fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Day 130 — Prototyping Two More Social Features
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Founder Stories, Startup Lessons

Day 130 — Prototyping Two More Social Features

Today I picked up from yesterday and built 2 new prototypes for our social features sprint.

Feature 1 — Social Proof

One of the cool features of the fasting app Zero is they show you how many users are actively participating in the same challenges you are.

Personally, I find this a really simple yet sophisticated way to show users they’re not in this alone, and I’d love to replicate something similar.

Here’s what I came up with:

Eventually we might build this into the UI in a more stable way, but it’s enough to test the concept for now.

Feature 2 — Mission Control

I tested out the concept of “missions” in the gameplay during one of our earlier sprints, and it tested really well. I think the idea has a ton of potential, especially in getting users to “do” rather than just “learn”. For today, I considered what we as Invincible would do with the inputs we got from users. For this challenge, users are asked to say something nice about another Invincible user.

I didn’t want to open the door to direct messages just yet — I think it could turn into a privacy nightmare — so instead I opted for a messaging system where we could moderate messages (i.e., in case anything harmful came through).

Here’s the high-level version of the idea:

On the last UI, I’m hoping to repurpose some of our chat functionality but first using it for Invincible messages, announcements, etc. This approach has the added benefit that it allows us to test this easily with direct communication like an email.

What’s Next?

I now have a few working prototypes ready to test!
Day 130 — Publishing a New Update and 2 More Feature Designs
By: Bob Weishar
Tags: Founder Stories, Startup Lessons

Day 130 — Publishing a New Update and 2 More Feature Designs Bob Weishar Apr 9·2 min read

Today I wrapped up the week with an update to our content and design of a couple new potential features.

Here’s what I did.

Publishing New Content

This morning I published a new content module to our app. We use Expo’s publish command, which allows the update to be “over-the-air” without actually requiring an app upgrade.

Publishing new app content

Download the app to check out the new “monitoring” module, plus 2 new spaceship games!

Feature Updates

Feature 1 — Points

One of the features I’m really excited will improve app usage — and fun — is implementing a points system. It’s something Duolingo does extremely well, so I riffed off their approach with our own unique superhero spin to it.

Levels and points have the added benefit that we can encourage competition between users and additional social features.

Here’s the dashboard view of the feature:

Gamifying the App

Feature 2 — Group Polls

Another social feature I thought might be interesting to try out is a group poll feature. So far, all of the question types in our app have a right or wrong answer. But life with diabetes and other chronic conditions includes a lot of “gray area”, too. So I thought we could show the spectrum of answers that users are answering, and in the process, show users they’re most definitely not alone in their perspectives.

Check out the prototype here.

What’s Next?

Time to test these features!
Episode 008 — Nicholas Heller, CEO of Fractal Labs
Tags: Startup, Founders, Fintech, Podcast, Founder Stories

SMEs are the backbone of each country´s economy, still, they are vastly underserved by financial services. Nicholas Heller and his team at Fractal Labs are here to change that.

Welcome to #TheQuickPitch, a podcast show in which Reid Jackson sits down with entrepreneurs across Europe building awesome tech companies 🚀💥

Nicholas Heller is co-founder & CEO of Fractal Labs, a platform #startup that helps reimagine financial services for SMEs. At #TheQuickPitch he discusses with Reid about the challenges and opportunities for financial services to serve start-ups and growth companies with products they need at a different stage of growth to progress their business. There is a surprisingly big lack of understanding of depth or metrics to make good credit scoring. Due to fragmentation of the SME market, it is also very difficult for financial institutions to quantify value from those segments, understand risk and offer timely relevant services to these sectors.

SME is a broad term and very fragmented, and they all (different segments) require different levels of services whether it´s from their bank, accountant or alternative lender. Therefore they are traditionally very underserved which also is a massive opportunity for Fractal Labs.

Don´t miss out our previous founders´interviews on #TheQuickPitch

Tune in and get to know how an ex-astronomer turned into a start-up CEO. Kim Nielsson is the CEO and Founder of Pivigo, a London-based start-up that brings businesses and data science together to harness the value and opportunities in data.

Meet Anna Tsyupko, the founder and CEO of Paybase, an end to end solution covering payments, compliance, and risk management start-up. Out of London, Anna and her team enable their clients to use payments for their advantage. Within three years the team has grown to just over 20 people and recently launched their platform. Listen to Anna’s story on how she lives and breathes entrepreneurship.

#founder #startup #openoceanvc
*No To Dim Eyes in my youth.*
By: Wuzor Knowledge Gift, Wkg
Tags: Impact, Christianity, Destiny, Purpose, Vision

*_Genesis 27:1-2 And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I.And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death:_*

What a matter. My heart is greatly challenged. I have no option but to weep in prayers. Lord let my eyes not grow dim in my youth. May I not lose passion for your eternal purpose when I have more years ahead. May I not settle when there are still many lands to conquer. Let my appetite not be reduced to only eating Venison while the will of God is yet undone. May I not think of handing over the Barton when my course is yet unfinished.

