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Imagine a world where machines not only perform tasks but also think, learn, and adapt. This isn't science fiction; it's the reality of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a wave of technological change that is reshaping the way we live and work. At the heart of this revolution is Artificial Intelligence, or AI, a groundbreaking technology that is propelling us into an era of unprecedented possibilities. Just as the previous industrial revolutions brought us steam engines, electricity, and the internet, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by the fusion of digital, physical, and biological systems, and AI is the driving force behind this fusion, enabling machines to mimic human intelligence and perform tasks that once seemed out of reach. How it all started 2000 years ago Just like , the remarkable innovations we marvel at today have humble beginnings that stretch far back in time. Before the term " " found its way into our vocabulary, the seeds of modern computing were sown in the soil of ancient Greece 2000 years ago. During that time, visionary minds conceptualized the idea of a machine possessing a form of 'intelligence'. These genius thinkers crafted a remarkable device that predicted the celestial movements of the sun, moon, and other planets. AI Artificial Intelligence Fast forward to 1901, when the remnants of this ancient wonder, known as the , were unearthed from a near the shores of Antikythera Island. This device is now revered as the world's first computer. It offers us a glimpse into an era when the first whispers of computational innovation began to echo. Antikythera mechanism sunken ship Image from WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY AI in the 20th century Alan Turing, a brilliant British computer scientist, made a remarkable impact during World War II by cracking the 'Enigma' code—a secret communication system used by the German military. In 1950, he raised a crucial question in his paper " ": "Can machines think?" Computing Machinery and Intelligence Around the same time, American computer scientist John McCarthy organized the Dartmouth Conference, where he coined the term 'Artificial Intelligence' and earned the title of AI's founding father. McCarthy's significant contributions also extended to the creation of the Lisp programming language in 1958—a foundational AI language still relevant today in robotics and other scientific applications. The rise of AI gained more traction as the very . This move sparked a domino effect, leading to the establishment of similar research centers, including one at Stanford University and others across the United States. Influential researchers like Allen Newell and Herbert Simon stepped up as strong advocates of AI; they harnessed computer models to replicate and mimic human-like problem-solving skills. All these turning points collectively mark the birth of Artificial Intelligence as a game-changing field that continues to shape our world in so many ways. first AI lab was set up at MIT in 1959 Image from MathWorks 21st-century AI and the 4th Industrial Revolution In the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a powerful and transformative force is steering the course of our future, propelling humanity into a realm of unprecedented possibilities. This force, born from the fusion of cutting-edge technologies, finds its driving essence in the remarkable phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Much like the steam engine ignited the First Industrial Revolution and electricity powered the Second, the Third used electronics and information technology, and AI stands as the dynamic catalyst propelling the Fourth. Imagine a world where machines possess an extraordinary capacity not just to comprehend vast volumes of data but to learn, adapt, and make decisions akin to human thought. Imagine a future where factories operate with impeccable precision through automation, healthcare diagnoses are revolutionized by AI-driven insights, and cities seamlessly orchestrate traffic and resource management using intricate AI algorithms. However, the Fourth Industrial Revolution goes beyond the mere substitution of human tasks by machines. It embodies a harmonious partnership between humans and AI, expanding the horizons of human potential. With AI at its core, industries are undergoing radical transformations. From manufacturing to finance, from agriculture to entertainment, AI is redefining processes, amplifying productivity, and unveiling untapped opportunities. This vision of the future is not confined to the pages of science fiction; it is rapidly unfolding before our eyes. AI is no longer a mere tool; it has become an integral part of the tapestry of progress. As we venture deeper into the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the role of AI is set to grow exponentially, giving rise to innovations that are yet to be imagined. In this grand narrative of technological evolution, AI emerges as a central protagonist, guiding us into a world where the limits of human ingenuity are continually pushed and redefined. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is more than a wave of change; it is an enthralling journey powered by AI, where the extraordinary becomes commonplace and the future becomes the present. Image from Parametrix The twist? Throughout history and in the grand tapestry of life, humans wear the crown of dominance despite our physical limitations. Our brains, relative to our size, are the largest among animals. This gift empowers us with intelligence, enabling us to solve problems, plan ahead, and cooperate with one another. Our ability to work together and collaborate on tasks like hunting and building propels us forward. Plus, we wield tools and inventions that extend our abilities in ways animals can't. But here's the twist: A new contender is emerging. Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI), a creation born of human ingenuity. AI can match our mental feats and even surpass them. Just as we've tamed animals for our needs, could AI, too, shape our destiny? Imagine a world where we share the stage with AI. Could we become the subjects of our own creation as AI takes the lead? Just like we've harnessed the strengths of animals, can we find ourselves under the sway of AI's intelligence and capabilities? Image from Outlook India As we navigate this juncture, we confront questions that probe the essence of our dominion. The rise of AI urges us to explore the limits of our own imagination, to ponder the boundaries of power, and to wonder if our creation could one day eclipse us in ways we never imagined. This moment in time isn't just about cool technology. It's about us thinking deeply. Could our own invention end up leading the way? Could the things we've built become even smarter than us? As we walk this path, we're faced with big questions. We're talking about power, creation, and what it means to be in charge. It's like looking at a puzzle and realizing that some of the pieces might end up in places we never expected. It's exciting, obscure, and a bit mind-boggling. Also published here.

