business – Page 3 – See Smart Change Life stories

2022, sky is the limit 😎

I can’t wait to have the first images from the new James Webb space telescope, this multi billion dollars scientific project is the most interesting ever.

25B31BDE00683EB6596E5F4505A00B0110FF6A9B4AA88BC31BDDB69DB78A65E0 , this would be the hash of the title in 64 bytes with SHA 256 🔐 which we use to secure blocks on the Bitcoin blochain.

Alright 😇 I just wanted to bore you with some geeky stuff for the new year. There is so much to learn and to discover in 2022. Let’s for a moment put aside the pandemic, since we have a promising vaccine mNRA technology, the only challenge left is mass production for the whole planet 🌎 (just..)

Democracy

The real challenge of 2022 might be elsewhere, starting by saving our democracies which have been hit badly with extraordinary measure on governments side and conspiracy theories on the other side. Given the low level of the French presidential campaign, I have never been that worried that France might follow the British in some European Union exiting delirium.

Crisis has only got worse existing problems, creating an even greater gap between the richest and the poorest.

With the current levels of inflation, chances are governments won’t increase minimum wages, using the base level workers as adjustment’s variable, in the idea that increasing all salaries with ongoing inflation might make it worse. This can already be verified, French governement recently offered 100€ to all citizens making less than €2000 net to compensate with the extra costs of energy. It is indeed easier to give free money 💰 than to change the whole system.

A new era

We must accept that the world as we knew it before this century’s pandemic is gone and that a new era has begun. Traveling with a mask on will be the new normal, for the best regarding viruses, for the worse regarding comfort. We use to not know anymore why we would go party because we were partying all the time, now is the time where we don’t really have the mindset to party, and the few times we do it has a real meaning, escaping for a night the burden of our new routines.

I am very impressed in a good way, by the way <Us human/> are able to adapt. Past the first scares and panic moments, we learn to live in a more “dangerous” world, we learned that, yes there is life, and there is death and we accept it as it is.

Space

I can’t wait to have the first images from the new James Webb space telescope, this multi billion dollars scientific project is the most interesting ever. The successor of Hubble will be able to go beyond what Hubble could see. (NASA article)

Webb Telescope will be able to see “baby galaxies”. One reason Webb will be able to see the first galaxies is because it is an infrared telescope.
NASA

Work

A little update regarding myself, I found my first contract as a freelancer, I received the good news of the 24th of December. 😊 I am still working hard to learn Python, Front End, and any languages I find interesting to learn by myself for a future career’s shift.
Along the way I am finding new passions for different subjects like SQL, which use to be the skill I did not know much about, I really LOVE it, it’s such a powerful tool, and I could begin to see the similarities between the different tools. The more I learn about things, the more I want to know even more.
I used to write a lot of incident tickets for the front end or back end teams in my previous companies, now I feel I will be able to dig furthermore to spot where the issue is, can’t wait 🤓.

Blockchain and Metaverse

Cryptocurrencies market took a bad hit during the last few weeks, it was hard to watch 😶‍🌫️. As much as I like the concept of Decentralized Finance DeFi, I am not sure we really all want to live in a world where currencies could go from 0 to 1000 in a few hours. Stable coins might be the solutions, and as much as I like the way that you can potentially finance your blockchain project by going live on the the market, it’s a bit too wild 🤠.
I still think there is a massive future for securing data on the blockchain in different fields, like real estate, or for example with medical data. I would feel more secure to have my data in the blockchain in the way that no one can alter or modify it, whereas on the cloud or in my computer, anyone could potentially change it or delete it. For real estate I see the blockchain as the notary of the future.
This will only be allowed by Governments with a better KYC (Know Your Customer) and Anti money laundering control.
On Metaverse, given how many oculus headsets have been sold in December, there is obviously a growing interest for VR. Meta (ex-facebook) is putting billions of $$$ into their metaverse, your VR headset might become the one thing to have to have an online life in the near future. Apple is rumoured to be launching its own headset this year, I can not believe they would allow their own customers to join Meta’s world so I am only guessing that Apple itself has a team working on their own Apple world.
There is probably a lot of money to make in all the accessories that people will need at home to have a better VR experience.

NFT mania is here, like Pokemon cards 20 years ago ?

You might still not fully understand what an NFT is, I myself had to read a bunch of articles to really figure out with time what was a “Non Fungible Token” and how to make it more simple to understand. I am going to try to popularise this topic for non specialist readers.

Remember the end of the 20th century, around 1999-2000 when buying packs of Pokemon cards was every kid dream with their pocket money ? I would be one of them, trying to get the most rare ones to have them all in my dedicated card folder. They were of course physical cards, the size of a card game and they were not unique but some of them were pretty rare. Well NFTs are the modern digital version of these. As simple as it sounds.

I am not sure outside of Pokemon online games, NFTs of these card exists yet. But I am pretty sure its licensing company, Nintendo, is planning on releasing them soon or late, either in their own metaverse or on a dedicated marketplace.

A NFT can be anything from a unique piece of art, a copy of an existing piece of art, a copy of a card (like Pokemon cards would be, or Magic cards etc…), a GIF, a song, an item for a video game, a piece of land (yes you can buy a piece of land in a metaverse).

As for today, there is already a craze among generation Z for those digital items. They are literally spending all their pocket money into it, and the richest one are spending crazy amounts into it.
But not only the gen Z but any big players of the crypto craze is already buying them, as well as bunch of high net individuals like artists who are getting attracted by this new world of possibilities.
As I was saying in one of my recent article about the Metaverse, these items are the things you will be proud to show your friends on Instagram in the future. It will not be you new crazy expensive watch, it will be your digital monkey that you bought for the crypto money equivalent of $10k.

