States even up to the time of this writing, although a mask is a much simpler device than a ventilator. experts predicted invasive ventilation The diagrams below give my personal view of the basic timeline of the pandemic, from March 2020 to the present day, when vaccination has begun but daily cases and deaths remain high. On the day of this writing, more people died of COVID-19 than in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that precipitated several wars. The future remains uncertain. The Organized Free-libre Open  Source Response Starting in March, four umbrella volunteer organizations were quickly formed. These included: (OSMS), which delivered more than 5 million pieces of PPE and began as a Facebook Group and a set of Google Docs. Open Source Medical Supplies (HE), whose slack channel of 18,000 volunteers became a nexus for many volunteers and projects. Helpful Engineering (COSMIC). Collective Open Source Medical Innovations  for COVID-19 (PubInv), my own organization, which existed before the pandemic. Public Invention The United Nations Technology Access Partners ( ) and Engineers Without Borders-USA ( ) serve important roles by trying to provide information about global need. UNTAP EWB-USA More than were created just to quickly design and construct ventilators. A community effort led by Public Invention these ventilator projects, which are too numerous to report here. Some of these projects were assisted by or under the umbrella of the big four organizations (HE, OSMS, COSMIC, and PubInv). 100 projects collected and evaluated The following opinions may help you understand which of these charitable organizations (501c3, in the US) is right for you if you want to volunteer (and all of them need money!): (OSMS) has focused on delivering supplies and has probably saved more lives than these other organizations by focusing on PPE. They have organized volunteers to make simply designed masks, gowns, and other equipment, and coordinated the actual delivery of these products. If you want to help provide PPE, this is the organization for you. Open Source Medical Supplies (HE) has an active Slack community and is running about 10 interesting engineering projects. Even if you choose to join other organizations, you should join HE’s Slack team and whatever channels interest you (although the traffic can be dizzying). Submitting a profile there may allow you to be tapped by a team for a specific need. Helpful Engineering is dedicated to the painstaking process of bringing medical devices to market. HE has 18,000 people who have signed up but probably 200 active people in a given week, though most of those people may not be putting in many hours. Helpful Engineering (COSMIC) is smaller and based out of British Columbia, Canada. COSMIC has skilled medical advice and is well organized; their monthly live streams have about 30 part-time volunteers and report on four interesting projects. Collective Open Source Medical Innovations for COVID-19 (PubInv) focuses on research and invention in the public interest and is dedicated to promoting an open-source ecosystem of modular components for ventilation support. The monitor/tester is our flagship project. With the recent addition of ventilator project, we are now making free-libre open source modules for every needed part of a complete ventilation and oxygen concentrator system. Public Invention has about 15 volunteers working 4 hours a week or more, on both pandemic and related inventions. Public Invention VentMon PolyVent non-pandemic A more detailed diagram that categorized color-codes projects run by these organizations is shown below. To see it in greater (zoomable) detail and links to all projects, click on the . Plectica Map here Two smaller organizations, the and , are making interesting reusable or reference implementations. Fonly Institute ArcanaProBono This community self-organized and shared knowledge through a variety of conferences ( , , , and ). Vent-Con 2020 VentCon QA Supply Shortage Solutions Symposium PuvInvCon2021 Videos of , , and can be found at the .) Vent-Con 2020 VentCon QA PubInvCon2021 Public Invention YouTube channel Blind Spots There were at one time ventilator projects attempting to address the pandemic, but sadly many have stopped making progress or have become closed-source and gone dark. Some of these dark projects may yet succeed in bringing a life-saving product to market, but since their progress is hidden, it is very difficult to judge. Some of the better open-source projects have been . more than 100 interviewed and analyzed Finally, this article is no doubt unintentionally biased, especially toward the anglophone projects which use English as their primary language. I know there are interesting and advanced ventilator projects developed in Spanish and French, for example. I would enjoy having large umbrella open-source design organizations parallel to the four highlighted here brought to my attention. The Present Need In March of 2020, the shortfall of ventilators was a hair-on-fire emergency. The adoption of social distancing, medical learnings, and the production by major corporations that rapidly manufactured ventilators abated the shortfall in the US and the wealthy nations. The vaccine gives legitimate hope that herd immunity will clamp down the pandemic by this summer. But the less wealthy nations continue to have a dire need that has not been met. The world now needs long-term volunteers who have the faith and vision to make medical devices abundant. Steady, long-term dedication by a few dozen skilled volunteers with engineering, medical, legal, and business skills can create something new for humanity: a shared public commons of designs and test data for a growing that are supply-chain resilient and more transparently open, and therefore safer and less monopolistic, than existing devices. ecosystem of open-source medical devices Also published at https://robertleeread.medium.com/the-humanitarian-engineering-free-libre-open-source-pandemic-response-organizations-6dd3c7f0299a -- Robert L. Read, January 2021 Main Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

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Invent in the Public, for the Public.

Humanitarian Engineering: The Open-Source Pandemic Response

🎯 Objective We will perform a very simple task of printing a number in the logs every 15 minutes with the help of Work Manager. 🤔 What is Work Manager? Work Manager is a simple library for doing any work . Here, a background task which needs to be executed at an moment is considered to be and by I mean that the task should be executed even if the user exits the app or the device restarts. deferrable background reliably doesn't exact deferrable reliably 👨🏽‍💻 Let's code ⚠️ Pre-requisites Create an android project with an Empty activity. Select Launcher Activity and Generate layout file options. 1. Verify you have in file. If not please add it. The result should look as below : 2. google() Project level build.gradle allprojects {
    repositories {
        google() }
} // If you're using a version of Gradle lower than 4.1, you must instead use: // maven { //     url 'https://maven.google.com' // } // An alternative URL is 'https://dl.google.com/dl/android/maven2/' 👉🏼 Import library In file paste the following the line of code : Module level build.gradle implementation "androidx.work:work-runtime:2.5.0" For latest available version of this library, please refer . this page 👉🏼 Create a Worker class Create a new class and it should extend . 1. MyWorker Worker Create a parameterized constructor : 2. { (context, workerParams);
    } public MyWorker (@NonNull Context context, @NonNull WorkerParameters workerParams) super Override and implement the method : 3. doWork() { ;
    } @NonNull @Override Result public doWork () return null Create a new static integer variable called count. 4. Inside the , increase value of count and also print the value in log : 5. doWork() count++;
Log.d( , +count+ ); "MyWorker" "worker called - " " time(s)" 💡 is the method where we need to perform the actual background task, this method gets executed on a background thread. It is good for doing tasks. For asynchronous task I will write another tutorial. doWork() Synchronous Return . 6. Result.success() We've written our worker class and the final class should look similar to : { count = ; { (context, workerParams);
    } {
        count++;
        Log.d( , + count + ); Result.success();
    }
} public class MyWorker extends Worker private static int 0 public MyWorker (@NonNull Context context, @NonNull WorkerParameters workerParams) super @NonNull @Override Result public doWork () "MyWorker" "worker called - " " time(s)" return 👉🏼 Create UI In create a Button inside the : activity_main.xml LinearLayout <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> < = = = = = = = > LinearLayout xmlns:android "http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:tools "http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width "match_parent" android:layout_height "match_parent" android:orientation "horizontal" tools:context ".MainActivity" android:layout_margin "16dp" < = = = = = /> Button android:id "@+id/trigger_job" android:layout_width "match_parent" android:layout_height "wrap_content" android:layout_gravity "center" android:text "Trigger Job" </ > LinearLayout 👉🏼 Start worker on button press In , create a Button type variable and map it to xml button using : 1. MainActivity findViewById() Button scheduleJob = findViewById(R.id.trigger_job); Set a new on button : 2. onClickListener() scheduleJob.setOnClickListener( View.OnClickListener() { {

