EOS Blockchain

Happy New year to you all. A new topic to start off the new year - 2018.

We all must have heard about blockchain and bitcoin and Ethereum and ... and must have wondered, what's going on? Why can't there be one tech solution to solve the problem? Here is where creativity comes to play.

Consider the human life itself, if we were all less imaginative then we would not have evolved as much as we have evolved today. The same applies to technology as well. The more creative and innovative we are, the more solutions and variations we can bring to each set of the problems.

But, as we see that the outcome is such that each of these diversified solutions converges and becomes part of a larger problem; and in that process each one contributes in a different way - like brainstorming, calling out the odds, tech constraints, infrastructure, the difficulties, the limitations, etc. and even triggering a thought or an idea is essential. 

Likewise, we see a pattern in a blockchain which is for a greater good. Let us take a look at EOS blockchain from this angle.

EOS.IO CEO, Brendan Blemer: decentralised autonmous cooperation that is designed to allow people to build, host and govern.

EOS.IO CTO, Dan Larimer: Open source software, it allows a developers to build a blockchain, it is a programmable blockchain which allows you to deploy applications without having to have servers.

Unique in the blockchain industry because it is the first platform designed from ground up for scalability; which means we can process millions of transactions per second. This is the one which can support the real-world applications.

Verbatim from blockgeeks:
"EOS Blockchain is aiming to become a decentralized operating system which can support industrial-scale decentralized applications.

That sounds pretty amazing but what has really captured the public’s imagination is the following two claims:

• They are planning to completely remove transaction fees.
• They are claiming to have the ability to conduct millions of transactions per second.

"
Why we need EOS blockchain (DAPPS)?[1]
support for million users
Free usage
Easily upgradable
Low Latency
Parallel performance
Sequential performance

Which are the platforms available?
BitShares and Graphene have good throughput but are definitely not smart contract suitable.[1]
Ethereum is clearly the most obvious choice in the market. It has amazing smart contract abilities but the low transaction speed is a major issue. Plus, the gas price can be problematic as well.[1]

EOS is thought of as a “best of both worlds” which combines the high throughput of Graphene and BitShares with the smart contract usability of Ethereum.

NOTE: DAPPS is a paradigm shift in the way we look at software models, distributed, resilient, transparent and incentivized applications - remapping the technological landscape. [1]

What are the EOS blockchain features?[1]
1. Scalability
2. Flexibility
3. Usability
4. Governance
5. Parallel processing
   through:

• a. Horizontal Scalability
• b. Asynchronous communication
• c. Interoperability 

6. Self-sufficiency

7. Decentralised operating system

Now, Ethereum is a decentralized supercomputer, EOS positions itself as an operating system. That in itself makes EOS, theoretically at least, a more focused product.[1]

Reference:
[1]. https://blockgeeks.com
[2]. https://www.cryptobull.org


Glossary:
DAPPS: Decentralised Applications.
DPOS: Delegated proof of stake.
Graphene: an open source blockchain.
BitShares: offers a stack of financial services including exchange and banking on a blockchain.

Bit coin in 2017

The new year price was less than $1,000 and today, almost end of the year, it is more than $17,500. What! a 1650% increase? Yes, you are right, it is, that too in less than a year.

How did this happen? Why are the bitcoin prices surging?

Last month Jordan Hiscott, chief trader at social trading platform ayondo markets, said he believes that bitcoin’s rapid growth model is a sign of shifting paradigms in the world of finance. In addition, Bitcoin is extremely secure, using dual-sided cryptography for each transaction, and there is also only a finite amount ever in existence." extract from express.co.uk.

"Earlier this month, the US-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) allowed two exchanges to start trading in Bitcoin contracts." extract from yourstory.

Forbes attributes this to sustained strength, growing interest in crypto, media coverage, sustained inflows, Initial coins offerings (ICO) frenzy, Segregated Witness (SegWit), Significant progress.

There are 700 kinds of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is just one of the cryptocurrency. There are a few more like Ethereum, bitcoin Gold, etc. Paccoin is one of the cryptocurrencies which is in highest supply (3,281,373,887,120) and priced at $0.0002[4]. To view all the different kind of cryptocurrency - https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

I was just looking at the history and it is amazing to see the huge surges and dips, fascinating. The history of prices looks like this.

