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Just as the individual control of fire radically changed the balance of power between humans and nature, individual control of the creation, transfer, and storage of value shifts the balance of power between ordinary humans and The Bureaucratic Machine, which maximizes energy to value conversion. Throughout history, the human groups that discovered better ways of harnessing energy conversion (i.e., fossil fuels) or better technologies to maximize the extraction of value from it (i.e. electricity) have become dominant over the rest. Hence, is a key RCD advantage among humans and maximizing its value is key for increasing living standards as our global population approaches 8 billion. energy to value conversion efficiency [1] As Bitcoin seems optimally designed for private individuals to directly access, store, and transfer their economic-value contribution, two reasons make it the most likely vehicle to achieve that goal, as its adoption expands over the coming decades. energy to value conversion Bitcoin’s ability to turn energy into a scarce and immutable unit of account, via a self-sustained process, fueled by network-effects and game theory dynamics [2] beyond human control, brings a paradigm shift in the way society represents, owns, transfers, and stores value. In other words, by subtracting human control from our civilization’s fictional money concept, Bitcoin prevents bureaucrats from seizing and allocating value according to their interest. Over time, as ordinary citizens begin owning and allocating their wealth as they see fit, individual merit and entrepreneurship will regain control of the economy, as they did under Capitalism until the early 20th century, when Monetary Central Planning replaced it. This is evident just from looking, for instance, at Venezuela, a country where Keynes’ most popular stealth-confiscation tools (currency and interest-rate manipulation) were expressly magnified to hasten the process of embezzling the country’s yearly productivity, plus all excess economic-value (savings) citizens and private entities had accumulated during the 20th century. As word of Bitcoin spread over the past decade, guess which country reached the world’s fourth-largest Bitcoin trading volume in 2018? Only an Immutable [3] , Non-Systemic, Individually Controlled currency can efficiently replace Monetary Central Planning. If using Venezuela to hypothesize the “absurdum” in a simple Reductio ad absurdum argument is enough to prove what Keynesian economics has been doing globally, over , it is even easier to understand why Bitcoin’s dominance will spread. the last 80 years As citizens realize that despite its rather primitive design (compared to the multiple advantages touted by blockchain abstractions), Bitcoin is the only safe way for them to control the: Economic value-added, they contribute, Excess value-added, they have accumulated over their lifetimes, and Access to their productivity on-tap, regardless of how badly future public or private bureaucrats want to seize it for their purposes. [1] RCD (Resource Competition Dynamics) within the context explained here -see the opinion note in summary. [2] By giving away to miners, part of the value generated from network effects coming from its growing grid of nodes, Bitcoin makes it increasingly more expensive to confirm invalid ledger-entries than to confirm valid ones. Over time, whether its price increases or not, grid-growth funds a growing asymmetry between the cost of hacking its ledger and the cost of validating it. Additionally, having no tangible entities to intimidate, legally or physically, critically increases the likelihood of its ledger’s perpetuity. [3] Even if a shared-ledger's intrinsic design is decentralized, extrinsic factors will ultimately render it mutable, unless a) it manages to expand the number of validations and validation nodes in its grid until it amasses a level of computational complexity high enough to discourage attacks, b) there are no key man risks, and c) executing major changes to its code requires absurdly high consensus levels. In short, such a ledger would have to expand undetected for several years, its key designer/s would have to fully vanish, and trying to impose major changes to it would have been proven to be practically impossible.

The Bitcoin Driven Power Shift from Bureaucracy to the Masses

Feeling the pain of bureaucracy I recently had a student organization from the Loyola University approach me and request my Virtual Reality services for one of their events. I was glad to work with them as they are a very well known and regarded institution. This engagement would help bring legitimacy to my business and would add additional revenue to my bottom line. It was a great opportunity, or so I thought. So began a lengthy series of emails, contracts to fill out in excruciating detail, forms to complete, people to inform, legalese to inspect, and various other bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Seriously guys, I’m not getting married here. I’m just going to show up for two hours and let you play some VR. I’ve spent hours and hours on this one engagement and it’s becoming more and more frustrating to have to face. What’s your strategy when faced with bureaucracy in your business? Do you implement the 80/20 rule, perhaps? Let me know in the comments below.

