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Recently, someone asked me if one of the jobs I had shared ( ) was open to remote folks. While I work hard to ensure my weekly list of  jobs only includes remote-friendly opportunities, this particular role was listed as being in-office. something I do every week However, I offered the following advice based on my personal experience and what I’ve seen from other folks over the years: Even when a job is listed as being “in office,” it’s still possible to get the  company to consider a remote employee. Like so many things in business, a lot of it has to do with when you ask and how you make your case. Here’s the specific advice I offered to this person. I hope it helps you, too. If you have additional tricks, comments, questions, or  kudos, feel free to leave them in the comments below. Your best bet is to apply and see how far the conversation gets. I know that sounds both random and setting yourself up for failure, but hear me out: In the “before times” (pre-pandemic), I was a remote worker for over ten years. This was the strategy  I’d developed over the years  (given that almost nobody advertised for remote jobs). I would apply and  be very, VERY vague about location. “Everything is negotiable, but I want to find out more about the job and have you find out more about me,” was my standard answer. Once we got down to brass tacks, I would already have a sense of the company, how many remote folks there work, the job workflow, etc. I  could mount an argument for remote work based on that information. “How many times do you text or call someone who sits literally one cubicle away.” “During an outage, how many people go to a meeting room versus take the call from their desk so they can keep working on the problem?” “How much of the team is not in this location, so they’re effectively “remote” anyway?” “How often do I need to physically go into the data center to physically touch a machine?” …and so on. My point would be to highlight how much of the job is already remote, and so my being remote from an office location was functionally no different than being on-site. It worked 50% of the time. The combination of my proving I was the right person for the job AND the case I made about the remote nature of  the work gave the hiring manager the ammunition they needed to make the  argument. NOW… how many of those jobs admitted the job could be done remotely up-front? Zero. Absolutely NONE of them would have initially agreed to  consider a remote person. For companies that refuse to consider remote staff, the case I had to make five years ago is the same one we have to make today. And luckily  (for those of us who believe strongly in the power of remote work), the process is largely the same. : The one absolute deal-breaker for remote work status is tax status. If a company doesn’t  have a tax presence in the location where you live, it’s very, VERY hard to get them to consider doing so for you and you alone. CAVEAT (aka “death and taxes”) However, even this isn’t 100% impossible. I have two different companies that do it for me. Also published . here

Job Listed As In-Office? You Might Be Able To Go Remote

Mark Twain's Speeches by Mark Twain, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . LITERATURE here LITERATURE ADDRESS AT THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND BANQUET, LONDON, MAY 4, 1900

          Anthony Hope introduced Mr. Clemens to make the response to the
          toast “Literature.” MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately with this toast without assistance from me. Still, I was born generous. If he had advanced any theories that needed refutation or correction I would have attended to them, and if he had made any statements stronger than those which he is in the habit of making I would have dealt with them. In fact, I was surprised at the mildness of his statements. I could not have made such statements if I had preferred to, because to exaggerate is the only way I can approximate to the truth. You cannot have a theory without principles. Principles is another name for prejudices. I have no prejudices in politics, religion, literature, or anything else. I am now on my way to my own country to run for the presidency because there are not yet enough candidates in the field, and those who have entered are too much hampered by their own principles, which are prejudices. I propose to go there to purify the political atmosphere. I am in favor of everything everybody is in favor of. What you should do is to satisfy the whole nation, not half of it, for then you would only be half a President. There could not be a broader platform than mine. I am in favor of anything and everything—of temperance and intemperance, morality and qualified immorality, gold standard and free silver. I have tried all sorts of things, and that is why I want to try the great position of ruler of a country. I have been in turn reporter, editor, publisher, author, lawyer, burglar. I have worked my way up, and wish to continue to do so. I read to-day in a magazine article that Christendom issued last year fifty-five thousand new books. Consider what that means! Fifty-five thousand new books meant fifty-four thousand new authors. We are going to have them all on our hands to take care of sooner or later. Therefore, double your subscriptions to the literary fund! 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. Mark Twain (2004). Mark Twain's Speeches. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3188/pg3188-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

MR. HOPE has been able to deal adequately

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Chapter XXXIV CHAPTER XXXIV We were not able to return to Johannesburg that night. The shells were coming over pretty fast, and I gathered that we were now more or less cut off, owing to the rebels having obtained possession of a new part of the suburbs. Our place of refuge was a farm some twenty miles or so from Johannesburg—right out on the veld. I was dropping with fatigue. All the excitement and anxiety of the last two days had left me little better than a limp rag. I kept repeating to myself, without being able to believe it, that our troubles were really over. Harry and I were together and we should never be separated again. Yet all through I was conscious of some barrier between us—a constraint on his part, the reason of which I could not fathom. Sir Eustace had been driven off in an opposite direction accompanied by a strong guard. He waved his hand airily to us on departing. I came out on to the stoep early on the following morning and looked across the veld in the direction of Johannesburg. I could see the great dumps glistening in the pale morning sunshine, and I could hear the low rumbling mutter of the guns. The Revolution was not over yet. The farmer’s wife came out and called me in to breakfast. She was a kind, motherly soul, and I was already very fond of her. Harry had gone out at dawn and had not yet returned, so she informed me. Again I felt a stir of uneasiness pass over me. What was this shadow of which I was so conscious between us? After breakfast I sat out on the stoep, a book in my hand which I did not read. I was so lost in my own thoughts that I never saw Colonel Race ride up and dismount from his horse. It was not until he said “Good morning, Anne,” that I became aware of his presence. “Oh,” I said, with a flush, “it’s you.” “Yes. May I sit down?” He drew a chair up beside me. It was the first time we had been alone together since that day at the Matoppos. As always, I felt that curious mixture of fascination and fear that he never failed to inspire in me. “What is the news?” I asked. “Smuts will be in Johannesburg to-morrow. I give this outbreak three days more before it collapses utterly. In the meantime the fighting goes on.” “I wish,” I said, “that one could be sure that the right people were the ones to get killed. I mean the ones who wanted to fight—not just all the poor people who happen to live in the parts where the fighting is going on.” He nodded. “I know what you mean, Anne. That’s the unfairness of war. But I’ve other news for you.” “Yes?” “A confession of incompetency on my part. Pedler has managed to escape.” “What?” “Yes. No one knows how he managed it. He was securely locked up for the night—in an upper-story room of one of the farms roundabouts which the Military have taken over, but this morning the room was empty and the bird had flown.” Secretly I was rather pleased. Never, to this day, have I been able to rid myself of a sneaking fondness for Sir Eustace. I dare say it’s reprehensible, but there it is. I admired him. He was a thorough-going villain, I dare say—but he was a pleasant one. I’ve never met any one half so amusing since. I concealed my feelings, of course. Naturally Colonel Race would feel quite differently about it. He wanted Sir Eustace brought to justice. There was nothing very surprising in his escape when one came to think of it. All round Jo’burg he must have innumerable spies and agents. And, whatever Colonel Race might think, I was exceedingly doubtful that they would ever catch him. He probably had a well-planned line of retreat. Indeed, he had said as much to us. I expressed myself suitably, though in a rather lukewarm manner, and the conversation languished. Then Colonel Race asked suddenly for Harry. I told him that he had gone off at dawn and that I hadn’t seen him this morning. “You understand, don’t you, Anne, that apart from formalities, he is completely cleared? There are technicalities, of course, but Sir Eustace’s guilt is well assured. There is nothing now to keep you apart.” He said this without looking at me, in a slow, jerky voice. “I understand,” I said gratefully. “And there is no reason why he should not at once resume his real name.” “No, of course not.” “You know his real name?” The question surprised me. “Of course I do. Harry Lucas.” He did not answer, and something in the quality of his silence struck me as peculiar. “Anne, do you remember that, as we drove home from the Matoppos that day, I told you that I knew what I had to do?” “Of course I remember.” “I think that I may fairly say I have done it. The man you love is cleared of suspicion.” “Was that what you meant?” “Of course.” I hung my head, ashamed of the baseless suspicion I had entertained. He spoke again in a thoughtful voice: “When I was a mere youngster, I was in love with a girl who jilted me. After that I thought only of my work. My career meant everything to me. Then I met you, Anne—and all that seemed worth nothing. But youth’s call to youth. . . . I’ve still got my work.” I was silent. I suppose one can’t really love two men at once—but you can feel like it. The magnetism of this man was very great. I looked up at him suddenly. “I think that you’ll go very far,” I said dreamily. “I think that you’ve got a great career ahead of you. You’ll be one of the world’s big men.” I felt as though I was uttering a prophecy. “I shall be alone, though.” “All the people who do really big things are.” “You think so?” “I’m sure of it.” He took my hand and said in a low voice: “I’d rather have had—the other.” Then Harry came striding round the corner of the house. Colonel Race rose. “Good morning—Lucas,” he said. For some reason Harry flushed up to the roots of his hair. “Yes,” I said gaily, “you must be known by your real name now.” But Harry was still staring at Colonel Race. “So you know, sir,” he said at last. “I never forget a face. I saw you once as a boy.” “What’s all this about?” I asked, puzzled, looking from one to the other. It seemed a conflict of wills between them. Race won. Harry turned slightly away. “I suppose you’re right, sir. Tell her my real name.” “Anne, this isn’t Harry Lucas. Harry Lucas was killed in the War. This is John Harold Eardsley.” 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. Agatha Christie (2020). The Man in the Brown Suit. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/61168/pg61168-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.

