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Web3: What is it and what it means for freelancers

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Tags cloud-and-infrastructure business-and-emerging-tech how-to leadership-and-career

It is being said that Web3 is the future of the internet which promises a decentralised, immutable version of the global web – free of intermediaries and equipped with the same cryptographic verifiability as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). But what does that really mean? By Stefania Volpe.

The article then explains:

  • Web3, Blockchain and NFT: what do they mean?
    • What is blockchain?
    • What is an NFT?
  • Impact of Web3 on the future of work
  • Benefits of web3 for freelancers
  • How freelancers can use web3 to monetise their services
  • Becoming a Web3 developer
    • Job profiles for developers in the Web3

Web3 is currently a somewhat vague concept whose exact definition has not yet been determined. It is more of an ideal image of a future web than a usable technology stack that developers can build directly on top of. Web3, to put it simply, is the next version of the Internet. The core of Web3 is to make the Internet decentralised, meaning that: there is no one who owns the Internet, all the data on it converges, it’s independent. Nice one!

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Stacks vs. Solana vs. Polygon: How do they compare from a developer perspective?

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Tags business-and-emerging-tech cloud-and-infrastructure how-to miscellaneous software-engineering

What’s the best blockchain for building Web3 applications? It depends on what you want to prioritize across the blockchain trilemma. The trilemma argues that blockchains can only provide two of the three properties of decentralization, security, and scalability, and that no matter where you build, you’ll be making a tradeoff. By Joe Bender.

Developers today have a lot of options for where to build, and it’s hard to decide what blockchain is best. In this post, we break down some of the key features in Stacks, Polygon, and Solana to make it easier for you to figure out where you want to build.

The article then dives into:

  • Stacks vs. Solana vs. Polygon: An overview
  • Stacks vs. Solana vs. Polygon: Programming languages
  • Stacks vs. Solana vs. Polygon: Developer support
  • Stacks vs. Solana vs. Polygon: Which blockchain should you choose?

Different blockchains have different strengths and weaknesses. The blockchain that you choose will be dependent on what you want to build and how you want to build it. For example, if you want a secure foundation for your Web3 applications, or if you want to tap into the latent potential in Bitcoin, Stacks is your place. Good read!

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Magic NAT: Everywhere, unbounded, and lower cost

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Tags cloud-and-infrastructure devops-and-ci-cd software-engineering leadership-and-career

Network Address Translation (NAT) is one of the most common and versatile network functions, used by everything from your home router to the largest ISPs. Today, we’re delighted to introduce a new approach to NAT that solves the problems of traditional hardware and virtual solutions. By Annika Garbers.

The article then paint the picture of:

  • What does NAT do?
  • Allowing traffic from private subnets to connect to the Internet
  • Enabling communication between private subnets with overlapping IP space
  • Conserving IP address space
  • Challenges with existing NAT solutions
  • Magic NAT: everywhere, unbounded, cross-platform, and predictably priced
  • Anycast: Magic NAT is everywhere, automatically

Cloudflare’s global capacity is at 141 Tbps and counting, and automated traffic management systems like Unimog allow us to take full advantage of that capacity to serve high volumes of traffic smoothly. Magic NAT, like our other network services, is priced based on the 95th percentile of clean bandwidth for your network: no installation, maintenance, or upgrades, and no surprise charges for data transfer spikes. Magic NAT is currently in beta, translating network addresses globally for a variety of workloads, large and small. Good read!

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Visualizing the 5 pillars of cloud architecture

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Tags cloud-and-infrastructure leadership-and-career software-engineering

Getting the most value out of an organization’s cloud infrastructure can be a daunting task. But the key considerations can be winnowed down to an easy-to-remember acronym: CROPS, which stands for cost optimization, reliability, operational excellence, performance efficiency and security. By Dan Lawyer.

These five pillars are proven guidelines through which companies can design, evaluate and implement cloud architecture in a way that can most effectively scale, ensuring compliance with the relevant standards and saving money over time.

The article then explains the pillars:

  • Cost optimization
  • Reliability
  • Operational excellence
  • Performance efficiency
  • Security

Each cloud architecture must be able to protect the confidentiality and integrity of your information, systems and assets. A robust and proactive approach to security will also ensure that your organization maintains compliance with all government regulations and cloud security standards, such as General Data Protection Regulation, System and Organization Controls 2, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Good read!

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Azure Synapse Link for SQL: From production to a data warehouse in a few clicks

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Tags leadership-and-career data-and-analytics

The Link technology in Synapse is used to synchronize data from different data sources to Synapse Analytics. Synapse Link for CosmoDB and Synapse Link for Dataverse were already released. Now it’s time for a new and very important one: Azure Synapse Link for SQL. By Dennes Torres.

The Azure Synapse Link for SQL can be used with Azure SQL Database and SQL Server 2022 to synchronize tables using these databases as sources and a Synapse Dedicated Pool as a destination.

The article then describes in some detail:

  • Azure Synapse Link for SQL basic elements
  • Azure Synapse Link for SQL Scenarios
  • Azure Synapse Link for SQL Architecture
  • Provisioning the Azure Synapse Link for SQL
  • Additional Options

The Azure Synapse Link for SQL is not the entire way from production to a data warehouse, but it makes the ETL/ELT process way easier by synchronizing the data with the Synapse dedicated SQL Pool, relieving the production environment from further ETL workload, and allowing you to proceed from this point with the transformation of the data for the data warehouse. Nice one!