            }
        }); new @Override public void onClick (View v) Inside the onClickListener(), assuming that we don't want to run this job when battery is low, create Constraints for the job : 3. Constraints constraints = Constraints.Builder()
                        .setRequiresBatteryNotLow( )
                        .build(); new true 💡 Constraints as the name implies are set of conditions that must be satisfied for the job to execute. For more details please refer . this link Create a periodic work request, we need to specify our worker class, time and its unit in which our task will be execute at least once as long as the constraints are satisfied. 4. PeriodicWorkRequest periodicWorkRequest = PeriodicWorkRequest.Builder(MyWorker.class, , TimeUnit.MINUTES)
                        .setConstraints(constraints)
                        .build(); new 15 Enqueue this periodic work request. We need to provide a unique name to be used by this worker, whether to replace or keep the pending (uncompleted) request, and object that we have created previously. We'll display a toast on the screen to notify user that work has been scheduled. 5. periodicWorkRequest WorkManager workManager = WorkManager.getInstance(getApplicationContext());
                workManager.enqueueUniquePeriodicWork( , ExistingPeriodicWorkPolicy.KEEP,periodicWorkRequest);
                Toast.makeText(MainActivity. , , Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); "Counter" this "🎉 Scheduled job!" The class will look similar to this : MainActivity { { .onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        Button scheduleJob = findViewById(R.id.trigger_job);
        scheduleJob.setOnClickListener( View.OnClickListener() { {
                Constraints constraints = Constraints.Builder()
                        .setRequiresBatteryNotLow( )
                        .build();

                PeriodicWorkRequest periodicWorkRequest = PeriodicWorkRequest.Builder(MyWorker.class, , TimeUnit.MINUTES)
                        .setConstraints(constraints)
                        .build();

                WorkManager workManager = WorkManager.getInstance(getApplicationContext());
                workManager.enqueueUniquePeriodicWork( , ExistingPeriodicWorkPolicy.KEEP,periodicWorkRequest);
                Toast.makeText(MainActivity. , , Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show();
            }
        });
    }
} public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity @Override protected void onCreate (Bundle savedInstanceState) super new @Override public void onClick (View v) new true new 15 "Counter" this "🎉 Scheduled job!" 💻 Let's run the code 🖱 Click the button on the UI : 👀 Observe in the logcat : ⌚ After some time we see : 📴 After a reboot, we again see : 🥳 Good work. Mission Accomplished! 💽 Code can be downloaded from here : github.com/jaikherajani/AndroidWorkerManager Previously published at https://www.jaikherajani.dev/how-to-schedule-a-periodic-background-job-using-work-manager-in-android

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Scheduling A Periodic Background Job Using Android Work Manager

