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Mint

Nikola Tesla

Indonesia

BYD is the world’s second-largest EV producer backed by Warren ... with plans to reach around 23,000 cars overall by year-end

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.r_M_oGcxHEm-offJiFMVzC&pid=News

BYD outbids Tesla to supply EVs for Indonesia's largest taxi operator

World

China

The Japanese brand unveiled two new concept cars in the bZ electric only brand, the bZ Sport Crossover concept and bZ FlexSpace concept. The Sport Crossover is the result of BYD Toyota EV Technology Co, a joint venture between Toyota and BYD. In addition ...

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.I-nHGbvR4qBdWRpaVfc-UC&pid=News

Shanghai Auto Show 2023 - new EVs, concept cars and luxury cars from China for the world

Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s Tesla was the best-selling EV car brand of 2022, beating out legends such as Toyota and Honda, two brands that have ruled the numbers game in traditional ICE cars, as well as EVs and hybrids for a long time.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.rwBPtUZHOctpOXCZpKJQnC&pid=News

Maker culture

Once mistaking it for a joke, Elon Musk now fears THIS Chinese EV maker

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.QhGNXWFNN9fOcqA6wgPRRg&pid=news

Firstpost on MSN.com

BYD Auto

Shanghai

Cars

A video years ago that showed Tesla CEO Elon Musk laughed at BYD cars has gone viral on the Internet. However, his attitude towards BYD has now changed drastically, as he replied on the Twitter: “That was many years ago.

Video Showing Tesla CEO Musk Laughing at BYD Goes Viral, Musk Now Says Its Rival’s Cars Are Highly Competitive

Metal

Respond

Allegation

BYD made a statement on Monday saying its plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) comply with emission rules thanks to an optimized dual-motor power

BYD responds to emissions allegations, says vehicles are in compliance with rules worldwide

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.90NEmZTGklQUKT99RJBvPA&pid=news

TechNode

Wealth

He Xiaopeng, the CEO of Xpeng, owns 20.5% of the company's Class A shares. The stock price has dropped nearly 20% so far this year.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.wzTuWKOJ4UmN5-7-Hchpbi&pid=News

War film

Chief Executive Officer

A Chinese EV billionaire's wealth has plummeted 75% to $1.4 billion as aggressive price wars push customers to higher-tier cars — like Tesla or BYD

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.q-ZVWyz-qFnnPRsNgOLlfQ&pid=news

Business Insider

Dolphin

Pricing and specifications of the affordable electric hatchback in Hong Kong indicate what to expect when it is launched in Australia.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.9O0on_d0uv6HfZv4U2pXIy&pid=News

BYD Dolphin pricing and specs revealed in key right hand drive market

thedriven

Nvidia

Experience

Software

NVIDIA revealed a new partnership Monday with Taiwanese semiconductor giant MediaTek to enhance the in-car driver experience and make

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.GLoWpByPWlpir3tkJO9PQi&pid=News

NVIDIA is upgrading the in-car experience with AI, streaming, and advanced safety features

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.I_cOPSwBiVoKUiv9NzOiAQ&pid=news

Electrek

MediaTek

A new collaboration between computing powerhouses could further enhance the way motorists interact with their vehicles.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.Y75TOfKd55GOGKmve2gPeS&pid=News

Nvidia's latest collaboration pushes further on software-defined vehicles

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.S14c2JRgogVg_l-CFg0byw&pid=news

Automotive News

Billionaire

He Xiaopeng, the billionaire cofounder of Chinese electric car maker Xpeng, has seen his wealth plunge almost 80% from its peak in 2021.

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.50GsvL5H3tmIGBZDDa0gPS&pid=News

Chinese Billionaire Suffers 80% Wealth Drop As The Country’s EV Price War Drags On

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF.U6nYa4Huf-RFEhjg-V4hNg&pid=news

Forbes

Get the most recent info and news about BYD on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

BYD Company Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the rechargeable battery and photovoltaic, handset components and assembly, and automobile businesses worldwide. It operates through three segments: Rechargeable Battery and Photovoltaic Products; Mobile Handset Components and Assembly Service; and Automobiles and Related Products. The company manufactures and sells lithium-ion and nickel batteries, photovoltaic products, and iron batteries primarily for mobile phones, electric tools, and other portable electronic instruments; mobile handset components, such as housings and keypads; and automobiles, and auto-related molds and components, as well as provides assembly, and automobiles leasing and after sales services. In addition, it offers passenger vehicles, taxis, buses, coaches, logistics vehicles, and construction and sanitation vehicles; vehicles for warehousing, port, airport, and mining operations; rail transit equipment; consumer electronics; and solar batteries and arrays. Additionally, the company develops, sells, and leases residential properties, as well as provides property management services. BYD Company Limited was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Shenzhen, China.

Indonesia’s strategic location and abundant natural resources make it an increasingly important player in the energy and sustainability space with tremendous growth potential, specifically in Asia and throughout the rest of the world. The archipelago nation’s critical equatorial geography means that it has a high potential for solar energy, with Indonesia’s government reporting a potential for 200,000 MW of solar power in . September 2021 Additionally, Indonesia has one of the largest geothermal potentials globally, ranking as the world’s second-largest geothermal power-producing country in . 2022 However, it is Indonesia’s rising importance in the electric vehicle (EV) supply chain ecosystem that is truly something to take note of. President Joko Widodo’s focus on promoting growth in Indonesia’s EV and battery production economies has resulted in significant development of Indonesia’s homegrown manufacturing capabilities. With this in mind, Indonesia’s increasing importance in the EV supply chain highlights Indonesia’s status as a potential disruptor to China’s current significant stranglehold on the global EV market. China’s Current Authority Over the World’s EV Industry China has played a significant role in both generating and fueling demand for EVs around the globe. For one, China is the world’s largest EV market, with 6.8 million EVs sold in , compared to 800,000 in the US. 2022 This demand, coupled with China’s long history of manufacturing expertise and relatively low labor costs in comparison to its Western counterparts, has resulted in China becoming a global leader in the production of EVs, with Chinese-based companies occupying seven out of the top ten best-selling plug-in EVs worldwide in . 2022 Additionally, Chinese governmental support and access to raw materials have further enabled China to take the lead in global EV production. The Chinese government has provided many and other incentives to EV automakers and battery manufacturers, resulting in robust EV supply chain growth and development within China. subsidies China is also home to some of the of key raw materials necessary for EV production, including lithium, cobalt, and nickel, thus providing Chinese-based companies with a competitive advantage in the production of batteries for EVs. world’s largest reserves Why Indonesia, and Why Not America or the European Union? Major demand for EVs in developed markets such as the United States and the European Union place these two regions top-of-mind for most when it comes to challenging China’s preeminence in the EV supply chain. However, the complex bureaucratic nature of these developed markets has resulted in relatively slow progress when it comes to creating homegrown EV production efforts. In the United States, governmental support for EV manufacturing through efforts like President Biden’s , which invests “$7.5B in EV charging, $10B in clean transportation, and over $7B in EV battery components, critical minerals, and materials” passed in , with more EV-specific actions being passed only recently in . Bipartisan Infrastructure Law November 2021 February 2023 Additionally, while the EU has taken efforts to prioritize EV production through legislation like the Critical Raw Minerals Act and the Net-Zero Industry Act announced in , significant challenges like continue to plague the development of homegrown EV supply chain efforts in both regions. March 2023 differences in American and EU subsidies In contrast, long-standing Indonesian government support for EV and EV battery production, significant infrastructure investment, and abundant natural resources support Indonesia’s potential as a primary disrupting force to China’s current EV monopoly. Indonesia’s announcement of its goal for having EVs make up 20% of all domestic vehicles manufactured by 2025 was backed by the issuance of Presidential Decree No. 55 in , with this legislation aimed at further enabling EVs to be produced and deployed throughout the country. August 2019 This news followed the announcement of a Mitsubishi effort to research the effectiveness of EVs in Indonesia in , which itself was followed by the announcement of a $4B Indonesia EV battery project in . February 2018 November 2018 It is through early mover actions such as these that highlight Indonesia's potential to be a significant disrupting force to China’s current monopoly on the EV supply chain market. Indonesia’s Growth Potential in the EV Space Indonesia’s critical status as the home of the , a key component in EV battery production, makes it an attractive part of the global EV supply chain. world’s largest nickel reserves The growth potential of this fast-paced industry is reinforced by the fact that Indonesian nickel company Harita Nickel (Trimegah Bagun Persada) is currently Indonesia’s biggest IPO in . 2023 Additionally, Indonesia’s PT HKML Battery Indonesia, Indonesia’s first EV battery plant built as a joint effort between an Indonesian and South Korean consortium, is slated to begin production in , with construction efforts already breaking ground in . 2024 April 2022 Furthermore, major EV manufacturers are already flocking to Indonesia in recognition of Indonesia’s critical importance in the EV supply chain. Indonesia announced Mitsubishi Motors’ plan to invest over $650M in Indonesia over a three-year period in , Tesla and BYD finalized EV investment deals in Indonesia in , and Ford followed suit through a announcement of a $4.5B investment in Indonesia. July 2022 January 2023 March 2023 Additionally, in , the Asian Development Bank granted Indonesia a $500M loan to expand private sector investments in clean and renewable energy, among other initiatives, following the announcement of Indonesia’s pursuit of a net-zero target by 2060, further supporting the push for Indonesia’s growth in the EV space. November 2022 July 2021 Additionally, the Indonesian government has also taken strategic steps to reduce the country’s heavy reliance on coal and other fossil fuels. Indonesia’s leadership at the G20 summit in 2022 resulted in the signing of the landmark , a $20B agreement to help Indonesia move away from fossil fuels. Just Energy Transition Partnership Additionally, in , a new governmental regulation was announced to retire some coal plants early, with the government helping to absorb any potential losses to reduce Indonesia’s reliance on fossil fuels, further contributing to Indonesia’s EV ambitions. September 2022 Conclusion All told, Indonesia holds significant promise to be a disruptor of China’s current dominance of the EV supply chain. While there are still many challenges that must be addressed for Indonesia to realize this potential, including the high costs of EVs in a country with , a possible shortage of raw materials like for EV battery production on the horizon, and reliance on Chinese firms for foreign capital and technical know-how like in the of the Indonesia Investment Authority’s establishment of a special fund with Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology, continued strong governmental support has resulted in an optimistic future for the growth of Indonesia’s presence in the world’s EV supply chain. relatively low car ownership lithium use-case Additionally, private economic investment has further accelerated Indonesia’s importance in the global EV production industry, reinforcing the notion that Indonesia could play a significant role in disrupting China’s current dominance of the EV supply chain ecosystem.

Indonesia’s Growing Potential as a Disruptive Force Against China’s EV Supply Chain Monopoly