Isaac was old and his eyes became dim that he could not see. His only resolve was to keep eating venison. And he was ready to place the Barton of authority to the wrong person even when prophecy had gone ahead that the elder shall serve the younger, all because of dim eyes. The pursuit of meat (what to eat indeed dims the eyes). An old man's eyes may grow dim but I pray we don't grow old while we are still in our youth.

Even in the work God has committed into our hands, may we not be too eager to handover while we still have months ahead. May we not grow weary of the Lord's burdens while there remaineth much work to be done. In Jesus name. Amen.

Shalom.

✴ *@WKG_WAPNetworks*
I do!
By: Avi Charkham
Tags: Startup, Coaching, Motivation, Focusing, Vision

“I do” might be the most powerful combination of words in the English language. What is incredible in these 3 letters is that they marry commitment and action in a way that no other words do. These 3 letters come with everything you need to accomplish anything you dream of.

But if you want them to work you have to read the fine print.

“I” is never really about me. It is always about the others who are impacted but what “I” do. Whos life do I impact? How are their lives better because of what “I do”? Without vows “I do” is useless. What is it that you do? So before you say “I do” take time to write your vows. Not to your wife, not to the world, to yourself. Ask yourself what do you want the people who loved you to say about you when you’re gone and write it down, vow to become that person. It is as simple as that. “Do” is something I actually do. Remember “There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love”. Your actions mirror what is important to you. So look at your actions. Not the ones you want to do, the ones you are already doing today, and ask yourself “Do my actions today reflect what is important to me?”. “I do” is not a one-off. “I do” is the first thing you tell yourself when the alarm clock rings at 5:30 am and you fight that snooze button. I do is the last thing you say to yourself before you go to sleep, as you lie there in bed in the dark staring in the ceiling, and all your self-doubt creeps in. “I do” is what you tell yourself when that moment comes an doing what is important to you requires courage.

So whether you’re a husband or a wife, whether your an entrepreneur building your company or whether you’re any person fighting to create the version of the future they want for themselves. These 2 short words are everything you need.

I Do.
riding a bike..
Tags: Leadership, Teaching, Vision, Jesus

Have you ever taught someone how to ride a bike? It’s a weird thing to explain. First, you have this pretty large language barrier between an adult and a child. Second, how do verbalize the idea of equilibrium? You don’t. You just kinda “feel it out.”

I don’t mean to brag but, I’ve taught three kids how to ride a bike. So, I’m pretty much an expert now.

One of the keys to learning to ride a bike is eye placement. You go where your eyes go. That means, if you’re looking to your right, you’re going to fade off to your right. If you’re looking down at your feet, your head is going to be down by your feet very soon.

You’ve got to teach the kids to look ahead. Don’t be distracted by the bright blue ball in the grass next to you or that dog on a leash in that yard behind you. Look ahead. You go where your eyes go.

I think that’s how life is sometimes. Great leaders recognize this reality. We go where our eyes go. Look at this verse.

“Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” Col. 3:2

Listen, there’s going to be a ton of distractions around you. There will be things trying to get all of your attention. Things that will make you doubt whatever God has put on your heart. Keep your eyes ahead. Don’t let those things distract you.

We go where our eyes go.

Learning to follow Jesus will be hard. There will be times where it feels like the world is caving in on you. Don’t let those things get your attention. Focus ahead. Focus on that voice calling out to you from off in the distance, “Get up. Come follow me!”

What are the things you need to stop looking at today? What would it look like to refocus on what’s ahead?
Application of consumer RGB-D camera’s for fruit detection.
By: Wouter Welling
Tags: AI, Vision, Machine Learning

Kinect V2. Image from MS Developer blog.

Since the introduction of affordable RGB-D sensors they have become an essential component of machine vision systems. Fruit crop industries are under pressure of growing food for an ever increasing world population while reducing the environmental impact of the industry. With the help of technology advancements in the artificial intelligence industry this is possible. Detection and localization with computer vision is essential for future management of fruit crops, such as automated harvesting.

In [1] Application of consumer RGB-D cameras for fruit detection and localization in field. The authors made an critical review and comparison of different RGD-D sensors and software systems.

Comparison of consumer RGB-Cameras.

