If you’re a software engineer, you’re expected to write good code. There are different criteria for what is good code but basically you don’t code whatever comes first to your mind. You try to think on the best solution, make it clean, somewhat scalable and even prepared for future extensions. This sets a coding mindset that is good for your career, but not always. All of this requires extra effort. Sometimes, there’s no time for Read more…
I haven’t explored all AI-related developments since ChatGPT’s launch, but here are some notes to revisit in a couple of years. ChatGPT just prints chained probable words, which might make you think that it’ll just regurgitate what it ingested, or that nothing interesting can come out from it. It could seem just like a natural language search engine. However, we’re discovering GPTs can create lots of stuff by just chaining probable words and accomplish several Read more…
Recently I’ve been setting up a new VPS for hosting dockerized web apps behind an nginx proxy. The goal is to have an nginx reverse proxy for serving the different web applications on the same server. Setting up the VPS When purchasing a VPS, you get an option to select a preinstalled distribution, if not, you just have to install a distribution yourself. I’m using Ubuntu because is the most popular and suits the task. Read more…
Software defects can kill people. I’ve revisited the case study of the unintended acceleration in Toyota cars in 2009 by Phil Koopman. You couldn’t believe what was found. For those that don’t remember, the case went to court for some deaths attributed to defects in the Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCS) that caused unintended accelerations with billionaire fines. Even the NASA helped audit the system. The report shares a lot of evidence about the practices Read more…
34 million dollars have been lost forever in an Ethereum NFT smart contract. What a waste. Because of software defects, the contract has reached a state where the money has been locked inside the smart contract and cannot be retrieved, not even by the responsibles. No one can revert this. Not even Vitalik Buterim, the Ethereum founder. People are arguing that a technology where a bug could make their users millions of dollar is bad. Read more…
When introducing Ethereum, I mentioned DAOs as one of the applications. Today, I’m going to explain to you in more detail what is a DAO, how they are created, and give you some examples. Let’s start. What is a DAO A decentralized autonomous organization is a new type of organization born through token emission in a blockchain. Token holders become members of it with voting powers according to their share. Tokens can be traded freely Read more…
One of the benefits of the blockchain is that all data is freely available. To create web3 applications it’s necessary to ask the state of smart contracts to the blockchain. If all of this sounds obscure to you, don’t worry, I will guide you through the concepts to let you understand what is required and how to think about it. In this article, you will learn how data is read from the blockchain, what tools Read more…
Tokens have come to stay. Most people are looking into DeFi but there are other use cases that are as disruptive or more. I’m talking about creator economy tokens. Tokens that somehow represent creators or allow them to earn from their creations maintaining a connection with its audience. The creator economy is growing and people are finding new ways to financially support creators and to get a stake in them. Let’s see some approaches. Selling Read more…
NFTs have a very bad reputation. “Have you paid for that? You’re paying for a jpeg! I have already copied it”. Today, I want to make you understand what they’re and what are the possibilities that it brings. To make you understand NFTs we’ll explore the concept of fungibility, some technical details, digital scarcity, what’s special about NFTs, use cases, and some frequent questions answered. Fungibility NFTs stands for Non-Fungible Token. First, you need to Read more…
When talking about NFTs and crypto art the first thing that comes to mind are the CryptoPunks. They have defined the current NFT standard and have become the most valuable art pieces on the blockchain. Even Jay-Z has bought one. They’re being sold for millions at top level art auction houses. But that’s no the most interesting part, let me explain. Profile picture NFTs and pseudonymous accounts Some NFTs collections like the CryptoPunks use a Read more…