In this tutorial, you'll learn the most common and useful commands that you can run in almost any UNIX-like environment, including Linux and Mac OS X. - print working directory pwd allows you to output the current directory you’re in. It provides a short and easy answer to the question "Where am I?" It’s very useful to run the command at the beginning of your terminal session. Here’s an example of running right after logging into the server as a root. pwd pwd pwd root@scw-tender-lewin:~ /root # pwd - list files and directories ls To view the content of the directory, you can use the ( ) command. The basic usage goes like this: ls list root@scw-tender-lewin:/ bin   dev  home        initrd.img.old  lib64       media  opt   root  sbin  srv       sys  usr  vmlinuz
boot  etc  initrd.img  lib             lost+found  mnt    proc  run   snap  swapfile  tmp  var  vmlinuz.old # ls If you want to check out the content of a specific directory, i.e. var, you can do it by adding its path right after the : ls root@scw-tender-lewin:/ backups  cache  crash  lib lock mail  opt  run  snap  spool  tmp # ls /var local log There are also a couple of useful flags that will change the format of the output of the command. ls Long list view The flag will do the long list view, which shows additional information like permissions, owner, size, date, etc.: -l root@scw-tender-lewin:/ total 4194396
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root       4096 May 15 06:46 bin
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root       4096 Sep  3 06:15 boot
drwxr-xr-x  16 root root       3680 May 20 06:35 dev
drwxrwxr-x  93 root root       4096 Sep  3 06:15 etc
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root       4096 Mar  6 09:14 home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root         34 Sep  3 06:15 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-115-generic
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root         34 Sep  3 06:15 initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-112-generic
drwxr-xr-x  23 root root       4096 Mar  6 09:16 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root       4096 Jul  8 06:20 lib64
drwx------   2 root root      16384 Mar  5  2019 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root       4096 Feb  4  2019 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root       4096 Feb  4  2019 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root       4096 Mar  6 09:17 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 189 root root          0 May  4 06:16 proc
drwx------   8 root root       4096 Mar 19 08:13 root
drwxr-xr-x  28 root root       1120 Sep  3 07:21 run
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root      12288 Jul  8 06:20 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root       4096 Mar  6 09:14 snap
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root       4096 Feb  4  2019 srv
-rw-------   1 root root 4294967296 Mar  6 10:10 swapfile
dr-xr-xr-x  13 root root          0 May  4 06:16 sys
drwxrwxrwt  10 root root       4096 Sep  3 07:22 tmp
drwxrwxr-x  10 root root       4096 Mar  5  2019 usr
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root       4096 Mar  5  2019 var
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root         31 Sep  3 06:15 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-115-generic
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root         31 Sep  3 06:15 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-112-generic # ls -l By the way, if you want to check some specific information about a single file, you can add its name the same way we did with the directory. Here’s how you could check the long list view on the : swapfile root@scw-tender-lewin:/ -rw------- 1 root root 4294967296 Mar  6 10:10 swapfile # ls -l swapfile Hidden files and folders To view the hidden files and folders you should add the flag to the command: -a ls root@scw-tender-lewin:/ .   bin   dev  home        initrd.img.old  lib64       media  opt   root  sbin  srv       sys  usr  vmlinuz
..  boot  etc  initrd.img  lib             lost+found  mnt    proc  run   snap  swapfile  tmp  var  vmlinuz.old # ls -a This way, we always get at least two additional records: and . A single dot stands for the current directory and the double dot is used to access the directory one level above the current. . .. Sorting the output of the command ls The flag is used to sort the results by size in descending order. -S root@scw-tender-lewin:/ swapfile    sbin  boot  home  lib64  mnt  root  srv  usr  dev  initrd.img      vmlinuz      proc
lost+found  bin   etc   lib   media  opt  snap  tmp  var  run  initrd.img.old  vmlinuz.old  sys # ls -S Combining the flags Quite often you want to achieve a complex behavior. For example, you might want to get both the long list view with , the human-readable size output with and sort the results with the flag. -l -h -S To achieve this, you can just combine all flags into one. The order of the flags doesn’t matter here and is equivalent to , so you can use any sequence you like: -lhS -hSl root@scw-tender-lewin:/ total 4.1G
-rw-------   1 root root 4.0G Mar  6 10:10 swapfile
drwx------   2 root root  16K Mar  5  2019 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  12K Jul  8 06:20 sbin
drwxr-xr-x  23 root root 4.0K Sep  3 06:15 .
drwxr-xr-x  23 root root 4.0K Sep  3 06:15 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K May 15 06:46 bin
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4.0K Sep  3 06:15 boot
drwxrwxr-x  93 root root 4.0K Sep  3 06:15 etc
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4.0K Mar  6 09:14 home
drwxr-xr-x  23 root root 4.0K Mar  6 09:16 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Jul  8 06:20 lib64
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Feb  4  2019 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Feb  4  2019 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root 4.0K Mar  6 09:17 opt
drwx------   8 root root 4.0K Mar 19 08:13 root
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Mar  6 09:14 snap
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.0K Feb  4  2019 srv
drwxrwxrwt  10 root root 4.0K Sep  3 07:22 tmp
drwxrwxr-x  10 root root 4.0K Mar  5  2019 usr
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 4.0K Mar  5  2019 var
drwxr-xr-x  16 root root 3.6K May 20 06:35 dev
drwxr-xr-x  28 root root 1.1K Sep  3 07:21 run
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   34 Sep  3 06:15 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-115-generic
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   34 Sep  3 06:15 initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-112-generic
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   31 Sep  3 06:15 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-115-generic
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   31 Sep  3 06:15 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-112-generic
dr-xr-xr-x 191 root root    0 May  4 06:16 proc
dr-xr-xr-x  13 root root    0 Sep  3 08:25 sys # ls -lhS - change directory cd So, after you’ve learned everything about the content in the directory, you probably want to go somewhere else. The command will take a directory name as a single argument and move you there. The command only prints the output if there’s an error, so you might want to immediately use the command to look around: cd cd ls root@scw-tender-lewin:/ root@scw-tender-lewin:/var .  ..  backups  cache  crash  lib lock mail  opt  run  snap  spool  tmp # cd var # ls -a local log Moving into the parent folder To move one folder above you should use the as a directory name. To move two or more levels above you can type and so on. .. cd ../.. If you’ve tried to navigate to the directory that doesn’t exist, you’ll see the following message: root@scw-tender-lewin:/var -bash: : local42: No such file or directory
root@scw-tender-lewin:/var root@scw-tender-lewin:/ bin   dev  home        initrd.img.old  lib64       media  opt   root  sbin  srv       sys  usr  vmlinuz
boot  etc  initrd.img  lib             lost+found  mnt    proc  run   snap  swapfile  tmp  var  vmlinuz.old # cd local42 cd # cd .. # ls Going home If you use the symbol as a directory name, you’ll be moved into your home folder. It’s a useful shortcut as it doesn’t matter where you are at the moment and you might now know the exact path to the home directory at some point. ~ root@scw-tender-lewin:/ root@scw-tender-lewin:~ /root # cd ~ # pwd - create a file touch The command allows you to create an empty file. So, here’s the plan: touch Navigate to our home directory with cd ~ Make sure it’s empty with ls Create a new file using and providing a filename right after it touch Run the command once again to see that the newly created file exists ls root@scw-tender-lewin:/var/ root@scw-tender-lewin:~ root@scw-tender-lewin:~ root@scw-tender-lewin:~ hello.txt log # cd ~ # ls # touch hello.txt # ls - create a directory mkdir To create a directory in Linux you should use the command. It works almost the same way as and expects the directory name. mkdir touch root@scw-tender-lewin:~ root@scw-tender-lewin:~ hello.txt  internal # mkdir internal # ls - display a manual / get help man And finally, the superpower! The command will give you a short manual on any command, even itself. If you want to do something but have forgotten an important flag or the command syntax, just type followed by the command name to get an instant manual. Here’s an example: man man root@scw-tender-lewin:~ NAME
     ls -- list directory contents

SYNOPSIS
     ls [-ABCFGHLOPRSTUW@abcdefghiklmnopqrstuwx1%] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     For each operand that names a file of a other than directory, ls displays its name as well as any requested, associated information.
     For each operand that names a file of directory, ls displays the names of files contained within that directory, as well as any
     requested, associated information.

     If no operands are given, the contents of the current directory are displayed.  If more than one operand is given, non-directory operands
     are displayed first; directory and non-directory operands are sorted separately and lexicographical order.

     The following options are available:
... # man ls type type in Conclusion In this article, we’ve reviewed the easiest to use and straightforward Linux, macOS, and *nix system commands like , , , , , and . ls pwd cd touch mkdir man If you're just starting your journey into the software development world, you might be intimidated by the looks of the all-mighty terminal or command-line. But as you see, it's quite easy and straightforward if you start at the right spot. Thanks for reading! I write a programming blog at and teach JavaScript programming . learn.coderslang.com Full Stack JS course Talk soon! Previously published at https://learn.coderslang.com/0001-the-most-useful-terminal-commands-linux-mac-and-unix/

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A Linux, Mac and UNIX Tutorial Of The Top 6 Cool Terminal Commands For Beginners

