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In the world of video editing, there is an arsenal of tools that can transform an ordinary video into a true work of art. One such tool is the “ ” feature to mute certain parts of a video. This technique plays a key role in creating professional and carefully crafted content. mute video Hiding Unnecessary Noise Muting a video can be an effective way to avoid including unwanted sounds such as background noise or random conversations. For example, when filming an outdoor interview, muting the audio during periods when the interviewee is not speaking allows you to focus the viewer's attention on the substance of the statement. Emphasizing Visual Elements Mute can also be used to emphasize visual elements in a video. For example, when creating a montage with colorful scenery or important details, muting the background sound allows viewers to delve deeper into the visual experience, making it more vivid and memorable. Creating An Emotional Atmosphere Muting the sound in certain scenes can help create an emotional atmosphere. This is especially significant when dealing with dramatic moments or scenes where visual impact is more essential than sound. This technique allows directors to control the emotional impact on the audience. Maintaining Rhythm and Tempo Turning the sound on and off at certain points in the video can help create more dynamic and interesting content. This is especially useful when creating music videos or videos with active scenes. Muting the sound for a moment can add intrigue and emphasize mood shifts. Conclusion The “mute video” feature is not just a technical trick but a powerful tool for creating unique and professional video content. This method allows you to manage viewers' attention, emphasize important moments, and create an emotional visual experience.