The Age of AI and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

Dick Sands the Boy Captain by Jules Verne, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book . THE APPRENTICE here THE APPRENTICE. There was no poop upon the "Pilgrim's" deck, so that Mrs. Weldon had no alternative than to acquiesce in the captain's proposal that she should occupy his own modest cabin. Accordingly, here she was installed with Jack and old Nan; and here she took all her meals, in company with the captain and Cousin Benedict. For Cousin Benedict tolerably comfortable sleeping accommodation had been contrived close at hand, while Captain Hull himself retired to the crew's quarter, occupying the cabin which properly belonged to the chief mate, but as already indicated, the services of a second officer were quite dispensed with. All the crew were civil and attentive to the wife of their employer, a master to whom they were faithfully attached. They were all natives of the coast of California, brave and experienced seamen, and united by tastes and habits in a common bond of sympathy. Few as they were in number, their work was never shirked, not simply from the sense of duty, but because they were directly interested in the profits of their undertaking; the success of their labours always told to their own advantage. The present expedition was the fourth that they had taken together; and, as it turned out to be the first in which they had failed to meet with success, it may be imagined that they were full of resentment against the mutinous whalemen who had been the cause of so serious a diminution of their ordinary gains. [Illustration: Negoro.] The only one on board who was not an American was a man who had been temporarily engaged as cook. His name was Negoro; he was a Portuguese by birth, but spoke English with perfect fluency. The previous cook had deserted the ship at Auckland, and when Negoro, who was out of employment, applied for the place, Captain Hull, only too glad to avoid detention, engaged him at once without inquiry into his antecedents. There was not the slightest fault to be found with the way in which the cook performed his duties, but there was something in his manner, or perhaps, rather in the expression of his countenance, which excited the Captain's misgivings, and made him regret that he had not taken more pains to investigate the character of one with whom he was now brought into such close contact Negoro looked about forty years of age. Although he had the appearance of being slightly built, he was muscular; he was of middle height, and seemed to have a robust constitution; his hair was dark, his complexion somewhat swarthy. His manner was taciturn, and although, from occasional remarks that he dropped, it was evident that he had received some education, he was very reserved on the subjects both of his family and of his past life. No one knew where he had come from, and he admitted no one to his confidence as to where he was going, except that he made no secret of his intention to land at Valparaiso. His freedom from sea-sickness demonstrated that this could hardly be his first voyage, but on the other hand his complete ignorance of seamen's phraseology made it certain that he had never been accustomed to his present occupation. He kept himself aloof as much as possible from the rest of the crew, during the day rarely leaving the great cast-iron stove, which was out of proportion to the measurement of the cramped little kitchen; and at night, as soon as the fire was extinguished, took the earliest opportunity of retiring to his berth and going to sleep. It has been already stated that the crew of the "Pilgrim" consisted of five seamen and an apprentice. This apprentice was Dick Sands. Dick was fifteen years old; he was a foundling, his unknown parents having abandoned him at his birth, and he had been brought up in a public charitable institution. He had been called Dick, after the benevolent passer-by who had discovered him when he was but an infant a few hours old, and he had received the surname of Sands as a memorial of the spot where he had been exposed, Sandy Hook, a point at the mouth of the Hudson, where it forms an entrance to the harbour of New York. As Dick was so young it was most likely he would yet grow a little taller, but it did not seem probable that he would ever exceed middle height, he looked too stoutly and strongly built to grow much. His complexion was dark, but his beaming blue eyes attested, with scarcely room for doubt, his Anglo-Saxon origin, and his countenance betokened energy and intelligence. The profession that he had adopted seemed to have equipped him betimes for fighting the battle of life. Misquoted often as Virgil's are the words "Audaces fortuna juvat!" but the true reading is "Audentes fortuna juvat!" and, slight as the difference may seem, it is very significant. It is upon the confident rather than the rash, the daring rather than the bold, that Fortune sheds her smiles; the bold man often acts without thinking, whilst the daring always thinks before he acts. And Dick Sands was truly courageous; he was one of the daring. At fifteen years old, an age at which few boys have laid aside the frivolities of childhood, he had acquired the stability of a man, and the most casual observer could scarcely fail to be attracted by his bright, yet thoughtful countenance. At an early period of his life he had realized all the difficulties of his position, and had made a resolution, from which nothing tempted him to flinch, that he would carve out for himself an honourable and independent career. Lithe and agile in his movements, he was an adept in every kind of athletic exercise; and so marvellous was his success in everything he undertook, that he might almost be supposed to be one of those gifted mortals who have two right hands and two left feet. Until he was four years old the little orphan had found a home in one of those institutions in America where forsaken children are sure of an asylum, and he was subsequently sent to an industrial school supported by charitable aid, where he learnt reading, writing, and arithmetic. From the days of infancy he had never deviated from the expression of his wish to be a sailor, and accordingly, as soon as he was eight, he was placed as cabin-boy on board one of the ships that navigate the Southern Seas. The officers all took a peculiar interest in him, and he received, in consequence, a thoroughly good grounding in the duties and discipline of a seaman's life. There was no room to doubt that he must ultimately rise to eminence in his profession, for when a child from the very first has been trained in the knowledge that he must gain his bread by the sweat of his brow, it is comparatively rare that he lacks the will to do so. Whilst he was still acting as cabin-boy on one of those