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Good teams commit and deploy frequently; in line with some of the main ideas behind . Gone are the days of quarterly or yearly releases and long-live feature branches! software engineering continuous integration (CI) and continuous deployment (CD) Today, I’ll show you how to  automatically deploy your Heroku app whenever code is merged into your main branch by using GitLab CI/CD. Ready to dig in? Getting Started Before we begin, we’ll need a and a Heroku account GitLab account. is a great place to host and deploy your apps. As a platform as a service (PaaS), Heroku allows you to focus on building cool things while abstracting away much of the infrastructure complexity. You can . Heroku create a Heroku account here is a great place to store your code. Beyond just being a source code management tool, GitLab also offers native CI/CD capabilities so you can set up pipelines to test and deploy your code without requiring another third-party tool. You can . GitLab create a GitLab account here The demo app shown in this article uses both GitLab and Heroku. You can . find all the code in the GitLab repo here Running Our App Locally You can run the app locally by cloning the repo, installing dependencies, and running the start command. In your terminal, do the following: $ git clone https://gitlab.com/tylerhawkins1/heroku-gitlab-ci-cd-demo.git
$ cd heroku-gitlab-ci-cd-demo
$ npm install
$ npm start After starting the app, visit in your browser, and you’ll see the app running locally: http://localhost:5001/ Deploying Our App to Heroku Now that the app is running locally, let’s deploy it to Heroku so that you can access it anywhere, not just on your machine. If you don’t already have the installed on your machine, you’ll need to install that before moving on. Heroku CLI After installing the Heroku CLI, run the following commands from your terminal to create a new Heroku app, deploy it, and open it in your browser: $ heroku create
$ git push heroku main
$ heroku open With that, you should see the same app, but this time running on a Heroku URL instead of on localhost. Nice work — you’ve deployed your Heroku app! Making Changes to Our App Now that we have our Heroku app up and running, what if we want to make changes? You can make changes to the source code and then add, commit, and push those changes to the branch. main If you wanted to deploy those changes to the production Heroku app, you’d need to run once again. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could automate the deployment instead of having to deploy it manually each time? git push heroku main This is where GitLab CI/CD comes into play. Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment Continuous integration (CI) is all about committing often and keeping the build in a good state at all times. Typically you would verify that the build is in a good state by running checks in a CI pipeline. These checks might include linters, unit tests, and/or end-to-end tests. Continuous deployment (CD) is all about deploying frequently. If the checks in the CI pipeline pass, then the build gets deployed. If the checks in the CI pipeline fail, then the build does not get deployed. With GitLab CI/CD, we can configure our CI pipeline to do exactly this — run our tests and then deploy our app to Heroku if the tests all pass. Configuring GitLab CI/CD We can create a CI pipeline in GitLab programmatically using a file. Our file looks like this: .gitlab-ci.yml image: node:20.10.0

cache:
  paths:
    - node_modules/

before_script:
  - node -v
  - npm install

stages:
  - test
  - deploy

unit-test-job:
  stage: test
  script:
    - npm test

deploy-job:
  stage: deploy
  environment: production
  script:
    - apt-get update -yq
    - apt-get install -y ruby-dev
    - gem install dpl
    - dpl - provider=heroku - app=$HEROKU_APP_NAME - api-key=$HEROKU_PRODUCTION_KEY
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH GitLab CI pipelines consist of stages and jobs. Each stage can contain one or more jobs. In our pipeline, we have two stages: and . In the stage, we run our unit tests in the . In the stage, we deploy our app to Heroku in the . test deploy test unit-test-job deploy deploy-job If all the jobs in the previous stage pass, then we can progress to the next stage. That means if the unit tests fail, then the app won’t be deployed, which is a good thing! We wouldn’t want to deploy our app if it was in a bad state. You’ll notice that the stage references two variables called and . These are stored as . deploy $HEROKU_APP_NAME $HEROKU_PRODUCTION_KEY CI/CD variables within GitLab If you’re setting this up in your own GitLab account, you’ll first need to find your API key in your Heroku account. Within your Heroku account settings, you should see a section with your API key. If you haven’t generated an API key yet, generate one now. Next, in your GitLab project, click on > > . Expand that section and add two new variables. Settings CI/CD Variables The value for will be the API key from your Heroku account. $HEROKU_PRODUCTION_KEY The value for will be the name of your Heroku app. $HEROKU_APP_NAME My app’s name is , but since Heroku app names are universally unique, yours will be something different. heroku-gitlab-ci-cd-demo With that, your GitLab CI pipeline is ready to go! Let’s test it out. Deploying Our Heroku App Automatically Let’s make a change to the code in our app. I made a simple change to the heading text, changing the words from “Heroku and GitLab CI/CD Demo” to “Heroku and GitLab CI/CD Rules!” You can make a similar change in your code. Now add, commit, and push that change to the branch. This will start the GitLab CI pipeline. You can view the pipeline within GitLab and see the progress in real time. main If everything goes well, you should see that both the and stages have passed. Now, go check out your hosted Heroku app. The GitLab CI pipeline deployed the app for you, so you’ll now see your changes live in production! test deploy Now whenever you need to make and deploy changes to your app, simply commit your changes and GitLab CI/CD will take care of the rest. Conclusion A good CI pipeline allows you to ship new features quickly and confidently without manually managing the deployment process yourself. Heroku and GitLab CI/CD make a great team!

How to Automate Heroku App Deployment with GitLab CI/CD

So, this is absolutely just another example of me playing around too much, but I had to share. As I mentioned in my yesterday, Google's AI Studio now supports uploading files and working with them in your prompt. post Today, I decided to give the Chat interface a try as I hadn't yet played with it. On a whim, I googled "dungeons and dragons rules PDF" and... well, you won't believe what happened next. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) First off, the most important thing to note if you want to test with PDFs, ensure that they are OCRed. Right now, AI Studio does not handle that well, but it should be corrected in the future. My Google search turned up the PDF here: , and I confirmed it was properly OCRed with a very scientific test by trying to select a few words. https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/downloads/DnD_BasicRules_2018.pdf Note that it's from 2018 and probably a bit out of date, but I figured it was good enough. I uploaded the PDF to Gemini and ensured I was using Gemini 1.5. This is important as the size of the PDF (180 pages) means a rather large token size. The UI reports this nicely: For my first test, I simply asked, "What are the attributes of a player character?" Here's what I got: In Dungeons & Dragons, player characters (PCs) are defined by several key attributes: Race: This determines your character's physical characteristics, ancestry, and innate abilities. Examples include humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, dragonborns, tieflings, etc. Each race has unique traits that affect gameplay. Class: This represents your character's chosen profession and determines their skills, abilities, and progression path. Examples include fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric, bard, etc. Each class has unique features and abilities that define their role in the party. Ability Scores: These six scores represent your character's core physical and mental capabilities: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. They influence almost every action your character takes, from attacking and defending to interacting with the world and casting spells. Skills: These represent specific areas of expertise your character has developed through training or experience. Examples include Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Perception, Persuasion, Arcana, etc. Skills are tied to ability scores and determine your character's success in various tasks. Background: This details your character's history and past experiences before becoming an adventurer. Examples include soldier, criminal, noble, sage, etc. Backgrounds provide additional skills, proficiencies, and roleplaying hooks. Equipment: This includes weapons, armor, tools, and other items your character carries. Equipment affects your character's capabilities in combat and exploration. Personality and Alignment: These define your character's moral compass, beliefs, and behavior. Alignment is a combination of two factors: morality (good, evil, or neutral) and attitude towards society and order (lawful, chaotic, or neutral). Backstory: This is the narrative of your character's life before the game begins, including their motivations, goals, and relationships. A well-developed backstory adds depth and helps you roleplay your character. These attributes work together to create a unique and well-rounded character that you can roleplay and guide through adventures in the D&D world. I'm pretty rusty in D&D, but that surely seems right! (When I shared this in a chat related to Gemini, William Ito skimmed it and said it looks correct for that era - so, I'm taking that as another sign it worked well.) I then asked, "What races are available to player characters?" The most common player character races in Dungeons & Dragons are: Humans: Adaptable and versatile, with no major strengths or weaknesses. Elves: Graceful and long-lived, with a natural affinity for magic and a resistance to charm effects. Subraces include High Elves, Wood Elves, and Dark Elves (Drow). Dwarves: Stout and hardy, with a resistance to magic and poison, and proficiency in combat and craftsmanship. Subraces include Hill Dwarves and Mountain Dwarves. Halflings: Nimble and small, with a natural ability to hide and a resistance to fear. Subraces include Lightfoot Halflings and Stout Halflings. The Player's Handbook also introduces several less common races, including: Dragonborn: Proud and draconic humanoids with scales and the ability to breathe fire. Tieflings: Demonic descendants with a natural affinity for magic and resistance to fire. Gnomes: Inventive and curious small creatures with a natural ability to tinker and a resistance to magic. Half-elves: Combining human and elven traits, they are versatile and have a resistance to charm effects. Half-orcs: Combining human and orc traits, they are strong and fierce with a resistance to being knocked unconscious. Additionally, some campaign settings and sourcebooks introduce even more exotic races, such as Aasimar, Firbolg, Goliath, Aarakocra, Genasi, and many others. The availability of these races depends on your Dungeon Master and the specific campaign setting you are playing in. Remember, the most important factor in choosing a race is to pick one that excites you and fits the character concept you have in mind. I have absolutely no clue if those exotic races exist, but I did a quick search on Aasimar, and it looks like it certainly does: Aasimar Alright, now, at this point, I was impressed. But I thought - why not push my luck? "Given the rules to create a character, create one with all the required characters and give it a name" And holy crap - Gemini delivered! Character Name: Lyra Swiftfoot Race: Lightfoot Halfling Class: Rogue (Thief) Background: Entertainer (Dancer) Alignment: Chaotic Good Ability Scores: (Using the standard set) Strength: 8 (-1) Dexterity: 17 (+3) Constitution: 14 (+2) Intelligence: 13 (+1) Wisdom: 12 (+1) Charisma: 15 (+2) Hit Points: 10 (8 + 2 from Constitution modifier) Proficiencies: Armor: Light armor Weapons: Simple weapons, hand crossbows, longswords, rapiers, shortswords Tools: Thieves' tools, Disguise kit (from background) Saving Throws: Dexterity, Intelligence Skills: Acrobatics (+5), Perception (+4), Performance (+6), Stealth (+7) (Expertise in Stealth and Performance) Equipment: Rapier Shortbow and quiver of 20 arrows Leather armor Two daggers Thieves' tools Disguise kit Backpack Bedroll Mess kit Tinderbox 10 torches 10 days of rations Waterskin 50 feet of hempen rope Pouch with 15 gp Personality Traits: I have a quick wit and a fondness for pranks. I am fiercely loyal to my friends and always look out for their safety. Ideal: Freedom: Everyone should be free to live their life as they see fit. (Chaotic) Bond: I will do anything to protect my younger sister, who is the only family I have left. Flaw: I have a weakness for shiny objects and can't resist the urge to steal them, even if it means putting myself at risk. Backstory: Lyra grew up on the streets, using her nimbleness and charm to survive. She learned to dance for coins and honed her skills in stealth and deception to pilfer from unsuspecting onlookers. After her sister was kidnapped by slavers, Lyra vowed to do whatever it takes to find and rescue her, even if it means venturing into the darkest corners of the world. This is just a basic example, and you can further customize Lyra by adding details to her appearance, personality, and backstory. You can also choose different skills, proficiencies, or equipment based on your preferences and the campaign setting. By the way, the formatting above is a bit off, but that came from me copying and pasting from Gemini and being a bit lazy about sprucing it up. I figured I'd push my luck and try again: "do that again please" Character Name: Falion Sunstrider Race: High Elf Class: Wizard (Evocation) Background: Sage (Researcher) Alignment: Neutral Good Ability Scores: (Using the standard set) Strength: 8 (-1) Dexterity: 14 (+2) Constitution: 13 (+1) Intelligence: 17 (+3) Wisdom: 12 (+1) Charisma: 10 (+0) Hit Points: 8 (6 + 1 from Constitution modifier) Proficiencies: Weapons: Daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, light crossbows Tools: None Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom Skills: Arcana (+6), History (+6), Investigation (+4) (Expertise in Arcana and History) Equipment: Quarterstaff Arcane focus (crystal) Scholar's pack Spellbook with six 1st-level wizard spells (Burning Hands, Charm Person, Detect Magic, Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Shield) Backpack Bedroll Mess kit Tinderbox 10 torches 10 days of rations Waterskin 50 feet of hempen rope Pouch with 10 gp Personality Traits: I am deeply curious about the world and always eager to learn new things. I am absent-minded and often lost in my own thoughts. Ideal: Knowledge: The path to power and self-improvement is through knowledge. (Neutral) Bond: I am searching for the lost library of a legendary archmage, rumored to contain powerful spells and forgotten lore. Flaw: I am overconfident in my abilities and sometimes underestimate the dangers I face. Backstory: Falion spent his youth studying in a prestigious academy of magic, quickly surpassing his peers with his thirst for knowledge and natural talent for evocation magic. After hearing rumors of a lost library containing powerful spells and forgotten lore, Falion set out on a journey to find it, hoping to unlock its secrets and further his magical abilities. This is just a basic example, and you can further customize Falion by adding details to his appearance, personality, and backstory. You can also choose different skills, proficiencies, or equipment based on your preferences and the campaign setting. So, at this point, I was blown away. Like, I don't even care if it broke any particular D&D rules; that was just fun. But... yeah, I pushed my luck ... ... ... one last time "Of the two characters you just made, who do you think would be a better party leader?" Between Lyra Swiftfoot and Falion Sunstrider, Lyra would likely be the better party leader for several reasons: : Lyra has a higher Charisma score, which is important for inspiring and motivating others. Her background as an entertainer also suggests she is comfortable in front of crowds and skilled at interacting with people. Charisma : Lyra's skillset is more suited to leadership. Her expertise in Persuasion and Deception allows her to negotiate effectively and navigate social situations, while her proficiency in Perception and Stealth makes her a good scout and strategist. Skills : Lyra's personality traits suggest she is quick-witted and loyal, both valuable qualities in a leader. Her flaw, while potentially problematic, can be mitigated by her other strengths and the support of her party. Personality : While wizards can be powerful, their focus on spellcasting and relative lack of social skills often makes them less effective leaders. Class Falion, on the other hand, excels in knowledge and magical power, making him a valuable asset to the party in terms of strategy and information gathering. However, his lower Charisma and lack of social skills might hinder his ability to effectively lead and inspire others. Additionally, his absent-mindedness and overconfidence could lead to poor decisions in critical situations. Of course, the effectiveness of a party leader also depends on the specific campaign setting, the party composition, and the players' roleplaying preferences. In some situations, Falion's knowledge and magical prowess might be more valuable than Lyra's social skills. Ultimately, the best party leader is the one that the players and the Dungeon Master agree upon and who can effectively guide the party through their adventures. My god. That's just... perfect. And honestly, it feels like the right choice for the right reasons. Anyway, this isn't necessarily a deep look at this particular feature, but it was so fun I had to share!