How to Make Your Video Look More Professional With the “Mute Video” Feature

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here . An Appeal for Help II. An Appeal for Help It was five minutes past nine when I entered our joint sitting-room for breakfast on the following morning. My friend Poirot, exact to the minute as usual, was just tapping the shell of his second egg. He beamed upon me as I entered. “You have slept well, yes? You have recovered from the crossing so terrible? It is a marvel, almost you are exact this morning. Pardon, but your tie is not symmetrical. Permit that I rearrange him.” Elsewhere, I have described Hercule Poirot. An extraordinary little man! Height, five feet four inches, egg-shaped head carried a little to one side, eyes that shone green when he was excited, stiff military moustache, air of dignity immense! He was neat and dandified in appearance. For neatness of any kind, he had an absolute passion. To see an ornament set crooked, or a speck of dust, or a slight disarray in one’s attire, was torture to the little man until he could ease his feelings by remedying the matter. “Order” and “Method” were his gods. He had a certain disdain for tangible evidence, such as footprints and cigarette ash, and would maintain that, taken by themselves, they would never enable a detective to solve a problem. Then he would tap his egg-shaped head with absurd complacency, and remark with great satisfaction: “The true work, it is done from within. The little grey cells—remember always the little grey cells, mon ami!” I slipped into my seat, and remarked idly, in answer to Poirot’s greeting, that an hour’s sea passage from Calais to Dover could hardly be dignified by the epithet “terrible.” Poirot waved his egg-spoon in vigorous refutation of my remark. “Du tout! If for an hour one experiences sensations and emotions of the most terrible, one has lived many hours! Does not one of your English poets say that time is counted, not by hours, but by heart-beats?” “I fancy Browning was referring to something more romantic than sea sickness, though.” “Because he was an Englishman, an Islander to whom la Manche was nothing. Oh, you English! With nous autres it is different. Figure to yourself that a lady of my acquaintance at the beginning of the war fled to Ostend. There she had a terrible crisis of the nerves. Impossible to escape further except by crossing the sea! And she had a horror—mais une horreur!—of the sea! What was she to do? Daily les Boches were drawing nearer. Imagine to yourself the terrible situation!” “What did she do?” I inquired curiously. “Fortunately her husband was homme pratique. He was also very calm, the crises of the nerves, they affected him not. Il l’a emportée simplement! Naturally when she reached England she was prostrate, but she still breathed.” Poirot shook his head seriously. I composed my face as best I could. Suddenly he stiffened and pointed a dramatic finger at the toast rack. “Ah, par exemple, c’est trop fort!” he cried. “What is it?” “This piece of toast. You remark him not?” He whipped the offender out of the rack, and held it up for me to examine. “Is it square? No. Is it a triangle? Again no. Is it even round? No. Is it of any shape remotely pleasing to the eye? What symmetry have we here? None.” “It’s cut from a cottage loaf,” I explained soothingly. Poirot threw me a withering glance. “What an intelligence has my friend Hastings!” he exclaimed sarcastically. “Comprehend you not that I have forbidden such a loaf—a loaf haphazard and shapeless, that no baker should permit himself to bake!” I endeavoured to distract his mind. “Anything interesting come by the post?” Poirot shook his head with a dissatisfied air. “I have not yet examined my letters, but nothing of interest arrives nowadays. The great criminals, the criminals of method, they do not exist. The cases I have been employed upon lately were banal to the last degree. In verity I am reduced to recovering lost lap-dogs for fashionable ladies! The last problem that presented any interest was that intricate little affair of the Yardly diamond, and that was—how many months ago, my friend?” He shook his head despondently, and I roared with laughter. “Cheer up, Poirot, the luck will change. Open your letters. For all you know, there may be a great Case looming on the horizon.” Poirot smiled, and taking up the neat little letter opener with which he opened his correspondence he slit the tops of the several envelopes that lay by his plate. “A bill. Another bill. It is that I grow extravagant in my old age. Aha! a note from Japp.” “Yes?” pricked up my ears. The Scotland Yard Inspector had more than once introduced us to an interesting case. “He merely thanks me (in his fashion) for a little point in the Aberystwyth Case on which I was able to set him right. I am delighted to have been of service to him.” “How does he thank you?” I asked curiously, for I knew my Japp. “He is kind enough to say that I am a wonderful sport for my age, and that he was glad to have had the chance of letting me in on the case.” This was so typical of Japp, that I could not forbear a chuckle. Poirot continued to read his correspondence placidly. “A suggestion that I should give a lecture to our local boy scouts. The Countess of Forfanock will be obliged if I will call and see her. Another lap-dog without doubt! And now for the last. Ah—” I looked up, quick to notice the change of tone. Poirot was reading attentively. In a minute he tossed the sheet over to me. “This is out of the ordinary, mon ami. Read for yourself.” The letter was written on a foreign type of paper, in a bold characteristic hand: “Villa Geneviève Merlinville-sur-Mer France “Dear Sir, “I am in need of the services of a detective and, for reasons which I will give you later, do not wish to call in the official police. I have heard of you from several quarters, and all reports go to show that you are not only a man of decided ability, but one who also knows how to be discreet. I do not wish to trust details to the post, but, on account of a secret I possess, I go in daily fear of my life. I am convinced that the danger is imminent, and therefore I beg that you will lose no time in crossing to France. I will send a car to meet you at Calais, if you will wire me when you are arriving. I shall be obliged if you will drop all cases you have on hand, and devote yourself solely to my interests. I am prepared to pay any compensation necessary. I shall probably need your services for a considerable period of time, as it may be necessary for you to go out to Santiago, where I spent several years of my life. I shall be content for you to name your own fee. “Assuring you once more that the matter is urgent, “Yours faithfully “P. T. RENAULD.” Below the signature was a hastily scrawled line, almost illegible: “For God’s sake, come!” I handed the letter back with quickened pulses. “At last!” I said. “Here is something distinctly out of the ordinary.” “Yes, indeed,” said Poirot meditatively. “You will go of course,” I continued. Poirot nodded. He was thinking deeply. Finally he seemed to make up his mind, and glanced up at the clock. His face was very grave. “See you, my friend, there is no time to lose. The Continental express leaves Victoria at 11 o’clock. Do not agitate yourself. There is plenty of time. We can allow ten minutes for discussion. You accompany me, n’est-ce pas?” “Well—” “You told me yourself that your employer needed you not for the next few weeks.” “Oh, that’s all right. But this Mr. Renauld hints strongly that his business is private.” “Ta-ta-ta. I will manage M. Renauld. By the way, I seem to know the name?” “There’s a well-known South American millionaire fellow. His name’s Renauld. I don’t know whether it could be the same.” “But without doubt. That explains the mention of Santiago. Santiago is in Chile, and Chile it is in South America! Ah, but we progress finely.” “Dear me, Poirot,” I said, my excitement rising, “I smell some goodly shekels in this. If we succeed, we shall make our fortunes!” “Do not be too sure of that, my friend. A rich man and his money are not so easily parted. Me, I have seen a well-known millionaire turn out a tramful of people to seek for a dropped halfpenny.” I acknowledged the wisdom of this. “In any case,” continued Poirot, “it is not the money which attracts me here. Certainly it will be pleasant to have carte blanche in our investigations; one can be sure that way of wasting no time, but it is something a little bizarre in this problem which arouses my interest. You remarked the postscript? How did it strike you?” I considered. “Clearly he wrote the letter keeping himself well in hand, but at the end his self-control snapped and, on the impulse of the moment, he scrawled those four desperate words.” But my friend shook his head energetically. “You are in error. See you not that while the ink of the signature is nearly black, that of the postscript is quite pale?” “Well?” I said puzzled. “Mon Dieu, mon ami, but use your little grey cells! Is it not obvious? M. Renauld wrote his letter. Without blotting it, he reread it carefully. Then, not on impulse, but deliberately, he added those last words, and blotted the sheet.” “But why?” “Parbleu! so that it should produce the effect upon me that it has upon you.” “What?” “Mais, oui—to make