We were not able to return to Johannesburg that night

Since its release in 2020, OpenAI's GPT-3 and all other AI content generators based on it have shocked the tech world with their impressive capabilities at spinning out instant content with just a few prompts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loRJkgeRgt4?embedable=true (Jaspar is one of the AI content generators built on GPT-3’s platform in action) By now, the vast majority of people who have anything to do with creating content for the web have seen demos of these tools in action. So they grasp all that it entails: its value proposition and benefit. Deep down, they know AI is changing the content game, but they are afraid of using it. They fear the repercussion that may later come down the line like the: Florida update in 2003, Penguin update in 2012 Panda update in 2014, Medic update in 2018, and Helpful Content update in 2022. But I think that fear is unfounded. Google will fail to crank down on AI-generated content. I didn't arrive at this conclusion on a whim. Neither did it appear to me in a dream. Nor was it some thought-up opinion. Instead, it's a result of experimenting with various AI tools available on the Market for months and seeing first-hand what they are capable of.' And that's what I will show you in this article. Google has performed beyond our wildest expectations Don't you get amazed by its search capability? From time to time, I do. You type in a bunch of keywords into that small little textbox. You hit the "Search button", and boom, in the blink of an eye, you see over 10 million results before you. Sometimes, you don't know exactly what you want. But if you have the faintest hint —put it into the search box, and Google will guide you with her smart autosuggestions. Isn't that impressive? At one point, the running joke on Twitter was that knowing things isn’t the most incredible skill in life, but one's ability to use Google to find them fast. But it wasn't always so Search in the late 90s was far different from what we have today. Back then, it was a completely frustrating experience — despite only a few thousand websites on the internet. In fact, Google wasn't the world's default Search engine. . So how did small Google, a baby Startup from Mountain View, beat big Yahoo to become the behemoth that it is today? It was $125B Yahoo A lot of people have taken a lot of stabs at that question over the years and missed Some say it's because of their minimalist design. Google's homepage was just a Search box and a Search button, While Yahoo's homepage was cluttered. Paul Graham, Y-combinator's Founder, dedicated . There, he says it's because Yahoo got excess unmerited revenue, and they were Media-centric instead of Tech-centric. a whole page on his site to this topic PG's answer reminds me of the warning I was giving about good Storytellers. It came from two different Nobel-Prize winners, Richard Feynman and Dr Daniel Kahneman, at two different times. Good storytellers can easily fool those of us who aren't experienced in scientific rigour or statistics. Now add PG's authority, and the claim begins to look solid. But in reality, it isn't. And the warning is: In an article on TechCrunch, Mohit Aron, a former Google Engineer now the CEO of Mohesity, says . He made reference to some scalability complexity kinds of stuff. it's because of the infrastructure But he's an Engineer, so I quite understand the sentiment Some Branding Expert cooked up an article I will not link to for some reason on Wharton's University of Pennsylvania website. Similar to the Engineer, they said it's because of the differences in their "brand approach". The article also made mention of the Brand's Purpose, Vision, and Mission statement. They even mentioned Logo, which overall, and to me, is laughable. When you see rhymes like "Yahoo Confusion VS Google's Clarity", there's probably bullshit in the air. Beware PS: And the (closest) answer? It came from another former Google Engineer, Robert Rossney. And it's in how Google easily presents the most relevant information to the user's search term. The algorithm behind this was called PageRank. PageRank rates the result using the number of high-quality backlinks a site has. In simple form: the more links from high-quality sites a page has, the more it is trusted and the better it ranks in the search engines. The invention's clear difference in producing the valuable result in 1996 tipped the Search war in Google's favour.  And ever since then, they've been Guardians of the web. Galaxy And whenever the algorithm got gamed, Google's subsequent over the years solidified its position and dominance. response and patches (updates) But they are not perfect Take Backlinks buying, for example. Bad actors use it to trick Google's algorithm into pushing their site to spots they don't deserve. Google knows. And has been fighting it as far back Oct 2007 ( ). PageRank update Yet, people are still selling it to date. In fact, it's a full-blown business. With so much capital in the market, it's one reason why the Search Engine result page has been shit in the past few years. So much so that . people now append the word "Reddit" to improve their search results This is one reason why I think they will fail to police AI-generated content. Like backlinks, it's entirely out of their watch. This is truer if you edit the output instead of pushing it directly into production. But that's just one reason; here are two more: AI is better than most Humans I'm not saying this to shame anyone; there are times I look at my piece and reconsider ever picking Content Marketing as a career. But the thing is, there's some really shitty content on the web that you'd think could only come from a bot, but it's, in fact, written by a human. It's as though English is not the writer's first language, and most times, that's true. Content mills in the west charge their clients thousands of dollars yet outsource them for pennies to writers living in the third world, like Pakistan, India, Thailand etc I have also used (iWriter et al) the quality is about the same. Ai-generated content has been written a lot better than some of the content writers I've used in the past. And because of the pay and the nature of the job, these Writers end up copying and rephrasing what already exists out there. No narrative, no storytelling whatsoever! Sometimes, their articles are full of what Ryan Law, Animalz VP of Marketing, calls "factual inaccuracies", resulting from the less-than-rigorous research that goes into them. This is the same weakness Experts accuse AI content of. Yet, these content rank, particularly when they are published on sites with high DR. We see them on the first result page all the time. So why should better content not rank because humans didn't write them? Is the Time-Compute worth it? In the online AI vs Google debates, besides asking if Google can detect AI content, I think the question not asked often is: How much will it cost them to do so for every page in their database? It's a lot and probably not worth it. For one, AI content is far different from "spun content". Ryan Law, whom I referenced earlier, describes Spun Content best: a fancily rephrased content whose underlying structure remains the same as the original. "It’s easy for Google to spot synonyms", he says. And countless Google updates after updates have shown this. But you can't say the same for AI-generated content. Sometimes, you wouldn't know if you weren't told! Not mere rephrasing. Cut and paste, find and replace. Now, if humans struggle to know, who will train the AI to learn to? I mean, people are using AI to win an art competition these days. How much more words! It gets even more interesting when you consider the pace of innovation for these tools. GPT-1 had 117 million parameters. GPT-2 had 1.5 billion. While GPT-3 has 175 billion, which is a whopping 116000% increase over GPT-2. Imagine what they have in store with GPT-4! And a quick trivial If Google is not sold on AI, then: Why are they rewriting Meta Descriptions and Title tags with AI? Why are they offering to help their AdWords customer rewrite their ads using AI? (and please don't @ me). Want to know a little secret? AI content is not new. It just became accessible to the public. Large media companies like the wall Street journal . have been using it for over five years now So also Google. Or, how do you think they create zero-click content? But I know Google. They will fight hard and won't relent And the only way I see them overcoming this challenge is by changing the incentives, I.e. Stop rewarding Quantity and start rewarding Quality. This will require a systematic change in how they review the content they index. I foresee them using a rating system for blog Authors. Your articles won't get indexed without registering. You are rewarded every time a reader finds your piece valuable. Break the rules, and it displays prominently on anything you write. While I've not thought through the idea for long, I believe this will raise the bar for written content and elevate the writer's value. Otherwise, Google will lose their search dominance to upcoming Search Engines or to Tiktok (which is already happening). I know some corporate defenders may want to throw the fact that they just recorded their all-time highest revenue at my face, so I'll remind you of the best time when having sex: just before it ends.

Google May Not Be Able to Crack Down on AI  Generated Words

Decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platform Mango Markets was recently exploited with hackers draining the platform of over worth of crypto. According to a tweet by Mango's official Twitter account, it seems that "oracle price manipulation" was the method used to attack the Solana-based DeFi platform. $110 million Another broke down how the attack went. The attackers started by depositing $5m worth of USDC to an account on the platform. The funds were then used to offer 483 million units of the platform's native Mango (MNGO) token in the form of perps (perpetual contracts). thread on Twitter Next, the attacker funded another account with to buy the 483 units of MNGO perpetual contracts. The attacker used this method to spike the price of MNGO from $0.03 to $0.91, making their MNGO perps worth . $5 million of USDC $423 million The money was then used to take out a loan of $116m using multiple tokens on the platform, including Bitcoin, Solana, and Serum. Unfortunately, the loan wiped out all of the liquidity in Mango Markets, causing the price of MNGO to crash to $0.02. Mango Market's development team confirmed that they are looking into what happened and have opened an investigation into it. The protocol announced via its various social media channels that it has blocked deposits while they investigate further. The team also told users not to deposit funds into the platform before they blocked deposits. Why Were Mango Markets exploited? Price manipulation was the method used to take out large perpetual contracts to push the price of MNGO over 45x in such as short time frame. This works by an attacker taking advantage of low liquidity to artificially boost a token's price. It is the same method used in pump and dump schemes; find a token with low liquidity, place large buy orders to drive up the price, and then use new investors as exit liquidity to cash out. However, this attack method is hard to pull off when there is a very high amount of liquidity since it would take a lot more capital to manipulate the price. This is why pump-and-dump schemes are more popular with new or fairly unknown tokens since they usually have very low liquidity. If they had sufficient liquidity, Mango Markets could have avoided this attack. One way that Mango Markets could have increased their liquidity is through the use of an automated market maker (AMM). Automated market makers are systems that gather liquidity from users and use algorithms to determine a token's price. AMMs work by large token holders known as liquidity providers (LPs), adding tokens pairs (i.e., MNGO/USDC) into pools in equal amounts. This enables decentralized exchanges to outsource their liquidity while compensating the LPs with a cut of the trading fees earned on the platform. According to Ben Roth, Co-founder and CIO of , having a sophisticated market maker can act as a clear deterrent for adverse trading behaviour during all market conditions. By working with a firm that is able to algorithmically provide deep, consistent liquidity, projects ensure that ‘bad actors’ are left with an increased level of uncertainty that their price manipulation strategy will be successful. Auros The Aftermath A day after the attack on Mango Markets, the attacker used the platform's decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to make a proposal. that the Mango DAO use its $70 million community treasury to reimburse any bad debts. The attacker proposed If the proposal is approved, the Mango DAO team will utilize the cash from their treasury to compensate for any unpaid debts. Afterward, the hacker would transmit the stolen tokens to an address supplied by the team behind the Mango DAO. In another act of manipulation, the hacker seemed to support this proposition by voting with millions of tokens stolen via the attack. Nevertheless, the quorum requirements for passing the proposal have not been met, so the proposal may not be accepted. The attacker also requested that no criminal proceedings be pursued should the proposal go through. Conclusion Mango Markets was attacked using price manipulation to spike the price of its native token and then take out massive loans in various other tokens on the platform. The attacker then demanded that the Mango DAO reimburse any bad debts using their treasury funds in return for the stolen liquidity.

