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Public Radio of Armenia

Geogria’s Communications Commission granted Elon Musk’s Starlink authorization in July 2022. SpaceX will provide high-speed broadband Internet services in Georgia through Starlink satellite systems. “Starlink is especially important in mountainous ...

https://www.bing.com/th?id=OVFT.7WRjVX1fviMomvXWCqd94y&pid=News

Starlink’s high-speed internet now available in Georgia

en.armradio

SLT-MOBITEL, Sri Lanka’s National ICT Solutions Provider, has become the country’s first service provider to join the Oracle Partner Network (OPN), a global community designed to enable partners to accelerate their customers’ transition to the cloud and drive superior outcomes.

SLT-MOBITEL Sri Lanka’s first ICT service provider joins Oracle Partner Network

https://www.bing.com/th?id=ODF._SPYmFKZ1OtNaHZfKi2PUg&pid=news

Daily News Worldwide (English) on MSN.com

Technology

The Economic Times

Coal India Ltd305.25-1.62% M&M1506.10-4.01% Adani Ports SEZ770.350.16% Vedanta 212.25-2.09% Coal India Ltd305.25-1.62% Sanofi India7325.40-1.97% Castrol India135.25-0.98% Chennai Petro521.80-2.36% GE Shipping798.75-2.54% Trending in Markets

Buy L&T Technology Services, target price Rs 5210: Motilal Oswal

Indiatimes

James Wolfe

NASDAQ

Fintel reports that on October 17, 2023, Wolfe Research upgraded their outlook for Fidelity National Information Services (NYSE ... FIS is a leading provider of technology solutions for merchants ...

Wolfe Research Upgrades Fidelity National Information Services (FIS)

Nasdaq

Larsen & Toubro

L&T Technology Services (LTTS) posted decent growth and margin performance in Q2 but lowered its FY24E growth guidance from >20% CC earlier to 17.5-18.5% CC. While LTTS’ deal wins have improved ...

Reduce Larsen and Toubro Technology Services; target of Rs 4100 HDFC Securities

moneycontrol.com

L&T Technology (LTTS) posted in-line revenue of USD288m in 2QFY24, up 3.2% QoQ CC (incl. SWC). Growth was driven by Transportation and Plant Engineering verticals, with 4.4% and 3.8% QoQ growth ...

Buy Larsen and Toubro Technology Services; target of Rs 5210: Motilal Oswal

Americas

Ravago

Ravago Americas LLC announced yesterday the acquisition of Polymer Technology & Services LLC (PTS; Murfreesboro, TN). PTS will become part of Ravago's Amco Polymers business, a North American distributor of commodity, engineering and specialty polymers.

Ravago Americas acquires Polymer Technology & Services

Plastics Today

Microsoft

Tata Consultancy Services

Partnership

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd is betting on its partnership with Microsoft Corp to develop artificial intelligence-based software services for clients, seeking to win higher margins to fuel growth.

TCS Seeks to Use Microsoft AI Partnership to Improve Margins

Bloomberg L.P.

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

Forward-looking outsourcing software development company headquartered in the USA

