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The fight against microplastics in our oceans is a crucial environmental challenge, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as a powerful tool in this battle. Microplastics, tiny plastic fragments less than five millimeters in size, pose a significant threat to marine life and ecosystems. They originate from various sources, including larger plastic debris that degrades over time, and microbeads used in cosmetics and other products. Their small size makes them difficult to detect and remove, which is where AI steps in. AI technologies, particularly in the form of machine learning and data analytics, are being employed to identify, track, and ultimately remove microplastics from marine environments. For example, AI algorithms can analyze water samples and images from drones or satellites to detect microplastics concentrations. This data can then be used to map pollution hotspots and track the movement of these particles through ocean currents. Startups are at the forefront of integrating AI into ocean cleanup efforts. Companies like The Ocean Cleanup, a Netherlands-based organization, are using AI to enhance their systems that collect plastic from rivers and oceans. Their technology uses machine learning to optimize the efficiency of cleanup devices and predict the accumulation of plastics. Another innovative approach is the use of autonomous robots equipped with AI for cleaning up microplastics. These robots navigate water bodies, identify microplastics using onboard sensors, and collect them without human intervention. This not only increases the scale of cleanup operations but also reduces the risks and costs associated with manual collection. In addition to direct cleanup efforts, AI assists in preventive measures. By analyzing data on plastic usage and waste management practices, AI helps identify key areas where interventions reduce the entry of plastics into the ocean. This includes optimizing recycling processes and developing more effective waste management strategies. Startups further contribute to solving the microplastics problem by focusing on the source of these pollutants. Innovations in biodegradable materials significantly reduce the amount of plastic entering the oceans. AI accelerates research and development in this area by analyzing material properties and environmental impacts, helping to create sustainable alternatives to conventional plastics. Moreover, public awareness and behavioral change are critical in combating microplastic pollution. AI-powered apps and platforms play an important role in educating the public and promoting eco-friendly habits. For instance, apps that track an individual's plastic usage and provide tips for reducing their plastic footprint are considered to be an effective tool for change.Beyond the pollution itself, a key study featured recently highlights the alarming risks associated with pathogen-laden microplastics in aquatic environments, raising significant public health concerns. This research explores how microplastics serve as carriers for pathogens in various water bodies, examining factors that influence the adherence and survival of these pathogens on microplastics, and their potential transmission to humans. The study is crucial for informing public health policies and environmental strategies, emphasizing the need for increased monitoring of microplastic pollution. It calls for further research into how microplastics facilitate the spread of pathogens and the resulting health risks. The study underscores the critical importance of understanding the role microplastics play in pathogen distribution, highlighting its significant implications for both environmental and human health. The research brings attention to the often-overlooked health dangers posed by pathogens on microplastics in water, advocating for urgent actions to safeguard public health and environmental integrity. The study also stresses the need for multidisciplinary research to better understand the complex interactions between microplastic-associated pathogens and to develop effective mitigation strategies. The role of AI in fighting microplastics in our oceans is multifaceted, encompassing detection, cleanup, prevention, and public engagement. As technology advances, startups specializing in AI and environmental solutions are poised to make significant contributions to preserving marine ecosystems and protecting the health of our oceans. By combining innovative technologies with concerted efforts across sectors, the goal of a cleaner, plastic-free ocean becomes increasingly attainable.

AI is Helping Clean Our Oceans of Plastics

PROBLEM STATEMENT Marine plastic pollution has been at the forefront of climate issues for the past decade. Not only does plastic in the ocean capable of killing marine life by strangulation or starvation but it is also a major factor in warming the ocean by trapping CO2. In recent years, there have been numerous attempts at cleaning the plastic that has been circling our oceans such as by the non-profit group, The Ocean Cleanup. The problem with a lot of cleanup processes is that it requires human labor and is not cost-efficient. There has been a lot of research done to automate this process by using Computer Vision and Deep Learning to detect marine debris to utilize ROVs and AUVs for cleanup. Note: This is theoretical and we are working on publishing our paper. Once it gets peer-reviewed and gets published in a journal I will update this article. So, watch this space for the release of our academic paper! : , , and Reading Resources Our Paper on Using CV and DL to detect Epipelagic plastic The University Of Minnesota's paper on a general-purpose marine debris detecting algorithm The Ocean Cleanup’s paper on floating plastic detection on rivers. The major issue for this approach is regarding the availability of datasets to train the computer vision models. The JAMSTEC-JEDI dataset is a good collection of Marine Debris off the coast of Japan on the seafloor. But, apart from this dataset, there is a huge discrepancy in the availability of datasets. For this reason, I’ve utilized the help of Generative Adversarial Networks; The DCGAN in particular to curate synthetic datasets that could theoretically be a close replica to real datasets over time. (I wrote theoretically because there are a lot of variables such as quality of real-images available, progress with GANs, training, etc). GAN and DCGAN GANs or Generative Adversarial Networks were proposed by Ian Goodfellow et al in 2014. GANs consist of a simple 2 components called Generators and Discriminators. An oversimplification of the process is as follows: The Generators role is to generate new data and the Discriminators role is to distinguish between the generated data and the actual data. In the ideal scenario, the discriminator is unable to distinguish between the generated data and real data which results in ideal synthetic data points. DCGAN is a direct extension of the GAN architecture mentioned above except it uses Deep Convolutional Layers in the discriminator and generator respectively. It was first described by Radford et. al in the paper . The discriminator is made up of strided convolutional layers while the generator is made up of convolutional transpose layers. Unsupervised Representation Learning With Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks GAN architecture (source: ) Here PyTorch Implementation In this method, we are going to be applying the DCGAN architecture on the dataset. If you’re not familiar with the DeepTrash dataset, consider reading my paper . DeepTrash is a collection of plastic images in the epipelagic layer and abyssopelagic layer of the ocean curated for marine plastic detection using computer vision. DeepTrash A Robotic Approach towards Quantifying Epipelagic Bound Plastic Using Deep Visual Models Let's begin coding! Installing Requirements We start by installing all the basic requirements to building our GAN model such as Matplotlib and Numpy. We will also be utilizing all the tools (such as neural networks, transformations) from Pytorch. If you’re not familiar with PyTorch I recommend giving this article a read: Initializing our Hyperparameters This step is fairly straightforward. We’re going to set up the hyperparameters that we want to train the Neural Network with. These hyperparameters are borrowed straight from the paper and PyTorch’s tutorial on training GANs. Generator and Discriminator Architectures Now, we define the architectures for the generator and discriminator. Defining the Training Function After defining the Generator and Discriminator classes, we move on to defining the training function. The training function takes in the generator, discriminator, optimization functions, and the number of epochs as the arguments. We train the generator and discriminator by recursively calling the train function until the required number of epochs. We do this by iterating through the dataloader and updating the discriminator with new images from the generator and calculating and updating the loss function. Monitoring and Training the DCGAN After we’ve established the Generator, Discriminator, and Train functions the final step is to simply call the train function for the number of epochs we defined. I’ve also used which allows us to monitor our training. Wandb Results We plot the loss incurred by the generator and discrimination during training. IMG - Generator and Discriminator Loss during Training We can also pull up an animation of how the generator was generating images to see a difference between the real and the fake images. Which looks something like this: And the final resulting image after training (the same image as above). CONCLUSION In this article, we discussed the use of Deep Convolution Generative Adversarial Networks to generate synthetic images of marine plastic that can be used by researchers to extend their current dataset of marine plastic. This can help with giving researchers the ability to extend their dataset with a mix of real and synthetic images. As you can see with the results, the GAN still needs a lot of work. The ocean is a complex environment with varying illumination, turbidity, blur, etc. But this is a theoretical starting point that other researchers can build off of. If you’re interested in improving the results and building a better network architecture, please reach out to me at gautamtata.blog@gmail.com.

Synthesizing Images of Marine Plastic Using Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks

Along with my team, I’ve been involved in a project called , a novel approach that uses Deep Learning to identify marine-plastic and I wanted to share the findings: DeepPlastic 85% mean-average precision! Using our model, we can now detect on average 85% (mAP) of all epipelagic plastic in the ocean. We achieve this level of precision based on a Neural Network architecture called . Below we’ve attached a video containing examples of marine plastic that we’ve run our model on: YOLOv5-S Where’s the Paper and The Code? This article would mainly serve as a no-code summary of our research paper. If you’d like to skip straight to the nitty-gritty details of the neural network or the code, you can access them here: arxiv pre-print: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.01882 Codebase and Dataset: https://zenodo.org/record/5562940#.YY1uML3MI-R If you’d like me to write another blog post explaining the code, data augmentation, etc., let me know in the comments below! How Did I Get Involved In This? I’ve always been passionate about the oceans. After graduating from school at California State University, Monterey Bay, I knew that I wanted to build tools/software that can help protect the ocean. After I collected, annotated, and curated the data along with the model, I realized that the precision metrics were significant, and there could be a manuscript that could be published here. So, I asked for help from , an expert in Marine plastics, and and for help with the writing and publishing of the manuscript. Dr. Sara-Jeanne Royer Jay Lowe Olivier Poirion Abstract The quantification of positively buoyant marine plastic debris is critical to understanding how concentrations of trash gather across the world’s oceans and identifying high concentration garbage hotspots in dire need of trash removal. Currently, the most common monitoring method to quantify floating plastic requires the use of a manta trawl. Before analysis, the need for physical removal incurs high costs and requires intensive labor–preventing scalable deployment of a real-time marine plastic monitoring service across the oceans. Without better monitoring and sampling methods, the total impact of plastic pollution on the environment as a whole, and details of impact within specific oceanic regions, will remain unknown. This study presents an automated workflow that utilizes videos and images captured within the epipelagic layer of the ocean as input and produces real-time quantification of marine plastic for accurate quantification and removal. YOLOv5-S was the best performing model, which operates at a Mean Average Precision (mAP) of 0.851 and an F1-Score of 0.89 while maintaining near real-time speed. In addition, our method can utilize” off the shelves” camera equipment and standard low-cost GPUs to monitor/quantify epipelagic plastic in near real-time. Goal For The Project We wanted to build a generalized object detector capable of identifying and quantifying sub-surface plastic around the world. Now that we understand our goal and how to achieve it, let us jump into the workflow. Curating The Dataset Finding a dataset that contained annotated pictures of marine debris was incredibly hard. There was no dataset in existence that had images of marine plastic in the epipelagic layer of the ocean. So, I decided to create one. I bought a GoPro Hero 9, A wetsuit, and snorkeling equipment and headed out to various locations in California along with 2 Plastic bags and 2 Plastic Bottles. The locations I visited were: Lake Tahoe, Bodega Bay, San Francisco Bay. Here, I shot videos of the plastic in 4K and later broke them into images frame-by-frame. [All plastics used were sanitized and were removed from the environment after I finished capturing the videost] The initial dataset was more than 100,000 images which I then painstakingly went through one by one and chose the best images and annotated them using supervise.ly. The final dataset, along with images scraped from the internet, was a whopping 4000 images. I tried my best to replicate real-world scenarios such as occlusion and brightness by burying objects in sand or placing them across from the sun. ( ) Photo by on ; ( ) Photo by on ; ( ) Image by Author Bottom Right Naja Bertolt Jensen Unsplash Top Right Nariman Mesharrafa Unsplash Top Left, Bottom Right Data Formatting Images were resized into 416x416 and converted into the format the Darknet and YOLOv5 PyTorch require. Data Augmentation Since the final dataset only contained 4000 images, I thought the best way to increase the size of the dataset was to augment it. So, I used Flip, Rotate, Brightness to replicate oceanic environments. I also used B&W to make the model not generalize towards color and cutouts to simulate occlusion. Building the Neural Network Building a Neural Network was a straightforward task. I had two goals for model selection: The model had to be somewhat accurate, and the model had to be fast. Fast enough to be used on Buoys and UAVs. I tried many models, such as Faster R-CNN, EfficientDet, SSD, etc., but stuck with two models: YOLOv4-Tiny and YOLOv5-S. Interested in a code run down for YOLOv5? Let me know in the comments below or reach out to me. Things to know/Tuning Hyperparameters: I used an called ADAM to set a decaying learning rate.Used a package called (Weights and Biases) and continuously monitored the loss.I used a as the final layer and only used called trash_plastic.I used paperspace.com and Google Colab pro with to train the model.Used transfer learning from weights trained on and Adaptive Learning Rate W&B softmax a single class NVIDIA v100 GPUs Underwater Scenes Deep Sea Debris — JAMSTEC JEDI Dataset. All the code used for the models including architectures can be found at , YOLOv4 YOLOv5 Interested in our code? Find it here Results After a lot of experimenting with training methods, data augmentations, and fine-tuning hyperparameters, we finally reached a point where the results were good enough to be used in real-world deployments. Best model : Precision: 96%, Mean-Average-Precision: 85%, F1-Score: 0.89, Inference Speed: 2.1 milliseconds/img. YOLOv5-S Photos by , ( ) Photo by on ; All Other Images by Author (Bottom Row) JAMSTEC JEDI (Second Row First Image) Bottom Right Naja Bertolt Jensen Unsplash What’s Next? At the moment, we are in the process of getting our paper published. We are trying to get the model in the hands of other researchers for testing and developing innovative ways to synthesize more data. If you’re interested, want to contribute, or want to chat, You can reach me here: . gautamtata.blog@gmail.com This article was first published here

How Deep Learning Can Help Quantify, Monitor, and Remove Marine Plastic: The DeepPlastic Way

Fashion brands worldwide are striving to reduce the industry’s negative environmental impact by creating new clothing using only recycled materials. This practice supports a circular economy, which gives used materials that already exist in our world a new life, thus avoiding landfills. Recently, there has been a growing movement in fashion production to create unique pieces using recycled plastic. Sounds great, right? Image via @milk on Instagram Plastic in our Oceans Eight million metric tons of plastics enter our oceans each year, severely impacting the biodiversity within marine environments. Whether it’s plastic straws, bottles, or bags, this is incredibly problematic because these plastic materials are not biodegradable. This means these materials will not leave our waters unless we physically remove them. Environmentalists and organizations worldwide are trying to come up with ways to prevent plastics from entering the ocean and ways to remove and reuse what is already there. The Role of the Fashion Industry A growing movement in the fashion industry is shifting towards a circular approach, to reverse the damage caused by the industry’s practices thus far. For instance, it is estimated that 92 million tonnes of textile waste are created every year globally, which ends up in our landfills or is burned into the atmosphere. Fashion brands are investing in technology that can produce products made entirely from recycled materials, as well as in systems that will help us recycle our used clothing in a more sustainable way. Currently, only about 3% of used clothing is recycled and used to create new clothes. This is because certain fabrics like wool and cotton are extremely challenging to recycle. The fabrics our clothing is currently made up of are very complex since whole products are made up of a blend of different materials that cannot be separated. The infrastructure and technology needed to complete this recycling process are also too new. Therefore, companies are looking for other materials, like plastic water bottles, to recycle into new pieces in a more efficient and sustainable way. It is now more accessible than ever to find clothing made from recycled plastics. How Does a Plastic Bottle Turn into a Clothing Item? The concept of turning plastic into clothing may seem like a complicated process, so let’s break it down. Using plastic water bottles removed from the ocean as our material of choice, the process starts with these bottles being sorted by color. This is because often only clear bottles can be used to make clothing. Once the sorting is complete, caps are removed and materials are sanitized. Then the bottles are broken down and shredded into small flakes. These flakes are then melted and spun into fine threads, which are spun together again to create yarn. This yarn can then be sewn into clothes to make various items ranging from swimwear to jackets, to activewear, to socks. Once the product is created, it then goes through other design processes such as color dyeing. Gif via @lucamainini The Issue of Microfibers On the surface, making clothing out of recycled plastics may seem like a great idea, but environmentalists have been digging deeper into the negative effects of this practice. It has been discovered that washing clothes made from recycled plastic can cause the shedding of non-biodegradable microfibers. Microfibers are essentially very tiny pieces of plastic that can shed off clothing. They are released into our water systems and can harm the biodiversity within them. These microfibers are rarely removed from the oceans because of their minuscule size. Technology is not quite there yet to filter out these microfibers before they reach the water systems. This filtration system could eventually be implemented into our washing machines to attempt to solve this problem. Girlfriend Collective - known for their activewear made from recycled plastic, now sells a Microfiber filter that you can install on your washing machine. Another good option is to wash your synthetics fabrics in a washing bag. Brands are also researching ways to reduce the microfiber release of their products. Be Mindful of Consumption Habits While clothes made from recycled plastics are an innovative way to repurpose plastics that already exist, the most effective solution to protecting the environment is to reduce our consumption habits. Overconsumption and waste is a major issue in the fashion industry. For instance, in North America, around 85% of clothing goes directly to the landfill, rather than be recycled or reused. The energy needed to produce and transport these clothing pieces made from recycled items is also damaging. So, it is important to be mindful of our purchases and invest in quality pieces that we are going to wear long-term to avoid excessive waste. Again, this circular approach to fashion is a fantastic way to support our environment, but this must be done in tandem with a reduction in our consumption. Image via @giambattistavalliparis on Instagram Shopping Second-Hand is Always a Great Option Shopping second-hand is another great way to affordably support circular fashion, as you are giving an item a new life and keeping it from the landfills. You can incorporate new items into your wardrobe while also protecting the planet. A lot of the time you can find high-quality gems at a fraction of the cost, just by shopping second-hand. Image credits: Vin + Omi @milk on Instagram @lucamainini @giambattist @giambattistavalliparis on Instagram Originally published . here