The Singapore government launched its Initiative in November 2014. Since then, Singapore has supported the extensive use of technology to enrich the lives of its citizens. Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions have been successfully harnessed to improve the efficiency and quality of services. Smart Nation Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), which is the technical name for text-to-speech conversion, has become one of the most widely used applications of AI, so much that a special flavor of ASR was created just for Singaporeans. In this article, we will explore the multiple ways in which Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) has provided value to different organizations, specifically Singapore government services. We will also look at how Voice AI and text-to-speech services were instrumental in the implementation of Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) technology for government services. Sentient.io’s The Hidden Worth of Automated Speech Recognition While most people recognize Automated Speech Recognition as the technology that makes funny conversations with Siri, Google, and others possible, it is so much more than that. In the services industry, Voice AI-based bots are a boon because they always manage to sound pleasant and patient. Moreover, they not only understand spoken words but also the context in which they are spoken. In addition to interacting with customers/users, ASR can also be applied in the workplace. ASR-enabled applications can listen to conversations or speech and generate transcripts that can be used for in-depth analysis. Transcribed or text-based records are not just easy to maintain, they also provide easy access to information via digital search. Some distinct advantages of using automated speech-to-text services are as follows. Transcribing speech to text manually is a time-consuming and tedious activity requiring hours of human effort. Automation ensures that this time can be put to better use. Automation reduces the chances of errors or omissions during the transcription process When it comes to sensitive information, it may not be possible to outsource the transcription task to external contractors due to security or privacy concerns. A well-tested ASR service that is also sensitive to local nuances in speech can help to generate transcripts with high accuracy. There are many processes in both the public and the private sector that can greatly benefit from the power of ASR. The following are some examples of where Speech-To-Text services can help in better governance. Governing bodies need to conduct meetings daily. Accurate and easy to access verbatim records of such meetings would ensure that significant information is always available. This is especially beneficial for high-level meetings or discussions that can affect laws, regulations, and policies. When it comes to court rulings, lawyers often rely on the records of past judgments to build their case. Such records can be easily generated using ASR. Parliament proceedings, speeches, and debates that are fully recorded can be transcribed for public consumption. In situations where recordings are available on video, the same service could be used to include subtitles in the video. “This conversation may be recorded for quality assurance” - That's right! Call centers usually record conversations. Analysis of transcripts of such conversations can help to address citizen pain points when interacting with government bodies. Interviews for new employee positions may be recorded and transcribed for reference in the future especially for qualified candidates who were not recruited. To enable the easy use of ASR in any locale it should be tailored to the specific nuances of the language used in that locale. Let us now see how this factor is relevant to ASR technology used in Singapore. Why and How did Singapore create its own flavor of ASR? English spoken in Singapore can be standard Singapore-English or the colloquial form, also known as . Any speech-to-text engine built for Singapore should consider nuances that are unique to Singaporean English. Following are some of the words and terms we use in our day-to-day life which are not pure English and would not be recognized by any other ASR. Singlish Words like “ang-moh” and “kiasu” are commonly seen in news articles and tv shows. Phrases like “double confirm” and “act blur” may sound English but are only unique to Singapore. Terms like “4D” (the lottery system) and “O$P$” would only be relevant to Singaporeans. Slang words like “Chope” which is also the name of a local website have become a part of a normal Singaporean conversation. Existing speech technologies were not capable of transcribing locally accented English accurately. To achieve high accuracy, Sentient.io trained its model on . This corpus contains 1 Terabyte of annotated speech audio. This ensures accuracy in transcription when spoken English is accented or colloquial. Let us now see how this technology helped some of the government services to build ASR based solutions. Automatic Speech Recognition IMDA’s National Speech Corpus (NSC) Singapore Government Services That Benefitted From ASR Sentient.io’s expertise in ASR technology has enabled several Singapore government agencies to build robust solutions using ASR. Following are some agencies that have benefitted from Sentient.io’s ASR solutions. Singapore’s largest content creator and national media network for both radio and television which produce all kinds of content for TV and radio, including dramas, news, talk shows, reality tv, documentaries, etc. Sentient.io’s ASR has helped them to improve their productivity in News Reporting by 500% and Drama Subtitling by 600%. The Ministry that oversees information and communications technology, the media and design sectors, public libraries, as well as the Government's information and public communication policies engage Sentient.io’s ASR to help with the transcription of the . This included a transcription of speeches by ministers and senior parliamentary secretaries who participated in the event. Committee of Supply 2020 How can you benefit from Sentient.io ASR? Sentient.io not only possesses the expertise in developing ASR solutions for government services, but the Sentient.io in-house team can also quickly customize their ASR services for a . broad range of industries and use-cases Also published at https://medium.com/sentient-io/automated-speech-recognition-helps-singapore-government-services-to-increase-productivity-83b39d59d0e3

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This was first published on the Russian IT-blog . In my opinion it is a nice example of hacker humor that is worth translating into English. Habr How would finding a new home for a kitten look like if it were done in a computer network protocol way? DHCP Tie the kitten to a long leash Let kitten walk free in a crowd When the new owner is found, they untie the kitten and take it HTTPS "Do you need a kitten?" "Does it have the pedigree and the pet vaccination certificate?" "Here. Isn’t your passport expired?" "No, just looks like this as it is a Zimbabwean one. But is it really a kitten?" "Well yes." "Then why does its pedigree describe it as a German Shepherd?" TCP "Hello!" "Hello!" "Can I ask you a few questions?" "Yes, just one at a time." "Do you see a kitten?" "This one?" "Yes." "Yes, I do." "Would you like to take it? "No. Do you have any other questions? "No." "Bye!" "Bye!" UDP "Here’s the kitten!" (shoves a kitten to the new owner's hands and runs away) ICMP meow meow meow meow 0% voice loss BGP "Do you need a kitten?" "No. I would recommend you to distribute kittens at the marketplace." "Where is it?" "Go straight, take the third turn on the left then ask someone. Or turn left and take the third turn on the right, but there is a traffic light which will delay you." Peer exchange protocol "Dear friends, please ask your friends if any of them know a person whose neighbors need a kitten!" SSH "Honey, while we were on holiday someone seemed to have visited our house!" "That's terrible! Did he steal something?" "On the contrary, he left us a kitten!" CDN Hi, Granny, you are sitting here distributing kittens all day, could you please find an owner for my kitten too? No problem honey, it will cost $2. Translated from: https://m.habr.com/ru/post/487120/

