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This year is shaping up to be yet another grim time for white-collar tech workers after enduring a tumultuous year of mass layoffs and dozens of tech giants putting thousands of employees’ heads on the chopping block. The . In mid-March, Amazon it would cut a further 9,000 corporate jobs. This comes right after the tech giant already sacked more than 18,000 white-collar jobs last year. tech layoff pulse is still beating strong announced Amazon isn’t alone in this. Just a few days earlier, Zuckerburg-run Meta that it will slash another 10,000 jobs on top of the 11,000 workers they laid off in November 2022. announced Elon Musk-owned Twitter has also trimmed the fat in recent months. When the CEO and founder of the cars manufacturer and distributor of Tesla became the sole owner of the social media platform, there were more than 8,000 employees. global electric That number has since come down to a mere 1,500 according to recent . reports Tech companies big and small, and even new-age startups have announced that they were planning on lowering their headcount as they try to navigate macroeconomic headwinds. What’s more, since the start of 2023, 575 tech companies have reported laying off more than 169,858 employees to date, according to . Layoffs.fyi January through March and much of April have already seen tens of thousands of tech workers getting the boot, with January marking more than . 84,000 layoffs alone Still, tech giants remain hopeful that conditions will start changing in the later stage of the year and perhaps reach full recovery again by the end of 2024. With news of more layoffs to come in the months ahead, many wonder where the thousands of disgruntled techies will be going or have gone. The mass layoffs come at a time of general labor market weirdness and when experts suggest that job vacancies have started declining for the first time since the post-pandemic era. The Hiring Freeze Let’s start with what some companies have already been doing for several months in an effort to clamp down on excessive employee headcounts and lower their expenses. Many tech companies, and more recently, businesses in finance, crypto, and blockchain have initiated hiring freezes. Instead of bringing onboard new employees to fill vacant roles, employers are pulling back on hiring new staff. Companies such as Meta, which have already laid off thousands, have announced that it’s closing hiring for nearly and are looking to cancel low-priority projects that are eating away at their bottom line. 5,000 open roles Some tech names that have been struggling to navigate the tough economic climate have announced that hiring freezes could continue well into next year. This would mean that existing employees, at least for now, would need to double their efforts to handle increased workloads and take on more responsibilities before the business hits rock bottom. The available jobs, however, do not come with the illustrious perks enjoyed by those tech workers that flocked to Silicon Valley by the thousands during the 2010s. Many companies, including names such as Apple, have resulted in cutting down on employee benefits and perks as a . possible cost-cutting measure While those that are hiring may offer substantial compensation, techies won’t have access to the employee-only benefits they once had, such as hybrid work, staff meals, paid time off, or even paid team-building events, among other things. In a time where employment in the industry is at an inflection point, and the outlook is growing increasingly grim, giving up a free club sandwich to secure your job in the short term doesn't seem like a bad idea, now does it? Now Hiring, Part-Time In the past, tech workers and professionals could job hop as frequently as possible, leaving one job and stepping into another. Unfortunately, the current market and economic climate do not allow them much room to shuffle or transition. The U.S. and industry group CompTIA showed that payrolls of tech companies have slightly decreased in March 2023. Overall, the industry employers added more than 76,546 new job postings, bringing the total number of openings up to 316,000. Bureau of Labor Statistics Other that the industry could add more than 272,000 new tech jobs this year, but this all hinges on the prospect of improving economic and financial conditions. sources estimate Yet, the number of unemployed people across the country remained relatively low, hitting a of 3.5% in March this year. five-decade low Elsewhere, some sources have claimed that access to full-time paid positions has decreased, making it harder for tech workers to find vacancies that can pay them their market value but also offer them secure employment opportunities. One former tech worker that although recruiters are actively contracting previously laid-off employees, merely 20% of them are looking to hire full-time. Most companies seeking new hires are only bringing on people on a contract or part-time basis. said Having more employees hired as contract workers and instead offering them full-time jobs gives them more leverage to let employees go once their contracts have ended or fire them if conditions deteriorate further. It’s also worth mentioning that even if laid-off techies do land a part-time or contract gig, it doesn't necessarily come with the pay that they’re used to. Contract workers in content moderation or customer service teams are being paid substantially less than their full-time peers. In some instances, it’s been recalled that some part-time employees are making around a quarter of the salary of a software engineer. The use of has allowed tech giants easier access to wider pools of tech talent and hiring them as they were needed. microwork platforms Now that funding and investments are drying up, and advertisers are pulling back on their marketing dollars, companies can easily let employees go without it affecting their bottom line. What About the Jobs That Are Available? Well, in a time when tens of thousands of workers are being let go globally, the competition has become increasingly tough. Those applying for roles will need to outsmart and out win other applicants in the hopes of . securing a full-time job Even once they have managed to sign on the dotted line and get to work, there’s little certainty that they will be kept around for the long term and fall victim to being laid off at a later stage. These worrisome and seemingly anxiety-induced conditions have led to greater issues that have now started affecting current employees and those actively seeking new employment. A Gartner found that roughly 77% of British tech workers are currently unhappy in their jobs. Many of them are seeking greater and increased mobility instead of job security, the opposite of what some laid-off employees are hoping for at the current stage. report What’s more, the Gartner research found that around one in five techies are ready to leave their jobs as soon as possible, with only 11% citing being happy in their current role. Lower headcounts, budget cuts, and fewer hands on deck have meant that many tech workers have now been driven to increase their capacity to meet productivity demands. This doesn’t only come at the cost of the employer but also employees that are now experiencing increased levels of job-related stress and burnout. Finding balance and even finding a job in the cooling tech job market requires techies to be more agile and mobile than ever before. Being more open-minded to available jobs while at the same time being more versatile and willing to sacrifice certain qualities to secure a new job. Find a Job, or Leave For decades, tech giants have nursed specific visa programs that attracted thousands of foreign workers to Silicon Valley. Employers were dishing out thousands of dollars in visa sponsorship every year to secure the best tech talent the global labor market has to offer. One thing was non-negotiable, as long as foreign workers remain employed, they can legally reside in the country. Many foreign workers that migrated to the U.S. on an H-1B visa have now been left to as mass layoffs continue. Those caught in the crossfire, having been sacked in recent months, are now on the prowl for new employers that will sponsor their immigration status. fend for themselves The risk of deportation is high; in some instances, laid-off foreign workers have roughly 60 days to find new employment before they are forced to leave. Without a full-time job or employment, thousands of foreign tech talent, which the U.S. desperately needs at the moment to keep up with rivals such as China, would be forced to leave once their visa terms expire. This would not only be a loss to employees and their employers, but some experts suggest that the American tech and technology sector could lose an entire generation's worth of tech talent if foreign workers have no other option but to go back to their native countries. The problem with America's foreign immigration system isn’t anything new. For decades, big tech companies have including F-1, L-1, and H-1B to attract top talent to the maturing tech sector. relied on student and work visa programs Limitations on visa programs, such as H-1B, which is capped at 85,000 per year have remained the same since the 1990s. Even as the country’s tech sector starts to mature, and more technology companies start popping up outside of Silicon Valley, and a notoriously difficult immigration system have been a blow to America’s tech landscape and the foreign-born talent that helped it grow into a global superpower. stringent immigration reform Now being , if they’re not able to land another job that can sponsor their immigration status, many foreign-born techies that have found their jobs on the chopping block in recent months are heading abroad. forced to leave the country Destinations such as Australia, Singapore, the UK, and America’s neighbor, Canada, have allowed many workers more freedom to start their own company or to find a new job. While some companies have offered to help foreign working techies find new employment to secure their immigration status, others were simply left in the dark and had to self-deport to avoid long-term immigration issues or blockades on their passports if they’re likely to return. America was for long a top destination for tech talent, but outdated immigration policies and systems have now forced them to self-deport or leave for other foreign markets that can offer them more attractive opportunities. Opting for Other Prospects The grim labor market has led to many tech workers changing lanes into other sectors that currently require their expertise. Several industries that have been enjoying steady growth and investment opportunities due to increased consumer and corporate demand have meant that tech workers could potentially find new opportunities in jobs that are outside of their general scope of practice. Businesses in healthcare, , and data analysis, among others have become attractive options for many tech workers. cybersecurity Although these roles are somewhat different than what they have been used to, they can, however, provide them with new employment opportunities and give them a fresh perspective on their careers. Elsewhere, jobs in supply chain management, digital infrastructure, tourism, and hospitality and information technology, to name but a few, are also hiring laid-off tech workers. While the work itself is slightly different, but still requires specific expertise and may not offer the same perks as their former employer, duties and responsibilities remain heavily tech-related. The change of industry allows employees to keep working on projects they’re well-known for, but at the same time, broaden their experience in different industries and network with a completely new set of employers. It’s still a very interconnected position, but this time, it’s not purely based on tech derivatives, and tech employees may become more humbled by their change of scenery in the long run. Looking Forward The short answer, however, is that America's tech workers are still here. They're just working in different industries, looking to diversify their career options and grow their expertise in fields they've previously never considered. While tech workers may be facing a tremendous amount of challenges and uncertainty, especially for foreign-born workers, opportunities in other industries could be a possible solution to their tight labor market conditions. However, they can’t bank on finding similar tech-related jobs in other sectors such as healthcare or cybersecurity infrastructure, as these may be limited, and competition can be stark at the same time. For those former employees that have been placed in a position where they have to self-deport to avoid immigration troubles, other developed markets could be a potential solution to their crumbling American dream. Years of sporadic growth and ambitious hiring, against the backdrop of slowing economic conditions, outdated immigration systems, and a lack of innovation has now left America in the backseat in the field of tech advancement. And with the sector only experiencing further headwinds, America will be left behind while its top local and foreign-born talent seek new ventures in more prosperous and advanced markets.

