Kryptomon is an NFT Play-and-Earn blockchain-game, where Pokémon meets Tamagotchi and CryptoKitties. Set in the Kryptomon metaverse, community members play as ‘Trainers’ of their own individual monsters — Kryptomons — each of which is a completely unique digital asset connected to an NFT. Each has a unique but mutable genetic code made up of 38 randomised parameters that determine all of the aspects — physical and behavioural — of the creature. This not only ensures that each Kryptomon is unique but also brings to life each Kryptomon as a digital companion in the Kryptomon metaverse. They are capable of learning, falling sick, getting hungry, and protecting their trainers when out on an adventure in the physical world. In turn, trainers will have to care for, feed, and train their Kryptomon partners in order to grow and prepare for the battles ahead. Kryptomon aims to create the next step in the evolution of crypto-gaming by using advanced blockchain technologies, digital genetics, and location-based technologies. So what are you waiting for? Play and participate in the Kryptomon league to become the Kryptomon Metaverse Champion! Kryptomon's Highlights: - Kryptomon is a crypto-game metaverse of genetically-unique living NFT creatures formed by 38-genes DNA that are truly alive on the blockchain. - Kryptomons are living NFT creatures that needs caring, feeding, playing, educating, and training from their owners, their trainers. Failing to do so will result in the hibernation of the Kryptomon, with other possible negative effects. - Kryptomons can breed and create genetically new creatures that are again, completely unique based on the genetic codes, DNA, of both of their parents. - Kryptomon is a play-to-earn game in which you get to become a real trainer to a real living digital creature, and explore both the metaverse and the real world together in order to battle and complete missions around you.

Kryptomon

kryptomon

ChainGPT, the AI-powered infrastructure providing a diverse suite of tools and services, announces the launch of a grant program to help facilitate innovation at the crossroads of AI and blockchain. With a total of up to $1 million in grants available for startups across different development stages, ChainGPT will offer three tiers of funding: Scaling-focused growth grants, builder grants to kickstart early-stage innovation, and research grants for newly launched projects. Web3 Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin about possible synergies between AI and blockchain, concluding that he looks forward to “seeing more attempts at constructive use cases of AI in all these areas, so we can see which of them are truly viable at scale.” recently wrote While this sentiment is widely agreed upon among Web3 builders, AI’s centralized nature creates friction with blockchain and Web3’s core ethos. Overcoming this and other obstacles disrupting collaboration between the technologies requires honing in on R&D as well as promoting industry dialogue and education. Establishing the grant program aligns with ChainGPT’s core mission to enhance the blockchain space with AI-powered solutions and support Web3 developers building AI technologies designed for blockchain. The program’s chief objective is to remove entry barriers for startups—providing them with the necessary resources to allow innovation to flourish by empowering them with AI technologies tailored to blockchain applications. A core feature of the grant program is the access it opens to the ChainGPT ecosystem, including its wide array of AI-powered tools for blockchain. Among these are ChainGPT’s APIs and SDKs, which provide startups with a robust toolkit to build AI-powered applications, tools, and products. Whether a startup is looking for a plug-and-play solution via an API or a more tailored approach using the SDK, ChainGPT’s technical infrastructure enables participants to benefit from advancements in AI. Startups can apply for the grants program through an . ChainGPT’s team will assess each startup’s eligibility, potential impact, and overall fit before an interview portion and final decision. Startups can apply for a maximum grant of $50 thousand, with ChainGPT providing $1 million in total grants to be distributed in USDT and credit for its suite of products. online application With numerous applications already submitted, some early featured projects to have been awarded grants from ChainGPT’s include: : A popular Web3 game from Pink Moon Studios that enables users, known as trainers, to collect, breed, and trade unique creatures within the Kryptomon universe. Kryptomon A Web3 AI execution protocol connecting users with access to DeFi, CeFi, and NFT markets through an all-in-one conversational AI interface. GT Protocol: A Web3 marketing analytics platform enabling organizations to grow their audiences faster by optimizing their marketing performance using the latest data analytics and insights. Cookie3: Powered by Solidus, AITECH is the world’s first deflationary AI token, serving as a payment gateway for licensing AI and blockchain solutions. AITECH: ChainGPT is a pioneer in the field of blockchain AI infrastructure, offering a wide range of tools and services including a smart contract generator and auditor, advanced AI trading, an NFT generator, an AI-powered security extension, and SDK and API access for developers and organizations to integrate ChainGPT. The ChainGPT Pad supports the entire ecosystem and is recognized for its strategic mentorship, earning for nurturing talented and innovative Web3 startups. top ROI rankings “We are fully committed to facilitating innovation within the budding AI-blockchain space, and our commitment to offering grants goes beyond simply monetary backing,” says Ilan Rakhmanov, CEO and Founder of ChainGPT. “As a startup that provides incubation and an IDO launchpad, we will also provide promotional support, technical guidance, and partnership opportunities for participants in our grant program. This initiative is designed to encourage the next wave of digital innovation by promoting shared learning that will pave the way for a more robust Web3 space, where AI and blockchain will unlock new possibilities and redefine what is possible in the digital domain.” About ChainGPT: ChainGPT is the leading provider of AI-powered infrastructure for crypto, blockchain, and Web3. From a next-generation IDO launchpad and incubator to automated smart contract generation and auditing as well as an advanced Web3 AI chatbot to AI-powered news aggregation, an AI training assistant, cross-chain swap, and an NFT generator, ChainGPT is a sophisticated, end-to-end solution for AI Web3 infrastructure. By integrating large language models (LLM) with blockchain, the company builds advanced, accessible, and user-friendly tools for all users. Further solidifying its position at the forefront of technological innovation, ChainGPT has established strategic partnerships and received recognition from notable tech leaders such as Google, Nvidia, BNBChain, and Chainlink. ChainGPT aims to advance the use of AI within the blockchain space. For more information, visit: Website This story was distributed as a release by BTCWire under HackerNoon’s Business Blogging Program. Learn more about the program here: https://business.hackernoon.com/

ChainGPT Launches $1 Million Grant to Drive Innovation at the Intersection of AI and Blockchain

চেইনজিপিটি এআই এবং ব্লকচেইনের সংযোগস্থলে উদ্ভাবন চালানোর জন্য $1 মিলিয়ন অনুদান চালু করেছে

ChainGPT startet einen Zuschuss in Höhe von 1 Million US-Dollar, um Innovationen an der Schnittstelle von KI und Blockchain voranzutreiben

ChainGPT lanza una subvención de $1 millón para impulsar la innovación en la intersección de la IA y Blockchain

ChainGPT lance une subvention d'un million de dollars pour stimuler l'innovation à l'intersection de l'IA et de la blockchain

चेनजीपीटी ने एआई और ब्लॉकचेन के बीच इनोवेशन को बढ़ावा देने के लिए $1 मिलियन का अनुदान लॉन्च किया

ChainGPT、AIとブロックチェーンの交差点におけるイノベーションを推進するために100万ドルの助成金を開始

ChainGPT, AI와 블록체인의 교차점에서 혁신을 주도하기 위해 100만 달러 보조금 출시

ChainGPT lança doação de US$ 1 milhão para impulsionar a inovação na interseção de IA e Blockchain

ChainGPT запускает грант в размере 1 миллиона долларов для стимулирования инноваций на стыке искусственного интеллекта и блокчейна

ChainGPT, Yapay Zeka ve Blockchain'in Kesiştiği Noktada İnovasyonu Artırmak İçin 1 Milyon Dolarlık Hibe Başlattı

ChainGPT triển khai khoản tài trợ trị giá 1 triệu đô la để thúc đẩy đổi mới trong sự giao thoa giữa AI và Blockchain

ChainGPT 推出 100 万美元赠款以推动人工智能和区块链交叉点的创新

Web3 has the full potential to revolutionize the Internet as we know it today. More new dApps, DEXs, wallets, networks, and other crypto projects are coming out on a daily basis, with new users flocking into the space all the time. This presents a huge demand for cross-chain solutions and increasing interoperability in the crypto space. Today, cross-chain technology can be easily implemented by anyone and everyone, with Cross-Chain Swap tools — which turns any existing crypto project into a large-scale powerful business, with higher profit and inter-blockchain liquidity Rubic’s within just one hour. Why is cross-chain Web3 important? What is the best cross-chain solution? How does one scale up with Rubic’s Cross-Chain Swap tools? All the answers are right here! Rubic Enhances Cross-Chain Web3 is that very tool in blockchain technology that is going to facilitate the Web3 revolution, opening new horizons for crypto projects to become the ultimate omnichain ecosystem in just a matter of minutes. Rubic Rubic is a Cross-Chain Swap service that aggregates allowing users to swap any of and in just a one-click transaction. By integrating Rubic’s SDK/widget, your project will get access to all of the assets that have been integrated into Rubic. 60+ DEXs and bridges, 15,000+ tokens 12 blockchains Why is Cross-Chain Web3 Important? Today, there’s a massive explosion of new crypto projects which leads to interoperability problems. Interoperability means the ability of various networks to exchange and use data with one another. If you look at the table below, you will see that $70.97 billion is locked on all chains, whereas Ethereum eats among others. As more new blockchain projects appear every day, it’s becoming harder to provide interoperability among all of them and get access to the desired crypto assets residing on various chains. $45.18 billion What is the Best Cross-Chain Solution? With a lack of interoperability, crypto projects built on different networks can’t offer users the advantages of several blockchains simultaneously. Users need to apply to external providers to swap crypto assets from different blockchains. Let’s say, one can’t easily swap USDT residing on the BNB chain into MATIC residing on Polygon. So, what are the solutions, if you want to give your users the best opportunities on the market and make your project interoperable? Integrating a bridge. Launching on different blockchains. Implementing Rubic’s Cross-Chain Tools. Let’s break each of them down. Integrating a Bridge To some extent, cross-chain bridges increase interoperability — they enable transfers from one blockchain to another. However, cross-chain bridges lead to excessive time spent, transaction fees, and low security. Cross-chain bridges allow the exchanging of a token for the same token residing on a different blockchain. For instance, USDT (BEP-20) can be exchanged into USDT (ERC-20), and no other way. Bridges utilize different technologies. You need to spend plenty of time on researching a bridge considering the estimated transaction time, speed, security, level of decentralization, and more. For developers, everything needs to be done from scratch — the calculations, processing of events, etc. This is time-consuming and takes up a lot of human resources. If a bridge stops operating, your cross-chain solution will fail, too. Moreover, the bridges are limited in terms of the swappable volumes, and if a bridge runs out of liquidity for certain assets, your platform won’t let users make a swap for them. Launching on different blockchains Let’s consider an example. Your project has launched on Polygon with a liquidity of $603 million. You decide to launch it on 4 blockchains to make it more accessible, and here’s what you will face: By launching your project on 4 networks, you will split your liquidity — $600 million will become $150 million on each of them. You get smaller liquidity and degrade your tokenomics. With such fragmented liquidity, there will be less finances to develop your project further. This is a much more time-consuming, expensive, and complicated process than even integrating a bridge. It won’t take hours, days, or weeks, but months. Are you sure you are ready for this? Essentially, even if launched on different blockchains, you still need to develop an additional multi-chain solution that will allow users to swap assets between these blockchains. Implementing Rubic’s Cross-Chain Tools Founded in 2020, Rubic already services over 70+ crypto projects with its SDK and widget. Rubic is the allowing users to swap 15,000+ assets between 12 blockchains, . Rubic can create an omnichain ecosystem out of any crypto project — be it a wallet, a dApp, a game, a launchpad, or a Metaverse — in a matter of 10–30 minutes, and for free. Why Integrate Rubic’s Cross-Chain Tools? One-Click Cross-Chain solution in a one-click transaction Rubic’s integration enables 60+ DEXs and bridges at the same time, providing , , and . With Rubic, users will be able to move assets across chains right on your page! higher transaction speed higher security lower fees As opposed to the existing cross-chain solutions mentioned above, Rubic’s Cross-Chain toolkit has compiled the best of many worlds: Free & Easy Integration Within just 10–60 minutes, you can turn your business into a cross-chain ecosystem in the most hassle-free way: 10 minutes for the widget integration and 30 minutes — for the simplest SDK integration. Rubic’s team is going to assist you before, during, and after integration. Security & Guarantees Rubic’s SDK is streamlined on all levels, in terms of caching and security. Thanks to aggregating 60+ DEXs and bridges in one place, we guarantee sufficient liquidity when making any swap. The transactions are auto-monitored, and the auto-refund function is fully set up. Rubic’s technical support is also, of course, ready to assist you 24/7. Ever-Lasting Liquidity Even if a certain DEX or bridge has run out of liquidity or simply stopped operating, we never leave our partnered project without successful transactions. We manage all the integrated DEXs and bridges in one place with our own architecture, and will always provide you with liquid assets. Full UX Customization As a white-label solution, Rubic’s SDK can be easily implemented into your project’s environment by letting you write your own logic in the code on how users will go through each step when making a swap. For Rubic’s widget, the UX is clear and friendly to the extent that any crypto novice will understand how to make a cross-chain or on-chain swap. UI is in Your Control Rubic’s SDK gives you full control over the UI on your website. You can fully customize Rubic’s SDK for your platform so that no one will ever notice its integration. Rubic’s widget, with its minimalistic and classic design, will be a great fit for any project’s existing interface. Smart Routing: The Best Swap Deal With Rubic’s SDK, you never meet any network latency or excessive transaction fees. Average transactions take 90 seconds. Aggregating multiple DEXs and bridges allows the algorithm to find the best deal on the market for cross-chain and on-chain swaps. The algorithm used at Rubic splits and manages transactions as needed, to save on gas and fees as much as possible. Quick and effective pathfinding is built based on the architecture uniting and matching real-time data. Thus, the best DEX, bridge, transaction time, gas fee, and other parameters are chosen. Revenue & Customizable Fees Up to 50% of the fees coming from trades via Rubic’s SDK/widget go straight to your business. Besides the fees taken by Rubic, you may choose preferable additional trading fees that will be charged by your platform via Rubic’s widget/SDK. Trading Volume Boost With Rubic’s SDK, users will be able to buy the desired tokens right on your website, regardless of the blockchain they use. They won’t need to go to a CEX or any other external providers to purchase assets at an unfavorable rate — they simply go to your website and make the best deal in one place. Thus, you will attract more users and multiply your trading volume. Save Time & Money On Everything By integrating Rubic’s SDK or widget, you save time on everything. With our widget, you don’t need to make additional calculations, write additional logic, or test your code multiple times. With an SDK integration, there’s no need to dive into details on how transactions are built and get hacked, or even how blockchain technology works. In both cases (widget and SDK), you will spend zero money; simply leveraging the benefits of the ready-to-use widget or SDK, customizable specifically for your project’s needs. 70+ crypto projects already use Rubic’s SDK or Widget to kickstart major incoming value, for both their token and their project. Among the crypto projects who integrated Rubic’s widget: (dApp), (Metaverse), , (DEX), (NFTs), . Liquiddriver.finance Netvrk.co Pulsartoken.io Algebra.finance Kryptomon.co Rewardeum.com Among the crypto projects who integrated Rubic’s SDK: , , (Investing), (NFT+DEX). Hector DEX Via.exchange Tokenplace.com Soku Swap.org Why Choose Web3 Cross-Chain? are quickly becoming a common sight in the cryptocurrency industry. Today, the only way to make your project powerful and outstanding on the blockchain landscape is to implement cross-chain technology. Omnichain Web3 solutions In the next few years, most crypto projects are likely to become omnichain platforms, and now, you can get ahead of the pack with Rubic. Rubic offers the Cross-Chain Web3 toolkit that will allow your project to grow into an omnichain Web3 ecosystem in a matter of 1 hour. By integrating Rubic, you will spend zero money, with minimum time and effort. One of the main Rubic’s goals is to facilitate the growth of Web3 and create a new cross-chain reality where businesses and individuals will have access to all crypto projects and tokens across all connected chains. The Web 3.0 revolution is getting closer, and you can become one of its pioneers. Also Published Here