Google Gemini: Your New Dungeon Master?

গুগল মিথুন: আপনার নতুন অন্ধকূপ মাস্টার?

Google Gemini: Ihr neuer Dungeon-Meister?

Google Gemini: ¿tu nuevo maestro de mazmorras?

Google Gemini : votre nouveau maître de donjon ?

गूगल जेमिनी: आपका नया कालकोठरी मास्टर?

Google Gemini: あなたの新しいダンジョンマスター?

Google Gemini: 새로운 던전 마스터?

Google Gemini: seu novo mestre de masmorras?

Google Gemini: ваш новый мастер подземелий?

Google Gemini: Yeni Zindan Ustanız mı?

Google Gemini: Chủ nhân ngục tối mới của bạn?

谷歌双子座：你的新地下城主？

Today's gamers expect levels that are not only visually stunning but also richly interactive and immersive. How can we reach these expectations as developers? Let’s talk about modern level design. In essence, level design refers to creating levels, stages, or missions within a game. But this description barely scratches the surface of what level design embodies. It's not merely about placing objects, enemies, or environmental artwork. It's a more profound and intricate process – it's about crafting experiences. Imagine level design as the art of shaping the player's adventure. It’s about constructing the narrative pathway they walk through, not just in terms of the physical space within the game but also in how they experience the story being told. The level is where the game's story, mechanics, and art converge to create a memorable experience. Consider a level in a as a chapter in a book. Each chapter has a beginning, where players are introduced to new elements or challenges. There's a middle where these elements are explored and interacted with, and an ending, often culminating in a significant challenge or a pivotal narrative moment. The level designer's job is to make this journey as engaging and coherent as possible. game But it's not just about linear progression. A well-designed level offers players choices and paths to explore while guiding them toward the intended narrative or gameplay goals. It's about creating an environment that feels alive and responsive to the player's actions. Consider how game levels like The Legend of Zelda or Dark Souls are designed. They aren't just spaces to traverse; they're puzzles to solve, stories to unravel, and worlds to immerse oneself in. The goal is to avoid extremes – neither too easy nor frustratingly hard. The challenge, akin to waves, should undulate, ensuring player engagement and accomplishment. You need to define your approach before you start level design placement. And here, you have several options that you can learn from famous examples. Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment. A prime example is the Resident Evil series, particularly Resident Evil 4. This game subtly adjusts the difficulty based on the player's performance. If the player dies frequently, the game reduces the number of enemies in subsequent attempts. Conversely, if the player is breezing through levels, it subtly ramps up the challenge. This dynamic adjustment keeps the game engaging for players of varying skill levels without breaking immersion. Progressive Challenge Scaling. The Super Mario Bros. levels are meticulously designed to introduce challenges progressively. Early levels are more straightforward, teaching the player basic mechanics. As the game progresses, levels become more complex, combining these mechanics in challenging ways. The infamous Water Levels or the introduction of more complex enemies like Hammer Bros. exemplify this scaling, which adds variety and escalating challenges while remaining fair and engaging. A classic example can be seen in Portal and Portal 2. These games excel in gradually introducing players to new mechanics and combining them increasingly complexly. Early levels are simple, focusing on understanding the essential use of the portal gun. As players progress, levels demand more sophisticated uses of the portals, spatial reasoning, and timing. This steady increase in complexity helps players develop their skills naturally without feeling overwhelmed. Safe Spaces and Respite. Dark Souls, a game known for its difficulty, skillfully balances challenge with rest. Between its notoriously tricky sections, bonfires are acting as safe spaces. These allow players to recuperate, reinforcing a sense of progression and achievement. It's a rhythmic balance of tension and relief, preventing frustration. Games like Bloodborne implement a risk-versus-reward system to balance difficulty. Engaging in high-risk combat scenarios can lead to greater rewards. This system encourages players to push their limits and allows them to play it safely. It's a balance that motivates players to improve and engage more deeply with the game mechanics. Player-Driven Difficulty. Games like The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim offers another approach. Here, the world is open, and players can choose their paths. They might wander into a high-level area and face tough challenges or stay in lower-level areas to build their skills and confidence. This player-driven difficulty allows individuals to tailor their experiences to their comfort level. The Mass Effect series offers settings that range from narrative-focused, where combat is easier, to hardcore modes that significantly ramp up combat challenges. This approach respects player choice and caters to a broader audience, from those seeking a story to those desiring intense gameplay. Narrative as a Difficulty Balancer. The Last of Us series uses narrative elements to balance gameplay difficulty. Intense combat sequences are interspersed with quieter, story-driven sections, where players learn more about the characters and the world. This ebb and flow maintains engagement without overwhelming the player. Balancing difficulty is not just about enemy placement or the number of obstacles. It's about understanding the player's journey through the game. It involves crafting a narrative flow where challenges rise and fall, maintaining interest and providing a sense of accomplishment. This approach requires a deep understanding of game mechanics, player psychology, and storytelling. Games like Celeste offer frequent checkpoints, acknowledging the game's severe difficulty and allowing players to quickly retry challenging sections, reducing frustration while maintaining the challenge. Implementing checkpoint and save systems can significantly affect the perception of difficulty. Difficulty in level design isn't just about combat or enemies. The environment itself can present challenges. The environment plays a key role in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Weather, terrain, and physics create situations where players must think and adapt. For example, climbing a mountain during rain is more challenging than in clear weather. This adds a layer of strategic decision-making based on the environment. Developers often release beta versions or updates based on player experiences. In modern game development, player feedback is crucial for balancing difficulty. Fortnite is an example of continuous updates and player feedback shaping the game's balance, keeping the gameplay fresh and appropriately challenging. Balancing difficulty in level design is an ongoing dialogue between the designer and the player. It's about understanding not just the mechanics of the game but the people who play it. Every player is different, and their experience can vary widely. The goal of the level designer is to craft a challenging, rewarding, and, most importantly, enjoyable journey for a wide range of players. Environmental art. Level design cannot exist without other elements. And you, as a level designer, should focus on another part of game design that will be at your disposal - Environmental art. Environment art is what gives life to the game's world. It's about the aesthetics – the textures, the lighting, the 3D models. These elements create the visual appeal and immersion of the game. The environment artists are like the painters and sculptors of the video game world, carefully crafting every visual detail to create a believable, engaging, and often beautiful environment for players to explore. A game with exceptional environment art can be awe-inspiring. Think of the stunning vistas in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or the intricate, dystopian world of Bioshock Infinite. The environment art sets the tone and atmosphere in these games, contributing significantly to the overall gaming experience. Level design should continue the environment design. It should highlight the setting and maintain the mood. Only then will the level design be considered good when it performs both practical and aesthetic functions. Let's shift our focus to level design, about the Level design is the structural foundation of the game’s world. It's about creating spaces that facilitate gameplay, guide the player's journey, present challenges, and help progress the narrative. gameplay experience within these environments. A level designer must consider how players interact with the environment, move through space, and utilize the game's mechanics. It's about creating a flow within the game, using the environment to create a path for the player, and strategically placing elements like enemies, obstacles, and rewards. For instance, the intricate level designs in Dark Souls are not just about aesthetics. They are meticulously crafted to challenge players, often forcing them to be cautious and observant. The levels are designed to create a sense of dread and anticipation, with traps and enemies positioned to surprise and challenge the player. Moreover, level design often involves creating an intuitive and navigable space. It's about leading the player without making it obvious that they are being led. This is where level design overlaps with environmental storytelling. The placement of objects, the architecture of the space, and the progression through the environment can all tell a story in subtle ways. An example is Half-Life, where the environment and level design work together to guide the player, tell a story, and create an immersive experience without requiring extensive dialogue or cutscenes. The game uses visual cues, level layout, and environmental details to lead the player and reveal the narrative. Intricate-level design goes beyond the basic layout of environments; it involves crafting spaces that are functional for gameplay and rich in narrative depth, player engagement, and creativity. Multi-layered Levels. Within a limited space, when we want to make it larger than it is, we use one basic approach: Multi-layered Levels. One of my favorite games with this approach is Dishonored. In Dishonored, the levels are designed with multiple layers and pathways, offering players a variety of approaches to complete their objectives. The game's levels are complex, with interconnected areas encouraging exploration and experimentation. Players can sneak through buildings, traverse rooftops, or find hidden passages, all adding depth and replayability to the game. It works nicely here, mainly because it fits the main mechanic of the teleports. A professional-level designer will always use every piece of space effectively, coordinating it with the mechanics and ideas. But what if I want something else, something different? Let’s return to the Dark Souls series, renowned for its interconnected-level design. The game world is like a massive, intertwined puzzle where areas loop back on themselves, creating a sense of discovery and surprise. This design makes the world feel interconnected and rewards exploration and memorization, a vital aspect of the game's challenge and allure. In BioShock, the underwater city of Rapture is not just a backdrop but an integral part of the game's story. The environment tells its story through audio logs, visual cues, and architecture. The Art Deco design, the dilapidated structures, and the propaganda posters combine to immerse the player in the game's dystopian world. The Breath of the Wild reimagines open-world design by creating a dynamic environment that interacts with the player's actions. The game world responds to player choices and actions, whether chopping down trees to create bridges or using the game's physics engine to solve puzzles. This dynamic interaction makes the environment a key player in the game's design. In The Last of Us Part, the environment reflects the story's emotional tone, from abandoned homes that tell stories of the inhabitants' final moments to the overgrown ruins that signify the world's post-apocalyptic state. The level design is a narrative tool, enhancing the story's emotional impact. As you see, level design can’t be independent. It needs to be a part of all other elements. You should play with it based on your ideas and the mood of your game. Now that we know the basic level design approaches, let's talk about their principles. One of the most crucial is a . Each level in a game should serve a clear and distinct purpose. This could be advancing the story, introducing new gameplay mechanics, presenting a unique challenge, or combining these elements. Each level is designed to advance the story in games like Uncharted or Tomb Raider. Players journey through different environments, each revealing a new story chapter. The level design aligns with the narrative arc, ensuring that the environment and its challenges reflect and enhance the unfolding story. Portal excels in introducing and gradually expanding upon its core mechanic – the portal gun. Early levels are designed to teach players the basics of portal traversal. As the game progresses, levels become more complex, integrating new elements like momentum and light bridges, requiring players to think creatively and apply what they've learned in new ways. Celeste is a brilliant example of levels designed to provide specific challenges. Each chapter introduces new elements - wind, moving platforms, or hostile creatures - each adding a unique twist to the game's core platforming mechanics. The levels are purposefully designed to test the player’s skills and adaptability. purpose The level design combines mechanics, story, and exploration seamlessly. The purpose of a level should be evident to the player, whether it's understood from the level's design, its place in the game's world, or its contribution to the overarching story. A level with a clear purpose provides direction and motivation, guiding the player through the game's journey. Moreover, purpose-driven level design ensures that each part of the game feels necessary and engaging. It avoids the pitfalls of filler content, where levels exist merely to extend playtime without adding meaningful experiences. Another fundamental principle in level design is . motivating player movement A well-designed level not only facilitates but also encourages player exploration and progression. It's about using the environment to subtly guide players towards objectives and discoveries, ensuring a seamless and engaging experience. For this, we can use different techniques. For instance, in Journey, the distant mountain is a constant visual goal for players. In Dark Souls, the level design frequently employs grand structures or unique landscapes as points of interest, guiding players across its interconnected world. . Skyrim is an excellent example, where players are motivated to explore through the promise of hidden dungeons, rare artifacts, and unexpected encounters. The level design rewards curiosity, making exploration a core part of the player's experience. In Half-Life, for example, levels are designed to lead players along a specific path without making it obvious. The game uses lighting, architecture, and environmental storytelling to guide players, ensuring they are never lost but still feel in control of their journey. A classic technique is the use of visual cues or landmarks. Encouraging exploration is key Effective pathfinding is crucial. In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the interactive elements like destructible objects, climbable surfaces, and physics-based puzzles engage players and encourage them to interact with the world around them, often leading to discoveries. Interactivity within the environment can serve as a strong motivator. Narrative elements can also guide player movement. In BioShock, the narrative unfolds through the environment, with audio logs, signage, and environmental changes guiding players through Rapture. The story creates a sense of urgency and curiosity, driving players to explore further. It requires a deep understanding of human psychology and player behavior. The goal is to create an organic and inviting world where every path, obstacle, and item feels purposefully placed to guide the player's journey. I adore level design. It looks so amazing when Resident Evil uses narrow corridors, sudden open areas, and blind corners to induce suspense and surprise. The level design manipulates spatial elements to evoke emotions, keeping players on edge. Or when in Journey, developers use of color, light, and shadow further accentuates paths and points of interest. In games, the arrangement of enemies, the architecture of the ruins, and the placement of items all tell a story, providing context and depth to the game world. In Hollow Knight, we can find intricate, interconnected level designs that encourage players to explore, backtrack, and discover new paths as they acquire new abilities. The layout of the levels becomes a puzzle for the player to solve. You can find more information about Spatial Communication in Level Design in this . video Action Games and Shooters. I talked about more calm genres like RPG and story-based adventures, but we had a few extra things when we discussed action games and shooters. In this type of game, we have a specific aspect of level design that's particularly crucial. And this is a . cover placement Cover placement is essential for creating strategic depth in tactical shooters like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. The environment offers various cover options, each presenting different advantages and vulnerabilities. This encourages players to think tactically about their position and the position of their enemies. Effective cover placement also enhances player movement. In Gears of War, the cover is not only for protection but also for maneuvering and flanking. The game's 'roadie run' mechanic, combined with the cover system, allows players to quickly move between covers, creating dynamic firefights and opportunities for strategic positioning. The placement of cover can transform an environment into a tactical playground. Call of Duty games, for instance, design levels with a mix of high and low covers, open areas, and choke points. This variety allows for different combat styles, from long-range engagements to close-quarters battles, making each encounter unique. Introducing dynamic or destructible cover adds another layer of strategy. In the Battlefield series, the destructible environments mean that cover is not always permanent, forcing players to adapt their tactics as the battlefield evolves. Cover placement is also crucial in how AI enemies engage the player. In Uncharted, enemies use cover effectively, flanking and suppressing the player, which requires strategic thinking and quick reflexes to overcome. It's essential to balance cover with . Too much cover can make a level feel cramped and restrict movement, while too little can lead to unfair challenges. Games like Halo strike this balance, offering open arenas with strategically placed cover, allowing for ranged battles and close-up engagements. open spaces Conclusion. In summary, motivating player movement is an art form in itself. It combines aesthetics, psychology, and gameplay mechanics to create a world players want to explore and engage in. It's what transforms a game from a series of tasks into a compelling journey.

