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“It will function primarily as a payment solutions provider (PSP), focusing on developing innovative technology solutions to enhance Stanbic IBTC’s existing financial services offerings.

Stanbic IBTC’s financial technology subsidiary starts operation

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Rated as the top mobile app development company in USA & India among all app development companies. Hire our top mobile app developers for your app idea!

OpenXcell

Top 15 Outsourcing Software Development companies in India & USA for Startups & SME's | 2019

The mobile application market is speculated to grow at significantly higher rates attributing to the rise in the number of smartphone users all over the world due to reduced prices of mobile phones as well as data. Analysts forecast that global mobile apps market will grow at a CAGR of 15.14% during the period 2017–2021. Such a vast market also presents opportunities for developers to tap into the stream and make a living out of it. In 2017, Sensor Tower calculated App Store revenue at $38.5 billion last year (34.7 percent growth over 2016), compared with an estimated $20.1 on Google Play (34.2 percent growth over 2016). The combined revenue of both the marketplaces comes out to be approximately $58.7 billion in 2017 up by 35% from 2016. And in 2018 this number has risen to $92.1 billion, 76% of it coming from mobile games. By 2021, the total number of smartphone users worldwide will reach 3.8 billion, just under half of today’s worldwide population. This growth is being attributed to the recent surge in adoption of mobile devices in India and China. So, how can a developer leverage this opportunity and make something for himself while continuing to develop awesome apps? This is what this post is all about. What I have compiled below is an exhaustive list of all the ways you can monetize a Mobile app and make a sustainable income out of mobile app development. Let’s get started! Advertising This is the most obvious of the lot. Marketers try every trick in their book to grab user’s attention and get them into their sales funnel. And marketers with a budget don’t shy away from spending money on paid ads. This leads to more competition for popular keywords thus resulting in higher bidding for that word. Image Source Openxcell What this means is that the ad shown on your app will have a higher (cost per click)/ (cost per thousand impressions) for advertisers, which in turn will mean more income for you if the ad is clicked or even viewed. CPC CPM Once you’ve integrated the ads, you can just focus on marketing your mobile application as much as possible and growing your user base. **Note: Apart from user base/number of downloads, what also matters is your app’s Daily Active User. An app with 10,000 downloads and 4000 DAU is far more valuable than an app with 100,000 downloads and only 1000 DAU. So, your job as a developer is to develop features to keep your users engaged, while also focusing on gathering new users. *** While choosing an ad platform, you should consider their , i.e. how many advertisers are willing to spend money on that platform because eventually, it’s the advertisers who pay for the ad and from which you get your cut. Given below is an exhaustive list of ad networks that you can consider which have a large advertiser base and would allow you to make a sustainable income out of advertising. advertiser base Best Ad Networks : Google’s AdMob is the most popular mobile ad network with cross-platform support. It offers high CPM and also you get an added advantage of being associated with 40 other third-party ad networks. Admob : Unity ads are effective for mobile games. Remember that infinite surfer game where you could watch a video and you’d get a life key; head start boosts at the end? Most probably that’s powered by Unity Ads. Unity is the leading company in gaming and its Unity Engine is the most popular software to develop mobile games. It has more than 1B gamers on this platform, so the scale will never be an issue ;) Unity Ads : Facebook ads have been a pioneer in digital marketing for a long time and have been regarded as the holy grail by digital marketing Gurus such as Neil Patel and Gary Vaynerchuk. Facebook has extended its network to mobile devices and now advertisers can extend their campaigns to mobile devices as well. Facebook Audience Network : This ad network is really unique. Instead of targeting ads by demography, they use Appographic targeting. They study how the user interacts with your app and curates’ ads which the user can interact with, resulting in better offers and eventually better CPC. And talking about its scale, it is one of the largest mobile ad networks. It can target over 1.5 billion users and is still growing. InMobi : It is regarded popularly as the second largest ad network after Google’s Admob. It is less heard of but is really popular in the US with its varied range of advertising options. Millennial Media Some other notable mentions are which deals with premium ads. Publishers connect to premium ad partners directly through DDM (Direct Deals Marketplace). is a mobile video advertising platform drawing high engagement with ads and thus high CPM, CPCV. Leadbolt AdColony Paid and Free Version Paid apps are a great way to earn on the . The revenue from ads is fluctuating and is decided by how many advertisers are willing to advertise on your app. But creating a paid app is awesome. You decide what you want to charge for your app and the user has to pay the entire amount if he wants to download it. playstore But no one wants to pay for an unknown commodity. It is very hard to make people part with there money, let alone to pay for an unknown app. So how to go about it? Checkout on the playstore.It offers a trial version of the app on the playstore for 15 days, after which if the user wishes to continue using the app, he/she has to buy the full version on the playstore. PowerAmp This way, the user has a taste of what the app would feel like and whether it serves the user’s purpose or not. Finally, if he finds it useful, he can continue using the app after purchasing the full version on the playstore. In-app Purchases / Freemium Although creating trial and paid versions of the app is a great way to sell your app, it can lead to decreased user retention. A user may choose to uninstall the app after the trial period is over as it is no longer usable. But this way you lose out on all the advertising revenue!! In order to prevent this, google has come out with a much more elegant solution i.e. in-app purchase. In-app purchase allows the user to pay for an extended feature in the app while continuing to use the base version. For example, an in-app purchase could allow the user to remove all the advertisements from the app, thus leading to a better app experience overall. This model has many upsides. If the user does not want to pay for the feature, you can still conceal the feature from the user while letting him use the base version. This way you’ll increase your DAUs and also have ads revenue simultaneously. This is better than the user uninstalling the app, and also the option of paying is always open just in case the user changes his/her mind ;) is an important metric when you pitch your app to an investor (if you plan to do so eventually) and it’s better to not mess it up. So the freemium model is excellent to keep your users engaged while hoping that they pay for the extended feature. DAU Rewarded Ads This one works best for . This model was particularly made popular by Unity where the user has to watch a 30 second ad in order to unlock something special, like doubling his coins/points, providing extended health, or any other exciting feature. mobile games This is a situation for all the parties. The advertisers get their value for money. The user has to sit through the entire ad in order to get the benefit. Hence the advertiser’s message gets along better. win-win The user gets some like extra points, health or whatever by just sitting through 30 seconds which otherwise he would have to pay for, or just make do without the benefit. In a world where everyone loves freebies, this is a great strategy. advantage The developer eventually wins!! Due to rates with the ads, the ads are costly which leads to increased earnings for the developer. Apart from that, the user receives free stuff which keeps him engaged in the app making the app addictive thus increasing the average time spent on the app and as well. high engagement DAUs If you can find out a way to integrate this model within your app, it can pay off really well. Sponsorships This is a bit and something I think has really good potential and will have huge payoffs if done right. unconventional We very well know how sponsorships work in youtube videos where a popular YouTube channel receives a certain amount or some goods for free from the company which wants its products to be reviewed on the channel, thus driving people’s attention to their product and eventually leading to increased sales. This is technically known as “ ”. But this works only if you have a large user base or if your app is specifically targeted. For example, a fitness app could receive sponsorship from fitness bands manufacturer to promote their bands. Even though this app might not have a large user base, but each and every user will be the target user for that company and that’s what matters. Influencer Marketing Donations This category includes everything ranging from Crowdfunding donations to paypal donations. Let’s be honest, advertisements are not a great User Experience and actually lead to frustrated users uninstalling apps, if overdone. So, if you don’t want to integrate ads, you can try one of the other options mentioned above or add an option to make a donation via PayPal. All you have to do is set up a account and create a link. Then you add a screen where you ask the users to donate if they liked the app and when they click the donate button, open that link (PayPal.me/XYZ) in the web browser. The user can choose to donate any amount they like. PayPal paypal.me Personally, I always try and pay for the app if it serves my purpose as I know it means a lot to the developer. If not, I try to donate via that paypal link. So, you can do the same. And btw here is my PayPal link: https://www.paypal.me/ayusch Go ahead and buy me a beer! 😉 Conclusion Given above is an exhaustive list of feasible methods that developers can use to monetize their app. Let me know if I’ve missed out on any point and I’d be happy to review it. Like what you read? Don’t forget to share this post on Facebook , Whatsapp, and LinkedIn . You can follow me on LinkedIn , Quora , Twitter , and Instagram where I answer questions related to Mobile Development, especially Android and Flutter . Also to learn android development you can visit https://ayusch.com or any online school . Microverse.org

How to Monetize your Mobile App in 2019

List of the Best Mobile App Development Companies & Developers — 2018 Reviews Is it a really harder for you to find best App Development company from a collection of thousands or maybe more?To save you from such a striving task, I collected here a prime list of the best app development companies in india. They have made business-growing apps since years and still making them with latest introduced technology. All of them are the solid ground of the best mobile app developers with exceptional technical skills plus heart winning strategies. So, what are you waiting for? Let’s start with the list of the best app development Companies in India: Best 10+ app development Companies in India 2018 IndiaNIC Infotech Ltd IndiaNIC is a leading mobile app, web and mobile games development company. Since 1998, we have successfully bagged 7000+ projects, building lifetime relationships with over 3500+ happy clients, for providing IT solutions to every industry sector out there. With the employee strength of over 400 mobile & web developers, designers and marketing experts working from our head office in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, we hail from a background of specialising in Mobile Apps, Games, Web Portal, Ecommerce, Custom Business Applications, Software Development using latest technologies as per the current and changing trends. Our expertise lies in Open Source Technologies, CMS’s, Microsoft Technologies, JAVA, MEAN Stake, iOS, Android, XAMARIN and other related trending tools and technologies. We are an ISO certified company and member of NASSCOM. Our client list includes names like Adidas, Cisco, Pepsi, Vodafone, McDonald’s, Gulfstream, Incentex, Jackson & Coker, Sancho BBDO, TATA, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Nirma Limited, and many more. Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 250–999 Founded: 1998 2. Peerbits Peerbits is a global IT solution company delivering web development, mobile application development and IT consulting services of any complexity to clients worldwide. Peerbits has a strong team of 50+ highly skilled IT experts. Peerbits carries trust of more than 200+ clients spread across diverse business verticals.We are committed to excellence through the systematic and disciplined process. Our expertise guarantees quality, competence and rapid execution of any projects ranging from mid-sized portals to complex app development and custom mobility solutions.Our vision is to provide the utmost integrity and client satisfaction through our services, creating lasting relationships with our clients. Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 50–249 Founded: 2011 3. Quytech An award winning bespoke mobile app development agency quy technology pvt ltd providing enterprise mobility solution, chat application, Augmented reality application & cross platform services . We have been rated among the top 20 most promising enterprise mobility company by CIO review. Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 50–249 Founded: 2010 4. Finoit Finoit is a product engineering Company providing strategic and technology consulting in the field of Mobile, Software and IoT domain. We are focused on designing and developing customer-centric products and applications for startups to elite business groups across the globe. With our technology consulting and implementation services using Web, Mobile and IoT development technologies, we have delivered intuitive digital experiences and scalable products while solving business problems to over 250 customers across North America, Europe and Australia. Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 50–249 Founded: 2010 5. Hopinfirst Hopinfirst is a leading edge custom software development, web and mobile offers development of websites, mobile applications, AR/AR development, Digital marketing services app development company Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 10–49 Founded: 2016 6. konstantinfo Konstant Infosolutions is an industry leader in delivering successful Mobile and Web development solutions across the Globe. We have been working since 2003, and have 2500+ happy customers worldwide. Having delivered 3500+ successful applications, we have served 30+ large Enterprises as well as start-ups. We are committed to success and our endeavor is to build highly performant and cost-efficient solutions. We have partnered with distinguished industries and firms worldwide like Amazon Web Services, Member of iOS Developer Program, Registered Google Play Developer, Microsoft Certified Partner, Adobe Solution Partner, Intel Partner, Acquia Partner, Authorize.Net Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 50–249 Founded: 2003 7. Octalsoftware Octal IT Solution is a global IT service provider having a strong presence in UK, USA, Singapore and India. The company has the reputation of delivering niche solutions in the areas of web and mobile app development. Octal has repeatedly prescribed quality as its virtue. With the ISO 9001:2008 certification and strict discipline towards the prominent quality standards, the company has produced flawless results since last decade. In its history of ten years, Octal has earned notable associations from technology leaders like Microsoft, NASSCOM, Amazon Web Services, Acquia, STPI, Dun & Bradstreet and Drupal Organization etc. Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 50–249 Founded: 2007 8. OpenXcell Incorporated in 2008 and headquartered in the USA, OpenXcell is an industry-leading software and mobile app development company known for delivering innovative software solutions and engaging mobile apps. Due to our unstoppable quest for making perfect mobile and web apps, we have slowly evolved into a one stop destination for all mobile and web app development needs. We have made a stellar reputation in the technology industry by adhering to strict timelines and quality deliverables. We are considered to be one of the most reliable partners by our clients as we follow a customer-oriented service model. Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 50–249 Founded: 2009 9. 360 Degree Technosoft 360 Degree Technosoft is global solution provider of web development and mobile applications development dealing in various platforms like iOS and android. Having developed more than 500+ mobile applications on various platforms, 360 Degree Technosoft is well-accustomed with Google and Apple tools desired to develop a mobile application. Pricing: < $25/hr Location: India Employees: 10–49 Founded: 2010 10. Spaceotechnologies Space-O is one stop solution for all your mobile software development needs. From concept to development to marketing to ongoing maintenance, Space-O delivers. We are now one of the top mobile app development companies in India by following the success mantra of “Design-led-Engineering”. We work with best-of-the-best fine art grads from top design institutes such as NID and best-of-the-best engineers. Pricing: $25 — $49/hr Location: India Employees: 250–999 Founded: 2010 11. Cumulations Technologies Cumulations Technologies is Bangalore based most trusted mobile app development company serving to the industry from past 8 years. Delivered 100+ projects for more than 70 clients. Specialty lies in solving challenging problems and converting to a viable solution. More than 95% of Projects delivered on time. Worked in almost every industry and niche including smart home, healthcare, e-commerce, ticket booking, Wearable devices, Fintech and more. Pricing: $25 — $49/hr Location: India Employees: 10–49 Founded: 2010 12. Arka Softwares Arka Softwares is the one-stop solutions for all your mobile app requirements. From developing websites for industry giants to providing seamless user experience, there are plethoras of reasons that you can find to hire Arka Softwares as your development partner. With a team of 100+ developers and designers, Arka Softwares have delivered more than 100+ mobile apps to clients all across the globes. With a primary focus on agile development methodology, Arka Softwares offers great benefits to all the clients. As a custom mobile app development company, we provide robust, scalable and high-end development solutions to all our clients from small start-ups to large enterprise. Pricing: 18$ to 20$/hr Location: India, USA, UK Employee: 100+ Founded: 2010 These are the best app development companies in India that you can look out. You can also give me your suggestions in the comment box below. PS: This list is in progress and I update it every fortnight. Would you Like to list your App Development Company? Please do comment with your company name.