LITSLINK

Artificial intelligence is a system that can not only solve assigned tasks but also learn how to solve new problems, including creative ones. Previously, this process was available only to the human brain, but now artificially created programs can also do this. The AI system needs learning algorithms to study and create corresponding patterns that can improve the program and provide better results in the future. can be divided into controlled (it includes naive Bayesian classification, decision tree, least squares method, logistic regression, support vector method, ensemble method), uncontrolled (clustering algorithms, principal component method, singular decomposition, analysis of independent components), and semi-supervised learning (mixed type), online learning, reinforcement learning, transductive learning, meta-learning, active learning. Machine learning algorithms Controlled methods presuppose that the previously used array can be useful for the ongoing  task also. If the current task was not performed earlier, it is possible for machines  to learn how to make it using learning algorithms  So in the controlled methods previously used array can be useful for the ongoing task also. Such methods are used in face recognition systems, spam selection in email, calculating the probability of a natural disaster, predicting  the success of advertising and so on. Uncontrolled methods are applied if the dataset is not labeled, and it is needed to find implicit relations in it. The examples of using uncontrolled systems include: observing the interaction of a large number of genes in biology; in sociological research, speech and picture recognition; the diagnosis of complex computing systems and mechanisms. Semi-supervised machine learning algorithms represent a hybrid of the supervised and unsupervised systems. The controlled algorithm has the data entered by the developer with all the variables, and all these elements together provide a solution to a given issue. If the developer cannot specify all the exact data or can specify it only partially, then this method of learning algorithms is perfect for solving problems in such conditions. The process starts when the developer enters the data and marks it. Then the program will be able to predict the solution for untagged data based on the patterns identified in the system . It will be processed using the previous experience of solving such tasks by the program. Higher accuracy of ML solutions can be gained on condition that among the many untagged data, at least a few labeled ones are placed. Then the machine will be able to draw logical conclusions based on given data. Nevertheless, an observer is required to control this process and decrypt data for future usage. If you want to deep dive into the topic of ML algorithms, you should pay attention to the following theories that provide a better understanding of how all the AI systems work: continuity assumption (points that exist very close with a high probability will have the same output label) cluster assumption (if to divide all data into different clusters, all the data of one such group is highly probable to have the same output label) manifold assumption (the size of the input space is much larger than the area on which the data is placed) Semi-supervised algorithms are applied in a variety of industries starting from fintech and ending up with entertaining apps. In banking, ML systems play a vital role since they help organizations to build data security. There is a sample of people who are currently customers of the bank. The developer must create a program that makes it easier for the administration to detect fraud. The developer knows only a few cases of cybercrime, and he enters all of them into the database. He does not know about the remaining cases, and his task is to detect all instances to prevent fraud in the future. Since the developer does not mark the data that needs to be identified, it  should be found by the machine to continue working. The observer marks the known data for the program and enables the system to learn using this information. In this case, the system will be trained on the basis of existing patterns and algorithms introduced by the developer, but will also detect data sets that do not have an exact result and work with them. In such conditions, semi-supervised algorithms work the best as they combine the features of both controlled and uncontrolled systems. Human intervention is needed to translate or decrypt the collected data, conduct experiments that require third-party objects or locations and physical presence. However, big data systems require a different approach. It might be challenging for the developer to label patterns manually, so he needs an automated system to substitute human work.  In this case, specially trained professionals are needed to work with databases. Although human-based approach is reasonable in this case, it might be resource-consuming and inefficient. Sumi-supervised systems have been widely applied in education for the last several years. For example, when a teacher at  school gives tasks and solves them together with students, students enter particular data to find the right solution to it. This approach is similar to the one used with marked data in a program. Then the teacher gives homework, and students learn to solve tasks on their own using familiar algorithms. However, only a share of tasks have the same structure and solution algorithm. Therefore, under the supervision of a teacher, students gradually learn to solve all new examples of problems, which were not initially disassembled in the classroom. This approach to education is highly effective. Thus, it  has been successfully applied in AI and ML systems. To determine which machine learning algorithm is best for your project or product, you have to evaluate the urgency of the task, think of the necessary solution, estimate time and resources required to address the challenge and determine the amount, size and type of input data. This deep evaluation will provide you with an understanding of which algorithm is needed and lead you to the most optimal solution.

