EMPEQ

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THE GREAT PEACOCK, OR EMPEROR MOTH

Edison's Conquest of Mars by Garrett Putman Serviss is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . Chapter XVII Edison's Conquest of Mars Chapter XVII The Emperor Survives. Through all this terrible contest the emperor of the Martians had remained standing upon his throne, gazing at the awful spectacle, and not moving from the spot. Neither he nor the frightened woman gathered upon the steps of the throne had been injured by the disintegrators. Their immunity was due to the fact that the position and elevation of the throne were such that it was not within the range of fire of the electrical ships which had poured their vibratory discharges through the windows, and we inside had only directed our fire toward the warriors who had attacked us. Now that the struggle was over we turned our attention to Aina. Fortunately the girl had not been seriously injured and she was quickly restored to consciousness. Had she been killed, we would have been practically helpless in attempting further negotiations, because the knowledge which we had acquired of the language of the Martians from the prisoner captured on the golden asteroid, was not sufficient to meet the requirements of the occasion. The Emperor Our Prisoner. When the Martian monarch saw that we had ceased the work of death, he sank upon his throne. There he remained, leaning his chin upon his two hands and staring straight before him like that terrible doomed creature who fascinates the eyes of every beholder standing in the Sistine Chapel and gazing at Michael Angelo's dreadful painting of "The Last Judgement." This wicked Martian also felt that he was in the grasp of pitiless and irresistible fate, and that a punishment too well deserved, and from which there was no possible escape, now confronted him. There he remained in a hopelessness which almost compelled our sympathy, until Aina had so far recovered that she was once more able to act as our interpreter. Then we made short work of the negotiations. Speaking through Aina, the commander said: "You know who we are. We have come from the earth, which, by your command, was laid waste. Our commission was not revenge, but self-protection. What we have done has been accomplished with that in view. You have just witnessed an example of our power, the exercise of which was not dictated by our wish, but compelled by the attack wantonly made upon a helpless member of our own race under our protection." We Dictate Terms. "We have laid waste your planet, but it is simply a just retribution for what you did with ours. We are prepared to complete the destruction, leaving not a living being in this world of yours, or to grant you peace, at your choice. Our condition of peace is simply this: 'All resistance must cease absolutely.'" "Quite right," broke in Colonel Smith; "let the scorpion pull out his sting or we'll do it for him." "Nothing that we could now do," continued the commander, "would in my opinion save you from ultimate destruction. The forces of nature which we have been compelled to let loose upon you will complete their own victory. But we do not wish, unnecessarily, to stain our hands further with your blood. We shall leave you in possession of your lives. Preserve them if you can. But, in case the flood recedes before you have all perished from starvation, remember that you here take an oath, solemnly binding yourself and your descendants forever never again to make war upon the earth." We Show Mercy. "That's really the best we can do," said Mr. Edison, turning to us. "We can't possibly murder these people in cold blood. The probability is that the flood has hopelessly ruined all their engines of war. I do not believe that there is one chance in ten that the waters will drain off in time to enable them to get at their stores of provisions before they have perished from starvation." "It is my opinion," said Lord Kelvin, who had joined us (his pair of disintegrators hanging by his side, attached to a strap running over the back of his neck, very much as a farmer sometimes carries his big mittens), "it is my opinion that the flood will recede more rapidly than you think, and that the majority of these people will survive. But I quite agree with your merciful view of the matter. We must be guilty of no wanton destruction. Probably more than nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Mars have perished in the deluge. Even if all the others survived ages would elapse before they could regain the power to injure us." The Martians Submit. I need not describe in detail how our propositions were received by the Martian monarch. He knew, and his advisers, some of whom he had called in consultation, also knew, that everything was in our hands to do as we pleased. They readily agreed, therefore, that they would make no more resistance and that we and our electrical ships should be undisturbed while we remained upon Mars. The monarch took the oath prescribed after the manner of his race: thus the business was completed. But through it all there had been the shadow of a sneer on the emperor's face which I did not like. But I said nothing. And now we began to think of our return home, and of the pleasure we should have in recounting our adventures to our friends on the earth, who were doubtless eagerly waiting for news from us. We knew they had been watching Mars with powerful telescopes, and we were also eager to learn how much they had seen and how much they had been able to guess of our proceedings. But a day or two at least would be required to overhaul the electrical ships and to examine the state of our provisions. Those which we had brought from the earth, it will be remembered, had been spoiled and we had been compelled to replace them from the compressed provisions found in the Martians' storehouse. This compressed food had proved not only exceedingly agreeable to the taste, but very nourishing, and all of us had grown extremely fond of it. A new supply, however, would be needed in order to carry us back to the earth. At least sixty days would be required for the homeward journey, because we could hardly expect to start from Mars with the same initial velocity which we had been able to generate on leaving home. In considering the matter of provisioning the fleet it finally became necessary to take an account of our losses. This was a thing that we had all shrunk from, because they had seemed to us almost too terrible to be borne. But now the facts had to be faced. Out of the 100 ships, carrying something more than two thousand souls, with which we had quitted the earth, there remained only fifty-five ships and 1,085 men! All the others had been lost in our terrific encounters with the Martians, and particularly in our first disastrous battle beneath the clouds. Preparing to Return. Among the lost were many men whose names were famous upon the earth, and whose death would be widely deplored when the news of it was received upon their native planet. Fortunately this number did not include any of those whom I have had occasion to mention in the course of this narrative. The venerable Lord Kelvin, who, notwithstanding his age, and his pacific disposition, proper to a man of science, had behaved with the courage and coolness of a veteran in every crisis; Monsieur Moissan, the eminent chemist; Prof. Sylvanus P. Thompson, and the Heidelberg Professor, to whom we all felt under special obligations because he had opened to our comprehension the charming lips of Aina—all these had survived, and were about to return with us to the earth. It seemed to some of us almost heartless to deprive the Martians who still remained alive of any of the provisions which they themselves would require to tide them over the long period which must elapse before the recession of the flood should enable them to discover the sites of their ruined homes, and to find the means of sustenance. But necessity was now our only law. We learned from Aina that there must be stores of provisions in the neighborhood of the palace, because it was the custom of the Martians to lay up such stores during the harvest time in each Martian year in order to provide against the contingency of an extraordinary drought. It was not with very good grace that the Martian Emperor acceded to our demands that one of the storehouses should be opened, but resistance was useless, and of course we had our way. The supplies of water which we brought from the earth, owing to a peculiar process invented by Monsieur Moissan, had been kept in exceedingly good condition, but they were now running low and it became necessary to replenish them also. This was easily done from the Southern Ocean, for on Mars, since the levelling of the continental elevations, brought about many years ago, there is comparatively little salinity in the sea waters. While these preparations were going on Lord Kelvin and the other men of science entered with the utmost eagerness upon those studies, the prosecution of which had been the principal inducement leading them to embark on the expedition. But, almost all of the face of the planet being covered with the flood, there was comparatively little that they could do. Much, however, could be learned with the aid of Aina from the Martians, now crowded on the land about the palace. The results of these discoveries will in due time appear, fully elaborated in learned and authoritative treatises prepared by these savants themselves. I shall only call attention to one, which seemed to me very remarkable. I have already said that there were astonishing differences in the personal appearance of the Martians, evidently arising from differences of character and education, which had impressed themselves in the physical aspect of the individuals. We now learned that these differences were more completely the result of education than we had at first supposed. Looking about among the Martians by whom we were surrounded, it soon became easy for us to tell who were the soldiers and who were the civilians, simply by the appearance of their bodies, and particularly of their heads. All members of the military class resembled, to a greater or less extent, the monarch himself, in that those parts of their skulls which our phrenologists had designated as the bumps of destructiveness, combativeness and so on were enormously and disproportionately developed. And all this, as we were assured, was completely under the control of the Martians themselves. They had learned, or invented, methods by which the brain itself could be manipulated, so to speak, and any desired portions of it could be specially developed, while the other parts of it were left to their normal growth. The consequence was that in the Martian schools and colleges there was no teaching in our sense of the word. It was all brain culture. A Martian youth selected to be a soldier had his fighting faculties especially developed, together with those parts of the brain which impart courage and steadiness of nerve. He who was intended for scientific investigation had his brain developed into a mathematical machine, or an instrument of observation. Poets and literary men had their heads bulging with the imaginative faculties. The heads of inventors were developed into a still different shape. "And so," said Aina, translating for us the words of a professor in the Imperial University of Mars, from whom we derived the greater part of our information on this subject, "the Martian boys do not study a subject; they do not have to learn it, but, when their brains have been sufficiently developed in the proper direction, they comprehend it instantly, by a kind of divine instinct." But among the women of Mars, we saw none of these curious, and to our eyes monstrous, differences of development. While the men received, in addition to their special education, a broad general culture also, with the women there was no special education. It was all general in its character, yet thorough enough in that way. The consequence was that only female brains upon Mars were entirely well balanced. This was the reason why we invariably found the Martian women to be remarkably charming creatures, with none of those physical exaggerations and uncouth developments which disfigured their masculine companions. All the books of the Martians, we ascertained, were books of history and of poetry. For scientific treatises they had no need, because, as I have explained, when the brains of those intended for scientific pursuits had been developed in the proper way the knowledge of nature's laws came to them without effort, as a spring bubbles from the rocks. One word of explanation may be needed concerning the failure of the Martians, with all their marvellous powers, to invent electrical ships like those of Mr. Edison and engines of destruction comparable with our disintegrators. This failure was simply due to the fact that on Mars there did not exist the peculiar metals by the combination of which Mr. Edison had been able to effect his wonders. The theory involved in our inventions was perfectly understood by them, and had they possessed the means, doubtless they would have been able to carry it into practice even more effectively than we had done. After two or three days all the preparations having been completed, the signal was given for our departure. The men of science were still unwilling to leave this strange world, but Mr. Edison decided that we could linger no longer. At the moment of starting a most tragic event occurred. Our fleet was assembled around the palace, and the signal was given to rise slowly to a considerable height before imparting a great velocity to the electrical ships. As we slowly rose we saw the immense crowd of giants beneath us, with upturned faces, watching our departure. The Martian monarch and all his suite had come out upon the terrace of the palace to look at us. At a moment when he probably supposed himself to be unwatched he shook his fist at the retreating fleet. My eyes and those of several others in the flagship chanced to be fixed upon him. Just as he made the gesture one of the women of his suite, in her eagerness to watch us, apparently lost her balance and stumbled against him. Without a moment's hesitation, with a tremendous blow, he felled her like an ox at his feet. A fearful oath broke from the lips of Colonel Smith, who was one of those looking on. It chanced that he stood near the principal disintegrator of the flagship. Before anybody could interfere he had sighted and discharged it. The entire force of the terrible engine, almost capable of destroying a fort, fell upon the Martian Emperor, and not merely blew him into a cloud of atoms, but opened a great cavity in the ground on the spot where he had stood. A shout arose from the Martians, but they were too much astounded at what had occurred to make any hostile demonstrations, and, anyhow, they knew well that they were completely at our mercy. Mr. Edison was on the point of rebuking Colonel Smith for what he had done, but Aina interposed. "I am glad it was done," said she, "for now only can you be safe. That monster was more directly responsible than any other inhabitant of Mars for all the wickedness of which they have been guilty." "The expedition against the earth was inspired solely by him. There is a tradition among the Martians—which my people, however, could never credit—that he possessed a kind of immortality. They declared that it was he who led the former expedition against the earth when my ancestors were brought away prisoners from their happy home, and that it was his image which they had set up in stone in the midst of the Land of Sand. He prolonged his existence, according to this legend, by drinking the waters of a wonderful fountain, the secret of whose precise location was known to him alone, but which was situated at that point where in your maps of Mars the name of the Fons Juventae occurs. He was personified wickedness, that I know; and he never would have kept his oath if power had returned to him again to injure the earth. In destroying him, you have made your victory secure." About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Garrett Putman Serviss (2006). Edison's Conquest of Mars. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19141/pg19141-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Emperor Survives