trading-vessels, Dick attracted the notice of Captain Hull, who took a fancy to the lad and introduced him to his employer. Mr. Weldon at once took a lively interest in Dick's welfare, and had his education continued in San Francisco, taking care that he was instructed in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, to which his own family belonged. Throughout his studies Dick Sands' favourite subjects were always those which had a reference to his future profession; he mastered the details of the geography of the world; he applied himself diligently to such branches of mathematics as were necessary for the science of navigation; whilst for recreation in his hours of leisure, he would greedily devour every book of adventure in travel that came in his way. Nor did he omit duly to combine the practical with the theoretical; and when he was bound apprentice on board the "Pilgrim," a vessel not only belonging to his benefactor, but under the command of his kind friend Captain Hull, he congratulated himself most heartily, and felt that the experience he should gain in the southern whale-fisheries could hardly fail to be of service to him in after-life. A first-rate sailor ought to be a first-rate fisherman too. It was a matter of the greatest pleasure to Dick Sands when he heard to his surprise that Mrs. Weldon was about to become a passenger on board the "Pilgrim." His devotion to the family of his benefactor was large and genuine. For several years Mrs. Weldon had acted towards him little short of a mother's part, and for Jack, although he never forgot the difference in their position, he entertained well-nigh a brother's affection. His friends had the satisfaction of being assured that they had sown the seeds of kindness on a generous soil, for there was no room to doubt that the heart of the orphan boy was overflowing with sincere gratitude. Should the occasion arise, ought he not, he asked, to be ready to sacrifice everything in behalf of those to whom he was indebted not only for his start in life, but for the knowledge of all that was right and holy? Confiding in the good principles of her protÃ©gÃ©, Mrs. Weldon had no hesitation in entrusting her little son to his especial charge. During the frequent periods of leisure, when the sea was fair, and the sails required no shifting, the apprentice was never weary of amusing Jack by making him familiar with the practice of a sailor's craft; he made him scramble up the shrouds, perch upon the yards, and slip down the back-stays; and the mother had no alarm; her assurance of Dick Sands' ability and watchfulness to protect her boy was so complete that she could only rejoice in an occupation for him that seemed more than anything to restore the colour he had lost in his recent illness. Time passed on without incident; and had it not been for the constant prevalence of an adverse wind, neither passengers nor crew could have found the least cause of complaint. The pertinacity, however, with which the wind kept to the east could not do otherwise than make Captain Hull somewhat concerned; it absolutely prevented him from getting his ship into her proper course, and he could not altogether suppress his misgiving that the calms near the [Illustration: Dick and little Jack.] Tropic of Capricorn, and the equatorial current driving him on westwards, would entail a delay that might be serious. It was principally on Mrs. Weldon's account that the Captain began to feel uneasiness, and he made up his mind that if he could hail a vessel proceeding to America he should advise his passengers to embark on her; unfortunately, however, he felt that they were still in a latitude far too much to the south to make it likely that they should sight a steamer going to Panama; and at that date, communication between Australia and the New World was much less frequent than it has since become. Still, nothing occurred to interrupt the general monotony of the voyage until the 2nd of February, the date at which our narrative commences. It was about nine o'clock in the morning of that day that Dick and little Jack had perched themselves together on the top-mast-yards. The weather was very clear, and they could see the horizon right round except the section behind them, hidden by the brigantine-sail on the main-mast. Below them, the bowsprit seemed to lie along the water with its stay-sails attached like three unequal wings; from the lads' feet to the deck was the smooth surface of the fore-mast; and above their heads nothing but the small top-sail and the top-mast. The schooner was running on the larboard tack as close to the wind as possible. Dick Sand was pointing out to Jack how well the ship was ballasted, and was trying to explain how it was impossible for her to capsize, however much she heeled to starboard, when suddenly the little fellow cried out,- "I can see something in the water!" "Where? what?" exclaimed Dick, clambering to his feet upon the yard. "There!" said the child, directing attention to the portion of the sea-surface that was visible between the stay-sails. Dick fixed his gaze intently for a moment, and then shouted out lustily,- "Look out in front, to starboard! There is something afloat. To windward, look out!" About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jules Verne (2005). Dick sands, the boy Captain. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October 2022 https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3250.html.images This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at , located at . www.gutenberg.org https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html

THE APPRENTICE

Field, Forest and Farm by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . THE ROOT CHAPTER XV. THE ROOT “The stalk or trunk is the upward-growing part of the plant, and needs air and light. The root, on the contrary, is the downward-growing part, and it needs soil and darkness. The extreme ends of the root’s various subdivisions are always growing, always young, of delicate structure, and for that reason admirably fitted for imbibing, very much as a fine sponge would do, the liquids with which the soil is impregnated. Because of their facility in absorbing moisture these ever-growing tip-ends are called spongioles. The spongioles terminate the rootlets, that is to say the final subdivisions of the root, subdivisions known as root-hairs on account of their resemblance to real hair. “The root takes various forms, which are all reducible to two fundamental types. Sometimes it consists of a main body or tap-root, which sends out branches as it bores deeper into the soil. This designation, tap-root, is a common and familiar term. Sometimes the root assumes the form of a tuft, a bunch of rootlets, simple or branching, which, springing from the same point, continue to grow at a nearly equal rate and on an equal footing as to importance. [ ]Roots of this sort are commonly known as fibrous roots. 