Lightrock is believed to lead AiDash’s funding round

AiDash raises $50 million to safeguard infrastructure from climate change-related threats - Digital Transformation News | The Financial Express

The funding round was led by global impact investment firm Lightrock, with participation from other investors. The funds will be used for hiring and geographic expansion.

Enterprise SaaS solutions provider AiDash bags $50 M in Series C round

AiDash said it will use the newly raised funds to nearly double its team strength to over 600 members, expand internationally and establish its headquarters in Europe.

aidash funding: SaaS startup AiDash raises $50 million led by Lightrock - The Economic Times

A California startup using artificial intelligence (AI) and satellites to spot fire and weather risks on power lines, AiDash, reported on Tuesday it had raised $50 million in new funding, reflecting Silicon Valley efforts to create products that help energy companies adapt to climate change.

Startup AiDash raises $50 million for tech using AI, satellites to spot wildfire risk

Find latest technology news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.

Startup AiDash raises $50 million for tech using AI, satellites to spot 
wildfire risk

AiDash

aidash

As a known fact, the retail scene globally has been in a slump ever since the rise of e-commerce and digital devices. The pandemic-stricken year has pushed the sector further into the gloom, with experts predicting sales to be declining by at least 10% year-over-year in the Southeast Asia region. On top of that, businesses are grappling with the challenge of engaging increasingly distracted customers in the digital space. With the tighter squeeze, brands are also re-looking at innovative yet cost-effective ways to enhance customer service experience in order to build loyalty. Recognising these challenges that companies are facing, has launched an online hackathon, the iHack Alpha, to tackle the aforementioned problems through AI-enabled solutions. The hackathon, which concluded on January 5th, saw over . Developers could work either individually or form a team (with a maximum of four members) to work on any of the four stipulated themes: Retail, Customer Service, Media, and Accessibility. Sentient.io 1,000 participating developers In each of these themes, a problem statement is provided, and developers are free to identify opportunity areas they would like to explore and ideate upon. To illustrate, the problem statement given under the theme of retail is: How can you use AI to help retail evolve and stay relevant? With this, developers could, for instance, identify how more retailers are adopting the online-to-offline (O2O) strategy to drive foot traffic to physical stores. Developers can then propose and design tools that will help businesses overcome the digital blind spot in marketing when going from O2O. Contrary to the common “job-stealing” notion that has been assigned to AI advances, the many innovations that stem from this hackathon alone, have proven that . AI can serve as an enabler Among the eight shortlisted ideas to the prototype phase, is the GeoFencing project. The project aims to help market the small local businesses or mom-and-pop stores that are overshadowed by giant corporations and do not have an online presence. The solution is to develop extensions or mobile apps that will help consumers to locate products that they are keen on purchasing, nearby. The idea is to help people get to know the shops in their vicinity. This provides the smaller businesses the opportunity to be considered as an alternative, without having to spend exorbitant dollars on advertising. To set the idea in motion, the team had employed various microservices from Sentient.io, including the Object Detection Microservice, Web Scraping API, as well as the Base 64 Encoding and Decoding Service. Empowering the Disabled at the Heart of iHackAlpha With a large proportion of the submissions targeting the accessibility theme, the single socially related theme is seen to have gained the most traction among contestants. An 80% unemployment rate in Southeast Asia for persons of disabilities is indeed a note of concern. Many teams of developers have expressed with full conviction in their presentation that this societal group has just as much to contribute as the general population if they were provided with proper assistive technologies. “Even with valuable skills and experiences, visually impaired people often find great difficulty in securing employment. After so many technological advancements in the last few decades, we still fail miserably at disability inclusion in the workplace. One of the main reasons for this lies in the fact that organizations fail to deploy assistive technologies for the visually impaired at the workplace. The most sustainable way to include the visually impaired population in the workforce is by considering it as a value-add transaction instead of going from a social responsibility perspective. Considering disability inclusion as a value-add transaction means that we want to bring in a disabled person into the workforce not because it is a social responsibility but because they have the necessary skills and resources to bring value to the organization. Therefore, in order to solve this problem of blind inclusion in the workplace, we must focus on making assistive technologies more accessible to this population,” said one of the finalists. The group then went on to propose a smart glass, which they named , to help visually impaired persons perform more productively at the workplace. iGlass “In this device, we attempt to integrate features from different assistive technologies like screen readers, canes, etc into a single device using recent technological advancements in artificial intelligence and embedded systems. The visual data from the surrounding is captured using a camera mounted on the smart glass. This visual data is then fed into a pipeline running on Raspberry Pi to generate auditory data using different sentient.io microservices and AI models,” the group explained. In other words, the necessary information captured through features such as image captioning, face recognition, emotion recognition, optical character recognition is then conveyed to the person seamlessly in audio format, through the bone transducer. It simulates the voices in one’s head that relay information regarding the immediate surrounding. “I was impressed with iGlass, though Google Glass had attempted this and failed, at least for now.  