How and Why Mango Markets Was Able to Be Exploited by Attackers

Hey Hackers! I’m Vijay and I’m an Entrepreneur, Designer & Engineer based in Auckland, New Zealand. First of all, a huge thank you to the community and staff for nominating me for a  few 2021 Noonies awards! HackerNoon I’ve been nominated in the following categories so please do check out these award pages and vote: HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - GO HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - GOLANG As someone in the tech industry, Learn more about my thoughts and opinions on open source and my journey in the tech industry via the interview below. I believe that the most exciting open-source technology of the present is Kubernetes because of its general-purpose nature and its ability to manage applications at planet scale. 1. What do you do and why do you do it? (tell us your story) In the year 2017, life events (workplace politics and corruption) led to what I believe was a turning point for me. The work I was doing was handed over to consulting firms and I was out of work. So I invested in learning something new. After a series of prototypes, I settled on Golang. It was easy to pick up, I had a lot of fun programming with it and I soon realised it was an amazing general-purpose programming language. It helped me solve every problem I threw at it. It naturally led me to the container movement and eventually to what I believe is the best open-source container orchestrator on the market - Kubernetes. Fast forward to the present day and I use Kubernetes and Golang on a daily basis. It’s amazing that tech so powerful is fully open source and free to use. 2. Tell us more about the things you create / write / manage / build! I currently spend most of my time working with teams designing and building containers that run on Kubernetes. Where possible, I contribute to open source projects and open source some of my work. This year I have started writing tech articles. I have written 3 so far. I published my first ever tech article on Medium and then re-published it here. I want people to be able to access content without too many restrictions and hence have moved to publish the remaining 2 articles exclusively on Hackernoon. 3. How did you end up on your current career path? Do you like it? I first saw a computer when I was about 12 years old. It was the game Prince of Persia running on MS-DOS. I was fascinated and after that was naturally attracted to computer-related courses at my school and university. I pursued a Computer Science degree, my first job was a software developer and I kept growing naturally in that career path. I love working with tech and feel that is the perfect fit for a mind like mine. 4. What tech are you most excited or passionate about right now and why? I like open-source general-purpose tech. Being open-source means that they don’t have restrictive or expensive licensing terms and being general-purpose means they can solve most problems you throw at it. Kubernetes and Golang fall into this category. RISC-V is another area that I am excited about. Like open-source software, RISC allows for open-source hardware solutions. A fully open-source hardware and software stack has the potential to disrupt the market. 5. What tech are you most worried about right now and why? Algorithms are designed to increase user addiction or spread misinformation. Software that is not open source and has ridiculous licensing terms, for example: need a different more expensive license if more nodes are added. I call such software “authorised ransomware”. Such software is far too popular in the corporate world. Tech that is advertised as Privacy focused but is not open source. Crypto mining and its impact on GPU prices has delayed my GPU upgrade. 6. If we gave you 10 million dollars to invest in something today, what would you invest in and why? I can’t think of a single consumer product that I can easily buy today that uses a fully open-source hardware and software stack. I would start a tech company that builds such products. I would probably start with a simple general-purpose use case and grow from there. 7. What are you currently learning? I am currently learning RISC-V. 8. What’s the best advice you’ve ever given someone? Go open source. 9. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Never stop learning. About HackerNoon’s 2021 Noonie Awards The annual Noonie Awards celebrate the best and brightest of the tech industry, bringing together all who are making the Internet and the world of tech what it is today. Please be sure to , nominate, and vote for the people and companies who you think are making the biggest impact on the tech industry today. check out our award categories The 2021 Noonies are sponsored by: , , and . Thank you so much to these sponsors who are helping us celebrate the accomplishments of all our nominees. bybit Dottech Domains Avast

"I want people to be able to access content without too many restrictions" #Noonies2021

Podcast listening is hard to track, but that doesn’t mean advertisers aren’t trying By Adrianne Jeffries In these muddled times, at least one thing is clear: Nearly everyone’s tracking you, always. But there is one area that has been largely off-limits to digital data collectors for 20 years: podcast listening. Traditionally, the podcast ecosystem has been tracking-resistant, in part because podcasters release their shows through RSS, free technology dating back to 1999. Podcast players, also known as , like Apple Podcasts and Castro then aggregate those episodes in easy-to-use apps. Listener behavior is strewn across a plethora of apps, many of which don’t share data with anyone, including the podcast creators. podcatchers That’s all changing. Advertisers are on podcasts in 2020, and companies are devising ways to provide them with data that will persuade them to spend more. The most common tactics include using IP addresses to identify users, adding tracking URLs to ads, and abandoning RSS in favor of proprietary platforms that already track their users. projected to spend more than $800 million The change has provoked considerable debate, , within the podcasting industry. sometimes combative In September 2019, Basecamp its podcast hosting service, Art19, after discovering that the company was building the capability for personalized ads. In December 2019, Libsyn, one of the major podcast hosting services, banned Podsights, one of the major podcast data companies, , “[W]e feel it is necessary to protect listener privacy.” In February, podcasting giant PRX hosted a on “emerging threats” to privacy in order to encourage more productive discussion. Then in August, one of the major podcast apps, Overcast, a feature that lets users see which podcasts have enabled tracking. publicly dumped saying conference added “I see the storm clouds gathering,” said Michelle De Mooy, a privacy consultant who spoke at PRX’s conference. “There’s a danger that this is a moment that can change away from privacy.” Podcast listening habits, like browsing history, can potentially reveal a lot about someone’s interests. There are podcasts about mental illness, substance abuse, sexuality, debt, and other sensitive topics. So what do your podcasts know about you? Traditionally, Podcasts Couldn’t Track Much The main metric of success for most of podcasting history has been the one thing the RSS infrastructure allows: how many times the file was downloaded. It’s like the early days of the web, when websites proudly displayed a “hit counter” that tracked the raw number of visits. But the act of downloading a podcast still passes some data, and whoever hosts the file can log a download’s date and time, the podcatcher used, the IP address (which also reveals rough location), and typically, the type of device. I see the storm clouds gathering. - Michelle De Mooy, privacy consultant Advertisers, meanwhile, have tended to target listeners based on a podcast’s subject matter. If you’ve ever heard a host give out a promo code for listeners while reading an ad, it’s because that’s basically how advertisers would track which podcasts were actually driving customers. Ads were not personalized because there was no data to personalize them with, and no way to match an ad to a specific user. This could rapidly change if the podcasting industry were to ever shift away from RSS. And there are some signs of that happening. Spotify has been signing exclusive deals with megastars like Joe Rogan and Kim Kardashian West. Bloomberg that Apple is hiring an executive to lead the charge on original and exclusive podcasts, and Amazon has its first platform-exclusive podcast. reported announced Needless to say, these exclusives will likely not be available via RSS. “They are not podcasts. They’re audio shows,” said Andrew Kuklewicz, the chief technology officer of PRX. However, when the venture-capital-funded podcast network Luminary to be copying audio and rehosting it instead of using RSS, it triggered an exodus of podcasters. (Luminary clarified that it was not copying audio and was still using RSS, just rerouting traffic first.) appeared Meanwhile, as podcasts have grown and become more professional, the commercial industry around them has found ways to work around RSS’s limitations. How Are You Being Tracked Now? In 2014, the podcast “Serial” debuted, introducing the medium to mainstream listeners. (As of September 2018, “Serial” had across its first two seasons.) more than 340 million downloads That same year, Acast, a podcasting company based in Sweden, announced “dynamic ad insertion.” Previously, ads were “baked in” to a recording, but now podcasters could mark their files with ad breaks, enabling a hosting company to switch in a different ad based on the time or location the podcast was downloaded. It also paved the way for ads to be sold programmatically, based on a bidding system that automatically matches buyers and sellers without the need for salespeople. Much of the advertising on the web, including Google Ads, is bought and sold this way. Programmatic buying requires consumer data in order for advertisers to rapidly experiment with different ways to target users and optimize ads for the best results. “That’s probably when I certainly saw things start to change,” said Kuklewicz, the CTO of PRX. “Once you can actually dynamically inject ads, then that data that I’d be able to get from requests becomes actionable. And once that’s possible, then we start to look a lot like the rest of ad tech right now.” Our goal here is to make tools that will let this medium grow in general and bring more people into the space and create better content. - Andy Pellett, co-founder of Podsights Suddenly, companies on the hosting and ad tech side started to try to squeeze as much data as possible out of the limited interaction they had with listeners, using a couple of different methods: They could add an extra web address in the metadata of an ad, forcing a tiny download that allows the advertiser to register the listener’s IP address, the podcatcher they used, and usually the type of device. They could also use “prefixes” or redirects that take the user on a brief detour to another webpage so a third party can register them, similar to the way a URL shortening service like Bit.ly works. At this point, we’re still just talking about basic data. But advertisers want more granular data: Did someone listen to my ad on a podcast, and then visit my website or buy something? And what else can I learn about podcast listeners, so I can decide whom to target with my ads? Some companies, like Podsights, now collect basic data, such as IP address and device type, and combine it with information from third-party data collection companies. Podsights co-founder Andy Pellett said the company uses this data only to establish “attribution”—that the same person who listened to an ad also visited a brand’s website, for example—and does not share any data that could be used to identify listeners. “Our goal here is to make tools that will let this medium grow in general and bring more people into the space and create better content,” he said. Other companies at least advertise the ability to do more granular targeting, though it’s not clear how many podcasts actually use such services. Megaphone says that its Megaphone Targeted Marketplace, which allows automated buying and selling of ads, allows advertisers to target users by “ .” Megaphone did not respond to a request for comment. demographic and purchase intent Your Podcast Player Could Know More About You Podcatchers themselves have access to far more accurate data about users, such as the full list of podcasts a listener subscribes to and how far they listen in any given episode. Some of the smaller podcatchers, however, have emerged as bulwarks against anything potentially invasive. When Russell Ivanovic, head of product for the podcatcher Pocket Casts, heard that some analytics companies had figured out a way to place cookies on users’ devices when they downloaded a podcast, he immediately disabled the capability in Pocket Casts. “They might be doing innocent things with it, but we felt like that was like a bridge too far,” Ivanovic said. “That’s not something users are expecting.” They might be doing innocent things with it, but we felt like that was like a bridge too far. - Russell Ivanovic, Pocket Casts Companies like Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Google, which all offer apps and devices that play podcasts, are in the best position to collect user data. These companies already have “first party” data, collected through their other services, that they can combine with someone’s podcast listening habits, as well as additional insights from the device you’ve installed them on. Spotify knows if your phone is , for example. in your hand or in your pocket Another way to collect more data would be if different layers of the ecosystem agreed to work together. National Public Radio attempted this with a project called , or RAD, essentially instructions for how podcasters and advertisers could finally measure if someone who downloaded a podcast actually listened to it, and for how long. NPR publishes lots of podcasts and also has its own podcast player, the NPR One app, giving it access to more data about how people listen. This data was used to reassure advertisers that their ads were actually getting heard, and also to tweak show formats. The creators of the show “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” for example, noticed that their listeners were dropping off in the middle of an episode. “The team was able to pivot and release episodes more frequently, but much shorter and more focused,” said Stacey Goers, senior product manager for podcasts at NPR. “And it really gives users what they wanted.” Remote Audio Data The ad server NPR uses, AdsWizz, also allows ads and stories to be swapped in and out of episodes. This enables NPR to experiment with its fund-raising campaigns as well as the content of the show. The first half of “Consider This,” for instance, is the same for everyone, but the second half comes from a station in the listener’s local area. The catch with RAD is that podcatchers also have to participate, and so far, they haven’t taken it up. “RAD has not seen a large amount of adoption,” Goers said. Part of that is because app developers would rather spend their limited resources on features that would attract new users, she said, and part of it is because of the lack of centralization. “Podcasting still doesn’t necessarily have a big governing body that’s putting its foot down and asking for it,” she said. The Changes Are Controversial—and It’s Not Clear How Widespread They Are “Ultimately if podcasts are going to grow as a media type, as they emerge, the advertisers are going to require the more granular level of tracking,” said Eric Picard, a consultant and former vice president of advertising product management at Pandora. But not everyone agrees that podcasting’s health relies on gathering more data. “That’s bullshit,” said Rob Walch, vice president of podcaster relations at Libsyn, a major hosting service that also sells ads for podcasters. “The podcasters that make the most money are the ones that are doing host-read ads that don’t do any of this. Joe Rogan makes more money podcasting with advertising than any of these people.” At least for now, podcasting is still a fairly private activity, in that it doesn’t produce much data on its own. “That’s one of the things, to be honest, that’s stunted podcast growth initially,” said Brad Smith, CEO of Simplecast, a hosting and analytics company. “Advertisers want to go where the deepest, richest data lives. And by default, you’re not going to get data out of podcasting.” Nothing has fundamentally changed, he said. “We gather the exact same information about a listening session today that we did five years ago.” Correction An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the technology NPR uses for dynamic ad and content insertion. It is AdsWizz, not RAD. . Originally published as " When Zombie Data Costs You a Home " with the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license

