"UnionML significantly simplifies creating and deploying machine learning applications."

UnionML aims to unify the ever-evolving ecosystem of machine learning and data tools into a single interface for expressing microservices as Python functions. Data scientists can create UnionML applications by defining a few core methods that are automatically bundled into ML microservices, starting with model training and offline/online prediction.

"Creating machine learning applications should be easy, frictionless and simple, but today it really isn't.," said Union.ai CEO Ketan Umare. "The cost and complexity of choosing tools, deciding how to combine them into a coherent ML stack, and maintaining them in production requires a whole team of people who often leverage different programming languages and follow disparate practices. UnionML significantly simplifies creating and deploying machine learning applications."

UnionML apps comprise two objects: Dataset and Model. Together, they expose function decorator entry points that serve as building blocks for a machine learning application. By focusing on the core building blocks instead of the way they fit together, data scientists can reduce their cognitive load for iterating on models and deploying them to production. UnionML uses Flyte to execute training and prediction workflows locally or on production-grade Kubernetes clusters, relieving MLOps engineers of the overhead of provisioning compute resources for their stakeholders. Models and ML applications can be served via FastAPI or AWS Lambda. More options will be available in the future.

More information is available about UnionML: https://www.union.ai.

About Union.aiUnion.ai helps organizations deliver reliable, reproducible and cost-effective machine learning and data orchestration built around open-source Flyte. Flyte is a one of a kind workflow automation platform that simplifies the journey of data scientists and machine learning engineers from ideation to production. Some of the top companies, including Lyft, Spotify, GoJek and more, rely on Flyte to power their Data & ML products. Based in Bellevue, Wash., Union.ai was started by founding engineers of Flyte and is the leading contributor to Flyte.

SOURCE Union.ai

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Union.ai releases UnionML for seamless creation of web-native machine learning applications - PR Newswire

STOCKHOLM, June 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- EMQ, the world's leading provider of open-source IoT data infrastructure, announced that it has officially become a Founding Sponsor of the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation (EEF). The sponsorship of EEF indicates an ongoing commitment from EMQ to support open-source BEAM languages that are scalable, resilient, and future-proof.

The Erlang Ecosystem Foundation is a non-profit organization for driving the further development and adoption of Erlang, Elixir, LFE, and other technologies based on the BEAM virtual machine.

Backed by companies like Erlang Solutions, EMQ, Cisco, and others, the foundation aims to grow and support a diverse community around the Erlang Ecosystem.

Erlang is a functional programming language originally developed at the Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory in 1986. Initially, it was designed as a switching language for solving the problems of the telecom world, but was released as open-source software in 1998.

Since being released to the public, Erlang has been spreading beyond Telecom and is widely used for many other verticals like Automotive, FinTech, IoT, e-commerce, Healthcare, and Blockchain.

To date, more and more organizations use Erlang as their backend programming language for high-profile IoT projects. One of the main reasons for using Erlang is its ability to build massively concurrent, scalable, and fault-tolerant distributed systems with requirements of high availability.

EMQ has always been a strong supporter of the Erlang Ecosystem and has built its flagship product EMQX the world's most scalable distributed MQTT-based IoT messaging platform by incorporating Erlang within its tech stack.

As the number of connected IoT devices continues to boom, so do all the issues that come up around IoT scalability and concurrency. According to the latest State of IoTSpring 2022 report by IoT Analytics, the number of connected IoT devices is expected to reach 14.4 billion by the end of 2022. To accommodate the massive amount of IoT devices flooding the markets, high-performance messaging technology needs to be rolled out for high-throughput and error-free scalability.

Due to Erlang's parallelism and distributed nature, EMQX can support the scalability requirements of fast-growing IoT applications. As demonstrated by a recent scalability and reliability test, EMQX 5.0 can easily handle 100 million concurrent MQTT connections in one single cluster while maintaining low latency and high fault tolerance.

Today, over 10,000 international organizations, have successfully adopted EMQX as their core IoT data infrastructure solutions in a variety of industries such as oil & gas, automotive, logistics, renewable energy power generation, and manufacturing.

As a Founding Sponsor of EEF, EMQ is dedicated to contributing libraries, tools, documentation, and other critical technologies of IoT data infrastructure that are used regularly by companies relying on the stability and versatility of the ecosystem.

Meanwhile, EMQ will work closely with EEF to build awareness of the Erlang Ecosystem, foster growth in the open-source community, and promote innovative software development projects.

"Weare proud to work together with EEF in its mission to foster a strong, healthy, Erlang developer community. Erlang is the core of our always-connected IoT data infrastructure platform serving millions of customers around the world. Thanks to Erlang's features, EMQ can create high performance, concurrency, fault-tolerant systems, and scalability across cloud, hybrid, and edge computing deployments in a cost-effective manner," said Feng Lee, CEO and Founder of EMQ, "We're passionate about Erlang and will continue making contributions to Erlang frameworks and toolsets. "

To learn more about EMQ's work with Erlang technologies, please visit http://www.emqx.com or follow @EMQTech on Twitter

About EMQ

EMQ is an innovative open-source software provider with strong roots in IoT data infrastructure, delivering the world's leading cloud-native MQTT messaging, streaming database, and edge computing solutions.

Since 2017 EMQ has been developing a high-performance and massively scalable distributed MQTT messaging server EMQX to accelerate the connectivity and integration of a wide spectrum of IoT applications and data across multiple platforms.

So far, EMQX has been adopted by more than 10,000 enterprise users from over 50 countries, connecting more than 100 million IoT devices worldwide.

EMQ's robust and flexible edge-to-cloud IoT data solutions encompass a suite of technologies designed for IoT applications: reliability, security, availability, scalability, latency & throughput. This enables successful enterprise-grade IoT deployments with ease and scale.

As a global organization, EMQ located its R&D center in Stockholm, Sweden, and has 10+ offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Source: EMQ Technologies Co., Ltd.