Semi-Supervised Machine Learning Algorithms

Scraping websites built for modern browsers is far more challenging than it was a decade ago. jsoup is a convenient API that makes scraping websites trivial via DOM traversal, CSS Selectors, JQuery-Like methods and more. But it isn’t without its caveat. Every scraping API is a ticking time bomb. Real-world HTML is flaky. It changes without notice since it isn’t a documented API. When our Java program fails in scraping, we’re suddenly stuck with a ticking time bomb. In some cases, this is a simple issue that we can reproduce locally and deploy. But some nuanced changes in the DOM tree might be harder to observe in a local test case. In those cases, we need to understand the problem in the parse tree before pushing an update. Otherwise, we might have a broken product in production. What is jsoup? The Java HTML Parser Before we go into the nuts and bolts of debugging jsoup let’s first answer, the question above and discuss the core concepts behind jsoup. The defines it as: jsoup website jsoup is a Java library for working with real-world HTML. It provides a very convenient API for fetching URLs and extracting and manipulating data, using the best of HTML5 DOM methods and CSS selectors. jsoup implements the specification and parses HTML to the same DOM as modern browsers do. WHATWG HTML5 With that in mind, let’s go directly to a simple sample also from the same website: Document doc = Jsoup.connect("https://en.wikipedia.org/").get();
log(doc.title());
Elements newsHeadlines = doc.select("#mp-itn b a");
for (Element headline : newsHeadlines) {
  log("%s\n\t%s",
    headline.attr("title"), headline.absUrl("href"));
} This code snippet fetches headlines from wikipedia. In the code above, you can see several interesting features: Connection to URL is practically seamless – just pass a string URL to the connect method There are special cases for some element children. E.g. Title is exposed as a simple method that returns a string without selecting from the DOM tree However, we can select the entry using pretty elaborate selector syntax If you’re looking at that and thinking “that looks fragile”. Yes, it is. Simple jsoup Test To demonstrate debugging, I created a simple demo that you can download here. You can use the following Maven dependency to install jsoup into any Java program. Maven will download jsoup jar seamlessly: <dependency>
  <groupId>org.jsoup</groupId>
  <artifactId>jsoup</artifactId>
  <version>1.14.3</version>
</dependency> This demo is a trivial Java app that returns a complete list of external links and elements with src attributes in a page. This is based on the code from here, converted to a Spring Boot Java program. The jsoup applicable code is relatively short: public Set<String> listLinks(String url, boolean includeMedia) throws IOException {
   Document doc = Jsoup.connect(url).get();
   Elements links = doc.select("a[href]");
   Elements imports = doc.select("link[href]");

   Set<String> result = new TreeSet<>(String.CASE_INSENSITIVE_ORDER);
   if(includeMedia) {
       Elements media = doc.select("[src]");
       for (Element src : media) {
           result.add(src.absUrl("src"));
           //result.add(src.attr("abs:src"));
       }
   }

   for (Element link : imports) {
       result.add(link.absUrl("abs:href"));
   }

   for (Element link : links) {
       result.add(link.absUrl("abs:href"));
   }

   return result;
} As you can see, we fetch the input String URL. We can also use input streams, but this makes things slightly more complicated when parsing relative URLs (we need a base URL anyway). We then search for links and objects that have an src attribute. The code then adds all of them into a set to keep the entries sorted and unique. We expose this as a web service using the following code: @RestController
public class ParseLinksWS {
   private final ParseLinks parseLinks;

   public ParseLinksWS(ParseLinks parseLinks) {
       this.parseLinks = parseLinks;
   }