Best 10+ app development companies in India

These days, the blockchain development companies are discovering a good approach to increase the business and use for finance purpose. In fact, some of them are top notch and delivers a cost-effective solution to grab attention on decentralized applications. However, the list of BlockChain dApp Development Company further takes the right development in case of business considerations and others. It quickly strengthens the business operations security by implementing reliable strategies forever. This should maintain professional smart contracts and blockchain development for strengthening your business operations quickly and in a hassle-free manner. 1.Xbsoftware XB software is an innovative as well as reliable outsourcing software development that is necessary for operating blockchain apps and Smart contracts. This should include the best platform for delivering cooperates with the clients on regular basis. Of course, the XB software company relies on most complex business decisions and it could be known for cutting-edge solutions to everyone. The ethereum dapp development could enhance the business considerations by availing foremost apps for blockchain development. 2. Zastrin This is a top-notch blockchain development company where it carries out the business smoothly and in a hassle-free manner. This quickly operates with the large extension and thus immediately boosts the business without any hassles. Moreover, the clients can learn dapp app development that is necessary for operating business process smoothly. They are leading firm who wish to develop basic business operations carried out by the professional firm. 3. blockmatics.tech If it is necessary for developing the Ethereum apps, the Blockmatics Tech is here and it offers a reliable solution to everyone. With prior knowledge, it could test and join the hydro blockchain in their respective field. This is necessary for operating with extreme projects that carry out a decentralized dapp developer stack consensus that enhances performance. It executes by performing varied results and adjusts according to the business considerations. With the personalized consultation, it begins to carry out in developing blockchain apps effectively. 4. Techaroha Techaroha is a top-notch software development company that is providing varied IT services and solutions. In addition to this, the firm is taking towards application development as well as a product that increases sales process automation and others. Customer satisfaction is a big thing so the team is care for customers and designed accordingly. With the help of emerging technologies, the Techaroha is a leading company who is focusing on a perfect solution for ethereum dapp builder and blockchain app development. 5. Ethereumlabs The Ethereum Labs are really focusing on the customer’s satisfaction that is necessary for operating with more than vast experience in developing and build dapp ethereum. The team is considering a major solution for accessing with right development strategies. So, each and everyone is grabbing the first class apps that are designed and developed as per the client’s satisfaction. With the latest development, it should take according to the recent development taken at the right hand. 6. Mobiloitte When it comes to developing blockchain and Ethereum apps, the Mobiloitte is a leading firm who could deliver first-class apps. They are developing applications quickly and in fact, adjust according to thousands of different operations. The Ethereum and blockchain developments on this platform aim to operate with a global audience and reach the cryptocurrency that is taken throughout without any hassles. 7. Fuelled At Fueled Company, the professionals develop award-winning mobile apps such as Ethereum apps and blockchain development. With standard market values, it could operate under expertise as well as deliver design and development work. This is necessary for operating with successful Cryptocurrencies that stand out the best. The dapp development Agency makes sure it could find the right place for developing blockchain and new Ethereum apps for everyday use. 8. Ethereum Ethereum is a decentralized platform that is necessary for operating smart contracts and blockchain app development. The team is ready to provide basic and advanced solutions that are possible for operating with third-party interference. Some apps are custom built option and thus are really fascinating in developing that should have more value around and represent the ownership of property. It enables developers to create markets and store values in the past results. 9.Openxcell When it facilitates smart contracts and Dapps, the Openxcell is a Top 10 Ethereum dApp Development Companies who is ready to develop blockchain technology for everyone. This should organize with downtime and assured to deliver fraud-free via smart contracts and audits for thousands of clients. By using the Ethereum apps, the platform aims to offer specific cryptographic token and miners are taking part in the right solution. It could code, decentralize, and secure the data accordingly. 10.Ethereumlabs The company is providing full stack development that could expertise in bringing blockchain technology and support forever. The Ethereum apps are nothing but it is used to develop blockchain technology and Dapps for varied purposes. It has existing codes that should integrate into developing a possible solution that could debug accordingly. The team eliminates the risk and operations are carried out quickly without any hassles. Why use Top 10 Ethereum Dapps and blockchain development companies? Most people are grabbing the best class companies that can able to identify with business needs and provide solutions accordingly. When it comes to Ethereum Blockchain application development and blockchain development, the above-listed companies are operating under professional designers. Moreover, the apps required to take part in delivering the best apps for developing at the top level. This is necessary for acquiring the Ethereum Dapp and blockchain app developments forever. It could carry out app requirements and business objectives smoothly. On the other hand, it involves challenging tasks and it could deliver outstanding results with experienced results. This has been taken almost affordable cost and it involves a big number of user-friendly apps for business and other solutions.

Top 10 Ethereum dApp Development Companies in USA, UAE & India

Top Custom Software Development Companies 2018

The command line is incredibly powerful when it comes to data processing. Still, many of us working with data do not take advantage of it. I can think of some reasons: : the focus is on minimizing how much you need to type and not so much on how readable a sequence of commands is; Poor readability : many commands, with many options; Steep learning curve some of these tools are around since the 70s and target delimited text files (and not modern formats like JSON and YAML). Looks outdated: These motivated me to write a command-line tool that focuses on readability, easiness to learn, and modern data formats while leveraging the command-line ecosystem. On top of that, it also leverages the Python ecosystem! Meet : SPyQL - SQL with Python in the middle SELECT 
  date.fromtimestamp(purchase_ts) AS purchase_date,
  sum_agg(price * quantity) AS total
FROM csv('my_purchases.csv')
WHERE department.upper() == 'IT' and purchase_ts is not Null
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1
TO json SPyQL in Action I think the best way for getting to know SPyQL and getting comfortable with the command line is to open a terminal and solve a problem. In this case, we will try to understand the geographical distribution of cell towers. Let’s start! Setup Let’s start by installing SPyQL: $ pip3 install -U spyql and check its version: $ spyql --version
spyql, version 0.8.1 Let’s also install , a utility for creating plots from the command line that leverages : MatplotCLI Matplotlib $ pip3 install -U matplotcli Finally, we will download some sample data (you can alternatively copy-paste the URL to your browser and download the file from there): $ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dcmoura/blogposts/master/spyql_cell_towers/sample.csv This CSV file contains data about cell towers that were added to the database on 2022 September 10 ( file from the project redistributed without modifications under the ). OpenCellid OCID-diff-cell-export-2022-09-10-T000000.csv OpenCellid Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License Inspecting the data Let’s look at the data by getting the first 3 lines of the file: $ head -3 sample.csv
radio,mcc,net,area,cell,unit,lon,lat,range,samples,changeable,created,updated,averageSignal
GSM,262,2,852,2521,0,10.948628,50.170324,15762,200,1,1294561074,1662692508,0
GSM,262,2,852,2501,0,10.940241,50.174076,10591,200,1,1294561074,1662692508,0 You could do this same operation with SPyQL: $ spyql "SELECT * FROM csv LIMIT 2" < sample.csv or $ spyql "SELECT * FROM csv('sample.csv') LIMIT 2" Notice that we are telling you to get 2 rows of data and not 3 rows of the file (where the first is the header). One advantage of SPyQL is that we can change the output format easily. Let’s change the output to JSON and look at the first record: $ spyql "SELECT * FROM csv('sample.csv') LIMIT 1 TO json(indent=2)"
{
  "radio": "GSM",
  "mcc": 262,
  "net": 2,
  "area": 852,
  "cell": 2521,
  "unit": 0,
  "lon": 10.948628,
  "lat": 50.170324,
  "range": 15762,
  "samples": 200,
  "changeable": 1,
  "created": 1294561074,
  "updated": 1662692508,
  "averageSignal": 0
} Querying the data Let’s first count how many records we have: $ spyql "SELECT count_agg(*) AS n FROM csv('sample.csv')"
n
45745 Notice that aggregation functions have the suffix to avoid conflicts with Python’s functions like , and . Now, let’s count how many cell towers we have by radio type: _agg min max sum $ spyql "SELECT radio, count_agg(*) AS n FROM csv('sample.csv') GROUP BY 1 
ORDER BY 2 DESC TO pretty"
radio        n
-------  -----
GSM      31549
LTE      12996
UMTS      1182
CDMA        16
NR           2 Notice the pretty printing output. We can plot the above results by setting the output format to JSON and piping results into : MatplotCLI $ spyql "SELECT radio, count_agg(*) AS n FROM csv('sample.csv') GROUP BY 1 
ORDER BY 2 DESC TO json" | plt "bar(radio, n)" How easy was that? :-) Querying the data: a more complex example Now, let’s get the top 5 countries with more cell towers added on that day: $ spyql "SELECT mcc, count_agg(*) AS n FROM csv('sample.csv') GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC LIMIT 5 TO pretty"
  mcc      n
-----  -----
  262  24979
  440   5085
  208   4573
  310   2084
  311    799 MCC stands for Mobile Country Code (262 is the code for Germany). The first digit of the MCC identifies the region. Here’s an exert from : Wikipedia 0: Test networks
2: Europe
3: North America and the Caribbean
4: Asia and the Middle East
5: Australia and Oceania
6: Africa
7: South and Central America
9: Worldwide Let’s copy and paste the above list of regions and create a new file named . On the mac, this is as easy as , but you can also paste this into a text editor and save it. mcc_geo.txt $ pbpaste > mcc_geo.txt Now, let’s ask SPyQL to open this file as a CSV and print its contents: $ spyql "SELECT * FROM csv('mcc_geo.txt') TO pretty"
  col1  col2
------  -------------------------------
     0  Test networks
     2  Europe
     3  North America and the Caribbean
     4  Asia and the Middle East
     5  Australia and Oceania
     6  Africa
     7  South and Central America
     9  Worldwide SPyQL detected that the separator is a colon and that the file has no header. We will use the syntax to address the column. colN Nth Now, let’s create a single JSON object with as many key-value pairs as input rows. Let the 1st column of the input be the and the 2nd column be the and save the result to a new file: key value $ spyql "SELECT dict_agg(col1,col2) AS json FROM csv('mcc_geo.txt') TO json('mcc_geo.json', indent=2)" We can use to inspect the output file: cat $ cat mcc_geo.json                                               
{
  "0": "Test networks",
  "2": "Europe",
  "3": "North America and the Caribbean",
  "4": "Asia and the Middle East",
  "5": "Australia and Oceania",
  "6": "Africa",
  "7": "South and Central America",
  "9": "Worldwide "
} We aggregated all input lines into a Python dictionary and then saved it as a JSON file. Try removing the alias from the to understand why we need it :-) AS json SELECT Now, let’s get the statistics by region instead of by MCC. For this, we will load the JSON file that we just created (with the option) and do a dictionary lookup: -J $ spyql -Jgeo=mcc_geo.json "SELECT geo[mcc//100] AS region, count_agg(*) AS n 
FROM csv('sample.csv') GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 2 DESC TO pretty"
region                               n
-------------------------------  -----
Europe                           35601
Asia and the Middle East          5621
North America and the Caribbean   3247
Australia and Oceania              894
Africa                             381
South and Central America            1 We do an integer division by 100 to get the 1st digit of the MCC and then we look up this digit on the JSON we just created (which is loaded as a Python dictionary). This is how we do a JOIN in SPyQL, via a dictionary lookup :-) Leveraging Python libs on your queries Another advantage of SPyQL is that we can leverage the Python ecosystem. Let’s try to do some more geographical statistics. Let’s count towers by H3 cell (resolution 5) for Europe. First, we need to install the : H3 lib $ pip3 install -U h3 Then, we can convert latitude-longitude pairs into H3 cells, count how many towers we have by H3 cell, and save the results into a CSV: $ spyql "IMPORT h3 SELECT h3.geo_to_h3(lat, lon, 5) AS cell, count_agg(*) AS n 
FROM csv('sample.csv') WHERE mcc//100==2 GROUP BY 1 TO csv('towers_by_h3_res5.csv')" Visualizing these results is fairly simple with Kepler. Just go to and open the above file. You should see something like this: kepler. gl/demo Final words I hope you enjoyed SPyQL and that I could show you how simple it makes to query data from the command line. In this first post about SPyQL, we are just scratching the surface. There is a lot more we can do. We have barely leveraged the Shell and Python ecosystems in this article. And we worked with a small file (SPyQL can handle GB-size files without compromising system resources). So, stay tuned! Try out SPyQL and reach back to me with your thoughts. Thank you! Resources SPyQL repo: github.com/dcmoura/spyql SPyQL documentation: spyql.readthedocs.io MatplotCLI repo: github.com/dcmoura/matplotcli You can find me on , , and ! Tweeter LinkedIn Vimeo Also Published here