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EMQ Announces Official Sponsorship of the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation (EEF) - PR Newswire APAC - PR Newswire Asia

Major tech companies are announcing in-demand roles for 2022.

According to recent data, the information technology industry had over $15 billion in funding in the last fiscal quarter of 2021. With such high investments, many major tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are hiring new employees to further their innovations. Thus, computer science majors and tech enthusiasts need to know the top positions available in the workforce.

Of course, there are jobs in technology for parents, recent graduates, and former software developers. This way, they can secure an in-demand position and start expanding their skill sets. Read on to learn about major tech companies announcing in-demand roles for 2022.

First, many major tech companies are hiring mobile app developers to join their team. Typically, these professionals develop software for iOS or Android mobile devices. For example, they may develop custom gaming applications, ecommerce platforms, or financial banking apps. In addition, many businesses need mobile developers to build and maintain their applications as well.

Of course, app developers need extensive knowledge of programming languages like Swift, Java, Python, as well as Ruby on Rails. Additionally, they should familiarize themselves with third-party libraries and application programming interfaces (APIs). This way, they have the proper tools and knowledge to write high quality code. Absolutely, tech companies are hiring mobile app developers for the high business demand.

Next, many major tech companies are hiring cybersecurity engineers. These professionals often identify threats and vulnerabilities in software systems. For example, many cybersecurity engineers must learn to patch the log4j vulnerability with powerful development tools and programming technologies. Notably, this vulnerability allows malicious attaches to execute code remotely on any targeted computer.

Since log4j is an open source logging library for Java, its widely used by businesses and websites around the globe. Fortunately, cybersecurity teams can use JFrogs Log4j and Log4Shell resource centre to access scanning tools and remediation strategies. In short, many enterprises are hiring cybersecurity engineers as they look to secure their systems.

In addition, a cloud architect is another one of the most in-demand tech positions for hire. This IT professional is responsible for overseeing a companys cloud computing strategy. Typically, this includes cloud adoption plans, application design, and management. Additionally, cloud architects usually handle cloud monitoring as well.

Many companies are seeking cloud architects as they look to solve their business problems. To get hired as a cloud architect, professionals should gain experience with programming languages like Python, Ruby, and Elixir. Many managers also look for employees with excellent leadership skills. In short, a cloud architect is one of the most in-demand positions for hire this year.

Moreover, many major tech companies are also hiring automation engineers. Many companies are seeking engineers who can alter workflows to reduce human error. For example, many businesses in the energy sector need automation engineers to monitor their systems and maintain compliance with international standards. Manufacturing plants, car factories, and food processing facilities are seeking these professionals as well.

Of course, automation professionals are key in the robotics industry to create design specifications and other supporting documents. With such a high need across different sectors, there are currently over 6,000 positions available on the job market. Undoubtedly, automation engineers are one of the top available positions in tech.

Furthermore, many tech enterprises are hiring artificial intelligence engineers to develop, manage, and oversee organization AI initiatives. To get hired in this role, professionals need a deep knowledge of mathematics and statistics. In addition, they should have strong programming skills in Pythong, R, and Torch languages. Of course, they should also know how to use some top open-source AI and machine learning libraries.

This way, they can create new innovations in their software. For example, many AI engineers create entertainment software features to provide custom-tailor suggestions. They can also build chatbots and virtual assistants to interact with clients. Certainly, AI engineers are one of the top open job roles in tech companies.

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Major Tech Companies Announce In-Demand Roles For 2022 - CGMagazine

Key Takeaways

In this article, we are going to introduce Apache Beam, a powerful batch and streaming processing open source project, used by big companies like eBay to integrate its streaming pipelines and by Mozilla to move data safely between its systems.

Apache Beam is a programming model for processing data, supporting batch and streaming.

Using the provided SDKs for Java, Python and Go, you can develop pipelines and then choose a backend that will run the pipeline.

Beam Model (Frances Perry & Tyler Akidau)

The key concepts in the Beam programming model are:

A basic pipeline operation consists of 3 steps: reading, processing and writing the transformation result. Each one of those steps is defined programmatically using one of the Apache Beam SDKs.

In this section, we will create pipelines using the Java SDK. You can choose between creating a local application (using Gradle or Maven) or you can use the Online Playground. The examples will use the local runner as it will be easier to verify the result using JUnit Assertions.

In this first example, the pipeline will receive an array of numbers and will map each element multiplied by 2.

The first step is creating the pipeline instance that will receive the input array and run the transform function. As we're using JUnit to run Apache Beam, we can easily create a TestPipeline as a test class attribute. If you prefer running on your main application instead, you'll need to set the pipeline configuration options,

Now we can create the PCollection that will be used as input to the pipeline. It'll be an array instantiated directly from memory but it could be read from anywhere supported by Apache Beam:

Then we apply our transform function that will multiply each dataset element by two:

To verify the results we can write an assertion:

Note the results are not supposed to be sorted as the input, because Apache Beam processes each item independently and in parallel.

The test at this point is done, and we run the pipeline by calling:

The reduce operation is the combination of multiple input elements that results in a smaller collection, usually containing a single element.

MapReduce (Frances Perry & Tyler Akidau)

Now let's extend the example above to sum up all the items multiplied by two, resulting in a MapReduce transform.

Each PCollection transform results in a new PCollection instance, which means we can chain transformations using the apply method. In this case, the Sum operation will be used after multiplying each input by 2:

FlatMap is an operation that first applies a map on each input element that usually returns a new collection, resulting in a collection of collections. A flat operation is then applied to merge all the nested collections, resulting in a single one.

The next example will be transforming arrays of strings into a unique array containing each word.

First, we declare our list of words that will be used as the pipeline input:

Then we create the input PCollection using the list above:

Now we apply the flatmap transformation, which will split the words in each nested array and merge the results in a single list:

A common job in data processing is aggregating or counting by a specific key. We'll demonstrate it by counting the number of occurrences of each word from the previous example.