   @GetMapping("/parseLinks")
   public Set<String> listLinks(@RequestParam String url, @RequestParam(required = false) Boolean includeMedia) throws IOException {
       return parseLinks.listLinks(url, includeMedia == null ? true : includeMedia);
   }
} Once we run the application can the application, we can use it with a simple curl command: curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" "http://localhost:8080/parseLinks?url=https%3A%2F%2Flightrun.com" This prints out the list of URLs referred to on the Lightrun home page. Debugging Content Failures Typical string scraping issues occur when an element object changes. E.g. Wikipedia can change the structure of its pages and the select method above can suddenly fail. This is often a nuanced failure, e.g. missing DOM element in the Java object hierarchy which can trigger a failure of the select method. Unfortunately, this can be a subtle failure. Especially when dealing with nested node elements and inter-document dependencies. Most developers solve this by logging a huge amount of data. This can be a problem due to two big reasons: Huge logs – they are both hard to read and very expensive to ingest Privacy/GDPR Violations – a scraped site might include user specific private information. Worse! The scraped site might change to include private information after scraping was initially implemented. Logging this private information might violate various laws. If we don’t log enough and can’t reproduce the issue locally, things can become difficult. We’re stuck in the add logs, build, test, deploy, reproduce – rinse repeat loop. Lightrun offers a better way. Just track the specific failure directly in production, verify the problem, and create a fix that will work with one deployment. This tutorial assumes you installed Lightrun and understand the basic concepts behind it. If not, please . NOTE: check out the docs Finding your way in Browser DOM Assuming you don’t know where to look, a good place to start is inside the jsoup API. This can lead you back to user code. The cool thing is that this works regardless of your code. We can find the right line/file for the snapshot by digging into the API call. I ctrl-clicked (on Mac use Meta-click) the select method call here: Elements links = doc.select("a[href]"); And it led me to the Element class. In it I ctrl-clicked the Selector “select” method and got to the “interesting” place. Here, I could place a conditional snapshot to see every case where an “a[href]” query is made: This can show me the methods/lines that perform that query: This can help a lot in narrowing down the general problematic area in the document object hierarchy. Sometimes, a snapshot might not be enough. We might need to use a log. The advantage of logging is that we can produce a lot of information, but only for a specific case and on-demand. The value of logs is that they can follow an issue in a way that’s very similar to stepping over code. The point where we placed the snapshot is problematic for logs. We know the query sent but we don’t have the value that’s returned yet. We can solve this easily with logs. First, we add a log with the following text: "Executing query {query}" Then, to find out how many entries we returned, we just go to the caller (which we know thanks to the stack in the snapshot) and add the following log there: Links query returned {links.size()} This produces the following log which lets us see that we had 147 links. The beauty of this is that the additional logs are interlaced with the pre-existing logs in-context: a[href] Feb 02, 2022 11:25:27 AM org.jsoup.select.Selector select
INFO: LOGPOINT: Executing query a[href]
Feb 02, 2022 11:25:27 AM com.lightrun.demo.jsoupdemo.service.ParseLinks listLinks
INFO: LOGPOINT: Links query returned 147
Feb 02, 2022 11:25:27 AM org.jsoup.select.Selector select
INFO: LOGPOINT: Executing query link[href]
Feb 02, 2022 11:25:27 AM org.jsoup.select.Selector select
INFO: LOGPOINT: Executing query [src] Avoid Security and GDPR Issues GDPR and security issues can be a problem with leaking user information into the logs. This can be a major problem, and Lightrun helps you reduce that risk significantly. Lightrun offers two potential solutions that can be used in tandem when applicable. Log Piping The big problem with GDPR is the log ingestion. If you log private user data and then send it to the cloud, it’s there for a long time. It’s hard to find after the fact and it’s very hard to fix. Lightrun provides the ability to pipe all of Lightrun’s injected logging to the IDE directly. This has an advantage of removing noise from other developers who might work with the logs. It can also skip the ingestion (optionally). To send logs only to the plugin, select the piping mode as “plugin”. PII Reduction/Blocklists Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is at the core of GDPR and is also a major security risk. A malicious developer in your organization might want to use Lightrun to siphon user information. Blocklists prevent developers from placing actions in specific files. PII reduction lets us hide information matching specific patterns from the logs (e.g. credit card format etc). This can be defined in the Lightrun web interface by a manager role. TL;DR With Java content scraping, jsoup is the obvious leader. Development with jsoup is far more than string operations or even handling the connection aspects. Besides getting the document object, it also handles complex aspects required for DOM element and scripting. Scraping is a risky business. It might break in the blink of an eye when a website changes slightly. Worse, it can break to some users in odd ways that are impossible to reproduce locally. Thanks to Lightrun, we can debug such failures directly in the production environment and publish a working version swiftly. You can use Lightrun for free by signing up . here Also Published Here