How Much Exactly are Podcasts Able to Track us

Internet-connected technologies that gather, integrate, and analyze data about people's behavior in an area are referred to as IoB. Is the Internet of Behaviour Getting Better Everywhere? In the aftermath of the pandemic, how individuals interact with personal space has become incredibly important. When a lethal illness may spread with minimal touch, it's critical to keep public health under control and preserve social distance measures. That's where the Internet of Things (IoT) comes in. Environment IoB technologies are now installed in many workplaces welcoming staff back for the first time in over a year. RFID tags tracking hand-washing or sensors detecting mask-wearing, for example, might be combined with automated alarms if someone isn't following standards. These are a few of the more prevalent IoB applications right now, although they're far from the only ones. Data from many technologies (cameras, scanners, sensors) and multiple sources (private sector, public sector, social media) is combined to assist in the analysis of crowded locations. Understanding how and why people use spaces may help them become safer, cleaner, more convenient, and appealing – in other words, better in every sense. We can now know what we couldn't before thanks to the Internet of Things, which means we can improve and develop environments in ways that were before inconceivable. Our Way of Life There are many reasons to be excited about the Internet of Things — and to be concerned about a society that monitors our every move. However, both sides of the coin must be debated because IoB technologies appear to be on their way to being ubiquitous. Given how many diverse things IoB can perform, rapid growth appears to be a foregone conclusion. Consider the fact that there are already billions of connected devices collecting granular data on where people go and what they do. These gadgets can be found in offices, stores, and restaurants, as well as in our automobiles, phones, and wearable devices, all of which capture vast amounts of data on modern life. By 2025, there will be over 42 billion connected devices in operation, creating over 1 billion GB of data per day. Previously, we primarily used this data for certain objectives, such as tracking our health, and we made only a rudimentary effort to connect disparate data sources. At its foundation, the Internet of Things is about utilizing more of this data to gain a better understanding of how we live. Using IoB to Solve Complicated Issues The ramifications are enormous, but the applications are extremely narrow. For example, a business could utilize IoB to track when people join and leave Zoom meetings over time and use that information to create a more efficient schedule. Another application would be to use facial recognition technology during a meeting to watch attendees' facial cues and identify staff who may be overworked or under-engaged, allowing for early intervention rather than burnout. IoB Applications Aren't Just for the Office Anymore Data from traffic could be utilized to prevent traffic jams and accidents, as well as to plan future highways for maximum safety and efficiency. Crowd data might be used to prevent riots from erupting at protests or major celebrations, as well as to enable more people to pass through airport security in less time. Schools might potentially use data from the Internet of Things to assist, prevent, or stop school shootings and brawls. IoB might be used in any situation where people interact to discover and reduce pain points for everyone involved. Where Could IoB go Wrong? It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to solve some of humanity's most pressing, significant, and difficult issues. Unfortunately, none of these results are guaranteed. IoB is intriguing, but it's also troublesome for a variety of reasons. Because there are currently few regulations governing internet-connected gadgets, it is frequently up to whoever collects data to decide how to utilize it. To fully benefit from the Internet of Things, data must be shared early, regularly, and completely. However, sharing it will necessitate a deep commitment to ethics as well as a thorough awareness of how things can go wrong. The Battle Between Good and Evil Consider the following scenario, which demonstrates the delicate balance that IoB must strike: Suppose a monitoring firm has data detailing where someone travelled in the last month. The corporation may agree to share that information with a partner if the person's name is hidden, or it may agree to hand it over to a judge who issues a warrant. They could, however, elect to sell such information to the highest bidder or hand it over to government agents who will exploit it to suppress opposition. There are ethical and exploitative methods to use each piece of IoB data. Another disadvantage is that people's movements aren't always reliable indicators of their true motivations. For example, if a fitness tracker shows that someone goes to bed at 3 a.m. every night, are they staying up so late because they work late, party hard, or suffer from insomnia? That question can usually be answered with enough IoB data. When it can't, though, firms are left with a lot of data but few useful insights. How do we make the Internet of Things Work? Companies interested in the Internet of Things, whether designing or adopting the technology, must take legal and ethical considerations carefully. The question remains as to whether or not businesses will act ethically. Then there's the matter of the costs. Who pays for the upkeep of the internet's security? You? What about the government? What about the business? They must be open and honest about the data they acquire and why they collect it. More significantly, organizations and individuals must use IoB as a force for good, improving people's experiences rather than punishing, rejecting, or stalking them. In a nightclub, for example, IoB may be used to monitor audience sentiment and then modify the environment by playing various music. With this information, the nightclub may decide to admit more or fewer patrons, change drink specials, or change the lighting. This information could assist a club owner to fine-tune a room such that everyone feels like a VIP the moment they walk in. But, perhaps more importantly, the club owner will grow his business by catering to the specific requirements and desires of his clientele. IoB Possibilities are Endless Inside the house, where individuals have control over what technology observes and tracks, IoB might have huge implications without generating ethical concerns. When someone is running late for work, for example, the correct combination of technologies can detect this and immediately turn up the bedroom lights, start the coffee maker, and get the automobile warmed up. There's not much IoB can't change for the better if we get creative and stay mindful.

Are we Able to put Internet of Behaviour (IoB) to Good Use?

