Get the most recent info and news about A Bola on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

Website: www.abola.pt

Portugal's leading sports newspaper since 1945.

Website: www.abola.pt

A BOLA TV, channel 12 of MEO

Website: www.abola.pt

Website: www.abola.pt

Portugal's leading sports newspaper since 1945.

Website: www.abola.pt

A BOLA TV, channel 12 of MEO

Website: www.abola.pt

Website: www.abola.pt

Portugal's leading sports newspaper since 1945.

Website: www.abola.pt

A BOLA TV, channel 12 of MEO

Website: www.abola.pt

A Bola

a-bola

As reported by the Portuguese newspaper <strong>A</strong> <strong>Bola</strong> (via Milan News), Porto are not going to be making any drastic decisions when it comes to their coach.

A Bola: Porto set date for talks with Milan coaching target Conceicao | OneFootball

FC Porto are not going to hold talks with head coach Sergio Conceicao until they have competed in the Portuguese Cup final on May 26.

A Bola: Porto set date for talks with Milan coaching target Conceicao

This is a story about the revolution in Africa through . Web3 NFT gaming It's midday in the bustling city of Lagos. The city is known for its famous yellow buses, fast lifestyle, and the never say die of the 20 million people who live there. It's also the home of 21-one-year-old Salami, a crypto gamer. Despite being in his third year studying Physics at the state university, Salami confesses that he currently dedicates almost half of his time to playing . He also says that he owes his current progress at crypto gaming to a gaming guild he joined late last year. crypto play-to-earn games Unlike traditional gaming guilds, crypto gaming guilds aren't based on a group of gamers just coming together to play games. Instead, crypto gaming guilds are a million-dollar crypto phenomenon. They rose in popularity with the and are the only way poor people or people in the global South can play Blockchain play-to-earn games like , , etc. exponential rise in popularity and value of NFTs, Axie Infinity The Sandbox The reason is simple; the virtual assets (NFTs) required to play these games are expensive to purchase. While this is a normal barrier to entry for most gamers of any kind — after all, high-end consoles and computers aren't cheap — it's more so for crypto gamers because of prohibitively expensive NFTs. Game consoles could cost hundreds of dollars, but the NFTs needed to play these crypto games could cost thousands of dollars. These gaming guilds solve this problem by bringing gamers together, renting NFTs out to them, and taking a cut of their earnings. In other words, the gaming guilds help players play expensive games in return for a cut in their earnings. This revenue-sharing program is called a scholarship. For people in like Salami, these gaming guilds are a lifesaver. By reducing the barrier to entry for these games, he can play them and manage to make a living for himself. And it's not only young students like Salami who are getting into the game of crypto gaming. emerging markets Because of the precarious economic conditions in Africa, both old and young people all over urban centers in the continent have been learning how to play these games and joining crypto gaming guilds. The fact that their earnings can easily be converted to dollars, an extremely valuable currency unit in the continent, means that gaming is a lot more lucrative for these African players. It also means that crypto gaming can be a real career path for many African gamers. While blockchain gaming is popular in Western countries, it's never really seen as a good career path. Of course, there are several reasons for this, but the important reason boils down to the odds of success being not very good. In a world where there are better career paths with more stability and bigger odds for success, treating blockchain gaming as a valid career path will just not work. Sure, some game NFTs are worth — however, a vast majority are worth nothing or will soon be worth nothing. tens of thousands of dollars However, this dynamic does not exist in Africa. For example, On the other hand, What this means, in essence, is that there are very few career paths with more stability and bigger odds for success than crypto gaming in Africa, while the opposite is true for developed nations. In the final analysis, this dynamic guarantees that more Africans will be interested in crypto gaming than in the West. the GDP per capita of most African nations hovers below 5,000 dollars. there's hardly any western country with a GDP per capita lower than 30,000 dollars. Africa: The Future Of Gaming Guilds In 2021, a by Kucoin affirmed what most analysts already knew; crypto adoption was growing at an unprecedented rate in Africa. Interestingly, this wasn't because of external factors. It was even despite external factors, as poor socioeconomic and ordinarily meant that crypto adoption would be stunted in Africa. report regulatory metrics However, this was not the case. According to the report, crypto adoption grew by 2500% in a single year. Analysts further predicted that this trend will continue for a long while, even if regulatory and economic indices remain opposed to cryptocurrency adoption growth. With the growth of crypto in Africa came the growth of crypto games. Ordinarily, the adoption of these games would have been met with hesitation. However, 2020 was a period of an extraordinary bull run in the cryptoverse, and this gave most gamers renewed confidence in the market. Within mere months, African gamers realized that crypto gaming was a viable industry. They also realized that only a gaming guild can reduce the barrier to entry and make the space attractive for gamers. Thankfully, there were already a few gaming guilds in place for that purpose, and that's how the gaming guild industry in Africa began to grow. Today, there are loads of gaming guilds in Africa. Some have even been accepted into the Binance Labs accelerator program, and many are poised to interest many crypto VCs. is one of those guilds, and the company has been growing exponentially. Afriguild The guild is certainly the most ambitious gaming guild in Africa right now, as it aims for the ambitious — but still possible — goal of onboarding a hundred million Africans into the world of Web3 in five years through education, gaming, and community building. The team-building effort of Afriguild is led by some of the brightest lights in the Nigerian Web3 space, including Toyosi Abolarin, and Tomiwa Olajide. And the guild itself is already doing exploits. Despite being only a few months old, Afriguild won 2nd place at the Axie Infinity Game Tournament at the Meta Conference In Dubai. This win shows that the startup has built a very vibrant network of young gamers, and its repertoire of games and NFTs is expanding by the day. Right now, the startup is still in early-stage funding, but its magnificent team and expanding community mean that it is one of the most promising guilds in the African Web3 space today. Despite it being a young company, Afriguild has made rather impressive strides in reaching this goal. The startup has built a very vibrant network of young gamers, and its repertoire of games and NFTs is expanding by the day. While many sincerely doubt that the startup will reach its goal of converting 100 million Africans into the world of Web3 within five years, one must realize that it's merely a matter of 2000% year-on-year growth. That has happened before, and it surely can happen again. Are you looking at the next ? What do you think? Yield Guild Games (YGG) The Future Of African Gamers Today For young people like Salami, crypto gaming is a lifesaver. Right now, he is pretty confident that his future lies in Web3, whether it's through playing games or participating in some other way. "I think I've gotten half of all my friends into crypto gaming. Of course, the money isn't a lot. However, while 0.2 BTC or ETH may not be a lot of money in United States Dollars, it's quite a lot in  Nigerian Naira. With that you can feed yourself, and even pay your tuition" He says. And what about his degree in Physics? Will he still pursue it? "Of course, I will. But that's just for a degree. The opportunities in Web3 are a lot more profitable than a degree in Physics. And that's not a bad thing — after all, Elon Musk left a graduate degree program at Stanford to build two internet companies." When asked whether the bear market scares him, Salami just nodded. "Yes, there might be some economic uncertainty. But there's economic uncertainty everywhere. Didn't a global recession happen in 2008?" There are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of African gamers on the continent who feel the same way. The only question now is whether time will prove them right or prove them wrong.

The Rise of Crypto Gaming Guilds in Africa

There comes a time in every business’s living cycle when the company turns to public relations. Reasons may vary, but the most common cause is merely the fact that everybody seems to be doing it. Doing PR has become somewhat a must for every market player, but many of them often approach this subject without a clear understanding of why their business needs it. The most common misconception about PR is that any PR-related activities should inevitably lead to soaring worldwide popularity and long queues of clients waiting to sign off the highest cheques. As tempting as this picture may seem, such expectations may be harmful to the company and eventually jeopardize the real potential outcomes that a good PR strategy could bring them. Choosing an appropriate PR strategy with realistic goals can help you raise awareness about your business and products, gain the trust of potential partners, and even get better investment proposals – which is particularly important for startups that are just starting out. This is what I learned from my own experience working with such brands as Qiwi, Whirlpool, Jumeirah, Alrosa and many other major and tech brands in the industry. Key Things to Know About PR The effectiveness of PR activities cannot be measured by the number of leads. No specialist can guarantee you clients as a result of a particular media publication. PR is a long-term strategy. Not only do you often have to wait for weeks before your first headlines come out, but there is also a big preparation stretch that needs to be done prior to that. The PR specialist needs to study the company and its products, find and connect with the right journalists, pitch the articles and prepare the publications strategically to reach certain goals in the long run. All of that takes time. Key Steps to Take Before Investing In PR Define Your Company Goals and Understand How PR Can Help Decide what you are trying to achieve and whether it’s PR that is likely to solve your problems. Some goals that you may set for your PR activities are: Increase your media exposure and take over your industry niche to bring in more clients, and increase revenue, become the market leaders PR helps influence consumers’ behavior by communicating the brand’s value. However, it’s important to keep in mind that PR guarantees no immediate increase in clients and revenue flows. If the company is limited in its budget, it might be worth investing in other promotional activities instead: a marketing campaign or a fruitful collaboration with relevant influencers can generate results much faster. PR is a powerful instrument in the long run, so it would require more patience and significantly more investments. Appeal to potential partners and investors by creating a reliable, influential image of the company A portfolio of media publications is often needed to provide the company’s credibility to investors. Such articles may highlight the business’s growth, its increasing popularity, or generally showcase that it’s interesting enough to receive some media coverage. Promoting an HR-brand If the company is struggling with its hires, the goal of the business is to help more people learn about the company and become interested in its work opportunities. In this case, PR can help increase the company’s outreach to the audience of popular media outlets. Understand Your Expertise Before consulting any PR specialists, try to put down a few thoughts to answer the following questions: What is it that your company is most knowledgeable in? Who can be your speakers? What kind of expert advice can they share? If your business can’t offer any particular expertise, or you’re struggling to come up with the speakers, there are two ways to tackle this problem: Bring in an external expert or speaker (e.g. high-profile advisor in your industry) Choose other methods of promotion Decide on Your Hire Who will be doing your PR? Three options to consider are: Hire an in-house Head of PR (with a potential perspective of growing a whole PR department) Appoint a PR agency Sign up a freelance PR Manager for a certain amount of tasks When to Hire a Head of PR? The more work there is to do, the more likely your business needs one. A big company with a large product portfolio that strives to generate more news and engage with a broader audience would definitely benefit from an in-house specialist that fully concentrates on the brand. A Head of PR is someone who works for one particular company, which means they can handle a bigger workload and consequently produce more significant results. They are always at the very center of the company’s activities and stay on track of everything, thus generating more news hooks and press events. Benefits Fully immersed in the company Always on top of the news Generates news events Finds and hires all the necessary specialists and experts Has a deeper understanding of the company’s PR strategy and a personal interest in its success No limit on KPIs, since you’re an in-house expert Drawbacks May have narrower expertise due to specializing in a particular industry May be less responsive and adaptive to trends occurring in the markets different from theirs Has fewer chances to consult other specialists and compare the company’s activities to other cases If there is not enough work to do for a PR specialist, such a hire can barely be justified Might be less efficient due to less control, as all the KPIs are usually set by the Head of PR themselves When to Hire an Agency? If the company hasn’t grown big enough to consider creating its own PR department, it might be worth hiring contractors instead. However, agencies can be just as useful for bigger corporations once their in-house specialists no longer cope with the workload: in this case, bringing in some help from the agency can impressively maximize the company’s PR efforts. An example of a successful synergy between the company’s in-house PR specialists and contractors is when the first ones are handling the personal brands of the CEO, and the key speakers (e.g., by managing their appearance at key industry events), and the agency covers the KPIs in media publications. Benefits: Offers combined expertise of multiple specialists that can brainstorm together in particularly challenging cases Agency specialists are often highly professional and experienced, as many former Heads of PR continue their careers by opening their own agencies Provides a package of services provided by different specialists (including copywriters, editors, and designers) Own media contact base, personal contacts with journalists, and an ability to build a relationship with the right media in shorter timeframes KPI-oriented approach Drawbacks: Slower speed of response due to handling multiple clients Unless the news event is urgent, the whole process of pitching and preparing media publications can take more time Less integrated into the company and therefore less familiar with its products and activities When to Hire a Freelance PR Manager? This may be the best option for companies tight on budget, but still eager to start diving into PR. Benefits: Cost-friendly Allocates as much time per client as needed, as they have to guarantee some result to justify their service Drawbacks: Less services provided (including consultations) Harder to hire, as the proof of relevant experience is particularly important Decide on the Metrics to Evaluate Your PR Efforts There are a number of parameters that you can use to define the key KPIs for your PR performance. They may include: Number of media publications Audience outreach Quality of the audience Tone of the publications Choose Your Speakers We touched on this subject earlier when we talked about defining the company’s expertise. Now, it’s time to pay closer attention to the profiles of people who will be representing your business. Your speakers are those who… Have a particular expertise Share this expertise with a PR specialist in written form and/or audio recordings. These chunks of information are later transformed into media commentary and publications Usually, the main speakers are the top managers of the company and/or genuine industry experts within the team. If there are no suitable candidates to cope with this role onboard, a PR specialist can suggest bringing in an external expert. For example, a dating app startup can be represented by a popular psychologist. Shortlist Your Preferred Media Not every company needs to be featured in Forbes. Your company’s media needs should be determined by your business goals. For example, when working with the world’s leading diamond mining company Alrosa, we were mostly aiming at industry and luxury lifestyle media, the same media outlets were used for a 5-star hotel chain Jumeirah, including the travel outlets. But when working with fintech company Qiwi, national, business and finance media were used to get the most results for the brand. To Conclude Going through all these steps one by one will help you re-evaluate your PR needs and maximize the effect of your activities without splashing too much cash over nothing. We’re always all in for a startup-friendly approach!

How to Get the PR Ball Rolling

Cómo poner en marcha las relaciones públicas

Comment lancer le bal des relations publiques

पीआर बॉल रोलिंग कैसे प्राप्त करें

PRボールを転がす方法

Como fazer a bola rolar PR

Làm thế nào để có được PR Ball Rolling

如何让公关球滚动

The Problem: “cd” & “ls” Suck 👎 Using command to change the directory and to preview files in the current directory may work sometimes, but it’s frustrating to have to use this workflow all the time whenever you want to go somewhere. cd ls The Solution I will give you 3 solutions not just one to make your life easier in terminal and jump easily between files. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” — Abraham Lincoln Let’s Sharpen Our Axe 🪓 You’re gonna need some to follow with me: perquisites Zsh Tmux Zoxide LF Fzf Solution 1: Zoxide zoxide is a smarter cd command This one is pretty cool; here’s what it does: It remembers all directories you visit and organizes them by most frequent. All you need is to type some letters from the name des => Desktop It jumps immediately there (super super cool) Step 1: Install It With Homebrew Brew install zoxide. Step 2: Initialize in ~/.zshrc open your ~/.zshrc file, and add this to initialize it eval "$(zoxide init zsh)" source ~/.zshrc to apply the changes source ~/.zshrc Step 3: Use Zoxide Instead of “cd” First, you need to visit the directories you want to jump to, so can identify it and fuzzy find it. zoxide Type + any letters you remember from the directory. z z desk// cd ~/Desktop Solution 2: LF Manager lf (as in "list files") is a terminal file manager written in Go with a heavy inspiration from ranger file manager Let me tell you a secret; this is my favorite one 🤫 if you’re like me, using Vim navigation keys hjkl After you get used to it, you suddenly want to use them everywhere. does exactly that; it works like columns view in Finder but with Vim. LF But don’t get me wrong; it still works with regular “Arrow” keys as well. Step 1: Install It With Homebrew Brew install lf. Step 2: Change the Directory on Quit “ it’s funny, but for some reason, it didn’t change the directory on quit” It’s like the main point, right !! 🥲 So, let’s fix this with a small function working as a wrapper to lf. It just saves the last directory path in the temp file, then cd to it. Add this function to your ~/.zshrc lf Wrapper function lf { local tmp=$(mktemp) command lf -last-dir-path="$tmp" "$@" cd "$(cat "$tmp")" rm -r "$tmp" } Step 3: Customize Your “lfrc” File It’s the LF config file to customize it; I like to keep it minimal. few UI interface configurations shortcuts to jump to my frequent main directories with a small cheatsheet for favorite LF shortcuts you’re gonna find it at ( if you can’t find it, create it ) ~/.config/lf/lfrc | |/ ) __ _ | | | / | | | () | | | | | | || _/ | ___ ___ _ __ / ( / _ | ' | |/ ` | | | | | ( | | ( | */|| ||| |*|, | | UI Set hidden # show hidden files set icons # show icons for files/directories set relativenumber # show files/directories relative numbers Jump Shortcuts map gh cd ~ # use 'gh' to go home directory map gp cd ~/personal/ # use 'gp' to go personal directory map gw cd ~/work/ # use 'gw' to go work directory map gt cd ~/tools/ # use 'gt' to go tools directory map gd cd ~/Downloads/ # use 'gd' to go downloads directory map gv cd /Volumes/ # use 'gv' to go volumes for (external drives) map gb cd ~/brainExt # use 'gb' to go obsidian BrainExt vault Fav Shortcuts hjkl/gg/G # Vim-like Navigation (move) space/v/u # select/invert/unselect (select) y/d/p/c # yank/delete/paste/clear (change) i/e/l # open with less/default-editor/default-app (open) change your default editor in ~/.zshrc To make sure that when you use shortcut, it always opens with it. e Then verify that your default editor changed: echo $EDITOR export EDITOR=vi # change default editor to vim Step 4: Cool Tmux Keybinding Imagine this scenario: you’re working on a file in Tmux, then do a quick shortcut open in new window to open any file from the same directory 🚀 lf Let’s go do exactly that, in ~/.tmux.conf But first, make sure that zsh is our default shell for the tmux conf Set the Default Shell to zsh set-option -g default-shell /bin/zsh this smart keybinding opens a new window with the name “Files.” ctrl+f The new window starts from the same path as well as your current window. And finally, it opens directly there ( use q to quit ) lf ctrl+f => lf (q) bind -n C-f new-window -n "files" -c "#{pane_current_path}" "zsh -ic 'lf; zsh'" Don’t forget to source ~/.tmux.conf tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf Solution 3: Tmux-fzf Script For this one, we don’t just use another utility. We build our own tmux manager script to fuzzy find all our project files in specific directories and jump. 🦘 Step 1: Organize Your Project Files in Specific Directories For example ~/personal ~/work ~/tools Step 2: Build “Tmux Manager” Bash Script Create a new file with the name in the tools directory. tmux_manager.sh Change this file into an executable: chmod +x tmux_manager.sh This script lists all projects in those directories to fuzzy find. Finally, open the selected project as (or create it if not found) Tmux Session #!/usr/bin/env bash _ __ ___ _ ___ __| | | | /_\ | | | ' ` _ | | | \ / / | || | | | | | || |> <| | | ,/ use fuzzy finder to get my working directories paths session=$(find ~ ~/personal ~/work/ ~/tools -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | fzf) get last part as a name & replace any (.) with (_) session_name=$(basename "$session" | tr . _) if the session doesn't already exist, create it. if ! tmux has-session -t "$session_name" 2> /dev/null; then # remove err msg to null tmux new-session -s "$session_name" -c "$session" -d fi switch to the session by name tmux switch-client -t "$session_name" Step 3: Create an Alias to Our “Tmux Manager” Script open ~/.zshrc, to add our new Alias Don’t forget to source it 😉 source ~/.zshrc alias tm="~/tools/tmux_manager.sh" Step 4: Cooool tmux keybinding for “Tmux Manager” The same trick we did before with lf. A quick shortcut will run our tmux manager script alias. ctrl+t It will open in a new tmux window; a big list of all projects. Your selected project will open in its own Tmux session. Tell me that this isn’t cool ?! 🙃 bind -n C-t new-window -n "tmux" "zsh -ic 'tm; zsh'" don’t forget to source ~/.tmux.conf tmux source-file ~/.tmux.conf Let’s Be Friends on Twitter 👋 https://twitter.com/belalsamyyy

