All Things Techie With Huge, Unstructured, Intuitive Leaps

The Future of Work?


One of the sad things about growing up, is work. I was dismayed to find out that if you worked one day, you had to do it again the next day and the next day. And at the end of it all, you die. And some jobs -well, the best thing about them, was the chair you sat in -it swiveled.

Work is inevitable & it might as well be efficient & free of frustration. So I modified my laptop.

I used to be a Microsoft zombie because I worked in Windoze. If I wanted to remember something, I'd jot it down in Notepad & save in it Documents. Documents was a vast collection of just about everything. Since I work on a few projects at once, that system became untenable. I modded my laptop & came to the conclusion that perhaps I've invented a new work paradigm & the tools to manage it.

I needed a personal database & it needed to work in a browser. Enter pouchdb. Then I needed a new browser, because Chrome won't let you work with local files unless you mod it & it opens you up to vulnerabilities. I use Midori locally for my db/files. And I usually have an IDE open (and many windows) so I have a bot run by Tomcat with AIML -a windows manager. I think that I may have something that doesn't give away my data to 3rd parties. All it needs now, is a bot that does the work for me.


(originally appeared as a LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Hiring Teams Instead of Individuals



HR has it all wrong. They shouldn't be hiring a person -they should be hiring a team.
I was thinking about the future of work & emergent tech. When I visit companies, often I go into an IT shop that has a mix of C# programmers who learned their trade by cracking shrinkwrap, writing "Hello World" tutorials & kiddie scripters who barely know how to write SQL code. These people did an adequate job of filling the IT needs at a good price when the company needed it. When it comes time to stretch the tech muscles, they hire one new guy & expect him to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. However, in the bunch there're gems who can perform well beyond their pay grade, but they're held back by a majority of folks who are afraid of what they don't know and the prospect of let go or marginalized.

So why don't companies hire an established team? These people are used to working together. They know their stuff. They get a job done. They take a percentage of the profits in lieu of benefits and regular employment and move on. Blockchain and tokenization can help in this paradigm of trusted records keeping.

A team can be productive because they are independent. They don't play politics. They don't take orders from just anyone. This is good, except for a sales team.


(originally appeared as a LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Blockchain Development Environments


Your blockchain development environment has a virus. It's called Windows. Of course, if you are a blockchain developer, you already know this.

The first time that I did a Docker installation of a BigchainDB  blockchain, there was a graceful implementation on Mac   & a kludge requiring 3 more pieces of software for Windows and it was problematic. (Docker & its smarter cousin Kubernetes are small, custom-configured server deployment execution environments that run on a laptop & act as a blockchain servers).

Because Mac is Unix based, and if you know Linux, you can actually fix installations that don't work. When a Microsoft Installer does something, everything is opaque & unfixable unless you have a few months to trace things through.

Now don't get me wrong. Mac blockchain installs are weird. You need a pile of stuff like curl, git, brew, node, npm, nvm, lts, as well as a couple of C & C++ compilers. You feel like you are typing in a Bosnian dialect and you would like to buy a vowel.  However, since you are issuing these commands separately, you knows what fails and what needs fixing. It isn't easier, but it is quicker to production.

Blockchains need crypto, hashing, peer networking and a database to make them blockchains. They ain't simple databases.


(originally appeared as a LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Transcendence in Blockchain



Blockchain 1.0 is toast. Creating ERC20 tokens today for payments is just another form of butt-scratching. It seems that almost every new offering today is just digital effluvia from a duplicated singleton button that everyone seems to want to press to make magic. Newsflash - only 8% of ICOs ever hit the exchanges.  Why? Because there is no transcendence.

New technology implies a transcendence of the stuff used to comprise it. Bitcoin transcended blockchain and became a crypto currency. Ethereum transcended Bitcoin by introducing smart contracts. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum have value as a crypto-currency arising from their unique transcendence of their constituent elements. If you are making crypto because you have a different way to spend it, you are just like the guy who says that he has invented a new word called 'plagiarism'.

Blockchain is secure, transparent, autonomous & outage resistant. You have to find a way to use those constituent elements in an enchanting way that goes beyond the mere attributes of blockchain, Bitcoin or Ethereum. It has to transcend all of that.

When you use blockchain & tokens in a new way that changes forever the old way, you are truly disruptive.

 If I had a dollar for all ICOs that were truly disruptive, I'd be broke.


(originally appeared as a LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Private Social Media



Folks are funny. They rant & rave about privacy & yet post the most intimate details of their lives on social media & bitch and complain when no one reads their posts.

The real funny bits, are the Youtube stars who make Cinéma Vérité videos & say "I'm not telling you where I live because all of the nuts out there", yet give enough meta-data about their lives, such that any reasonably logic monkey can figure out their town, if not their exact address. Case in point, a youtuber injured himself in an earlier video & posted the antibiotic bottle for the drugs to combat the infection. He was careful to hide the address, but if you googled the pharmacy number on the label (which I did) it gave you the exact address.