The automotive market stands on the verge of a major transformation with the introduction of electric vehicles, addressing the concerns of global greenhouse gas emissions and the use of exhaustible power resources. The accelerated demand for these vehicles comes from the shift in three key areas: consumer behavior, regulations, and integration of AI technology in the process flow. As per , “a total of 10.5 million new BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) and PHEVs (Plug-in Electric Vehicles) were delivered during 2022, an increase of +55 % compared to 2021.” EV-Volumes.com “It is clear now that electric vehicles are the future, and that the future is coming faster than many anticipated. California and other states have already declared that no new gas vehicles will be sold after 2035,” said Dave Lewis, CEO of . MoveEV China despite sporadic Covid outbreaks and lockdowns, emerged at the top of the leaderboard with an increment of +82 percent year-over-year EV sales by the end of 2022. The Chinese government's subsidies for electric vehicles, the expansion of the mini-electric vehicle industry, and the emergence of more relatively affordable brands are a few factors contributing to the sector's explosive growth in China. Following closely up with China, Europe made up about 11% of the total revenue generated. Stringent climate laws and regulations drive the European transportation industry, its program defines how laws make “reaching the EU’s climate goal of reducing EU emissions by at least 55% by 2030 a legal obligation.” “Fit For 55” However, the EV market in Europe is in the clutches of an impending energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The rising cost of electricity is impacting the affordability of driving electric vehicles, to the point where they may become more expensive to run than their gas-powered counterparts. This surge in electricity prices could potentially hinder the continent's shift towards electric transportation. “When we looked at this(transition to EVs) before the energy crisis, we were looking at a tipping point of around 2023 to 2024. But if you assume you have a tariff going forward of $0.55, the tipping point then moves to 2026,” , a partner at Ernst & Young. said Maria Bengtsson Several countries are framing their policies around the threat of climate change and exhausting renewable sources pool. The Biden administration is pushing America to decarbonize by a 50 percent electric vehicle target by 2030. introducing "Today, nearly all automakers have put zero-emissions vehicles at the heart of their long-term strategies – and, perhaps more importantly, their medium-term investment plans," according to . The report emphasized how EVs are no longer a budding industry but have gained enough traction to be mainstream in markets like China, Germany, France, and the UK. S&P Global Mobility The adoption of EVs is majorly driven by advancements in technology, the integration of AI into automobiles has led to the enhancement of features that have made driving effortless and safe. As per , “ the global Automotive Artificial Intelligence (AI) Market is predicted to thrive at a CAGR of 29.2% and valued at over USD 34.30 billion over the forecast year 2022-2030”. Research and Markets It further noted that the growth in the automotive AI market is a direct reflection of increasing demands “for sophisticated vehicles and the shift of the automotive industry towards electricity.” Challenges like limited driving range, long charging times, and integration with smart grids are being addressed by the introduction of AI Technology. “ The increased sensitization of an electric vehicle leads to more data from the vehicle being available. This data can be used by manufacturers, service representatives, and drivers,” said Cliff Rice from . Rockwell Automation He further explained that manufacturers can use this data to improve driver assistance algorithms, understand driving patterns for maintenance needs, and provide advanced diagnostics and software updates to enhance vehicle performance and increase their lifespan. Predictive analytics is playing a significant role in advancing battery technology. Using predictive maintenance, these technologies are improving the efficiency and reliability of batteries. This is  important as it ensures that batteries operate at optimal levels, delivering high performance and minimizing the risk of breakdowns. “Batteries are highly complex components – chemically, electrically, and in terms of software,” , Data Scientist at Volvo. “But data analytics can help us to understand them better: how they are used, how they are affected by the driver, how they are impacted by other components in the vehicle.” said Rikard Vinge Apart from user experience, engineers are using AI to improve the designs and working efficiency of components. “By using AI in our generative thermal design approach, we are able to create and simulate thousands of iterations of a design in a matter of days, fully autonomously. To fully grasp the scale and speed at play here, in the time it takes a thermal engineer to create one design, we’ve already created 1 000,” said Diabatix CEO, Lieven Vervecken. Several companies are collaborating with big tech names to provide their users with the best of both technologies. Ford has with Google to make use of its cloud services and expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Tesla AI for updating the software over the cloud providing their users with remote services. Volkswagen and Microsoft have also to unleash the power of Azure IoT and PowerBI by offering telematics and productivity solutions. collaborated leverages joined hands The major OEMs(Original Equipment Manufacturers) are convinced that the transition to the e-mobility industry is now inevitable. BYD Auto's sales of BEVs and PHEVs tripled by concentrating its production and sales efforts on electric vehicles, making it the leading manufacturer of PHEVs and BEVs in 2022. Tesla dominates global BEV sales with a 17% market share, while the Volkswagen Group saw only a 10% increase in EV sales in Europe with declining PHEV sales. Established carmakers are reinventing their business models in the hope of adapting to a new world where electricity replaces traditional gasoline and diesel.  Automakers are buying up they can get as factories undergo renovations to build electric vehicles. Some businesses are being forced to find partners due to the high expense of creating electric vehicles, while others are becoming acquisition candidates. every battery The prominent players in the industry are revving up their traditional internal combustion engines to become the frontrunner in eliminating them altogether. Leading names like Tesla, Volkswagen, Toyota, General Motors, and Nissan are introducing new models in the market. The transition to the EV industry is bringing about a lot of opportunities for innovation in the field of battery technology, braking systems, steering systems, and the arrangement of propulsions.  In 2020, more than patent applications were made, with an average grant rate of 50%, according to global patent trends in the Electric Vehicle (EV) sector. 18,000 While the patent filing trends suggest the pace of technology, it also gives a fair picture of the new changes occurring in the industry. As per a published by European Patent Office(EPO) in 2020, patent filings for batteries and other electricity storage technologies saw an annual increment of 14 % worldwide, 88 percent of which offered innovation in battery technology. report Electric vehicles raise the highest demand for Lithium supply for the manufacturing of batteries. If today’s demand is forecasted to 2050, the US market alone would require a three-fold mining of what is currently produced globally, but does it have to be this way? A found that “Lithium demand can be reduced by up to 92 percent in 2050 in comparison to the most lithium-intensive scenarios. This can be done by employing three key policy interventions: decreasing car dependency, right-sizing EV batteries, and creating a robust recycling system.” recent report The existing charging infrastructure for these batteries is far from capable of meeting the growing demand. Although huge investments are underway, skepticism looms owing to cost, choice, and soaring in the areas where battery packs have previously failed to deliver considerable driving range and took long charging times. The fastest vehicle and charger- the Lucid Air can reportedly give of range in 20 minutes, is typical for average EVs. “range anxiety,” about 300 miles 100-200 miles per charging hour To alleviate such concerns, there has been a swift effort to establish fast charging networks throughout the country, with utilities looking to increase electricity sales. More than have joined forces to establish the National Electric Highway Coalition, which aims to develop a nationwide fast-charging network along major highways in the US. The number of fast chargers has already grown significantly, with over available today,  and there are even more 60 utilities 6,500 commitments underway. General Motors Co. and Pilot Co. to partner up and build a network of charging stations across the U.S., set to boost about 20% of the number of fast chargers available to American drivers. plan As the world transitions from a fleet of gasoline-powered vehicles to electric vehicles, it is estimated that millions of people will rely on the electric grid in various ways. This means that the power generation capacity will have to increase to accommodate the growing demand for electricity without causing strain on the grid. , US, there will be a 38 % increase in electricity consumption by 2050, mainly due to the high involvement of electric vehicles. According to the Department of Energy Research conducted at the University of Texas, Austin carried out state-by-state assessment scenarios where every personal car, truck, and SUV is converted to a plug-in electric model. The found that the state energy consumption jumped to 17 % in Wyoming and 55 % in Maine. \ study The ranged from 20-30 percent in most of the states. Some states showed an available capacity to take upon the excess loads whereas, for others, ideal case assumptions for charging times were made to channel the power. The capacity of grids for EV charging depends greatly on the time of the day they are plugged in. The chance of grids overloading falls drastically if charged at when consumption is lesser. consumption off-peak hours With all the speculations and possibilities, the imagined “zero emissions” world doesn’t seem to acknowledge what happens to fossil fuel-driven vehicles running on the roads for now. One idea circulating is the remodeling of traditional engine-driven cars to electric vehicles. At a recent industry event, Toyota's CEO, Akio Toyoda, signaled that the business would enter the conversion market by displaying two vintage Corollas that had been converted to electric and hydrogen power. “The reality is that we cannot achieve zero carbon emissions in 2050 simply by switching all new car sales to EVs,” said CEO Toyoda at the “It is important to provide options for beloved cars that are already owned.” press conference. While some experts support the idea of remodeling, others believe that electrifying cars is unlikely to be a viable option for individuals with limited financial resources. “ If you’re thinking of how do I retrofit an ICE car to be an EV, I don’t think that’ll happen. People will simply buy EVs as replacement cars as usual, but they may straddle the two technologies by having a plug-in hybrid car first,” said Trevor Curwin from . Sheeva.ai The rapid expansion of the EV industry, despite the challenges posed by external factors and limitations, provides a strong indication that electric vehicles are here to stay and will play a significant role in shaping the future of transportation.

Electric Vehicles: Driving Towards a Sustainable Future With Artificial Intelligence

Vehículos eléctricos: conduciendo hacia un futuro sostenible con inteligencia artificial

Véhicules électriques : vers un avenir durable grâce à l'intelligence artificielle

इलेक्ट्रिक वाहन: आर्टिफिशियल इंटेलिजेंस के साथ एक सतत भविष्य की ओर ड्राइविंग

電気自動車: 人工知能による持続可能な未来への推進

Veículos Elétricos: Rumo a um Futuro Sustentável com Inteligência Artificial

Xe điện: Hướng tới một tương lai bền vững với trí tuệ nhân tạo

电动汽车：借助人工智能迈向可持续发展的未来

So, we have Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, inflation, and Bitcoin in the same sentence. It looks like the beginning of some joke. But, it isn’t because things are very serious. Mad Max serious. Desperate times call for a voice of wisdom of old and wise. “The Oracle of Omaha” seems like the perfect candidate. Let’s hear what Warren Buffet has to say about inflation. “The best thing you can do is to be exceptionally good at something,” the 91-year-old said Saturday. Mentioning professions like doctors and lawyers as examples, Buffett said that ”[people] are going to give you some of what they produce in exchange for what you deliver.” Buffett added that skills, unlike currency, are inflation-proof. If you have a skill that is in demand, it will remain in demand no matter what the dollar is worth. The only problem is that you won’t get paid. If I got it right, I’m supposed to “produce” something someone else needs, and then in an “exchange,” I would get something I need - a “product.” Sounds like a solid plan. I can write in exchange for sandwiches. I can’t give you legal advice although I have a law degree, but I didn’t pass a bar exam, because you know - writing. So, we’re back to good old bartering which “is the exchange of goods and services between two or more parties without the use of money. It is the oldest form of commerce.” (Investopedia) Old is gold, but without gold, actually. How about Bitcoin? Bitcoin is often touted by supporters as a hedge against inflation, dubbed “digital gold.” (Yahoo Finance) Great! Problem solved! Inflation can’t get satisfaction, after all. Just to make sure, give me a moment to quickly consult with the Oracle of Omaha. “If you ... owned all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it,” Buffett said. “Because what would I do with it? I’ll have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything.” He described his views on farmland and rental properties versus bitcoin as “the difference between productive assets and something that depends on the next guy paying you more than the last guy got.” What are you supposed to make out of this? Who you gonna call? Ah, I know. The Guardians of the Bitcoin Galaxy The Dogecoin “daddy” was among the first to bark at Warren Buffett. The PayPal “daddy,” on the other hand, wasn’t gentle at all. Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel called Warren Buffett a “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha,” even as he denounced JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink as “enemies of bitcoin.” Thiel “referred to the troika of Buffett, Fink and Dimon as a “gerontocracy” that was standing in the way of a cryptocurrency revolution.” Let’s leave it at that. It’s better that way. Let’s focus our attention on some more pressing questions. For example, what were these fine gentlemen up to during these tough times? Relax Honey And Just Follow The Money Everybody knows what Elon Musk did with $44 Billion, even those who did their best to try living under a rock. What about Warren Buffett? Buffett told shareholders that right after he told them in his annual letter on Feb. 26 that he was having trouble finding anything to buy at attractive prices, Berkshire spent more than $40 billion on stocks over the next three weeks. Wait! What? Berkshire. What’s that? “Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.” (Wiki) Where did all that money go? Well, here and there. You know, only safe bets. Nothing spectacular and surprising as Twitter. The oil sector, Apple, and other usual stuff for Buffett. Wait? What happened to invest-in-your-skills-during-the-inflation lecture? “Thee” perfectly rhymes with “me,” but only in cheesy quotes. Buffett has embarked on … a shopping spree the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Financial Crisis That's the most cash Buffett has splurged on equities in a quarter since 2008… Buffett, , at long last pounced – and did so with … as patient as any investor when it comes to waiting for bargains surgical precision And according to Bespoke Investment Group, … Suffice to say that Warren Buffett is pretty adept at the whole thing… But there's a second (and perhaps more urgent) … When prices are rising at the fastest pace in four decades, Buffett's biggest Q1 binge… almost 80% of his purchases came during the weakest part of the quarter. That's remarkable timing "buy low, sell high" factor driving Buffett's lavish spending on stocks right now: Inflation cash is trash. That helps explain Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, And Electric Cars Too? Oh, my dear Cypher, you were so right: Getting back to Thiel and his This-Is-Sparta-Bitcoin “defense mechanism,” let’s say, to a certain degree, I can understand. But Elon? A sweet blue birdie became a social media bird of prey in his hands. Why? If he is crypto-friendly, he isn’t exactly crypto enthusiastic. Dogecoin started as some kind of a joke, or I was the one living under a crypto rock. Musk just couldn’t let it go, could he? Why? Did you know that Buffett is the biggest investor (with all due respect and apology for my ignorance for the following labeling) in the Chinese “version” of Tesla - BYD? I had no idea. “Tesla is the world’s largest electric vehicle maker, delivering 308,600 electric vehicles in the fourth quarter, up from 241,300 in Q3, 201,250 in Q2 and 184,800 in Q1. But BYD is catching up. BYD sold 93,945 new energy vehicles in December, up 218% vs. a year earlier,” reports Ed Carson at IBD. That tweet makes more sense now, doesn’t it? And, Elon is a silver-tongued devil, not only on Twitter: Elon Musk's EV maker reported strong sales for March — it delivered 65,814 cars from its Shanghai factory, up 85% from a year earlier. The company restarted production on April 19 — according to , and even wrote a letter to the Shanghai government expressing its gratitude, according to . state-owned Xinhua Reuters A letter of gratitude is the least he should’ve done in a situation where at least 27 Chinese cities are under some degree of Covid lockdown, affecting around 180 million residents, according to CNN's latest calculations last week. And, here we are, trapped in our multiverses of madness, sadness, bitterness, and helplessness. I can’t define inflation. I’m not an economist. But, there’s something I’m absolutely certain of. Investing your time in writing and reading stories on Hacker Noon is inflation-proof. Guaranteed!