It was amazing how much the team accomplished in a short period of time,” said one of the six judges, . Ms. Christy Davies, Executive Director of Lien Centre at Singapore Management University When asked what she was looking out for in the submissions, Ms. Davies said: “First and foremost, did the invention or solution meet the needs of their defined client?  I looked for a clear problem statement and a systematic thought process which then used data or AI as the tool and vehicle to tackle their problem. I was also curious to a clear motivation of why they chose the issue they did because a solution is often more effective when it is emotionally or very practically connected to the heart and passion of the entrepreneur or coder”. It was certainly heartening that despite it being a hackathon contest, many teams bore the common goal of empowering and improving lives through their innovative ideas and skillful application of AI technologies. Winning Concepts and Prototypes The project which clinched was titled the , a two-way chatting app for blind-deaf people to communicate with others. To send a message, the blind-deaf person can simply tap the screen, using either short tap (representing dots) or long taps (representing dashes). The Morse code written by them is then converted into English text for the other party to read. On the flipside, incoming messages from the other party are converted into vibrations of dot & dash for blind-deaf people to understand. first place Artificial Voice “The idea for the project is inspired by the Helen Keller story we studied in school days, where Anne Sullivan used to write on Helen Keller’s palm to communicate with her. So, we thought why can't we replace Annie with a mobile phone, which can communicate with the deaf-blind by sending a message with haptic feedback,” said Mr. Harsha Satya Vardhan, the team leader of project . Artificial Voice Taking into consideration that subjects could be together at the same place or communicating across different locations, the team behind the project has also included the ‘near’ and ‘far’ features. The ‘near’ feature can be activated when both parties are at the same place. When the person without a disability speaks, it is converted into vibrations via Morse code in real-time for the blind-deaf person to understand the message. The blind-deaf person will also be able to give a reply in real-time by tapping on the screen of the app. Using Sentient.io Text to Speech and Automatic Speech Recognition services, the Morse Code is converted to speech that is heard audibly by the other party. “I like the Artificial Voice submission because it is something which can really benefit a group of very marginalized people and bridge some of the communication gaps with others.” said one of the internal judges, Eddie Leong, VP Operations of Sentient.io The team behind was overjoyed when they were announced as the winner of iHack Alpha Challenge. Artificial Voice “Mahesh and I have been working very hard for three months on this project and had many iterations. We look forward to improving the current prototype and the lives of the visually impaired individuals through our project,” said Mr. Vardhan. The were awarded to project and respectively. The former is a website that allows people with hearing impairment to take voice notes during a meeting. Meanwhile, the latter is a mobile app that resembles a virtual mentor or friend for people with neurodevelopmental disorders, including Autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia. It works as a translator that translates pictorial representations to normal text and vice-versa to fill the communication gap in a virtual working environment. second and third places MeetDocs Buddy With regards to the concept behind Buddy, the team explained that people with neurodevelopmental disorder often face difficulty comprehending long paragraphs, along with the tone. The app can help users to identify a variety of tones present in a sentence, including the emotional aspects and language style. It also provides a visualisation of words, as well as some related content (Wikipedia article) for better understanding. The project is intended to provide these employees with greater ease of communication and in turn, efficiency at work. “The biggest challenge we face while working on our project is managing our time since we have limited time developing, planning, and testing the products. The other challenges we face were creating an impactful solution that addresses the problem and attempting to solve it to a more considerable extent. “But our desire to make people's lives better using technologies and the support of Sentient.io mentors helped in the successful completion of the product,” said Mr. Ashutosh Gupta, the team leader of project Buddy. Among the judges was , who expressed that he was looking out for solution level, business scalability, and profitability. He noted that the submissions contained unique ideas and concepts, which completely matches the frame of open innovation and intent of a hackathon as such. Mr. Etsushi Tsuru, Managing Director of Asahi Shimbun Asia Other criteria include, but are not limited to code quality, the technology used, the overall usability, and the user experience. About Sentient.io empowers developers and enterprises by enabling easy integration of AI capabilities into their solutions and software through the Sentient.io AI & Data platform. Sentient.io Our platform allows developers with no AI experience to easily find and use powerful pre-trained AI models as well as data sets through API calls, allowing you to rapidly and effortlessly add AI capabilities to projects. Also published at https://mark-at-sentientio.medium.com/ihack-alpha-by-sentient-io-unveils-ai-powered-solutions-for-business-social-challenges-2209d0ae3716