Until end of 2010, never crossed 40 cents.
In 2011, it started from 30 cents and in the mid-year, it increased to $29.60; 9400% increase. Immediately, it fell down to $14; reduced by 50%. Continued to decrease where it went down as low as less than $3. And by year end it was close to $5.
In 2012, the prices moved from $5 to $13.5; an increase by 170%.
In 2013, it started picking up. It went from $13.5 to around $1150;  increase by 8400%.
In 2014, there was a decline. It went upto $950 and by the year end, it declined to $310, reduced by 206%.
In 2015, it was between $300 to $400 for most part of the year, as the year ended, it went above $400 and it hovered around $430 to $450.
In 2016, started from $430, in the middle of the year it soared to $764, an increase by 77%. By year end, it picket up and went up until $960, a further increase by 25% in 6 months.

In the last 5 years there has been an 135,540% increase in the price[1].

References:
1. https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com
2. https://www.statista.com
3. https://www.express.co.uk/finance
4. http://paccoinexplorer.com/
5. https://coinmarketcap.com

Internet Of Things and our lives

I have started to learn IoT and it fascinates me from different angles, the way the entire world would be a big web of things, the kind of future market it holds, the products that are already in the market, how it eases or solves many problems that exist, etc.

To begin, let us quickly see what is IoT as per Wikipedia, The Internet of things (IoT) is the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enable these objects to connect and exchange data. 

In simple words, Internet of things is non-human conversations i.e., machine to machine communications which is automatic, smart, intelligent, interconnected devices making our lives easier by tending to SERVICES even before we know we want them.

We understand that Internet of things is connected devices across, just not inside your house, office but connected to other networks as well. This big-web connectivity can be leveraged and used for predicting without human intervention, and the predictive mechanisms would make it an intelligent system instead of just being reactive. IoT is bringing in more and more into digital fold every day[3].

What do we need to have IoT?  Some of the technologies involved are TCP/IP, WiFi, Zig Bee, Cellular N/w, RFID, bluetooth, AR Markers, etc.

What is the future of IoT? Experts estimate that the IoT will consist of about 30 billion objects by 2020. It is also estimated that the global market value of IoT will reach $7.1 trillion by 2020.[2] Wow! that's mind-boggling.

Image reference: Digital reach [3].

There are many IoT products on the market today. This year, vendors are beginning to recognize the true opportunities in the Internet of Things market – from connected manufacturing applications to smart assistants that can go right in consumers' kitchens[5]. There is a 31% increase from the previous year. To name a few products - Amazon's Alexa, Google home, Apple watch, Philips hue, Amazon echo, Withings (wireless blood pressure monitor), etc. For more products, please visit http://iotlist.co/, one of my favorite.

Another, interesting product that I came across was - IBM's Watson - "Watson IoT Platform blockchain integration". Watson IoT Platform blockchain integration enables IoT devices to provide data to blockchain transactions, which stores the data in the blockchain's immutable ledger and uses it in the business rules that are implemented in the blockchain's smart contracts[7]. Convergence of IoT with blockchain.

Cognitive Internet of Things: The key is to be able to learn, think and understand the physical and contextual data and apply intelligence to increase application performance. This requirement has led to the development of the ‘Cognitive’ Internet of Things. Cognitive means, relating to or involving conscious mental activities (thinking, learning, understanding, and remembering)[3].

Very soon we will all be free from day to day mundane tasks, all taken care off by IoT and we can leverage our time and energy in much more powerful activities. Good Day!

References:

1. Jigsaw Academy

2. Wikipedia

3. http://www.digireach.com/trends-in-the-internet-of-things/

4. www.bbvaopenmind.com

5. http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/internet-of-things

6. http://iotlist.co/

7. https://console.bluemix.net

Passion to Code, Passion to Learn though mother of 2

Passion to code, passion to learn, passion to get hands-on on latest technologies drives me immensely. Though I have 2 kids and around 16 years of IT experience, it does not stop me from learning.

I got introduced to computers in school in 1987. During Lab periods I was assigned the task of being the first one to go to the computer lab, before all the students come in, put a 5¼ floppy into the CPU on all the desktop machines in the Lab, boot the machines and keep it ready for the students to use. I remember asking my computer science teacher as to what computer science was all about, apart from programming and gaming. Among other things, she said that “only 1% clear the computer exam, it is very difficult.” I was left wondering that if DOS, windows, BASIC programming, LOGO, (all of what I was doing then), were so easy then what is so hard! It created an urge in me to know more, do more. I used to go to the Lab after classes and program in BASIC, etc.