Designing a Video Game: Principles and Rules of Modern Level Design

Hi All! Here is my weekly email discussing mental models, performance, business and entrepreneurship. If you love this content (please share it), but also… Check out my , connect with me on / , and read my Podcast YouTube Twitter daily newsletter. What’s in today’s newsletter? Specialize first, diversify later. Build a strong foundation in a niche before expanding your horizons. As Jeff Bezos said, "You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness." Adapt your strategy over time. Specialization and combinatorial thinking each have their place depending on your development stage. Stay agile and optimize for each phase. Deploy counterintuitive strategies (I’ll discuss them) used by all successful entrepreneurs to build strong foundations before branching out into new domains. Also know when's the right time to transition from niche focus to combinatorial thinking. Our world today is fascinated by cross-disciplinary innovation. It seems like the best ideas come from combining different fields and perspectives. I’ve written about combinatorial thinking . several times But today I’m going to tell you why you need to niche down and specialize (at least for a period of time), in your career or in your business. I have no doubt you’re asking… why would anyone wanna specialize in a narrow domain? Wouldn't that limit their potential and creativity? Didn’t you just tell us something radically different, just last week? Well, let me explain. There’s a time and place for everything and history tells us a different story. See, many of the most successful people and businesses with a deep focus on one area. started They built a strong foundation of expertise and reputation before branching out into new domains. They understood that specialization and diversification aren't mutually exclusive, but complementary strategies for growth (I’ll give you some examples in a second). Now. Why is this top of mind? About a year ago I had Joe Foster, the founder of Reebok, on my . I learned that Reebok became a global brand by specializing in women's aerobics shoes (niching down). podcast But when we met for coffee yesterday, he shared how Reebok later diversified into other sports and markets. He explained how specialization gave Reebok a competitive edge, but also how diversification helped Reebok adapt and thrive. His story inspired me to write this newsletter and explore the role of specialization in growth, and how to balance it with diversification. I believe that both approaches have their merits and challenges, and that the key is to use 'em wisely and intentionally. As Jeff Bezos said: "You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it's worth it." In this newsletter, I'll share with you my perspective on how to find your niche, why you need to care about it, how to leverage it for growth, and how to expand your horizons when the time is right. I hope you'll find it useful and interesting. Finding Your Niche Finding your niche is one of the most important and challenging tasks for any aspiring creator, entrepreneur, or professional. How do you find your niche? How do you know if you have chosen the right one? How do you validate your niche before investing too much time and energy into it? Well that’s what I’m here for. Let’s start with two frameworks. The Venn Diagram Framework The Venn diagram framework for finding your niche helps you identify your unique combination of , , and that can help you create value and stand out. skills passions market opportunities This framework forces you to visualize these items. The elements you visualize are the three key factors that define your niche: : What are you good at or can become good at with practice and learning? Skills (Expertise & Experience) : What do you enjoy doing or learning about? Passions (Energy & Enthusiasm) : Who are the people who have a problem that you can solve or a need that you can fulfill? Market (Economics) Your niche is the intersection of these three factors. This is your sweet spot where you can create the most value and differentiation. The framework is very easy to implement just, follow these steps: List down all the skills, passions, and market segments that you have or are interested in. Draw a Venn diagram and see where they overlap. You can also use online tools like to create your own Venn diagram. this one Find one or more areas of overlap that are specific enough to be distinctive, but broad enough to be viable. For example, if you are skilled at writing, passionate about personal finance, and interested in serving young professionals, your niche could be writing about personal finance blog for young professionals. Just a reminder, this framework (like most others) are not perfect. It assumes that your skills, passions, and market are fixed and independent, which is not always the case. You’ll develop new skills or passions over time, or discover new market opportunities that you didn’t know existed. You’ll also find that some of your skills, passions, and market segments are interrelated or overlapping. So don’t treat this framework as a one-time exercise, but as a starting point and a guide. Revisit and update your Venn diagram regularly, and experiment with different combinations and variations. Also, always be open to feedback and data from your potential customers, and adjust your niche accordingly. The Hedgehog Concept Another useful framework to find your niche is the hedgehog concept. This concept was popularized by in his book, , where he studied the characteristics of companies that achieved sustained excellence and outperformed their competitors. Jim Collins Good to Great Collins found that one of the common traits of these companies was that they had a clear and simple understanding of what they were best at, what they were passionate about, and what drove their economic engine. He called this their “ ”, inspired by the ancient Greek parable of the hedgehog and the fox. hedgehog concept The parable goes like this: The fox is a cunning and versatile animal that knows many things and can pursue many strategies. The hedgehog is a simple and focused animal that knows one big thing and sticks to it. Every day, the fox tries to catch the hedgehog using different tricks and tactics, but every time, the hedgehog rolls into a ball of spikes and fends off the fox. The fox never learns, and the hedgehog always wins. The hedgehog concept is similar to the Venn diagram framework, but with some subtle differences. The three circles of the are: hedgehog concept This is not just a skill, but a core competency that you have or can develop that gives you a competitive edge and makes you stand out from the crowd. It is something that you can excel at and sustain over time. What you can be the best in the world at. This is not just a hobby, but a genuine love and enthusiasm for what you do. It is something that motivates you and gives you joy and fulfillment. What you are deeply passionate about. This is not just a market, but a way to measure and generate value for your customers and yourself. It is something that you can monetize and scale. What drives your economic engine. To find your niche, you need to identify the intersection of these three circles. This is where you can achieve greatness and build a lasting legacy. This is your . hedgehog concept To use this framework, you can start by asking yourself three questions: What can I be the best in the world at? What am I deeply passionate about? What drives my economic engine? The goal is to find one or more areas of overlap that are ambitious enough to challenge you, but realistic enough to achieve. Like the Venn diagram framework, this framework is not flawless. It assumes that you can objectively and accurately assess your own abilities, passions, and value proposition, which is not always easy or possible. You may also face trade-offs and conflicts between the three circles, such as having to choose between what you love and what pays well, or between what you are good at and what the market wants. Don’t treat this framework as a final answer, but as a direction and a vision. You should test and validate your hedgehog concept with your potential customers, and refine it based on feedback and results and you also have to be willing to pivot and adapt your hedgehog concept as you learn and grow. The Business Case for Niche Specialization Why do some companies and individuals succeed while others struggle? Well, like I mentioned, one key factor is specialization. One could argue a thousand different examples of companies that do diversify. But at the beginning, all great companies, hyper focus… to start. Efficiency Specializing in a niche allows you to optimize your processes and resources, and achieve higher levels of efficiency and productivity. For example, Basecamp is a software company that hyper specializes in project management tools. By concentrating on one domain, they can simplify their roles and workflows, and devote their attention to improving their core features, rather than diluting their efforts across multiple domains. Efficiency leads to profitability. Innovation Specializing in a niche also fosters innovation and adaptability. By combining different specialties within your niche, you can create new products and services that meet customer needs. For instance, Saxx Underwear specialized in men’s athletic underwear, and used their expertise to create new products like plush loungewear. Saxx is so deep in the weeds of their consumer and their niche that they notice things no one else will ever notice. They get a “ ” for their target customer so they can innovate faster than anyone else. canary in the coal mine Innovation leads to growth. Career Benefits Specialization also pays off in your career. Sommeliers, for example, advance faster and earn more than general beverage managers, despite having less diverse experience. Depth provides credibility and authority. Specialization leads to recognition. The data is clear - specializing in a niche supercharges businesses and careers, providing a competitive edge and higher earning potential. Specialization always precedes diversification. The Psychology Behind Specialization There are significant psychological advantages to specialization as well. Specialization actually helps us perform at a higher lever, with less friction. The Power of Automaticity When we deeply specialize in a niche, we train our brains to perform at an elite level with minimal effort. Through thousands of hours of deliberate practice, we develop automaticity – the ability to execute complex skills without conscious control or attention. Expert violinists can play intuitively, without thinking about note patterns or finger positions. Likewise, star athletes "trust their training" and execute in flow states. Surgeons enter trance-like focus, losing self-awareness during procedures. In short, niche specialization enables the brain to conserve mental energy and divert it towards higher-level insight and creativity. Deep skills become instinctual. Mental Models for Focus Specialists naturally use mental models like and to guide their thinking. inversion exaptation means asking This flip exposes flaws in strategies. Inversion “What would someone do to cause the opposite of my goal?” For example, if your goal is to improve employee retention, you could use inversion and ask "What would I do if I wanted to increase employee turnover?" This flipping of perspective can reveal gaps or flaws in your current strategies. It exposes assumptions, forces you to consider unintended consequences, and highlights actions that could undermine your goals. Inversion is a powerful framework specialists can use to stress test their plans and decisions. By imagining the opposite intent, they gain insights that strengthen their approach. involves applying niche skills creatively in new contexts, not just where they originated. Knowledge transfers unexpectedly. Exaptation For example, the technology behind air hockey tables was originally developed to help clean sensitive electronic components. But engineers later exapted this air suspension technology to invent a new arcade game. The key is repurposing a specific skill or innovation for a completely unrelated use case. Other examples: Using medical adhesive technology to develop soft mountaineering picks that grip ice. Leveraging expertise in aerodynamics from auto racing to design more efficient wind turbine blades. Applying knowledge of microbiome science from yogurt production to develop new probiotic therapies. Building on experience with virtual reality in gaming to create new VR-based PTSD treatments. The core idea is specialists taking their niche expertise and finding unexpected applications that create new value. It allows them to maximize the utility of their deep knowledge. Internalizing a Specialized Identity Research finds that developing a coherent identity (which comes with specialization) boosts motivation and persistence. Specializing shapes how we see ourselves. While pigeonholing has downsides, identifying with a niche provides direction and meaning. As specialists gain mastery, their skill becomes internalized as part of their self-concept. They think, "I am a marketing specialist" rather than "I do marketing." This identity inspires commitment to the craft. This deep integration of niche mastery into self-identity acts as a flywheel. As specialists gain renown in their craft, it further solidifies their self-image and commitment. Their niche obsession breeds more obsession in a virtuous cycle. Being known as the expert woodworker motivates them to become even more adept at woodworking. From Specialist to Combinatorial Thinker To tie this back into how this newsletter started, there is a time for specializing (depth) and time when it really does benefit you to become a polymath (breadth). Studies show depth and breadth can create powerful synergy: Scientists with artistic hobbies are more likely to become Nobel laureates. Diverse activities boost creativity. Inventors with patents across fields produce the most radical innovations. Varied experience connects unforeseen dots. Entrepreneurs who've worked in different industries have higher success rates. Their wider lens reveals overlooked opportunities. In summary, breadth can enhance depth. But depth comes first. Once you’ve achieved depth, you can pursue breadth, aka combinatorial thinking (if you haven’t read past newsletters), which is the art of blending skills from different domains to create new value, like musical notes mingling in a hit song. Thinkers like Scott Adams, Tim Ferriss and Elon Musk exemplify this art, combining distinct expertise into unique outcomes. Adams leveraged skills in business, humor and cartooning to create Dilbert Ferriss combines writing, entrepreneurship and self-experimentation to engage followers Musk integrates engineering, innovation and vision to launch groundbreaking ventures Transitioning from niche expertise to combinatorial thinking requires meticulous timing: Sample diverse domains to discover native strengths and passions. Before specializing: Complement your core skills to avoid tunnel vision. Stay updated on broad trends. While specializing: Leverage niche expertise into new spaces. Diversify offerings. Create novel hybrids. Post-specialization: Balance breadth and depth as needed. But always build upon a specialized foundation. Remember. Specialization brings mastery. Diversification brings growth. Both are essential. The key is embracing each phase fully in its time. Don't rush from novice to polymath overnight. Start by finding your niche. Tend your craft through deep work. Gain skills unconsciously. You’ll eventually start to master . your thing Then carefully broaden your scope. See how your specialty converges with alternate modes of thought. New synapses will spark at these intersections. As Jeff Bezos says, "You have to stay alert, engaged, and continually learning." Maintain a beginner's mind along with your hard-won expertise. Your journey will have twists and turns. Specialize, diversify, oscillate. Optimize for each terrain. Enjoy the trip. And at the end of the day, keep moving forward. Momentum conquers all obstacles. Progress compounds. If you enjoyed this article, I’d love to hear from you. Email me at scott@scottdclary.com or at me and I’ll do my best to get back to everyone! tweet @ScottDClary Also published . here