Debugging jsoup Java Code in Production

This article gives you an introduction to what ISO is about, describes the cooperation between the ISO party and the blockchain project, and provides information on how blockchain technology works Introduction to ISO Much like the roads need traffic lights and modern states would not work without the rule of law, every important aspect in the fields of technology, economy, health care, and medicine needs ISO standards. These standards declare the correct limits, values, procedures, quality evaluation methods, and many others. ISO Standards are a key part of our society as they ensure quality and safety in both products and services in international trade. ISO standards benefit businesses by cutting costs through improved systems and procedures. Similarly, governments can benefit greatly from ISO standards, as these can support common good by providing expert-approved global norms, and thus also pave the way to the global exchange of goods and ideas. Many governments, therefore, implement international standards and integration of ISO standards, which ensures transparency for trading parties world-wide. The first interaction with the ISO world for many industries was a requirement to attain ISO 9001, Total Quality Management, in 2015. ISO 9001 is the stamp of approval indicating that a company is following good practices and procedures usually in the manufacturing industry. These days, we can again hear or read about ISO standards and its because a rising cardinality of ISO mentions right next to another technological chapter of the 21st century, a blockchain. • Goal: Enabling ecosystems through interoperability • Challenge: Anticipating technology trends and their impact on applications Importance of standards - a summary “Trusted standards mean that industry doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel, that innovations will be compatible and work with existing technology, and that products and services will be trusted, too. Governments use standards as trusted solutions to complement regulation, and they give peace of mind to consumers who know they are not putting themselves or their families at risk.” - Acting ISO Secretary-General Kevin McKinley Blockchain To extend the above wheel analogy further, the uses of the wheel as an instrument were initially very limited, but eventually, it permeated every aspect of the industrial revolution and the world it created. In many ways, the internet is the new wheel, and the blockchain works as its pneumatic tire - an enhancement to make the wheel even more useful and ubiquitous. Nevertheless, there is still some uncertainty about how innovative an aspect this technology can prove for the IT infrastructure of the future. A lot will depend on what can be built on or around the blockchain technology. Implementing blockchain-based solutions to systems that deliver ISO standards globally is a great step towards adopting the blockchain technology thoroughly. Some may still not believe that blockchain could ever transcend the pitfalls of being "just another technological buzzword". However, since this technology is starting to permeate areas like the ISO, banking, or identity protection, many have already started paying closer attention. Blockchain is a cryptography-focused architecture based on the Internet protocol and powered by networked computer servers that do not need to be set up by developers. That is, however, just one of its many attractive features. In addition, blockchain is a software approach designed to bind this hardware together and dedicate it to the Consensus, a universal validity check system that, among others, uses the Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) methods for validation, and is the primary layer of any decentralized verification architecture. In many respects, blockchain can be considered a meta-technology, since it utilizes, enhances, and potentially supersedes other, already existing, software technologies. As such, it allows us to create versatile technological solutions that aim to minimize the agency of third-party providers and, in a way, to return the power back to the users. This can be achieved by the blockchain providing an environment where users can interact freely in a trustless ecosystem for very low to almost-zero fees and at speeds that make everybody in the world reachable in a matter of minutes. To make that possible, the blockchain can also be used as a transaction platform and distributed accounting ledger that uses cryptocurrency tokens (digital money) as a demonstration of a specific value at the current time (much like traditional fiat currencies). Nevertheless, for trustless technology to work on a global scale, it needs to implement trust in a different manner. This is where ISO standards come into the picture, as they ensure that the blockchain interactions follow globally applicable rules, norms, and procedures. This is also why starting in 2016, blockchain has its own set of ISO standards, called ISO/TC307. Gilbert Verdian and ISO/TC307 drove the initiative to develop a Blockchain , eventually approved in October 2016 as . 