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The First Amendment Implications of TikTok's Ban

On War by Carl Von Clausewitz, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Night Fighting Book IV: Chapter XIV. Night Fighting The manner of conducting a combat at night, and what concerns the details of its course, is a tactical subject; we only examine it here so far as in its totality it appears as a special strategic means. Fundamentally every night attack is only a more vehement form of surprise. Now at the first look of the thing such an attack appears quite pre-eminently advantageous, for we suppose the enemy to be taken by surprise, the assailant naturally to be prepared for everything which can happen. What an inequality! Imagination paints to itself a picture of the most complete confusion on the one side, and on the other side the assailant only occupied in reaping the fruits of his advantage. Hence the constant creation of schemes for night attacks by those who have not to lead them, and have no responsibility, whilst these attacks seldom take place in reality. These ideal schemes are all based on the hypothesis that the assailant knows the arrangements of the defender because they have been made and announced beforehand, and could not escape notice in his reconnaissances, and inquiries; that on the other hand, the measures of the assailant, being only taken at the moment of execution, cannot be known to the enemy. But the last of these is not always quite the case, and still less is the first. If we are not so near the enemy as to have him completely under our eye, as the Austrians had Frederick the Great before the battle of Hochkirch (1758), then all that we know of his position must always be imperfect, as it is obtained by reconnaissances, patrols, information from prisoners, and spies, sources on which no firm reliance can be placed because intelligence thus obtained is always more or less of an old date, and the position of the enemy may have been altered in the meantime. Moreover, with the tactics and mode of encampment of former times it was much easier than it is now to examine the position of the enemy. A line of tents is much easier to distinguish than a line of huts or a bivouac; and an encampment on a line of front, fully and regularly drawn out, also easier than one of Divisions formed in columns, the mode often used at present. We may have the ground on which a Division bivouacs in that manner completely under our eye, and yet not be able to arrive at any accurate idea. But the position again is not all that we want to know the measures which the defender may take in the course of the combat are just as important, and do not by any means consist in mere random shots. These measures also make night attacks more difficult in modern Wars than formerly, because they have in these campaigns an advantage over those already taken. In our combats the position of the defender is more temporary than definitive, and on that account the defender is better able to surprise his adversary with unexpected blows, than he could formerly.(*) (*) All these difficulties obviously become increased as the power of the weapons in use tends to keep the combatants further apart.—EDITOR. Therefore what the assailant knows of the defensive previous to a night attack, is seldom or never sufficient to supply the want of direct observation. But the defender has on his side another small advantage as well, which is that he is more at home than the assailant, on the ground which forms his position, and therefore, like the inhabitant of a room, will find his way about it in the dark with more ease than a stranger. He knows better where to find each part of his force, and therefore can more readily get at it than is the case with his adversary. From this it follows, that the assailant in a combat at night feels the want of his eyes just as much as the defender, and that therefore, only particular reasons can make a night attack advisable. Now these reasons arise mostly in connection with subordinate parts of an Army, rarely with the Army itself; it follows that a night attack also as a rule can only take place with secondary combats, and seldom with great battles. We may attack a portion of the enemy’s Army with a very superior force, consequently enveloping it with a view either to take the whole, or to inflict very severe loss on it by an unequal combat, provided that other circumstances are in our favour. But such a scheme can never succeed except by a great surprise, because no fractional part of the enemy’s Army would engage in such an unequal combat, but would retire instead. But a surprise on an important scale except in rare instances in a very close country, can only be effected at night. If therefore we wish to gain such an advantage as this from the faulty disposition of a portion of the enemy’s Army, then we must make use of the night, at all events, to finish the preliminary part even if the combat itself should not open till towards daybreak. This is therefore what takes place in all the little enterprises by night against outposts, and other small bodies, the main point being invariably through