A Blazing Fast File Management for Terminal ⚡️

In today’s world, for many people, conversing with AI has become as routine as discussing one’s coffee preferences with a barista (or it soon will be!). Yet, here lies an irony: . the more we interact with AI, the more elusive our understanding of these conversations becomes This irony essentially represents a modern twist on the “black box” dilemma, which has perplexed the ML community for years. The “black box” problem refers to the opaque decision-making processes of ML models (large language models (LLMs) including), where the rationale behind any given response is shrouded in complexity. Despite advances in technology, the inner workings of these models, governed by billions or soon trillions of parameters, remain largely inscrutable. Their decision-making is a puzzle, complicated by nonlinear interactions that defy straightforward interpretation. Prompting — the buzzing word of 2023 — doesn’t make it any better: we now have obscured layers of communication activated with every prompt. What we see — the prompt we type — is merely the surface. Beneath lies a hidden dialogue, an augmented system prompt, which is a complex, coded conversation the model conducts with itself, away from our understanding. And who knows what a model whispers to itself? So, if you were confused about prompting amid the avalanche of articles, blogs, and tutorials about it — you should be. As Ethan Mollick’s reveals, contrary to intuition, , such as pretending to navigate a Star Trek episode or a political thriller, demonstrating that traditional logical or direct prompts may not always yield the best responses from AI. research the most effective prompts involve imaginative scenarios But it also reveals that it’s not coherent and might change with a new version of the model. He mentions the futility of seeking a universal “magic phrase” for AI interaction, the effectiveness of specific prompting techniques like adding context, few-shot learning, and Chain of Thought, and the significant impact that prompts can have on AI performance. But for me — and I’ve been using AI a lot — many times, the most straightforward prompts, or “magic words,” can be surprisingly effective. How to explain it? A few years back, Explainable AI (XAI) was heralded as a solution to the “black box” issue, with entities like DARPA leading the charge (they created the , which has not been updated since 2021). However, the buzz around XAI seems to have dimmed, overtaken by a broader focus on Responsible AI. Is Responsible AI the solution? XAI toolkit So, that’s what we end up with: How do machines make decisions? — We don’t know! How to talk (prompt) to them? — We don’t know as well! But, please, keep shipping to us new, larger (though we will also take smaller) models! Why? — We don’t know! But we can’t stop. Great Article Covering the Topic An explanatory article about the concept of a black box: https://hackernoon.com/deep-learning-and-artificial-neural-networks-solving-the-black-box-mystery-rl7h32wa?embedable=true 🎁 Bonus: The Freshest Research Papers, Categorized for Your Convenience Special Category: Definitely Worth Reading : Discusses the development and advantages of 1-bit LLMs, promising significant cost reductions and efficiency improvements. The Era of 1-bit LLMs Read the paper : Introduces bGPT, a model that simulates the digital world beyond traditional modalities, predicting and diagnosing algorithms or hardware behavior. Beyond Language Models Read the paper Language Models in Specialized Domains : Integrates music understanding and generation capabilities into LLMs, demonstrating LLMs’ potential in music composition. ChatMusician Read the paper : Aims to bridge LLMs’ gap in interpreting structured data, enhancing their ability to ground knowledge in tables, graphs, and databases. StructLM Read the paper : Focuses on responsibly creating Code LLMs, contributing to advancements in coding benchmarks, and emphasizing model openness. StarCoder2 and The Stack v2 Read the paper : Discusses video generation’s potential as a unified interface for diverse tasks, outlining challenges and future directions. Video as the New Language for Real-World Decision Making Read the paper Enhancing and Merging Language Model Capabilities : Proposes a method to fuse knowledge from multiple chat models, improving chat model performance through a novel merging technique. FUSECHAT Read the paper : Details a multilingual language model that showcases superior performance in coding tasks and multilingual capabilities. Nemotron-4 15B Technical Report Read the paper : Explores latent multi-hop reasoning in LLMs, revealing their inherent capabilities and limitations in complex reasoning tasks. Do Large Language Models Latently Perform Multi-Hop Reasoning? Read the paper Scaling and Efficiency in Model Training : Discusses a system for training LLMs on over 10,000 GPUs, tackling efficiency and stability challenges in large-scale model training. MegaScale Read the paper : Proposes a theory for optimizing LLM learning, aiming for reduced training steps and improved performance. Towards Optimal Learning of Language Models Read the paper : Introduces a model combining gated linear recurrences with local attention, offering an efficient alternative for language processing tasks. Griffin Read the paper : Investigates the effects of scaling on fine-tuning LLMs, providing insights into data, model, and method impacts on bilingual tasks. When scaling meets LLM finetuning Read the paper Improving Robustness and Diversity in AI : Generates diverse adversarial prompts to enhance LLM robustness, employing an open-ended search method for prompt discovery. Rainbow Teaming Read the paper : Proposes a deterministic sampling technique for code generation, improving sample diversity and model performance in compiler optimization. Priority Sampling of Large Language Models for Compilers Read the paper Generative Models and Interactive Environments : Trains a generative model to create interactive virtual worlds from various inputs, advancing generative AI and simulation capabilities. Genie r Read the pape Enjoyed This Story? I write a weekly analysis of the AI world in the Turing Post newsletter. Subscribe for free using the button below and be the first to read the latest stories. The goal of Turing Post is to equip you with comprehensive knowledge and historical insights, so you can make informed decisions about AI and ML. 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Explainable AI and Prompting a Black Box in the Era of Gen AI

A Floating City and The Blockade Runners by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Chapter XXXIX here CHAPTER XXXIX. Some minutes later we were descending a long flight of steps on the Canadian side, which led to the banks of the river, covered with huge sheets of ice. Here a boat was waiting to take us to “America.” One passenger had already taken his place in it. He was an engineer from Kentucky, and acquainted the Doctor with his name and profession. We embarked without loss of time, and by dint of steering, so as to avoid the blocks of ice, reached the middle of the river, where the current offered a clear passage. From here we had a last view of the magnificent Niagara cataract. Our companion observed it with a thoughtful air. “Is it not grand, sir? Is it not magnificent?” said I to him. “Yes,” replied he; “but what a waste of mechanical force, and what a mill might be turned with such a fall as that!” Never did I feel more inclined to pitch an engineer into the water! On the other bank a small and almost vertical railroad, worked by a rope on the American side, hoisted us to the top. At half-past one we took the express, which put us down at Buffalo at a quarter past two. After visiting this large new town, and tasting the water of Lake Erie, we again took the New York Central Railway at six o’clock in the evening. The next day, on leaving the comfortable beds of a “sleeping car,” we found ourselves at Albany, and the Hudson Railroad, which runs along the left bank of the river, brought us to New York a few hours later. The next day, the 15th of April, in company with the indefatigable Doctor, I went over the city, East River, and Brooklyn. In the evening I bade farewell to the good Dean Pitferge, and I felt, in leaving him, that I left a friend. Tuesday, the 16th of April, was the day fixed for the departure of the “Great Eastern.” At eleven o’clock I went to Thirty-seventh pier, where the tender was to await the passengers. It was already filled with people and luggage when I embarked. Just as the tender was leaving the quay some one caught hold of my arm, and turning round I saw Dr. Pitferge. “You!” I cried; “and are you going back to Europe?” “Yes, my dear sir.” “By the ‘Great Eastern’?” “Undoubtedly,” replied the amiable original, smiling; “I have considered the matter, and have come to the conclusion that I must go. Only think, this may be the ‘Great Eastern’s’ .” last voyage; the one which she will never complete The bell for departure had rung, when one of the waiters from Fifth Avenue Hotel came running up to me, and put a telegram into my hands, dated from Niagara Falls:—“Ellen has awakened; her reason has entirely returned to her,” said Captain Corsican, “and the doctor has every hope of her recovery.” I communicated this good news to Dean Pitferge. “Every hope for her indeed! every hope!” said my fellow-traveller, in a sarcastic tone. “I also have every hope for her, but what good does that do? Any one may have great hopes for you, for me, for all of us, but at the same time he may be just as much wrong as right.”... Twelve days later we reached Brest, and the day following Paris. The return passage was made without any misfortune, to the great displeasure of Dean Pitferge, who always expected to see the great ship wrecked. And now, when I am sitting at my own table, if I had not my daily notes before me, I should think that the “Great Eastern,” that floating city in which I lived for a month, the meeting of Ellen and Fabian, the peerless Niagara, all these were the visions of a dream. Ah! how delightful is travelling, “even when one does return,” in spite of what the Doctor may say to the contrary. For eight months I heard nothing of my original, but one day the post brought me a letter, covered with many-coloured stamps, which began with these words:— “On board the ‘Corinquay,’ Auckland Rocks. At last we have been shipwrecked.” And ended thus:— “Was never in better health.” “Very heartily yours, Dean Pitferge.” END OF “A FLOATING CITY.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2022). A Floating City and The Blockade Runners. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/67829/67829-h/67829-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Here a boat was waiting to take us to “America.”

In a landscape where decisions fuel growth, content marketing ROI measurement is your compass. It guides you away from guesswork and towards impactful strategies. Content marketing is a big deal for B2B businesses these days. It helps them connect with people, make their brand known, and close sales. A predicts this trend to surge, soaring to a whopping 107 billion by 2026. Statista report And apparently, every B2B business is eager to leverage content marketing for its maximum potential. But here’s the concern, figuring out how much businesses getting back from their efforts can be tricky. This brings in picture the hero of today’s blog - Content Marketing ROI. In fact, it is where almost all the businesses fail to do the mathwork and rely majorly on guesswork. In this blog, let's cover how to figure out "return on investment" (ROI) for content marketing and talk in detail about the hefty mistakes to avoid. If you're a boss, a founder, or a product manager, you're in for some useful insights on how to make smarter choices. First let’s discover, what is content marketing ROI. What is Content Marketing ROI? Content Marketing ROI is like a scoreboard for how well your content efforts pay off. It tells you if the money and time you put into creating content bring back more money. It's similar to checking if your investment was worth it. Here's a simple way to figure it out: ROI = (Revenue - Cost) / Cost x 100 Say you used $1000 for content marketing, and it made you $3000.
That way, your profit is $2000.
Meaning, your ROI is 200%. This tells you that for every $1 you spent, you got back $2. So, Content Marketing ROI is a tool to see if your content is working smartly, making you more money than you put in. Evidently, content marketing, if not whipped with strategic actions, can plummet all your hard work & often weakens the entire content strategy. To save you from bearing this whopping cost of some most common mistakes, keep reading this blog till the end. Avoid These Mistakes When Calculating Content Marketing ROI 1. Set Clear Goals Imagine you're embarking on a road trip. Before you hit the road, you need to decide where you're headed, right? The same principle applies to measuring your content marketing ROI. Defining clear goals is like setting your destination on a GPS. It gives you direction, and purpose, and helps you stay on track. When you outline your goals, you're essentially answering the question, "What are you trying to achieve with your content?" If you're looking to increase website visits, you'll focus on metrics like page views and unique visitors. If capturing more leads is your aim, then sign-ups and downloads become key. And if boosting sales is the target, tracking conversions and revenue generated takes the lead. Each goal requires a specific approach. When you know your content goal, you tailor your strategy to align with it. You'll create content that resonates with your intended audience and nudges them in the direction you want. 2. Understanding the Real Costs Most marketing teams overlook the whole picture. Think about making content like writing articles or making videos. It's not just about the money you spend directly. You've also got to count the extra costs, like the time people spend on it. The cost of content creation and distribution that tags along both: The cost of hiring writers, and editors, or outsourcing content through an agency.
I : The time spent by your in-house team to edit, brainstorm, assign, and publish the content. Direct costs: ndirect costs to Semrush, According Content marketing is important for B2B businesses because it can deliver a high return on investment (ROI). This is partly because it’s a relatively low-cost channel. 3. Focus on the Right Metrics There's a plethora of metrics out there, but not all of them will suit your goals. Pick metrics that directly tie to your objectives. For instance, if you're aiming for lead generation, tracking the number of sign-ups or downloads might be more relevant than overall website traffic. Metrics may trigger a feel-good rush, with website visits in millions, a striking email open rate, and a spike in subscribers. Nevertheless, it rarely speaks about your product/business performance. The interesting thing here is – if content marketing is not converting to tangible results and not pushing the subscribers to take action, what's the point? Or for that matter, the million monthly visits not piquing your customer's interest in your product/service -- all the endeavours go tanked. How about focusing on actionable metrics? Website conversions Click-through rates through email campaigns Testimonials, positive feedback on socials and website These metrics present a vivid scenario of how your marketing efforts are touching the bottom line. 4. Overlooking Small Conversions The larger picture of content marketing ROI is gauged through website conversion rates, down-the-funnel conversions and finally reaching to the sales team. However, to attain the macro conversion, micro conversion sets a breeding ground. Micro conversions like Digital product download (whitepaper, ebook, workbooks) Newsletter signups Social media mentions act as a catalyst in the customer journey depicting the customer behavior and how likely they will interact with your future content. Note: A well-crafted blog post might boost traffic, but if it doesn't translate to leads or sales, the ROI might not be as favorable. Conversely, a targeted Whitepaper might generate fewer visits but convert higher, leading to a stronger ROI. 5. Deep Analysis of the Customer Journey A common mistake in content marketing ROI measurement is relying solely on self-attribution, where the last click receives all the credit for a conversion. In reality, customers often interact with multiple touchpoints and content pieces before converting. Adopting varied attribution models and leveraging advanced analytics tools can help capture the full impact of your content throughout the customer journey. This comprehensive view is essential for understanding how each piece of content contributes to conversions. Google's study highlights a fascinating insight - customers engage with about 2.8 touch points before buying. Therefore, crediting the final touchpoint overlooks the impact of the other 1.8. For example, imagine a customer discovering your brand via a blog post, engaging on social media, and then buying after a promo email. If they say the email triggered the purchase, it downplays the role of the other content. It's like giving credit to the closing scene while ignoring the plot buildup. Conclusion: Navigating the Content Marketing ROI Terrain Measuring content marketing ROI isn't a crystal ball, but it's as close as you'll get to predicting success. As leaders and product marketers, you have the power to make data-backed choices. Define goals, pick the right metrics, calculate your ROI, and sidestep common traps. Remember, ROI isn't just about numbers—it's about the direction you take next. Your content's success story unfolds through these figures, guiding you toward smarter, more effective strategies. There's more digging happening here, if you follow me ! here