Sustainable Clothes Made From Recycled Plastic

A 25-year-old Dutchman named Boyan Slat, alternately hailed as by the publication Maritime Executive, has for years waged war against plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. “an ocean action hero” and a “wunderkind” It is a foe, Maritime Executive noted, that is “intent on taking over the planet,” which is unfortunately not hyperbole. According to the United Nations, some of plastic waste winds up in the oceans each year, and over time it breaks down into microplastics. There are some of the latter material beneath the waves, according to a recent study by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), and it poses a threat to marine life, and by extension global food chains. eight million tons 16 million tons Slat, who at age 18 founded a nonprofit known as The Ocean Cleanup, first centered his efforts on the , an area twice the size of the state of Texas that stands as the world’s largest concentration of plastic pollution. Now he has turned his attention to the world’s rivers, the source of much of the plastic that finds its way to the oceans. Great Pacific Garbage Patch His weapons of choice are robotics -- starting with a 2,000-foot-long unmanned floating barrier . While the U-shaped apparatus failed on its initial foray toward the Garbage Patch, splitting in two late in 2018, an overhauled version of the same structure was launched in June 2019. It succeeded in bringing home some , which was recycled and beginning in October 2020. The proceeds will be used to fund subsequent cleanup efforts. given the name Wilson 60 bags of trash sold as sunglasses As for the rivers, Slat’s organization earlier this year deployed called “Interceptors” to waterways in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic, with plans to hit the world’s 1,000 most polluted rivers by 2025. solar-powered autonomous trash collectors "We accept that we won't deliver magic in one go,” he told CNN. “But we're doing this, step by step." Slat is far from alone in using robotics in the fight against pollution. Other enterprises have, in fact, developed bots that can or . While these robots might not look as futuristic as robots in classic sci-fi movies, they have proven to be effective, no matter their use. consume water pollution collect river trash those that can plant trees 10 times faster than humans to those that can monitor plant growth in adverse weather conditions. From those that can monitor coral reefs to those that can kill invasive species, and even those that venture into sewers to reduce carbon emissions. They range from Particularly important are those robots used to alleviate air pollution, which according to the World Health Organization around the world every year, and leaves 90 percent of the global population breathing unhealthy air. That led the Integral Platform for Climate Initiatives to partner with Russia’s ITMO University in 2018 to develop to monitor air quality (as well as bots to gather data about water quality). kills seven million people drones equipped with sensors Similarly equipped drones were in 2019, as air pollution is a particularly serious problem there. While air-quality evaluations had previously been performed by those on the ground, the drones’ sensors allowed for an in-depth examination of such things as air temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity and levels of various gases, including carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. tested in Greece And in Thailand, meanwhile, a fleet of drones was deployed in 2019, in an attempt to spray pollution out of the sky. These aircrafts dispensed water and a “non-hazardous chemical spray,” , and government officials claimed that the drones were able to lower the level of a particularly harmful toxin. according to the Bangkok Post But robotics are truly poised to make a wide-ranging impact. Consider, for example, the developed by MIT in partnership with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). They measure ocean depth, detect leaked chemicals or collect other samples of interest. While previous efforts in this realm have suffered from a lack of efficiency or accuracy -- i.e., the robots tended to explore uninteresting areas and/or net useless samples -- this updated technology uses probability to find the most promising places. robotic boats One robotic boat found the most exposed part of a coral reef in Barbados -- crucial to assessing the impact of climate change -- and another collected as many as eight times as many samples as previous methods. Victoria Preston, one of the authors of a 2019 paper on robotic boats, that with the older technology, “it’s easy to think you’ve found gold, but really you’ve found fool’s gold.” Now, that is far less likely. told SciTechDaily Elsewhere, robots have helped improve factories through automated processes that measure energy efficiency and environmental dangers. Through IoT-based monitoring robots can assess toxicity levels in factories and on the field. This type of can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and waste. Robots can even sort through materials to determine which parts can be recycled. environmental monitoring But back to Slat for just a moment. According to a , the problem posed by plastic pollution first caught his attention when at age 16 he saw more plastic bags than fish during a diving trip to Greece. He set aside his aerospace engineering studies to . He now serves as its CEO. 2018 Time Magazine profile found The Ocean Cleanup in 2013 While Slat’s organization, The Ocean Cleanup, has done its part to advance the robotics used in the fight against pollution, Slat is fully aware that the problem won’t be eradicated anytime soon. “Big problems,” he told Time, “require big solutions.” Certainly there will be a need for even bigger solutions. But suffice it to say that the awareness is there, as is the resolve. It is as important a battle as any, and one humankind cannot afford to lose.

The Future Is Now: Robots Helping Us Combat Plastic Pollution And Climate Change

Zuleyka Strasner's honeymoon was a life-changing experience, and not just because she was newly married. What was meant to be a romantic vacation in Nicaragua became the catalyst for her transforming her lifestyle and founding her own company. The Corn Islands were beautiful, Zuleyka remembers. But the ocean was a stark reminder of the world's state of pollution and waste. "I was astounded by how much plastic and trash there was in the sea, absolutely astounded," Zuleyka says. When she returned home to San Francisco, she got rid of all single-use plastic in her home. She cleaned out her kitchen cupboards. Her grocery trips turned into three-hour adventures. And she realized exactly how challenging it was to live an environmentally conscious lifestyle. So, Zuleyka decided to take matters into her own hands. In 2018, she founded , a plastic-free online grocery store in the Bay Area of California. Zero Grocery It wasn't easy, especially since Zuleyka began without any capital. But she eventually raised $4.7 million within two years. In an episode of How I Raised it, Zuleyka tells the story of how she went from $2,500 of her own money to turning down checks in 2020. Use your connections (and don’t feel shame) When Zuleyka felt ready to begin raising money in 2018, she thought she'd meet with maybe 20 people. A few might cut her some checks and she'd be good to go, she assumed. In reality, she presented 263 pitches between September and January — a five month timespan — all on her own. Throughout the fundraising process, Zuleyka made use of her secret weapon: Connections. Since she previously worked as an operations manager at Felicis Ventures, she had the contacts she needed to set up meetings. "I had an early network, I knew a lot of VCs, I knew a lot of angels, I had made just a lot of friends because I like people. And I also have little to no shame," Zuleyka says. When one potential investor turned her down, she asked them for more names: "Each one person can unlock for me another three or four people ... You just keep that pipeline going," Zuleyka says. It was that boldness that led to her success. During that hectic first round, she raised $500,000 from six investors. Don't waste your time with those who don't care Over the course of her 263 meetings, Zuleyka spoke to a drove of potential investors. "There were some people I really tried hard to win over and over and over again," Zuleyka says. "And the honest answer is they're just not that into you … they're just not that into your company." Instead, save your energy for the people who legitimately care. For Zuleyka, that person was Charles Hudson. Hudson ( on the How I Raised It podcast), managing partner at Precursor Land Ventures, believed in Zuleyka from the get go. He seemed genuinely interested in her, how she operated, and the idea behind Zero Grocery. In the end, half of that initial $500,000 came from Hudson. who also appeared Underdogs have superpowers Zuleyka, a black trans woman from East London, is not what the majority of Silicon Valley looks like. She never brings this up in pitch meetings: "It really isn't the basis of any of the discussions that we have, nor is it the basis on which I'm building this company at all. So I don't really ascribe to any of that identitarian politics at all, but it is important for us to recognize." When it came time for Zero Grocery to hire employees, Zuleyka looked to people from a variety of backgrounds, but especially those who had struggled or suffered in some way. She values the "true underdogs" who may have been overlooked in the past. These individuals bring an intense will to succeed, which Zuleyka considers a superpower. 35X growth isn’t easy, so you have to stay resilient Zuleyka recalls times when Zero Grocery was days and even hours within shutting down completely. But she always pulled through. Her persistence was especially put to the test during the first round of fundraising, when she spent her days in and out of meetings. Not every potential investor liked her ideas; some dismissed or tore her mission up completely. But "every meeting you go into, you cannot take the baggage from the last meeting," she says. Ultimately, it was Zuleyka's belief that her company was doing something good for the world that kept her resilience intact. In 2020, the company grew 35X. By the end of the year, Zero Grocery had nearly 100 employees, up from six workers in March. A large component of the company's fundraising success — and the massive growth of its customer base — was due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With people avoiding public spaces, more and more individuals turned to online grocery shopping. And that meant more and more people found Zero Grocery. "If I could click my fingers and this would all be over tomorrow, I would do it instantly," Zuleyka says. But at the same time, she recognizes that Zero Grocery has provided a useful purpose to many: "We've at least been able to take up that responsibility to service people and service folks and enable them to not leave their homes." Zuleyka feels hopeful about the future of Zero Grocery. "Maybe it's bliss, ignorance or being blind, I'm not sure. But it's incredible what the human spirit can do," Zuleyka says. "This company, this idea, this mission is so much bigger than me." Nathan Beckord is the CEO of Foundersuite.com which makes software for raising capital. Foundersuite has helped startups raise over $3 billion in angel and venture capital since 2016. This article is based on an episode of Foundersuite’s How I Raised It podcast , a behind-the-scenes look at how startup founders raise money.

How An "Underdog" Founder Raised $4.7 Million To Build A Plastic-Free Grocery Delivery Service