After having the flat array of string, we can chain another PTransform:

One of the principles of Apache Beam is reading data from anywhere, so let's see in practice how to use a text file as a datasource.

The following example will read the content of a "words.txt" with the content "An advanced unified programming model". Then the transform function will return a PCollection containing each word from the text.

As seen in the previous example for the input, Apache Beam has multiple built-in output connectors. In the following example, we will count the number of each word present in the text file "words.txt" that contains only a single sentence ("An advanced unified programming model") and the output will be persisted in a text file format.

Even the file writing is optimized for parallelism by default, which means Beam will determine the best number of shards (files) to persist the result. The files will be located on folder src/main/resources and will have the prefix "wordcount", the shard number and the total number of shards as defined in the last output transformation.

When running it on my laptop, four shards were generated:

First shard (file name: wordscount-00001-of-00003):

Second shard (file name: wordscount-00002-of-00003):

Third shard (file name: wordscount-00003-of-00003):

The last shard was created but in the end was empty, because all words were already processed.

We can take advantage of Beam extensibility by writing a custom transform function. A custom transformer will improve code maintainability as will remove duplication.

Basically we'd need to create a subclass of PTransform, stating the type of the input and output as Java Generics. Then we override the expand method and inside its content we place the duplicated logic, that receives a single string and returns a PCollection containing each word.

The test scenario refactored to use WordsFileParser now become:

The result is a clearer and more modular pipeline.

Windowing in Apache Beam (Frances Perry & Tyler Akidau)

A common problem in streaming processing is grouping the incoming data by a certain time interval, specially when handling large amounts of data. In this case, the analysis of the aggregated data per hour or per day is more relevant than analyzing each element of the dataset.

In the following example, let's suppose we're working in a fintech and we are receiving transactions events containing the amount and the instant the transaction happened and we want to retrieve the total amount transacted per day.

Beam provides a way to decorate each PCollection element with a timestamp. We can use this to create a PCollection representing 5 money transactions:

Next, we'll apply two transform functions:

In the first window (2022-02-01) it's expected the total amount of 30 (10+20), while in the second window (2022-02-05) we should see 120 (30+40+50) in the total amount.

Each IntervalWindow instance needs to match the exact beginning and end timestamps of the chosen duration, so the chosen time has to be "00:00:00".

Apache Beam is a powerful battle-tested data framework, allowing both batching and streaming processing. We have used the Java SDK to build map, reduce, group, windowing and other operations.

Apache Beam can be well suited for developers who works with embarrassingly parallel tasks to simplify the mechanics of large-scale data processing.

Its connectors, SDKs and support for various runners bring flexibility and by choosing a cloud native runner like Google Cloud Dataflow, you get automated management of computational resources.

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Introduction to Apache Beam Using Java - InfoQ.com

WARNING:This story contains detailsreaders might find distressing

Robin Antone went through some hard years when he was younger.

Originally from Oneida Nation of the Thames, he grew up in nearby London, Ont., moving through various foster families and group homes. The instability of his youth led todrugs and drinking. He saidthe desperation caused by addiction made him vulnerable to becoming a victim of human trafficking.

Only he didn't realize that's what it was at the time.

"There were these guys that I used to come in contact with ... and they would ask me if I wanted to make some money," Antone, 49, told CBC Hamilton. "One day, I went to this guy's house with a friend of mine at the time, a so-called friend. He introduced me to this guy, got me drunkand proposed some money to perform a sexual act."

Antone saidthe same "friend" put him in similar situations several times.

"It didn't dawn on me until later in my life that guy was actually trafficking me, because he benefited financially from introducing me to these different men."

Antone hid what was happening at the time because he was ashamed, but saidbeing open about it now is part of hishealing journey since 1996. He hopes it will inspire others to come forward for help.

Today, Antone works at Ganohkwasra Family Assault Support Services in Six Nations of the Grand River,near Brantford, Ont.

Hesaidmore public discussion around human trafficking in recent years has helped him realize he was a victim. He saidputting a name to what happened has contributed to his recovery.

"It is empowering because, for me, it's a part of my healing journey a missing piece of the puzzle."

Helping community members better recognize what constitutes human trafficking is a major focus for Jami-Lee Baxter, supervisor of Ganohkwasra'schild and youth programming.

Part of that workincludesa program calledDeyogwadawenye, which means "we are travelling together" in Cayuga. Her team is working hard on community education, trafficking prevention and developing supports for victims.

It's unclear how prevalent it is in the community because of the lack of awareness and tracking something theDeyogwadawenyeteam hopes to change.

"A lot of times it gets reported as domestic violence and not human trafficking," said Baxter, whose team received a grant of $246,165 from theOntario government last year, part of a provincewideanti-human trafficking strategy that includes increasing culturally appropriate services for Indigenous communities.

The team began its work in April 2021 and so farhasn't identified or counselledany victims, but is supporting a large roster of young people who may be at risk.

Baxter saidproviding education from an Indigenous perspective, as well asculturally relevant healing and therapy, makethe program unique.

"[Indigenous peoples have] experienced human trafficking and sexual exploitation right from European contact," she said. "There was forced labour in residential schools as well."

The Ontario government says human trafficking takes multiple forms, including "sex trafficking, labour trafficking and forced marriage It can include recruiting, harbouring or controlling a person's movements using force, physical or psychological coercionor deception. Traffickers often make victims do labour (for example, domestic, physical and manual labour) or perform sexual acts in exchange for monetary gain."

In moreremote Indigenous communities, or communitieswith a lack of affordable or accessible housing, human trafficking can involverequiring sexual acts in exchange for somewhere to stay or a ride somewhere, saidAlex Martin, an anti-human trafficking youth worker with Deyogwadawenye. ForSix Nations, he said, its proximity to major highways is also a risk factoras it allows easy access to people from outside the reserve.