The Framework Successful People Use to Become Indispensable

ফ্রেমওয়ার্ক সফল লোকেরা অপরিহার্য হয়ে উঠতে ব্যবহার করে

Der Rahmen, den erfolgreiche Menschen nutzen, um unverzichtbar zu werden

El marco que utilizan las personas exitosas para volverse indispensables

Le cadre que les personnes qui réussissent utilisent pour devenir indispensables

सफल लोग अपरिहार्य बनने के लिए जिस रूपरेखा का उपयोग करते हैं

成功者が欠かせない存在になるために使用するフレームワーク

성공한 사람들이 없어서는 안 될 존재가 되기 위해 사용하는 프레임워크

A estrutura que pessoas de sucesso usam para se tornarem indispensáveis

Схема, которую используют успешные люди, чтобы стать незаменимыми

Başarılı İnsanların Vazgeçilmez Olmak İçin Kullandığı Çerçeve

Khuôn khổ mà những người thành công sử dụng để trở thành thứ không thể thiếu

成功人士不可或缺的框架

Introduction In your engineering career, once you get to deal with architectural topics, you may learn of many patterns that are usually "problematic" or otherwise uncomfortable to deal with, yet you might have to work with them regardless. It may be a requirement from a customer or management, organizational practices, or just a part of a system or a product that isn't properly thought out or otherwise mismanaged. Today, I would like to talk about a pattern (or an "anti-pattern"?) that I don't hear people talk much about - an integration point. web software What is an integration point? Let's start with some simple mind experiments and imagine the following situations: You are tasked with developing an authentication framework for the customer's business. To pass the authentication process, the user's information has to be retrieved and validated. The information is stored on a separate customer server and has to be behind their corporate API. The information is served in some kind of XML format. You are tasked with building processing of user's activity data. You might have to build a chart on top of it or extract some sort of metric from it. The said data is owned by a separate department and is provided via an event queue. You might be starting to notice a common pattern here. There is an upstream service that is sending data to you. Alternatively, you might be receiving data from the said upstream service. This service you don't own is sending you data you don't control, all done by a team you're not a part of. What can go wrong? Well, first of all, since we're not in control of our data format anymore, we can assume that it may change in ways we do not expect. Adding or removing some fields might be handled with some data parsers, while switching data types or response codes completely might not be. Second, consider that the lifecycle of the app in question might not be in your control. Downtime, throttling, and errors of all kinds might happen when you least expect them. Now, an important underlying issue here is how your organization is associated with the owners of the service in question. Are their KPIs and goals aligned with yours, and is it in their interest to maintain and ensure the stability of your work? Are they open and available to listen to your requirements, when, and in which format? Consider how they might not be available at critical moments. What can be done about it? Document the data format. To be able to work with data properly, the receiving team must know what to expect. The data-owning team should usually also play by those expectations. To achieve that, all response formats, all status codes, all endpoints, etc, should all be in a fixed format. More importantly, changes to the said data formats should be communicated in advance as well thoroughly documented. The perfect scenario is when data format changes are handled in reverse-compatible ways. Once a bidirectional framework like that is established, given that a change in data format happens, it would be easier to find the point of failure and communicate it to your partners. Prepare for network errors. The bidirectional relationship between the sending and the receiving services should be implemented in a way that would make it resilient to possible downtimes. Longer response delays can be put in place to account for throttling, although usually increasing delays is not a long-term solution. In case the counterpart service becomes unavailable, there are a couple of things that can be tried as well. Depending on the domain circumstances, there's a choice between serving cached responses, serving fallback data, or even issuing clients with a notice that the underlying service is temporarily unavailable. If data from the underlying service is not critical to serving a response, it may be ignored altogether sometimes. Be careful around caching. With all of the above in mind, you can not always make a request to the service serving the data for you when you need it. You might be tempted to save it locally or cache it, which would be the right thing to do most of the time. You should always think about how to react to changes in the underlying data. Can the other service send you events once data expires, or do you need to handle that yourself? When should you expire your cache in such a case? The data model can mismatch Now, imagine the following. So, our service has received the data from upstream and saved it successfully. And now, once we want our app to do something about it, the application fails. Or we serve it to the client, and the client is unhappy. As an example, the data points that we've received are valid, yet they simply do not form a valid chart. Web applications are sometimes more than just data. Sometimes, they are also a data model built on top of the said data. Meaning we take the data and we do something about it. The constraints that you might have expected the data to abide by might not have been originally intended for it. The solution to such a problem is not always clear. But you can ask yourself the following questions: Should our expectations of the data be changed? Can the data be corrected or fixed? Can we switch to a different data source altogether? Assume responsibilities So, we integrated the two systems together, and it came to a point when something went wrong. This means that someone would now have to fix it. In such cases, there must be a clear understanding of who's responsible for which part of the integration. The data will usually be owned by the other team, of course, but it is not always so clear when it comes to the format of exchange. Of course, this problem can be discussed once it occurs. Setup monitoring In case an accident does happen, timely alerts will help both your team and the counterpart team react to the incident in a timely manner. Let's not stop on this in detail since there are most likely plenty of articles written on the subject matter. Conclusions As you can see, something that seems like a trivial problem at first can have a lot of nuance to it. Let it be known that the internet of today is built on top of tiny little nuances like that, and it has worked quite well for us up until now. With some thought put into it, such problems can be solved to a good extent.

Software Architects' headache - the Integration Point

Today, I want to invite you to join me every week, right here on HackerNoon, for This is a simple article series, focused on great tactics you can use in your team to become as productive as possible. management tips. In this piece, we're going to focus on communication specifically: dealing with conflict and how to motivate others. So, let’s go! Without “water” and boring recommendations ;) #1 Reading Body Language When you're trying to understand someone, their words are just half the story. You also need to pay attention to their body language. You have to listen to the entire person: give or take, about half of what a person is really saying comes not through the words they're using but through their body. What you're looking for are behavioral deviations: The 1st type is a deviation from a person's normal way of communicating, referred to as their baseline If someone's behavior suddenly changes, it could be a sign that something is wrong. For ex, if someone who usually stands close to you and speaks slowly is now standing further away and speaking rapidly, that could be a sign of trouble. It's important to be aware of these changes in behavior, but it's also important not to assume that you know what's wrong. Instead, you can ask questions to try to understand what's going on, but be respectful of the other person's privacy, and don't be pushy. The 2nd type is a deviation from contextual norms In social situations, there are certain behaviors that are considered normal and acceptable. For ex, it is normal to briefly look another person in the eye and smile or say hello. However, if someone stares at you for a long time, it can be considered rude or uncomfortable. So, don't make assumptions here; the person might be looking at you because they just like the T-shirt you're wearing :) The best way to learn more about why someone is behaving in a certain way is to observe them carefully and ask questions if you feel comfortable doing so. Some things to look for include eye aversions, fidgeting, posture, and ofc, my favorite one - distancing behavior. If someone is standing further away from you than normal or is angling their feet away from you, it could be a sign that they are not interested in the conversation or do not like you. Begin to listen to the whole person, establish good baselines, and start looking for significant deviations. When you do, you'll realize that you've been missing a big part of the conversation! #2 5 Phrases to Avoid Sometimes, success at work is all about knowing what to say. Other times, it's about knowing what not to say. That's not my job We've all heard this one. Here's the issue. Even when it's technically true, it never inspires, and it's never helpful. When you say "That's not my job," you're essentially saying that you're only there to look out for yourself, and that you don't care about the needs of the team. If you don't have time to help someone, that's okay. Just tell them you'll help them later. But don't dismiss them with a curt "That's not my job." People often say "We've tried that before" when discussing a problem at work and someone suggests a possible solution. This is a way to avoid the extra work that comes with change. Even if something has been tried before, it doesn't mean that it can't be done in a new way. And even if you've struggled with this problem in the past, don't give up before you've even tried the new solution. We've tried that before There's no budget for that Some people may resist new ideas or solutions because they think they will cost too much money. However, smart leaders know that budgets are just guidelines, and they are willing to invest in great solutions, even if they have to adjust the budget to do so. A good leader will be able to find ways to make the budget work, even if it means moving money around from other areas. They will also be able to explain the value of the new solution to the team and stakeholders so that everyone is on board. I told you so It never helps, only inflames the person. So you're better off saying nothing at all. 5. That doesn't follow procedure Some people may also use policies, rules, or traditions as an excuse to avoid change. However, it's important to remember that most rules are not absolute, and great conversation is the key to team productivity. If you have a new solution that is likely to lead to progress, don't be afraid to speak up. Here’s the case from my personal experience: Once ,we were working on an NFT collection, and our partner was messing up and couldn't deliver the visuals in time. And then, one of the engineers came to me with an idea to not display the NFTs’ visuals and reveal them later. At that time, it was a new mechanic in the industry, but we decided to take a risk and it worked out. A week later, that guy became a lead! Still here? Let’s continue! #3 Avoid These 7 Toxic Words Some words, while potentially honest or well-intentioned, can hurt to the point of being toxic. By toxic, I mean they can inflame emotions, damage your reputation, and disrupt communication at work. Even when offering needed criticism, you can do so in a positive fashion. Harsh and definitive statements like, "We can't do that," "He can't authorize that," or "Our customers can't understand this solution" are rarely helpful. Can't This is an easy word to use, but often negative and heavy. Instead, try to offer a more informative explanation of the decision that was made. No Wrong If you want to make someone angry or question their intelligence, tell them they're wrong. A more nuanced statement is usually more beneficial. Blaming people, even when they deserve it, is rarely productive. If you need to address a mistake, it's important to do so in a way that is focused on the team and framed positively. Fault Instead of saying, "You messed up," you could say, "We made a mistake, but here's what we can do to fix it." Never It can sound like you're closing the door on all possibilities, which can reduce people's hope and motivation. Instead of saying, "never," try saying things like, "it's possible," "we'll see," or "let's explore our options." This shows that you're open to new ideas and possibilities, and that you're willing to work towards a better future. Stupid It's a common word, but mostly, seen as just insulting. People very often take it personally even if you’re talking about a product of smth. It’s much better to choose a non-inflammatory language. Impossible It's also important to remember that we can't predict the future, so saying something is "impossible" is not always accurate. Instead of saying "impossible," it's more helpful to use more nuanced language, such as "I'm not sure we have the time for that" or "I'm concerned this might be too difficult right now." #4 Selling Your Ideas Have you ever heard someone say that they could never be in sales? They act like sales are somehow dishonest. And equates them with the stereotype of a used car salesman. That's unfortunate because It's a form of persuasion successful people should use all the time. selling is a fundamental skill in life. Selling your ideas is simply the process of persuading people to agree with you and support your plans. It's a skill that you can use even if you're not in a traditional sales role. Consider these 4 very useful tactics: Assess your credibility Depending on the quality of the idea, you might want to share it with others; no matter what your level of credibility. Having said that, the goal is to be as credible as possible. That means, first, having a trouble-free, high-quality track record at your job. Gain a reputation as a person who is helpful and supportive when others speak up with their ideas That’s to say, do yourself a favor, and build lateral support before trying to build vertical support. What I mean is that you're well-served to start with your peers, and others on your level or below you. This way, you can gauge how well the idea might be received, above you. And you're likely to receive good feedback that will help you refine the idea, and make it better. When promoting ideas, do it in a way that helps others Your idea is important to you, but remember that everyone has their own goals and priorities. This is especially true when you're sharing your ideas with people above you in the company. Before you pitch your idea, take some time to think about how it aligns with their priorities. How can your idea help them to achieve their goals; what are they? Be prepared to articulate this clearly and concisely. Be sure to spend time practicing your pitch If the idea is a big departure from the past or you're pitching to the executive level, you'd better be ready. You have to know the bottom line costs and projected benefits that are likely. You also have to be ready for predictable questions, which is why a great practice talk with peers is so useful before pitching to executives. Selling sometimes gets a bad rap, but it shouldn't. Selling yourself and selling your ideas is a normal, required part of professional life. And if you remember the tips we just covered, people just might be buying what you're selling. To sum up, managers play a vital role in the success of any organization. They are responsible for leading and motivating teams, setting goals, ensuring that projects are completed on time and within budget, and many more things. Developing as a successful manager takes time and effort, and I hope that you find all the tips described above helpful!

Management: 4 Top Skills and Tips for Better Communication & Influence

ব্যবস্থাপনা: ভালো যোগাযোগ ও প্রভাবের জন্য 4টি শীর্ষ দক্ষতা এবং টিপস

Management: 4 Top-Fähigkeiten und Tipps für bessere Kommunikation und Einfluss

Gestión: 4 habilidades y consejos principales para una mejor comunicación e influencia

Management : 4 principales compétences et conseils pour une meilleure communication et une meilleure influence

प्रबंधन: बेहतर संचार और प्रभाव के लिए 4 शीर्ष कौशल और युक्तियाँ

マネジメント: コミュニケーションと影響力を向上させるための 4 つの主要なスキルとヒント

관리: 더 나은 의사소통과 영향력을 위한 4가지 주요 기술과 팁

Gestão: 4 principais habilidades e dicas para melhor comunicação e influência

Менеджмент: 4 главных навыка и советы для лучшего общения и влияния

Yönetim: Daha İyi İletişim ve Etki İçin En İyi 4 Beceri ve İpucu

Quản lý: 4 kỹ năng và mẹo hàng đầu để giao tiếp và tạo ảnh hưởng tốt hơn

管理：改善沟通和影响力的 4 项顶级技能和技巧

384 Stories To Learn About Technology Trends

About a year ago, I was working on a project at my previous job. The goal was to set up a reliable message queue. Most people might go straight to RabbitMQ, and I almost did too. But I decided to look for something different. That's when I came across NATS JetStream. After working with it for the past year, I can say it's truly impressive. It's fast, it can handle a lot of data, and it fits well with cloud systems. Today, I'll walk you through how to use NATS JetStream with a Golang app. By the time you finish reading this article, you'll be able to implement a robust and fast message queue. Message queues For those who are not familiar, what are message queues? In the real world, message queues help systems talk to each other without getting overwhelmed. For example, when you order something online, your order might go into a message queue before it's processed. This way, even if many people order at the same time, the system can handle it smoothly. Message queues are key for making sure data gets where it needs to go, especially when things get busy. Project requirements For my project, I had a clear list of needs when it came to selecting a message queue: : It was crucial that our messages stayed safe. We couldn't afford to lose them due to network glitches or if a server needed to restart. In simple terms, once a message is in the queue, it should stay there until it's processed. Durable Queues : Sometimes, there can be small issues or temporary errors when a system tries to read a message. I needed a way to send these messages back into the queue so they could be tried again later. This ensures that no message gets left behind because of short-term problems. Retrying Messages : As our system might get more users and data, I wanted our message queue to grow easily with us. Horizontal Scaling With these requirements in mind, I began my search for the perfect message queue solution. Possible solutions When searching for the right message queue, I explored several options. Here's a brief overview: : I didn't dive too deep into these. They're older and seem to lack current support. Gearman, Beanstalkd, and similar : It's favored by many small businesses. However, I found it a bit slow. Setting the HA (High-available) cluster requires real expertise. Plus, it lacks the ability to “requeue” a message with delay. RabbitMQ : It's excellent for PubSub and storing KV data. But as a queue system? Not the best. If Redis is set to store all messages, it slows down drastically. Redis : It's a strong choice for event streaming. But it’s not the best choice for message queues. For instance, how can I requeue a message? Apache Kafka : It looked promising and fits the needs of large organizations. It met most of my criteria. Yet, horizontal scaling isn't straightforward. It demands a large infrastructure and a skilled team, which felt excessive for my project's scale. Apache Pulsar Finally, I stumbled upon NATS JetStream. It seemed to align perfectly with my requirements. How NATS JetStream fits to requirements To understand how NATS JetStream works, I made some simple code and did tests. Here's what I learned: : : Setting Things Up I made two simple Golang CLI tools One for sending messages (NATS publisher) ...
publishedTotal := 0
for i := 0; i < 30000; i++ {
	subject := "test_subject_name"
	_, err = jetStream.PublishAsync(subject, []byte(strconv.Itoa(i)))
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("publish: %w", err)
	}