The Multiverse of Madness: Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Inflation & Bitcoin

El multiverso de la locura: Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, inflación y Bitcoin

Le multivers de la folie : Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, l'inflation et le bitcoin

द मल्टीवर्स ऑफ़ मैडनेस: वॉरेन बफेट, एलोन मस्क, इन्फ्लेशन एंड बिटकॉइन

狂気の多元宇宙: ウォーレン・バフェット、イーロン・マスク、インフレ、ビットコイン

O Multiverso da Loucura: Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Inflação e Bitcoin

Đa vũ trụ của sự điên rồ: Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Lạm phát và Bitcoin

疯狂的多元宇宙：沃伦·巴菲特、埃隆·马斯克、通货膨胀和比特币

38% of businesses. Yes, according to stats, that number of businesses systems run completely on SaaS software. Customer Think It’s been months running your Saas company; you’ve estimated your budget (the tight budget), researched what the top-performing Saas companies are doing? (maybe 100 times or so) But somewhere, you’re still stuck in a rut. ** Source: BetterCloud You’re using the same rules and software and experiencing the same results. But times are changing, and so is the saas industry.  That being said, the leading-edge Saas software like Vertical and horizontal Saas are taking the Saas industry by storm. In this article, let’s dig a little deeper into how Vertical Saas can help you skyrocket your Saas business. What is Vertical Saas? ** Source: Single grain Let’s take a look at these stats. Global data indicates that the Software as a Service (SaaS) market is going to hit USD 716.52 Billion by 2028. newswire Given that, this billion-dollar industry does have its advantages. When it comes to vertical Saas, it is an amalgamation of Saas solutions and distinctive products for a specific market. Big giants like Microsoft 365, Quickbooks and Slack are ready to give it a whirl — they can’t resist it! There is Saas product software that is built as an industry initiative. This category of SaaS products includes solutions that suit a super-niched market. Well, the model for Vertical SaaS takes a multi-faceted approach. It relies on firms that are built to tackle a single problem and handle other business challenges. For example, financial and health care companies are traditionally vertical Saas companies. Since their model isn’t catered to everyone, also they don’t have a wide range of products. That’s the reason; it satisfies the needs and requirements of limited people. Here are a few examples of vertical Saas software: SAP Business ByDesign Veeva (cloud platform for life science and pharma) BioIQ (MedTech) Health Assurance Plan (dental software) Guidewire (insurance) Banking, heavy manufacturing, and government. In simple words, there are vertical-specific platforms like Litify (uniquely customized for law firms). This shift from inclusive, one-size-fits-all platforms to vertical-specific solutions is helping B2B industries to develop and grow. The Beauty of Vertical Saas Now that you’re all aware of what is vertical Saas? Hang in there. It’s time to understand how vertical Saas can help you grow your Saas company. Here are a few of the advantages of Vertical Saas you can’t afford to miss: Confined Products: You don’t have to make any extra effort since vertical Saas focuses more on making on-time deliveries and targeting a niche market with specific software needs. This saves your time but also reduces operational costs. Makes sales a Lot simpler: One of the biggest challenges a company can face is in their sales process. With vertical Saas, the processes are made accessible. Since most of the people are working from home these days, they can easily access any process from their homes, and be more productive. This can improve sales rates. It has easy customization and provides simple updates on future campaigns. Better R.O.I:  Scaling is an important factor that constructs every company. You don’t have to worry about any infrastructure or revenue lost since Saas is profitable due to low customer churn. You need not worry about high-end computers or expensive technologies, all you need is additional Saas-based licenses for increasing work. Easier upsell: For a long-term running company, you do need more products to sell and raise your upsell. This means you do need to increase your product velocity. A vertical Saas software can provide a better roadmap for products and also control other attributes at the same time. The best part is it delivers products on time, with high quality and reliability for customers. Less competition:  As mentioned earlier the vertical Saas software targets a highly specific niche audience. It works best for traditional industries like banking and pharma. This means there is less competition and more sales. Its niche-specific software provides leverage to companies. Granted that they can serve more customers in less time without any fear of losing data, money or resources. The Growing Trend of Vertical SaaS Source: Twitter Since it's no surprise that vertical Saas allows companies to be more productive. Even say that  80% of businesses plan to make all their systems SaaS by 2025. stats With these whopping numbers, some ongoing trends can change the wave of the vertical Saas industry. Let’s understand how these trends can allow companies to work efficiently and evolve as a business. So here are a few top trends for vertical Saas: Automation will be the key: Vertical Saas is automating almost all its processes so that it can maintain high-quality services. Customer intelligence: Observe customers from a hand distance and analyze all their data and insights for future campaigns. Emerging niches: As the demand grows so does the vertical Saas niche products market. It amplifies the new niche products usage. For example, providing solutions for a childcare management app. These niche-specific solutions can raise awareness and also sales. Additional services: Vertical Saas can go above and beyond to make customers happy. That's the reason the new software will be more focused on offering services like advisory, management, cloud consultation, new products migration, and sales. Conclusion To conclude, Vertical SaaS solutions handle industry-specific problems that often go unnoticed. To be precise, Saas organization operates in over 100 different countries. Companies can now enjoy the benefits of so many integrated services. From payment processing to cloud-based technology, companies can experiment and create strong cross-selling opportunities.

A Shift in Saas Industries -The Future is Vertical

What is a BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) and How Does it Work?

(RFC reading for fun and pragmatism!) Background My girlfriend is a nurse, and around these parts that means she works shift work. Her schedule is a block of shifts (sometimes day shifts, sometimes evening shifts) followed by a block of days off (which also varies as to the number of days), and the entire schedule itself repeats every so many weeks. Basically, picture something like this: ...and repeat. While there is a pattern to it, it essentially means that without access to a copy of her schedule readily at hand, it is to know if we are free on some random day next month. So obviously, I want an electronic version at the ready for these types of inquiries. literally impossible Unfortunately, it is also to enter all of these shifts one by one, by hand, into something like Google Calendar, because it requires manually creating dozens of events (“repeats every other Monday” unfortunately does not cut it here :P), and on each of them, manually selecting “Repeats,” manually selecting “Custom…”, manually selecting “every X weeks”, all without introducing any errors. incredibly tedious Ugh. Fortunately, here to save the day… the iCalendar specification! What is the iCalendar specification? The (as in , not to be confused with good ol’ iCal, now known as Apple’s app) is a “data format for representing and exchanging calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, independent of any particular calendar service or protocol.” iCalendar specification RFC 5545 Calendar Basically, it’s a list of rules about how to describe events in computer-friendly language, and if you follow those rules, users can import your events consistently in whatever various calendaring programs they might be using. Glancing through the specification, you’ll see it talks about how to specify all kinds of features you may have seen in various calendaring apps, such as: Specify a location Specify a time zone Repeat an event with a certain frequency Note whether someone’s an optional or required attendee Denote whether it shows up as busy or free time on someone’s calendar Send an alert a few minutes before an event happens ...and much, much more. If you’ve ever received an email with a file attached, and when you click it you’re prompted to add an event to your calendar, such as below… Congratulations! You officially have experience with iCalendar! :D .ics Let’s talk about what iCalendar looks like under the hood. The Basics of iCalendar The “simplest thing that can possibly work” in terms of iCalendar is a text file, with an extension, that contains the following properties: .ics : (required) Marks the beginning and end of the iCalendar object as a whole (similar to how wraps around a web page). BEGIN:VCALENDAR … END:VCALENDAR <html>…</html> : (required) The version number of the specification required (generally, “2.0” unless you’re feeling super retro). VERSION : (required) A unique identifier for the product that created the iCalendar object. Some real-world examples are for Google Calendar and for Apple Calendar. PRODID “-//Google Inc//Google Calendar 70.9054//EN” “-//Apple Inc.//Mac OS X 10.14.6//EN” : One or more of these pairings mark the beginning and end of an event definition. BEGIN:VEVENT … BEGIN:VEVENT : (required) A unique identifier for the event. and are both common patterns. UID [buncha-random-chars] [buncha-random-chars]@[yourdomain.com] : (required) The date/time that the event was created (not to be confused with when it starts, which is the next one). DTSTAMP : When the event starts and ends. DTSTART … DTEND Here’s a simple example tying all of that together: BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Example Corp//Example Calendar App 1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:20210310T001345Z-0242ac130003@example.com
DTSTAMP:20210310T001345Z
DTSTART:19991231T235959
DTEND:20000101T000000
SUMMARY:Party like it’s 1999!
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR If you save this as “ ” and import it, you should see a new event appear at the very tail end 1999 that lasts from 11:59:59PM on December 31, 1999 until midnight on January 1, 2020! y2k.ics How to specify a date/time? The RFC gets into this at length, but the basic gist is: If it’s a date only, it’s specified in the format of . YYYYMMDD If it’s a date and time, it’s specified in the format of (with in 24-hour time). If it’s a UTC time (see below) it also has a at the end. YYYYMMDDTHHMMSS HH Z There are three different ways to specify a date and time such as 11:59:59PM on December 31, 1999: : Used when you want an event to be at the same time, regardless of a person’s location. Date with local time DTSTART:19991231T235959 : Used when you want an event to be at an absolute time across all geographic locations, and disregarding Daylight Savings Time. (Note: DTSTAMP is always in this format.) Date with UTC time DTSTART:19991231T235959Z : A combination of both; it pegs to a specific time, but within a given time zone, so it takes into consideration things like Daylight Savings Time. Date with local time and timezone reference DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:19991231T235959 In the above example, we went with the “date with local time” format so that the event would be at the same time regardless of location, since exactly when the “last minute of 1999” is differs across the globe. But for tracking shift schedules, “Date with local time and timezone reference” makes more sense, because if I fly to Europe for work, I don’t want the start times to shift by several hours. Nope, that semi-colon after DTSTART in the third example is not a typo. “Property parameters” such as TZID are passed in with a semicolon rather than a colon. (See List and Field Separators) This will also come into play with... Repeating Events Ok, so we already have enough information to create each shift schedule the first time, but note that it repeats every X weeks. How do we handle that? Enter Recurrence Rules ( )! This property defines a rule or repeating pattern for recurring events. Here are just a few of the options that it supports: RRULE : How often the event occurs. Some examples are , , and even . FREQ WEEKLY DAILY SECONDLY : How many s should there be in between events? INTERVAL FREQ : Repeat the event X times. (Useful if you have a class that runs for 4 weeks, for example) COUNT : Alternatively, this will repeat the event until a certain date. UNTIL : Allows you to say something only happens on certain days of the week. BYDAY The RFC has all sorts of examples. Putting it All Together For our purposes, we need events that: Use a because I travel frequently (in non-COVID times) and I want the events to be shown at the proper start/end times regardless of where I am in the world. Date with local time and timezone reference Have a of and an of 8 since the schedule repeats every 8 weeks. FREQ WEEKLY INTERVAL And an date of because the schedule gets reset every calendar year, and next year will be something different! (Hence my very strong desire to write this process down. ;)) UNTIL 12/31/2021 Put it all together, and you get: BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Webchick Inc//Webchick’s Crappy Bash Script 1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:3231CB09-1E10-4910-BB24-B358629890B7
DTSTAMP:20210314T090733Z
SUMMARY:Day Shift
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20210111T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20210111T180000
RRULE:FREQ=WEEKLY;INTERVAL=8;UNTIL=20211231
END:VEVENT

... (repeat x many more events) ...

BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:F20376E5-FA0F-429D-AB1F-3F0155EE10BA
DTSTAMP:20210314T090734Z
SUMMARY:Evening Shift
DTSTART;TZID=America/Vancouver:20210208T173000
DTEND;TZID=America/Vancouver:20210208T233000
RRULE:FREQ=WEEKLY;INTERVAL=8;UNTIL=20211231
END:VEVENT

... (repeat x many more events) ...