The team believes a significant amount of such activity is going on in the community. In March, three menone each fromSix Nations, Port Dover and nearby Burfordwerearrested after a human trafficking investigation, and charged with communicating for the purpose of obtaining sexual services and seeking sexual services.

At the national level, Martin said, about 60 per cent of human trafficking victims are Indigenous, even though Indigenous people only make up 1.4 per cent of Canada's population.

"Some of these people who are victims or survivors may not know they're being trafficked themselves," he said, noting the group is preparing an education module for schools, considering the average age of a trafficking victim is 13. "Right now, it's going unreported because we're not open to seeing what human trafficking is."

Some signs may include if a young person'snew, older boyfriendor girlfriendis trying to isolatethe individualfrom friends or family,or ifsomeone is wearing newclothes or hasother consumer goods they didn't buy themselves. It's also important to monitor young people's gaming accounts for users offering gifts over the platform, such as virtual currency to be used in the game, saidMartin.

"It's scary for youth, not only on reserve, but everywhere."

Joan Henhawk, the program's other youth worker, saidlearning about human trafficking has helped her open the discussion with her own childrenandurge them to share the information with their friends.

"What really opened my eyes is the luring and grooming stage," she said. "They actually pretend to be your boyfriend or girlfriend [The victim will] think, 'That's my boyfriend, they're just being nice to me,' but maybe they're after more."

Deyogwadawenye encourages community members to callthrough Ganohkwasraor contact policeif they suspect an instance of trafficking.

Unfortunately, getting police help can be complicated in a grooming situation. Antone saidhe called them when he believed it was happening to someone in his life, butthey weren't able to do anything because there was no proof of laws being broken.

"These recruiters come into our community and befriend teenagers, young girls people in risky situations and they lure them out of the community," he said, noting it underscores the importance of educating and supporting potential victims. "People are so in denial that it happens here in Ohsweken.

"If you have teenagers, it does apply to you. If you have internet at home, it does apply to you."

If you're experiencing what may be considered human or sex trafficking, there is help:

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'It's going unreported': Program on Six Nations, Ont., out to open eyes on what human trafficking is - CBC.ca

Knoldus Partners with EPFL - Scala Center

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario (PRWEB) June 08, 2022

Knoldus is honoured to be named to the Scala Center's official advisory board. Knoldus is the world's largest Fast Data Intelligence with Functional Programming organization. At Knoldus, our mission is "Helping Businesses Succeed with Technology." We empower global enterprises and SMEs by leveraging emerging future-ready technologies, bringing them a quantifiable competitive advantage. Recently, we announced Affiliate Partnership with EPFL Switzerland.

How Knoldus uses Scala

Knoldus started with Scala more than a decade ago. When we saw the potential of Scala technology for our clients and prospects, we moved quickly to start using it in all our engagements and reaped the benefits early enough to demonstrate the power of Scala in any technology development.

Scala is explicitly designed to express the most common programming patterns clearly, elegantly, concisely, and in a type-safe manner. It is a perfect combination of object-oriented and functional language concepts with rich syntax and type systems.

Knoldus has been regular at conferences and meetups as a presenter, sponsor, and participant. Our Scala-focused meetup groups have more than 500+ members in Toronto, 250+ members in the Netherlands, 300+ members in Singapore, and another 4,000+ members spread globally. As a high-end service and consulting organization focused on emerging tech, we would like to continue our association with Scala, its development, and evangelization of the language.

Our partnership with the Scala Center

The Scala Center, founded in 2016, is an open-source Scala foundation that aims to assist the space's long-term development. EPFL is a world-class research university in Lausanne, Switzerland, with a unit dedicated to it. The Scala Center is a language foundation dedicated to fostering long-term growth in the Scala open source community.

Knoldus is now an official member of the Scala Center's advisory board. The Advisory Board is made up of companies that want to help the open-source community and support their strategic commitment in Scala and associated technology.

As an affiliate partner, Knoldus is benefited with the capacity to vote in elections for the Scala Center's Advisory Board, the capacity to advise and vote on guidelines for Scala Center initiatives, recruitment possibilities at EPFL, get right of entry to the Scala Center's transparency reports, and the possibility to take part in the Scala Center's annual event.

If you would like to understand how the Fast Data Intelligence and Functional Programming paradigm can help your organization, then don't hesitate to get in touch with us at https://www.knoldus.com/contact-us/

If you have a strong interest in Scala or Functional Programming and want to work with the world's largest team of Functional Programming and Fast Data Intelligence engineers, see Knoldus' current job openings at https://www.knoldus.com/careers/

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Knoldus is proud to be announced as an Affiliate Partner of Scala Center backed by EPFL, a world-class research university in Switzerland - PR Web

This is an interview with one of the worlds most creative and talented blockchain and cryptocurrency developers, Brandon Synth Smietana, the Co-Founder of Skycoin, whose company develops software and hardware for decentralized networking and data storage.

He was among the blockchain pioneers who took part in writing Bitcoins source code with one of the most mysterious personalities of our time, Satoshi Nakamoto. Skycoin, which was launched in 2012, has no rivals in terms of its ground-breaking approach and is tech savvy.

What are Skycoins flagship products; why is Skycoin so much more than just a crypto token; and why is its unique technology so important? We asked Smietana about all this and more.

Have you ever wondered why you need platforms like YouTube, Google, Twitter and Facebook? Do you realize that these companies control a huge array of your personal data? We give them our data. They control it, they monetize it, and they exploit us. They control peoples thinking, they rig elections, they manipulate what people see, what they hear, and eventually the objective is to manipulate how people behave. Its about controlling people.

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So, we went through this phase in the internet where everyone had a blog and it was decentralized. And then, we went to this phase where three companies, Twitter, Facebook and Google, control basically the whole internet and block off everything else. So, theres this illusion of this global internet and people playing by the rules, and that your data is only being collected to fight terrorists. In fact, they collect it so that one group of people can economically dominate the others, and that is what it is being used for.