75 Roots “As a general rule, the growth of the root keeps pace with that of the stem or trunk. Thus the oak, elm, maple, beech, and all our large trees have a vigorous, deep-growing root as anchorage for the enormous superstructure, to brace it firmly against the wind. But there is no lack of lowly herbage that has roots quite out of proportion to the other parts,—veritable tap-roots of greater size and vigor than many a plant of far greater aërial development can boast. To this class belong the mallow, carrot, and radish. Lucerne has for support to its meager foliage a root that bores two or three meters into the ground. “An agricultural practice of supreme interest is based, at least partly, on the excessive development of certain roots. The plant is a laboratory where life converts into nutritive matter the manure from [ ]our stables and poultry-yards. A cart-load of dung becomes at the farmer’s pleasure, after passing through one sort of plant or another, a crop of peas or beans, a basket of fruit, or a loaf of bread. Hence this fertilizer is a very precious thing which nothing can replace and which must be utilized to the very utmost. The nourishment of us all depends on it. Enriched with this fertilizer, the soil produces, we will say, a first harvest of wheat. But wheat with its bunch of short and fine roots, has drawn only upon the upper layer of fertilizing material, leaving intact all that the rain has dissolved and carried down into the lower layers. It has performed its mission admirably, it is true; it has made a clean sweep and converted into wheat all the fertilizer contained in the layer of soil accessible to its roots, so that if wheat were sown a second time no harvest would be obtained. The soil, then, is exhausted on the surface, but in its underlying strata it is still rich. Well, what crop shall we choose for the utilization of these lower strata and the production of still further supplies of food? It cannot be barley, oats, or rye, since their little fibrous roots would find nothing to glean in the surface soil after the first crop of wheat. But it will be lucerne, since this plant will send down its roots, each as thick as your finger, to the depth of one, two, or even three meters, if need be, and give back the fertilizer in the form of forage, which, with the help of the animal that feeds on it, will be converted into nutritious meat, valuable dairy products, excellent wool, or, at the very least, [ ]animal power for draft service or other work. This succession of two or more different kinds of crops for the utmost utilization of a given area of prepared soil is called rotation of crops, of which there will be more to say later. 76 77 “Deep roots, so admirably adapted to the utilization of the lower strata of the soil, become in other circumstances a source of serious difficulty. Suppose a tree is to be transplanted. Its long tap-root will make the operation difficult and hazardous. You must dig deep, both in pulling it out and in replanting it; and then you must be careful not to injure the root, for it is all in one piece and if it does not take hold and grow the sapling will die. In this case it would be much to the tree’s advantage to have fibrous roots running down only to a slight depth; it could then be pulled up easily, and if some roots perished in the operation enough would be left intact to insure the success of the transplanting. “This result can be obtained: it is no difficult matter to make the tree lose its tap-root and acquire, not a regular bundle of roots of even length; but a short and much ramified root that possesses the advantages of the bunch of small roots without having its shape. Thus in nurseries where young trees remain for some years before being transplanted, after two years’ growth a spade is passed under the surface of the soil to cut off the main root, which would in time become a deep tap-root. The stump that remains then branches out horizontally without going deeper. Another way is to pave the nursery [ ]bed with tiles. The tap-root of the young tree pushes downward until it reaches this barrier, where it is straightway forced to stop growing in depth and compelled to send out lateral branches. 78 “The kind of root we have thus far been talking about is primordial, original; every plant has it on emerging from the seed; it appears as soon as the seed germinates. But many plants have other roots that develop at different points of the stem, replacing the original root when that dies, or at least coming to its aid if it continues to live. They are called adventitious roots, and they play a highly important part, notably in certain horticultural operations such as propagating by slips and layers, which we will talk about later. “Besides these two operations, the object of which is to multiply the plant, it is customary to prompt the growth of adventitious roots either for the purpose of fixing the plant more firmly in the ground or in order to increase its yield. The best way to attain this result is to bank up the earth at the base of the stalk. This process is sometimes called earthing up. The buried portion soon sends out a great number of roots. Indian corn, for example, if left to itself is too poorly rooted to resist wind and rain, which beat it down. In order to give it greater stability the farmer earths up the corn. In the earth banked up at the base of the stalk bundles of adventitious roots form and furnish the plant a firmer support. “Wheat stalks bear on their lower ends buds [ ]which, according to circumstances, perish to the detriment of the harvest or develop into roots and promote the growth of more ears of grain. Let us suppose wheat has been sown in the autumn. In that cold and rainy season vegetation is slow, the stalk grows but little, and the various buds remain very close together almost on a level with the ground. But if they are favored by having damp soil near them, these buds send forth adventitious roots which nourish them directly and promote a fullness of growth that the ordinary root by itself could not have secured. Thus stimulated by nourishment, these buds develop into so many wheat-stalks, each one ending at a later period in an ear of grain. But if wheat is sown in the spring, its rapid growth under the influence of mild weather brings the buds too high for them to send out roots. The stalk then remains single. In the first case from one grain of wheat sown there springs a cluster of stalks producing as many ears; in the second case the harvest is reduced to its lowest terms: from one grain of wheat one stalk, one ear. Hence this development of the lower buds of cereals is of the greatest importance. To obtain it, or, in agricultural terms, to make the wheat send up suckers, the lower buds must send down adventitious roots, as they will do if they are brought into contact with the soil. To this end, shortly after germination a wooden roller is passed over the field, and this roller, without bruising the young stalks, pushes them deeper into the ground.” 79 About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre (2022). Field, Forest and Farm. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/67813/pg67813-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