The Discovery of Muscovy by Richard Hakluyt is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . The Copy of the Duke of Muscovy and Emperor or Russia his Letters, sent to King Edward VI., by the hands of Richard Chanceler. The Copy of the Duke of Muscovy and Emperor or Russia his Letters, sent to King Edward VI., by the hands of Richard Chanceler. “The almighty power of God, and the incomprehensible Holy Trinity, rightful Christian belief, etc.  We, great Duke Ivan Vasilivich, by the grace of God Emperor of all Russia, and great Duke of Vladermerskij, Moskowskij, Novogrodskij, Cazanskii, Pskanskii, Smolenskii, Tuerskij, Hugorskij, Permskii, Veatskii, Bolgarskii, with divers other lands, Emperor also and great Duke of Novogoroda, and in the low countries of Chernigouskii, Rezanskii, Volotskii, Refskii, Belskii, Rostouskii, Yaroslavskii; Belocherskii, Oodorskii, Obdorskii, Codinskii, and many other countries, lord over all the north coast, greeting. “Before all right great and worthy of honour Edward, King of England, &c., according to our most hearty and good zeal, with good intent and friendly desire, and according to our holy Christian Faith and great governance, and being in the light of great understanding, our answer by this our honourable writing unto your kingly governance, at the request of your faithful servant Richard Chanceler, with his company, as they shall let you wisely know, is thus.  In the strength of the twentieth year of our governance, be it known, that at our sea coasts arrived a ship, with one Richard and his company, and said, that he was desirous to come into our dominions, and according to his request hath seen our Majesty and our eyes; and hath declared unto us your Majesty’s desire as that we should grant unto your subjects, to go and come, and in our dominions, and among our subjects to frequent free marts, with all sorts of merchandises, and upon the same to have wares for their return.  And they have also delivered us your letters which declare the same request.  And hereupon we have given order, that wheresoever your faithful servant Hugh Willoughbie land or touch in our dominions, to be well entertained, who as yet is not arrived, as your servant Richard can declare. “And we, with Christian belief and faithfulness, and according to your honourable request and my honourable commandment will not leave it undone, and are furthermore willing that you send unto us your ships and vessels, when, and as often as they may have passage, with good assurance on our part to see them harmless.  And if you send one of your Majesty’s council to treat with us, whereby your country merchants may with all kinds of wares, and where they will, make their market in our dominions, they shall have their free mart with all free liberties through my whole dominions with all kinds of wares, to come and go at their pleasure, without any let, damage, or impediment, according to this our letter, our word, and our seal, which we have commanded to be under-sealed.  Written in our dominion in our town and in our palace in the Castle of Moscow, in the year seven thousand and sixty, the second month of February.” This letter was written in the Muscovian tongue, in letters much like to the Greek letters, very fair written on paper with a broad seal hanging at the same, sealed in paper upon wax.  This seal was much like the broad seal of England, having on the one side the image of a man on horseback in complete harness fighting with a dragon. Under this letter was another paper written in the Dutch tongue, which was the interpretation of the other written in the Muscovian letters.  These letters were sent the next year after the date of King Edward’s letters, 1554. About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Richard Hakluyt (2003). The Discovery of Muscovy. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4076/pg4076-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

The Copy of the Duke of Muscovy and Emperor or Russia his Letters, sent to King Edward VI.