In China, Cisco routers are banned, but you can buy a Huawei router. And, how do you know that the Chinese government didnt put a backdoor in that. And, when you buy an American router, you get an American backdoor. Of course, there are backdoors in all their communications equipment.

So, what Skywire is, is a neutral open-source standard for networking that will have open-source hardware. People can compile their own firmware and know theres not a Chinese backdoor in it, or have to choose between a Russian backdoor, a Chinese backdoor and the EU security backdoor. Businesses need to control their own infrastructure. They need to control their routers, their firmware and their file storage. They have to reduce reliance upon these third parties.

When we started 10 years ago, blockchain was about taking the power from the Fed and devolving it back down to the people. We were a social revolution; we were fighting the government. But, today blockchain means penny stock pump-and-dumps, moonboys and lambos, and its about getting rich quick.

We dont play these games. We still think we have to change the world for the better. Thats why all we do is aimed at creating an infrastructure for Web 3.0, which we were talking about long before it became trendy.

People think blockchain is about cryptocurrencies because they know Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the reality is that blockchain technology is much more general than cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is actually just database technology. So, anywhere we use a database, we can use blockchain.

But, the adoption of blockchain has been held back by the fact that blockchain currently requires half a million dollars to implement, maybe two million or four million dollars worth of mining equipment, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in electricity costs. And, what that guarantees is that were going to have a couple big coins: the Bitcoins, Ethereums, EOSes, whatever

That leaves the other coins vulnerable from a security perspective. So, the question is: How do I get a consensus that is not based on proof-of-work? Because, basically, the problem with proof-of-work is that whoever has the most hashing power controls the network, and what that means is that whoever has the most money controls the network, because, if you have the most money, you can just buy hashing power, and then you own the network.

So, you know, the Bitcoin network we pretend like its decentralized, but the reality is that its controlled by whoever has the most money, and I wouldnt call that decentralization. And, if you look, I think theres three mining pools that control the vast majority of hashing power. And, theyre owned by the same guys, the same investors, all three of them.

And, then you have the question of energy usage. Do you really want to spend $50 million per year on electricity just to be able to do six transactions per second? You know, its basically overhead, and it doesnt add anything, so the question is: How do I get consensus without the overhead of all of this mining equipment? And, thats why we created Obelisk, because just the energy costs a huge amount.

We have to lower the costs for small businesses to create and run their own blockchains because theyre not going to spend $50,000 per month just so they can say their database is on a blockchain.

Skycoins Fiber is best described as an infinitely scalable blockchain network. In this sense, Fiber is more than a blockchain. This is a solution to the existing scaling problems that the largest blockchain networks using distributed ledger technology are subject to.

So, we have to dramatically reduce the cost of consensus by getting rid of proof-of-work and getting rid of proof-of-stake, and what thats going to enable is a network of 100,000 blockchains, or a million blockchains, or ten million blockchains. And, thats what we call Fiber.

There is a Web 3.0 aspect for consumer and business applications. You know, you decentralize your data, grab your data and copy it on the cloud. You dont really care who or where its hosted, right?

People who use Web 3.0 normally wont know theyre using it. When Web 3.0 is here, it will be when people are using it and dont know that theyre using it. Its going to be identical. The apps are going to look identical to what we have now. Its going to be exactly the same. The only difference is that there will be a different database in the backend.

No, its based on Ben-Ors protocol for decentralized coin-flipping. We want to have 100,000 blockchains, and we dont want to have all this overhead. It doesnt really make any sense. I would say Fiber its not really Obelisk. It was just the idea of getting your own blockchain for the decentralized internet. I think its really focused more for business use.

Look at the biggest coins. Look at the Binance chain. Theres no source code for it. Its not open source. No one knows what the hell its doing. Theyve released some source code, but, actually, the node doesnt sync. You run it, and it doesnt sync. So, the whole network is running on a server in Binances office, and thats where Binance tether, BUSD, and all these thousands of services are leaving Ethereum to go on the Binance Token.

Theyre leaving Ethereum for a closed-source platform that doesnt even really release its source code. And, if you run the source code, the node doesnt actually work.

We used to have consensus, right? And EOS went to master nodes, and they just ran 30 master nodes and completely controlled it. And so, its sort of this model now of faking it, faking decentralization because it has inefficiency, and it really doesnt add anything. Oh, yeah, were decentralized, but who the hell cares, right? People only care what the app does, they only care what the functionality is.

CX is Skycoins feature rich programming language, and it is what I think is best for blockchain. It is designed to meet the growing needs of Skycoins ecosystem that cannot be met by any other available languages.

If my blog data is on blockchain, I need a language that tells me who can update the data, how big it could be, what the format is, I need APIs for viewing the data, APIs for modifying the data, permission control, an application scripting language, and I need to do mathematical computations.

With CX, you can run any program on any computer in such a way that it will run on a blockchain database. The difference between Skycoins CX and Ethereum is you cannot run a video game on Ethereum, while CX allows you to run any application on a blockchain that you could run on your laptop.

Its a programming language. And, I wouldnt consider Ethereums smart contracting language to be a real programming language because its too limited. I want to do video sharing sites. I want to have Telegram, I want to do poker, I want to do 3D video games, I want to be able to run any app that I can run on my computer, and I want the data to be stored on a blockchain. And so, I dont want to be limited to just buying and selling a PNG for $100,000 and then changing the owner and then paying a $50 transaction fee to do that.

There are CX programs that would be on a blockchain, but some applications have data on the blockchain, and others dont. It has to be flexible enough so that it could be executed on the blockchain, but it could also be executed on a normal CPU without having a blockchain. It just depends on what youre doing.