	publishedTotal++
}
fmt.Printf("published %d messages\n", publishedTotal)
... One for fetching messages (NATS consumer) ...
totalReceived := int32(0)
for {
	func() {
		ctx, cancel := context.WithTimeout(context.Background(), 3*time.Second)
		defer cancel()

		msgs, fetchErr := jetStreamSubscriber.Fetch(1, nats.Context(ctx))
		if fetchErr != nil {
			if errors.Is(fetchErr, context.DeadlineExceeded) {
				return
			}

			log.Printf("sub fetch err: %s\n", fetchErr)
			return
		}

		for _, msg := range msgs {
			ackErr := msg.Ack()
			if ackErr != nil {
				log.Printf("sub ack err: %s\n", ackErr)
			}
			totalReceived++
			log.Printf("total received: %d\n", totalReceived)
		}
	}()
}
... Durable queues With these tools ready, I checked a few things: : Sending Many Messages : What if I send thousands of messages all at once? Question : The consumers took all the messages in. Nothing was lost. Answer : Sending Without Consumer : What if I send messages but there's no one to consume them? Question : When a consumer is ready, it receives all the messages. Answer : NATS Server Issues : How do consumers act if the NATS server stops? Do they try to connect again when NATS is back? Question : Yes, consumers connect back to NATS by themselves when it's working again. Answer : Unread Messages and NATS Problems : What about messages sent to NATS but not consumed, and then NATS server turns off? Question : If NATS starts working again, all the waiting messages are consumed. This is because NATS keeps messages safe on the computer's storage. Answer NATS showed excellence aligning our first requirement. Let’s check out how it can send messages back to a queue. Requeue In NATS JetStream, requeuing a message that has encountered a problem is straightforward. You can achieve this by calling the function available in the message API. Invoking ensures that the message is sent back to the queue, effectively providing a second chance for it to be processed at a later time. Nak() Nak() Another feature that adds to the utility of NATS JetStream is the ability to requeue messages with a custom delay. This functionality comes in handy when dealing with tasks that are deferred and need to be carried out after a certain period has elapsed. For example, if you have a notification system that must send alerts at specific intervals, you can use this feature to schedule these messages accurately. Two requirements are nailed. There is one more important point about scalability. Horizontal Scaling When it comes to horizontal scaling, NATS JetStream makes the process relatively simple. Setting up a cluster involves running multiple NATS servers with JetStream enabled. All that's required is to specify the same and define the routing paths between each node in the configuration. cluster_name I added an example of docker-compose.yml file to run a local NATS cluster: version: "3.5"
services:
  nats1:
    container_name: nats1
    image: nats
    entrypoint: /nats-server
    command: --server_name N1 --cluster_name JSC --js --sd /data --cluster nats://0.0.0.0:4245 --routes nats://nats2:4245,nats://nats3:4245 -p 4222
    networks:
      - nats
    ports:
      - 4222:4222

  nats2:
    container_name: nats2
    image: nats
    entrypoint: /nats-server
    command: --server_name N2 --cluster_name JSC --js --sd /data --cluster nats://0.0.0.0:4245 --routes nats://nats1:4245,nats://nats3:4245 -p 4222
    networks:
      - nats
    ports:
      - 4223:4222

  nats3:
    container_name: nats3
    image: nats
    entrypoint: /nats-server
    command: --server_name N3 --cluster_name JSC --js --sd /data --cluster nats://0.0.0.0:4245 --routes nats://nats1:4245,nats://nats2:4245 -p 4222
    networks:
      - nats
    ports:
      - 4224:4222

networks:
  nats:
    name: nats What adds to the utility is that you can connect to any node within the cluster, whether from a publisher or a consumer application, and it just works seamlessly. This implies that the system is designed to handle varying load distributions, routing the messages effectively irrespective of which node you are connected to. It was clear to me that NATS JetStream aligned with all my requirements perfectly. Pros and nuances I spent considerable time with NATS JetStream and can outline its strengths and limitations based on my experience: Pros : NATS JetStream is more than just a message queue system. It offers a variety of features that I'll elaborate in the next articles. Broad Functionality : Being written in Go, the source code is accessible and provides insight into undocumented functionalities. This is particularly useful for Go developers who want to delve deeper into the system. Go-Based : The performance metrics for NATS JetStream are impressive, making it a reliable choice for high-throughput scenarios. Strong Benchmarks Nuances : One thing to be aware of is that NATS ensures 'at-least-once' message delivery. As a result, your consumer logic must be idempotent to handle such cases. 'At-Least-Once' Delivery : While the documentation is generally good, it doesn't cover all configuration options. Sometimes, you'll need to go through the SDK code to understand certain functionalities fully. Incomplete Documentation : This could be seen as both a pro and a nuance. The SDK handles reconnections automatically, which means you don't have to code this logic yourself. Built-In Reconnection Logic Performance The performance benchmark was conducted by , where NATS JetStream was compared with other popular message queues like Apache Pulsar and RabbitMQ. It's important to approach these results with a degree of skepticism, as the company is known for its affinity towards Apache Pulsar. They themselves noted that they faced difficulties in configuring NATS JetStream for the benchmark, which could potentially skew the results in favor of their preferred system. Steamnative NATS JetStream – During our tests, we attempted to follow the recommended practices for deliverGroups and deliverSubjects in NATS, but encountered difficulties. Our NATS subscriptions failed to act in a shared mode and instead exhibited a fan-out behavior, resulting in a significant read amplification of 16 times. This likely significantly impacted the overall publisher performance. Conclusion After working with NATS JetStream for an extended period, several aspects of the system became apparent: Easy configuration. High performance. Broad functionality. Beyond its capabilities as a message queue, NATS JetStream also functions as a message broker for event-streaming, PubSub, and synchronous Request-Reply message bus. While this article provides an initial overview, I plan to discuss the diverse features of NATS JetStream in more detail in future articles. This will include a closer look at its specific functionalities and how they can be applied in different scenarios. References NATS JetStream Publisher/Subscriber demo code Comparison of NATS, NATS Streaming and NATS JetStream Implementing NATS JetStream as Queues in Golang Steamnative performance benchmark Steamnative performance benchmark (detailed)

NATS JetStream — a New Way to Create Resilient Message Queue

Here's a walk down memory lane of the technology platforms I used to develop educational games and simulations since I started my ed-tech company in 1994. Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook I started with Multimedia Toolbook by Asymetrix. It was a really good and well-refined program, The company was founded by Paul Allen, co-founder of . But it was for Windows only and Apple Macs were becoming too popular in schools to ignore so most developers jumped to Macromedia Director. Microsoft Macromedia Director Director by Macromedia was also a great program, but not as well refined as Toolbook. I pushed the envelope with Director creating my first super-realistic business simulation. It won an award at a Macromedia developer conference. I created all sorts of apps with it, including one that communicated with satellite data systems to identify the location of locomotives. Adobe Director Director was eventually acquired by . My team and I continued to use Director for many years but, to the disappointment of many, Adobe did not continue to develop the program well and their customer support was terrible. I presume they kept it alive as a cash cow to fund other projects, but I'm just speculating. All I know is that the change of ownership was not good. Adobe Adobe Flash Adobe also acquired Flash from another company. Adobe did invest in developing Flash further and it became a capable platform used widely around the world. We developed several educational games and simulations with Flash. And lots of other people developed annoying websites that forced you to sit and watch Flash animations before entering the site :-) Steve Jobs of Apple single-handedly killed Flash by banning it from Apple devices. This forced developers like us to incur very high costs to rebuild our products using other platforms. On a positive note, it did clean up those Flash websites :-) Unity Unity by Unity Technologies is a widely-used game development platform. It is much more complex than the platforms noted above. It is also more capable and modern (in most ways but not all). But there was a period of time when Unity apps would not run at all online — they had to be installed on your computer. This was a serious limitation as much of the world was moving to software as a service. But web technologies were not mature enough to support Unity. We did create a few apps with Unity and those apps are still good today. Unity continues to be a popular platform that most game developers should consider. HTML 5 is the internet standard that made it possible to create more feature-rich apps that play online. It took many years for the Internet (world wide web) to mature enough for this standard to be possible. HTML 5 Once all the major Internet browsers supported it, developers like us were able to build educational games and simulations without being bound to a specific software platform owned and controlled by a third party. And our users did not have to install any software as everything became playable online (software as a service). What's Next? Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed reality (MR), Web 3 — here is a I created some time ago. helpful chart of these technologies Also published here.

30 Years of Tech Tools in EdTech Development

Diana Is Invited to Tea with Tragic Results

Today's guest is , an experienced software tester who can shed some light on this part of the industry. Alexander van der Berg What is a good tester? A good tester knows where the bugs hide and reliably finds them even under time pressure. The tester does not ask what needs to be tested but knows it based on qualifications, experience, and intuition. A good tester also knows the priority of each found issue so that not every issue must be discussed with the product manager. A good tester develops tests that find and prevent bugs from going to production. This means that if the automated tests never find bugs before they appear in production, then maybe the tests are not well written, are superfluous, and can be deleted. And more useful tests should be automated instead. Regarding : test automation A good tester also develops automated tests that have a low maintenance effort. This means that the tests have a good architecture and require the tester to have programming skills. Automated tests must also be reliable and, under the same conditions, always show the same result. The automated tests must not be flaky because this causes a loss of trust in the test results. What were you looking for in people when you were interviewing candidates for your junior colleagues? I looked for various things: Experience with the tools and in the technical [focus] area we used in the company. When I, for example, needed someone for mobile app test automation, the job applicants who only automated Windows Desktop software were not the best fit because they had to learn mobile app test automation and the used tools first. Talent to find bugs. I checked this by showing some screenshots from the company's website or app and asking the job applicant how these screens should be tested. Programming skills for test automation. I always tested Git and programming knowledge with a short exercise. This filtered out a lot of job applicants because some people write everything on their CV they ever had installed on their computer but do not have working knowledge in any of it. My recommendation for job applicants: focus your CV and your job applications on the area you know well and want to work on. If you would like to change the testing area, then write a good motivation for it. And keep your CV short: no one takes the time to read a ten-page CV when they receive dozens of applications each day. How is the market for testers right now? As usual, I would say testers are looked for a lot. Maybe this will change with AI doing testing, but someone with testing experience will have to tell the AI tool what to do. So the testing job tasks will change, but the job will still be needed. Why do you think it is so difficult to find good testers? Only two percent of the job applicants I received in the past few years had the skills and knowledge necessary for the company I worked for. Some people only work in testing because they are not good enough to work as a developer. They are, therefore, not able to program reliable and low-maintenance test automation; this means they are not a good fit for any company that relies on automated tests. Other people only work in testing for the money they can earn in IT, which means that they are neither very motivated nor skilled at it, and are not really motivated to get better. Not many people like testing AND are good at it. Most people want to create new things. What was your day like as a tester? This depends on the company. Some companies structure test and test automation in Scrum sprints, the same way as for the developers. In others, I did not know what I would be doing the next day because many unexpected issues and tasks came up. For some companies, I did manual testing only; for others, the goal was to automate as many tests as possible—or to support the developers with the configuration of the continuous integration and deployment system. I also worked in parallel to testing as third-level support and analyzed issues reported by the customers because testers usually know all the parts and subsystems of a product very well. From what I’ve heard, companies often look for test automation, but in the end require manual testing. What is your experience with that? It is and will always be a mixture between manual testing and test automation: it is often not possible to automate every test. The goal should be to automate as many tests as possible to reduce the manual testing effort. Test automation should not be postponed because when too much manual testing must always be done, then the tests will never be automated. Besides this, exploratory testing will always be manual and will always be necessary. One possible way to reduce the effort for manual testing is to automate the test case steps that can be automated, execute these automated test steps locally, and then manually continue the test from the last automatically executed step. This saves time for the manual execution of the steps that run automated. How does collaboration between testing and programming usually work? This depends on the company. In Scrum teams, a tester is included in a developer team. In others, there is one tester responsible for various teams, or the development work is done by an external company and only the final or milestone result is delivered for testing. How can one know if this job is a good match for them? The most important thing is that you like your job. Only then are you motivated to do high-quality work and to get better at it. Maybe it is possible to get to know the department, colleagues, and tasks during a trial day. If you’re unsure, maybe better not to start; or try it out and change jobs if it is not a good match. Changing jobs is not a big issue, and no job is forever anyway. For whom would you recommend testing as a job? People who have a talent for finding bugs: if you cannot enjoy a play because the stage is dusty and some lights on the ceiling are broken, then you are a good tester because you are one of the few people who immediately notice it. Learn more If you are interested in learning more about testing, or other programming subjects, you can sign up for an occasional email from me when I publish new content. here Meanwhile, here you have some related articles: What is manual testing? Software testing and how you can use it as a tech entry job How to prioritize test cases in end-to-end testing Also published here. The lead image for this article was generated by HackerNoon's AI Image Generator via the prompt "testing".