Odei Garcia-Garin et al. from the University of Barcelona have developed a deep learning-based algorithm able to detect and quantify floating garbage from aerial images. They also made a web-oriented application allowing users to identify the garbage known as floating marine macro-litter, or FMML, within images of the sea surface. Watch the video: References Odei Garcia-Garin et al., Automatic detection and quantification of floating marine macro-litter in aerial images: Introducing a novel deep learning approach connected to a web application in R, Environmental Pollution, ​. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2021... Code & web app: https://github.com/amonleong/MARLIT Follow me for more AI content: Instagram: ​ https://www.instagram.com/whats_ai/ LinkedIn: ​ https://www.linkedin.com/in/whats-ai/ Twitter: ​ https://twitter.com/Whats_AI Facebook: ​ https://www.facebook.com/whats.artifi... 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You'll learn a lot of cool stuff, I promise. 0:30​ - Floating marine macro-litter 2:19​ - The method 5:10​ - Conclusion Video Transcript 00:00 an ai software able to detect and count 00:03 plastic waste in the ocean 00:04 using ariel images it's both clever and 00:07 simple 00:08 and you could use this same model for 00:10 many image classification applications 00:12 let's see how it works 00:16 [Music] 00:21 this is what's ai and i share artificial 00:23 intelligence news every week 00:25 if you are new to the channel and want 00:26 to stay up to date please consider 00:28 subscribing to not miss any further news 00:31 we live on a blue planet over 70 00:35 of earth is covered by sea from space 00:38 our ocean appears pristine clean 00:42 unfortunately it's not because of poorly 00:45 controlled waste sites 00:46 illegal dumping and mishandled waste 00:49 from population centres 00:51 tourism industrial and agricultural 00:53 activities 00:54 an estimated 8 million metric tons of 00:57 plastic 00:58 waste entered the oceans 01:02 aude garcia garion et al from the 01:04 university of barcelona 01:06 have developed a deep learning based 01:08 algorithm able to detect and quantify 01:10 floating garbage from aerial images 01:13 they also made a web-oriented 01:15 application allowing users to identify 01:17 these garbages 01:18 called floating marine microliter or fml 01:21 within 01:22 images of the sea surface floating 01:25 marine macro litter is any persistent 01:27 manufactured or processed solid material 01:30 lost or abandoned in a marine 01:32 compartment as you most certainly know 01:34 these plastic wastes are dangerous for 01:36 fish turtles and marine mammals as they 01:39 can either 01:40 ingest them or get entangled and hurt 01:42 traditional approaches to detecting 01:44 these 01:45 fmls are observer-based methods 01:48 meaning that they require someone on a 01:50 vessel or airplane to look for them 01:52 yielding to precise identification but 01:55 extremely expensive and time demanding 01:57 labor 01:58 fortunately this detection can be done 02:00 using cameras or sensors on aerial 02:02 vehicles 02:03 but it also requires trained scientists 02:05 to manually look at the collected data 02:08 being again extremely time consuming 02:10 automation is clearly needed here and 02:12 could help us 02:13 improve the quality of our marine 02:15 compartments worldwide 02:16 much more effectively this is where 02:19 machine learning 02:20 and deep learning commonly deep learning 02:23 proves over and over 02:24 that it's a very powerful automation 02:26 tool and especially in the computer 02:28 vision industry 02:29 where it's known to automatically 02:31 identify the important features of an 02:33 image 02:33 without any human supervision making 02:36 this approach 02:37 less time demanding than its 02:38 predecessors for many different 02:40 applications including 02:41 this very important one as you may 02:44 suspect 02:45 they use the convolutional neural 02:46 networks to attack this problem 02:48 this type of neural network is the most 02:50 commonly used deep learning architecture 02:52 in computer vision 02:54 the idea behind this deep neural network 02:56 architecture is to mimic the human's 02:58 visual system if you want to learn more 03:00 about the foundation of convolutional 03:02 neural networks 03:03 or cnns i will refer you to their video 03:05 on the top right corner on your screen 03:07 where i'm explaining them more in depth 03:11 they train their algorithm with real 03:13 images like this one 03:15 taken by drones and aircraft with 03:17 annotations made by the same 03:19 professionals that are usually 03:20 manually analyzing them this is a 03:23 challenging task even for deep learning 03:25 because of all the possible variations 03:27 in colors and sun reflections as you can 03:29 see here 03:31 in short their model is a regular binary 03:33 classifier 03:34 cnn architecture composed of 03:36 convolutions and poolings 03:38 terms that i explained in the video i 03:40 referenced earlier 03:41 that outputs a binary response telling 03:43 us if there are fmls or not in the 03:46 picture 03:46 the depth of the network is due to these 03:48 convolution layers 03:50 compressing the image and creating many 03:52 feature maps 03:53 which are the outputs of the filters 03:55 ending with a general representation 03:57 of the image allowing us to know in 03:59 general 04:00 what the image contains such as fml in 04:03 this case 04:04 note that this exact same architecture 04:06 could have been used on 04:08 any other computer vision application 04:10 with a test to classify whether or not 04:12 something is in the image such as 04:14 putting a defect on a manufacturer part 04:16 or telling if there is a dog or not what 04:18 they did differently making it powerful 04:20 to fml detection 04:22 is that they had the idea to split the 04:24 image into 25 smaller cells 04:26 that each outputs a classification 04:28 result fml 04:30 or not yielding much better overall 04:32 accuracy 04:33 then they used the shiny package of r 04:37 to develop their application their 04:39 algorithm allows the detection and 04:41 quantification 04:42 of fmls as well as providing support to 04:45 the monitoring and assessment of this 04:47 environmental threat 04:48 however it's still not completely 04:50 automated yet and requires a human in 04:52 the loop 04:53 as of now they are still looking for 04:55 more annotated data to allow their 04:57 algorithm to also 04:58 identify the size color and type of fml 05:01 which are very relevant information for 05:03 planning well-targeted policy and 05:05 mitigation measures 05:07 this is still an amazing application of 05:09 deep learning with a great use case that 05:11 will benefit everyone 05:13 of course this was just an introduction 05:15 to this new paper 05:16 and i linked both the paper their code 05:18 and their application 05:20 in the description below if you would 05:21 like to read more about it or even 05:23 try it out yourself please leave a like 05:26 if you went this far in the video 05:28 and since there are over 80 percent of 05:30 you guys that are not subscribed yet 05:32 please consider subscribing to the 05:33 channel to not miss any further news 05:36 thank you for watching 05:40 [Music]

Using AI to Detect and Count Plastic Waste in the Ocean

The so called progressive industrialisation has probably done more harm to our planet than good. Today, the world has found itself amidst the crisis of waste management, specifically plastic waste management. If we step back and look at the bigger picture by the numbers, the picture is much more ugly than we can even imagine. Source: sailorsforthesea.org They said diamond is forever, but hey! Plastic is forever too. We all know how severe the problem of waste management is, especially for the developing countries due to lack of resources. This is where kicks in. technology According to a recent study, 90 percent of plastic debris in the ocean , eight in Asia and two in Africa. comes from 10 rivers Let’s talk about solutions. There is enough plastic in this entire world that we could stop mining oil for a while and use the available trash to generate some energy. Yes, it is possible to generate energy out of plastic. _In the adventure classic Back to the Future, Emmett "Doc" Brown uses energy generated from rubbish to power his…_theconversation.com How we can turn plastic waste into green energy Fundamentally, plastic is made up of carbon and hydrogen, which is essentially what fossil fuels are made up of. According to the link above, plastics are among the most valuable waste materials — although with the way people discard them, you probably wouldn’t know it. It’s possible to convert all plastics directly into useful forms of energy and chemicals for industry, called using a process “cold plasma pyrolysis”. Apart from the above mentioned solutions, we all can contribute to the cause bit by bit. Here’s how. _Plastic Bank, igniting a Social Plastic® revolution. Uniting and enrolling humanity for local action that creates…_www.plasticbank.com Stop Ocean Plastic Let’s look at the example of . A company based in Indonesia whose aim is to reduce flow of plastic into the oceans. Any regular person can collect plastic waste from around their surrounding (for example, from their own house, or some factory nearby) and deposit the plastic in the plastic bank. In exchange, they can get money or energy or internet or some commodity. Plastic Bank blockchain The video below explains everything beautifully! There are so about a 100 more startups who strive to achieve the same results. Today, it is not at all tough to contribute to the noble cause. In fact, it is imperative to tackle the problem now or else all advancements the mankind is making in the field of technology would render futile because there won’t be a planet to live at all. Some may argue that Mars is ready for us, but to clear those doubts; we have to wait for a few more centuries to destroy Mars again. There is a beautiful documentary made by NatGeo which I saw last evening. It describes how far or near are we to make Mars our home. Here’s the link:

Combating Plastic Pollution using Technology

Ok. So by now it’s pretty clear to most people that we have a plastic problem. Our oceans are literally swimming in plastic. The question is: what can we do about it? There is a fairly simple solution. But before we get to the solution, we need to understand the problem and how we got here. The problem Out of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic ever produced only 9% is recycled. More recently that figure is about 14% but the fact is that even when the intentions are good, we are terrible at recycling plastics still poses . big challenges For simplicity, we will focus on single-use plastic water bottles but many other plastics such as bags, cigarette buts, diapers, food packaging, other beverages, microbeads from clothes, etc. are equally important. A clear example: Bottled water The bottled water market globally keeps growing with an approximate 600 million households now consuming bottled water. In 2017 the bottled water market reached a volume of 391 billion litres after growing at an average of 6% per year during 2009–2016. At the current rate of growth, 90 million more homes will consume bottled water by 2022. Table: Bottled water consumption worldwide * Households with access to electricity and water (WHO) ** Estimates based on population and bottled water consumption. In some cases, it may include large bottles that are refilled. Assuming that each household consumes about 2 bottles per day on average this means 576 million x 365 = 210 billion bottles per year. This aligns pretty well with the estimate of a total of 480 billion plastic bottles consumed annually whereof 50% are water. Gobal annual bottled water consumption in millions of tons of plastic Why are so many people drinking bottled water? During the past 30 years, tap water quality in Europe and North America vastly improved both in terms of taste and quality. Despite this, bottled water consumption went from zero to the staggering numbers above. The main reasons cited by consumers are: Prefer the taste of bottled water Concerned about the quality and health impact of tap water Replacing sugary beverages Convenience of bottled water In addition to this, the bottled water industry has actively been promoting the health benefits of mineral and spring water for many years. Due to this almost half of the population believe bottled water is healthier than tap water. How can we solve this? There are many very challenging problems in the world such as climate change, inequality and terrorism that are extremely difficult to solve. Bottled water is not one of them. As a matter of fact, bottled water is completely unnecessary for most households. In North America and Europe more than 95% households have access to clean tap water. In many other areas of the world with access to tap water, it can easily be made safe with an affordable filter. Despite this too many homes choose bottled water due to taste preference or misinformed health concerns. Governments have a responsibility to educate people and provide guidelines on solutions for drinking water just like they do for recycling, water consumption, alcohol and general health. This includes informing people about the problems bottled water is causing in terms of transportation, waste and plastic pollution and provide alternatives. For low- income families it may even be advisable to subsidise solutions for clean drinking water. With education and water filters everyone can safely drink tap water What’s next? With the help of education and regulation Europe and North America could cut bottled water consumption by at least 75% in just a couple of years limiting most consumption to sparkling mineral water served on glass bottles. China, India, Mexico and Indonesia that are big consumers of bottled water can do the same, although the quality of local tap water requires more stringent regulation of water filters. The money saved by consumers will go to other consumption and thus creating new jobs replacing the bottled water industry. If we do the same thing for all the major groups of single-use plastics, then plastic waste can be vastly reduced as an issue. What are we waiting for? Let’s start lobbying family, friends and politicians now! Disclaimer: I’m Co-founder of TAPP Water with a mission to provide easy and affordable solutions for clean and environmentally friendly water. Sources: Ellen MacArthur Foundation — 2017 Study on plastic production and recycling National Geographics -Plastic Produced Recycling Waste Ocean Trash 2017 Forbes — 1 million bottles per minute and 91% not recycled