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Did you ever surf the internet and suddenly find yourself staring at some page just because it had a very attractive design? Did you ever want to buy a product simply because it looked great? If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, it means that you’ve appreciated a designer’s work. We spend a lot of time on the internet, and we are surrounded by ads wherever we go. Graphic designers create a lot of content that we interact with every day. They are creative individuals who are always looking for an opportunity to express their creativity. Therefore, there’s no surprise that it can be quite challenging to find the right gift for such a person. If you’re working or living with a graphic designer, you may have noticed that these people can be quite picky when it comes to things they consider worthy of including in their workspace, wardrobes, or living rooms. Fortunately, we are here to help you choose a gift that will be appreciated by a . graphic designer 1. Studio Designs 10053 Vision Craft Station This is a perfect gift for a designer who prefers to work with canvases and paper. This craft station will make the work process much easier and more enjoyable. Created specifically for designers, it’s durable and functional. The top part is made out of blue tempered glass, and the angle of glass can be changed between 0 and 70 degrees. There are two drawers on both sides of the glass. The drawers are two-inch deep, and they are great for storing paints and brushes. There are also three drawers for any extra items. This craft station is reliable, functional, and it also looks cool, which makes it a perfect gift for a graphic designer. 2. MYNT3D Super 3D Pen This thing is more than just a toy. Yes, it’s really fun to play with, but it can also be useful for because it will enable them to turn their 2D drafts into 3D art. With this pen, you can design, build, draw, and repair. It has an ultrasonic sealed nozzle for maximum efficiency, and it’s clog-proof. graphic designers The pen is lightweight and easy to use. Thanks to its speed slider, you can quickly regulate the flow, making your strokes more or less thick. The pen comes with ABS plastic of three different colors so you can start to create immediately. 3. Synology NAS DiskStation DS916 “What every designer would appreciate as a gift is backup storage,” says Tara Wardle, a designer from a custom writing review website Online Writers Rating. Such a gift can be a life-saving thing for anyone who needs to render and store many projects. You can use it as a backup or primary storage. Thanks to this disk station, you can also synchronize your data with various cloud services. 4. Mixoo Capacitive Stylus Pen A capacitive stylus pen is a great gift for a graphic designer. It was created for a smooth experience and precision. One of the best things about this pen is that it’s compatible with a vast variety of devices, including iPads, Android tablets, iPhones, and Android smartphones. The pen has a transparent disc that ensures high precision, and its rubber grip makes it very comfortable. It also has a cap with a clip so you can attach the stylus to your notebook, case, or pocket. 5. Re-markable Paper Tablet “I love working with paper and pencil. It just feels different. I know some designers would disagree with me, but nothing feels more comfortable than drawing sketches with a pencil,” says Codie Haas from a custom writing review website . Best Writers Online Many designers love paper but it can also get messy, and it’s not easy to keep your pencil sketches organized. This Paper Tablet perfectly combines the feel of regular paper with the convenience of digital tablets, which makes it a perfect gift for graphic designers. 6. Wacom Inkling Digital Sketch Pen This is another great device that combines digital experience with a traditional pen-and-paper feel. In this case, there’s no imitation of drawing on paper — you can literally draw on paper, while the device records the movement of your pen, recording your sketches in a digital format. Sketches created with this pen work well with Photoshop, Illustrator, and other programs used by graphic designers. If you’re looking for a useful gift that will demonstrate your appreciation of somebody’s craft, this digital pen is a perfect choice. 7. Vogek 6-Port USB Charging Station This is a great gift not only for a graphic designer but also for anyone who owns many gadgets and has problems with charging them. This charging station has six USB ports and it enables you to charge six devices simultaneously from one outlet. The best thing about this charger is that it utilizes smart charging technology: it automatically detects the capacity of each gadget and delivers the right amount of power. The charging station is compact and safe to use. 8. Projection Keyboard What can be a better gift for a creative person than a practical device that is also a work of art itself? This futuristic projection keyboard looks beautiful, and it’s also portable. The device is much smaller than regular keyboards so it’s easy to carry around. It will be appreciated by any tech-savvy person, especially by graphic designers. 9. TaoTronics TT-DL13B LED Desk Lamp This is a lamp that combines functionality with a stylish minimalistic look. It enables you to adjust the brightness and to choose from among five color modes. Each color mode has seven brightness levels. This lamp allows you to get the exact amount of light you need so it’s a great gift for anyone who loves to draw. Besides, this lamp is energy-efficient, so it can also be a great present for environment-conscious people. 10. Vanamco DeviceLab This is a developmental stand created for people who work on responsive designs. This device stand is great for testing responsive designs on multiple devices simultaneously. It’s a simple yet very useful gift for designers that will help them be more productive. We hope that these gift ideas will help you surprise graphic designers and show your appreciation of their work. It’s always great to receive gifts that are both functional and stylish, and also actually related to what you do. Besides, not all of these gifts are expensive so you will certainly find the right option. Bonus: If your graphic designer has a WordPress website to showcase their works, is a great gift for them. It helps create folders for their creatives in WordPress library. FileBird - WordPress Media Library Folders