END:VCALENDAR And when imported into Apple Calendar: And there you have it! So. The next time you get one of those .ics files, try popping it open in a text editor and see how much of it makes sense now! PS: If you want to see the bash script I used to generate this, it’s at . If you want to go it alone, this is your friend! https://github.com/webchick/shiftycal handy validator Also published on: https://dev.to/webchick/using-icalendar-for-semi-predictable-but-oddball-events-20nk

How to Use iCalendar for Semi-Predictable but Oddball Events

In the fast-moving world of , VeChain, a -based platform, distinguishes itself with an anti-fraud technology that has the potential to ultimately end product piracy. cryptocurrency blockchain Vechain’s proprietary technology helps to authenticate purchases and boost consumer confidence through reliable recordkeeping. Moreover, it can help companies to establish a higher level of transparency during their manufacturing and delivery processes. But what is VeChain, and how does it function? And most importantly – is its VET coin a good investment? Read on below for a deeper look into the world of VeChain, and find out what investment prospects this emerging technology holds right now. What Is Vechain? Let’s start by firstly understanding the role of in the realm of cryptocurrency. VeChain Currently, supply chain data for business procedures is compartmentalized in data silos among various stakeholders. It adversely affects information flow and acts as a dividing aspect among stakeholders. VeChain offers to provide a complete view of all organizational processes by taking away the concept of information data silos. Essentially, VeChain is a blockchain platform that helps to simplify information chain management. Its blockchain was originally conceived as a means of determining whether a real-life product is genuine or not. It helps prevent frauds and knock-offs; and now, multiple corporations use its blockchain to keep track of production, manufacturing, delivery, and much more. The blockchain purports the formation of self-executing with a definitive outcome without third-party trust or intrusion required. It facilitates the establishment of decentralized applications ( ), which can solve many enterprise problems, including: smart contracts DApps – VeChain uses smart chips technology to track every individual item, hence preventing duplication. Anti-counterfeit for Luxury Products – Using smart Internet of Things sensors to report critical data through the blockchain, companies can automatically monitor and ensure that food products aren’t spoiled during transportation and storage. Cold-chain for Logistics – companies can retain a tamper-free pool of data for vehicle data such as repair history, registration, insurance, and driver habits. Automobile Industry – companies can quantitatively track their carbon contributions to help decrease carbon emissions. The concept here is that consumers engaged in reduced carbon-emitting behaviors, for instance, buying products with reduced carbon, could be given the credits that can be redeemed for environment-friendly products or can be given as a donation. Going Green – collaborating with Bayer China, VeChain intends to use blockchain technology for solving problems related to digitalized clinical trial tracing. Clinical Trial Traceability VeChain aims to grow into a leading platform for initial coin offerings (ICOs) and lead transactions between Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices. How Does Vechain Work? The main goal of VeChain is to streamline the data flow of supply chains. The VeChain portal comprises of two specific tokens: to give value to VeChain’s network (funds the blockchain) VeChain Token (VET) to strengthen smart contract plans (empowers the technology) VeChainThor Energy (VTHO) The is this: As mentioned briefly in the previous section, VeChain allocates every product a distinct identity. It uses smart chips or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and sensors to track what happens to the product at every phase of the supply chain. way it works Moreover, all this information can be accessed in real-time by authorized stakeholders. It helps companies and customers ensure that each product is handled properly and verified for legitimacy during a purchase. The VeChain Portal claims to deliver a 360-degree outlook of all the essential information related to a product and its subsequent business processes. The platform provides access to authorized stakeholders, such as supply, storage, and transportation, to create greater market transparency. VeChain also publishes frequent financial reports to encourage transparency. VeChain aims to develop an intrusion-free and evenly deployed corporate system to allow clear information flow, promote effective cooperation, and allow velocity-based information sharing. As per VeChain’s philosophy, blockchain technology has the power to break the asymmetric information flow and allow for data ownership to flow back to and strengthen its user. To elaborate a real-life use of VeChain based management of operations, the portal can monitor and keep track of a long list of operational details. Information such as quality, validity, storage temperature, mode of transportation, and mile route delivery of a pack of medicines can be managed right from the manufacturing facility to the end customer, using the above-mentioned smart-chip sensors. What Are The Key Features of Vechain? The of VeChain as a blockchain and a cryptocurrency are: key features Like many blockchains, the VeChainThor blockchain is open source, which makes it suitable for hosting smart contracts and DApps. Open Source Blockchain: The VeChainportal will allow corporations to use the awesome power of blockchain for industries such as agriculture, liquor, and luxury goods. In-house IOT and Supply Chain Management Technology: Native fee delegation is a part of blockchain code, and the app users are not expected to hold VET or VTHO. They can write transactions related to gas costs as stated by sponsored developers are not applicable. Native Fee Delegation: The History of Vechain Having understood what VeChain is and what it is meant for, let’s delve a bit into its origins. Sunny Lu, Louis Vuitton China’s ex-Chief Information Officer (CIO), . The platform grew as a Bitse subsidiary, a leading and reputable blockchain company in China. VeChain is one of the few blockchains that has a considerable customer base amid well-established companies. founded VeChain in 2015 Since its inception, the company has been developing enterprise-focused solutions deployed on its proprietary blockchain platform. With a rising trend towards building better decentralization platforms within the blockchain industry, VeChain moved to a consortium blockchain before establishing the VeChain Foundation and ultimately starting their final migration to a Proof of Authority (PoA)-based public blockchain platform. In the early days, the VEN token operated through the Ethereum platform and its blockchain technology. More recently, VeChain created an independent blockchain platform and rebranded it to VeChainThor (VET) in 2018. In terms of strategic partnerships, VeChain has, over the years, formed alliances with many major corporations. These partnerships focus on helping to achieve their goal of blockchain-powered transparency in the management and supply industries. Among these agreements is a partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in line with VeChain’s aim to reach the respected accounting firm’s client base. The collaboration will help improve product verification and tracking systems. Another major arm of VeChain is their partnership with Renault. Along with Microsoft and Viseo, the brand has created a car maintenance book that is digitally managed and tamper-proof. VeChain is the official partner of technology for the Gui’an- technology sector. Gui’an is the economic development zone in Central China. Other notable partnerships and live-use cases include: DNV GL Deloitte Walmart China BMW BYD Auto Bayer China H&M LVMH ENN AWS PICC ASI Group Vechain Price History VeChain price history is based on the VET Token used on the blockchain. Since about late 2018, the VET Token price mostly moved sideways in a range of $0.002-$0.009. However, even within this range, it has presented itself as being tremendously changeable at times, with prices jumping in the double-digit percentage range. In 2020, VeChain finally managed to create a stir in the market when the price rose to $0.02 in the course of a price rally in the middle of the year. It amounted to an increase of approximately 400 percent in just more than a month. Moreover, the success of VeChain is attracting further investors. The bull market that took place instantaneously propelled the VET Token price to over $0.03 shortly after the beginning of the year 2021. On January 21, VET reached its new all-time high price at $0.035. Since then, it has catapulted in price even more, reaching an all-time high on April 27 of $0.27. With a The market capitalization (or market cap) of a cryptocurrency is a measurement of its market value. In other words, it... at the time of writing of around $11 billion, VeChain ranks 14th in market cap among cryptocurrencies. The total supply is 86.712 million VET, with just over 64 million VET currently in circulation. market cap What Is The Future of Vechain? It must be obvious by now that the technology undoubtedly works; many investing partners believe in the project, and presently, the price is on a sturdy upswing. All in all, the prospects of VeChain looks promising. But before we make any , let’s note some expert opinions. price forecasts VET Price Predictions Remember that these predictions are only to form informed opinions and is not investment advice. Coinswitch Experts at predict a positive price trend for VeChain, saying the VET token may increase in price to $0.38, by 2023 – mostly propelled by partnerships with big names such as PwC, Renault, and others. Coinswitch Wallet Investor Analysts at also see VeChain as a worthwhile investment. They predict it could reach as high as $0.86 by 2025. Wallet Investor Digitalcoinprice.com ‘s forecast also assumes an overall profitable long-term investment, predicting it could reach $0.50 by 2025. Digitalcoinprice.com VET Price Factors You might be asking yourself: what is behind these ? positive upward trends For starters, this performance is mainly because of the large number of companies adopting the VeChainThor platform to develop apps that connect blockchain technology to the real world. Examples of these companies include LVMH, Walmart China, and BYD. Another factor is the social media hype. In recent times, traction surrounding Vechain on social media, especially on Reddit, has grown. It has led to many users buying the currency because of the ‘fear of missing out (FOMO) phenomenon, something that is well-known in the world of crypto. he Bottom Line T To sum up, VeChain is already among an elite list of companies that can pride themselves on developing a fully-functioning and coherent product that is being used by numerous industries. It’s fair to say that this is down to the team behind this project having taken an extremely innovative approach to their work. In a globalized world, where products cannot be manufactured centrally in one place anymore, tracking them has become an issue of immense importance. Hence, VeChain helps create the infrastructural basis to resolve this problem in a blockchain efficiently. If you’re thinking of investing in VeChain, and analyze the forecasts and expert predictions regarding its growth and usability, the price increases of 300% or more over the coming years do not seem unrealistic. Of course, as always it’s important to do your own research. Investors who want to buy the VET token must carefully educate themselves about VeChain and its technology and use crypto expert opinions only as a supporting tool before deciding to take the plunge and investing. So, with the newfound knowledge in crypto, why not sign up to Bybit? Sign up for a free trading account Disclaimer This article is intended for and only to be used for reference purposes only. No such information provided through Bybit constitutes advice or a recommendation that any investment or trading strategy is suitable for any specific person. These forecasts are based on industry trends, circumstances involving clients, and other factors, and they involve risks, variables, and uncertainties. There is no guarantee presented or implied as to the accuracy of specific forecasts, projections, or predictive statements contained herein. Users of this article agree that Bybit does not take responsibility for any of your investment decisions. Please seek professional advice before trading.

Everything You Need to Know About Vechain

The Complete Guide Using To Selenium Locators In Protractor To Run Test Automation With Scripts

Amazon recently announced a new feature for Alexa skill developers, the . This API allows you to set custom reminders for users of your skill which will play with a chime at the requested time and can also fire an alert on your mobile phone if you have the Alexa companion application installed, as shown below. Used properly, this new API has the promise to provide a lot of repeat engagement with your customers. In this post, I’ll talk about how I integrated reminders with two of my skills in ways that I believe provide true customer value and have the potential to increase engagement with my skills. Reminders API Reminders shown in the Alexa app Use Case: Tournament Reminders Some of my skills have a special “tournament round” which occurs every week. For Blackjack Game, every Tuesday you can play with a separate bankroll against other players to see who can get the highest bankroll within 100 rounds. For Slot Machine, there is a one hour window on Wednesday evening and Monday morning during which you try to get the highest bankroll with a rotating “tournament machine.” (I added a second weekly tournament on Monday mornings when this skill went live in Europe to better accommodate those customers.) For both of these skills, usage during the tournament windows spikes each week, proving it’s a popular product feature. I’m especially happy with the Slot Machine tournament and I actually play it myself every now and then (I promise I don’t cheat!), and as a customer I’d find that sometimes I would forget about the tournament until it was over. When the Reminders API was announced, I knew that I had to incorporate it into my skill so users (including me!) could know when the tournament round was starting. As with any new feature, I started with the conversational flow — how did I want to present this feature to customers, ensuring that they had an ability to set a reminder and understood the benefit of doing so, while not nagging them too often about it. I decided to provide this functionality in two ways — one with a new custom ReminderIntent that allowed them to specifically ask for a reminder (“set a weekly reminder for the tournament”) and the other by doing an upsell when the session was closing if a tournament was upcoming in the near future (“the next tournament starts in 10 hours. Would you like to set a weekly reminder for the tournament every Wednesday at 6 PM?”). In the latter case, I didn’t want to annoy the customer by asking this every time they played my skill, but I did want to prompt them occasionally since it was also in my benefit if they played the tournament. I also didn’t want to prompt them if they already had a reminder set for the upcoming tournament, and of course wanted to make sure they knew when that tournament was in their own timezone. Implementation Details With this flow in mind, there are three main steps that had to happen: (1) setting the reminder, (2) handling the response from the API, and (3) checking for an existing reminder before kicking off this flow. Let’s start with the code that sets the reminder. For the moment, there isn’t a clean API within the ask-sdk to make the call to the Reminder API, however it’s simple enough to use a library like request-promise to issue the POST command directly to the endpoint provided in the Alexa request. In my code, you can see that I’m setting the timezone to America/US_LosAngeles (Pacific time) in building the alert. That’s because the tournament round runs simultaneously world-wide for users — everyone is playing together! Setting the alarm in the right timezone should automatically adjust the reminder for customers who live in areas with no or different daylight savings rules than the West Coast tournament clock. You’ll also see that I’m using the moment package to get the two-character code needed to set byDay for a weekly reminder (being sure to first set the locale to English). I use this module elsewhere — if I weren’t I’d probably just use getDay() and hardcore an array of two-character day names instead. In managing the response from this API, you have to keep in mind that it’s possible that attempting to set the reminder could fail. This will happen if the user doesn’t provide permission for the skill (in which case the error code will be UNAUTHORIZED), or if could be another error. In my case, I lump the set of other errors into a single “something went wrong” message, however I do provide the customer with a meaningful call to action and a consent card in the Alexa app for the customer to try setting another reminder. Finally, I also wanted to check whether a reminder is set before I prompt the user to set a reminder. For that, we make a call to get all active reminders set by this skill. Because Slot Machine can set reminders for multiple tournaments on different days, this code checks through the full list of returned reminders to see if the day matches that of the next tournament for which we want to set a reminder. Other Notes The above code demonstrates how to set a reminder, check for active reminders, and handle the result from setting a reminder. This code works well if you are only handling reminders in response to an explicit user request (such as with my ReminderIntent), but what about my other use case, where I prompt the customer when they are exiting the skill? In this case, I keep a timestamp so I don’t bother the user more than once a week. There are, of course, many other ways that this could be handled such as combining or replacing this logic with a note that customers can set a reminder in the future by explicit request — or to mention this as part of the Help text — or even to mention it at the end of the tournament itself. This feature is new enough that I haven’t had an opportunity to play with these different options to determine which would be best, but the key is that any of these options should be considered with the customer in mind.