This is a free sample chapter from my book, Meta-Learning: Powerful Mental Models for Deep Learning and Thriving in the Digital Age . First things first Before you can learn to do deep learning, you must become a developer. Being a developer is not only about programming. In the larger scheme of things, being able to write code is just a small part of what a developer can do. If I were to start all over, I would optimize this part of the journey for fun. I would want to get into the tinkering mindset and start feeling comfortable messing around on my computer. There is no better way to achieve this than by working on something you truly enjoy. I would take it easy. When it comes to learning, consistency beats intensity every time. When you are just starting something, there is no better way to stay consistent than to not exert yourself too much. I would still make quick progress, because this time around, I would know what to focus on. This is what the beginning of this chapter will cover. How to get started My first stop would be to complete one of the programming MOOCs. They don’t teach you a lot about being a developer, but they do teach you some things about writing code. I would probably go for Harvard CS50 on . And, as I want to have fun, I might choose the game programming track. edx Harvard CS50 has one great thing going for it: On top of teaching you how to program, it also teaches you about the computer and how it works! Two birds with one stone. Still, regardless of which MOOC or programming book you chose, it is hard to go wrong. Programming has been taught for many generations, and many good teachers are out there. The biggest mistake you can make at this stage is to do more than a single beginner programming course. Striving to learn any particular programming language really well would be a mistake. It doesn’t make sense to invest all of your time into learning calligraphy if you have nothing to write about! Likewise, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to work on building a table but focus all your effort on a single leg and then complain that the table will not stand! All we need at this stage is some familiarity with programming concepts — enough so that we can perform meaningful online searches. The programming skills we need are understanding the value of Stack Overflow, documentation, and how to reach both. This might sound tongue in cheek, but these skills are genuinely at the core of a programming career. Add knowing a few basic things about programming, and you have a very firm platform on which to build. How to move around in code is an essential skill The next leg of the table we are assembling is our ability to move effectively in code. This is not something that most programming courses cover, but it is an essential skill to have. This boils down to learning to use a code editor really well. Any major code editor will do. Some people swear by textmate, sublime text, atom, vscode, emacs, or vim. It doesn’t matter which one you choose. Focus the same attention on learning it as you would to writing code and you will be alright. If you are absolutely lost as to which one to pick, chose vscode. Do not worry about the choice too much — it is not one you must stick with forever. I do not know of a single developer who has not tried multiple editors in the course of their career. However, I also don’t know a single developer worth their salt who doesn’t believe that learning to use an editor is an important skill. Version control can give you superpowers To work on our next leg, we move to version control. Code is written in small iterations, often by more than one person. Additionally, code is so expensive to produce that we want to make sure we don’t lose our work and that we can explore new directions without destroying the work we have done up to now. All this is very hard to achieve without specialized tools. Thankfully, we have a software solution that addresses all the needs listed above and then some! The tool goes by the name of git. It is a small command line program that can change any directory into a git repository. In the process, it endows the directory with superpowers, such as an ability to travel back in time or create alternate timelines! Git comes with an online counterpart, called GitHub. While git excels at managing the source code on your computer, GitHub is great for code sharing and collaborating with others. Pushing your code to GitHub also provides you with a backup. If some accident should befall your PC, your work will be preserved at another location. Git is a marvel of software engineering but, unfortunately, the API it exposes is not very human-friendly. Thankfully, GitHub created its own command line tool, the . It has a much gentler learning curve than git. gh cli Being able to use the computer is where it's at The last leg of our four-legged table is probably the hardest to construct. The challenge lies solely in the lack of good learning resources. This part deals with learning how to use the computer in the context of writing code. For deep learning, this goes beyond your local setup. How do you spin up a cloud VM? How do you ssh into it? How do you move data around? How do you build your own home rig for experimentation? The good news is that you do not have to learn all of this at once. A great starting point might be to learn how to navigate the file system on the operating system of your choice. As you get more comfortable using the command line, you can gradually add more commands to your arsenal. The one resource that stands out for learning how to use a computer is by MIT. The Missing Semester of Your CS Education Maybe a day will come when a single course will cover all the basics of being a developer. For now, unfortunately, we must piece together our own curriculum. The good news is that it is enough to get just a taste of each of the four disciplines I outline above; there is no need to become an expert at any of them. How to become a machine learning expert All we have been doing thus far is preparing ourselves for taking the “Practical Deep Learning for Coders” course by . If you have a rudimentary understanding of programming and can move around on your computer, the course can take you from there. fast.ai And why a course and not something else? No other resource out there will teach you everything you need to know to do machine learning at a high level. Many good offerings focus on a particular set of tools or some aspect of the machine learning pipeline, but no other complete package exists. This is the only course I am aware of that will teach you the end-to-end process of arriving at a good solution to a machine learning problem. fast.ai In fact, for many, the course goes beyond showing one how to be a good deep learning practitioner. Through taking the fast.ai courses, I learned how to learn. I also started to share my work and became an active member of the deep learning community. The courses not only taught me nearly everything practical that I know about machine learning but also showed me how to thrive in the digital age. If you give the lectures a proper go and become an active member of the or , you will be alright. Nonetheless, the courses propose a way of learning that might be new to many. While the course explains the approach, a written summary of it, from my perspective, with the entire progression explained in one place, might still be beneficial. This is what we will be looking at in the remainder of this chapter. fast.ai forums fast.ai discord An effective way to learn It all begins with watching a lecture. The next step is to open the lecture notebook and figure out how all the pieces fit together. The idea is to run each line of code and look at the outputs. If you come across a function you have not previously encountered, this is a good time to read its documentation. How will the performance differ if you pass in different arguments or slightly tweak the hyperparameters? Once you understand the bigger picture, it’s time to reproduce the results. To do so, open a new notebook and try to recreate the training pipeline that the lecture demonstrated. It’s an open-book exercise — it’s okay if you need to look back at the lecture notebook, but the less you do so, the better. On the other hand, there are no limitations on reading the documentation or searching online. Both of these activities are encouraged and they closely resemble what programming feels like when it’s done completely on your own. Once everything is up and running, and you have obtained a result similar to that in the lecture, it is time to go a step further. This time, we search for a similar dataset and test drive the technique we just learned about. Your imagination is the only limit here. You could seek out a dataset online or you could put one together yourself. Alternatively, the fast.ai library provides access to many used for research. You can download them to your machine with a single command. datasets The idea is to systematically grow your skills. You start in a controlled setting of the lecture notebook, learning the ins and outs of the technique that the lecture discussed. With every new exercise, more of the training wheels come off, to the point where you’re doing everything on your own from start to finish. This approach to learning works like a charm. There are no hard and fast rules here and you are more than welcome to modify it as you go. Being creative and coming up with exercises that are challenging and interesting to you is a very valuable skill in its own right; acquiring it will take your learning to the next level. The result is always the same: to arrive at a place where you can comfortably apply the techniques you learn in the lectures to problems you haven’t previously seen. While practice is the only way to improve your ability to solve real-life machine learning problems, moving toward this way of learning does not require you to revolutionize your life. A couple of minutes a day, over multiple days, is all you need to get started. With every consecutive day of learning, you build momentum. Soon you start to notice the results, and the ability to do things you thought were out of reach not too long ago creates a lot of excitement. Very soon, you will find yourself losing track of time as you explore this or that technique. Where to go next From the broader picture, going through lecture materials is a starting point. It gives us a platform upon which we can build. Even before you finish the course, it is a good idea to start coming up with and working on mini-projects of your own. If you are low on inspiration, you can check out this with projects that fast.ai students worked on during one of the courses. There, you will find an assortment of ideas: blog posts, howtos, forum posts, GitHub repositories, explainer videos, and Kaggle competitions. amazing forum thread Summary The way of learning I describe above was completely new to me. However, after experiencing what it can do, I have never ceased being a fast.ai student. Any other approach feels like a waste of time. It wasn’t always like that. Initially, I thought that the fast.ai way of learning could not work. The exercises proposed in the lectures didn’t feel like learning to me. How could I make any progress spending so much time ? To me, learning was this process in which you sat down with a book for an hour or two and came out on the other end being able to discuss something highly complex and abstract. doing I was very lucky, as at the time I found fast.ai I was at the end of my rope. Nothing was working, so I was ready to try something completely new. Stumbling across fast.ai turned out to be the adventure of my life. Thank you very much for reading! If you enjoyed this and would like to learn more, you can connect with me on Twitter here .

Going From Not Being Able To Code To Deep Learning Hero

You’re qualified, keen, personable, and have no hygiene issues (that you’re aware of). Your C.V. is a gleaming gem that would almost certainly grab the attention of Elon Musk (if only he’d see it), and to top it off, your mum assures you that not only are you going to land a huge role, but also any company would be lucky to have you. It’s time to get serious. Coffee (7 overpriced mochaccino lattes); check ✓ Job board registrations (12, including that weird platform that tried to convince you to take that temporary position at Bing); check ✓ Phishing emails (no not that sort, the good kind that you send to companies you want to work for but that aren’t hiring); check ✓ Man, whoever said ‘job hunting is for the unemployed’ is gravely mistaken: it's a full-time job in itself. Suddenly, a small electronic miracle temporarily stalls your inevitable order of delicious coffee shop banana bread. It’s an email notification for your ‘work-friendly’ email account (yes that's right, we all know you’re still rocking that account, just for spam though, obviously). ‘cooldude89@yahoo’ ‘Hey Jeff, loved your C.V., would you like to chat about some opportunities?' Sincerely, Dave, Vampire Recruitment. Vampire RECRUITMENT…. ‘Hi, can I get that large piece of banana bread please and another mochaccino?’ Fast forward six weeks, and you’re in a poorly ventilated room basking under the warm glow of the fluorescent ceiling lights (at least you’ll have a tan if this doesn't pan out). You’ve had 3 interviews, 4 coffees, an awkward chat with another candidate, and that leftover lasagna from last night that most definitely was not as good today. >>> ENTER THE WHITEBOARD. ‘So Jeff, to wrap things up, we’d like you to invert the binary tree, after which I’ll need you to sign out with security and you can be on your way’. The whiteboard test, why is there always a whiteboard test? How is this even relevant? As you pick up the marker you feel your brain screensaver kick into gear. One.last.One.last.push. A week later you get it. ‘......We’d like to thank you for your interest, however, on this occasion….’ Ugh. Surely there is a better way? Well, Jeff, and anyone else reading this, there is, or at least there will be. Que infomercial music: Do you like playing games? Of course, you do. Do you like spare time? Errrr yeah. Do you want to get hired without jumping through hoops? ‘Here boy’. >>> Enter ! StackRaft We built StackRaft to revolutionize the way we hire talent. Based on conversations with thousands of software engineers and hiring managers, we addressed the single most important job-related question: Why are recruiters allowed to live? Oops, I mean; ‘why is the job application process so painful and how can we reduce the time it takes to hire?’ Since I think we’ve covered the ‘why’, let's jump into the ‘how’ (spoiler, the answer is StackRaft). Let me break it down for you: You go on the platform and register in under one minute. We hate registration just as much as you do, but we need to keep you in the loop and there’s no better way to communicate. - performance matters, not schools. But get your pseudonym handle, that’s where the fun is. No need to fill in your “credentials” You instantly get jobs recommended for you and you can take the 5-10 minute interview to apple The interview questions are job-specific posted by hiring managers, such as the one below: . Yep, it’s , it’s Why? Well, code can be copied and pasted and we’re not measuring your Google search skills here, this is about your ability to solve problems and critical thinking. not a coding challenge a design thinking challenge. After you apply, you also get , and this creates an opportunity to learn and connect with others as per their answers connected to your peers who have applied for the same job, pseudonymously If the hiring managers love your answer, they contact you to proceed with an interview. No third party recruiters & no time wasted. If your answer is at the top, but you don’t get a call-back, , which means that other companies will take notice. you still get featured as a top performer And if your answer is not tops, , including career advice from senior engineers. Because we don’t want this to be a dead-end, and instead it should be a rewarding learning experience. you receive feedback and guidance from the community Based on your performance over time, we will recommend jobs that are handpicked for you. By the way, StackRaft and Hackernoon have partnered up to help you skip recruiters, job boards, and spam emails. Ready to get started? Register here https://jobs.hackernoon.com/

You're NOT Unhire-able. You're Just A Victim Of An Obsolete Hiring Practice

From hijacked routers to an on the World Health Organization, our time of crisis shows that hackers are opportunists to the core. Health records, social security numbers, IP … everything is fair game, nothing sacred or immune. At least in the current online infrastructure. On a long enough timeline, the probability of a hack nears 100%. attempted hack We need to rethink online architecture. We need to give data the ability to defend itself. What if security could travel with data, essentially making it immune to hacks? What if the entire internet had data-centric security, essentially giving it herd immunity to incursions? Now is a pivotal time for blockchain, and US enterprises stand at an inflection point between the old, vulnerable internet and a new bastion of data privacy, security and resilience. It is time to reconsider how we interact with data online. The biggest risk is staying put Ever since the words “data-driven” hit the tech airwaves, enterprises have been cobbling together networks of APIs in order to enable systems where data drives insights, connections and results. The trouble comes in the cobbling. It has become standard practice to wire APIs into application-centric architectures. Designed more than 40 years ago for an era of mainframes, such architectures hold up poorly in the modern online world. The old (yet unfortunately current) data stack goes like this. The middleware or business logic tier sucks up data from a siloed database and feeds it into a firewall-protected custom API layer, which in turn powers cloud-based applications. Since the database is siloed, data management is spread out across middleware, leading to redundancy, bloat and leakage. The only way to make sense of data in a broader analytical capacity is to replicate siloed data into 'data lakes.' There are no mechanisms to ensure data integrity, and no central source of truth. Even if data is encrypted, the nature of the disparate stack presents security vulnerabilities at every stage of use. I don’t need to remind you of the troubles associated with the old data stack. We read about them every day. The new path to data security In order to achieve true data security, the three-tier architecture must collapse. In its place, a natively data-centric architecture will rise. This architecture, which combines data without data lakes, lets you share data without APIs and embeds security inside the data itself, will lay the groundwork for the next iteration of the web, which we call Web3. This new stack uses blockchain to democratize data ownership while making all data secure, interoperable and traceable. It combines the original generous intent of the early internet with levels of security and accountability that online users have come to sorely miss. Because functionality is built into data and not middleware, compliance and data management become far easier, as does running data-centric apps that use machine learning, AI and machine-to-machine communication. The net result? A data value chain that actually works. Secure data that you can both trace and trust. Interoperable data that directly powers applications without the need for middleware. Simpler, more streamlined data architecture. A cleaner platform for innovation; quality data for better business decisions. A solution for our broken internet. A Crisis, an Opportunity China, Australia and Germany are already showing us what the new global standard of enterprise blockchain looks like. China's 100-city has reduced the cost of deploying a blockchain-based app to a mere $300, fueling an innovation ecosystem. The Australian government's and Germany's burgeoning demonstrate how a national commitment to supporting blockchain paves the way for a successful Web3 future. national blockchain network national blockchain roadmap public-private ecosystem Lacking national coordination, our biggest opportunity in the US lies in what we've always been good at: . The world is showing us that blockchain is coming. In this time of crisis, with opportunist hackers hungrier than ever for online assets, blockchain could be one of the biggest opportunities yet. innovation and grassroots adoption