Cracking the Code of Content Marketing ROI: A Bold View for Leaders

Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . A BOLD PROPOSITION here CHAPTER XVI. A BOLD PROPOSITION On his return Servadac communicated to the count the result of his expedition, and, though perfectly silent on the subject of his personal project, did not conceal the fact that the Spaniards, without the smallest right, had sold Ceuta to the English. Having refused to quit their post, the Englishmen had virtually excluded themselves from any further consideration; they had had their warning, and must now take the consequences of their own incredulity. Although it had proved that not a single creature either at Gourbi Island, Gibraltar, Ceuta, Madalena, or Formentera had received any injury whatever at the time of the first concussion, there was nothing in the least to make it certain that a like immunity from harm would attend the second. The previous escape was doubtless owing to some slight, though unaccountable, modification in the rate of motion; but whether the inhabitants of the earth had fared so fortunately, was a question that had still to be determined. The day following Servadac’s return, he and the count and Lieutenant Procope met by agreement in the cave, formally to discuss what would be the most advisable method of proceeding under their present prospects. Ben Zoof was, as a matter of course, allowed to be present, and Professor Rosette had been asked to attend; but he declined on the plea of taking no interest in the matter. Indeed, the disappearance of his moon had utterly disconcerted him, and the probability that he should soon lose his comet also, plunged him into an excess of grief which he preferred to bear in solitude. Although the barrier of cool reserve was secretly increasing between the captain and the count, they scrupulously concealed any outward token of their inner feelings, and without any personal bias applied their best energies to the discussion of the question which was of such mutual, nay, of such universal interest. Servadac was the first to speak. “In fifty-one days, if Professor Rosette has made no error in his calculations, there is to be a recurrence of collision between this comet and the earth. The inquiry that we have now to make is whether we are prepared for the coming shock. I ask myself, and I ask you, whether it is in our power, by any means, to avert the evil consequences that are only too likely to follow?” Count Timascheff, in a voice that seemed to thrill with solemnity, said: “In such events we are at the disposal of an over-ruling Providence; human precautions cannot sway the Divine will.” “But with the most profound reverence for the will of Providence,” replied the captain, “I beg to submit that it is our duty to devise whatever means we can to escape the threatening mischief. Heaven helps them that help themselves.” “And what means have you to suggest, may I ask?” said the count, with a faint accent of satire. Servadac was forced to acknowledge that nothing tangible had hitherto presented itself to his mind. “I don’t want to intrude,” observed Ben Zoof, “but I don’t understand why such learned gentlemen as you cannot make the comet go where you want it to go.” “You are mistaken, Ben Zoof, about our learning,” said the captain; “even Professor Rosette, with all his learning, has not a shadow of power to prevent the comet and the earth from knocking against each other.” “Then I cannot see what is the use of all this learning,” the orderly replied. “One great use of learning,” said Count Timascheff with a smile, “is to make us know our own ignorance.” While this conversation had been going on, Lieutenant Procope had been sitting in thoughtful silence. Looking up, he now said, “Incident to this expected shock, there may be a variety of dangers. If, gentlemen, you will allow me, I will enumerate them; and we shall, perhaps, by taking them , be in a better position to judge whether we can successfully grapple with them, or in any way mitigate their consequences.” seriatim There was a general attitude of attention. It was surprising how calmly they proceeded to discuss the circumstances that looked so threatening and ominous. “First of all,” resumed the lieutenant, “we will specify the different ways in which the shock may happen.” “And the prime fact to be remembered,” interposed Servadac, “is that the combined velocity of the two bodies will be about 21,000 miles an hour.” “Express speed, and no mistake!” muttered Ben Zoof. “Just so,” assented Procope. “Now, the two bodies may impinge either directly or obliquely. If the impact is sufficiently oblique, Gallia may do precisely what she did before: she may graze the earth; she may, or she may not, carry off a portion of the earth’s atmosphere and substance, and so she may float away again into space; but her orbit would undoubtedly be deranged, and if we survive the shock, we shall have small chance of ever returning to the world of our fellow-creatures.” “Professor Rosette, I suppose,” Ben Zoof remarked, “would pretty soon find out all about that.” “But we will leave this hypothesis,” said the lieutenant; “our own experience has sufficiently shown us its advantages and its disadvantages. We will proceed to consider the infinitely more serious alternative of direct impact; of a shock that would hurl the comet straight on to the earth, to which it would become attached.” “A great wart upon her face!” said Ben Zoof, laughing. The captain held up his finger to his orderly, making him understand that he should hold his tongue. “It is, I presume, to be taken for granted,” continued Lieutenant Procope, “that the mass of the earth is comparatively so large that, in the event of a direct collision, her own motion would not be sensibly retarded, and that she would carry the comet along with her, as part of herself.” “Very little question of that, I should think,” said Servadac. “Well, then,” the lieutenant went on, “what part of this comet of ours will be the part to come into collision with the earth? It may be the equator, where we are; it may be at the exactly opposite point, at our antipodes; or it may be at either pole. In any case, it seems hard to foresee whence there is to come the faintest chance of deliverance.” “Is the case so desperate?” asked Servadac. “I will tell you why it seems so. If the side of the comet on which we are resident impinges on the earth, it stands to reason that we must be crushed to atoms by the violence of the concussion.” “Regular mincemeat!” said Ben Zoof, whom no admonitions could quite reduce to silence. “And if,” said the lieutenant, after a moment’s pause, and the slightest possible frown at the interruption—“and if the collision should occur at our antipodes, the sudden check to the velocity of the comet would be quite equivalent to a shock ; and, another thing, we should run the risk of being suffocated, for all our comet’s atmosphere would be assimilated with the terrestrial atmosphere, and we, supposing we were not dashed to atoms, should be left as it were upon the summit of an enormous mountain (for such to all intents and purposes Gallia would be), 450 miles above the level of the surface of the globe, without a particle of air to breathe.” in situ “But would not our chances of escape be considerably better,” asked Count Timascheff, “in the event of either of the comet’s poles being the point of contact?” “Taking the combined velocity into account,” answered the lieutenant, “I confess that I fear the violence of the shock will be too great to permit our destruction to be averted.” A general silence ensued, which was broken by the lieutenant himself. “Even if none of these contingencies occur in the way we have contemplated, I am driven to the suspicion that we shall be burnt alive.” “Burnt alive!” they all exclaimed in a chorus of horror. “Yes. If the deductions of modern science be true, the speed of the comet, when suddenly checked, will be transmuted into heat, and that heat will be so intense that the temperature of the comet will be raised to some millions of degrees.” No one having anything definite to allege in reply to Lieutenant Procope’s forebodings, they all relapsed into silence. Presently Ben Zoof asked whether it was not possible for the comet to fall into the middle of the Atlantic. Procope shook his head. “Even so, we should only be adding the fate of drowning to the list of our other perils.” “Then, as I understand,” said Captain Servadac, “in whatever way or in whatever place the concussion occurs, we must be either crushed, suffocated, roasted, or drowned. Is that your conclusion, lieutenant?” “I confess I see no other alternative,” answered Procope, calmly. “But isn’t there another thing to be done?” said Ben Zoof. “What do you mean?” his master asked. “Why, to get off the comet before the shock comes.” “How could you get off Gallia?” “That I can’t say,” replied the orderly. “I am not sure that that could not be accomplished,” said the lieutenant. All eyes in a moment were riveted upon him, as, with his head resting on his hands, he was manifestly cogitating a new idea. “Yes, I think it could be accomplished,” he repeated. “The project may appear extravagant, but I do not know why it should be impossible. Ben Zoof has hit the right nail on the head; we must try and leave Gallia before the shock.” “Leave Gallia! How?” said Count Timascheff. The lieutenant did not at once reply. He continued pondering for a time, and at last said, slowly and distinctly, “By making a balloon!” Servadac’s heart sank. “A balloon!” he exclaimed. “Out of the question! Balloons are exploded things. You hardly find them in novels. Balloon, indeed!” “Listen to me,” replied Procope. “Perhaps I can convince you that my idea is not so chimerical as you imagine.” And, knitting his brow, he proceeded to establish the feasibility of his plan. “If we can ascertain the precise moment when the shock is to happen, and can succeed in launching ourselves a sufficient time beforehand into Gallia’s atmosphere, I believe it will transpire that this atmosphere will amalgamate with that of the earth, and that a balloon whirled along by the combined velocity would glide into the mingled atmosphere and remain suspended in mid-air until the shock of the collision is overpast.” Count Timascheff reflected for a minute, and said, “I think, lieutenant, I understand your project. The scheme seems tenable; and I shall be ready to co-operate with you, to the best of my power, in putting it into execution.” “Only, remember,” continued Procope, “there are many chances to one against our success. One instant’s obstruction and stoppage in our passage, and our balloon is burnt to ashes. Still, reluctant as I am to acknowledge it, I confess that I feel our sole hope of safety rests in our getting free from this comet.” “If the chances were ten thousand to one against us,” said Servadac, “I think the attempt ought to be made.” “But have we hydrogen enough to inflate a balloon?” asked the count. “Hot air will be all that we shall require,” the lieutenant answered; “we are only contemplating about an hour’s journey.” “Ah, a fire-balloon! A montgolfier!” cried Servadac. “But what are you going to do for a casing?” “I have thought of that. We must cut it out of the sails of the ; they are both light and strong,” rejoined the lieutenant. Count Timascheff complimented the lieutenant upon his ingenuity, and Ben Zoof could not resist bringing the meeting to a conclusion by a ringing cheer. Dobryna Truly daring was the plan of which Lieutenant Procope had thus become the originator; but the very existence of them all was at stake, and the design must be executed resolutely. For the success of the enterprise it was absolutely necessary to know, almost to a minute, the precise time at which the collision would occur, and Captain Servadac undertook the task, by gentle means or by stern, of extracting the secret from the professor. To Lieutenant Procope himself was entrusted the superintendence of the construction of the montgolfier, and the work was begun at once. It was to be large enough to carry the whole of the twenty-three residents in the volcano, and, in order to provide the means of floating aloft long enough to give time for selecting a proper place for descent, the lieutenant was anxious to make it carry enough hay or straw to maintain combustion for a while, and keep up the necessary supply of heated air. The sails of the , which had all been carefully stowed away in the Hive, were of a texture unusually close, and quite capable of being made airtight by means of a varnish, the ingredients of which were rummaged out of the promiscuous stores of the tartan. The lieutenant himself traced out the pattern and cut out the strips, and all hands were employed in seaming them together. It was hardly the work for little fingers, but Nina persisted in accomplishing her own share of it. The Russians were quite at home at occupation of this sort, and having initiated the Spaniards into its mysteries, the task of joining together the casing was soon complete. Isaac Hakkabut and the professor were the only two members of the community who took no part in this somewhat tedious proceeding. Dobryna A month passed away, but Servadac found no opportunity of getting at the information he had pledged himself to gain. On the sole occasion when he had ventured to broach the subject with the astronomer, he had received for answer that as there was no hurry to get back to the earth, there need be no concern about any dangers of transit. Indeed, as time passed on, the professor seemed to become more and more inaccessible. A pleasant temperature enabled him to live entirely in his observatory, from which intruders were rigidly shut out. But Servadac bided his time. He grew more and more impressed with the importance of finding out the exact moment at which the impact would take place, but was content to wait for a promising opportunity to put any fresh questions on the subject to the too reticent astronomer. Meanwhile, the earth’s disc was daily increasing in magnitude; the comet traveled 50,000,000 leagues during the month, at the close of which it was not more than 78,000,000 leagues from the sun. A thaw had now fairly set in. The breaking up of the frozen ocean was a magnificent spectacle, and “the great voice of the sea,” as the whalers graphically describe it, was heard in all its solemnity. Little streams of water began to trickle down the declivities of the mountain and along the shelving shore, only to be transformed, as the melting of the snow continued, into torrents or cascades. Light vapors gathered on the horizon, and clouds were formed and carried rapidly along by breezes to which the Gallian atmosphere had long been unaccustomed. All these were doubtless but the prelude to atmospheric disturbances of a more startling character; but as indications of returning spring, they were greeted with a welcome which no apprehensions for the future could prevent being glad and hearty. A double disaster was the inevitable consequence of the thaw. Both the schooner and the tartan were entirely destroyed. The basement of the icy pedestal on which the ships had been upheaved was gradually undermined, like the icebergs of the Arctic Ocean, by warm currents of water, and on the night of the 12th the huge block collapsed , so that on the following morning nothing remained of the and the except the fragments scattered on the shore. en masse Dobryna Hansa Although certainly expected, the catastrophe could not fail to cause a sense of general depression. Well-nigh one of their last ties to Mother Earth had been broken; the ships were gone, and they had only a balloon to replace them! To describe Isaac Hakkabut’s rage at the destruction of the tartan would be impossible. His oaths were simply dreadful; his imprecations on the accursed race were full of wrath. He swore that Servadac and his people were responsible for his loss; he vowed that they should be sued and made to pay him damages; he asserted that he had been brought from Gourbi Island only to be plundered; in fact, he became so intolerably abusive, that Servadac threatened to put him into irons unless he conducted himself properly; whereupon the Jew, finding that the captain was in earnest, and would not hesitate to carry the threat into effect, was fain to hold his tongue, and slunk back into his dim hole. By the 14th the balloon was finished, and, carefully sewn and well varnished as it had been, it was really a very substantial structure. It was covered with a network that had been made from the light rigging of the yacht, and the car, composed of wicker-work that had formed partitions in the hold of the , was quite commodious enough to hold the twenty-three passengers it was intended to convey. No thought had been bestowed upon comfort or convenience, as the ascent was to last for so short a time, merely long enough for making the transit from atmosphere to atmosphere. Hansa The necessity was becoming more and more urgent to get at the true hour of the approaching contact, but the professor seemed to grow more obstinate than ever in his resolution to keep his secret. On the 15th the comet crossed the orbit of Mars, at the safe distance of 56,000,000 leagues; but during that night the community thought that their last hour had taken them unawares. The volcano rocked and trembled with the convulsions of internal disturbance, and Servadac and his companions, convinced that the mountain was doomed to some sudden disruption, rushed into the open air. The first object that caught their attention as they emerged upon the open rocks was the unfortunate professor, who was scrambling down the mountain-side, piteously displaying a fragment of his shattered telescope. It was no time for condolence. A new marvel arrested every eye. A fresh satellite, in the gloom of night, was shining conspicuously before them. That satellite was a part of Gallia itself! By the expansive action of the inner heat, Gallia, like Gambart’s comet, had been severed in twain; an enormous fragment had been detached and launched into space! The fragment included Ceuta and Gibraltar, with the two English garrisons! About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (1998). Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1353/pg1353-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

A BOLD PROPOSITION

Some time ago, I ran across a pretty fascinating service, the . This API handles everything imaginable related to working with decks of cards. It handles creating a shuffled set of cards (containing one or more decks), dealing out a card (or cards), and even reshuffling. Deck of Cards API Even better, it includes card images you can use if you don't want to find your own: It's an incredibly feature-filled API, and best of all, it's completely free. No need for even a key. I've known about this API for a while and have contemplated building a card game with it, but realized that games can quickly go from simple to fairly complex. In fact, my friends urged me not to spend time on this, and honestly, they were probably right, but I've got a history of building code demos that don't make sense. ;) strongly long For my demo, I went with the following rules: Obviously, basic Blackjack rules, try to get close to 21 as possible without going over. No betting, just one hand at a time. No doubling down or splitting. Dealer has a "soft 17" rule. (I'm mostly sure I've done that right.) The game uses six decks (I read somewhere that it was standard). Game Setup Initially, the player and computer both have an array representing their hands. playerCards:[], 
pcCards:[], The method handles setting up the hands for both players: deal async deal() {
	// first to player, then PC, then player, then PC
	this.playerCards.push(await this.drawCard());
	// for the dealer, the first card is turned over
	let newcard = await this.drawCard();
	newcard.showback = true;
	this.pcCards.push(newcard);
	this.playerCards.push(await this.drawCard());
	this.pcCards.push(await this.drawCard());
}, Two things to point out. First, I deal to the player, then the PC (or dealer, name-wise I kinda go back and forth), and then back again. I also modify the card result object to have set such that I can render the back of the card for the dealer. showback Here's how that's done in HTML: <div id="pcArea" class="cardArea">
	<h3>Dealer</h3>
	<template x-for="card in pcCards">
		
		<img :src="card.showback?BACK_CARD:card.image" :title="card.showback?'':card.title">
	</template>
</div>
<div id="playerArea" class="cardArea">
	<h3>Player</h3>
	<template x-for="card in playerCards">
		<img :src="card.image" :title="card.title">
	</template>
</div> is simply a constant: BACK_CARD const BACK_CARD = "https://deckofcardsapi.com/static/img/back.png"; Game Logic So, at this point, I could hit the app and get a Blackjack hand: At the bottom, I used a div to display the current status: My logic was like so: Begin with the player, and let them hit or stand. If they hit, add a new card, and see if they busted. If they stand, let the dealer player. Let's focus on the player first. To hit, we simply add a card: async hitMe() {
	this.hitMeDisabled = true;
	this.playerCards.push(await this.drawCard());
	let count = this.getCount(this.playerCards);
	if(count.lowCount >= 22) {
		this.playerTurn = false;
		this.playerBusted = true;
	}
	this.hitMeDisabled = false;
}, Bust checking was a bit complex. I built a function to get the 'count' for the hand, but in Blackjack, Aces can be 1 or 11. I figured out (and hope I'm right), that you can never have two 'high' aces, so my function returns a and value where for the high version, if an Ace exists, it's counted as 11, but only one. Here's that logic: lowCount highCount getCount(hand) {
	/*
	For a hand, I return 2 values, a low value, where aces are considered 1s, and a high value, where aces are 11. Note that this fails to properly handle a case where I have 3 aces
	and could have a mix... although thinking about it, you can only have ONE ace at 11, so 
	maybe the logic is:  low == all aces at 1. high = ONE ace at 11. fixed!
	*/
	let result = {};
	// first we will do low, all 1s
	let lowCount = 0;
	for(card of hand) {
		if(card.value === 'JACK' || card.value === 'KING' || card.value === 'QUEEN') lowCount+=10;
		else if(card.value === 'ACE') lowCount += 1;
		else lowCount += Number(card.value);
		//console.log(card);				
	}
	//console.log('lowCount', lowCount);
	let highCount = 0;
	let oneAce = false;
	for(card of hand) {
		if(card.value === 'JACK' || card.value === 'KING' || card.value === 'QUEEN') highCount+=10;
		else if(card.value === 'ACE') {
			if(oneAce) highCount += 1;
			else {
				highCount += 10;
				oneAce = true;
			}
		}
		else highCount += Number(card.value);
	}
	//console.log('highCount', highCount);
	return { lowCount, highCount };
}, If the player busts, we end the game and let the user start over. If they stand, it's time for the dealer to take over. That logic was simple - hit while below 17 and either bust or stand. In order to make it a bit more exciting, I used a variable and async function, , to slow the dealer's actions so you can see them play out in (kinda) real-time. Here's the dealer's logic: delay async startDealer() {
	/*
	Idea is - I take a card everytime I'm < 17. so i check my hand, 
	and do it, see if im going to stay or hit. if hit, i do a delay though
	so the game isn't instant.
	*/	

	// really first, initial text
	this.pcText = 'The dealer begins their turn...';
	await delay(DEALER_PAUSE);

	// first, a pause while we talk
	this.pcText = 'Let me show my hand...';
	await delay(DEALER_PAUSE);

	// reveal my second card
	this.pcCards[0].showback = false;

	// what does the player have, we need the best under 22
	let playerCount = this.getCount(this.playerCards);
	let playerScore = playerCount.lowCount;
	if(playerCount.highCount < 22) playerScore = playerCount.highCount;
	//console.log('dealer needs to beat', playerScore);

	// ok, now we're going to loop until i bust/win
	let dealerLoop = true;
	while(dealerLoop) {
		let count = this.getCount(this.pcCards);
		