I am mentioning the metaverse because in fact since it’s a digital asset you can only show it to people in for example online art galeries on the metaverse. I am not sure yet there are companies offering in real life displays of NFT’s that you own but this might become in the future a product that everyone will own to be able to show their recent acquisitions.

You also have to understand that the those assets are localized on a blockchain, and that the blockchain is keeping tracks of who owns this particular item. Blockchain is also already a complicated thing to understand, to give you an example, let’s say the blockchain is like an online database, that keeps tracks of all data and connect those date on a chain of blocks. You can not modify an existing block but you can add a new one containing for example a new NFT. ( in reality blockchain is way more complex)

A popular NFT you can buy on OPEN SEA nft markeplace

So you are wondering probably, what are they buying and why are they buying something that is fully digital and that has no value but the one people are ready to pay for ? Well it’s exactly like those Pokemon cards, their real value is almost nothing but the price people are ready to pay for the rarest one is crazy.

And also it is a fashion trend and also surely the desire to own something unique that may very well increase in value in the future, a form of investment. Also with the new developments of metaverse, a totally new system of artefacts and assets is being developed.

For example the new players of the Sandbox game (link), which is using the $SAND token, to be able to be among the first players of the full game you have to buy on Open Sea an “Alpha pass” which is available for 2,76 Ethereum or $13 083,86 (link).
Just Yesterday, a piece of land of the metaverse of the sandbox was sold more than $4 million (link). Knowing that it’s only the beginning of Metaverses and that 99% of people probably don’t know anything about it yet, the potential is probably HUGE, but still with it’s a super high risk investment for something 100% virtual.

Of course NFTs are far from being perfect, first of all there is an issue of licensing since anyone can copy any piece of art and sell it as if he/she was the artist who made it in the first place. Marketplaces and buyers will have to be vigilant before buying and making their own research on whether or not this NFT they are buying is a legit one.
Also blockchain is well known for not being the most environmental friendly technology with all the power it needs.
There are security concerns as well, since you digital assets are located on a dedicated online wallet, there will always be at risk of being stolen by hackers.
And of course, as I was mentioning it on the article about the ugly reality of metaverse, people will probably tend to hide in the VR world if their “real life” is not as good as it can be in their dreams, risk of addiction are high.

Open Sea one of the largest NFT marketplace : https://opensea.io

Reached my thirties and now what ?

I have millions of ideas coming to my head all day long, when a subject is interesting enough to me I take notes or also spend time looking into it. Then I try to figure out if it’s worth sharing to the blog or not.

“Everything I know I learned after I was thirty.”
– Georges Clemenceau

I’ve been feeling the need the last few days to write articles. I always write my articles in one shot, then publish them and make a few corrections on the go the next few days. I felt the need to mention this, because I am not yet happy with my lastly published article about gamification ! Sometimes I would take notes during the day on my phone about subjects I want to write more about later, and then spend some time compiling the similar notes together in order to form sort of a backbone of the next article. There is no logic on when I publish or write these, it can be between two classes, between two meetings or in the middle of the night when I can’t fall asleep.

Believe it or not, I am sort of suffering of a little down time following my birthday’s celebration last weekend 🤔

It can be super diverse thoughts and subject such as how trains are going from China to Europe given the fact the track width is changing between different countries, found out there are dedicated train stations with special tracks that allow trains to gradually widen or narrow their width (of course they need trains who have the ability to do so) at the speed of 15km/h which is nonetheless impressive given the forces and weight at stake. Or how come property developers all around European cities are building super small 15 square meters surfaces and how this type of apartments on the market is influencing rent and property prices. I think that last one is a really big & important subject which I will write about later. Everywhere I have been, Paris, Lyon, Berlin, Wroclaw, I have seen the exact same phenomenon of newly built overpriced 15 sqM apartments, the size of a student apartment but sold has one room for young couples … driving the prices of the whole city market up like crazy. It’s also crazy how now kitchens are disappearing in modern 2 rooms apartment, with part of the living room becoming an open kitchen.

Anyway I keep this one for later, because it’s quite a large subjects ! By the way I am surprised that even today we do not have any European size newspaper with journalist coming from all the countries and publishing about a wide range of subjects, maybe there is not anyone really interested in the end about Europe as a whole but only citizen of different countries only caring about their own land, SAD. That’s another subject again , see ! Writing on a subject is always widening my thoughts to new important subjects 😅 European Union has been build politically, forgetting the citizens themselves, who only see it has a nice way to cross borders (except during the first part of covid times brrrrhh) and use the same currency.

I am currently creating my own company in order to be able to freelance in France and offer my help to companies needing help with their customer care. Not sure how well it will go, but just spending time to create things makes me want to create even more !
I have a few entrepreneurial projects on my mind, and I think I finally have the confidence (maybe it comes with age ? Or at least maturity ) to try, I am not scared of failure at all, had my own failures before but each time it helped me progress.

I already mentioned it before, but I am following intensive class of Python development, following some live Python also on Twitch, king of becoming a geek. Since it’s mobilising quite a lot of mathematics I had to take a few classes again also… On the side I also study Front End in order to be able to start interviews faster than Python which is much more complex. It’s definitely a new passion, I love technical fields, I should have gone into it from the beginning 🤔 ! The hardest part when you study/work alone is to not feel guilty while you are not doing it !

I think programming is the logical learning to work on right now, it should really be taught at school in France, not sure when our government plans to finally update the way they teach technical fields at school ? Maybe in 20 years … I feel the how annoying those subjects are just by writing about it, when I was mentioning already European Union I felt that it’s a hot topic, probably not worth the burden.