I have come a long way since then. Though I wanted to do computers in my college, I had to take up commerce. But, while doing my Bachelors, I got a scholarship at Aptech and enrolled for a higher diploma program in 1995, which was for 2 years. I used to spend more time at Aptech, than in the college.

I remember, when they started Unix, I used to go to the Lab from 7am and work until 9pm, without a break. I was in love with Unix. I used to write programs in C++; some creative (not the normal ones) programs and send those programs to my cousin who was not in Bangalore. She used to flaunt those programs to her classmates and they used to be amazed.

As part of the course, we did 2 projects, one in 2^nd sem, the other in 4^th sem which was a live project for a company. We had to go to the company, collect their requirements, create SRS, feasibility study, context diagrams for both current and proposed system, HLDs, LLDs, flow diagrams, develop the product in Oracle, including UI and reports. It was a great learning experience; we gained so much in terms of know-how, the practical problems, insights into a real-world scenario. This still helps me when I start new projects.

After Aptech, In 1998; I got a job with IISc and while there, I learned VB, java, MCSP – in and out of windows server, Novell Networking, etc. Soon after, I joined MphasiS (BFL software then). There I simulated a couple of products like Audivox’s Cellphone, Samsung’s cell phone with digicam, panasonic’s DVD, etc. I also built an internal portal using IIS, ASP and SQL server. I also developed tools using VB which saved a lot of man hours. All this while I continued my studies and enrolled for MCA.

Meanwhile, I decided to explore testing, and though my centre manager asking me to get back to development, I remained in testing. I loved testing because it did not restrict me to only the module I was working on and exposed me to the whole product. And I could as well code, automation.

Here, I realized that I had the skill to uncover defects which others could not. I also loved the role of playing a quality gatekeeper.  This took me to my next role when I joined Yahoo! as a white box tester. Here I played an altogether different role in QE; manual testing, test lead, handling multiple projects, project reporting, backend testing, testing advertisement pipelines, automating backend tests, big data testing, big data automation, automation frameworks and standing-up for quality of the product. It has been a hard fight, but yet I stood up for quality wherever required.

However, as fate would have it, due to a re-org in Yahoo! I was back into development. This time it started with big data development using Hadoop, pig scripts, oozie, hbase, etc. and also involved managing testing and release engineering activities, like yearly, quarterly roadmaps, tracking, task allocation, automation progress, optimisation, etc.

I was lucky to be mentored on machine learning for big data validation, which led me to explore R and Hadoop, with research on other technologies, zeroing down to Rhadoop for reporting, which can be used with Hadoop streaming and with additional packages to enhance buffer to increase the performance of huge data. It was a time of exploring and experimenting with the newest technologies. I continued to enroll in allied courses too and completed one on Machine Learning.

It was an awesome experience, with a hectic job and my first baby was just 1.5 years. Sleepless nights were the norm, and I built many scripts using Matlab, built NN (neural networks) with one hidden layer, to recognize numbers from print 0 to 9, developed script to categorize spam or not, and many more.

Late 2014, I quit Yahoo! and started helping my friend with his startup. We built a product for Target Inc. from scratch and delivered it in 4 months, where we got a funding of $50000. Around this time, I applied for GMITE at IIM-B, got shortlisted and enrolled for a one-year executive program, on-campus in 2015. And it so happened that I was pregnant again with my second child. Despite the limitations this placed on me, I managed to pull through the program and when I went for the convocation in Feb-2016, I had my 18-days-old baby with me! 

I have continued on the same path since then and completed a course in Data Sciences and Artificial Intelligence to build relevant skills. As part of the project for AI, I developed a feature for autonomous driving “identifying traffic signal green lights direction” using NN in matlab. End of 2016, I had enrolled for “Do your venture” MOOC program for a women’s startup program, where I got shortlisted as one of the 50 entrepreneurs who got bootcamped at IIMB.

Recently, I enrolled for an Internet of Things (IoT) course, with a full scholarship, for which I am grateful to Jigsaw Academy for giving me this opportunity.