How we can easily stop plastic waste now

From Crypterium live services to future use cases, to personal reasons for moving to crypto — catch up what Crypterium CEO Marc O’Brien had to say in his recent interview with Breaking Banks, #1 fintech podcast in the world. If you have missed it, listen to the full recording here , or take a look at the highlights. A recap on Crypterium services We already have live services and we’ve got many more use cases coming out. Our customers can register with our service, go for a very short KYC process and be able to do mobile top-ups. For anywhere in the world, whether it’s a developing economy like Kenya or any other country you’ll be able to use the Crypterium app and refill your mobile. This is a part of our strategy for being fully global. The other service, that is also strategic for us in terms of volume, is to enable all of our customers with , to let them send crypto to their contacts in just one second. Basically, in the folder that you have, you can select your contact, select the amount and send crypto to them. They will get the crypto in the Crypterium account themselves directly, they’ll get an SMS message if they don’t have an account yet. crypto Bitcoin There are different numbers, but the numbers I’ve looked into is that there are 25 mln crypto unique crypto wallets today. It doesn’t compare at all to the 3 bln of Visa and MC card holders. What we offer is a very good use case for inviting your friends and people you know to crypto so they could experiment with it in a very easy-to-use way. In addition to that, we are going to attach your card, and we are working with Visa’s, Master Card’s and Union Pay’s to bring our customers the opportunity to make E-commerce payments. If customers want a plastic card they can have a plastic card too. The three pillars We are talking about our business in three segments. The first one is we have a Hot wallet for all the major cryptocurrencies, but we’re looking to add many more over time. Currently, we’ve got BTC, ETH and Litecoin. Secondly, we have liquidity and effects platform which means we’re able to make instant payments into the fiat world so we then have a bridge into the fiat world. All of the merchants who want to accept fiat for transfers will get fiat. The last part is our own token. We have essentially tokenized the service so when a customer wants to make a transaction, they need our token CRPT token as “gas” for the transaction and that’s exactly where our utility tokens get utilized. Going global We have 450 000 registered interested people around the world that really want the service. We have 72 000 token holders, in terms of active users we went live four weeks ago and we made no promotion and no marketing as we yet are getting ready to really scale our product. Digital waves I’ve worked with VISA and MC for many years and they have amazing business models. They’ve really succeeded in the major developing economies but they still have the huge opportunity in the developing markets. There is such a great opportunity for them to displace cash and actually, the displacement of cash on the cards means that payments go digital. And the opportunity for us at Crypterium is to ride that wave that has gone digital, bridge this crypto-fiat gap and start to migrate customers across. My reason for changing from VISA into the fin-tech community 4 years ago is that I wanted to be at the leading edge of digital, leverage my payments experience and in the last year join the crypto space because I see it’s going mainstream. The end of plastic Plastic cards will disappear when everybody has a smartphone, I’d give it 20 years. About Crypterium C is building a mobile app that will turn cryptocurrencies into money that you can spend with the same ease as cash. Shop around the world and pay with your coins and tokens at any NFC terminal, or via scanning the QR codes. Make purchases in online stores, pay your bills, or just send money across borders in seconds, reliably and for a fraction of a penny. Crypterium Join our or other social media to stay updated! Telegram news channel ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ Website Telegram Facebook Twitter BitcoinTalk Reddit YouTube LinkedIn

“Plastic cards will disappear when everybody has a smartphone” — an interview with Crypterium CEO

Data and Its Color

Why 1-Bit Transformers Will Change the World

Cybersecurity Is a Top Investor Concern

Authors: (1) Renato P. dos Santos, CIAGE – Centre for Generative Artificial Intelligence in Cognition and Education. Table of Links Abstract and Introduction Materials And Methods Results and Analyses Prompts and generated texts Conceptualizing chemical reactions Deepening on understanding of chemical reactions Question about combustion Question about a graph of gases turning into water over time Question about the difference between atoms, molecules, and moles Deepening on the concept of mole Question about changing of state Question about an animated representation of water molecules undergoing phase changes Question about plasma, a state of matter Question about chemical bondings Question about illustration of chemical bonds Question about the essence of the type of chemical bonding Further analysis Conclusions Limitations of the study and possible future studies Author Contributions, Conflicts of interest, Acknowledgements, and References Deepening understanding of chemical reactions P1: Yeah, but that sounds like my teacher talking. I don't even understand this chemical reaction business. What’s the use of an example of a business I don't understand? : ChatGPT I apologize for jumping ahead. Let's step back and approach this from a foundational perspective. Imagine you're baking cookies. You have a recipe that calls for 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, and 1 cup of chocolate chips. Once you combine these ingredients and bake them, you get 12 cookies. You can't suddenly have more flour, sugar, or chocolate chips than you started with, right? Similarly, you can't end up with less than you put in. This is a basic principle of conservation—what you put in is what you get out. Chemical reactions are like recipes. You start with certain ingredients (called reactants) and end up with a product (or products). Just like you can't suddenly have more flour or less sugar in your cookies, in a chemical reaction, you can't have more of one type of atom at the end than you started with or less of another. So when we talk about balancing chemical reactions, we're making sure our "recipe" (the chemical equation) doesn't magically create or lose any atoms. We're ensuring everything is accounted for. Does this analogy make sense in understanding the concept of chemical reactions and the need for balance? : BingChat I’m sorry if I sounded like your teacher. I was trying to explain the concept of chemical reactions and balance in a clear and simple way. But I understand that sometimes it can be hard to grasp abstract concepts without seeing them in action. That’s why I suggested some online tools that can help you visualize and practice balancing chemical equations. But maybe you are wondering why you need to learn about chemical reactions and balance in the first place. What’s the use of knowing how atoms and molecules interact and rearrange during a chemical reaction? Well, let me tell you that chemical reactions are everywhere in our world, and they affect many aspects of our lives. Here are some examples of how chemical reactions are important and useful: • Chemical reactions are essential for life. All living organisms, including humans, plants, and animals, rely on chemical reactions to perform vital functions such as metabolism, respiration, photosynthesis, digestion, growth, and reproduction. For example, when you eat food, your body breaks down the molecules in the food into smaller units that can be used for energy or building blocks. This process involves many chemical reactions that are carefully regulated by enzymes. • Chemical reactions are involved in many everyday phenomena. Some examples are cooking, baking, cleaning, rusting, burning, fireworks, batteries, and fermentation. For example, when you bake a cake, you mix different ingredients that react with each other to produce carbon dioxide gas. This gas makes the cake rise and become fluffy. The heat from the oven also causes chemical reactions that change the color, flavor, and texture of the cake. • Chemical reactions are important for many industries and technologies. Some examples are medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, mining, energy, and environmental protection. For example, in medicine, chemical reactions are used to synthesize drugs that can treat diseases or relieve pain. In agriculture, chemical reactions are used to produce fertilizers that can enhance crop growth and yield. In manufacturing, chemical reactions are used to create materials such as plastics, metals, ceramics, and textiles. As you can see, chemical reactions and balance are not just boring topics that you have to learn in school. They are actually very relevant and interesting topics that can help you understand how the world works and how you can make it better. I hope this helps you appreciate the importance and usefulness of learning about chemical reactions and balance. : Bard I apologize for my previous response, which was too formal and technical. Let's try to approach this from a different angle. Imagine you are running a bakery. You want to make a batch of cookies, so you gather up your ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and baking soda. You mix all of the ingredients together, and then you put the dough in the oven. When the cookies are finished baking, you have a new product: cookies! But how did this happen? What happened to the flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and baking soda? They didn't just disappear. Instead, they reacted with each other to form new substances: cookies. This is what a chemical reaction is. It is a process in which two or more substances (the reactants) are converted into one or more different substances (the products). The reactants and products have different properties, which means that they have different chemical compositions. In the case of the cookie dough, the reactants are the flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and baking soda. The products are the cookies. Chemical reactions happen all around us, all the time. When you light a match, the wood reacts with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water. When you cook food, the food reacts with heat to produce new substances. When your body digests food, the food reacts with enzymes to produce nutrients. Chemical reactions are essential for life. They are also used in many different industries, such as food processing, medicine, and manufacturing. I hope this analogy helps you to understand the basics of chemical reactions. If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. Here is another analogy: Imagine you are playing with Lego bricks. You can build all sorts of different things with Lego bricks: cars, houses, airplanes, and more. But what happens if you take the Lego bricks apart and put them together in a different way? You will create a new structure. Chemical reactions are similar to playing with Lego bricks. The atoms in the reactants are like the Lego bricks. When the reactants react, the atoms are rearranged to form new substances (the products). I hope this analogy helps you to understand the concept of chemical reactions a little better. : Claude You're right, jumping straight into balancing equations without a solid grasp of chemical reactions themselves is putting the cart before the horse. Let's back up and make sure you have a good foundation first. Chemical reactions are processes where the molecular structure of substances changes. Atoms within molecules get rearranged, broken apart, or joined together. This results in entirely new substances being formed with different properties. A simple everyday example is cooking an egg. When you heat an egg, the protein and fat molecules unravel and form new bonds. This changes the egg from a liquid to a solid. A chemical reaction has occurred! Reactions also happen around us all the time - in car engines, inside batteries, and even within ourbodies. Understanding them allows chemists to develop new materials, medicines, fuels, and all kinds of useful products. The key takeaway is that chemical reactions transform starting compounds (reactants) into different ending compounds (products). Balancing the equations comes later to represent what's happening at the atomic level. Does this help explain the basic idea and purpose of chemical reactions? I'm happy to use examples more relevant to your interests if that's more engaging. The goal is to make sure the foundation makes sense before going into the specifics. response use of the terms "foundational perspective," "Imagine," and "basic principle of conservation" correspond with the category of while "chemical reactions are like recipes," and "analogy" point to the categories , and . The casual tone, personalised feel, and the use of a question at the end add to the category. * goes into expansive detail with phrases like "seeing them in action," "online tools," and "examples of how chemical reactions are important," which hit the and categories. The emoji at the end provides a . use of two distinct analogies — a bakery and Lego bricks —aligns with the Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations category. Phrases like "I apologize," "different angle," and "please feel free to ask" contribute to the category . response, acknowledging "You're right" and "The goal is to make sure the foundation makes sense," emphasises the category. The egg example and references to daily life situations align with the ChatGPT’s Instructional Strategies, Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations Meta-discussion & Perspective Framing Personalization & Personable Touch BingChat Detail Depth & Content Recommendation Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations Personable Touch Bard's Personalization & Personable Touch Claude’s Personalization & Personable Touch Use of Analogy & Comparative Illustrations. This paper is under CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED license. available on arxiv