In a Time of Crisis, Data Must Be Able to Defend Itself

The article explores different cases of integrating "disruptive people" with software and creative teams and how it impacts search for innovation and business continuity. Several years ago, I got promotion as a marketing team lead with a U.S.-based custom software development consultancy. My initial task in a new job role was to build an inbound team from scratch. Having defined key roles without which I wouldn’t be able to reach our ambitious goals, I dived deep into candidates search, selection, and interviewing. While it was a breeze to find and hire a UX/UI designer, a market researcher and a marketing assistant, finding and hiring a good SEO specialist with at least basic webmaster skills turned out to be a nightmare. I had to reject every single applicant without exception. Reasons were many, from very poor English to skyrocketing wage expectations to high SEO budget requirements. I was about to lose my hope to hire someone internally and outsource SEO function to an agency when our recruiters sent me the very final candidate to interview. And half an hour in the interview, my decision to hire him was almost made. Unlike dozens of other candidates who grimaced each time they heard about our tight marketing and SEO budget, Ian (let’s call him like this) smiled all the time, was very optimistic and enthusiastic about the tasks and goals anticipating him in this position. I wanted to be as fair with him as possible and told him about all possible showstoppers and barriers we might face along our marketing journey, but nothing scared him. At the end of the interview, he was determined to help us generate inbound leads and take over and manage our SEO function. Having analyzed later what attracted me in Ian so much, I concluded it was that and the . “ ” I was impressed with his attitude and decided to give him a try. And I never regretted that decision. hustler mindset ability to think outside the box without fearing any challenges No big budget - no issues, let’s do guerilla SEO instead! As a matter of fact, Ian’s professional background was pretty unique as he came from gambling and betting where he, as an SEO guy, had to employ many black- and grey-hat practices. This particular experience instilled Ian’s growth hacking mindset, which made a positive impact on our inbound marketing, allowing our team to generate up to 25 MQLs a month and brought in clients and opportunities worth of a 7-figure in estimated value. Most of this success was due to Ian’s on- and off-page optimization efforts and automation. To cut it short, Ian’s hustler mind and growth hacking approaches helped us keep a marketing budget low, while our web goals completion rate was skyrocketing. In less than six months, our traffic went from literally zero to several thousand unique and returning visitors. And we paid almost nothing for backlinking, as Ian’s hustler nature helped him place links to highly credible resources fast and without any hassle. He was really very good at bargaining with bloggers and admins. Ian never used any black-hat practices that could boost our SEO very quickly at the cost of compromising competitor web properties or harming their backlink profiles. It was our agreement from the very beginning, and he never violated it although most of the ideas he shared were illicit. Would I have been able to achieve my team goals if I’d hired a person with a traditional mindset and accustomed to using typical and classical approaches only? Probably yes, but at a much slower pace and with a substantial budget! In our industry, cost per click on certain keywords is very high ($100+ per keyword) and so is links placement with a trustworthy publication. What does it mean to hustle? The word has way too many definitions, but I like how it’s defined in the book by and . hustle “Misfit Economy” Alexa Clay Kyra Maya Phillips “We define hustle as making something out of nothing. To hustle means getting your hands dirty, being lean and facile, working hard, being resourceful and resilient, and showing or having gumption, chutzpah, or mojo”. Hustlers never have any master plan: they improvise and respond promptly to whatever life throws their way. It’s all about spotting an idea and going for it. Hustlers are the best innovators because much of innovation comes from constraints such as scarcity or challenge. In my case, I had a very scarce SEO budget, a website built from scratch and with no history, and a very tight deadline. It was the reason why so many SEO guys I’d interviewed before Ian eventually withdrew: they feared the challenge and budget absence. Ian didn’t as he was able to see a huge opportunity for himself and our brand! And he did have gumption, chutzpah, and charisma, which made me want to attract him to join my team. Why is it critical to have disruptive people in technology and creative teams? I guess the answer is obvious – these people will be key drivers of your project, they’ll help you deliver a state-of-the-art product and optimize/save budget, which is essential for the survival of any small company or startup. Today, we can observe a tendency when some companies intentionally replace their well-organized employees with , or highly disorganized individual. Why? Because "disruptive people" are invaluable and indispensable when it comes to cultivating innovation and improving day-to-day quality of professional life. disruptive In 2014, , a German multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software, experimented with hiring people with autism disorders and placing them in technical and creative roles such as software programmers, testers, and designers. The idea was that these people have a unique ability to focus on the details. SAP The experiment to be successful: at the time of writing, SAP employs over 150 people with autism in 23 different roles, from software development and customer support to HR and data protection, across 13 countries and 28 global locations. turned out SAP’s program inspired over 250 companies to learn how to implement a similar program for the integration of the differently-abled with work processes and corporate cultures. Microsoft, JP Morgan Chase, EY, DXC Technology, and Ford are among the companies seeking to hire disruptive people to add value to their business. Autism at Work Other companies tend to hire people with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These people can’t stay focus for a while and usually jump from activity to activity. But because they get bored quickly, they become sources of new fresh ideas and conjure up new scenarios and abilities. "An ADHD brain is a perfect match for high-tech jobs because an under-stimulated frontal lobe gets jump-started by always-changing technology." ADDitude Magazine As such, people with ADHD are a perfect match for both independent and highly dependent job roles. As computer technicians, they rove through the company working with stakeholders and other departments to solve computer issues. As programmers, they can code and troubleshoot code issues independently, which is another important virtue many can harness for own benefits. software development teams Black-hat hackers turned software and hardware engineers If you want to build a highly-disciplined, self-organizing, and truly committed , don’t be afraid to hire a hacker! Just like pirate communities in Somalia, hacker communities are highly engaged, loyal, and autonomous, which enables collective genius and self-governing nature of the team. All hackers have rules, norms, and etiquette, which makes them perfect for cultivating and instilling self-discipline and positive work cultures. marketing team There are many examples when black- and grey-hat hackers got legit jobs from their exploits. Several years ago, Facebook then 21-year-old George Hotz (aka Geohot), a famous PlayStation hacker who’d spent four months in court disputes with Sony. hired Another famous modder Johnny Chung Lee was a computer scientist who once hacked a Nintendo Wiimote using infrared light and a few pens. He was later hired by Microsoft to develop Kinect, a line of motion sensing input devices. Today, there are platforms like that help connect hackers with customers, i.e., businesses looking to leverage their illegal skills for legit purposes. The hacker hiring phenomenon has yet to be explored, but demand is evident and acute. BugCrowd The more silver bullets you have in your black hat, the more solutions will come out of your white hat – the logic is pretty simple here. To wrap up, when you need to build a team from scratch (marketing, software development, data science, etc.), always think proactively about who’ll be driving it from inside and who’ll help you, a team leader, do your job well and reach your crucial KPIs faster and more effectively. As such, do think about finding and attracting people with a mindset different from the rest of the world. Such mindsets are often developed in illicit hacker and hustler communities or as a result of a mental or behavioral disorder. Even looking for people with juvenile delinquency background can work to your benefit. It was that “those who had been involved in aggressive, illicit and risky activities in their teens” are more likely to become successful entrepreneurs and professionals in the future. found Innovating means building upon what’s already been built and improving what already exists. Hackers and hustlers don’t invent anything new; they automate things out of laziness and create non-trivial solutions out of boredom. At the end of the day, it’s your business that wins! And what about you–have you ever considered hiring hackers, hustlers or differently-abled to boost your software development, spice up your creative processes, and find unconventional solutions to your challenges? If yes–please share your experience in the comments! Did you like my article? Please support it by sharing. Feel free to follow me on LinkedIn and read me on Hacker Noon .