There are many different types of consumer RGB-D cameras operating on various 3D measurement principles. An evaluation of ten most common depth sensors in terms of bias, precision, lateral noise, different lighting conditions and materials is being used to compare all sensors. The authors made an evaluation of fourteen common RGB-D sensors shown in Table 1.
Interview: Building resilient communities
Tags: Design Thinking, Entrepreneur, Design, Leadership Skills, Culture Design

Carla Camilla Hjort, co-founder and director of SPACE10, is a creative and cultural entrepreneur based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Driven by her passion for people, the planet, society and culture, she develops concepts, projects, and communities that help deliver positive change. Carla is the founder of ArtRebels, a creative design studio; Trailerpark Festival, a music, art and tech festival; Made in Space, a hybrid conference exploring alternative future scenarios; and SPACE10, a future-living lab on a mission to create better and more sustainable ways of living.

What do you consider to be the most important issues to address within your field?

From my experience of building communities and leading social change through art and cultural design, the most important focus is twofold. First, you need to have a very strong and clear vision of what you wish to build, why it is important and of course also who it is for. Once you have defined your purpose and project framework, the second most important aspect, in my opinion, is leadership. There seems to be a misconception about how you build real communities. Today, it seems as if everyone wishes to design spaces and digital interfaces for people to share and come together. However, a lot of designers and architects — and perhaps even worse: marketeers — seem to think that if we just design nice spaces and platforms, the community will somehow magically appear and function. From my experience, this rarely seems to be the case.

Community is all about creating a sense of belonging and that first and foremost comes from having a visionary leader to lead the way. We need to remember that community is created for and by people and a fancy app or a flashy co-living space will not do the trick alone.

What are the most important skills or practices in your work and why?

As already mentioned, I believe that great leadership is very crucial in everything I do and I always make sure to develop these skills in my team. Besides leadership, I think a high level of design and conceptual skill sets are super important when you want to work within the field of cultural design. You need to love people and sincerely care about how we live and interact in order to build long lasting and meaningful solutions.
Leadership Forum 2019: Lessons for Emerging Leaders
By: Hope Williams
Tags: Leadership, Startup, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Skills, Leadership Development

“You will lose your favorite candidate to another job offer.”

Jon Rosser, Senior Associate Partner at Platinum Recruiting, joined to share a market perspective of talent and the pitfalls of recruiting from your team. Jon explained three key recruiting tactics and two ways our attendees should develop their networks for the long-term.

Recruiting Tactics

Be Engaged and Involved: Make sure you are working with your HR and recruiting partners. While the HR pros are actively searching for and interviewing candidates, you should be doing the same. Make sure to share job posts with your network — that might be via social media or word of mouth.

You also can’t afford to wait for the perfect candidate, so be proactive. That also means making sure you’re providing timely input and feedback. The labor market is tight — while you deliberate, your ideal candidate may receive (and accept) another offer from your competition.

Nail the Intake: The first meeting (often referred to as an intake meeting) with whoever supports recruiting for the role you’re hiring for is crucial. Jon provided a few suggestions to make your intake meeting a success. His first tip was to bring your top three must-haves for the role. He also suggested outlining your nice to have (but not required) skills, and to identify what the skills that can be developed further on the job. Finally, confirm what the interview process looks like ahead of time. This ensures that when you reach the “final interview” stage, all necessary stakeholders and decision-makers have been involved and you’ll be ready to make an offer.

Be Decisive: If you have the “final interview” conversation ahead of time, you’ll be ready to make quick decisions at the end of the process. You may have to make the decision to hire someone you’re not 100 percent sure about, but having the top must-have skills identified will help guide your decision. Be fast! Candidates will be moving quickly as well.

Long-Term Career Building

Always Be Recruiting: You may not have the headcount available today, but it’s important to continue to share what you’re currently doing and building — and why you’re passionate about it. Top talent won’t be on the market for very long, so make sure you’re building the pipeline for roles you envision hiring in the coming months.

Be an Open Network: Sometimes the best thing you can offer someone is to connect then to someone else, especially when that someone else is a better fit for their current needs. Always make intros to connect great people. You’d be surprised how this can come back to help you later down the road when you’re looking for great talent.
You Can’t Grow Your Organization Without This One Tool
By: Christian Muntean
Tags: Business Intelligence, Leadership Coaching, Leadership Skills, Leadership Development, Delegation

This article is part of a series for busy leaders. The very best leaders are fantastic at giving away leadership. Some people call that delegation. This article provides a practical framework.

I practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ). BJJ is a martial art created by Hélio Gracie, who wasn’t very big or strong. He adapted traditional Japanese Jiu-Jitsu and Judo to be more practically useful. Specifically, to help a smaller, weaker person defend themselves against a larger, stronger opponent.

It’s a difficult martial art and takes a notoriously long time to master. It’s not that the concepts are that difficult to understand. They make sense when explained. But they are hard to execute. However, when you do learn them, they are almost magically effective.

Your first opponent is the one you usually will have the most difficult time learning to overcome. That opponent is yourself. At the beginning, you don’t know even know that’s where the fight is. You have to learn to stop trying to use your effort or strength. Instead, use leverage, movement, and balance. Which kind of sounds wise and powerful.