GenAIbots' Strategies for Explaining Chemical Reactions to Students 

Electronic waste — better known as e-waste — has been a massive problem for years. However, most people have never even heard of the term. Unfortunately, whether they realize it or not, it impacts them directly. How does e-waste hacking put you at risk? The Overlooked Problem With E-Waste Most people don’t think twice about what happens to their electronics when they throw them away or trade them in. In almost every case, their old devices become e-waste. Common examples include phones, computers, printers, monitors, smart devices and wearables. Almost all electronics contain materials like nickel, flame retardants, and cadmium that either are or can become hazardous if disposed of improperly. For example, lithium-ion batteries can produce noxious smoke if damaged and toxic liquid if exposed to water. In landfills, these devices poison the air, waterways, and soil by leeching heavy metals and poisonous chemicals. Since e-waste is a relatively new problem, it remains largely unaddressed. Today, it accounts for roughly 70% of the toxic waste in U.S. landfills. Only a fraction is ever formally recycled, leaving the rest to pollute local environments for thousands of years until they naturally break down. While there’s no breakdown of where the country’s e-waste comes from, the consumer electronics sector is likely responsible for most of it. People have been buying more than ever in recent years — computer purchases surged by 34% during the COVID-19 pandemic — suggesting they’ve been throwing away more than ever. The main focus of e-waste is its environmental risks, for good reason. However, that’s not its only problem. Many people don’t realize they’re essentially handing all their device’s data directly to a cybercriminal when they dispose of it improperly. E-waste hacking is becoming increasingly profitable for cybercriminals as people toss more electronics every year. Unfortunately, buying something new is often cheaper than having something repaired. Once a device leaves the owner’s hands and lands in the trash, it’s forfeit — along with every shred of personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data it ever stored. What E-Waste Hacking Looks Like While e-waste hacking sounds futuristic, it’s concerningly simplistic. Once an electronic device is thrown away or given to a third party for disposal, it often ends up in a landfill. At some point along the journey, people pick through the waste for hard drives to recover data. They either misuse it themselves or sell it to a third party for a profit. There’s 100 times more gold in one ton of smartphones than in one ton of gold ore. Thus, urban mining — extracting usable material like copper, glass, aluminum or gold from discarded electronics — is becoming popular in places like Ghana, China and India. How does e-waste hacking work? Usually, cybercriminals can pry out a device’s physical drives and recover the data from them, as many people forget to wipe or destroy those. While they might have to use specialized tools to bypass security measures, they often only have to plug it in to retrieve sensitive information. Back in 2009, a group of journalism students from the University of British Columbia bought a $40 hard drive at an open-air market in Ghana for an international reporting course. Once they plugged it in, a multi-million dollar U.S. defense contract between the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and a military contractor was sitting there, waiting to be read. What Are the Security Risks of E-Waste? Once cybercriminals get ahold of an improperly disposed-of device’s storage system, they can see the previous owner’s PII. This could include names, social security numbers, addresses and contact information. They also gain access to whatever files remain intact. Regarding e-waste generated by consumer electronics, individuals become susceptible to identity theft, phishing scams, cyberattacks and financial fraud. If cybercriminals choose to sell their information on the dark web, they remain at risk for the rest of their lives. While individuals are usually the focus of cybersecurity concerns related to e-waste, businesses are also at risk. If even a single employee improperly disposes of their old work laptop, the company’s data breach risk skyrockets. E-waste hacking can expose proprietary information, give cybercriminals a way to infiltrate the brand’s network legitimately or lead to an uptick in cyberattacks. Considering the average data breach cost over $4.45 million in 2023, the consequences could be catastrophic. How Do Electronics End up in Hackers' Hands? The logistics of electronics going from a garbage can into a hacker’s hands is more straightforward than most people would assume. One of the simplest means is through theft, where the person retrieves the thrown-away device from the trash and takes it home. While most cybercriminals don’t make dumpster diving a pastime, many know where to go — or who to call — to get their hands on recently thrown-out electronics. Considering roughly 800 laptops worth of e-waste are generated every second in the U.S., the simplicity of such a plan shouldn’t come as a surprise. Another illicit means cybercriminals use to get their hands on PII is through a third party like a recycling center, buy-back platform or trade-in program. In this scenario, the intermediary sells used consumer electronics to them directly. Whether due to negligence or an effort to make a quick profit, sensitive data doesn’t get wiped before the sale. One of the most concerning ways e-waste ends up in hackers’ hands is through cargo ships. According to a 2016 study — one of the few on the matter — the U.S. exports up to 40% of its e-waste for dismantling or recycling. Apparently, there have been multiple cases where countries have had to reject cargo loads of e-waste shipments. While some say this claim is untrue, the U.S. has set a precedent by exporting plastic waste for decades. Despite international law making it illegal, it has increased its exports to places like Malaysia and Indonesia. Moreover, while most shipments are categorized as recycling, they end up in landfills, meaning e-waste export isn’t an unreasonable concept. What to Do to Avoid E-Waste Hacking While most people’s first thought is to avoid e-waste hacking by holding on to their technology, unused electronics are attractive targets to thieves. Besides, lost devices pose a host of other cybersecurity risks. The only way to guarantee security is through proper disposal channels. 1. Shred Data Storage Systems People must get used to “shredding” their hard disk drives and solid state drives (SSDs) like they do their sensitive documents. Once they wipe their device, they should render their storage systems unusable by physically destroying them and their chips. 2. Use Darik's Boot and Nuke Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is a free, open-source software people use to wipe physical drives. While it’s effective, it should only be used by individuals and not businesses, as it doesn’t meet any formal destruction requirements like NIST or HIPAA. Notably, it does not work on all devices and will not work for SSDs due to compatibility issues. 3. Leverage Data Encryption People should proactively encrypt every shred of data on their devices even if they use DBAN since data residue — recoverable digital traces of data — remains on electronics and is recoverable by hackers even after the manual erasure process. As a bonus, this measure can protect them from experiencing the effects of various cyberattacks. 4. Use Reputable Third Parties Simply destroying and throwing away electronics to prevent e-waste hacking is irresponsible because it is incredibly damaging to the environment. Instead, people should find reputable, transparent third parties to ensure their devices don’t end up being sold off or landfilled. The World Cannot Ignore the Issue of E-Waste Even without the security risks e-waste hacking poses, improperly disposed-of electronics are a problem. They poison the air, waterways and soil for thousands of years as they sit in landfills. Individuals and enterprises must do their part to prevent this from happening for the good of data protection and the environment. Electronic waste — better known as e-waste — has been a massive problem for years. However, most people have never even heard of the term. Unfortunately, whether they realize it or not, it impacts them directly. How does e-waste hacking put you at risk? Electronic waste — better known as e-waste — has been a massive problem for years. However, most people have never even heard of the term. Unfortunately, whether they realize it or not, it impacts them directly. How does e-waste hacking put you at risk? The Overlooked Problem With E-Waste The Overlooked Problem With E-Waste Most people don’t think twice about what happens to their electronics when they throw them away or trade them in. In almost every case, their old devices become e-waste. Common examples include phones, computers, printers, monitors, smart devices and wearables. Almost all electronics contain materials like nickel, flame retardants, and cadmium that either are or can become hazardous if disposed of improperly. For example, lithium-ion batteries can produce noxious smoke if damaged and toxic liquid if exposed to water. In landfills, these devices poison the air, waterways, and soil by leeching heavy metals and poisonous chemicals. Since e-waste is a relatively new problem, it remains largely unaddressed. Today, it accounts for roughly 70% of the toxic waste in U.S. landfills. Only a fraction is ever formally recycled, leaving the rest to pollute local environments for thousands of years until they naturally break down. 70% of the toxic waste 70% of the toxic waste While there’s no breakdown of where the country’s e-waste comes from, the consumer electronics sector is likely responsible for most of it. People have been buying more than ever in recent years — computer purchases surged by 34% during the COVID-19 pandemic — suggesting they’ve been throwing away more than ever. computer purchases surged by 34% computer purchases surged by 34% The main focus of e-waste is its environmental risks, for good reason. However, that’s not its only problem. Many people don’t realize they’re essentially handing all their device’s data directly to a cybercriminal when they dispose of it improperly. E-waste hacking is becoming increasingly profitable for cybercriminals as people toss more electronics every year. Unfortunately, buying something new is often cheaper than having something repaired. Once a device leaves the owner’s hands and lands in the trash, it’s forfeit — along with every shred of personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data it ever stored. What E-Waste Hacking Looks Like While e-waste hacking sounds futuristic, it’s concerningly simplistic. Once an electronic device is thrown away or given to a third party for disposal, it often ends up in a landfill. At some point along the journey, people pick through the waste for hard drives to recover data. They either misuse it themselves or sell it to a third party for a profit. There’s 100 times more gold in one ton of smartphones than in one ton of gold ore. Thus, urban mining — extracting usable material like copper, glass, aluminum or gold from discarded electronics — is becoming popular in places like Ghana, China and India. 100 times more gold 100 times more gold How does e-waste hacking work? Usually, cybercriminals can pry out a device’s physical drives and recover the data from them, as many people forget to wipe or destroy those. While they might have to use specialized tools to bypass security measures, they often only have to plug it in to retrieve sensitive information. Back in 2009, a group of journalism students from the University of British Columbia bought a $40 hard drive at an open-air market in Ghana for an international reporting course. Once they plugged it in, a multi-million dollar U.S. defense contract between the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security and a military contractor was sitting there, waiting to be read. bought a $40 hard drive bought a $40 hard drive What Are the Security Risks of E-Waste? Once cybercriminals get ahold of an improperly disposed-of device’s storage system, they can see the previous owner’s PII. This could include names, social security numbers, addresses and contact information. They also gain access to whatever files remain intact. Regarding e-waste generated by consumer electronics, individuals become susceptible to identity theft, phishing scams, cyberattacks and financial fraud. If cybercriminals choose to sell their information on the dark web, they remain at risk for the rest of their lives. While individuals are usually the focus of cybersecurity concerns related to e-waste, businesses are also at risk. If even a single employee improperly disposes of their old work laptop, the company’s data breach risk skyrockets. E-waste hacking can expose proprietary information, give cybercriminals a way to infiltrate the brand’s network legitimately or lead to an uptick in cyberattacks. Considering the average data breach cost over $4.45 million in 2023, the consequences could be catastrophic. cost over $4.45 million cost over $4.45 million How Do Electronics End up in Hackers' Hands? The logistics of electronics going from a garbage can into a hacker’s hands is more straightforward than most people would assume. One of the simplest means is through theft, where the person retrieves the thrown-away device from the trash and takes it home. While most cybercriminals don’t make dumpster diving a pastime, many know where to go — or who to call — to get their hands on recently thrown-out electronics. Considering roughly 800 laptops worth of e-waste are generated every second in the U.S., the simplicity of such a plan shouldn’t come as a surprise. roughly 800 laptops worth of e-waste roughly 800 laptops worth of e-waste Another illicit means cybercriminals use to get their hands on PII is through a third party like a recycling center, buy-back platform or trade-in program. In this scenario, the intermediary sells used consumer electronics to them directly. Whether due to negligence or an effort to make a quick profit, sensitive data doesn’t get wiped before the sale. One of the most concerning ways e-waste ends up in hackers’ hands is through cargo ships. According to a 2016 study — one of the few on the matter — the U.S. exports up to 40% of its e-waste for dismantling or recycling. Apparently, there have been multiple cases where countries have had to reject cargo loads of e-waste shipments. up to 40% of its e-waste up to 40% of its e-waste While some say this claim is untrue, the U.S. has set a precedent by exporting plastic waste for decades. Despite international law making it illegal , it has increased its exports to places like Malaysia and Indonesia. Moreover, while most shipments are categorized as recycling, they end up in landfills, meaning e-waste export isn’t an unreasonable concept. international law making it illegal international law making it illegal What to Do to Avoid E-Waste Hacking While most people’s first thought is to avoid e-waste hacking by holding on to their technology, unused electronics are attractive targets to thieves. Besides, lost devices pose a host of other cybersecurity risks. The only way to guarantee security is through proper disposal channels. 1. Shred Data Storage Systems People must get used to “shredding” their hard disk drives and solid state drives (SSDs) like they do their sensitive documents. Once they wipe their device, they should render their storage systems unusable by physically destroying them and their chips. 2. Use Darik's Boot and Nuke Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) is a free, open-source software people use to wipe physical drives. While it’s effective, it should only be used by individuals and not businesses, as it doesn’t meet any formal destruction requirements like NIST or HIPAA. Notably, it does not work on all devices and will not work for SSDs due to compatibility issues. 3. Leverage Data Encryption People should proactively encrypt every shred of data on their devices even if they use DBAN since data residue — recoverable digital traces of data — remains on electronics and is recoverable by hackers even after the manual erasure process. As a bonus, this measure can protect them from experiencing the effects of various cyberattacks. 4. Use Reputable Third Parties Simply destroying and throwing away electronics to prevent e-waste hacking is irresponsible because it is incredibly damaging to the environment. Instead, people should find reputable, transparent third parties to ensure their devices don’t end up being sold off or landfilled. The World Cannot Ignore the Issue of E-Waste Even without the security risks e-waste hacking poses, improperly disposed-of electronics are a problem. They poison the air, waterways and soil for thousands of years as they sit in landfills. Individuals and enterprises must do their part to prevent this from happening for the good of data protection and the environment.

