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In September, the official launch of Authic.io will take place: the first exclusive NFT marketplace in the Netherlands.  Here, quality and user-friendliness are key, says co-founder Wouter Kloosterman. Authic held the first NFT exhibition in the Netherlands during TEFAF at the Michelin-starred restaurant Beluga. First things first, An NFT is a Non-Fungible Token: a non-exchangeable, irreplaceable digital certificate of ownership. Also called: a small piece of code in a (public database) that proves you are the owner of a digital item, such as a photo, audio file, or artwork. This code is often linked to a personal digital crypto wallet. what exactly are NFTs? blockchain Strict selection by curators Exactly one year ago, an exclusively curated platform for the sale of , focusing on the high-end of digital art. Wouter Kloosterman, Lemar Bachtiar, and Tat Luat Nguyen started Authic.io: NFTs "We only present curated art.” That is, . For example, they look at the track record of the artists. Has the artist been in the industry for a long time? curators, assess our digital artworks on various criteria Is his art consistent? And is the quality, such as resolution, high? Only when the artist passes curation, a collection is put together in collaboration with our curators. That means we can guarantee high-quality art exclusively on our platform. Also interesting: Our platform’s focus lies on . That means that most NFTs on will be very exclusive and rare!  Most collections have only a singular edition! 1/1's Authic.io The first curated NFT collection in the Netherlands , in collaboration with & partners such as BCNL and Samsung, organized the first local, real life NFT gallery. (During TEFAF). Authic the Michelin-starred restaurant Beluga Their works are part of the first curated NFT collection exhibited during the . The collection includes top international artists, such as Belgian artist with his work: Only 10 artists were selected out of 600+ applications! TEFAF Jonas Leriche 'Transhuman Romance'. "Leriche consciously seeks the boundary between what is artificial and authentic. Transhuman Romance makes the audience wonder what it would be like to be entertained by a cyborg geisha? It took eighteen hours to paint the lady. After which she was photographed and digitally edited into a beautiful work of art." Now available on the Authic NFT marketplace. Fashion, technology, and hyper surreal plastic models A second exhibitor is 3D artist Known for his sensual artwork, has produced work for none other than and , as well as collaborated with V In his work, he combines elements of fashion and technology with hyper surreal plastic models. Jason Ebeyer, with his work "Soft Escape." Ebeyer Madonna Doja Cat ogue Italia, Tom of Finland, and Steven Klein. Soft escape is a nod to the beauty norm of social media and the perception of the digital generation -- Jason Ebeyer Sunshine Royale Motel by Michel Mölder At the end of September, not only will the platform (officially) go live, but also the collection "This series consists of ten different 'cinemagraphs' featuring various well-known Dutch people such as 'Sunshine Royale Motel' by Michel Mölder. , , and . Humberto Tan Barrie Stevens Isa Hoes Jody Bernal A cinemagraph is a mix of photo and video. This series, it's about images in which everything stands still. Only subtle, surprising, and moving elements bring each image to life. Those movements together form a loop, so as a viewer you don't see when the movement starts or ends. This keeps you looking at the artwork. Also interesting: the setting in which the images are located concerns a digital motel, which Mölder designed entirely himself." to collect or sell exclusive NFTs at Authic! No need for technical knowledge As inspiring as all these sounds, for many people, NFTs remain and therefore difficult to understand. That's why, in addition to a collection, "elusive" curated NFT art Authic focuses on accessibility. We want to remove any barriers for buying an NFT, so that even people without technical knowledge can enter the world of digital art. For example, on you can already  pay very easily with as fiat payments processor. In addition, you can so no messing around with seed phrases or connecting your wallet to shady websites. Authic.io IDEAL choose to use a custodial wallet, If you feel like having a look in-to the future of NFT’s, then look no further and read the great article: ’ ‘ The Promising Future of the NFT marketplace by writer Hackernoon ! Amit Biwaal Authic is hiring! If you agree with our vision on the future of NFTs, and fit the profile with experience and skills, come join our team! We are currently looking to fill two freelancer positions: Senior Test Engineer Junior Python Engineer Feel free to reach out for an interview on our socials, through the contact form or in an email!