Laid-Off Techies: Where Are You Going?

ছাঁটাই করা প্রযুক্তি: আপনি কোথায় যাচ্ছেন?

Entlassene Technikfreaks: Wohin gehen Sie?

Techies despedidos: ¿Adónde vas?

Techniciens licenciés : où allez-vous ?

लेड-ऑफ टेकीज़: आप कहाँ जा रहे हैं?

解雇された技術者: どこへ行くの?

해고된 기술자: 어디로 가시나요?

Técnicos demitidos: para onde você está indo?

İşten Çıkarılan Teknisyenler: Nereye Gidiyorsunuz?

Những kỹ thuật viên thất nghiệp: Bạn đang đi đâu thế?

下岗技术人员：你要去哪里？

The Adventure of the Cheap Flat

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . GEOFFREY RAYMOND CHAPTER XV. GEOFFREY RAYMOND I was to have a further proof that day of the success of Poirot’s tactics. That challenge of his had been a subtle touch born of his knowledge of human nature. A mixture of fear and guilt had wrung the truth from Mrs. Ackroyd. She was the first to react. That afternoon when I returned from seeing my patients, Caroline told me that Geoffrey Raymond had just left. “Did he want to see me?” I asked, as I hung up my coat in the hall. Caroline was hovering by my elbow. “It was M. Poirot he wanted to see,” she said. “He’d just come from The Larches. M. Poirot was out. Mr. Raymond thought that he might be here, or that you might know where he was.” “I haven’t the least idea.” “I tried to make him wait,” said Caroline, “but he said he would call back at The Larches in half an hour, and went away down the village. A great pity, because M. Poirot came in practically the minute after he left.” “Came in here?” “No, to his own house.” “How do you know?” “The side window,” said Caroline briefly. It seemed to me that we had now exhausted the topic. Caroline thought otherwise. “Aren’t you going across?” “Across where?” “To The Larches, of course.” “My dear Caroline,” I said, “what for?” “Mr. Raymond wanted to see him very particularly,” said Caroline. “You might hear what it’s all about.” I raised my eyebrows. “Curiosity is not my besetting sin,” I remarked coldly. “I can exist comfortably without knowing exactly what my neighbors are doing and thinking.” “Stuff and nonsense, James,” said my sister. “You want to know just as much as I do. You’re not so honest, that’s all. You always have to pretend.” “Really, Caroline,” I said, and retired into my surgery. Ten minutes later Caroline tapped at the door and entered. In her hand she held what seemed to be a pot of jam. “I wonder, James,” she said, “if you would mind taking this pot of medlar jelly across to M. Poirot? I promised it to him. He has never tasted any home-made medlar jelly.” “Why can’t Annie go?” I asked coldly. “She’s doing some mending. I can’t spare her.” Caroline and I looked at each other. “Very well,” I said, rising. “But if I take the beastly thing, I shall just leave it at the door. You understand that?” My sister raised her eyebrows. “Naturally,” she said. “Who suggested you should do anything else?” The honors were with Caroline. “If you happen to see M. Poirot,” she said, as I opened the front door, “you might tell him about the boots.” do It was a most subtle parting shot. I wanted dreadfully to understand the enigma of the boots. When the old lady with the Breton cap opened the door to me, I found myself asking if M. Poirot was in, quite automatically. Poirot sprang up to meet me, with every appearance of pleasure. “Sit down, my good friend,” he said. “The big chair? This small one? The room is not too hot, no?” I thought it was stifling, but refrained from saying so. The windows were closed, and a large fire burned in the grate. “The English people, they have a mania for the fresh air,” declared Poirot. “The big air, it is all very well outside, where it belongs. Why admit it to the house? But let us not discuss such banalities. You have something for me, yes?” “Two things,” I said. “First—this—from my sister.” I handed over the pot of medlar jelly. “How kind of Mademoiselle Caroline. She has remembered her promise. And the second thing?” “Information—of a kind.” And I told him of my interview with Mrs. Ackroyd. He listened with interest, but not much excitement. “It clears the ground,” he said thoughtfully. “And it has a certain value as confirming the evidence of the housekeeper. She said, you remember, that she found the silver table lid open and closed it down in passing.” “What about her statement that she went into the drawing-room to see if the flowers were fresh?” “Ah! we never took that very seriously, did we, my friend? It was patently an excuse, trumped up in a hurry, by a woman who felt it urgent to explain her presence—which, by the way, you would probably never have thought of questioning. I considered it possible that her agitation might arise from the fact that she had been tampering with the silver table, but I think now that we must look for another cause.” “Yes,” I said. “Whom did she go out to meet? And why?” “You think she went to meet some one?” “I do.” Poirot nodded. “So do I,” he said thoughtfully. There was a pause. “By the way,” I said, “I’ve got a message for you from my sister. Ralph Paton’s boots were black, not brown.” I was watching him closely as I gave the message, and I fancied that I saw a momentary flicker of discomposure. If so, it passed almost immediately. “She is absolutely positive they are not brown?” “Absolutely.” “Ah!” said Poirot regretfully. “That is a pity.” And he seemed quite crestfallen. He entered into no explanations, but at once started a new subject of conversation. “The housekeeper, Miss Russell, who came to consult you on that Friday morning—is it indiscreet to ask what passed at the interview—apart from the medical details, I mean?” “Not at all,” I said. “When the professional part of the conversation was over, we talked for a few minutes about poisons, and the ease or difficulty of detecting them, and about drug-taking and drug-takers.” “With special reference to cocaine?” asked Poirot. “How did you know?” I asked, somewhat surprised. For answer, the little man rose and crossed the room to where newspapers were filed. He brought me a copy of the Daily Budget, dated Friday, 16th September, and showed me an article dealing with the smuggling of cocaine. It was a somewhat lurid article, written with an eye to picturesque effect. “That is what put cocaine into her head, my friend,” he said. I would have catechized him further, for I did not quite understand his meaning, but at that moment the door opened and Geoffrey Raymond was announced. He came in fresh and debonair as ever, and greeted us both. “How are you, doctor? M. Poirot, this is the second time I’ve been here this morning. I was anxious to catch you.” “Perhaps I’d better be off,” I suggested rather awkwardly. “Not on my account, doctor. No, it’s just this,” he went on, seating himself at a wave of invitation from Poirot, “I’ve got a confession to make.” “En verité?” said Poirot, with an air of polite interest. “Oh, it’s of no consequence, really. But, as a matter of fact, my conscience has been pricking me ever since yesterday afternoon. You accused us all of keeping back something, M. Poirot. I plead guilty. I’ve had something up my sleeve.” “And what is that, M. Raymond?” “As I say, it’s nothing of consequence—just this. I was in debt—badly, and that legacy came in the nick of time. Five hundred pounds puts me on my feet again with a little to spare.” He smiled at us both with that engaging frankness that made him such a likable youngster. “You know how it is. Suspicious looking