Using SPyQL and Python to Run Command Line Analytics

Foursquare was probably the first entertainment startup to introduce location-based services to the mass-market. Later on, Pokémon GO was fueling a wave of augmented reality game app ideas, startups with a location-based touch got back into the spotlight. What location-based apps ideas can enhance your software solution or fuel your startup? Let’s find out! What Are Location-Based Mobile Apps? Location-based services apps/location-aware apps are the applications that offer various services depending on the user’s location as identified using GPS or data from the cell tower and Wi-Fi. How to Make a Location-Based App Location-based app development should begin with the understanding of the aims you pursue and the business task you want to solve. However, there are some common features to use: Users should be able to identify their location and share it with othersThe solution should allow measuring distances between objects (to find the nearest shop, café, restaurant, etc.)The app should contain in-built maps with navigation feature, for the users to spot the fastest ways to their destination. To build a location-based application, which will interest users and keep them engaged, you should decide on the must-have functionality, key features to solve your business needs, data security aspects, most suitable technologies, and the tech stack. Let’s look into the geolocation technologies in more detail. Location-Based Technologies As we have already mentioned, the aim of building a location-aware app should influence the choice of technology. If we create a mobile guide around the country or its picturesque places, we may suppose that GPS would solve all our problems. However, we may not need the GPS at all, it’s not a good idea to use a steam-hammer to crack nuts. To make an excellent app guide, positioning principle, based on Cell ID may be enough. Cell ID does not provide accurate user coordinates, only the information that the user with a smartphone has entered a certain sector of base transceiver station within a location area code. The details about the BTS can be received from multiple free databases, OpenCellID is the one most popular. The idea is that we tie some points of our interest in the app with the BTS ID in this area. When a user enters this sector, an app can make some prompts like: " Don’t you want to visit ... nearby?«, or «You are almost at...». Why is it better than GPS? The major answer is that the application does not need an active GPS receiver, and the battery will live long. Let’s take a big store or even a shopping center for the following example. It can also be a smart home system. Not by any stretch of the imagination, should you use GPS in such cases. The minimum problem you will face is a low signal indoor, the best variant is that it will show what building a user is in. Wi-Fi positioning is used for such purposes, it works well in premises. The principle of it is that the building contains Wi-Fi transmitters, and the software realizes the logic of position defining. The location is defined to an accuracy of 0,5 -2 meters, depending on the number and position of the transmitters. Thus, the app will be aware of the user position every moment and it opens broad possibilities for businesses: you can prompt your users about a shop nearby (in case of shopping centers) or inform them about the discount for some products. Businesses can receive a lot of additional information: the most visited places in the shopping center, the most popular customer routes in the store, even a list of people who entered the store without frames at the entrance (the frames at the entrance are primarily intended to count visitors and not to detect thieves). We once developed an application, the essence of which was to monitor users through a WiFi scanner, register their devices IDs, the customers’ points of interest in a shopping center, and targeted advertising was generated based on this data. This implementation was very similar to geofencing technology but more accurate. Geofencing — in fact, it is the definition of users in a specific geofence. A GPS module is used, and the technology is based on determining coordinates. In case you have a store and an app for it, the users having it, can be notified of a recent promotion or discount when they pass by. It’s a wonderful chance for businesses to remind their clients about themselves, but what if a company fails to have a dedicated app? A low-power Bluetooth LE — iBeacon technology comes to the rescue. These are small tags that are used within a short-range wireless data transmission (Bluetooth LE) to distribute messages or notifications. Let’s now speak about the most popular technology — GPS, high precision user location technology. We often use it for logistics or taxi service apps. It will also be a great option for a restaurant network. Depending on the task to solve, we can choose the most suitable technology to use. It is often a combination of several technologies to close as many issues as possible for the users and businesses. Stages of Location-based App Development Creating a location-based mobile application we keep to a standard procedure, where the first stage is discovery, followed by design, then backend is implemented. Only finally we develop a location-aware app in Android or iOS. The success of the entire development process is to a great extent determined by the discovery stage. It’s vital to find out all the aims and tasks the client has in mind. The next step is to identify the pains of the users and the things which can engage them. When the light is shed on the key points and the general concept of location-based mobile app development is worked out we agree it with our client. Stfalcon’s team proceeds to design after the client’s consent. We work out the solution design with all the user flows and scenarios in mind to make it simple, intuitive, yet convenient, and effective and also agree it with the client. The next stage is backend development since every mobile app needs to turn to the external server, which centralizes the whole business logic of a software solution we develop. Finally, we make a location-aware app for iPhone or Android or both depending on the customer’s request. We finalize the development with testing and QA stages that follow. How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Location-Based Application Every client, enthusiast, or startup wants to know the cost of development before they start a location-based app creation. There is no definite answer to the question before the project details are discussed. However, to give you a slight clue, we’ll mention that app development for 2 platforms will approximately cost you 80000 USD. With a minor budget, you can consider MVP development. It will cost you about 2 times less and provide you with an opportunity to launch your product into the market, test your idea, business logic, and user engagement. And now let’s take a look at some geolocation app ideas for Android and iOS: Ideas for Your Own Location-Based Apps Using very basic types of location-aware apps specified above you can expand an idea further and build the following: Users and brands can write personal messages, add photos or offer discounts which their followers can only see when visiting a certain location. 1. Location-based app for content available only in certain locations (SnapChat + Pokémon GO). For it is an opportunity to recommend interesting spot to their friends or remind about a memorable event. can use it to attract more visitors to their less popular venues by offering on-the-spot discounts or notify about special time-limited offers when users are down town. users Brands People love it when somebody (or something like app) completes a boring task for them. And a lot of tasks are location-based (don’t forget to notify a loved one you’re running late, grab those cookies from the store on the corner, etc.). Trigger app allows you to notify people when you’re leaving your workplace. 2. Location-based app for task automation. Modern retail stores are full of products and not everything worth of attention can be put upfront. With this app idea can: 3. Location-based app for locating products in malls and stores. brands point out products to consumers based on what they’ve bought before remind about recurring purchasespoint out special offers and items that are on-sale Unfortunately, a modern world is not as safe as we’d like it to be with acts of terrorism, natural and various human-instigated disasters happening daily. This kind of app can provide users with crucial notifications based on the automated analysis of local online newspapers while spare them the overwhelming flow of bad news from around the world. 4. Location-based app for notifying users about threats nearby. LastQuake (France) and FEMA (USA) offer information about a limited types of events, quakes and weather-related respectively, but the world still lacks a sophisticated solution in this field. . We surely have a lot of mobile travel guides and apps for finding a place to eat, to sleep, and to hang out at. But all trip planning is still on us. A location-based app for Android and iOS that could offer decent weekend planning (booking tickets or hotel, sightseeing, clubbing) based on the user’s budget and type of leisure they prefer will get a lot of hype. Plus, there would be a clear profit for brands: you could prioritize or advertise the activities they offer for a fee. 5. Location-based app for planning a weekend Conclusion Geolocation technology has something to offer beyond suggesting popular restaurants nearby and yet another location-based dating app. You just got to think of what activities are location-related and where would people love to see a bit of automation. This year the global pandemic had dictated the new rules to a , which took place on 24-26 July 2020. The developers made significant changes to the game to match the COVID-19 stay-at-home requirements, now the players can progress in the game even while staying indoors. It resulted into the overwhelming revenue of 17.5 mln USD, and the first festival day became the second most profitable day in the history of the game. Thus, with COVID 19 it became clear that the location-based apps should be altered to match the present-day reality. However, for Stfalcon, it’s not at all a problem, but a new challenge, and we’ll gladly bring your idea to life, expand our portfolio, and expertize even more. Pokémon Go Fest Previously published at https://stfalcon.com/en/blog/post/5-hot-ideas-for-location-based-apps

5 Location-Based Mobile Apps Secrets You Should Know

We're excited to announce that the official website for has launched! React Native Echarts We're constantly updating the site to provide you with the latest information about our project. On the website, you will find the complete documentation, edit demos online, and view solutions to common issues and other related information. New Logo And Design We've designed a logo that reflects our project's key features: efficiency, simplicity, and technology. The logo is based on a polar coordinate bar chart and has been transformed into a modern and technological style. Hope you like it! Building a Modern Document Website for React Native Library In addition to the website launch information, I will also describe how to build a modern documentation website. If you're interested in building a documentation website for your open-source project, this guide can be a great reference. Initialized with Docusaurus To build a modern documentation website, the first step is to use to initialize your project. Docusaurus provides a framework for building documentation websites quickly and easily. You can initialize your project with the following command. Docusaurus npx create-docusaurus@latest my-website classic --typescript For more information, please refer to . Docusaurus Getting Started Ember Expo Snack is an open-source platform for running React Native apps in the browser. If you are building a website for a React Native library, this is an excellent feature that helps developers easily try out and test their code without having to download anything locally. Expo Snack Integrating Snack in a Docusaurus project can be challenging. I refer to this and the source code at . issue react-native-website Integrating Snack involves the following steps. Write a remarkPlugins call . This plugin will visit all nodes with when compiling markdown files, and replace the node with a SnackPlayer . @react-native-website/remark-snackplayer code node.lang == 'SnackPlayer' div Write a client module call . This module listens for client-side events and call , at the appropriate time. snackPlayerInitializer initSnackPlayers updateSnacksTheme Modify the a configuration file , add to remarkPlugins, add to clientModules, and add to . docusaurus.config.js @react-native-website/remark-snackplayer snackPlayerInitializer https://snack.expo.dev/embed.js scripts In the file, define some styles for snack-player. src/css/custom.css Write code in a markdown file with a code block. SnackPlayer name=Hello%20World
import { Text } from 'react-native';
export default function() {
  return (
    <Text>Hello, world!</Text>
  );
} Now you have an online editor, like the one below. If you are interested in the implementation principles, you can take a look at our as well as . commit Including Snacks in your documentation Use a SnackPlayer Component Ember Expo Snack is cool, but sometimes I want to put the code in a tsx file and then import it to the article where I need it. In this way, my code is easier to edit and reusable. In addition to the online editor, we provide a SnackPlayer component that can be used like below. import SnackPlayer from '@site/src/components/SnackPlayer';
import SimpleLineChart from '!!raw-loader!@site/src/snippets/simple-line-chart/index.tsx';

<SnackPlayer name="Simple Line Chart">{SimpleLineChart}</SnackPlayer> Thanks to Webpack raw-loader, you can import any code file as raw text, and then insert it in a code block. This component is also very simple to implement, accepting snack-related props and code string, and turning them into SnackPlayer , refer to . div this commit You can now use @wuba/react-native-echarts online, . We plan to provide more use cases in the future. try it out now If you want to customize your own components, please refer to . By the way, if you just want to have a live editor for react, is a good choice. Using JSX in Markdown React Live Add Doc Search Algolia is a search engine that can be integrated into your Docusaurus project to provide fast and efficient search functionality for your documentation website. This feature helps users quickly and easily find the information they need. It's easy to integrate Algolia with Docusaurus. You can refer to for more information. Docusaurus Doc Search I18n Support With the increase of international users, supporting multiple languages is becoming increasingly important. Docusaurus provides i18n support to help you create a website that can be easily translated into different languages. Currently, we have only added 2 languages, Chinese and English, if you have other needs, please let us know. For more information, please refer to . Docusaurus i18n Show Github Contributes It's always important to give credit where credit is due. Showing the contributors of your project on your documentation website is a great way to acknowledge their hard work and dedication. We build a on and associate the team with the GitHub repository. react-native-echart team https://opencollective.com/ You can then get the contributor images for the project by assembling the following link: https://cdn.hackernoon.com/images/vJcrvKCc3hh6oCV6ujhOFQ6v9dN2-2023-03-29T13:34:07.603Z-clftqa8dv000r0bs6dt0sg2pl Thanks to the following contributors, if you want to join us, please feel free to submit a PR or issue. Deploying Your Website Use GitHub Pages to Deploys Deploying your website is an important step in making it accessible to the public. Docusaurus makes it easy to deploy your website using GitHub Pages. This is a fast and efficient way to get your website online quickly. For more information, please refer to . Docusaurus Deploying to GitHub Pages Increase Website Traffic Add Global Site Tag for Analytics To better understand how users interact with our website, we can use Google Analytics to track various metrics such as page views, bounce rates, and user demographics. To integrate Google Analytics with Docusaurus, you can use the plugin. @docusaurus/plugin-google-gtag For more information, please refer to . Docusaurus Google Analytics SEO Optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for ensuring that your documentation website is easily discoverable by search engines. Docusaurus provides a variety of tools and features that can help you optimize your website for SEO. For more information, please refer to . Docusaurus SEO Add Sitemap to Google Search Console A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on our website and helps search engines like Google index our website more efficiently. By adding a sitemap to Google Search Console, we can help Google to discover and index all the pages on our website. Docusaurus comes with a built-in plugin for generating a sitemap. You can get the sitemap by visiting the /sitemap.xml page on your website. Every language has its sitemap, for example: https://wuba.github.io/react-native-echarts/sitemap.xml https://wuba.github.io/react-native-echarts/zh-Hans/sitemap.xml For more information, please refer to . Once the sitemap is generated, we can submit it to Google Search Console. Docusaurus Sitemap Summary In this article, we have shown you how to use Docusaurus to build a modern documentation website, as well as how to integrate common features such as online editing, document search, multi-language support, contributor display, and analytics. By following these steps, you can create a robust and user-friendly documentation website for your open-source project. Also, the source code of our website is located . here Also published . here