Until a sweaty 280lb guy is sitting on top of you, choking you. Then spazzing out suddenly makes more sense. But spazzing doesn’t help. It just wears you out. It causes you to make mistakes.

You have to learn to control your own emotions while paying attention to your opponent’s. You have to learn to calmly be able to recognize your current position, which is fluid, and be able to think multiple moves or options ahead.

For most practitioners, that doesn’t even make sense, real sense, for years.
3 quotes to inform a life strategy on failure
By: Domhnaill Hernon
Tags: Failure Stories, Leadership Skills, Change, Motivation, Inspiration

3 quotes to inform a life strategy on failure

A quote on its own can be thought provoking. However, multiple well thought out quotes in combination can inform a life strategy on a given topic.

Here are three that I think of together on the theme of “failure” and how failure can propel us forward but often how it is a necessary force to create change. These three quotes made me think about failure in a different way and together summarize my approach to dealing with failure.

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want

This is a quote I heard recently and resonated with me. I first heard David Feherty on the golf channel say this in relation to a player that lost a tournament; however, the quote is properly attributed to Randy Pausch.

I would say that most of my learning has come from “failure”. I find failure is often too strong a word to describe it –not perfectly achieving my original goal is a better description. When viewed through this lens failure isn’t a bad thing but a necessary part of the process to achieve success. Real failure is to not learn from your experiences. Turning failure into experience is a great skill.

I haven’t failed – I’ve just found 10,000 that won’t work

Edison’s famous quote on “failure” is also related. His success in inventing the light bulb was because of the many ways in which it didn’t quite work out and he learned from that. From that perspective his 1000 attempts weren’t failure. It would have been failure if he gave up and didn’t show persistence. His final success – one that changed the world – was dependent on what he learned from previous attempts.

Plans are useless but planning is indispensable

Dwight D. Eisenhower said this in relation to preparing for battle. A variant of this is “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” attributed to Mike Tyson. The core concept here is that without the planning process there can be no plan and therefore you are leaving your chances of success to pure luck. However, just because you plan doesn’t mean that every aspect of that plan will play out exactly as planned. To be successful you need to enter the planning process and create a plan but you also need to be adaptive when that plan meets reality. Anything worth doing in life is complicated and you must be ready for this complexity and fight it with adaptability.

In summary I believe that:

Failure is not a negative but an absolute necessary preemptive path to success.

You can turn your “failures” into success by learning from your experiences.

To turn failure into success you must be persistent.

When your plans hit reality you must be adaptive otherwise you allow failure to easily creep in.

How do you think about failure? Do you have any other interesting quotes that resonated with you and that changed your perspective?
On Being The Devil’s Advocate
By: S. G. S. Abel
Tags: Leadership, Leadership Skills, Opinion, Discussion, Education

On Being The Devil’s Advocate

Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash

I am a Devil’s advocate. In a nice way, of course. I find I must be. Some would state that being the Devil’s advocate is to be contrary just for the sake of it. I think it is a necessary role to play.

It took me a long time to learn the value of questioning the majority’s opinion and even longer to learn how to express a dissenting one.

I did not understand the value of someone who questions or pretends to be against an idea or plan that many agree with, so that people may discuss it and consider other views. (Source: theidioms.com)

This is something I wish I had learned much earlier in my career. Fresh out of college, I did not have the confidence to know that I had something to offer, even if it was a question. I didn’t think I had the professional knowledge or experience to be an active participant. I worried about what others would think of me.

Expressing your thoughts can be difficult to learn. As children we just want to fit in. Even standing up for what we know is wrong can be so hard. We may find ourselves being silent to belong or just not to stand out. We are afraid of ridicule.

But as adults it becomes vital to learn to question others and express our thoughts, even if they are different. At times, we must be the Devil’s advocate.
THE DEMANDS OF LEADERSHIP
By: Eridan Group
Tags: Leadership, Startup, Startup Lessons, Leadership Skills, Leaders

Do you really know the responsibilities that lie on your shoulders as a leader? Are both of your feet on the ground to play your role well enough — no matter the adverse conditions you may encounter? In order to be termed successful, leaders have to play multiple roles in the course of their work in ensuring they maximize the potentials, resources, and opportunities available to them per time.

Leaders in this century face an unprecedented, ever-increasing demand to function at high levels of effectiveness. Leadership, being the driving force of an organization, needs to move effectively to actualize corporate goals in this dynamic and highly competitive era. As a great leader, your personal effectiveness is to permeate your team and result in increased organizational performance. This is because your job is to inspire, motivate, organize and manage your team to achieve the set-out objectives and aspirations despite any challenging circumstances.