iHack Alpha Inspires AI-Powered Solutions to Address Social Challenges

According to Statista, the global startup economy generates nearly $3 trillion. Startups have always been the driving force behind the world market, bringing new ideas, and transforming familiar business systems. Unfortunately, the economic crisis associated with Covid-19 has not spared this area. According to the Startup Genome study, 74% of startups saw their revenues decline since the beginning of the crisis. How did the pandemic and other external factors affect the startup market and what new trends have emerged? Re-prioritization of Industries The pandemic has changed our priorities, accelerating the growth of some industries, and freezing the development of others. According to , the revenue of startups from industries such as travel & tourism, beauty & fashion, automotive, agtech has decreased by more than 30%. the Startup Genome Report Gaming, AI & Big Data, blockchain & crypto were affected less. Also this year we observed strong representation from biotechnology startups. Furthermore, the current crisis has shown the importance of digitization of the offline economy, making tech companies even more in demand. Never before has technology played such a key role in the economy. Now, in order to maintain globalization in the context of a lockdown and ensure effective communication, it is simply necessary to have a digital presence for your business. Therefore, tech companies, having lost customers, who have suspended the development of software products for their business, simply found new from other industries. The Rise of the Asia-Pacific Market One of the most exciting trends this year is the shift in the startup ecosystem. The main player in this trend is the Asia-Pacific region, where 20% of the leading ecosystems in 2012 have grown to 30% today. So, Seoul and Tokyo, Melbourne, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Delhi took their places in the list of top global startup ecosystems. The emergence of new strong players in the market opens up new opportunities for partnership and development of the global startup market. The Asia-Pacific region is becoming home of promising new startups. The first to recover from the pandemic, this region was able to catch up with its competitors and take its place in the market. Machine Learning and AI-based Solutions The development of Machine learning and AI was not stopped by the pandemic. The use of smart technologies continues to gain traction, and startups are bold enough to offer innovative solutions. Modern business needs to process a huge amount of data and provide personalized messages for its target audience, which is why new marketing and analytical solutions are emerging. The use of AI/ML solutions is widespread through the use of chatbots, speech and image recognition, robotics, and much more. According to experts, this trend will only intensify, so now you should think about the introduction of artificial intelligence in your business. Not surprisingly, AI/ML is coming to the fore in technology source priorities. IdeaSoft's portfolio includes many AI-related projects. For example, Nexar is AI dash cam app for iPhone and Android, that instantly detects dangers on the road and provides “watch out” life-saving warnings. Or Neura, AI and ML-based platform for increasing users' engagement. Neura researches each user’s past, recognizes his or her present context and predicts future activity. Both projects are excellent cases of AI technology implementation for business tasks. New Opportunities with 5G Networks There has been a lot of talk about 5G lately. For startups, this technology will provide new opportunities for creating tech solutions that need the power of 5G. The improved internet speed will enable startups to bring their bold ideas to life. Compared to 4G's maximum speed of 150 megabits per second, devices connected to 5G will be able to move a massive one to 10 gigabits per second. Thus, 5G can provide uninterrupted access to digital tools, no matter where you are at home, in the office or on the road. According to , by 2024, there will be around 1.9 billion 5G subscriptions worldwide. Many startups are working on effective software solutions to improve the healthcare, retail, logistics industries, as well as 5G itself. Statista Forecast number of mobile 5G subscriptions worldwide from 2019 to 2024 Blockchain is Still in Demand Another technology, interest in which has not faded over the years. For the most part, blockchain continues to be used in fintech, but other industries are also looking for ways of implementing blockchain to solve various business challenges. Blockchain is attractive primarily for its main properties: transparency, security and cost efficiency. Many startups are working to create more profitable payment systems, more and more companies are using cryptocurrency. Despite some distrust of this technology, the number of crypto wallet owners is growing, and startups are not going to abandon blockchain, finding new ways to adopt it. We are talking about the use of smart contracts and the creation of cloud storage based on blockchain, as well as the creation of decentralized applications (dApps) that meet various needs and so on. Wrapping Up So, despite the uncertain economic situation, the startup market continues to develop, although its players have changed. The role of tech startups has increased in the context of a lockdown as one of the main ways to optimize various industries in a crisis. Technologies such as AI, ML, blockchain, 5G have received accelerated growth and soon we can expect the emergence of new amazing startups that will change our lives.

Top 5 Tech Startup Trends in 2020

For many years Nginx has been a default solution to serve as a reverse proxy for Rails applications. However, with the release of Kamal, the Rails community opened Traefik as a new reverse proxy solution. Within my 15 years of experience with Rails, I created an almost perfect configuration for Nginx that migrated through all my projects. With Traefik, I had to start from scratch. Traefik Intro Traefik is an Edge Router; it means that it’s the door to your platform and that it intercepts and routes every incoming request but does not process requests itself. When an incoming request comes to Traefik, it is getting served through the EntryPoint. Traefik can listen to multiple EntryPoints, and each EntryPoint is associated with a port and a protocol (HTTP/HTTPS, TCP, UDP). After the request is received, it is passed to the Router. Router is a rule that tells Traefik how to handle the request. It can be based on the path, the host, the headers, etc. The router will then forward the request to the appropriate service. But before a request is forwarded, it can be modified by the Middleware. Middleware is a piece of code that can modify the request or the response before it reaches the service. Middleware is the place where you can add authentication, rewrite the path, add headers, etc. To better understand how Traefik works, I provide an image from the official . Traefik documentation Compared to Nginx, the Traefik configuration is entirely different. Besides a traditional configuration file (which can be both in YAML and TOML formats), Traefik can be configured with dynamic configuration. It means that you can configure Traefik with a file, but also with a REST API, a Docker label, a Kubernetes annotation, etc. Since Kamal is a Docker orchestration tool, Traefik configuration is done with Docker labels. It means that you don’t need to write a configuration file; instead, you should provide labels to your Docker containers. Labels work dynamically, so you don’t need to reboot Traefik to apply them. At the same time, operating a Docker label can be pretty tricky, especially at the beginning. Traefik Dashboard The good news is that Traefik works pretty good with Kamal out of the box with Kamal (Kamal provides basic default configuration, which I will show later), and maybe you won’t need to change anything. However, if you want to take a look at how Traefik is configured, you may want to enable a . web dashboard To do this, open your Kamal config (usually ), and add the following lines. config/deploy.yml # config/deploy.yml

traefik:
  args:
    api.dashboard: true
  labels:
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.servixce: api@internal
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.rule: "Host(`traefik.onetribe.com`)"
    traefik.http.middlewares.auth.basicauth.users: user:$2y$05$us7dsDg56EJ/qojvhLvy9OEshrzoWjGSKXziBqeiFq3Ehf1pAiGSG
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.middlewares: auth@docker If you have a separate configuration for production and staging environments, you probably will have the last two labels in your environment-specific configuration files. # config/deploy.production.yml

traefik:
  labels:
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.rule: "Host(`traefik.onetribe.team`)"
    traefik.http.middlewares.auth.basicauth.users: user-production:$2y$05$us7dsDg56EJ/qojvhLvy9OEshrzoWjGSKXziBqeiFq3Ehf1pAiGSG