How to Spot a Good Tester: Interview With Alexander Van Der Berg

Title heavily inspired by great talk; Photo by from Disclaimer: this Thomas Bormans Unsplash As the name implies, today we want to consider almost trivially simple models. Although the current trend points towards complex models, even for time-series models, I am still a big believer in simplicity. In particular, when your dataset is small, the subsequent ideas might be useful. To be fair, this article will probably be most valuable for people who are just starting out with time-series analysis. Anyone else should check the table of contents first and decide for themselves if they want to continue. Personally, I am still quite intrigued by how far you can push even the most simplistic time-series models. The upcoming paragraphs show some ideas and thoughts that I have been gathering on the topic over time. Models with pure i.i.d. noise We start with the simplest (probabilistic) way to model a (univariate) time-series. Namely, we want to look at plain ndependently, dentically, istributed randomness: i i d This implies that all our observations follow the same distribution at any point in time ( distributed). Even more importantly, we presume no interrelation between observations at all ( distributed). Obviously, this precludes any autoregressive terms as well. identically independently Probably your first question is if such models aren't too simplistic to be useful for real-world problems. Certainly, most time-series are unlikely to have no statistical relationship with their own past. While those concerns are true by all means, we can nevertheless deduce the following: Any time-series model that is more complex than a pure-noise model should also produce better forecasts than a pure-noise model. In short, we can at least use random noise as a benchmark model. There is arguably no simpler approach to create baseline benchmarks than this one. Even smoothing techniques will likely require more parameters to be fitted. Besides this rather obvious use-case, there is another potential application for i.i.d. noise. Due to their simplicity, noise models cand be useful for very small datasets. Consider this: If big, complex models require large datasets to prevent overfitting, then simple models require only a handful of data. Of course, it is debatable what dataset size can be seen as 'small'. Integrated i.i.d. noise Now, things are becoming more interesting. While raw i.i.d. noise cannot account for auto-correlation between observations, integrated noise can. Before we do a demonstration, let us introduce the : differencing operator If you haven't heard about differencing for time-series problems yet - great! If you have, then you can hopefully still learn something new. Definition of an integrated time-series With the difference operator in our toolbox, we can now define an : integrated time-series There are several ideas in this definition that we should clarify further: First, you probably noticed the concept of exponentiating the difference operator. You can simply think of this as performing the differentiation several times. For the squared difference operator, this would look as follows: As we will see, multiple difference operators allow us to handle different time-series patterns at once. Third, it is common convention to simply write We will happily adopt this convention here. Also, we call such time-series without referencing its order or seasonality. simply integrated Obviously, we also need to re-transform a difference representation back to its original domain. In our notation, this means we invert the difference transformation, i.e. must hold for arbitrary difference transformations. If we expand this formula, we get These simplifications follow from the fact the difference operator is a linear operator (we won't cover the details here). Technically, the last equation merely says that the next observation is a sum of this observation plus a delta. In a forecasting problem, we will typically have a prediction for the change Let's denote this prediction as to stress that it is not the actual change, but a predicted one. Thus, the forecast for the integrated time-series is Afterwards, we apply this logic recursively as far into the future as our forecast should go: Integrated noise for seemingly complex patterns By now, you can probably imagine what is meant by an integrated noise model. In fact, we can come up with countless variants of an integrated noise model by just chaining some difference operators with random noise. Linear trends from integrated time-series One possibility would be a simply integrated time-series, i.e. It is an interesting exercise to simulate data from such a model using a plain standard normal distribution. As it turns out, samples from this time-series appear to exhibit linear trends with potential change points. However, it is clear that these trends and change points occur completely at random. This implies that simply fitting piece-wise linear functions to forecast such trends can be a dangerous approach. After all, if the changes are occurring at random, then all linear trend lines are mere artifacts of the random data-generating process. As an important disclaimer, though, ' ' means unpredictable from the time-series itself. An external feature might still be able to accurately forecast potential change points. Here, however, we presume that the time-series is our solely available source of information. unpredictable Below, you can see an example of the described phenomenon. While there appears to be a trend change at around t=50, this change is purely random. The upward trend after t=50 also stalls at around t=60. Imagine how your model would have performed if you extrapolated the upward trend after t=60. https://gist.github.com/SaremS/748ed817b1ac395fd8f23f8243213e3f?embedable=true#file-integrated_ts-py Of course, the saying goes 'never say never', even in those settings. However, you should really know what you are doing if you apply such models. Seasonal patterns Similarly to how a simple integration produceds trends, we can also create seasonal patterns: Formally, we now need the s-th difference of our seasonal  process to be a stationary process, e.g. The inverse operation - transforming the i.i.d. process back to the seasonally integrated - works similarly to the one before: You can think of the inverse operation of seasonal differencing as a operation over periods. Since I am not aware of a respective, native Python function, I decided to do to get the desired outcome. Below is an example with : cumsum s reshape->cumsum->reshape s=4 https://gist.github.com/SaremS/fb28ab0782c1e3aa072340e63a54523c?embedable=true#file-seasonal_integration-py As you can see, the generated time-series looks reasonably realistic. We could easily sell this as quarterly sales numbers of some product to an unsuspecting Data Scientist. We could even combine both types of integration to generate a seasonal time-series with trending behavior: https://gist.github.com/SaremS/2f9293fb023ab49e8c164628ca404a97?embedable=true#file-seasonal_and_trend-py At this point, you will probably realize that the title of this article was a little click-baity. Integrated time-series are, in fact, purely linear models. However, I believe that most people wouldn't consider a model with, more-or-less, zero parameters a typical linear model. Memory effects through integration Another interesting property of integrated time-series is the ability to model memory effects. This effect can be seen particularly well when there are larger shocks or outliers in our data. Consider the below example, which shows seasonal integration of order `s=12` over i.i.d. draws from a standard : Cauchy distribution https://gist.github.com/SaremS/32b7825a4cb730f5f9812a0e77f751d9?embedable=true#file-cauchy_memory-py The first large shock in the i.i.d. Cauchy series at around t=20 is sustained over the whole integrated series on the right. Over time, more shocks occur, which are also sustained. This memory property can be very useful in practice. For example, the economic shocks from the pandemic have caused persistent changes in many time-series. Benchmarking against NBEATS and NHITS Let us now use the dataset from Nixtla's for a quick evaluation of the above ideas. If you are regularly reading my articles, you might remember the general procedure from . AirPassengers neuralforecast this one First, we split the data into a train and test period, with the latter consisting of 36 months of data: https://gist.github.com/SaremS/510303feb5c1eef012ba7075930f4fba?embedable=true#file-airpass_data-py In order to obtain a stationary, i.i.d. series we perform the following transformation: First, the square-root stabilizes the increasing variance. The two differencing operators then remove seasonality and trend. For the respective re-transformation, check the code further down below. https://gist.github.com/SaremS/1e82a22be22984efe248a4cb837e233a?embedable=true#file-stationary_ts-py We can also check a histogram and density plot of the stabilized time-series: https://gist.github.com/SaremS/2c214bba7c55cf60b5e2d7610698c6bc?embedable=true#file-density_and_histogram-py Our stationary series looks also somewhat normally distributed, which is always a nice property. Now, let us create the forecast for the test period. Presuming that we don't know the exact distribution of our i.i.d. series, we simply draw from the empirical distribution via the training data. Hence, we simulate future values by reintegrating random samples from the empirical data: https://gist.github.com/SaremS/283e26aab0bc9d688b57793a1e33be98?embedable=true#file-simple_forecast-py This looks very good - the mean forecast is very close to the test data. In addition, our simulation allows us to empirically sample the whole forecast distribution. Therefore, we can also easily add confidence intervals. Finally, let us see how our approach compares against rather complex time-series models. To do so, I went with Nixtla's implementation of and : NBEATS NHITS https://gist.github.com/SaremS/3d801020cd1083224acc97748a6c289d?embedable=true#file-neuralforecast_benchmark-py Below are the respective for the test set: RMSEs 25.5021 Simple Model: 42.6277 NBEATS: 62.6822 NHITS: As we can see, our almost trivial model has beaten two sophisticated time-series models by a fair margin. Of course, we need to emphasize that this doesn't allow to draw any general conclusions. Rather, I'd expect the neural models to outperform our simple approach for larger datasets. Nevertheless, as a benchmark, those trivial models are always a worthwhile consideration. Takeaways - What do we make of this? As stated multiple times throughout this article: A seemingly complex time-series could still follow a fairly simple data-generating process. In the end, you might spend hours trying to fit an overly complex model even though the underlying problem is almost trivial. At some point, somebody could come along, fit a simple ARIMA(1,0,0), and still outperform your sophisticated neural model. To avoid the above worst-case scenario, consider the following idea: When starting out with a new time-series problem, always start with the simplest possible model and use it as a benchmark for all other models. Although this is common knowledge in the Data Science community, I feel like it deserves particular emphasis in this context. Especially due to nowadays' (to some extent justified) hype around Deep Learning, it can be tempting to directly start with something fancy. For many problems, this might just be the right way to go. Nobody today would consider a Hidden Markov Model for NLP today when LLM embeddings are available almost for free now. Once your time-series becomes large, however, modern Machine Learning will likely be better. In particular, are very popular for such large-scale problems. Gradient Boosted Trees A more controversial approach would be, you guessed it, Deep Learning for time-series. While some people believe that these models don't work as well here, their popularity at probably speaks for itself. tech firms like Amazon References Hamilton, James Douglas. . Princeton university press, 2020. [1] Time series analysis Hyndman, Rob J., & Athanasopoulos, George. . OTexts, 2018. [2] Forecasting: principles and practice

A Data Scientist's Guide to Simplistic Time-Series Models

Hi! Recently, I have told you about the process of creating Victa and why I came up with the idea of ​​developing a running app with deep gamification. Today I would like to share our experience of launching on and tell you how we got “Product of the day”. Product Hunt https://hackernoon.com/how-i-launched-victa-a-running-app-for-gamers-and-got-a-top-ranking-in-the-app-store?embedable=true Victa is the first running and walking app that combines game mechanics, lore and series with functional tracker and analytics. It helps keep you motivated on the path to your desired shape and turns monotonous workouts into a real adventure! The idea of launching on Product Hunt appeared almost immediately, as we approached the stage of promotion, large-scale user acquisition and investment. We studied cases of launches and were inspired by stories about the growth of the audience by 15 times in a year due to publication on the platform. Some context: we are currently at a stage where it is critical to attract as many users as possible, collect feedback and statistics to develop the product. In addition, it is important for us to reach the US audience, and Product Hunt can be a starting point for attracting organic traffic in the States. It is worth noting that PH is not about one-day traffic, but a resource that can appeal new users for a long time. And of course, a successful launch on the platform and getting the “Product of the day” helps in communicating with investors, while we have just reached a new round of fundraising. Despite the fact that some products take 1–2 months to prepare for a launch, we did not have such luxury, and decided to do it in a week! What goals did we set for launching on Product Hunt: New audience, including from the USA “Product of the day” and “Product of the week” Feedback and data for product improvement READY It is important to note that this was our second launch on PH. The first was January 1st. At that time we didn’t have much knowledge about American resources and the way the platform works. We posted on PH without any preparation together with publishing the first on Medium. article Later, we realized what had been missed. We began communicating with support, so that they allow us to make another launch. To do this, it was necessary to prove that we had a big update [and we had it]. In general, you can release on PH once a half-year. But it is considered a good practice to do this once a quarter, making a big update in a product and pushing it through the support. This time, we decided to approach the process on a larger and more organized scale. We have identified two possible dates for ourselves: March 20 or 27. On one side the dates were limited by the consideration period at Skydeck Berkeley, and on another side by the preparation time and advice from our hunter, but more on that later. Choosing the day Task #1 is to choose the day of the week to launch [this affects the amount of traffic and the level of competition] and check that there are no great releases [ChatGPT, etc.] on this day. If you believe that your product will be out of competition, then Tuesday is a good choice. You can check upcoming releases in the “Coming soon” section. We opted for a balanced Monday, which also allowed us to use the entire week to compete in the “Product of the week” race. We had to use all the capabilities of the team and think over the details of the launch in just a couple of days. The main workload fell on the designer and me. We distributed the preparation of visual materials and texts, and also consulted familiar founders who had experience in launching on the PH. Since this was our second launch, it was a little easier: we already knew about the guides, the importance of high-quality content, the preparation makers, and the hunter, a person who “vouches” for the product, helps with many aspects in preparation and supports team on day X. Hunter search As far as we expected to get the most out of this opportunity, we decided to launch with a help of a hunter. In general, you can successfully launch on your own if you know all the details and also do it not for the first time. But since we were very limited in time, we chose a more stable path. Our hunter was Chris Messina, the creator of the hashtag [you heard it right] and #1 hunter on Product Hunt. Chris provided useful advice and was in touch with us before and after the launch. Preparation for voting To break out into top, you need to call on all the help of the universe on day X. Therefore, we attracked our entire social capital on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Slack, as well as on Product Hunt itself. We divided our activities into three slots [morning, afternoon and evening] and made a mailing schedule taking into account time zones [USA, Russia, Europe]. This helped us reach the maximum number of awake audience and spread the load on the PH for 24 hours [it doesn’t like peaks]. The important point was the CTA. It is highly desirable to avoid a direct link to the launch page as well as upvotes from new accounts registered 5 minutes ago. They may not be counted and lead to the reset of part of the votes. Therefore, you should go to the product from the main page, leave comments. It is good to repeat the whole procedure for one or two competitors. STEADY I won’t repeat the basics that can be easily found with the help of Google, but I will describe interesting points that the hunter or people with successful launch experience on Product Hunt suggested to us. Makers’ profiles The PH community loves reading about makers and learn about their side activities [comments, discussions, stories, collections and products used]. This builds credibility and helps gain followers for future launches. Launch page Everything is quite clear with the title and subtitle: they should make users open the launch page. However, we decided to experiment with the product description. We analyzed the descriptions and identified the main keys of the top 20 products in the running category, then tried to reuse them. Visuals play an important role in design. To avoid experimenting on PH, we used a site where we could upload all materials and preview how the page would look on launch day. It’s important to create animated icons, videos, and GIFs showcasing the features of the product. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MCySTUhSCs&embedable=true Creating a video for the page was a real challenge for us! It was necessary to prepare content quickly and efficiently with limited resources taking in mind that the whole team is located in different countries and time zones. I wrote the script in the evening and, together with the designer, made a storyboard for the video. The next day I went to record it. After about 120 takes [🤤] I sent the materials to the designer. Post-production took approximately 20 hours, and we faced one more challenge during the editing. There was a visual artifact, which destroyed the whole picture at an important moment of the monologue. We had to kludge, taking a similar episode from another video with unfinished inserts and merging it with a sound from a new one. Maker’s comment The first comment for the launch is always the maker’s comment. As well as «Support is great. Feedback is even better” block, it contains the main description about the release and directs new comments that are no less important than upvotes. Products with more upvotes but fewer comments sometimes give way to more engaging ones. In a post, the main functions of the product are usually listed using emojis instead of bullet points, gifts are offered, and the hunter is thanked. We decided to stick to the format that is customary for Product Hunt. Teaser After setting the release on the desired date [be sure to put 00:01 PST / PDT to have all 24 hours to vote] you need to prepare a teaser. This is a special page that appears in the “Coming soon” section, where anyone can sign up for your launch in advance. We tried to make the teaser as soon as possible, because it allows you to get a bright label “Coming soon” next to each maker’s comment. And then there is just one little thing left [not really]: you have to start commenting on the launches of all products that occur before your release in order to increase visibility and gain additional followers. Posts and mailing We have divided all messages into several categories: Email newsletters and push notifications to our users Posts and messages in thematic groups in Telegram, WhatsApp, Slack, Reddit and Facebook Post and personal mailing on LinkedIn to my contacts Personal mailing to founders and CEOs of companies from “Coming soon” on Product Hunt and authors of previous launches Friends, family and fools The goal of all the messages was to convey to the audience that their support would help more people learn about the app and start looking at running and their health in a new way. GO! 9:00 am — we check the readiness to launch mailings to our database, contacts on LinkedIn and Product Hunt, as well as the readiness of posts for thematic groups. 10:01 am — emails have been sent, and the first posts are up. Now it’s time to actively respond to all comments, consistently post new content, and add traffic 🚀 1:00 pm — we make it to first place 🏆 6:00 pm — we publish one of the last prepared posts. Just in case, a few extra posts are saved for the next morning. As seen by the second-place spike at 8:00 am, it could come in handy 🙂 2:00 am — at night, when I couldn’t respond anymore, the team takes over in the comments. 10:00 am — Victory! 🍾 During the day, the team controlled stability and rolled out hotfixes. And for the rest during the first 24 hours, we were as active as possible, responding to all comments, asking users what they think of Victa, and answering their questions. Monitoring competitors On day X, it is useful to use the Product wars tool, that allows you to watch the race in real time and adjust your tactics. For example, vote cheating and their reset by Product Hunt are clearly visible there. It can happen due to direct clicks to the product page and/or upvotes from newly registered users. Results and conclusions In less than a week, we have received several hundred clients and they continue to come. How can more be done? Analysis with a hunter says the following: Product Hunt audience is web first. Web-oriented products get more clicks. Keep in mind. Lack of Android. The obvious fact is that this platform easily expands your target audience by 2–3 times. Make the product multiplatform. I hope this article will help you and your product to take the top of Product Hunt. Good luck and see you on the other side 🤙 If you found this article helpful, we’d love it if you could share a feedback about our app! https://apps.apple.com/us/app/victa-fitness-adventure/id6443617052?embedable=true For cooperation and investment contact: alexander@victa.ai Also published . here