Building a Documentation Website for Your Open-source Project Using Docusaurus​

In this AMA, we host the CEO of Pool Data, Shiv Malik. Shiv walks us through Pool Data and how it supports data unions in bringing value to the data economy. We also chat about the wider data economy. slogging This Slogging thread by Jack Boreham, Char736, Shiv Malik, Mónica Freitas, Melissa Brown, Sara Pinto, Cris Silva, Blocklawd, Jimmy L, Sonic3625, james Burrows and Gilbert Hill occurred in slogging's official #amas channel, and has been edited for readability. Jack Boreham Jul 13, 2022, 11:00 AM Hi, @channel, please join me in welcoming the CEO of Pool Data, Shiv Malik. Pool Data is a platform that seeks to redistribute power, value, and control in the data economy. Pool supports data unions by providing them with a marketplace and infrastructure to scale their organizations, meaning everyone can benefit from data sharing. You can ask the Shiv anything about: What is Pool Data? How did it come about? Who are the team members behind Pool? What’s their background? Why should we care about our personal data? What’s wrong with the data economy at the moment? What are data unions and how is Pool supporting them? How does this fit in with data buyers, brands, and what they’ve been doing with cookies etc? How are data unions related to Web3? What is your roadmap for the coming year? What is your vision for the future of data? Jack Boreham Jul 13, 2022, 11:01 AM Hi Shiv Malik a pleasure to have you with us. I hope you are prepared for these Qs 😁. To start off, can you tell our audience about your background and the birth of Pool Data? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:03 AM Sure thing! So I’ve got had a bit of a peripatetic career. I was an investigative journalist for many years for the Guardian working on economics issues and also terrorism. I am the author of a couple of books and the co-founder of a think tank. I started in Web3 in early 2017. First as a day trader and then I worked for Golem and then Streamr. Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:05 AM Since 2018 I’ve spent my time working to incubate and foster data unions, and building frameworks for them to utilise. I started Pool back last year to specifically concentrate on helping data unions get off the ground. and now Pool has a team of 14 people. Char736 Jul 13, 2022, 11:03 AM Shiv Malik. I'm interested by the idea of a data union what is it and how does pool worth with them? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:05 AM Great question. So a data union is basically a way of allowing people to share and monetize their data. They can be structured in a good many ways. Some of them are DAOs others are more like traditional cooperatives. Pool helps them in three ways. 1. A marketplace to sell the data. 2. An analytics solutions so all the data unions can work cooperatively to create amazing analytics for the world. 3. A data wallet to allow individuals to store their own data and also join other data unions. Mónica Freitas Jul 13, 2022, 11:05 AM Hi Shiv Malik! Great to have you with us. How does Pool work? And where did the idea for Pool come from? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:09 AM Mónica Freitas - the idea has long intellectual roots. Jaron Lanier, the author of Who Own the Future (great book by the way) was talking about them years ago. Glen Weyl is another great proponent of the idea. I started working on them in 2017 to make them a reality and now we count at least 90 data unions around the world monetizing all sorts of data from mobility to clickstream data to mobile sensor data and financial transaction data. Sara Pinto Jul 13, 2022, 11:05 AM Hey Shiv Malik, it's great to have you here with us! We see a lot of news about shared data. What can be benefits of data sharing? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:12 AM Sara Pinto I think the main benefit of data sharing is 1. the income you can derive from doing so as a collective (individually your data is worth very little, combined it is worth a fortune). We expect that to be around $150-200 a year. 2. People will get so much in terms of convenience and control by storing their own data in a vault. Imagine signing in with your wallet (i.e. signing in with ethereum) and being able to share your full data story with anyone, on your terms and under your full control. Cris Silva Jul 13, 2022, 11:06 AM Hello, Shiv Malik. Why did you decide to have your own token? What are the perks of that token for individuals and businesses? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:15 AM Cris Silva - Great question! So it’s turns out when you work as a cooperative you really need utility tokens to sort out certain common problems. And it’s not just governance we’re talking about her. For example, the revenue we expect to garner from our combined analytics will pull upon raw data from all the data unions in our ecosystem. Who is to say which data sets are the most valuable or not in a given query. The Token in this instance will really help us sort out who should get more revenue or not. Our token is also a discount token to allow DUs who really want to be invested in common success to get full value out of the platform. Blocklawd Jul 13, 2022, 11:10 AM Shiv Malik we here about data privacy issues all the time in the news, Facebook, etc. Where does Pool Data fit into all of this? What benefits does pool offer the average consumers? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:18 AM - privacy is massively important. But I think people can now see that Google, apple and even facebook are starting to co-opt the privacy space. They’re basically saying, ‘only we can protect user privacy’. That has meant that everyone else is locked out of the data economy and they will garner even more control over advertising and analytics and basically the world’s data. That has to stop. Especially since the economic future of everyone depends on ordinary people having control and leverage over the data they produce if they are going to have any control over AI. Also I think privacy tools have been great at stopping people from sharing information but not so great at allowing us to share on our terms, when we do want to. And humans are very pro-social beings. We want to share information, we just don’t want to be taken for a ride and we want to be able to say no when we chose. Melissa Brown Jul 13, 2022, 11:12 AM Shiv Malik what do you mean by storing data in a wallet. Is it like crypto Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:20 AM Melissa Brown - yes! That’s pretty much correct. Imagine a regular wallet but now you’ve also appended a data vault to it (we’re using Ceramic as the protocol). And now if you join a data union, you will also be able to copy and paste the same data you share with them into your own data vault. The read permission of the vault will be controlled by the same private key you use to send money. It’s pretty revolutionary. Sara Pinto Jul 13, 2022, 11:19 AM Shiv Malik storing our own data in a vault makes total sense. What are the issues revolving data? Regarding the economy and storing it Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:23 AM Sara Pinto so the idea of a personal data vault is pretty old. There’s an amazing paper written in Harvard Biz Review from 1999 for example. It’s the dream idea: everyone gets to port their data and store their own digital story. It solves a lot of KYC issues for example. The hard part has always been about where does the individual get that data from? If everyone stores random bits of data, that are basically an unstructured mess, how will anyone else be able to read that data in a programatic fashion?    That’s where data unions come in. They already produce well structured data. So it’s easy to store that stuff on IPFS (using Ceramic). Does that answer your question? Cris Silva Jul 13, 2022, 11:20 AM Shiv Malik, interesting. So, do you operate solely in a blockchain/web3-centric strategy? Or do you have options for the not-so-up-to-date web2 companies? 😂 👍 1 Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:25 AM Cris Silva - yeah - short version of this is that the data buyers are al in Web2 and all the data unions are already in Web3 or are moving (because they need scalable micropayments and only blockchain delivers this). So Pool has to act as a bridge between Web2 and Web3. Cris Silva Jul 13, 2022, 11:26 AM Shiv Malik, I bet there are very specific issues that arise when you have to bridge that web2 - web3 gap. What would you say are the biggest issues Pool faces? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:29 AM Cris Silva great question again! So I’d say, the monetary bridge is tricky but that’s why Data Union data products are priced in dollars, we accept payments in dollars, and then we pay out using Gnosis Chain in xDAI which is (as you guys I’m sure know) a dollar based stable coin. The other main issue will be getting major websites to allow people to sign in with Ethereum in the near future. But that’s why we are partnered with a very serious Web2 advertiser who totally believes in data walletts replacing the cookie. Of course greater adoption of the “sign in with Ethereum” protocol will also massively increase web3 adoption. Jack Boreham Jul 13, 2022, 11:22 AM Shiv Malik my goodness that's amazing. So how are you trying to educate people on the value your wallet brings them! It must be a challenge to make this mainstream, given all the Blockchain jargon haha. Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:27 AM Jack Boreham - great question! So the data wallet will be out next year for people to test. But for us the big moment is in March 2024 when everyone in Europe (450m people) will get a new legal right to port data from Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft (linkedin, Github etc), in real time, at the touch of the button. All you have to do is sign in and connect to a third party. That’s when we expect Data Unions to explode. And that’s when we will market our data Wallet - called Pocket - on a vast scale. Sonic3625 Jul 13, 2022, 11:29 AM Hi Shiv Malik! Would you say the current data economy is broken? How will pool compete with giants like meta who take our data for their own use? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:36 AM - totally, yes. It’s actually undergoing a HUGE crises. First there was GDPR, then data scandals shuttered companies like Cambridge Analytica and Jumpshot. Then Apple shut down 3rd party tracking of apps. And now cookies are being blocked by Chrome in 2023. So the old Surveillance data economy is finally defunct. Which is great news. BUT the big battle now is to find a replacement. Google basically is using privacy protection as a way to leverage even more economic control of advertising. Ordinary people will get almost nothing if they succeed. (And perhaps not even better privacy). Data Unions are a way that really fixes this. In fact the EU believes in the idea as well and is putting in €2bn to support them. Sonic3625 Jul 13, 2022, 11:29 AM Especially as they want to be THE Dominent meta player Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:38 AM To answer the second half  - people who store data in a data vault will actually have far more info about their digital story than Facebook would have on them. Combine clickstream data, or data from your car with fianncial transaction data and you’ve already got way more data than Facebook does. That’s how we outcompete everyone - working together to create much, much richer data. Sara Pinto Jul 13, 2022, 11:30 AM Shiv Malik yes it does! Thank you. So what having said that, what do you think it will be the future of data? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:39 AM Sara Pinto - the future of data - that’s easy! Data Unions! A world in which everyone has a controlling stake in the data economy. Where people have data dignity and agents representing them for all the hard stuff. That’s what I want! Melissa Brown Jul 13, 2022, 11:32 AM Shiv Malik what about the rest of the world, how will you market it to them? Mónica Freitas Jul 13, 2022, 11:34 AM Shiv Malik, I'm new to data unions. I assume they reassemble any other union/syndicate. So, in essence, a group of people working together to protect their data and how it's being used. Is this correct? What are the particularities that make data unions unique? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:43 AM Mónica Freitas - that’s right Monica! and my we should have called them “data syndicates”! They have functions of both a union (in that they negotiate better prices for you on your behalf and better terms of conditions for using your data). But they are also like cooperatives in that they share out revenue. There’s a basic explainer here btw: https://www.pooldata.io/blog/what-is-a-data-union 💚 1 Cris Silva Jul 13, 2022, 11:33 AM Shiv Malik, that's a great choice of a crypto coin - not as subject to fluctuations as others. Have you noticed an increase in crypto adoption from your web2 clients? Especially after collaborating with Pool? (I'm always curious to know about the impact companies have on the transformation of the web3 space) james Burrows Jul 13, 2022, 11:40 AM Shiv Malik, you've mentioned the EU putting two bn towards it, but how do you ensure that kind of money isn't wasted? How will you work with data unions to ensure their offerings are substantial and beneficial for users? Jack Boreham Jul 13, 2022, 11:43 AM Shiv Malik just out of curiosity do guys lobby governments for funding data unions? Cris Silva Jul 13, 2022, 11:45 AM Shiv Malik, that's very true. You're a relatively recent company. What has the growth curve been like? How many unions do you currently have? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:41 AM Cris Silva We think so too!Data buyers are still very reluctant to think about crypto. but anyone running a data union has realised that paying millions of people small amounts each day can only be done through a blockchain. “that’s a great choice of a crypto coin” - 🔥 1 Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:48 AM and Jack Boreham - I’ll take your questions toghether. So the funds right now are administered by the EU through the NGI programme, Horizon 2020 and others. (I don’t have all the links to hand). We work hard to chose good teams, great ideas and products with clear traction. In the end though it is the data buyers who tell us which of the products they find most interesting. We ran a catalyst programme for Data unions in the first half of the year to really tease all of this out with our major data buyer partners. Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:50 AM Cris Silva So it’s a small enough space at the moment that we pretty much have contacts with all the big data uninos. (Some have 250k-1m users now). We will work with the six best to get them onboarded to our data marketplace by the end of the year. The next stages are then working on the combined analytics platform and the data wallet, Pocket. The hard part is bringing them together to start with but I think we’ve overcome that hurdle! Mónica Freitas Jul 13, 2022, 11:46 AM Shiv Malik, oh, that's a great model. Do you work with already existing data unions, or do you help to create new ones too? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:51 AM Mónica Freitas - the ☝ should answer your question too I hope! Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:54 AM Jack Boreham - sorry I don’t think I quite answered your question - we haven’t yet applied for grants , but we did lobby for the ecosystem to get proper regulation, that wasn’t too stringent, and yes, the ecosystem funding to get it all going. Back at the start of the pandemic, in 2020 that’s mainly what I was doing - lobbying people in Brussels (along with a good amny others0 to help push through the Data Governance Act which means what they call “data intermediaries” (i.e. data unions) can be officially recognised and supported. That also means the data they sell will also have much more standing in a world where most data brokers are operating under the table because they don’t have real user consent to sell it. Gilbert Hill Jul 13, 2022, 11:53 AM EU Horizon program Data trust & sovereignty call for funding https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en https://www.ngi.eu/opencalls/#ngizeroentrust_opencall 🙏 2 james Burrows Jul 13, 2022, 11:53 AM Shiv Malik, can you talk about what data union platforms you at excited about? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:58 AM - So here are a list (I can’t pick faves!) of some great data unions. Some are Web2 others are Web3 as mentioned before. , , , , , and https://gener8ads.com/ https://cake.app/ https://unbanx.me/ https://dimo.zone/ https://www.ozone.ai/account https://swashapp.io/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tech.solipay.consumer&hl=en_GB&gl=US 🙌 1 Sara Pinto Jul 13, 2022, 11:54 AM Shiv Malik you mentioned that data unions can help monetize data, and you mentioned some of the ways you can do it. Does Pool offers those 3 methods? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 11:54 AM Sara Pinto yes - we offer all three! Cris Silva Jul 13, 2022, 11:54 AM Shiv Malik, those are giant unions already. That gives you a pretty big pool of data to share. How do you manage to navigate the different data privacy regulations? Melissa Brown Jul 13, 2022, 11:55 AM Shiv Malik I would love to know what you guys think about the metaverse as a separate entity from web3, how will Pool fit in this? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 12:00 PM Melissa Brown - great question on the metaverse - in short you are not going to be able to traverse the metaverse without being able to store your digital identity and story. Pocket, our data wallet will be an absolutely central part of all of this. Mónica Freitas Jul 13, 2022, 11:56 AM Shiv Malik that does answer my question 😊 One of your highlights in the landmarks achieved as a company was establishing a company culture. What's your company culture? Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 12:00 PM Mónica Freitas - We’ve run out of time but I’ll try and answer this briefly! 💚 1 Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 12:01 PM I’d say it’s the people. We have an AMAZING team of real experts who are such a joy to work with. 🔥 1 Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 12:01 PM That’s the biggest landmark. If you can bring great people together - ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE! Jack Boreham Jul 13, 2022, 12:01 PM We certainly have!! Thank you Shiv Malik for partaking in this AMA, fantastic answers and best of luck with pool!! Mónica Freitas Jul 13, 2022, 12:01 PM Shiv Malik Thank you! Gilbert Hill Jul 13, 2022, 12:01 PM Shiv Malik thanks! Shiv Malik Jul 13, 2022, 12:02 PM Thank you everyone for your brilliant questions and bearing with me as I typed as fast as possible! 💚 5 james Burrows Jul 13, 2022, 12:03 PM Thanks all!