Connecting and committing to your purpose at all times, as a leader, positions you to deliver excellently. It makes you to utilize all the opportunities that will help advance the organization’s vision. As a leader, your dedication to accomplishing the vision will be seen in how you review and evaluate, periodically and as occasion demands, all the approaches and processes you have put into use, and refining them to further advance how you create value.
Leadership ! Stan Lee was right !
By: Fabien Arneodo
Tags: Leadership, Comics, Leadership Skills, Business, Leaders

For the past few years and still true today, leadership is becoming one of the best avenues to express yourself at work… unfortunately, in a lot of cases, this is in the wrong way …

Everything we can find in the leadership books, articles, etc , goes along the lines that good leaders display impeccable behaviour and communication skills and also show a lot of respect to everyone.

Sadly, companies are continuing to express themselves only around their business metrics data.

How many companies are just delivering and pushing metrics messages to their employees? On the other side of the coin, employees are instead searching for more confidence & well-being at work

Shouldn’t companies be providing different aspects of leadership in their organisation ?

Just to take an example.

From Sales meetings, to Go-To-Market meetings, when you listen to your Manager or Top Management, you expect to leave the meeting feeling driven and motivated from their leadership communication and discussions they bring to the table.

But in most cases, it is quite the opposite !

The leadership behaviour isn’t present: they use the wrong words at the wrong time, and ultimately, your goals & motivation are just plunged in the ground instead of trying to reach the sky.

Please, Manager, Top Management, use the right behaviour and words to motivate your team & leaders inside your company !

Leadership is a position of superpower — Motivation & talk can make a person become a better worker !

If we quote Stan Lee in the Amazing Spiderman, Uncle Ben said — « With great power comes great responsibility » — to his nephew Peter Parker aka Spiderman.

Wouldn’t you think that we can use this same mantra for the leadership positions in the organisation ? Leaders you have the responsibility to use your power to create a good environment and well-being for the employees !

Maybe what I’m writing here is very basic leadership training, but trust me, a lot of companies forget even this basic principle.

Don’t forget that leaders are the first impulse for good results.

Your team will thank you for the boost & motivation ! And I guarantee that if you do this, the result will be that your company will reach the yearly / quarterly /monthly goals.

Another important point, don’t schedule only one company launch per year ! You have to be in contact with your consumer every day right? so why you should talk to your employees only once a year ? Practicing leadership every day is a mix in between behaviour, communication & respect, so express your feelings and be honest with your team … with smiles 😊
Keep your data secret using tweetnacl
By: Lizen Shakya
Tags: Encryption, Software Development, Decryption, Crypto, Nodejs

Cryptography is a method of protecting information and communications through the use of codes so that only those for whom the information is intended can read and process it.

There are different ways to encrypt and decrypt data in javascript. Here I have given a short example for tweetnacl one of the packages to encrypt and decrypt data.

Introduction:

NaCl (pronounced “salt”) is an abbreviation for “Networking and Cryptography library”, a public domain “…high-speed software library for network communication, encryption, decryption, signatures, etc.

NaCl was created by the mathematician and programmer Daniel J. Bernstein.

Installation:

To install tweetnacl via a package manager:

yarn:

$ yarn add tweetnacl

npm

$ npm install tweetnacl

We also need to install tweet-nacl-util for encode and decode in utf-8 and base64

$ npm install tweetnacl-util

Is tweetNacl secure?

TweetNaCL’s code has been written by experts, has been carefully reviewed, and is something you can trust. The only catch is that it is very slow.

Encryption:

The example for encryption is as follows:

Note that keyPairObj, nonce and box changes on every hit.

Decryption:

Using the same encryptedData, secretKeyString, publicKeyString, nonceString from encrypted data. We can decrypt the data.

Alternatives JS libraries

Libsodium (a NaCl fork)

Crypto.js

GitRepo for demo
Top Encryption Solutions Companies
By: Karen George
Tags: Encryption, Top Companies, Data Encryption

As cybercriminals become more sophisticated, it becomes easier for them to circumvent security measures and access sensitive personal data. While businesses and consumers are ultimately responsible for protecting themselves and following best practices, developers are on the frontlines of the ever-evolving cyber security battle, as they’re the ones building the solutions that keep data encrypted and secured.

Encryption, as a concept, is far older than mobile phones, or cloud computing, or any of a dozen other innovations that have reshaped our world in recent years. Primitive forms of encryption were in use centuries ago, and relatively advanced methods had been developed by World War II. Even AES encryption, the strongest and most widely-accepted form of data encryption today, is closing in on its 20th birthday as the US government’s official standard. Despite its long history, encryption has always existed outside the mainstream of public and private-sector computing. It’s…read more…

Few Top Encryption Solutions Companies:

Craxel comes in with a market-ready secure data trust platform backed by searchable encryption: the Black Forest Digital Trust Platform (BFDTP). The BFDTP introduces the only high-performance production-ready database with breakthroughs in searchable encryption, to enable organizations to encrypt data when it is created and store it in a fully encrypted form in the cloud, or on-prem, without sharing the keys with the data platform. BFDTP also provides more cost-effective opportunities to improve on legacy ecosystems.