sure of my coming! He reread the letter and was dissatisfied. It was not strong enough!” He paused, and then added softly, his eyes shining with that green light that always betokened inward excitement: “And so, mon ami, since that postscript was added, not on impulse, but soberly, in cold blood, the urgency is very great, and we must reach him as soon as possible.” “Merlinville,” I murmured thoughtfully. “I’ve heard of it, I think.” Poirot nodded. “It is a quiet little place—but chic! It lies about midway between Bolougne and Calais. It is rapidly becoming the fashion. Rich English people who wish to be quiet are taking it up. M. Renauld has a house in England, I suppose?” “Yes, in Rutland Gate, as far as I remember. Also a big place in the country, somewhere in Hertfordshire. But I really know very little about him, he doesn’t do much in a social way. I believe he has large South American interests in the City, and has spent most of his life out in Chile and the Argentino.” “Well, we shall hear all details from the man himself. Come, let us pack. A small suit-case each, and then a taxi to Victoria.” “And the Countess?” I inquired with a smile. “Ah! je m’en fiche! Her case was certainly not interesting.” “Why so sure of that?” “Because in that case she would have come, not written. A woman cannot wait—always remember that, Hastings.” Eleven o’clock saw our departure from Victoria on our way to Dover. Before starting Poirot had despatched a telegram to Mr. Renauld giving the time of our arrival at Calais. “I’m surprised you haven’t invested in a few bottles of some sea sick remedy, Poirot,” I observed maliciously, as I recalled our conversation at breakfast. My friend, who was anxiously scanning the weather, turned a reproachful face upon me. “Is it that you have forgotten the method most excellent of Laverguier? His system, I practise it always. One balances oneself, if you remember, turning the head from left to right, breathing in and out, counting six between each breath.” “H’m,” I demurred. “You’ll be rather tired of balancing yourself and counting six by the time you get to Santiago, or Buenos Ayres, or wherever it is you land.” “Quelle idée! You do not figure to yourself that I shall go to Santiago?” “Mr. Renauld suggests it in his letter.” “He did not know the methods of Hercule Poirot. I do not run to and fro, making journeys, and agitating myself. My work is done from within—here—” he tapped his forehead significantly. As usual, this remark roused my argumentative faculty. “It’s all very well, Poirot, but I think you are falling into the habit of despising certain things too much. A finger-print has led sometimes to the arrest and conviction of a murderer.” “And has, without doubt, hanged more than one innocent man,” remarked Poirot dryly. “But surely the study of finger-prints and footprints, cigarette ash, different kinds of mud, and other clues that comprise the minute observation of details—all these are of vital importance?” “But certainly. I have never said otherwise. The trained observer, the expert, without doubt he is useful! But the others, the Hercules Poirots, they are above the experts! To them the experts bring the facts, their business is the method of the crime, its logical deduction, the proper sequence and order of the facts; above all, the true psychology of the case. You have hunted the fox, yes?” “I have hunted a bit, now and again,” I said, rather bewildered by this abrupt change of subject. “Why?” “Eh bien, this hunting of the fox, you need the dogs, no?” “Hounds,” I corrected gently. “Yes, of course.” “But yet,” Poirot wagged his finger at me. “You did not descend from your horse and run along the ground smelling with your nose and uttering loud Ow Ows?” In spite of myself I laughed immoderately. Poirot nodded in a satisfied manner. “So. You leave the work of the d— hounds to the hounds. Yet you demand that I, Hercule Poirot, should make myself ridiculous by lying down (possibly on damp grass) to study hypothetical footprints, and should scoop up cigarette ash when I do not know one kind from the other. Remember the Plymouth Express mystery. The good Japp departed to make a survey of the railway line. When he returned, I, without having moved from my apartments, was able to tell him exactly what he had found.” “So you are of the opinion that Japp wasted his time.” “Not at all, since his evidence confirmed my theory. But I should have wasted my time if I had gone. It is the same with so called ‘experts.’ Remember the handwriting testimony in the Cavendish Case. One counsel’s questioning brings out testimony as to the resemblances, the defence brings evidence to show dissimilarity. All the language is very technical. And the result? What we all knew in the first place. The writing was very like that of John Cavendish. And the psychological mind is faced with the question ‘Why?’ Because it was actually his? Or because some one wished us to think it was his? I answered that question, mon ami, and answered it correctly.” And Poirot, having effectually silenced, if not convinced me, leaned back with a satisfied air. On the boat, I knew better than to disturb my friend’s solitude. The weather was gorgeous, and the sea as smooth as the proverbial mill-pond, so I was hardly surprised to hear that Laverguier’s method had once more justified itself when a smiling Poirot joined me on disembarking at Calais. A disappointment was in store for us, as no car had been sent to meet us, but Poirot put this down to his telegram having been delayed in transit. “Since it is carte blanche, we will hire a car,” he said cheerfully. And a few minutes later saw us creaking and jolting along, in the most ramshackle of automobiles that ever plied for hire, in the direction of Merlinville. My spirits were at their highest. “What gorgeous air!” I exclaimed. “This promises to be a delightful trip.” “For you, yes. For me, I have work to do, remember, at our journey’s end.” “Bah!” I said cheerfully. “You will discover all, ensure this Mr. Renauld’s safety, run the would-be assassins to earth, and all will finish in a blaze of glory.” “You are sanguine, my friend.” “Yes, I feel absolutely assured of success. Are you not the one and only Hercule Poirot?” But my little friend did not rise to the bait. He was observing me gravely. “You are what the Scotch people call ‘fey,’ Hastings. It presages disaster.” “Nonsense. At any rate, you do not share my feelings.” “No, but I am afraid.” “Afraid of what?” “I do not know. But I have a premonition—a je ne sais quoi!” He spoke so gravely, that I was impressed in spite of myself. “I have a feeling,” he said slowly, “that this is going to be a big affair—a long, troublesome problem that will not be easy to work out.” I would have questioned him further, but we were just coming into the little town of Merlinville, and we slowed up to inquire the way to the Villa Geneviève. “Straight on, monsieur, through the town. The Villa Geneviève is about half a mile the other side. You cannot miss it. A big Villa, overlooking the sea.” We thanked our informant, and drove on, leaving the town behind. A fork in the road brought us to a second halt. A peasant was trudging towards us, and we waited for him to come up to us in order to ask the way again. There was a tiny Villa standing right by the road, but it was too small and dilapidated to be the one we wanted. As we waited, the gate of it swung open and a girl came out. The peasant was passing us now, and the driver leaned forward from his seat and asked for direction. “The Villa Geneviève? Just a few steps up this road to the right, monsieur. You could see it if it were not for the curve.” The chauffeur thanked him, and started the car again. My eyes were fascinated by the girl who still stood, with one hand on the gate, watching us. I am an admirer of beauty, and here was one whom nobody could have passed without remark. Very tall, with the proportions of a young goddess, her uncovered golden head gleaming in the sunlight, I swore to myself that she was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. As we swung up the rough road, I turned my head to look after her. “By Jove, Poirot,” I exclaimed, “did you see that young goddess.” Poirot raised his eyebrows. “Ça commence!” he murmured. “Already you have seen a goddess!” “But, hang it all, wasn’t she?” “Possibly. I did not remark the fact.” “Surely you noticed her?” “Mon ami, two people rarely see the same thing. You, for instance, saw a goddess. I—” he hesitated. “Yes?” “I saw only a girl with anxious eyes,” said Poirot gravely. But at that moment we drew up at a big green gate, and, simultaneously, we both uttered an exclamation. Before it stood an imposing sergent de ville. He held up his hand to bar our way. “You cannot pass, monsieurs.” “But we wish to see Mr. Renauld,” I cried. “We have an appointment. This is his Villa, isn’t it?” “Yes, monsieur, but—” Poirot leaned forward. “But what?” “M. Renauld was murdered this morning.” About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books. This book is part of the public domain. Agatha Christie (2019). The Murder on the Links. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58866/pg58866-images.html This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org , located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.