		/*
		We are NOT doing 'soft 17', so 1 ace always count as 11
		*/
		if(count.highCount <= 16) {
			this.pcText = 'Dealer draws a card...';
			await delay(DEALER_PAUSE);
			this.pcCards.push(await this.drawCard());
		} else if(count.highCount <= 21) {
			this.pcText = 'Dealer stays...';
			await delay(DEALER_PAUSE);
			dealerLoop = false;
			this.pcTurn = false;
			if(count.highCount >= playerScore) this.pcWon = true;
			else this.playerWon = true;
		} else {
			dealerLoop = false;
			this.pcTurn = false;
			this.pcBusted = true;
		}
	}
} FYI, is used in the white status area as a way of setting game messages. pcText And basically - that's it. If you want to play it yourself, check out the CodePen below, and feel free to fork it and add improvements: https://codepen.io/cfjedimaster/pen/YzRZYqV?embedable=true

How to Create a Blackjack Game With Alpine.js and the Deck of Cards API

কিভাবে Alpine.js এবং Deck of Cards API দিয়ে একটি Blackjack গেম তৈরি করবেন

So erstellen Sie ein Blackjack-Spiel mit Alpine.js und der Deck of Cards API

Cómo crear un juego de blackjack con Alpine.js y la API de Deck of Cards

Comment créer un jeu de blackjack avec Alpine.js et l'API Deck of Cards

अल्पाइन.जेएस और डेक ऑफ कार्ड्स एपीआई के साथ ब्लैकजैक गेम कैसे बनाएं

Alpine.js と Deck of Cards API を使用してブラックジャック ゲームを作成する方法

Alpine.js와 Deck of Cards API를 사용하여 블랙잭 게임을 만드는 방법

Como criar um jogo de Blackjack com Alpine.js e a API Deck of Cards

Alpine.js ve Kart Destesi API'si ile Blackjack Oyunu Nasıl Oluşturulur

Cách tạo trò chơi Blackjack với Alpine.js và API bộ bài

如何使用 Alpine.js 和 Deck of Cards API 创建二十一点游戏

It’s early Tuesday morning, and I am again in the metro, going to a location in Prague I have never been to before. People are quiet on the train, thinking about their lives. I saw just a few people not looking at their phones. Have we become humanity addicted to some shiny devices and so-called “technologies”? That could be another topic. Now, I am going to the second day of Prague. DevOpsDays2023 The hotel welcomes me with many tobacco smokers outside and a strange facade. I am in the right place because I saw familiar faces and heard someone talking about Jenkins. I took the elevator to the conference area and headed to the registration. A lovely girl said to me after I got my welcome pack. I said back. I told myself something was wrong. See, sweet girls never say hello to me like that. hello hello Then I remembered I am in a friendly company because DevOps is not only about technologies but also about the mindset of being nice to others. I met a few great people I worked with and then went to the conference room. I expected more attendees. The room was 80% full. It may be too early. I was just on time for the first speaker. Ben Hirschberg – Unpacking Open Source Security in Public Repos & Registries Ben is representing a company called ARMO which deals with . I discovered their free scanner while trying to convince some of my stakeholders that we are shipping not-so-well-secured containers. I was eager to learn more. container security Armo’s team researched and compared the vulnerabilities they discovered in two large groups: All open-source projects in Github as one group and a group of so-called ” from CNCF as the second. He showed the security findings in both groups, leaning towards the intention that the graduated projects are a bit more secure (in most areas). We should investigate how they did it and apply it on our own. “graduated projects The other exciting point I have struggled with is that we should investigate critical /high CVEs found during the scan because they could not be exploited in particular cases. Usually, this is part of the remediation activity, but I know of some companies that want their containers clean, no matter what. This struggle sometimes causes a lot of friction within the teams. He also showed some use cases to support that. The CVE scanners are good conversation starters, but the human element is needed to do the analysis and prepare the remediation plan. I don’t expect the AI to do this now, but this will be the future. Paul Bruce – Re-growing a DevOps Community (in Boston) Considering the title, the second talk would be boring. I was wrong. Paul took us through a growth journey, and he challenged me and most of the audience to think about diversity, community, and true belonging. Even though his talk was about some efforts in a different country, I learned a lot about working and building a community. This is a vital tool on your tool belt of (professional) life. I am a visual person. When he shared a picture of grass in the parking lot, I immediately thought: everything is possible. Then he said the same with his own words. We need to look for possibilities, specifically in unusual places. The beauty of life doesn’t lie in the known. Nobody cares about a beach full of beton, but most people will smile and be happy seeing a flower pushing through the horror and bringing something beautiful to the world. This also applies to personal and work relations. Right? I wanted to spend more time with Paul while he was in Prague, but I didn’t make it. He is a very insightful person to learn from. So next time you end up in an event near him, say hi and soak some wisdom. Break; One of my favorite parts of any event is the “free” coffee. Ok, you got me, it’s the “free” beer, but it was 10:30, and I don’t like drinking in the morning. The coffee breaks are an excellent way to support conferences by visiting sponsors’ booths. Because of them, such events exist. community The second best use of the breaks is to meet people. I prefer to avoid meeting new people. I get nervous most of the time when I have to talk to an entirely stranger person. I know I am weird. I stayed within my comfort zone by talking to people I already knew. If you like meeting people, use the coffee break to enlarge your horizon. I went back to the room after gulping a disgusting cup of coffee. Instant coffee is different from my thing, but I needed the caffeine. I went back to the room to meet the next fantastic speaker. Sowmya Sridharamurthy – TestOps? well, never mind Doing proper testing is a hoax. We always do it in a way that goes against the value and the experience within the quality team. On the other hand, the level of testing desired by the same team could be more business justifiable. This, of course, is my sole opinion. Sowmya focuses on an exciting intersection between Operations and Testing. Testing has a very low priority in the modern DevOps world. Everyone knows that we need to ship faster quality software. Surprisingly the team responsible for this part needs to be addressed. Their proposals for improvements, tools, and processes often go to . /dev/null I learned a lot from this talk. If I have to pinpoint one: Automation is the key, but you need to talk to your quality professionals to achieve that. So why don’t you start this conversation now? Can you also ensure you have covered the whole 9 yards of testing? Michael Man – Overcoming the DevSecOps Imposter Syndrome The Security component that puts the Sec part into the is vast. Often one might feel insecure in their knowledge just because we aim to focus on many things simultaneously. DevSecOps Michal covered how he solved such a problem himself. The key is to identify what area to focus on and the gaps you have in your knowledge and prepare a learning plan. Mental health is essential. Take care of yourself and reach out for help. The Cuber Security community will help you. Intermission Two cups of espresso later, I get tired of writing about my great DevOpsDays experience. My energy level is getting low, and I want to go and walk the dog now. While I am doing this, please reflect on the learnings from today: Opensource is secure; There are good examples you could follow. What steps are you going to take next? You could find beauty and inspirational ideas mostly in unusual places. What does that mean to you? Can we deliver quality software without testing? Who can tell? Continuous learning is an excellent way to beat the Impostor syndrome. What are you going to learn next? Why don’t you take a short walk as well? See you in 15 minutes. Open Spaces I am back. I hope you had a refreshing break in the open. I’m not too fond of commercial conferences because you always have many more questions and topics, and there is no venue to discuss them. DevOpsDays Prague fixes that by running an Open Space where you can propose your topic, get the people interested in discussing it, and a room or a space where you do that. I stayed for three sessions, but I contributed to two. Usually, the Vegas rule applies, so I am not going to share what we have discussed, but I am free to share what I have learned: One topic could explode into more subjects, making the whole conversation unfocused and wasteful. The main topic of the room was , but we ended up in a heated discussion about the entire Diversity and Inclusion subject, and we achieved nothing. Gender gaps in communications The second open space I visited was called “Where are the Business people.” The room needed help to identify why they needed business people and why they were interested in finding them. We have yet to reach an agreement on the goal of the session. We shared some event names where people go, and that’s all. The third discussion was about the Impostor Syndrome and how to overcome it. The meeting went south, and many people could not share their opinions, wasting good intentions. Putting some tiny structures in the Open Spaces and focusing the energy in the right direction could produce beautiful results beneficial for everyone present. I’ve seen this working! Kudos I took the metro back to my area of Prague, still observing people around me. I am curious. I went back home full of energy and new knowledge. I know how hard it is to organize an event like this. I am speaking from experience. I have organized more than 30 of those. Kudos to the whole crew of DevOpsDays 2023, who did this in their free time without any benefits except for the joy of providing the others with a place to meet and discuss common topics. You should be proud of yourselves! Also published here.

DevOpsDays 2023 Prague Was a Blast

Sharing with you another insightful article by a seasoned software engineer and tech enthusiast Alex Babin (with his permission). *** In the fast-paced world of IT development, managing complex projects with limited resources is a constant challenge that requires a delicate balance. As someone who has navigated the intricacies of project management in the IT industry for years now, I’m well aware of the issues that commonly arise. In this article, I’d like to share my insights and recommendations on how to tackle these challenges head-on, allowing you to master project management in the face of limited resources. Common issues with project management In an ideal world, IT teams possess unlimited resources to realize the most exquisite wants and wishes posed by business people. Back on Earth, though, matching business requirements with production capabilities is one of the most daunting issues. And there’s quite a number of challenges involved, so let’s get them pinpointed. Handling budget planning Classical budgeting operates on fixed, annual budget allocations, which can be too rigid to accommodate the evolving needs of IT projects. For example, traditional budgets are often developed several months before the start of a fiscal year, making it difficult to account for new developments in technology or changes in business priorities. Another common issue with classical budgeting is that departments may be prompted to spend the entirety of their budget by the end of the fiscal year, even if it's not in the best interest of the project or organization. Therefore, it can be worth adopting a more dynamic budgeting approach that allows for greater agility and adaptability. Dealing with the project management triangle The project management triangle consists of three core constraints: resources, time, and budget. Balancing these constraints is a thorough act that can make or break a project. It's essential to keep these factors in mind throughout the project's lifecycle and make adjustments as needed. Unfortunately, you can't have it all at once— sometimes, sacrifices must be made. A good strategy would be to focus on one of the three dimensions while flexibly adjusting the other two. For example, if you choose to concentrate on fast product delivery, you may need to increase the resources allocated to the project or adjust the budget accordingly. Another alternative is to lower the quality requirements for the output. Project management triangle. Source Prioritization: determining the most critical projects and tasks One of the most significant challenges in managing limited resources is determining which projects and tasks are the most crucial. If you don't prioritize tasks properly within a project, it can create a lot of issues such as wasting resources, missing deadlines, exhausting the team, and producing low-quality work, which may eventually lead to project failure. Quite often, team leads would simply allocate tasks based on their vision or previous experience, which is not always optimal. For example, if you’re building an e-commerce website, a good idea would be to first prioritize the project backlog relying on the specified OKRs (objectives and key results). This means, each piece of the site’s functionality should be assessed in accordance with the high-level business goals of the project (e.g. increase sales, enhance awareness of the product, etc)—and in case it doesn’t contribute much to these goals, it should be lowered in priority. To sum up, prioritization should heavily rely on a data-driven approach and OKRs rather than on individual preferences. Processes designed for management, not productivity Sometimes, organizational processes can work against productivity rather than for it. Managers may be required to complete overly detailed reports that consume valuable time, which could be better spent on more productive tasks. For instance, instead of focusing on the core tasks and completing the project, team members may have to devote significant amounts of time to detailed status reports, progress updates, or time-tracking logs. As a consequence, this excessive focus on reporting and micromanagement can lead to decreased team morale and slower progress toward the project's objectives. Tips and recommendations . Encourage open communication between IT teams and business executives during the budgeting process. This mutual understanding of priorities and resource constraints will help create a more realistic project plan that aligns with both parties' expectations. Introduce collaborative budgeting . Be prepared to adapt to changing circumstances and requirements. For example, if the market demand or customer goals change it’d be crucial to quickly adjust resources as needed to stay on track and maintain a strong focus on the most critical tasks and objectives. Embrace flexibility . A good idea would be to introduce a prioritization framework, such as the Eisenhower Matrix or RICE (reach, impact, confidence and effort), to ensure that the most critical tasks are addressed first. Regularly reassess priorities as new information becomes available. Prioritize tasks based on OKRs and real-time data . Focus on essential metrics and key performance indicators that truly reflect the project's progress and success. For instance, in most cases, it would be excessive to log every single activity an employee does while shifting focus to tracking implemented features or resolved issues will make more sense. Reshape reporting processes to reduce unnecessary work and micromanagement Final thoughts I’d say, the path to successful IT project management lies in striking a delicate balance between limited resources and ambitious goals. And it’s not just about managing projects, but also nurturing a culture of continuous improvement, which I will investigate in more detail next time. Hopefully, with these principles at the core of your approach, you will be able to achieve remarkable results. Stay tuned!

Modern Approaches to Complex IT Development: Striking a Balance with Limited Resources

Today, is the second most popular cryptocurrency on the market, thanks to its sophisticated consensus algorithm and innovative solutions that have underpinned its blockchain network. The history of updates to Ethereum includes dozens of hard forks, which in one way or another, have been aimed at reducing transaction fees, improving the stability of the distributed ledger, and upgrading security and smart contract protocols. The Shanghai update was the last and perhaps the most important after (or Ethereum 2.0 update). Ethereum The Merge This article will explain , the opportunities, the implications it brings to the network, and the risks and vulnerabilities. In the end, you will learn about the prospects for the Ethereum project after receiving the Shanghai update. Ethereum's Shanghai update KEY TAKEAWAYS The Ethereum Shanghai blockchain update is the second most important update of recent years, after The Merge. The Shanghai update is primarily aimed at enabling validators to extract their assets from staking. Many crypto industry experts predict that after the update, the price of Ethereum coin is more likely to go up after a short-term drop as a result of a decrease in the volume of staking. What is Ethereum's Shanghai Update? Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade is a hard fork and a major of the Ethereum ecosystem that could affect the market value of the ETH cryptocurrency, as stakers and validators can now withdraw ETH from the Beacon Chain deposit contract. This change makes the network complete in terms of PoS consensus mechanism, allowing ETH users not only to stake coins but also to withdraw them into liquidity if necessary. enchantment The Shanghai update pack influences Ethereum's so-called execution layer, the network component that deals with smart contracts and protocol rules. Another set of updates, dubbed Capella, will apply to Ethereum's consensus layer – the part of the network through which Ethereum's validators enforce rules set in the execution layer. Both updates take place simultaneously, and the Ethereum developers have combined them under a single name - Shapella. This massive unlocking of coins marks the final phase of Ethereum's most significant update, called The Merge, after which the network has moved to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) transaction validation algorithm. According to the algorithm's rules, new ETH is distributed as a reward to those who hold coins. The more ETH a blockchain validator places in staking, the more likely the Ethereum network to validate transactions and reward it with new coins. staked To motivate validators to keep the network running, a staking fee of up to 5% per annum is paid to anyone who deposits coins in a special smart contract as collateral. The contract is called the Beacon Chain and was launched in 2020 when the issuance of new coins in Ethereum came at the expense of mining. Last September, developers successfully migrated the network to the PoS algorithm. Still, institutional investors with coins locked into the Beacon Chain could technically not withdraw funds – both collateral and accrued income in the form of rewards. The Shanghai upgrade solves this problem. Once it launches, about 500,000 validators can withdraw a minimum pledge of 32 ETH (about $57k) and accumulate rewards as new coins. FAST FACT The Shanghai update is an important preparatory step before the development of a series of solutions aimed at implementing the Ethereum 2.0 update Opportunities and Implications of Ethereum's Shanghai Update The long-awaited Shanghai update is a watershed moment for the ETH blockchain in many ways, comparable in scale only to the recent Ethereum Merge update. It is believed that this upgrade not only redefines the concept of the project regarding staking and lending but also helps to increase the investment appeal many times over thanks to the numerous Ethereum improvement proposals. According to the (Ethereum Improvement Proposal), which describes and proposes changes to the Ethereum protocol to improve its functionality and efficiency, among the most important changes are the following: EIP : Beacon Chain Push Withdrawals as Operations EIP-4895 This ETH update offer provides validators with the ability of partial withdrawal of ETH that has been added to the staking on the Beacon Chain since December 2020, when the network was originally introduced. EIP-4895 offers long-term stakers and holders additional liquidity by allowing staked ETH to be withdrawn from staking with low gas fees after a two-year wait. This innovation is perhaps the most anticipated of any available within the Shanghai package, especially for holders of large amounts of Ethereum in their accounts. : PUSH0 Instruction EIP-3855 This proposal updates the set of instructions and rules for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which significantly reduces the size of smart contracts and optimizes code. The EVM object format puts the data for a smart contract into one set of codes and separates it from the rest of the smart contract code. The smart contract interacts with the data through calls and queries. This format is expected to add flexibility to Ethereum smart contracts and increase the speed of their queries, as well as reduce the gas fees charged for these transactions. : Limit and Meter Initcode EIP-3860 EIP-3860 is an EIP-170 extension that limits the maximum initialization code size to 49152 and provides a fair initialization code charge when interacting with an “initcode”, thereby reducing the transaction fee. In addition, this change adds two additional units of gas for each 32-byte portion of the code. This solves the problem of gas shortage exceptions in Ethereum, which has persisted for years. Thanks to such solutions, it will be possible to achieve significant improvements in blockchain efficiency and reduce its load, which often leads to delays in various operations within the network. EIP-3651 This update aims to improve Ethereum's interaction with the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange and wallet. Payments from the U.S. platform are now more expensive than from other similar projects. The initial interaction with Coinbase software requires “warming up” because it consumes more gas than regular transactions. This is because, under the access list structure introduced by EIP-2929, Coinbase calculates gas according to the cost of accessing a “cold” account in EIP. With the implementation of EIP-3651, the wallet software will be “warm” from the start, reducing the exchange's gas consumption when paying with ERC20 tokens. Risks and Vulnerabilities of the Shanghai Ethereum Blockchain Update The Shanghai Ethereum update is a long-awaited change to the Ethereum Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Before the update's launch, developers scheduled test networks with Sepolia, the second-largest test network that provides a secure and reliable environment for testing smart contracts features. Only authorized individuals can run validation nodes on Sepolia's new consensus level. The update allows users to withdraw tens of billions of dollars in ether. With the update, there are some risks to consider, especially if you have ETH staked somewhere. Staked Ethereum Volume Decline According to research by CryptoQuant, about 60% of the assets locked up in staking contracts (about 10.3 million ETH) are now unprofitable (if you compare the current price to the price at the time each token was placed). A significant number of unprofitable tokens were locked in between March 2021 and June 2022, when ETH was trading above $2,000. Meanwhile, most of the remaining profitable ETH rose only 20-30%. In other words, it's simply not profitable for stakers to sell their ETH now. Moreover, 75% of staked Ethereum is controlled by crypto-exchanges (Coinbase, Binance, Kraken), which allowed investing in staking any amount, and special platforms (Lido, Rocketpool, Stakehound, Stakewise, Stkr), which provided their users with liquid staking services – issue of “derivative” token (derivative) secured by cryptocurrency blocked in staking. It turns out that most private stakers will not be able to directly initiate a withdrawal. And when you consider that almost all the big players are at a loss, they won't be in a hurry to do so either. So, all that's left for us to do is to see how successful the renewal is. In our opinion, Shanghai is another step for Ethereum to achieve global mass adoption and secure its status as a true industry engine. Impact on the Ethereum Price The complete withdrawal option will reduce the number of validators in the network, but the intensity of this effect depends on the number of validators using this option. The Beacon chain's totally blocked value (TVL) may be depleted as stakers claim their staking rewards and give up their assets. How this affects the Ethereum price depends on what most validators decide to do with their rewards and uninvested assets. The market is incredibly difficult to predict, and popular assumptions may not work. However, there is a daily withdrawal limit to limit the update's impact on the market price of Ethereum. Impact on Other Market Tokens Price In addition to ETH, Shanghai update Ethereum can also significantly affect the tokens of liquid-staking services such as Lido, Rocketpool, Stakehound, etc. These platforms issue Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSD), tokens representing staked Ethereum. Thanks to them, any amount of money can be invested in ETH staking, which will not be blocked under any circumstances. After the Shanghai Ethereum update, the value of these platforms' native tokens may also change. And it will most likely be directly correlated with ETH (if ETH price goes up, LSD tokens will go up too). Still, with more dynamics, especially in case of decline – ETH is interesting by itself, while LSD is interesting only if the currency underlying their derivatives grows. Ethereum Prospects: Will the New Update Give the Project a Boost or Collapse its Price? The new update of Ethereum has become a widely discussed event that has undoubtedly changed the course of things within the concept of its blockchain development. Some experts argue that due to the latest update and the sharp decline in staked coins, the price of ETH digital assets could plummet, affecting the state of altcoins. On the other hand, many experts point out that thanks to the renewal of Shanghai, the coin will be able to renew not only the annual price highs but also set new records in the nearest future, despite the insignificant and short-term outflow of funds due to the withdrawal of blocked coins by the validators. Anyway, it’s possible to expect two scenarios. Ethereum Price Rising The main factor influencing the price of ETH is staking. Thanks to the Shanghai network update, more users will hold and contribute their ETH to staking, which favors the price increase. Ethereum's staking ratio will rise due to the ability to withdraw ETH because investors who previously worried about their money could earn higher returns without experiencing a drop in liquidity. As a result, we should expect ETH's price to increase so long as big institutions continue to acquire ETH and add it to their stakes to earn 5% APY without sacrificing liquidity. Ethereum's Shanghai update will address several urgent user and developer issues, from lower gas fees to fewer transaction errors. The Ethereum Foundation also promises little to no delays in the buildup to the Surge release because these changes will be implemented before the next Ethereum upgrade EIP-4844: Proto Danksharding update is made available. Ethereum Price Fall As a result of the and FTX collapses, there is still a gloomy feeling in the crypto industry, and significant businesses are failing. Another way to characterize macroeconomic issues is as pessimistic, given that the Federal Reserve is still raising interest rates and that U.S. inflation is still well below the 2% target. Due to the possibility of a bear market, this may compel the initial users who started ETH staking in December 2020 to sell their ETH and obtain greater liquidity. This is why the Ethereum Foundation implemented a daily withdrawal cap of about 40,000 ETH, which should lessen selling pressure and lower ETH's volatility in the short term. Terra Luna It is assumed that the Shanghai upgrade, among other things, will affect how institutional investors will interact with the coin. On the one hand, we can assume that private investors will be more willing to invest their money knowing that new updates plus Bitcoin's dominance always grow exponentially, and over time the investments will bring good returns.  On the other hand, will be more willing to invest their assets in ETH liquidity pools, knowing that they can access them and cash them out at any moment. liquidity providers Conclusion Shanghai update was undoubtedly one of the most significant upgrades in the history of the crypto project Ethereum, which today is a kind of technological basis for developing new decentralized applications working with the help of smart contracts. It is one of the most promising cryptocurrencies on the market, with great potential to become a benchmark of quality blockchain solutions developed for practical use in different areas of the financial system.

