Spoiler Alert

spoileralert

This is the first book about "Hannibal Lecter", the cannibalistic serial killer. Published in 1981, in this thriller, we follow the story of Will Graham, an FBI agent, who is brought out of retirement to track a serial killer known as the "Tooth Fairy." The story begins with the massacre of two families in Birmingham and Atlanta. The FBI is stumped, with no leads or motive. At this point, the FBI ask for Graham's help, a former agent who captured Dr. Lecter and now is living a quiet life in Florida. Graham doesn't want to help because of the physical and psychological wound made by Dr. Hannibal, but in the end, he is coerced by his former boss, Jack Crawford, to come out of retirement to help track down the Tooth Fairy. One remarkable thing about this book is the ability of Will Graham to recreate the crime scenes and reenacts the murders in his mind to get a sense of what happened to understand the motivations and psyche of the Tooth Fairy. At a certain moment, he became stumped and consulted Dr. Lecter in prison. They have a unique relationship, Dr. Lecter admiring Graham's mind and Graham using Dr. Lecter's insights to track down the killer. A lot of the tension is built with plot twists, red herrings and false leads. Eventually, Graham realizes that the Tooth Fairy is Francis Dolarhyde, a disabled man who works at a film lab. Dolarhyde is obsessed with William Blake's painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun" and believes he is transforming into the Red Dragon. The climax is when Graham and Dolarhyde face off in a final showdown. The final confrontation was tense and thrilling, keeping the reader in suspense until the end. In the end, Graham can stop Dolarhyde and bring him to justice. Another reason this book is one of the best thrillers is the several complex and well-developed characters. The reader can understand very well their thoughts, motivations, and personalities. The Author made the reader become part of the story. And there are a lot of gross depictions of violence. "Red Dragon" is one of the best thriller books and is considered Thomas Harris' best work, exploring the dark and twisted inner of the human mind. Cover by @ Kiuyan Ran

THE RED DRAGON Book Full Plot Summary [Spoiler Alert]

EL DRAGÓN ROJO Resumen completo de la trama del libro [Alerta de spoiler]

THE RED DRAGON Livre Résumé complet de l'intrigue [Spoiler Alert]

रेड ड्रैगन बुक का पूरा प्लॉट सारांश [स्पॉयलर अलर्ट]

THE RED DRAGON Book 全あらすじまとめ【ネタバレ注意】

Resumo do enredo completo do livro THE RED DRAGON [Alerta de spoiler]

Cuốn sách RỒNG ĐỎ Tóm tắt toàn bộ cốt truyện [Cảnh báo spoiler]

红龙书完整情节摘要 [剧透警报]

Learn about my secret way for getting into Google. And, new MERCH! (US shipping) (Global Shipping) https://amzn.to/2XSivc7 https://teespring.com/stores/techlead... 👨‍💻 Join ex-Google/ex-Facebook engineers for my coding interview training here. http://techinterviewpro.com/ 👨‍💻 Watch 100+ programming interview problems explained: (20% off now, limited time) https://coderpro.com/ 👨‍💻 Sign up for my FREE daily coding interview practice: http://dailyinterviewpro.com/ 🎬 Learn how I built a $1,000,000+ business on YouTube and the behind-the-scenes strategies of running a successful YouTube channel: http://youtubebackstage.com/ 📈 Get your 2 FREE stocks on WeBull (valued up to $1,400): https://act.webull.com/k/S4oOH2yGOtHk... 🛒 My computer/camera gear: http://amazon.com/shop/techlead 💳 TechLead "ultra-thin" wallet gift: https://amzn.to/2WNhqEP ☕ TechLead custom coffee-maker gift: https://amzn.to/3dxwrzr 🎉 Party up: http://instagram.com/techleadhd/ http://twitter.com/techleadhd/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickshyu/ Disclosure: Some links are affiliate links to products. I may receive a small commission for purchases made through these links. Video Transcript: Note: This transcript is auto-generated by YouTube and may not be entirely accurate. 00:00 hey tech lead here and welcome to the 00:01 attack lead show 00:03 now i am an ex google tech lead 00:06 it is coffee time oh that's great now 00:10 what we're going to talk about today is 00:12 how to get into google 00:13 as a software engineer i can tell you 00:15 how to get in i have done over 100 00:17 interviews for the company 00:19 why don't you join me for a drive and 00:21 we'll talk about this 00:24 so what i'm trying to tell you here is 00:25 that 00:27 i've hacked the system there's actually 00:30 a 00:30 loophole okay in the recruiting system 00:34 in which anybody can easily just bypass 00:38 the whole 00:38 recruiting process and get into google 00:41 now this is something that i've kept to 00:43 myself for 00:44 quite a while now and i was very 00:46 reluctant to share this 00:48 secret and once you pick up on the 00:50 secret 00:51 you'll find that it's not based on 00:53 competency 00:55 right you don't necessarily need to even 00:57 know how to code 00:58 that's why there's so many people so 01:00 many incompetent engineers working at 01:03 these large tech companies people who 01:05 have no idea what they're doing 01:07 people who have no idea how to reverse a 01:09 linked list 01:10 i'm talking about like managers right 01:12 you want to learn how to get into tech 01:14 right and you want a shortcut and i'm 01:17 here to tell you 01:19 yeah there's a shortcut literally hold 01:21 on there's a traffic light here let me 01:23 see if i can just hack that traffic 01:24 light 01:26 there we go you know they say to never 01:29 drink and drive 01:30 and they're right but i'm a professional 01:34 tech lead so just don't copy me don't do 01:37 what i do at home kids 01:39 now let me put it this way the first 01:42 step 01:42 is you need to make your way to silicon 01:44 valley 01:45 sorry i had to just make a u-turn i kind 01:47 of got lost 01:49 and you know oftentimes people just get 01:51 lost in the woods 01:52 right you know you don't see the forest 01:55 for the trees and then people get 01:57 all stuck in the weeds messing around 02:00 but most of the time i would say at 02:02 least say 90 02:04 of the time this technique should get 02:05 you through 02:07 the doors of any company 02:12 all right we're almost there so here's 02:14 the thing 02:15 right you want to know the trick you 02:17 want to know how to get into google 02:19 where are you there that's right we're 02:22 already there we got into google 02:24 this is it let's go take a look all 02:36 right and there we go 02:37 we got into google see that wasn't so 02:40 hard was it 02:42 you basically just need to go on san 02:43 antonio road head northbound 02:45 make a ride over onto charleston and you 02:48 can get onto the google campus 02:50 fairly easy it's open to the public 02:52 anybody can go in it's not that 02:53 difficult you know using this technique 02:55 okay you can actually get into any top 02:57 tech company you know you could get into 02:59 apple 03:00 amazon facebook netflix and i know that 03:03 many times it can be pretty difficult 03:05 for a lot of people 03:06 i might get lost in the woods lost in 03:08 the forest but what you want to do is 03:10 make sure that you're following the 03:11 proper navigation just follow those 03:13 step-by-step turn-by-turn instructions 03:15 you can get into any top tech company 03:17 now i have a few additional updates i 03:18 want to point your attention to 03:20 you may be wondering what i'm wearing 03:21 here and this is the t-shirt i've got 03:23 here 03:24 it's me adjusting my glasses 03:27 and it's a pretty cool shirt actually i 03:29 really like the way it turned out 03:31 it's available in the description below 03:33 if you're interested in checking it out 03:34 it says 03:35 respect the tech lead and i especially 03:37 like the words here 03:39 tech lee tech lead with the segmentation 03:41 fault because 03:43 it runs out of stack space as is trying 03:45 to repeat that and 03:46 it is true by the way i am the tag lead 03:48 and let's not forget that 03:50 i actually found this design agency who 03:53 was able to create the design 03:54 get you guys all set up with this i made 03:56 it as cheaply pressed as possible 03:59 and the design actually costs a few 04:00 hundred dollars to create 04:02 so it's high quality stuff i hope you 04:03 guys enjoy that

How to Hack Your Way Into Google (Spoiler Alert: You’ll be Using Wheels)

Navigating toward a cloud-native architecture can be both exciting and challenging. The expectation of learning valuable lessons should always be top of mind as design becomes a reality. In this article, I wanted to focus on an example where my project seemed like a perfect serverless use case, one where I’d leverage AWS Lambda. Spoiler alert: it was not. Rendering Fabric.js Data In a publishing project, we utilized Fabric.js—a JavaScript HTML5 canvas library—to manage complex metadata and content layers. These complexities included spreads, pages, and templates, each embedded with fonts, text attributes, shapes, and images. As the content evolved, teams were tasked with updates, necessitating the creation of a publisher-quality PDF after each update. We built a Node.js service to run Fabric.js, generating PDFs and storing resources in AWS S3 buckets with private cloud access. During a typical usage period, over 10,000 teams were using the service, with each contributor sending multiple requests to the service as a result of manual page saves or auto-saves driven by the Angular client. The service was set up to run as a Lambda in AWS. The idea of paying at the request level seemed ideal. Where Serverless Fell Short We quickly realized that our Lambda approach wasn’t going to cut it. The spin-up time turned out to be the first issue. Not only was there the time required to start the Node.js service, but preloading nearly 100 different fonts that could be used by those 10,000 teams caused delays too. We were also concerned about Lambda’s processing limit of 250 MB of unzipped source code. The initial release of the code was already over 150 MB in size, and we still had a large backlog of feature requests that would only drive this number higher. Finally, the complexity of the pages—especially as more elements were added—demanded increased CPU and memory to ensure quick PDF generation. After observing the usage for first-generation page designs completed by the teams, we forecasted the need for nearly 12 GB of RAM. Currently, AWS Lambdas are limited to 10 GB of RAM. Ultimately, we opted for dedicated EC2 compute resources to handle the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, this decision significantly increased our DevOps management workload. Looking For a Better Solution Although I am no longer involved with that project, I’ve always wondered if there was a better solution for this use case. While I appreciate AWS, Google, and Microsoft providing enterprise-scale options for cloud-native adoption, what kills me is the associated learning curve for every service. The company behind the project was a smaller technology team. Oftentimes teams in that position struggle with adoption when it comes to using the big three cloud providers. The biggest challenges I continue to see in this regard are: A heavy investment in DevOps or CloudOps to become cloud-native.
Gaining a full understanding of what appears to be endless options.
Tech debt related to cost analysis and optimization. Since I have been working with the Heroku platform, I decided to see if they had an option for my use case. Turns out, they introduced large dynos earlier this year. For example, with their Performance-L RAM dyno, my underlying service would get 50x the compute power of a standard Dyno and 30 GB of RAM. The capability to write to AWS S3 has been available from Heroku for a long time too. V2 Design In Action Using the Performance-L RAM dyno in Heroku would be no different (at least operationally) than using any other dyno in Heroku. To run my code, I just needed the following items: A Heroku account
The Heroku command-line interface (CLI) installed locally After navigating to the source code folder, I would issue a series of commands to log in to Heroku, create my app, set up my AWS-related environment variables, and run up to five instances of the service using the Performance-L dyno with auto-scaling in place: heroku login
heroku apps:create example-service
heroku config:set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=MY-ACCESS-ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=MY-ACCESS-KEY
heroku config:set S3_BUCKET_NAME=example-service-assets
heroku ps:scale web=5:Performance-L-RAM
git push heroku main Once deployed, my example-service application can be called via standard RESTful API calls. As needed, the auto-scaling technology in Heroku could launch up to five instances of the Performance-L Dyno to meet consumer demand. I would have gotten all of this without having to spend a lot of time understanding a complicated cloud infrastructure or worrying about cost analysis and optimization. Projected Gains As I thought more about the CPU and memory demands of our publishing project—during standard usage seasons and peak usage seasons—I saw how these performance dynos would have been exactly what we needed. Instead of crippling our CPU and memory when the requested payload included several Fabric.js layers, we would have had enough horsepower to generate the expected image, often before the user navigated to the page containing the preview images.
We wouldn’t have had size constraints on our application source code, which we would inevitably have hit in AWS Lambda limitations within the next 3 to 4 sprints.
The time required for our DevOps team to learn Lambdas first and then switch to EC2 hit our project’s budget pretty noticeably. And even then, those services weren't cheap, especially when spinning up several instances to keep up with demand. But with Heroku, the DevOps investment would be considerably reduced, placed into the hands of software engineers working on the use case. Just like any other dyno, it’s easy to use and scale up the performance dynos either with the CLI or the Heroku dashboard. Conclusion My readers may recall my mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” - J. Vester In this example, I had a use case that required a large amount of CPU and memory to process complicated requests made by over 10,000 consumer teams. I walked through what it would have looked like to fulfill this use case using Heroku's large dynos, and all I needed was a few CLI commands to get up and running. Burning out your engineering and DevOps teams is not your only option. There are alternatives available to relieve the strain. By taking the Heroku approach, you lose the steep learning curve that often comes with cloud adoption from the big three. Even better, the tech debt associated with cost analysis and optimization never sees the light of day. In this case, Heroku adheres to my mission statement, allowing teams to focus on what is likely a mountain of feature requests to help product owners meet their objectives. Have a really great day! Navigating toward a cloud-native architecture can be both exciting and challenging. The expectation of learning valuable lessons should always be top of mind as design becomes a reality. architecture In this article, I wanted to focus on an example where my project seemed like a perfect serverless use case, one where I’d leverage AWS Lambda. Spoiler alert: it was not. Spoiler alert: it was not. Rendering Fabric.js Data In a publishing project, we utilized Fabric.js —a JavaScript HTML5 canvas library—to manage complex metadata and content layers. These complexities included spreads, pages, and templates, each embedded with fonts, text attributes, shapes, and images. As the content evolved, teams were tasked with updates, necessitating the creation of a publisher-quality PDF after each update. Fabric.js JavaScript We built a Node.js service to run Fabric.js, generating PDFs and storing resources in AWS S3 buckets with private cloud access. During a typical usage period, over 10,000 teams were using the service, with each contributor sending multiple requests to the service as a result of manual page saves or auto-saves driven by the Angular client. Node.js Angular The service was set up to run as a Lambda in AWS. The idea of paying at the request level seemed ideal. Where Serverless Fell Short We quickly realized that our Lambda approach wasn’t going to cut it. The spin-up time turned out to be the first issue. Not only was there the time required to start the Node.js service, but preloading nearly 100 different fonts that could be used by those 10,000 teams caused delays too. We were also concerned about Lambda’s processing limit of 250 MB of unzipped source code. The initial release of the code was already over 150 MB in size, and we still had a large backlog of feature requests that would only drive this number higher. Finally, the complexity of the pages—especially as more elements were added—demanded increased CPU and memory to ensure quick PDF generation. After observing the usage for first-generation page designs completed by the teams, we forecasted the need for nearly 12 GB of RAM. Currently, AWS Lambdas are limited to 10 GB of RAM. Ultimately, we opted for dedicated EC2 compute resources to handle the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, this decision significantly increased our DevOps management workload. Looking For a Better Solution Although I am no longer involved with that project, I’ve always wondered if there was a better solution for this use case. While I appreciate AWS, Google, and Microsoft providing enterprise-scale options for cloud-native adoption, what kills me is the associated learning curve for every service. The company behind the project was a smaller technology team. Oftentimes teams in that position struggle with adoption when it comes to using the big three cloud providers. The biggest challenges I continue to see in this regard are: The biggest challenges I continue to see in this regard are: A heavy investment in DevOps or CloudOps to become cloud-native. Gaining a full understanding of what appears to be endless options. Tech debt related to cost analysis and optimization. A heavy investment in DevOps or CloudOps to become cloud-native. Gaining a full understanding of what appears to be endless options. Tech debt related to cost analysis and optimization. Since I have been working with the Heroku platform, I decided to see if they had an option for my use case. Turns out, they introduced large dynos earlier this year. For example, with their Performance-L RAM dyno, my underlying service would get 50x the compute power of a standard Dyno and 30 GB of RAM. The capability to write to AWS S3 has been available from Heroku for a long time too. Heroku large dynos write to AWS S3 V2 Design In Action Using the Performance-L RAM dyno in Heroku would be no different (at least operationally) than using any other dyno in Heroku. To run my code, I just needed the following items: A Heroku account The Heroku command-line interface (CLI) installed locally A Heroku account The Heroku command-line interface (CLI) installed locally Heroku command-line interface (CLI) After navigating to the source code folder, I would issue a series of commands to log in to Heroku, create my app, set up my AWS-related environment variables, and run up to five instances of the service using the Performance-L dyno with auto-scaling in place: heroku login
heroku apps:create example-service
heroku config:set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=MY-ACCESS-ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=MY-ACCESS-KEY
heroku config:set S3_BUCKET_NAME=example-service-assets
heroku ps:scale web=5:Performance-L-RAM
git push heroku main heroku login
heroku apps:create example-service
heroku config:set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=MY-ACCESS-ID AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=MY-ACCESS-KEY
heroku config:set S3_BUCKET_NAME=example-service-assets
heroku ps:scale web=5:Performance-L-RAM
git push heroku main Once deployed, my example-service application can be called via standard RESTful API calls. As needed, the auto-scaling technology in Heroku could launch up to five instances of the Performance-L Dyno to meet consumer demand. example-service I would have gotten all of this without having to spend a lot of time understanding a complicated cloud infrastructure or worrying about cost analysis and optimization. Projected Gains As I thought more about the CPU and memory demands of our publishing project—during standard usage seasons and peak usage seasons—I saw how these performance dynos would have been exactly what we needed. Instead of crippling our CPU and memory when the requested payload included several Fabric.js layers, we would have had enough horsepower to generate the expected image, often before the user navigated to the page containing the preview images. We wouldn’t have had size constraints on our application source code, which we would inevitably have hit in AWS Lambda limitations within the next 3 to 4 sprints. The time required for our DevOps team to learn Lambdas first and then switch to EC2 hit our project’s budget pretty noticeably. And even then, those services weren't cheap, especially when spinning up several instances to keep up with demand. Instead of crippling our CPU and memory when the requested payload included several Fabric.js layers, we would have had enough horsepower to generate the expected image, often before the user navigated to the page containing the preview images. We wouldn’t have had size constraints on our application source code, which we would inevitably have hit in AWS Lambda limitations within the next 3 to 4 sprints. The time required for our DevOps team to learn Lambdas first and then switch to EC2 hit our project’s budget pretty noticeably. And even then, those services weren't cheap, especially when spinning up several instances to keep up with demand. But with Heroku, the DevOps investment would be considerably reduced, placed into the hands of software engineers working on the use case. Just like any other dyno, it’s easy to use and scale up the performance dynos either with the CLI or the Heroku dashboard. Conclusion My readers may recall my mission statement, which I feel can apply to any IT professional: “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” - J. Vester “Focus your time on delivering features/functionality that extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.” - J. Vester In this example, I had a use case that required a large amount of CPU and memory to process complicated requests made by over 10,000 consumer teams. I walked through what it would have looked like to fulfill this use case using Heroku's large dynos, and all I needed was a few CLI commands to get up and running. Burning out your engineering and DevOps teams is not your only option. There are alternatives available to relieve the strain. By taking the Heroku approach, you lose the steep learning curve that often comes with cloud adoption from the big three. Even better, the tech debt associated with cost analysis and optimization never sees the light of day. In this case, Heroku adheres to my mission statement, allowing teams to focus on what is likely a mountain of feature requests to help product owners meet their objectives. Have a really great day!