An Appeal for Help

THE ABASEMENT OF MR. HOOPDRIVER

Many of our friends in the valley feel completely unempowered to negotiate compensation plans since COVID began making waves in the US in March. The common stories we hear from top talent are either: (A) not even considering recruiting due to fear of the current economic climate (B) a feeling of “no leverage  to have any compensation conversations internally and (C) fear of on-boarding to a new role while everyone is remote. While that fear may have some validity it does not outweigh the potential lost opportunity of a better career advancement. Many in the country are hurting, and plenty of people  are without jobs. However, many software companies are seeing phenomenal growth, and the career options and opportunities for those in tech career paths become better with almost every passing day. With the current climate of uncertainty, even high performers seem to be more risk averse while negotiating their value in roles. But companies are more worried than ever about losing top talent in this uncertain time, and so right now might be the best time for you to renegotiate. This is the time to align your value with your company’s goals and your own. A few of our friends have recently tested this theory, and one even got a raise of $45K from a base pay under $200K. In March of 2020, recruiting and hiring in many companies froze, or was delayed due to COVID uncertainty. It felt like every other day there was a new article talking about layoffs around the country. And while the job market in the tech industry has bounced back, the rhetoric of nationwide unemployment is still rampant. In fact, by May that tide had turned and many companies gained ability to forecast their core business, as well as forecast hiring needs. Two examples include: Truework itself, with not even 100 employees and over as of 11 October 2020 13 openings Bazaar Voice with around 1K employees and as of 11 October 2020. 78 job openings If you sit in a competitive and growing part of the software and tech world, the poor job market is a myth.  This is no time to feel disempowered. Instead, the first half of 2021 is both an important time to consider your and a key time to negotiate for plans either internally or externally. As a high-performer, now may be the best time of your career to renegotiate and create long-term alignment with your company, or seek a new company that is better aligned with either your own values or the massive economic shifts underway. Know what you are worth and push for the right plan for your current contributions to the business. career path compensation We have seen a few trends in how to negotiate compensation / recruit during COVID. to avoid and tips to reframe your thinking. The following are the most common mistakes Focusing only on what you have done and what you have been paid in the past. All come down to leverage in some form or the other. By only focusing on the past you significantly weaken your position. Ultimately a founder's goal is to strategically spend capital in a way that maximizes future return on investment. No company in their right mind would offer an outside hire more money because they felt their compensation was too low at their old job. negotiations A common response when an employee uses this tactic is that your past performance is covered by your previous contract with the company, and that is a valid point. Focusing only on your title Some companies simply lack the ability to make material changes to title without mountains of political buy-in and support. For other companies, they may be able to change the title to your preference, but leave the rest of your compensation the same. Fighting for title, if you choose that path, may win a small battle  but lose the war in terms of achieving your overall goals around compensation. Making it personal / emotional Your negotiation has nothing to do with your self worth or how much your managers respect you. Particularly in this climate, company needs may have changed with scale and markets - what it needed a year ago may no longer be relevant. Preface the conversation by telling your manager this is not personal and you want to find long term alignment with the company. By mentioning this in the beginning you have a framework to reference as negotiations become more intense. Making it obvious that you are not willing to walk away Know your market value and that there are always options out there, and back to earlier points, negotiations come down to leverage. When you make it clear you are staying no matter what happens in the negotiation, your leverage is decreased, perhaps down to zero. Failing to get organized All too often employees simply state they want a higher base pay or bonus. The complete lack of research, lack of preparation, and lack of real-time comparables harms the negotiating process before it has even truly begun. Leverage your internal network, mentors, or even outside advisors on how to prepare for this negotiation including who you should talk to within the company first. Instead of falling into the above quagmire of mistakes, we recommend these solutions to ensure you are putting your best foot forward, and giving yourself the maximum chance of success in your endeavor to obtain a better or more fair compensation package. Focus on what the business needs in the future and why you are a key part of that solution Make clear in words, and ideally in quantitative details why you are the best person who can help the company reach the next stage in their growth trajectory. Clearly communicate how you are a proven asset and team player. Any new hire is risky and expensive,, not to mention the opportunity cost of ramping them up. Know your BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) What is most important to you and what is most important to the company, both now and in the future?  Are you willing to sacrifice cash now for equity later, and if so what is your preference, and what is your preference versus your understanding of company preference. For example, Amazon is widely known to have high equity compensation, and yet rarely if ever pays more than around $170K in cash base pay. Knowing your company’s preferences can save you a great deal of time and effort. If you have the time and interest, another offer is often powerful leverage in these sort of conversations. It can take significant time and energy to get this outside offer. However, if you know your company matches outside offers, and rarely works on a negotiation without it, then this may be the right path for you. Patty McCord, ex Chief People Officer at Netflix, is famous for encouraging employees to interview at other companies. Research, and predict what levers your boss/company cares about This research should help inform you on both who to talk with first ( likely your first line manager), and will also probably help shed light on how other negotiations have occurred for either existing employees or current recruits. If you have any relationship with HR or recruiting that can prove helpful to understanding where the market is currently for other hires, and how to think about positioning yourself. Negotiating by Email We rarely hear of anyone who emails these sorts of issues to managers with great success. Even if you are a star player, not using the video or phone call to convey important information like a compensation concern can put a bad taste in the mouth of leadership and harm your overall potential for the ideal outcome. Additionally, you should be ready to adapt your strategy based on the response and verbal/visual clues your boss gives you during the negotiation. You would never call an all-in bet in poker without first trying to read your opponent. Every negotiation is different, and your own compensation makes it difficult, if not impossible, to be fully objective. However, if you follow these steps, our experience is that you create the possibility of a very healthy engagement with your leadership, and probably showcase that you can and will stand up for yourself at the least. In a best case scenario there is an open attitude and mindset, your ask is logical and makes sense, and your leadership grants all or most of what you ask for enabling you to be an even more productive employee. These conversations are almost never easy, and rarely is there a “ ” during COVID to surface these issues. However, if you avoid solving an underlying point of friction for you as an employee, it will likely surface eventually as a point of conflict in either your departure to another job, or decreased performance. Neither of these outcomes are ideal for either party, so get out there and see what is possible. perfect time Hopefully, after you follow these best practices, you achieve your goal in compensation, promotion, and other career advancements. Congrats. The next step is to clearly define goals and objectives required to succeed in the new role / position / etc. Once you succeed in these new goals, it may be time to reach for your next promotion. Why read this / about the authors and have had wins in negotiating compensation for themselves and dozens of others over the last several years in both public companies and start-ups. Ben Faw Jeff Morelli Ben is a serial entrepreneur, an alumni of UBS (I Banking), Tesla, HBS, LinkedIn, and a Co Founder of BestReviews ( , and ). Sold to Tribune Publishing for over $100M sold again to Nexstar for $160M in November of 2020 Jeff was the first non-cofounder hire at (where Ben was an early advisor), and has built two multi-million dollar sales playbooks. On top of leading the company in sales every quarter, Jeff also closed the largest deal in Truework’s history. Truework

How to Negotiate Compensation During COVID (and at other times)

It was a night just like any other night. I finished work for the day and closed my laptop. I had dinner and after an hour, I put on my Oculus Quest headset in order to begin my VR workout. However, I noticed the home screen was different. An app I had never seen before was in my library and I realized it was the free VR film I had downloaded the night before. Most reviews said the film ran for just 10 minutes, so I thought, I thought it would be a nice mellow warm-up before an intense session of but in just a few minutes the film had me in tears and sobbing like a child. congratulations. You are the first VR experience that has ever made me cry. What the hell? Let’s watch this film first. Thrill of the Fight , Dear Angelica, What’s it about? is a 3DoF virtual reality animated film about a mother and daughter. The Oculus Store describes it as: Dear Angelica “A journey through the magical and dreamlike ways we remember our loved ones. Entirely painted by hand inside of VR, Dear Angelica plays out in a series of memories that unfold around you. An immersive, illustrative short story starring Geena Davis and Mae Whitman.” However, I feel like that small synopsis doesn’t do the film justice. is a true work of art that shows the power of VR as a storytelling medium. Since the film is only 10 minutes long, I don’t want to spoil the story here. All I will say is that it is about love and longing and the relationship between a parent and a child. Dear Angelica Why did the film hit me so hard? is a short and sweet film, which pushes VR animation to new horizons and tries to elicit emotion from an audience that’s used to playing games like Safe to say, that is no easy task to pull off in just 10 minutes. Dear Angelica Beat Saber or Arizona Sunshine. Angelica vs. The Monster I’ll admit the art style is a bit jarring and even distracting at first. However, if you keep watching and let yourself get used to the environment, you may be taken on a narrative journey like no other before. The narrator tells the story through a letter she’s written to her mother. All the while, scenes from the letter come to life in 360 VR animation. At times, the narrator’s words literally move through you. I can’t describe in any other way than “pure art”. The film leads you to turn your head in certain directions and follow animations that coincide with the narrator’s sentiments. In time, those sentiments become your own. For anyone that has ever been away from their family for a long period of time, the narrator’s emotion will hit close to home. Dear Angelica Three years ago, I moved to Tokyo, Japan from the small city of Winnipeg, Canada. While I’m living my best life here, it’s still hard sometimes to be away from friends and family. Because of that, this film brought out feelings I may have kept inside. However, many others have had the same experience. Dear Angelica user reviews So far the film has received great reviews on the Oculus Quest Store. 65% of users gave 5 stars. 15% gave it 4 stars and 12% gave the film 3 stars. Finally, just 8% of viewers didn’t like the film, giving it 2 stars or less. Dear Angelica One user named Sh4dowqueen called it “one of the best storytelling experiences of all time.” Another user, Brenthas1, even accused someone in her household of cutting onions! However, we all know those tears were not created by syn-propanethial-S-oxide released from onion cutting. Those tears were brought on by the pure emotion in the words of narrator. Dear Angelica’s For those of you that own an Oculus Quest or an Oculus Rift, I highly recommend giving a try. The film only lasts 10 minutes, so it isn’t a large commitment. Dear Angelica While I think is a work of art that anyone can enjoy, I believe that older audiences will enjoy the film more and be able to connect with it on a deeper level. If you do end up downloading on your Oculus device, be sure you have a box of tissues ready, becauseI don’t think the Oculus warranty covers water damage due to tears. Dear Angelica Dear Angelica Also published on:

Dear Angelica is the First VR Experience to Make Me Cry

In this article and the following, we will take a close look at two computer vision subfields: Image Segmentation and Image Super-Resolution. Two very fascinating fields. Two years ago after I had finished the Andrew NG course I came across one of the most interesting papers I have read on segmentation(at the time) entitled (Bilateral Segmentation Network) which in turn served as a starting point for this blog to grow because of a lot of you, my viewers were also fascinated and interested in the topic of semantic segmentation. BiSeNet More we understand something, less complicated it becomes. – Unknown I did my best at the time to code the architecture but to be honest, little did I know back then on how to preprocess the data and train the model, there were a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I understood semantic segmentation at a high-level but not at a low-level. Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.– Confucius Fig 1: These are the outputs from my attempts at recreating BiSeNet using TF Keras from 2 years ago 😂. A true work of art!!! Pretty amazing aren’t they? I knew this was just the beginning of my journey and eventually, I would make it work if I didn’t give up or perhaps I would use the model to produce abstract art. With that said this is a revised update on that article that I have been working on recently thanks to FastAI 18 Course. Image-to-image translation We change from inputting an image and getting a categorical output to having images as input and output. This is done by cutting and replacing the classification head with an upsampling path (this type of architectures are called ). fully convolutional networks Don’t worry if you don’t understand it yet, bear with me. is a class of vision and graphics problems where the goal is to learn the mapping between an input image and an output image. It can be applied to a wide range of applications, such as collection style transfer, object transfiguration, season transfer and photo enhancement. Image-to-image translation Semantic Segmentation A.K.A Image Segmentation is an essential area of research in computer vision for image analysis task. The main goal of it is to assign semantic labels to each in an image such as (car, house, person…). Semantic segmentation pixel Fig 2: Credits to Jeremy Jordan’s blog Here the output of the network is a segmentation mask image of size (Height x Width x Classes) where Classes is the total number of classes. For the image below, we could say 128 x 128 x 7 where 7 (tree, fence, road, bicycle, person, car, building). Fig 3. Classification / Regression Just for reference, in normal Convolutional Neural Network (ConvNet) we have an image as input and after a series of transformations the ConvNet outputs a vector of C classes, 4 bounding box values, N pose estimation points, sometimes a combination of them and etc. Fig 4: Here is an example of a ConvNet that does classification. Simple and fast way Fig 5. The easiest and simplest way of creating a ConvNet architecture to do segmentation is to take a model pretrained on ImageNet, cut the classifier head and replace it with a custom head that takes the small feature map and upsamples it back to the original size (H x W). Though it’s not the best method nevertheless it works ok. Now, remember as we saw above the input image has the shape (H x W x 3) and the output image(segmentation mask) must have a shape (H x W x C) where C is the total number of classes. I will explain why this is important. Fig 6: Here is an example from CAMVID dataset The model we are going to use is ResNet-34, this model downsamples the image 5x from (128 x 128 x 3) to a (7 x 7 x 512) feature space, this saves computations because all the computations are done with a small image instead of doing computations on a large image. We cut the ResNet-34 classification head and replace it with an upsampling path using 5 Transposed Convolutions which performs an inverse of a convolution operation followed by ReLU and BatchNorm layers except the last one. Fig 7. Upsampling path — , 2016. The need for transposed convolutions (also called deconvolution ) generally arises from the desire to use a transformation going in the opposite direction of a normal convolution, i.e., from something that has the shape of the output of some convolution to something that has the shape of its input. A Guide To Convolution Arithmetic For Deep Learning Something interesting happened during my testing I’m not fully sure if it is the new Pytorch v1 or Fastai v1 but previously for multi-class segmentation tasks you could have your model output an image of size (H x W x 1) because as you can see in Fig 6 the shape of the segmentation mask is (960 x 720 x 1) and the matrix contains pixels ranging from 0–Classes, but with Pytorch v1 or Fastai v1 your model must output something like (960 x 720 x Classes) because the loss functions won’t work (nn.BCEWithLogitsLoss(), nn.CrossEntropyLoss() and etc), it will give you a Cuda device asserted error on GPU and size mismatch on CPU. Fig 8. output tensor The only case where I found outputting (H x W x 1) helpful was when doing segmentation on a mask with 2 classes, where you have an object and background. This happens because now the loss functions essentially one hot encodes the target image(segmentation mask) along the channel dimension creating a binary matrix(pixels ranging from 0–1) for each possible class and does binary classification with the output of the model, and if that output doesn’t have the proper shape(H x W x C) it will give you an error. This is setup if just for training, afterwards, during testing and inference you can argmax the result to give you (H x W x 1) with pixel values ranging from 0-classes. Fig 9. My outputs using the architecture describe above Unet Fig 10. U-net Arch from the paper This architecture consists of two paths, the downsampling path(left side) and an upsampling path(right side). This method is much better than the method specified in the section above. The main contribution of this paper is the U-shaped architecture that in order to produce better results the high-resolution features from downsampling path are combined(concatenated) with the equivalent upsampled output block and a successive convolution layer can learn to assemble a more precise output based on this information. Another important modification to the architecture is the use of a large number of feature channels at the earlier upsampling layers, which allow the network to propagate context information to the subsequent higher resolution upsampling layer. : information providing sufficient receptive field. In the semantic segmentation task, the receptive field is of great significance for the performance. Context information This strategy allows the seamless segmentation of arbitrary size images. Downsampling Path The can be any typical arch. of a ConvNet without the classification head for e.g: ResNet Family, Xception, MobileNet and etc. At each downsampling step, we double the number of feature channels(32, 64, 128, 256…). downsampling path Upsampling Path Every step of the consists of 2x2 convolution upsampling that halves the number of feature channels(256, 128, 64), a concatenation with the correspondingly cropped(optional) feature map from the downsampling path, and two 3x3 convolutions, each followed by a ReLU. upsampling path The authors of the paper specify that cropping is necessary due to the loss of border pixels in every convolution, but I believe adding reflection padding can fix it, thus cropping is optional. At the final layer, the authors use a 1x1 convolution to map each 64 component feature vector to the desired number of classes, while we don’t do this in the you will find at the end of this article. notebook Fig 11. My outputs using a Unetish arch. Fastai Unet learner It’s a module that builds a U-Net dynamically from any model(backbone) pretrained on ImageNet, since it’s dynamic it can also automatically infer the intermediate sizes and number of in and out features. The difference from original U-Net is that the downsampling path is a pretrained model. This learner packed with most if not all the image segmentation best practice tricks to improve the quality of the output segmentation masks. This learner is composed of: Class DynamicUnetClass UnetBlock DynamicUnet This U-Net will sit on top of a backbone (that can be a pretrained model) and with a final output of n_classes. During the initialization, it uses Hooks to determine the intermediate features sizes by passing a dummy input through the model and create the upward path automatically. Arguments: Blur: It takes blur flag to avoid checkerboard artifacts at each layer.Self_Attention: an Attention mechanism is applied to selectively give more importance to some of the locations of the image compared to others.Bottle: it determines whether we use a bottleneck or not for the cross-connection from the downsampling path to the upsampling path. UnetBlock A quasi-UNet block, that uses upsampling and ICNR weight initialisation, both which are best practice techniques to eliminate checkerboard artifacts in Fully Convolutional architectures. Introduced in the . PixelShuffle checkerboard artifact free sub-pixel convolution paper It uses hooks to store the output of each block needed for the cross-connection from the backbone model. Notebook developed with Pytorch v1.4 and fastai v1: colab.research.google.com Conclusion There 3 key takeaways: Image Segmentation models take an image input of shape (H x W x 3) and output a masks with pixels ranging from 0-classes of shape (H x W x 1) or a mask of shape ( H x W x classes). You can easily customise a ConvNet by replacing the classification head with an upsampling path. But if you use a UNet architecture you will get better results because you get rich details from the downsampling path. Fastai UNet learner packages all the best practices that can be called using 1 simple line of code. You can also extend this learner if you find a new trick. , you are really amazing. I do this for you. Thank you very much for reading References https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/bisenet-for-real-time-segmentation-part-i-bf8c04afc448 https://docs.fast.ai/vision.models.unet.html#UnetBlock https://www.jeremyjordan.me/semantic-segmentation/ https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.07285 https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.04597 https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.02937 https://towardsdatascience.com/image-to-image-translation-69c10c18f6ff Get in touch Twitter: @CanumaGdt LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prince-canuma-05814b121/ Email: prince.gdt@gmail.com