A hot take 🔥🔥 from a kind place. Before I start throwing sparks around I want to make clear that I think there’s lots of benefits to capturing in git. Static definitions, recipes and specs for how we make our software are useful in all kinds of ways. 🌈 everything as code However, those definitions to understand our dynamic environment and that’s my essential problem with GitOps. Lots of claims are made for GitOps - it offers better security, historical records, and a solution to drift and reconciliation. I find myself wondering whether any of this is really true and in this article I’ll explain why. don’t help us GitOps makes me think of the old Hans Christian Andersen tale, about what’s real and what’s imagined. The emperor declares he’s wearing clothes, but what if he’s actually not wearing anything at all? What is GitOps? Before we dig in, let’s set a baseline for what based on we describe as GitOps weavework’s four principles The entire system is described declaratively. The canonical desired system state is versioned in Git. Approved changes that can be automatically applied to the system. Software agents to ensure correctness and alert on divergence. Just like the , these four principles are pretty easy to accept. But, as with agile, turning theory into practice is the interesting part. agile manifesto What does GitOps look like in practice? Gitops strongly centers on the idea of software agents continuously running to converge system state with desired state. So, how do we reconcile these states using a typical GitOps approach? We install an operator (or agent) into our cluster which “pulls” (more on that later) the desired state from a git config repo, makes decisions, and adjusts workloads accordingly. This is offered as an alternative to a standard DevOps pipeline which “pushes” change to the cluster: Ok, so we’ve outlined the theory and described the basic practice. Now for the upsides for GitOps. How do they materialize when we start to implement? Extra security with GitOps? 🧐 First up - added . What’s the benefit of taking the “pull-based” approach as opposed to simply pushing a change to our cluster? The main advantage is that with GitOps your CI server doesn’t have production access, so we can say that this improves our security. security Traditional DevOps GitOps Infrastructure Imperative Declarative Declarative Desired State Untraceable Versioned Versioned Change Approvals Tickets Pull Requests Pull Requests Deployments Manual CI Event + GitOps Operator Security Manual Secrets in CI + Secretes in infra However, is there really any additional security in this setup? If the CI system can update configurations, how does GitOps prevent rogue workloads from being deployed by a malicious actor with access to CI? 🤔 Versioning and environment history Another major selling point for GitOps is the versioned history for the environment. That is kinda true, but you also get this with plain old DevOps assuming your pipeline and deployment information is in the source repo. This history is useful, but it isn’t a true record for how environments have actually changed (more on this later). Rollback Is rollback simpler with GitOps? I’m of the opinion that you’re better off with regular old DevOps by just reverting the commit. The benefit here is that it makes rollback a standard developer workflow and versioned with the source repository. Something doesn’t work? Simply git revert Disaster recovery What happens when your whole cluster goes down? What happens when you want to bring up a new cluster? Those are fair questions. But most teams aren’t rolling out blue/green clusters. Most companies have a static cluster/clusters. Most disaster recovery wouldn’t be hampered with the need to run deployment pipelines, and I think this should be scripted without the need for GitOps. So, yeah, I’m skeptical about the benefits. But I have more reservations when we start to look at the trade-offs we have to make when we implement GitOps. Let’s take a look at those. The challenges with GitOps The first big with GitOps is the effect it has on our pipelines. Splitting the deployment away from the earlier stages of the pipelines causes them to become distributed. From a value stream perspective this makes it hard to understand the overall path from commit to production. It disconnects earlier stages of qualification from later ones. challenge This matters because it removes the developer feedback from the value stream. In this setup, if a deployment fails, where does the feedback come from? How do developers get information on the deployment process? How can they enhance the deployment process with their own notifications? How can they improve the deployment process? The second side effect is that separating these stages into two toolsets increases the gap between development and operations. Typically the GitOps tooling is run and managed by a central platform team. Often the CI system is in the domain of the team. As Marshal McLuhan said, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us”. The gap is widened even further by using a separate config repo to store the desired states: It is common to have git repositories centered around individual microservices with a separate common repo for describing the desired state of environments. One is code and developer centric, one is operations centric. Also, it is not unusual to have to write glue pipeline scripts to update the config repo. Revisiting push vs. pull The major innovation in GitOps seems to be to move the operations to a . This seems like a big change, but on closer inspection I don’t think it’s actually true. [Thanks to my good friend Henrik Hoegh for spelling this out to me] pull-based model Typically, a GitOps operator reads a config from a git repo, applies zero-to-many transformations on it, and then into the kubernetes API server. Which is exactly what your deployment tool does in the push based model! With GitOps we distribute our pipeline over two asynchronous tools, using a git repository as a semaphore, but . pushes it with both approaches we changes into our cluster push It’s great for Drift and Reconciliation though, right? Another big headline advantage of GitOps is the reconciliation loop - the automated repairing of any or manual change. Any undocumented changes are erased and the environment is reconciled with the git definition. drift At face value, this seems like a massive bonus. However, I take a different view on this too.  Before we jump to reconciling undocumented changes we need to ask . Maybe we don’t want them reconciled? There could be a very good reason to do a manual change, and we might not want the environment to be automatically repaired. why they have happened in the first place Another reason might be sabotage, in which case we definitely want humans in the loop to investigate and manage the situation. In either case, to take place, not just a slack message from a reconciliation loop that disappears into the ether. configuration drift should cause a proper incident management process And on the technical side, I feel that Kubernetes already has a reconciliation loop. You describe your deployments and configuration declaratively, and it is Kubernetes’ job to make that true.  Layering reconciliation loops feels like adding unnecessary complexity. The map git repo is not the territory We like to think the git config repository is equivalent to how things change, but in reality there is a gap between these static definitions and what is actually happening in the dynamic DevOps automation. All this talk about GitOps providing a “Single Source of Truth” is simply not true. If I want to find out what was actually running on Thursday night there is no simple way to get there. The GitOps configuration provides no insight into manual changes, scaling events, failed reconciliation and many other edge cases. These types of events cause incidents but GitOps provides no situational awareness when they happen. When an incident occurs what we really need is to understand how things have changed. A big problem with modern GitOps is developers and ops teams having little or no true record of the actual changes that occur. We need to be clear that desired states are not actual states. actually A static view of change is beneficial but limited I began by saying that I’m all for putting the recipes, definitions, and specs for our desired DevOps in version control. It offers us all kinds of benefits. Let’s remind ourselves of what they are: : enables sharing, reviewing and auditing in a familiar technology Better transparency : enables branching/pull-request based approaches to integrate change Code tools and workflows : allows you to add linters, checkers and static analysis in the automation processes, and enforces consistency of changes Better Quality : helps minimize configuration drift Immutability : can help reduce “configuration sprawl”: the configuration of processes spread over multiple unconnected systems Centralization So far so good - but every static definition has a dynamic execution. There are real events taking place, asynchronously and automatically, with results we need to record and understand. Static Definition Dynamic Execution Build script Compilation/Packaging Test suite Test runs Deployment file Deployments Docker file Docker image builds Infrastructure model Infrastructure changes The dynamic world is, quite literally, where the action is. Working back from a GitOps definition to events, changes, ordering, and dependencies is not easy for developers. If you’re still wondering why this matters, the tells us that “70% of outages are due to changes in a live system.” So, when things go wrong, the dynamic world should be the first place we look for answers. google SRE book Conclusions - Who’s GitOps? Much like the agile manifesto, the loose definition of GitOps means that it can and will be applied in all kinds of different ways. A broad church approach is the perfect nerd-snipe. Is GitOps? Maybe? I dunno! Terraform And like agile, everyone experiences FOMO. What if this is the next big thing? Do we jump on the bandwagon for fear of being left behind? With agile we need to ask “who’s agile?” Maybe we need to ask “who’s GitOps?” As ever, what we really need to ask ourselves is - who are we serving with these tools and what problems are we trying to solve? At the end of The Emperor’s New Clothes the people around the emperor continue to praise his new outfit, even as they come to realize he’s completely naked. It’s an embarrassing situation that any of us can get into when . Like the kid in the crowd who shouts “But the Emperor has nothing at all on!” sometimes it’s good to uncomplicate everything by just saying what you see. we go all in on something and want it to be true

Is GitOps the Emperor With No Clothes?