When You Need More Power Than Lambda Provides

As I hit the big 4-0 and prepare to dive back into the freelance world, I can't help but chuckle at my younger self. Oh, the enthusiasm! The naivety! The sheer audacity to think I could do it all! But as they say, with age comes wisdom - or in my case, a hilarious collection of "what not to do" stories. So, grab a coffee (or something stronger), and let me tell you the top five mistakes this old freelancer won't be repeating that are shaping my triumphant comeback tour. Shared with 7 TED talks that will inspire you to be a better freelancer. Freelancing Fails That Made Me Smarter The 'Yes Man' Syndrome: When Enthusiasm Outpaces Expertise Picture this: a bright-eyed freelancer (yours truly) bouncing around like a caffeinated squirrel, shouting "Yes, I can!" to every request that came my way. Build a dashboard? Sure! Write a Python script? Absolutely! Audit your analytics. Why not! Spoiler alert: It didn't always end well. There was that time I confidently agreed to create a "simple" python-based pipeline with APIs for a client, only to find myself three days later, surrounded by cheap Lidl coffee caps, questioning my life choices and Googling (No chatbots to be used back then) "How to explain to the client that their request is hard." Lesson learned: Define your niche, know your strengths, and don't be afraid to say "no" to projects outside your wheelhouse. Your sanity (and your clients) will thank you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtPRrn5nwAo&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true Client Roulette: The Perils of Not Knowing Your Audience Ever walked into a room thinking you're the guest of honor, only to realize you've crashed the wrong party? That's how I felt during a workshop I once conducted for a team that didn't want to be there. The enthusiasm level was somewhere between the "DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) line" and "watching paint dry." As I fumbled through my carefully prepared presentation, I could almost hear the collective eye-rolls. It was like trying to sell ice to Eskimos - if the Eskimos were penguins, and I was offering them sunscreen. Lesson learned: Know your audience inside and out. Understanding your ideal client profile isn't just good business - it's the difference between being a welcome guest and an awkward party crasher. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smajeIVjCSc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true The Middleman Muddle: When Good Intentions Lead to Bad Outcomes In my quest to be the ultimate problem-solver, I once found myself playing a tech matchmaker. A client needed a specific tool implemented, and I knew just the person for the job! Or so I thought. What followed was a comedy of errors that would make Shakespeare proud. Delayed timelines, miscommunication, and I found myself stuck in the middle of a tech tug-of-war, feeling like a bewildered spectator at a particularly intense ping-pong match. All that was missing was some popcorn and a referee's whistle if it didn’t have a direct impact on what I was expected to deliver. Lesson learned: Stick to what you know best. Being helpful is great, but not at the cost of your project's success or your professional relationships. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BOEaiIX9Xg&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true The Freebie Trap: Compensating Dissatisfaction with More Work There I was, facing a client who looked about as satisfied as a cat in a bathtub. My brilliant solution? "Hey, let me throw in some extra work for free!" It was like trying to fix a leaky boat by drilling more holes. Before I knew it, I was juggling multiple projects, working overtime, and still not hitting the mark. It was the professional equivalent of digging myself into a hole and then deciding the best way out was to keep digging. Lesson learned: Set clear expectations from the start. If something's not working, address it head-on rather than trying to bury it under a mountain of free work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu_XDJP3wAc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true The Discount Dilemma: When Generosity Comes Back to Haunt You In my early days, I handed out discounts like they were party favors. "You get a discount! And you get a discount! Discounts for everyone!" It felt great at the moment, but it came back to bite me harder than a caffeinated chihuahua. Case in point: A client I'd given a hefty discount to in their startup phase came back years later, expecting the same deal. Trying to explain why my rates had increased was about as comfortable as a root canal surgery without anesthesia. Lesson learned: Your time and expertise have value. Price them accordingly, and stick to your guns. Your bank account (and your self-respect) will thank you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaxNc5-qn6s&ab_channel=TED&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CNRmhleJmk&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true Turning Mistakes Into Mastery: My Freelance Comeback Tour As I prepare to take the freelance plunge full-time, those hard-learned lessons from past missteps will shape a smarter, more focused approach going forward. Gone will be the overeager yes-man, the mismatched client-freelancer pairings, the accidental middleman roles, the freebie traps, and the discount debacles. From those failures, I've discovered my true calling - serving as a strategic data partner for early-stage and scaling mobile app companies, especially in e-commerce and gaming. No more scattered as a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of tailored, data-driven growth strategies for this industry, or as I want to call it, “Data Operation Partner”. My future services will directly tackle common pain points I've witnessed. From conducting workshops to define clear goals and KPIs, to assessing ROI and maximizing data investments, to optimizing pipelines for reduced costs - it's all about empowering clients to leverage their data for strategic growth and operational excellence. Many companies struggle with high data costs and transforming insights into smart decision-making. My customized, data-driven solutions will cut through that chaos. Comprehensive health checks to uncover opportunities. Collaborative sessions with key stakeholders like CEOs, CDOs, and product teams to ensure seamless integration and measurable impact. While my niche will crystallize in mobile/e-commerce, I know my expertise can translate across industries like healthcare, finance, and retail - anywhere data insights drive sustainable growth and elevate the customer experience. This freelance journey has been priceless in lessons learned. From over-committing to undervaluing my work, I now emerge with a sharpened skillset, clarified mission, and belief in providing exceptional value through strategic data partnership. Here's to using past missteps as stepping stones toward freelance mastery. May we all find the humor in our freshman freelancing flubs while using them as fuel for future success. I can't wait to begin this new chapter! I will finish with Simon Sinek and start with WHY, which I hope you all know because this is exactly what we freelancers need to focus on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true Avoid rookie freelance blunders - read my hard-earned wisdom and level up your freelance game! Any tips I have forgotten? What lessons have you learned during your career? As I hit the big 4-0 and prepare to dive back into the freelance world, I can't help but chuckle at my younger self. Oh, the enthusiasm! The naivety! The sheer audacity to think I could do it all! But as they say, with age comes wisdom - or in my case, a hilarious collection of "what not to do" stories. So, grab a coffee (or something stronger), and let me tell you the top five mistakes this old freelancer won't be repeating that are shaping my triumphant comeback tour. Shared with 7 TED talks that will inspire you to be a better freelancer. Freelancing Fails That Made Me Smarter The 'Yes Man' Syndrome: When Enthusiasm Outpaces Expertise Picture this: a bright-eyed freelancer (yours truly) bouncing around like a caffeinated squirrel, shouting "Yes, I can!" to every request that came my way. Build a dashboard? Sure! Write a Python script? Absolutely! Audit your analytics. Why not! Spoiler alert: It didn't always end well. There was that time I confidently agreed to create a "simple" python-based pipeline with APIs for a client, only to find myself three days later, surrounded by cheap Lidl coffee caps, questioning my life choices and Googling (No chatbots to be used back then) "How to explain to the client that their request is hard." Spoiler alert: Lesson learned: Define your niche, know your strengths, and don't be afraid to say "no" to projects outside your wheelhouse. Your sanity (and your clients) will thank you. Lesson learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtPRrn5nwAo&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtPRrn5nwAo&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true Client Roulette: The Perils of Not Knowing Your Audience Ever walked into a room thinking you're the guest of honor, only to realize you've crashed the wrong party? That's how I felt during a workshop I once conducted for a team that didn't want to be there. The enthusiasm level was somewhere between the "DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) line" and "watching paint dry." As I fumbled through my carefully prepared presentation, I could almost hear the collective eye-rolls. It was like trying to sell ice to Eskimos - if the Eskimos were penguins, and I was offering them sunscreen. Lesson learned: Know your audience inside and out. Understanding your ideal client profile isn't just good business - it's the difference between being a welcome guest and an awkward party crasher. Lesson learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smajeIVjCSc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smajeIVjCSc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true The Middleman Muddle: When Good Intentions Lead to Bad Outcomes In my quest to be the ultimate problem-solver, I once found myself playing a tech matchmaker. A client needed a specific tool implemented, and I knew just the person for the job! Or so I thought. What followed was a comedy of errors that would make Shakespeare proud. Delayed timelines, miscommunication, and I found myself stuck in the middle of a tech tug-of-war, feeling like a bewildered spectator at a particularly intense ping-pong match. All that was missing was some popcorn and a referee's whistle if it didn’t have a direct impact on what I was expected to deliver. Lesson learned: Stick to what you know best. Being helpful is great, but not at the cost of your project's success or your professional relationships. Lesson learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BOEaiIX9Xg&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BOEaiIX9Xg&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true The Freebie Trap: Compensating Dissatisfaction with More Work There I was, facing a client who looked about as satisfied as a cat in a bathtub. My brilliant solution? "Hey, let me throw in some extra work for free!" It was like trying to fix a leaky boat by drilling more holes. Before I knew it, I was juggling multiple projects, working overtime, and still not hitting the mark. It was the professional equivalent of digging myself into a hole and then deciding the best way out was to keep digging. Lesson learned: Set clear expectations from the start. If something's not working, address it head-on rather than trying to bury it under a mountain of free work. Lesson learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu_XDJP3wAc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zu_XDJP3wAc&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true The Discount Dilemma: When Generosity Comes Back to Haunt You In my early days, I handed out discounts like they were party favors. "You get a discount! And you get a discount! Discounts for everyone!" It felt great at the moment, but it came back to bite me harder than a caffeinated chihuahua. Case in point: A client I'd given a hefty discount to in their startup phase came back years later, expecting the same deal. Trying to explain why my rates had increased was about as comfortable as a root canal surgery without anesthesia. Case in point: Lesson learned: Your time and expertise have value. Price them accordingly, and stick to your guns. Your bank account (and your self-respect) will thank you. Lesson learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaxNc5-qn6s&ab_channel=TED&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaxNc5-qn6s&ab_channel=TED&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CNRmhleJmk&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CNRmhleJmk&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true Turning Mistakes Into Mastery: My Freelance Comeback Tour As I prepare to take the freelance plunge full-time, those hard-learned lessons from past missteps will shape a smarter, more focused approach going forward. Gone will be the overeager yes-man, the mismatched client-freelancer pairings, the accidental middleman roles, the freebie traps, and the discount debacles. From those failures, I've discovered my true calling - serving as a strategic data partner for early-stage and scaling mobile app companies, especially in e-commerce and gaming. No more scattered as a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of tailored, data-driven growth strategies for this industry, or as I want to call it, “Data Operation Partner”. My future services will directly tackle common pain points I've witnessed. From conducting workshops to define clear goals and KPIs, to assessing ROI and maximizing data investments, to optimizing pipelines for reduced costs - it's all about empowering clients to leverage their data for strategic growth and operational excellence. Many companies struggle with high data costs and transforming insights into smart decision-making. My customized, data-driven solutions will cut through that chaos. Comprehensive health checks to uncover opportunities. Collaborative sessions with key stakeholders like CEOs, CDOs, and product teams to ensure seamless integration and measurable impact. While my niche will crystallize in mobile/e-commerce, I know my expertise can translate across industries like healthcare, finance, and retail - anywhere data insights drive sustainable growth and elevate the customer experience. This freelance journey has been priceless in lessons learned. From over-committing to undervaluing my work, I now emerge with a sharpened skillset, clarified mission, and belief in providing exceptional value through strategic data partnership. Here's to using past missteps as stepping stones toward freelance mastery. May we all find the humor in our freshman freelancing flubs while using them as fuel for future success. I can't wait to begin this new chapter! I will finish with Simon Sinek and start with WHY, which I hope you all know because this is exactly what we freelancers need to focus on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&ab_channel=TEDxTalks&embedable=true Avoid rookie freelance blunders - read my hard-earned wisdom and level up your freelance game! Any tips I have forgotten? What lessons have you learned during your career?