# config/deploy.staging.yml

traefik:
  labels:
    traefik.http.routers.dashboard.rule: "Host(`traefik.staging.onetribe.team`)"
    traefik.http.middlewares.auth.basicauth.users: user-staging:$2y$05$us7dsDg56EJ/qojvhLvy9OEshrzoWjGSKXziBqeiFq3Ehf1pAiGSG Let’s go line by line in file. config/deploy.yml On line enables Traefik Dashboard, as it is disabled by default. 5, api.dashboard: true On line I defined a router that will serve the dashboard. The internal Traefik API service is called ; I attached it to the router. 7, api@internal dashboard Then, on line I defined a rule that tells Traefik to serve the dashboard on the domain. Rule can be based . 9, traefik.onetribe.team on the path, the host, the headers, etc Since I don’t want to expose the dashboard to the public, I added a basic authentication middleware on lines and . Traefik supports different authentication methods: , , , etc. I used basic authentication, as it is the easiest to configure. 9 10 basic digest forward Password can be encrypted with the command, which is a , and this is really amazing how software, which is 20 years old, is still in use. To encrypt a password for a new user, run the following command. htpasswd part of the Apache toolkit htpasswd -nB user Traefik Logging Besides the visualization of the configuration, it is important to have good logging. Most of my Kamal projects use AWS CloudWatch for logging, so I configured Traefik to send logs to CloudWatch. To do this, I added the following lines to the file. config/deploy.yml logging:
  driver: awslogs
  options:
    awslogs-region: us-east-1
    awslogs-group: application
    awslogs-create-group: true
    tag: "-" This will configure logging for your application containers. In the example above, I used as a log group; you can use any name you want. The option is important; I used the container name and ID to distinguish logs from different containers. The picture below demonstrates how logs are organized in the CloudWatch. application tag As you see, besides application container logs, I also have a Traefik log stream, which includes both error and access logs (which is not the best, but it is how it is). Traefik logging can be configured by passing arguments to the Traefik container. I assume that my health check requests are pretty fast, so I set the minimum duration to 50ms to filter not important data. traefik:
  args:
    log.format: json
    accesslog: true
    accesslog.format: json
    accesslog.filters.minduration: 50ms Middlewares 101 I already talked about middlewares earlier in this article; let’s have a closer look at them. Middlewares are a piece of code that can modify the request or the response before it reaches the service. I used a basic authentication middleware to protect the Traefik dashboard. As we already know, each router has a set of settings and is also a setting that accepts a list of middlewares. Each middleware should be defined with it is own labels. middlewares traefik.http.middlewares.<middleware_1>.basicauth.users: username:<encrypted_password>
traefik.http.middlewares.<middleware_2>.ipwhitelist.sourcerange: 127.0.0.1/32
traefik.http.routers.<router_name>.middlewares: <middleware_1>, <middleware_2>, <middleware_3> : Traefik middlewares are not global. They are attached to the router, so you need to define them for each router separately. Important Kamal adds a to each service that uses Traefik. It is essential to know because if you add a middleware to a router, it will replace the default middleware. If you want to add a middleware to the default middleware, you must add it to the list of middlewares. default middleware WWW Redirect Redirecting from a www to a non-www domain is a common practice. It is important to have a single domain for SEO and security reasons. In Nginx, I used to do this with a simple directive. rewrite server {
  server_name www.onetribe.team;
  return 301 $scheme://onetribe.team$request_uri;
} To do this with Traefik, you need to configure on the router. RedirectRegex middleware servers:
  web:
    hosts:
      - <ip_address>
    labels:
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.middlewares: onetribe-web-www-redirect@docker
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.regex: ^http://www.(.*)
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.replacement: https://$1 You probably noticed that I used schema in regex. Why not ? In all my configurations with Traefik, I do HTTPS termination on the load balancer before the request reaches Traefik. In Rails, 7.1 introduced to handle such configurations. http:// https:// config.assume_ssl option Compress Almost all Nginx configurations I saw had a directive. Compressing responses to save bandwidth and speed up the website is a good practice. Digital Ocean has an , explaining how HTTP compression works and how to configure it with Nginx. gzip excellent tutorial server {
  # ...
  gzip on;
  gzip_comp_level 2;
  gzip_min_length 1000;
  gzip_proxied any;
  gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
  gzip_vary on;
  # ...
} Traefik has a that can be used to achieve the same result. Compress middleware servers:
  web:
    hosts:
      - <ip_address>
    labels:
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.middlewares: onetribe-web-compress@docker
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-compress.compress: true Full Example The example below combines two middleware defined above and a middleware that is added by default by Kamal–Retry. The Retry middleware reissues requests a given number of times to a backend server if that server does not reply. servers:
  web:
    hosts:
      - <ip_address>
    labels:
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.middlewares: onetribe-web-www-redirect@docker,onetribe-web-retry@docker,onetribe-web-compress@docker
      traefik.http.routers.onetribe-web.rule: PathPrefix(`/`)
      traefik.http.services.onetribe-web.loadbalancer.server.scheme: http

      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.regex: ^http://www.(.*)
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-www-redirect.redirectregex.replacement: https://$1

      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-compress.compress: true

      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-retry.retry.attempts: 5
      traefik.http.middlewares.onetribe-web-retry.retry.initialinterval: 500ms Rails Assets Handling Last, it is not about the Traefik but about the Rails configuration. With Nginx, I usually didn’t care about how my CSS, JS, and other static assets were handled; Nginx did this for me. All required headers (like compression that we discussed above and cache control) were added by Nginx. Traefik is not a web server; it is an edge router, so it doesn’t handle static assets. It means that you need to configure Rails to handle static assets properly. Stop, Rails static file handling is slow and not efficient. And you are right, or at least you were right. Modern versions of Puma handle static assets well. Besides, in 2024, we usually use cloud storage like AWS S3 to handle user uploads, so Rails will only serve CSS and JS files, which is not a big deal for Puma. I ended with something like this in my file. config/environments/production.rb # config/environments/production.rb
  # ...