Why Hiring Hustlers and Differently-abled is Good for Innovation

This is not a drill. This is not the time to give up. This is not a time for excuses. This is a time for pulling out all the stops. Sounds dramatic, right? Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, doesn’t think so. He used these words at the on COVID-19 on March 5, 2020, to encourage governments and public health organizations to collaborate in the fight against corona. media briefing He believes that only a coordinated and collective approach will help us stop the global spread of the virus. Or to use his words: “We’re all in this together, and we can only save lives together.” No matter what you think of the WHO or the Director-General’s statements, he is right about one thing: There is still a lack of consensus on how to respond. Governments aren’t on the same page when it comes to the coronavirus. Measures vary widely per country. They have different ways to count and report cases of coronavirus infections, different approaches to virus testing, and different recommendations as to what to do when you have a cold or fever. The sense of urgency is an important factor that can explain the differences. Regions that experienced a coronavirus outbreak or are unclear about the source of infections tend to implement more stringent measures, such as school closures and the cancellation of large events. But there are also political reasons for the different measures. Governments may decide to downplay the coronavirus threat or underreport the number of cases to avoid being perceived as a global problem (with all the economic doom and gloom). And don’t forget the cultural differences. Deep-rooted traditions in the workplace may make it difficult for people who are infected to come forward. This is particularly true in countries/workplaces where a sick day is frowned upon. A lack of consensus makes it extremely difficult to triangulate the truth. The result? The unclear facts about the coronavirus contribute to jitters in the stock market and beyond. Investors have a hard time getting their heads around the economic impact of the pandemic Private organizations also struggle. What should they do to avoid an outbreak on their premises? More and more companies and other organizations implement travel restrictions and travel bans. But also here there is hardly any consensus. One of my friends has to self-isolate because he spent a few days in Italy. His wife, on the other hand, is expected to go to the office. Her employer only urges workers to stay home when they have symptoms of a fever. All these different reactions and approaches appear to have a counterproductive effect. On the one hand, people believe that some countries and companies overreact. Also, we start to see more and more stories about conspiracy theories around the outbreak. On the other hand, we witness stockpiling and panic-buying out of fear of the possibility of becoming subject to self-isolation and quarantine measures. Depending on the country, we already see shortages of face masks, toilet paper, hand sanitizers, pasta, or rice. But there is a Consensus About One Thing We (societies) will recover! Everybody seems to agree that we will be able to combat the pandemic successfully. The number of newly reported cases from China and South Korea appears to be declining. New cases predominantly come from known clusters. As soon as we have beaten the coronavirus, things will quickly go back to business as usual. Let’s avoid hysteria. I received an email from my bank last week, warning me not to let my emotions get the better of me when stock markets plunge. “It’s just an irrational reaction to what’s currently happening in the world.” Also, my students are convinced that sooner or later, things will reset. I asked them to write an analyst report on a company that they believed would be a fruitful investment. They made their investment decisions by the beginning of February, and all of their investments are currently loss-making. But, rest assured! My students are convinced that by the end of Spring 2020, their investments will again show a positive return. The stocks will soon return to pre-corona levels. And no matter how much I want to believe them, their responses made me think. I am a traveler and follow the news on the coronavirus carefully. And the more I think about it, the more I believe that the impact of the coronavirus will be more significant than we now realize. The “Coronavirus” is Changing the World No, I am not exaggerating. I truly think we haven’t seen the full impact yet. Why? Well, the answer goes back to 2000. I was writing my Ph.D. on evolutionary patterns and processes in law and economics and stumbled upon an article by from Stanford and Columbia. Ronald Gilson One of the sentences in the articles has always stuck with me: “Accomplishing change is more complicated than merely having to protect the status quo.” He referred to an example from San Francisco where a large number of residents unsuccessfully sought to have the Embarcadero Freeway, a two-level concrete highway that separated downtown San Francisco from the waterfront, torn down. A smaller group, including the Chinatown community, successfully blocked the removal of the “skyway” (protecting the status quo). Only when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake inflicted significant damage on the freeway, the opposition to the Embarcadero Freeway was able to push for the removal of the structure. Even though the minority suffered a dramatic decline in business due to the damaged freeway, the destruction became a fact. The earthquake radically changed the status quo. Of course, it is difficult to compare an earthquake with the outbreak of the coronavirus. But, similar to what happened in California in 1989, the coronavirus is changing the status quo in many areas. Here are some examples. The Environment Have you seen the that show the indirect impact of the coronavirus on the environment? satellite images It is amazing how the air above infected areas and clusters is rapidly cleaning up. Pollution levels go down as governments and other organizations close down businesses, reduce productivity, and restrict or ban travel. So far, environmentalists haven’t been very effective in restricting heavy industrial development, business operations, and commercial travel. But with the “Embarcadero Freeway” story in mind, it isn’t immediately obvious that affected industries and commercial transportation will easily return to pre-coronavirus levels after we have stopped the pandemic. Travel I have always considered myself lucky that I could travel the world and speak at so many international conferences and other events. But things have dramatically changed this month. Easy travel is slowly but surely disappearing. Countries are closing their borders for people that come from (or have traveled through) infected areas. Most of the scheduled events for March and even April have been postponed or canceled. I tend to agree with these decisions. Not so much because of the fear of getting infected, but I don’t want to be stuck in a hotel or airport, deprived of my freedom, for one or more weeks. Will we ever go back to the old world of traveling? Organizers of events are desperately looking for alternatives. We predictably see a breakthrough of online and virtual meetings/events (which so far have been a disaster due to connectivity issues). I am already looking for new gear (better cameras and microphones) to be prepared for the new “status quo” of virtual conferences and keynote presentations. Education On March 4, 2020, announced that 13 countries implemented school closures, affecting an unprecedented amount of almost 290 million learners. UNESCO The adverse consequences are clear: higher dropout rates, increased pressure on teachers, and higher economic costs, just to name a few. The solutions are clear and straightforward. Governments and schools have no other choice than to promote and facilitate online and remote learning. There are plenty of education startups that can help pave the way to develop distance learning environments. It has always been difficult for them to change the status quo of in-class learning. And I am sure that the road to more online learning platforms will be bumpy. As a teacher, I understand the challenges. But when more and more schools are offering digital learning portals, a new status quo could quickly emerge. Work Working from home and working remotely remain controversial issues in most companies. Deep-rooted work cultures often make distance working something bad. For instance, working from home is still the exception. Not feeling well or having a cold is usually not perceived as a good reason for not coming to the office. Well, this perception has rapidly changed. People who are coughing, sneezing, and sniffing are now asked not to come to the office. “Please stay home.” The cloud and online office apps and tools are readily available. Working for home and working remotely are quickly becoming the new normal/status quo. Technology The coronavirus is disrupting the big tech industry. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have given profit warnings to investors. The production of new tech devices, such as smartphones and laptops, is heavily impacted by the spread of the virus. But, as always, there is another side to the story. And here I don’t only refer to companies that offer technologies that support work-from-home and distance learning, or coronavirus vaccine developers. There are other examples of companies that will benefit from changes in the status quo. Think about companies that build ecosystems around emerging technologies, such as robotics and drones. These emerging tech solutions are more and more being used to prevent the further spread of the virus. Many of these technologies weren’t immediately accepted by society, but now they enable remote interactions among people and help doctors with diagnosing coronavirus infections. The benefits of these emerging technologies are clear in the current health crisis but will not easily be forgotten after the coronavirus. The new ecosystems will quickly move to other use-cases in other industries and businesses. The same can be said about companies that operate in the area of sensors, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics. These technologies were already near mainstream pre-corona. The fact that the technologies are being used to make outbreak predictions and search for treatments will also make their use post-corona stronger. I can see similar developments in the area of augmented reality and virtual reality. They will surely benefit from the new “status quo” in travel, education, and work. Back to the World Health Organization The Director-General of the World Health Organization calls for a collective and coordinated approach. Governments should set vested interests and political motives aside and work together to fight the coronavirus. He is correct. For instance, trying to bury the truth about coronavirus infections is wishful thinking in the world of social media. Also, the lessons learned from the pre-iPhone SARS pandemic 17 years ago are important, but many things have changed in almost two decades. The coronavirus is the first pandemic in the digital economy. The world has become flatter, more transparent, and more decentralized. Ironically, COVID-19 will only accelerate this trend. Governments and industry should understand the full impact of the pandemic. Only then will we be able to adequately respond to this crisis (as well as future outbreaks), while at the same time prepare ourselves for a new, even more, digital and tech-oriented world. It feels like we haven’t seen the full impact of the coronavirus yet.

Will the World Be Able To Limp Back to Normalcy After The Coronavirus Scare?

Over the past decade, cryptocurrency has become a term that everyone recognizes. Whether it registers as some far-out concept that has something to do with invisible money, or whether you are a crypto geek who belongs to exchange platforms and follows various currencies religiously. Until now, involvement in the realm of digital currencies has been optional, however, 2020 may be the start of a decade where these intangible exchanges become an unavoidable part of our collective lives. When bitcoin was birthed, it was in the aftermath of the traditional financial market’s collapse. The possibility of a currency untainted by corruption in banks and governments was highly appealing and the value of bitcoin soared. Yet, as the excitement faded, Bitcoin became more of a trade-able asset than a potential universal currency. Now, several other digital currencies are rearing their heads, vying to compete with the US dollar as the next universal currency. A move which has both worried and excited various international players. First there are the currencies with less realistic short-term goals, such as Libra, the digital currency introduced by Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg announced this initiative in October, when he spoke to the US House of Representatives, that his technology-based currency is about promoting “financial inclusion” and aiding people “lift themselves from poverty”. claiming Facebook’s lofty goals, spearheaded by this digital currency, would create a global payment network that avoids the regulatory scrutiny of current banking systems which often kills competition and raises prices. Theoretically, the ability to send money around the world with ease could transform Libra into a main player in terms of global currency. But practically, it is almost impossible. Firstly, there is the problem of trust. After the Zuckerberg fiasco of this year, people do not trust Facebook with their private data, some even claim it is a threat to our democracy. Then there is the ambiguity behind the Libra design. US policymakers have they have no idea what Libra is. Such a lack of clarity is bound to lead to regulatory hell. stated Not to mention that Libra’s proposed system of providing will require due diligence and ‘Know Your Customer’ regulations to combat money laundering, resulting in a similar process to that of banks today…defeating the entire aim. ‘banks for the un-banked’ Clearly. There are far too many wrinkles to smooth out before considering Libra a current up-and-comer in the realm of universal currencies. The other digital currency whose launch is imminent, is the Chinese renminbi. Recently, we have seen a handful of countries attempt to diminish the disproportionate control of the dollar by to digital currencies. Governments such as that of Venezuela and North Korea are apparently already using cryptocurrencies to evade US sanctions. turning However, none hold that much weight, or symbolize that much of a threat quite like the digitization of the Chinese renminbi. For China, the aim of their blockchain ambitions are not simply to avoid sanctions, but to “displacing US influence in the global financial system” which they see as “a national priority.” China has apparently been researching blockchain extensively since as far back as 2014, and 2020 is said to be the year when they may begin small scale within the country . If tests go well, the currency will presumably go live shortly after. experiments If China successfully implements their cashless currency, they would then replicate it across Asian economies which account for more than half of the world’s population. Clearly, even their decision to explore digital currencies is monumental. With powerful entities such as Facebook and China gearing towards introducing digital currencies, it is becoming evident that this decade, crypto will become a far more influential player in the global economy.