policeman—don’t like to admit you were hard up for money—think it will look bad to them. But I was a fool, really, because Blunt and I were in the billiard room from a quarter to ten onwards, so I’ve got a watertight alibi and nothing to fear. Still, when you thundered out that stuff about concealing things, I felt a nasty prick of conscience, and I thought I’d like to get it off my mind.” He got up again and stood smiling at us. “You are a very wise young man,” said Poirot, nodding at him with approval. “See you, when I know that any one is hiding things from me, I suspect that the thing hidden may be something very bad indeed. You have done well.” “I’m glad I’m cleared from suspicion,” laughed Raymond. “I’ll be off now.” “So that is that,” I remarked, as the door closed behind the young secretary. “Yes,” agreed Poirot. “A mere bagatelle—but if he had not been in the billiard room—who knows? After all, many crimes have been committed for the sake of less than five hundred pounds. It all depends on what sum is sufficient to break a man. A question of the relativity, is it not so? Have you reflected, my friend, that many people in that house stood to benefit by Mr. Ackroyd’s death? Mrs. Ackroyd, Miss Flora, young Mr. Raymond, the housekeeper, Miss Russell. Only one, in fact, does not, Major Blunt.” His tone in uttering that name was so peculiar that I looked up, puzzled. “I don’t quite understand you?” I said. “Two of the people I accused have given me the truth.” “You think Major Blunt has something to conceal also?” “As for that,” remarked Poirot nonchalantly, “there is a saying, is there not, that Englishmen conceal only one thing—their love? And Major Blunt, I should say, is not good at concealments.” “Sometimes,” I said, “I wonder if we haven’t rather jumped to conclusions on one point.” “What is that?” “We’ve assumed that the blackmailer of Mrs. Ferrars is necessarily the murderer of Mr. Ackroyd. Mightn’t we be mistaken?” Poirot nodded energetically. “Very good. Very good indeed. I wondered if that idea would come to you. Of course it is possible. But we must remember one point. The letter disappeared. Still, that, as you say, may not necessarily mean that the murderer took it. When you first found the body, Parker may have abstracted the letter unnoticed by you.” “Parker?” “Yes, Parker. I always come back to Parker—not as the murderer—no, he did not commit the murder; but who is more suitable than he as the mysterious scoundrel who terrorized Mrs. Ferrars? He may have got his information about Mr. Ferrars’s death from one of the King’s Paddock servants. At any rate, he is more likely to have come upon it than a casual guest such as Blunt, for instance.” “Parker might have taken the letter,” I admitted. “It wasn’t till later that I noticed it was gone.” “How much later? After Blunt and Raymond were in the room, or before?” “I can’t remember,” I said slowly. “I think it was before—no, afterwards. Yes, I’m almost sure it was afterwards.” “That widens the field to three,” said Poirot thoughtfully. “But Parker is the most likely. It is in my mind to try a little experiment with Parker. How say you, my friend, will you accompany me to Fernly?” I acquiesced, and we set out at once. Poirot asked to see Miss Ackroyd, and presently Flora came to us. “Mademoiselle Flora,” said Poirot, “I have to confide in you a little secret. I am not yet satisfied of the innocence of Parker. I propose to make a little experiment with your assistance. I want to reconstruct some of his actions on that night. But we must think of something to tell him—ah! I have it. I wish to satisfy myself as to whether voices in the little lobby could have been heard outside on the terrace. Now, ring for Parker, if you will be so good.” I did so, and presently the butler appeared, suave as ever. “You rang, sir?” “Yes, my good Parker. I have in mind a little experiment. I have placed Major Blunt on the terrace outside the study window. I want to see if any one there could have heard the voices of Miss Ackroyd and yourself in the lobby that night. I want to enact that little scene over again. Perhaps you would fetch the tray or whatever it was you were carrying?” Parker vanished, and we repaired to the lobby outside the study door. Presently we heard a chink in the outer hall, and Parker appeared in the doorway carrying a tray with a siphon, a decanter of whisky, and two glasses on it. “One moment,” cried Poirot, raising his hand and seemingly very excited. “We must have everything in order. Just as it occurred. It is a little method of mine.” “A foreign custom, sir,” said Parker. “Reconstruction of the crime they call it, do they not?” He was quite imperturbable as he stood there politely waiting on Poirot’s orders. “Ah! he knows something, the good Parker,” cried Poirot. “He has read of these things. Now, I beg you, let us have everything of the most exact. You came from the outer hall—so. Mademoiselle was—where?” “Here,” said Flora, taking up her stand just outside the study door. “Quite right, sir,” said Parker. “I had just closed the door,” continued Flora. “Yes, miss,” agreed Parker. “Your hand was still on the handle as it is now.” “Then allez,” said Poirot. “Play me the little comedy.” Flora stood with her hand on the door handle, and Parker came stepping through the door from the hall, bearing the tray. He stopped just inside the door. Flora spoke. “Oh! Parker. Mr. Ackroyd doesn’t want to be disturbed again to-night.” “Is that right?” she added in an undertone. “To the best of my recollection, Miss Flora,” said Parker, “but I fancy you used the word evening instead of night.” Then, raising his voice in a somewhat theatrical fashion: “Very good, miss. Shall I lock up as usual?” “Yes, please.” Parker retired through the door, Flora followed him, and started to ascend the main staircase. “Is that enough?” she asked over her shoulder. “Admirable,” declared the little man, rubbing his hands. “By the way, Parker, are you sure there were two glasses on the tray that evening? Who was the second one for?” “I always bring two glasses, sir,” said Parker. “Is there anything further?” “Nothing. I thank you.” Parker withdrew, dignified to the last. Poirot stood in the middle of the hall frowning. Flora came down and joined us. “Has your experiment been successful?” she asked. “I don’t quite understand, you know——” Poirot smiled admiringly at her. “It is not necessary that you should,” he said. “But tell me, were there indeed two glasses on Parker’s tray that night?” Flora wrinkled her brows a minute. “I really can’t remember,” she said. “I think there were. Is—is that the object of your experiment?” Poirot took her hand and patted it. “Put it this way,” he said. “I am always interested to see if people will speak the truth.” “And did Parker speak the truth?” “I rather think he did,” said Poirot thoughtfully. A few minutes later saw us retracing our steps to the village. “What was the point of that question about the glasses?” I asked curiously. Poirot shrugged his shoulders. “One must say something,” he remarked. “That particular question did as well as any other.” I stared at him. “At any rate, my friend,” he said more seriously, “I know now something I wanted to know. Let us leave it at that.” 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 (2006). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69087/pg69087-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 .