How One Startup Is Removing Barriers to Buying NFTs

Hey Hackers, I'm excited to announce that HackerNoon has signed on as a media partner for this year's Non-Fungible Conference which is an in-person event in Portugal! HackerNoon will have staff onsite to interview some awesome companies in the Web3 space and report on what is shaking up to be an incredible event. What is the Non-Fungible Conference? Premiering on the European scene, (NFC) is set to take place in April 2022 in the bustling city of Lisbon, Portugal and promises to kick off with a bang! Non-Fungible Conference Here is the plot: A jam-packed 2-day event filled with talks, panels, workshops, parties and momentous experiences that bring together artists, projects, platforms, collectors and investors from the global NFT community. On April 4th & 5th, the conference will take place at the Pavilhão Carlos Lopes - an iconic venue in the heart of the city. The event will host over 100 speakers & 100 artists who will share their knowledge and views to an audience of 1500 attendees ready to learn and get more insight into the NFT Revolution. Gaming, Art, Collectibles, and Metaverse are the main tracks, exploring the core foundations, the current situation, and what the future holds for this juggernaut in the artistic world. The speaker line-up includes the OGs and most famous players in the NFT world with exclusive talks by Sebastien Borget from the Sandbox, Brian o’Hagan from Sorare or YEN from the iconic collection World of Women, to name a few. Mario Klingemann a.k.a. Quasimondo, the legendary Kevin Abosch, the decentralized The Guild, and Magician Nahiko are already planning their stay in sunny Lisbon. A central piece of NFC features the 3 Art Galleries, where visitors will have the chance to meet the artists. Except not less than 100 international artists showcased on screens in 3 areas. “Bring the metaverse into real-life” is NFC's motto, so expect Cosplayers, a Shopping District to mint and collect NFT pieces and join some awesome parties all along this journey. Links to the event : website: https://www.nonfungibleconference.com twitter: https://twitter.com/nfcsummit linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nfcsummit WHERE Lisbon, Portugal at the Pavilhão Carlos Lopes - an iconic venue in the heart of the city. WHAT TO EXPECT More than 100 speakers, 100 international artists and 1500 attendees from the global NFT community are expected for this 1st edition which will focus on 4 main themes: Gaming, Collectibles, Art and Metaverse. More than a conference, NFC is a pure experiential event, with an NFT art gallery, a shopping district and of course, colorful parties and cosplayers joining the fun! #NFCsummit in numbers: 1500+ Attendees 100+ Speakers International artists 4 Content Tracks 5 rooms Curated NFT Art Exhibition NFT Shopping District Cosplayers warmly welcome Parties, Side Events, Cultural Experiences and more SNEAK PEEKS - ACTIVATIONS & EXPERIENCES MINT/COLLECT YOUR NFT TICKET FOR THE @nfcsummit Unique ArtWork made for NFC in collaboration with the OGs artists & , thanks to lead by . @neurocolor @XCOPYART @CultCryptoArt @EclecticMethod From Guernica to Kyiv Because of the Emergency of the Situation, 40 artists decided to follow Picasso’s path and create 	a massive collaboration within 3-weeks. Inspired by Guernica, « From Guernica to Kyiv'' will be displayed during the Non-Fungible Conference on a giant screen wall. This art installation will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, on April 4-5, 2022 and will be created under the supervision  of . Everyone can bid to buy a layer of ArtWork. All proceeds and royalties will go to the UkraineDAO Wallet. The Guild Cosplay Contest Cosplayers, the time to reveal your inner self as your favorite avatar is here! The NFC welcomes you to attend the conference and participate in the Cosplay dress-up competition. Taking place on the main stage on 4 & 5 April, ensure your Cosplay tickets are purchased and stand a chance to win amazing prizes! Nansen Cocktail Bar x Neil Beloufa What about an AI-algorithm-generated bar? The process: Every participant will be airdropped a unique NFT cocktail in their ETH wallet. When they go to the Bar, they can display their QR Code ETH Address (from their mobile). An automated machine next to the bar will scan the