Confessions of a Freelancer: 5 Mistakes I Won't Repeat

একজন ফ্রিল্যান্সারের স্বীকারোক্তি: 5টি ভুল আমি পুনরাবৃত্তি করব না

Geständnisse eines Freelancers: 5 Fehler, die ich nicht wiederholen werde

Confesiones de un autónomo: 5 errores que no repetiré

Confessions d'un pigiste : 5 erreurs que je ne répéterai pas

एक फ्रीलांसर की स्वीकारोक्ति: 5 गलतियाँ जो मैं नहीं दोहराऊंगा

フリーランサーの告白: 二度と繰り返したくない5つのミス

프리랜서의 고백: 반복하지 않을 5가지 실수

Confissões de um freelancer: 5 erros que não vou repetir

Признания фрилансера: 5 ошибок, которые я не повторю

Bir Freelancerın İtirafları: Tekrarlamayacağım 5 Hata

Lời thú nhận của một Freelancer: 5 sai lầm tôi sẽ không lặp lại

自由职业者的告白：我不会重复的 5 个错误

The F*ck It Effect

F*ck এটি প্রভাব

Der F*ck-It-Effekt

El efecto F*ck It

L'effet F*ck It

एफ*क इट प्रभाव

ファック・イット効果

빌어먹을 효과

O efeito foda-se

Эффект «к черту это»

S*ktir Et Etkisi

Hiệu ứng F*ck It

F*ck It 效应

SEO Clerks is an absolute disaster zone for anyone seeking legitimate digital marketing services. If you enjoy flushing your hard-earned money down the virtual toilet, then by all means, dive headfirst into the scam cesspool that is SEO Clerks. Let's start with the quality of services offered. Spoiler alert: there is none. It's like entering a virtual black market where snake oil peddlers roam freely, offering promises of boosting your website's ranking overnight. But what do you get in return? Absolutely nothing but a dent in your wallet and a bruise to your pride. Oh, but it gets worse. Brace yourself for the horror show of link building scams. You'll find more shady backlinks here than in a cyberpunk novel. These so-called "experts" promise to catapult your website to the top of Google's search results with their magic links. What they don't tell you is that those links are about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Customer service? Ha! Don't make me laugh. Trying to get a refund from SEO Clerks is like trying to squeeze water from a stone. Once they have your money, they vanish into the digital ether faster than you can say "rip-off." And let's not forget the cherry on top: the user interface straight out of the early 2000s. Navigating SEO Clerks feels like stumbling through a labyrinth designed by a sadistic web designer who enjoys watching people suffer. Imagine stumbling upon a digital marketing marketplace that boasts more scams than a back alley in a cyberpunk dystopia. Welcome to SEO Clerks, where the promise of boosting your website's ranking is about as trustworthy as a politician's campaign pledge. Let's dissect this mess, shall we? First off, the quality of services offered here is as genuine as a three-dollar bill. It's like entering a virtual snake pit where every seller is vying to offload their dubious SEO concoctions onto unsuspecting buyers. But wait, it gets juicier. Remember that forum post from Ionicware, the brains behind SEO Clerks, where they play the victim card, blaming banned users for crying scam? Yeah, that's about as believable as a unicorn sighting. It's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Ionicware's sanctimonious declaration only serves to highlight the dumpster fire that is SEO Clerks. Link building scams galore! And let's not forget the pièce de résistance: link building scams galore! You'd have better luck finding a needle in a haystack than a legitimate backlink on this platform. It's a virtual minefield of shady practices that would make even the most hardened internet sleuths break a sweat. A shocking scam example!!! - Come get those Top Page 1 Rankings! https://www.seoclerk.com/Link-Building/5635/ALPHA-SEO-Links-and-Rankings-Booster-Top-Marketplace-Seller An outdated Method from 2014 - Pure SPAM will rank you at the top! I'm absolutely fuming about this guy and his ridiculous SEO link building scam! It's like he's stuck in some digital Stone Age, thinking that spamming web 2.0 URLs with links and then showering them with profile links and forum/blog comment garbage is some kind of magic formula for boosting rankings. Seriously? Are we in 2005? First off, let's talk about web 2.0. Sure, they were hot stuff back when MySpace was cool, but in today's SEO landscape, relying on them as some cornerstone of your strategy is like using a flip phone in the age of smartphones. And embedding them with links? That's like trying to hide a rotten egg under a pile of glitter - it's still a rotten egg, mate! And then there's the profile links and forum/blog comments. Spamming these places with your links is not only lazy, it's downright harmful! Do you really think Google, with all its sophisticated algorithms, is going to look kindly upon your link vomit? Nope, they're more likely to slap you with a penalty faster than you can say "black hat." But what really grinds my gears is that there are still people out there peddling this garbage as some sort of shortcut to SEO success. Newsflash: there are no shortcuts! Building a solid, sustainable SEO strategy takes time, effort, and genuine value creation. It's about crafting quality content, engaging with your audience, and earning links through merit, not manipulation. So to this guy and anyone else trying to pull off this outdated, spammy nonsense: wake up and smell the SEO coffee! The only thing you're building with your scam is a one-way ticket to obscurity in the depths of Google's search results. And frankly, you deserve it. The next Rotten Egg - Pay $400 - Not a single on page technical SEO adjustment!! Ugh, let me tell you about this absolute nightmare of an SEO scammer. This sorry excuse for a human being has the audacity to charge $400 for their so-called "top-ranking" SEO service, and what do they deliver? Nothing but a steaming pile of spammy links. (Useless as tits on a bull) - tits are not used on a bull because bulls do not produce milk. They have the nerve to promise results without doing any real work. No technical optimizations, no on-page technical improvements, no research, and forget about optimizing for Google. Nope, all they do is litter the internet with their garbage links, like a digital fly infestation. And you know what's the worst part? People fall for it! They get sucked into this black hole of deceit, thinking they're investing in their business's success, only to find themselves buried under a mountain of useless backlinks. These scammers don't care about helping your website thrive. They're just out to make a quick buck at the expense of your online reputation. They're like parasites feeding off the desperation of those who don't know any better. SEOClerks and Their Scam-Filled Business Model Let's get one thing straight: SEOClerks knows exactly what they're doing. They are fully aware of the scam-riddled marketplace they run and, quite frankly, they don’t care. Why would they? Their entire business model is predicated on making money from freelancing SEO scams. It's infuriating and yet, not surprising. You see, SEOClerks is teeming with shady operators who promise the moon and deliver a pile of dirt. Fake backlinks, bogus traffic, and sketchy SEO services – you name it, they've got it. And it's not like SEOClerks is oblivious to this. No, they are complicit. They actively promote these scams, providing a platform for con artists to thrive. They benefit from transaction fees, and every scam that gets pulled off on their site puts money in their pockets. Honest businesses and individuals looking to improve their online presence get swindled, losing both money and time, while SEOClerks laughs all the way to the bank. It's a disgraceful exploitation of people’s desire to succeed online. SEOClerks isn't just turning a blind eye – they're facilitating and profiting from deception. It's high time someone held them accountable for perpetuating these fraudulent activities. Enough is enough. The freelancing world deserves better than this cesspool of scams masquerading as a legitimate marketplace. SEOClerks Under Fire for Hosting and Promoting SEO Scams Industry insiders and disgruntled customers have accused the platform of knowingly allowing scams to flourish, profiting from deceptive practices that undermine the credibility of freelance SEO work
. SEOClerks has become a hub for a variety of SEO services, ranging from backlink building to traffic generation. However, a growing number of reports suggest that many of these services are scams designed to dupe unsuspecting clients. "It's a breeding ground for fake services," said one industry expert. "You have individuals selling non-existent or low-quality backlinks, fake traffic, and other dodgy SEO tricks." The platform operates by taking a commission on each transaction, meaning that they financially benefit from every sale – legitimate or not. This creates a perverse incentive structure where the more scams that are pulled off, the more money SEOClerks makes. Critics argue that this has led to a laissez-faire attitude towards scam listings, with minimal oversight or enforcement of quality standards. Customers have expressed frustration over the lack of accountability. "I paid for high-quality backlinks and got nothing but junk," said one disappointed user. "When I tried to get a refund, I was met with resistance from both the seller and SEOClerks. It’s clear they’re not interested in protecting their customers." Despite numerous complaints and negative reviews, SEOClerks continues to thrive, raising questions about the ethical implications of their business model. "They are well aware of the scams and yet they choose to do nothing," commented another industry insider. "It's all about making money, regardless of the cost to their customers." So, if you ever come across one of these rotten egg SEO scammers, run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Don't let them sink their claws into your hard-earned money. Your website deserves better than to be tainted by their slimy tactics. If you value your sanity and your wallet, run far, far away from SEO Clerks. Save yourself the headache, the heartache, and the financial ruin. There are plenty of reputable digital marketing platforms out there. SEO Clerks is not one of them, and it never will be. As the backlash grows, SEOClerks faces mounting pressure to clean up its act. Whether they will take meaningful action or continue to turn a blind eye remains to be seen. For now, the platform remains a controversial player in the world of SEO services, under scrutiny for its role in facilitating and profiting from scams. SEO Clerks is an absolute disaster zone for anyone seeking legitimate digital marketing services. If you enjoy flushing your hard-earned money down the virtual toilet, then by all means, dive headfirst into the scam cesspool that is SEO Clerks. Let's start with the quality of services offered. Spoiler alert: there is none. It's like entering a virtual black market where snake oil peddlers roam freely, offering promises of boosting your website's ranking overnight. But what do you get in return? Absolutely nothing but a dent in your wallet and a bruise to your pride. Oh, but it gets worse. Brace yourself for the horror show of link building scams. You'll find more shady backlinks here than in a cyberpunk novel. These so-called "experts" promise to catapult your website to the top of Google's search results with their magic links. What they don't tell you is that those links are about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Customer service? Ha! Don't make me laugh. Trying to get a refund from SEO Clerks is like trying to squeeze water from a stone. Once they have your money, they vanish into the digital ether faster than you can say "rip-off." And let's not forget the cherry on top: the user interface straight out of the early 2000s. Navigating SEO Clerks feels like stumbling through a labyrinth designed by a sadistic web designer who enjoys watching people suffer. Imagine stumbling upon a digital marketing marketplace that boasts more scams than a back alley in a cyberpunk dystopia. Welcome to SEO Clerks, where the promise of boosting your website's ranking is about as trustworthy as a politician's campaign pledge. Let's dissect this mess, shall we? First off, the quality of services offered here is as genuine as a three-dollar bill. It's like entering a virtual snake pit where every seller is vying to offload their dubious SEO concoctions onto unsuspecting buyers. But wait, it gets juicier. Remember that forum post from Ionicware , the brains behind SEO Clerks, where they play the victim card, blaming banned users for crying scam? Yeah, that's about as believable as a unicorn sighting. It's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Ionicware's sanctimonious declaration only serves to highlight the dumpster fire that is SEO Clerks. forum post from Ionicware Link building scams galore! Link building scams galore! And let's not forget the pièce de résistance: link building scams galore! You'd have better luck finding a needle in a haystack than a legitimate backlink on this platform. It's a virtual minefield of shady practices that would make even the most hardened internet sleuths break a sweat. A shocking scam example!!! - Come get those Top Page 1 Rankings! https://www.seoclerk.com/Link-Building/5635/ALPHA-SEO-Links-and-Rankings-Booster-Top-Marketplace-Seller https://www.seoclerk.com/Link-Building/5635/ALPHA-SEO-Links-and-Rankings-Booster-Top-Marketplace-Seller An outdated Method from 2014 - Pure SPAM will rank you at the top! I'm absolutely fuming about this guy and his ridiculous SEO link building scam! It's like he's stuck in some digital Stone Age, thinking that spamming web 2.0 URLs with links and then showering them with profile links and forum/blog comment garbage is some kind of magic formula for boosting rankings. Seriously? Are we in 2005? First off, let's talk about web 2.0. Sure, they were hot stuff back when MySpace was cool, but in today's SEO landscape, relying on them as some cornerstone of your strategy is like using a flip phone in the age of smartphones. And embedding them with links? That's like trying to hide a rotten egg under a pile of glitter - it's still a rotten egg, mate! And then there's the profile links and forum/blog comments. Spamming these places with your links is not only lazy, it's downright harmful! Do you really think Google, with all its sophisticated algorithms, is going to look kindly upon your link vomit? Nope, they're more likely to slap you with a penalty faster than you can say "black hat." But what really grinds my gears is that there are still people out there peddling this garbage as some sort of shortcut to SEO success. Newsflash: there are no shortcuts! Building a solid, sustainable SEO strategy takes time, effort, and genuine value creation. It's about crafting quality content, engaging with your audience, and earning links through merit, not manipulation. So to this guy and anyone else trying to pull off this outdated, spammy nonsense: wake up and smell the SEO coffee! The only thing you're building with your scam is a one-way ticket to obscurity in the depths of Google's search results. And frankly, you deserve it. The next Rotten Egg - Pay $400 - Not a single on page technical SEO adjustment!! Ugh, let me tell you about this absolute nightmare of an SEO scammer. This sorry excuse for a human being has the audacity to charge $400 for their so-called "top-ranking" SEO service, and what do they deliver? Nothing but a steaming pile of spammy links. (Useless as tits on a bull) - tits are not used on a bull because bulls do not produce milk. They have the nerve to promise results without doing any real work. No technical optimizations, no on-page technical improvements, no research, and forget about optimizing for Google. Nope, all they do is litter the internet with their garbage links, like a digital fly infestation. And you know what's the worst part? People fall for it! They get sucked into this black hole of deceit, thinking they're investing in their business's success, only to find themselves buried under a mountain of useless backlinks. These scammers don't care about helping your website thrive. They're just out to make a quick buck at the expense of your online reputation. They're like parasites feeding off the desperation of those who don't know any better. SEOClerks and Their Scam-Filled Business Model SEOClerks and Their Scam-Filled Business Model Let's get one thing straight: SEOClerks knows exactly what they're doing. They are fully aware of the scam-riddled marketplace they run and, quite frankly, they don’t care. Why would they? Their entire business model is predicated on making money from freelancing SEO scams. It's infuriating and yet, not surprising. exactly You see, SEOClerks is teeming with shady operators who promise the moon and deliver a pile of dirt. Fake backlinks, bogus traffic, and sketchy SEO services – you name it, they've got it. And it's not like SEOClerks is oblivious to this. No, they are complicit. They actively promote these scams, providing a platform for con artists to thrive. They benefit from transaction fees, and every scam that gets pulled off on their site puts money in their pockets. Honest businesses and individuals looking to improve their online presence get swindled, losing both money and time, while SEOClerks laughs all the way to the bank. It's a disgraceful exploitation of people’s desire to succeed online. SEOClerks isn't just turning a blind eye – they're facilitating and profiting from deception. It's high time someone held them accountable for perpetuating these fraudulent activities. Enough is enough. The freelancing world deserves better than this cesspool of scams masquerading as a legitimate marketplace. SEOClerks Under Fire for Hosting and Promoting SEO Scams Industry insiders and disgruntled customers have accused the platform of knowingly allowing scams to flourish, profiting from deceptive practices that undermine the credibility of freelance SEO work . Industry insiders and disgruntled customers have accused the platform of knowingly allowing scams to flourish, profiting from deceptive practices that undermine the credibility of freelance SEO work Industry insiders and disgruntled customers have accused the platform of knowingly allowing scams to flourish, profiting from deceptive practices that undermine the credibility of freelance SEO work . SEOClerks has become a hub for a variety of SEO services, ranging from backlink building to traffic generation. However, a growing number of reports suggest that many of these services are scams designed to dupe unsuspecting clients. "It's a breeding ground for fake services," said one industry expert. "You have individuals selling non-existent or low-quality backlinks, fake traffic, and other dodgy SEO tricks." The platform operates by taking a commission on each transaction, meaning that they financially benefit from every sale – legitimate or not. This creates a perverse incentive structure where the more scams that are pulled off, the more money SEOClerks makes. Critics argue that this has led to a laissez-faire attitude towards scam listings, with minimal oversight or enforcement of quality standards. Customers have expressed frustration over the lack of accountability. "I paid for high-quality backlinks and got nothing but junk," said one disappointed user. "When I tried to get a refund, I was met with resistance from both the seller and SEOClerks. It’s clear they’re not interested in protecting their customers." Despite numerous complaints and negative reviews, SEOClerks continues to thrive, raising questions about the ethical implications of their business model. "They are well aware of the scams and yet they choose to do nothing," commented another industry insider. "It's all about making money, regardless of the cost to their customers." So, if you ever come across one of these rotten egg SEO scammers, run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. Don't let them sink their claws into your hard-earned money. Your website deserves better than to be tainted by their slimy tactics. If you value your sanity and your wallet, run far, far away from SEO Clerks. Save yourself the headache, the heartache, and the financial ruin. There are plenty of reputable digital marketing platforms out there. SEO Clerks is not one of them, and it never will be. As the backlash grows, SEOClerks faces mounting pressure to clean up its act. Whether they will take meaningful action or continue to turn a blind eye remains to be seen. For now, the platform remains a controversial player in the world of SEO services, under scrutiny for its role in facilitating and profiting from scams.