This Decade, The Masses Will Not Be Able to Avoid Digital Currencies 

So, what was it that made me stop paying attention to the lazy devil on my shoulder? I was thinking about starting a side project for a while and as many others who want to start a side project would understand, I spent a lot time reading others encouraging people to develop their own ideas. After reading for a while, I sat with a friend to get some tips on how to effectively use my time. After all, the man has two children, same as me, but finds time to do so many things that I could only dream of doing. So I decided to stop the excuses and start doing. I removed the Facebook application from my phone, saved materials I wish to read and started to feed my mind with knowledge instead of garbage (well, I don’t consider Marvel’s shows as garbage, so they were saved). After a while, I had so many ideas and things that I wanted to try in my own new project, but I wasn’t closer to starting a side project than I was before. And it felt terrible. I couldn’t explain why I still could not find the time and, if to be more precise, the will to start something of my own. Anything. I couldn’t care less about the result, I just wanted to write something, but I didn’t. Time passed, and I reinstalled the Facebook app on my phone, and returned to the old habit of scrolling an endless feed with no purpose at all. I kinda accepted the fact that a side project is a nice concept, but not for me. And it was fine. Or so I thought. It was a regular evening and I was sitting with my spouse and talking about the regular things we did in the day. He was telling me about a problem he has, while sharing a Google Sheet between his teammates to manage the tasks of a certain project. That makes no sense to me. Sharing a sheet between all team members means everyone has access to the whole document (well, you can manage the permissions to each row or cell, but it requires a lot of effort to maintain it through time). “There must be some tools that handle exactly that” I told him. There are, of course, but apparently his company doesn’t want to allocate budget for that. That was when I realized that I could do it for him, quite easily honestly. In that moment, when my head started breaking the problem into requirements and thinking about implementation details, I realized what is it that I was missing so far. Ideas were not enough for me. I needed a client. I needed a real problem to solve. I didn’t even mind solving a problem that already has a solution, as long as I could do it my way and have someone who is waiting for me to deliver. I needed clear requirements, a time frame and maybe most importantly, someone to update along the way, who isn’t me (cause, well, it’s quite easy to cut yourself some slack). Conclusion: It’s quite obvious, I guess, but I would write it nonetheless: In order to accomplish your goal, you need to find the right motivation for you. It (probably) is different from your friends or colleagues. Find your own way to ignite your passion and chase your dreams. To make this more interesting and educative, I chose not to use the same tools I’ve been using at my daily job, but to learn a new framework to work with and some other new technologies. Can’t wait to write another post explaining how I chose to implement my first side project! Some other posts I found interesting about writing a side project: The Ultimate guide for side projects How to start a side project: 21 pro tips

How I Was Able to Motivate Myself To Start My First Side Project

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"I used to be able to even jump over a garbage can," said Bill Gates

Is a time machine coming soon? Breaking News Breaking news from academia. You can find the news everywhere — , also and . Journalists seem to be convinced that we humans are now able to construct a using . They are all quoting the and we can it and go back to the 20th century and possibly stop the World War. Physicists reverse time using quantum computer here there ‘time machine’ ‘cutting-edge’ ‘quantum technology’ ‘arrow of time’ ‘flip’ It is claimed that the , might not be true. Okay. As a half-scientist, I decided to read the directly. I don’t understand most of the details but I think I have a better understanding than most journalists do. second law of thermodynamics can be violated irreversibility of entropy paper Photo by on Bank Phrom Unsplash So… What is Happening? Are we able to reverse time? . Are we one step closer to a time machine? *.Did they violate any physics that we think we know of? . Kind of Not really Nah Scientists are now able to ‘simulate’ the previous state correctly given the current state 85% of the time in a two-qubit quantum computer, and only 50% in a three-qubit setting. Let’s be clear, We all could play a video backward and we would have ‘reversed time’, without violating any physics of course. In general, you could theoretically simulate any reversible process backward in time. that is by no means a violation of the second law of thermodynamics or any physics. This is not about time travel. Photo by on Devin Avery Unsplash Don’t Get Me Wrong… I am not suggesting that what the researchers did was useless, wrong, or whatever. Reverse computation is difficult. For example, can we possibly simulate climate backward in time? , with a certain confidence interval. Does that mean we can go back to the past? . Are we violating any physics? , it is a simulation. Quite possibly Not really Definitely not Photo by on Icons8 team Unsplash The Takeaway There is only one truth, but there are infinite interpretations of the truth. Most of the headlines and buzzwords probably don’t do justice to the findings, and it is extremely dangerous to infer anything beyond our comprehension. Scientists barely understand quantum physics, and no one should expect anyone to understand it. This is a demonstration of academic integrity. Academia is therefore responsible for producing more logical interpretations on their own findings, and should not delegate it to the general public or over-interpret for media covfefe. It is not the media’s job to tell the truth. They are a business, just like any other business, and their job is to make money. — Jay Foreman Photo by on Sidharth Bhatia Unsplash About Me Thank you for reading! If you are interested in the application of data science, check out my latest articles: _The journey on the unsinkable — what AI can learn from the disaster_hackernoon.com Would You Survive the Titanic? _Exploring data visualization tools in Python_towardsdatascience.com Visualizing bike mobility in London using interactive maps and animations *Are we one step closer to a time machine? Assuming it does exist in the future, we are technically getting closer to that time. Time moves forward. Originally published at edenau.github.io .

Scientists are Now Able to ‘Reverse Time’

While you’re thinking about a future dominated by robots and holograms, or at least “smarter” phones, studies show that these technological inventions are meant to enhance our entertainment and not actually improve our day-to-day tasks. The real potential of disruption is owned by the Internet of Things (IoT) industry. Big companies, such as Samsung, Qualcomm, LG, Huawei, and Intel, have already seen this and are all with the hope of establishing product leadership in the future. How many patents you may ask? Just these five companies combined hold over 13,300 IoT patents to this date, which makes IoT one of today’s most-researched emerging markets. filling patents Let’s look at the of the IoT market at the beginning of 2019: state 7 billion IoT devices 17 billion connected devices $151 billion IoT market evaluation $64 billion worth of products and services Industry 4.0 90% of senior execs in technology, media, and telecommunications industries IoT is critical to some or all lines of their business say If you can’t properly understand the significance of these numbers by themselves, let us explain this market growth like this: If the industry continues to evolve at the same speed, the number of IoT devices will exceed the number of smartphones in the ! next three years https://iot-analytics.com/state-of-the-iot-update-q1-q2-2018-number-of-iot-devices-now-7b/ With more than 18 billion IoT devices in consumers’ homes, industry experts and potential customers are questioning their security. And they are perfectly right to do so. Currently, of existing IoT devices are not adequately secured. 80% Why is IoT device security so weak? The security issues that befall IoT devices is not new. The IoT industry might seem new, but having smart appliances in our homes is definitely not new. Actually, the first Internet-connected appliance was invented as early as 1982: a . From there, the industry has seen efforts from in 1999, from Helsinki University of Technology in 2002 (when the term “Internet of Things” was first used), and finally, the concept we’re studying today being in 2008. More than 10 years of innovation and yet, the security issues didn’t find closure. Coke vending machine Microsoft and P&G born The risks can be understood by looking back to 2016, when the at the time occurred. A is when a machine connected to the Internet is used to “flood” a targeted server with superfluous requests, making it unavailable for an extended period of time. Given the fact that most companies aren’t hosting their software on only one machine but on an entire warehouse’s worth of servers, a one-on-one attack seems useless. But let’s look at the extra “D” in DDoS: Distributed-Dos attack. That’s when the hacker uses multiple machines to perform their flooding attack. biggest DDoS attack Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack The attacker can buy and install all these computers in their home, but that is highly unlikely. Even if they have the funds, it’ll be so easy to track the massive purchase or their physical location. They can infect people’s computers or phones. But since most of the operating systems now come with pre-installed firewall and antivirus programs, this method is becoming less feasible. Or the attacker can leverage a network of poorly-secured IoT devices sitting in people’s homes all over the world and direct their computational power towards a target server. That’s the easy solution right there? That’s exactly what happened in 2016 when the attacker developed the that was searching for IoT devices that were still using the default password. The result was devastating. And the next attack happened in less than a month after the first, shutting down Amazon, SoundCloud, Reddit, Spotify, and many other websites all at once! Mirai malware https://blog.cloudflare.com/inside-mirai-the-infamous-iot-botnet-a-retrospective-analysis/ A network of 18 billion unprotected IoT devices is not only dangerous for their actual owners, but it could put the entire open Internet in danger. There’s any solution for secured IoT devices? The problem is rooted from the development of IoT systems. The proposed architecture is centralized and ineffective: devices have to connect to a central cloud server to perform their operations. It can be Google Cloud IoT, Amazon’s AWS IoT, Apple’s HomeKit, you name it. Even with the proven years of experience in IT from these companies, having the and cloud-related hacks on their records makes you think twice before trusting their system security. iCloud Gmail How can we solve their centralization issue? With the opposite approach: a decentralized system. The decentralized IoT ecosystem that we’re thinking about is based on blockchain technology. In this way: Network protection — An attacker has to compromise , not only a single node for a successful attack. the entire network Always up to date — The nodes stay by default. synchronized No individual vulnerabilities — Each device becomes a node in a network, moving from the individual device to the entire decentralized network. the point of failure : the blockchain enables IoT devices to protect themselves. In simple words https://vecap.io/ So who is there to provide a solution to our grim future? We found interesting applications among blockchain IoT providers, such as IoT Chain developing an IoT operating system, The Watson IoT Platform, who’s proposing a solution that moves the data on a private blockchain, or Atonomi, whose infrastructure is based on the device’s identity and reputation within the network. Even the most popular blockchain-based IoT project at the moment, IOTA, can be counted, although its solution is focused on the transactional and data transfer aspect. That’s actually the common problem of these projects: they are focused more on solving other issues than actually solving the security problems that we have right now. One blockchain-based project, though, comes as security-first: . Its solution is not an enhancement of the device’s built-in security functions. It is actually bypassing the device’s security altogether, moving the security to a unified decentralized network. That is exactly the blockchain solution that had been previously discussed. But their ambition goes even further. Instead of having a network for each individual, imagine having a global network formed out of all the active devices in the world! That’s pretty bold, right? In this case, a hacker will need to hack at least 51% of the devices in order to compromise the network. We’re speaking about millions of IoT devices in tens of thousands of homes and offices. It’s not too far-fetched to claim that this task sounds impossible. VeCap The road to a global IoT network A global network, in order to remain secure, needs a gatekeeper. However, if there’s a party in charge of keeping people in or out, the network is no longer decentralized anymore, right? VeCap found a workaround for this. The network can be joined by anyone at anytime under two conditions: Use a — There’s no centralization at the network level, but it still gives too much competitive power to VeCap as a company. That’s why there’s a second option… VeCap certified device Use the to connect an uncertified device. VeCap adapter Basically, anyone with any type of device can join the network. There is a level of security, but it’s not in control of any one party. That’s the security-first approach that IoT desperately needs right now. The focus on individual devices and single-purpose applications born from the greed of software companies and device manufacturers has distanced us from a unified standard. This problem of lack of interoperability was recognized by the European Commission when in 2017 they introduced , which gives specific guidance on how to set up interoperable digital public services. The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) This reluctance between companies is typical when it comes to new technologies. VHS fought for a long time until it became the standard of videotapes. Energy outlets are still not standardized around the world up to today. We have a long way to go, but with the VeCap solution already proposed for IoT, are you willing to wait for these vendors to agree with each other in such a competitive market or are you going to help it become a reality? How close are we to Internet failure? Since that initial attack on IoT devices in 2016, in only 3 years 20% of all companies at least one cyber attack on their IoT devices. One report that 97% of these attacks can be catastrophic for the organization, with potential losses up to 13% of its revenue. These are alarming numbers, given the fact that hackers need less than a minute to gain access to an unprotected device. Manufacturers alone can’t keep up with the attackers anymore. But that’s where projects like could take the security concerns off of their shoulders and bring confidence among adopters. faced shows VeCap

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