superior numbers, and getting round his position, to entangle him unexpectedly in such a disadvantageous combat, that he cannot disengage himself without great loss. The larger the body attacked the more difficult the undertaking, because a strong force has greater resources within itself to maintain the fight long enough for help to arrive. On that account the whole of the enemy’s Army can never in ordinary cases be the object of such an attack for although it has no assistance to expect from any quarter outside itself, still, it contains within itself sufficient means of repelling attacks from several sides particularly in our day, when every one from the commencement is prepared for this very usual form of attack. Whether the enemy can attack us on several sides with success depends generally on conditions quite different from that of its being done unexpectedly; without entering here into the nature of these conditions, we confine ourselves to observing, that with turning an enemy, great results, as well as great dangers are connected; that therefore, if we set aside special circumstances, nothing justifies it but a great superiority, just such as we should use against a fractional part of the enemy’s Army. But the turning and surrounding a small fraction of the enemy, and particularly in the darkness of night, is also more practicable for this reason, that whatever we stake upon it, and however superior the force used may be, still probably it constitutes only a limited portion of our Army, and we can sooner stake that than the whole on the risk of a great venture. Besides, the greater part or perhaps the whole serves as a support and rallying-point for the portion risked, which again very much diminishes the danger of the enterprise. Not only the risk, but the difficulty of execution as well confines night enterprises to small bodies. As surprise is the real essence of them so also stealthy approach is the chief condition of execution: but this is more easily done with small bodies than with large, and for the columns of a whole Army is seldom practicable. For this reason such enterprises are in general only directed against single outposts, and can only be feasible against greater bodies if they are without sufficient outposts, like Frederick the Great at Hochkirch.(*) This will happen seldomer in future to Armies themselves than to minor divisions. (*) October 14, 1758. In recent times, when War has been carried on with so much more rapidity and vigour, it has in consequence often happened that Armies have encamped very close to each other, without having a very strong system of outposts, because those circumstances have generally occurred just at the crisis which precedes a great decision. But then at such times the readiness for battle on both sides is also more perfect; on the other hand, in former Wars it was a frequent practice for armies to take up camps in sight of each other, when they had no other object but that of mutually holding each other in check, consequently for a longer period. How often Frederick the Great stood for weeks so near to the Austrians, that the two might have exchanged cannon shots with each other. But these practices, certainly more favourable to night attacks, have been discontinued in later days; and armies being now no longer in regard to subsistence and requirements for encampment, such independent bodies complete in themselves, find it necessary to keep usually a day’s march between themselves and the enemy. If we now keep in view especially the night attack of an army, it follows that sufficient motives for it can seldom occur, and that they fall under one or other of the following classes. 1. An unusual degree of carelessness or audacity which very rarely occurs, and when it does is compensated for by a great superiority in moral force. 2. A panic in the enemy’s army, or generally such a degree of superiority in moral force on our side, that this is sufficient to supply the place of guidance in action. 3. Cutting through an enemy’s army of superior force, which keeps us enveloped, because in this all depends on surprise, and the object of merely making a passage by force, allows a much greater concentration of forces. 4. Finally, in desperate cases, when our forces have such a disproportion to the enemy’s, that we see no possibility of success, except through extraordinary daring. But in all these cases there is still the condition that the enemy’s army is under our eyes, and protected by no advance-guard. As for the rest, most night combats are so conducted as to end with daylight, so that only the approach and the first attack are made under cover of darkness, because the assailant in that manner can better profit by the consequences of the state of confusion into which he throws his adversary; and combats of this description which do not commence until daybreak, in which the night therefore is only made use of to approach, are not to be counted as night combats. 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. Carl von Clausewitz (2006). On War. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1946/pg1946-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 .