What Is E-Waste Hacking?

ই-ওয়েস্ট হ্যাকিং কি?

Was ist Elektroschrott-Hacking?

¿Qué es el pirateo de residuos electrónicos?

Qu’est-ce que le piratage des déchets électroniques ?

ई-कचरा हैकिंग क्या है?

電子廃棄物ハッキングとは何ですか?

전자 폐기물 해킹이란 무엇입니까?

O que é hackeamento de lixo eletrônico?

Что такое взлом электронных отходов?

E-Atık Hacking Nedir?

Hack rác thải điện tử là gì?

什么是电子垃圾黑客？

Why Humans Are Drawn to Games

কেন মানুষ গেমের প্রতি আকৃষ্ট হয়

Warum Menschen sich zu Spielen hingezogen fühlen

Por qué los humanos se sienten atraídos por los juegos

Pourquoi les humains sont attirés par les jeux

मनुष्य खेलों की ओर क्यों आकर्षित होते हैं?

人間がゲームに惹かれる理由

인간이 게임에 끌리는 이유

Por que os humanos são atraídos pelos jogos

Почему людей привлекают игры

İnsanlar Neden Oyunlara Çekilir?

Tại sao con người bị thu hút bởi trò chơi

人类为何热衷于游戏

is a multi-tool component that keeps a company afloat through many channels and approaches. It is a multiverse of metrics–you just have to find what works for you. But how do you decide whether to stick with proven approaches or follow the latest trends? The truth is, the nature of the digital landscape is ever-changing and you can never really know when the latest marketing obsession will once again become obsolete. It’s just the nature of things and in 2024 we all have to deal with it. The good news is that the overall trends are not as fleeting as they might seem, and keeping up to date with forecasts for the upcoming months can give your business the much-needed push to catch your audience’s attention in the highly competitive field. Now, few things seem to be especially prominent amongst marketing trends right now, but before we dive headfirst into modern marketing, let’s recap the basics. Marketing Why should you care? While sticking to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy certainly has its benefits, in the modern day and age staying up to date is imperative to building a successful business. Your audience has ever-changing and evolving preferences, and your competitors continually explore new strategies to see what works and what doesn’t. If you want to stay relevant, you have to put effort into understanding what "staying relevant"  in your field means. Is it creating an AI campaign for a new feature or partnering up with a user for an honest review? Your competitors reside in the same limitless space as you do–the internet, the main thing that drives progress and competition. There is plenty of useful information getting out daily, the question is: who is going to get there first? First, set your priorities In response to the very dynamic nature of social media marketing, brands are now ready to focus their attention on platforms that closely align with their goals and audience preferences. Now, that doesn’t mean you should abandon all channels except one; the goal is to prioritize a few and keep the rest low-key because having a prominent social media presence is the hallmark of good, recognizable branding. You can save time and target a specific platform instead of many, like spending your time and money on campaigns when your audience spends most of their time on . Instead, create engaging YouTube videos, showcase product demos, collaborate with influencers, build a strong presence through community engagement, and curate visually appealing content on Facebook YouTube Instagram. This is just an example, and the way you do it will be unique to your product and your goals. By identifying your priorities you can direct your attention where it needs to go, effectively reaching and engaging your audience, driving brand awareness and sales in a competitive market. Now that your priorities are set, we can get into the upcoming trends. The creativity of AI In recent years the creativity of AI has gotten truly mind-blowing. With the recent we have seen a new horizon for the creative potential of AI. While this specific tool is not released just yet, there are plenty that can help you in the process of content generation. Major brands are already collaborating with AI to create new-age marketing campaigns. , which ended up winning at the Drum Awards Festival, an annual global competition for marketers. And Nike allowed their customers to –powered by AI. , unveiling of Sora Heinz launched one with DALLE-2 design their own unique pair of shoes There are plenty of examples out there. Big companies are using artificial intelligence not only for content creation but for ideation and strategy too. There are research assistants, generative apps, tools that can enhance resolution and ones that can make up a whole marketing strategy. Can it replace a whole marketing team? Probably not, but AI will for sure become a much more present trend in the coming years. Yet, here you’ll have to be more careful since to downrank AI-generated summarized content. Google is already implementing measures User-generated content In contrast to using machines to do the work, chances are we will be seeing much more user-generated content in the near future. There’s already plenty of it, and according to the brand engagement rises by 28% when consumers see both brand and user-generated content, and user-generated videos gain 10x views than brand videos posted on YouTube. It’s expected–we trust people, and a human presence in a campaign makes it much more trustworthy. Statistics can back this up–85% of users find user-made content more influential than branded content (also according to the Gitnux report). These days creating a tikTok with a creator raving about your product is more likely to get you more reach than placing a billboard on Times Square. As you can see, an unpolished video can have more benefits than a perfectly crafted campaign. It’s authentic, and that’s its main allure. It also has to be done right. A big part of this is generating an environment that will eventually build a strong brand community. Regular communication and giveaways will make your users more likely to want to take part in creating content for you. And when they do, reward it! It’s already a very cost-effective tool, so you can direct your resources towards supporting this type of engagement. But if you choose to use this approach for your business don’t make it feel plastic. The modern consumer is overwhelmed with content and will be able to easily distinguish real from fake. Gitnux Marketdata report Micro-Influencer Marketing On the road to authenticity, brands are now scaling down their collaborations with influencers. In the past years, we’ve seen it all and a brand deal from a celebrity is now simply a given in the media space. But the market is oversaturated and brands are looking for new ways to engage the same audiences by slightly changing their approach. The by the Influencer Marketing Hub highlights a notable preference among marketers and businesses towards collaborating with nano- and micro-influencers. The reason is simple–higher engagement rates. Why? Because smaller-scale influencers seem more trustworthy. And, this strategy is much more cost-effective for the brand. 2024 State of Influencer Marketing report Partnership Marketing Competition is the driver of progress. But what if you make your rivals (or just brands that you probably share an audience with) your collaborators? You already have so much in common: your audience and your goals. That’s enough to entertain the idea of partnership marketing to help both of your brands grow and reach new customers. Imagine the value you bring–doubled. This approach also allows you to cut costs, share resources, and exchange ideas with other teams. luxury brands partner with hotels, tech companies collaborate with cafe chains, and retail stores are more than happy to spice things up by introducing a non-profit company special offer. Brands do this all the time; High-quality content No matter which direction you go, high-quality content will remain a priority. We’ve all seen how annoying those extremely low-quality mobile ads can get. While this can get users’ attention, forget about it positioning your company as a respectable brand. These days humanity is overwhelmed with the amount of content that is up for consumption and so much of it is not at all well-made. It’s an opportunity for you to earn customer loyalty by putting effort into every step of content creation: from ideation to execution. To further perfect your process you can conduct interviews with your potential customers to see what matters to them. This way you will be more attuned to your audience, so setting up an appropriate Tone of Voice and tailoring the type of content to your clients is bound to bring much better results. Your work is you An easy way to up the quality and effectiveness of the marketing content you produce is to remember that what you do is a reflection of who you are, and the way your brand communicates with its audience is a reflection of the values that lie at the core of your company. Treating your potential customers with respect by creating relevant, engaging, high-quality content will build a bond that is not achievable by dry marketing techniques and metrics.