GEOFFREY RAYMOND

Innocent at Large

And flood him with 💖 for the World Cup final. Didier Deschamps celebrating his team victory in 2018 WC semi-final 🎉(Source: ) France Bleu He made it! France ( 🇫🇷) will face Croatia ( 🇭🇷) this Sunday in Moscow for the 2018 World Cup Final. Allez les Bleus! Čestitamo! 👏👏👏 Bravo Didier! Millions of French people right now would love to give him a warm hug to thank him. But this won’t happen, at least not until he made it home. But, what about shooting him some kind words by ? email This is possible! It’s called email scrapping and this is my technique to find (most of the time) anyone’s email. Find the email pattern 📇 It’s way more difficult to reach personal inboxes. You can’t verify emails hosted on mail servers such as (I’ll get back to that soon). Your best shot is to scrap his or her professional email. Gmail For the email pattern, we know two important things: we’re looking for a man called Didier Deschamps he’s working at as . French Football Federation manager of the French National Team It sounds silly here but this is the first step of every email scrapping session. Now you can open and search for “French Football Federation” to find its domain. The top result says Google fff.fr From here, let’s assume that Didier Deschamps professional email will end by “@fff.fr”. First guess 🤔 You will help yourself with a few tools online. Let’s begin with hunter.io Hunter is a French startup that I considered to be the best email scrapper around. Co-Founder wrote many inspiring stories. (and to read my personal favorite )! François Grante Make sure to check them out here Most of the emails both found and verified by Hunter work. It’s always a good move to ask Hunter before scrapping anything yourself. Go to Hunter and click on “Finder” section. Then, enter the complete name and the domain. 🐺 Hunter’s best guess for Didier Deschamps email is When I hover my mouse over the orange dot, a black box pops up to display a confidence score of 69%. It’s not bad but it’s not a sure shot yet, they tell us they “haven’t found this email on the web”. A verification is mandatory here. didierdeschamps@fff.fr First verification🚦 There’s only one tool that is trustworthy for checking emails, it’s . MailTester Go visit it, copy and paste the email recommended by Hunter and hit the “Check address” button. Let’s see what MailTester thinks about didierdeschamps@fff.fr 🤦‍ Well, it didn’t work as expected! MailTester says didierdeschamps@fff.fr is invalid. They warned us with the orange dot and a confidence score quite far from 100%. Remind that Hunter didn’t find the address online. Don’t blame Hunter. Instead of leaving you alone in the dark, Hunter scan the domain to see what’s the most common pattern used. From there, they build up an email with the complete name of the person you are looking for. We have learned a few things so far: The server “@fff.fr” exists ✅ The server returns answers to MailTester so we can verify emails ✅ The pattern {firstnamelastname@domain} is wrong, we must find another one ⚠️ Many servers decline to answer to MailTester requests, making verifications impossible. MailTester returns a result like this when it happens: The second point here might be the most important of the three. MailTester can’t verify my own valid Gmail address as Google denies permission. Either the server doesn’t allow e-mail address verification or your guess is wrong. When this happens, you have to roll your sleeves and go back to Google to start your investigation. Ask Horatio Caine (of the Internet)🕵️‍ YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!! 🕶🎸🎶 How can we guess Didier Deschamps email from here? We know a valid domain, his email may be not over there (that would be unfortunate) but we must be sure before sailing away ⛵️ MailTester told us the part that failed in our first try was the name. To fix our email pattern, the best thing to do is to look for other emails hosted on the same server. Let’s use Google advanced search syntax and type: email “@fff.fr” Here’s what I’ve found on the 5th page of results: 2 new emails! ✌️ Don’t expect to find people emails in the first pages. You must often read 4–5 results pages to find something relevant like here. Google found two people, B. Marchais and E. Bougeard, as their emails went public. Before going any further, let’s do a sanity check. Hello, E. Bougeard from the French Football Federation 👋 ebougeard@fff.fr works! 🎉🎉🎉 For the record, is invalid. bmarchais@fff.fr I googled “ to make sure she’s still working at the French Football Federation. Turns out that yes, she is but… marchais fff.fr” New email pattern unlocked 🔓 Surprise! 😬 Looks like there are several patterns active on this server. Another quick check to make sure it is: Meh. Mailtester says it can’t verify her email, the server seems to filter access depending on the pattern. Still, what are the odds to publish somewhere on the Internet a fake email address on a contact webpage? 😏 My confidence score for her email: 99% That’s what Google is also useful for. When servers restrict MailTester, your best shot is to google the email to find it somewhere. Trusting the email pattern is mandatory to get results here. Round 2 🥊 Based on the email patterns we’ve found, we can try these two addresses: didier.deschamps@fff.fr ddeschamps@fff.fr So we may not be able to verify with MailTester. Let’s try anyway: didier.deschamps@fff.fr Wrong way ⛔️ Well, this is weird! Could it be possible that this server reads the name pattern to deny checking only valid emails? That would be hilarious 😂 It seems to be the case as it returns as not valid! But joking aside, we still haven’t found Didier’s email. didier.deschamps@fff.fr It’s time to test our second guess: ddeschamps@fff.fr 🥁🥁🥁 🕺🕺🕺 You got it! This email exists, you can now send your kindest words to Didier Deschamps! 💌 Voilà! Various patterns exist on this server, sometimes you can find a few correct ones. For the record, works too. d.deschamps@fff.fr Final Thoughts 💭 Email scrapping could be hard and there’s one very important thing you have to know: You will fail sometimes! , some of them are invisible out there. Some others use old domains that now redirect you to the official website of the company. It’s impossible to find all the existing email addresses Personal emails are the hardest to find, don’t waste too much of your time on these ones. And last but not least, some patterns can be super difficult to decipher. But still, this tutorial can do the trick for those interested in leads generation. Hungry for code? You can write a script to google an email domain, scrap the results, pick up emails and check them on MailTester. Languages such as CasperJs might be useful. Long story short Set the email pattern with the complete name of the person and the company he or she is working for. Go to and see what they found, a green dot means it’s good. hunter.io Verify the email with . MailTester If verification failed, hit Google to find email addresses from the same company. Browse the results, verify the emails found and iterate. Shoot your email! 👉 😉 Clap if you liked my tutorial! More stories are on their way to Medium, hit the subscribe button to make sure to miss none of them. Feel free to post your comment below or shoot me an email at… Well, you’ll figure it out