QR Code. The Automate is a Giant Pikachu Designed by Neil Beloufa. Neil is a contemporary artist, mostly known for his video installations and monographic exhibitions. He has received several awards in Contemporary Art (Georges Pompidou National Museum of Modern Art and MoMA). After scanning the code, the machine will play an animation and display the Cocktail Artwork. Participants can redeem the NFT at the bar, and the Barman will mix their cocktail. Each cocktail can be “used” only once. One out of the 2000 NFTs will be an open bar NFT. https://www.nansen.ai/ Samot Club Live Paint Before ever grabbing a brush, the Argentinian rebel Samot expressed himself with oil and wrenches. He honors these roots by painting cars everywhere he goes, and we are bringing two exotic sport cars for him to work on during both days of the NFC. You will then spot these masterpieces driving around Lisbon, so make sure you don’t miss out on the process. Sandbox Jungle Party x Party Degenerates The official closing party of the NFC on Tuesday April 5th. This epic event will take place in the tropical jungle of Estufa Fria, the greenhouse in the middle of Park Eduard VII (minutes away from NFC Headquarters). Expect art and music, a proper sandbox, experiences and amazing acts curated by the co-organiser and rebellious artists from Party Degenerates. Guest and the first  confirmed act is massive but we keep it secret. Just a hint for now: Day Zero. https://www.sandbox.game/en/ https://partydegenerates.com/ Music is the answer Already creating bonding and collab between superstar guests: the renowned Dj and Producer Eclectic Method has created a bunch of remixes involving legendary artists invited to the conference such as Quasimondo or Conlan from Async Art, just watch! https://twitter.com/i/status/1496131220849242122 https://twitter.com/EclecticMethod/status/1501943484466413581 We hope to see you there. If you're attending the event, and wanna say hi, look out for someone wearing a . That'll be us ;) HackerNoon shirt

HackerNoon Partners with Non-Fungible Conference

HackerNoon se asocia con la conferencia no fungible

The Great Gatsby: Chapter 4

Facebook recently announced at the company’s Connect event that it has changed its name to Meta. Many people may be a little curious about the word Meta, which means beyond in Latin. As CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter published to accompany the event, “I used to study Classics, and the word “meta” comes from the Greek word meaning “beyond”. For me, it symbolizes that there is always more to build, and there is always a next chapter to the story.” At the same time, Facebook announced that it would soon change its NASDAQ stock ticker symbol from FB to MVSE starting on December 1. As reported in The Verge, which first interviewed Zuckerberg in July, the change in name is in part motivated by a strategic shift from being known primarily as a social media company to focus the metaverse plans. This is reflected in the reporting of financial results, rather than the company’s structure, splitting between apps and metaverse related products. Facebook is not just changing its name. “All of our products, including our apps, now share a new vision: to help bring the metaverse to life. And now we have a name that reflects the breadth of what we do,” confirmed Zuckerberg. But is that the full story behind the shift? Indeed, there’s speculation that a primary goal may be to make its crypto wallet a game-changer. Currently, Novi is pitched as simply a “digital wallet that helps people send and receive money internationally — instantly, securely, and with no fees”. Novi But if the plan works, Novi may become the digital interface for all encrypted assets, from cryptocurrencies to NFTs, in the metaverse that Meta is planning to create. Why did Facebook change its name? Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook as a brand was stuck in the past being regarded as a social media company. Put simply, the renamed Meta now represents more than a re-skinned Facebook concept. “Right now our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can’t possibly represent everything we’re doing today, let alone in the future. Over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company, and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards,” says Zuckerberg. Now Facebook is just one of Meta's suite of products: WhatsApp – messaging app Oculus VR -- virtual reality (VR) Onavo -- mobile network analytics Beluga -- messenger service Instagram -- photo and video-sharing app What role will the Novi wallet play? Whether Meta's goal is to become the backbone of the crypto field or replicate the success of crypto-asset exchanges, Meta hopes to join the crypto field based on Zuckerberg's remarks. Facebook recently announced a pilot project in collaboration with Coinbase and Paxos. They enticed users to try it by promoting Facebook's digital wallet, Novi, to users in the US and Guatemala shortly before the name change announcement in October. The aim is to allow the business to “evaluate the wallet’s core functions and showcase operational capabilities, specifically those around customer service and compliance. Novi is also being designed for interoperability with other digital wallets,” according to a report in . Cointelegraph As early as 2019, Facebook attempted to enter the crypto field by launching its own token Libra, but it ultimately failed. Finally, under the combined pressure of the US Central Bank and policymakers, the token was forced to cancel. Libra was later tweaked, relaunched, and renamed Diem. The spokesperson stated that the company has not abandoned support for the Diem network, a permissionless payment system that is still awaiting the green light from Washington. “We intend to launch Novi with Diem once it receives regulatory approval and goes live,” the spokesperson told . Cointelegraph It may be surprising that the Novi project has been heavily criticized by some US senators who oppose Facebook's relaunch of cryptocurrency and digital wallets. But the response from Diem, the associated stablecoin project, shows how challenging these organizational changes maybe for regulators and lawmakers. In response to the letter calling on Facebook to halt its stablecoin and crypto wallet projects, Diem stated that it “Diem is not Facebook. We are an independent organization, and Facebook’s Novi is just one of more than two dozen members of the Diem Association. Novi’s pilot with Paxos is unrelated to Diem.” Despite the senators' criticism, the Novi encrypted wallet project has certainly not given up. It will likely play an essential role in Meta's future crypto provision. According to relevant information, as Facebook becomes Meta, its payment and financial services and Novi are being integrated. Meta plans to unify all payment methods and financial services under the Novi brand in the future, with significant implications for its metaverse business offering in the future. In a recent report UK-based blockchain VC Outlier Ventures confirmed the need for the metaverse to have a crypto decentralized core, with its own payment system as key: “The defining characteristic of a true Metaverse is that it needs its own economy and currencies native to it, where value can be earnt, spent, lent, borrowed or invested interchangeably in both a physical or virtual sense and most importantly without the need for a government.” Crypto, NFTs and the Metaverse Vishal Shah, Facebook’s head of metaverse products, said the aim was to enable “as many creators as possible to build a business in the metaverse.” Shah underlined the importance of the diversity of creators in the metaverse: “Creators who make digital objects, creators who offer services and experiences and those who build entire worlds like game creators do today.” In turn, the diversity of creators will be reflected in the diversity of business. And in underlining this point about “new types of ownership models,” he pointed out the role of NFTs, with the new Meta platform making it easier “to sell limited education digital objects like NFTs, display them in their digital spaces and even resell them to the next person securely”. Crypto experts such as Anndy Lian, Chairman of BigONE Exchange commented earlier last week on too: “#Meta means beyond in Greek. Are you ready for it’s future? I am.” Ben Armstrong ALA Bitboy is also bullish on metaverse projects too. He mentioned this on his too: “Are you bullish on #metaverse projects? These are gaining more and more traction.” Twitter Tweet All in all, I have to say this- Metaverse is the future.

Facebook becomes Meta- What is next?