VR Bureaucracy

Let’s face it, not too many people grew up wanting to be a middleman designated to infuriate their fellow human beings at every opportunity between strict business hours. Yet we have a massive class of people who do just that. How did the bureaucrat get born? No one really knows for sure, but there is one thing that is becoming more certain, we know how they will be taken out. Hello, blockchain! Pure market forces are conspiring to destroy a monopoly that governments have with citizens’ precious information and services — everything from what we own to what we owe, to who we are, social security numbers, tax, votes, and identities. There are moments in every large monopoly-like market where ‘customer service’ is not innovated because there is no apparent need to, causing the start of a revolutionary feeling. This is much akin to what the French pulled back in 1789; when people get pissed-off enough they take action. As with Uber, which has completely disrupted the corrupt and inept taxi industry, we can look forward to a revolution against governments and ironically enough it will be led by governments themselves. This will be thanks to globalisation and a need for countries to be competitive in the struggle for talent, tax revenues and innovation to maintain prosperity. As progressive governments seek the value of blockchain, it will be at the expense of someone who uses the word ‘no’ more than their heart beats. Sweden’s land registry authority, the Lantmäteriet, wants to allow buyers, sellers, banks and authorities to track a transaction from beginning to end digitally instead of using paper contracts, thus making tracking and transparency easier; every party has information always accessible on the blockchain. The Dubai government is going all in. It wants all government documents secured on a blockchain by 2020. It estimates its blockchain strategy has the potential to generate 25.1 million hours of economic productivity each year in savings, while reducing CO2 emissions. Let’s pause and think what this all means. Governments can address the challenges of trust and transparency while meting the need for data protection and privacy. And you won’t need a department of people getting in the way while not adding value to the transaction. I would like to thank the global movement that’s demanding high service-level innovation for this shift. How many times when dealing with a government department have you screamed, “Why can’t they make this easier, faster or simpler!” because you’ve had a better experience from a leading technology company? It’s just not people with bad haircuts who get in the way, but the entire government system is geared to grind any basic enquiry to a halt: conflicting data formats, woeful interoperability and trying to balance openness against privacy. Government data can now be fully unleashed, because blockchain provides an immutable, transparent record of the truth, and it is changing how organisations carry out trusted transactions. But more than that, watch out for emerging countries who don’t have billions tied up in legacy systems, where bean-counters are desperate for ROI. For once, it might really payoff to be behind, because poor governments can skip several generations of IT systems and avoid creating a bureaucratic class of public service to leapfrog developed nations and realise new competitive benefits. The rocky road to transparency Before we get too utopian let’s not forget that some realities will hit home. We know from supply chains that blockchain helps with eliminating counterfeit goods, but many organisations they are holding back because they don’t want to reveal the extent of their problem. I expect governments to behave the same. It’s interesting that the two toughest and heavy handed approaches have come from China and the US. But I suspect their hands will be forced as other countries move ahead at warp speed to seize the innovation higher ground. When you start counting the cost of gross inefficiency and opportunity loss, the business case is very clear. But getting there will take time, even for the most dedicated. You first have to build a foundation for the change, policies need to be in place, and education of the right people at the city, state and federal government levels needs to occur. But this has to be at the top levels, because the middle level is where trouble begins. I can’t imagine a lot of people in a cozy position welcoming the removal of their relevance with open arms. Once the right people understand blockchain and the way it can solve existing problems, you then turn your sights to where existing technology infrastructure is inadequate — here you hit the sweet spot for blockchain change. It then becomes a challenge to attract the right partners to think through, build and deliver solutions. Ultimately, it’s about improving the lives of citizens I love the idea of ‘responsive open data’. Blockchain-based solutions will give people the ability — without having to wait in line — to automatically transact with the government, yet still have complete trust that the government has certified that transaction. Instead of going to the social welfare office or calling them up and waiting for an hour to get through to complete a transaction, you could use an app on your phone. In Australia, the social welfare agency CentreLink is famous for terrible service. West Australian Alysia Kepert was caught in the so-called “robo-debt” crackdown. After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, she received income support but missed reporting requirements during treatment. Following a nine-month battle with the department — which involved going to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal — she reduced the debt from $4,000 to $500. She waited 45 minutes on hold during one call and said the whole process took a psychological toll. “It was actually reliving a very painful part of my life, with the cancer diagnosis, and all the hardship I experienced as a result,” she said. “And you could actually be handballed through quite a few people before you could get to the person that could actually help you.”

Death of the bureaucrat.