Night Fighting

1811 Dictionary in the Vulgar Tongue: Section G

I first heard of , formerly known as Knowledge Plaza, in 2011. I was attending a very small startup event where presented the company and its market vision. Elium Gregory Culpin Even though Elium already had some traction and gained many flagship customers, they were still doing on-demand development for other companies to cover their costs. It appeared that was their “last distraction”. In 2013, they convinced and his associates that it was time to build their own team. That’s where I officially met them and had the chance to start working with some of Elium team members. Over time, Talentsquare and Elium development teams worked very close together. When Talentsquare went bankrupt, Elium hired the development team. I decided to continue and lead the company sellout process. I built a new operating company with two passionate people with a sound vision of the HR industry future, and Arthur Roose. After rebuilding Talentsquare for a year it was time for me to move on and let them take the lead. Talentsquare Pieterjan Kempynck Thibault Halbrecq , called me and suggested that I join them. As I maintained good relationships with my former colleagues, I knew Elium was a very promising product and that the team was full of very talented people. I joined this highly motivated group of fifteen people in September 2015. Soon after I announced my resignation Elium’s CEO My first challenge was to create the product management function within the organization and take over a major app redesign. This was an important step as the company also wanted to raise its Series A. After a year and a half of hard work, the effort paid off. We managed to officially launch the new version of the app, now under the name Elium, and we raise a . Right after the funding round, things accelerated quickly. In less than a year, we doubled the company size, moved to wonderful offices. The product and engineering teams grew fast too. 4m€ Series A This provided the opportunity to build and lead a very talented product team and create the product marketing function. Together we completely reshaped the way we were working, we introduced a dual-track agile framework inspired from Marty Cagan’s book, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love, ran more and more market customer research studies, worked very hard on internal and external product communication, and implemented many new processes. The thing I’m probably the proudest of is the product session we initiated during our user clubs, private customer events organized every six months. These events usually include presenting two customer cases and a product workshop. My team and I really loved this because we were picking one of the biggest customer issues in our backlog and then trying to solve it with our customers. Of course, this required some upfront preparation  to make sure we could end with something concrete and tangible. Our customers loved this too because they could put themselves in our shoes for a couple of hours, which helped them understand the complexity of our work. It also helped us completely change the relationship we had with certain very picky customers. We were also proud to present their contributions at the next user club. In March 2019, after many discussions and researches, Elium had to make the decision to lay off around 25% of its workforce. Despite all the positive energy and the company’s great product, we were not reaching our target. I’d been then asked to take over the marketing department on top of my previous responsibilities (product marketing and product management). To be honest, the 12 months that followed were very tough. I spent most of my time juggling between market researches and operational work to find the right path for the company. In March 2020, after 3.5 years of ups and downs, it was time for me to move on for a new venture. I leave Elium in very good hands as , my very first Product Manager (PM) hire took over the role. Together with , who joined the venture in January 2019, and the rest of the team, I’m certain they’ll find their way. Julien De Coster Jean-François de Crom Despite furious competition coming from Microsoft and a myriad of emerging new players, Elium is a great product with passionate people and customers. The product’s core feature (its story) remains unchallenged. Five things I learned (sometimes the hard way) 1. It’s not easy to shift from solo product manager to the Head of Product. When you’re the only product manager in the room, you know everything about your product and doesn’t necessarily feel the need to document anything (Who would read it anyway?) You don’t have much need to think about processes since your team is probably still small and you have direct and frequent interactions. The same goes for the interactions with other teams. But when your company size doubles in a year and you can’t hold the product alone, that’s another story! Things were going so fast that I hired two PMs at the same time. Suddenly, I had to document the processes, think about how to organize the work, split it among my team members, supervise our designer’s workload, split our development team in two…. Let’s be honest, that was probably not the smartest idea. This shift really made me think a lot about who I am and who I wanted to be as a manager. It also helped me reflect a lot on my PM practices. When you lead a team of PMs you don’t approach the job the same way and you realize even more how important it is to communicate inside and outside your team. You also learn to focus on how your team is approaching a problem’s resolution rather than focusing on the solution itself. It’s important to set standards on how you approach market researches, discoveries, interviews, documentation, product and development teams relationship, communications, etc. rather than the final result. Because if you only focus on the end result, you end up staying focused on operations and doing command and control. 