Skycoin is just one of maybe 15 software products and software protocols that weve developed. I think its very difficult to predict crypto assets. Its very difficult to say whats going to go up, whats going to go down. You know, people see crypto as a sort of investment that theyre trying to make money on, and I think there are too many people like that.

I mean, thats the way they see it. You know: Im going to buy this because its going to go up. But, I think most of the people who bought Skycoin bought it because they like what were doing. They like this community that weve built. They like our vision for what the future of the internet is going to look like.

There are some people who bought it for financial returns, and I think, unfortunately, they were disappointed because if youre trying to get a pump-and-dump If youre going to this pump, youre going to that pump Youre going to this, youre rushing into these new coins, these new ICOs And, this coins here this week, and its up 50x, and then next week its gone, and you never hear of it again.

I think that our community is a bit different. We dont have a lot of moonboys in our community. We dont have a mu mu and lambo mu, and Im gonna get rich. I think theres a lot of people that are using our VPN service, theyre running Skywire nodes, theyre waiting for us to build this new peer-to-peer internet for local communities. Thats what theyre doing.

Skycoins price was $50 when we had no source code. We had nothing when Skycoin was at a $5-billion market cap. We were just starting out. We were just hiring people. And, now that we have like 18 hardware products, our VPN done, our programming language done, were making video game prototypes, were going into small business and corporate networking, were building out CX for programming education and for blockchain applications... Now that were doing all of these things, our token is at 20 cents.

So, how is it that when we had nothing, its a $5-billion market cap, and now that we have a lot more than a lot of our competitors five times over, those that have $800-million market caps But what are we at? $20 million now?

You know, Dogecoin has had no developers for the last 8 years but its market caps more than Ford. So, what does that say? I think the market is a bunch of moonboys going from pump-and-dump to pump-and-dump. The blockchain market today is a market that rewards marketing. If you want, you take your marketing team, you launch a new coin, and then, three months later, you launch another coin. Theres no market for old coins. Like, we talked to OKEx and they only want new coins. They dont want old coins. They want to do a pump, a massive marketing push. They want to dump at 50x, and then they want to do it again next month. And, thats really where the markets at if you want to make money. Its not in developing something over five or ten years.

This is an interview with one of the worlds most creative and talented blockchain and cryptocurrency developers, Brandon Synth Smietana, the Co-Founder of Skycoin, whose company develops software and hardware for decentralized networking and data storage.

He was among the blockchain pioneers who took part in writing Bitcoins source code with one of the most mysterious personalities of our time, Satoshi Nakamoto. Skycoin, which was launched in 2012, has no rivals in terms of its ground-breaking approach and is tech savvy.

What are Skycoins flagship products; why is Skycoin so much more than just a crypto token; and why is its unique technology so important? We asked Smietana about all this and more.

Have you ever wondered why you need platforms like YouTube, Google, Twitter and Facebook? Do you realize that these companies control a huge array of your personal data? We give them our data. They control it, they monetize it, and they exploit us. They control peoples thinking, they rig elections, they manipulate what people see, what they hear, and eventually the objective is to manipulate how people behave. Its about controlling people.

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So, we went through this phase in the internet where everyone had a blog and it was decentralized. And then, we went to this phase where three companies, Twitter, Facebook and Google, control basically the whole internet and block off everything else. So, theres this illusion of this global internet and people playing by the rules, and that your data is only being collected to fight terrorists. In fact, they collect it so that one group of people can economically dominate the others, and that is what it is being used for.

In China, Cisco routers are banned, but you can buy a Huawei router. And, how do you know that the Chinese government didnt put a backdoor in that. And, when you buy an American router, you get an American backdoor. Of course, there are backdoors in all their communications equipment.

So, what Skywire is, is a neutral open-source standard for networking that will have open-source hardware. People can compile their own firmware and know theres not a Chinese backdoor in it, or have to choose between a Russian backdoor, a Chinese backdoor and the EU security backdoor. Businesses need to control their own infrastructure. They need to control their routers, their firmware and their file storage. They have to reduce reliance upon these third parties.

When we started 10 years ago, blockchain was about taking the power from the Fed and devolving it back down to the people. We were a social revolution; we were fighting the government. But, today blockchain means penny stock pump-and-dumps, moonboys and lambos, and its about getting rich quick.

We dont play these games. We still think we have to change the world for the better. Thats why all we do is aimed at creating an infrastructure for Web 3.0, which we were talking about long before it became trendy.

People think blockchain is about cryptocurrencies because they know Bitcoin and Ethereum, but the reality is that blockchain technology is much more general than cryptocurrencies. Blockchain is actually just database technology. So, anywhere we use a database, we can use blockchain.

But, the adoption of blockchain has been held back by the fact that blockchain currently requires half a million dollars to implement, maybe two million or four million dollars worth of mining equipment, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in electricity costs. And, what that guarantees is that were going to have a couple big coins: the Bitcoins, Ethereums, EOSes, whatever

That leaves the other coins vulnerable from a security perspective. So, the question is: How do I get a consensus that is not based on proof-of-work? Because, basically, the problem with proof-of-work is that whoever has the most hashing power controls the network, and what that means is that whoever has the most money controls the network, because, if you have the most money, you can just buy hashing power, and then you own the network.

So, you know, the Bitcoin network we pretend like its decentralized, but the reality is that its controlled by whoever has the most money, and I wouldnt call that decentralization. And, if you look, I think theres three mining pools that control the vast majority of hashing power. And, theyre owned by the same guys, the same investors, all three of them.

And, then you have the question of energy usage. Do you really want to spend $50 million per year on electricity just to be able to do six transactions per second? You know, its basically overhead, and it doesnt add anything, so the question is: How do I get consensus without the overhead of all of this mining equipment? And, thats why we created Obelisk, because just the energy costs a huge amount.

We have to lower the costs for small businesses to create and run their own blockchains because theyre not going to spend $50,000 per month just so they can say their database is on a blockchain.