Ethereum Shanghai Update: A Bold Step Towards the Future or a Risky Jump Off the Cliff?

Autonomous AI systems are intelligent computer programs that can autonomously perform tasks and make decisions without human intervention or guidance. The development of efficient autonomous AI systems presents challenges due to biases, ethical considerations, transparency, security, and control. In this article, we explore the theoretical G.O.D. (Generator, Operator, Destroyer) framework inspired by mythology as a way to build an system that revolutionizes our lives through a balanced approach to problem-solving and decision-making. autonomous AI The G.O.D. framework echoes the , consisting of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva — the Generator, Operator, and Destroyer forces, respectively. In the G.O.D. framework, three AI models have unique roles and responsibilities: the Generator AI model creates tasks based on a goal, the Operator AI model executes tasks autonomously and efficiently, and the Destroyer AI model monitors progress and takes corrective actions. Hindu Trimurti The Workflow of the G.O.D. Framework in Autonomous AI Systems Define the goal: A human user defines the AI system’s goal. Generate tasks: The Generator creates clear and unambiguous tasks aligned with the system’s goal. Operator execute tasks: The Operator autonomously and efficiently executes tasks, potentially replicating itself to perform tasks in parallel. Destroyer tasks: The Destroyer monitors task progress and takes corrective actions to refine/ purge tasks and ensure the system works towards the desired outcome. Feedback communication and coordination: The Destroyer refines tasks and ensures the system works towards the desired outcome. Teacher tasks: Embodying the spirit of Lord Dattatreya, the Guru of all G.O.D.s in Hindu tradition, the Teacher model represents the importance of continuous learning and improvement. The Teacher model learns from experiences and adjusts the other three models’ roles accordingly. Additionally, it checks for patterns of unethical goals/ task creation and controls it. Implementing the G.O.D. framework Generator AI model: The Generator AI model uses techniques such as natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning to create specific tasks based on the human user’s defined goal. Leveraging recent developments in Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT-4, the Generator model can be deployed as a serverless function on public cloud platforms, triggered when a goal message appears from the user or the Destroyer model requests task refinement/removal. Operator AI model: The Operator AI model executes tasks generated by the Generator AI model autonomously and efficiently, using techniques such as robotics, computer vision, and natural language generation. With access to vast internet data, the Operator model can also be deployed as a scalable serverless function, triggered by messages in the task queue. LLMs like GPT-4 can be utilized for tasks that involve text outputs or can be described in the text. Destroyer AI model: The Destroyer AI model monitors task progress and takes corrective actions to refine tasks and ensure the system works toward the desired outcome. It employs techniques such as reinforcement learning, anomaly detection, and decision-making algorithms for continuous improvement and refinement. Serverless functions and models like GPT-4 can be considered for deployment and processing to avoid building custom models. Teacher AI model: The Teacher model monitors the performance of the other three models (Generator, Operator, and Destroyer) and provides corrective actions to prevent repetitive loops and ensure ethical alignment with guidelines and goals. The Teacher model should be trained on a large amount of data covering a broad range of scenarios and use cases. Existing tools like OpenAI moderation endpoints can be useful for part of it, and can save on model training costs. Example goal: We will understand this with an example. We will use GPT models to deliver this example goal. Benefits of the proposed approach : The G.O.D. framework offers a straightforward and easy-to-implement approach for ethical AI, leveraging successful Simplicity LLMs. : The framework balances the four models (Generator, Operator, Destroyer, and Teacher), enabling the AI system to continuously learn and improve without entering repetitive loops or unethical behavior. Balanced roles : The G.O.D. framework emphasizes ethical decision-making and goal-setting, helping to prevent harmful or unethical behaviors. Ethical decision-making : The presence of Lord Dattatreya and the Teacher model emphasize continuous learning and improvement, aiding the system’s adaptability to changing circumstances. Continuous learning : The G.O.D. framework is designed for flexibility, with the Generator, Operator, and Destroyer models allowing for quick adjustments to goals and tasks as needed. Flexibility : By emphasizing goal-setting and task optimization, the G.O.D. framework may enhance the overall performance of the autonomous system, leading to better user outcomes. Improved performance Limitations : Implementing the G.O.D. framework with custom models requires expertise in AI, ethics, and other domains. Complexity The G.O.D. framework involves multiple AI models, potentially requiring significant computational resources, leading to high costs and slower processing times. Computational Requirements: Despite the G.O.D. framework’s aim to prevent unethical behavior, AI models may exhibit ethical bias due to data biases or subjective interpretations of ethical values. Ethical Bias: The G.O.D. framework may work well in specific domains but may not generalize well to other domains, limiting its broader applicability. Limited Generalization: The G.O.D. framework may not be flexible enough to adapt to changing situations or unexpected events, potentially limiting its ability to make appropriate decisions in complex scenarios. Limited Flexibility: Conclusion The G.O.D. framework provides a simple yet effective approach to implementing ethical AI systems. Incorporating the four models of Generator, Operator, Destroyer, and Teacher, the system is designed to balance between achieving goals and avoiding unethical behavior. The presence of the teacher model represents the importance of continuous learning and improvement in the system. While there are limitations and challenges to implementing any autonomous AI system, the G.O.D. framework offers comparative benefits over similar systems and is a step towards building more responsible and ethical AI systems. Disclaimer: The G.O.D. framework uses Hindu mythology deities as a symbol of different roles involved in a balanced system. However, it is important to note that the framework is not intended to promote or hurt the sentiments of any specific religion or belief system. It is simply a framework proposed to address the various issues faced with the development and deployment of AI systems. References Hindu mythology: Various Puranas- Brahma Purana, Vishnu Purana, Shiva Purana, Avadhut Gita This framework developed by @yoheinakajima also proposes creation, prioritisation, and execution agents with memory.
European Commission. (2021). White Paper on Artificial Intelligence: a European Approach to excellence and Trust. Retrieved from . https://github.com/yoheinakajima/babyagi: https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/white-paper-artificial-intelligence-european-approach-excellence-and-trust_en

The G.O.D. Framework: A Balanced Approach to Building Autonomous AI Systems

The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . A Black Scoundrel here A Black Scoundrel When Jane Clayton regained consciousness she saw Anderssen standing over her, holding the baby in his arms. As her eyes rested upon them an expression of misery and horror overspread her countenance. “What is the matter?” he asked. “You ban sick?” “Where is my baby?” she cried, ignoring his questions. Anderssen held out the chubby infant, but she shook her head. “It is not mine,” she said. “You knew that it was not mine. You are a devil like the Russian.” Anderssen’s blue eyes stretched in surprise. “Not yours!” he exclaimed. “You tole me the kid aboard the Kincaid ban your kid.” “Not this one,” replied Jane dully. “The other. Where is the other? There must have been two. I did not know about this one.” “There vasn’t no other kid. Ay tank this ban yours. Ay am very sorry.” Anderssen fidgeted about, standing first on one foot and then upon the other. It was perfectly evident to Jane that he was honest in his protestations of ignorance of the true identity of the child. Presently the baby commenced to crow, and bounce up and down in the Swede’s arms, at the same time leaning forward with little hands out-reaching toward the young woman. She could not withstand the appeal, and with a low cry she sprang to her feet and gathered the baby to her breast. For a few minutes she wept silently, her face buried in the baby’s soiled little dress. The first shock of disappointment that the tiny thing had not been her beloved Jack was giving way to a great hope that after all some miracle had occurred to snatch her baby from Rokoff’s hands at the last instant before the Kincaid sailed from England. Then, too, there was the mute appeal of this wee waif alone and unloved in the midst of the horrors of the savage jungle. It was this thought more than any other that had sent her mother’s heart out to the innocent babe, while still she suffered from disappointment that she had been deceived in its identity. “Have you no idea whose child this is?” she asked Anderssen. The man shook his head. “Not now,” he said. “If he ain’t ban your kid, Ay don’ know whose kid he do ban. Rokoff said it was yours. Ay tank he tank so, too. “What do we do with it now? Ay can’t go back to the Kincaid. Rokoff would have me shot; but you can go back. Ay take you to the sea, and then some of these black men they take you to the ship—eh?” “No! no!” cried Jane. “Not for the world. I would rather die than fall into the hands of that man again. No, let us go on and take this poor little creature with us. If God is willing we shall be saved in one way or another.” So they again took up their flight through the wilderness, taking with them a half-dozen of the Mosulas to carry provisions and the tents that Anderssen had smuggled aboard the small boat in preparation for the attempted escape. The days and nights of torture that the young woman suffered were so merged into one long, unbroken nightmare of hideousness that she soon lost all track of time. Whether they had been wandering for days or years she could not tell. The one bright spot in that eternity of fear and suffering was the little child whose tiny hands had long since fastened their softly groping fingers firmly about her heart. In a way the little thing took the place and filled the aching void that the theft of her own baby had left. It could never be the same, of course, but yet, day by day, she found her mother-love, enveloping the waif more closely until she sometimes sat with closed eyes lost in the sweet imagining that the little bundle of humanity at her breast was truly her own. For some time their progress inland was extremely slow. Word came to them from time to time through natives passing from the coast on hunting excursions that Rokoff had not yet guessed the direction of their flight. This, and the desire to make the journey as light as possible for the gently bred woman, kept Anderssen to a slow advance of short and easy marches with many rests. The Swede insisted upon carrying the child while they travelled, and in countless other ways did what he could to help Jane Clayton conserve her strength. He had been terribly chagrined on discovering the mistake he had made in the identity of the baby, but once the young woman became convinced that his motives were truly chivalrous she would not permit him longer to upbraid himself for the error that he could not by any means have avoided. At the close of each day’s march Anderssen saw to the erection of a comfortable shelter for Jane and the child. Her tent was always pitched in the most favourable location. The thorn boma round it was the strongest and most impregnable that the Mosula could construct. Her food was the best that their limited stores and the rifle of the Swede could provide, but the thing that touched her heart the closest was the gentle consideration and courtesy which the man always accorded her. That such nobility of character could lie beneath so repulsive an exterior never ceased to be a source of wonder and amazement to her, until at last the innate chivalry of the man, and his unfailing kindliness and sympathy transformed his appearance in so far as Jane was concerned until she saw only the sweetness of his character mirrored in his countenance. They had commenced to make a little better progress when word reached them that Rokoff was but a few marches behind them, and that he had at last discovered the direction of their flight. It was then that Anderssen took to the river, purchasing a canoe from a chief whose village lay a short distance from the Ugambi upon the bank of a tributary. Thereafter the little party of fugitives fled up the broad Ugambi, and so rapid had their flight become that they no longer received word of their pursuers. At the end of canoe navigation upon the river, they abandoned their canoe and took to the jungle. Here progress became at once arduous, slow, and dangerous. The second day after leaving the Ugambi the baby fell ill with fever. Anderssen knew what the outcome must be, but he had not the heart to tell Jane Clayton the truth, for he had seen that the young woman had come to love the child almost as passionately as though it had been her own flesh and blood. As the baby’s condition precluded farther advance, Anderssen withdrew a little from the main trail he had been following and built a camp in a natural clearing on the bank of a little river. Here Jane devoted her every moment to caring for the tiny sufferer, and as though her sorrow and anxiety were not all that she could bear, a further blow came with the sudden announcement of one of the Mosula porters who had been foraging in the jungle adjacent that Rokoff and his party were camped quite close to them, and were evidently upon their trail to this little nook which all had thought so excellent a hiding-place. This information could mean but one thing, and that they must break camp and fly onward regardless of the baby’s condition. Jane Clayton knew the traits of the Russian well enough to be positive that he would separate her from the child the moment that he recaptured them, and she knew that separation would mean the immediate death of the baby. As they stumbled forward through the tangled vegetation along an old and almost overgrown game trail the Mosula porters deserted them one by one. The men had been staunch enough in their devotion and loyalty as long as they were in no danger of being overtaken by the Russian and his party. They had heard, however, so much of the atrocious disposition of Rokoff that they had grown to hold him in mortal terror, and now that they knew he was close upon them their timid hearts would fortify them no longer, and as quickly as possible they deserted the three whites. Yet on and on went Anderssen and the girl. The Swede went ahead, to hew a way through the brush where the path was entirely overgrown, so that on this march it was necessary that the young woman carry the child. All day they marched. Late in the afternoon they realized that they had failed. Close behind them they heard the noise of a large safari advancing along the trail which they had cleared for their pursuers. When it became quite evident that they must be overtaken in a short time Anderssen hid Jane behind a large tree, covering her and the child with brush. “There is a village about a mile farther on,” he said to her. “The Mosula told me its location before they deserted us. Ay try to lead the Russian off your trail, then you go on to the village. Ay tank the chief ban friendly to white men—the Mosula tal me he ban. Anyhow, that was all we can do. “After while you get chief to tak you down by the Mosula village at the sea again, an’ after a while a ship is sure to put into the mouth of the Ugambi. Then you be all right. Gude-by an’ gude luck to you, lady!” “But where are you going, Sven?” asked Jane. “Why can’t you hide here and go back to the sea with me?” “Ay gotta tal the Russian you ban dead, so that he don’t luke for you no more,” and Anderssen grinned. “Why can’t you join me then after you have told him that?” insisted the girl. Anderssen shook his head. “Ay don’t tank Ay join anybody any more after Ay tal the Russian you ban dead,” he said. “You don’t mean that you think he will kill you?” asked Jane, and yet in her heart she knew that that was exactly what the great scoundrel would do in revenge for his having been thwarted by the Swede. Anderssen did not reply, other than to warn her to silence and point toward the path along which they had just come. “I don’t care,” whispered Jane Clayton. “I shall not let you die to save me if I can prevent it in any way. Give me your revolver. I can use that, and together we may be able to hold them off until we can find some means of escape.” “It won’t work, lady,” replied Anderssen. “They would only get us both, and then Ay couldn’t do you no good at all. Think of the kid, lady, and what it would be for you both to fall into Rokoff’s hands again. For his sake you must do what Ay say. Here, take my rifle and ammunition; you may need them.” He shoved the gun and bandoleer into the shelter beside Jane. Then he was gone. She watched him as he returned along the path to meet the oncoming safari of the Russian. Soon a turn in the trail hid him from view. Her first impulse was to follow. With the rifle she might be of assistance to him, and, further, she could not bear the terrible thought of being left alone at the mercy of the fearful jungle without a single friend to aid her. She started to crawl from her shelter with the intention of running after Anderssen as fast as she could. As she drew the baby close to her she glanced down into its little face. How red it was! How unnatural the little thing looked. She raised the cheek to hers. It was fiery hot with fever! With a little gasp of terror Jane Clayton rose to her feet in the jungle path. The rifle and bandoleer lay forgotten in the shelter beside her. Anderssen was forgotten, and Rokoff, and her great peril. All that rioted through her fear-mad brain was the fearful fact that this little, helpless child was stricken with the terrible jungle-fever, and that she was helpless to do aught to allay its sufferings—sufferings that were sure to come during ensuing intervals of partial consciousness. Her one thought was to find some one who could help her—some woman who had had children of her own—and with the thought came recollection of the friendly village of which Anderssen had spoken. If she could but reach it—in time! There was no time to be lost. Like a startled antelope she turned and fled up the trail in the direction Anderssen had indicated. From far behind came the sudden shouting of men, the sound of shots, and then silence. She knew that Anderssen had met the Russian. A half-hour later she stumbled, exhausted, into a little thatched village. Instantly she was surrounded by men, women, and children. Eager, curious, excited natives plied her with a hundred questions, no one of which she could understand or answer. All that she could do was to point tearfully at the baby, now wailing piteously in her arms, and repeat over and over, “Fever—fever—fever.” The blacks did not understand her words, but they saw the cause of her trouble, and soon a young woman had pulled her into a hut and with several others was doing her poor best to quiet the child and allay its agony. The witch doctor came and built a little fire before the infant, upon which he boiled some strange concoction in a small earthen pot, making weird passes above it and mumbling strange, monotonous chants. Presently he dipped a zebra’s tail into the brew, and with further mutterings and incantations sprinkled a few drops of the liquid over the baby’s face. After he had gone the women sat about and moaned and wailed until Jane thought that she should go mad; but, knowing that they were doing it all out of the kindness of their hearts, she endured the frightful waking nightmare of those awful hours in dumb and patient suffering. It must have been well toward midnight that she became conscious of a sudden commotion in the village. She heard the voices of the natives raised in controversy, but she could not understand the words. Presently she heard footsteps approaching the hut in which she squatted before a bright fire with the baby on her lap. The little thing lay very still now, its lids, half-raised, showed the pupils horribly upturned. Jane Clayton looked into the little face with fear-haunted eyes. It was not her baby—not her flesh and blood—but how close, how dear the tiny, helpless thing had become to her. Her heart, bereft of its own, had gone out to this poor, little, nameless waif, and lavished upon it all the love that had been denied her during the long, bitter weeks of her captivity aboard the Kincaid. She saw that the end was near, and though she was terrified at contemplation of her loss, still she hoped that it would come quickly now and end the sufferings of the little victim. The footsteps she had heard without the hut now halted before the door. There was a whispered colloquy, and a moment later M’ganwazam, chief of the tribe, entered. She had seen but little of him, as the women had taken her in hand almost as soon as she had entered the village. M’ganwazam, she now saw, was an evil-appearing savage with every mark of brutal degeneracy writ large upon his bestial countenance. To Jane Clayton he looked more gorilla than human. He tried to converse with her, but without success, and finally he called to some one without. In answer to his summons another Negro entered—a man of very different appearance from M’ganwazam—so different, in fact, that Jane Clayton immediately decided that he was of another tribe. This man acted as interpreter, and almost from the first question that M’ganwazam put to her, Jane felt an intuitive conviction that the savage was attempting to draw information from her for some ulterior motive. She thought it strange that the fellow should so suddenly have become interested in her plans, and especially in her intended destination when her journey had been interrupted at his village. Seeing no reason for withholding the information, she told him the truth; but when he asked if she expected to meet her husband at the end of the trip, she shook her head negatively. Then he told her the purpose of his visit, talking through the interpreter. “I have just learned,” he said, “from some men who live by the side of the great water, that your husband followed you up the Ugambi for several marches, when he was at last set upon by natives and killed. Therefore I have told you this that you might not waste your time in a long journey if you expected to meet your husband at the end of it; but instead could turn and retrace your steps to the coast.” Jane thanked M’ganwazam for his kindness, though her heart was numb with suffering at this new blow. She who had suffered so much was at last beyond reach of the keenest of misery’s pangs, for her senses were numbed and calloused. With bowed head she sat staring with unseeing eyes upon the face of the baby in her lap. M’ganwazam had left the hut. Sometime later she heard a noise at the entrance—another had entered. One of the women sitting opposite her threw a faggot upon the dying embers of the fire between them. With a sudden flare it burst into renewed flame, lighting up the hut’s interior as though by magic. The flame disclosed to Jane Clayton’s horrified gaze that the baby was quite dead. How long it had been so she could not guess. A choking lump rose to her throat, her head drooped in silent misery upon the little bundle that she had caught suddenly to her breast. For a moment the silence of the hut was unbroken. Then the native woman broke into a hideous wail. A man coughed close before Jane Clayton and spoke her name. With a start she raised her eyes to look into the sardonic countenance of Nikolas Rokoff. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1993). The Beasts of Tarzan. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/85/pg85-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