SeoClerks.com - The Digital Marketing Dumpster Fire Scam You Must Avoid 

SeoClerks.com - ডিজিটাল মার্কেটিং ডাম্পস্টার ফায়ার স্ক্যাম আপনাকে এড়িয়ে চলতে হবে

SeoClerks.com - Der Digital Marketing Dumpster Fire-Betrug, den Sie vermeiden müssen

SeoClerks.com: la estafa del incendio del contenedor de marketing digital que debe evitar

SeoClerks.com - L'arnaque aux incendies de bennes à ordures de marketing numérique que vous devez éviter

SeoClerks.com - डिजिटल मार्केटिंग डंपस्टर फायर घोटाला जिससे आपको बचना चाहिए

SeoClerks.com - 絶対に避けるべきデジタルマーケティングのゴミ箱詐欺

SeoClerks.com - 피해야 할 디지털 마케팅 쓰레기 수거통 화재 사기

SeoClerks.com - O golpe de incêndio na lixeira de marketing digital que você deve evitar

SeoClerks.com — Мошенничество с пожаром в мусорном контейнере цифрового маркетинга, которого следует избегать

SeoClerks.com - Kaçınmanız Gereken Dijital Pazarlama Çöp Kutusu Yangın Dolandırıcılığı

SeoClerks.com - Trò lừa đảo đốt cháy thùng rác tiếp thị kỹ thuật số bạn phải tránh

SeoClerks.com - 您必须避免的数字营销“垃圾箱火灾”骗局

How To Implement API Key Authentication Middleware in ASP NET Core

Picture this: You're stuck in another soul-crushing Zoom meeting, fantasizing about your escape. "If only I found my true calling, then work would be amazing!" Sound familiar? Spoiler alert: that elusive dream job doesn't exist. The whole concept is designed to keep you spinning your wheels, never taking real action. Let's break down this comforting lie. The Dream Job Delusion We're spoon-fed the idea that out there is a magical job that will be fun every day, effortlessly match our skills, and change the world (all with flexible hours!). Problem is, this is a fairy tale, and it's harming more careers than it helps. Here's the harsh truth: The Fun Mirage: No job is a non-stop joyride. Even passion-fueled work has grunt work days, difficult clients, and setbacks. The Skill Lottery: Waiting to find something you're already good at limits your growth. Real fulfillment comes from tackling challenges and getting better over time. The Unicorn Syndrome: That perfect-sounding job posting? Written by an HR person, not your guardian angel. It probably involves 10 roles crammed into one impossible package. Mythbusting the "Perfect Fit" Here's the thing about career fulfillment – it's usually a messy, iterative process. Some of the most successful and satisfied people: Fell into their paths: Chance encounters, side projects, and "good enough" opportunities turned into something amazing with time and effort. Made their own damn job: Instead of seeking the ideal company, they carved their own niche, often finding more freedom and influence than on a traditional path. Prioritized people over job titles: They found a team or a boss who believed in them, creating space to grow and experiment far beyond the original job description. The Power of Doing Over Dreaming The antidote to the 'dream job' paralysis? Relentless action, guided by a few core principles: Seek the Stretch Zone: Where could you deliberately choose a bit of discomfort in exchange for massive growth potential, even if it's not a fairytale "fit"? Bet on Yourself, Not a Job Description: What problem can you solve, with or without a company backing you? Developing this skill makes you invaluable. Optimize for the Day-to-Day, Not the Title: Who will you be working with? What will you actually do? That matters more than prestige. The Choice Point It's tempting to cling to the dream job fantasy. But the really empowering question is this: How badly do you want to build a career you love? Enough to embrace some discomfort; to be more interested in doing than in finding the abstract ideal? What’s The Solution? Now… we’ve demolished the myth of the effortless, pre-destined "dream job." The good news is, that's way more liberating than it sounds. Instead of chasing an elusive target, what if we shift to a mindset of building the kind of career that truly empowers you? This is where the concept of a Power Portfolio comes in. What the Heck is a Power Portfolio? Think of it as a diversified collection of income streams, projects, and skillsets that grants you leverage and fuels a  fulfilling career journey: Multiple Revenue Streams: Not just your salary. Side hustles, small-scale experiments, or even building skills to consult in your niche down the line. The "Slash" Mentality: You're more than your job title. You're a marketer/writer/budding coder. More slashes = more optionality. Network as Net Worth: Prioritize real relationships with people in diverse fields. These connections become opportunity generators. Ownership Mindset: You're not a cog in a machine; you're a CEO even within a traditional job – seeking to expand your impact, not just complete tasks. Why a Portfolio Beats the Dream Job Hunt Here's where this gets strategically powerful: Recession-Proofing: If one income source falters, you have a safety net. Plus, diverse experience makes you more adaptable in a changing market. Negotiating Power: When you're not wholly reliant on one paycheck, you can walk away from bad situations, demanding the treatment you deserve. Discovering Hidden Opportunities: Side projects often turn into full-blown businesses or unexpected career shifts. This beats applying for jobs blindly. The Anti-Fragile Career: With a portfolio, you're constantly learning and evolving alongside market needs, not scrambling to catch up. How to Start Building Your Power Portfolio No need to quit your job tomorrow (unless you REALLY want to). Start small: List Your "Weird" Skills: The thing you do for fun but never put on a resume? That might be your niche consulting angle. The 5-Hour Side Hustle: Can you carve out 5 hours a week to build a tiny product, offer a service, or write a newsletter in your field? Micro-Mentorship: Find ONE person whose career you admire. Don't ask for a job, ask for a 20-minute informational chat. Connections compound rapidly. Document, Don't Just Do: Turn your work wins into case studies, and share your process on social media. Visibility = unexpected opportunities. The Power Portfolio Shift Building a career you love isn't about luck or finding the ONE true company. It's about cultivating a set of skills, revenue streams, and relationships that make you indispensable in any environment. It puts control back in your hands, even in chaotic times. Scott Picture this: You're stuck in another soul-crushing Zoom meeting, fantasizing about your escape. "If only I found my true calling , then work would be amazing!" true calling Sound familiar? Spoiler alert: that elusive dream job doesn't exist. The whole concept is designed to keep you spinning your wheels, never taking real action. Let's break down this comforting lie. The Dream Job Delusion The Dream Job Delusion We're spoon-fed the idea that out there is a magical job that will be fun every day, effortlessly match our skills, and change the world (all with flexible hours!). Problem is, this is a fairy tale, and it's harming more careers than it helps. Here's the harsh truth: The Fun Mirage: No job is a non-stop joyride. Even passion-fueled work has grunt work days, difficult clients, and setbacks. The Fun Mirage: No job is a non-stop joyride. Even passion-fueled work has grunt work days, difficult clients, and setbacks. The Fun Mirage: The Skill Lottery: Waiting to find something you're already good at limits your growth. Real fulfillment comes from tackling challenges and getting better over time. The Skill Lottery: Waiting to find something you're already good at limits your growth. Real fulfillment comes from tackling challenges and getting better over time. The Skill Lottery: already The Unicorn Syndrome: That perfect-sounding job posting? Written by an HR person, not your guardian angel. It probably involves 10 roles crammed into one impossible package. The Unicorn Syndrome: That perfect-sounding job posting? Written by an HR person, not your guardian angel. It probably involves 10 roles crammed into one impossible package. The Unicorn Syndrome: Mythbusting the "Perfect Fit" Mythbusting the "Perfect Fit" Here's the thing about career fulfillment – it's usually a messy, iterative process. Some of the most successful and satisfied people: Fell into their paths: Chance encounters, side projects, and "good enough" opportunities turned into something amazing with time and effort. Fell into their paths: Chance encounters, side projects, and "good enough" opportunities turned into something amazing with time and effort. Fell into their paths: Made their own damn job: Instead of seeking the ideal company, they carved their own niche, often finding more freedom and influence than on a traditional path. Made their own damn job: Instead of seeking the ideal company, they carved their own niche, often finding more freedom and influence than on a traditional path. Made their own damn job: Prioritized people over job titles: They found a team or a boss who believed in them, creating space to grow and experiment far beyond the original job description. Prioritized people over job titles: They found a team or a boss who believed in them, creating space to grow and experiment far beyond the original job description. Prioritized people over job titles: The Power of Doing Over Dreaming The Power of Doing Over Dreaming The antidote to the 'dream job' paralysis? Relentless action, guided by a few core principles: Seek the Stretch Zone: Where could you deliberately choose a bit of discomfort in exchange for massive growth potential, even if it's not a fairytale "fit"? Seek the Stretch Zone: Where could you deliberately choose a bit of discomfort in exchange for massive growth potential, even if it's not a fairytale "fit"? Seek the Stretch Zone: Bet on Yourself, Not a Job Description: What problem can you solve, with or without a company backing you? Developing this skill makes you invaluable. Bet on Yourself, Not a Job Description: What problem can you solve, with or without a company backing you? Developing this skill makes you invaluable. Bet on Yourself, Not a Job Description: Optimize for the Day-to-Day, Not the Title: Who will you be working with? What will you actually do? That matters more than prestige. Optimize for the Day-to-Day, Not the Title: Who will you be working with? What will you actually do ? That matters more than prestige. Optimize for the Day-to-Day, Not the Title: do The Choice Point The Choice Point It's tempting to cling to the dream job fantasy. But the really empowering question is this: How badly do you want to build a career you love? Enough to embrace some discomfort; to be more interested in doing than in finding the abstract ideal? What’s The Solution? What’s The Solution? Now… we’ve demolished the myth of the effortless, pre-destined "dream job." The good news is, that's way more liberating than it sounds. Instead of chasing an elusive target, what if we shift to a mindset of building the kind of career that truly empowers you? building This is where the concept of a Power Portfolio comes in. What the Heck is a Power Portfolio? What the Heck is a Power Portfolio? Think of it as a diversified collection of income streams, projects, and skillsets that grants you leverage and fuels a  fulfilling career journey: Multiple Revenue Streams: Not just your salary. Side hustles, small-scale experiments, or even building skills to consult in your niche down the line. Multiple Revenue Streams: Not just your salary. Side hustles, small-scale experiments, or even building skills to consult in your niche down the line. Multiple Revenue Streams: The "Slash" Mentality: You're more than your job title. You're a marketer/writer/budding coder. More slashes = more optionality. The "Slash" Mentality: You're more than your job title. You're a marketer/writer/budding coder. More slashes = more optionality. The "Slash" Mentality: Network as Net Worth: Prioritize real relationships with people in diverse fields. These connections become opportunity generators. Network as Net Worth: Prioritize real relationships with people in diverse fields. These connections become opportunity generators. Network as Net Worth: Ownership Mindset: You're not a cog in a machine; you're a CEO even within a traditional job – seeking to expand your impact, not just complete tasks. Ownership Mindset: You're not a cog in a machine; you're a CEO even within a traditional job – seeking to expand your impact, not just complete tasks. Ownership Mindset: Why a Portfolio Beats the Dream Job Hunt Why a Portfolio Beats the Dream Job Hunt Here's where this gets strategically powerful: Recession-Proofing: If one income source falters, you have a safety net. Plus, diverse experience makes you more adaptable in a changing market. Recession-Proofing: If one income source falters, you have a safety net. Plus, diverse experience makes you more adaptable in a changing market. Recession-Proofing: Negotiating Power: When you're not wholly reliant on one paycheck, you can walk away from bad situations, demanding the treatment you deserve. Negotiating Power: When you're not wholly reliant on one paycheck, you can walk away from bad situations, demanding the treatment you deserve. Negotiating Power: Discovering Hidden Opportunities: Side projects often turn into full-blown businesses or unexpected career shifts. This beats applying for jobs blindly. Discovering Hidden Opportunities: Side projects often turn into full-blown businesses or unexpected career shifts. This beats applying for jobs blindly. Discovering Hidden Opportunities: The Anti-Fragile Career: With a portfolio, you're constantly learning and evolving alongside market needs, not scrambling to catch up. The Anti-Fragile Career: With a portfolio, you're constantly learning and evolving alongside market needs, not scrambling to catch up. The Anti-Fragile Career: How to Start Building Your Power Portfolio How to Start Building Your Power Portfolio No need to quit your job tomorrow (unless you REALLY want to). Start small: List Your "Weird" Skills: The thing you do for fun but never put on a resume? That might be your niche consulting angle. List Your "Weird" Skills: The thing you do for fun but never put on a resume? That might be your niche consulting angle. List Your "Weird" Skills: The 5-Hour Side Hustle: Can you carve out 5 hours a week to build a tiny product, offer a service, or write a newsletter in your field? The 5-Hour Side Hustle: Can you carve out 5 hours a week to build a tiny product, offer a service, or write a newsletter in your field? The 5-Hour Side Hustle: Micro-Mentorship: Find ONE person whose career you admire. Don't ask for a job, ask for a 20-minute informational chat. Connections compound rapidly. Micro-Mentorship: Find ONE person whose career you admire. Don't ask for a job, ask for a 20-minute informational chat. Connections compound rapidly. Micro-Mentorship: Document, Don't Just Do: Turn your work wins into case studies, and share your process on social media. Visibility = unexpected opportunities. Document, Don't Just Do: Turn your work wins into case studies, and share your process on social media. Visibility = unexpected opportunities. Document, Don't Just Do: The Power Portfolio Shift The Power Portfolio Shift Building a career you love isn't about luck or finding the ONE true company. It's about cultivating a set of skills, revenue streams, and relationships that make you indispensable in any environment. It puts control back in your hands, even in chaotic times. Scott