  config.public_file_server.enabled = true
  config.public_file_server.headers = {
    "Cache-Control" => "public, max-age=#{30.days.to_i}, must-revalidate"
  } header is important; it tells the browser how long it should cache the file. In this example, I set it to 30 days. Must-revalidate tells the browser to revalidate the file after the cache expires. Cache-Control With such settings, Rails will serve static files only once for each client. If you think this is not enough, you can use a CDN like Cloudflare or AWS CloudFront to cache responses from Rails and dramatically reduce the load on your server. Conclusion As it usually happens with new technologies, it takes time to get used to them. Traefik is not an exception. It took me a while to understand how it works and how to configure it. At the same time, I see the benefits of using Traefik over Nginx with Rails – the main one is, of course, support of Docker out of the box. I believe this was the main reason why Basecamp decided to go with Traefik. Almost a year has passed since I switched our first project to Traefik, and I’m happy with the result. I hope you will find this article useful. Feel free to ask questions in the comments below.

A Beginner's Guide to Traefik Tuning for Rails Applications

A Short History of the World, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES The Greek-speaking eastern half of the Roman Empire showed much more political tenacity than the western half. It weathered the disasters of the fifth century A.D., which saw a complete and final breaking up of the original Latin Roman power. Attila bullied the Emperor Theodosius II and sacked and raided almost to the walls of Constantinople, but that city remained intact. The Nubians came down the Nile and looted Upper Egypt, but Lower Egypt and Alexandria were left still fairly prosperous. Most of Asia Minor was held against the Sassanid Persians. The sixth century, which was an age of complete darkness for the West, saw indeed a considerable revival of the Greek power. Justinian I (527-565) was a ruler of very great ambition and energy, and he was married to the Empress Theodora, a woman of quite equal capacity who had begun life as an actress. Justinian reconquered North Africa from the Vandals and most of Italy from the Goths. He even regained the south of Spain. He did not limit his energies to naval and military enterprises. He founded a university, built the great church of Sta. Sophia in Constantinople and codified the Roman law. But in order to destroy a rival to his university foundation he closed the schools of philosophy in Athens, which had been going on in unbroken continuity from the days of Plato, that is to say for nearly a thousand years. From the third century onwards the Persian Empire had been the steadfast rival of the Byzantine. The two empires kept Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt in a state of perpetual unrest and waste. In the first century A.D., these lands were still at a high level of civilization, wealthy and with an abundant population, but the continual coming and going of armies, massacres, looting and war taxation wore them down steadily until only shattered and ruinous cities remained upon a countryside of scattered peasants. In this melancholy process of impoverishment and disorder lower Egypt fared perhaps less badly than the rest of the world. Alexandria, like Constantinople, continued a dwindling trade between the east and the west. THE CHURCH (NOW A MOSQUE) OF S. SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE The obelisk of Theodosius in in the foreground statue on left Photo: Sebah & Foaillier Science and political philosophy seemed dead now in both these warring and decaying empires. The last philosophers of Athens, until their suppression, preserved the texts of the great literature of the past with an infinite reverence and want of understanding. But there remained no class of men in the world, no free gentlemen with bold and independent habits of thought, to carry on the tradition of frank statement and enquiry embodied in these writings. The social and political chaos accounts largely for the disappearance of this class, but there was also another reason why the human intelligence was sterile and feverish during this age. In both Persia and Byzantium it was all age of intolerance. Both empires were religious empires in a new way, in a way that greatly hampered the free activities of the human mind. THE MAGNIFICENT ROOF-WORK IN S. SOPHIA Photo: Sebah & Foaillier Of course the oldest empires in the world were religious empires, centring upon the worship of a god or of a god-king. Alexander was treated as a divinity and the Cæsars were gods in so much as they had altars