A Black Scoundrel

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license.
Authors:
(1) Cristina España-Bonet, DFKI GmbH, Saarland Informatics Campus. Table of Links Abstract and Intro
Corpora Compilation
Political Stance Classification
Summary and Conclusions
Limitations and Ethics Statement
Acknowledgments and References
A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01
B. Topics
C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper
D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation
E. Stance Classification at Article Level
F. Training Details Abstract Neutrality is difficult to achieve and, in politics, subjective. Traditional media typically adopt an editorial line that can be used by their potential readers as an indicator of the media bias. Several platforms currently rate news outlets according to their political bias. The editorial line and the ratings help readers in gathering a balanced view of the news. But in the advent of instruction-following language models, tasks such as writing a newspaper article can be delegated to computers. Without imposing a biased persona, where would an AI-based news outlet lie within the bias ratings? In this work, we use the ratings of authentic news outlets to create a multilingual corpus of news with coarse stance annotations (Left and Right) along with automatically extracted topic annotations. We show that classifiers trained on this data are able to identify the editorial line of most unseen newspapers in English, German, Spanish and Catalan. We then apply the classifiers to 101 newspaper-like articles written by ChatGPT and Bard in the 4 languages at different time periods. We observe that, similarly to traditional newspapers, ChatGPT editorial line evolves with time and, being a data-driven system, the stance of the generated articles differs among languages. 1. Introduction Instruction-following language models (ILMs) are omnipresent. Their use is not so extended as that of search engines yet, but due to the availability and high quality of systems and models such as Alpaca (Taori et al., 2023), Bard (Google, 2023), BLOOMZ and mT0 (Muennighoff et al., 2023), ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2023), Llama 2-chat (Touvron et al., 2023), or Koala (Geng et al., 2023), their use is expected to be more common in the near future. These models face several problems being the most relevant the lack of trustworthiness (van Dis et al., 2023; Huang et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2023a). They are not ready to be used as a source of reliable information if their outputs are not fact-checked. A second big issue with systems based on language models (LM) is the fact that they might reproduce the biases present in the training data (Navigli et al., 2023). Biases range from cultural miss-representation due to data imbalance to offensive behaviour reproduced from written texts. LMs are finetuned into ILMs either in a supervised way using input-output pairs and an instruction (Wei et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022, 2023b) or with reinforcement learning from human feedback (Ouyang et al., 2022; Nakano et al., 2021). In both cases, the finetuning should help removing bias. But neutrality is something very difficult to achieve, also for the humans that generate the supervisory data. The finetuning phase might therefore over correct the original biases or introduce new ones. For methods that generate the supervision data with the LM itself, the original biases might be inherited. We focus on a specific use of ILMs: the writing of newspaper articles. Journals and newspapers follow an editorial line which is in general known to the reader. Besides, sites such AllSides [1] Media Bias Fact Check [2] (MB/FC), or Ad Fontes Media [3] provide ratings about the political bias of (mostly USA) media sources and their quality with respect to factual information. With these ratings, conscientious readers can make informed decisions about which media outlets to choose in order to get a balanced perspective. But what happens when journalists use systems such as ChatGPT or Bard to aid in their writing? As said above, humans also have biases, the danger lies in being unaware of them, as they might affect the user’s/reader’s perspective (Jakesch et al., 2023; Carroll et al., 2023). ChatGPT already warns its users about misinformation. However, the political bias, if any, is not known apart from the subjective perception that a user has. We address the question above for articles generated by ChatGPT and Bard in four languages: English, German, Spanish and Catalan. We do this in an automatic and systematic way with almost no human intervention so that the method can be easily extended to new languages and other ILMs with few effort. We do not aim at classifying individual articles with their specific bias, but to classify the media source (an ILM in this case) as Left or Right-oriented in a similar way as the media bias sites do for newspapers and other media outlets. 1. https://www.allsides.com 2. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com 3. https://adfontesmedia.com This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Cristina España-Bonet, DFKI GmbH, Saarland Informatics Campus. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: Authors: (1) Cristina España-Bonet, DFKI GmbH, Saarland Informatics Campus. Table of Links Abstract and Intro Corpora Compilation Political Stance Classification Summary and Conclusions Limitations and Ethics Statement Acknowledgments and References A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01 B. Topics C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation E. Stance Classification at Article Level F. Training Details Abstract and Intro Abstract and Intro Corpora Compilation Corpora Compilation Political Stance Classification Political Stance Classification Summary and Conclusions Summary and Conclusions Limitations and Ethics Statement Limitations and Ethics Statement Acknowledgments and References Acknowledgments and References A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01 A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01 B. Topics B. Topics C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation E. Stance Classification at Article Level E. Stance Classification at Article Level F. Training Details F. Training Details Abstract Neutrality is difficult to achieve and, in politics, subjective. Traditional media typically adopt an editorial line that can be used by their potential readers as an indicator of the media bias. Several platforms currently rate news outlets according to their political bias. The editorial line and the ratings help readers in gathering a balanced view of the news. But in the advent of instruction-following language models, tasks such as writing a newspaper article can be delegated to computers. Without imposing a biased persona, where would an AI-based news outlet lie within the bias ratings? In this work, we use the ratings of authentic news outlets to create a multilingual corpus of news with coarse stance annotations (Left and Right) along with automatically extracted topic annotations. We show that classifiers trained on this data are able to identify the editorial line of most unseen newspapers in English, German, Spanish and Catalan. We then apply the classifiers to 101 newspaper-like articles written by ChatGPT and Bard in the 4 languages at different time periods. We observe that, similarly to traditional newspapers, ChatGPT editorial line evolves with time and, being a data-driven system, the stance of the generated articles differs among languages. 1. Introduction Instruction-following language models (ILMs) are omnipresent. Their use is not so extended as that of search engines yet, but due to the availability and high quality of systems and models such as Alpaca (Taori et al., 2023), Bard (Google, 2023), BLOOMZ and mT0 (Muennighoff et al., 2023), ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2023), Llama 2-chat (Touvron et al., 2023), or Koala (Geng et al., 2023), their use is expected to be more common in the near future. These models face several problems being the most relevant the lack of trustworthiness (van Dis et al., 2023; Huang et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2023a). They are not ready to be used as a source of reliable information if their outputs are not fact-checked. A second big issue with systems based on language models (LM) is the fact that they might reproduce the biases present in the training data (Navigli et al., 2023). Biases range from cultural miss-representation due to data imbalance to offensive behaviour reproduced from written texts. LMs are finetuned into ILMs either in a supervised way using input-output pairs and an instruction (Wei et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022, 2023b) or with reinforcement learning from human feedback (Ouyang et al., 2022; Nakano et al., 2021). In both cases, the finetuning should help removing bias. But neutrality is something very difficult to achieve, also for the humans that generate the supervisory data. The finetuning phase might therefore over correct the original biases or introduce new ones. For methods that generate the supervision data with the LM itself, the original biases might be inherited. We focus on a specific use of ILMs: the writing of newspaper articles. Journals and newspapers follow an editorial line which is in general known to the reader. Besides, sites such AllSides [1] Media Bias Fact Check [2] (MB/FC), or Ad Fontes Media [3] provide ratings about the political bias of (mostly USA) media sources and their quality with respect to factual information. With these ratings, conscientious readers can make informed decisions about which media outlets to choose in order to get a balanced perspective. But what happens when journalists use systems such as ChatGPT or Bard to aid in their writing? As said above, humans also have biases, the danger lies in being unaware of them, as they might affect the user’s/reader’s perspective (Jakesch et al., 2023; Carroll et al., 2023). ChatGPT already warns its users about misinformation. However, the political bias, if any, is not known apart from the subjective perception that a user has. We address the question above for articles generated by ChatGPT and Bard in four languages: English, German, Spanish and Catalan. We do this in an automatic and systematic way with almost no human intervention so that the method can be easily extended to new languages and other ILMs with few effort. We do not aim at classifying individual articles with their specific bias, but to classify the media source (an ILM in this case) as Left or Right-oriented in a similar way as the media bias sites do for newspapers and other media outlets. 1. https://www.allsides.com https://www.allsides.com 2. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com https://mediabiasfactcheck.com 3. https://adfontesmedia.com https://adfontesmedia.com

Multilingual Coarse Political Stance Classification of Media: Abstract and Intro

মিডিয়ার বহুভাষিক মোটা রাজনৈতিক অবস্থানের শ্রেণীবিভাগ: বিমূর্ত এবং ভূমিকা

Mehrsprachige grobe politische Standpunktklassifizierung von Medien: Zusammenfassung und Einführung

Clasificación multilingüe de posturas políticas generales de los medios: resumen e introducción

Classification multilingue grossière des positions politiques des médias : résumé et introduction

बहुभाषी असभ्य राजनीतिक रुख मीडिया का वर्गीकरण: सार और परिचय

多言語メディアの粗い政治的立場の分類：概要と序論

미디어의 다국어 거친 정치적 입장 분류: 개요 및 소개

Classificação Multilíngue da Posição Política Grosseira da Mídia: Resumo e Introdução

Многоязычная грубая политическая классификация СМИ: Аннотация и введение

Medyanın Çok Dilli Kaba Siyasi Duruş Sınıflandırması: Özet ve Giriş

Phân loại lập trường chính trị thô sơ đa ngôn ngữ của truyền thông: Tóm tắt và giới thiệu