Here's Why Your "Dream Job" is Bullsh*t

Dealing with Missing Data in Financial Time Series - Recipes and Pitfalls 

ফাইন্যান্সিয়াল টাইম সিরিজে অনুপস্থিত ডেটা নিয়ে কাজ করা - রেসিপি এবং ক্ষতি

Umgang mit fehlenden Daten in Finanzzeitreihen – Rezepte und Fallstricke

Manejo de datos faltantes en series de tiempo financieras: recetas y trampas

Gérer les données manquantes dans les séries temporelles financières – Recettes et pièges

वित्तीय समय श्रृंखला में गुम डेटा से निपटना - विधियां और नुकसान

金融時系列における欠損データの扱い - 秘訣と落とし穴

금융 시계열에서 누락된 데이터 처리 - 방법 및 함정

Lidando com dados ausentes em séries temporais financeiras – receitas e armadilhas

Работа с недостающими данными в финансовых временных рядах: рецепты и подводные камни

Finansal Zaman Serilerinde Eksik Verilerle Başa Çıkmak - Tarifler ve Tuzaklar

Xử lý dữ liệu bị thiếu trong chuỗi thời gian tài chính - Bí quyết và cạm bẫy

处理金融时间序列中的缺失数据 - 秘诀和陷阱

I’ve been spending more time working with Blazor, which means many more learning opportunities for me. That also means more learning opportunities for me to share with YOU! In this particular case, I was battling with trying to hook some event handlers on some MudBlazor list items… But it turns out that the Blazor render mode was the part breaking my dependency injection on the page, which was the culprit of my event hookups never working. In this article, I’ll walk you through the scenario I was facing and how I started debugging. You’ll see that I realized I was focused on the wrong concept, and once I realized some details about the configured Blazor render mode, things started to make more sense. I hope that this article (and video) help you — and I am confident they’ll help me the next time I run into this. Before I Knew It Was Blazor Render Mode… I was heads-down working on some Blazor UI for an application I’m building, and it’s the motivation behind whipping up . The problem was pretty simple: I just wanted to wire up some to some buttons that I had on my list items. another quick article on MudBlazor list items event handlers Here’s what the code looked like: @page "/items"

@using DevLeader.Services
@using DevLeader.Services.Items

@inject IItemsService ItemsService

<PageTitle>Dev Leader Is Awesome!</PageTitle>

<h1>Dev Leader Is Awesome!</h1>


@if (_itemsCollection == null)
{
    <p><em>Loading...</em></p>
}
else if (_itemsCollection.Count == 0)
{
    <p><em>No items found.</em></p>
}
else
{
    <MudList>
    @foreach (var item in _itemsCollection)
        {
            <MudListItem>
                <MudCard>
                    <MudCardHeader>
                        @item.Title
                    </MudCardHeader>
                    <MudCardContent>
                        <MudButtonGroup xs="12" sm="6">
                            <MudButton Variant="Variant.Filled"
                                       Color="Color.Primary"
                                       OnClick="e => ApproveButton_OnClickAsync(item)">
                                Approve
                            </MudButton>
                            <MudButton Variant="Variant.Filled"
                                       Color="Color.Secondary"
                                       OnClick="async e => await RejectButton_OnClickAsync(item)">
                                Reject
                            </MudButton>
                        </MudButtonGroup>
                    </MudCardContent>

                </MudCard>
            </MudListItem>
        }
    </MudList>
}

@code {
    private IReadOnlyList<Item>? _itemsCollection;

    protected override async Task OnInitializedAsync()
    {
        await Task.Yield();

        var endDateTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(1);
        var startDateTimeUtc = DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(-7);

        _itemsCollection = await ItemsService
            .GetItemsAsync(
                startDateTimeUtc: startDateTimeUtc,
                endDateTimeUtc: endDateTimeUtc,
                cancellationToken: CancellationToken.None)
            .ConfigureAwait(false);
    }

    private async Task ApproveButton_OnClickAsync(Item feedItem)
    {
        await Task.Yield();
    }

    private async Task RejectButton_OnClickAsync(Item feedItem)
    {
        await Task.Yield();
    }
} You can see that I was even fooling around with trying to see different implementations of the — because they just were NOT triggering no matter what I did. But that turned out to be a red herring because the event handlers not triggering were a symptom of the problem. async event handlers For the rest of this article, I’ll explain more about that problem (hint: it’s how dependency injection and render mode play together). I also made this video about Blazor render modes and how I was debugging this dependency injection issue here: https://youtu.be/bo7Ahp2r7kI?embedable=true Dodging the Red Herring Even though I had set out to go wire up event handlers and prove that they worked, the fact that they seemed busted was a red herring. The async event handlers not firing was not because I was doing MudBlazor setup incorrectly, it’s because there was another problem altogether. And here’s what was hiding in my console output: Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.Rendering.WebAssemblyRenderer[100]Unhandled exception rendering component: Cannot provide a value for property 'ServiceImplementation' on type 'MyProject.Pages.MyPage'. There is no registered service of type 'MyProject.IService'.System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot provide a value for property 'MyService' on type 'MyProject.Pages.MyPage'. There is no registered service of type 'MyProject.IService'. I figured if I have an exception being thrown on the page, perhaps I shouldn’t put my energy into the async event handlers anymore on the MudBlazor list items… Odds are, I had a bigger problem to sort out, and that bigger problem was just causing the rest of the page to not load correctly. : the odds were correct. Spoiler alert But here’s what was VERY weird about this situation: The page was showing results in the MudList component as there was an individual MudListItem populated. The only way this can happen, if you check the code shown earlier in the article, is if my dependency is called. This means, 100% for certain, that the dependency WAS accessible on the page and we DID call and use it successfully. … Which means now all of a sudden in some cases, we can’t seem to get the dependency. From all of my experience using Autofac and other dependency injection frameworks, this was baffling. Generally speaking, if we can resolve a dependency once, we should be able to resolve it again. One could argue maybe subsequent resolutions have different behaviors, but at least the DI framework could identify that there was something registered. So… what makes this situation different than when things are working? To the Internet, I went… which is also why this article and the video I created exist. Blazor Render Mode Broke My App! Full disclaimer: this is not the fault of Blazor or Blazor render modes being bad… Nothing like that. This is 100% an issue that I created due to my misunderstanding, or lack of understanding, of how render modes work in Blazor. My application is configured to use InteractiveAuto render mode. This is what was configured in the template when I created my application in Visual Studio: @code {
    [CascadingParameter]
    private HttpContext HttpContext { get; set; } = default!;

     private IComponentRenderMode? RenderModeForPage => HttpContext.Request.Path.StartsWithSegments("/Account")
         ? null
         : InteractiveAuto;
} This means that Blazor will determine when it can do client-side rendering for performance/latency reasons — in some situations dramatically improving the loading experience for users. The problem? It means that my dependency injection is going to try and take place on the client side! Not going to work for me. At least, not with a solution I know of yet… But I’m sure we’ll get there. The internet suggested that I could toggle the Blazor render mode per page, which seemed to be a very sensible move. In fact, this was a great solution that I would have liked to do, however… Adding the @ directive on the individual pages never worked. The behavior to change the render mode NEVER updated for me. Again, this will be a follow-up article and video when I figure out what the heck was going on. The fix for me, at least what will work for now for me, is as follows: @code {
    [CascadingParameter]
    private HttpContext HttpContext { get; set; } = default!;

    // private IComponentRenderMode? RenderModeForPage => HttpContext.Request.Path.StartsWithSegments("/Account")
    //     ? null
    //     : InteractiveAuto;

    private IComponentRenderMode? RenderModeForPage => InteractiveServer;
} I don’t need to rely on any client-side rendering right now. This will at least unblock me to continue to develop my Blazor application. As things evolve, I’ll be sure to come back and revisit this Blazor render mode setting to make a better decision. Wrapping Up Blazor Render Mode and Dependency Injection Blazor render mode is broken! Okay, I’m kidding, so hopefully that wasn’t your takeaway from this article. There are a few key points I wanted to highlight, including that my current solution here may not at all be a viable option for you. And that’s why I will be creating follow-ups as I sort through this myself. My takeaways: If your code on page isn’t executing when you think it should be, double check for console errors. Something might be preventing the page to load as you expect. Blazor server-side rendering vs Blazor client-side rendering will in fact treat dependency injection separately. Give this some thought. This is an example of some potential “technical debt” that I will need to pay down later… but I would rather keep building than remain stuck for now. If you found this useful and you’re looking for more learning opportunities, consider and check out my ! subscribing to my free weekly software engineering newsletter free videos on YouTube