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30 positive feedback examples that create positive outcomes

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Tags leadership-and-career miscellaneous

Giving positive feedback to your employees is one of the most powerful things a leader can do. It encourages your direct reports to continue doing good work, but it also strengthens the relationships. By Lucy Georgiades.

However, many managers struggle to give positive feedback. They may feel like they don’t want to appear insincere, or they may be worried about appearing weak.

In this blog, you’ll learn:

  • Why giving positive feedback is important
  • Why do managers struggle to give positive feedback
  • How to give positive feedback
  • 30 examples of positive feedback
  • When is the best time to give positive feedback
  • 5 mistakes to avoid when giving positive feedback

The key here is to be authentic and specific in your positive feedback. If you’re not, your team will see right through you. And don’t worry, you’ll know the exact steps to give positive feedback the right way after reading this article. Good read!

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How decision intelligence solves the last mile of analytics challenge

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Tags data-and-analytics leadership-and-career

In this article authors focused on the role of decision intelligence in closing the “last mile” gap between current technologies and the value large organizations seek to extract from their data analytics investments. By diwo.ai.

Decision intelligence (DI) is the ability to use relevant and available data to identify and explain optimal actions that improve business outcomes.

We live in a world where there is so much data available, and it is growing non-stop. By 2025, there will be ~ 128 zbs of data. The average employee today is simultaneously engulfed by data and yet unable to find the most important data to make the best decisions in real time. So businesses have data, but lack insights to efficiently bridge the gap from data to decisions—what is commonly referred to as the “last mile of analytics challenge.” Companies won’t realize the full promise of data analytics until they operationalize the “last mile” step where insights become actionable. The path to ROI with analytics is better decisions, not better dashboards.

The article is split into:

  • Can decision intelligence solve the last mile of analytics challenge?
  • How can decision intelligence help more people improve decision-making in the daily routine of their jobs?
  • Where should decision intelligence be used?
  • How does decision intelligence fit into the modern data stack?

In its simplest form, a modern data stack encompasses an ingestion tool, a warehousing tool, a transformation tool, analysis and model building tools and the “decision” layer built on the advanced analytical capabilities of decision intelligence. Each of these layers play a key role in an organization’s ability to get actionable insight from vast amounts of data and ML models, develop recommendations for action and accelerate decision-making. Good read!

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Secure communication with light particles

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Tags miscellaneous leadership-and-career data-and-analytics cloud-and-infrastructure security-and-privacy

Researchers are developing an anti-eavesdropping quantum network. By Technische Universitat Darmstadt.

While quantum computers offer many novel possibilities, they also pose a threat to internet security since these supercomputers make common encryption methods vulnerable. Based on the so-called quantum key distribution, researchers at TU Darmstadt have developed a new, tap-proof communication network.

The new system is used to exchange symmetric keys between parties in order to encrypt messages so that they cannot be read by third parties. In cooperation with Deutsche Telekom, the researchers led by physics professor Thomas Walther succeeded in operating a quantum network that is scalable in terms of the number of users and at the same time robust without the need for trusted nodes.

So far, such quantum key methods have been technically complex and sensitive to external influences. The high stability of the transmission and the scalability in principle were successfully demonstrated in a field test together with Deutsche Telekom Technik GmbH. As a next step, the researchers at TU Darmstadt are planning to connect other buildings in the city to their system. Interesting read!

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MLOps in 10 minutes

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Tags ai-and-machine-learning leadership-and-career data-and-analytics

How MLOps helps across all stages of ML project. By Alexey Grigorev.

It’s a common misconception that MLOps is solely about the tools we use for deploying models and preparing the infrastructure for it. Partly it is, but it’s not the whole story – there’s much more. In this post, I’ll break down a machine learning project into several stages and explain how MLOps helps at each of them.

Typical ML project stages

Source @towardsdatascience.com: https://towardsdatascience.com/mlops-in-10-minutes-165c746a9b8e

MLOps is a new topic and there’s no consensus on what it is or what it is not. In this post, author will share his personal take on it. You don’t have to agree with it, but he hopes it’ll still be useful.

The article pays attention to:

  • What is MLOps
  • Train stage
  • Experiment tracking
  • Training pipelines
  • Operate stage
  • Deployment
  • Model monitoring
  • People, processes and best practices

In this article, we only scratched the surface. We discussed what MLOps is and looked at the helicopter view of the process. We broke down the process into 3 stages: design, train and operate. Good read!

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How narcissistic leaders destroy from within

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Tags miscellaneous leadership-and-career

When the person at the top is malignant and self-serving, unethical behavior cascades through the organization and becomes legitimized. By Lee Simmons.

You end up with these individualistic cultures with no teamwork and low integrity. We’ve documented this in a bunch of Silicon Valley tech firms.

Charles A. O’Reilly

What traits do we look for in our leaders? Ask someone what distinguishes a forceful leader, in business or politics, and they’re likely to mention self-confidence and charisma. Great leaders, we say, are bold and strong-willed. They have a vision for creating something new or remaking a company or a country. They challenge conventional wisdom and are slowed by neither self-doubt nor criticism.

The article explains:

  • Why do we empower them?
  • Tallying the damage
  • Follow the trail

True narcissists, O’Reilly says, are self-serving and lack integrity. “They believe they’re superior and thus not subject to the same rules and norms. Studies show they’re more likely to act dishonestly to achieve their ends. They know they’re lying, and it doesn’t bother them. They don’t feel shame.” They are also often reckless in the pursuit of glory – sometimes successfully, but often with dire consequences. Interesting read!

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