Image courtesy of NASA / Unsplash There is growing demand in various industries, such as energy, agriculture, transportation, and also in scientific research fields, particularly environmental studies, for not only more intelligent and efficient data collection, but also for distributed and localised manipulation of the data being collected, in real-time. Current State of Internet of Things The so-called Internet of Things has been around for some time. Data collection from independent, isolated devices is nothing new and there are several success stories on the market. But these IoT devices have been mostly successful on the consumer electronics market, like the Nest thermostat for instance, or the ever growing list of "connected" kettles, fridges, dishwashers, and I don't know what else Samsung is cooking (supposedly inside a "connected" oven). While these devices could in theory accommodate sophisticated real-time capabilities, their purpose is quite limited. No one else benefits from a Google Nest other than the person or household using it. These devices, even though they might incorporate various useful technologies, don't have any other practical usage beyond their commercial intent. Whenever we think about IoT devices, we start picturing either fancy connected household appliances which nobody needs, or small Raspberry PI "hack kits" with various other small sensors, all bundled together with a lot of wires in a hobby-style, soon-be-discarded project. On the other hand, the heavy industries such as the energy sector are struggling to adopt cloud and IoT technologies which might improve their workflows and as a result they lack the benefits which these technologies would bring. The consequence of the slow “digitalisation” (the term commonly used in these industries) is however propagated to the entire society, and in many cases to the environment and the biosphere. Thus, the swift transition to digital technologies in the heavy industries should be primarily an environmental and ecological consideration, and then a commercial and economic one. Existing Implementations Across Industries Let's start with looking at what is out there already and I will only focus on the heavy industries and scientific research sectors. I will mostly draw conclusions from my own experience as an independent consultant working in a few different large scale projects in the energy sector in Norway over the past five years. I have also been involved in a few scientific research projects with an environmental focus while working at the leading during the course of 2018. Norwegian Institute for Water Research From what I've been able to observe, not only by directly being involved in various projects, but also by speaking with several other large companies in the energy sector in Norway, there are various data platforms being developed mostly in-house, independently. The purpose varies of course from one company to another, but what these platforms have in common is: collecting data from industrial assets, usually in the form of time-series data, and storing it in various types of data structures for the purpose of further analysis and also for condition monitoring of assets. The most sophisticated ones also have 3D simulators and digital twins. These solutions are often highly complex and costly to implement and deploy. They are usually built from the ground up, using in many cases cloud architectures based on the Kubernetes framework, and with limited collaboration efforts with other parties. Besides the usual shortcomings resulting from working under an isolated and closed-source platform, most existing solutions are only using traditional IoT technologies and not leveraging the “Intelligent Edge” technologies, ending up at best with an architecture that looks similar to this: The above architecture is based on the traditional Azure IoT solutions developed by Microsoft to enable bulk data transfer to the cloud, but the cloud provider could also be Google, AWS, etc. Azure IoT Edge There are competing IoT platforms from Google Cloud and AWS, but my experience is mostly around the Azure IoT Edge suite, and as far as I can tell it seems to be slightly ahead of its competitors when it comes to integrated and reliable cloud IoT platforms. Its demonstrated capabilities enables developers to build, deploy, and monitor end-to-end solutions that use edge devices, which be used for a variety of purposes in several industries. The main benefit of using Azure IoT Edge enables you to move parts of your workload to the edge, so your devices can spend less time sending messages to the cloud and react more quickly to events. The architecture is based on containers and uses Docker-compatible individual containers to perform workloads on edge devices and to communicate with the cloud. Key features: Here are some of the features that are already built-in into the Azure IoT Edge solutions: scalable container-based modular architecture and open-source developer tools and SDKs an integrated runtime which is deployed on the Edge device and ensures two-way device-to-cloud communications and also communication internally between the individual modules