Blazor Render Mode – How To Avoid Dependency Injection Woes

145 Stories To Learn About Book

"We will migrate to TypeScript, and then..." – how often do you hear this phrase? Perhaps, if you mainly work within a single project or mostly just start new projects from scratch, this is a relatively rare expression for you to hear. For me, as someone working in an outsourcing company, who, in addition to my main project, sees dozens of various other projects every month, it is quite a common phrase from the development team or a client who would like to upgrade their project stack for easier team collaboration. Spoiler alert: it is probably not going to be as soon of a transition as you think (most likely, ). soon never While it may sound drastic, cases, this will indeed be the case. Most people who have not undergone such a transition may not be aware of the dozens of nuances that can arise during a project migration to TypeScript. For instance, are you prepared for the possibility that your project build, which took in pure JavaScript, might suddenly start taking when using TypeScript? Of course, it depends on your project's size, your pipeline configuration, etc., but these scenarios are not fabricated. You, as a developer, might be prepared for this inevitability, but what will your client think when you tell them that the budget for the server instance needs to be increased because the project build is now failing due to a heap out-of-memory error after adding TypeScript to the project? Yes, TypeScript, like any other tool, is not free. in most tens of seconds tens of minutes On the Internet, you can find a large number of articles about how leading companies successfully migrated their projects from pure to TypeScript. While they usually describe a lot of the issues they had during the transition and how they overcame them, there are still many unspoken obstacles that people can encounter, which can become critical to their migration. JavaScript Despite the awareness among most teams that adding typing to their projects through migration to TypeScript might not proceed as smoothly as depicted in various articles, they still consider TypeScript as the to address typing issues in their projects. This mindset can result in projects remaining in pure JavaScript for extended periods, and the eagerly anticipated typing remains confined to the realm of dreams. While alternative tools for introducing typing to JavaScript code do exist, TypeScript's overwhelming popularity often casts them into the shadows. This widespread acclaim, justified by the TypeScript team's active development, may, however, prove disadvantageous to developers. Developers tend to lean towards the perception that TypeScript is the solution to typing challenges in a project, neglecting other options. exclusive and definitive solution only Next, we will consider JSDoc as a tool that, when used correctly and understood in conjunction with other tools (like TypeScript), can help address the typing issue in a project . Many might think that the functionality of JSDoc pales in comparison to TypeScript, and comparing them is unfair. To some extent, that is true, but on the other hand, it depends on the perspective. Each technology has its pros and cons, counterbalancing the other. virtually for free Code examples will illustrate a kind of from TypeScript to JavaScript while maintaining typing functionality. While for some, this might appear as a form of . Again, it all depends on how you look at it… graceful degradation progressive enhancement JSDoc and Its Extensions is a specification for the comment format in JavaScript. This specification allows developers to describe the structure of their code, data types, function parameters, and much more using special comments. These comments can then be transformed into documentation using appropriate tools. JSDoc /**
 * Adds two numbers.
 * @param {number} a - The first number.
 * @param {number} b - The second number.
 * @returns {number} The sum of the two numbers.
 */
const getSum = (a, b) => {
  return a + b
} Initially, JSDoc was created with the goal of generating documentation based on comments, and this functionality remains a significant part of the tool. However, it is not the only aspect. The second substantial aspect of the tool is the description of various types within the program: variable types, object types, function parameters, and many other structures. Since the fate of was uncertain, and many developers lacked (and still lack to this day) proper typing, JSDoc started adding this much-needed typing to JavaScript. This contributed to its popularity, and as a result, many other tools began to rely on the JSDoc syntax. ECMAScript 4 An interesting fact is that while the JSDoc documentation provides a list of basic tags, the specification itself allows developers to expand the list based on their needs. Tools built on top of JSDoc leverage this flexibility to the maximum by adding their own custom tags. Therefore, encountering a JSDoc setup is a relatively rare occurrence. pure The most well-known tools that rely on JSDoc are (not to be confused with the Closure programming language) and . Both of these tools can help make your JavaScript , but they approach it differently. Closure Compiler primarily focuses on your files by adding typing through JSDoc annotations (after all, they are just ), while TypeScript is designed for files, introducing its own well-known TypeScript constructs such as , , , , and so on. Closure Compiler TypeScript typed enhancing .js comments .ts type interface enum namespace Not from its inception, but starting from , TypeScript began allowing something similar to Closure Compiler – checking type annotations in files based on the use of JSDoc syntax. With this version, and with each subsequent version, TypeScript not only added support for JSDoc but also incorporated present in the Closure Compiler. This made migration to TypeScript more straightforward. While Closure Compiler is still being updated, used by some teams, and in JavaScript (if its rules are followed), due to support for checking files and various other updates brought by the TypeScript team, . version 2.3 .js many of the core tags and constructs remains the most effective tool for code compression .js Closure Compiler eventually lost to TypeScript From the implementation perspective, incorporating an understanding of JSDoc notation into TypeScript is not a fundamental change. Whether it is TypeScript types or JSDoc types, ultimately, they both become part of the AST (Abstract Syntax Tree) of the executed program. This is convenient for us as developers because all our everyday tools, such as ESLint (including all its plugins), Prettier, and others, primarily rely on the AST. Therefore, regardless of the file extensions we use, our favorite plugins can continue to work in both and files (with some exceptions, of course). .js .ts Developer Experience When adding typing to JavaScript code using JSDoc, it is advisable to use additional tools that enhance the development experience. is a JSDoc plugin for ESLint. This plugin reports errors in case of invalid JSDoc syntax usage and helps standardize the written JSDoc. An important setting for this plugin is the option, which offers one of the following values: , (referring to Closure Compiler), or . As mentioned earlier, JSDoc can vary, and this option allows you to specify which JSDoc tags and syntax to use. The default value is (though this has not always been the case), which, given TypeScript's dominance over other tools that work with JSDoc, seems like a sensible choice. eslint-plugin-jsdoc mode typescript closure jsdoc typescript It is also important to choose a tool for analyzing the type annotations written in JSDoc, and in this case, it will be . This might sound strange because, in this article, it seems like we are discussing its replacement. However, we are not using TypeScript for its purpose – our files still have the extension. We will only use TypeScript as a type-checking linter. In most projects where TypeScript is used , there is typically a script responsible for compiling files into . In the case of using TypeScript as a linting tool, instead of a command handling compilation, you will have a command for linting your types. TypeScript primary .js fully build .ts .js build // package.json

{
  "scripts": {
	   "lint:type": "tsc --noEmit"
  }
} If, in the future, a tool emerges that TypeScript as a linting tool for project typing, we can always replace it in this script. surpasses To make this script work correctly, you need to create a file in your project or add additional parameters to this script. These parameters include and , which allow TypeScript to check code written in files. In addition to these parameters, you can enable many others. For example, to make type checking stricter, you can use , , , , and more. TypeScript will rigorously check your code even if you are using files. tsconfig.json allowJs checkJs .js strict noUncheckedIndexedAccess exactOptionalPropertyTypes noPropertyAccessFromIndexSignature .js The TypeScript team consistently enhances the functionality of TypeScript when working with JSDoc. With almost every release, they introduce both fixes and new features. The same applies to code editors. Syntax highlighting and other DX features provided by TypeScript when working with files also work when dealing with files using JSDoc. Although there are occasional instances where support for certain JSDoc features may come later, many GitHub issues labeled with JSDoc in the TypeScript backlog indicate that the TypeScript team continues to work on improving JSDoc support. .ts .js Many might mention the nuance that when using TypeScript solely for files, you are deprived of the ability to use additional constructs provided by TypeScript. For example: , , , , , and others, as their syntax are only available in files with the extension. .js Enums Namespaces Class Parameter Properties Abstract Classes and Members Experimental (!) Decorators .ts Again, for some, this may seem like a drawback, but for others, it could be considered a benefit, as most of these constructs have their drawbacks. Primarily, during TypeScript compilation to JavaScript, anything related to types . In the case of using the aforementioned constructs, all of them are into less-than-optimal JavaScript code. If this does not sound compelling enough for you to refrain from using them, you can explore the downsides of each of these constructs on your own, as there are plenty of articles on the Internet discussing these issues. simply disappears translated Overall, the use of these constructs is generally considered an anti-pattern. On most of my projects where I use TypeScript to its full extent (with all my code residing in files), I always use a custom ESLint rule: .ts // eslint.config.js

/** @type {import('eslint').Linter.FlatConfig} */
const config = {
  rules: {
    'no-restricted-syntax': [
      'error',
      {
        selector: 'TSEnumDeclaration,TSModuleDeclaration,TSParameterProperty,ClassDeclaration[abstract=true],Decorator',
        message: 'TypeScript shit is forbidden.',
      },
    ],
  },
} This rule prohibits the use of TypeScript constructs that raise concerns. When considering what remains of TypeScript when applying this ESLint rule, essentially, only the aspect remains. In this context, when using this rule, leveraging for adding typing to files is almost indistinguishable from using TypeScript with files. typing JSDoc tags and syntax provided by TypeScript .js .ts As mentioned earlier, most tools rely on AST for their operations, including TypeScript. TypeScript does not care whether you define types using TypeScript's keywords and syntax or JSDoc tags supported by TypeScript. This principle also applies to ESLint and its plugins, including the plugin. This means that we can use this plugin and its powerful rules to check typing even if the entire code is written in files (provided you enabled the ). typescript-eslint .js appropriate parser Unfortunately, a significant drawback when using these tools with files is that some parts of these tools, such as specific rules in typescript-eslint, rely on the use of specific TypeScript keywords. Examples of such rules include , , , and others that are tied explicitly to TypeScript keywords. Fortunately, there are not many such rules. Despite the fact that these rules could be rewritten to use AST, the development teams behind these rules are currently reluctant to do so due to the increased complexity of support when transitioning from using keywords to AST. .js explicit-function-return-type explicit-member-accessibility no-unsafe-return Conclusion JSDoc, when used alongside TypeScript as a linting tool, provides developers with a powerful means of typing files. Its functionality does not lag significantly behind TypeScript when used to its , keeping all the code in files. Utilizing JSDoc allows developers to introduce typing into a pure JavaScript project right now without delaying it as a distant dream of a full migration to TypeScript (which most likely will never happen). .js full potential .ts Many mistakenly spend too much time critiquing the JSDoc syntax, deeming it ugly, especially when compared to TypeScript. It is hard to argue otherwise; TypeScript's syntax does indeed look much more concise. However, what is truly a mistake is engaging in empty discussions about syntax instead of taking any action. In the end, you will probably want to achieve a similar result, as shown in the screenshot below. Performing such a migration is significantly easier and more feasible when transitioning from code that already has typing written in JSDoc. By the way, many who label the JSDoc syntax as ugly while using TypeScript as their sole primary tool, after such remarks, nonchalantly return to their files, fully embracing TS Enums, TS Parameter Properties, TS Experimental (!) Decorators and other TS constructs that might raise questions. Do they truly believe they are on the right side? .ts Most of the screenshots were taken from the migration of files to while preserving type functionality in my library (here is the ). Why did I decide to make this migration? Because I wanted to. Although this is far from my only experience with such migrations. Interestingly, the sides of migrations often change (migrations from to undoubtedly occur more frequently). Despite my affection for TypeScript and its concise syntax, after several dozen files written/rewritten using JSDoc, I stopped feeling any particular aversion to the JSDoc syntax, as it is . .ts .js form-payload PR .js .ts just syntax Summing up: JSDoc provides developers with real opportunities for gradually improving the codebase without requiring a complete transition to TypeScript from the start of migration. It is essential to remember that the key is not to pray to the TypeScript God but to start taking action. The ultimate transition to using TypeScript fully is possible, but you might also realize that JSDoc is more than sufficient for successful development, as it has its advantages. For example, here is what a "JSDoc-compiler" might look like: // bundler.js

await esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: [jsMainEntryPoint],
  minify: true, // 👌
}) Give it a try! Do not stand still; continually develop your project, and I am sure you will find many other benefits! Also published . here

TypeScript Might Not Be Your God: A Case Study of Using JSDoc for JavaScript Projects

Imagine a world where success isn't measured by the number of hours you grind away at your desk but by the smart strategies and innovative ideas you bring to the table. In the bustling heart of startup culture, there's a myth that's been sold to us: the belief that more work invariably leads to more growth. But what if I told you that this is just a well-orchestrated myth? Let's embark on a journey to debunk this myth. We'll explore the origins of this 'work hard, play hard' ethos and why it's time to shift our focus from quantity to quality. From the garages of Silicon Valley to the modern-day co-working spaces, we'll unravel the truth behind startup success. It's time to challenge the status quo and discover the smarter path to sustainable growth. Are you ready to change the way you think about work and success? The Perpetuation of the Overwork Myth in Startup Culture In the world of startups, a narrative as old as Silicon Valley itself persists: the more you work, the more you succeed. This myth, deeply ingrained in the fabric of entrepreneurial culture, has shaped the way countless founders and teams approach their journey to success. But where did this belief originate, and why does it continue to thrive in an era that increasingly values balance and well-being? The Silicon Valley Origin Story The story begins in the garages and makeshift offices of the early tech pioneers. These trailblazers, often idolized for their relentless work ethic, set a precedent: success in the tech world was synonymous with long hours, sleepless nights, and an all-consuming commitment to your venture. The media played a significant role in glamorizing these figures, often overlooking the other factors that played into their success – timing, innovation, market readiness, and sometimes, sheer luck. As these narratives proliferated, they painted a picture of the ideal entrepreneur: a tireless warrior battling against all odds, armed with nothing but a laptop and an unwavering will to succeed. This image became a template, a blueprint that many aspiring entrepreneurs felt compelled to follow. This is where services like those offered by become invaluable, providing expert support in HR, compliance, and finance to alleviate the operational burden on startup founders. back-office experts The Modern Startup Scene: A Legacy Continued Fast forward to today, and the startup world still holds tightly to this ethos. In co-working spaces and tech hubs around the globe, there's an unspoken reverence for the 'hustle.' Founders brag about pulling all-nighters as if it's a rite of passage, and 'busy' has become the ultimate badge of honor. Social media amplifies this, with influencers and thought leaders often equating success with the ability to endure punishing work schedules. But this narrative is not just harmless folklore; it has real consequences. It sets a dangerous precedent for what it means to be successful in tech. Aspiring entrepreneurs may feel pressured to emulate these unhealthy work patterns, believing it to be the only path to success. This relentless pursuit of work can lead to burnout, a phenomenon increasingly common in the tech world, and ironically, a serious impediment to productivity and creativity. At , we understand the unique challenges faced by startups and offer tailored solutions to streamline operations, allowing founders to focus on what truly matters for growth. Levy Questioning the Status Quo It's time to question this status quo. Is the glorification of overwork truly justified? Are we mistaking activity for productivity, or busyness for effectiveness? In the following sections, we'll dive deeper into the costs of this overwork culture and explore what truly drives sustainable growth in startups. Spoiler alert: it's not just about working harder. Burnout and Its Impact As we peel back the layers of the startup work ethic, a stark reality emerges: the glorification of overwork often leads to burnout, a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. Burnout in the startup ecosystem is not just a buzzword; it's a critical issue that's gaining attention for its profound impact on individuals and businesses alike. Understanding Burnout in the Startup World Burnout is characterized by feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance from one's job, and reduced professional efficacy. In the high-stakes environment of startups, where personal and professional boundaries are frequently blurred, burnout can be especially insidious. A 2020 by Blind, an anonymous professional network, revealed that 61% of professionals reported experiencing burnout, with the numbers being particularly high in tech companies. study The Triggers of Burnout Several factors contribute to burnout in startups. The relentless pursuit of growth, the pressure to meet investor expectations, and the fear of failing in a highly competitive market can create an environment where excessive working hours are the norm. This is compounded by the 'always-on' culture, where technology keeps us connected to work around the clock, leaving little room for disconnection and recovery. The Cost of Burnout The consequences of burnout extend beyond individual well-being. From a business perspective, burnout can lead to decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and a higher turnover rate. According to the World Health Organization, workplace stress costs American businesses up to , a testament to the economic impact of this issue. $300 billion annually To mitigate these costs, many companies are turning to solutions that promote efficiency and employee well-being. can play a pivotal role in reducing the strain of overworking by streamlining essential processes. Expert operational management Moreover, burnout can stifle creativity and innovation – the lifeblood of the startup ecosystem. A workforce that is mentally and physically exhausted is less likely to generate the breakthrough ideas that drive startup success. Addressing the Burnout Epidemic Recognizing and addressing burnout is not just a matter of personal well-being; it's a strategic imperative for startups. Creating an environment that prioritizes mental health, encourages regular breaks, and respects personal time is crucial. This involves a cultural shift: redefining success not by the number of hours worked but by the quality of work and the well-being of the team. What Actually Drives Startup Growth? Moving beyond the myth that more work equals more growth, it's crucial to understand what genuinely drives startup success. Growth in the startup world is a multifaceted phenomenon, influenced by a blend of strategic planning, innovation, and team dynamics. Let's explore these key drivers that can propel startups to new heights, without falling into the trap of the overwork culture. Strategic Planning and Goal Setting Success in startups often begins with a clear and strategic plan. It's not just about working hard; it's about working smart. Effective goal setting involves identifying specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound objectives. A by the Harvard Business Review highlighted that companies with a formalized goal-setting process are four times more likely to be high-performing. Strategic planning also means prioritizing tasks that align with long-term goals and delegating or discarding those that don't. study This approach ensures that every hour spent working is impactful and moves the needle forward in a meaningful way. Leveraging Technology and Automation In today's digital age, technology plays a pivotal role in startup growth. Automation tools and software can drastically increase efficiency, allowing startups to do more with less. For instance, automating routine tasks like data entry, customer support, and even certain aspects of marketing can free up valuable time for the team to focus on more strategic initiatives. Adopting the right technology stack can be a game-changer for startups. A by McKinsey & Company revealed that early adopters of Artificial Intelligence and automation experienced revenue growth at a rate three times higher than non-adopters in their industries. survey The Power of a Balanced Team A diverse and balanced team is another critical component of startup growth. Diversity in skills, perspectives, and backgrounds can lead to more innovative solutions and better decision-making. Building such a team requires more than just talent; it requires creating an environment where operational efficiency is prioritized. can be instrumental in achieving this balance, allowing creative minds to focus on what they do best. Comprehensive back-office support A by Boston Consulting Group found that companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenues due to innovation. Moreover, a team that maintains a healthy work-life balance is more likely to be productive and creative. report Encouraging a culture where employees feel valued and are given the space to recharge leads to higher job satisfaction and retention rates, which are crucial for long-term growth. Fostering a Culture of Continuous Learning and Adaptation In the rapidly changing startup landscape, the ability to learn and adapt is invaluable. Encouraging a culture of continuous learning and being open to pivoting strategies in response to market feedback can make a significant difference. This adaptability allows startups to stay ahead of trends and respond effectively to challenges and opportunities. In crux, startup growth is not a linear path defined solely by the number of hours worked. It's a dynamic process that requires strategic planning, leveraging technology, building a balanced team, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and adaptation. In the next section, we'll delve into how startups can implement these strategies to achieve sustainable growth. Implementing Sustainable Growth Strategies Having explored the drivers of startup growth, it's essential to understand how to implement these strategies effectively. Sustainable growth in startups is about creating a balance between ambition and well-being, leveraging resources smartly, and maintaining a culture that fosters innovation and productivity. Here's how startups can put these principles into action. Setting Realistic Goals and Metrics The foundation of sustainable growth is setting realistic and achievable goals. According to a Forbes , only 8% of people achieve their goals. This often stems from setting overly ambitious goals without a clear plan. report Startups should focus on SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals that align with their long-term vision. Additionally, choosing the right metrics to track progress is crucial. Vanity metrics like social media followers might look good on paper but often don't correlate with real business growth. Instead, focus on metrics that directly impact your business, such as customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, churn rate, and revenue growth. In setting these goals, startups benefit from leveraging external expertise. can provide the necessary guidance and support, helping startups align their operational strategies with their growth objectives. Strategic operational insights Leveraging Technology for Efficiency Technology is a powerful tool for startups looking to grow sustainably. By automating routine tasks, startups can increase efficiency and allow their teams to focus on more strategic work. For instance, CRM systems can automate customer interactions, while project management tools can streamline workflow management. A by Salesforce revealed that CRM software can increase sales by up to 29%, productivity by up to 34%, and accuracy of forecasting by 42%. These tools not only save time but also provide valuable data insights for better decision-making. survey Building and Nurturing a Balanced Team A balanced team is at the heart of a startup's success. This means having a mix of skills and personalities that complement each other and a culture that supports work-life balance. Google's Project Aristotle, a study on team effectiveness, found that the best teams are those where members feel safe to take risks and express their ideas – an environment where work-life balance is respected. Encouraging regular breaks, flexible working hours, and a supportive atmosphere can significantly boost team morale and productivity. A by the University of Warwick found that happy employees are up to 12% more productive. study Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning The startup ecosystem is constantly evolving, and so should its players. Creating a culture of continuous learning and encouraging employees to upskill can keep a startup agile and competitive. This could be through workshops, online courses, or encouraging side projects. LinkedIn's 2023 Workplace highlighted that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development. This investment in learning not only helps in personal growth but also ensures that the startup is always at the forefront of innovation. Learning Report Implementing sustainable growth strategies requires a holistic approach. It's about setting realistic goals, leveraging technology, nurturing a balanced team, and fostering a culture of continuous learning. By focusing on these areas, startups can achieve growth that is not only rapid but also sustainable and resilient in the face of challenges. Conclusion As we've journeyed through the landscape of startup culture, challenging the myth of overwork and exploring the multifaceted nature of true growth, one thing becomes clear: sustainable success in the startup world is not a product of relentless grind, but of strategic, balanced, and smart practices. The myth that more hours at the desk equates to more growth has been debunked. Instead, we've seen that strategic planning, leveraging technology, nurturing a balanced and diverse team, and fostering a culture of continuous learning are the real drivers of sustainable growth. These practices don't just prevent burnout; they fuel innovation, productivity, and ultimately, success. In the dynamic and ever-evolving world of technology and startups, adaptability and balance are key. As we move forward, let's redefine the metrics of success in the startup ecosystem. It's not about who works the longest; it's about who works the smartest, who innovates, who adapts, and who maintains a team that's as healthy and balanced as it is driven and passionate. To all the entrepreneurs, innovators, and dreamers out there in the HackerNoon community: let's embrace these principles. Let's build startups that are not only successful in their achievements but also in their approach to work and well-being. Here's to growing smarter, not just harder!