Skycoins Fiber is best described as an infinitely scalable blockchain network. In this sense, Fiber is more than a blockchain. This is a solution to the existing scaling problems that the largest blockchain networks using distributed ledger technology are subject to.

So, we have to dramatically reduce the cost of consensus by getting rid of proof-of-work and getting rid of proof-of-stake, and what thats going to enable is a network of 100,000 blockchains, or a million blockchains, or ten million blockchains. And, thats what we call Fiber.

There is a Web 3.0 aspect for consumer and business applications. You know, you decentralize your data, grab your data and copy it on the cloud. You dont really care who or where its hosted, right?

People who use Web 3.0 normally wont know theyre using it. When Web 3.0 is here, it will be when people are using it and dont know that theyre using it. Its going to be identical. The apps are going to look identical to what we have now. Its going to be exactly the same. The only difference is that there will be a different database in the backend.

No, its based on Ben-Ors protocol for decentralized coin-flipping. We want to have 100,000 blockchains, and we dont want to have all this overhead. It doesnt really make any sense. I would say Fiber its not really Obelisk. It was just the idea of getting your own blockchain for the decentralized internet. I think its really focused more for business use.

Look at the biggest coins. Look at the Binance chain. Theres no source code for it. Its not open source. No one knows what the hell its doing. Theyve released some source code, but, actually, the node doesnt sync. You run it, and it doesnt sync. So, the whole network is running on a server in Binances office, and thats where Binance tether, BUSD, and all these thousands of services are leaving Ethereum to go on the Binance Token.

Theyre leaving Ethereum for a closed-source platform that doesnt even really release its source code. And, if you run the source code, the node doesnt actually work.

We used to have consensus, right? And EOS went to master nodes, and they just ran 30 master nodes and completely controlled it. And so, its sort of this model now of faking it, faking decentralization because it has inefficiency, and it really doesnt add anything. Oh, yeah, were decentralized, but who the hell cares, right? People only care what the app does, they only care what the functionality is.

CX is Skycoins feature rich programming language, and it is what I think is best for blockchain. It is designed to meet the growing needs of Skycoins ecosystem that cannot be met by any other available languages.

If my blog data is on blockchain, I need a language that tells me who can update the data, how big it could be, what the format is, I need APIs for viewing the data, APIs for modifying the data, permission control, an application scripting language, and I need to do mathematical computations.

With CX, you can run any program on any computer in such a way that it will run on a blockchain database. The difference between Skycoins CX and Ethereum is you cannot run a video game on Ethereum, while CX allows you to run any application on a blockchain that you could run on your laptop.

Its a programming language. And, I wouldnt consider Ethereums smart contracting language to be a real programming language because its too limited. I want to do video sharing sites. I want to have Telegram, I want to do poker, I want to do 3D video games, I want to be able to run any app that I can run on my computer, and I want the data to be stored on a blockchain. And so, I dont want to be limited to just buying and selling a PNG for $100,000 and then changing the owner and then paying a $50 transaction fee to do that.

There are CX programs that would be on a blockchain, but some applications have data on the blockchain, and others dont. It has to be flexible enough so that it could be executed on the blockchain, but it could also be executed on a normal CPU without having a blockchain. It just depends on what youre doing.

Skycoin is just one of maybe 15 software products and software protocols that weve developed. I think its very difficult to predict crypto assets. Its very difficult to say whats going to go up, whats going to go down. You know, people see crypto as a sort of investment that theyre trying to make money on, and I think there are too many people like that.

I mean, thats the way they see it. You know: Im going to buy this because its going to go up. But, I think most of the people who bought Skycoin bought it because they like what were doing. They like this community that weve built. They like our vision for what the future of the internet is going to look like.

There are some people who bought it for financial returns, and I think, unfortunately, they were disappointed because if youre trying to get a pump-and-dump If youre going to this pump, youre going to that pump Youre going to this, youre rushing into these new coins, these new ICOs And, this coins here this week, and its up 50x, and then next week its gone, and you never hear of it again.

I think that our community is a bit different. We dont have a lot of moonboys in our community. We dont have a mu mu and lambo mu, and Im gonna get rich. I think theres a lot of people that are using our VPN service, theyre running Skywire nodes, theyre waiting for us to build this new peer-to-peer internet for local communities. Thats what theyre doing.

Skycoins price was $50 when we had no source code. We had nothing when Skycoin was at a $5-billion market cap. We were just starting out. We were just hiring people. And, now that we have like 18 hardware products, our VPN done, our programming language done, were making video game prototypes, were going into small business and corporate networking, were building out CX for programming education and for blockchain applications... Now that were doing all of these things, our token is at 20 cents.

So, how is it that when we had nothing, its a $5-billion market cap, and now that we have a lot more than a lot of our competitors five times over, those that have $800-million market caps But what are we at? $20 million now?

You know, Dogecoin has had no developers for the last 8 years but its market caps more than Ford. So, what does that say? I think the market is a bunch of moonboys going from pump-and-dump to pump-and-dump. The blockchain market today is a market that rewards marketing. If you want, you take your marketing team, you launch a new coin, and then, three months later, you launch another coin. Theres no market for old coins. Like, we talked to OKEx and they only want new coins. They dont want old coins. They want to do a pump, a massive marketing push. They want to dump at 50x, and then they want to do it again next month. And, thats really where the markets at if you want to make money. Its not in developing something over five or ten years.

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Skycoin's Brandon Smietana Discusses the Role of Distributed Ledger Tech in WEB 3.0 - Finance Magnates

Where open source communities live GitHub

There are millions of open source projects on GitHub. Joinone or start your own.

Open source software is free for you to use and explore. Get involved to perfect your craft and be part of something big.

Your contributions help make technology better for everyone, developers and non-developersalike.

Amazing developers use GitHub. Contribute code to projects that change how softwareisbuilt.

Whatever your skill level, working on open source software is a great way to learn newthings.