How to scrap Didier Deschamps email

Looking to invest in an ICO, or get your hands on some already traded coins? Awesome, welcome aboard! Before you jump in, let me give you some clues to spot shaky projects with examples taken from actual ones. These tips come from my experience (and failures) as well the discussion I had both with friends and the cryptocurrency community. Tu parles Français ? Allez viens ! On est bien. The Whitepaper is ALWAYS the most insightful resource Whitepapers (WP for the rest of this article) can be scary. While some manage to keep it short (~10 pages), others can reach the hundreds yet it’s the best place to gauge the seriousness of a project. . So what should you be watching closely in a WP? It’s still the first thing I check once I’m seriously considering a coin The English Language Surprising? Not so much if you put it this way: It might seem small or even petty, but if you find a low-quality English or repeated typos in the WP, you better start running. how to trust an organization unable to put out a flawless WP with a decentralized cryptocurrency project? Big Promises with technical vagueness This is probably the most common, as most people won’t read the technical parts of the whitepaper. Even if you don’t fully get the technical details, the difference between a WP trying to cover its lies and a transparent one are quite apparent. , the full recipe is here: SFIcoin is the perfect example of this — DONT INVEST: SCAM : “The Next Global Paying System”. Big promises that don’t mean anything : their WP that details the vision, the roadmap, the use cases but doesn’t address AT all the tech. Unbacked claims Last but not the least, the SFICOIN is just going to be the first leading peer to peer cryptocurrency to manage the high-value instant payments. : massive red flag. There are no certainties in cryptocurrencies. “We will be the first to X” lot of visuals, a lot of work on design but overall it’s empty of real meaning. A WP made by marketers for marketers It’s ok for a WP to get quite technical (here is Stellar’s — XLM), but it’s not OK to cover an absence of technical solution with jargon. The Darwin Awards of Whitepapers Wanna see how does a terrible WP looks like? , it’s been 7 months and I can’t find any worse. Out of the 22 pages, ~18 are spitting copy pasta about the future. Most of the paper is very generic, and so many things in it are so off. I had to pick one so here we go, the comparison between Narbonne, Ether um and Wa es. Yes, you read it right, they can’t even spell Ethereum and Waves properly. Check Narbonne’s i w So many things need to be debunked in this table, it’s actually a good exercise. Here are a few you do the rest: “Bookkeeping at the ”: I’m not even sure what it means, but I think a project like covers this for Ethereum. blockchain Request (REQ) “Mobile Banking”: Hello ! OmiseGo “AI, chatbot, voice control”: strictly no use for the project (an infrastructure for banks) but buzzwords so they had to be here! How does a proper WP look like? A WP is a usually presenting at least: technical document The vision for the project / what problem the team is trying to crack, An overview of the technical solutions proposed to the problem and why they were chosen, The details of the technical implementation of the chosen solutions, A credible roadmap for the delivery, Technical information about the token: token type, total amount, token mechanisms… Specifications for the ICO, if any. To hone your skills, there is nothing better than the OG! I invite you to read the written by Satoshi. You can also check: original Bitcoin’s whitepaper to remind you that (it’s a GitHub wiki) if the fundamentals are sound. Ethereum’s WP the design doesn’t have to be fancy Cardano’s WPs: split between a “ ” and , I think the team does an outstanding job to make their project intelligible to those interested. philosophical WP academic papers Wanna get fancy? Get yourself a BTC whitepaper poster. The Transactions per second myth Now that we’ve got the whitepapers covered, let me address another big chunk of today’s article: the myth of the transactions per second (TPS). Transaction per second: A convenient lie So why is it so popular? Well, it’s a bit like the GHz for processors: it used to be the only thing advertised. It makes sense in a way, that you have a standard allowing you to compare different processors that are actually not comparable: higher is always better right? TPS doesn’t mean anything at all. it gives the impression Well, no. You can have a 32 bit 1 core processor operating at 3.5 GHz and a 64 bits 8 cores processor operating at 2 GHz. Guess which one delivers the most computing power? It’s the second one without a doubt. It’s exactly the same for the tokens, except it’s not only the power that matters here. Let me pull : a quick reminder from my previous article if you missed it The choice to make a system more decentralized isn’t made for performance; it’s made for the advantages provided by decentralization. It allows creating new kind of services offering guarantees that weren’t possible before. Even if the TPS is meaningless, it’s almost expected now. Newcomer investors will put significant trust in this very misleading indicator, and most projects advertise a given TPS. Good! It gives you a good sign of how honest they are: Using TPS to cut through the crap Consider coin A, advertising 1M TPS and coin B advertising 10 TPS. What about the features they support? What about decentralization? What about the team vision? Community support? Simply by looking at the number, I know now that Coin A is bullshit and coin B could be OK. Any coin promising something higher than this is either: The current state of the art of tech allows for a maximum of ~10 000 TPS (already huge) without excessive centralization. and its 21 block producers that have tremendous power over the network. Making compromise on decentralization. The prime example of this EOS : you can see some coins advertising crazy TPS, some will even show a test network supporting their claim. The thing to look for is the setup of the test network: usually, it’s just a few nodes. It’s easy to reach a high TPS on a three nodes , but it gets harder and harder as the nodes multiply. The lab scenario network uses a new kind of ledger called block-lattice and supports up to 7 000 TPS in ideal conditions. which uses another radically new solution (the Tangle) currently supports ~800 TPS, but it will scale with user adoption. Those two are the most radical “ledger innovations” there are and the most promising. They are the current state of the art: to me any project advertising TPS over this without an equally radically new technical solution is instantly suspicious. Banking on novel and previously untested technological solutions. NANO IOTA Including solutions in their computation of TPS, which leads back to point one: excessive centralization. off-chain scaling in their computation. Ethereum which has arguably one of the most robust dev community there is, is still 1 to 2 years away from a live implementation of sharding. How could a bunch of newcomers pull this in 6 months? Including new mechanisms such as sharding Pulling this number out of their hat. Note: A cryptocurrency development project often starts quite centralized. What matters is that the team have a plan to open up the network progressively. For instance, NEO is quite centralized for now, but now that the infrastructure is sound the team is making moves towards decentralizing more . Before we conclude, let us dive into the crazy world of ICOs, it’s such a wild west that it deserves another section by itself. ICOs red flags to look for Huge discounts for early birds If you see an ICO offering huge discounts (>30%) on the first phases of the sale that’s usually a recipe for disaster. Indeed, it means: Since the early birds get such a large discount, they have a once the token hit the market: it’s guaranteed free money if they sell fast enough. strong incentive to dump at ICO price or even a little below Why should the team need such a strong incentive to drive the sale? I see this pattern a lot for . tokens with close to no utility Even the two situations above don’t unfold, one is guaranteed: huge discounts push towards a concentration of the tokens in the hand of a few: it attracts whales. Massive discounts are a recipe for . political centralization and governance problems No product, demo or code The big risk with ICOs is that you’re essentially investing on a promise or a vision. Yet some ask for money once they already have a working alpha while some others run straight to the ICO as soon as the WP is ready. The latter is much riskier. If there is an alpha or a demo version available, please do check it out! Even if you’re not a dev, GitHub makes it easy to see how active the repository is, even without looking at the code. This method is far from perfect are there are ways to make it look like a repo is active even if it’s not. it’s always insightful to check the GitHub repository of the project. The team doesn’t match If you are seriously considering investing in an ICO, I urge you to google the most prominent team members. Look at their LinkedIn, their Twitter, their previous companies, etc. If you find inactive profiles, it’s usually a pretty bad sign. You might also find skeletons in the closest, such as one team member who participated in another crypto project that turned out to be a failure or a scam. Screenshot for that doesn’t take itself too seriously Banano, a NANO fork A low quality or frequency social media presence is also a bright orange flag. These guys will have to market their project, acquire users and partners. If they can’t market themselves, it’s already a shaky start. . Double check any high profile figure to make sure they are actually involved in the project. If you see Satoshi as advisor, RUN! It’s also very common for ICO scams to advertise a prestigious advisor… that has nothing to do with the project Inappropriate token distribution The token distribution chart is usually present in every WP. If it’s not, it’s essentially like “give us your money, and we won’t tell you what we’ll do with it”… RUN! It usually looks like a pie chart. The most transparent projects have two: one for the distribution of the tokens, and one covering how the funds will be spent by team. Storm token distribution is pretty good ( ) source It’s ok, even good that the team reserves a share of the token for the development of the project. You have to watch the share allocated to the team: it can range from 10% to 30% for the reasonable projects. On the other extreme of the spectrum, you have coins like Ripple (XRP) for which the team owns ~60% of the total supply. It is a significant risk for token holders: first, it’s an enormous vector of centralization. Besides, it means that . the team can heavily manipulate the price of its coin Note: A few months ago, facing a backlash against this very centralized distribution, the team put an escrow system in place using a smart contract. 55 billions tokens are now placed in escrow and released at the pace of 1 billion per month. It doesn’t change anything to the underlying centralization issue and makes me wonder which kind of team would need $500 million (current price of XRP ~ $0.5) each month for its development/partnership/other. Besides, since these tokens are now locked they are not counted in the circulating supply (~39B) , which might reassure investors but is purely misleading. The actual supply is 100B tokens. Personal view: the whole move feels like a marketing stunt. Conclusion I wrote this article to provide you with some clues to help you spot unreliable crypto projects. Overall, I hope that you understand by now that . I advise you NOT TO INVEST IMPULSIVELY. Even if it’s the best project in the world, you can sleep on it, read some more and decide a couple of days later with a fresh outlook if you want in or not. the more you read before investing, the lower the risk will be To finish, let me give you more tricks I use to get a quick idea of the seriousness of the project: Google search : this method allows you to search Reddit for a specific token. If there is a massive red flag on the project, it's usually documented somewhere on Reddit. site:reddit.com "token name (+scam/shitcoin/issues...)" Additional note: Reddit is getting quite tribal now. The best place to find reliable information on a given token is certainly not the token subreddit. Don't go to /r/Ripple/ if you want an objective perspective on XRP. Greedy people are promoting shaky projects all around the internet, never blindly trust just one guy even if he seems to be honest. Don’t trust one single source, always cross them! Several services exist to organize the community due diligence on ICOs. is a pretty reliable one, but do your own due diligence. ICOCheck Last but not least: . A lot of them fail dramatically. You are much better off limiting yourself to the top 25/100/200 tokens depending on the risk you’re willing to take. Even among those, there are many doubtful projects: beware and happy investing! I strongly recommend you to not invest in ICOs for at least the first year you’ve been invested in cryptos PS: You have some tricks to spot an unreliable project you haven’t seen in this piece? Feel free to share them below. Let me know if you liked this article and you can keep pressing 👏up to 50 claps. check out my wiki for more content like this. Don’t forget to clap it to help it spread: This article is the translation of an original (French) story. EcoCrypto.fr

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Crypto Bullshit: How to spot a shitcoin?