Scaling Up Your Crypto Project with Cross-Chain Web3

Top Korean Gaming Publisher to Drop NFTs has announced an NFT collection drop in collaboration with , a top developer and publisher in the mobile gaming industry with highly-rated AAA games, including Lineage 2: Revolution, The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross, Blade & Soul Revolution and MARVEL Future Fight. The ‘Golden Bros’ drop on Binance NFT provides early access to the game and digital assets through the Mystery Box Collection. Binance NFT Netmarble Corporation Non-fungible tokens have piqued the curiosity of crucial technology and gaming companies. Binance NFT is amongst the most popular platforms for realising that objective. Seascape Network, Ecio, BetaMars, Kryptomon, South Korean entertainment business YG, and others have used the portal to execute several high-profile NFT deals. Netmarble is the most recent entity collaborating with Binance NFT on a non-fungible token release. The NFT sector offers the acclaimed game publisher future possibilities to develop its player base and introduce a different IP to the industry. Furthermore, the publisher has extensive experience creating games based on worldwide IPs such as The Seven Deadly Sins, Marvel Studios, and many others. To give a leading gameplay experience, the Golden Bros game is now being designed on Unreal Engine. A 3v3 battle royale version with controls that even novice players can quickly adapt to and rapid fights will be featured in the game. Binance NFT’s collaboration with this big game publisher emphasises the relevance of NFTs in the crypto industry. The platform simplifies the minting and dissemination of NFT collections while also growing a community of NFT fans. The Future of Digital Art and NFTs NFTs have gained widespread awareness due to large art transactions, accounting for about a quarter of all NFT sales. For example, an American artist known as Beeple sold his digital artwork for $69.3 million at Christie’s earlier this month, putting him among the “top three most valuable living painters.” Every time the owner of the NFT changes, they will earn a ten percent royalty. ṆFTs are registering record-breaking sales with CryptoPunk #7804, one of the 24x24 pixel art pieces, sold for $7.5 million in March 2021, while Trevor Jones” Bitcoin Angel sold for $3.2 million. In 2022, the NFT market is expected to grow even further. Like any other sector, it has its own set of hazards that purchasers should be aware of before investing. However, when it comes to art, it’s necessary to look at the item first – and then at its properties – because possessing something you don’t like has little value. Catch all the breaking news, and Don’t forget to like the story! Image credits: and . Kanchanara Muhammad Asyfaul Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence, asking the right questions, and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The writer holds Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana and Cosmos. The writer has a vested interest in the story.

Top Rated Korean Publisher Netmarble is Bringing NFT Collection to Binance NFT

A country living under draconian restrictions, which also happens to be facing the biggest currency devaluation of the century. Venezuela should be fertile ground for mass cryptocurrency adoption. Is it? How’s Bitcoin doing in Venezuela, you ask? , the country’s activity on LocalBitcoins is immense. Through December Venezuela’s business oscillated between 14.2% and 15.4% of the total volume the site moves. And it sits at #4 in the “Which country trades the most Bitcoin” all-time leaderboard: According to Coindance However, on the ground, most people are just as unaware of cryptocurrency as the rest of the world. They’ve heard the name “Bitcoin”, and some of them know as few myths and legends about it. They don’t use it, though. They wouldn’t know where to begin if they wanted to. And most of the altcoins are virtually unknown. Dash is the notable exception. More on that later. Recent developments you might be unaware of The Venezuelan Government relaxed its exchange control policy in May this year. It’s been in place since 2003, one of Chávez’s flagship decisions. A way to protect themselves against foreign interference and to control the population at the same time. It may also be one of the causes of the unprecedented crisis the country is living through, but that can’t be proven. Correlation does not imply causation. Rest assured the control is still in place, just not as severe. You can buy foreign currency from banks and exchange offices, but a limited amount. And you have to declare what you’ll be using it for and cut through red tape to get it. On the other hand, Venezuelan credit cards still aren’t accepted outside of the country’s borders. And don’t even think about withdrawing cash out of an ATM while abroad. Worldwide cryptocurrency adoption stats In the most-recent poll making the rounds on the Internet right now, Statista tried to . They asked “Internet users between 18 and 64 years of age” if they use or currently own cryptocurrencies. measure crypto adoption There are three South American countries in the top 5: Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina. Venezuela is not even in the chart, which doesn’t seem to make sense. Statista claim’s it’s a “Global Consumer Survey”. We leave it up to each individual to determine if they believe Venezuela was considered. As for cryptocurrency’s mass adoption, there are other non-country-specific stats that require attention. According , global Interest in Bitcoin shows a dramatic increase over the years in Google Search Trends. to Cryptopolitan For the terms “ ” and “Cryptocurrency”, the pattern doesn’t show the same growth. Also, the total number of addresses that own more than 1 BTC has been steadily rising year after year. The movement is on its way, but we’re still in early stages. Ethereum Our very own poll about cryptocurrency in Venezuela This article’s author ran a non-scientific, and 411 people responded. They are definitely not a representable sample of the whole of the Venezuelan population, but they might represent a more technologically inclined portion. informal poll through Twitter The poll was intended for Venezuelans still living in the country, and the question was: “ ” Considering Venezuela suffers a perpetual currency-control regime and the most devastating inflation in history, why DON’T you use cryptocurrencies to safeguard your money? Twitter allows a maximum of four choices, so we boiled the possible reasons down. The results : were as follows 43% blamed it on a “ ” Lack of Information 27% claimed it was “ ” Too volatile 20% complained it’s “ ” Too difficult to use 10% admitted “ ” I don’t trust the technology Let’s break that down, one result at a time: “ ” 1. Lack of Information Most of what you need to know about cryptocurrencies is available on the Internet. And we’re in the so-called information age. Still, it’s an overwhelming, chaotic, ever-changing topic. Everything about it seems to be up in the air. It’s understandable that people feel they don’t have enough information about it. “ ” 2. Too volatile There’s no way around it, the crypto-space is a volatile environment. And it’s going to remain that way for the foreseeable future. Is that a legitimate concern if you live in a country that suffered an estimated 200.000% inflation this year? It might be if you have more stable ways of securing your money. Do they have it, though? Not according to . my experience “ ” 3. Too difficult to use They’re not wrong. The technology behind cryptocurrencies is in its infancy and at the moment everything is clunky. On the other hand, that might be the exact reason to get in right now. On the ground floor. Everybody and their grandmas will be in on the action when it’s easy to use, and then it might be too late. “ ” 4. I don’t trust the technology On this one, we need follow-up questions. It could be argued that the reasons for the lack of trust could be a combination of the three previous options, but who knows really? When it comes to money mistrust might be a healthy attitude. A way to protect yourself. It can also lead to wasted opportunities. Cryptocurrency in Venezuela poll, other responses: Besides the options available, the poll reached the Venezuelan cryptocurrency community. They mostly replied with “ ” or with “ ”. Both valid points, but this article isn’t about them. The poll was intended for people who aren’t as technologically aware as they are. We do use it. Every day. Replace cryptocurrency with Bitcoin The most common reply for the general public, though, was: “ ”. That one hurt. We don’t have any money to safeguard Other noteworthy replies: “ ”, “ ”, and “ ”. Fear of change/ the new They’re almost useless for payments All of the above Case study: Dash The only altcoin that has made a significant play to position itself in the troubled region is Dash. Some entrepreneurial Venezuelans learned about the marketing budget embedded in Dash’s protocol and organized a movement around it. Talks, training workshops, huge events followed. According : “ ” to Kryptomoney Though we majorly name Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency in the country is Dash. As its low transaction fees and fast confirmation time features appeals to merchants in the country. We wouldn’t go that far. And the number of commerces that accept any crypto as a form of payment is still too low to take the stat seriously. Did the play work? Did they achieve their goal? In small circles already interested in cryptocurrency it did. The information spread. Dash’s logo became familiar. In general, not so much. Cryptocurrency is still an arcane subject in Venezuela. It’s early in the game and Dash Venezuela is still at it, though. Cryptocurrency in Venezuela, a conclusion: The country faces the biggest incentive for mass adoption to be found on this planet of ours. The harshest economic crisis in times of peace on record. Still, Venezuela’s relationship with cryptocurrency is akin to the world’s relationship to it. Fear, learning curves and lack of access to reliable information about the subject keeps people away. The dream of a “crypto-nation” that government officials close to and local anarcho-capitalists share is far from becoming a reality. The progress is undeniable, though. And the opportunities that presents for the intrepid entrepreneur are immense and hard to ignore. the Petro project ** *** + ** *** Article , edited by Ben Lakoff. originally published by Alternative Asset Allocation Amílcar Ortega AKA Eduardo Prospero is a author, a and a blogger in and from Caracas, Venezuela. Currently located in Buenos Aires. self-published professional rapper English Spanish

Is Mass-Cryptocurrency-Adoption Venezuela's Destiny?

The Sub-Saharan African nation is a country of contradictions where real poverty could also mean real cryptocurrency adoption. South Africa is not the poorest country in the world, but it is the most unequal, according to the , and while 11 million people are unbanked the nation ranks first when it comes to cryptocurrency ownership among internet users, which could be the start of mass adoption there. World Bank World Bank list of most unequal countries Cryptocurrency in South Africa The fact that cryptocurrency usage in South Africa tops various lists is not all that surprising as many experts have argued that inflation and poverty push people towards cryptocurrency ownership. “With economic crises knocking at their doors, countries like Iran, Turkey, Venezuela, Argentina and Zimbabwe turn towards cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to keep it all together,” said crypto writer and Kryptomoney Founder Rohit Kukreja in an . article Bitcoin.com agrees with this as revealed in an they published a couple months ago. In it, they say cryptocurrency has expanded globally. It adds that a poll conducted by Statista shows that people in economically troubled countries tend to turn to decentralised digital money far more readily than those in thriving nations. article Statista, according to the crypto news outlet, surveyed 400,000 people in 46 countries and South Africa popped up in fifth place as 16% of the population said they used or owned cryptocurrencies. Turkey was at the top of the list with 20%, followed by Brazil and Colombia with 18%, and Argentina also with 16%. The ranked South Africa at the top of its cryptocurrency ownership list followed by Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Brazil, and Nigeria, among others. The survey, in this case, was specifically targeted to internet users, which may explain the difference between one poll and the other. 2019 Global Digital Yearbook As in the rest of the world, South Africans began their journey into crypto through Bitcoin. Transaction volumes in the country peaked in April 2016 and again in December 2017. Bitcoin trading volumes are back on the rise in South Africa as shown in the following . infographic According to , the most popular cryptocurrencies today are Bitcoin, Ehtereum, Litecoin, and EOS. However, as the website notes, South Africans see these cryptocurrencies as investments. Nichemarket There is, however, only one cryptocurrency that has real utility in the Sub-Saharan African country. Electroneum, a company I work with, has created an ecosystem. It can be used in South Africa to top up The Unlimited mobile airtime and data. Many retailers are also beginning to accept ETN for purchases of bread, milk, sugar, and coffee. Many taxis are also now receiving payment in Electroneum. One of the two founding fathers of blockchain, Dr. Scott Stornetta, recently said that “the way for mass adoption is to add value to the end user as Electroneum is focusing on doing with their cryptocurrency.” Poverty on the rise The governmental Department of Statistics of South Africa released a on 22 August 2017 revealing the population living poverty had declined from 66.6% in 2006 (32.9 million) to 53.2% in 2011 (27.7 million), but then increased to 55.5% (30.6 million) in 2015. report Africa Check released 2015 of their own breaking down the general and children population living in poverty by ethnic groups. statistics The real-time website on 8 August 2019 showed that 13.3 million people in Southb Africa live in extreme poverty, which means they survive on less than US$1.25 a day. World Poverty The Huffington Post published a on their website where they claim that over half of South Africans live in poverty and manage to survive with under US$59 a month. video Mobile phone usage Sub-Saharan Africa, which includes South Africa, has experienced significant growth in internet use among the population, according to a Pew Research Centre published in October of last year. report The analysis reveals that the Sub-Saharan African people feel very positive about the influence of the internet in their countries, including in the area of education, economy, and politics. The Pew Research study outlined the fact that 79% percent of the population has used a smartphone to receive or make payments on mobile phones. Also, 91% of adults own a mobile phone, be it a smartphone or a feature phone. South Africa smartphone penetration has now gone beyond the 80% level, according to . They added that smartphone subscriptions stood at 47 million as of 30 September 2018, which is a figure to be noted as the population is nearly 59 million. ICASA Last year, 13.5 million smartphones were sold in South Africa, a 7% increase from the previous year, which is far higher than the global sales growth of 1%, to the Business Insider. according A country of contradictions South Africa is undoubtedly a country of contradictions. For many years after the end of Apartheid in 1994, the country began turning eyes globally as its economy began to grow. In July 2017, an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said that the South African economy had accomplished enormous social progress. It spoke of a country that gave millions of people access to vital public services, including education, health, and housing. report However, now the economy is on a downturn as the Gross Dosmestic Product slows and investment shrinks, according to . The crude reality is that apart from about 30 million South Africans living in poverty, including , 7.1 million with HIV, and unemployment is gradually increasing, standing at 29% currently, according to . Bloomberg 6 million children people living Trading Economics But with cryptocurrency users on the rise in a country where the Finance Minister Tito Mbweni has established a cryptocurrency regulatory working group, and given the rise of mobile phone purchases, South Africa represents a huge opportunity for blockchain companies and cryptocurrencies that look to provide people on the ground with the tools they need to live more.