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Are you aware of how the were carried out when there was no internet or computers? Back then, stock exchanges had active trading floors filled with brokers and traders. To make a trade or a purchase, they had to shout or use hand signals to alert others about their buy or sell orders. It looked a whole lot like an auction at a fish market today. buying and selling of stocks But then came computers and the internet to change the game completely. That not only replaced the archaic trading system on the floors of exchanges but also made it possible for individual investors to participate in markets on an equal footing. But that wasn't the last market-altering shift that would happen. The Algorithmic or Automated Trading Era Next came the era - where computers are programmed to trade independently when specific criteria are met. This made it possible to execute complex trading strategies with pinpoint precision. Investors and brokers gained the ability to plot their strategies many moves in advance. And they could also protect themselves from downside risk with automated stop-loss orders. algorithmic or automated trading The new trading systems also made a variety of possible. They took automated trading to the next level by allowing computers to trade based on a variety of price signals analyzed in real-time. And since the computers can execute a near-limitless number of trades in an instant, high-frequency trading to exploit every minute price movement became the norm. useful algorithmic trading tools Algorithmic trading strategies also came with another advantage. Traders could use software like and platforms like to backtest their strategies against historical market data. That meant they would know their strategy's odds of success before committing real money to it. It marked the final shift from intuition-based trading to data-backed analytical trading. MetaTrader 5 TradingView Enter Artificial Intelligence But algorithmic trading wasn't perfect. Using algorithmic trading, we can tell a computer to do A when B occurs. For example, an order to buy a stock (A) when RSI<30 (B). When condition B (RSI<30) is met, the computer performs action A (buys the stock). That's automated trading. Humans program and specify conditions in advance and the computer does everything else. But preprogrammed strategies can fall apart when confronted with contradictory or unexpected data. It's a vulnerability that has already spurred in the recent past. numerous mass-selloffs Artificial intelligence (AI), however, goes a step further. AI trading solutions can train on multiple types of data to understand how and why markets move as they do. Applying AI to the task of stock trading can allow computers to figure out those A and B conditions themselves and get results with minimum risk. And they should also have the ability to shift strategies on the fly with no further human intervention. Human Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence The great thing about AI systems is that they can process gigantic amounts of information in mere seconds, far exceeding the ability of human traders. The fintech app , for example, built proprietary AI-driven algorithms to instantly analyze information from a variety of data sources. It considers historical company and stock data, international markets, news announcements and social sentiment, financial reports, and even stocks' compatibility with investors' existing portfolios. Front The result is to quickly show investors the potential risk for any investment, so they can make more informed decisions in a fraction of the time. AI systems consider all the technical, fundamental, sentimental, and lots of other micro and macro factors to make the correct evaluation in real-time. They bring some of the art of the old-school intuition-based trader together with the power of data-backed analysis. And stock trading AI systems are improving fast. This past June, researchers at the University of Cagliari reported the results of a project that used a convolutional neural network (CNN) to power a buy and hold stock trading strategy. The CNN trained on historical S&P 500 data and could predict the live market with 50% accuracy. And with some minor modifications, . it did better than break even Is AI a Game Changer? While it's still too early to declare AI the next big thing in stock trading, all of the early signs are pointing in that direction. Already, basic AI systems can do a better-than-average job at predicting market movements. And they don't suffer from the tendency to , as human traders do. They approach every situation with cool rationality – which means they can exploit market movements that run counter to the underlying data. trade based on emotions AI can also protect traders from mistakes and work to stabilize markets, unlike algorithmic trading. A wide range of tasks (automation spectrum) can be performed without human intervention through AI that was impossible before. fat-finger trading With AI, can evaluate millions of data points and carry out trades at the most favorable price points, and analysts can make market predictions with increased accuracy. And AI can also help large trading firms to mitigate risk while aiming at the highest possible gains. Robo-advisors However, to perform such functions, a large amount of data is required. An AI model can only provide superior predictions when the primary dataset it learns from is large and diverse. And developers must ensure to utilize training methods that don't leave the AI with blind spots or inherent biases. Only then can an AI-based trading system have a solid foundation upon which to build. Pitfalls of AI in Trading With that said, some factors could prevent AI from coming to dominate financial markets. As with any other type of technical innovation, there are bound to be missteps along the way. And considering the speed of today's markets and their growing dependence on automation, even a slight hiccup could cause havoc. And there's also the possibility of AI being used for purposeful market manipulation. Back in 2010, a rogue trader used an algorithm to try and sway markets to their advantage – . With AI in the mix, such schemes might grow ever-more sophisticated, depending on what kind of fail-safe mechanisms evolve to constrain automated traders. with disastrous results And there's still the matter of AI's immaturity as a technology. Even now, as impressive as AI trading systems are, they can't fully replicate human intuition. That could leave AI systems open to external manipulation. For example, suppose an AI system tracks an influencer, Mr. X, using sentiment analysis. It would be up to its training data to inform a decision on how to weigh Mr. X's opinions. The AI can't yet factor in real-time contextual data. However, a seasoned human trader might have known that Mr. X's followers, given his history, would discount his opinion and act accordingly – producing a contradictory result. And if an individual influencer carried enough weight with an AI, they might decide to try and influence that AI's decision-making for their own benefit. The possibility of such outside manipulation – however remote – will remain a stumbling block for AI trading systems. That is until they evolve further and can make more intuitive decisions on their own. AI Trading Offers an Edge Over Algorithm Trading What is clear, however, is that AI-powered trading holds several advantages over its algorithm-only predecessors. First, there's the fact that an algorithm-driven system is always limited by the skills of the person using it. Because they cannot conduct independent analysis, they won't always deliver profitable results. An AI-powered system, by contrast, can make decisions based on rich data in real-time. AI can process massive amounts of data far faster than a human trader ever could, which increases the chances that it will make sound and reasoned decisions. And it can make those decisions fast enough to exploit even the tiniest market movements, or to counteract unexpected market swings by remaining flexible. Managing Risks All of these factors mean that AI is already one of the best tools available to forecast which stocks to invest in. The risk-management benefits of current-generation AI tools alone make it more than worth using. And for that reason, it's no surprise that AI is already in use by the stock markets themselves for that purpose. NASDAQ, for example, adopted an AI-powered anti-fraud system at the end of 2019. It's purpose-built to that caused the flash crash referenced earlier. And because the system can learn to spot other types of malicious activity, it may come to act as a check on some of the pitfalls of AI-powered trading identified here. detect and defeat the exact type of market manipulation The Bottom Line The bottom line is that AI has already revolutionized the stock market. It may not be as visible as the technologies it's displacing, but its influence is undeniable. And this is just the beginning. Moving forward, there's an excellent chance that AI will continue to evolve new feature sets to aid investors, brokers, and market regulators. But even at this early stage, AI-powered trading tools can reduce the time, in-depth knowledge, and intuition necessary to build a strong portfolio for the long term. We haven't reached the point where human traders become irrelevant, but today's AI has closed the gap between casual investors and professional traders considerably. And given how fast that has happened – it won't be long before AI becomes the new foundation of the stock markets of the future. Photos licensed via contributor's Adobe Stock account, by metamorworks, peshkov, AndSus.

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This Slack discussion by Limarc Ambalina, Amy Tom and David Smooke occurred in , and has been edited for readability. slogging's official #unpopular-opinion channel Nicolas Cage is a good actor. Limarc Ambalina Feb 1, 2021, 4:47 PM Hands down. He’s gotta be the only actor who has been in a movie with Cher, Meg Ryan, AND Emma Stone hahhahahha Amy Tom Feb 1, 2021, 6:47 PM Statistically speaking, he must be the best. He’s been in 110 films and counting Amy Tom Feb 1, 2021, 6:47 PM Including Faceoff! David Smooke Feb 1, 2021, 9:12 PM Adaption was amazing David Smooke Feb 1, 2021, 9:24 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6woPWN7X5U He's been in movies that range from 0% to 97% on Rotten Tomatoes David Smooke Feb 1, 2021, 9:28 PM https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/nicolas_cage You know what's better than one Nic Cage? Two Nic Cages David Smooke Feb 1, 2021, 10:10 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdA9_mtXYME And of course, critically acclaimed National Treasure IS a national treasure Amy Tom Feb 1, 2021, 11:23 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jApIcfIHe1E Honest Trailers! David Smooke Feb 2, 2021, 12:07 AM Did you know National Treasure the DVD came with a treasure hunt? David Smooke Feb 2, 2021, 12:07 AM https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2020-04-11/10-dvd-easter-egg-hunts-worth-your-time Wow DVD games were the shit Amy Tom Feb 2, 2021, 12:09 AM Amy Tom Feb 2, 2021, 2:54 AM I'm about to get a boyfriend on hinge #bringalltheboystotheyard Amy Tom Feb 2, 2021, 2:54 AM Let's test it. How does Benjamin Gates get access to Abigail's safe? Limarc Ambalina Feb 2, 2021, 2:57 AM I mean Abigail doesn't own the safe 😅 he got into her office with the coin and he got into the safe where the delectation of independence is by using special laser pointers to disarm the system while it went into cleaning 😂 Amy Tom Feb 2, 2021, 2:59 AM Look at the range of his facial expressions here: anger to confusion to fear to realization to empathy to epiphany to remorse to empowerment to catlike to scared to relief, How can you not think he's the greatest - and dare I say strongest and most athletic -  actor of all time? David Smooke Feb 3, 2021, 9:47 PM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTQpfspEdk&t Cage is so animated in his normal roles, he's just the perfect choice as a voice actor for kids films Limarc Ambalina Feb 3, 2021, 11:15 PM But I do have to say that I can watch National Treasure every year and never get sick of it. Also Gone in 60 Seconds in underrated and still might be my favorite Nicolas Cage film of all time. Limarc Ambalina Feb 3, 2021, 11:18 PM Animated? The other characters may be animated, but  I'm fairly certain that is Nicolas Cage acting as Grug Crood. David Smooke Feb 3, 2021, 11:53 PM