One of the first things that we should recognise about automated testing is that it is a risk-aversion strategy — by that definition, we can infer that the more tests a system has, the less likely it is to behave unexpectedly—This is generally a good thing, however, the downside is that too much testing can lead to significantly reduced speed and agility and can turn a software project into a technological bureaucracy. The amount of testing that a company does usually corresponds to the size of the company. Big companies tend to be risk-averse, so developers who work for such companies are typically expected to write tests (both unit and integration tests) to cover most of the system’s logic; especially on the back end. Practices such as test-first TDD and 100% code coverage for both unit and integration tests are commonplace. The amount of testing also often depends on the industry that the company is in and on the importance of the project within the company (though a lot of companies tend to blindly enforce the same blanket testing practices across all projects). Companies and projects which directly handle money or valuable digital assets are typically the most risk-averse; it’s not unusual for engineers on these projects to spend more time writing tests than writing actual business logic. Some companies have a policy which requires 100% unit test coverage and 100% integration test coverage for any piece of logic that gets merged into the main development branch across all projects. The amount of testing happening in these companies is bordering on insanity and it costs these companies a lot in terms of productivity and agility. Employee churn is another factor which is strongly correlated with risk aversion; if you can’t expect employees to stick around long enough to support all the new code which they wrote, at least tests will make it easier for new employees to understand the existing code and to pick up where the previous employee left off (with minimal risk of damaging the existing code)… Ironically however, projects that have an overly large amount of test logic and scaffolding tend to be less interesting for engineers to work on; this typically increases employee churn; it’s a vicious cycle which can only be kept in check through the use of increasingly large paychecks. A couple of years ago, I worked on a high-stakes project for a big company that had so much testing and scaffolding logic around it that it could take days to make the most trivial changes like renaming certain fields in an API response. While this level of testing might have made sense for that specific project under different circumstances; because it was still pre-production (and still prone to changing requirements), I would argue that the test suite was not worth its cost at that particular time. I think that during the very early stages of most projects, overly detailed unit tests should be seen as a form of premature optimization. Tests lock down APIs and make it harder for developers to change those APIs as requirements change. When you have thousands of lines of unit and integration tests around a specific class/component, as an engineer, you have a strong incentive to put off refactoring that class/component (often, well past its use-by date); this is because refactoring tests can require a lot of effort and the process is relatively boring/tedious. This misalignment of incentives can cause technical debt to build up at a faster rate. Locking down the code base is generally a good thing if the system is already in production and has several external dependencies, but it can be really bad for systems which haven’t launched yet (or haven’t yet found a market fit)… I think that it’s better to start with simple integration tests and then maybe do unit tests later once the project’s code has settled into a good production state. When a system hasn’t launched yet, you want developers to be able to experiment as much as possible. It’s practically impossible to design a perfect API from scratch. As Facebook would say, sometimes it’s better to “Move fast and break things”.

Too much testing is bureaucracy

In courageous defiance against his company’s oppressive coding standards, local software engineer Jack Johnson decided to hardcode all strings in English in his team’s product. “Look, it just takes too much effort to add support for 50 languages,” said Johnson, apparently unaware that integrating i18n support into the product would’ve taken just a few hours due to the robust internationalization libraries available to him. Taking his customary 3-hour foosball break, he added, “I mean, I’m here to code, not to translate stuff! Who even has time to do that?” At press time, Johnson was heard complaining that the app he had hoped to use to plan his vacation abroad was only available in Chinese.