Adding Reminders to your Custom Alexa Skill

We are all taught to share as children. What happens when we become adults? The Sharing economy is commonly defined as “the peer-to-peer-based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated through community-based online services” *. The market is currently worth over $100 billion but it is predicted to grow to at least $335 billion by 2025*. When we all start to realise the potential of sharing assets and services, the impact will be life changing for both the Western world and the developing countries. Not only shall it lessen our global footprint, decrease our costs, open up avenues for extra income, “it also has the potential to address long-term societal challenges such as making cities more inclusive and building social connections between groups that might otherwise never have interacted.” (Cheryl Martin, World Economic Forum writes in “Collaboration in the Cities”) We are all aware of the consumerist society in which we live, but the time has now arrived to start becoming less throwaway and more responsible. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations “Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted” *. This is a horrifying statistic and can easily be changed. There are various apps that have been created to combat this, diverting food from being unnecessarily thrown away. This is a great step in the right direction but it is still early days. Food wastage is just one example, there are plenty more. With the rapid development of technology, we will soon be able to fully embrace sharing and start differentiating between what we actually need to personally own and what we can simply borrow or rent. The sharing economy has been brought into the limelight with Uber and Airbnb in the last few years. Airbnb has enabled extra income for the house owner and Uber has provided a vast amount of jobs for freelancer drivers who are free to work whenever they wish. Both companies have revolutionised the providers and users lives. They have created opportunity, income and freedom for the provider, and choice, ease and security for the user. There are thousands of other companies that exist but similarly they specialise in one particular niche. There are some major issues with all of these clever start-ups. Firstly, you must sign up to each individual company, download each individual app and give over your bank details every time. Secondly, there are so many of these apps but many are localised. Thirdly, you may incur international transaction fees and exchange rates if you are using an app in a foreign country. All of these negatives have been realised and taken into consideration for a new app called ShareRing, which has the potential to change the whole sharing economy and is due to launch in November this year. Tim Bos (Co-founder and CEO of ShareRing) Melbourne start-up, ShareRing, has been deemed to be ‘the Amazon of the sharing economy’. Tim Bos (CEO) recognised how fragmented the industry has become and saw its potential. It is based around blockchain technology and uses a dual token system, which means you will not incur any exchange rates or international fees. The beauty of ShareRing is that you will not need to understand any jargon to simply use it when it is launched towards the end of this year. Bos has in fact made a point of not focusing on talking about the technology side, stating that its everyday user will not need to know anything about its clever tech. All that needs to be known is that you will be able to simply sign up to one platform, have one username and password, and be able to share anything you could possibly dream of; from a car to a wedding dress to a pet sitter to food. There will also be geolocation so you will be able to source the closest asset or services to you. ShareRing has already secured some impressive partnerships and is in line to raise $38million by the end of its ICO. BYD (Chinese based automobile company), DJI drones (market leader in drone technology), GTI Holdings (a major investment fund) are a few names to mention but ShareRing has also recently joined the new mobility consortium MOBI that consists of 70% of the top automakers of the world including BMW and Ford. This company means business. Bos (appropriate name!) and business partner Peter David founded global carsharing platform Keaz, which has offices in Australia, Hong Kong, Vietnam and the USA. Their experience is quite apparent, as the delivery of their new venture has been impeccable. The sharing economy is here to stay and is soon to explode. It’s an exciting time for us all. Hopefully we shall be able to turn round the drastic situation and global waste we have put on our planet. Time to practice the act of sharing that we so strongly preach to our children. Read more about ShareRing: https://sharering.network/en Follow the ShareRing community: _The latest Tweets from ShareRing (@ShareRingCo). The world's first trusted token for sharing services. One way to pay…_twitter.com ShareRing (@ShareRingCo) | Twitter _You can view and join @ShareRing right away._t.me ShareRing (SHR) Sources: 1. www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/sharingeconomy_032017final.pdf 2. www.brookings.edu/research/the-current-and-future-state-of-the-sharing-economy 3. http://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/

How could sharing create a better world for us all?

From: World Forum for Blockchain Use Cases. Nikolaj Martyniuk, Co-Founder & CEO of WePower “We believe that the WePower project might be one of the turning points in proving blockchain’s applicability in one of the most fundamental industries to our daily lives — energy.” —Nikolaj Martyniuk, Co-Founder & CEO of WePower. Photo by . Cassie Boca Soft-spoken 32-year old is a man on a renewable energy mission. Born in Lithuania, Nick graduated from in Milan, Italy in 2007 with a BSc in International Economics and . He wanted to master management tools typical of companies with a significant international dimension and operating in different and increasingly integrated economic systems. There he learned to understand and analyze the dynamics of globalization of cultures and operations and the relationships among countries at the European and extra-European levels. Nikolaj Martyniuk Bocconi University Management After a brief spell as Financial Analyst with , he helped Lithuanians reduce their fuel costs and simultaneously protected the environment from pollution by promoting the use of in Lithuania. Shortly thereafter — in 2013 — he developed a 16 MW pipeline of biogas projects with . His passion for renewable energy ultimately earned him the position of of Modus in October 2014. Orion Securities Group Compressed Natural Gas Modus Energy Solutions CEO In 2016, his company — a giant 5.7 MW power plant capable of supplying 3,000 households annually. Half of the EUR9.56 million required came from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the remainder was provided by Modus. Here is drone footage of the installation: built the largest solar power plant in the Baltics 22,000 solar panels near Lake Narač, Belarus, built by Modus Energy. After a 6-month stint as CEO of , Nick discovered Arvind Narayanan’s Princeton Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies , which he passed with flying colours. He also completed Bocconi University’s . Modus International course online course on Private Equity and Venture Capital The two courses inspired him to launch his dream company: . WePower enables energy tokenization, which basically means energy buyers can now contract directly with green energy producers. To realize his dream, Nick and a further and has assembled a of technologists and partners. His new company has been covered by , , , and . Clearly WePower is gaining significant momentum in their short history. WePower raised $3m in October 2017 $40m in February 2018 formidable team Inc. FastCompany Nasdaq BusinessWire many other publications Why WePower is a big deal Nick started WePower as a way to combat the problems that currently exist in the green energy market. The global energy market today is dominated by “dirty energy” — energy produced by burning fossil fuels like oil, coal and gas. According to REN21’s (pg 30), as much as 78.4% of all the world’s energy still comes from fossil fuels, despite the dire warnings of climate change experts. Renewables 2017 Global Status Report Transforming an energy market — from which many have profited handsomely ever since the Industrial Revolution — to clean energy is a difficult task, requiring vast amounts of capital. Banks are reluctant to fund these projects because of the length of time to earn a return. Governments are reluctant to fund big new infrastructure projects because of budget constraints. Incumbents are reluctant to change because of their deep vested interests in continuing to extract millions of dollars of value ( estimates $1.4 trillion annually) from natural resources, despite the cost to the planet. Navigant Research Amidst the reluctance to changing the status quo, concerned end users are looking for alternatives. As the world moves towards a decentralized future, peer-to-peer energy platforms like and have appeared, which allow for decentralized selling and buying of renewable energy. However, most P2P energy platforms struggle to scale beyond micro-grids. Therefore, the goal of WePower is to promote renewable energy by allowing end users to participate directly in the funding of renewable energy projects. As a reward, these end users receive power at below market rates. SolarCoin Power Ledger How the WePower platform works: A renewable energy producer wants to build 100 MW solar energy capacity. The cost of such a project is estimated at $100 million. The producer is $20 million short to bring the project to life. Using WePower, the producer tokenizes the projected production of energy of $20 million and sells it up front at below market price. After completion of the project, power is provided to the buyers, which they can use for themselves or sell on the marketplace. WePower’s progress to date WePower has a bold vision, which appears to be gaining significant momentum: WePower , as an initial seed investment to test how the market would respond. raised $3m in October 2017 In December, WePower from more than 300 applicants to join their . This program is supported by the major energy companies like EnergyAustralia and Spotless. The bottom line is that multi-billion dollar companies will help WePower to scale in Australia, while they are expanding in Europe. EnergyAustralia is watched closely by energy companies in Asia, and it’s likely that involvement in this program could open doors in Asia too. EnergyAustralia selected Startupbootcamp Energy Australia Accelerator program , the backbone of the System, a partnership with WePower in January. Elering Estonian Energy announced WePower closed a in February, making it the largest ICO in the energy sector to date. $40m ICO Also in February, as one of the top 5 most innovative energy companies in the world. This global recognition of WePower’s technological leadership comes at a pivotal time for the company. Fast Company listed WePower Blockchain is a hot topic in the energy industry, with a string of startups and utilities now considering how to fuse decentralized computing with decentralized energy. But most projects are still conceptual or at the pilot stage. WePower is one of the first companies to bring a blockchain energy network to commercial fruition. — Fast Company More than three dozen Fast Company editors, reporters, and contributors surveyed thousands of companies to create the list, which recognize pioneering companies across 36 categories. Fast Company has been producing the list for more than 10 years. Each year tracks the major shifts and developments of business giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix and Apple. The list also follows the evolution of more recent players like Spotify and Uber and recognizes new projects with undeniable potential. Past cover stories from these lists include renown technology leaders like Satya Nadella from Microsoft, Brian Chesky from AirBnb, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and Elon Musk from SpaceX. This year WePower is in good company: — Green Mountain Power For helping customers go off the grid — BYD For introducing the first electric trucks — Sonnen For creating modern energy grids for communities — Drift Marketplace For using blockchain to connect indie power producers with consumers — WePower For democratizing renewable energy through blockchain technology — Entrade For turning trash into clean electricity, heating, and cooling — GE Power For building wind farms around the world — Ciel & Terre For floating solar panels in unusual places — Zen Ecosystems For bringing smart thermostats to commercial spaces — Dandelion For lowering the cost of home geothermal power In early February, , the Norwegian Transmission System Operator visited WePower’s engineering team in Estonia to discuss the future of tokenized energy trading and blockchain technology: Statnett The Estonian energy tokenization project has also attracted the attention of the ’s Directorate-General for Energy, who invited WePower for talks about a vision for European level energy trading on blockchain: European Commission WePower CEO, Nikolaj Martyniuk speaking after his first meeting with the EC. With so much interest generated less than 4 months after their seed funding and less than 3 weeks after their ICO, Nick and the team at WePower, together with their advisors, appear to be well set for becoming the first platform to tokenize the global renewable energy industry. Growing recognition of WePower technology in Europe and Australia will help the company integrate into the energy markets faster. This will enable faster adoption among energy developers resulting in more energy available to be traded on the WePower platform. It’s a win for energy providers, a win for energy users and most important, a win for the planet. Watch this space… Company website White paper LinkedIn (3k followers) Medium (29k followers) Twitter (43k members) Telegram Nikolaj Martyniuk, CEO & Co-Founder, WePower — disrupting and tokenizing the global energy industry. About the Author Michael Haupt devours blockchain white papers for breakfast and writes about the bright, decentralised, peer-to-peer world he envisions for his daughter. He has described a blockchain-powered society in , and he’s concerned we may not get there unless we can find creative energy solutions to power a blockchain-driven world. Postcards from 2035 The Legal Stuff This opinion piece represents the personal views of Michael Haupt. He was compensated to share his views after WePower passed an initial , and he is relying on the information supplied by WePower’s management team in forming his opinions. ICO Evaluation This article is not a prospectus nor a solicitation for investment and it does not pertain in any way to an offering of securities in any jurisdiction. This article is not to be construed as investment advice.