35 countries and organizations were involved in the completion of this project. Gilbert Verdian ISO Standard ISO/TC307 - BLOCKCHAIN AND DISTRIBUTED LEDGER TECHNOLOGIES ISO/TC 307 currently operates in structure cells that are created and disbanded when needed. ISO/TC 307/CAG 1 Convenors coordination group ISO/TC 307/JWG 4 Joint Working Group with ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 WG ISO/TC 307/SG 2 Use cases ISO/TC 307/SG 6 Governance of blockchain and distributed ledger technology systems ISO/TC 307/SG 7 Interoperability of blockchain and distributed ledger technology systems ISO/TC 307/WG 1 Foundations ISO/TC 307/WG 2 Security, privacy and identity ISO/TC 307/WG 3 Smart contracts and their applications The proposal of this standard is standardization of blockchains and distributed ledger technologies to support interoperability and data interchange among users, applications, and systems. Gilbert Verdian is the current chairman of the ISO National Committee on Blockchain for the UK. ISO/TC307 tools LiveLink - a portal for all documents, email communications, a forum, and even a list of members who are registered for a particular working group. N-docs - documents that are assigned with sequential numbering for ease of reference. Other relevant standardization efforts next to ISO/TC307 ITU-T Focus Group on Application of Distributed Ledger Technology IEEE Blockchain initiative CEN/CENELEC Focus Group on Blockchain and DLT Blockchain as an ISO integrator The paragraphs below provide an example of blockchain-based solutions and a company that delivers ISO standards in mutual collaboration. In August 2019, there was a collaboration agreement signing by LTO Network's and NEN, the Dutch Standardization Institute. By utilizing LTO Network's hybrid blockchain, NEN has become one of the first standardization agencies around the world to store hashes of standardization certificates on the blockchain in a decentralized manner. Rick Schmitz The decentralized solution created by this fusion delivered an instant verification of certificates provided by NEN using patented smart QR codes, hashes of which are safely stored on the LTO blockchain which is currently 23th most used blockchain (source - ). Stakeholders can then use the QR codes to confirm the validity of any certificate issued by NEN in a matter of seconds. Changes to the certificates will be automatically reflected in their QR codes, which are then re-hashed on the blockchain to safeguard the validity of the certificate’s current state. Any possible tampering with these QR codes will make them out-of-sync with the data stored on the blockchain, and they will, therefore, be found invalid by the parties involved. Blockchain Activity Matrix Why is Blockchain a good solution? Traditionally, electronic security focuses on authorization, authentication, and access control. These mechanics are intended to keep unauthorized users from accessing or modifying data. However, when it comes to authorized access, either on application or system level, it does not provide any protection. Blockchain enables tamper resistance for data through distribution over many systems that are run and managed by independent parties. This is ensured by the architecture of the blockchain, where every piece of data has thousands of globally distributed copies. A potential attacker intent on breaching the certificate would have to compromise the majority of the data distribution at the same time, which is extremely hard, expensive, and with a well-designed blockchain almost impossible. To reiterate, blockchain is a versatile solution for a variety of real-world use cases, and it is up to innovative minds how soon and how extensively this “ ” of the internet will be used for the betterment to many walks of the modern life. pneumatic tire The End About parties involved Basic ISO use cases Getting government tenders: ISO certificate is now required in the majority of government tenders. Building credibility internationally: ISO Certification helps your organization with credibility to build an overseas business. Greater customer satisfaction: ISO standards are designed to enable an organization to serve their customers better and hence increase customer satisfaction. ISO certification enhances customer satisfaction by meeting customer requirements. Improving product quality: Since product quality matches the international level, this can reduce the risk of order rejections that can occur due to a flaw in the product. Improving business efficiency: ISO certification implementation enhances the functional efficiency of an organization. The ISO Certification agency helps you develop SOPs & work instructions for all your processes. ISO implementations help manage the resources effectively, as you become able to utilize all your resources to the maximum extent. Improving marketability: ISO certification helps improve the credibility of business with a current & new client, which leads to creating a niche market for business. Source - Quora About NEN The Netherlands Standardization Institute (NEN) is a center of standardization that helps parties adhere to established standards and terms of conduct, and to agree on clear and usable terms. NEN also helps Dutch companies and parties make agreements with other organization at an international level. NEN’s business activities include European and national standardization, investigating, issuing certificates, training and consulting about international standards, and maintaining the infrastructure required for drawing up these standards. About LTO Network LTO Network is a member of the blockchain standards committee (as well as an ISO/ TC 307 contributor) and the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA). LTO Network develops and provides a Toolkit for Trustless Workflows (as a product/service). It is a solution that automates workflows in the business-to-business (B2B) market by making them trustworthy between each party. To execute this, they split up their solution into a Hybrid Chain with two different layers. The second layer uses permissionless private chains, which utilize LTO “Live Contracts”. The “Live Contract” is like a workflow to automate processes (for example, a customer who applies within a KYC, which is getting signed by the company). The information about this event happening gets hashed (saved within the cryptographic algorithm) on the first layer, which acts then as the security layer. All of this is possible by connecting legacy systems that the parties already use.