Breaking the Startup Myth: More Work Doesn't Equal More Growth - Here's What It Does!

স্টার্টআপ মিথ ভাঙা: আরও কাজ বেশি বৃদ্ধির সমান নয় - এখানে কী করে!

Den Startup-Mythos brechen: Mehr Arbeit bedeutet nicht mehr Wachstum – hier erfahren Sie, was es bewirkt!

Rompiendo el mito de las startups: más trabajo no equivale a más crecimiento: ¡esto es lo que sí!

Briser le mythe des startups : plus de travail n'équivaut pas à plus de croissance - voici ce qui se produit !

स्टार्टअप मिथक को तोड़ना: अधिक काम का मतलब अधिक विकास नहीं है - यहाँ बताया गया है कि क्या होता है!

スタートアップ神話の打破: より多くの仕事をすることは、より多くの成長を意味するわけではありません - これが実際の結果です。

스타트업 신화 깨기: 더 많은 노력이 더 많은 성장을 보장하지는 않습니다 - 이것이 의미하는 바는 다음과 같습니다!

Quebrando o mito das startups: mais trabalho não significa mais crescimento - aqui está o que significa!

Разрушение мифа о стартапах: больше работы не означает большего роста – вот что значит!

Startup Efsanesini Çöktürüyor: Daha Fazla Çalışmak Daha Fazla Büyümeye Eşit Değil - İşte Ne Sağlar!

Phá vỡ quan niệm sai lầm về khởi nghiệp: Làm nhiều việc hơn không đồng nghĩa với tăng trưởng nhiều hơn - Đây là điều có thể làm được!

打破创业神话：更多的工作并不等于更多的成长——这就是什么！

A few months ago, the Yelp engineering team published an article about how they use embeddings to represent and organize online content, particularly within the context of Yelp’s efforts to offer easily accessible high-quality content. https://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2023/04/yelp-content-as-embeddings.html?source=post_page-----2c1d62f74e10--------------------------------&embedable=true Yelp aims to offer easily accessible high-quality content. We need to tag, organize and rank online content to attain this goal. For this purpose, Yelp engineers have started using general embeddings on different data. It improves usability and efficiency for all kinds of model development. How refreshing is it not to have one more article about embeddings in the context of RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) isn’t it!? That was the hook for me! Additionally, having worked many times on enterprise search systems (intricate implementation details but also ranking/relevancy aspects), I was also looking at use cases that were not search-oriented, or at least not directly. Although it can be interesting to explore embeddings in the context of semantic search (vs full-text search) or hybrid search, which is a valid topic by itself, that’s not something for this time. :) Without further ado, let’s dive deep into this article! I’m excited to learn about how Yelp supports its various use cases related to tagging, organizing, and ranking. Embeddings are the common backbone for many ML models and facilitate cross-team collaborations. I will use this article to introduce some machine learning concepts along the way that can help to better understand the domain. But first, this is all about embeddings! Text embedding has been researched in depth in the scientific community. First, embeddings were generated with sparse vectors representing words. Spoiler alert: the article not only explores but also delves into photo embeddings (yep, Yelp has a lot of different content…)! text embeddings At its core, one of the article’s focuses is embeddings, which are vectors utilized to represent diverse types of content. Named appropriately, these vectors are ‘embedded’ into a designated space, serving as a numerical representation for the encoded content. This space is a coordinate system where each vector has a specific position. The arrangement of vectors in this space captures the relationships and context between them. In the context of embeddings, each vector in the space has multiple dimensions. Each dimension represents a specific feature or characteristic of the content. Embeddings developed further with context-aware embeddings since the same word can have different meanings depending on how it is used in a sentence. With the use of transformers in recent years, we now have text snippet embeddings that capture more semantic meaning. Consider a simplified text embedding with two dimensions: one representing the of terms and the other for terms. A vector [4, 1] might represent a text heavily focused on technology. Embeddings can encode entire text passages, not just single words, and can have numerous dimensions tailored for specific use cases (e.g., similarity, sentiment analysis). This is a simplified representation of . The model used by Yelp is more advanced than this example. A good starting point to learn about is to explore Word2Vec. frequency technology-related health-related text embeddings word embeddings Whether vectors represent words, photos, or text snippets, proximity in space implies meaningful connections. This representation enables advanced operations and use cases. Small thing: sparse vs dense vectors. Sparse vectors offer memory efficiency but may be computationally expensive, while dense vectors provide richer representations at the cost of increased memory requirements. Both are compact representations of the content. To wrap up this refresher on embeddings (though we spent quite some time there), in the realm of multimodal models (models that can handle different types of data, such as both text and images), the direct use of raw data representations is infrequent. Instead, content is effectively encoded as vectors, providing a convenient means for manipulation. Once the content is represented numerically, basic mathematical operations become feasible (the basis for many ML algorithms). Oh, and I almost forgot: how do we create these embeddings? A transformer is a neural network architecture designed for various tasks, including generating nuanced and semantically meaningful embeddings not limited to text alone. It considers broader contexts, whether within a sentence, text snippets, or other data types like images in multimodal settings. Here’s if you want to learn more: the introductory paper So what does Yelp want to do? Semantic comprehension of the text is essential for Yelp. Yelp reviews are our most valuable asset since they contain a lot of business context and sentiment. We want to capture the essence of each review text to serve their information to our users better. We looked for versatility in our embedding as we try to use the same embedding in various tasks: tagging, information extraction, sentiment analysis and ranking. I briefly mentioned it earlier, but here’s the core idea! The goal is to have versatile embeddings that can be applied in different contexts to accomplish various tasks. Once these embeddings are obtained, they can be used as input for different machine learning models, each tailored to specific tasks. To achieve this versatility, a transformer embedding model is employed, labeled input data relevant to . In the end, the space where the embeddings are encoded captures the knowledge necessary for these diverse tasks. trained on the desired tasks Embeddings based on reviews are currently generated by the Universal Sentence Encoder off-the-shelf model offered by Tensorflow. This blog section will present the USE model, any modifications tested to improve it and its advantages for the Yelp dataset. The Universal Sentence Encoder (USE) serves as the base transformer model they’ve chosen. If you’re interested in more details, you can refer to their article or read the paper introducing the Universal Sentence Encoder. Alright, I’ll skip this part. I’m not particularly interested in the inner workings of the USE transformer; it’s a bit too detailed for me. I’m sure it’s impressive, though! ;) You can find the base model on Hugging Face, and it also includes a comprehensive description of its internals. https://huggingface.co/Dimitre/universal-sentence-encoder?source=post_page-----2c1d62f74e10--------------------------------&embedable=true Here’s something helpful for better visualizing these embeddings: earlier, I provided an example of a 2-dimensional vector used to encode whether a text was more focused on technology or health. USE generates, by default, 512-dimensional embeddings. It helps to relativize how they capture enough context to be used for all these various tasks. Then, the article goes on to describe how they used this model to encode reviews and the results. By nature, most NLP models will perform better when trained on domain-specific text. With this hypothesis, we developed and compared a Yelp fine-tuned encoder with the pre-trained USE model available on TensorFlow-Hub. We aimed to create a better model adapted to the Yelp domain than the pre-trained model. After fine-tuning the model, we wanted to use it to generate an embedding for reviews specifically. Some vocabulary clarifications first: the terms ‘off-the-shelf model,’ ‘foundation model,’ and ‘base model’ are often used interchangeably. They typically refer to pre-trained models available for immediate use without the need for extensive customization or additional training. The development of a base model is a resource-intensive process, with a focus on data quantity over quality. The costs associated with this first stage can amount to millions of dollars in resource processing and can span several weeks. The exact details of large model development, including training time and dataset sizes, are proprietary information held by the developers and researchers involved in the project. Access to this information is crucial to identify biases and understand the ethical impact on applications that use them. Open-source models, like USE, have an advantage here. Given the significant costs associated with creating base models, not every company can afford this investment. Consequently, having access to these pre-trained models off the shelf for free proves to be highly convenient. In the second stage, these pre-trained base models can be fine-tuned to better capture business domain knowledge. While the first stage focuses on learning the structure, features, and recurrent patterns from extensive datasets (task and content-specific), the second stage involves training the base model on a smaller, domain, task-specific dataset, prioritizing . quality over quantity However, in Yelp’s case, the fine-tuned model did not outperform the base model during inference. The model evaluation made on the Yelp domain showed that the ready-to-use model performed better than or as well as the Yelp pre-trained encoder for all tasks. These results happened because either the Yelp domain touches many generic subjects in the USE model or our experiments lacked task diversity to gain an edge. Based on these results, we decided to keep the off-the-shelf USE pre-trained model. Definitely, the quality of the fine-tuning dataset could be a significant reason. Factors like diversity and biases might impede the fine-tuning process. This raises questions about how they assess the quality of their input data, specifically reviews, and whether they undergo preprocessing. Hyperparameters can also play a role in impacting the process. Now, the choice of evaluation metrics is crucial. If the metrics used do not align with the goals of the fine-tuning tasks, they might not accurately reflect the model’s performance. We computed the cosine similarity between different embedding representations of reviews Cosine similarity is commonly used to compare text embeddings. It does not take into account the magnitude of the vectors (i.e., the length of the text). Instead, it focuses on the orientation of the vectors rather than their absolute values. It’s easy to understand that the semantic meaning of a sentence should not be impacted by the length, but if the vectors point in opposite directions, they probably express opposite meanings. Note also that, as mentioned earlier, USE generates fixed-length vectors. In this case, it would not have been an issue with cosine similarity, but fixed-length vectors are easier to integrate with different ML algorithms (and this is what they want, remember: tagging, sentiment analysis, etc.). … It transforms varying sentence lengths into a fixed-length vector representation. But ultimately, what I’m really missing in this testing approach, beyond the metric that was used, is the process. I would have liked to know more about their testing approach, including details about the data they used, whether it is automated, some insights into the infrastructure, etc. Now that they have explained how they generate text embeddings from user reviews of businesses. They mention that they use these initial embeddings to generate another type of embeddings: . business embeddings We chose to base our business embedding on user content. We select the 50 most recent reviews and average their vector embeddings to create our first business embedding representation. It’s a great way to start since reviews contain quality content describing the businesses. The next step will be to add the photo embeddings as well. So basically, they average the top 50 reviews’ embeddings of a given business to generate a single embedding per business. Something like that? business_embedding = sum(top_50_embeddings) / len(top_50_embeddings) After all, that’s the beauty of having vectors… However, they don’t explain how they pick out those top 50 embeddings. Perhaps they include the review rating as part of the text embedding and use it down the road for ranking. A clearer explanation of the approach regarding additional metadata handling would have been nice. And then there’s this assumption that “reviews contain quality content.” Really? I mean, as a user, when I drop a note on a business page, it’s not always a masterpiece… So, I’m still hung up on my earlier question about sizing up the quality of their input data. And why do they do that…? Business embeddings help generate a top-k similarity list to relate businesses to other businesses, users to businesses and users to users based on their matching business interaction history. This correlation matrix of similarity helps show signification recommendations like “Users like you also liked…” or “Since you like business A, you might like business B”. You can learn more about this use case in . this blog post Ah, that’s cool — recommendations based on vectors. That’s a use case that makes sense (comparing related vectors) and adds a lot of end-user value. Well done! The approach they mention is based on a technique named , either item-based or user-based. In their case, the correlation matrix mentioned in the context of generating recommendations indicates that a similarity score, possibly Pearson correlation, is computed for each pair of businesses or users. collaborative filtering They refer to another post that provides a detailed explanation of their approach. It reminds me of an amazing book, old but incredibly well-written, that actually sparked an obsession with recommendations for me at that time — by the late . But there’s so much more than recommendations in this book! Toby Segaran https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/programming-collective-intelligence/9780596529321/?source=post_page-----2c1d62f74e10--------------------------------&embedable=true Ok, we are almost at the end, 2/3 done… They now introduce another type of embedding: . Well, this one is not for the faint of heart, and honestly, I will go through it quickly because if you want nitty-gritty details, head to the article. I think I have more newbie questions than comments. photo embeddings This time, they chose to use a different model than USE to generate these embeddings: CLIP. CLIP (Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training) and USE are tailored for different purposes, with CLIP being more adept at handling image-text associations and abstract visual concepts. Here are some of the advantages highlighted: The CLIP model is a zero-shot model, meaning it can infer successfully from an unseen dataset. A zero-shot model is an opportunity for Yelp to better identify and tag unseen photo categories to improve photo search. Our classifier won’t need a thousand examples for each new tag or label added. The next section compares the CLIP model with their existing classifiers, ResNet50, for the classification of Food, Drinks, Menu, Interior, Exterior, and Home Services Contractor. Without any fine-tuning, the pre-trained CLIP model outperforms ResNet50, as assessed by precision/recall measures. The main advantages of CLIP include its ability: To recognize categories it has never seen during training (zero-shot learning), while ResNet50 requires examples for each category. To capture semantic relationships and concepts within images and text, unlike ResNet50, which lacks an inherent understanding of textual information associated with the images. This is a really interesting finding: just like USE, the base CLIP model outperforms a fine-tuned model (note: ResNet50 is not a transformer architecture) . for Yelp It would have been interesting to know how a fine-tuned CLIP using Yelp data would have fared. Additionally, I would have liked more information about the testing methodology. Finally, they look at some of CLIP’s vulnerabilities. Before using CLIP and publishing its results, it’s better to know its vulnerabilities and how to optimize the model performance. The key vulnerability highlighted in the text is related to what the authors refer to as ‘typographic attacks’ — the model’s susceptibility to being misled by the presence of specific words or text in images. https://gizmodo.com/if-skynet-takes-over-try-writing-robot-on-your-shirt-1846433086?source=post_page-----2c1d62f74e10--------------------------------&embedable=true In summary, the vulnerability stems from CLIP’s sensitivity to textual elements in images, posing a risk of misclassification when certain words are strategically placed. That’s something to know when deploying CLIP in real-world scenarios, particularly in contexts where typographic attacks could be a concern. I understand that USE could not handle the joint processing of images and text, leading them to explore CLIP. However, the embeddings generated by the two models exist in different spaces, preventing cross-content operations by mixing these two types of embeddings. I wonder if such a requirement could arise. Additionally, I read about Hugging Face providing an encoder-transformer template that can be used to build your own transformer architecture by combining several base models if I understand correctly. https://huggingface.co/blog/warm-starting-encoder-decoder?source=post_page-----2c1d62f74e10--------------------------------&embedable=true Could they use this if needed? This is clearly beyond my expertise. In conclusion, that was a very interesting article! It showcased: the usage of embeddings to power different use cases, the usage of embeddings as an interface between products and teams, the efficacy of off-the-shelf models compared to models that have been finely tuned (for Yelp), and the advantage of having these base models available for free and, even better, open source (either known training set and/or parameters/weights). Still, some open questions persist, such as: validation of the quality of the input data (e.g., reviews), details about the testing methodologies, The storage infrastructure is missing: where did they decide to store and serve these embeddings? It could be a basic data lake (blob storage) or a more advanced vector database; however, the required search capabilities are not really advanced at this point. Unclear also about the approach to managing metadata, which is also related to the previous point. I would have loved to learn more about the sentiment analysis use case that was mentioned at the beginning. Investigate and delve deeper into the usage of embeddings in the context of graph representation, as embeddings effectively capture relationships between concepts. I  hope this post gives you some insights into what you could do with embeddings, How you could generate them, and what parts of your products could benefit from them. These off-the-shelf models can help you easily incorporate this technology to make it work for you and deliver more end-user value. The sky is the limit, and you don’t actually need to know all the intricacies. Found this article useful? Follow me on Linkedin and ! Please 👏 this article to share it! Hackernoon