Website: craxel.com

The world’s first moving target data protection platform. CryptoMove Tholos is a key vault and secrets management product for devops security that protects API keys, configs, and other app secrets with decentralization and moving target defense as a service. So CryptoMove’s intuitive platform makes managing all your keys and secrets easy. Years of stealth R&D. Cloud native. Team of PhD’s and distributed systems engineers. Backed by Google’s CISO and security leaders from FireEye, Palo Alto Networks, JPMorgan, & others.

Website: cryptomove.com

Kanguru Solutions is a U.S.-based manufacturer of hardware encrypted USB flash drives, remote management and cloud-based Endpoint Security services, duplication equipment and more for organizations around the world. Kanguru is committed to offering the highest level of excellence in securing data and protecting information for its customers. The firm’s products include FIPS 140–2 / Common Criteria Certified, hardware encrypted USB Flash Drives, as well as encrypted Hard Drives, and Remote Management for managing sensitive data on assigned USB drives anywhere in the world. Kanguru’s products are made of high-quality materials, are TAA Compliant and assembled in our secure U.S. facility unless otherwise stated..

Website: kanguru.com

Few more Top Encryption Solutions Companies …
The Evolution of Password Manager (1/4)
By: Id Guard Offline
Tags: Encryption, Password Security, Password Management, Password Manager, Passwords

Passwords are important and we have lots of them.

Passwords should be long, complex, and unique.

Thus nobody can remember all of them.

We write them on sticky notes or type them in spreadsheets. But we are not comfortable with that.

We save them in a cloud-based note and set a password to protect them. It is convenient, but it might not be safe.

We usually use browsers to surf the internet and log in to websites. So browsers integrate a tool, password manager, to help us remember and fill passwords.

Browser password managers are the first generation used widely. However, the passwords saved in browsers are not encrypted or encrypted in a way that can be decrypted easily.

For example, the most popular browser, Chrome, uses DPAPI to encrypt passwords on Windows. Any application run by the user can recover the original passwords by using CryptUnprotectData.

encrypted ≠ secured

And developers even write open-source programs that can extract the passwords saved by Chrome from Windows, Mac, Linux, and other platforms. Check out this one, Chrome-Password-Grabber

Well, it is not wise to put all your passwords in one place without decent protection. It is just like a gold mine for hackers.

If a browser can help you fill passwords without asking for a master password to unlock the password vault, then it does not provide a good vault. If the browser can read passwords directly, then malicious applications can read them too.

Moreover, browsers are hackers’ favorite targets. Check out this Opera sync servers hacked, usernames and passwords at risk.

In conclusion, I strongly recommend that you do not use browser password managers.
Managing Encrypted Secrets(Credentials) 🔐 with Rails6
By: Sandesh Bodake
Tags: Encryption, Ruby on Rails, Software Development, Ruby

Background:

Generally in the application, there are various secret keys and credentials that we need to make use of API keys, Secret keys for eg. AWS CLI login credentials etc.

Let’s talk about rails credentials now,

The way for managing secret keys in the Rails ecosystem itself.

How different this approach is? Well, it will store secrets itself in the application but those are encrypted and to decrypt them we need a master key.

Interacting with credentials:

A set of files were used to manage credentials

config/credentials.yml.enc

config/master.key

So basically config/credentials.yml.enc is an encrypted file that store credentials, we can safely commit this file to version control systems.

config/master.key contain a key that is used to decrypt config/credentilas.yml.enc This file should be in .gitignore

How To add/update credentials:

By running the following command we can edit/update credentials.

$ EDITOR=vim rails credentials:edit

This command will open the credentials file in decrypted version.

Note: you can change EDITOR anything you want like nano or if you’re in windows use notepad etc.

When we save it, it encrypts again using the same master key.

How To read credentials?

We can access secrets following way,

database.yml

Rails.application.secrets will retrieve the credentials accordingly to the current rails enviroment.

Note: We need to share same master.key to others specifically, so that they can decrypt the secrets.

Managing multi-environment credentials

To create credentials file for other environments like staging, production etc we need to use the following command.

rails credentials:edit --environment production

In Rails6 we can create environment wise secrets and their keys.

This command will create the following files inside the folder of /config

config/production.yml.enc

config/production.key

For accessing keys we can use the following command
Using GNU Privacy Guard (GPG)
By: Skynet Tools
Tags: Encryption, Information Technology, Linux, Privacy, Cybersecurity

This is the first a few tutorials I will be posting based on GPG.

http://www.gnupg.org/

What is GNU Privacy Guard:

GPG is an encryption technology. Its first version was designed in 1991 as a public cryptographic system called “Pretty Good Privacy(PGP)”. Then it got rewritten and licensed under the Gnu Public License. This new system because an standard for file and email encryption in linux and unix systems.