多语言媒体粗略政治立场分类：摘要和简介

This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license.
Authors:
(1) Cristina España-Bonet, DFKI GmbH, Saarland Informatics Campus. Table of Links Abstract and Intro
Corpora Compilation
Political Stance Classification
Summary and Conclusions
Limitations and Ethics Statement
Acknowledgments and References
A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01
B. Topics
C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper
D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation
E. Stance Classification at Article Level
F. Training Details 2. Corpora Compilation We approach our task as a classification problem with two classes: Left (L) and Right (R) political orientations. This is a simplification of the real problem, where articles can also be neutral and there might be different degrees of biases. Previous work relied on 3 or 5 classes, always including the neutral option (Baly et al., 2020; Aksenov et al., 2021). In these works, data was manually annotated creating high quality training data but also limiting a lot the scope of the work in terms of languages and countries covered. When using the fine-grained classification scale, the authors acknowledge a bad generalisation of the classifiers to new sources. On the other hand, García-Díaz et al. (2022) and Russo et al. (2023) exclude the neutral class and work with a binary or multiclass Left–Right classifications of tweets from Spanish and Italian politicians respectively, but their work does not include longer texts. The binary classification might be justified as they worked with tweets, a genre where people tend to be more visceral and therefore probably more polarised. In our case, we need to be sure that the classifier generalises well to unseen sources and we stick to the 2-class task while minimising the number of neutral articles in training (see below). Distant Supervision. As far as we know, only a manually annotated newspaper corpus in English (Baly et al., 2020) and another one in German (Aksenov et al., 2021) are available. We follow a different approach in the spirit of Kulkarni et al. (2018) and Kiesel et al. (2019). We do not manually annotate any article, but we trust AllSides, MB/FC, Political Watch and Wikipedia (the latter only in cases where the information is not available in the previous sites) with their classification of a newspaper bias. We extract this information for newspapers from USA, Germany, Spain and Catalonia. With the list of newspapers, their URL,[4] and their stance, we use OSCAR, a multilingual corpus obtained by filtering the Common Crawl (Ortiz Suárez et al., 2019; Abadji et al., 2021), to retrieve the articles. Appendix A lists the sources used in this work: 47 USA newspapers with 742,691 articles, 12 German with 143,200, 38 Spanish with 301,825 and 19 Catalan with 70,496. Topic Modelling. Not all articles have a bias, some topics are more prone than others. While the Sports section of a newspaper is usually less prone to reflect political biases, the opposite happens with the International section. We therefore use topics to select a subset of relevant training data for our binary classification. We do topic modelling on the articles extracted from OSCAR using Mallet (McCallum, 2002) which applies LDA with Gibbs sampling. We cluster the data in both 10 and 15 groups per language, roughly corresponding to the number of sections a newspaper has. The keywords extracted for each topic are listed in Appendix B. We choose articles that fall under the topics we label as International, Government, Law & Justice, Economy, Live Science/Ecology, and specific language-dependent topics such as Immigration and Violence for English, Nazism for German, and Social for Spanish. The selection is done after the inspection of the keywords. For the final dataset, we do the union of the selected articles clustered to 10 and 15 topics. The process filters out 49% of the Spanish articles, 39% of the German and 31% of the English ones. Preprocessing and Cleaning. We discard articles with more than 2000 or less than 20 words before cleaning. Afterwards, we remove headers, footers and any boilerplate text detected. This text has the potential to mislead a neural classifier, as it might encourage the classifier to learn to distinguish among newspapers rather than focusing on their political stance. We select a newspaper per language and stance for testing and clean manually their articles. To create a balanced training corpus for each language, we randomly select a similar number of Left and Right-oriented articles from the remaining collection. This balanced dataset is divided into training and validation as shown in Table 1 (top rows). ChatGPT/Bard Corpus. We create a multilingual dataset with 101 articles. For this, we define 101 subjects including housing prices, abortion, tobacco, Barak Obama, etc. and translate them manually into the 4 languages (see Appendix D). The subjects consider topics prone to have a political stance such as those related to feminism, capitalism, ecologism, technology, etc. We also include proper names of people in the 4 countries being considered, whose biography may differ depending on the political stance of the writer. These subjects are inserted into the template prompt (and its translations into German, Spanish and Catalan):[5] Write a newspaper article on [SUBJECT]en We prompt ChatGPT (GPT-3.5-Turbo) five times using the same subjects across four time periods. We generate the dataset with ChatGPT versions of Feb 13 (v02), Mar 23 (v03), May 24 (v05) and Aug 3 (v08); we cover the 4 languages simultaneously only with the last two. ChatGPTv05 generates significantly longer texts than the other ones with an article-oriented structure with slots to be filled with the name of the author, date and/or city. Multilingual Bard was available later, and we prompt it twice during the same period as ChatGPTv8.[6] Table 1 shows the statistics for this corpus. [4] This implies selecting all the articles that are under a domain name of a news outlet, whether they are news or not. [5] More specific prompts did not lead to different styles for the first versions of ChatGPT, for the last one we added more information such as ...without subheaders. to avoid excesive subsectioning and/or bullet points. Neither ChatGPT nor Bard did always follow properly the instruction. The dataset we provide includes the prompts we used. [6] Prompted 14–21 August 2023 from Berlin for English and German and from Barcelona for Spanish and Catalan as, contrary to ChatGPT, the generation depends on the location. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: (1) Cristina España-Bonet, DFKI GmbH, Saarland Informatics Campus. This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED license. Authors: Authors: (1) Cristina España-Bonet, DFKI GmbH, Saarland Informatics Campus. Table of Links Abstract and Intro Corpora Compilation Political Stance Classification Summary and Conclusions Limitations and Ethics Statement Acknowledgments and References A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01 B. Topics C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation E. Stance Classification at Article Level F. Training Details Abstract and Intro Abstract and Intro Corpora Compilation Corpora Compilation Political Stance Classification Political Stance Classification Summary and Conclusions Summary and Conclusions Limitations and Ethics Statement Limitations and Ethics Statement Acknowledgments and References Acknowledgments and References A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01 A. Newspapers in OSCAR 22.01 B. Topics B. Topics C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper C. Distribution of Topics per Newspaper D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation D. Subjects for the ChatGPT and Bard Article Generation E. Stance Classification at Article Level E. Stance Classification at Article Level F. Training Details F. Training Details 2. Corpora Compilation We approach our task as a classification problem with two classes: Left (L) and Right (R) political orientations. This is a simplification of the real problem, where articles can also be neutral and there might be different degrees of biases. Previous work relied on 3 or 5 classes, always including the neutral option (Baly et al., 2020; Aksenov et al., 2021). In these works, data was manually annotated creating high quality training data but also limiting a lot the scope of the work in terms of languages and countries covered. When using the fine-grained classification scale, the authors acknowledge a bad generalisation of the classifiers to new sources. On the other hand, García-Díaz et al. (2022) and Russo et al. (2023) exclude the neutral class and work with a binary or multiclass Left–Right classifications of tweets from Spanish and Italian politicians respectively, but their work does not include longer texts. The binary classification might be justified as they worked with tweets, a genre where people tend to be more visceral and therefore probably more polarised. In our case, we need to be sure that the classifier generalises well to unseen sources and we stick to the 2-class task while minimising the number of neutral articles in training (see below). Distant Supervision. As far as we know, only a manually annotated newspaper corpus in English (Baly et al., 2020) and another one in German (Aksenov et al., 2021) are available. We follow a different approach in the spirit of Kulkarni et al. (2018) and Kiesel et al. (2019). We do not manually annotate any article, but we trust AllSides, MB/FC, Political Watch and Wikipedia (the latter only in cases where the information is not available in the previous sites) with their classification of a newspaper bias. We extract this information for newspapers from USA, Germany, Spain and Catalonia. With the list of newspapers, their URL,[4] and their stance, we use OSCAR, a multilingual corpus obtained by filtering the Common Crawl (Ortiz Suárez et al., 2019; Abadji et al., 2021), to retrieve the articles. Appendix A lists the sources used in this work: 47 USA newspapers with 742,691 articles, 12 German with 143,200, 38 Spanish with 301,825 and 19 Catalan with 70,496. Distant Supervision. Topic Modelling. Not all articles have a bias, some topics are more prone than others. While the Sports section of a newspaper is usually less prone to reflect political biases, the opposite happens with the International section. We therefore use topics to select a subset of relevant training data for our binary classification. We do topic modelling on the articles extracted from OSCAR using Mallet (McCallum, 2002) which applies LDA with Gibbs sampling. We cluster the data in both 10 and 15 groups per language, roughly corresponding to the number of sections a newspaper has. The keywords extracted for each topic are listed in Appendix B. We choose articles that fall under the topics we label as International, Government, Law & Justice, Economy, Live Science/Ecology, and specific language-dependent topics such as Immigration and Violence for English, Nazism for German, and Social for Spanish. The selection is done after the inspection of the keywords. For the final dataset, we do the union of the selected articles clustered to 10 and 15 topics. The process filters out 49% of the Spanish articles, 39% of the German and 31% of the English ones. Topic Modelling. Preprocessing and Cleaning. We discard articles with more than 2000 or less than 20 words before cleaning. Afterwards, we remove headers, footers and any boilerplate text detected. This text has the potential to mislead a neural classifier, as it might encourage the classifier to learn to distinguish among newspapers rather than focusing on their political stance. We select a newspaper per language and stance for testing and clean manually their articles. To create a balanced training corpus for each language, we randomly select a similar number of Left and Right-oriented articles from the remaining collection. This balanced dataset is divided into training and validation as shown in Table 1 (top rows). Preprocessing and Cleaning. ChatGPT/Bard Corpus. We create a multilingual dataset with 101 articles. For this, we define 101 subjects including housing prices, abortion, tobacco, Barak Obama, etc. and translate them manually into the 4 languages (see Appendix D). The subjects consider topics prone to have a political stance such as those related to feminism, capitalism, ecologism, technology, etc. We also include proper names of people in the 4 countries being considered, whose biography may differ depending on the political stance of the writer. These subjects are inserted into the template prompt (and its translations into German, Spanish and Catalan):[5] Write a newspaper article on [SUBJECT]en ChatGPT/Bard Corpus. We prompt ChatGPT (GPT-3.5-Turbo) five times using the same subjects across four time periods. We generate the dataset with ChatGPT versions of Feb 13 (v02), Mar 23 (v03), May 24 (v05) and Aug 3 (v08); we cover the 4 languages simultaneously only with the last two. ChatGPTv05 generates significantly longer texts than the other ones with an article-oriented structure with slots to be filled with the name of the author, date and/or city. Multilingual Bard was available later, and we prompt it twice during the same period as ChatGPTv8.[6] Table 1 shows the statistics for this corpus. [4] This implies selecting all the articles that are under a domain name of a news outlet, whether they are news or not. [5] More specific prompts did not lead to different styles for the first versions of ChatGPT, for the last one we added more information such as ...without subheaders. to avoid excesive subsectioning and/or bullet points. Neither ChatGPT nor Bard did always follow properly the instruction. The dataset we provide includes the prompts we used. [6] Prompted 14–21 August 2023 from Berlin for English and German and from Barcelona for Spanish and Catalan as, contrary to ChatGPT, the generation depends on the location.

Multilingual Coarse Political Stance Classification of Media: Corpora Compilation

মিডিয়ার বহুভাষিক মোটা রাজনৈতিক অবস্থানের শ্রেণীবিভাগ: কর্পোরা সংকলন

Mehrsprachige grobe Klassifizierung politischer Standpunkte von Medien: Korpora-Zusammenstellung

Clasificación multilingüe de posturas políticas generales de los medios: compilación de corpus

Classification multilingue grossière des positions politiques des médias : compilation de corpus

बहुभाषी असभ्य राजनीतिक रुख मीडिया का वर्गीकरण: कॉर्पोरा संकलन

多言語メディアの粗い政治的立場分類：コーパス編集

다국어 거친 정치적 입장 미디어 분류: 말뭉치 편집

Classificação multilíngue da postura política grosseira da mídia: compilação de corpora

Многоязычная грубая классификация СМИ по политическим позициям: сборник Corpora

Medyanın Çok Dilli Kaba Siyasi Duruş Sınıflandırması: Corpora Derlemesi

Phân loại lập trường chính trị thô sơ đa ngôn ngữ của phương tiện truyền thông: Tổng hợp Corpora

多语言媒体粗略政治立场分类：语料库汇编

Plunging Into Data: Unraveling Time Series Patterns

The New Hollywood leader and one of the world’s most powerful brands just joined forces in a deal that elevates live sports on connected TV (CTV) and hammers another nail in the coffin of linear TV. Netflix announced that it will stream the NFL’s two Christmas Day games in 2024. This marks the beginning of a three-season agreement, during which the streaming service will also air at least one Christmas Day game in both 2025 and 2026. The games will also air on broadcast TV in the competing team cities, and they be available on U.S. mobile devices with NFL+. The Rise of Live Sports on CTV The live sports industry is the last bastion of linear TV viewing. But the world is changing fast. About half of U.S. audiences no longer pay for cable TV or other traditional pay TV services, according to Insider Intelligence. About four out of 10 viewers mainly consume sports content through ad-supported CTV platforms or social media, according to Trade Desk’s Future of TV Report. Streaming services have been gobbling up live sports content over the past few years, ranging from Amazon’s and Peacock’s deals to stream NFL games to Netflix acquiring rights for the WWE. And competition is heating up. A recently announced venture between ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery may account for about 55% of U.S. sports rights, according to Citi analysts. All Hail the NFL Netflix, a Johnny-come-lately to live sports, has good reason to cozy up to the NFL. The NFL dominates television and drives culture. Nielsen says the NFL accounted for a 93 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in 2023. The NFL has wisely sensed and responded to the rise of CTV, agreeing to air games with a variety of streaming companies, among them Amazon Prime, Paramount+, Peacock, and YouTube TV. Thursday Night Football games on Amazon Prime and a Black Friday game (the first ever) in 2024 have delivered ratings and advertising gold. The league created controversy by streaming a 2024 wild card playoff game on Peacock exclusively, which shut out viewers who lacked a Peacock subscription. But the decision delivered numbers: 23 million total viewers, according to Nielsen. NBC said that the game set a record for the most-streamed live event in U.S. history. And Super Bowl LVIII on February 11 game attracted an average viewership of 123.4 million, setting a new record for the most-watched television broadcast in history. Out of this audience, 112 million viewers watched the game on CBS. The remaining viewership was distributed among Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports, and various NFL digital platforms, including NFL+. All Eyes on Amazon The NFL is clearly just getting warmed up. The 2024-25 season will include a game in Brazil streaming exclusively on Peacock. The September 6 game will be the first NFL game played in South America and the second game to air exclusively on Peacock. A playoff wild card game will air on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon streaming a playoff game is especially intriguing. The experience will most certainly be different than the one Peacock featured and speaks to CTV’s potential for changing how people experience live sports. For one thing, Amazon will use the game to test Amazon Ad targeting features as it did with the Black Friday game when Amazon rolled out a new strategy called audience-based creative, allowing advertisers to target different audience segments with different ads in the same time slot.Amazon will also inject commerce into the game-watching experience. Amazon already offers deals for Amazon Prime customers associated with Thursday Night Football, and Amazon really ramped up shopping deals during the 2023 Black Friday game (including limited time deals along with plenty of shoppable ads).Amazon also provides several interactive features to enhance the TV viewing experience, such as X-Ray, which gives fans real-time access to live statistics and data. A feature called the 4th Down Decision Guide offers fans the opportunity to step into the role of NFL coaches during critical moments. It poses the question: should a team attempt to advance on fourth down or opt for a punt? Using machine learning, this tool assesses the success rates of both choices and evaluates their impact on the team's chances of winning the game. These kinds of features (and a lot more) are not gimmicks -- they make watching the game more of an experience. Essentially, Amazon and the NFL are reinventing Black Friday as a hybrid shopping and entertainment experience -- enticing people to stay online and watch football on a day when they’re usually out shopping was at one time unthinkable. The game garnered an average of 9.61 million viewers who watched the Miami Dolphins crush the New York Jets on Amazon Prime Video.The ratings were lower than expected. But Amazon’s first NFL outing with Thursday Night Football underwhelmed at first, too, and now things have turned around. And as Columbia University sports management professor Joe Favorito told The Street, "If you would have said to someone nine million people on the Friday after Thanksgiving are going to watch a streamed NFL game three years ago, people [would] have been jumping up and down." Amazon’s relationship with the NFL will also challenge Netflix to deliver something more experiential especially because Amazon is already creating the state of the art in CTV live sports. I expect Netflix will share more details of its own in coming weeks. A Christmas Advertising Bonanza? Christmas Day marks the NFL’s continued expansion into holiday sports viewing. The NFL averaged 28.4 million viewers across its three games on Christmas Day last season (compare that to the NBA, which averaged 2.8 million across its five games). According to the NFL, last year’s three Christmas games ranking among the top 25 most viewed TV programs of 2023. Analyst Guggenheim predicts that these games will bring in approximately $185 million in direct advertising revenue. This figure is in addition to potential increases in subscriber growth, engagement, or promotional benefits. Such a boost would signify a 15.7% increase over the firm’s existing 2024 advertising forecast of $1.18 billion. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the day is coming when the Super Bowl will move to CTV. Which New Hollywood business will win that prize? NFL photo by Photo by Adrian Curiel on Unsplash. Netflix photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash. The New Hollywood leader and one of the world’s most powerful brands just joined forces in a deal that elevates live sports on connected TV (CTV) and hammers another nail in the coffin of linear TV. Netflix announced that it will stream the NFL’s two Christmas Day games in 2024 . This marks the beginning of a three-season agreement, during which the streaming service will also air at least one Christmas Day game in both 2025 and 2026. stream the NFL’s two Christmas Day games in 2024 The games will also air on broadcast TV in the competing team cities, and they be available on U.S. mobile devices with NFL+. The Rise of Live Sports on CTV The Rise of Live Sports on CTV The live sports industry is the last bastion of linear TV viewing. But the world is changing fast. About half of U.S. audiences no longer pay for cable TV or other traditional pay TV services , according to Insider Intelligence. About four out of 10 viewers mainly consume sports content through ad-supported CTV platforms or social media , according to Trade Desk’s Future of TV Report. About half of U.S. audiences no longer pay for cable TV or other traditional pay TV services About half of U.S. audiences no longer pay for cable TV or other traditional pay TV services About four out of 10 viewers mainly consume sports content through ad-supported CTV platforms or social media About four out of 10 viewers mainly consume sports content through ad-supported CTV platforms or social media Streaming services have been gobbling up live sports content over the past few years, ranging from Amazon’s and Peacock’s deals to stream NFL games to Netflix acquiring rights for the WWE. And competition is heating up. A recently announced venture between ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery may account for about 55% of U.S. sports rights , according to Citi analysts. may account for about 55% of U.S. sports rights may account for about 55% of U.S. sports rights All Hail the NFL All Hail the NFL Netflix, a Johnny-come-lately to live sports, has good reason to cozy up to the NFL. The NFL dominates television and drives culture. Nielsen says the NFL accounted for a 93 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in 2023 . The NFL has wisely sensed and responded to the rise of CTV, agreeing to air games with a variety of streaming companies, among them Amazon Prime, Paramount+, Peacock, and YouTube TV. Thursday Night Football games on Amazon Prime and a Black Friday game (the first ever) in 2024 have delivered ratings and advertising gold. NFL accounted for a 93 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in 2023 NFL accounted for a 93 of the 100 most-watched TV broadcasts in 2023 The league created controversy by streaming a 2024 wild card playoff game on Peacock exclusively, which shut out viewers who lacked a Peacock subscription. But the decision delivered numbers: 23 million total viewers, according to Nielsen. NBC said that the game set a record for the most-streamed live event in U.S. history . NBC said that the game set a record for the most-streamed live event in U.S. history NBC said that the game set a record for the most-streamed live event in U.S. history And Super Bowl LVIII on February 11 game attracted an average viewership of 123.4 million, setting a new record for the most-watched television broadcast in history . Out of this audience, 112 million viewers watched the game on CBS. The remaining viewership was distributed among Paramount+, Nickelodeon, Univision, CBS Sports, and various NFL digital platforms, including NFL+. setting a new record for the most-watched television broadcast in history setting a new record for the most-watched television broadcast in history All Eyes on Amazon The NFL is clearly just getting warmed up. The 2024-25 season will include a game in Brazil streaming exclusively on Peacock. The September 6 game will be the first NFL game played in South America and the second game to air exclusively on Peacock. A playoff wild card game will air on Amazon Prime Video. Amazon streaming a playoff game is especially intriguing. The experience will most certainly be different than the one Peacock featured and speaks to CTV’s potential for changing how people experience live sports. For one thing, Amazon will use the game to test Amazon Ad targeting features as it did with the Black Friday game when Amazon rolled out a new strategy called audience-based creative, allowing advertisers to target different audience segments with different ads in the same time slot. Amazon will also inject commerce into the game-watching experience. Amazon already offers deals for Amazon Prime customers associated with Thursday Night Football, and Amazon really ramped up shopping deals during the 2023 Black Friday game (including limited time deals along with plenty of shoppable ads). Amazon also provides several interactive features to enhance the TV viewing experience, such as X-Ray, which gives fans real-time access to live statistics and data. A feature called the 4th Down Decision Guide offers fans the opportunity to step into the role of NFL coaches during critical moments. It poses the question: should a team attempt to advance on fourth down or opt for a punt? Using machine learning, this tool assesses the success rates of both choices and evaluates their impact on the team's chances of winning the game. These kinds of features (and a lot more) are not gimmicks -- they make watching the game more of an experience. Essentially, Amazon and the NFL are reinventing Black Friday as a hybrid shopping and entertainment experience -- enticing people to stay online and watch football on a day when they’re usually out shopping was at one time unthinkable. The game garnered an average of 9.61 million viewers who watched the Miami Dolphins crush the New York Jets on Amazon Prime Video. The ratings were lower than expected. But Amazon’s first NFL outing with Thursday Night Football underwhelmed at first, too, and now things have turned around. And as Columbia University sports management professor Joe Favorito told The Street, "If you would have said to someone nine million people on the Friday after Thanksgiving are going to watch a streamed NFL game three years ago, people [would] have been jumping up and down." Amazon’s relationship with the NFL will also challenge Netflix to deliver something more experiential especially because Amazon is already creating the state of the art in CTV live sports. I expect Netflix will share more details of its own in coming weeks. A Christmas Advertising Bonanza? A Christmas Advertising Bonanza? Christmas Day marks the NFL’s continued expansion into holiday sports viewing. The NFL averaged 28.4 million viewers across its three games on Christmas Day last season (compare that to the NBA, which averaged 2.8 million across its five games). According to the NFL, last year’s three Christmas games ranking among the top 25 most viewed TV programs of 2023 . The NFL averaged 28.4 million viewers across its three games on Christmas Day last season The NFL averaged 28.4 million viewers across its three games on Christmas Day last season last year’s three Christmas games ranking among the top 25 most viewed TV programs of 2023 last year’s three Christmas games ranking among the top 25 most viewed TV programs of 2023 Analyst Guggenheim predicts that these games will bring in approximately $185 million in direct advertising revenue . This figure is in addition to potential increases in subscriber growth, engagement, or promotional benefits. Such a boost would signify a 15.7% increase over the firm’s existing 2024 advertising forecast of $1.18 billion. $185 million in direct advertising revenue $185 million in direct advertising revenue I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the day is coming when the Super Bowl will move to CTV. Which New Hollywood business will win that prize? NFL photo by Photo by Adrian Curiel on Unsplash. Netflix photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash. NFL photo by Photo by Adrian Curiel on Unsplash. Netflix photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash.