Victa: How we Launched Our App on Product Hunt in a Week and Became “Product of the Day”

Today, I faced the following challenge at my internship: to modify/implement a splash screen and an icon for the project I am working on. However, I preferred to do it natively so as not to be dependent on third-party libraries. I set aside some time to do the spike (study) on how it works, where I would have to make changes, and what it would apply to. After doing the spike, I understood that I would have to do it separately for iOS and Android. Let's talk about iOS first! Note: This tutorial was created with the application built using create-react-app. iOS Firstly, we need to remember that to work with Apple's environment, we need a macOS. Now that the project is already created, let's go to the 'ios' folder and open it in . Xcode After that, we go to the folder with the name of our project, following the fictitious example below: Now, we will go to the 'Images' file, where we will have the size options. Just drag the corresponding images for each dimension and also one to be the app icon to use in the splash screen (if you don't know how to format your images to meet the standards, at the end of the article, we will have a brief tutorial on how to do it). At this point, we have already finished configuring the icons, and now we move on to the splash screen. For this step, I will use a solid background and an image in the center as an example, but you can edit it as your design created (or as you imagined lol). Firstly, we will open the in Xcode. In this file, we will navigate in the following order: . 'LaunchScreen' file 'View Controller Scene' → 'View Controller' → 'View' In this field, we have the safe area, which is nothing more than the useful space on the screen. By default, it already comes with the name you gave to the app when you created it and a footer 'Powered by React Native'. In this case, we will delete the footer and the app name. After that, we will click on the '+' in the upper right corner and go to the 'Image View' option and drag it to the application, align it in the middle, and adjust the responsiveness. Now that we have adjusted everything, just close Xcode and build your application. Your app will be all configured (Note: if you had already run it on your phone or emulator before, remember to delete the app so that the icon changes are applied)! Android Now let's move on to the Android configuration. For this, we will need icons in various sizes as well as a round version of the icons (without background). Also, please note that if you don't have these sizes, we have a step-by-step guide at the end of the post on how to configure this. A bit different from what we did on iOS, I chose not to use Android Studio here and instead modify the code directly because I didn't find its formatting menu very interesting! With the images already saved on your device, we will open the application folder in the file manager → android → app → src → main → res. Inside the "res" folder, we have the "drawable" folder and other folders. "mipmap-suffix" The "drawable" folder is where we will configure our splash and have the main icon, while the "mipmap" folders are responsible for the different icon sizes and round icons. The first thing we will do is replace the icon files with ours. I recommend using the same names as the ones already there so you don't have to modify native code yet, as shown below: Now that we have made changes throughout our application, we will move on to the native part! Inside the drawable folder, we have the file "rn_edit_text_material.xml" and we will make some configurations in it. To make it less verbose for you to write, I will leave the configurations that I used for you to simply copy and paste into your code along with an explanation of each change: We added the tag to direct the project schemas, and inside it we passed what we want to use. <layer-list> In this case, I used the tag to set the background color (we will configure it in the next step), and the last tag with the prefix to set the dimensions, which image to use, and its positioning on the device screen. <item android: drawable="@color/primary" /> item android: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<layer-list xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">   
  
  <item android:drawable="@color/primary" />
  <item android:width="100dp" android:height="100dp" android:drawable="@drawable/icon" android:gravity="center" />
</layer-list> Now we will configure our backgroundColor, for that we will navigate to the "res" folder and create a file called "colors.xml" inside the "values" folder. We will add the code below, which contains a tag with our background color tag, already with the same name we gave in the previous step. <resources> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<resources>
  <color name="primary">#f2f2f2</color>
</resources> "styles.xml" is a file within the "values" folder, where we'll edit the following line that comes as a default when creating the app: <item name="android:editTextBackground">@drawable/rn_edit_text_material</item> to this code: <item name="android:windowBackground">
  @drawable/rn_edit_text_material
</item>
<item name="android:statusBarColor">
  @color/primary
</item> In the code snippet mentioned above, we set which window the background belongs to at the      top, and at the bottom, we set the color (previously defined). Great job! Your Android app             should be all set with the new splash screen and icons. Don't forget to test it thoroughly               before publishing it to the app store. Good luck with your app! Creating icons in desired sizes. To create our icons in the exact sizes, we will use 2 tools, the first one is called #Figma ( ) and the second one is a website called #ApeTools ( ). In ApeTools, we upload our image and it formats it in the iOS or Android standard size. In Figma, we will upload our Android images and add a borderRadius to them to make them rounded. https://www.figma.com/ https://apetools.webprofusion.com/#/tools/imagegorilla ApeTools: To use it, we will click on the "choose file" option, select the Logo and then select the Android and iOS base, after that just click on and the site will automatically render our icons. Kapow! Figma: Note: This step is only for configuring the Android icon. We will open the website or the #Figma application, upload the images that we want to round and in the right-hand menu, in the curve option, we will put '100' to get a perfect circle (in the example below I did it with only one image for illustration, but it should be done in all images of the "@mipmap" and I also used a larger borderRadius because my sample image was too large). My information: Linkedin ( ) https://www.linkedin.com/in/caslujpg/ Github ( ) https://github.com/caslujpg Email ( ) caslujpg@gmail.com If this article helped you and you want to buy me a coffee: PayPal ( ) https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=ETNDVF9LP8NB8 ( 7639b894-6a88-4d43-9c39-6af265462f34 ) Pix(Brazil)

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The Future of Serverless API Development is Now

Today, VPNs are becoming more prevalent than ever. While some advocates of these services would go as far as , there’s one group that simply won’t have that option. Kids trying to enjoy their time at school might not have much luck if they’re especially strict about which webpages are allowed to be visited. recommending users to create their own Phones and laptops will be subject to these filters if they’re connected to the school’s Wi-Fi, leading to plenty of headache and frustration. Not to mention, there’s always the chance of less-than-reputable people hijacking the network to collect personal data. Anyone with this issue should consider the 5 best VPN services for avoiding school filters and maximizing security! This article includes affiliate links to NordVPN and ExpressVPN. You won’t be charged anything extra for clicking on links to these services, but purchases made through these links will support the writer. Disclaimer: The 5 Best VPN Services for use During School ExpressVPN NordVPN SurfShark ProtonVPN PIA 1. ExpressVPN is another popular service with many user-friendly features, from its own no-log policy to lower lag in online games. It also with much greater pride. The service has entire guides on its website dedicated to unblocking YouTube, Twitter, and even Netflix, making it particularly helpful for kids who just want to have fun between lessons. It helps that the VPN is also very simple to use, making it one of the most beginner-friendly services out there. ExpressVPN boasts its usefulness during school hours ExpressVPN is one of the more expensive options on this list, costing around $8 USD per month for the 12-month plan and around $13 for the one-month plan. To make up for the extra cost, all plans include a built-in password manager, allowing you to easily keep track of your most complicated passwords. 2. NordVPN is perhaps the most well-known VPN out in the wild. It has essential features needed to avoid unwanted filters while also offering monitors to prevent your data from being stolen. The minds behind the VPN are quite invested in preventing any breaches, carrying a strict no-log policy and 24/7 support just in case things go wrong. To top it all off, it even , showcasing how important privacy is for anyone pursuing an education. NordVPN acknowledges the benefits of its use in schools NordVPN offers multiple different plans across different multi-month packages. The cheapest option is the standard plan, costing around The pricier choices offer extra features like encrypted cloud storage and a cross-platform password manager. If you simply want to test-drive the service for yourself, the cheapest option will cost around $13 for a single month of use. $3.49 per month across two years . 3. SurfShark is a relatively popular choice for VPN enthusiasts. The company behind it , so those familiar with the latter should have no problem getting used to the former. It’s particularly helpful for anyone that has multiple devices, as SurfShark carries no limits to how many devices can be registered under an account. It doesn’t take as much pride in its benefits for school use, it does include to enjoy popular websites and games. SurfShark joined forces with NordVPN an article on bypassing school restrictions SurfShark is currently priced at around $2.49 USD per month. This applies to its 24-month package, meaning you’ll pay around $60 over two years. If you simply want to try out the VPN, it will cost you around $13 for just one month. It’s also been getting a lot of sponsorships on YouTube and other social media sites, so you might have some luck if you want to search around for a special discount code. The service also includes optional features like real-time security alerts and an antivirus for those especially invested in security. 4. ProtonVPN is an especially unique service. It offers plenty of services that the other VPNs on this list share, but there’s a major benefit it holds over others. The service offers a completely free option, allowing anyone at all to have a taste of the VPN’s usefulness. Those with the free version still have access to customer support and basic servers, making it particularly helpful for those that don’t have permission to buy a VPN from their parents. ProtonVPN It should be noted that the features of the free ProtonVPN are notably limited compared to other paid services. The VPN offers its own “plus” subscription for around €4.99 euros per month, though this applies for a 24-month period. Those wishing to try the Plus service for just one month will need to pay around €9.99. There is also an “unlimited” plan that offers every service from Proton in a premium package, from email to cloud storage. 5. PIA , or PrivateInternetAccess, is a lesser-known service that aims to compete in the big leagues. As the name suggests, this VPN prides itself on privacy, focusing on advanced encryption and data-leak prevention. It’s particularly useful towards those focused more on education, as it’s simple to use and will keep any important schoolwork from being lost to malicious attackers. PIA PIA is one of the cheapest VPNs you’ll find that isn’t outright free, offering a package of three years and three months for just around $2 USD. Trying it out for a month will cost around $12, making the 3-year plan an even better value overall. It also includes its own antivirus and a dedicated IP, letting users customize their privacy like never before. Final Thoughts on VPNs for School Using a VPN during school comes with some risks, especially if the school has a policy against them. You should be careful about using any of the VPNs on this list if doing so could get you into trouble. If you’re confident in using these, they should be especially helpful in letting you wind down after tough tests or long lessons. Though there are other free VPNs out there, few of them have the reliability, feature-set, and good reputation shared by the services on this list. Additionally, all of these services feature a 30-day money-back guarantee. This guarantee applies to any paid plan no matter which one you choose. If you’re having some trouble with one, don’t hesitate to test the others!