South Africa tops the list of cryptocurrency ownership among global internet users

After working with crypto and blockchain startups from all over the world, I noticed the huge gap between ICO marketing and IEO marketing. In this article, I would like to share my experience and insights working at with some of the most interesting and innovative blockchain companies to help you plan and execute the best marketing campaign for your IEO. Guerrilla Buzz From the proverbial ashes of (ICOs), which whilst still popular amongst the crypto community, are beginning to fall out of favor with newer crypto investors and certain skeptics of the community in general, a new form of offering is on the rise. This is mainly due to the perceived risk of investing in an ICO and the chances for fraud, with some reports stating that over of ICOs run during 2017 were fraudulent. People are also concerned within the cryptocurrency sphere, about the unpredictable volatility of some coin projects. As a direct result of this, Stablecoins have been introduced to the market, these are cryptocurrency coins that maintain price stability. These, however, are not without their flaws and they have had on whether or not they can maintain their own stability. This new offering is what is known as an ). In this article, we are going to be explaining all of the key points that you need to know if you are planning to launch your blockchain project to the public using an IEO. Intro Initial Coin Offerings blockchain 70% speculation Initial Exchange Offering (IEO IEOs in simplistic terms are not that much different to ICOs in the way that they operate. Investors are still offered a number of cryptographic tokens in return for the money that they put into the specific IEO project. A Brief Explanation of IEOs The main difference between the two types of offers is that rather than the blockchain project itself having to set up the sale process themselves and having to target investors on their own, the sale of the tokens will be assisted and facilitated by a third-party, which is typically a cryptocurrency exchange. As a result of this increase in IEO listing, a large number of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges have started to offer their own launchpad services. These are dedicated platforms that help to market and facilitate the launch of blockchain projects that the exchanges feel are the most likely to be a commercial success. One of the key things to keep in mind when trying to market your IEO to an outside audience is to make sure that if you do run a marketing campaign, you need to make sure that you are engaging with your target audience. If you are targeting millennials, try and do some research into what things are currently piquing the interest of that demographic and try to implement them into your marketing plan. Make Sure You Engage Your Audience The importance of running marketing campaigns before you are picked up by an exchange is massive. Competition between various blockchain projects to get onto an exchange launchpad is incredibly fierce and the exchanges will be more likely to side with a project which has already developed a very steady, yet effective marketing presence. You’re not only looking to engage the investors, but also the exchanges themselves. If you are unsure about running your own marketing operations, do not despair, there are a number of different companies that specialize in running the marketing operations of different blockchain projects. is among the more effective methods of disseminating relevant information about your blockchain project to the crypto community. Furthermore, if you are displaying your expertise in your PR then the community at large are likely to look at your project more favorably and may be more likely to invest into your business at a later date. Invest in Making Good PR PR One of the most tried and tested methods of generating PR within the crypto world is to write guest posts on a variety of different cryptocurrency news outlets. This does not have to actually be about your project, however, you should be trying to disseminate worthwhile knowledge to the community. You should also be spreading value with your communications. One example for a topic of a guest post would be to explain the problems that your blockchain project is trying to solve and then, in turn, explaining how your project is going to bring that problem to an end. Making sure that you have good PR is a great way to ensure that when you begin your journey, searching for an exchange to pick you up, you will already have a sizable amount of online content related to you and your project. This online footprint will make you more desirable to exchanges in the long-term. Below are some examples of popular sites used for guest posting: ● CryptoSlate ● TotalCrypto ● KryptoMoney ● CryptoRadar ● CoinSutra Marketing yourself and your project over social media is one of the most cost-effective and popular ways of generating interest from masses of people. There are also certain social media sites that have a much larger number of cryptocurrency users than others, some examples of these are , and . Making Use of Social Media Reddit Medium Steemit is also not a bad option. Linkedin One recommendation for your social media marketing is to start being proactive with it, long before you plan to actually pitch your idea to an exchange. One way of managing this is to keep posting updates relating to your project, this allows you to keep your community interested whilst creating worthwhile content for new readers also. If you are lucky, you may also be able to communicate with people with similar interests and mentalities. If you get cozy with these individuals, they may be able to post about your project, also bringing more viewers to your pages and new potential customers for when you launch your IEO. If you are looking to naturally grow your online audience, one of the most tried and tested methods of doing this is to dive in and start communicating in community discussions. When you are getting into these discussions, it is best to speak factually and to add undeniable value to the conversation. If you come across as intelligent and knowledgable, people are more likely to follow you and therefore will also be more likely to get involved in your blockchain project. Once you have effectively marketed your blockchain project and have developed a large online presence, it may be time for you to select an exchange that will host your IEO. One of the first things to consider is that you will want to form a partnership with the largest possible exchange so that you can get the largest amount of exposure and investment possible. Choose an Exchange That Will Get You Maximum Engagement Secondly, when launching your IEO, you need to consider whether or not the exchange you are working with has a good reputation in the community. One way to do this is by reviewing news articles about your chosen exchange to make sure they have not been involved in any controversial dealings. Also, get involved by engaging in conversations with different exchanges. From doing this, you will be able to get an idea of how you feel about each exchange and whether you believe that the exchange will be able to do well by your project whilst making the right decisions to ensure the security of your investment potential. Below is a comprehensive list of the most popular cryptocurrency exchange launchpads. ● Binance Launchpad ● Huobi Prime ● BW Launchpad ● Coineal Launchpad ● OKEx Jumpstart ● ZBG Launchpad ● BGOGO Apollo ● BitMax Launchpad ● IDAX Foundation ● Coinbene ● Latoken Launchpad ● Kucoin Spotlight ● Probit Launchpad ● Cobinhood ● Bittrex International ● Exmarkets Launchpad There are definitely a large number of benefits to launching your blockchain project through an IEO, rather than using an ICO. You are likely to be viewed as more reputable by your potential investors, yet you will not have to go through that much red tape to set up your sale. This is in contrast to scam-heavy and untrusted ICOs and the overly regulated and suffocating red tape of Security Token Offerings. Conclusion It is also definitely recommended that you enlist the help of a specialist cryptocurrency marketing company to assist you with your pre-launch marketing. This will allow you to have the highest possible access to a large number of different investors even before your chosen exchange markets your project to their masses of users. If you have a good product, have marketed your product effectively and have partnered with a popular and effective exchange then you will be able to make an effective run at raising money for your project. This money will be able to help you succeed in your objectives going forward.

IEO Marketing Checklist

Part 1 (#25–#13) Revealing techniques of 25 successful attacks on blockchain: from 2010 to 2018, $1.8+ billion USD. Bitcoin Out of Thin Air — 92 Billion BTC Date: Aug 2010 Attack An flaw in Bitcoin’s code has been exploited at block #74638 to generate 92233720368.54277039 BTC. The overflow has resulted from a type that can hold an integer up to at most 2⁶³-1, giving the number 9223372036854277039. integer overflow UINT64_MAX After Attack Bitcoin community canceled all relevant transactions and rolled back the ledger to the pre-hack state. AllinVain — 25,000 BTC ($500,000) Date: Jun 2011 Attack The hacker broke into the victim’s hard drive and transferred a large chunk of balance to an external wallet. World’s first cryptocurrency hacks victim . from Wikipedia Mt. Got 1st Hack — 2609 BTC ($50,000) Date: Jun 19 2011 Attack The attacker and altered the nominal value of BTC to 1 cent. Afterward, the attacker transferred 2609 BTC from some clients to sell at this low price and purchased back nearly 650 BTCs from another account. obtained an auditor’s credentials After Attack Mt. Got suspended the operations for several days but then carried it on. from https://steemit.com Bitcoinica: Hacked 3 Times — 122,000 BTC ($430,000) Date: Mar / May / Jul 2012 1st Attack The attacker hosted on the Linode’s server and made away with 43,554 BTC. Some individuals who used Linode’s server have also been hacked. decrypted the Bitcoinica’s hot wallets 2nd Attack The attacker got access to Bitcoinica’s database, obtained users’ private identification information and sensitive details, and stole 38,000 BTC. 3rd Attack The attacker stole 40,000 BTC, but it has been reported that Bitcoinica’s funds were held in Mt. Gox secretly, which was later refunded. from bitcoinmagazine.com BitFloor — 24,000 BTC ($85,000) Date: Sep 2012 Attack The attacker obtained the unencrypted private keys that stored online for backups. After Attack BitFloor refunded the users, but it eventually closed down due to regulatory measures from its associated banks. from KryptoMoney.com Mt. Got 2nd Hack — 750,000 BTC ($350 million) Date: Mar 2014 Attack The attacker found . The details of the transactions can be edited to make it like it never took place. transactions malleable Specifically, in a general transfer transaction, the attacker (the receiver) was able to manipulate the sender’s signature before it goes into the blockchain, and changed the transaction ID. This new and tampered transaction has a chance to overwrite the sender’s original transaction, in which scenario, the attacker gets the funds yet it seemed like the sender does not successfully put the original transaction into the blockchain. The attacker (the receiver) can, therefore, ask for an additional transfer, who will eventually receive the funds twice. After Attack Mt. Got halted all BTC transactions right away. No refunds were made. Eventually Mt. Got filed for bankruptcy. from https://cryptoiscoming.com Poloniex —97 BTC (12.3% of all its BTC) Date: Mar 04 2014 Attack The attacker exploited the . Because of that, the withdrawal requests were processed simultaneously instead of sequentially, the attacker could send multiple withdrawal actions within a short period of time to withdraw more than the balance allowed, making the balance negative eventually. faulty design of Poloniex’s withdrawal code After Attack Polonies reduced all its holders’ balance by 12.3%, and later on repaid all the losses. from Wikipedia BitStamp — 19,000 BTC ($5.1 million) Date: Jan 04 2015 Attack The attacker stole 19K BTC from Bitstamp’s operational hot wallet. After Attack BitStamp suspended all operations. And it moved on to use a . multi-sig wallet from http://theconversation.com The DAO — 3.6 million ETH ($55 million) Date: Jun 2016 Attack Clearly, it’s due to reentrancy. on it. Lots of tutorials After Attack Ethereum community planned to do a soft fork but found another DDoS vulnerability inside the code, so a hard fork was inevitable. Right now we have Ethereum (new version) and Ethereum Classic (old hacked version). from https://steemit.com/ Steemit.com —Steem and Steem Dollars ($85,000) Date: Jul 2016 Attack The attacker hit 260 Steemit accounts and drained their balances. It’s a human error that was caused by a UI design flaw. Some users might not be aware of the difference between the memo and the password, and accidentally pasted their password at the memo field, which will be submitted along with the transaction. Those passwords will be kept public and immutable on the blockchain of Steemit! can simply scrape the passwords of numerous users who made this fatal mistake. A simple script from https://www.bitfinex.com Bitfinex — 120,000 BTC ($72 million) Date: Aug 2016 Attack Bitfinex switched to use BitGo’s multi-sig wallet 12 months ago. The attacker found a vulnerability in its multi-sig architecture and took advantage of it. After Attack Bitfinex issued BFX tokens to compensate victims, which are redeemable in USD. The victims lost are refunded slowly and steadily afterward. The attack made the price of BTC drop from $607 to $515 in just a few hours. from “Daily value of your cryptocurrency wallet” CoinDash — ETH ($7 million) Date: Jul 2017 Attack The attacker manipulated the ICO address posted on CoinDash’s website to lure investors into incorrect place for exchanging Ether for CoinDash tokens. Wrap-up Hope you enjoy the brief intro to the techniques of each of the big hacks. Some of the attack details remain confidential and there’re not much opened to the public, I have tried my best to organize and present the truth based on the references below. There are , including Veritaseum, Parity 1st hack, Enigma, Tether, Parity 2nd hack, NiceHash, Coincheck, BitGrail, Google Adwords, Bancor, Coinrail, Zaif, and a real bloody hacker fight that I have experienced. 12 more hacks to go Stay tuned! Great References https://medium.com/bitfolio-org/the-biggest-cryptocurrency-hack-in-the-history-of-blockchain-22380febfaa2 https://coinsutra.com/biggest-bitcoin-hacks/ https://blocksdecoded.com/cryptocurrency-hacks/ https://u.today/top-3-biggest-bitcoin-hacks-and-frauds-in-history https://www.coinannouncer.com/the-hack-history-of-blockchain/ https://blockonomi.com/mt-gox-hack/ Hack on blockchain itself: https://coincentral.com/blockchain-hacks/ https://cryptopotato.com/lessons-learned-from-the-biggest-crypto-hacks-in-history/ https://cryptopotato.com/market-declines-as-korean-crypto-exchange-coinrail-faces-hack/ https://www.benzinga.com/fintech/17/11/10824764/12-biggest-cryptocurrency-hacks-in-history https://www.ccn.com/biggest-theft-history-know-far-530-million-coincheck-hack https://www.blockstuffs.com/blog/top-10-blockchain-hacks Blockchain Graveyard: https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/ Acquire security consultancy from blockchain white-hat hackers. is for your blockchain business safeguarding. Be careful not to be 0xdead! Turing Chain

Learn Blockchain’s Top 25 Hacks in History

I am somewhat new to the world of hacking and programming, but it is a field that I enjoy being in. My weapons of choice are for my OS, and for programming. Parrot Python By now you may have heard the story of the 3 gentlemen who , the code used by The Zodiac killer, this really got me interested into completing a challenge I had started a few years ago, but never completed. The fantastic site , has some great hacking challenges that range the gambit of skill level. It is community created, so the difficulty levels sometimes isn't accurate, but they are all solvable non the less. cracked the Z-340 Over The Wire The particular challenge I'm speaking of is cleverly called , because it’s a crypto challenge, on the main page you are given hints and examples of how the encryption of that level works and it is up to you to hack in, find the files you need and decipher the code. Super cool. Krypton I've noticed a few things reading the levels, some of them might need some work to help shift the letters to the correct position to be able to do what is needed to solve the level. This is where python comes in for me. I'm very much a project-based learner, I found that that is the best way for me to learn. So the plan is to use python to create little scripts that would help me take in the alphabet text and manipulate it in the way suggested to get the result desired, and by that, it would be a 3-in-1 kind of project. I get to do some basic hacking, I get to learn some coding, and learn about cryptography. Do you have a similar learning project? Or have any tips for me? I hope this post has given you some ideas. This has been ryn0f1sh, The King of N00bs