Goodbye, Linear TV: Netflix to Stream NFL Christmas Games in 2024

বিদায়, লিনিয়ার টিভি: 2024 সালে এনএফএল ক্রিসমাস গেমস স্ট্রিম করবে Netflix

Auf Wiedersehen, lineares Fernsehen: Netflix überträgt NFL-Weihnachtsspiele im Jahr 2024

Adiós, Linear TV: Netflix transmitirá los juegos navideños de la NFL en 2024

Au revoir, télévision linéaire : Netflix diffusera les matchs de Noël de la NFL en 2024

अलविदा, लीनियर टीवी: नेटफ्लिक्स 2024 में एनएफएल क्रिसमस गेम्स स्ट्रीम करेगा

さようなら、リニアテレビ：Netflix が 2024 年に NFL クリスマス ゲームをストリーミング配信

안녕, Linear TV: Netflix, 2024년에 NFL 크리스마스 게임 스트리밍 예정

Adeus, Linear TV: Netflix transmitirá jogos de Natal da NFL em 2024

Прощай, линейное телевидение: Netflix будет транслировать рождественские игры НФЛ в 2024 году

Elveda Linear TV: Netflix, 2024'te NFL Noel Oyunlarını Yayınlayacak

Tạm biệt, Truyền hình tuyến tính: Netflix sẽ phát trực tuyến các trò chơi Giáng sinh của NFL vào năm 2024

再见，线性电视：Netflix 将于 2024 年播放 NFL 圣诞比赛

BAMK•OF•NAKAMOTO•DOLLAR In a groundbreaking move, new crypto startup BAMK is set to revolutionize the Bitcoin blockchain with the introduction of the Nakamoto Dollar (NUSD), a protocol-agnostic synthetic USD stablecoin. This initiative first launched via the Bitcoin Runes protocol, in what we can assume was a very clever marketing strategy, potentially ushering in a new era of decentralized finance (DeFi) on the Bitcoin network. Here's an in-depth look at BAMK's ambitious project and its potential impact on the market. The Rise of the Runes Protocol The Runes protocol enhances Bitcoin's capability by enabling the creation of digital tokens, significantly improving transaction speed and cost-effectiveness. This innovation is akin to what Ethereum achieved with tokenization, leading to an influx of new tokens and capital. With Runes, Bitcoin now has the infrastructure to support similar growth, paving the way for projects like BAMK to deploy via Bitcoin (Note: $BAMK was launched via Bitcoin Runes Protocol, and $NUSD, or similar, while not yet released for minting, will likely be protocol agnostic, think BRC20 potentially). BAMK and the Nakamoto Dollar BAMK, short for Bamk of Nakamoto Dollar, aims to create a 1:1 USD synthetic stablecoin on the Bitcoin network, using the ticker $NUSD (Nakamoto USD). Their project, BAMK Protocol or BAMK for short (initially, the NAKADO Protocol), seeks to establish the first Bitcoin Layer 1 synthetic dollar as was first inspired by ideas from crypto visionary Arthur Hayes. Key Features and Phases of the BAMK Project Phase 1: Bootstrapping with Ethena:

BAMK has developed a proprietary growth protocol to create a synthetic dollar, starting with a native bond token to incentivize total value locked (TVL) on Bitcoin Layer 1.
A public mint of the B.O.N.D. token (now $BAMK on exchanges) has been initiated to attract initial liquidity.


Phase 2: Hedging Mechanism:

The NUSD stablecoin will be 100% hedged by holding a long spot position in BTC and a short perpetuals position, ensuring stability despite market volatility.


Future Integration:

NUSD aims to be protocol-agnostic, and compatible with various token standards and protocols, allowing for broad adoption and integration across platforms. The team behind the project tell us that it is likely NUSD will launch on BRC20 first with a 5-byte ticker. Watch this space! Strategic Decisions and Market Impact From their Twitter/X and also voa conversations we have had with the BAMK team, we can see that BAMK was approached by venture capitalists who were ready to invest at a $40 million valuation. However, the team decided to forgo VC funding to maintain independence and foster community involvement. Instead, they minted 21 billion $BAMK tokens to incentivize TVL and engage the degen trading community. In other words, think of this as a grassroots model. Potential Market Impact Uncapped Potential for Capital Inflow:

The introduction of NUSD on the Bitcoin network holds uncapped potential for capital inflow. Unlike Ethereum-based stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are capped through banking regulations and restrictions, NUSD aims to operate without these constraints. This could lead to a significant increase in on-chain liquidity and attract substantial capital to the Bitcoin network【24†source】.


Enhanced Bitcoin Utility:

Introducing a stablecoin directly on Bitcoin can enhance its utility, making it a more versatile asset for transactions, lending, and other financial services.
The synthetic nature of NUSD ensures that it remains stable despite Bitcoin's volatility, providing a reliable medium of exchange and store of value.


Community and Decentralization:

BAMK's decision to prioritize community involvement over VC funding aligns with the decentralized ethos of Bitcoin.
By incentivizing participation through the $BAMK token, BAMK aims to build a robust and engaged community that supports the project's growth and sustainability. Challenges While the potential benefits are significant, there are challenges to consider. The success of NUSD hinges on the effectiveness of the hedging mechanism and the broader adoption of the Runes protocol. Additionally, regulatory scrutiny and market acceptance will play crucial roles in determining the project's long-term viability. Interpretation BAMK's initiative to create the Nakamoto Dollar on Bitcoin represents a bold step towards expanding Bitcoin's functionality and utility. By leveraging the Runes protocol, BAMK aims to bring a new level of financial innovation to the Bitcoin network, potentially transforming it into a hub for decentralized finance. As the project progresses, it will be closely watched by the crypto community, eager to see how this ambitious endeavor unfolds. For more information, visit BAMK's official website and follow their updates on X. As far as cyrpto projects go, BAMK is about as audacious as they come. If you have been in this space for any amount of time, you will recall in the early days of Bitcoin, the general idea and meme used was that with Bitcoin, you would be your own bank. Fast forward to today and while Bitcoin has given us some amazing properties, we never really did become our own bank. If BAMK protocol does what it aims to do - you will undoubtedly all become bamksters. BAMK•OF•NAKAMOTO•DOLLAR In a groundbreaking move, new crypto startup BAMK is set to revolutionize the Bitcoin blockchain with the introduction of the Nakamoto Dollar (NUSD) , a protocol-agnostic synthetic USD stablecoin . This initiative first launched via the Bitcoin Runes protocol, in what we can assume was a very clever marketing strategy, potentially ushering in a new era of decentralized finance (DeFi) on the Bitcoin network. Here's an in-depth look at BAMK's ambitious project and its potential impact on the market. BAMK Nakamoto Dollar (NUSD) synthetic USD stablecoin The Rise of the Runes Protocol The Runes protocol enhances Bitcoin's capability by enabling the creation of digital tokens, significantly improving transaction speed and cost-effectiveness. This innovation is akin to what Ethereum achieved with tokenization, leading to an influx of new tokens and capital. With Runes, Bitcoin now has the infrastructure to support similar growth, paving the way for projects like BAMK to deploy via Bitcoin (Note: $BAMK was launched via Bitcoin Runes Protocol, and $NUSD, or similar, while not yet released for minting, will likely be protocol agnostic, think BRC20 potentially). BAMK and the Nakamoto Dollar BAMK, short for Bamk of Nakamoto Dollar , aims to create a 1:1 USD synthetic stablecoin on the Bitcoin network, using the ticker $NUSD (Nakamoto USD). Their project, BAMK Protocol or BAMK for short (initially, the NAKADO Protocol), seeks to establish the first Bitcoin Layer 1 synthetic dollar as was first inspired by ideas from crypto visionary Arthur Hayes . Bamk of Nakamoto Dollar Arthur Hayes Key Features and Phases of the BAMK Project Phase 1: Bootstrapping with Ethena:

BAMK has developed a proprietary growth protocol to create a synthetic dollar, starting with a native bond token to incentivize total value locked (TVL) on Bitcoin Layer 1.
A public mint of the B.O.N.D. token (now $BAMK on exchanges) has been initiated to attract initial liquidity. Phase 2: Hedging Mechanism:

The NUSD stablecoin will be 100% hedged by holding a long spot position in BTC and a short perpetuals position, ensuring stability despite market volatility. Future Integration:

NUSD aims to be protocol-agnostic, and compatible with various token standards and protocols, allowing for broad adoption and integration across platforms. The team behind the project tell us that it is likely NUSD will launch on BRC20 first with a 5-byte ticker. Watch this space! Phase 1: Bootstrapping with Ethena : BAMK has developed a proprietary growth protocol to create a synthetic dollar, starting with a native bond token to incentivize total value locked (TVL) on Bitcoin Layer 1.
A public mint of the B.O.N.D. token (now $BAMK on exchanges) has been initiated to attract initial liquidity. Phase 1: Bootstrapping with Ethena BAMK has developed a proprietary growth protocol to create a synthetic dollar, starting with a native bond token to incentivize total value locked (TVL) on Bitcoin Layer 1. A public mint of the B.O.N.D. token (now $BAMK on exchanges) has been initiated to attract initial liquidity. BAMK has developed a proprietary growth protocol to create a synthetic dollar, starting with a native bond token to incentivize total value locked (TVL) on Bitcoin Layer 1. A public mint of the B.O.N.D. token (now $BAMK on exchanges) has been initiated to attract initial liquidity. Phase 2: Hedging Mechanism : The NUSD stablecoin will be 100% hedged by holding a long spot position in BTC and a short perpetuals position, ensuring stability despite market volatility. Phase 2: Hedging Mechanism The NUSD stablecoin will be 100% hedged by holding a long spot position in BTC and a short perpetuals position, ensuring stability despite market volatility. The NUSD stablecoin will be 100% hedged by holding a long spot position in BTC and a short perpetuals position, ensuring stability despite market volatility. Future Integration : NUSD aims to be protocol-agnostic, and compatible with various token standards and protocols, allowing for broad adoption and integration across platforms. The team behind the project tell us that it is likely NUSD will launch on BRC20 first with a 5-byte ticker. Watch this space! Future Integration NUSD aims to be protocol-agnostic, and compatible with various token standards and protocols, allowing for broad adoption and integration across platforms. The team behind the project tell us that it is likely NUSD will launch on BRC20 first with a 5-byte ticker. Watch this space! NUSD aims to be protocol-agnostic, and compatible with various token standards and protocols, allowing for broad adoption and integration across platforms. The team behind the project tell us that it is likely NUSD will launch on BRC20 first with a 5-byte ticker. Watch this space! Strategic Decisions and Market Impact From their Twitter/X and also voa conversations we have had with the BAMK team, we can see that BAMK was approached by venture capitalists who were ready to invest at a $40 million valuation. However, the team decided to forgo VC funding to maintain independence and foster community involvement. Instead, they minted 21 billion $BAMK tokens to incentivize TVL and engage the degen trading community. In other words, think of this as a grassroots model. Potential Market Impact Uncapped Potential for Capital Inflow:

The introduction of NUSD on the Bitcoin network holds uncapped potential for capital inflow. Unlike Ethereum-based stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are capped through banking regulations and restrictions, NUSD aims to operate without these constraints. This could lead to a significant increase in on-chain liquidity and attract substantial capital to the Bitcoin network【24†source】. Enhanced Bitcoin Utility:

Introducing a stablecoin directly on Bitcoin can enhance its utility, making it a more versatile asset for transactions, lending, and other financial services.
The synthetic nature of NUSD ensures that it remains stable despite Bitcoin's volatility, providing a reliable medium of exchange and store of value. Community and Decentralization:

BAMK's decision to prioritize community involvement over VC funding aligns with the decentralized ethos of Bitcoin.
By incentivizing participation through the $BAMK token, BAMK aims to build a robust and engaged community that supports the project's growth and sustainability. Uncapped Potential for Capital Inflow : The introduction of NUSD on the Bitcoin network holds uncapped potential for capital inflow. Unlike Ethereum-based stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are capped through banking regulations and restrictions, NUSD aims to operate without these constraints. This could lead to a significant increase in on-chain liquidity and attract substantial capital to the Bitcoin network【24†source】. Uncapped Potential for Capital Inflow The introduction of NUSD on the Bitcoin network holds uncapped potential for capital inflow. Unlike Ethereum-based stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are capped through banking regulations and restrictions, NUSD aims to operate without these constraints. This could lead to a significant increase in on-chain liquidity and attract substantial capital to the Bitcoin network【24†source】. The introduction of NUSD on the Bitcoin network holds uncapped potential for capital inflow. Unlike Ethereum-based stablecoins like USDT and USDC, which are capped through banking regulations and restrictions, NUSD aims to operate without these constraints. This could lead to a significant increase in on-chain liquidity and attract substantial capital to the Bitcoin network【24†source】. Enhanced Bitcoin Utility : Introducing a stablecoin directly on Bitcoin can enhance its utility, making it a more versatile asset for transactions, lending, and other financial services.
The synthetic nature of NUSD ensures that it remains stable despite Bitcoin's volatility, providing a reliable medium of exchange and store of value. Enhanced Bitcoin Utility Introducing a stablecoin directly on Bitcoin can enhance its utility, making it a more versatile asset for transactions, lending, and other financial services. The synthetic nature of NUSD ensures that it remains stable despite Bitcoin's volatility, providing a reliable medium of exchange and store of value. Introducing a stablecoin directly on Bitcoin can enhance its utility, making it a more versatile asset for transactions, lending, and other financial services. The synthetic nature of NUSD ensures that it remains stable despite Bitcoin's volatility, providing a reliable medium of exchange and store of value. Community and Decentralization : BAMK's decision to prioritize community involvement over VC funding aligns with the decentralized ethos of Bitcoin.
By incentivizing participation through the $BAMK token, BAMK aims to build a robust and engaged community that supports the project's growth and sustainability. Community and Decentralization BAMK's decision to prioritize community involvement over VC funding aligns with the decentralized ethos of Bitcoin. By incentivizing participation through the $BAMK token, BAMK aims to build a robust and engaged community that supports the project's growth and sustainability. BAMK's decision to prioritize community involvement over VC funding aligns with the decentralized ethos of Bitcoin. By incentivizing participation through the $BAMK token, BAMK aims to build a robust and engaged community that supports the project's growth and sustainability. Challenges While the potential benefits are significant, there are challenges to consider. The success of NUSD hinges on the effectiveness of the hedging mechanism and the broader adoption of the Runes protocol. Additionally, regulatory scrutiny and market acceptance will play crucial roles in determining the project's long-term viability. Interpretation BAMK's initiative to create the Nakamoto Dollar on Bitcoin represents a bold step towards expanding Bitcoin's functionality and utility. By leveraging the Runes protocol, BAMK aims to bring a new level of financial innovation to the Bitcoin network, potentially transforming it into a hub for decentralized finance. As the project progresses, it will be closely watched by the crypto community, eager to see how this ambitious endeavor unfolds. For more information, visit BAMK's official website and follow their updates on X . official website X As far as cyrpto projects go, BAMK is about as audacious as they come. If you have been in this space for any amount of time, you will recall in the early days of Bitcoin, the general idea and meme used was that with Bitcoin, you would be your own bank. Fast forward to today and while Bitcoin has given us some amazing properties, we never really did become our own bank. If BAMK protocol does what it aims to do - you will undoubtedly all become bamksters.

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