and temples devoted to them and the offering of incense was made a test of loyalty to the Roman state. But these older religions were essentially religions of act and fact. They did not invade the mind. If a man offered his sacrifice and bowed to the god, he was left not only to think but to say practically whatever he liked about the affair. But the new sort of religions that had come into the world, and particularly Christianity, turned inward. These new faiths demanded not simply conformity but understanding belief. Naturally fierce controversy ensued upon the exact meaning of the things believed. These new religions were creed religions. The world was confronted with a new word, Orthodoxy, and with a stern resolve to keep not only acts but speech and private thought within the limits of a set teaching. For to hold a wrong opinion, much more to convey it to other people, was no longer regarded as an intellectual defect but a moral fault that might condemn a soul to everlasting destruction. THE RAVENNA PANEL, DEPICTING JUSTINIAN AND HIS COURT Photo: Alinari THE ROCK HEWN TEMPLE AT PETRA Photo: Underwood & Underwood Both Ardashir I who founded the Sassanid dynasty in the third century A.D., and Constantine the Great who reconstructed the Roman Empire in the fourth, turned to religious organizations for help, because in these organizations they saw a new means of using and controlling the wills of men. And already before the end of the fourth century both empires were persecuting free talk and religious innovation. In Persia Ardashir found the ancient Persian religion of Zoroaster (or Zarathushtra) with its priests and temples and a sacred fire that burnt upon its altars, ready for his purpose as a state religion. Before the end of the third century Zoroastrianism was persecuting Christianity, and in 277 A.D. Mani, the founder of a new faith, the Manichæans, was crucified and his body flayed. Constantinople, on its side, was busy hunting out Christian heresies. Manichæan ideas infected Christianity and had to be fought with the fiercest methods; in return ideas from Christianity affected the purity of the Zoroastrian doctrine. All ideas became suspect. Science, which demands before all things the free action of an untroubled mind, suffered a complete eclipse throughout this phase of intolerance. War, the bitterest theology, and the usual vices of mankind constituted Byzantine life of those days. It was picturesque, it was romantic; it had little sweetness or light. When Byzantium and Persia were not fighting the barbarians from the north, they wasted Asia Minor and Syria in dreary and destructive hostilities. Even in close alliance these two empires would have found it a hard task to turn back the barbarians and recover their prosperity. The Turks or Tartars first come into history as the allies first of one power and then of another. In the sixth century the two chief antagonists were Justinian and Chosroes I; in the opening of the seventh the Emperor Heraclius was pitted against Chosroes II (580). At first and until after Heraclius had become Emperor (610) Chosroes II carried all before him. He took Antioch, Damascus and Jerusalem and his armies reached Chalcedon, which is in Asia Minor over against Constantinople. In 619 he conquered Egypt. Then Heraclius pressed a counter attack home and routed a Persian army at Nineveh (627), although at that time there were still Persian troops at Chalcedon. In 628 Chosroes II was deposed and murdered by his son, Kavadh, and an inconclusive peace was made between the two exhausted empires. Byzantium and Persia had fought their last war. But few people as yet dreamt of the storm that was even then gathering in the deserts to put an end for ever to this aimless, chronic struggle. While Heraclius was restoring order in Syria a message reached him. It had been brought in to the imperial outpost at Bostra south of Damascus; it was in Arabic, an obscure Semitic desert language, and it was read to the Emperor, if it reached him at all, by an interpreter. It was from someone who called himself “Muhammad the Prophet of God.” It called upon the Emperor to acknowledge the One True God and to serve him. What the Emperor said is not recorded. A similar message came to Kavadh at Ctesiphon. He was annoyed, tore up the letter, and bade the messenger begone. This Muhammad, it appeared, was a Bedouin leader whose headquarters were in the mean little desert town of Medina. He was preaching a new religion of faith in the One True God. “Even so, O Lord!” he said; “rend thou his Kingdom from Kavadh.” 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. H. G. Wells (2011). A Short History of the World. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