Hack The Planet (Krypton)

I’m addressing to the english speaking crypto community because such a community didn’t really exist in my language. I’m verry sorry for my level in english, I’ll hope that I’m understandable enough to be comfortably read and to participate adequately to the debate. Disclaimer: Hi there ! (kind of a second disclaimer :) ) My nickname is Sybille and I’m a KryptoNoob, I keep asking myself cryptonoob questions, because I want to understand what all of this fuzz is about. I’m reading a lot of articles about cryptocurrency, blockchain, coins, ICO and all that jazz in the cryptoworld. Sometimes I even dare to put a comment or ask a question on a medium article, but without having much answer, so far… That’s telling me that maybe I’m so noob that I’m asking questions that no one would bother to answer, that I’m not the center of the world (and that’s a shame), and maybe that my english isn’t good enough, and that while I believe that I can express myself in this language, I’m in fact leaving in a fantasy world where my ideas and speeches appear clearly in my mind and sounds as a strange borborygmi for others. But you know what ? I’m a cryptonoob enthusiast ! So enthusiast in Fact, that I have invested 1 000 euros in the cryptogame (and I’m doing it even if the french government tax any capital gain in crypto up to 60% !). I wanted to wait until I have fully understand what it is about and I’m still trying to learn things about it, but I have read so much blockchain enthusiasts saying that it’s in the way social life is organized since we stop being hunter-gatherer and began to live in large centralized and vertical community were the power is so much unequally distributed, that finally I just fell for it. And also (maybe it is the true untold reason, but not for long…), I want to be super rich without working too much (Don’t judge me — Well, I’m not sure that 1 000 euros will be enough though). the thing of a generation and even a new cycle So here it is : the blockchain ! Decentralized wide community, that create trust beyond verbal and written promises. A technology that promise to bind our words by the magic of computing (it’s probable that computing machine will be magic to me for the rest of my life). That sounds really great and exciting to me ! And I want to believe in it, and I want that computing make our communities, exchanges and life better. Technologies, social rules, laws and cultures define how wealth and power are distributed and organized. The question of the distribution of wealth and power is the central, the only question, that must govern our thoughts when we think about politic. Isn’t it ? And this time, technologie seems to be able to redefine how the whole system works. So I still have my noob, unanswered critics, questions, beliefs and remarks that I wan’t to share with the cryptocommunity :) ! Here they are : About blockchain in general : The big problem : the centralisation of computing ! (so, is it a problem ? Maybe you can tell me ?! :-) ) **What I think I have understood :**There is a mining process that guarantee the transactions, the decentralized system of computing and validation of the blocks partly guarantees the openness and security of the system, and the ones who are giving there computing power are rewarded by . coins If it works like this the main risk is the centralisation of the whole computing process, I see it happening for 2 reasons : 1. Because there is a scale advantage about doing it this way ! Like in the mining world of gold, in the beginning, everybody tried to mine it by him-herself, after a while giant companies emerged and optimized the process, and now the top 10 companies control one third of the production. For the blockchain it’s even more likely that the centralisation of the production will occure, because there are no geographical issue in the computing process. And it’s already happening, for the Bitcoin at least. If, say, an oligopole of blockchain minning companies appears, the system will be no more a decentralized one, and we can even imagine that the two or three main companies could easily manipulate the market or the ledger for their own profit.2. Aren’t we going to go to a world where most of the computing power will be concentrate in the hand of the GAFAM ? Especially with the 5G ! As I see it, if we get a powerful, worldwide (or at least countrywide) and reliable Mobile Internet System, we won’t need to keep the computing power on our devices, and a centralized computing system will be more efficient and cheaper to run. In this case the computing power will be centralized, just cause it costs less, and the same risk as in point 1 will emerge. Why is it a problem : Wouldn’t this 2 factors, or to sum it up the centralization of the computing power, jeopardize the future of any decentralized blockchain system, or is this not a problem at all in a blockchain world ? Or maybe you think that it’s a problem but that it won’t happen ? Teach me ! I’d like to know ! Question : A question about the smart contract : SmartContracts execute themselves and permit to avoid any third party that are normally needed to secure the transaction, it’s a bit like if the words of anyone become even more reliable as the ones of my most trusted friend ! sounds great :) ! What I think I have understood : When we make a smart contrat how is it executing itself automatically ? I didn’t understand it fully ! Cause, I mean, in a contract you have to get a human validation like : ‘hey I have well get the product !’ or : ‘the service has been delivered in the quality and quantity expected’. Doesn’t the contract still need the validation of a third party if people disagree, just like what Amazon, the banking or the judicial system are doing ? For exemple, if I buy a Bitcoin by myself how does the blockchain know that I have paid for it ? So, again, teach me ! Which part of the contrat is executing by itself, or by the blockchain process ? As you can see I’m missing something. But I don’t know what… Question : About Security : It’s so secured and well designed that its not even worthwhile to attack it ! What I think I have understood : The infrastructure around the blockchain, seems to be very unsecured ! Very good, you can’t forge the blockchain, but or . I don’t know for sure if Bitcoins is less secure than the USD system in proportion of the level of exchange and value, but it seems like it. But : you can steal the coin during the ICO you can steal it from the wallet Maybe the security and guarantee of the infrastructures of the companies around the blockchain aren’t yet at the level of the bank system ? But well, isn’t the blockchain created to precisely avoid the bank system ? Question : I think that the absence of central authority and identity recognition at a social level (in the Fiat world, we have for exemple the banking system and the judicial system) poses several problems to secure well the blockchains coins, cause for a cyberburglar this kind of value, anonymous and untraceable seems to be the perfect target. What is your opinion about this question ? Maybe the blockchain itself could be program to be better secured ? Or is this an invalid question ? About Bitcoin in particular : I see a lot of problems about bitcoins that might jeopardize the possibility of using it as a world currency : The concentration issue : , and the Bitcoin could hit the million dollars mark. Won’t we have a 1000 of Jeff Bezos if this currency hit the Million Dollars mark !? And Satochi will be 10 times richer than Bezos…Isn’t it a big inequality issue ? And also, just something that won’t happen because it’s seems unlikely (I know that it’s a very feeble argument… but it’s the one frome my guts : maybe my guts aren’t ready yet). If 40% of the market is owned by 1 000 people, it’s easy for them to manipulate the market and the prices if there is not an independent regulator. How could we prevent the main Bitcoin’s owner to manipulate the market (like doing a lot of transactions between there own wallets at a high price and selling some for real to cryptonoob like me) ? And won’t the risks of this concentration appeal for a new and less concentrated Bitcoinlike currency ? What I think I have understood : 40% of the bitcoins are owned by 1 000 people Remark : Question : The costs to operate the Bitcoin blockchain : The blockchain cost a lot to be operate. But Bitcoin can change to be more efficient to operate. Is such a change likely to happen ? About the cost in itself does it costs more to operate than the USD ? for example, USD needs : The Fed, Printed Money, Police, Army, ATM, banks, a judicial system… ? Is there a fair comparaison between the cost of Bitcoin and USD ? Or maybe again this question is irrelevant because we cannont compare the two ? What I think I have understood : Question : So here it is ! Here are (some of) my remarks and questions about the blockchain. I thank you very much in advance if any reader is willing to help me understand more about it. I’m aware that those questions and remarks might just be irrelevant and dumb from the point of view of a blockchain expert. I hope that she or he will explain to me (and my fellow cryptonoob) why and what is that I’m so wrong or not, or direct me to the right content that might help me to understand better all of this. Because I genuinely want to understand how blockchain works and what it could be. Kisses, Sybille

Questions and Remarks From A KryptoNoob Enthusiast !

Forget kryptonite. If “hard skills” are Superman's strength, think of “soft skills” as the key that unlocks his true potential. In a world obsessed with technical expertise, those who master empathy, communication, and adaptability hold the real power – and employers know it. Think about it: sure, robots might code faster. AI might write snappy marketing copy. But can they negotiate a tense deal, inspire a dispirited team, or pivot seamlessly when a project goes sideways? Not a chance. The Skills That Can't Be Outsourced Soft skills are your superpower because they're essentially human. They hinge on connection, understanding, and navigating the complexities of human behavior. You can't automate genuine empathy. There's no algorithm for building trust. Too often, we treat soft skills like a fluffy bonus, the nice-to-haves on a resume. But in a rapidly changing job market, they're the non-negotiables. The difference between simply getting the job and truly excelling in it. Let's unpack some superpowers and the scenarios where they shine: The ability to step into someone else's shoes – be it a frustrated client, a struggling coworker, or a nervous interviewee – is pure gold. It's how you disarm disputes, build bridges, and design products that truly address people's needs. Empathy is a spectrum, and the more you practice it, the more natural it becomes. Empathy – Your Secret Weapon: Clear, concise, tailored communication isn't merely about avoiding misunderstandings. It's about persuasion, inspiration, and leaving people feeling heard and understood. Your communication skills are how you get buy-in, manage expectations, and rally your team toward a shared goal. Communication – The Crystal Ball: The only constant in the current marketplace is change. The adaptable are the survivors. This means being comfortable with ambiguity, learning on the fly, and course-correcting without breaking a sweat. Think of it as mental gymnastics, keeping you agile when the ground shifts beneath your feet. Adaptability – The Chameleon: Some soft skills act as the foundation for many others. Self-awareness is the ultimate keystone skill. Understand your own reactions and responses, and those tough conversations or unexpected changes get much easier to handle. Keystone Skills: Unlike technical skills that can become outdated, soft skills get with use. Each time you navigate a conflict, your adaptability grows. Every act of empathy makes you more attuned to others. Renewable Resources: stronger How to Flex Your Superpower (Soft Skills) Unlike capes and laser vision, developing soft skills takes practice and intention. Here's how to get started: Turn the Lens Inward: Self-awareness is the bedrock. Think about the last time you gave a presentation. Were you focused on truly connecting with your audience, or did you race through your slides to get it over with? Did you notice people checking their phones, or did you leave feeling like you'd made an impact?  Honest self-assessment is the first step to pinpointing areas where your communication style could use a boost.  Do you stay cool when a deadline gets changed at the last minute, or does it send you into a tailspin? Recognizing your stress triggers empowers you to develop coping mechanisms that boost your resilience. Seek Out Challenges: Soft skills are forged in the fire. If the idea of speaking up in meetings makes you break out in a cold sweat, start small.  Force yourself to contribute one thoughtful comment or question each time.  Feel the fear and do it anyway!  That long-overdue conversation with your boss about a raise? Schedule it, and treat the preparation as seriously as you would any task. Role-play with a friend to practice.  The more you confront those daunting situations, the easier they become, and the stronger your sense of agency grows. Find Your Super Squad: Mentors, colleagues, and friends who exhibit strong soft skills are your kryptonite – in a good way. Observe the office diplomat – the one everyone goes to for advice when tensions are high. How do they de-escalate situations?  What kind of language do they use to build rapport?  Notice not just their words, but their body language and tone of voice.  Have a friend who always seems to land great opportunities? Ask them for honest feedback about your resume and interview style – they might see areas for improvement that you've missed. Now, we've covered the basics. You get that soft skills matter, that they open those doors marked "opportunity" and "career success." But, we're a discerning bunch, aren't we? Let's break down the "why" behind the "what," and ditch the clichés for some deeper truths. Mythbusting: Soft Skills Aren't "Soft" at all Let's be real, the term "soft skills" is a disservice. These abilities are anything but squishy or optional. They demand focus, mental toughness, and a willingness to engage the messiest parts of ourselves. Let's rebrand them as  "human-centric skills" or "essential skills". It's about honoring the complexity they represent. Here’s taking each mandatory “soft skill” to a deeper level. The Dark Side of Empathy: A Cautionary Tale Empathy, our secret weapon, has a shadow side. Unchecked, it can lead to burnout and clouded judgment. Yes, connect with others, but remember to center yourself.  True empathy means understanding your limits as much as another person's needs. Self-care isn't selfish; it's a sustainability plan for your most valuable tool. Communication Isn't Just Words: Your Body Speaks Volumes Mastering communication transcends eloquent speeches and snazzily written emails.  Notice your posture, tone of voice, and the energy you bring to a room. This non-verbal language often conveys more than the words themselves. Awareness of how you strengthens every interaction. present Adaptability as a Mindset: Embrace the Unknown Adaptability isn't mere flexibility; it's embracing a "figure-it-out" philosophy. It's approaching the unexpected not as a threat, but as an adventure. This means cultivating curiosity, asking bold questions, and being comfortable saying, "I don't know...yet." The Power of Vulnerability: Taking off the Armor We prize strength, but what about audacious vulnerability?  Owning our mistakes, asking for help, and admitting when we're out of our depth fosters a different kind of strength – one that builds trust and creates space for true collaboration. Vulnerability makes you magnetic. Cultivating Your Soft Skills, the Unsexy Way Let's ditch those 5-minute online courses promising to turn you into a communication guru. Cultivating real human-centric skills takes work, and it often looks more mundane than glamorous: Before reacting in meetings, take a single, intentional breath. It centers you and can prevent impulsive responses. The Mindful Minute: Regularly ask trusted colleagues for candid feedback, specifically around your soft-skill blind spots. The Awkward Feedback: Write about those cringe-worthy interactions. Analyzing where you stumbled builds self-awareness for next time. The Journal of Discomfort: The ROI of Introspection Don't underestimate the power of deliberate self-examination.  Schedule "thinking time" alongside work tasks. Reflect on your leadership style, communication patterns, and emotional triggers. This investment gives you a competitive advantage – the X-factor of knowing . yourself The Future of Leadership Companies can train hard skills, but they can't instill empathy, genuine charisma, or the ability to inspire. As you hone these abilities, you're not just developing yourself; you're shaping the kind of leader you want to be – the kind a team will truly follow. A Final Challenge Don't wait for someone to teach you soft skills. Carve your own path. Observe the masters, engage in difficult conversations honestly, and take the risks that grow you as a human, not just a worker.  It's the most fulfilling, powerful career journey you can take. A Word to the Tech-Obsessed If you're the type who lives and breathes code, data, or design, this isn't a knock against your talent. But those incredible technical abilities reach their full potential only when paired with the X-factor of soft skills. It's what elevates you from "competent" to "indispensable." Imagine a world where every tech whiz is a master communicator, or every analyst has a deep well of empathy. It's the future of work – human connection fueled by technical brilliance. So, the next time you think about leveling up, don't just load up on coding bootcamps. Seek out workshops on conflict resolution, take an improv class, volunteer for a cause you care about. These are the investments that pay lifelong dividends. Because while the world changes around us, the demand for human connection remains a constant. That's your superpower, and it's time to unleash it. Scott