Image to Image Translation and Segmentation Tutorial 

Ethereum development, while still very nascent in feel, has come a long way. When I started developing Solidity smart contracts and Ethereum dapps in 2017, Truffle and Web3.js were the industry standard. These are great tools and I have tons of respect for the people that built them. However, anyone who has used them has dealt with bugs and sometimes poor developer experience. There are a few new tools out there that have clearly been inspired by these first sets of tools and made the developer process much better. I've been very focused on the Layer 2 side of things at and building the off-chain bits, so I haven't dove into Solidity dev in some time. Connext I recently participated in a hackathon where I got to dive back in and see the current state of things. I found a lot of cool tools, but not much in the way of docs on how to get things working together. I decided to write up my findings and create a project that can be a starting point for anyone that wants to build and test smart contracts and dapps. TL;DR Clone the and you'll be fully set up to develop, compile, test and deploy in a full-featured Typescript dev environment! Starter Kit repo Buidler (Replacement for Truffle) bills itself as a "task runner for Ethereum smart contract developers". In practice, this means that the tool will help you bootstrap your Solidity project with a template and give you all the scaffolding needed to test out your smart contracts and ultimately deploy onto the Ethereum blockchain. Previously, it was standard procedure to use Truffle's , , , and features to bootstrap your Solidity projects. A killer feature Buidler touts is stack traces when your Solidity contracts revert 😱! Buidler init compile test migrate Ethers.js (Replacement for Web3.js) is a Javascript SDK for interacting with the Ethereum blockchain. I used Web3.js exclusively for a long time when I started Solidity development. When I tried Ethers for the first time, I was blown away by how easy it was to get set up and how nice the API is. I urge anyone who is used to working with Web3.js to give Ethers a try. It has all the necessary functions for working with wallets, accounts, and contracts, and it also has some neat utilities such as ABICoder, HDNode, BigNumber, and various formatting utilities for hex strings, ether units, and Etherum addresses. Ethers.js Waffle (Replacement for Truffle test utilities) is a lightweight test runner for Ethereum smart contracts. It has some really nice testing utils built in like Chai matchers for Ethereum addresses, hashes, and BigNumbers, it's Typescript native, and plays really nicely with Ethers. Ethereum Waffle Typescript Everywhere! Typescript has been all the rage lately, and for good reason. For me, the absolute gamechanger with Typescript is the IDE integration which gives you autocomplete for all class properties, object keys, function parameters, etc. I can't ever go back to coding vanilla Javascript after familiarizing with Typescript. The nice thing about all the tools I mentioned above is that they all work extremely well with Typescript, and once everything is set up, developer experience is a dream. Project Setup Now onto the fun stuff! In an empty folder, create an npm project by running . It doesn't really matter what the values are set to for the scope of this exercise. npm init Install Buidler: $ npm install --save-dev @nomiclabs/buidler Bootstrap Buidler project: $ npx buidler Select the option to "Create an empty buidler.config.js" (we will be using a different stack than the example, so we will create our own). 888               d8b      888 888
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👷 Welcome to Buidler v1.0.1 👷‍‍