THE ROOT

AUSTRALIA

There’s this rule of thumb in computer science that acts more like a fundamental law in the cryptosphere—it’s about ten times more difficult to do something the decentralized way than the centralized way. Perhaps that’s why the bulk of 21st century Internet innovation (or colonization) happened under Big Tech’s reign while the peer-to-peer movement remained a thing to scoff at. Developing tech companies have always been understandably reluctant in choosing the decentralized path, but the crypto world cleverly managed to popularize the hard way as the default way for today’s tech startups (or at least the appearance of decentralization, but we’ll get back to that). But how do you get a highly technical revolution real-estate in the public consciousness? Only in hindsight does the recipe become obvious: The first ingredient is relatable blanket terms that neatly sum up the crypto movement's ideals. Blockchain, DeFi, and Web3 should do for now. Then make clinging to those ideals a prerequisite for the successful funding of any startup. Next, add a financial incentive for the hackers, tycoons, and shills to go do what they do best under the flag of crypto. And vwa-la, a few bubble cycles later the general public, without learning a single thing about money or the Internet, intuitively associate their future with those blanket terms. The trouble is, a great deal of information gets lost in translation when using such vague terms to explain a project. Blockchain startups are generally fixated on a distinctly narrow non-blockchain solution, yet they can prop themselves up as new “Internet layers” or  “decentralized banks” while having nothing to do with Internet infrastructure or banking, all because they’re or the many larger blockchain infrastructure components that preceded them. Those deep in the space know blockchain equivalents, by virtue of their decentralization, are a different thing entirely. What an inconvenient truth that is if you’re tasked with explaining what doesn’t yet exist. powered by built on dVPNs are in the opposite predicament. For obvious reasons, they got stuck being framed almost exclusively in the context of VPNs. Ironically, they do not fit the Web3, DeFi, or blockchain narrative because they are actually a novel Internet infrastructure layer. The same case could be made for any modern tech startup that doesn’t fit into a buzzword-oriented category. But I’d argue the dVPN has a closer relationship to Web3 than most would like to admit. A Web3 with no dVPN There’s a reason governments and megacorps don’t delve much into blockchain technology, even as year over year support for a Blockchain Revolution continues to grow: Web3 is still under the thumb of the same public and private institutions it means to replace. Just using the tech sector and overall government spending as a proxy, the crypto movement has yet to even slow its exponential growth. I tried to solve for this disconnect in my book , and concluded the societal shift toward decentralization is far from inevitable—it’s more like a fight for control over the movement’s direction. Blockchain Wars: The Future of Big Tech Monopolies and the Blockchain Internet DeFi and Web3 have some ambitious goals, to say the least. DeFi aims to give power back to the people by creating a money system that governments can’t control. Web3 aims to shift the decision-making around Internet services from business executives to communities of peers. These grandiose goals are perhaps attainable in the long-term, but the more imminent problem is staring every Web user right in the face—the Internet’s borders. An Unspoken Problem A good portion of your worldview is shaped by where you live, and that’s no longer just because of your physical surroundings. The Internet you probably interact with every day feeds you noticeably different information depending on your location. In the more mild cases, this will slightly alter Google searches and social media feeds based on the demographic of your area. In the more extreme cases, Internet services are filtered or completely blocked by governments. Without being too specific, it’s safe to say this at least partially explains the all-time-high and ever-growing political polarization, both nationally and regionally. It shouldn’t be hard to convince anyone of the issue with this system. It makes large institutions, specifically governments and tech companies, the default gatekeepers of all public information. And it’s no secret these heavily regulated domestic versions of the Internet aren’t designed on some impartial basis, or in the best interest of citizens, but for suppression of information deemed harmful by the controlling party. It’s the perfect setup for extremely powerful propaganda machines, capable of dividing entire populations even in today's increasingly globalized world. *** We crypto enthusiasts don’t flaunt this, probably because Web3 offers no compelling solution. It doesn’t matter how good a blockchain’s underlying cryptography is. Countries can and will block the traditional websites of their affiliated startups, thus blocking access to that blockchain. China can’t stop the Ethereum Blockchain, but it could block all the front-ends of Ethereum dapps. Even the United States blocks or limits access to foreign cryptocurrency exchanges, even blockchain-based ones like Binance Smart Chain. The technical reasoning for this runs quite deep. As I alluded to at the opening of this blog, “decentralized” Internet services you interact with are almost never decentralized. For each project, there are varying degrees of decentralization, each in the various places where they apply. It’s not an easy topic to summarize, but FlipsideCrypto, a data science company that studies blockchains, does it best with their . About 99% of blockchains are centralized, 0.9% are approaching decentralization, and 0.1% are truly decentralized. This doesn’t even account for the heavily centralized Web2 layers that almost all blockchains still rest on. 0.1%—0.9%—99% rule Web3 can accurately be described as a new Internet layer, but certainly not as a new Internet, as it doesn’t carve into its lower levels. At this incipient stage, it’s tempting to overestimate Web3’s abilities while underestimating its fragility. Admittedly, Big Tech and Big Government will continue to crimp down on Internet