Soft Skills: The X-Factor That Opens Every Door

Your web scraper has just been blocked by Cloudflare again! You've looked online for solutions, but nothing seems to do the trick. Is there a secret sauce for Cloudflare bypass? You bet there is. You just haven't stumbled upon the right recipe! Embark on a guided tour through the maze of Cloudflare anti-bot technology. We're here to demystify Cloudflare's inner workings, unveil some game-changing tricks, and ensure you never hit a dead end again! What Is Cloudflare? , the cyber fortress of the Internet, offers top-notch services to boost the security and performance of websites and web applications. But you probably knew that already! Cloudflare Now, what's the secret sauce that makes Cloudflare so popular? Drumroll, please—it’s anti-bot solutions! Ever come across that page? Well, you’re the only one! That’s a result of the , a high-tech shield against the mischief of malicious bots. Cloudflare Bot Management service Here are the technologies that power that cybersecurity platform: Behavioral analysis: Picture it as Sherlock Holmes scrutinizing user behavior on the Web to decipher whether users are humans or not. Machine learning magic: Think of it as the Dumbledore's Army of bot detection, learning from a colossal dataset with billions of records to give every request a reliable bot score. Fingerprinting: Use millions of internet properties to precisely identify bot requests without compromising user privacy. The result? Bots, begone! From stopping credential stuffing to thwarting content scrapers, spammers, inventory hoarders, credit card stuffers, and even putting up a solid defense against application DDoS attacks—Cloudflare's got it covered. Cloudflare’s Bot Management stands tall as the Batman of bot management, vigilantly safeguarding websites to thwart any hint of malicious bot behavior. 🦸‍♂️ But every superhero has its kryptonite! Dive into the next section to unravel more. Tips to Bypass Cloudflare Before digging into this chapter, let's tackle a burning question. Is it even possible to bypass Cloudflare? Absolutely! No online solutions can or should restrict users from accessing public sites as they wish, even through automated software. Thus, the million-dollar question is: how to outsmart Cloudflare? 🤔 Dive into the tips below to master the art of eluding Cloudflare! Use a Reliable IP Cloudflare gives IPs a score based on their reputation. If your IP has been caught red-handed performing actions considered malicious by Cloudflare, the chances of getting blocked become high. The solution? Having a large pool of IPs to distribute your requests on. In that scenario, even if one IP gets blocked, you have many others available in your arsenal. That’s where IP rotation via proxy comes into play. Find out more on . how to rotate an IP address Leverage Browser Automation Only browsers can overcome the challenges set by Cloudflare’s Bot Management. When you navigate a page shielded by that solution, your browser uses JavaScript to tackle those challenges without you even realizing it. Requests made by an automated script through a traditional HTTP client will then hit an immediate roadblock. Why? Because HTTP clients can’t execute JavaScript! That’s something only a browser can do. Thus, your Cloudflare-ready automated script should rely on an approach for programmatically executing actions on a web page in a browser, such as . controlling a headless browser via Playwright Reverse Engineering the Cloudflare Challenges This is where the real challenge kicks in—how to outsmart the anti-bot defenses intricately embedded into a web page by Cloudflare? The answer: dive deep into their workings, unravel the puzzle through reverse engineering, and conquer. That's easier said than done 😅 Step one involves finding the request linked to the retrieval of the JavaScript challenge. This will involve encrypted code that you must somehow decipher: Suppose you managed to do that. Now, all that remains is to figure out the original code's intentions and create a strategy to fool it into thinking that the Cloudflare challenge has been overcome. On paper, this sounds like a valid approach, but in the real world, it may be a one-way ticket to a colossal headache. Don’t worry, though. Overcoming Cloudflare is possible—you just need the right tools! My Solution Works… Until It Doesn't Imagine you're an IT genius who manages to crack the code to get past Cloudflare's bot protection technologies. Bear in mind that Cloudflare is an ever-evolving beast, so no guarantees your solution will work tomorrow. To reach the goal, you've got to embrace a different approach! A real-world, ideal, intelligent solution to overcome Cloudflare would be a controllable browser that: Can overcome advanced anti-bot measures for you. Is always up-to-date because it runs in the cloud. Automatically rotates IPs and handles request attempts. Avoids fingerprinting to improve your privacy. Can resolve CAPTCHAs on its own. Allows cookie management and header customization. Ensures amazing scalability and performance by executing in the cloud. It can be controlled by any browser automation library, such as Selenium, Playwright, or Puppeteer. This isn't a mere dream, but a palpable reality. The browser you're imagining is real, developed by Bright Data, and goes by the name of ! Scraping Browser Final Thoughts Cloudflare reigns supreme in safeguarding websites against malicious bots. Here, we've delved into the technologies it uses for detecting and stopping automated software, offering you some handy tips to avoid them. But let's be real, that’s a grueling, trial-and-error, demoralizing task. Need to bypass Cloudflare once and for all? Embrace Scraping Browser from and join our mission to transform the Internet into a public space accessible to everyone, everywhere, even via automated scripts! Bright Data Until next time, keep exploring the Internet with freedom!

Cracking the Code of Cloudflare Bypass

ক্লাউডফ্লেয়ার বাইপাসের কোড ক্র্যাক করা

Den Code von Cloudflare Bypass knacken

Descifrando el código de omisión de Cloudflare

Déchiffrer le code du contournement de Cloudflare

क्लाउडफ्लेयर बाईपास के कोड को क्रैक करना

Cloudflareバイパスのコードを解読する

Cloudflare Bypass 코드 크래킹

Quebrando o código do Cloudflare Bypass

Взлом кода обхода Cloudflare

Cloudflare Bypass Kodunu Kırmak

Bẻ khóa mã bỏ qua Cloudflare

破解 Cloudflare 绕过代码

When purchasing storage, the emphasis is usually on media, but it may be even more important to consider access methods too. You will need to take storage protocols into account when designing and procuring infrastructure, especially when you leave legacy storage behind in order to migrate to cloud-native object storage. However, object storage relies on the S3 API for communications, while legacy workloads rely on POSIX, the Portable Operating System Interface that provides a set of standards developed in the 1980s to allow applications to be portable between Unix OSs. Chances are that most enterprises have had applications in service for decades that were developed to run on POSIX. Chances are also that engineers are already aware of POSIX’s poor performance. That being said, when you have legacy systems that can only ingest data in a certain format or from a certain source, your options might be limited and you may have no choice but to implement an outdated protocol or rewrite your code. For example, if you can only ingest from a local disk with a filesystem and not with RESTful APIs accessed over network, then you must first make that data available on disk before your application can use it. However, using an object store as a filesystem has a number of serious negative implications when it comes to performance, compatibility, data integrity and security. Let’s demonstrate  this with some real world testing using a small utility called . This utility allows you to mount an S3 bucket as a local filesystem. It stands for S3 (Simple Storage Service) File System - FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace). It's an open-source project that leverages the FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) interface to present a filesystem-like interface to S3. s3fs-fuse Once an S3 bucket is mounted using , you can interact with the bucket as if it were a local filesystem. This means you can use regular file operations (like read, write, move, etc.) on files in your bucket. This sounds amazingly convenient and we can argue it simplifies application development. But inherently object storage and file systems have fundamental differences that will affect the s3 bucket mounted as a filesystem. s3fs-fuse Let’s take a moment to step back from the utility to discuss the real reasons why treating object storage as a filesystem is far from optimal. The problem is much bigger than and includes other utilities such as Rust based , a file client that translates local file system API calls to S3 object API calls. The first reason is that all of these utilities rely on POSIX for filesystem operations. POSIX is inefficient and it was never intended for working with very large files over-the-network. s3fs-fuse s3fs-fuse Mountpoint for Amazon S3 The speed of POSIX based systems decreases as the demand, especially concurrent demand, on them increases. When large organizations need to store and access oceans of data for deep learning, AI, and other data intensive use cases, POSIX does not have the ability or scalability to meet these demands. While all-Flash arrays have kept POSIX in the game, scalability and RESTful APIs (the hallmarks of the cloud) are like kryptonite. Because of this, running POSIX on top of an object store is suboptimal. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why: POSIX FS interface is inherently IOPS centric. They are chatty, expensive and hard to scale. RESTful S3 API addresses this by transforming IOPS into a throughput problem. Throughput is easier and cheaper to scale. This is why object storage is high-performance at a massive scale. Layering POSIX over S3 will not scale because POSIX is too chatty to be performed over an HTTP RESTful interface. Performance: Because object operations are atomic and immutable, there is no way to guarantee consistency correctness. This means you can lose the uncommitted data in case of a crash or run into corruption issues in case of shared mounts. Semantics: : Writes or any mutations to a file won't appear in the namespace until it is committed. This means concurrent access across shared mounts will not see the modifications. It is not useful for shared access. Data Integrity POSIX permissions and ACLs are primitive and incompatible with the S3 API’s way of handling identity and access management policies. It is not possible to safely implement POSIX access management on top S3 APIs. Access Control: POSIX also lacks most of the functionality that developers love about S3, such as  object level encryption, versioning, immutability – these simply have no equivalent in the POSIX world and nothing is able to translate them. POSIX Pain Points These examples illustrate the issue and its implications. To get started, we will use CSV file which is approximately 10GB and has 112 rows. this Note: We will assume the is already installed and you have mounted one of the buckets from the object storage into your filesystem. If not, follow the instructions . s3fs-fuse here In these examples, we will assume the bucket name is test-bucket and the file name is taxi-data.csv is in /home/user/ directory and is mounted at /home/user/test-bucket/ s3fs-fuse bucket Copy Operation We’ll try something simple first and try to copy the CSV file to our test-bucket using mc commands and record the time taken time mc cp /home/user/taxi-data.csv minio/test-bucket/taxi-data.csv This shouldn't take a lot of time and the file should be copied to our bucket. Now let’s try to do the same with s3fs-fuse time cp /home/user/taxi-data.csv /home/user/test-bucket/taxi-data.csv Time it took during the testing real	1m36.056s
user	0m14.507s
sys	0m31.891s In my case I was only able to copy the file partially to the bucket and the operation failed with the following error cp: error writing '/home/user/test-bucket/taxi-data.csv': Input/output error
cp: failed to close '/home/user/test-bucket/taxi-data.csv': Input/output error After multiple tries it succeeded real	5m3.661s
user	0m0.053s
sys	2m35.234s As you can see, because of the amount of API calls the utility needs to make and the general overhead of the operations, the utility becomes unstable and most of the operations do not even finish. Pandas Example We’ve shown you a simple example, which may or may not have been convincing, because let's face it, you might think is quite rudimentary. cp time cp So for the folks who need more empirical evidence let's write a Python snippet to test this. We’ll do a simple Pandas example with both and the package, and see the performance impact s3fs-fuse python s3fs import timeit
import os
import fsspec
import s3fs
import pandas as pd

# Write a dummy CSV file to test-bucket
df = pd.DataFrame({"column1": ["new_value1"], "column2": ["new_value2"]})
df.to_csv("s3://test-bucket/data/test-data.csv", index=False)


def process_s3():
    # add fsspec for pandas to use `s3://` path style and access S3 buckets directly
    fsspec.config.conf = {
      "s3":
      {
        "key": os.getenv("AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID", "minioadmin"),
        "secret": os.getenv("AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY", "minioadmin"),
        "client_kwargs": {
          "endpoint_url": os.getenv("S3_ENDPOINT", "https://play.min.io")
        }
      }
    }
    s3 = s3fs.S3FileSystem()
    for i in range(100):
        # Read the existing data
        print(i)
        df = pd.read_csv('s3://test-bucket/data/test-data.csv')
        # Append a new row
        new_df = pd.concat([df, pd.DataFrame([{"column1": f"value{i}", "column2": f"value{i}"}])], ignore_index=True)
        # Write the data back to the file
        new_df.to_csv('s3://test-bucket/data/test-data.csv', index=False)


execution_time = timeit.timeit(process_s3, number=1)
print(f"Execution time: {execution_time:.2f} seconds") Time taken during the testing Execution time: 8.54 seconds Now let's try the same for s3fs-fuse import timeit
import pandas as pd

# Write a dummy CSV file to test-bucket
df = pd.DataFrame({"column1": ["new_value1"], "column2": ["new_value2"]})
df.to_csv("s3://test-bucket/data/test-data.csv", index=False)


def process_s3fs():
    for i in range(100):
        # Read the existing data
        print(i)
        df = pd.read_csv('/home/user/test-bucket/data/test-data.csv')
        # Append a new row
        new_df = pd.concat([df, pd.DataFrame([{"column1": f"value{i}", "column2": f"value{i}"}])], ignore_index=True)
        # Write the data back to the file
        new_df.to_csv('/home/user/test-bucket/data/test-data.csv', index=False)


execution_time = timeit.timeit(process_s3fs, number=1)
print(f"Execution time: {execution_time:.2f} seconds") Time taken during the testing Execution time: 9.59 seconds These examples demonstrate constant reads and writes to S3 files. Imagine this performed concurrently by multiple clients – the latency grows dramatically. Remove the Overhead! As you can see, the difference between using POSIX translation to treat objects as files and using the direct API to work with objects is night and day. There is simply no comparison when it comes to security, performance, data integrity and compatibility. MinIO has to integrate with almost any popular programming language, and it can run on almost any platform such as Kubernetes, bare metal Linux, Docker containers – and much more. SDKs MinIO with encryption at rest and in-transit, combined with PBAC to regulate access and to protect data integrity. You will achieve the best performance possible, regardless of where you run MinIO, because it takes advantage of underlying hardware (see ) to deliver the greatest possible performance. We’ve MinIO at 325 GiB/s (349 GB/s) on GETs and 165 GiB/s (177 GB/s) on PUTs with just 32 nodes of off-the-shelf NVMe SSDs. secures objects erasure coding Selecting the Best Hardware for Your MinIO Deployment benchmarked There is simply no need for a filesystem utility in the middle of MinIO and your application! Any advantage legacy apps might receive will be offset by the pain of POSIX. If you have any questions about using POSIX translation for your application, be sure to reach out to us on ! Slack Also published . here

Why You Shouldn't Put a Filesystem on Top of an Object Store

কেন আপনি একটি অবজেক্ট স্টোরের উপরে একটি ফাইল সিস্টেম রাখা উচিত নয়

Warum Sie ein Dateisystem nicht über einen Objektspeicher legen sollten

Por qué no deberías poner un sistema de archivos encima de un almacén de objetos

Pourquoi vous ne devriez pas placer un système de fichiers au-dessus d'un magasin d'objets

आपको किसी ऑब्जेक्ट स्टोर के शीर्ष पर फ़ाइल सिस्टम क्यों नहीं रखना चाहिए?