2. You can never communicate enough. When your team and your company are growing quickly, you can’t rely on verbal communication anymore. Worst, all of a sudden you may realize that you don’t know everyone anymore. I’ve also realized that any information you give a colleague at the wrong time for them, will inevitably be forgotten or lost. Even if your communications are well organized in a channel, folder or space that is accessible to everyone, the chance that someone outside of your team will look for this information is close to zero. Therefore, it’s important to continuously communicate and repeat the important information again and again (and again). It’s also good to communicate using different methods to make sure the information has been well received and absorbed. 3. You’re as strong as your weakest link. Product management is 80% about stakeholder management. You need to keep everyone in sync and focused on the same topics to have an impact. This can be tough when you grow fast because you’ll have so many new people that you can’t train them all and teach them everything about the product. That can be quite dangerous because it increases the chances to make false promises to increase the registration volume and close more deals. If you want to scale properly, you need to be very sharp on what you decide to develop, and you need to maintain strong relationships with every department to stay on track. 4. It’s okay to fire people. In the framework of a project I lead at Elium, I had the pleasure to meet and interview a dozen founders of fast scaling companies. The not-so-surprising fun fact is that even though everyone almost always believes that their story is unique, pretty much all companies are going through the same phases. One of them is firing people. Every phase of a company requires different profiles. At the very beginning, you’re looking for people who can tackle any challenge. You’ll look for swiss-knives. Yet, the more you grow, the more you’ll look for specialists. Every role will be split and the scope of work for each individual will be narrowed down. From a macro perspective it’s great because you have more resources. So, you hope to have a greater impact. Yet, from a micro perspective, this can become, and be perceived as, a real challenge. You’ll only want to keep some generalist in your management team and won’t necessarily find a suitable place for all the remaining ones. This may end up generating frustrations and conflicts. Also, some people’s learning curves may not follow the same curve than your growth requires. It’s not easy to learn how to become a manager or how to become an expert in a field without external support. Therefore, it’s sometimes good to let some of your team members go. Over time, I’ve learned that, even though it’s sad to lose a colleague, it’s necessary. Firing a team member may actually be good for both the person and your team. It will force the team members to reflect on their career and chose their next venture. 5. The market is always right. Assumption. That’s probably one of the words my team said the most. We make assumptions almost every day. Most of them are anecdotical and make our life easier, it helps us go faster and that’s okay. But the path of least resistance can also be the path of least growth. You don’t take much risk when assuming that if you see colleagues talking in a room where the door is closed, they want some privacy and don’t want to be disturbed. You take much more risk assuming your customer wants something without asking them. Whether you are scaling or are in crisis, the behavior is always the same. Some stakeholders willing to speed things up will push you to go for their solutions arguing they know your customer problems and that all your customers feel/act “the same way”. As a product lead, I’ve sometimes learned the hard way that there’s no shortcut to success, and not a single stakeholder owns the truth. It’s the sum of the collective intelligence that makes a great product that customers love. Of course, it doesn’t mean that you need to know everything before you act, but it means you should always go back to the root of the problem to find the best solution. In the end, it’s not really what your internal stakeholders think that matters, it’s your product usage, your customer satisfaction and your revenues. What’s next for me? After 3.5 years of working at Elium, it was time for me to move on and take on new challenges. That’s why I’ve decided to join , a very fast scaling company which is part of the House of HR group. We aim to revolutionize the way students and other professionals are approaching the job market. We want to offer them a smooth and easy way to earn money on the side, whenever and however they want. NOWJOBS currently operates in Belgium and in The Netherlands. NOWJOBS Next to my role at I’ll keep on developing and I’m also looking to help other companies grow. I’m focusing on 3 main domains: growth marketing, product management and product marketing. So if you need help or just want someone to challenge your idea, . NOWJOBS Achieved feel free to reach me out

What I Learned From 3.5 Years as a Product Leader at a VC Backed SaaS Startup