A Short History of the World, by H. G. Wells, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE EMPEROR CHARLES V THE EMPEROR CHARLES V The Holy Roman Empire came to a sort of climax in the reign of the Emperor Charles V. He was one of the most extraordinary monarchs that Europe has ever seen. For a time he had the air of being the greatest monarch since Charlemagne. His greatness was not of his own making. It was largely the creation of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I (1459- 1519). Some families have fought, others have intrigued their way to world power; the Habsburgs married their way. Maximilian began his career with Austria, Styria, part of Alsace and other districts, the original Habsburg patrimony; he married—the lady’s name scarcely matters to us—the Netherlands and Burgundy. Most of Burgundy slipped from him after his first wife’s death, but the Netherlands he held. Then he tried unsuccessfully to marry Brittany. He became Emperor in succession to his father, Frederick III, in 1493, and married the duchy of Milan. Finally he married his son to the weak-minded daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Ferdinand and Isabella of Columbus, who not only reigned over a freshly united Spain and over Sardinia and the kingdom of the two Sicilies, but over all America west of Brazil. So it was that this Charles V, his grandson, inherited most of the American continent and between a third and a half of what the Turks had left of Europe. He succeeded to the Netherlands in 1506. When his grandfather Ferdinand died in 1516, he became practically king of the Spanish dominions, his mother being imbecile; and his grandfather Maximilian dying in 1519, he was in 1520 elected Emperor at the still comparatively tender age of twenty. He was a fair young man with a not very intelligent face, a thick upper lip and a long clumsy chin. He found himself in a world of young and vigorous personalities. It was an age of brilliant young monarchs. Francis I had succeeded to the French throne in 1515 at the age of twenty-one, Henry VIII had become King of England in 1509 at eighteen. It was the age of Baber in India (1526-1530) and Suleiman the Magnificent in Turkey (1520), both exceptionally capable monarchs, and the Pope Leo X (1513) was also a very distinguished Pope. The Pope and Francis I attempted to prevent the election of Charles as Emperor because they dreaded the concentration of so much power in the hands of one man. Both Francis I and Henry VIII offered themselves to the imperial electors. But there was now a long established tradition of Habsburg Emperors (since 1273), and some energetic bribery secured the election for Charles. At first the young man was very much a magnificent puppet in the hands of his ministers. Then slowly he began to assert himself and take control. He began to realize something of the threatening complexities of his exalted position. It was a position as unsound as it was splendid. From the very outset of his reign he was faced by the situation created by Luther’s agitations in Germany. The Emperor had one reason for siding with the reformers in the opposition of the Pope to his election. But he had been brought up in Spain, that most Catholic of countries, and he decided against Luther. So he came into conflict with the Protestant princes and particularly the Elector of Saxony. He found himself in the presence of an opening rift that was to split the outworn fabric of Christendom into two contending camps. His attempts to close that rift were strenuous and honest and ineffective. There was an extensive peasant revolt in Germany which interwove with the general political and religious disturbance. And these internal troubles were complicated by attacks upon the Empire from east and west alike. On the west of Charles was his spirited rival, Francis I; to the east was the ever advancing Turk, who was now in Hungary, in alliance with Francis and clamouring for certain arrears of tribute from the Austrian dominions. Charles had the money and army of Spain at his disposal, but it was extremely difficult to get any effective support in money from Germany. His social and political troubles were complicated by financial distresses. He was forced to ruinous borrowing. THE CHARLES V PORTRAIT BY TITIAN (In the Gallery del Prado, Madrid) Photo: Anderson On the whole, Charles, in alliance with Henry VIII, was successful against Francis I and the Turk. Their chief battlefield was North Italy; the generalship was dull on both sides; their advances and retreats depended mainly on the arrival of reinforcements. The German army invaded France, failed to take Marseilles, fell back into Italy, lost Milan, and was besieged in Pavia. Francis I made a long and unsuccessful siege of Pavia, was caught by fresh German forces, defeated, wounded and taken prisoner. But thereupon the Pope and Henry VIII, still haunted by the fear of his attaining excessive power, turned against Charles. The German troops in Milan, under the Constable of Bourbon, being unpaid, forced rather than followed their commander into a raid upon Rome. They stormed the city and pillaged it (1527). The Pope took refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo while the looting and slaughter went on. He bought off the German troops at last by the payment of four hundred thousand ducats. Ten years of such confused fighting impoverished all Europe. At last the Emperor found himself triumphant in Italy. In 1530, he was crowned by the Pope—he was the last German Emperor to be so crowned—at Bologna. Meanwhile the Turks were making great headway in Hungary. They had defeated and killed the king of Hungary in 1526, they held Buda-Pesth, and in 1529 Suleiman the Magnificent very nearly took Vienna. The Emperor was greatly concerned by these advances, and did his utmost to drive back the Turks, but he found the greatest difficulty in getting the German princes to unite even with this formidable enemy upon their very borders. Francis I remained implacable for a time, and there was a new French war; but in 1538 Charles won his rival over to a more friendly attitude after ravaging the south of France. Francis and Charles then formed an alliance against the Turk. But the Protestant princes, the German princes who were resolved to break away from Rome, had formed a league, the Schmalkaldic League, against the Emperor, and in the place of a great campaign to recover Hungary for Christendom Charles had to turn his mind to the gathering internal struggle in Germany. Of that struggle he saw only the opening war. It was a struggle, a sanguinary irrational bickering of princes, for ascendancy, now flaming into war and destruction, now sinking back to intrigues and diplomacies; it was a snake’s sack of princely policies that was to go on writhing incurably right into the nineteenth century and to waste and desolate Central Europe again and again. The Emperor never seems to have grasped the true forces at work in these gathering troubles. He was for his time and station an exceptionally worthy man, and he seems to have taken the religious dissensions that were tearing Europe into warring fragments as genuine theological differences. He gathered diets and councils in futile attempts at reconciliation. Formulæ and confessions were tried over. The student of German history must struggle with the details of the Religious Peace of Nuremberg, the settlement at the Diet of Ratisbon, the Interim of Augsburg, and the like. Here we do but mention them as details in the worried life of this culminating Emperor. As a matter of fact, hardly one of the multifarious princes and rulers in Europe seems to have been acting in good faith. The widespread religious trouble of the world, the desire of the common people for truth and social righteousness, the spreading knowledge of the time, all those things were merely counters in the imaginations of princely diplomacy. Henry VIII of England, who had begun his career with a book against heresy, and who had been rewarded by the Pope with the title of “Defender of the Faith,” being anxious to divorce his first wife in favour of a young lady named Anne Boleyn, and wishing also to loot the vast wealth of the church in England, joined the company of Protestant princes in 1530. Sweden, Denmark and Norway had already gone over to the Protestant side. The German religious war began in 1546, a few months after the death of Martin Luther. We need not trouble about the incidents of the campaign. The Protestant Saxon army was badly beaten at Lochau. By something very like a breach of faith Philip of Hesse, the Emperor’s chief remaining antagonist, was caught and imprisoned, and the Turks were bought off by the promise of an annual tribute. In 1547, to the great relief of the Emperor, Francis I died. So by 1547 Charles got to a kind of settlement, and made his last efforts to effect peace where there was no peace. In 1552 all Germany was at war again, only a precipitate flight from Innsbruck saved Charles from capture, and in 1552, with the treaty of Passau, came another unstable equilibrium .... Such is the brief outline of the politics of the Empire for thirty-two years. It is interesting to note how entirely the European mind was concentrated upon the struggle for European ascendancy. Neither Turks, French, English nor Germans had yet discovered any political interest in the great continent of America, nor any significance in the new sea routes to Asia. Great things were happening in America; Cortez with a mere handful of men had conquered the great Neolithic empire of Mexico for Spain, Pizarro had crossed the Isthmus of Panama (1530) and subjugated another wonder-land, Peru. But as yet these events meant no more to Europe than a useful and stimulating influx of silver to the Spanish treasury. It was after the treaty of Passau that Charles began to display his distinctive originality of mind. He was now entirely bored and disillusioned by his imperial greatness. A sense of the intolerable futility of these European rivalries came upon him. He had never been of a very sound constitution, he was naturally indolent and he was suffering greatly from gout. He abdicated. He made over all his sovereign rights in Germany to his brother Ferdinand, and Spain and the Netherlands he resigned to his son Philip. Then in a sort of magnificent dudgeon he retired to a monastery at Yuste, among the oak and chestnut forests in the hills to the north of the Tagus valley. There he died in 1558. Much has been written in a sentimental vein of this retirement, this renunciation of the world by this tired majestic Titan, world-weary, seeking in an austere solitude his peace with God. But his retreat was neither solitary nor austere; he had with him nearly a hundred and fifty attendants: his establishment had all the splendour and indulgences without the fatigues or a court, and Philip II was a dutiful son to whom his father’s advice was a command. INTERIOR OF ST. PETER’S, ROME, SHOWING THE HIGH ALTAR Photo: Alinari And if Charles had lost his living interest in the administration of European affairs, there were other motives of a more immediate sort to stir him. Says Prescott: “In the almost daily correspondence between Quixada, or Gaztelu, and the Secretary of State at Valladolid, there is scarcely a letter that does not turn more or less on the Emperor’s eating or his illness. The one seems naturally to follow, like a running commentary, on the other. It is rare that such topics have formed the burden of communications with the department of state. It must have been no easy matter for the secretary to preserve his gravity in the perusal of despatches in which politics and gastronomy were so strangely mixed together. The courier from Valladolid to Lisbon was ordered to make a detour, so as to take Jarandilla in his route, and bring supplies to the royal table. On Thursdays he was to bring fish to serve for the jour maigre that was to follow. The trout in the neighbourhood Charles thought too small, so others of a larger size were to be sent from Valladolid. Fish of every kind was to his taste, as, indeed, was anything that in its nature or habits at all approached to fish. Eels, frogs, oysters, occupied an important place in the royal bill of fare. Potted fish, especially anchovies, found great favour with him; and he regretted that he had not brought a better supply of these from the Low Countries. On an eel-pasty he particularly doted.” ... [ ] 1 In 1554 Charles had obtained a bull from Pope Julius III granting him a dispensation from fasting, and allowing him to break his fast early in the morning even when he was to take the sacrament. Eating and doctoring! it was a return to elemental things. He had never acquired the habit of reading, but he would be read aloud to at meals after the fashion of Charlemagne, and would make what one narrator describes as a “sweet and heavenly commentary.” He also amused himself with mechanical toys, by listening to music or sermons, and by attending to the imperial business that still came drifting in to him. The death of the Empress, to whom he was greatly attached, had turned his mind towards religion, which in his case took a punctilious and ceremonial form; every Friday in Lent he scourged himself with the rest of the monks with such good will as to draw blood. These exercises and the gout released a bigotry in Charles that had hitherto been restrained by considerations of policy. The appearance of Protestant teaching close at hand in Valladolid roused him to fury. “Tell the grand inquisitor and his council from me to be at their posts, and to lay the axe at the root of the evil before it spreads further.” . .. He expressed a doubt whether it would not be well, in so black an affair, to dispense with the ordinary course of justice, and to show no mercy; “lest the criminal, if pardoned, should have the opportunity of repeating his crime.” He recommended, as an example, his own mode or proceeding in the Netherlands, “where all who remained obstinate in their errors were burned alive, and those who were admitted to penitence were beheaded.” And almost symbolical of his place and role in history was his preoccupation with funerals. He seems to have had an intuition that something great was dead in Europe and sorely needed burial, that there was a need to write Finis, overdue. He not only attended every actual funeral that was celebrated at Yuste, but he had services conducted for the absent dead, he held a funeral service in memory of his wife on the anniversary of her death, and finally he celebrated his own obsequies. “The chapel was hung with black, and the blaze of hundreds of wax-lights was scarcely sufficient to dispel the darkness. The brethren in their conventual dress, and all the Emperor’s household clad in deep mourning, gathered round a huge catafalque, shrouded also in black, which had been raised in the centre of the chapel. The service for the burial of the dead was then performed; and, amidst the dismal wail of the monks, the prayers ascended for the departed spirit, that it might be received into the mansions of the blessed. The sorrowful attendants were melted to tears, as the image of their master’s death was presented to their minds—or they were touched, it may be, with compassion by this pitiable display of weakness. Charles, muffled in a dark mantle, and bearing a lighted candle in his hand, mingled with his household, the spectator of his own obsequies; and the doleful ceremony was concluded by his placing the taper in the hands of the priest, in sign of his surrendering up his soul to the Almighty.” Within two months of this masquerade he was dead. And the brief greatness of the Holy Roman Empire died with him. His realm was already divided between his brother and his son. The Holy Roman Empire struggled on indeed to the days of Napoleon I but as an invalid and dying thing. To this day its unburied tradition still poisons the political air. [ ] Prescott’s Appendix to Robertson’s History of Charles V. 1 About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. H. G. Wells (2011). A Short History of the World. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/11870/11870-h/11870-h.htm This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html .