innovation with the arbitrary borders their spheres of influence create. Enter the dVPN dVPNs have little to do with blockchain, but everything to do with peer-to-peer networks. Their goal is quite simply, to make the Internet blind to borders. It does this by encapsulating the parts of your device that touch the Internet and supplanting all their data exchange with some distant connection chosen by you. That’s it really, an elegantly simple dictum technically capable of addressing all the aforementioned concerns. At face value, this seems just like a VPN, but as with most things in computer science, the decentralized architecture makes it a different thing entirely. The most important facet of their decentralization is in their node network, which is residential, not commercial. This means VPN endpoints are random people using open-source software to share their device’s spare bandwidth, not servers in industrial data centers. This grants dVPNs three distinct advantages over VPNs: (1) the displacement of trust from a single company to an open-source community of random peers, (2) cheaper, KYC-less, middlemen-less, subscription-less, seamless payments, and most importantly (3) a service unblockable by conventional means. Such advantages arise only out of a high degree of decentralization on many different levels, hence the high difficulty in making them a technical reality. The story of how dVPNs enable this and fit into the larger Web3 space has gone untold. is the perfect poster child of the dVPN technology stack because of the project’s incessant commitment to decentralization. Mysterium Network ***Disclaimer: Though I'm writing this on my own accord and with full autonomy, I do work at Mysterium Network as a business analyst and admittedly have a certain degree of bias toward them.*** Decentralization on “many levels” sounds ambiguous. Let me be more specific. Mysterium’s token is decentralized, given the total supply having been circulating for over four years, the number of holders growing with each new user, and with the vast majority of trading being on decentralized exchanges. The tech has always been fully open-source, made with consistent, almost daily iterations by over a dozen developers, for several years. It is not a privately owned dVPN service, but a public technology stack others can use to make dVPNs or add dVPN-like features to their apps/dapps/browsers/search engines. Specialized hardware is a foreign concept for Mysterium, as the network can be adapted for any device and router types. Moving into mainnet, every user/provider interaction with the service will be permissionless. And of course, geographical decentralization and a majority residential node network is a given, and all those network statistics are transparently recorded on my.mysterium.network. Rather than harping on the technical aspects that make this dVPN stack such a technological feat, I’ll point to a single metric that demonstrates it. The Fundamental Crypto Asset Score (FCAS) is a metric created by the same company that made the 0.1%—0.9%—99% rule. You’ll see this used in the ratings tab on coinmarketcap. Using a series of both on and off-chain datapoints, FCAS measures the quality of hundreds of cryptocurrencies by User Activity, Market Maturity, and Developer behavior. Mysterium has terrible scores for user activity and market maturity because none of the testnet data makes it into the calcs, but the developer behavior at the time of this writing is . For reference, that’s within 5 points of the Dev scores for Uniswap, Chainlink, and Polkadot. The results may be slightly skewed by the fact that the Mysterium team uses GitHub for a lot of things, but the fact that a ~#1,000 crypto stacks up with some of the most well-developed projects ever speaks volumes about their technological sophistication. 926/1,000 Suffice to say, Mysterium’s ethos exhibits a refreshing willingness to forgo the easy path in favor of decentralization. It’s an increasingly rare quality in the cryptosphere, and it’s about to start paying off. Mysterium mainnet is set to occur within a few short months, meaning access to a polished, permissionless, unstoppable dVPN technology stack is also around the corner. It's unrealistic to think the rules of the data economy and government censorship will be rewritten through implementation at the level of app users. The real game-changer is realized from browsers, apps, and other Internet services having a newfound toolkit that wards off Internet gatekeepers that bully their users. Restoring the Internet as a global network, blind to borders is a necessary step for Web3 that isn’t guaranteed without the help of the dVPN.

What the Crypto World doesn’t understand about the dVPN

BY RYAN HOLMES Growth or profit? For tech startups, it’s a million-dollar (and sometimes billion-dollar) question. If you want to expand your business, you generally have to spend money. But when does growth at all costs become a reckless strategy? How do you find the right balance between growth and burn? The tech world’s last major reckoning with this question was back in March 2014, when Silicon Valley darling filed an S-1 indicating it was ready to IPO. For years, Box, which offers cloud-based content-management software to enterprises, had been growing at a fast clip. Investors were willing to overlook the massive amounts of money the company was losing, citing its long-term potential. Box But then something unexpected happened. The markets shifted. Investors hunkered down. Whispers went out that Box’s “unit economics” weren’t working. So the company before finally going public. The new attitude: Growth was important, but companies needed to be profitable (or show at least clear path to profitability), too. waited nine long months So what’s the optimal ratio between these two fundamentals? Ultimately, the answer is still fairly subjective, but there’s an insanely simple chart that can help you sort it out. MEET THE GROWTH-PROFIT MATRIX There’s no shortage of methods out there for assessing whether your startup has got the growth-profit balance just right — the real question is what “just right” actually means. The for example, suggests that a successful software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup’s growth rate plus profit should add up to 40: If you’re growing at 60% rate, you can afford to lose 20%, for instance. now-famous “Rule of 40,” But I’m a highly visual person and started to wonder whether there was a way to express this dynamic graphically. Thinking about ‘s own trajectory, I threw together this super-simple chart: Hootsuite Now, I realize this is far from scientific, and I also know the underlying concept isn’t new or revolutionary — everyone to the venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz have used graphs like this to assess businesses. It’s