built-in device provisioning services and also integrated end-to-end transport security built-in failover and failsafe networking mechanisms for efficient and reliable communication with the cloud or other third-party services The entire thing is on Github, and there are several additional tools to assist you in building your apps, such as the , an for IoT Edge, an for VS Code, and plenty of . There is of course also ample documentation, a , and a number of tutorials available. open-source IoT Edge Dev Tool AI toolkit IoT Edge extension code samples CLI tool For me personally, another big selling point, besides being open-source, is the ease of use and availability of integrated solutions. I have worked on a project not to long ago where we were building a complex industrial data analytics platform, also using edge devices, but with all the services being deployed using Kubernetes (in Azure) and our own streaming services built around RabbitMQ. While building a distributed, bi-directional cloud platform using Kubernetes provides many opportunities in terms of flexibility, control, and scaling, I found it to be a very complex and costly endeavour. Azure IoT Edge provides most of the basic functionality in a highly integrated and reliable manner, with built-in security. AI-Enabled Environmental monitoring In the scientific community, researchers working particularly with ecological studies, in crucial fields such as conservation or environmental monitoring, would dramatically benefit from being able to deploy their data intensive workloads directly on independent devices in the field, run them as the data is being collected, and sync the results to the cloud, in real-time. For example, during a which monitored the beluga whale populations in Alaska, part of Microsoft's initiative, researchers at the had to analyse thousands of hours of audio recordings to study populations and behaviour. The data was collected with hydrophones placed in permanent moorings within the whales habitat. conservation project AI for Earth NOAA A team at Microsoft was then able to assist the scientists at NOAA with over their existing detectors and identify beluga sounds from the audio recordings in an automatic fashion, thus helping them to reduce the time used and dramatically increase the efficiency of the process. applying machine learning The effort is being hailed as a by Microsoft and indeed rightfully so. Still, projects like this, with critical applications in ecology, can go even further. Ideally, data recorded is processed, analysed on the go, and results are sent back to the cloud in real-time, while data scientists train and define the models using the cloud interfaces, which are deployed directly on the device. success story AI for Earth Microsoft's AI for Earth initiative is quite inspiring and motivating and they seem to have invested strongly in putting it all together. They offer various open-source tools, examples, APIs, potentially serving as a hub to connect scientists with programmers and other technologists across disciplines. What gives me even more confidence is the fact that the AI for Earth team at Microsoft not only acknowledges the role that technology has played in accelerating the climate and ecological crisis, but they seem to be well-versed in some of the most complex ecological thinking, among which concepts like – something which the philosopher and ecological thinker has theorised. hyperobjects Timothy Morton The earth currently faces urgent and accelerating environmental challenges. Climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss, pollution, overpopulation, and food and fresh water shortages need quick and comprehensive mitigation, but can seem so overwhelming that philosopher Timothy Morton calls them hyperobjects, entities so vast and distributed that they're difficult to fully define or comprehend. Further steps Naturally there is a long road ahead when it comes to building an integrated data platform which leverages the real-time capabilities of IoT Edge devices and makes use of AI algorithms "at the edge". If you are already using Microsoft Azure as a cloud provider, or you're willing to give it a try, you are definitely in good company and with a solid foundation to get you started. You may find at first the entirety of all the potentially confusing and maybe even overwhelming, if you're new to IoT. Azure IoT services and terminology But don't worry, everything is well documented and based on open-source technology and protocols. I also put together on how to install and get started with the Azure IoT Edge on Ubuntu, which could be beneficial as an initial step. a technical guide

The Way to Building Integrated Data Platforms with IoT Edge Devices and AI Algorithms "At the Edge"