THE EMPEROR CHARLES V

FROM TIBERIUS GRACCHUS TO THE GOD EMPEROR IN ROME

The remote revolution has begun; this is a call to arms. It has become obvious that there is a , against our new way of life. An effort to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt among knowledge workers globally. The threat of not advancing in one’s career, or being paid less based on distance from the home office, or that working from home will make you less successful, less healthy, and sad. coordinated attack against the future of work Not to dismiss mental health challenges that may have come from the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, but I, for one, would rather not allow the HR department to choose whom I spend most of my day with, as they don't always hire the best and brightest. Sometimes they are constrained by upper management who is unaware of the massive amount of inflation occurring and that employers need to be paid more for top talent than they did last year. If you didn't get a raise in 2021, that means you got about a 5.4% pay cut according to the consumer pricing index. Who benefits from keeping the status quo? I assume journalists who have integrity are writing in the name of "Telling both sides of the story,” but these also suggest that your peers who return to the office will be more likely to be promoted and advance their careers. These articles and could be the final death rattle of , or possibly someone that may have financial incentive to use to get a fat paycheck (academics, consultants, and old guys trying to remain relevant) from executives who want to manage people through "presenteeism.” Bosses everywhere are searching high and low for any evidence or "experts" to tell them what they want to hear instead of the truth. puff pieces Op-Eds commercial real estate confirmation bias The truth is that for most businesses and knowledge workers, remote work has not decreased productivity; it may have decreased hours worked. As an American, I promise you that hours worked do not equal productivity for knowledge work. Few companies worth mentioning are brave enough to state that they are against remote work directly during the first . It would be a death blow to their recruiting efforts, and with 1 of 4 American workers able to work from home, it could also be very unpopular. tight labor market in my lifetime In my opinion, the worst offenders in the remote work war come from the firms that won't commit to either position. They use the guise of "leaving the decision to your manager" as a way to scapegoat and distribute blame to managers while attempting to be on the side of remote work by not outright banning it company-wide. If employers want to be on the right side of history, they will make a stand in support of going remote. More importantly, employers don't want to lose top talent, so they treat workers differently for arbitrary reasons across teams, allowing managers to play favorites because they want to keep the workers they know can't quit in the office in an effort to keep everyone in the office. This also allows organizations to increase or decrease attrition by instructing different managers or teams to call workers back into the office, thus avoiding regulatory authority. It is not surprising that the remote work rules are often bent for technology teams and executives. It is time to make employers justify going into the office It is time to stop asking employers if you can work from home. It is time to ask them to be better employers. It is time to ask managers to be better managers. It is the first time that workers have had any leverage in decades. It is your time at stake. Your time is more valuable than ever. It's not 1980 anymore; we have cellphones, Internet, email, Zoom, etc. All the while, everything but worker compensation keeps creeping up, from the increased creep of work into our home and family lives to the massive increase in the cost of living while wages have remained stagnant for ages when compared against inflation. It is time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction. Simultaneously employers are also afraid to lose top talents to the " " and have determined that scapegoating the managers is the least confrontational option that allows them to continue to recruit during a labor shortage while maintaining complete control over workers. All the while, these "leaders" plan to continue working from home themselves. Great Resignation Employers are surprised that workers don’t want to play this game anymore? It is no wonder that r/antiwork has been the most popular subreddit on Reddit for the past week. We are living in a dystopian universe where has up until recently helped employers keep wages low outside of a handful of highly skilled roles. monopsony power If you are like me or , who publishes many independent, cited pieces covering the anti-WFH propaganda machine that has taken aim at remote workers on his newsletter, you would have noticed the pattern of disinformation in the form of articles, OP-EDs, headlines, news broadcasts, and other media are being utilized in an effort to sway public opinion (and scare workers) towards a half-measure such as " " “Hybrid,” or with "your manager’s approval." These are that are being used by employers to maintain control over employees. Almost anytime an employer has created an ambiguous employment policy in the history of work, it has rarely resulted in benefiting the employee. Ed Zitron Flexibility, weasel words Using these words  in their remote policies will allow employers to continue to allow , role creep, scope creep while continuing to exert near ultimate control over employees without having the discussion about additional compensation… its the employer that wants to keep their “flexibility” to heap additional work on employees as they have historically done for decades due to the “If you can lean, you can clean” ideology. In a results-only work environment (ROWE), a remote workers role and job duties will be narrowly defined, which means employers expenses will increase as they will be unable to force workers to pick up their slack due to their not hiring adequately, thus reducing profits for the investor class if workers were paid a fair wage for the work they are doing. job creep “Ownership of stock is concentrated among those with higher incomes. That is hardly a surprise as investing in stocks or mutual funds requires money. Some 92% of those in the top 10% of the income ladder owned stock in 2019 compared to 56% of those considered middle class. When it comes to owning stocks directly, families in the top 10% of earnings accounted for 44% compared to only 12% of the middle class and 5% of those in the bottom quintile. - U.S. News and World Report So while most Americans fancy themselves temporarily embarrassed billionaires, the reality is quite different. Half of Americans own nearly nothing, while 1% owns the majority of assets and stock. This should not be news at this point; we need to start holding rentiers responsible for stagnant wages, and to do so, all we need to do as workers is collaborate, share information, and hold employers accountable to a shared bill of workers’ rights. This brings me to the big question that everyone is debating, but nobody seems to want to talk about directly. Who gets to choose where and when you work, if your work can be completed from anywhere and/or anytime? At remotework.com, we believe the worker should choose when and where they work if their work, measured by results only, can be completed from anywhere; for this to be successful, job descriptions and hiring agreements need to have narrowly defined job descriptions. We are seeking attorney partners who would like to assist us with creating a set of employment agreements for each U.S. state and region internationally that protect remote workers. Please contact us if you are interested in assisting. Another question exists, but we should at this point already know the answer to it. The answer is that they should be paid the same amount of total compensation. “How will compensation be awarded between two equally qualified employees, who produce the same amount of value and have the same experience and seniority with the company when one of them works in the office and the other works from home? A lot of anti-remote is using among other things, and occasionally to support their in an effort to prevent the                                                                                              evolution of global work culture. propaganda flawed data, paid research, logical fallacies, incomplete information, psychological tricks, poorly written survey questions, pure bullshit weak arguments Don't fall for it. Workers should not believe for a minute that the growing pains from recovering from the pandemic (Yes, many of these remote work surveys, research, and articles are based on data during a global pandemic) and a transition to a new work culture are permanent. We are not only talking about being able to work from anywhere, not that it isn’t a nice perk. The real issue we are talking about is taking back our most valuable resource, not oil, not data; we are talking about time itself, time FOR ourselves to spend how we see it. Hours worked do not equal productivity when it comes to knowledge work; similar to skilled craftsmen, you should be paid for what you know, not how long it takes you to complete a task. We know that the transition to remote work is easy for most knowledge workers. Remote work is not new, it was called telecommuting in the 1990s, and millions of people have done it successfully without special accommodations from their employers. However, the massive remote work