? What do you want to do? … 
  Create a sample project
❯ Create an empty buidler.config.js
  Quit $ npx buidler Create a few directories to hold your project files: $ mkdir contracts scripts test Set Up Typescript Install the required Typescript dependencies: $ npm install --save-dev ts-node typescript @types/node @types/mocha Create a file in the project root: tsconfig { : { : , : , : , : , : }, : [ , ], : [ ]
} "compilerOptions" "target" "es5" "module" "commonjs" "strict" true "esModuleInterop" true "outDir" "dist" "include" "./scripts" "./test" "files" "./buidler.config.ts" Rename the Buidler config file and make it typesafe: mv buidler.config.js buidler.config.ts { BuidlerConfig } ; config: BuidlerConfig = {}; config; import from "@nomiclabs/buidler/config" const export default Creating and Compiling Contracts Now, we're ready to start writing some code! Create a very simple Solidity contract called in the directory (latest Solidity version at the time of writing was ): Counter.sol contracts/ 0.5.12 pragma solidity . . contract Counter {
  uint256 = event CountedTo(uint256 number) function countUp() public returns (uint256) {
    uint256 newCount = + require(newCount > , ) = newCount emit CountedTo( ) return }

  function public returns (uint256) {
    uint256 newCount = - require(newCount < , ) = newCount emit CountedTo( ) return }
} 0 5 12 ; count 0 ; ; count 1 ; count "Uint256 overflow" ; count ; count ; count ; countDown() count 1 ; count "Uint256 underflow" ; count ; count ; count ; Set the Solidity version in (autocomplete type annotations!!): buidler.config.ts Buidler conveniently bundles a compilation task, so compiling is a piece of cake: Compiling...
Compiled 1 contract successfully $ npx buidler compile The Solidity versioning system that Buidler uses is AMAZING. Switching versions is a piece of cake, and Buidler automatically downloads and installs Solidity versions as needed, all you need to do is change it in the config. Huge props to the Buidler team for setting this up! Set Up Test Environment with Ethers and Waffle Now, we will set up our testing environment. Install Ethers, Waffle, and the Buidler plugin: $ npm install --save-dev @nomiclabs/buidler-ethers ethers ethereum-waffle chai @types/chai Add the required type definitions to your : tsconfig.json { : { : , : , : , : , : , : }, : [ , ], : [ , ,
} "compilerOptions" "target" "es5" "module" "commonjs" "strict" true "esModuleInterop" true "outDir" "dist" "resolveJsonModule" true "include" "./scripts" "./test" "files" "./buidler.config.ts" "node_modules/@nomiclabs/buidler-ethers/src/type-extensions.d.ts" Set up to use the Ethers plugin: buidler.config.ts { BuidlerConfig, usePlugin } ;

usePlugin( ); config: BuidlerConfig = {
  solc: {
    version: }
}; config; import from "@nomiclabs/buidler/config" "@nomiclabs/buidler-ethers" const "0.5.12" export default Set Up TypeChain is a really cool tool that gives you a full typed interface for your smart contracts. Once it's set up we can get type hints for contract functions in Typescript! TypeChain As of this writing, Buidler does not have a TypeChain plugin. I'm planning to build one myself soon if someone doesn't do it first! Begin by installing the library and the Ethers binding: $ npm install --save-dev typechain typechain-target-ethers Generate the type files by running the command. defines where the generated files will be stored, and the quoted string at the end will pick up any generated contracts in our directory: outDir build $ ./node_modules/.bin/typechain --target ethers --outDir typechain 'build/*.json' Now inside the directory, you should see a few files generated, one of which is . That's the main contract types file, and gives us what we need to write type safe tests! typechain/ Counter.d.ts Writing and Running Contract Tests Writing tests mostly follows the Waffle with one main difference: the object is imported from the library instead of the library. syntax ethers.provider "@nomiclabs/buidler" ethereum-waffle Now let's write a test. Create a file called inside the directory: counter.ts test/ { ethers } ; chai ; { deployContract, getWallets, solidity } ; CounterArtifact ; { Counter } chai.use(solidity); { expect } = chai;

describe( , { provider = ethers.provider; [wallet] = getWallets(provider); counter: Counter;

  beforeEach( () => {
    counter = deployContract(wallet, CounterArtifact) Counter; initialCount = counter.getCount(); expect(initialCount).to.eq( );
    expect(counter.address).to.properAddress;
  }); it( , () => { counter.countUp(); count = counter.getCount();
    expect(count).to.eq( ); counter.countUp();
    count = counter.getCount();
    expect(count).to.eq( );
  });

  it( , () => { counter.countDown(); count = counter.getCount();
    expect(count).to.eq( );
  });
}); import from "@nomiclabs/buidler" import from "chai" import from "ethereum-waffle" import from "../build/Counter.json" import from "../typechain/Counter" const "Counter" => () // 1 const // 2 let // 3 let async await as const await // 4 0 // 5 "should count up" async await let await 1 await await 2 "should count down" async // 6 await const await 0 Explanation of numbered lines: 1. Set up using the one imported from Buidler. provider 2. Get a wallet from the function. Also note, you can destructure any number of wallets from this function, for example: getWallets [wallet1, wallet2, wallet3] = getWallets(provider); let 3. Import the Counter type and use it as the type of the variable that gets deployed in the . beforeEach 4. Waffle has some useful Chai matchers for writing contract tests like BigNumber matchers and Ethereum address matchers. Check them all out . here 5. Simple test to count up and make sure the counter works. 6. Those of you that are paying attention will see that this test will fail. Wait on this to see the real magic of Buidler. Let's run the tests! $ npx buidler test Notice something unusual in the results? All contracts have already been compiled, skipping compilation.


  Counter
    ✓ should count up (143ms)
    1) should count down


  1 passing (593ms)
  1 failing

  1) Counter
       should count down:
     Error: VM Exception while processing transaction: revert Uint256 underflow
      at Counter.countDown (contracts/Counter.sol:24) It's a STACK TRACE from your Solidity code showing the LINE NUMBER that the revert happened on!!! 😱👻💀 Gone are the days of commenting out contracts line by line to see which revert is triggered. Deploying Contracts After testing, the final step in the cycle is to deploy your contracts. The first step is to add a network config to your file. We'll use rinkeby for this, but you can add any network (i.e. mainnet) similarly: buidler.config.ts { BuidlerConfig, usePlugin } ; waffleDefaultAccounts ;

usePlugin( ); INFURA_API_KEY = ; RINKEBY_PRIVATE_KEY = ; config: BuidlerConfig = {
  solc: {
    version: },
  paths: {
    artifacts: },
  networks: {
    buidlerevm: {
      accounts: waffleDefaultAccounts.map( ({
        balance: acc.balance,
        privateKey: acc.secretKey
      }))
    },
    rinkeby: {
      url: ,
      accounts: [RINKEBY_PRIVATE_KEY]
    }
  }
}; config; import from "@nomiclabs/buidler/config" import from "ethereum-waffle/dist/config/defaultAccounts" "@nomiclabs/buidler-ethers" const "" const "" const "0.5.12" "./build" => acc `https://rinkeby.infura.io/v3/ ` ${INFURA_API_KEY} export default I'm using Infura as my Ethereum node endpoint, but any remote endpoint would work. If you haven't done this ever, grab an API key from . Infura Now, we create a deploy script inside our folder called : scripts/ deploy.ts { ethers } ; { factory = ethers.getContract( ) contract = factory.deploy(); .log(contract.address); .log(contract.deployTransaction.hash); contract.deployed()
}