To sum it up, in the past 3 years, I have acquired skills in ML (machine learning), Data sciences and AI. Along with these, I did my GMITE (general management for IT executives) IIMB, helped my friend in his startup and bootcamped at IIMB in an entrepreneurial program. During this phase, I also had my second child and I am currently enrolled for IoT and reading up on blockchain. Looking back, I can say that all these would not have been possible, without my husband and mom’s support.

One key thing, even after the turmoils at workplace never deterred my spirit to be in tech space as a women geek. I am passionate, so as many! Let us rock this world!

Built a product for twitter sentiment analysis, for any given 2 hash tags. https://neo-r-apps.shinyapps.io/TwitSA/; check it out.

Artificial Intellgence and Mars Rovers

Mars Rovers, wow, I was fascinated with this topic. So, I went deeper to understand about Mars rovers. They are autonomous agents. 

So, you may ask what are autonomous agents. Autonomous agents are software entities that are capable of independent action in dynamic, unpredictable environments. An autonomous agent can learn and adapt to a new environment. A system where its own behavior is determined by its own experience and knowledge.

A Mars rover is an automated motor vehicle that propels itself across the surface of the planet Mars upon arrival.

There are several rovers sent to Mars. In those, these 4 are successfully robotically operated Mars rovers: Sojourner, Spirit rover (MER-A), Opportunity (MER-B) and Curiosity. Only Opportunity and Curiosity rovers are operational, as on 8-Feb-2017 and Opportunity turned 13 this Jan.

These Mars rovers are one of the proofs of Artificial intelligence.

 This image is Spirit (MER-A) and Opportunity (MER-B) - twin rovers.

What is Intelligence? 
Intelligence is faculty of reasoning. 

Dictionary definition: "Capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity, aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc."

In other words, intelligence is - 
+ Ability to perceive and act in the world
+ Reasoning: proving theorems, medical diagnosis
+ Planning: take decisions
+ Learning and Adaptation: recommend movies, learn traffic patterns
+ Understanding: Text, speech, visual scene.



With this, we can clearly see that there are 4 approaches to defining artificial intelligence.
1. Thinking rationally: Laws of thought
2. Acting rationally: Rational behavior, doing the right thing.
3. Thinking like a human: Cognitive Science.
4. Acting like a human: The Turing Test Approach.

Some of the capabilities of AI are NLP, Knowledge representation, Automated reasoning, Machine learning and Computer Vision and Robotics.

References:
1. AI classes and notes at IISc, 2017.
2. NASA

A memorable one week stay @ IIMB Campus

Can you imagine, someone who is 8 months pregnant and staying in a campus (alone) away from family for a week? Yes, I did.

I stayed @ IIMB campus for a week, while I was pregnant. The campus was so beautiful. I still remember the fresh air, the early morning walks, though I had to drag myself out of the bed, but the serene surroundings did the magic for me. It is a mesmerizing experience. In those 6 to 7 days, I did go around on some of the mornings, but some mornings, I merely got up, to be on time to the class.

We had classes every day for the last one week, where we had classes for the chosen specialization. It would start at 9 in the morning and went on until 5 in the evening and after that, we had to continue to work on our projects, assignments, readings, etc. And the very thought of traveling from Indiranagar to Banargetta every day, during the last trimester was a nightmare. Thus, decided to stay on the campus for the last one week, which I requested for and was approved.

It was one of the most productive weeks. I had "ME" time after a long time. Though there are things related to your pregnancy and at the time I had to literally drag myself but it did not deter me. I was so happy to have this ME time, I did so many things along with my coursework as well. There were a couple of pending things to the "product" that I was building in data science, I got one to closure. Also, for the first time, I was away from Eva, though it is a mixed feeling to be away from your child, I choose to make the best of my ME time. So, there were no other distractions but only the tasks that I had to do. 

Every alternative day, my husband and my daughter, came visiting me in the evening. And my mom once. My daughter liked the place because she had so much of place to run around and play and eat chocolates, etc. ; while I was busy with my task. Then, before they leave, we would have dinner together, Au Bon Pain was our favorite. 

About the campus: A 100-acre oasis in south Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), with its all-stone architecture, lush verdant woods and landscaped gardens, provides an idyllic environment to engage in management studies, academics and learning. IIMB has world-class infrastructure that facilitates excellence in teaching, research, consulting and other professional activities. [extract from IIMB website].