experiment that was caused by Covid demonstrated that the emperor (employers) had no clothes (justification for us to be in the office) and that there are few if any reasons to require knowledge workers to be in the office. In fact, . Additionally, we know that most remote employers and remote workers save money and time by avoiding commercial office space, , high cost of living, . (not to mention ) the other costs/tradeoffs/and problems tied to going into the office. productivity has been proven to increase or match our office-based peers long commutes remote work reduces traffic congestion, according to Texas A&M University car accidents and fatalities Last but not least, working remotely could also help slow global warming. benefits could be extended to over a billion+ workers globally. The old adage, a dollar saved is a dollar earned also applies to climate change. In fact, according to , the USA nearly quadrupled its greenhouse gas emission reductions thanks to remote work in 2020, reducing them by 11%. According to the EPA, ground transportation (including driving to and from work) accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in the US at 29%; these U.S. Energy Information Administration We estimate that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions decreased by 11% in 2020 as a result of less energy consumption related to reduced economic activity and responses to COVID-19. The good news is that according to Gartner, . That is great; however, I think it is globally imperative to go 100% remote for all knowledge workers; it may be a small piece of the larger puzzle humanity must solve when it comes to saving the planet from climate change. We need to make employers justify going into the office; we need to get the other half of the knowledge workers to be allowed to work from home, like Yesterday. 51% of knowledge workers will be remote billion+ Remote Work Is Not For Everyone I am not advocating for remote work to be mandatory; I think workers should make the best choice for themselves and their family, without the approval of their manager. I believe corporations should leverage co-working spaces, especially hot desks, that have a smaller ecological footprint and greater utilization than dedicated offices as an option when workers need to go into the office. Also, it no longer surprises me that two of the billionaires whose companies are famous for not supporting remote work are heavily investing in space exploration. (hint: T&A) I know that for many workers, remote work may not be possible; I recommend getting a co-working space and having your employer pay for it with the money they save on real estate. We are going to look back and ask ourselves, why did we pay so much in rent for so long when we turn all those skyscrapers into residential housing. It would be unethical for me to leave out the elephant in the room... the office has protected many workers from competing with the rest of the world. This is not to say that remote work is for everyone, nor that it will benefit everyone. It is likely that there is a global correction coming as corporations realize that remote work also benefits them as like India, China, Brazil, and elsewhere who are more than qualified for knowledge work with a much lower cost of living. Personally, I think the following countries will benefit from remote work more than others; India, Pakistan, Nigeria, The Philippines, Egypt, Bangladesh, Japan, Ghana, Russia, Thailand, and South Africa. there are plenty of capable knowledge workers in countries with much lower costs of living and largely English speaking populations As an American, It would also be careless not to mention that the U.S. Healthcare system is broken, and tying healthcare to employment gives employers leverage over some of our most vulnerable knowledge workers. Those who may need to keep employment to maintain healthcare coverage for themselves or their loved ones. Please keep this in mind if your colleagues don't immediately jump on the remote work bandwagon. "Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from," a Google spokesperson said, adding that pay will differ from city to city and state to state. One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, GOOGLE, stop being evil … and possibly dumb? Stop doing things because it is the way they have always been done. You are going to lose talented people and tarnish your reputation as an innovative company and a good employer by paying people less based on how far away they live from the office. They say that the most expensive words in the English Language are: “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” That is a fast track for an innovative company to the dead pool by losing top talent and getting a bad reputation for top graduates. Now, take all this with a grain of salt; a number of people tell me when I say this that Google has a lot of smart people who probably did the math before spending . $2.1 Billion dollars on an office building in NYC My advice - and I am just a lowly MBA candidate at UC Davis - would be to pay people based on the results of their work and/or the value they create or that you expect they will create. This includes investing in your employees, developing them, and training managers into a role that replaces mentorship. Manager-mentors are key to developing talent in a remote-first world so your employees can create even more value in the future. I would also probably hold off on buying any more billion-dollar office buildings for a while. The RemoteWork.com Mission If we are to guarantee the future health and happiness of ourselves and our children, families, friends, employees, colleagues, etc... we must work together to counter the anti-remote work narrative that is jeopardizing the future of work for everyone. Just because you have an in-demand skill set as a programmer, or if you’re a profit center on the sales team and can negotiate to work from home for yourself, doesn't mean that as a community, we should not without that privilege. Receptionists shouldn't have to warm office chairs because they don't have the same leverage as other workers. We are in this together and should work to lift everyone up from under the thumb of ancient cultural norms from . They will work to divide us and take advantage of the most vulnerable workers that could work from home to keep butts in seats. by class, salary, or physical location. It is time for remote workers to unite. disrespect workers Donald Trump's favorite decade Don't let them divide us The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. - Chinese proverb We know that knowledge workers love the results of working from home, and I, for one, plan to ensure that I see my children and future grandchildren more, among other WFH benefits. Together we can change our global work culture as a gift to future generations, in addition to preventing  millions of metric tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere slowing the pace of global warming. There are many forces that wish for our friends, family, and loved ones to return to the office under the guise of "Flexibility." Billionaires want our loved ones to risk their lives in traffic every day so a middle manager can get their TPS reports in-person and feel purpose. We want more from the management; we want better managers. Our enemies are the rentiers, the bureaucrats, the office tyrants, the narcissists, and the office politicians (sociopaths) that want to keep the status quo so they can continue to take credit for work completed by individual contributors, builders, and creators. Our enemies want things to go back to "normal." There were a lot of things that were "normal" in the history of humanity that we look back on with disgust. I have a feeling subjecting billions of people to traffic while ruining the environment with carbon dioxide for decades longer than necessary will likely be one of them. The Office is Dead for Knowledge Workers At least most of them, if you have a lab, etc. You might just be the exception to the rule. and . Just ask your . Today we have a chance to build the future together, united. If you agree, and I hope you do,  join remotework.com as a remote worker, remote leader, or as a sponsor of a remote workspace. You will be helping us  build a community of remote workers and leaders. Our objective is not only to help knowledge workers transition to go remote, but we wish to become a voice of authority on the evolution of remote work to provide a counter-narrative based on facts to those that would like to see us return to cage-like cubicles. The office is dead, we are not coming back CFO While leveraging the knowledge and expertise of the collective knowledge of our members, some of which have been working remotely since the 1990s to develop the data, tools, resources, and information to inform and assist remote workers from around the globe to actualize and benefit from this cultural shift. Knowledge is power, and knowledge workers are powerful. We want to create a better world through better jobs, greater compensation, better management, and a healthier work-life balance. I think this is something worth fighting for, but I can’t do it alone, so let’s do it together. Join us today. P.S. If your company is doing a great job transitioning to remote work, solving problems related to working from home, or you would like to nominate them for something else remote work-related. I encourage you to **nominate them for The Remote Work Awards **after joining our remote work DAO community for remote workers. Until then , Carpe Diem James Bellefeuille CEO of remotework.com y for free. P.S. Click here if you would like to join the remote work communit