very basic, but — at a glance — it should let you know if your company is headed in the right direction. from Boston Consulting Group Needless to say, the bottom-left quadrant here is the one you generally want to find yourself in. With few exceptions, you don’t want your startup to be losing money and not really growing. That’s a sure sign that you haven’t mastered product-market fit yet. don’t The top-left quadrant is where most promising startups start off. It’s definitely where Hootsuite was in its early years. We were losing money, but for all the right reasons: burning through our investments in order to grow fast. In retrospect, this approach let us gain a huge early lead on our competitors in the social-relationship platform space. As we matured, our priorities shifted. Growth remained important, but investors and analysts became increasingly focused on seeing a path to profitability. So we reduced our spending, tightening belts and asking employees to do more with less. Last year, we . There’s no doubt we’re a healthier company now, one built to make money built to last doing it. achieved a cash-flow positive milestone and A CONSTANT GAME OF FOUR SQUARE The idea of just “breaking even” may not sound like a milestone, but if you look at similar-sized companies in our space, it’s actually kind of revolutionary. We’re an eight-year-old business, we’re still growing at a great pace, but we’re actually cash-positive. For most cloud companies — from Zendesk and Marketo to Hubspot and Shopify — the idea of breaking even doesn’t enter the picture until anywhere from two to four years IPO. after So when it comes to the growth-profit matrix, it’s all about angling yourself into the right quadrant at the right time — knowing it might not be in your best interest to try and stay put there forever. For many startups, this is easy to miss. If we were to think of these four types of growth-profit ratio as phases, on the other hand, stretched out chronologically, we might be setting ourselves up to fail. I hardly think of our high-growth days as over and done with. While it’s not easy to achieve high profitability and high growth at the same time, there’s one way to break into that elusive top-right quadrant of the chart (and_back_ into it if you’ve had to slow down and refocus for awhile): continuous innovation. By developing new product lines and finding new ways to , it’s possible to sustain high profits while also expanding market share. bring real benefits to customers In our case, for example, we’ve built new functionality into our core platform, including the ability to . And we’re adding features that make our dashboard useful not just to marketers but to net new audiences — namely, and customer service teams. All these steps align with our long-term goal–one that’s predicated on high growth and high profit — of becoming a $10 billion company. buy social media ads sales The profit-growth question doesn’t have easy answers. What’s more, you can never stop asking it because the answer might change according to circumstance. Depending on your industry and the stage of your company, “success” might mean a very different ratio than it does for a different startup in a different phase. Ultimately, every investor cares primarily about one thing: how much cash flow your company generates over its lifetime. You may not be profitable , but there needs to be a clear route to profitability, ideally in your near future — no matter how groundbreaking your business idea may be. right now . This article originally appeared on Fast Company and is reprinted with permission More From Fast Company: Making The Case For Hiring Less And Growing Slowly Why This CEO Appointed An Employee To Change Dumb Company Rules Three Myths About Successful Founders That Just Won’t Die

The Quick and Dirty Growth-Profit Matrix

Sometimes, it’s kind of interesting to know the origins of the products/projects we love. I made a collection of such products/projects and the stories of how they got their name. JavaScript (Programming language) From an made to its creator : interview Brendan Eich InfoWorld: As I understand it, JavaScript started out as Mocha, then became LiveScript and then became JavaScript when Netscape and Sun got together. But it actually has nothing to do with Java or not much to do with it, correct? Eich: That’s right. It was all within six months from May till December (1995) that it was Mocha and then LiveScript. And then in early December, Netscape and Sun did a license agreement and it became JavaScript. And the idea was to make it a complementary scripting language to go with Java, with the compiled language. MySQL (Database management system) is one of the founder of MySQL and one of his daughter's name is My(after whom MySQL was named). Michael "Monty" Widenius Git (Version control system) Linus Torvalds (Developer of Git) has quipped about the name git, which is British English slang for a stupid or unpleasant person. Torvalds said: "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'.The man page describes git as "the stupid content tracker". Ubuntu (Operation system) The OS was named after the Southern African philosophy of (literally, 'human-ness'), which Canonical Ltd. suggests can be loosely translated as "humanity to others" or "I am what I am because of who we all are". ubuntu Java (Programming language) The language was initially called Oak after an oak tree that stood outside James Gosling(Developer of Java)'s office. Later the project went by the name Green and was finally renamed Java, from . Java coffee Python (Programming language) In (Developer of Python)'s own words: Van Rossum " " In December 1989, I was looking for a "hobby" programming project that would keep me occupied during the week around Christmas. My office ... would be closed, but I had a home computer, and not much else on my hands. I decided to write an interpreter for the new scripting language I had been thinking about lately: a descendant of ABC that would appeal to Unix/C hackers. I chose Python as a working title for the project, being in a slightly irreverent mood (and a big fan of Monty Python's Flying Circus). Ruby (Programming language) The name "Ruby" originated during an online chat session between Yukihiro Matsumoto (Developer of Ruby) and Keiju Ishitsuka on February 24, 1993, before any code had been written for the language. Initially two names were proposed: "Coral" and "Ruby". Matsumoto chose the latter in a later e-mail to Ishitsuka. Matsumoto later noted a factor in choosing the name "Ruby" – it was the birthstone of one of his colleagues. when name was decided and email they've shared. The original conversation was in Japanese. Translated chat Scala (Programming language) The name Scala is a portmanteau of scalable and language, signifying that it is designed to grow with the