Bits of Thought: Yelp Content As Embeddings

127 Stories To Learn About Wordpress

A solopreneur is the next evolutionary step from a professional or a freelancer to a one-person business powerhouse. Whether you're a specialist like a designer or data scientist, or a multi-talented virtual assistant and content creator, the common thread is ambition. But how do you effectively kick off a one-person business? You are most likely here because you are thinking about becoming a solopreneur yourself. Or, maybe you’ve heard this new word and would like to understand its meaning. Either way, let's first clarify what sets a solopreneur apart from a freelancer. Spoiler Alert: Solopreneur vs Freelancer While all solopreneurs are freelancers at their core, not all freelancers embrace the solopreneur spirit. The distinction lies in their approach to work, their long-term business goals, and the vision they hold for their professional future. Aspect Freelancer Solopreneur Growth & Scalability Focuses on delivering services without a plan for scaling up significantly. Aims to grow and scale the business, often through productization and automation strategies. Long-term Vision Operates with a short-term or project-based mindset. Has a long-term vision for the business and works towards creating a sustainable brand. Income Dependency Income is directly tied to time invested (hourly rates, per-project fees). Seeks to create income streams that are independent of time invested (passive income). Brand & Marketing May not invest in marketing or branding beyond necessary to find work on freelance platforms. Invests in building a brand identity and actively markets the business to establish a presence. Business Operations Engages minimally in business operations outside of their freelance work. Manages all aspects of the business, including strategy, marketing, and accounting. Solopreneur Blueprint Launching a one-person business can be daunting, knowing you're the sole force behind every decision. However, by breaking down the process into manageable steps and crafting a strategic plan, you can navigate your first year with confidence. 1 Model Yourself After Successful Solopreneurs To manage the uncertainty of investing in a new endeavor, look to those who’ve done it. Imagine you are employed as a graphic designer and you are considering going solo. There are a few considerations before you choose the ‘model’. Look for those with a similar background and trajectory. For example, if you have one year of industry experience and your model worked in well-known agencies, studios, and companies for 10 years when they started their business, you might want to find a different model. You can think of it as comparing your resumes. Once you find a comparable role model, the goal is to dissect their solo business model. How do they attract and retain clients? What social media platforms are they using? Are they on freelancing platforms? What unique products or services have they created that set them apart? You get the idea. Next, try to reach out to them and ask for 30 minutes of their time to pick their brain about starting as a solopreneur. Networking is key. However, if direct contact is daunting, seek out interviews or podcasts where they share their journey. 2 Collect Data on Your Business Data isn't just for big corporations; it's a powerful tool for a solopreneur's strategic planning.  Therefore, consider investing in data collection and metric definition from the start. It can feel silly since not much is happening at the beginning but this will help you understand your business in the future. , client acquisition costs, and are just a few metrics that can provide invaluable insights. Monthly recurring revenue client conversion rates Use the growth rate formula to measure your progress and adjust your strategies accordingly: / Growth Rate (GR) = (End Value (Clients or Revenue)−Starting Value (Clients or Revenue) Starting Value (Clients or Revenue))×100% Note that tracking your progress during the first three months will be biased since demand for your services can fluctuate throughout the year, but you might get some insights and you will start building the practice of tracking success in Thinking about your growth early on and building those processes can help you feel more in control and increase your confidence. . metrics 3 Focus on What You Can Influence Very early on, it is quite difficult to track your progress and manage your expectations around growth. However, you can focus on actions within your control that can attract new clients or enhance client loyalty. If cold messaging is your strategy, consider the impact of dedicating an additional 30 minutes each day to this task. with your outreach—test different pitches or portfolio presentations to see which resonates more with potential clients. To understand  the effectiveness of the variations, you can conduct a simple A/B test. This involves creating two distinct groups from your list of cold contacts. Each group receives a different version of your pitch or portfolio. After a set period (say a week), analyze the response rate from each group. How many from each group replied? How many led to paid work? By comparing these ratios, you can identify which approach was more successful. Experiment 4 Trust in Compounded Efforts Patience is a fundamental aspect of solopreneurship. Early work on and establishing an online presence may feel unrewarding, yet this effort sets the stage for later success. As your client base grows, so does your market presence, making it easier to attract new business. Similarly, product sales can start slow but increase exponentially as your brand gains recognition. branding Solopreneur’s Mindset Summary By understanding the four aspects, you can set a solid foundation for your solopreneur journey. Remember, the transition to solopreneur from employment or freelancing is not just a change in title—it's a shift in mindset from simply delivering work and getting paid to truly running a business.

Solopreneur Blueprint: 4 Strategies for Laying the Groundwork in Year One

সোলোপ্রেনিউর ব্লুপ্রিন্ট: প্রথম বছরে ভিত্তি স্থাপনের জন্য 4টি কৌশল

Solopreneur Blueprint: 4 Strategien, um im ersten Jahr den Grundstein zu legen

Plan de emprendedor individual: 4 estrategias para sentar las bases en el primer año

Plan Solopreneur : 4 stratégies pour préparer le terrain dès la première année

सोलोप्रेन्योर ब्लूप्रिंट: पहले वर्ष में आधार तैयार करने के लिए 4 रणनीतियाँ

ソロプレナーの青写真: 1 年目に基礎を築くための 4 つの戦略

1인 기업 청사진: 1년 차 기반 마련을 위한 4가지 전략

Plano Solopreneur: 4 estratégias para estabelecer as bases no primeiro ano

План индивидуального предпринимателя: 4 стратегии для закладки основы в первый год

Solopreneur Planı: Birinci Yılda Temel Atmaya Yönelik 4 Strateji

Kế hoạch chi tiết của Solopreneur: 4 chiến lược đặt nền móng trong năm thứ nhất

个体企业家蓝图：第一年奠定基础的 4 项策略

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Blackhatworld.com. It's like a digital wasteland where the scavengers of the internet gather to peddle their worthless junk. I mean, seriously, it's a jungle out there, and not in a good way. The forum, also operating as a , is a haven for digital marketing scams and quacks, counting their revenue. freelance platform like Fiverr It's like they've adopted a "see no evil, hear no evil" policy as long as the advertising dollars keep rolling in. The worst part is that these self-proclaimed SEO gurus are polluting the minds of unsuspecting newbies. First off, let's talk about the sheer volume of these services that claim to be the magic potion for boosting your website's ranking. It's like a never-ending parade of snake oil salesmen, each promising the moon and stars but delivering nothing more than a black hole of disappointment. AND ALL FOR !!!! You'd think with the number of self-proclaimed SEO experts on there, Google's algorithm would've been cracked wide open by now. Spoiler alert: it hasn't. And then there's the issue of . It's like the wild west of the internet, with scammers riding into town and looting unsuspecting victims left and right. The worst part? It feels like the platform turns a blind eye to it, if not outright encourages it. scams It's as if they have a neon sign saying, "Scammers welcome, no background checks required." What's even more infuriating is that the scammers seem to have some kind of mystical protection on the forum. It's like they've cast a shield of invisibility, and the moderators are either oblivious or complicit. You try reporting a scammer, and it's like yelling into the void. No one cares, or worse, they might just ban you for daring to speak out against the sacred cow of shady practices. After all, the scammers are paying a fee to advertise their scams on the forum! And let's not forget how the platform knowingly promotes these scams. It's like they've adopted a "see no evil, hear no evil" policy as long as the advertising dollars keep rolling in. It's a classic case of to the festering sore that is their marketplace, all in the pursuit of profit. turning a blind eye I get it; the internet can be a sketchy place, but Blackhatworld.com takes it to a whole new level. It's like they've built a haven for digital charlatans, and they're just sitting back, counting their ad revenue while the unsuspecting users fall victim to the countless scams. I swear, some of the so-called experts on there must have learned SEO from a fortune cookie or a particularly misleading game of telephone! You've got users spouting off advice that's not just questionable—it's downright laughable. It's as if they and decided to tear it up, burn it, and then dance around the ashes while chanting some SEO voodoo incantations. read the SEO rulebook Then there are the brilliant minds who think that backlinks from sketchy, irrelevant sites are the secret sauce to SEO glory. It's like they're playing a dangerous game of link-building Russian roulette, hoping that one day Google will reward them for their dedication to the fine art of link spamming. The worst part is that these self-proclaimed SEO gurus are polluting the minds of unsuspecting newbies who stumble onto the forum seeking guidance. Imagine being a digital Padawan looking for Yoda-level wisdom and instead getting handed a lightsaber made of cardboard with "SEO MAGIC" scrawled on it in crayon. It's a tragedy in the making. So, if you're ever feeling masochistic and decide to dive into the SEO advice section of Blackhatworld.com, brace yourself for a rollercoaster of facepalms and head-scratching moments. It's a wild ride through the twilight zone of SEO wisdom, where the blind are leading the blind, and everyone's just hoping they don't fall off the cliff of search engine oblivion. Good luck out there because you're going to need it.

Blackhatworld.com: Where The Blind Leads The Blind 

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