The Remote Work Revolution Made It Clear That The Emperor Has No Clothes

A behind-the-scenes look at how machine learning works uses patterns in data to . Sounds magical? The core concepts are actually embarrassingly simple. I say “embarrassingly” because if someone made you think it’s mystical, they should be embarrassed. Here, let me fix that for you. Machine learning label things The core concepts are embarrassingly simple. Our thing-labeling example will involve classifying wine as yummy or not-so-yummy and we’ll keep all the ideas simple enough to enjoy alongside a glass of wine… or three. If wine is not your cup of tea, of the same text. here’s an alcohol-free version How does it work? ML’s not magic — it’s impossible to learn without data, so I’ll have to taste some wine. If you must know, this one got a N label, N for nope-let’s-not-try-this-again . And I got it all over myself. The things we do for science. Data To learn, you need to learn . Let’s imagine I tasted 50 wines (for science!) and visualized their info for your viewing pleasure below. Each wine has an age in years and a review score, plus the correct answers we’re trying to learn: Y for yummy and N for not-so-yummy. something from After I’ve tasted the wines and recorded their data in a spreadsheet (left), good manners dictate that I to you in a more eye-friendly format (right). If you’re craving dataset jargon like features and instances, my guide to that stuff. Since we’re among friends, “inputs” will do just fine. show the info here’s Algorithm By picking a machine learning algorithm to use, we’re picking the type of recipe we’re going to get. Why don’t you be my algorithm? Your entire job is to separate the red things from the blue. Can you do it? The purpose of a machine learning algorithm is to pick the most sensible place to put a fence in your data. If you thought about drawing a line, congratulations! You just invented a machine learning algorithm whose name is… . Yeah, such a sci-fi name for such a simple thing! Please don’t be intimidated by jargon in machine learning, it usually doesn’t deserve the shock and awe the name inspires. perceptron How would you cordon off the red things from the blue? But does your line go? I hope you’d agree that a flat line is not a very smart solution. Our goal is to separate Y from N, not decorate the horizon. where The purpose of a machine learning algorithm is to pick the most sensible place to put the fence, and it decides that based on where your datapoint have landed. How does it do that? By an objective function. optimizing Optimization I plan to give optimization its own blog post, but for now think of it like this: the objective function is like the rule for scoring a board game, optimizing it is figuring out how to play so that you earn the best score possible. An objective function (loss function) is like the point system for a board game. This photo suggests that back in college I had yet to learn optimization… why am I playing the ? land-war-in-Asia strategy Traditionally in ML, we like sticks more than carrots — the points are penalties for mistakes (getting a label on the wrong side of the fence) and the game is to get as few of these bad points as possible. That’s why the objective function in ML tends to be called a “loss function” and the goal is to minimize loss. The loss function is like the rule for scoring a board game, optimizing it is figuring out how to play so you get the best score possible. Want to play? Go back to the plot above, put your finger horizontally against the screen and rotate it until you get a score of zero bad points (no points escaping the segregating wrath of your mighty finger). Congratulations, Comrade Perceptron! Feeling futuristic yet? Jargon in machine learning usually doesn’t deserve the shock and awe the name inspires. The solution you came to is hopefully something like this: In the leftmost image, c’mon; we’re not even trying. Hopefully you’ll agree that the middle one is better, but it still doesn’t fit as well as it can. I’m a fan of rightmost one. The spice of life If you like variety, you’ll love algorithms. There are plenty of them. One way they differ from one another is in how they try on different positions for the separating boundary. If you like variety, you’ll love algorithms. There are so many! Optimization nerds will tell you that rotating the fence in tiny increments is certifiably lame (sorry for tricking you into it!) and there are much better ways to get to the optimal position faster. Some researchers devote their whole lives to coming up with ways to get the best fence position in fewest hops, no matter how perverse the terrain (determined by your inputs) becomes. Another source of variety is the shape of the boundary. Turns out the fence needn’t be straight. Different algorithms use different kinds of fences. When we pick these gobbledygook names, we are simply picking the shape of the boundary that we are drawing between the labels. Do we want to separate them with one diagonal line or many horizontal/vertical lines or flexible squigglers… or something else? There are lots and lots of algorithms to pick from. Algorithms for hipsters These days, no hipster is into the humble straight line. Flexible, squiggly shapes are all the rage among today’s fashionable crowd (you may know these as , though there isn’t much that’s neural about them — they were named rather aspirationally more than half a century ago and no one seems to like my suggestion that we rename them to “yoga networks” or “many-layers-of-mathematical-operations”). data science neural networks Instead of the marketing-hype-scented comparison of other algorithms with lines and neural networks with brains, it’s better to think of them in terms of contortionist ability. Those other methods are simply less talented at data yoga. Nothing is free, however, and neural networks exact a hefty price (more on this soon!), so don’t trust anyone who tells you they’re always the best solution. Neural networks may as well be called “yoga networks” — their special power is giving you a very flexible boundary. Those gobbledygook algorithm names tell you what of fence they’re going try to put in your data. If you’re an applied machine learning enthusiast, it’s okay if you don’t memorize them — in practice you’ll just shove your data through as many algorithms as you can and iterate on what seems promising. The proof of the pudding’s always in the eating… so let’s eat. shape Even if you study the textbook, you won’t get the solution right on your first try. Don’t sweat it. This isn’t a game with one right answer and no one gets their solution on the first try. Give yourself permission to tinker, dabble, and play. The proof of machine learning pudding’s in the eating — does it work on new data? Leave the “ does it work” for researchers who design new algorithms. (And you’ll probably end up getting familiar with those names the same way you learned the characters of whichever bad soap opera haunts your town’s TV screens. Against your will. Give it time.) how Model Once the fence in place, the algorithm is finished and what you get out of it is what you wanted along: a model, which is just a fancy word for recipe. It’s now some instructions for the computer to use to convert data into a decision next time I show it a new bottle of wine. If the data lands in the blue bit, call it blue. In the red bit? Call it red. Label Once you put your freshly-minted model into production, you use it by feeding the computer an age and review score. Your system looks up which region that corresponds to and it outputs a label. When I get four new bottles of wine, I simply match their input data against the recipe’s red and blue regions and label them accordingly. See? It’s easy! How do we know if it works? The same way we know if a bunch of monkeys on typewriters wrote some Shakespeare. By checking the output! The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Test your system by running a bunch of new data through it and make sure it performs well on it. In fact, do that anyway, regardless of whether an algorithm or a programmer came up with that recipe for you. Summary Here’s a handy visual summary for you from another of my : articles Machine learning for poets If that was confusing, maybe you’ll like this analogy more: A poet picks an approach (algorithm) to putting words on paper. The approach determines the resulting poetic form (boundary shape) — will it be a haiku or a sonnet? Once they’re finished optimally fleshing out their sonnet, it is now a poem (model). How is a poem a recipe? Beats me — I’m open to suggestions. The rest of the analogy works, though. ML models vs traditional code I’d like to point out that the recipe isn’t all that different from code that a programmer might have written by eyeballing the problem and manually making up some rules. Quit anthropomorphizing machine learning already. A model is conceptually the same kind of thing as regular code. You know, the kind of recipe that’s handcrafted by some human armed with an opinion and a caffeine source. Quit anthropomorphizing machine learning already. And don’t go around saying that retraining — jargon for rerunning the algorithm to adjust the boundary as new examples are gathered — makes it creature-like or inherently different from your programmer’s standard work product. Humans can sit there tweaking the code in response to new info too. If you’re worried that your machine learning system now does the update much faster, invest in good testing or avail yourself of a long . time.sleep() Is this all there is to it? Yeah, pretty much. The hard part of ML engineering is installing packages and then wrangling your hairy beast of a dataset so a finicky algorithm deigns to run on it. This is followed by an eternity of fiddling with the code settings (don’t let the noble name fool you) until voilà! A model! One that turns out not to work when you evaluate its performance on new data… and you’re back to the drawing board, over and over, until finally the heavens open up and your solution stops embarrassing itself. That’s why it’s so important to for this endeavor. “hyperparameter tuning” hire failure-tolerant personalities Don’t hate it for being simple. Levers are simple too, but they can move the world. If you were expecting magic, well, the sooner you’re disappointed, the better. The death of superstitious excitement for sci-fi makes way for rebirth: excitement for getting cool things done. Machine learning may be prosaic, but ! It lets helps you write the code you couldn’t come up with yourself, allowing you to automate the ineffable. Don’t hate it for being simple. Levers are simple too, but they can move the world. what you can do with it is incredible If you’re keen to get started with an AI/ML project, I’ve got a step-by-step guide for you . Enjoy! here

Machine learning — Is the emperor wearing clothes?

Bitcoin is a digital currency and the first application of the distributed public ledger technology known as blockchain. Digital currencies are susceptible to a weakness known as double-spending where in which the same single digital token is spent more than once. Due to this threat, the transfer of tokens needs to be verified against a ledger that codifies transactions. Traditionally, the ledger is held by a centralized third-party mediator such as a bank. Satoshi Nakamoto’s motivation behind Bitcoin was to forego fees charged by third-party mediators and neutralize their ability to reverse transactions. Bitcoin eliminated the need for a third-party mediator by creating a trustless, decentralized ledger that is distributed to many network nodes and is secured by a SHA-256 cryptographic Proof-of-Work (PoW) block-chain. Many of the goals Satoshi set out to accomplish with Bitcoin have been achieved. However, since Bitcoin’s inception, new issues have emerged. Initially, Bitcoin could be mined by personal computers (CPUs), but soon thereafter a race to maximize computing (hash) power took off. The first step-change in this technological arms-race was transitioning from mining with CPUs to video cards (GPUs). Eventually, GPUs were supplanted by vastly more powerful Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) chips that are designed solely for mining crypto-currency. Presently, the speed at which ASIC chips can process hashes is exponentially greater than any previous technology. To put things in perspective, the Bitmain Antminer S9 (ASIC) hashes 13,000 times faster than the best in class NVIDIA GTX 1080 (GPU). These extremely powerful ASICs bring into question Satoshi’s original vision of, “one CPU one vote”. [1] [2] The engineering cost to develop single-purpose mining ASICs has led to the formation of niche manufacturers that have also began their own crypto-mining operations. Mining is especially advantageous for these Bitcoin ASIC manufacturers because they obtain equipment at production cost. This advantage has allowed certain ASIC manufacturers to influence a large of percentage of total hash-rate and control the distribution of mining equipment. Ironically, by deciding how many miners are sold to the market and who they are sold to, these ASIC manufacturers are operating as third-party intermediaries. This we coin is the “Roman Emperor Problem”. Needless to say, Satoshi could not have foreseen this development when Bitcoin was created. NODE Haven poses that profit-motive drives the aforementioned centralization of power and any PoW cryptocurrency that is reliant on the hardware that these ASIC manufacturers produce will suffer. The manufacturers’ financial backing, governance structure and profit-seeking motives drive them to drain value from the associated crypto-currencies that they claim to serve. In essence, the crypto-currency community is paying a to the ASIC manufacturers that invested into the development of the equipment they sell. The service of this is paid in profit-margin and control of how the ASIC equipment is distributed. In order to circumvent the control that these “Roman Emperor” ASIC manufacturers have, NODE Haven proposes a co-operative business model where crypto-currency mine operators collectively invest in the development of the advanced mining equipment that they need. This model combats the control that centralized ASIC manufacturers exploit and facilitates the decentralization of PoW cryptocurrencies as intended. debt debt [1] http://www.dogiecoin.com/bitmain-antminer-s9.html [2] http://cryptomining-blog.com/tag/gtx-1080-ti-hashrate/ If you are interested in learning more about NODE Haven, our 7nm BTC ASIC Miner development or the “Roman Emperor Problem” visit our , , or channel. Website Telegram SLACK