THE BYZANTINE AND SASSANID EMPIRES

SEVEN CENTURIES IN ASIA (CIRCA 50 B.C. TO A.D. 650)

In Hulk vs. Ghost Rider, both characters have their own unique power tiers, but one thing they have in common is their ability to take down their opponents. Below, you will find a comparison of each character’s Superpowers and Weaknesses, as well as their Matchups. Keep reading to learn which superpowers are best for the upcoming full fight. Hulk vs Ghost Rider power tier list The MCU’s latest crossover, Hulk vs Ghost Rider, features two powerful superheroes and their respective powers. In this list, we will look at the strengths and weaknesses of both the Hulk and the Ghost Rider. As far as power tiers go, the Red Hulk and the Ghost Rider are both ranked at the top. However, you must keep in mind that they are not equals! They each possess their own unique abilities and are powerful opponents. Ghost Rider (2006) #12 Although the Ghost Rider is powerful, he isn’t immune to physical harm. In fact, in his first appearance, he survived an explosion in a firework factory and still remained conscious. His powers have also been compared with Hulk, but the latter is arguably better at physical combat. The Ghost Rider can also resist the effects of Aida’s electrokinesis powers. Despite being bulletproof, the Ghost Rider has also been impaled by Carbon Spikes. The original Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze, is arguably the most powerful of the two. He is one of the most underrated characters in the Marvel universe, yet he is an impressively powerful character. His full use of strength has allowed him to defeat Dr. Strange, Mephisto, and Asmodeus. However, he also is vulnerable to the powers of the near-infinite Zarathos. Because of this, he is often the human safety net for the Hulk and the Ghost Rider. The primary power of the Hulk is his immense superhuman strength. This strength increases with his anger. The Hulk can break down vehicles with a single punch or stomp the ground while dealing huge amounts of damage. He can also stop a speeding Humvee with a single punch, and his thunderclap is enough to stop a military helicopter from blowing up. Superpowers The first half of the Hulk vs Ghost Rider Full Fighter is an explosive clash between the two superpowered Marvel characters. Hulk and Ghost Rider have been in a feud since the 1960s, and this battle was not one to be missed! The two have been in a number of mutual matchups, and they both are capable of crushing one another. The Hulk is considered the strongest character in the Marvel universe, but there are some characters that can match the Hulk’s strength and power, such as Ghost Rider. The Ghost Rider, however, is not the strongest of the two, and he is able to defeat the Hulk in Banner form. Both of these characters are powerful, but each has its own special abilities. The Hulk has unlimited strength and can withstand physical damage and hellfire. Meanwhile, Ghost Rider is practically invulnerable to physical damage. Whether you are looking for a great battle or a thrilling climax, you’ll be amazed by how strong and versatile each of these characters is. The Hulk is a superhuman with endless strength and a remarkable ability to regenerate his body. His incredible strength is complemented by his endless stamina. And he is able to breathe underwater thanks to specialized glands. The Hulk also has a vision of ghosts and is able to see ghosts. Whether they’re fighting for the ultimate prize or the last to go, this full-flight battle is sure to be a spectacular one! The two heroes’ abilities in this match are extremely different. The Hulk is the stronger of the two, but the Ghost Rider is able to use his ghostly powers against the Hulk. His ability to smell sin extends far beyond his nasal cavity, allowing him to sense evil and sin. It also allows the Ghost Rider to see and feel what the other is doing. Weaknesses In Hulk vs. Ghost Rider Full Fight, the Hulk is the more powerful character. However, the Ghost Rider can be a strong opponent. He can heal after being KO’d and is very difficult to defeat without control. Moreover, the Ghost Rider can be very hard to hit, so you have to be patient. The full fight will have some interesting moments, which you can’t miss. The Hulk’s strength is always impressive and surprising. He is so strong that he can shred tanks like paper. He is also very intelligent, but it doesn’t mean that his abilities are incomparable. Besides, the Ghost Rider can be a great prop, creating cool battle scenarios. However, his weaknesses can’t be overshadowed by the strength of his opponent. The Hulk gets stronger when angry. His unlimited strength could prove to be too much for the demon Zarathos, but the Hulk will still be able to put up a decent fight. The Hulk will eventually crush the demon’s spirit out of Johnny Blaze. It may be hard to imagine that a demon with such power could defeat such a powerful superhero. While the Hulk is considered the strongest non-cosmic character in the Marvel Comics universe, there are some characters that are equally strong. For example, Ghost Rider is capable of defeating Hulk in Banner form. However, the Ghost Rider is a great fighter and has beaten the Hulk in the past. Despite this, the Hulk is still the better choice. Ghost Rider Proves He Can Beat The Hulk In One Brutal Move Matchups While the Hulk is one of the strongest heroes in the Marvel Universe, he is not immune to damage. Both he and Ghost Rider are superhuman. This means that they can match each other in strength. Nonetheless, there are some notable differences between the two. While Hulk is known for his superhuman strength, the Ghost Rider is a powerful yet weak character. Both can defeat the other, but the Hulk has the upper hand. The Hulk is more capable of withstand the attack of the Ghost Rider, and he is not prone to knockouts. The Ghost Rider, on the other hand, has a lack of intellect and planning. He operates purely instinctively, which could prove fatal against intelligent opponents such as Bruce Banner. Although the Hulk has many weaknesses, his anger and power will overcome these shortcomings. If Hulk is able to defeat Ghost Rider, he may be able to use weapons forged in Hell and Heaven. However, Hulk is not as powerful when using religious devices, while Ghost Rider is vulnerable to such devices. However, he has an advantage in other areas. His ability to manipulate hellfire is a significant factor in deciding the outcome of this fight. The Hulk has superior strength, while the Ghost Rider has excellent defense. Both of these heroes have a lot of power. The Hulk has great stamina, while the Ghost Rider’s strength and speed are unmatched. It would be interesting to see the Ghost Rider reverting back to his host form, as his power would be more useful than in his host form. Jinx’s fractured mind could protect him from the Penance Stare, but it could also be a hindrance. Connection to Hulk The She-Hulk is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. She is a lawyer. She attended the UCLA School of Law and is a member of the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for the best legal scholars. She performs legal work as a member of the Magistrati, which has the power to compel her to adjudicate cases anywhere in the creation. However, she ceased functioning as a member of the Magistrati when she adjudicates a case involving the Hulk. The connection to the Hulk is quite simple. Cho was a sidekick to another hero before he became Hulk. Before joining the Hulk family, he was a sidekick to another hero. This made him an excellent choice for the role. Cho was a very good friend of the Hulk and was a strong character in the comics. In the Marvel comics, he fought alongside the Hulk in several battles, but he never actually killed anyone. There has also been an ongoing connection between the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the comics. The first film, The Avengers, was inspired by the comics. It featured Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. The movie also featured their relationship and Bruce Banner’s safety. It was also notable that Bruce Banner and Tony Stark were very close. This close connection was highlighted in the She/Hulk episode. In the comics, the relationship between the two characters was discussed as their mutual respect for each other. Interestingly enough, the connection between Bruce Banner and the Hulk isn’t revealed until issue #6. In Hulk #6, the connection between Banner and the Hulk is revealed to have been slipping. This connection allows the consciousness of “something much worse” to take control of the Hulk’s body. This causes Hulk to transform into a twisted Titan. It’s unclear whether this connection is the same as the connection between Bruce Banner and the Hulk. Also Published on: https://mashradar.com/hulk-vs-ghost-rider-full-fight-power-comparison/