What are the best books on Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, decentralized networks and cryptography? The best book on Bitcoin, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, decentralized networks, and cryptography is by Andreas M. Antonopoulos. The Internet of Money This post is my book review of . The Internet of Money is a great book because it doesn’t just examine these concepts for what they are today. The Internet of Money Instead, they are placed in the context of human history. It’s like meets fintech. Sapiens In order to better understand Bitcoin, for example, you need foundational knowledge of both currency and networks. Currency goes back to the beginning of humans, before even writing. Networks come in all shapes and sizes. One point I’ll discuss later is that the power and potential of Bitcoin lie in the type of network it is. Unlike most fintech material, The Internet of Money is conversational and easy to understand because it originated as a series of introductory lectures about Bitcoin. As of this writing in early 2018, the price of Bitcoin has taken a plunge, but I’m just as excited about it as I was just a couple of short months ago when the price was twice as high. The people who see it as a hit it and quit it short-term investment are not. One of my friends bought BTC back in December and texted me about it all excited. Now he’s bitching and moaning about the correction. Most people haven’t taken the time to learn about how impactful blockchain technology is and how it will solve major problems in the world. But those who have are still extremely bullish. will provide this insight and even if you aren’t interested in crypto, you should read it to gain a better understanding of the origin of money, and where it’s headed. Because every single one of us uses money, right? The Internet of Money Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book followed by my commentary: “Approximately 1 billion people currently have access to banking, credit, and international finance capabilities — primarily the upper classes, the Western nations. Six and a half billion people on this planet have no connection to the world of money. They operate in cash-based societies with very little access to international resources. “Even in the remotest places on Earth, now there is a cell-phone tower. Even in the poorest places on Earth, we often see a little solar panel on a little hut that feeds a Nokia 1000 phone, the most produced device in the history of manufacturing, billions of them have shipped. We can turn every one of those into, not a bank account, but a bank.” Bitcoin has the potential to reach the masses, which is why Antonopoulos calls it “the money of the people.” This fact alone makes it a big deal. As a US citizen, I can open a brokerage account within minutes. After reading IoM, I realized that this is a privalege that many of us, including myself, take for granted. But for the majority of people in the world, it’s a fantasy. “One of the most important principles of the internet is neutrality. The internet does not distinguish between a large organization and a small organization. It does not know the difference between CNN and an Egyptian blogger. It allows the Egyptian blogger to speak to the world with the same power of voice that CNN has. Bitcoin is neutral to the sender, the recipient, and the value of the transaction. That means it gives every citizen, every user of bitcoin, the ability to innovate in terms of financial instruments, payment systems, and banking. You can operate on the same level as Citibank. That is truly revolutionary.” This is a difficult concept to grasp because it hasn’t yet been realized and we don’t know how it will take shape in its final form. With Bitcoin, we are moving towards a world where anyone with a cell phone can create and run their own financial institution as easily as starting and writing a blog. “Throughout history, the most amazing technology is adopted by criminals first.” When I discuss Bitcoin with my friends today, I’ve noticed many of them think it’s this evil, corrupt thing because that’s what they hear in the media. For this reason, they don’t want to have anything to do with it. But the truth is that the internet started out as a vehicle for criminals as well. So did electricity. So did automobiles (literally). “What’s remarkable about that is that it’s faster than the rate of investment in the internet in 1995. We are ahead of the curve. Bitcoin is growing faster than Twitter did in the first three years. Bitcoin is growing faster than Facebook grew in the first few years.” Facebook went from a handful of users on college campuses to taking over the world in, what? A few years? If Bitcoin is ahead of that pace, imagine what kind of impact it will have on the world in just a couple of years. This is why I want to get invested . now “Every day, an immigrant somewhere cashes their paycheck and stands in line to wire 50 percent of that paycheck back to their home country to feed their extended family. Here in the US, 60 million people have no bank accounts, yet they cash their paychecks and send them abroad. Overall in the world, $ 550 billion is transmitted every year as remittances from first-world countries. Much of that money is sent to five major destinations: Mexico, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and China. In some of these places, remittances represent up to 40 percent of the local economy. Sitting on top of that flow of $ 550 billion are companies like Western Union, and they take, on average, a cut of 9 percent of every single one of these transactions out of the pockets of the poorest people of the world.” This blew my mind because I didn’t realize how corrupt the standard of international payment transfer is today. When immigrants send money back to their families in Bitcoin, their families will get 9% more because they won’t have to pay fees. For the poorest in the world, this isn’t just significant. It’s life changing. “Bitcoin is simply a dumb network, and that is one of its strongest and most important features. When you design networks, when you architect network systems, one of the most fundamental choices is this: do you make a dumb network that