Meet the Man Who Plans to Tokenize the Global Renewable Energy Industry

Please note that my opinions automatically makes them the ones of all people from my company, France and more generally every resident of the planet Earth. To celebrate the soon-to-be first GitHub repository to reach 300k stars, I decided to do a deeper analysis of this metric. Before starting and in order to be completely honest, I must admit I‘m a bit biased, primarily due to their way of making newcomers believe they were required to star their repository. For people unfamiliar with what I’m referring to, they basically used to instruct everyone in the getting started challenge to create a GitHub account and go star freeCodeCamp (FCC for short) as a mandatory step. After some time, I created to remove the imperative wording that was used, as a first step towards removing completely this instruction. It was rejected at first, got approved, sort-of reverted in another merge, but Quincy finally decided to the offending sentence a few months afterwards. a pull request delete Now that you have the background that will also be helpful later, let’s proceed to the first mandatory step before making some visualizations! Data: The Gathering An interesting thing to know is that the GitHub Rest API is limited to the first 400 pages of 100 stargazers as we discovered at our expense with , but this is another story. Parsing the web page was not an option either, since it only displays the last 5100 people. Fortunately, the GraphQL endpoint doesn’t have this limitation (at least for now ;)). Starveller Our query is pretty basic and retrieves only the information we might need later, namely , and all the entity counts of an user. The maximum results per page you can retrieve is almost always 100, I’ve used the value 50 here since I experienced some API timeouts otherwise. location createdAt Executing such query through the GitHub would give us the following data (trimming down to the first stargazer for display purposes): GraphQL explorer The notion of cursor accessible in the field will help us iterate through the results, which will get passed as a new argument to the query, instructing GraphQL to retrieve results from the previous . We will be able to pass this easily using an ES6 template string that you can look at . pageInfo after stargazers endCursor here With this, we can now create to fetch all that good stuff. Because it took a couple hours spanning on multiple days to get everything, I couldn’t possibly save that simply in memory since I had to pause and restart a few times, so I used . For people that don’t know or won’t take the time to look at their readme, it is a local JSON database with lodash utilities. our script lowdb The logic consists of a simple function calling itself with the previous cursor, or grabbing the last one from the database on the first iteration. The resulting file size is 194MB, but I leveraged in order to make it available to you all so you can use it better than I will (feel free to diss me in the comments). git-lfs Visualizations Now that we have our raw data, let’s play with it. The first interesting thing that we could look at would be the overall evolution of stargazers. For this article, I’m going to pick a charting library using the amazing API combined with an open-source script that anyone can read, ensuring impartiality. RANDOM.org Well that was quite unexpected: Out of all of them, the one made by my team at got picked, that will have to do I guess.. Uber We are going to need to group the stars by date to be be able to tell how much the repo got per day and the overall evolution to look for meaningful signals. The resulting array is going to be saved into it’s own file that will be passed to our chart, in order to avoid serving the full database to you, wonderful reader. byDay After all this text and snippets, can we finally see ?! Yes. Using we can plot the overall evolution along with the per-day value represented by a . We’re also going to do a bit of cheap tricks with the axis ticks in order to show the values corresponding to the nearest hovered X. Go ahead and play with it, it’s interactive! (Sorry mobile users, I had to remove the second one) something! react-vis LineSeries BarSeries The first thing we notice is the pretty abnormal peak between July 9th and 10th of 2015 where we got a total of roughly 2900 stargazers. Let’s play investigative journalists and go back in time to look for what we can find at these dates, in order to see if we can pinpoint what was the cause of this growth. One was made in June 18th on Wired but seem to have had no impact, but e made on July 9th on lifehacker ( US ranked as of now) appears to have participated. We are also going to use Twitter’s since they will most likely have tweeted about big news concerning the site. And here it is, along with responses that looks like the site just went live, we have they are the top 1 trending repo on GitHub. Although I’m not sure why there were not already since June 24th with ~200 stars a day, I don’t really know how Github used to do the ranking, but it must be the main source. article another on 209th advanced search one announcing The first drop on July 6th 2016 corresponds to the removing completely the text referring to the action of starring the repo, but still shows a gif doing it, thus still drawing some people into doing the same action. The point to which we get back to a completely normal growth in June 2017 matches the revamp of the site along with the on-boarding ; which is confirmed by looking at the web archive of the site that started picking up snapshots at this date. Funnily enough, the diff and shows they are now using this growth hacking technique with Youtube subscribers, but that’s another story. commit process this gif Wayback Machine snapshots for FreeCodeCamp January-August 2017 But what I’m really interested to analyse with more scrutiny would be the . What are they exactly? Well it’s the I gave to users who only starred FCC, and nothing else. Not all of them are necessarily completely inactive, but because they only gave this star, I assumed they would never have given it were they not instructed to do so. Smithes codename At first I thought representing the would be a good way to display this data, but I quickly realized that rendering their opposites, the , would be a better way to show the proportion on the full timeline. Smithes Neos Thus, we are going to make it so that our Y axis represents the percentage of stars for each day along with a flame-graph-like color scale to clearly show potential differences from one day to another. Hovering will give you the exact percentage and the total number of for a specific day. Neos Neos Ultimately, you would want this to be a red rectangle. As you can see, it’s very unlikely early stargazers from before the Operation Black Storm (as I like calling it) to be , since this limited range of people were either relatives of the project owners or already familiar with Open-Source. Smithes After June 23rd and FCC going mainstream with more than 100 stars a day, the started doing their apparition, . The only time largely surpassed their counterparts was around the 24th September 2015 period. I tried to go back to the source, but it was a bit cloudy. One thing’s for sure, they didn’t win because of . Smithes en masse Neos this The slow fall of up until the liberating on-boarding rework can be explained by the fact older accounts had more time to learn what starring really meant and/or give it to other projects. Still, it would be surprising to see the latest batches of 2017 going past 60 or even 70% in 2019 if they follow the same pattern as the ones from 2 years ago. Neos For the sake of curiosity, what do you think the final star count would really look like if we got rid of all at once? A single will give us the long-awaited answer you have all been craving for. Smithes filter Do I sound smarter using a LateX font? I know I do. That’s still a huge number you would say, but at least it wouldn’t be the top repository anymore thanks to bootstrap beating it by a few thousands. One could only imagine what this number would be without any deception or my conditional be stricter. Smith Just because I could, I did another iteration of our first visualization using the data to see what it could have been: Neo-rmalized The fluctuations do not differ that much, only the units do. Cartography Because I really like maps, I thought it would also be cool to pin stargazers to world countries based on their publicly available location. GitHub uses a simple text input, allowing pretty much everything with potentially different formats and little jokes like “localhost” or “Earth” (you’re not unique by the way, there was respectively 20 and 243 of you in the whole dataset), so we will need to normalize that in some way. The solution I went with was to use the Google Geocoding API. The script is composed of and to manage query concurrency. With their 2500 req limit per day on the free plan however, we will have to find another way to get around it, or wait the amount of remaining location to geocode divided by 2500: node-geocoder p-queue We probably don’t want to wait that long Since the database is in a single JSON file, we also need to be careful of how we are doing the write, I got burned multiple times when I killed my scripts at the exact same time it was writing, resulting in the loss of all fetched data after my last commit. To minimize that, I simply created a cache of users to update, and a 10 second interval function that would write all of them at once. I won’t embed gists of these scripts here because it’s pretty ugly, but you can still go ahead and look at them if you feel like it. After getting throttled a few times, I realized OpenStreetMap had a Geocoding equivalent called . You still need to be respectful of their and limit queries to not DDOS their service, so unlike with Google I kept a concurrency of 1. To avoid doing some queries, we can do a mapping of already geocoded cities by their names and try to match it with user locations. This way, we won’t need to geocode NYC 3012 times for example. There is one little issue though: apparently world countries didn’t agreed on name unicity of their cities, which is shocking. I also came across a few oddities: for example, there is a city called Paris in Texas where they have a little Eiffel Tower with a cowboy hat! Nominatim policy Chapeau. But let’s get back to our business. Since some cities are duplicated between countries, often with the Canada, United Kingdom and USA trio; I arbitrarily made priority to some cities depending on their importance, which may skew some of the results. Given that’s how Geocoders works anyway (by returning an array of possible results sorted by importance/relevance), the impact of such method compared to querying every location should be pretty limited. I’ve also grabbed a JSON of all countries to populate users who only specified that information. With something like 4% of geocoded addresses I was able to match 39102 users locations at the first pass of the script, leaving 94247 unassigned. After a few back and forth between geocoding and the deduplicate script, I should be able to get all the information I need. It’s worth putting the emphasis on the fact that Geocoding is not an exact science, especially when you don’t have Google resources. While looking at my output, I saw a couple really bad results like “Venice” getting resolved to Canada or even “Johannesburg” to a bus stop is Israel. I fixed some of these but probably not most of them, thus our data is not 100% accurate, still good enough to have a global idea! For the display, I’ll be using , allowing me to render the countries as SVG components, and a d3 color scale based on the number of stargazers. Go ahead and click any country to get the top cities (only on desktop though, click again to un-focus). react-simple-maps Yes, the France count is purely coincidental. I could have used another of our frameworks, to render every single city but I wasn’t sure how that would have played with Medium embedding and especially to mobile users, so I refrained from doing so and stuck to the lightweight solution. deck.gl Conclusion I believe you should not take the darker path to make your project popular at all costs, even if it’s serving a good cause. Resorting to subterfuges to make use of mostly inexperienced people doesn’t seem right, especially in the Open-Source sphere and even more if you’re specifically targeting people who want to learn. I might be too severe but in any case, it was instructive for me to create visualizations about a subject I care deeply about and sharing my thought process at the same time. I hope someone will appreciate. All the code is available here .

A Dive into FreeCodeCamp Stargazers

tl;dr This article shows you how you can use to set up and test against APIs using . OpenShift AWS localstack Example code to run through this using is available . ShutIt here Here’s an asciicast of the process: Introduction In this walkthrough you’re going to set up an system using , and then run localstack in a pod on it. OpenShift minishift is a RedHat-sponsored wrapper around that provides extra functionality more suited to enterprise production deployments of Kubernetes. Many features from have swum upstream to be integrated into Kubernetes (eg role-based access control). OpenShift Kubernetes OpenShift The open source version of OpenShift is called . Origin Localstack Localstack is a project that aims to give you as complete as possible a set of AWS APIs to develop against without incurring any cost. This is great for testing or trying code out before running it ‘for real’ against AWS and potentially wasting time and money. Localstack spins up the following core Cloud APIs on your local machine: at API Gateway http://localhost:4567 at Kinesis http://localhost:4568 at DynamoDB http://localhost:4569 at DynamoDB Streams http://localhost:4570 at Elasticsearch http://localhost:4571 at S3 http://localhost:4572 at Firehose http://localhost:4573 at Lambda http://localhost:4574 at SNS http://localhost:4575 at SQS http://localhost:4576 at Redshift http://localhost:4577 at ES (Elasticsearch Service) http://localhost:4578 at SES http://localhost:4579 at Route53 http://localhost:4580 at CloudFormation http://localhost:4581 at CloudWatch http://localhost:4582 At present it supports running in a Docker container, or natively on a machine. It is built on , which is a mocking framework in turn built on , which is a python AWS SDK. moto boto You can then create distinct endpoints for each set of services, and isolate them from one another. Also, you can worry less about resource usage as the cluster scheduler will take care of that. Running within an OpenShift cluster gives you the capability to run very many of these AWS API environments. However, . it doesn’t run out of the box, so this will guide you through what needs to be done to get it to work Started Minishift? If you don’t have an OpenShift cluster to hand, then you can run up minishift, which gives you a standalone VM with a working OpenShift on it. Installing minishift is documented . You’ll need to install it first and run ‘minishift start’ successfully. here Once you have started minishift, you will need to . set up your shell so that you are able to communicate with the OpenShift server $ eval $(minishift oc-env) Change the default security context constraints Security Context Constraints (scc) are an OpenShift concept that allows more granular control over Docker containers’ powers. They control seLinux contexts, can drop capabilities from the running containers, can determine which user the pod can run as, and so on. To get this running you’re going to change the default ‘restricted’ scc, but you could create a separate scc and apply that to a particular project. To change the ‘restricted’ scc you will need to : become a cluster administrator $ oc login -u system:admin Then you need to edit the restricted scc with: $ oc edit scc restricted You will see the definition of the restricted At this point you’re going to have to do two things: Allow containers to run as any user (in this case ‘root’) Prevent the scc from restricting your capabilities to setuid and setgid 1) Allow RunAsAny The localstack container runs as root by default. For security reasons, OpenShift does not allow containers to run as root by default. Instead it picks a random UID within a very high range, and runs as that. To simplify matters, and allow the localstack container to run as root, : change the lines runAsUser:type: MustRunAsRange to read: runAsUser:type: RunAsAny this allows containers to run as any user. 2) Allow SETUID and SETGID Capabilities When localstack starts up it needs to become another user to start up elasticache. The elasticache service does not start up as the root user. To get round this, localstack su’s the startup command to the localstack user in the container. Because the ‘restricted’ scc explicitly disallows actions that change your user or group id, you need to remove these restrictions. Do this by deleting the lines: - SETUID SETGID Once you have done these two steps, . save the file Make a note of the host If you run: $ minishift console --machine-readable | grep HOST | sed 's/^HOST=$.*$/\1/' you will get the host that the minishift instance is accessible as from your machine. Make a note of this, as you’ll need to substitute it in later. Deploy the pod Deploying the localstack is as easy as running: $ oc new-app localstack/localstack --name="localstack" This takes the localstack/localstack image and creates an OpenShift application around it for you, setting up internal services (based on the exposed ports in the Dockerfile), running the container in a pod, and various other management tasks. Create the routes If you want to access the services from outside, you need to create OpenShift routes, which create an external address to access services within the OpenShift network. For example, to create a route for the sqs service, create a file like this: apiVersion: v1items:- apiVersion: v1kind: Routemetadata:annotations:openshift.io/host.generated: "true"name: sqsselfLink: /oapi/v1/namespaces/test/routes/sqsspec:host: sqs-test.HOST.nip.ioport:targetPort: 4576-tcpto:kind: Servicename: localstackweight: 100wildcardPolicy: Nonestatus:ingress:- conditions:- lastTransitionTime: 2017-07-28T17:49:18Zstatus: "True"type: Admittedhost: sqs-test.HOST.nip.iorouterName: routerwildcardPolicy: Nonekind: Listmetadata: {}resourceVersion: ""selfLink: "" then create the route with: $ oc create -f See above for the list of services and their ports. , you might want to prepend the host name with a unique name for the instance, eg If you have multiple localstacks running on your OpenShift cluster host: localstackenv1-sqs-test.HOST.nip.io .Look upon your work Run an ‘oc get all’ to see what you have created within your OpenShift project: $ oc get allNAME DOCKER REPO TAGS UPDATEDis/localstack 172.30.1.1:5000/myproject/localstack latest 15 hours ago NAME REVISION DESIRED CURRENT TRIGGERED BYdc/localstack 1 1 1 config,image(localstack:latest) NAME DESIRED CURRENT READY AGErc/localstack-1 1 1 1 15h NAME HOST/PORT PATH SERVICES PORT TERMINATION WILDCARDroutes/apigateway apigateway-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4567-tcp Noneroutes/cloudformation cloudformation-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4581-tcp Noneroutes/cloudwatch cloudwatch-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4582-tcp Noneroutes/dynamodb dynamodb-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4569-tcp Noneroutes/dynamodbstreams dynamodbstreams-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4570-tcp Noneroutes/es es-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4578-tcp Noneroutes/firehose firehose-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4573-tcp Noneroutes/kinesis kinesis-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4568-tcp Noneroutes/lambda lambda-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4574-tcp Noneroutes/redshift redshift-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4577-tcp Noneroutes/route53 route53-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4580-tcp Noneroutes/s3 s3-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4572-tcp Noneroutes/ses ses-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4579-tcp Noneroutes/sns sns-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4575-tcp Noneroutes/sqs sqs-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 4576-tcp Noneroutes/web web-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io localstack 8080-tcp None NAME CLUSTER-IP EXTERNAL-IP PORT(S) AGEsvc/localstack 172.30.187.65  4567/TCP,4568/TCP,4569/TCP,4570/TCP,4571/TCP,4572/TCP,4573/TCP,4574/TCP,4575/TCP,4576/TCP,4577/TCP,4578/TCP,4579/TCP,4580/TCP,4581/TCP,4582/TCP,8080/TCP 15h NAME READY STATUS RESTARTS AGEpo/localstack-1-hnvpw 1/1 Running 0 15h Each route created is now accessible as an AWS service ready to test your code. Access the services Can now hit the services from your host, like this: $ aws --endpoint-url=http://kinesis-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io kinesis list-streams{"StreamNames": []} For example, to create a kinesis stream: $ aws --endpoint-url=http://kinesis-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io kinesis create-stream --stream-name teststream --shard-count 2$ aws --endpoint-url=http://kinesis-test.192.168.64.2.nip.io kinesis list-streams{"StreamNames": ["teststream"]} This is an extract from my book This is a work in progress from the second edition of Docker in Practice Get 39% off with the code: 39miell