main()
  .then( process.exit( ))
  .catch( { .error(error);
    process.exit( );
  }); import from "@nomiclabs/buidler" async ( ) function main const await "Counter" // If we had constructor arguments, they would be passed into deploy() let await // The address the Contract WILL have once mined console // The transaction that was sent to the network to deploy the Contract console // The contract is NOT deployed yet; we must wait until it is mined await => () 0 => error console 1 Super easy stuff! Now, just run the script and we can see our address and transaction hashes right in the console: All contracts have already been compiled, skipping compilation.
0x01FF454Dd078dC7f3cd0905601d093b17E7B9CD7
0x2ae1444920ed76420fb69c9f2fc914c20956efc2ae05c94ab1ea53f224aa0930 $ npx buidler run --network rinkeby scripts/deploy.ts We can go to and see that the transaction in fact completed successfully. Etherscan There you have it! A full step-by-step guide to setting up a supercharged build, test, deploy environment that's typesafe and makes use of some cool new tools. Wrapping Up To keep everything clean and awesome, let's make some handy NPM scripts. Add the following to your : package.json : { : , : , : , : } "scripts" "build" "npm run compile && npm run typechain" "compile" "npx buidler compile" "typechain" "npx buidler compile && typechain --outDir typechain --target ethers 'build/*.json'" "test" "npx buidler test" The script does both contract compilation and generates TypeChain bindings, and the script runs the contract tests. build test Bonus: Verify On Etherscan Buidler has a super handy plugin for verifying contracts on Etherscan, which is a task that is more complicated than it seems like it should be. Their tool handles flattening for you, which is very handy for contracts that import other contracts, make use of OpenZeppelin libs, etc. We can start by installing the plugin: $ npm install --save-dev @nomiclabs/buidler-etherscan Then, we add to our tsconfig.json to make sure our Typescript environment knows about this plugin: { : { : , : , : , : , : , : }, : [ , ], : [ , , ]
} "compilerOptions" "target" "es5" "module" "commonjs" "strict" true "esModuleInterop" true "outDir" "dist" "resolveJsonModule" true "include" "./scripts" "./test" "files" "./buidler.config.ts" "node_modules/@nomiclabs/buidler-ethers/src/type-extensions.d.ts" "node_modules/@nomiclabs/buidler-etherscan/src/type-extensions.d.ts" Next, we add the required configuration to our (hop over to and get an API key from your account page if you haven't yet): buidler.config.ts Etherscan { BuidlerConfig, usePlugin } ; waffleDefaultAccounts ;

usePlugin( );
usePlugin( ); INFURA_API_KEY = ; RINKEBY_PRIVATE_KEY = ; ETHERSCAN_API_KEY = ; config: BuidlerConfig = {
  solc: {
    version: },
  paths: {
    artifacts: },
  networks: {
    buidlerevm: {
      accounts: waffleDefaultAccounts.map( ({
        balance: acc.balance,
        privateKey: acc.secretKey
      }))
    },
    rinkeby: {
      url: ,
      accounts: [RINKEBY_PRIVATE_KEY]
    }
  },
  etherscan: { url: , apiKey: ETHERSCAN_API_KEY
  }
}; config; import from "@nomiclabs/buidler/config" import from "ethereum-waffle/dist/config/defaultAccounts" "@nomiclabs/buidler-ethers" "@nomiclabs/buidler-etherscan" const "" const "" const "" const "0.5.12" "./build" => acc `https://rinkeby.infura.io/v3/ ` ${INFURA_API_KEY} // The url for the Etherscan API you want to use. "https://api-rinkeby.etherscan.io/api" // Your API key for Etherscan // Obtain one at https://etherscan.io/ export default Hopefully we kept our deployed address from the previous step handy, because then we can simply run the built in task that this plugin provides: All contracts have already been compiled, skipping compilation.
Successfully submitted contract at 0xF0E6Ea29799E85fc1A97B7b78382fd034A6d7864 for verification on etherscan. Waiting for verification result...
Successfully verified contract on etherscan $ npx buidler verify-contract --contract-name Counter --address 0xF0E6Ea29799E85fc1A97B7b78382fd034A6d7864 Easy as pie! Now, check the contract address on , and you can see the full contract source code and read and write the contract directly from the webpage. Etherscan Final Thoughts Buidler seriously impressed me with its devex throughout my whole time using it. It has a ton of cool features already and they have plans to build a whole bunch more cool stuff. In addition to Solidity stack traces, the team plans to roll out another much needed smart contract debugging feature: ! console.log I will definitely be following this project closely and contributing to its ecosystem however I can. Stay tuned for more follow-up posts regarding full-stack dapp development and tooling!

The New Solidity Dev Stack: Buidler + Ethers + Waffle + Typescript [Tutorial]

Originally published on melvinkoh.me Few years back, Bitbucket shines when putting it next to Github. Before Github came up with Github Actions and free unlimited private repos, Bitbucket already did. Since I was freelancing, most of my repos need to be private, and paying is less of an option to me, I decided to use Bitbucket. However, things have changed a lot. Github is now more comprehensive, and some necessary features are still missing in Bitbucket, like labeling a Git issue. With Bitbucket, I also get a missing portfolio of mine which is the contribution activity graph. I believe most agree this is essential to developers for many purposes, despite this doesn’t reflect the true work one has done. > contribution activity of one of Arch Linux developers With Github, I get security notifications if any of my repos has a vulnerable package. > Security warning from Github Migrating Bitbucket Repos To Github With many reasons, I decided to consolidate all my repos from Bitbucket to Github. Of course, this comes with costs which I will talk about later. How? What I anticipate is a copy of all my repos in Github, and I will then no longer be using Bitbucket as . origin To achieve it, I have to: clone all my repos from Bitbucket create repos of same names in Github update the origin of existing repos to the Github URLs. These seem tedious if you do them manually. Luckily, someone has prepared a script for this purpose. Using bitbucket-to-github I forked and added some extra bit to make it more relevant to my situation. In my version, I made these changes: bitbucket-to-github operations of same kind are run concurrently repositories are cloned using SSH instead of HTTPS Repo Link Caveat The script is not a sophisticated piece, it is meant to “Get the job done!”. So, while the script is executing, monitor the console output all the time. Any error will not likely to halt the entire script but the message will be printed to the console. > Error message printed to console while running the script In my case, one of my repos are not able to push to Github as I have blobs larger than 100mb. I didn’t spend time to work around it as the files are just some pickled trained NN model from my uni class long time ago. Last, thanks for creating the script that I could fork. Feel free to fork mine or his for your own usage! pouriaa

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TRUEWORK

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