Open source is made by people just like you. Learn how to contribute, launch a new project, and build a healthy community of contributors.

Browse data from over 3,800 projects on the experiences and backgrounds of those who use and build open source software.

Whether you are new to code or ready to start a big project, there are a few ways to get involved in open source.

Learn how developers build and maintain open source software. You can watch a project that interests you to see its progress as it happens.

You dont have to build everything from scratch. Make copies of your favorite projects, experiment in private repositories, and tailor tools and features to meet your needs.

Make a suggestion, fix a bug, improve documentation, or contribute code to a project. Even asking questions helps.

Open source software is made by people just like you. Heres how they gotstarted.

Katrina Owen created Exercism, a platform to gain fluency in programming languages, to solve her own needs. Today, Exercism supports more than 50 programming languages, written and used by developers in over 190 countries.

Whatever your interestwhether its mobile apps or astrophysicstheres an open source project foryou.

Start exploring now

Were building developer tools alongside you. We hope they help you perfect your process, work on projects of any size, and share ideas with your friends and coworkers. Take them for a spin or help us build them.

Atom is a hackable text editor for the 21st century, built on Electron, and based on everything we love about our favorite editors.

Hubot is a chat bot, modeled after GitHubs Campfire bot, hubot. Hes pretty cool. Hes extendable with scripts and can work on many different chat services.

Git LFS is a command line extension and specification for managing large files with Git.

Public and open source projects are free to start, maintain, and contribute to. Add advanced collaboration tools to your private repositories for $7/month.

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The indented, italicized sections below appear as annotations to the Open Source Definition (OSD) and are not a part of the OSD. A plain version of the OSD without annotations can be found here.

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Rationale: By constraining the license to require free redistribution, we eliminate the temptation for licensors to throw away many long-term gains to make short-term gains. If we didn't do this, there would be lots of pressure for cooperators to defect.

The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

Rationale: We require access to un-obfuscated source code because you can't evolve programs without modifying them. Since our purpose is to make evolution easy, we require that modification be made easy.

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

Rationale: The mere ability to read source isn't enough to support independent peer review and rapid evolutionary selection. For rapid evolution to happen, people need to be able to experiment with and redistribute modifications.

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.

Rationale: Encouraging lots of improvement is a good thing, but users have a right to know who is responsible for the software they are using. Authors and maintainers have reciprocal right to know what they're being asked to support and protect their reputations.

Accordingly, an open-source license must guarantee that source be readily available, but may require that it be distributed as pristine base sources plus patches. In this way, "unofficial" changes can be made available but readily distinguished from the base source.

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

Rationale: In order to get the maximum benefit from the process, the maximum diversity of persons and groups should be equally eligible to contribute to open sources. Therefore we forbid any open-source license from locking anybody out of the process.

Some countries, including the United States, have export restrictions for certain types of software. An OSD-conformant license may warn licensees of applicable restrictions and remind them that they are obliged to obey the law; however, it may not incorporate such restrictions itself.

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.

The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

Rationale: This clause is intended to forbid closing up software by indirect means such as requiring a non-disclosure agreement.

The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.

Rationale: This clause forecloses yet another class of license traps.

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.

Rationale: Distributors of open-source software have the right to make their own choices about their own software.

Yes, the GPL v2 and v3 are conformant with this requirement. Software linked with GPLed libraries only inherits the GPL if it forms a single work, not any software with which they are merely distributed.

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

Rationale: This provision is aimed specifically at licenses which require an explicit gesture of assent in order to establish a contract between licensor and licensee. Provisions mandating so-called "click-wrap" may conflict with important methods of software distribution such as FTP download, CD-ROM anthologies, and web mirroring; such provisions may also hinder code re-use. Conformant licenses must allow for the possibility that (a) redistribution of the software will take place over non-Web channels that do not support click-wrapping of the download, and that (b) the covered code (or re-used portions of covered code) may run in a non-GUI environment that cannot support popup dialogues.

The Open Source Definition was originally derived from the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG).

Version 1.9, last modified, 2007-03-22

Read the original here:

The Open Source Definition (Annotated) | Open Source Initiative

The company has set 15 December as the last official day Atom will be in operation. But a successor is in sight.

After more than a decade of helping software developers write code, GitHub is archiving its open-source text editor Atom to focus on cloud-based alternatives.

Launched in 2011, Atom is a free and open-source text and source code editor for software developers working on a range of operating systems.

The Atom software development environment laid the foundation of the Electron framework which has paved the way for thousands of apps, according to GitHub, including Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack and GitHub Desktop.

Now, GitHub has announced that it is officially sunsetting Atom and archiving all associated projects on 15 December, 2022.

When we introduced Atom in 2011, we set out to give developers a text editor that was deeply customisable but also easy to use one that made it possible for more people to build software, the company said.

While that goal of growing the software creator community remains, weve decided to retire Atom in order to further our commitment to bringing fast and reliable software development to the cloud via Microsoft Visual Studio Code and GitHub Codespaces.

GitHub said Atom has not had any significant feature development for the past several years, despite sporadic maintenance and security updates for developers still using the editor.

We recognise that Atom is still used by the community and want to acknowledge that migrating to an alternative solution takes time and energy, GitHub said.

Microsoft, which acquired GitHub for $7.5bn in 2018, launched its Visual Studio Code text editor in 2015 to compete with Atom. Since the acquisition, VS Code has gained popularity and now has a significant hold of the market share, while Atoms popularity has dwindled.

As new cloud-based tools have emerged and evolved over the years, Atom community involvement has declined significantly, said GitHub.

The legacy of Atom may yet live on through a successor, however. TechCrunch reported that one of Atoms core contributors, Max Brunsfeld, is leading an effort to launch a new, lightning-fast collaborative code editor called Zed.

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GitHub to sunset open-source text editor Atom later this year - Siliconrepublic.com