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Two blockchain terms are in the headlines recently: 51% attack and double-spend. Most notably, Firo, a privacy-focused project formerly known as Zcoin, experienced a 51% attack where an actor controlled over half of the mining power in order to reverse transactions and compromise the security of the network. Proof-of-work mining was the original security method for decentralized cryptocurrencies beginning with Bitcoin, and it has stood the test of time as the industry standard. However, events such as these cast increasing doubt on whether or not a purely mining-based approach can be trusted for securing a network in the future. A day of reckoning may soon come where cryptocurrencies with older designs are unable to keep up in the ever-evolving and competitive technological landscape. 51% attacks affect all but the “top-of-the-food-chain” coins It’s relatively well- at this point that lesser proof-of-work chains are vulnerable to 51% attacks. More specifically, projects which use a hashing algorithm for which it isn’t the dominant project, where a relatively minor player in the mining scene of a top coin can easily and single-handedly attack a minor coin using the same algorithm. documented Some projects seek to avoid this risk by developing resistance to ASICs, mining equipment specialized to a particular algorithm, allowing users with more basic or universal hardware to participate effectively in mining. However, this leads to another kind of vulnerability, where general-purpose hashrate can be rented to attack a coin. In contrast with ASIC coins where an attacker risks destroying their investment of specialized hardware, ASIC-resistant coins can be attacked without said specialized hardware, making the potential costs much lower. In all cases, however, hashrate marketplaces make it difficult for smaller market cap projects to be truly safe. Having specialized ASICs necessary for effective mining does make a network more difficult to attack, and provides a strong incentive against doing so, as damaging the price of a coin which is the principal source of income for your specialized hardware can prove to be a higher cost than the potential for profiting off of an attack. However, this still presents centralization risks with many of the top coins having as few as three pools controlling the majority of hashrate. This centralization issue is even starker in the production of mining equipment, with few players controlling the vast majority of the market. The double-spend problem Bitcoin recently experienced what was touted as a double-spend attack, which is where an attacker sends a transaction that it later fraudulently revokes. Upon further review, this was likely a user that had a transaction stuck due to a low fee and twice attempted to re-attempt it with a higher fee (which usually works to unstick the transaction). But in the end, the first transaction was approved and the following attempts were rejected. All in all, this led to days of uncertainty as to which transaction would end up being the legitimate one. Make no mistake, however, double-spends are a real thing, the highest-profile of which were a series of from 2018 where attackers exploited the ATM’s settings which allowed unconfirmed transactions to be accepted and later double-spent the Bitcoin back into their control, making off with the cash dispensed from the machines. Bitcoin ATM thefts This is not unique to Bitcoin either (although its replace-by-fee feature certainly makes this easier): Bitcoin Cash also experiences , sometimes thousands a day. Most are unsuccessful but many have nonetheless succeeded. double-spend attempts Making the transaction irreversible may protect the network from the attack This is the fundamental principle Dash’s ChainLocks technology operates on. By using a network of incentivized and collateralized nodes, the first-seen block on the network is locked-in and made permanent, making chain reorganizations impossible. This means that after a transaction is sent, within just a couple minutes it will become completely irreversible. A similar but separate feature, InstantSend, also uses the masternodes except it instantly locks a transaction from being double-spent until it is included in a block, at which point ChainLocks takes over and makes the transaction fully permanent. Essentially what this means for cryptocurrencies such as Dash that implemented this technology is that once a transaction is sent, the user can confidently consider it finalized and secure. The reason this is secure is that the masternode network consists of nodes which require a significant investment in order to operate. At present prices, an attacker would need to spend over $100,000 per masternode (likely significantly higher due to the effects this would have on the market), and do this thousands of times. About half of Dash’s supply is currently spoken for in existing masternodes, making it practically impossible to acquire enough to affect network security. This is not lost on the Firo team, either. Firo had actually implemented ChainLocks on testnet prior to the incident, which may not have happened at all had it happened several weeks later. Project steward that ChainLocks can indeed represent the ideal security solution: Reuben Yap believes In short, we believe that PoW + LLMQ chain locks are a great way of combining security and fair distribution while remaining permissionless… shoutout to Dash for massively improving the masternode system from the original masternode lists. Their innovations in deterministic masternodes and LLMQ chain locks are a huge step forward. Why not just use proof-of-stake? Of course, the implementation of collateralized nodes to improve network security begs the question: why not just switch to using proof-of-stake entirely? While this would certainly solve the threat of 51% attacks, it introduces a new set of challenges. First is the supply issue: by definition, proof-of-stake coins distribute the supply to existing holders of the coin. In theory, if such a coin started with 10 initial holders, those 10 individuals would end up controlling the entire supply unless they either sold, spent, or donated their coins to someone else. Of course, this isn’t a common occurrence, and many proof-of-stake projects either started as proof-of-work (and therefore don’t have that distribution problem) or have alternative distribution mechanisms such as an ICO or giveaways. In any case, it poses a risk of centralizing power around too few actors. Mining allows anyone to participate in theory, and as miners have fixed costs associated with running equipment (much higher than typical node hosting costs), they are more likely to need to sell some of their profits to maintain operations, further distributing the supply. Additionally, proof-of-stake may present some , past examples of which include attacks tricking the network into thinking a node had associated collateral when in fact it did not, overloading the memory of staked nodes causing them to fail, and others. unique security challenges Proof-of-work is inherently much more difficult to spoof, and its intensive infrastructure requirements make it much more difficult to knock offline. A hybrid model including both a staked and a mining element can combine the best of both worlds and avoid each respective system’s vulnerabilities. While still a fledgling industry, cryptocurrency is still well over a decade old. Some of the initial technologies that the space pioneered are starting to show their age. It’s time to update proof-of-work mining to survive in the modern digital age.