While the general public is hearing more and more about and cryptocurrencies, the philosophical and political underlying of decentralization are still kept mostly within the community. . blockchain Decentralization is bringing a paradigm shift that deserves more coverage than price action in my book A few months ago, I realized that I didn’t really understood decentralization. I got the high-level concept, but I failed to connect all the dots and Since then, I’ve done my homework and now it’s time to give back my humble understanding of it. understand the social and political ramifications of it. Tu parles Français ? Allez viens ! On est bien. Lien vers la version française. DOOMSAYER GETS THE SPOTLIGHT The Simpsons: Season 16, Episode 19 — Thank God it’s Doomsday Decentralization is not an easy change to apprehend. Imagine yourself in the internet early days, let’s say 1995. Could you have thought about all the potential use cases for this new tech and how they were going to unfold? Back then, you even had prominent actors from the tech industry : predicting the uselessness or failure of the internet Robert Metcalfe, in InfoWorld, 1995: “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” Waring Partridge, in Wired, 1995: “Most things that succeed don’t require retraining 250 million people.” It’s easy to laugh at them now, but ask yourself this question: Aren’t you doing exactly the same thing with decentralized services? My first audience for this article are people who read two articles from mainstream medias before concluding that decentralization is stupid. Let me be the third and the charm. Mainstream medias are here to promote emotional content that makes you react, so you get your dopamine shot and come back. They are not here to help you learn and grow. They caused their own demise. I, for one am simply a 26 years old French dude with a knack for writing and time on his hand. I have nothing to sell to you, but simply one goal: help people to realize what’s happening, so they can be part of it. I’ve tested the draft on people aged anything from 20y old to 60+. . You’ll gain a framework allowing you to see decentralization for what it is: the premise of a new world order. It’s foolproof, as long as your willing to lend me 12 minutes of your attention Change is hard, scary and confusing. It destroys your previous references and leaves you in a world where you have to re-think everything again. It’s a lot of work to adapt, but the earlier your start, the easiest it is, just like it happened for Internet. Feel free to share this piece with your decentralization-sceptic and decentralization-enthusiast friends alike! Decentralization is multidimensional spectrum It might seem obvious to some, but it’s an important fact: . It goes from the most centralized systems possible, such as our current fiat monetary systems ( Banks decide pretty much everything) to the most decentralized systems, such as the English language (more on this later). Decentralization is a spectrum, not a state “Central” Before we dive in, here is an interesting infographic giving you an overview of the centralization of major industries: Thanks to Lillian Wei, Source Now that you get the spectrum of decentralization, the second thing to understand is the different dimensions of decentralization. The hard part is than in absolute, they aren’t any typology of the different dimensions of decentralization. To make things easier, I’m gonna use (Co-Founder of Ethereum, one of the leading decentralization projects) that features three main dimensions: the one proposed by Vitalik Buterin 1. The Architectural Dimension : the devices, the servers, the stuff! The architectural dimension address . This dimension is easy to grasp because about the physical things the base units of the network To maximize architectural decentralization, you’ll need to multiply the devices powering your , and spread them around the globe. network Graphical representation of the transactions happening on the IOTA Network (Tangle). Visualizer: Tangle.glumb.be To know how architecturally decentralized a system is, you can ask these questions: How many underlying devices are powering the network? Are they geographically spread or concentrated in one area? 2. The Political Dimension Politics is about power. This dimension address the . The most politically centralized protocol is one where a sole decision maker makes all the shots. At the other end of the spectrum, you’ll have many actors and evenly distributed responsibilities. decision making process of the system In the most politically decentralized systems, the spread between the least influential node and the most influential node is kept to a minimum. The perfectly politically decentralized network would offer the same influence to any node. Here are some good questions to determine how politically decentralized a system is: How many people/groups are involved in the decision making process? How does the power repartition looks like? What kind of criteria is used to weight each participant influence? Are they any recourse / appeal mechanisms built in the system? 3. The Logical Dimension The logical dimension is by far the hardest of the three to understand. Don’t give up if you don’t get it from the first read! In Vitalik’s terms, it reads like this: Does your system look like one thing single thing like a singleton or does it look more like an amorphous swarm? Essentially, this dimension is about the differences between each nodes that compose the network. To maximize logical decentralization, you want them to diverse. Don’t let some fancy words scare you, it’s actually not so hard. Looking at examples really helped me understand this one, so here they are: A direct democracy: : there are a few places (parliament, chambers, police, military…) that are the nodes of the protocol. The architecture of a direct democracy is quite centralized Despite the architectural centralization, the decision power is spread in a direct democracy so the protocol is politically decentralized. — aka it’s one main “body”. There is only one government enforcing one set of laws. It’s logically centralized Nation vs Federation for the same reason than the direct democracy: there are only a few locations/institutions where the action happens. Both are architecturally centralized, : the president/assembly/other elected or not officials hold most of the power, without any public oversight. You can’t swap president two years in, you have to wait the full term, even if the president lie, collude with foreign powers, mishandle public money… Hi to the elephant in the room! The federation might be a little less politically centralized than the nation, but it’s quite similar. Both are also politically centralized The logical dimension is where things get interesting. While , a federation is made of distinct “parts” that acknowledge and preserve their difference while working towards a common goal. Hence the federation is a good example of logically decentralized system. a nation is one unique main “body”, aka logically centralized Logical centralization overview for common protocols ( ) Source: Vitalik Buterin The English Language Considering the English language as a protocol, a node would be any English speaking person. The good news is they are plenty, they are diverse, and spread all around the world! The architecture is very decentralized. There is no single governing body deciding what English is and is not. Yes, there are official institutions publishing English Grammars for instance, but the grammar is not law: you can choose to follow it or not. The actual English, the one linguists study, is not the one depicted in a grammar, it’s the one spoken by all English speaking individuals. The political dimension of it is