Putting Value back in the Data Economy with Pool Data CEO Shiv Malik

Devolviendo valor a la economía de datos con el CEO de Pool Data, Shiv Malik

Remettre de la valeur dans l'économie des données avec Shiv Malik, PDG de Pool Data

पूल डेटा के सीईओ शिव मलिक के साथ डेटा अर्थव्यवस्था में मूल्य वापस लाना

Pool Data の CEO である Shiv Malik がデータ エコノミーに価値を取り戻す

Recuperando valor na economia de dados com o CEO da Pool Data, Shiv Malik

Đưa giá trị trở lại nền kinh tế dữ liệu với Giám đốc điều hành của Pool Data Shiv Malik

与 Pool Data 首席执行官 Shiv Malik 一起为数据经济带来价值

Bundlejs: An Online Esbuild-Based Bundler 

After Microsoft’s blitzkrieg take-over, the Open-Source JavaScript community, as we know it, is coming to an end. All things said and done, you must stand in awe, at how Microsoft, executed this takeover, with very little to no resistance from a community of hundreds of thousands of active JavaScript developers, even introducing the use of TypeScript in React, Angular, and Node, while cornering both source-control and distribution of code. It’s strategically perfect in all dimensions. Kudos to Nadella and his team. When I started coding, I really loved the Open Source JavaScript community. It did always feel weird, that people would write code, and share it for free. But people did, and still do, and it felt amazing and crazy at the same time. There was Github to manage our sources and npm, which indexed the open-source libraries and made it super-easy to search, find, and import functionalities, and to create, update and share libraries ourselves. And on Stackoverflow, you could even get free support and advice. JavaScript was improving year after year with every ECMAScript release. It wasn’t perfect, but it all worked. The future seemed bright. Although Open Source grew inside capitalism, it’s values weirdly weren’t part of that capitalistic worldview. That’s why, from day one, it was bound for destruction at some point or another. Then one day Microsoft came in and took control of the two core tools, which were the gateways to the whole Open Source community; npm and Github. I don’t think people saw this coming, and it’s clear that the majority of developers, even today, don’t realize what happened and how it will affect them very shortly. Once the take-over was complete, a massive propaganda onslaught began to fully convert the idealistic open source community towards the capitalistic Microsoft mantra. It’s a ‘secret’ war, with high-tech propaganda, which over time will silently destroy and remove independence, kill-off non-Microsoft-owned editors, tools, libraries, even JavaScript itself. All of this is inevitable because Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. It’s in its DNA to take over whole industries and turn them into profit-generating monopolies for its shareholders. Microsoft’s mission is to turn every JavaScript developer into a Microsoft TypeScript money-generating drone, one way or another. Below I’ll describe the multi-dimensional blitzkrieg of Microsoft in 5 simple steps. Act 1: Microsoft Kills JavaScript Microsoft may not be able to innovate on products, and they usually fail miserably. But it is shockingly good at marketing, propaganda, and take-overs. Microsoft has essentially deprecated JavaScript and the non-profit foundation, which governed it, by TypeScript, which is governed and controlled by the for-profit Microsoft Corporation. If Microsoft was truly interested in improving JavaScript it could have done that through the non-profit foundation. But instead, it took the ‘Evil Corp’ approach of making the foundation and JavaScript slowly irrelevant, so it could guarantee that it could monopolize and monetize the whole industry. Understanding the Propaganda The ‘JavaScript at Scale’ narrative is aimed mostly at the business decision-makers, positioning TypeScript as the reliable and robust choice versus the bug-prone and unreliable vanilla JavaScript. Over time this will deprecate JavaScript as a language in business environments. It will become the new PHP. And so as not to offend JavaScript developers too much, the ‘ ’ narrative was introduced, which for obvious reasons is naively erroneous at best. TypeScript does use JavaScript constructs but has a lot more in common with C#. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript So although TypeScript has its benefits, you should be aware, it is not what Microsoft wants you to believe it is. It’s fairer to say that TypeScript is a C# superset, with some JavaScript limitations, which compiles to JavaScript. Proprietary Open Source JavaScript is not controlled or owned by one profit-driven corporation. It’s an open-source, non-profit, effort driven by many independent actors and corporations. TypeScript, on the other hand, is Proprietary Open Source, because it is by the profit-driven Microsoft corporation. owned, financed, and fully controlled Piggy-backing the Community By infusing JavaScript and open-source in its propaganda, Microsoft was able to piggy-back on the disorganized and leaderless open-source community and did this without any noticeable resistance. The whole community welcomes TypeScript whole-heartedly, or at least it seems so. Act 2: Microsoft Acquires Github Although Github stayed independent for a long time, it was a for-profit company from day one. It’s an almost perfect product-market fit for developers. Developers can store, manage source-control, and share code-base. Developers have profiles with an overview of what code-bases the developer contributed to. This profile is almost always requested when developers apply for a job. Developers can report bugs and do pull requests to open source repositories. Any developer, who is fine with sharing this code publicly, can use Github for free. The upsell to a subscription model starts when you don’t want to share your code publicly, and want to use private repositories. This feature is mostly used by companies or startups. But even then you could use these features free for small teams. Github’s first-mover advantage, its freemium model, and the close inter-connection with npm, turned it into a monopoly. Today, authors, educators, speakers, and developers, when referring to creating or downloading a repository always mention Github. It’s become synonymous with source control. And since Github was funded by Venture Capital, there was always an exit planned from day one. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that a corporation, interested to own the userbase and code-bases of those users, would one day come in, and provide a return on investment for the hard work of its founders and investors. No surprise there. After the acquisition by Microsoft, its integration with VSCode, further strengthened its monopoly position as the go-to source code repository service. Act 3: Microsoft Acquires npm Now that Microsoft owned Github, the next logical step was to acquire npm. Npm is not only the JavaScript package manager, it is also the directory of open source libraries in the community. Just like Github, npm was a for-profit company from day one. Its’ monopoly position was based on having been chosen as the package manager for NodeJS. In 2021, it’s close to impossible for the JavaScript community to unlink from npm. It’s part of the DNA. Using npm alongside github has become just as a routine for a developer as breathing. Act 4: Microsoft pushes VSCode as the go-to (and only) Editor for TypeScript When I started coding, I watched hundreds of tutorials, followed courses and read many coding books, and continue to do so. And 99 out of 100 times, you hear people continuously advise VSCode as the best of the best editor on the planet. It’s very rare that someone even mentions Vim or WebStorm. And for a long time, I actually drank the cool-aid and used only VSCode. But once I started seriously coding, I got annoyed by all the bloatware, spyware, and marketing inside VSCode. It’s not like you don’t notice. I felt like being used instead of being a user. There is no such thing as free in capitalism. If a for-profit corporation, like Microsoft, gives you something free, be prepared to become raped at some point. I moved on from VSCode to WebStorm, via Vim. But the majority of developers, who use Github and npm as part of their routine, will eventually switch to VSCode if they haven’t already. Microsoft’s propaganda machine is very efficient (if you are blind). Act 5: Airbnb for Open-Source Libraries, the business model The message is clear, open source is about to be monetized by corporations and Venture Capitalist driven companies. And just like Airbnb makes more money on renting out properties without owning any, parasites like TideLift, OpenCollective, and others, will apply the same Silicon-Valley mantra to open-source. The Airbnb model is coming to the Open-Source Community. The most popular open-source libraries will slowly start having ‘premium’ versions, which will have less, or no bugs, and better support. They’ll keep the open-source available, but it will become filled with continuous up-sells and bugs forcing you to pay. This is simply inevitable. Venture Capitalists wouldn’t invest hundreds of millions of dollars into something just out of their good heart:). And then after some time, Microsoft will buy one or all of the players, and own the whole industry from top to bottom, from start to finish. Game over. In conclusion: What should you do as a JavaScript Developer in 2021? Learn TypeScript If you are a JavaScript developer, learn TypeScript immediately. Most, if not all employers, will require you to have TypeScript as part of your stack. That is not a bad thing in itself, as you will become more efficient and productive. It will be a lot easier for you to learn other statically typed languages, which is a nice side-effect. TypeScript is a gateway ‘drug’ to a world of statically typed languages. Be Flexible and Open to Learn Anything New Well, you need to change and definitely be aware of all the new risks and demands on your career. Some of it may save you, and some of it may kill you and it’s not very clear what is what. The modern software developer, continuously learns new practices, patterns, and technologies, and is flexible enough to change, unlearn and drop, and replace, refactor anything, at the drop of the hat, even learning and switching to a new language all together. I am not a purist, which means that I will continue to take advantage of the open-source community. I could even say use and abuse, just like Microsoft did and does. It would be stupid, and not productive to stop using libraries. But I have become even more aware of the dangers and I am decreasing my dependency on third-party convenience libraries and patterns. As a result, I am coding more low-level, which for me at least, is a lot more fun, because it requires me to exercise my brains, and learn new skills. At the end of the day, that is how you become a better software engineer. Today, when I do decide to use a certain technology, library, or framework, I don’t just do it blindly on a whim, gobbling up all the direct and indirect propaganda, from the corporations or the venture capitalists behind it. I approach each new technology with an open mind and an objective pragmatism. I actually go through an internal assessment process, just as if I was still an engineer at some large corporation. Does it really do things better? Is it faster, cleaner, less prone to bugs? Will it increase my productivity? What are the short-, middle- and long-term costs of using it? Will it make me too dependent on one corporation or toolkit? These are important questions, and you should ask them continuously. Some Examples I didn’t move instantly from a REST API model to GraphQL, even though I learned it, understand its concepts, and the reasoning behind it. I could switch anytime if I needed to. But I haven’t, because although it solves a lot of issues, it creates a bunch of others at the same time. Even though I use the NextJS framework for my React front-end, I am not creating API’s inside it, and I am not deploying it on Vercel either. Although I switched from JavaScript to TypeScript, I don’t use VSCode, Github or Azure, because there are other better solutions and tools for that. When React hooks came out, I almost immediately dropped class-based components and switched to hooks-functional components. As a result, I was able to remove my dependency on Redux. Final Thoughts This oped will in many cases clash with the mainstream narrative and opinions, and that’s fine. Our group-think is not as independent or correct as we may think. We often revert to techno-framework-tribalism, aggravated by the constant attack by weapons of mass propaganda. But it is important to find out about different views, and opinions and stay vigilant. This is an important soft-skill for the modern developer. And it’s not all doom and gloom. Learning TypeScript is a good introduction to statically typed languages. So go learn it. But use it as a stepping stone to learning more statically typed languages, not as a final destination. Good luck with your TypeScript journey. Alex Kleydints Previously published at https://kleydints.medium.com/a-post-mortem-in-5-acts-of-how-microsoft-privatized-open-source-killing-javascript-in-the-process-62ee5fc77d9e?sk=24632ec5a1ae4511a359484687d5840a

A Post-Mortem in 5 Acts: How Microsoft Privatized Open Source And Killed JavaScript in the Process

When asked about the universe, its origin, and life in general, what comes to mind? The answer has fathomed scientist, theologians, philosophers and man for decades. I can go from the philosophical standpoint of being like, I am a Copt, here is what I believe. You and me, could go back and forth discussing what is truth, and all that. However, this isn't the point of this post. I want to look at the question of, "a universal theorem of everything". The whole universe and how it is tied in general is that of a physics standpoint. We are at the dawn of age of exploration really, and still mankind has a question on what unifies nature itself. Let us first look into theory. Now, in short Simulation Theory dictates that we are all part of a simulation or "living in a simulation". Imagine the video game Sims 3, but this is the reality. If that is the case, so far I want a refund, but all jokes aside, there are multiple problems with this reasoning. simulation The universe as we see it is infinitely expanding, meaning technological capabilities are becoming statistically improbable. If supposed simulation makes the universe simulatable enough for the illusion of it constantly expanding then this is still statistically improbable To simulate a single biological system would take computational power that doesn't exist technologically in our planet today. This includes consciousness and all that. The computational power of a simulation would likely require a computer much bigger then the sun, our own galaxy, etc., technology improbable to exist, and a series of paradoxes. Given the mathematical nature of all things, simulation theory seems less capable of being both regressional and consistent. Now that being said, serious people are considering simulation theory. George Hotz wants to dictate a " ", while even is a huge proponent of simulation theory. Now don't get me wrong, I think George Hotz is pretty cool. He is actually likely one of the good guys in tech. However, not sure the physics would be in his favor. That is fine, I can be a George Hotz fan and not like simulation theory. That being said, besides the five points I gave, I have other reasons of my disgruntledness with simulation theory. church for us to escape the simulation Elon Musk The fact that a universe can be simulated but people have consciousness and free will makes no sense from a philosophical standpoint. If we are free willed beings, and the universe is supposed to be simulated as of a video game, what would be the point? Why would a super intelligent species capable of annihilating each other want to offload currently impossible computational power to simulate something just for the sake of it? If life isn't just a video game after all, I would doubt us humans are that entertaining to a civilization that far off advanced. Now for some reason simulation theory made me inclined to discuss a different topic that is sort of related. I wanted to question fellow intellectual on his views of . Now don't get me wrong, I like his blog, he is a great comic, no disrespect there. Also, I'm not questioning his views on being right or wrong. , "The description of reality in God’s Debris isn’t true, as far as I know, but it’s oddly compelling." It is a thought experiment, not meant to be taken seriously as far as I understand. Think of . That being said, in my mind it isn't a scientifically useful thought experiment because: Scott Adams pandeism He stated himself Mensa meetings It is a hypothetical paradox not beneficial to the physicist's quest of understand the universe's origin. It doesn't answer any big questions From an exploratory perspective, I see where he is coming from if you look at raw entertainment value. However, still it reminds me of philosophers discussing things just for the sake of discussion. It is meant to be thought provoking and entertaining at best, but for someone as serious as me, I rather sit discussing the errors of simulation theory w/ George Hotz if given the chance. Speaking of understanding the universe, an interesting perspective may be from someone such as . Now if you don't know who Stephen Wolfram is, you probably aren't in the fields of distributed computing or Theoretical Physics. He is the creator of , which besides being used by anxious students trying to find answers to common equations, is one of the most advanced forms of natural language understanding and computationally-driven data processing. also created his own centered around functional programming and statistical computing. Stephen Wolfram Wolfram|Alpha Wolfram multi-paradigm computational language Now the reason I bring Stephen Wolfram up in this discussion, is he is working on a project known as the . This is a project aimed at trying to find a fundamental theory of physics. Now basically what he is trying do is apply relational elements into hypergraphs. This means sequences and vertices (In Laymann's terms) to dimensional elements or graphical representations of structures representing aspects of nature, time and the universe. Besides the fancy looking UML diagrams, he actually goes into quite great detail. Wolfram Physics Project He looks at causal relationships, hierarchical rules, and deeply related patterns. Essentially, he is trying to establish a certain mathematical code for things, and represent various aspects of space, classical mechanics, quantum physics, and nature. It is basically the establishment of a programming language that can represent all these aspects of the universe the physicist are looking for. Eventually, he seems like he wants to find an underlining rule of everything. This is something I also am trying to do w/ a similar approach. Now before getting into my full thoughts, I wanted to , "Thus it seems that even God is bound by the Uncertainty Principle, and can not know both the position, and the speed, of a particle. So God does play dice with the universe". quote the late Prof. Hawking on something Hawking was referencing that, "God doesn't play with dice in the universe" and responding to it. Hawking is also a profilic atheist who believes that the concept of God and physics can't go hand in hand. Philosophically, I would disagree with the notion that God would have to be bound by the laws of physics. Einstein's famous lines If something existed before the origin point of the universe and time itself, logically it doesn't have to be bound to said creation. Therefore, it is illogical that something existing before the universe's origin point has to be bound by the laws of said universe. That being said, it is interesting the the Uncertainty Principle has been brought up. In an unpopular opinion post I done on , I talked about the concept of, "All of Nature and the Universe can be represented by a single Mathematical Equation". I said directly in my post, Reddit We are all mathematical code and the "same said pattern" is just at randomized frequencies. Imagine if after the origin point of the universe, a continuous mathematical code found in everything was just reoccurring and said code literally is just the holy grail of all what Quantum physicist been searching for. An actual theory of everything that is just described by a single derived mathematical equation. This is still considered less of a popular opinion then is should be, as many physicist don't think we are there where you can manifest everything with just one equation." Now in response to someone questioning the uncertainty principle in relation to a unified theory of everything, I stated, If you are able to statistically represent particle positions and momentum as randomized frequencies then you should be able to derive a way to figure out electron position and velocity to high degree of accuracy. That being said, even if you weren't able to do a statistical representation, you can still find a way to model them as variables in said equation. Now that we went over this discussion, I wanted to discuss my proposition of things and of the universe. I have talked about some sort of of the universe. Part of this view is that the universe follows some sort of systematic pattern, and is almost like " " in the universe. This lead me to three different proposals: origin point code Proposal #1: QSOPR Theorem: Quantum Similarity Origin Point References The view that DNA and biological life has an algorithmic design, among with the view of the mathematical representations regarding Quantum similarity, object set references, computational proof theory, and complexity algorithms leads to the introduction of Quantum Similarity Origin Point References or QSOPR Theorem in general. Proposal #2: MDQBT: Multi-Dimensional Quantum Breakpoint Theorem In this , I will derive the equation X=O+Σ H +( n (log)Φ/P d x for the representation of our universe under the origin point and dilation of time, t. This theorem will be one of the biggest of our understanding of the universe and what Quantum Origin as well as Quantum States symbolizes in terms of mathematically representing the universe as we know it. Following the same rational and logic with Quantum Similarity we have a much bigger picture of the mathematical framework that our "universes" is under. This will henceforth be one of the main papers in a series of others that explains our universe through Quantum physics and infinitely expanding loops and ripples in time. paper Proposal #3: QSICT: Quantum Simulated Informational Consciousness Theory In response to Dr. Giulio Tononi’s and both supporting and contradicting some points made on in relation to Christopher Michael Langan, comes a different explanation on the universe and a unified idea of consciousness in relation to Quantum Information. My idea is that the principles of Quantum Similarity applies to the neural wiring of our brains and many stimuli based decisions are following a characteristic pattern that can be mathematically represented under a certain mechanical system. Under this, all self-evident or replicated actions of the universe aren’t the universe in essence replicating itself, but rather a continuation of the symbolic nature of all patterns. Next let us dive into the human subconscious (which is separate from the conscious of the brain). The subconscious also follows systematic patterns in its decision making, but the patterns are randomized and dependent on the stimuli reaction. Evidently all human decision making follows a cognitive Kantianism-style nature and all purely animalistic decisions are evident of statistical outliers that still follow patternistic natures. This explains consciousness in terms of Quantum Information, Quantum Similarity, and provide a slightly more differing point to the “ ”. Integrated Information Theory Teleological Evolution Hard Problem of Consciousness Now the above three proposals are derived from a post I made earlier on , and I have a full eBook on Google Play as well as the , and a . That being said, there are tons of thorough evidence that suggest code in the universe or some underlining theorem of everything. Minds here PDF Udemy Infact, something still baffling scientist are mathematical codes in the universe as discussed , or when Tyson infamously freaked out seeing error correcting codes in the universe as seen . Now this is less in support of simulation theory and more in support of an origin point of the universe and the idea that nature can eventually be bound by a unified equation or perhaps even a category of unified equations that follow the same systematic pattern. here here Outside of this, I am looking to Quantum Similarity, not in relation to molecular structures, but how the same principles can be tied to said patterns and equations in various different aspects of nature. This is something that is a stretch goal of mine, that I hope I can derive eventual computational power to do. It also lead to a joke by a fellow colleague saying, "Trying to mathematically prove God is one thing, but I am pretty sure at this point God just wants to be left alone", and it reminds of the, "God does not play with dice" comment and the late Prof. Hawking's, "God does play with dice" response. modeling That being said, I think eventually humanity is getting closer to answering the big questions. We are deriving computational breakthroughs that will answer beyond many things that have baffled man over and over. It may be both exciting and scary what the future will hold or what is set out to be entirely proven. If you enjoyed this post, I suggest you check out my physics reading , follow me on , , , or check out my . As always, I am also on . list Academia Google Scholar Minds Decentralized-Internet SDK OpenCollective