Run Your Own AWS APIs on OpenShift

A series on best practices in large codebases for new engineers. This one focuses on how to think about large codebases via an introduction to the practice of commenting. Some variable names have been changed to protect the innocent. The first thing I advise new software engineers fresh out of school is this: . Trust no one It is certainly absurdly harsh, but I’ve found it serves a dual purpose: it gives engineers the confidence to share their own ideas (since existing assumptions are always suspect), and it helps motivate them to write robust, readable, and maintainable code. Most engineers at the beginning of their career have coded primarily for themselves or their TAs or at most a small group. Much of that code is temporary and used only until you hand in your assignment or scrape and analyze your data. Habits that work very well for academic or personal code will bite you in the ass in a professional environment. Imagine an environment where dozens (maybe hundreds) are contributing alongside you. Your code will live on for years, and people will be trying to read it long after you’ve forgotten what you’ve written and maybe long after you’ve left the project or company. In this things will break. Code that once worked will regress. It will regress in a thousand tiny and unpredictable ways. Your nice clean elegant API will have crap added to it, parameters slapped in and deprecated, and semantics inverted until it ends up like this real actual function from Windows XP used to create a symlink: codebase BOOL br= ::DeviceIoControl(hDir, FSCTL_GET_REPARSE_POINT, NULL, 0,&ReparseBuffer, MAXIMUM_REPARSE_DATA_BUFFER_SIZE, &dwRet, NULL); Source: http://www.flexhex.com/docs/articles/hard-links.phtml Part 1: Comments to the rescue? In this article, I’m going to discuss comments as a way to illustrate how code can evolve badly and how you can try to protect against future mistakes. Often people turn to comments to combat the uncontrolled growth of codebases. But comments are ripe for abuse. As with all code, there are good ways and bad ways to write them. Comments can do terrible damage Let’s look at a practical example. Everybody knows it’s good to comment your code to “make it readable”. Some people also know it’s bad to comment your code “too much”. Consider this comment: def user_history(days=90): for i in xrange(days):… # Do 90 days of history by default Let’s say you add this comment to your fresh new function. In a large codebase with many contributors, hundreds of people could end up reading this comment. They don’t learn anything new from reading it that they didn’t learn from the default parameter above it. That means it’s wasting engineers’ time. But it’s not just a time waster. Over the course of a year, hundreds of programmers will make changes to your codebase. Let’s say some new code is added: def user_history(days=90): … prep_user_history_processing()do_some_more_stuff() Do 90 days of history by default for i in xrange(days):… There are now many lines of code separating the function’s declaration from your comment. They might not even fit on the screen together at the same time. Now let’s say that in the intervening year, the user history processing has changed so that now we often read 1000 days of user history. Eventually one of the many programmers using this function is sick of writing user_history(days=1000). They go ahead and change the default. def user_history( ):prep_user_history_processing()do_some_more_stuff() days=1000 … Do of history by default 90 days for i in xrange(days):… Boom. Tests pass. Code pushed. A month later, another coder comes along and skims this function. They’re skipping through the file, and they see the comment but don’t actually look at the function declaration. They call the function with the default argument assuming it’s 90 days. Thus a bug is born. This is how large code bases actually work. This is how many bugs are written. Learn to program defensively Comments that don’t add anything, like the one above, aren’t useful and are potentially dangerous. But more than that . To write truly robust code you must ensure it’s not only correct (which itself can be challenging) but also resistant to skimming, misreading, carelessness, and growth. in a large codebase the evolution of your code is simply beyond your control When the author added the “90 days” comment above it was the second line of the function just below the default argument. They may have reasoned that if somebody were to change the number they would likely change the comment. They didn’t take into account that in the intervening year enough code could be added that the two would no longer even fit on the screen together at the same time. It might seem lazy to you that someone would just skip to this part of the code without looking at the top of it. But coders are people and people make mistakes. Reading code is hard. With enough commits and enough time, mistakes are inevitable. To be a great programmer, you must take into account these future mistakes when you write your code today. Writing useful comments Thoughtful code that that keeps in mind and takes care of its many hapless readers can help turn the tide toward order in a large codebase. In our user history case, the coder can fix things by simply not having the comment in the first place. It’s not needed. In the more general case the coder should consider for comments and for all code: How will this be useful over time? What misinterpretations and misconfigurations will this cause? Is this simple enough to be understood even in the face of a barrage of commits, our penchant for finding the easiest way, and our inexhaustible capacity to forget? Who is this code for? To answer the last question it’s useful to distinguish whether a comment is for someone this function or for somebody the function. calling modifying Public comments If your function is public-facing in a large codebase then the caller shouldn’t have to read the function body to understand how to call it. A clear docstring should obviate the need to read (or likely misread) the code. def user_history(days=90):"""Remotely fetch user events for the specified number of days. Args:days (int): the number of days to fetch for, rounded down byday to 12am Returns:list(UserEvent): all events found, empty list if none are found Raises:AccessException: raised if caller does not have permissionto access this data"""for i in xrange(days):… This comment has useful information upfront. The reader doesn’t have to trawl through many lines of python to figure out (possibly incorrectly) something like the return type. ( Note that static typing or something like Python’s type hints can help with this.) Take care with your docstring. Take time to consider whether it’s are really useful, whether and how it can be misinterpreted, and whether it’s likely to still be useful a month or a year from now, after many more commits. The comment above is written in . If your large codebase doesn’t have a standardized format for docstrings, you should invest time in starting one. Google’s python args standard Standards help protect against laziness and mistakes by providing a correct and easy habit. Because it’s the standard used by every function and it’s parsed for use on the docs page, everybody is accustomed to updating it. You could even deploy a linter that warns you if you’ve changed a function without updating its description. Public comments do not address the implementation of your function. People only calling the function don’t need to know about that. That’s where internal comments come in. Internal comments In theory good code should speak for itself. Variables and functions should be clearly named and control flow should be obvious. But there will always be places when the code can’t speak for itself because of something very subtle or very complex. Internal comments are written inline with the code and won’t be parsed to show in public docs. They’re intended for somebody intimate enough with the code that they’re actually going to go through and read it line by line. Well, let’s be honest; they’ll probably skip a lot of lines. Here’s an example of an internal comment: # DO NOT CHANGE THIS TO A SET!!! IT WILL BREAK number_list = [number for number in xrange(10)]do_something(number_list) 1 This comment is pretty useful — it says something that’s very hard to glean from the code, and if other coders read it then it could prevent bugs. But as we know, because they’ll be skimming or they’ll make a mistake. This comment would be even more useful as an assert: many coders won’t read it number_list = [number for number in xrange(10)] do_something(number_list) assert type(number_list) is list Now we have the same information, but even if the coder is lazy and skims the comments, they still can’t cause a bug. Their testing will fail. (Yes, there might not be adequate testing. That’s a subject for .) another time Still, we didn’t explain why, and it’s really not obvious from reading the code why we have to have a list there. Somebody might come in and try to clean up the code by removing this seemingly superfluous assert. Here you can put in a useful comment to explain what’s going on. number_list = [number for number in xrange(10)]# As of version 1.2.1, do_something has a bug that causes it to# crash if non-list collections are used for certain inputs.assert type(number_list) is listdo_something(number_list) Now, we have a precise internal comment that tells the reader something useful that they can’t easily glean from the code concerns the internals of the function that callers of this function don’t care about it explains why it’s there and why you shouldn’t remove it This by no means covers all places you should use comments, but the general rules hold. Your code should be concise and explicit, and when it can’t easily speak for itself you can write a comment that tells the reader something useful. Often people won’t bother to read comments, so you shouldn’t rely on them too heavily. Compassion without trust The truth is that reading and understanding somebody else’s code is hard. Given enough people with enough code and enough time, mistakes and carelessness are guaranteed to happen regularly. Trust no one to be mistake-free. When producing code for others you should keep these traits of your fellow coders (and yourself) in mind and defend against them as consistently as possible. By being thoughtful and concise and using well-understood standards, and by generally being aware of our own faults as we write code, we can begin to guard against our own mistakes. In future articles I’ll discuss how this applies to other aspects of software including testing and global state. engineering Article 2: A Beginner’s Guide to Automated Testing Article 3: Quick Tips for Gitting on a Team is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising &sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories

Trust No One: An Introduction to Large Codebases for New Engineers

THE LANGUEDOCIAN SCORPION: FOOD

Reduce HDFS Latency with Alluxio Managed SSD Cache and Presto Consistent Hashing-Based Soft Affinity Scheduling Background At Uber, data informs every decision. Presto is one of the very core engines that powers all sorts of data analytics at Uber. For example, the operations team makes heavy use of Presto for services such as dashboarding; The Uber Eats and marketing teams rely on the results of these queries to make decisions on prices. In addition, Presto is also used in Uber’s compliance department, growth marketing department, and ad-hoc data analytics. The scale of Presto at Uber is large. Currently, Presto has 7K weekly active users, processing 500K queries per day and handling over 50PB of data. Uber has two data centers with 5000 nodes and 15 Presto clusters across 2 regions in terms of infrastructure. Uber’s Presto Deployment Current Architecture Uber’s Presto architecture is shown in the diagram above. The UI/Client layer. This includes internal dashboarding, Google Data Studio, Tableau, and other tools. In addition, we have some backend services that use JDBC or query parsing to communicate with Presto. The proxy layer. This layer is responsible for pulling stats from each Presto coordinator, including the number of queries and tasks, CPU and Memory usage, and so on. We determine which cluster each query should be scheduled to based on these stats. In other words, it is doing the load-balancing and query-gating services. Presto clusters. At the bottom, multiple Presto clusters communicate with the underlying Hive, HDFS, Pinot, and others. Join operations can be performed between different plugins or different datasets. In addition, for each layer of the above architecture, we have Internal monitoring Support for using Kerberos security The Presto workloads are divided into two categories. Interactive: Query sent by data scientists and engineers Scheduled: mainly Batch query, which is scheduled and recurring, including Dashboard query, ETL query, etc. The Journey to the Cloud Over the past few years, the Uber team has been thinking about how and when to go to the cloud and what the layout should be to interact with the cloud. We are using the “what-why-how” model. we have a variety of application layers, such as BI applications. On the computation engine side, we have Spark, Presto, and so on. In the cloud, there are many cloud-native options. On the storage side, we can choose from GCS, S3, HDFS in the cloud, and many other options. What: One of the most important motivations is to improve cost efficiency and achieve elastic scaling of hardware resources. Also, we want to achieve high usability, scalability, and reliability. Why: On the one hand, because cloud provides many native features, we need to consider features compatibility with open source components. On the other hand, we need to figure out how performance works at different scales. Uber holds a huge data lake, so performance is crucial for the customers and us. Additionally, we are looking into the cloud’s ability to enforce security and compliance requirements. The native cloud-provided services can also be used to reduce “tech debt.” How: Future State – Hybrid Cloud The diagram above shows the long-term plan. The solution can be extended to different cloud service vendors based on such an architecture. Now, we are still in the very early stages of implementation. We want to run a hybrid model with PROD clusters (on-prem) and cloud clusters (GCP). As shown in the bottom right corner of the figure, we expect most of the data to still be on-prem HDFS. The blue arrows represent some pre-tests we did where we ran some experiments without any caching on top of HDFS. The results showed high network traffic and cost, which is a huge overhead. Therefore, we are exploring public cloud services, such as GCS or S3, to serve as an L2 Cache. We want to put some important data or frequently used data sets in the “L2 Cache on the cloud”. For each Presto cluster in the cloud, we plan to leverage local SSDs to cache some data to improve performance. This solution can be scaled into different cloud providers using the same architecture, which is our vision in the long term. Using Alluxio for Local Caching Recently, we deployed Alluxio in our product environment in three clusters, each with more than 200 nodes. Alluxio is plugged in as a local library and it leverages the Presto workers’ local NVMe disks. We’re not caching all the data, but a selective subset of data called selective caching. Below is a diagram of Alluxio as a local cache. The Alluxio Cache Library is a local cache that runs inside the Presto worker. We have implemented a layer on top of the default HDFS client implementation. When any external API reads from an HDFS call, the system first looks at the inventory of the cache to see if it is a cache hit or miss. If it’s a cache hit, it will directly read the data from the local SSD. Otherwise, it will read from the remote HDFS and cache the data locally for the next read. In this process, the cache hit rate has a significant impact on the overall performance. We will discuss the detailed design and improvement of the Alluxio local cache in part 2 of this blog series. Key Challenges and Solution Challenge 1: Real Time Partition Updates The first challenge we encountered was the real time partition updates. At Uber, a lot of tables/partitions are constantly changing because we upsert queries constantly into Hudi tables. The challenge is that the partition id alone as a caching key is not sufficient. The same partition may have changed in Hive, while Alluxio still caches the outdated version. In this case, partitions in cache are outdated so the users will get outdated results while running a query if the data is served from caching, resulting in inconsistent experience. Solution: Add Hive latest modification time to caching key Our solution is adding the latest modification time to the caching key as below: Previous caching key: hdfs://<path> New caching key: hdfs://<path><mod time> Through this solution, the new partition with the latest modification gets cached, ensuring that users always get a consistent view of their data. Note that, there’s a trade-off – outdated partitions still present in cache, wasting caching space until evicted. Currently, we are working to improve the caching eviction strategy. Challenge 2: Cluster Membership Change In Presto, Soft Affinity Scheduling is implemented by the simple mod-based algorithm. This algorithm has the disadvantage that if a node is added or deleted, the whole ring is messed up with a different cache key. Therefore, if a node joins or leaves a cluster, it can hurt the cache efficiency of all the nodes, which is problematic. Presto locates the same set of nodes for a given partition key for this reason. As a result, we always hit the same set of nodes both for caching and queries. While this is good, the problem is that Presto previously used a simple hash function that can break when the cluster changes. As shown below, currently, simple hash mod based node lookup : key 4 % 3 nodes = worker # 1. Now node#3 goes down, new lookup: key 4 % 2 nodes = 0, but worker#0 does not have the bytes. Solution: Node id based consistent hashing Consistent hashing is the solution. Instead of the mod based function, all nodes are placed on a virtual ring. Relative ordering of nodes on the ring doesn’t change, regardless of joining or leaving. Instead of using mode based hash, we always look up the key on the ring. We can ensure that no matter how many changes are made, they are always based on the same set of nodes. Additionally, we use replication to improve robustness. This is the solution to the cluster membership issue. Challenge 3: Cache Size Restriction Uber’s data lake is at large scale, with 50PB of data accumulated per day. However, our local disk space is only 500 GB per node. The amount of data accessed by Presto queries is much larger than the disk space available on Worker nodes. Although it is possible to put everything in the cache, heavy eviction can hurt overall cache performance. Solution: Cache Filter The idea is to only cache a selected subset of data, which includes certain tables and a certain number of partitions. The solution is to develop a cache filter, a mechanism that decides whether to cache a table and how many partitions. Below is a sample configuration: {
  "databases": [{
      "name": "database_foo",
      "tables": [{
          "name" : "table_bar",
          "maxCachedPartitions": 100}]}]
} Having a cache filter has greatly increased cache hit rate . The following are the areas to pay attention to when it comes to Cache Filter. from ~65% to >90% Manual, static configuration Should be based on traffic pattern, e.g.: Most frequently accessed tables Most common # of partitions being accessed Tables that do not change too frequently Ideally, should be based on shadow  caching numbers and table level metrics We’ve also achieved observability through monitoring/dashboarding, which is integrated with Uber’s internal metrics platform using Jmx metrics emitted to Grafana based dashboard. Current Status and Future Work Current Status We have deployed 3 clusters of 200+ nodes each to our production cluster, with all nodes on NVMe disks, and 500GB cache space per node. We used a cache filter to cache about 20 most frequently accessed tables. We are still in the early stage of deployment and monitoring results. The initial measurement shows great improvement with about 1/3 of wall time for input scan (TableScanOperator and ScanFilterProjectOperator) vs. no cache.  We are very encouraged by these results. Alluxio has shown great query acceleration and provides consistent performance in our big data processing use cases. Next Steps First, we would like to onboard more tables and improve the process of table onboarding with automation, in which Alluxio Shadow Cache (SC) will be helpful. Second, we want to have better support for the changing partitions/Hoodie tables. Lastly, load balancing is another optimization we can implement. There’s still a long way to go along our journey. As compute-storage separation continues to be the trend along with containerization in big data, we believe a unified layer that bridges the compute and storage like Alluxio will continue to play a key role. We will share the detailed design and improvement of the Alluxio local cache in the next blog. About the Authors Chen Liang Chen Liang is a senior software engineer at Uber’s interactive analytics team, focusing on Presto. Before joining Uber, Chen was a staff software engineer at LinkedIn’s Big Data platform. Chen is also a committer and PMC member of Apache Hadoop. Chen holds two master’s degrees from Duke University and Brown University. Beinan Wang Dr. Beinan Wang is a software engineer from Alluxio and is the committer of PrestoDB. Before Alluxio, he was the Tech Lead of the Presto team in Twitter, and he built large-scale distributed SQL systems for Twitter’s data platform. He has twelve-year experience working on performance optimization, distributed caching, and volume data processing. He received his Ph.D. in computer engineering from Syracuse University on the symbolic model checking and runtime verification of distributed systems.

Speeding Up Uber’s Presto with Alluxio - Part 1

Those of us in the business of selling secondhand mobile phones have been closely following the new cell phone trends and developments in 2020. However, one piece of news that has gotten a bit buried amid it all is the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. T-Mobile successfully acquired Sprint on April 1. As you may have noticed, it’s been somewhat of a quiet summer as far as the merger goes—but that’s about to change. Quick Takes: Where Things Stand with the Merger Today T-Mobile officially folded the Sprint brand under its flagship banner on August 2. We may be seeing some ripples finally take form in the industry once some key “separation dates” get here. The big, obvious development impacting both resellers and customers is that we’re down to just three major cell carriers in the United States (Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile). What should we expect down the pipeline as a merger that’s mostly been on paper up until now takes shape in real life? Let's explore some key speculation points related to the T-Mobile/Sprint merger with a focus on the impact the newly formed conglomerate could have on secondhand mobile phones. There are some interesting things to look at, specifically in terms of pre-2020 5G devices being traded in prematurely in some markets. Why Are T-Mobile and Sprint Merging? While there are many peripheral advantages to merging for both carriers, resellers should make no mistake about the fact that there is one main objective behind the T-Mobile/Sprint merger: This conglomerate will be highly focused on bringing 5G to more places. In fact, the partnership’s ability to dominate in the 5G market hinges specifically on a strategy of bringing 5G to rural markets faster than anyone else can. T-Mobile needed Sprint under its tent due to Sprint’s well-known, long-standing relationships with the nation’s rural carriers. We’re potentially looking at a future where T-Mobile will be pushing for every customer to be a 5G customer. An expanded 5G network across rural parts of the country means that more cell customers may be eager to trade in existing devices for 5G devices. This could increase the supply of newer, non-5G devices on the resale market as T-Mobile advances its plans. Popular Opinion: It Will Be a While Before Customers Feel the Merger Deeply It looks like T-Mobile is taking every measure necessary to make sure current Sprint customers can enjoy a changeover that’s as non-abrupt as possible. For now, both Sprint and T-Mobile customers can keep doing exactly what they’re doing, including visiting the same brick-and-mortar stores that have served them as their cellphone homebase thus far. In addition, all online account management for Sprint customers will be exactly the same for the time being. The long-term goal is to transition all Sprint customers over to the T-Mobile network before creating a combined, supercharged network. T-Mobile has also promised to preserve pricing for three years. While customers will see branding updates across their accounts in the upcoming months, they won’t see any bill increases or changes until 2023. In addition to folding millions of Sprint customers into its brand, T-Mobile is also aggressively trying to court “switchers” from the nation’s two major carriers using an aggressive trade-in offer. T-Mobile will pay off the remaining device payments or service contracts for all customers who make the switch from Verizon or AT&T. The carrier will be handing out up to $650 per line via trade-in credits and virtual prepaid cards whenever a customer trades in an existing phone for a new one. This will have an obvious impact on the trade-in market if customers bite. This is Where It Gets Interesting for the Resale Market One of the more complicated aspects of the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint is that they use different technologies to power their 2G networks. While T-Mobile uses GSM, Sprint uses CDMA. As you may know, the big difference is that CDMA phones generally don’t use SIM cards like GSM phones do unless they’re LTE-enabled devices. The speculation now is that T-Mobile will choose GSM as it makes the pivot to unify the entire conglomerate to a single form of technology. This means that current Sprint customers going along for the ride with T-Mobile will find themselves with devices that are not compatible with their networks in the not-so-distant future. As a result, these customers will need to upgrade to new devices to be able to get network coverage. Yes, T-Mobile is making a big show of saying that nothing is changing for Sprint customers; however, it seems inevitable that the merger will cause a large portion of current Sprint customers to outgrow their devices prematurely. We’ll also see something of a device limbo for millions of existing Sprint customers with 5G-compatible devices from now until the three-year merger process is completed in 2023. We expect that any Sprint 5G phone that came out before the Galaxy S20 will be rendered outdated because Sprint 5G phones released in 2019 to enable access to T-Mobile’s 5G network. The affected devices include the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G, Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, and the LG V50 ThinQ 5G. Those devices will still be capable of tapping into Sprint’s 4G network, but only where it’s still available. will not be getting updates T-Mobile has tried to smooth the rough patch by offering discounted 18-month leases on Galaxy S20 5G phones to replace the soon-to-be outdated devices. This is interesting for resellers because even fairly new 5G phones from before the February 2020 release date of the S20 may be appearing in the resale market much earlier than would be expected without the Sprint/T-Mobile merger. We can also look ahead to potentially seeing post-lease S20 5G phones hitting the market 18 months from now (potentially February 2022). Speculating on How the Merged Companies Will Handle Resale of Used Devices T-Mobile isn’t giving any behind-the-scenes looks at how it’s handling the resale of traded Sprint devices. That means we don’t yet know if they will continue to sell their used devices separately or consolidate used phone supply. However, it’s pretty clear that the two brands will have a consolidated used phone supply by at least the 2023 deadline for the merger being fully complete. The one thing that does seem certain is that whatever channel T-Mobile decides to use to deposit Sprint devices that are will see more CDMA and pre-2020 5G devices. traded in Final Takeaways on the T-Mobile/Sprint Merger The T-Mobile/Sprint merger will affect 5G device traffic for resellers. Existing Sprint customers who would have held onto their devices may create an influx of pre-2020 devices much sooner than expected. In addition, we may see more CDMA than GSM devices traded in than usual as Sprint customers adjust to T-Mobile’s network. Sources Used: https://www.cnet.com/news/t-mobile-to-redeploy-sprints-midband-5g-spectrum-in-new-york-in-may/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/07/03/t-mobile-confirms-its-going-to-brick-5g-on-most-sprint-5g-phones-post-merger/ https://secure.sprintbuyback.com/bbt/ https://www.twice.com/blog/potential-effects-of-the-t-mobile-and-sprint-merger-on-the-wireless-industry https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/30/how-would-a-t-mobile-sprint-merger-affect-your-cellphone-bill.html https://www.cnet.com/news/t-mobile-and-sprint-are-one-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-mobile-mega-merger/#:~:text=After%20nearly%20two%20years%20of,fourth%2Dlargest%20national%20wireless%20carriers. https://www.t-mobile.com/news/press/t-mobile-guarantees-industrys-best-trade-in https://www.wired.com/story/t-mobile-sprint-merger-guide/ https://www.pcmag.com/news/what-the-sprintt-mobile-merger-means-for-sprint-customers

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