demands of its users. Django (Python frmaework) The framework was named after guitarist . Django Reinhardt Chrome (Browser) An answer from Glen Murphy, Design Lead, Google Chrome on asking "How Chrome gets its name?". In his words, " " We had a ‘pick a codename’ vote early in the development cycle – the names that came of that competition were so terrible that we were all pretty happy when one of the leads overrode it and declared that the codename would be ‘Chrome’, presumably because he likes fast cars. Mozilla (Company) The history of the name Mozilla goes all the way back to the internal codename for the original 1994 Netscape Navigator browser, with the name meaning "Mosaic killer" and aiming to some similarity with the building-crushing , as the company's goal was to displace as the world's number one web browser. The name Mozilla was revived as the 1998 open sourcing spinoff organization from Netscape. Godzilla NCSA Mosaic Firefox (Browser) The name "Firefox" (a reference to the ) was chosen by Mozilla for its similarity to "Firebird" (which was the former name of Firefox), but also for its uniqueness in the computing industry. red panda Laravel (PHP Framework) " " — (Creator of Laravel) When trying to think of names, I thought about the geography of Tolkien's Middle Earth and C.S. Lewis' Narnia. In Narnia, Cair Paravel is the name of the castle where the kings and queens of Narnia live. Laravel rhymes with Paravel. I thought the name had a classy and sophisticated ring to it. Taylor Otwell Hadoop (Open source big data software) The name Hadoop is not an acronym; it’s a made-up name. The project’s creator, , explains how the name came about: Doug Cutting “ ” The name my kid gave a stuffed yellow elephant. Short, relatively easy to spell and pronounce, meaningless, and not used elsewhere: those are my naming criteria. Kids are good at generating such. Googol is a kid’s term. Skype (Instant messaging app) The name for the is derived from "Sky peer-to-peer", which was then abbreviated to "Skyper". However, some of the domain names associated with "Skyper" were already taken. Dropping the final "r" left the current title "Skype", for which domain names were available. software Adobe (Company) The name Adobe was derived from Adobe Creek, a river or creek that ran behind the house of John Warnock, one of the founders. But where is Adobe Creek? It's located in Los Altos, California. Apache (Software foundation) According to the FAQ in the Apache project website, the name Apache was chosen out of respect to the Native American tribe and their superior skills in warfare and strategy. The name was widely believed to be a pun on 'A Patchy Server' (since it was a set of software patches). Apache Leave such stories in the comment section if you know about one.

How software projects got their name

After closing their , (circa $146 millions raised to date) announced new licence changes (again) to their Redis Modules. Before that we had high profile startups (behind Apache Kafka with circa $205m raised to date) and (now a public company) change their licences. These licence changes are according to their executives necessary to protect against what they perceive as unfair practices from big cloud vendors ( often cited as biggest culprit) — who do not make significant contributions (or none at all!) to open source projects and yet fork projects to create competing hosted services. The following are some of the quotes from Redis and Confluent executives that echo the sentiment of unfairness towards the big cloud vendors. latest funding round Redis Confluent MongoDB Inc Amazon Web Services “The community now understands that the original concept of because it isn’t suitable anymore to the modern era where cloud companies use their monopoly power to adopt any successful open-source project without contributing anything to it” — Redis CEO Ofer Bengal. open source has to be fixed “As a company, one solution we could pursue would be for us to build more proprietary software and pull back from our open source investments. But we think the right way to build fundamental infrastructure layers is with open code. As workloads move to the cloud we need a mechanism for preserving that freedom while also enabling a cycle of investment, and this is our motivation for the licensing change. We think this is a positive change and one that can help ensure small open source communities aren’t acting as free and unsustainable R&D for tech giants that put sustaining resources only into their own differentiated proprietary offerings.” — Confluent co founder . Jay Kreps Being open source VC backed startups means large exit via IPO or M & As is #1 priority for their investors, and that`s OK, after all VCs also need to deliver high returns to their own backers!:) But in order to deliver significant returns to investors, these startups need to first deliver great value to their customers and gain significant market share — meaning increased adoptions of their technology, fast revenue growth via hosted services and other enterprise support services. Unfortunately these business objectives become harder to meet if big cloud vendors with high distribution power such as AWS are offering similar hosted services. For example Confluent reacted with soon after AWS announced their — because of course they understood the negative impact to growth of AWS offering a hosted Kafka service that will be competing with Confluent`s own hosted service that also runs on the AWS infrastructure. licence changes Amazon Managed Streaming for Kafka (MSK) All this brings us to a fundamental question that we would like to ask the HackerNoon community. Can an open source startup ecosystem thrive alongside the very aggressive market expansion of big cloud vendors? Or even a more interesting question, is being VC back startup really compatible with the current open source business models? Of course there are some good exceptions of companies built on open source business model like — now part of IBM after several years as a public company. Another company using open source business model that could possibly follow Red Hat`s path is . Red Hat Canonical One thing we have consistently witnessed over the past few years is that far too many startups use open source strategy prematurely as a quick way to get traction in order to raise money from VCs— and later try to capture enterprise customers with hugely expensive enterprise offerings that make the cheaper alternatives of big cloud vendors more attractive? Please share your thoughts with us by completing this — we will share the results of the survey on HN in the coming weeks. Survey: Open Source Survey | Posted by , Co — Founder | Twitter: Bambordé Baldé @cloudbalde | LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bambordé

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