also quite decentralized. Finally, . Two English speakers coming from different countries might speak an English that is very different from one another, because of the vocabulary, the emphasis, or even the sentence structure. You have many different kind of English spoken all around the globe: American English, UK English, my beloved Frenglish… it’s also very logically decentralized Using the three dimensional decentralization spectrum Each dimension is mostly independent from one another. . You can have a service at one end of the spectrum for one dimension, and the other end on another Case Study: Web Hosting Services Web hosting services such as AWS (Amazon Web Services) are the perfect example of this: . As a hosting provider, AWS need to be reliable. To do so, they have many servers so that the redundancy builds resilience. Moreover, . It reduces latency and further increase resilience. From an architectural perspective, they want their network to be as decentralized as possible both for performance and security reasons, they have their servers spread all around the world Overview of the main AWS datacenters location. Source: . AWS Yet, from a political perspective, Amazon has absolute control over the network. They can refuse to serve you, delete your content (if it’s illegal for instance) and the AWS user community no say on their decisions. Hence, on the political dimension, AWS is close the most centralized end of the spectrum. Finally, on the logical dimension AWS is centralized, it’s a pretty monolithic company. A significant hassle than can be worth the trouble Now that we’re clear on the decentralization spectrum, you might wonder why going through the hassle? Indeed, : they have many different components, a decision power spread between several parties and an accountability imperative. decentralized systems tend to be more complex and harder to manage that centralized ones Are decentralized systems efficient for computations? All those requirements weight on the system and slow it down, right? So why go through the hassle? It turns out it’s even more than that! It can be hard to find a relevant comparison between centralized and decentralized systems, but the price of computing power is probably the easiest to understand. . Scary ratio, right? ( ) Right now, the ratio between the cost of the computing power on the Ethereum Word Computer vs a traditional one (ex Amazon EC2) is between roughly one million Don’t trust me, go here to check Well… yes and no. First, you have to consider how cheap computing power got over the last couple decades. We’re reaching a point where even just $1 spent on AWS represents a tremendous amount of computing power. presents the evolution of computing over the last 25 years with neat infographics: This page Hard Disks dramatically increased in capacity while becoming more compact. Source And well, we’ve got to ask ourselves: does the comparison even makes sense? It can be useful to understand the current state of our tech, but does it tell us anything else? . It allows creating new kind of services offering guarantees that weren’t possible before. The choice to make a system more decentralized isn’t made for performance; it’s made for the advantages provided by decentralization Decentralization’s benefits: The Edge of the Crowd To put it simply, decentralized systems offer a set of unique advantages opening a wide range of use cases. Let’s go through the main advantages one by one. EFFICIENCY . For instance, the physical distribution of post offices is decentralized. It wouldn’t be efficient to have all the post offices in the same city. In some cases, making a system decentralized is simply the best way to answer your needs There is another notion that can play a large role for the efficiency of a system: . Consider people who already own a resource (let’s say a house or car), but only use it 10% of the time. Instead of having to build a whole new infrastructure for your service, you can use instead the spare capacity that is already available: hello Uber or Airbnb. spare capacity FAULT TOLERANCE Since a decentralized system is redundant (there are no elements that exist only once, all have many “copies”), That’s precisely why web hosting services have to be architecturally decentralized. But many systems benefit from fault tolerance: consider the energy production/distribution network for instance. the risk of the whole system failing accidentally is much more limited than a centralized system. There is another notion quite useful to understand why decentralized system are resilient, it’s the is a term used in network infrastructure to describe an element than is not redundant: it exists only once. SPOF. Single Point of Failure If this element was to fail, it would bring the whole system down, hence the name. If you’re still following, you should be able to connect the dots: since everything is redundant in a an architecturally decentralized system, there are no SPOF. If there is a SPOF, it means that there is a single/central element somewhere (that could break), hence it’s not a decentralized system. ATTACK RESISTANCE Attack resistance is essentially a matter of cost/benefit. Unattackable systems don’t exist, what do exist are systems that are simply to costly to attack considering the potential reward. You can also consider malicious actors that would be looking to damage the protocol not for direct financial benefit, but for something else. Maybe it’s a competitor trying to bring you down? Even in that scenario, the attacker would need to dedicate a lot of resource to have a chance to bring a decentralized system down. Another interesting fact to consider is also that information is spread over many devices. It makes the system more resilient to hacks, as the data is less exposed. If an attacker manage to get control over one device, he only gets access to a fragment of the whole dataset. Too bad Ashley Madison wasn’t architecturally decentralized. COLLUSION RESISTANCE The idea behind collusion resistance is to make it hard for one subgroup of the system to come together and act only for their own best interest, to the detriment of the whole system. The extreme example of collusion would be a monopoly — it lets actor gain an unfair advantage over the whole market and impose its bidding. : the common interest of the system (the betterment of the country) is frequently, some would even say systematically hijacked by specific subgroups (such as businesses) for their own benefits (profits). For instance, in our modern democracies, collusion resistance is extremely low Conclusion Decentralization is a high level concept that is essential to understand blockchain and other decentralized ledgers. If you want to explore further, you can look at videos of founders of the major project explaining their vision to get a better idea of what a decentralized system enable: Here is Vitalik Buterin explaining what ETH is for the layman. [03:51] Charles Hoskinson explaining the Cardano team approach and what Cardano is trying to achieve. [1:02:49] NEO explained by its founder Da HongFei. [16:04] You might have missed the internet revolution, but you’re in luck for this one: it’s barely beginning! . Now is the time to get knowledgeable about it so you can recognize and harness opportunities as they emerge I hope this article helped you get a better understanding of the paradigm shift offered by the newfound ability to develop decentralized protocols at scale, thanks to blockchain. and other decentralized protocols. Let me know if you like this article and you can keep pressing 👏up to 50 claps. check out my wiki for more content like this. Don’t forget to clap it to help it spread: This article is the translation of an original (French) story. EcoCrypto.fr