The ways GPG Works:

With GPG you generate a public and private key. GPG uses asymmetric key cryptography meaning that one key is used to encrypt and another is used to decrypt. Which would be public, private. You would always keep the private key private meaning only you should have it, as the public key anyone can have it. Then messages and files encrypted with the “public” key can only be decrypted with the private key.

Creating Keys:

To start the key generation process run the command

gpg — gen-key

Now you will need to fill in what you’re prompted for.

The type of key you want The keysize you want How long the key should be valid for If the info you selected is correct Your real name Email address Passphrase

Now that you have generated your keys you can list them by typing the following commands:

For public keys

gpg — list-keys

For private keys

gpg — list-secret-keys

Now that you have created your keys you can share your public key. People can then use this public key to encrypt messages to you which you can then decrypt. To do so you will need to export the public key from your key ring. To export all keys you can use

gpg — export -a

You can also search to narrow down the keys being exported. Using

gpg — export -a site

https://skynettools.com/using-gnu-privacy-guard-gpg/
Encrypting Virtual Machine
By: Rahul Sahay
Tags: Encryption, Cloud Computing, Rahul Sahay, Azure, Virtual Machine

This is the continuation of Azure Learning Series. In this section, we will cover encryption of virtual machines. Having said that, let’s get started.

File in azure storage account are by default encrypted using secure storage encryption.

But, once you able to see storage with .vhd account, that is not encrypted.

You can use bitlocker in order to encrypt virtual disk within azure.

Cryptography key for this is going to be stored in azure key vault.

Therefore, first thing we need to create is key vault from market place in azure.

While creating make sure to check the checkbox against virtual machine encryption. I checked all here.

We have created our key vault. Keep in mind that inorder to encrypt VM, your key-vault and VM should be in same region. Now, let’s go ahead and click on the key link as shown on the left menu.

You can see above, that encryption is not enabled.

To enable encryption on this disk, we can either do it with UI or with powershell.

Let’s do it with UI option with the name Encryption

It may get encrypted or you may get error as well. In-case you get error, try with powershell script as well.

For that, I will open cloud shell embedded in azure portal itself like shown below. In case, if you are configuring powershell for the first time, you need to mount storage for that as well like shown below. If

For quick reference, you can use this doc https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/disk-encryption-cli-quickstart as well.

I have modified the command with my key-vault and resource group. az vm encryption enable -g “az300″ -name “azvmdemo” -disk-encryption-keyvault “rahul-Key-Vault”

- In order to get the confirmation, execute az vm show -name “azvmdemo” -g “az300″. — This should show “EncryptionOperation”: “EnableEncryption” as well.

With this, we have completed VM encryption module.

Thanks,

Rahul Sahay

Happy Coding
Payment Security Market Worth $43.76 Billion By 2025
By: Gaurav Shah
Tags: Encryption, Prevention, Security, Fraud, Payments

The global payment security market size is expected to reach USD 43.76 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc., progressing at a CAGR of 12.3% during the forecast period. Rising need for PCI DSS (payment card industry data security standard) compliance and adoption of digital payment mode by consumers are likely to stoke the growth of the market. The payments industry is going through a movement of infrastructure transformation, which is essential to compete efficiently with non-bank trendsetters and address progressing customer requirements.

Over the past few years, major economies have modernized their payment infrastructures and many others are scheduling to upgrade. Digital payments aid merchants in maintaining continuous compliance with PCI DSS, which is further anticipated to bolster the growth of the payment security market. In March 2015, World pay noted over 133,000 fraudulent transactions reported, which interpreted stolen card details being used every 20 seconds. Thus, payment security providers help its customer’s systems to protect itself from threats and aim to provide secure businesses by getting them to comply with PCI DSS. Therefore, the payment security market is estimated to be driven by the adoption of PCI DSS compliance.

Fraud detection and prevention solutions hold the largest share in the overall market. These solutions provide various fraud analytics solutions such as big data and predictive analytics. Big data and predictive analytics helps to detect and avoid frauds.

Click the link below:

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/payment-security-market

Further key findings from the report suggest:
#KyberDeFi Virtual Hackathon
By: Kyber Network
Tags: Featured, Ethereum, Hackathon, Blockchain, English

#KyberDeFi Virtual Hackathon

*IMPORTANT UPDATE*: Hackathon has been extended to 28 October!

Kyber has participated in various Ethereum hackathons in the past year, and each time we were impressed by the quality of work produced in just 48 hours over a single weekend. An estimated 220 developers built 50+ DApps using Kyber during these weekend hackathons altogether, and many of them have become active members of the Kyber community.