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We've been hearing a lot about artificial intelligence and natural language processing – and in particular about the latest version of OpenAI's GPT – for weeks. The recent release of GPT 3.5, and specifically the very new ChatGPT tool, is definitely a huge leap forward. You may have read about people asking the AI to draw up real estate contracts and wills, and even generate programming code. This article approaches the tool from a slightly different perspective. You can watch a video version of this article here if you'd like to use it to supplement your learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxJKuINwPSw%3F&embedable=true Experimenting with ChatGPT and Bash Scripting I decided to see how ChatGPT handles Linux Bash scripting. But (spoiler alert!) as I worked through the tool's suggestions - both good code and bad code - I began to realize that there was an even more powerful benefit staring me in the face: an opportunity to pair-program with an eminently helpful partner. The AI ultimately failed to solve my problem, but the it failed was absolutely fascinating. And watching the AI searching for new answers was absolutely crazy. way First Attempt – ChatGPT Tries to Solve the Problem So let's see how it all happened. Here, more or less, is the initial prompt I provided to the AI: Write me a Bash script that prompts for the URL of a YouTube video and then uses the yt-dlp program to download from that URL. The script should then change the file name to "myvideo.mp4" After a few seconds, the ChatGPT told me that a script was coming. Here's how that code looked: #!/bin/bash

# Prompt user for YouTube video URL
read -p "Enter YouTube video URL: " url

# Download video from YouTube using yt-dlp
yt-dlp $url

# Get the name of the downloaded video file
yt-dlp $url

# Change the downloaded video filename to "myvideo.mkv"
mv video-filename.mp4 myvideo.mp4 The AI obviously knows what Bash scripts are and how to present code. It even did a great job commenting each line of code. The AI knows how to properly prompt the user for input and then how to import the input string into a variable called . url It also knows about the yt-dlp program and how it works, appropriately feeding it the URL that was provided. Then it at least attempted to rename the downloaded video file to myvideo.mp4. But everything kind of broke down when it assumed that the download filename would be video-filename.mp4. Whoops. At any rate, the AI helpfully showed me how to create the script from its code and then run it. Second Attempt – ChatGPT Corrects Itself My first follow-up prompt pointed out the obvious mistake and, after a few seconds, ChatGPT admitted it was wrong and offered an improvement. You're right, the script I provided would not work as expected because it assumes that the downloaded video will be saved to a file with the name . However, this is not guaranteed to be the case. To fix this... video-filename.mp4 It's just mind-blowing how the AI is completely engaged in the process here. It remembers its first code, listens to and understands my complaint, and thinks through a solution. Here's that second attempt: #!/bin/bash

# Prompt user for YouTube video URL
read -p "Enter YouTube video URL: " url

# Download video from YouTube using yt-dlp
yt-dlp $url

# Get the name of the downloaded video file
filename=$(basename $url)

# Change the downloaded video filename to "myvideo.mkv"
mv $filename.mp4 myvideo.mp4 Ok, so I can see how the solution kind of looked right. is a Linux tool that can strip out file system directories and leave nothing but the actual filename. basename The problem is that the variable doesn't contain a local filename, but an internet address. This one definitely isn't going to work. url Third Attempt – ChatGPT Tries Again So I tried again, explaining how that wasn't the right tool for the job. And ChatGPT gives it another try. #!/bin/bash

# Prompt user for YouTube video URL
read -p "Enter YouTube video URL: " url

# Extract the filename from the URL
filename=$(basename $url)

# Download the video using the yt-dlp tool and specify the filename
yt-dlp -o $filename $url

# Change the downloaded video filename to "myvideo.mkv"
mv $filename.mp4 myvideo.mp4 This time, it shows that it had familiarized itself with the yt-dlp documentation, suggesting that we use the argument to give the downloading video a name, against which should now work. With each iteration, the AI gives me this updated code for my cutting and pasting pleasure. -o basename Of course, that wasn't going to work either. With the next attempt, I get the feeling that the AI is a bit desperate. If At First You Don't Succeed...At Least You'll Learn Something I'm going to skip past the next attempt or two, as we ran into a side problem: Videos coming from YouTube aren't always MP4s, they're sometimes MKVs or even WEBMs. That uncertainty could mess with the filenames we're working with, so I asked ChatGPT to work that into the code. #!/bin/bash

# Prompt user for YouTube video URL
read -p "Enter YouTube video URL: " url

# Extract the filename from the URL
filename=$(basename $url)

# Download the video using the yt-dlp tool and specify the filename
yt-dlp -F mp4 -O $filename $url

# Change the downloaded video filename to "myvideo.mkv"
mv $filename.mp4 myvideo.mp4 When I reported how that, too, wouldn't work, the AI started to get confused. First it told me that the option was expecting a valid video format, but that "mp4" wasn't valid. Then it gives me valid options, including "mp4". -F When nothing the AI suggested worked, it gave up, advising me to make sure that yt-dlp was actually installed on my machine and showing me how to do that. I figured that was a good time to give up. It was a surprisingly good effort and, even if it didn't solve the problem, it did show me some useful syntax and got me thinking. In case you're interested, by the way, here's how an actual working script would look. #!/bin/bash

# Prompt user for YouTube video URL
read -p "Enter YouTube video URL: " url

# Download video from YouTube using yt-dlp
yt-dlp $url

# Get the name of the downloaded video file
original_filename=$(ls | awk '/mp4/ || /webm/ || /mkv/')

# Change the downloaded video filename to "myvideo.mkv"
mv "$original_filename" /home/ubuntu/vids/myvideo.mp4 The first two lines of code are just the way ChatGPT suggested. But I then isolate the filename by listing all the files in the current directory and using to filter for only filenames containing either mp4, webm, or mkv. (This assumes that there will never be more than one video file in the directory at a time.) awk The filename will then be written to the variable. I'll then use that variable as part of a command to rename the file As far as I can tell, that'll work no matter what format was actually sent. original_filename move myvideo.mp4 Wrapping Up Artificial intelligence might not be quite ready for real-world programming tasks today, but I wouldn't want to bet against it getting there tomorrow...or some time next year. In the meantime though, I would absolutely recommend engaging with tools like ChatGPT whenever you're faced with a challenging programming task. Two minds are (almost) always better than one. Featured image generated via prompt of “An AI robot throwing a bash party.” HackerNoon AI Besides (to which you can subscribe), links to all kinds of technology goodness available as articles, books, and courses. my YouTube channel my website Also published . here

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Over the past few years, cryptocurrencies have moved beyond purely technological subjects into some of the most discussed topics in the sphere of global and national financial development. The rapid growth of cryptocurrency capitalization and the development of the collective investment model (crowdfunding) were the reasons for a sharp shift in perspectives. In contrast to many areas where blockchain is currently only a potential application, distributed registry technology has a real practical use in financial transactions. Blockchain is often viewed as primarily related to cryptocurrencies, and when talking about cryptocurrencies, it is generally referred to as Bitcoin. Today's most popular and promising practical application of blockchain technology is the payment field. We are talking about the so-called crypto-processing technology, which allows the transfer of funds without the intermediation of credit and other financial institutions, protects information about payments, accelerates currency conversion, etc. Due to all these advantages, more and more companies are using crypto-processing to process crypto payments even during market dips. This article will explain why crypto payments are a reliable means of payment even during the bear crypto market. We will also look at the advantages that crypto payments have over traditional payment methods and analyze the future prospects that this technology already offers. At the end, you'll learn why businesses should start thinking about crypto payments now to stay ahead of the curve. Despite the Сrypto Winter, Payments Made With Cryptocurrencies Are Still On The Rise In order to understand how crypto payments during bearish market periods can support essential business processes in terms of mutual settlements, it is necessary to remember the important role that this innovative and up-and-coming technology plays today. Any viable currency, whether a distributed cryptocurrency created by a computer program or a traditional paper currency issued by the government, must gain the trust of the community in which it circulates. Cryptocurrency processing offers a payment system in which the recipient no longer has to trust a "third party" (institutions such as banks or governments) to verify the solvency of the sender within an agreed-upon amount. Cryptocurrency systems put a solution to the trust problem on an indestructible, dispersed computer program that makes settling payments between different companies easier and faster. This fact undeniably confirms the increasing popularity of using crypto payments in business today. Cryptocurrencies, claiming to perform the function of a means of payment a priori (by the construction of the protocol within which they exist), perform the function of a payment system as well. With standard fiat currencies, the situation is different: we can say that the dollar, which is a means of payment, can be accepted as payment for goods or services in cash (then the payment system as such does not exist) or in non-cash, through the payment system Visa, Mastercard and others. Since cryptocurrencies can only be paid for in non-cash form (due to the lack of physical representation), a distributed registry acts as a payment system within which settlements are made. First of all, due to such important advantages as speed, reliability, and ease of use, cryptocurrency payments now occupy a place of honor in the economic system, particularly in the structure of payment systems. Moreover, the value of this cryptocurrency processing technology significantly increases when it comes to market crashes, usually accompanied by a sharp decline in the price of an asset. In this case, stablecoins, which are pegged to fiat currencies such as the US dollar, are a great tool to hedge the risks associated with high cryptocurrency volatility and can be used to for goods and services. accept crypto payments Cryptocurrencies Offer a Number of Benefits That Traditional Payment Methods Do Not To answer the question of how crypto payments during crypto winter can support important business processes, you need to understand what gives them value compared to traditional payment methods. Cryptocurrency payment gateways are growing in popularity due to the widespread use of digital assets and the security benefits they provide. Many companies are starting to accept crypto payments to get ahead of the times and enter new markets. There are many that crypto processing has over traditional payment methods. Below is a list of the most important ones. advantages Speed In the blockchain, the operation time is usually a few minutes. After receiving the funds, you can either immediately use them or, if you work through any payment systems, the transaction can be made on the same day. In some cases, this period may be several days. When using card processing, the receipt of funds is also carried out promptly. But in this case, first, you receive money from a merchant account in the payment system, and you can transfer it to yourself within the period specified in the agreement with the payment system. The period can be from several days to 1 month. In other words, you will be able to receive money at your direct disposal after this period. Security Compared to fiat money, transactions using cryptocurrency are much faster and safer. Cryptocurrencies use encryption to verify transactions. A special code key is used to transmit and process the data. Cryptocurrency information is stored in a blockchain, a digital ledger, or a public registry for recording transactions. The history of all transactions is recorded in a blockchain. It is impossible to rewrite the history of the blockchain, which guarantees security. Low Commissions Cryptocurrency transactions are much more affordable than traditional means of payment. By accepting cryptocurrencies such as BTC, ETH, Doge, etc., as a means of payment, the online store does not have to pay high commissions like with traditional payment methods. This feature of cryptocurrencies helps business owners accept crypto payments and enhances their profitability. No Chargebacks Chargebacks are a very unpleasant circumstance for businesses, and the higher the turnover, the greater the risks. Freezing disputed funds in accounts interferes with normal operations, and to some companies, it can lead to a complete blocking of accounts. When paying with cryptocurrencies, users cannot dispute the transaction and get their money back as the payment system decides. Blockchain-recorded transactions cannot be edited or reversed. And for businesses, this is a clear and valuable advantage. Global Presence Thanks to decentralization, cryptocurrencies are genuinely international. Accepting crypto payments opens up virtually the entire world to businesses, and it's impacting company performance: according to statistics, businesses that offer cryptocurrencies as a payment option make 40% more sales to new customers, double the average check, and get impressive ROI and increased net profit compared to those who only accept fiat currencies. A growing, active international community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts is a great target audience for businesses regardless of category. The crypto community, for the most part, is a gathering of people interested in emerging trends. Ordering a trivial pizza for crypto is no less interesting for them than paying for technological innovation from a promising startup or a subscription to a favorite online entertainment service. The Future of Cryptocurrency Payments is Looking Bright The crypto future in 2023 looks promising. According to some , the volume of cross-border cryptocurrency payments will grow 25-fold over the next few years and reach $4.4 trillion by 2024. Many feel that cryptocurrencies are the catalyst for the latest payment revolution. However, before cryptocurrencies can be adopted for payments worldwide, some troubleshooting and general tuning must occur. There also needs to be a clear strategy for implementing these activities. predictions Payment applications will also play an important role. Last year, digital and mobile wallets accounted for about 45% of global e-commerce payment transactions. Today, some payment applications already offer users the opportunity to buy and sell cryptocurrency, eliminating the need to do it using cryptocurrency exchanges or special services. Some companies have already started implementing elements of distributed blockchain networks to update their services, hoping to attract new customers and promote the use of cryptocurrencies. Those applications should make cryptocurrency transactions clear and understandable for everyone, thus helping to introduce cryptocurrencies into the mainstream market. However, it will likely take quite some time for both individuals and companies to adopt cryptocurrency as the primary means of everyday payment transactions. To turn cryptocurrency into a mainstream payment method, companies, and their customers must be able to use it in their day-to-day operations. To begin with, the process of transitioning from traditional money to cryptocurrency will need to be established. For a while, retailers and business owners will want to avoid incurring transfer costs or taking on the risk of currency fluctuations. Thus, payment companies and crypto processing services will play a crucial role in facilitating this transition*.* The popularity of crypto as a payment method will also grow as traditional money becomes increasingly scarce. Since fiat currencies are influenced by many external factors, provoking sharp changes in exchange rates, cryptocurrencies are much more stable. Even though their price also fluctuates, you can always rely on several stablecoins. The value of cryptocurrencies is primarily determined by demand, and it will inevitably grow. Given the development of blockchain and blockchain-based technologies, major cryptocurrencies are a reliable alternative to fiat volatility. Businesses Should Start Accepting Cryptocurrency Payments Now to Stay Ahead of The Curve To date, quite a lot has been said about cryptocurrencies, but interest in them has not disappeared yet. Moreover, the number of cryptocurrencies is increasing, and with them, more and more companies are switching to digital payments, even at a time when the markets are bearish. There are plenty of to start accepting crypto payments during crypto winter. reasons Marketing and Fundraising As cryptocurrencies grow in popularity, people are looking for more and more to work with to implement this technology. Crypto can also be used as a marketing concept to attract new customers. In addition, experts say that the more payment options business can provide, the higher the customer conversion rate. companies This is a positive aspect in terms of effective marketing. The number of people looking for goods and services with cryptocurrency payment is growing daily, and businesses have an excellent opportunity to tap into this growing market. Also, companies that accept crypto have an advantage over competitors by becoming pioneers in the field. Companies can easily create a marketing program to embrace crypto, showing how the technology is bringing their business into the future. Sales Growth A company's ability to generate sales plays a crucial role in its success, and increasing the flow of customers ensures the growth of company profits. Decentralized cryptocurrency makes it easy to scale the business. And if a business sells products or services, crypto allows it to accept payments from abroad, expanding the potential audience freely. No payment disputes or refunds — the customer cannot dispute crypto transactions. In addition, blockchain technology verifies that funds are available before the transaction is completed. This makes purchasing virtually impossible without sufficient funds in the customer's account. Moreover, unlike a credit card payment, it cannot be reversed. The business receives all funds immediately. High-speed Transactions and Worldwide Access When it comes to crypto payments, businesses don't need intermediaries to make transactions, so the money will arrive in the account much faster without waiting 2-3 banking days for transaction confirmation. It is also possible to withdraw funds daily in a different currency if desired. The Internet allows companies to do business with any client from anywhere in the world. Even the smallest online store can now sell its goods and services in many different countries. And because cryptocurrency is decentralized, businesses avoid the costs associated with transaction fees and exchange rates. Thus, businesses now have a unique form of currency that applies uniformly regardless of location. Conclusion Using cryptocurrencies is becoming increasingly popular, and for a good reason — the more payment options a business provides to its customers, the more profitable it is. Even in times of market crashes, cryptocurrency payments remain a reliable alternative. Cryptocurrencies are indispensable for diversifying a company's financial instruments and improving customer focus. The introduction of payments via digital coins will benefit any business that, with the help of crypto, can expand its markets of operation much faster and more efficiently than when working exclusively with fiat. In addition to low commissions and accelerated transaction processing, the transition to cryptocurrency payments allows businesses to expand their target audience, attract new customers, get ahead of competitors, and become more independent from traditional banking institutions.

Crypto Payments Are on the Rise Despite the Bear Market — Here's Why

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