Re: George Hotz, Simulation Theory, Stephen Wolfram, "God and Dice"

My primary goal is to find a solution that allows my limited time to be focused on providing business solutions instead of getting up to speed with DevOps processes. In the " " article, I provided an introduction of the application I wanted to migrate from Amazon's popular AWS solution to . Here's How I Moved from AWS to Heroku Heroku Subsequently, the " : Changing my Tech Stack" article illustrated the establishment of a new Heroku account and focused on introducing a Java API (written in Spring Boot) connecting to a ClearDB instance within this new platform-as-a-service (PaaS) ecosystem. Destination Heroku Quick Recap As a TL;DR (too long; didn't read) to the original article, I built an Angular client and a Java API for the small business owned by my mother-in-law.  After a year of running the application on Elastic Beanstalk and S3, I wanted to see if there was a better solution that would allow me to focus more on writing features and enhancements and not have to worry about learning, understanding, and executing DevOps-like aspects inherent within the AWS ecosystem. Now with the Java API running in Heroku, it was time to focus on the client side of the application. An AWS S3 Alternative The Amazon AWS simple storage service (S3) is amazing.  Those interested in looking for an exciting case study, just look at services offered by Netflix or Airbnb to see how responsive and scalable the object service platform really is for high demanding applications. While the AMHS application does not compare on any level to Netflix or Airbnb, I initially selected AWS S3 because it was the right place to locate the static files for the Angular application.  I wanted to keep the client code and the server code running on the same base service, which justified my decision. When I started thinking about static content, I wasn't sure how things would work in the Heroku model.  In doing some quick research, it became apparent that I was not the only one with this use case.  In fact, all of the results led me to the same solution— simply utilize a Node.js Express server to host the static files for the client.  As a result, I would have an application running for the client in Heroku, just like I do the RESTful API. Creating the Application amhs-angular Following the same base steps in the "Destination Heroku" article, I created an application called to house the Angular client code. amhs-angular Since this will be a static web application only, there is no need to configure any additional add-ons for this service.  I could have performed the same process using the following command with the Heroku CLI: heroku create amhs-angular Next, I added the Heroku project as a remote in the git repository for the AMHS Angular client using the following command: amhs-angular heroku git:remote -a amhs-angular Which responded with the following output: set git remote heroku to https://git.heroku.com/amhs-angular.git The following git command validated the remote was set up properly: $git remote -v Update Angular to Run Inside Node Express When using AWS S3 for the static client files, I followed the steps below in order to provide a publicly accessible version of the AMHS client: 1. Build the distribution for Angular using the command ng build --prod 2. Navigate to AWS | Storage | S3Single-click the AMHS bucket 3. Drag all the files under the folder into the main file screen in AWS /dist 4. Select all the files and grant the appropriate level of security With Heroku, the plan is to use a Node.js Express server to host these files. Within the terminal of the AMHS Angular client project, I executed the following command to include the express sever: $ npm install express --save Next, I needed to update the n to and also included a to perform the Angular build. package.jso "start": "node server.js" "postinstall": "ng build --output-path dist" Below, is a copy of the after it was updated: package.json : { : , : , : , : , : , : , : }, "scripts" "ng" "ng" "start" "node server.js" "build" "ng build --prod" "test" "ng test" "lint" "ng lint" "e2e" "ng e2e" "postinstall" "ng build --output-path dist" I also needed to include an attribute, at the same level as to the : "engines" "scripts" package.json }, : { : , : } "engines" "node" "11.15.0" "npm" "6.7.0" Next, a generic file (referenced above) needed to be created. The contents are listed below: server.js express = ( ); path = ( ); app = express();

app.use(express.static( ));

app.get( , {
res.sendFile(path.join(__dirname, ));
});

app.listen(process.env.PORT || ); const require 'express' const require 'path' const './dist' '/*' ( ) function req,res '/dist/index.html' 8080 Finally, I needed to update the Angular file to reference the correct call-back URL and the API created in the "Destination Heroku" article: environment.prod.ts api: , : 'https://amhs.herokuapp.com' redirectUrl 'https://amhs-angular.herokuapp.com/implicit/callback' At this point, when the client is deployed, it is ready to utilize a Node.js Express server to host the files in the folder, calling the file when the https://amhs-angular.herokuapp.com URL is called. /dist /dist/index.html Application Enhancements In addition to making the changes above, I wanted to introduce some new features to the AMHS application as well.  Two items that were on the backlog are as follows: introduce ability to delete a property allow Admin user to delete a staff member With the necessary API changes already in place, I went ahead and updated the Angular client as well.  The Property list now contains a Delete button for each property: Deleting a property is a simple operation and included a confirmation modal before performing the actual delete: The staff view also includes a Delete button: With staff members, things were a bit more complicated.  The underlying business rules are noted below: A staff member should not be deleted if the staff member has sales tied to an existing property. A staff member should not be deleted if the staff member is a manager of any active staff. In the case where either condition is not allowed, the recommendation is to make the staff member inactive. Using this logic, the following modal appears when condition #1 is not met: Similarly, failure to meet condition #2 generates the modal displayed below: When a staff member can be deleted, the following confirmation modal appears: After validating everything was working as expected, all of the changes above were checked into the master branch of the AMHS Angular client repository. Pushing Changes to Heroku With the code in the AMHS Angular client repository checked and the Heroku remote setup for the project, the code was deployed to Heroku using the following command: amhs-angular git push heroku The following command provided updates regarding the deployment: NPM_CONFIG_LOGLEVEL=error
       NODE_ENV=production
       NODE_MODULES_CACHE=true
       NODE_VERBOSE=false engines.node (package.json):  11.15.0
       engines.npm (package.json):   6.7.0

       Resolving node version 11.15.0...
       Downloading and installing node 11.15.0...
       npm 6.7.0 already installed with node - node_modules Installing node modules

       > fsevents@1.2.12 install /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/fsevents
       > node-gyp rebuild

       gyp info it worked if it ends with ok
       gyp info using node-gyp@3.8.0
       gyp info using node@11.15.0 | linux | x64
       gyp http GET https://nodejs.org/download/release/v11.15.0/node-v11.15.0-headers.tar.gz
       gyp http 200 https://nodejs.org/download/release/v11.15.0/node-v11.15.0-headers.tar.gz
       gyp http GET https://nodejs.org/download/release/v11.15.0/SHASUMS256.txt
       gyp http 200 https://nodejs.org/download/release/v11.15.0/SHASUMS256.txt
       gyp info spawn /usr/bin/python2
       gyp info spawn args [ '/tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/.heroku/node/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/gyp/gyp_main.py',
       gyp info spawn args   'binding.gyp',
       gyp info spawn args   '-f',
       gyp info spawn args   'make',
       gyp info spawn args   '-I',
       gyp info spawn args   '/tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/fsevents/build/config.gypi',
       gyp info spawn args   '-I',
       gyp info spawn args   '/tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/.heroku/node/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp/addon.gypi',
       gyp info spawn args   '-I',
       gyp info spawn args   '/app/.node-gyp/11.15.0/include/node/common.gypi',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Dlibrary=shared_library',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Dvisibility=default',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_root_dir=/app/.node-gyp/11.15.0',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_gyp_dir=/tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/.heroku/node/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/node-gyp',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_lib_file=/app/.node-gyp/11.15.0/<(target_arch)/node.lib',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Dmodule_root_dir=/tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/fsevents',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Dnode_engine=v8',
       gyp info spawn args   '--depth=.',
       gyp info spawn args   '--no-parallel',
       gyp info spawn args   '--generator-output',
       gyp info spawn args   'build',
       gyp info spawn args   '-Goutput_dir=.' ]
       gyp info spawn make
       gyp info spawn args [ 'BUILDTYPE=Release', '-C', 'build' ]
       make: Entering directory '/tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/fsevents/build'
         SOLINK_MODULE(target) Release/obj.target/.node
         COPY Release/.node
       make: Leaving directory '/tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/fsevents/build'
       gyp info ok

       > node-sass@4.14.0 install /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/node-sass
       > node scripts/install.js

       Downloading binary from https://github.com/sass/node-sass/releases/download/v4.14.0/linux-x64-67_binding.node
       Download complete
       Binary saved to /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/node-sass/vendor/linux-x64-67/binding.node

       > node-sass@4.14.0 postinstall /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/node-sass
       > node scripts/build.js

       Binary found at /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/node-sass/vendor/linux-x64-67/binding.node
       Testing binary
       Binary is fine

       > ejs@2.7.4 postinstall /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/ejs
       > node ./postinstall.js

       Thank you for installing EJS: built with the Jake JavaScript build tool (https://jakejs.com/)


       > core-js@2.6.11 postinstall /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/core-js
       > node -e "try{require('./postinstall')}catch(e){}"

       Thank you for using core-js ( https://github.com/zloirock/core-js ) for polyfilling JavaScript standard library!