Today we are excited to launch #KyberDeFi Virtual Hackathon to educate more developers around the world about Kyber Network’s liquidity protocol and token swap technology, and how they can be used to create innovative payment flows and DeFi (decentralized or open finance) products. This online hackathon will be from 9th September — 21st October, and will focus heavily on novel and practical solutions for DeFi, giving us a chance to witness greater composability between top Ethereum projects, including our Tech Partners: bZx, Chainlink, Compound, Melon, Synthetix!

Check out our launch video below:

Bounty Prizes: USD $42,000 and more!

With over USD $42,000 worth of prizes and special Kyber Crypto-collectible NFTs (courtesy of Enjin) up for grabs, we look forward to seeing what interesting use cases get created! The submission period of ~6 weeks also provides substantial time for hackers around the world to further develop their ideas and build a viable product for commercial use.

You can participate in multiple bounties including those from our tech partners bZx, Chainlink, Compound, Melon, Synthetix, so be sure to check out the Devpost resource page to find the relevant tools to get started! We will have more detailed blog posts about our tech partners over the next few days.
Snitching On Expensive Google BigQuery Queries
By: Vadim Solovey
Tags: Slack, Featured, Google Cloud Platform, Cloud Cost Management, Bigquery

Get visibility into queries that might require some (cost) optimization and user training on how (not) to run queries on Google BigQuery.

BigQuery snitch in action to identify expensive queries

From time to time, we all make mistakes and run unoptimized Google BigQuery queries. What matters the most is how quickly we can identify these queries, learn from our mistakes, apply the lessons learned, and move on.

At DoiT International, in our capacity of Google Managed Service Provider, we are always being asked by our customers about how teams can surface these queries as soon as they run. One of my colleagues, Moshe Ohayon has found an elegant way to solve this problem and has open-sourced a solution that now everyone can use (and improve!).

By following the README, you can deploy a single Google Cloud Function watching over all of your Google BigQuery queries and posting on Slack queries exceeding `ALERT_THRESHOLD`.

The following `config.json` will produce alerts on all queries exceeding $10 and will post a message to Slack and email.

Example of how bq-snitch notifications are posted on Slack. I admit I wasn’t very creative with my sample query ;-)

The bq-snitch can also send the notifications on email. Make sure to enable Sendgrid on your Google Cloud Platform project and put your Sendgrid API key to the config.json.

Taboola.com is one of the early beta testers of bq-snitch.

“The visibility gains from using this tool are palpable. The fact that the feedback is fast and to the point helps us improve our overall cloud cost management”.

If you’re using Google BigQuery (and Slack/email), give bq-snitch a try. If you can think about how we/you can improve it, we’d love to get issues/pull-requests on GitHub.

If none of these work for you, the least you can do is to give us a star 😇

Want more stories? Check our blog on Medium, or follow Vadim on Twitter.
Leading Communities Of Resistance Course
By: Deep Green Resistance
Tags: Featured

Our planet is dying, and we know the reason for it — industrial civilization is killing it. We need to resist the destruction, protect our land and life, and replace the toxic culture with land-based, just and sustainable forms. We need radical, oppositional Communities — CPR collectives. Such communities provide a fundamental unit of opposition, based on shared interests and identity, and/or a common landbase. Our resistance will be best served by wielding the power available to united collectives committed to each living members and all classes. The planet needs Protectors, Community Builders, and Community Leaders who commit to building cohesive collectives to resist toxicity and destruction and protect land and life.

Communities that Protect and Resist (CPR) — commissioned by DGR Asia-Pacific — is embarking on an effort to train, motivate and support activists to spread radical Community Building throughout the planet. Leading Communities of Resistance (LCOR) is a keystone development in that initiative. We invite activist to enroll in this first offering.

LCOR focuses on developing awareness, knowledge, values & skills, and confidence in activists who are or who want to be involved in building a Community that resists the dominant culture. We understand the critical role leadership plays in moving a Community to maturity and maintaining a committed collective through setbacks and challenges, internal and external.

The LCOR course would be offered to DGR members, allies, or anyone interested in organizing in their communities. This will be a 15 hours course, conducted via Zoom. The course would be offered parallely in two different time slots (suitable for Asia-Pacific region and North American region). Participants all across the world are encouraged to apply.

For more information, check out LCOR broucher.

To apply:

#1 Select the time slot most appropriate to you based on your location

#2 For North American time slot, send filled in application form to CPR, email it to ctpr@protonmail.com, or visit ctpr.home.blog

#3 For Asia-Pacific time slot, email your application to southasia@deepgreenresistance.org or visit asiapacific.deepgreenresistance.org

Featured image: via The Nation (CC BY-SA 4.0)