Blockchain and ISO sharing a drive

Bomani X (yes - a real person!), is the current face of the hottest new voice/audio social media app - Clubhouse. The Clubhouse app was downloaded 2.3 million times by 31 January 2021, and is currently available on iphone - it is, also, currently invite-only and is offering a wide range of audio-based activities based on your preferences, including live music sets, tech startup chats, and even speed dating. Interestingly enough, none of these is yet monetised, although Clubhouse has plans to turn their popular users into influencers. Clubhouse has decided not to depend on an ubiquitous letter logo favored by almost all tech startups in this era. Instead, they use their logo space interestingly, as a platform to showcase some of their most interesting users. Bomani X can probably be determined as a ‘digital entrepreneur‘ - besides being an American guitarist and songwriter, he founded a sharing network for home concerts and hackathons called New Perspectives Party, and Lit.Spins - a subscription box service that pairs books with classic vinyls. That is such a great idea appealing instantly to the heart of all real music lovers, who are book lovers as well. This branding also works to help new users discover other users, some of their past ‘faces’ being Julie Wenah and King Kiko, just to name a few. I listened in to Bomani X’s chat over the last weekend, with the Italian digital community, the purpose of this chatwas to introduce the app as it had just recently launched in Italy. I learned a lot from being in the same room as music producers, actual clubhouse owners and the people trying to make a difference in digital music and entrepreneurship in general. It was a good way to spend my evening listening in to these great talents who all want to help out each other to make a kind of impact, and I could instantly see how powerful this app could really become. As Clubhouse launches in the rest of the world, it would not be the first social app to face controversies and legalities about privacy and moderation. Just a couple hours ago, China has blocked Clubhouse after a brief, uncensored chance to catch freewheeling conversations about taboo subjects in China. As most of Southeast Asian companies do business and interact with the Chinese and Chinese tech, it is quite a sad (but expected I guess?) and troubling turn of events that effectively prohibits the young talents there from getting worldwide access to showcase themselves and their skills or their ideas. Right now there is no official announcement from Beijing, however, if it is officially banned or not, but several people have faced connection issues, and the general consensus is that it will be a matter of time before it becomes officially banned. In Europe, there are serious concerns about moderation and the app faces legal action over data protection and privacy laws - launching while not having platform terms and privacy notices in the specific country‘s language is a violation of consumer protection rules in many European nations. Just last week, Italy took the lead in being one of the first countries to set restrictions on TikTok. Italy has ordered the popular Tiktok app to immediately ban underage users or users whose age could not be determined, after the recent news came to light that a 10 year old died after filming a viral ‘blackout’ challenge on TikTok. While in the recent past, many popular apps from US startups just need to show a basic ‘adequate protection’ privacy terms and were easily given the go-ahead with a spurious wave of the hand from the powers that be. Right now, however, due to the recent fiasco of privacy concerns - namely Whatsapp in the eye of the data privacy policy storm - Clubhouse has faced criticism, even at home in US, with its lack of effective moderation and abuse prevention practices. This week it was recommended to me to tune in to the chat room : ‘Southeast Asia Tech Club’s : Post Work Chill’ and so I did. I later realised that the recommendation to join this chat was due to knowing one of the speakers in the chat room, a bright, talented young man who was working in a tech unicorn; who also runs a cool cocktail bar (that closed down during the pandemic - and reopened after a merger with another cafe!), and in this chat he announced that he recently joined one of the most beloved Singapore’s robo-advisor fintech startups. I have always been silently rooting for this young man’s career after knowing about his work 4 years ago, inadvertently - as the nature of my work leads me to be a high user of LinkedIn, almost daily. I often follow these young talents’ careers, and root for their success. Now, hearing him speak about his new move and the evident excitement and joy in his voice about his new role, I am suddenly nostalgic for all those familiar faces, those familiar voices whom we haven’t had the chance to interact with personally, for far too long. Initially, I thought that the best use case of Clubhouse would be similar to an older Chinese app ‘Zhihu’, which functions as a Q&A app - Zhihu’s closest current counterpart would be Quora, similar as a Q&A portal - but the difference is that Zhihu also has chat rooms for specialized knowledge seekers, specifically targeted at different listeners thirsty for a usually technical type of answer to their questions. I’m keeping my eye out for Clubhouse’s creator pilot program. Unlike other social media influencers, the creators chosen has age (and wisdom, and knowledge) on their side. I think now, Clubhouse has made me sentimental for the days where we could easily mingle with each other in conferences - meeting someone new, as well as saying hello to the familiar ones in the tech scene - and I would say that Clubhouse is perfect as a brand new alternative for the type of networking in conferences we have missed out on. Plus, it feels so much more relaxed and casual - and, more social than using something like Zoom, for example, for a ‘drinks chat’. These ’clubs’ are rather cool: BomaniX (The Bomani Effect Group) Good Time - Daily light hearted wrap up of what’s happening in tech and culture Clubhouse is an invitation-only, audio chat app, valued in Dec 2020 at $100 million. It is now valued at 1 billion USD since Jan 2021. I was honored to be nominated by an Australian investor who was, in turn, invited by the founder of Product Hunt. The app is not yet available on Android. Links: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/style/clubhouse-app-influencers.htmlNews https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55971009 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/style/clubhouse-app-influencers.html https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/08/clubhouse-is-now-blocked-in-china-after-a-brief-uncensored-period/ Image Source: https://twitter.com/joinclubhouse/status/1337190370229293057?s=12