The Roman Emperor Problem: ASIC Manufacturer Mediation

Rise of The Invisible Economy Why should you live in a world without feeling its weight? — Karl Ove Knausgård This article introduces readers to the co-mingling of two related technologies that will transform life and business as we know it. The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) & the Internet of Value (IoV) will create an invisible economy (much like the emperor’s new clothes) except you need to peek under the hood to know what’s going on. Basic Terminology The term “the Internet of Things” was coined by of & Gamble, later MIT’s Auto-ID Center, in 1999. Today, it comprises anything (devices: cell phones, computers, televisions, car keys, thermostats, lights ; living beings: animals, humans with a chip (e.g. pacemakers) that is connected to the internet and can send/receive data over a network and has a unique identifier. Kevin Ashton Procter Wordpress The term “Internet of Value” can be simply understood as money/assets represented as computer code (eg cryptocurrencies) that can be transmitted over a network. aims to create an “ ” — a world where money is exchanged at the speed in which information moves today. Of course, the true IoV extends to anything of value including fiat currencies, commodities and other assets. Ripple Labs internet of value The Internet of Value as it is imagined (a global settlement network) is not in existence today but could be tomorrow. Flashback: En Route to Kenya It was 2001 and I had just graduated from college in Mumbai, India. I was on board an airplane destined for Nairobi, Kenya in East Africa. My cousin sister was sitting in the adjoining seat. She joined us from a common connecting airport. She was traveling from USA to Kenya and I was traveling from India to Kenya. Incidentally, Kenya is a pioneer in mcommerce through its M-pesa platform. There were many differences between USA and India as there are today but our conversation veered towards the use of credit cards in our respective countries. India was well known as it is today (despite demonetization) for a cash based society ( ) alongside many countries such as Germany (33% cashless transactions) and the US(45% cashless transactions) was known for the use of personal debt to finance purchases and the increasing role that credit cards were playing in financing the debt. For all my curious readers, Singapore leads the cashless transactions league table at 61% with Netherlands (60%), France (59%) and Sweden (59%) close behind. Again, these percentages are meant to be directional. They do indicate that a large portion of the transactions in the world are still cashless. only 2% transactions are cashless Societies can go cashless for a list of incentives ranging from reducing the cost of ATM’s and hard currency for banks (case in point — Sweden) to mass financial inclusion (case in point — India). Coming back to my trip — my sister explained that she carries her credit card for convenience but hesitates to use it because she finds it hard to keep track of expenses except when she uses cash or debit cards. For her, the mere action of parting with cash or a card that directly applies the debit to her bank account serves as an occasional reminder that she is overspending. To me, it sounded like the convenience of swiping introduces an element of opacity i.e. you have to wait for your credit card statement to scan your itemized purchases (apps were not that popular at the time. Remember the first iPhone was launched in 2007 and I am talking about 2001) As a rookie programmer, I felt this experience was very similar to closed operating systems/software. With open source software like Linux, it is easy to see the code but this ability is useful only if you are a programmer. However, with MS Windows, you have a great Graphical User Interface but you don’t know the code under the hood. I see a very similar trend with the oncoming invisible economy and that is: With convenience comes opacity unless you want to expend the time learning what’s under the hood. This is especially true when it comes to the IoT and the IoV At the time, all my transactions were in cash or via a debit card because I did not have a credit card. I was used to the phrase “keep the change” while my sister was used to just swiping. Just like Knausgård’s words above, I was used to feeling the weight of a coin or a note in my hand before handing it out. Now, not so much. Fast Forward To Today It is 2017 and I work in the United States. I have not gone to a bank branch in 1 year. I carry cash 2% of the time. My wallet is filled with credit cards. I pay my friends using Venmo and absolutely adore the emoticons that come with it. One thing I must say is I use credit wisely and pay off my debts well before time. Now, you can also use the Apple pay icon on your MacBook Pro for payments. Global Trends in Payments As per : Ayden The mobile share of global payments (currently 37%) will continue its inexorable rise, exceeding 50% in markets such as the U.K. and Australia. This is mostly driven by the growth of mobile wallets. Apple Pay, with its early adopters and powerful brand, is leading the charge (up by 400% in the past year), while Android, with its greater smartphone market share, could be the one to open the floodgates. According to Worldpay, alternative payments (digital wallets, currency etc.) could account for 59% of settlement activity by 2017, up from 43% in 2012. In the US, you have a bank consortium that has introduced that is competing with Venmo. Klarna, a Swedish payments app has morphed into a bank. PayTM in India had an infusion of $1.4 Billion from Softbank. WePay and AliPay are already expanding globally. Here is a snapshot of the landscape: Zellepay 4. Tech giants Amazon, Facebook and Google are already seeking inroads. With their enormous reach, their clientele would practically be the entire world. 5. As per the US market accounted for the most deals to payments startups in the first half of 2016. The United Kingdom ranks second, and is the home to well-funded startups like and , among many others. The third spot is tied by Germany (home to and ) and India (home to and ) followed by Canada, Singapore, and Denmark. CB Insights Transferwise Azimo Number26 Payleven MobiKwik Juspay In short, payments and settlements will continue to be of tremendous focus in the VC and FinTech world. What will change the game? Read on. The Future: Internet of Everything There are many payment protocols in place today such as ACH in USA, SWIFT in many other countries and SEPA in Europe. So, how do you transfer value across borders? Enter the Blockchain. Granted, there is an enormous amount of unfounded excitement around Blockchain and it’s application to cross border payments to eliminate middlemen, transaction fees and transaction times. A proverbial grandson in the US will be able to send digital money/crypto currency (which will be optionally convertible to fiat currency) to his grandmother in a small village in India using a digital wallet/crypto wallet on his cellphone in a matter of minutes at a fraction of the current transaction costs or zero transaction costs. In short, it does make economic sense. Whether the world is ready for it is a different matter altogether. Blockchains require enormous computing power. Efficiency is sacrificed for an immutable record and security. Consider the recent problems in the Bitcoin community over Segregated Witness (SegWit) method of handling the size of blocks. The Bitcoin Blockchain can only handle a few transactions per second compared to Visa’s network which can handle roughly 2,000 transactions per second. Luckily, the SegWit matter did not result in a hard fork to the Bitcoin Blockchain. In short, Blockchains have ways to go before becoming globally scalable. Ripple Labs feels that the IoT and the IoV are the same things and that eventually there will one global network. The ‘Internet of Everything’, as it is referred to today, will facilitate transfer of value across borders and will also allow inanimate objects to participate. However, before that happens, there has to be a registry of value i.e. all types of assets (including physical ones such as commodities) will need to be registered to be able to be exchange hands over the Internet of Everything. Already, Honda and Visa announced a proof of concept of a connected car that makes payment for gasoline seamless: Smart contracts (computer code — if x happens, then do Y statements to put it crudely) will facilitate online contracts. In the future, an automated car can pay for it’s own gasoline using crypto-currencies and embedded smart contracts. In fact, transactions by things may exceed transactions by humans. Challenges abound and need to be overcome— role of regulators, governments to protect citizen’s rights, online security that prevents using the Internet of Things to invade privacy and create a reality show out of our lives, creation of digital identities etc. Financial Inclusion for all is a very difficult mission. Cash is still king. : I don’t want to blind them, I just want them to blink a little. As the Emperor says in the Emperor’s New Clothes In the end, a blink of an eye is all the time it will take to do business on the Internet of Everything and yet it will be difficult to see the transaction happen. It will almost be like magic. Thank you for reading. If you think this article is educational, please share it with your followers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or other social media. You can follow me on Twitter: @akothari_mba If you liked this article, please recommend it by clicking the heart below.

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