Introduction A recent study revealed that more than about 30% of the top ICOs have dipped in value, and an enormous majority of ICOs are trading at a loss. All of this has led to a drop in the volume of trading thereby making it exceedingly difficult for the budding ICOs to raise more capital in the past few months. But what strikes as a surprise is the high amount of institutional interest in blockchain, the development of cryptocurrency infrastructure, and the launch of new capital. A close correlation has been observed between the performance of the Nasdaq between 1994 and 2003, and that of Bitcoin between October and August, 2018. This has raised questions like whether the price of Bitcoin too will see an increase like that of NASDAQ. An interesting fact is also that a lot of companies that issued tokens will see the effect of multiplication in the market, with token prices likely increasing alongside Bitcoin, aiding the enhancement of the overall capitalization of the cryptocurrency assets in the market. Perhaps the price of Bitcoin will see pressure from different hard fork versions of its protocol, like Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV, and many more. Regardless, one thing to keep in mind moving forward is the concern surrounding the operation of the Bitcoin blockchain and the enormous amount of electric power that it consumes, specifically from the public perception perspective of the average individual. Reduction in retail involvement due to the adoption of cryptocurrency by institutions Despite the significant fall in the capitalization of the cryptocurrency assets from $800 to $130 billion, there has been an uninterrupted flow of declarations from several multinational businesses and companies who are filing patents — including Amazon, Google, Facebook, MasterCard, and others — around blockchain due to an increased institutional interest in the technology. The institutional interest in blockchain has been further reinforced by stock exchanges in London, New York, Gibraltar, Malta, Singapore, Switzerland, Boston, that are working to launch of security exchanges and thereby enabling the enlisting and trading of tokenized securities. Allowing pension managers and mutual funds to easily invest in diverse cryptocurrency assets through listings on recognized exchanges could prove essential for growth. Another significant part of the framework that the institutional managers require for trading in cryptocurrency assets are custody services, and so Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, and Coinbase have confirmed that they will provide such services. All over the world, banks are testing out blockchain technology for an extensive variety of use cases. In Europe, the ABN Amro bank commercially launched the Escrow management solution use case, and Allied Irish Bank and BNP Paribas are still in pilot mode with regards to domestic interbank payments and trade finance respectively. In North America, Citigroup is in pilot mode for a digital payment solution for the private securities use case, and Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo are in a testing phase with equity swap trading and private label MBS securitization use cases respectively. Korean Banks and Woori Bank in Asia are in pilot mode with customer identification and cross border transaction processing use cases respectively. The institutional interest in blockchain technology is not restricted to banking services. Vitana of Metlife is the first automated insurance product in the world for gestational diabetes powered by Blockchain technology. Beluga Pay of Pemex allows cryptocurrency payment at the Pemex gas station. TradeLane of Maersk IBM has established a joint business to conduct trading with the utilization of Blockchain technology. Walmart Food Traceability Initiative of Walmart has devised a way of tracing the leafy green products of Walmart back to the original farm by the employment of the platform powered by Blockchain technology. These are just some of the many use cases that are sprouting up around the world. Conclusion The institutional interest in blockchain and cryptocurrency resources was initially centred around raising capital, predominately for technology startups and new ventures. But alas, with almost $20 billion being raised against a setting of negligible guidelines and regulations, various con artists were attracted to the guarantee of making quick and easy money, and as such, vast numbers of the 4,500 of current ICOs launched on the market are bound to come up short. Nonetheless, crypto resources have heralded enthusiasm for this new asset class and the wider technology in general, and there is expanding and unmistakable proof that actual cash is being spent on valuable blockchain projects. Two examples of such are supply chains and loyalty schemes, both of which are being disrupted by companies leveraging blockchain technology. Lastly, crypto resources are currently progressing on their way towards being utilized for offering partial proprietorship in substantial resources bonds, private and cited funds, property, and even products such as gold bars that JP Morgan is tokenizing. In this way, there are tons of proof that institutional interest in Blockchain and crypto resources is growing. Blockchain innovation is not a worldview, nor are crypto resources the response to every one of our issues, although they do offer some impressive new apparatuses to limit the expenses of working together, and they offer straightforwardness, security, and control in our quickly digitizing world.