       The project needs your help! Please consider supporting of core-js on Open Collective or Patreon:
       > https://opencollective.com/core-js
       > https://www.patreon.com/zloirock

       Also, the author of core-js ( https://github.com/zloirock ) is looking for a good job -)


       > uws@9.14.0 install /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e/node_modules/uws
       > node-gyp rebuild > build_log.txt 2>&1 || exit 0


       > amhs-client@0.0.0 postinstall /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e
       > ng build --output-path dist


       Date: 2020-04-29T14:51:08.447Z
       Hash: 3d551622b66d1beb5645
       Time: 16403ms
       chunk {main} main.js, main.js.map (main) 238 kB [initial] [rendered]
       chunk {polyfills} polyfills.js, polyfills.js.map (polyfills) 428 kB [initial] [rendered]
       chunk {runtime} runtime.js, runtime.js.map (runtime) 6.22 kB [entry] [rendered]
       chunk {styles} styles.js, styles.js.map (styles) 60.8 kB [initial] [rendered]
       chunk {vendor} vendor.js, vendor.js.map (vendor) 4.96 MB [initial] [rendered]
       added 1304 packages in 78.585s Running build

       > amhs-client@0.0.0 build /tmp/build_d2400638d424ad7a3269162acc30fb7e
       > ng build --prod


       Date: 2020-04-29T14:52:24.535Z
       Hash: 459ef7d3fda55011a399
       Time: 72281ms
       chunk {0} runtime.06daa30a2963fa413676.js (runtime) 1.44 kB [entry] [rendered]
       chunk {1} main.478fe235ec2084c25ab2.js (main) 867 kB [initial] [rendered]
       chunk {2} polyfills.aeab97ddd8f1df8ccaa1.js (polyfills) 103 kB [initial] [rendered]
       chunk {3} styles.495d5a4089b8a2584a59.css (styles) 30.9 kB [initial] [rendered] - node_modules removed 1204 packages and audited 182 packages in 18.694s
       found 3 vulnerabilities (1 low, 1 moderate, 1 high)
         run `npm audit fix` to fix them, or `npm audit` for details Procfile declares types     -> (none)
       Default types for buildpack -> web Done: 53.1M Released v1
       https://amhs-angular.herokuapp.com/ deployed to Heroku -----> Node.js app detected -----> Creating runtime environment -----> Installing binaries -----> Restoring cache -----> Installing dependencies -----> Build -----> Caching build -----> Pruning devDependencies -----> Build succeeded! -----> Discovering process types -----> Compressing... -----> Launching... Looking at the Heroku console, the following information was displayed: https://amhs-angular.herokuapp.com When used, would integrate with Okta to present the login screen for the AMHS application: Conclusion Using Heroku for the AMHS Angular client, deployments are reduced from a number of manual steps to a single git command: git push heroku In fact, using the CI/CD functionality within GitLab (where the AMHS source code is housed), the process can be automated using a very basic pipeline that is fired when the master branch of the repository changes. While I am sure there is a way to automate the same steps in AWS S3, more time would time would have been required for learn aspects of technology which is not focused on providing features and functionality to my client. In the final article of this series, I will cover the following points: Detailing the New Design How Things Have Changed Supportability and Maintainability Using Heroku Lessons Learned Have a really great day!

Delivering Static Web Content on Heroku [A How-To Guide]

When people think of anarchy, they think of the world on fire or complete and utter chaos. However, that is not the case. When I say anarcho-capitalism, I am not advocating for a traditional anarchist society but rather an anarcho-capitalist one. Two entirely different things. That being said, let me get into my "key points". As our intellectual capabilities increase as society so should our own sovereignty as nations. In a perfectly intellectual society, one wouldn't need a government to function. The current generation tends to blame capitalism for most of the world's problems, embracing socialism. I would say, capitalism is the answer and that many of the problems capitalism is blamed for is actually globalism disguised as capitalism. Most of the world's political paradigm is labeled by a left vs. right or conservative vs. liberal, etc. Regardless of whom you vote for, lots of the world's problems that make society divided seems to be history repeating itself in many different ways. This is why a major paradigm shift needs to happen in a futurist post-modernist society. For such a society to work, a lot needs to be done, hence why I made this article to explain the basics. I want to say, first off, we need to get rid of broken systems, but in this case we are seemingly getting rid of everything. This includes a broken tax system, giving bailouts to those who don't deserve it, the allowance of legalized monopolies and special interests, among other things. A question in response would be, "How would society be able to function without such things?". My response is, why can't we have the same things we have now but without reliance on a centralized authority? The first question that comes to mind is, what about things that taxes rely on? What about roads, infrastructure, public schools, city parks, etc. Ironically, I think the mythical character in Ron Swanson this one for me. What if technologically you were able to "tokenize everything"? Let us come into terms with the philosophy of how the US dollar is backed, along with most foreign currencies. They are backed by "trust in their government". Now before we go into the problems with this, let me propose a new incentive based socio-economic model. Parks and Recreation accidentally answered What if instead of, "trust in the government", not backed by any material standard, we have "trust in private entities"? Now this may sound like some recipe for disaster, but hear me out. Private entities are way less likely to burn through cash the same way the government does. Also, the economic model I am trying to propose will be centered around growth/incentives. Imagine if everything you pay for in taxes such as roads, public schools, etc. can be replaced by private entities backed by representative equity shares or issued tokens/assets. Let us say company x that is an infrastructure company does so and so road build project, here is the environmental impact, and here is what was accomplished. The more company x is accomplishing, the more its issued backed/representative asset is worth. If that sounds confusing, let me explain. You apply this new type of asset class for company types, meaning that the added value is by what said company provides. Private entities have more pressure to actually get things accomplished if their value is backed by action. Politicians most time don't function with the same level of transparency. Also, it is a win not just on making it easier for private entities to grow given less regulation and oversight, but you don't have to implement a tax based system. Not only can a model like this be implemented without having a tax based system, but it is investment based as well. This means non-forced and the risk/return goes to you directly. Now when you get into things such as welfare, and the environment, etc. or other systems that now need to be replaced by decentralized forms or privatized, you get into other discussions. This can include things such as, "Buildings filled with pod homes, and those who live in them have to do stuff like planting or some sort of task equivalent in terms of giving back to the economic production of such as society". The way societies in the future will also be measured is on production rather than job growth. Production and per capita income are better indicators than job growth as a # overall, given lots of people can be underemployed or other skews that don't measure the strength of a society overall. The way current socioeconomic models work is unsustainable with the future. This is true mostly worldwide. Most societies are allusioned by non-meaningful metrics until everything comes crashing down. People entering politics aren't held accountable anymore, and there is no more civil discourse. Monopolies are also seemingly increasing like a disease helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The fact that there are models in which the government creates barriers to entry for the smaller guys whether it is in the financial world (Wall Street), in social markets, or anything in between shouldn't exist. Laws that enforce monopolies shouldn't exist. There are some places where kids could get arrested and fined just for owning lemonade stands. Society needs to inspire entrepreneurship and innovation again. We can organize everything, and futuristic societies may adapt a government-less self governing model. Everything, even security can be privatized. As long as their is a consensus, just like how current economies work, than this form of a society is quite possible. My belief is that it can even provide the benefit of an economic powerhouse. This is a model where the rich can get richer and the poor can get out of poverty. The increased accountability on privatized corporations, the lack of oversightful regulations, and survivability instincts are what societies were meant to be in the beginning of time anyways. Also, less atrocities and even perspective world peace is quite possible when one doesn't vote for someone representative of their entire community. Humans should be able to be accountable for their own actions without needing the reliance of a politician. Maybe it is a high IQ fantasy of mine, but I sure hope society is getting there. If you want to support my research in decentralization or my core work, please consider checking out my OpenCollective .

My Dream for the Future: An Anarcho-Capitalist Society

There are some really , yet when it comes to dealing with a possibly abandoned, unmaintained project, there is no definitive guide for users, contributors, or maintainers. great guides for starting a new open source projects I hope that this can be a useful guide for that. 1. Problem In we usually find libraries that are no longer actively maintained and we needed a "rule of thumb" for dealing with this problem. FastRuby.io (our Ruby on Rails upgrade service) When do you declare that an open source project has been abandoned? How many days have to go by until you start maintaining your own fork? What's the standard for communicating with maintainers, contributors, and users? How do you avoid competing OSS forks of popular projects? How do you avoid duplicated work by people who want to maintain popular, but unmaintained OSS projects? What's the best way to find everybody is using? n that one fork 1.1. Nights and Weekends Too many applications out there are using libraries that depend on people having enough time during nights and weekends to work on their side projects. Most of the maintainers out there are not paid for their work. They might have from their employers (e.g. sponsors open source efforts), , , , or , but most projects don't have financial support. some help Ombu Labs Tidelift GitHub Sponsorships Gitcoin OpenCollective No wonder many OSS maintainers burn out after years maintaining their project. What happens when a maintainer burns out, starts using a different tech stack, or even worse, dies? As users, we should be entirely grateful for their hard work, but we should also find a way to continue maintaining their OSS project, by starting a new fork or backing an existing one. 2. Proposal Depending on your role in the project, here are some strategies that could help users and contributors, or maintainers: For users and contributors: Continuing maintenance for an abandoned OSS project For maintainers: Finding someone else to maintain your OSS project 2.1. Why There is no clear way to continuing maintenance of an abandoned OSS project. There are definitely great guides that share a few important concepts, but not a lot of action steps for the case when an OSS project ends in : maintenance limbo Best Practices for Maintainers Winding Down an Open Source Project Healthy Open Source 3. Guide for Open Source Users and Contributors What can you do as someone who actively uses or contributes to the OSS project? For example: What can you do when you need to have support for Rails 6.0 for your application but this library is blocking you? really really 3.1. Best Judgment for Assessing Abandonment First things first, use your best judgment to determine whether the project is truly abandoned or just feature complete. There are many projects out there that are not being actively maintained because they do one little thing really well. Think about these projects as the outliers because they are feature complete and have no bugs. Here are some things to consider when judging the state of an OSS project: When was the last time there was a commit to the master branch? When was the last time there was a commit to a non-master branch? When was the last time there was a comment in an issue by a maintainer? When was the last time there was a code review from one of the maintainers? Is the test suite still passing if you submit one small change to the project? When was the last version of the library published? (Example: for a Ruby gem, you can check in ) https://rubygems.org When was the last time an issue or pull request was closed by a maintainer? 3.2. Inquire When it is not clear, it is okay to inquire about the status of the project. If someone hasn't done it already, you can submit an issue to the project asking about the state of things. Before you submit your inquiry, you might want to submit a pull request with a small improvement to the project. If the change is small enough and it improves things, then it should be easy to review or close. Make sure that the test suite passes in CI. You can start your inquiry by saying that you appreciate their dedication and thank them for their hard work over the years, then you can ask if they're looking for help maintaining the project. demand an answer from the maintainers. Maintainers don't owe you anything because software is provided , so you will be lucky if you get a response to a nice request. So, . Do not as is please be nice You don't need to offer yourself as a potential maintainer for the project, maybe there are other people out there who are in a better position to continue maintaining the project. If you don't get any response for a month, then you can move on to the next section. 3.3. Start Your Own Fork You could start your own OSS project by creating a fork. Before you do that, make sure that you check the . There might be someone else updating a fork that already has all the changes you need. contribution network for the project Fun fact: but I think the rise of GitHub turned that around. Forking a project used to be considered a "bad word" This is what did with . A group of contributors got together and decided to start a new open source, e-commerce framework which started as a fork of Spree. Solidus Spree The is actually quite interesting and definitely a step in the right direction based on lessons learned from Spree and Solidus' history governance model for Solidus Assuming you didn't skip any steps, you may want to post a comment in the issue you submitted initially. In there you can say that until the maintainers respond, you will be maintaining a fork of this project. 4. Guide for Open Source Maintainers What can you do as someone who is maintaining an OSS project to make it easier on yourself? What can you do as someone who is done maintaining the project and wants to move on? Here are some ideas based on my own experience and advice from other maintainers. 4.1. Look for Co-Maintainers You don't have to do it alone. It's very likely that many of the users and contributors of your project would be happy to step up their commitment to co-maintain it. . You can go so much further if you build a team of co-maintainers Nobody wants to spend their holidays answering comments, reviewing pull requests, or triaging bugs. The nice thing about finding co-maintainers is that they can step up when you can't. A quick and simple way to do this is to post an issue to your repository. Another one is to post a notice at the beginning of the README. You don't have to accept all the people who are interested, but maybe some recent contributors will be interested. 4.2. Look for Someone to Continue Maintenance If you can't actively maintain the project anymore, you can update your README sharing this with your users and contributors. You can say that your project needs a new maintainer and wait for people to reach out to you. If nobody reaches out to you, then maybe they are using an alternative solution. You can update your README to mention that your project is no longer being maintained and that there are other alternatives to solve a similar problem. Finally, if you are using GitHub, you can . This will show a warning bar to anyone who gets to your project's page: archive your repository This repository has been archived by the owner. It is now read-only. 4.3. Vet Potential Co-Maintainers Of course, as a responsible maintainer you don't want to let some random person on the Internet maintain your project. Trust needs to be earned. I think that's probably the most concerning part about giving up control. Do you know this person? Do you know someone who knows them? Have they been contributing to your project for years? How can you really trust them? Before you give a person permission to merge to master and publish new versions of your library, you can ask them to submit n contributions to your project. That way you can see if they know what they are doing and you trust them to steer the project in the right direction. 5. This Guide is Open Source: Send Me a Pull Request ❤️ Did I miss anything? Do you have any tips that could be useful to the OSS community? This article is open source and you can find it over here: https://github.com/fastruby/blog/blob/master/_posts/2020-03-26-guide-for-unmaintained-open-source-projects.markdown So if you see something that could be improved or correct, please fork our repo and send a pull request. Thank you! Previously published at https://www.fastruby.io/blog/open-source/guide-for-unmaintained-open-source-projects.html