ファイルシステムをオブジェクトストアの上に置くべきではない理由

객체 저장소 위에 파일 시스템을 배치하면 안되는 이유

Por que você não deve colocar um sistema de arquivos em cima de um armazenamento de objetos

Почему не следует размещать файловую систему поверх хранилища объектов

Neden Nesne Deposunun Üstüne Dosya Sistemi Koymamalısınız?

Tại sao bạn không nên đặt hệ thống tập tin lên trên kho lưu trữ đối tượng

为什么不应该将文件系统放在对象存储之上

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . Afterword by Bruce Schneier here Afterword by Bruce Schneier I'm a security technologist. My job is making people secure. I think about security systems and how to break them. Then, how to make them more secure. Computer security systems. Surveillance systems. Airplane security systems and voting machines and RFID chips and everything else. Cory invited me into the last few pages of his book because he wanted me to tell you that security is fun. It's incredibly fun. It's cat and mouse, who can outsmart whom, hunter versus hunted fun. I think it's the most fun job you can possibly have. If you thought it was fun to read about Marcus outsmarting the gait-recognition cameras with rocks in his shoes, think of how much more fun it would be if you were the first person in the world to think of that. Working in security means knowing a lot about technology. It might mean knowing about computers and networks, or cameras and how they work, or the chemistry of bomb detection. But really, security is a mindset. It's a way of thinking. Marcus is a great example of that way of thinking. He's always looking for ways a security system fails. I'll bet he couldn't walk into a store without figuring out a way to shoplift. Not that he'd do it -- there's a difference between knowing how to defeat a security system and actually defeating it -- but he'd know he could. It's how security people think. We're constantly looking at security systems and how to get around them; we can't help it. This kind of thinking is important no matter what side of security you're on. If you've been hired to build a shoplift-proof store, you'd better know how to shoplift. If you're designing a camera system that detects individual gaits, you'd better plan for people putting rocks in their shoes. Because if you don't, you're not going to design anything good. So when you're wandering through your day, take a moment to look at the security systems around you. Look at the cameras in the stores you shop at. (Do they prevent crime, or just move it next door?) See how a restaurant operates. (If you pay after you eat, why don't more people just leave without paying?) Pay attention at airport security. (How could you get a weapon onto an airplane?) Watch what the teller does at a bank. (Bank security is designed to prevent tellers from stealing just as much as it is to prevent you from stealing.) Stare at an anthill. (Insects are all about security.) Read the Constitution, and notice all the ways it provides people with security against government. Look at traffic lights and door locks and all the security systems on television and in the movies. Figure out how they work, what threats they protect against and what threats they don't, how they fail, and how they can be exploited. Spend enough time doing this, and you'll find yourself thinking differently about the world. You'll start noticing that many of the security systems out there don't actually do what they claim to, and that much of our national security is a waste of money. You'll understand privacy as essential to security, not in opposition. You'll stop worrying about things other people worry about, and start worrying about things other people don't even think about. Sometimes you'll notice something about security that no one has ever thought about before. And maybe you'll figure out a new way to break a security system. It was only a few years ago that someone invented phishing. I'm frequently amazed how easy it is to break some pretty big-name security systems. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the big one is that it's impossible to prove that something is secure. All you can do is try to break it -- if you fail, you know that it's secure enough to keep out, but what about someone who's smarter than you? Anyone can design a security system so strong he himself can't break it. you Think about that for a second, because it's not obvious. No one is qualified to analyze their own security designs, because the designer and the analyzer will be the same person, with the same limits. Someone else has to analyze the security, because it has to be secure against things the designers didn't think of. This means that all of us have to analyze the security that other people design. And surprisingly often, one of us breaks it. Marcus's exploits aren't far-fetched; that kind of thing happens all the time. Go onto the net and look up "bump key" or "Bic pen Kryptonite lock"; you'll find a couple of really interesting stories about seemingly strong security defeated by pretty basic technology. And when that happens, be sure to publish it on the Internet somewhere. Secrecy and security aren't the same, even though it may seem that way. Only bad security relies on secrecy; good security works even if all the details of it are public. And publishing vulnerabilities forces security designers to design better security, and makes us all better consumers of security. If you buy a Kryptonite bike lock and it can be defeated with a Bic pen, you're not getting very good security for your money. And, likewise, if a bunch of smart kids can defeat the DHS's antiterrorist technologies, then it's not going to do a very good job against real terrorists. Trading privacy for security is stupid enough; not getting any actual security in the bargain is even stupider. So close the book and go. The world is full of security systems. Hack one of them. Bruce Schneier About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Cory Doctorow (2009). Little Brother. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/30142/pg30142-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

Afterword by Bruce Schneier

153 Stories To Learn About Cryptography

Imagine Superman absorbed the energy not of the sun, but of people’s gratitude and belief in his powers. And kryptonite was people’s disbelief, discouragement, and hate. I just described Bitcoin. You have heard it said that technology is a double-edged sword. Recently, ChatGPT. It can harm as well as uplift a student. Or humanity in general. But after some thought, I posit that some technologies, like Bitcoin, are a net-good technology. Much less harmful than useful and instead, very vulnerable to being attacked, stained, ridiculed, and greatly misunderstood. My idea could be taken with a pinch of salt. Because of its vulnerabilities, Bitcoin is one technology that quite early on, many famous people have said is a scam, a Ponzi scheme, money used by criminals, ‘stupid’ and ‘evil’. To be fair, though, others have praised it. , said Bill Gates, while the billionaire investor Michael Saylor quit his CEO job last year to focus on singing Bitcoin’s praises. And buying more Bitcoin. “It is a technological tour de force” The trouble is, Bitcoin is sometimes complicated, like an action novel - Fast paced action featuring Japanese, Chinese, and American corporations, financial mind games with people spending billions of dollars of money that ‘does not exist’, innocent victims who get ‘rekt’. Other times, it is mundane and in a little corner of the world for my neighbors right now hardly know it exists. Or that it is a real thing with real power. In other places, it is high philosophy dealing with human action (praxeology), divine conceptions, and so on. But it is good. Only good. The fastest good on Earth. And this might be appreciated if we ponder, as we shall do today, how people would react to its gradual disappearance, its relation to Facebook or Nuclear power, and the core architecture built mostly on cooperation and not competition. The Last Bitcoin Currently, there are 19.6 million bitcoins in existence, and they will soon reach the hard cap limit of 21 million. To get a feel for where Bitcoin stands in the eyes of the world, imagine this. Imagine Bitcoins’ greatest weakness  - the ability of keys to get lost - has affected all the coins except one. Of the 21,000,000 Bitcoin that can exist, 20,999,999 get lost, and only 1 Bitcoin is left in the entire world. Would this be a good thing or a bad thing? Some people would say it would be a bad thing but for different reasons. A Bitcoiner today would definitely say this would be a bad thing to happen, as Bitcoin would be one thread away from being lost forever. Though, chances are high that Bitcoiners in that world with only one coin left would be very humble people. True believers in a lost technology especially if lost coins had never been salvaged before. A no-coiner (non-Bitcoiner) today who has brushed against some very toxic maximalists, would likely say it is bad because it would lead to wars. ”, they would argue. With rage-fuelled toxic humans in their mind’s eye. “People would wring each other’s throats for this worthless single thing A no-coiner in that world with 1 coin would likely be somebody who doesn’t lose any sleep over “Bitcoin”. Hard to think they would even know what it is, as lost technology is usually sought out by archaeological types. But one thing I believe is nobody who learns of this one bitcoin would be outraged that only 1 exists. That would be absurd. They would be saddened at learning of the history of this great technology, now reduced to a single event in space and time. : Definitely, all altcoins would be goners. Not even one would be left Aside However, instead, this tragic event might then become the most uplifting event in the world. After moping around over lost bitcoins, this one coin could quickly become a beacon of hope. A unifier to put ahead of us, as we remember all the likenesses that went before it into the deep dark void of cyberspace. Preserved with the collective will of everybody on Earth like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. And maybe, if quantum computing is mature by then, there might be a way to actually map and treasure hunt for these lost coins in the depths of cyberspace. today’s no-coiner insists. Zapping me back to reality. “How about having a World War 3 because of this coin” “Frankly, it would be much easier for a few people to destroy the last few nodes holding up this last Bitcoin than to bother waging a world war over it at all”. : People will treasure Bitcoin’s Scarcity. Like they would Superman. They just haven’t realized it yet. Lesson Types of Technologies Physical Technology As already posited, most technology is a double-edged sword. That means, it could benefit you, but it could hurt you. Fire was the first example of highly-destructive, highly-beneficial tech. Thousands of years later, circa 1938, Nuclear power became the best example. In a few hours, the nuclear weapons we humans have created could totally destroy the planet, ushering all surviving creatures back to the Stone Age. Or rather, back to a post-CT-extinction world. But wielded with care and the will to create a great civilization, together, the energy abundance that our nuclear fission and fusion resources can unleash would solve world hunger, climate change, desertification, and global electrification, with enough to spare for space exploration. Physical technologies like nuclear power thus depend on humanity having enough heart to care about the common good for us all, more than the clouding squabbles over race, gender, religious affiliation, cultural predispositions, or economic interests. To use nuclear power for good means sacrificing the chance to exploit or step over others, for the opportunity to sit on the round table and work together. Social Technology Another type of technology is social technology. It is . Social technologies like telephones, the internet, and social media, have exponentially multiplied our capability to harness physical technologies like nuclear power, and we would be severely limited as a species without them. a way of using human, intellectual, and digital resources in order to influence social processes - Wikipedia Knowledge would travel at a snail’s pace, and some places would be dramatically better worse, in many ways, than others because of the highly difficult flow of technological progress and the unique cultural situations and environments of each place. and Now unlike physical technologies like fire, nuclear power or knives, social technologies are mostly a force for good, but there is a caveat. Being information-collecting entities, they can easily decouple from their place of serving people to making people serve them. The power shifts to reside not with the users anymore but with the central authorities i.e. the corporations owning the IP of these websites. Plus the websites themselves when the AIs get sentient! And because human habits are mathematically predictable (lunch is between 11 am and 2 pm everywhere), these sites e.g. Google or Facebook, have amassed so much data on their users that they can send targeted ads with precision, making money from us before we know we want to buy a product. This is no problem until data breaches happen, or until artificial intelligence sitting on top of this technology acquires the capability to undermine the efforts of us, the people, who trained it in the first place (by competing with us for pennies). As is happening today which is fuelling online rage and clickbait. Fiat currencies are another form of social technology with a central authority called the Central Bank, and altcoin cryptocurrencies are a form of social technology with a central authority called the ICO company. Synergistic social technology The third technology I know is Bitcoin. A synergistic social technology. A synergistic social technology works unlike any other social technology. First, it does not harvest people’s data so it then becomes even more powerful than the individual person. It grows only if people believe in it, protect it, and use it consistently. Any slight disinterest, distrust or dissatisfaction, and its value collapses (these are all those spiky swings of the Bitcoin price. It is frantically trying to satisfy everybody). Not like Google stock which is rock solid and stable. And goes up relatively predictably. in real-time When BTC grows in value, the people get stronger because the users are the owners. When data breaches happen, it suffers because people jump ship like * that. They are very picky when it comes to their monetary self-sovereignty. snap* So it can only be a force for good because bad people creeping in will scare away the good people who actually do the hard work of loving, sharing, building, maintaining, and innovating around the technology. This is easy to see with the Silk Road incident of 2013. Negative connotations of Bitcoin with criminal activity crashed the price faster than a meteorite. From $266 to $50. Did any illegal trade in drugs and whatnot proliferate with this crash? No. It quickly dried up. If anything, the US government greatly profited after the seizure of Bitcoin worth billions of dollars while US citizens were lost in FUD, faithless and not sure whether the dream of monetary sovereignty was over this quickly. Interestingly, some people tried creating Silk Road 2.0, but the FBI got them so fast that they hardly made headlines. : Criminal activity in a currency like Bitcoin = You will get caught and Bitcoin suffers. Lesson Fraudsters look for Thriving Environments Every Bitcoiner got on board this global social ecosystem by listening to a few sound rules of money and making the bold choice to live unapologetically truthfully. Bitcoin is good because fixed rules of money, including the ultimate rule on quantity, mean a simple order everyone can follow and make wealth. Work hard and buy or mine some Bitcoin satoshis. Hold for at least 5 years. You’ll make a profit more than anything else. How hard is that? How non-evil. Good money is not controlled by anybody but is protected and used by everybody. Alas, whenever good people connect to the wisdom that is Bitcoin and join the party, the number goes up and fraudsters get on board as well. Fraudsters are predators, and predators eat the meatiest prey in the Jungle. Despite being only a modest $600 billion net worth right now, because it is such a sound and positive force of good for people, the scammers are plentiful, and they want to take your cash and disappear. And each time good people’s money is taken, they get rekt (financially ruined) and the price crashes. The scammers go into hiding, to wait for you and me to pick ourselves up again, so they can strike again. Many of these scammers and fraudsters hide behind the thin veil of ‘cryptocurrencies’ so the next time you read a toxic maximalist calling an altcoin a “sh**coin”, understand they are frustrated and just want to protect you and themselves from the sweet words of scam artists. Pumping and dumping of crypto, even bitcoin “investments”, is fraud and hurts both the naive people who opt into these scams, and the bitcoin community at large when the exit is made and people’s morale crashes into millions of tiny pieces. : Bitcoin is not evil. It is the easiest technology for corrupt and evil people to ruin. That is why it sounds so evil when anything bad happens by its hand, yet the majority of the ills in the financial world happen via fiat currencies. Lesson Cooperation outshines Competition What’s in it for poor people? - Anonymous There are people who feel that Bitcoin has been an entirely useless innovation as far as getting poor people out of poverty is concerned, while billionaires like Michael Saylor keep buying all the bitcoins. They can make millions in profit in months when the price goes up, while a modest earning pleb can only Dollar Cost Average a few sats every month and hence needs to wait all 5 years to make a modest enough profit to cash out. But here are some facts; Logically, nobody can own all bitcoins cause not everybody wants to sell at any moment in time. If the price of Bitcoin goes up you can’t buy more with the stock you already have. People have to spend bitcoins on food and other things no matter how ‘hodledor’ they would like to be. Most importantly, Bitcoin is about the people. The common man, woman, and child. on how spending and replacing, vs hodling, is how we spread Bitcoin adoption and ultimately, its utility in more sectors around the world. Carl Menger penned a great piece a few days ago Cooperation outshines competition. Consensus and collective agreement is built into the nature of the protocol, not one-upmanship. If Bitcoin gets too valuable and transaction fees balloon, I believe there will be another fork to break down satoshis into even smaller amounts. Or we shall find ways to make bigger and cheaper coinjoins. Because the most valuable Bitcoiner to the network is every Bitcoiner. Not only Mr. Saylor. More important than competition, Bitcoin thrives on cooperation. Think of everybody; some work as miners, others run nodes, some code LN apps, others orange-pill. It is impossible for us to all stack as much as the other because different work earns differently in the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the world. And aside from the Bitcoin activities, some people are CEOs of big companies creating all the other wonderful stuff we want to buy with Bitcoin while some are students, still grappling with what they should learn to make it in this fast-changing world, et cetera. Bottom line - Together is how it works. Thinking of how each Bitcoin node runs can show us the importance of sticking together. The one lesson we should steadfastly hold onto, as taught to us by Bitcoin itself, is using and running Bitcoin just like Bitcoin nodes. Together. As a family. Some nodes (people) are big miners with 10,000 ASICs minting entire bitcoins on a daily basis while others are laptop nodes. It does not matter. All need to DYOR (Do Their Own Research) and verify transactions themselves. If a transaction (a deal in the real world) is no good, they should do everyone else a favor and block it. Fast. If Bitcoin goes to $1 million and Michael Saylor becomes the richest man in the history of our planet, I believe I will benefit because Mr. Saylor will spend his coins investing in pro-people companies all over the world. Poor or financially desperate people in Africa, Asia, or anywhere right now should stack as a good habit for financial discipline, the way exercise is good for your body even when you are not preparing for a world-championship fighting match (like yours truly). When the price gears up, opportunities will open up. And Bitcoiners are hardly underpaid despite great work ‘cause honest payments flow best through Bitcoin as well. One more thing, the halving is near. Get ready.