The Institutional Interest In Cryptocurrency And Blockchain

A write-up of my first kaggle competition experience During my this year, I had pledged to make into Top 25% for any 2 (Live) Kaggle competitions. Initial planning on My Self-Taught Machine Learning journey This is a write up of how Team “rm-rf /” made it to the Top 30% in our First kaggle competition ever: The “Quick, Draw! Doodle Recognition Challenge” by AI Team, hosted on kaggle. Google Special Mention: Team “rm-rf /” was a two-member team consisting of my Business partner and friend and myself. Rishi Bhalodia Experience Picture this: A race that goes on for three months. There is no finish line, there are high-scores. You’re a seasoned runner in your school. The catch? You’re against people speeding on SuperCars (GrandMasters with a LOT of experience) while I was running barefoot. Sure, I was pretty good against my friends, but against a car? In a sense, it was like a PUBG game where we just free-fall into the middle of the fight and grabbed onto any gun we could, tried to make it to the “safe zone”. The Safe Zone for us was the medal area. So why is everyone so addicted to Kaggle? Personally, I learned much more in the 1 month of competing than any 1 month MOOC that I have ever taken up. The “Experts” on kaggle are always generous with their ideas. We were surprised by the fact that many people would almost give out their complete solutions-being on the Top LB positions! Every night we’d make a good submission, the next day you wake up and you would have fallen by 20 ranks on the LB! Hit Reset and work again towards a better submission and then repeat again every day. Finally, We got to 385/1316 on Private LB: Our ideas on the given compute allowed to get to just this rank. It was definitely an amazing experience, I’d definitely compete more and try to perform better. On many occasions, when we’d manage to land a Top 100 submission, after sleeping soundly-we’d wake up to a public kernel that would have completely thrown us down the LB by 50 positions!! People who compete in competitions are truly passionate, there is always an overflow of ideas, always an overflow of talent. For us, it was just giving it our best shot and living for a few weeks on minimal sleep and breaking and building conda environments while trying to convert the ideas shared in the discussions into code. In the end, I really learned why Kaggle is the Home to Data Science. Goal It was always a dream goal of mine to perform well in kaggle competitions. For starters, I had kept the bar at 2 Top 25% submissions. Doodle Challenge: Even though the competition had a large number of file size and a few interesting challenges, we were aiming our best for a medal. Competition The goal is to identify doodle(s) from a dataset of CSV(s) files containing the information to “draw” or create them. Goal: Challenge is: The number of files in the challenge was ~50 Million! Personally, I had already done a LARGE number of MOOC(s) and I was confident given that how many times I had gone over the definition of a CNN, it’d be pretty easy to land a bronze medal. Of course, I was very wrong. Things that did not work We’re very grateful to Kaggle Master for sharing his Fast.ai starter pack-we built on Top of it along with a few tricks from Grandmaster Beluga. Radek Osmulski Mistake 1: As beginners, its always suggestive to start a kaggle competition when the competition is fresh. Why? The number of ideas that overflow in a competition is just huge! Even the LB Top scorers are very generous with sharing their approach-it’s just a matter of if we could figure out the missing nuggets of information and be able to convert their ideas into code. We started the competition almost past mid-way since its launch. Mistake 2: We learned about “experimenting”, validation. The starter pack works on 1% of the data, I tried experimenting with 5% of the data, followed by 10% of the data and this had shown a consistent increase in performance. Next: I decided to throw all the data at the model, the training ran for ~50 hours on my 8 GB GPU. We had expected a Top score with this approach and instead the model accuracy fell to the floor! Lesson learned: Experiments are very important and so is validation. The starter pack relies on “drawing” the images into memory and then training the model on them. The issue with Linux is, it keeps a limit at the number of files unless specifically formatted against that. We didn’t do a validation check and trained against a portion of the data. A reflective validation set is certainly something that you must install while getting started. Ideas that worked Progressive Training and re-sizing: Training the Model on 1% of the data with 256 image size. Fine-Tuning the Model to 5% of the data with 128 image size. Further, Fine-Tuning the Model to 20% of the data with 64 image size. ResNet18<ResNet34<ResNet50<ResNet 152 when trained on the same portion of the dataset. This approach showed a consistent increase in performance. Ensembling: Our best submission was a “Blend” of a ResNet 152 trained with fastai (v1) on 20% of the dataset and the MobileNet Kernel by Kaggle GM Beluga. Summary You will find many better discussions in the competition discussions, so please excuse this post if these ideas don’t get you a Top LB score. This was really a personal summary of the things that I’ve learned competing. Finally, I’ve pledged to compete a lot more, hopefully, you’ll find team “rm-rf /” somewhere on the LB in the recent competitions. I’ve been bitten by the “Kaggle Bug” and I would probably prefer competing in the future over signing up for more MOOC(s) See you on the LB, Happy Kaggling! If you found these interviews interesting and would like to be a part of My Learning Path , you can find me on twitter here . If you’re interested in reading about Deep Learning and Computer Vision news, you can check out my newsletter here .

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