supports smart devices, or do you make a smart network that supports dumb devices?” “The power of pushing intelligence to the edge, of not making decisions in the center, moves the innovation into the hands of its end users and gives those end users the ability to build applications that are so niche that only a handful of people around the world need them. And they can build those applications without asking for anyone’s permission.” These two quotes illustrate perhaps the most important concept in the book: that Bitcoin (and the internet) are inherently “dumb” networks, which is what makes them so powerful. Dumb networks remove the bottleneck of a central authority to make improvements. Anyone can participate with little to no barrier to entry and make enhancements to the system that immediately benefit the entire network. This is another reason why it is poised to grow so quickly. “Flat, paved roads not only allow the automobile to exist, allow the horse to comfortably exist, but they also open the door for new technologies. Now, you have people riding Segways, scooters, skateboards, rollerblades, pushing prams and all of the other things that are moving around on our streets. That’s an infrastructure inversion. You start with the new technology living on the old infrastructure and then, it flips. You build infrastructure and then the old infrastructure rides on top, on the infrastructure designed for the new technology.” “I predict, over the next 15 to 20 years, we’ll see a great infrastructure inversion happen in finance. First, the banks will resist. Then, the banks will adopt. The banks will run their systems alongside blockchain and bitcoin systems, and finally they will run all of traditional banking as an application on top of a decentralized trusted ledger. Because, while it is very hard to do a decentralized trusted ledger that’s connected to all of these legacy banking systems, simulating legacy banking on top of a decentralized ledger, on top of bitcoin, an open global blockchain, is trivial. All you have to do is take all of its capabilities and slow them down. Cars failed initially because roads sucked. But people initially blamed the cars, not the roads. Once roads improved, everyone loved cars. The same thing will happen in the internet of money. Right now, the infrastructure isn’t there. But it’s being built out quickly. And when it is ready, traditional banking won’t stand a chance. “Adoption is not simply the act of using the currency; it’s also attaching oneself to a community that has also chosen to adopt that currency.” Another important concept of cryptocurrencies is that users will be able to exercise their “vote” by way of use. Unlike national currencies, which we are forced to use because of where we live, we will eventually be able to decide which currencies to use based on how they best serve our needs. “Here’s a little thought experiment: Let’s take three radically disruptive technologies and mash them together. Bitcoin. Uber. Self-driving cars. What happens when you mash the three together? The self-owning car. A car that pays for its Toyota lease, its insurance, and its gas, by giving people rides. A car that is not owned by a corporation. A car that is a corporation. A car that is a shareholder and owner of its own corporation. A car that exists as an autonomous financial entity with no human ownership. This has never happened before, and that’s just the beginning.” This was perhaps the most mind-bending passage in the book for me. You can’t even fathom how this scenario would play out in today’s world. But cryptocurrencies make it possible for non-human entities to own stuff and transact with each other and with humans. Kind of like corporations today, but on an IoT scale. “By separating the message from the medium, your perception of value shifts from the cost of production to the value it has to the consumer when they consume it.” “Every generation mistakes the medium for value and considers the next iteration of the medium — that widens access, that opens availability, that broadens the range of expression — they consider that medium trivial, vulgar, cheapening the message. What they don’t understand is when you cheapen the medium, you release the message and you elevate it. You are able now to express a broad range of messages.” When Amazon made publishing available to the masses, it “cheapened” the medium of books. Eventually, this forced consumers to discern between the real value they got from reading books and the perceived value that was inherent in the gatekeeper-based traditional publishing system. With Bitcoin, finance is poised for a similar revolution. “Scaling is a moving target. Scale defines the edge of today’s capabilities. As it moves forward, capability increases.” This was in reference to the challenges of scale that the internet faced in its early days and continues to face today. No one ever thought it would be possible to transfer pictures and then audio and then video online, but the internet overcame all of these obstacles one by one. The blockchain world will face similar challenges and it will overcome them because like the internet, anyone can get in the game. Smart people will see these challenges as opportunities and capitalize on them. That’s what this is all about in a nutshell: opportunity. Massive opportunity on a scale never seen before. After it’s all said and done, the world will never be the same. If you want a glimpse into this new world opportunity, then you should read The Internet of Money . -ALYG Footnotes First published on . Quora is your quick start guide to getting comfortable with cryptocurrencies and getting in the game. Crypto Newbie Gains Download the book for free. Originally published at alyg.blog on February 15, 2018.

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