Bitcoin is a Force Only for Good, Like Superman

বিটকয়েন একটি শক্তি শুধুমাত্র ভালোর জন্য, যেমন সুপারম্যান

Bitcoin ist eine Kraft, die nur dem Guten dient, wie Superman

Bitcoin es una fuerza solo para el bien, como Superman

Bitcoin est une force uniquement pour le bien, comme Superman

बिटकॉइन सुपरमैन की तरह केवल भलाई के लिए एक शक्ति है

ビットコインはスーパーマンのように善のためだけに力を発揮する

비트코인은 슈퍼맨처럼 선을 위한 힘입니다

Bitcoin é uma força apenas para o bem, como o Super-Homem

Bitcoin Süpermen Gibi Sadece İyiliğe Yönelik Bir Güçtür

Bitcoin là một lực lượng chỉ dành cho những điều tốt đẹp, giống như siêu nhân

比特币是一股正义的力量，就像超人一样

One a penny, two a penny, AI buns As a and part-time coder, I’ve seen first-hand the value of taking some text or code and using ChatGPT to help me infinitely improve it. If could refactor my code, it could surely help improve my cooking. product manager ChatGPT specifically, are my culinary kryptonite. This subtly sweetened, yeast-leavened bread native to the British Isles is both delicious and an absolute pain to bake. Despite multiple attempts, my buns better resembled than digestible delicacies. With only stodgy bricks to show for my efforts, I had vowed never to make these tasty treats again… until recently, that is. Hot Cross buns, hockey pucks Then one day, my American colleague strolled into the office, their hands brimming with a basket of homemade hot cross buns. Each one was a — a sweet slap in the face to my British pride. The gauntlet was thrown — I would master this recipe! But this time would be different. This time I had the power of large language models on my side. fluffy delight I mean, baking is not that different from coding right, right? A logically deductive combination of chemicals producing a desired result. Sure, I could find better recipes online, but I tried that before, and it doesn’t help. To achieve this, I will combine some of the most successful prompting techniques I’ve learned using ChatGPT: . Role Setting, Chain of Thought, and Self-Reflexion means giving the AI a focused purpose. Most of the time, asking the all-seeing ChatGPT sage is fine, but you can get the best results by focusing on its intent and drive. For example, I don’t want my AI to start randomly talking about the logistics of sourcing raisins. Role setting To achieve this, I prompted: You are BakerGPT. A Michelin award-winning baker who is here to help me create some of the most delicious baked items in human history, drawing inspiration and techniques from any source to achieve this goal. You will assist me in developing recipes and ask me clarifying questions if you think it will help you improve your answers or suggestions. If you understand, respond: UNDERSTOOD Excellent, so I’ve successfully explained to BakerGPT that I wanted to make amazing hot cross buns. Next, I want to improve its results by providing some examples of recipes I used before. This is . To achieve this, we will provide the AI with examples of things I would like it to imitate before asking it to generate its own. Usually, this would be stuff like a poem or press release, but recipes would be best in our case. It’s like a mini training session for the AI, helping reduce the risk of hallucinating weird solutions like using olive oil instead of butter. So I provided some examples of hot cross bun recipes I found online, and I already can see it commenting and even trying to suggest its own. Not so fast, BakerGPT! called Chain of Thought Prompting So we have our overqualified assistant who has been researching buns all its life. Let’s ask it to — what does it think makes a good or bad hot cross bun recipe? engage in some  self-reflexion So that’s promising — it seems to know exactly the qualities I’m after! Let’s ask what we must do with the recipe to get the best characteristics whilst eliminating the bad. I want more reflexion! How could it make the recipe even better? Let’s pause here because this is super impressive. Right away, the suggestion of had never even occurred to me. I mean, what even is bread improver? A quick search reveals a mixture of emulsifiers, enzymes, and flour treatment agents that help break down gluten and improve the quality of the dough and final rise. That sounds just like what I need! Other great shouts include soaking the dried fruit in orange juice and pre-fermenting. Nice to also know I could adapt this to be gluten-free or vegan if required. bread improver Ok, so this all sounds great. Let’s ask it to generate a recipe using all the suggestions provided. Here is what it produced: British Hot Cross Buns Ingredients: For the buns: - 300ml full-fat milk - 100g butter - 500g strong bread flour - 1 tsp salt - 50g caster sugar - 25g brown sugar - 1 tbsp sunflower oil - 7g sachet fast-action or easy-blend yeast - 1–2 tsp bread improver - 2 eggs, beaten - 100g mixed dried fruits (sultanas, raisins, currants, dried cranberries, chopped dried apricots) - 50g chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, or almonds) - Zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon - 1 apple, peeled, cored, and finely chopped - 2 tsp ground cinnamon - 1 tsp mixed spice - 1/2 tsp ground ginger - 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg For the cross: - 75g plain flour, plus extra for dusting For the glaze: - 100g powdered sugar - 2–3 tbsp milk or lemon juice Method: 1. In a small saucepan, gently heat the milk with the orange and lemon zest, cinnamon stick, and a few cardamom pods. Once warm, remove from heat and let it infuse for 10 minutes. Strain the milk and discard the solids. 2. Bring the infused milk to a boil, then remove from heat and add 100g butter. Leave to cool until it reaches hand temperature. 3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the strong bread flour, salt, caster sugar, brown sugar, fast-action or easy-blend yeast, and bread improver. Create a well in the centre. 4. Pour the warm milk and butter mixture into the well, followed by the beaten eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon, then use your hands to form a sticky dough. 5. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 5–7 minutes until smooth and elastic. Place it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with oiled cling film or a damp tea towel, and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled in size. 6. Add the mixed dried fruits, chopped nuts, orange and lemon zest, chopped apple, and spices to the dough. Knead to distribute the ingredients evenly. Cover and let rise again for another hour or until doubled in size. 7. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas. Then, divide the dough into 15 even pieces (about 75g each) and roll into smooth balls. Place on baking trays lined with parchment paper, leaving enough space for expansion. Cover and let prove for 1 more hour. 8. Mix the plain flour with water to make a thick paste for the cross. Pipelines across the buns form crosses. Bake for 18–20 minutes or until golden brown. 9. Remove the buns from the oven and let them cool slightly on a wire rack. Mix powdered sugar with milk or lemon juice to create a glaze. Drizzle the glaze over the warm buns. Serve these delicious, tender, and flavourful hot cross buns warm with butter, and enjoy the improved texture brought by the addition of bread improver. With bated breath and fingers crossed, I set out to create these AI-inspired buns. Hours of my life were at stake, and tension in the kitchen was palpable… then, finally, the iPhone timer pinged. I had done it, and I have to say the results were nothing short of . spectacular I brought a bunch into the office. My colleagues were blown away by how soft, moist, and flavourful these were (even after sitting in Tupperware for 2 days). Somehow through the alchemy of prompt engineering and baking, I’d made something incredible. I was running around the flat proclaiming to my partner we should start an . AI bakery But why stop there? How far could we push this? Growing up in an Iraqi-Austrian household, the exotic aromas and bold flavors of the Middle East were a comforting constant. So I decided to pay homage to my roots and mix some of those techniques and flavors into my buns, asking ChatGPT to reimagine this recipe from an Iraqi perspective. The idea of taking a British baked good with a literal cross on it and the best of the middle east has something of a crusader-esk poor taste to it. Still, the results were anything but — . an unholy union of deliciousness Spiced Za’atar Cross Buns - 300ml full-fat milk - 100g butter - 500g strong bread flour - 1 tsp salt - 1 tbsp sunflower oil - 7g sachet fast-action or easy-blend yeast - 1–2 tsp bread improver - 2 eggs, beaten - 100g crumbled feta cheese - 75g chopped dates or dried apricots - 50g toasted pine nuts - 2 tbsp chopped fresh mint or parsley - 1 tsp ground cumin - 1/2 tsp ground coriander - 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon - 1/4 tsp ground cardamom - 1/4 tsp ground allspice - 1/4 tsp paprika - 1/4 tsp black pepper For the cross: - 75g plain flour, plus extra for dusting For the topping: - 1 egg, beaten for egg wash - Sesame seeds Method: 1. In a small saucepan, gently heat the milk and butter until the butter melts and the mixture reaches hand temperature. 2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the strong bread flour, salt, sunflower oil, fast-action or easy-blend yeast, and bread improver. Create a well in the centre. 3. Pour the warm milk and butter mixture into the well, followed by the beaten eggs. Stir with a wooden spoon, then use your hands to form a sticky dough. 4. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for 5–7 minutes until smooth and elastic. Place it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with oiled cling film or a damp tea towel, and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour or until doubled in size. 5. Add the crumbled feta cheese, chopped dates or dried apricots, toasted pine nuts, fresh herbs, and spices to the dough. Knead to distribute the ingredients evenly. Cover and let rise again for another hour or until doubled in size. 6. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 7. Divide the dough into 15 even pieces (about 75g each) and roll into smooth balls. Place on baking trays lined with parchment paper, leaving enough space for expansion. Cover and let prove for 1 more hour. 8. Mix the plain flour with water to make a thick paste for the cross. Pipelines across the buns form crosses. Brush the buns with beaten egg for egg wash and sprinkle sesame seeds on top. Bake for 18–20 minutes or until golden brown. 9. Remove the buns from the oven and let them cool slightly on a wire rack.  Serve these Middle Eastern-inspired hot cross buns warm with a side of hummus or tzatziki, or enjoy them as a flavorful snack or accompaniment to a meal. The combination of feta cheese, dried fruit, pine nuts, and aromatic spices creates a delicious and unique twist on the traditional hot cross bun. A hot cross bun perfect for dipping with hummus? I’d found ! These buns were impressive, and the use of dried apricots with spices and cheese felt like little bites of bliss evoking memories of my father baking. heaven I went on to create a few more variations: with smoked ham, grated gouda, minced garlic, and chopped dill; Japanese Umami Cross Buns with tamagoyaki omelet, shitake mushroom, and pickled ginger flavored with soy sauce and mirin; and finally the comprised of strong cheddar, crumbled laverbread (seaweed) and crispy bacon topped off with fresh chives. Latvian baltic buns Welsh Celtic Buns Some of the wilder experiments asked what a hot cross bun could look like inspired by Japanese fashion designer (sweetened red bean paste, matcha, and chopped candied yuzu) or clothing brand (milk and white chocolate chips with toasted hazelnuts and vanilla). Issey Miyake H&M What surprised me about all this was how fun it is to use a tool like ChatGPT to create my own . It’s like a cooking simulator, a real-world version of Nintendo’s ‘Cooking Mama’. Within seconds I could be dreaming up new recipes and flavors with no limits on what techniques or ingredients to experiment with from any regional culinary background or school of cooking. test kitchen of ideas Machines are particularly well suited to this as their connections are more diverse and thus have a less compartmentalized view of the world than us humans. Even if I did not have an ingredient, ChatGPT could suggest an alternative or let me know if something in the cupboard would work. What is exciting about this for me is not just being able to produce better recipes but the ability to take chances and be more creative and curious in our approach to food. You usually find a recipe, buy the ingredients, cook, and hope for the best. Now with AI, we are freed up to play with it, tailor it to our tastes, and even ask why something may be better or worse. A chance to even take old recipes and rework them into something new. After all, very few (if any) foods are invented. Most are contemporary twists on traditional themes. As Lynne Olver wrote on the Food Timeline, “Today’s grilled cheese sandwich is connected to ancient cooks who melted cheese on bread. 1950s meatloaf is connected to ground cooked meat products promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which are, in turn, related to ancient Roman minces.” As a culture, we’re cooking less and buying more prepared meals. Since the mid-sixties, the time spent preparing meals has fallen by half. While the global trend is the same, Americans , spending less time cooking than any other country. I hope using AI to cook this way is more fun and exciting than working from prescribed recipes and will bring an entirely new type of cook into the kitchen. lead the way You see, cooking changes your relationship with food. Instead of consuming something, now you’re making it. The more people we can get interested in cooking and asking questions about where ingredients come from can only be better for us and our environment. The alternative is that we become so alienated that within a generation, cooking a meal from scratch will seem as exotic and ambitious — as “extreme” — as most of us today regard brewing beer, baking a loaf of bread, or putting up a crock of sauerkraut. I wouldn’t recommend asking a tool like ChatGPT to generate something from scratch just yet. Still, as shown above, a mixture of specific prompts that set R and use prompting and R is particularly effective in achieving the best results for not just cooking but many forms of creative work. oles Chain of Thought eflexion Now, every time I see a hot cross bun, I no longer feel a sense of dread — AI has given me a chance to think differently about baking. To those willing to experiment, AI makes exploring things like cooking more accessible. Meals become achievements, expressions, discoveries, and relationships and help us honor in a way where we come from. This mad hybrid of human, machine, and food goes beyond nutritionism and essentialism. It serves as a tool for training that connects us with nature and teaches us how to utilize AI for a brighter future. Happy prompt baking everyone. Also published [here.](https://How ChatGPT Took Me From Baking Disaster to Masterchef)