Clubhouse: The Bomani Effect 

TRUSTED VS TRUSTLESS: THE ROLE OF TRUST IN THE MEANS OF EXCHANGE OPERATION

Store links on the blockchain forever The Product The web app deployed at , interacts with a smart contract deployed on . Being on testnet means you can interact with it using free ethers. Get your . 0x.now.sh Ethereum Ropsten testnet free ethers here The Process Users make a transaction requesting the blockchain to store a URL string. Since it is a transaction that modifies the state of the blockchain, it needs to have some amount of ethers attached to it so that it can be mined to the blockchain by miners. The amount of fee (also called ) is determined by the Metamask chrome extension and displayed in the prompt box. gas There is some waiting time for the transaction to be confirmed (5–10sec) depending on how busy the blockchain is. The shortened URL is generated. eg https://0x.now.sh/s?id=23 When the users clicks on the shortened URL another transaction is made requesting the blockchain which URL string is located at the provided reference (in this case 23) Since this transaction is not changing the state of the blockchain, we do not need to pay any ETH this time, the user is seamlessly redirected to the long URL. dApp Being a Decentralized application means that this web app does not require any centralized database to function. It only interacts with the smart contract deployed on the blockchain. The SmartContract 📃 pragma solidity ^0.4.24; contract e0x {event Log(string message);event LinkAdded(uint linkId, string url); struct LinkTemplate {address userAddress;string url;} uint lastLinkId;mapping (uint => LinkTemplate) public linkMapping; constructor() public {lastLinkId = 0;} function createNewLink(string url) public returns (uint) {lastLinkId++;linkMapping[lastLinkId] = LinkTemplate(msg.sender, url);emit LinkAdded(lastLinkId, url);return lastLinkId;} modifier linkExists(uint linkId) {//link with the given hash does not existif(linkMapping[linkId].userAddress == 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000) {revert();}_;} function getLink(uint linkId) linkExists(linkId) public constantreturns(address,string) {LinkTemplate memory link = linkMapping[linkId];return(link.userAddress,link.url);} } Technical Challenges Interacting with the smart contract EthersJS library is used to talk to the blockchain // provider picks up the Metamask injected web3 object from browserlet provider = new ethers.providers.Web3Provider(web3.currentProvider);let address = "ADDRESS_OF_DEPLOYED_SMART_CONTRACT";let abi = [...] //defines JSON interface for the smart contract Storing data on the blockchain // calling the createNewLink function defined in the smart contracttx = await contract.createNewLink(url);console.log(tx.hash); Listening to blockchain events contract.on("LinkAdded", (linkId, linkUrl) => { var shortUrl = '{0}/s?id={1}'.f(window.location.origin, linkId.toNumber())  
    $("#info").prepend( "Short URL: <a href='{0}'>{0}</a><br>".f(shortUrl) );  
      
}); Generating the list of recently shortened URLs web3’s allEvents() function call was used to list down all the events recorded in the smart contract whenever a new url was shortened. MyContract = web3.eth.contract(abi);myContractInstance = MyContract.at(address);events = myContractInstance.allEvents({event: 'LinkAdded', fromBlock: 0, toBlock: 'latest'});events.watch(function(error, result){console.log(result.args.url, result.args.linkId.toNumber());...}); Making the shortened URLs accessible in all Browsers This was quite tricky because interacting with blockchain required the browser to be web3 enabled, and have some wallet installed (metamask or similar). Currently web3 and wallet support is only for Chrome and Firefox on Desktop only. To solve this, I had to create a wallet on the fly as follows provider = ethers.getDefaultProvider('ropsten');wallet = ethers.Wallet.createRandom();wallet = wallet.connect(provider); Shout out to the awesome for having support for this. ethersJS library Counting URL visits The flexibility for using this one all browsers comes at a cost. Each time user clicks on the shortened URL no change is made to the blockchain state, hence it is not possible to determine how many times each link was clicked. This issues remains unsolved. The complete source code for this project is on . Github Pull Requests welcome 😁

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