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Despite the macabre name, headless browsers aren't scary (at least, to most people). They're similar to standard web browsers, but are controlled through code instead of with a mouse and keyboard. You can do almost anything with a headless browser on a page that you can do with a normal web browser, including submit forms, wait for asynchronous JavaScript, and set cookies. When used in combination with modern cloud platforms, it's easier than ever to create automated scrapers. In this article, I'll walk you through a few web scraping tricks and examples using , a headless browser based on Chromium that has become an industry standard, and Node.js. We'll also use to easily run and iterate on our scraper code. Puppeteer Autocode All you need to get started is a free Autocode account. Let's dive in! TL;DR (30s) Getting a basic scraper working is simple. Start by going to https://autocode.com and creating or logging into your account. Create a new project, and paste the following code into the editor: lib = ( )({ : process.env.STDLIB_SECRET_TOKEN}); puppeteer = ( ); browser = puppeteer.launch(); page = browser.newPage(); page.goto( ); title = page.title(); browser.close(); title; // authenticates you with the API standard library const require 'lib' token const require 'autocode-puppeteer' let await let await await 'https://www.youtube.com/' // Any URL you'd like let await await return Autocode will automatically add required dependencies, so all you need to do now is, press the or button to push your code live. And that's it! You're now scraping the title of the page (what you'd see in the tab bar when you open the site in Chrome) with Puppeteer. Save Run Breaking It Down Here's what happens in the above code: We require a . Note that the default Puppeteer package will not work due to dependency size constraints. variant of Puppeteer configured to work in the Autocode environment We prepare Puppeteer by launching it and opening a new page. We navigate to the desired page with . await page.goto() Once on the right page, we use the method to scrape the page title. page.title() We close the browser instance when we're finished. This flow is analogous to opening Chrome on your computer, typing in the navbar, checking the title of the page, and finally closing the browser. We'll follow this general pattern when web scraping with Puppeteer. https://youtube.com/ We're just scratching the surface of what's possible, but there's something important to emphasize first. With Great Power... Many websites disallow scraping, and use tools like reCAPTCHA or contain a file containing guidelines for scrapers and other automated tools. You should always check and respect site rules before scraping. robots.txt Scraping Data From Page Content Now that you've got the basics down, let's explore how to scrape more useful data from a page. One key piece of functionality Puppeteer provides is the ability to query a page for HTML elements with . For example, Puppeteer's method takes a selector and allows you to run code in the context of the browser on all elements matching the selector. CSS selectors page.$$eval() Here's what it looks like in action: lib = ( )({ : process.env.STDLIB_SECRET_TOKEN}); puppeteer = ( ); browser = puppeteer.launch(); page = browser.newPage(); page.goto( ); videoData = page.$$ ( , (titleLinkEls) => { titleLinkEls.map( { { : titleLinkEl.getAttribute( ), : + titleLinkEl.getAttribute( )
    };
  });
}); browser.close(); videoData; // authenticates you with the API standard library const require 'lib' token const require 'autocode-puppeteer' let await let await await 'https://www.youtube.com/' let await eval 'a#video-title-link' return ( ) => titleLinkEl return title 'title' link 'https://youtube.com' 'href' await return Once we've loaded YouTube in a page, we can use the function to query for each video link on the front page and return the name of the video and a link to it. We've essentially created a custom trending video API! page.$$eval() Crafting Selectors With Chrome Devtools One tricky part about creating scrapers is figuring out what elements of the page contain relevant data - after all, it's not immediately obvious that matches all the video links on YouTube. One convenient tool for this is the inspector in Chrome's devtools. a#video-title-link You can open the inspector under in the topbar, or by using the keyboard shortcut : View > Developer > Inspect Elements CMD + Option + C Once you have the inspector open, you can mouse over elements on the page and see them highlighted. Clicking one will show the element in the devtools window, including its attributes and position in the DOM. With the inspector, you should be able to figure out a way to reference the correct elements and scrape the data you want. Debugging With Screenshots Puppeteer allows you to take screenshots of pages using the method. This can be especially useful to see the current page state when composing flows that involve interaction with or , much like a statement. page.screenshot() page.click() page.select() console.log For example, let's say you want to build a flow that involves clicking on the first video on the front page of YouTube to scrape its like and dislike count. You might try something like this: lib = ( )({ : process.env.STDLIB_SECRET_TOKEN}); puppeteer = ( ); .exports = (context) => { browser = puppeteer.launch(); page = browser.newPage(); page.goto( ); page.click( ); screenshot = page.screenshot(); browser.close(); { : , : screenshot, : { : }
  };

} // authenticates you with the API standard library const require 'lib' token const require 'autocode-puppeteer' /**
* An HTTP endpoint that acts as a webhook for HTTP(S) request event
* @returns {object.http} result
*/ module async let await let await await 'https://www.youtube.com/' await 'a#video-title-link' let await await return statusCode 200 body headers 'Content-Type' 'image/png' To make the screenshot return as an image rather than just binary data, we must pass back the proper header. The above code is an example of how to do this in Autocode with the return type. To return other types of data, you'll need to remove the return type or change the return type to match the type of data you're returning. For more information, you can read about the Autocode uses for parameters and return types. Note: Content-Type object.http FunctionScript specification If you were to try running the above code a few times, you would notice that the screenshot is either not changing from the main page, or that you'd see something like this: This would clue you in to the fact that you need to wait for parts of the page to load using something like : page.waitForSelector() lib = ( )({ : process.env.STDLIB_SECRET_TOKEN}); puppeteer = ( ); .exports = (context) => { browser = puppeteer.launch(); page = browser.newPage(); page.goto( ); page.click( ); page.waitForSelector( ); screenshot = page.screenshot(); browser.close(); { : , : screenshot, : { : }
  };

} // authenticates you with the API standard library const require 'lib' token const require 'autocode-puppeteer' /**
* An HTTP endpoint that acts as a webhook for HTTP(S) request event
* @returns {object.http} result
*/ module async let await let await await 'https://www.youtube.com/' await 'a#video-title-link' await '#top-level-buttons' let await await return statusCode 200 body headers 'Content-Type' 'image/png' Other use-cases include combining screenshots with the , a file hosting platform like , and a package like to create daily screenshot diffs for regression testing. Autocode scheduler Box pixelmatch Tuning Your Scraper The web is a wild place, and new standards are appearing all the time. If a technique doesn't work the way you expect on a first attempt, you may need to try a different method, like waiting for a selector or even just waiting for a set amount of time rather than a event, or using a different selector. Luckily, Puppeteer has plenty of options! DOMContentLoaded Increasing Your Autocode Timeout Complicated flows that involve visiting multiple pages or flows that visit slow pages may require more than the default 10 second timeout on Autocode. If your scraper is consistently timing out, you can try increasing the timeout under in the bottom left corner of the Autocode editor. Advanced Settings Free accounts can increase their timeouts to up to 30 seconds, while can go up to 2 minutes. Professional Tier accounts Simulating Logged-In States (Advanced) Many websites show different data based on whether or not the current viewer is logged in. To simulate this state in Puppeteer, you might be able to use the method using cookies obtained from the Chrome devtools. You can also attempt to use and submit a site's login form directly with your username and password, but many sites use CAPTCHAs to prevent this. page.setCookie() Be careful not to set cookies under the wrong domain if you try this! Limitations Because web scrapers usually rely on the structure of the DOM for pages they visit, frontend updates can break scrapers. For this reason, it's often better to use a supported API if it is available to you. If your desired data follows a specific format and the page you're scraping obfuscates their CSS attributes or changes them frequently, Puppeteer does have a method that returns the current DOM structure of the page as a string. You can then use a regex or some other method to extract your data. page.content() Thank You! Puppeteer is an extremely powerful tool, and if you're interested in a deeper dive, I would encourage you to check out . the official documentation If you have any questions or feedback, a good place to get in touch with me is the Autocode community Slack channel. You can get an invite under in the topbar on . You can also reach out to me on Twitter . Docs > Ask for Help in Slack autocode.com @Hacubu If you want to stay up to date on the latest from Autocode, I would also encourage you to follow . Happy hacking! @AutocodeHQ Also published on: https://dev.to/hacubu/an-introduction-to-scraping-almost-anything-with-puppeteer-and-node-js-e9g

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