2024 Marketing Insights: Content, Partnerships, AI Implementation and More

The Crash That Brought the Shadow to the Light. On the morning of July 5, 2017, a gray Toyota Camry turned into the cul-de-sac of a neighborhood in Bangkok in a subdivision on the western edge of the city. A driver makes a miscalculation on a 180-degree turn and accidentally causes a collision with a front gate on a model home and real estate office. The driver exits the vehicle obviously upset about the event and needs to speak with the owner of the model house about the accident. After a significant time elapsed, Alexander Caze surfaced from his home to discuss the collision at the front gate of his home. As Alexander Caze made his way to have the conversation with the person in the vehicle, the FBI stormed the property arresting Alexander Caze aka “Alpha02” aka “Admin online” the owner of the Dark Web marketplace AlphaBay. Riches to Wretchedness. Alexander Cazes was just 25 and the CEO of EBX Technologies, a company that offered website creation services for businesses. Or at least that is what Alexandre Cazes said when someone asked about his occupation. According to Cazes’s father, Alexandre was a computer genius who started his own web design business at 17, had a high IQ, AND specialized in everything from web development to encryption services. While still a teenager, Cazes was believed to have started his first company, EBX Technologies, selling computers and helping small businesses set up their websites. His IT presence was clear to see; authorities traced Alexandre as far back as 2008, posting advice on a tech forum on how to remove a virus from a digital photo. Cazes grew up near Montreal and his family said he was a genius. In the shadows, Alexandre was the alleged mastermind of AlphaBay. According to publicly available information on AlphaBay prior to its takedown, one AlphaBay staff member claimed that it serviced over 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors. Around the time of the takedown, there were over 250,000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals on AlphaBay, and over 100,000 listings for stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms, and fraudulent services. Comparatively, the Silk Road dark web marketplace, which was seized by law enforcement in November 2013, had reportedly approximately 14,000 listings for illicit goods and services at the time of seizure and was the largest dark web marketplace at the time. . All Wrongdoing can be Traced to an Excessive Attachment to Material Wealth Alexander Cazes biggest vulnerability turned out to be his penchant for bragging about his newly acquired wealth and status. Alexandre Cazes claimed his worth was about $23 million US, including $12.5 million in properties and vehicles, and the rest in cash and cryptocurrencies. Cazes's assets seized by the U.S. government included $6.6 million Cdn in Bitcoin, $2.4 million in Ethereum, $622,000 in Monero, and $980,512 in Zcash. He had at least 11 bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts registered in his name or his wife's name in Thailand, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Beyond cash, Cazes had a taste for luxury vehicles, including a 2013 Lamborghini Aventador, a Porsche Panamera, a Mini Cooper, and a BMW motorcycle. He had three properties in Bangkok, and a vacation property in Phuket, Thailand. Subtle Clues That Were Not So Subtle. Alexandre Cazes lived a seemingly quiet life for more than a year with his Thai girlfriend in a middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Bangkok, but the flashy cars he drove stood out. All in an area where people drive pickup trucks and children tool around on plastic tricycles, and there was the nearly $1 million, metallic gray Lamborghini, a Porsche, and then the Mini Cooper for his girlfriend. Nothing except expensive cars, which were completely out of place in the neighborhood where homes cost less than $120,000. The neighbors thought Alexandre Cazes worked in the hotel business. neighbor, who asked not to be named because the case involves crime, said Cazes rarely left the house before noon. She said she got her first good look at him one day when he was outside, trying to photograph a monitor lizard that had crawled out of a deserted field nearby. “We smiled at each other, that’s it,” she said. One Whispers in the Dark That Awoke a Giant. Alexandre Cazes believed that crypto’s anonymity would protect him but just as crypto had opened new markets for the criminal world, it opened up opportunities for law enforcement. According to U.S. government documents, Cazes had an estimated net worth of around $23 million. This wealth was diversified across real estate in Thailand, Cyprus, and Antigua, luxury cars, and liquid assets such as cash and cryptocurrencies. Specifically, $12.5 million was invested in properties and vehicles. At its height, daily sales ranged between $600,000 and $800,000 across 300,000 listings for illicit goods, offered by over 40,000 vendors and viewed by some 200,000 users. Alexadre’s activity with AlphBay led to a police operation shutdown called “Bayonet”, which involved authorities in six countries including the FBI, the Dutch National Police, and the Royal Thai Police. AlphaBay’s Simple Mistakes From a Brilliant Mind. Alexandre Cazes made mistakes and one was with his personal email. Once new users joined the forums and entered their private email accounts, they were greeted with an email directly from AlphaBay welcoming them to the forums. The email address “Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com” was included in the header information of the AlphaBay welcome email. Searches for that email led investigators to forum posts by accounts with the same online handle Cazes used on AlphaBay, Alpha02. They eventually tracked down Cazes’ full name and LinkedIn account, which listed him as affiliated with EBX Technology, a company that investigators suspected was a front for AlphaBay. Alexandre Cazes had registered a PayPal account tied to bank accounts held in his name as well as the EBX Technologies business name using the "Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com" email account. Also, in 2008 a post to a French-language online tech forum "www.commentcamarche.com" by user "Alpha02" included the name "Alexandre Cazes" and the Hotmail address. The administrator of AlphaBay, notably, had used the username "Alpha02" before changing it to "Admin." To Encrypt or Not to Encrypt…That Is the Question. When the police, aided by the FBI and DEA, raided Alexandre Cazes's home, they said he was using a PC that was logged into AlphaBay as "Admin." The laptop was also found opened and unencrypted - revealing that Alexandre Cazes had been communicating with an AlphaBay data center, revealing the day-to-day operations as well as with AlphaBay users, and numerous passwords to AlphaBay servers and other infrastructure. A Tragic End And a Snake in the Grass. Alexandre Cazes was being held in a cell at Bangkok's Narcotics Suppression Bureau and, just hours before he was due to meet prosecutors for talks over his extradition to the US, was found dead of an apparent suicide. Alexandre Cazes did not run AlphaBay singlehandedly. He worked closely with a “security administrator” and second in command known as , or simply “DS” for short. DeSnake Sometime after the takedown of Alpah Bay and the death of Alexandre Cazes, posted on a popular dark web forum to announce the relaunch of AlphaBay and a dedication to Alexandre Cazes aka “alpha02.” DeSnake

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