Why decentralization matters? A 12 min overview for the layman

The AVIF Format is the next-gen image format based on the AV1 video encoding format. AV1 was created and is developed by the , a consortium formed by Mozilla, Google, Cisco, Netflix, Amazon, and other companies. The main idea behind AVIF is to take advantage of the compression algorithms originally developed for video in an image format. Netflix for images across its applications because of the superior quality this format provides while keeping the image size low. Alliance for Open Media believes that AVIF has potential All the major browser makers are closely involved, directly or indirectly, in the development and promulgation of AVIF. So why should you care about it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUgppbKvlk&t=169s?embedable=true AVIF Benefits: Lighter Images Without Sacrificing Quality It’s an exciting time for image compression. WebP has been gaining momentum as a JPEG replacement, but now, AVIF has arrived, out-compressing WebP in nearly all cases. In fact, the AVIF image format provides greater reduction in file size when compared with JPEG, PNG and WebP formats. The advantage is that the compression algorithms were originally developed for video in an image format. With AVIF, users have seen file sizes drop by nearly 60% compared to JPEG and 35% compared to WebP, with no loss in quality. In addition, the AVIF file format supports lossy and lossless image formats, as well as transparency. The AVIF image format is an image format that supports any image codec. AVIF is available today in web browser versions used by a large number of web users: Google Chrome 85 and beyond Mozilla Firefox 86 and beyond Android Safari on iOS 16.0 and beyond (For a list of browsers that support AVIF, please see .) the AVIF section on caniuse.com Source: https://caniuse.com/avif* AVIF In Action The AVIF format is best suited for images that contain specific details that need to be preserved, for example, gradients, text and graphics in movie posters. Its performance and quality is great when you use compression. If you are reading on an AVIF-capable browser such as recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, or Android, you should see three images below: An AVIF image 9KB in size The images are comparable in quality, yet the AVIF image achieves significant reductions in file size. By using AVIF for image compression, you can reduce the image file size even further and gain additional benefits: A WebP image 12KB in size A JPEG image 16KB in size Faster page loading times Better SEO rankings (Search engines like Google reward page loading speed, especially on mobile) Lower bounce rate Improved customer satisfaction Lower bandwidth costs , a German-based football media company, saw page load time accelerated by 26% and first time to interactive time accelerated by 24% after enabling automatic AVIF conversion. OneFootball imgix & AVIF Since making AVIF available at imgix, our users have seen file sizes drop by nearly 60% compared to JPEG and 35% compared to WebP, with no loss in quality. , one of our first customers to implement the automatic AVIF format conversion, has seen a 30% decrease in file size. Unsplash https://twitter.com/OliverJAsh/status/1441095716227543042?s=20&t=R1kCrCUHCqOCp6XlI-GS9Q?embedable=true Just like Unsplash, you can automate image format conversion by using imgix. Through the use of the parameter, imgix will automatically serve images in AVIF for all browsers that support it. For browsers that don’t yet support it, the imgix rendering API will fall back to the next-best available format. If is set and the browser does not support the AVIF format, we'll first fallback to WebP if it is supported. If WebP is not supported, imgix will fall back to the source image type or to any format specified by the fm parameter. Image quality and website performance is great when you use compression within the AVIF format. ‘auto=format’ auto=format Future-Proof Your Images It can be a cumbersome process to create, manage, and serve different formats of images for different purposes. Copying images into different formats can also incur a huge storage cost over time. Instead of deciding which image format to serve for which environment, or constantly debugging the complex interaction between data and images--imgix does it all for you. Working with an image optimization partner like imgix that serves the AVIF format means you are future-proofing your images and setting yourself up for success as technology continues to advance. As new standards enter the market, we will constantly evaluate and innovate so you can stay ahead of the curve. Try this feature free by signing up for . an imgix account Also published . here

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