Our Guide for Unmaintained Open Source Projects

"The end is in the beginning and yet you go on." - Samuel Beckett Almost exactly one year ago I found myself sitting in a meeting room together with four gentlemen. I was interviewing for a scientific programmer job at a small software consultancy, at that time located somewhere outside Oslo. It was a pleasant sort of affair, though at one specific point during the discussion, the atmosphere in the room took an expected turn. “He’s one of those environmentalists” - the CEO was probably thinking, by the curious expression on his face and slight change of tone in his speech. His attitude appeared to become more defensive and he also seemed surprised that I’d be preoccupied with matters concerning the climate. After all, this is a sought-after software engineer position where one would be working with several cloud technologies, in a team of geo-physicists and data scientists. And the company was also a spin-off of a reputable software research institute in Norway. The advertisement said the company is developing solutions for the energy sector. I don’t know exactly why, but I assumed “renewable” energy. But the story that was presented to me during the interview was slightly different from what I imagined. I’ve been presented with a sophisticated desktop application which was used in the development of seismic modelling of the ocean floor, for the purpose of discovering and exploration of oil reserves. One of the main customers was the biggest Norwegian producer of oil & gas, Equinor. “But the world is transitioning to renewable energy sources,'' I said after they finished the presentation, with what must have been an unexpected interruption. And even if the atmosphere has started to become considerably awkward, I kept on and, addressing the whole group, I asked if they had seen the latest . At that time, the CEO didn’t seem familiar with the report, but one of the scientists was and mentioned something to him. Eventually the CEO made a remark saying that of course they agreed with the need to transition to renewable energy sources but that needs to be addressed from an economic point of view as well. The rest of the group didn’t seem to disagree with the narrative. IPCC report on global warming Equinor has published last year a press release celebrating Norway’s third largest oil field beginning production, and branding it “a technological triumph and a milestone for the Norwegian oil industry”. They also seem to acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis and the importance of cutting down on emissions. “It’s 2019 and climate strikes are taking place the world over. So why are we so proud of our new oil field?”, says on the of their newly opened oil field. promotional page Why indeed. Equinor is no doubt trying to have their cake and eat it, as they say in Britain. They are reassuring shareholders and doing everything in their capacity to appear supportive of the Paris accord, while still producing more oil. The Age of Perpetual Crisis “I can feel the discomfort in your seat”, the lyrics of a popular song goes. 2019 was a year when the climate crisis has reached the forefront of the public imagination, and any stories about it now carry a significantly higher degree of discomfort. Headlines are telling us, in a rather alarmed tone, that we are living in the age of perpetual crisis - environmental, social, political. “It’s a Jungle out there”, as another popular tune would say. I’ve considered writing something on climate from a practical point of view, to examine how the tech industry might be able to contribute with direct solutions. Such an article would probably have been something like a call to action - let’s get enough people interested, raise awareness of the environmental crisis, and then start working on cleantech solutions. If we can deploy some capital on green start-up accelerators, maybe we can make a significant contribution to solving the biggest crisis that humanity is facing at the moment. And hopefully someone will turn off the oil pipes. I did try to write such a piece. I started collecting stories related to climate and the environment from the tech industry. Noticeably, there aren’t so many such stories. In the tech industry, the collective preoccupation with climate change or the environment is still severely limited. Anything that has to do with the climate or the natural world appears merely as an after-thought, and gets dismissed almost instantly as something which happens somewhere else. As my research was expanding, my discomfort was mounting. My original idea to write a piece on climate from a software developer point of view looked increasingly like a superfluous and banal enterprise. I’ve come to the conclusion that initiatives like have ultimately the effect of a drop in a bucket, compared to what the response to the climate crisis should be. Instead I decided to investigate why is there such an enormous lack of urgency and disconnect between where the tech industry is at the moment and where it should collectively be, and if it is even conceivable for the tech industry to be focused on solutions for the climate crisis? carbon-neutral data centers Speaking of collective action, the open source funding platform recently published an on their blog in which they have sounded the alarm regarding our current predicament and they have announced their participation in the , urging others to do the same. The movement was initiated by the international climate campaign group . The action consists of temporarily shutting down your website or service, in part or completely, in protest against the lack of policies to tackle the climate crisis. 350.org is also behind the and is backing Greta Thunberg’s school strikes movement, which have proved the most effective and galvanizing climate movements in recent years, if not decades. OpenCollective article Global Digital Climate Strike 350.org global climate strikes Fridays For Future Climate Change Can't Be Solved With Enthusiasm Alright, but why is this our problem? We’re in the software development business, and our primary concern is to build and ship software. How is this our responsibility? Insisting on this argument makes the entire tech industry look like the on board of the sinking Titanic ship, playing to the tune of the inevitability of their peril. But the tech industry, being mainly concerned at the moment with things like AI, ML, Blockchain, or crypto currencies, hasn’t even realised the terrifying course we are on as a planet. musicians Instead, it is perfectly in tune with the neoliberal economic model which demands exponential growth through free-market capitalism, without the slightest concern for the climate and the effects that digital technology has on the environment. Even more so, when it comes to technologies like Blockchain, everyone is in love with its potential to deliver on the libertarian dream of decentralisation and democratization of institutions, with even the UN , and for climate action no less. endorsing it Still, one tech founder on Twitter that there is “growing concern” in the tech industry, which might suggest there is some hope that maybe climate change and the environment will stop being the annoying buzz-killers in the background. tells me “Climate change is the new crypto”, another tech investor on Twitter last November, suggesting that many of the “smartest minds in tech” are shifting their enthusiasm to working on solutions for the climate crisis. The appetite for working on climate solutions in the tech industry does appear to be growing at the moment, although no major government seems capable of entertaining the idea that fossil fuels must stay in the ground. wrote Okay, so isn’t this good news, that there is some preoccupation in the tech industry? Not necessarily, no. For one, almost all efforts in the tech world seems to focus on legitimising its operations, either digital or logistical, by cleaning out its act, for instance with Google’s carbon neutral data centers. In the specific crypto sphere, there are also detailed reports, such as , which goes to great lengths to claim that the crypto mining operations use around 85% renewable energy. this one Climate change is not an issue to be solved with enthusiasm. You can’t simply fix global warming by launching accelerators and in “disruptive” new technologies to lower emissions, despite what Bill Gates would have you believe. It’s not enough to and our data centers carbon neutral and then carry on with business as usual. Such initiatives not only have little to no actual effect, but they may obscure the reality, potentially giving the impression that things are going well and action is being done. And the harsh reality is that the tech industry still works hand-in-hand with the fossil fuel industry in enthusiastically supplying digital technology and infrastructure, such as cloud data platforms. green start-up investing make our applications greener already heavily subsidised For execs of big tech companies, taking a strong position in fighting the climate crisis is nothing more than a ridiculous fantasy. To Amazon, for instance, the idea that they should take any meaningful action sounds so obscene that they have to resort to against their employees who organize and demand it. Amazon isn’t the only major tech company facing calls for stronger climate action. coercive measures Google is also facing mounting pressure, with more than 2,000 employees having signed a supporting climate action and a separate which calls on the tech giant to commit to and release a company-wide climate plan. There is also an industry wide , albeit only in its infancy, but acknowledging “tech’s dirty role in climate change” and voicing bold demands. In addition, there is a global community where tech professionals can connect with one another on matters concerning climate change. pledge open letter tech workers coalition ClimateAction.tech Responsibility Is Not Predicated By Guilt Perhaps one aspect can offer the best explanation to why individuals are being reluctant to demand stronger climate action. It is quite uncontroversial to say that people all over the world are responsible for global warming. If only we could have done a bit more recycling, if only we would have changed the petrol engine car to a Tesla, maybe we wouldn’t have ended up in this mess. “Anyone can make a change”, isn’t this what we’re told? Sure, anyone has the power to turn off the oil pipes. Each of us sits on the board of multinational corporations and can decide how much rainforest is going to be wiped out to grow palm oil so we can enjoy a chocolate spread for breakfast. Don’t we all have millions to spend on financing think-tanks so we can lobby policy makers? Yes, anyone can make a real change. As I write this, Australia is battered by the most severe wildfires ever witnessed in its history, and take for instance Richard Flanagan’s for The Guardian, who’s one of Australia’s most prominent novelists and also an outspoken environmental campaigner. Referring to the climate crisis, he makes the statement that “human beings all over the world are responsible [for causing it]”. This is a fundamental problem in the way in which we talk about the climate crisis. Humans as a species have caused global warming, but you personally did not cause it, even if you read this article on an iPhone. December column Nor had I caused global warming, just because I am writing this on a laptop. Individuals aren’t guilty for mass extinction, which is what global warming leads to, but guilt is being scaled down to individuals. We are however, as a species, as a whole, responsible to fix it, but responsibility is not predicated by guilt. Being Ecological In The Anthropocene As an individual, you can’t do anything to stop climate change, however you may be prepared to change. We need a radical new attitude to the climate crisis, ecology, and the environment, which should begin with not worrying about our own individual carbon footprint. In the current free-market, global economic system any individual efforts of minimising it are practically worthless. In addition, our current anthropocentric attitude towards ecology, especially in the tech world, is incompatible with any kind of effective climate action. The theorist Timothy Morton, who’s been dubbed “the philosopher prophet of the Anthropocene” by , makes the case that thinking in an ecological way requires that we let go of our current idea of nature. In his last book , Morton, who adheres to a school of philosophical thought known as , argues that our pastoral view of nature, our association of it with rolling hills, green meadows, birdsong, and so on, are very problematic and may even prevent us from contemplating any effective action. The Guardian Being Ecological Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) According to Timothy Morton, nature isn’t “actual trees and bunny rabbits, it’s a concept, an interpretation”. Being ecological doesn’t mean that we must become aware of the environment and the natural world, it means that we discard the idea that there is a separation in the first place. There is no separation between an iPhone and a bunny rabbit, or a slug for that matter. Everything is interconnected, and it’s not the bunny rabbits that are causing mass extinction. They can’t turn off the oil pipes by themselves. If you read this and think that it sounds ludicrous, consider that for thousands of years this ecological way of co-existence with the environment, known as has been common to most indigenous peoples around the world. Something which the modern Eurocentric idea of progress through industrial capitalism has instructed us to dismiss in an instant. kincentric ecology It is for all accounts and purposes unrealistic to expect strong action on climate from big tech companies, who will most likely take any ecological idea and laugh it out as preposterous hippie-dippie nonsense. However tech workers are very far from having explored all avenues that could lead to collective, effective action, especially when you consider the fact that most of the software which powers the world’s digital infrastructure is by now open-source. Climate strikes, along with action by the activist group , have been proven the most effective and galvanising forms of climate action in the past year. Indeed, as Oscar Wilde wrote in 1891, “it is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” Extinction Rebellion

Digital Ecology: Anyone Can Make a Change

Quick and Easy CRUD with NestJS, @nestjsx/crud and TestMace

Excalibur is a free and open-source tool that can help you to easily extract tabular data from PDFs. I originally wrote this post for my . website Photo by on Patrick Tomasso Unsplash Borrowing the first three paragraphs from my previous blog post since they perfectly explain why extracting tables from PDFs is hard. The PDF ( ) was born out of to create “a universal way to communicate documents across a wide variety of machine configurations, operating systems and communication networks”. Basically, the goal was to make documents viewable on any display and printable on any modern printer. PDF was built on top of (a page description language), which had already solved this “view and print anywhere” problem. PDF encapsulates the components required to create a “view and print anywhere” document. These include characters, fonts, graphics and images. Portable Document Format The Camelot Project PostScript A PDF file defines instructions to place characters (and other components) at precise coordinates relative to the bottom-left corner of the page. Words are simulated by placing some characters closer than others. Similarly, spaces are simulated by placing words relatively far apart. How are tables simulated then? You guessed it correctly — by placing words as they would appear in a spreadsheet. x,y The PDF format has no internal representation of a table structure, which makes it difficult to extract tables for analysis. Sadly, a lot of open data is stored in PDFs, which was not designed for tabular data in the first place! Excalibur: Extract tables from PDFs into CSVs Excalibur is a web interface to extract tabular data from PDFs, written in Python 3! It is powered by . You can check out fantastic documentation at and follow the development on . Camelot Read the Docs GitHub : Excalibur only works with text-based PDFs and not scanned documents. (As Tabula , “If you can click and drag to select text in your table in a PDF viewer, then your PDF is text-based”.) Note explains How to install Excalibur After installing (see ), you can simply use pip to install Excalibur: ghostscript install instructions $ pip install excalibur-py : You can also download executables for Windows and Linux from the and run them directly! Note releases page How to use Excalibur After installation with pip, you can initialize the metadata database using: $ excalibur initdb And then start the webserver using: $ excalibur webserver That’s it! Now you can go to and start extracting tabular data from your PDFs. http://localhost:5000 a PDF and enter the page numbers you want to extract tables from. Upload Go to each page and select the table by drawing a box around it. (You can choose to skip this step since Excalibur can automatically detect tables on its own. Click on “ ” to see what Excalibur sees.) Autodetect tables Choose a flavor (Lattice or Stream) from “ ”: for tables formed with lines or for tables formed with whitespaces. Advanced Lattice, Stream, Click on “ ” to see the extracted tables. View and download data Select your favorite format (CSV/Excel/JSON/HTML) and click on “ ”! Download A table detection upgrade Camelot, the Python library that powers Excalibur, implements two methods to extract tables from two different types of table structures: , for tables formed with lines, and , for tables formed with whitespaces. Lattice gave nice results from v0.1.0 since it was able to detect different tables on a single PDF page, in contrast to Stream which treated the whole page as a table. Lattice Stream But last week, Camelot v0.4.0 was released to fix that problem. adds an implementation of the table detection algorithm described by Anssi Nurminen’s that is able to detect multiple -type tables on a single PDF page (most of the time)! You can see the difference in the following images. #206 master’s thesis Stream Both -type tables detected in v0.4.0 Stream as compared to Whole page being treated as a table in v0.3.0 Voted #1 on Labworm Excalibur was voted #1 on in the second week of November! Labworm is a platform that guides scientists to the best online resources for their research and helps mediate knowledge exchange by promoting open science. Labworm Why another PDF table extraction tool? There are both open ( , ) and closed-source ( , ) tools that are widely used to extract data tables from PDFs. They either give a nice output or fail miserably. There is no in between. This is not helpful since everything in the real world, including PDF table extraction, is fuzzy. Tabula pdfplumber Smallpdf Docparser Excalibur uses Camelot under the hood, which was created to offer users complete control over table extraction. If you can’t get your desired output with the default settings, you can tweak the “ ” settings and get the job done! Advanced For a more detailed account of why Camelot was created, you should also check out “The longer read” section of my . Use . previous blog post Ctrl + F The road ahead Reiterating from “The longer read” section I talked about above, it was a pain to see open-source tools not give a nice table extraction output every time. And it was frustrating to see paywalls on closed-source tools. I think that paywalls should not block the way to . I believe that Camelot was a successful attempt by us, at SocialCops, to address the problem of extracting tables from text-based PDFs accurately. Excalibur has made it more easier for anyone to access Camelot’s goodness with a nice web interface. open science But there’s still a lot of open data trapped inside images and image-based PDFs. And state of the art software is locked behind paywalls. optical character recognition ‘At this time, proprietary OCR software drastically outperforms free and open source OCR software and as such could be worth a public agency’s investment depending on the amount and type of OCR jobs the public agency is needing to perform.’ — How to Open Data — Working with PDFs So the next step is to make it easy for anyone to extract tables (or any other type of data for that matter) from images or image-based PDFs by adding OCR support to Camelot and Excalibur. If you would like to contribute your ideas towards this, do add your comments on . You can also check out the for guidelines around contributing code, documentation or tests, reporting issues and proposing enhancements. #101 Contributor’s Guide If Excalibur has helped you extract tables from PDFs, please consider supporting its development by ! becoming a backer or a sponsor on OpenCollective Also, stop publishing open data as PDFs and keep looking up! :) to Christine Garcia for providing feedback and suggesting edits. Thanks

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