Brave! Area Software Engineer Resists Bureaucratic i18n Protocols

How to Find Out If You're Paying for Slow Internet

Welcome to HackerNoon’s Writing Prompts! Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. 1. What is your company in 2–5 words? Digital product agency disrupting healthcare. 2. Why is now the time for your company to exist? There is no denying that the pace of innovation and technology has accelerated in the last decade. However, the healthcare industry has not evolved as quickly as other industries. It faces unique challenges, like a lack of agility, strict regulations, antiquated processes, and slow innovation. Although there are many people in the sector working to improve quality and accessibility, systemic problems and financial interests limit what can be achieved. Our strategy is to bring agility to this setting by using our knowledge of technology, user-centric approach, and in-depth knowledge of the business to create software that is strategically planned, scalable, and cleverly constructed. 3. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? When we first set out, we were quite excited about developing digital solutions that prioritized the needs and wants of users and delivered genuine value. By then, we collaborated with businesses in every sector of the economy, including real estate, retail, food, entertainment, agronomy, retail, and finance. Even though we've produced incredible products and gained a lot of knowledge from the process, we believed that focus and mission were still lacking. In 2020, during the pandemic, we made a strategic shift and decided to focus 100% on healthcare, allowing us to fully immerse ourselves in the industry, gain specialized knowledge, and, most importantly, have a shared, meaningful purpose. This change gave our entire team a compelling mission and a defined path. Who wouldn't find satisfaction in working on initiatives for a sector of the economy that ultimately saves lives? I guess that’s what I love most about the team and why we are the ones who solve problems. We’re a team of focused, knowledgeable, and creative people with a shared purpose: improving healthcare. 4. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I would probably be building another startup. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a teenager, so I’m sure that if Light-it had not succeeded, I would be building something else. 5. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We work with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and they are measured quarterly. We have company-wide OKRs and OKRs per department. They help us stay aligned with the same goals quarter to quarter. 6. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? In broad terms, we partner with our clients to help them ideate, design, and develop healthcare digital products. The challenge we resolve is the lack of expertise in developing healthcare software with a product mindset and keeping strategy, budget, compliance, and user experience in mind.  There are hundreds of software development firms with no experience in healthcare, which can lead to short-term gains at the expense of long-term scalability and maintenance. We at Light-itadopt a unique strategy. We follow industry best practices, implementing scalable models across several platforms and providing end-to-end product development services with extensive user experience support and consulting. Since we have an agile approach, startups are our bread and butter. Nevertheless, our interactions with health systems have also been excellent. Our introduction of an agile vision and innovative mindset has been extremely effective in these circumstances, given their customary bureaucratic and slower ways. Finding a reliable partner is usually difficult for a healthcare organization, but finding someone who can offer both high-tech development and strategic advice is much more difficult. That's what makes us unique. 7. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? **Light-it'**s traction has been steadily growing year after year, an incredibly encouraging trend. Last year was particularly exciting for us as we forged partnerships with industry giants like ABInBev Foundation, the world's largest beer company, and Inviza, a groundbreaking RPM and DTX product for the US Air Force.  These collaborations are not only about business and transactions – they validate our position as leaders in our field and serve as a powerful encouragement to continue our hard work. 8. Where do you think your growth will be next year? We have been collaborating with startups, supporting them through the entire product development process, from launch to scaling. Now that we are collaborating with Health Systems, we plan to continue doing so because we have seen such a positive impact. We don't intend to expand the company too quickly because, as a team, we want to keep our boutique approach. We aim to keep our crew size between one hundred and two hundred. We always have new projects coming up. In my opinion, one of the biggest promises in health technology is generative AI. Puppeteeris a spinoff company we launched last year, and it is the result of the realization that 2024 was going to be the year of generative AI and that humanity will either have to accept it or perish. Our first round is presently being raised, and we have high hopes for it this year. Regarding our long-term future, Light-it's DNA will always embrace new technologies and pathways, so who knows what else might emerge! "You win, or you learn" strikes a chord with me. Every new endeavor, whether it succeeds or fails, adds to our development and resiliency. I'm committed to establishing a positive work environment that prioritizes curiosity, boldness, ownership, and dedication to ongoing development while also considering the well-being of our team. 9. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. The first paying customers we had were family members and friends building e-commerces. Since then, we’ve worked with startups from pre-seed to Series D, with Fortune 500s and some of the biggest health systems in the world! In terms of revenue, we expect to keep growing at the rate of 50% per year. 10. What’s your biggest threat? We have all heard that AI will replace software engineers, so I guess that should be my biggest thread as a software development company owner. Still, I’m convinced that our team has minds that no AI can substitute: Empathy, strategy, and creativity are some of the skills needed in a product team that AI can't substitute. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Welcome to HackerNoon’s Writing Prompts! Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Welcome to HackerNoon ’s Writing Prompts! Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. HackerNoon The link for the template is HERE. 1. What is your company in 2–5 words? Digital product agency disrupting healthcare. 