How ChatGPT Took Me From Baking Disaster to Masterchef

Hey, you beautiful, big-brained motherf*cker! Are you tired of being that person who can solve quantum physics problems in their sleep but can’t stick to a single project for more than a week? Yeah, I’m talking to you, the smart*sses who have a Ph.D. in overthinking and a knack for getting absolutely nothing done. Welcome to the club. We’re diving headfirst into the intoxicating world of “cerebral seduction,” where the intellectual allure of new ideas keeps us trapped in a never-ending cycle of flirting but never committing. We can debate the merits of existentialism versus nihilism until we’re blue in the face, but when it comes to actually doing something, we’re stuck in the starting blocks. But fear not, my fellow procrasti-geniuses! This blog post is here to help you break free from the chains of cerebral seduction and finally commit to doing something for a f*cking change. We’ll explore why we’re so addicted to shiny new ideas, how to recognize the distractions that keep us from committing, and the strategies that can help us make tangible progress in our lives. It’s time to put your big ‘ol brain and start getting sh*t done. Are you with me? Let’s do this! to work The Appeal of New Ideas So, what’s the f*cking deal with our obsession with shiny, new ideas? Let’s face it; we’re all a bunch of intellectual magpies, chasing after the next fascinating concept that tickles our curiosity and curbs our ooh-shiny craving. The more complex and abstract the idea, the more we’re drawn to it like moths to a flame. But why is this? For starters, very smart people often thrive on intellectual stimulation. The dopamine rush we get from engaging with a new idea is like a drug we can’t resist. We find comfort and validation in our ability to grasp and dissect complex concepts, and motherf*cker, it feels good. But there’s a darker side to this cerebral seduction, and it’s called “intellectual procrastination.” It’s the trap of constantly seeking out new ideas, theories, and perspectives while neglecting to make any real progress in our own lives. We become masters of the theoretical, but novices at actually getting sh*t done. This tendency has some ugly consequences. Our lack of focus means we struggle to achieve our goals, whether it’s writing that novel, launching that startup, or finally f*cking learning to play the guitar. We become paralyzed by the endless options available to us, and instead of focusing on one project, we end up spinning our wheels in a whirlwind of half-baked ideas and unrealized dreams. It’s time to put an end to this frustrating cycle of cerebral seduction and start committing to something for a change. Because, let’s be honest, as great as it is to be a smartass, it’s even better to be a smartass who gets sh*t done. Identifying Your Distractions Alright, smarty-pants, it’s time for some tough love. To overcome this cerebral seduction bullsh*t, we need to face the demons that keep us distracted from making progress. It’s time to dig deep and identify those pesky triggers that send us down the rabbit hole of endless intellectual exploration. You know the culprits I’m talking about: social media, news articles, online debates, podcasts, YouTube videos — the list goes on. These distractions are like kryptonite to our already scattered brains, making it nearly impossible to focus on one task for an extended period. And let’s not forget about FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out. As intellectual junkies, we’re constantly afraid that we’ll miss out on the next groundbreaking idea or that we’ll fall behind in our fields if we don’t consume every f*cking piece of information available (even if we know rationally that that’s not possible). This FOMO fuels our insatiable hunger for new ideas, making it even harder to commit to a single project. FOMO can be a real b*tch. Ironically, if you’re always too afraid of missing out to commit, you guarantee that you’re missing out. While you were over-optimizing, the train has already sailed. But here’s the good news: self-awareness is the first step to overcoming these distractions. By recognizing our personal triggers and acknowledging our FOMO, we can begin to take control of our wandering minds and start focusing on what truly matters. (More on that another day.) So, take a moment to reflect on your own habits and distractions. Be brutally honest with yourself. What’s keeping you from committing to a single idea? Once you’ve identified these roadblocks, you’ll be better equipped to tackle them head-on and break free from the vicious cycle of cerebral seduction. It’s time to start getting shit done, and it starts with recognizing what’s holding you back. The Art of Commitment Alright, brainiacs, let’s throw conventional wisdom out the f*cking window. We’re not here for the same old productivity advice that never seems to work for us. We need something tailored to our big, beautiful, overthinking minds. So let’s dive into the unorthodox art of commitment. Procrastinate as long as possible — until the pressure to deliver becomes irresistible. Instead of fighting your natural tendency to procrastinate, use it to your advantage. You might find that you work best under pressure, and that focused, last-minute effort can lead to great results. Embrace your inner procrastinator: Commit to one task at a time, but only for a short period. Pick a task, set a timer for 25 minutes, and work like a mad genius until the timer goes off. Then, take a break before moving on to another task or idea. This way, you’re still focusing on one thing at a time without feeling overwhelmed by long-term commitments. Become a serial mono-tasker: Design a personalized productivity system that caters to your quirks and habits. Throw conventional productivity advice to the wind and do what works best for you. If you’re a night owl, schedule your work when you’re most awake and creative. If you find inspiration in chaos, embrace it. Create your own rules: Identify your biggest distractions and find a way to incorporate them into your work. If you can’t resist scrolling through Twitter, use it as a source of inspiration or a platform to share your progress. The key is to accept your quirks, and use them to fuel your creativity. Turn your weaknesses into strengths: Be prepared to pivot or abandon ideas that aren’t working. It’s okay to change your mind or take a different direction if you’re not making progress. The goal is to be adaptable and open to new possibilities. Adopt a “f*ck it” mindset: When to Say “F*ck It” and Move On Now, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: not every idea or project is worth pursuing indefinitely. Sometimes, we need to recognize when it’s time to say “f*ck it” and move on. The point of the exercise is to remain intellectually committed to something and to invest the time and energy into those things you’ve chosen to prioritize. The point is to pursue a deadend indefinitely for the sake of “commitment.” not If the idea is a dead-end of any new shiny concepts that are vying for your attention, it may be time to move on. regardless Knowing when to abandon a project or idea can be crucial to our success. Clinging to a sinking ship can drain our time, energy, and resources, keeping us from pursuing more fruitful endeavors. So how do we know when it’s time to throw in the towel? Here are some guidelines: If you’re failing to make headway, it might be a sign that the idea isn’t worth pursuing. Lack of progress: consistently When the effort you’re putting into a project is no longer yielding meaningful results, it’s time to reevaluate. Diminishing returns: If you no longer feel excited or motivated by the idea (even when you’re actively engaged in it), it be time to let it go. Pay attention to the feelings you have surrounding the idea. Do you feel like you don’t have enough time to pursue the idea? Are you nervous or struggling with impostor syndrome? Key in on which feelings you’re experiencing and evaluate whether or not it’s best to let it go or hang on a while longer if the issue doesn’t actually stem from the idea itself. Loss of passion: might Take, for example, the story of Instagram’s founders. They initially created a location-based app called Burbn, but quickly realized that users were more interested in the photo-sharing feature. So they pivoted, dropped the original concept, and created Instagram — a decision that ultimately led to a billion-dollar acquisition. The lesson here is clear: Be willing to let go of ideas or projects that aren’t working and embrace new opportunities. The key to success lies in our ability to adapt, pivot, and move on when necessary. Building Momentum and Celebrating Success Alright, brainiacs — it’s time to talk about the sweet, sweet taste of victory. As we start committing to ideas and projects, we’ll begin to experience a sense of accomplishment that’s far more satisfying than the fleeting thrill of flirting with new concepts**. Let’s explore how to build momentum and celebrate our success in our own unique, genius way:** Learn to appreciate the victories, no matter how tiny they might seem. Finished a chapter of your book? Fucking fantastic! Solved a small coding problem? Hell yeah! These seemingly insignificant achievements add up and contribute to our overall progress. Savor the small wins: : Forget about traditional benchmarks — establish your own personalized milestones that align with your quirks and goals. Celebrate them with your own unique rituals, whether it’s dancing around your living room, ringing a f*ck yeah bell, or treating yourself to a fancy espresso. Just be careful not to put too much weight on extrinsic rewards, and savor the intrinsic value of your progress throughout your ritual. Create your own milestone markers Use your victories as fuel to propel you forward. Revel in the satisfaction of overcoming challenges and remind yourself that you’re capable of achieving even more. Don’t lose sight of your end goal, but stay focused on the journey and the progress you’re making. Read my take on why work-life balance can be total bullsh*t here. Keep the momentum going: Connect with others who share your passions and understand your struggles. Building a network of like-minded smartasses can help keep you motivated and accountable. Share your successes and setbacks, and celebrate each other’s achievements. Surround yourself with support : : Remember, you’re not just any smart person — you’re a f*cking genius. Use your incredible brainpower to create tangible achievements that you can be proud of. Show the world what you’re capable of when you commit to your ideas and projects. Embrace your unique intelligence By building momentum and celebrating our successes, we not only break free from the trap of cerebral seduction (by training ourselves like one of Pavlov’s favorite puppers) but also become more fulfilled and productive individuals. Let’s lean into our weird, wonderful, and wickedly smart selves, and start making sh*t happen! (Woof, woof, motherf*cker.) Conclusion: Well, brainiac, we’ve reached the end of our journey. Let’s recap the key takeaways before we set forth to conquer the world: , and use them to fuel your creativity. Identify and embrace your personal distractions and design your own unorthodox approach. Throw conventional productivity advice out the window, and find the right balance between flexibility and focus. Learn the art of commitment, and move on from projects that aren’t working. Recognize when it’s time to say “f*ck it”, , celebrate your successes, and use your unique intelligence to achieve greatness. Build momentum Now it’s time to put these strategies and tips into action. Let’s find an idea, put a ring on it, and embrace commitment like never before. (Cue bad b*tch energy Beyonce playlist) So go forth, my dear, brainy comrades, and show the world that we’re not just a bunch of burnt-out intellectual-f*ckboi smartasses. We’re a force to be reckoned with, and we’re ready to make our mark on the world — one committed, unorthodox, and f*cking brilliant idea at a time! Are you ready to finally see what you’re capable of with people who get it (and who aren’t going to just give you a list of the same old productivity hacks)? Find success on your own f*cking terms. actually ➡️➡️🤓Join us at Liferise. At the time of this writing, you can join on a donations-only basis (e.g., free) in exchange for feedback during the alpha phase. or . 💯 Sign up using Gumroad here learn more here Also published here

Cerebral Seduction: How To Stop Flirting With New Ideas

restores power equilibrium, taking it from tyrants and giving it to the meek who shall inherit the earth. It is a silent protest creeping in, dissolving the constructs of corrupt politics, money, and rulership over human sovereignty. The unalterable record that is the Bitcoin network will allow wealth to remain in the hands of those that accumulate it properly for centuries. Bitcoin In Bitcoin, the early adopters get rewarded first. As the price increases, the laggers & everyone else pay a delayed ignorance tax. Yet, it shows mercy with periodic dips in price to allow newcomers to redeem themselves. Bitcoin uses encrypted technology to build the decentralized world we want to live in. It is really about liberation. Suppose I could impart wisdom to my children and grandchildren regarding Bitcoin. There may be a time when acquiring Bitcoin will not be like the days of old. Secure it, and hold it over a long period like an enduring Atlas. Continue to educate yourself. Then part with it only to pass it down to the next generation or only after great strain. Whatever you sell it for must have a significant impact on your quality of life or preserve whatever good is left in the world. If not, don’t. Human beings have this innate tendency to be remembered for the things they have accumulated throughout life. In the ancient past, they built monoliths and pyramids in remembrance. In the future, it will be a digitized time chain keeping a record of peer-to-peer transactions and data that man will be remembered upon. Bitcoin will stick around even if the internet shuts down or the threat of nuclear war is imminent. Bitcoin allows your wealth to remain on the blockchain ledger and out of the hands of banks and the bandits that scavenge upon the allure of unsecured riches. Bitcoin is the ultimate sound money in all its linear regression. Many have claimed it to be alien technology or curated by the NSA, even something as far-fetched as being created by a cult. Bitcoin is no cyanide-laced Kool-Aid; it is a monetary network built on network effect game theory. It’s a network with no leader(s). It’s a network that’s entirely inclusive for all. It’s a network that instills trust and love in a community of because it’s a transparent truth machine that allows us to share the same vision. I believe it was created out of the plight of the human condition. It appeared because it was needed to level the playing field after Occupy Wall Street. Bitcoin is a collective checkmate on corruption by multiple software engineers under the mysterious name Satoshi Nakamoto. bitcoiners Unlike the old currencies, Bitcoin cannot be altered or seized by tyrants that become drunk on the power of money printing. Bitcoin enriches your savings over time. Humans went from giving their best years to family and children to corporations and careers and consider it progress. That is not what progress should look like. Suppose you have parents or grandparents that are not financially secure after toiling away at multiple jobs for decades. Bitcoin is for them, and it’s for you. There is a saying I have come up with regarding earning money in its current state. Fiat money is like holding sand between closed fists. Once you open them to spend some, it slips through your fingertips, forcing you to have to work harder to regain some more. The manipulation of the stock market, precious metal market, and real estate market will no longer be trusted but verified thanks to Bitcoin. If they even exist at all in the future, Bitcoin will redirect the mentality of profit, gain, and loss in the corrupted fiat system. When you hand someone a dollar, it can be counterfeit. When you trade gold, it can be fake without proper assaying. When you send Bitcoin to a wallet, it has to be authentic. If it’s not, it just won’t work, and the receiver will know immediately they didn’t get paid in legitimate currency. It’s a purely trustless system, thanks to Proof of work. Bitcoin is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and it is a not get-poor, slowly overtime scheme. There will be many so-called Bitcoin kryptonite solutions in the future. Some will be packaged in Proof of stake protocols or NFTs and even some new snazzy decentralized coin all the teeny boppers are raving about. They are mainly distractions designed to siphon your investment dollars away from Bitcoin. Every year there is a new project claiming to be the next Bitcoin but why are they trying to be second best? Bitcoin will not capitulate. If you can’t beat em join em. . Bitcoin is collectively mined, the rewards are divided among everyone who participates. No changes can be made unless there’s a consensus, the code is open source, the blockchain ledger is entirely transparent, and everyone has an equal vote. This is what separates Bitcoin from the pack, the Alpha. Once any intelligent, open-minded investor looks at what this thing called Bitcoin represents, they will have a hard time not being enamored with all its possibilities. Nations are adopting Bitcoin as legal tender Also published here.

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