Hulk Vs Ghost Rider Full Fight Power Comparison

Not too long ago, Howtotoken started the (details about it ) and the core idea was simple: build a moderated list of 10,000 questions for anyone who wants to learn more about the blockchain and cryptocurrency in general, and this challenge is already running into its fourth week: 10KQA Challenge here Week 1 report Week 2 report Week 3 report One of the most interesting questions asked this week was in a discussion about Bitmain starting to sell its , and how this will affect the profits when mining Ethereum. Thanks to the experts, we have received an interesting answer that we will now share with the community in this weekly report. But before we dive into that, let’s go over some of the other interesting questions and answers that were talked about this week. Antminer E3 Why are cryptocurrencies acceptable under Sharia Law? As we all know, last week Islamic countries were allowed to use crypto by Muhammad Abu Bakar, but the most interesting question here is why cryptocurrency could be considered Halal and here are some of the reasons: Cryptocurrencies are not controlled by a centralized system, which is what makes them more secure than other current financial systems out there. Cryptocurrencies are widely accepted; hence, it is money. However, Abu Bakar notes that while cryptocurrencies are halal in most cases, they are not halal in all. For instance, they are not halal in jurisdictions were they are banned. He also stated that it is not advisable to use cryptocurrencies for investment purposes. Regarding the current situation with the high volatility of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, there was an interesting question asked about stable coins. Which USD-backed stable coin is the most reliable and why? , suggests considering if you need a replicative asset for dollars in the world of crypto. Jonathan Ponciano TrueUSD The main reason for it is the legal framework developed by the issuer to protect token holders. It does this by creating a strong link between tokens and underlying dollars. The product is being developed in partnership with banks, two Washington D.C. law firms, a crypto hedge fund, and a New York investment firm. This platform is called TrustToken, where all operations with this token are stored. The next questions are in regards to mining, as more and more news about this field is currently the hot-topic of conversation. Security and hidden miners still plague users, but there are some basic recommendations that you can follow to avoid that. How do I prevent hidden mining on my computer? , a co-founder and an active entrepreneur, describes six ways to guarantee that no one will mine from your computer in an article for his website. Adash Verma Fossbytes He says that most websites are using Coin Hive for mining. Here are the instruments to block it: 1. Use the No Coin Chrome extension “As soon as you visit a website, No Coin will detect and show you if any such activity is going on. You’ll see a red symbol as shown in the screenshot below. While this extension blocks any such activity, it also allows you to whitelist a website for a period of time.” 2. Use the minerBlock Chrome extension The principle of this extension is the same. However, currently this service has less miner domains on their list. 3. Block coin mining domains in hosts file “This is the manual way of blocking particular domains that you find harmful or irritating. Due to this method of blocking, your browser won’t be able to connect to these domains. We can edit the hosts file and redirect it to 0.0.0.0. For Windows, navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc and edit the hosts document to add 0.0.0.0 coin-hive.com at the end. Please note that this change blocks the mining scripts which are hosted by coin-hive.com. In case you come across other mining script domains, you can add them further down the line.” 4. Block domains in AdBlocker Go to the “Customize” section, then direct yourself to “Block an Ad by its URL” and insert the following link: https://coin-hive.com/lib/coinhive.min.js 5. Use NoScripts in Firefox NoScripts might be an option if you use Firefox. However, it is pretty aggressive and usually blocks too many websites. 6. The Opera browser “With the release of the Opera 50 web browser, the company brought in-built functionality to block CoinHive scripts and cryptocurrency mining techniques. This will allow users to make sure that their computers doesn’t go crazy whenever any website that is using the digital coin mining technique is encountered. The users can find this option in Settings (Preferences on macOS) > Basic > Block ads, and under the Recommended lists of ad filters click NoCoin.” How do you spot a website that is mining using your computer? , an author of , has the solution for you. Eric Limer popularmechanics.com One of the most prominent symptoms of “cryptojacking” is an immediate and abrupt change in the overall performance of your computer. It will usually slow down your machine significantly. “If you notice either of these conditions and get suspicious, just pull up your Task Manager on Windows (Ctrl+Alt+Delete) or Activity Monitor on a Mac (Command + Space and search for “Activity Monitor”). If your web browser is pulling a particularly high percentage of CPU power (close to all of it), there might be a cryptojacker at play. If you suspect a certain website is to blame, you can test your theory by closing the tab and monitoring the results or, in Google Chrome, go to the Menu, then More Tools, then Task Manager to check CPU usage by tab.” What is the effect of Bitmain’s ASIC-miner E3 on mining process of ETH? The first bulk of miners are already sold out and will be delivered to its users in the second half of July 2018, but now we should take the time to calculate and analyze the characteristics and risks that need to be taken into consideration. The Antminer E3 is the first Ethereum-based ASIC miner. Prior to this, GPUs like the RX570 were the most cost-effective method to mining Ethereum, offering 1MH/s at a . The E3 in comparison offers 1MH/s at $4.40, so it’s around 2.27x more cost effective. Interestingly enough, it isn’t more efficient in power usage; the RX570 and GPUs are more efficient in that regard. cost of around $12 1080 Ti It’s great to see what the ROI is for this miner: Full-size table here: https://www.anythingcrypto.com/bitcoin-mining-calculators The main risks for miners is that the plan for changing to the hybrid proof-of-work/proof-of-stake algorithm called Casper (which could potentially lead to Ethereum becoming fully proof-of-stake based) could make it so that you are no longer able to mine it. The real question that needs to be asked is when this will be implemented, as ASICs are going to become a problem in several months. However, Casper may not be implemented until months or even years after that — so a short-term solution may be needed (although, because the E3 isn’t drastically more efficient than existing GPUs, this may not even be necessary). To join our challenge and get new updates, follow us on: Telegram: TENKQA Twitter: @howtotoken I will be appreciative of all participants, ideas, and discussions. It is my hope that we will all be able to get something positive from the process and that unforgettable feeling of having a flow. We are also looking for moderators to join our challenge who will learn with us and search for new questions and answers regarding the blockchain and cryptocurrency in these categories: Core Blockchain Development Profits (trading, ICO, mining) Real Disruptive Models Laws and Regulations ** **👏 We need your claps to reach more people since this is a new publication. Please spread this story with a tweet, Facebook share, etc. About the author: — Founder of Geekforge.io and Howtotoken.com. Interviewing the top 10,000 worldwide experts who reveal the biggest issues on the way to technological singularity. Join my . Kirill Shilov #10kqachallenge: GeekForge Formula

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