2. Why is now the time for your company to exist? There is no denying that the pace of innovation and technology has accelerated in the last decade. However, the healthcare industry has not evolved as quickly as other industries. It faces unique challenges, like a lack of agility, strict regulations, antiquated processes, and slow innovation. Although there are many people in the sector working to improve quality and accessibility, systemic problems and financial interests limit what can be achieved. Our strategy is to bring agility to this setting by using our knowledge of technology, user-centric approach, and in-depth knowledge of the business to create software that is strategically planned, scalable, and cleverly constructed. 3. What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem? When we first set out, we were quite excited about developing digital solutions that prioritized the needs and wants of users and delivered genuine value. By then, we collaborated with businesses in every sector of the economy, including real estate, retail, food, entertainment, agronomy, retail, and finance. Even though we've produced incredible products and gained a lot of knowledge from the process, we believed that focus and mission were still lacking. In 2020, during the pandemic, we made a strategic shift and decided to focus 100% on healthcare, allowing us to fully immerse ourselves in the industry, gain specialized knowledge, and, most importantly, have a shared, meaningful purpose. This change gave our entire team a compelling mission and a defined path. Who wouldn't find satisfaction in working on initiatives for a sector of the economy that ultimately saves lives? I guess that’s what I love most about the team and why we are the ones who solve problems. We’re a team of focused, knowledgeable, and creative people with a shared purpose: improving healthcare. 4. If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing? I would probably be building another startup. I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was a teenager, so I’m sure that if Light-it had not succeeded, I would be building something else. Light-it Light-it 5. At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics? We work with OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), and they are measured quarterly. We have company-wide OKRs and OKRs per department. They help us stay aligned with the same goals quarter to quarter. 6. In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom? In broad terms, we partner with our clients to help them ideate, design, and develop healthcare digital products. The challenge we resolve is the lack of expertise in developing healthcare software with a product mindset and keeping strategy, budget, compliance, and user experience in mind.  There are hundreds of software development firms with no experience in healthcare, which can lead to short-term gains at the expense of long-term scalability and maintenance. We at Light-it adopt a unique strategy. We follow industry best practices, implementing scalable models across several platforms and providing end-to-end product development services with extensive user experience support and consulting. Light-it Since we have an agile approach, startups are our bread and butter. Nevertheless, our interactions with health systems have also been excellent. Our introduction of an agile vision and innovative mindset has been extremely effective in these circumstances, given their customary bureaucratic and slower ways. Finding a reliable partner is usually difficult for a healthcare organization, but finding someone who can offer both high-tech development and strategic advice is much more difficult. That's what makes us unique. 7. What’s most exciting about your traction to date? **Light-it'**s traction has been steadily growing year after year, an incredibly encouraging trend. Last year was particularly exciting for us as we forged partnerships with industry giants like ABInBev Foundation, the world's largest beer company, and Inviza, a groundbreaking RPM and DTX product for the US Air Force.  These collaborations are not only about business and transactions – they validate our position as leaders in our field and serve as a powerful encouragement to continue our hard work. 8. Where do you think your growth will be next year? We have been collaborating with startups, supporting them through the entire product development process, from launch to scaling. Now that we are collaborating with Health Systems, we plan to continue doing so because we have seen such a positive impact. We don't intend to expand the company too quickly because, as a team, we want to keep our boutique approach. We aim to keep our crew size between one hundred and two hundred. We always have new projects coming up. In my opinion, one of the biggest promises in health technology is generative AI. Puppeteer is a spinoff company we launched last year, and it is the result of the realization that 2024 was going to be the year of generative AI and that humanity will either have to accept it or perish. Our first round is presently being raised, and we have high hopes for it this year. Puppeteer Regarding our long-term future, Light-it's DNA will always embrace new technologies and pathways, so who knows what else might emerge! "You win, or you learn" strikes a chord with me. Every new endeavor, whether it succeeds or fails, adds to our development and resiliency. I'm committed to establishing a positive work environment that prioritizes curiosity, boldness, ownership, and dedication to ongoing development while also considering the well-being of our team. 9. Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year. The first paying customers we had were family members and friends building e-commerces. Since then, we’ve worked with startups from pre-seed to Series D, with Fortune 500s and some of the biggest health systems in the world! In terms of revenue, we expect to keep growing at the rate of 50% per year. 10. What’s your biggest threat? We have all heard that AI will replace software engineers, so I guess that should be my biggest thread as a software development company owner. Still, I’m convinced that our team has minds that no AI can substitute: Empathy, strategy, and creativity are some of the skills needed in a product team that AI can't substitute. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. Would you like to take a stab at answering some of these questions? The link for the template is HERE. The link for the template is HERE.

BUREAU

bureau.id

51-200 employees

Since 2020

COMPANY RANKING

BUREAU

EVERGREEN INDEX #2138

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BUREAU

bureau.id

51-200 employees

Since 2020

COMPANY RANKING

BUREAU

EVERGREEN INDEX #2138

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STORIES ABOUT BUREAU

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