But there are those of us who don't want Facebook to mine our data or sell our meta-data. We don't want our data disseminated.

So I am thinking of a new type of social media platform where all of your posts are encrypted. You pull a reverse asymmetric encryption. All of your contacts have your private key for that social media platform. You publish your posts with a public key that you don't disclose. Only those with your key can read the posts.  To pay for this platform, you agree to look at 10 ads a week. Makes sense to me.

(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

The Future of Crypto-Currency


I'm usually cleverly disguised as a rational adult. I have to come out of character when I confront an irrational world. The irrationality really shows through when you have an out-of-money experience & a client wants to buy your services, but wants you to sell them something that you don't believe in. You really have to think twice before saying nothing.

So I was evaluating algorithms to trade crypto. Do you do the DEX & smart contract route that can have consequences like front-running & bully-buying because someone else allotted a larger amount of gas that got the smart contract to execute their order before yours?

Then it dawned on me. What if the current crop of crypto-currency goes the way of the dodo bird? What if the Winkelvoss twins hire a Harvard drop-out to write new crypto-currency paradigms & the programmer goes off on his own and invents a brand new crytpo-currency that doesn't need a few minutes for proof of work, or who's virtual machine node fits on a mobile phone. Then the holders of all of the ERC20s will be fubarred - & broke, just like the hodlers who bought more BTC at $9100. What if you had a crypto that was chain-agnostic? Holy Crap - I was seeing the future. But the feeling passed. I think it was gas

(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

I'm going hunting a SNARK


... snark ...
noun ...
... an imaginary animal (used to refer to someone or something that is difficult to track down).

Lewis Carroll wrote this about SNARKS in 1874:
"If your Snark be a Snark, that is right:
Fetch it home by all means—you may serve it with greens,
And it’s handy for striking a light.
You may seek it with thimbles—and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap—”

However, he wasn't talking about a specific type of modern SNARK -- the zk-SNARK. zk-SNARK stands for “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge,” and refers to a proof construction where one can prove possession of certain information, e.g. a secret key, without revealing that information, and without any interaction between the prover and verifier.

The possibilities of zk-SNARKs are impressive, you can verify the correctness of computations without having to execute them and you will not even learn what was executed - just that it was done correctly.

When you use zk-SNARKS with blockchain, you have virtual a limitless range of applications that can be exploited. I'd say more, but I have to stop at the patent office first.

(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Local versus Global Optimality




Neural Nets & Evolutionary Algorithms can be pretty dumb & pretty smart at the same time. How? The same way that quantum physics works where we have local conditions that work for our immediate locale/environment & quantum or global conditions  on a massive scale in the rest of the universe that may be invisible to us.

When you give an adaptive AI machine a learning set, it self-adjusts until it evolves to solve the problem. If it works perfectly with the data of the training set, it has local optimality. If it works universally beyond the training data, it has global optimality.

The normal algorithm of AI is to climb the closest hill it encounters, which is the best solution locally. That may not be the highest hill and the machine may be trapped at the top of a low hill. Once it reaches the summit, it doesn't know enough that it may have to climb down the hill to get to a higher better place.

This is true also in technical architecture. An application may be built that performs well locally, but fails when an attempt to scale it is made. The same is true for blockchain solutions. Some may have an ideal local application but won't fit for a variety or reasons on a global scale, and some of the factors may not be technical.

(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

The ICO Orgy Has Come And Gone. Long Live the ICO.



A ne'er-do-well with a spotty credit history and a shady business running out of a communal office-share with no employees decides to attend the ICO crypto buying orgy to make himself rich quickly. He shows up at the orgy palace. There're a few bodies passed out on the floor. The sawdust on the floor is what used to be the furniture. It is mopping up the vomitus. A weary bartender is cleaning up. Our shady joneser looks around and has a puzzled look on his face. He turns to the barkeep and says "I've come for the orgy".
The barkeep replies, "Sorry, it's over. Everybody has been screwed."

I tell this story because it's true. My best friend is a medical doctor - Chief of Radiology. He checked in with me last week & asked how I was doing. I told him that I had a few blockchain projects on the go. He replied: ICO=SCAM. My friend is a sophisticated investor with a 7 figure portfolio and that's his perception of ICOs. I had to create a long missive on how I do participate in ICOs, but my primary business is enterprise, data-centric blockchains.

To make an ICO work these days, you have to target real investors, with real value in the niche that you operate. You need business substance. The other orgy is dead.

(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Time For Data DNA



I'm thinking of having my DNA tested because most days, I feel that I'm not me. Weird ideas keep popping into my head. Yesterday I was thinking about data & analytics.

As a data science aficionado, I like to keep every scrap of data. I like to find things that the data tells me. Most of the time it tells me that my life is boring & I should go outside for a walk or find a way to get a private jet or something. But a thought with more gravitas struck me. Mother Nature doesn't keep a database of every animal, plant or cognitively-impaired Trumpkin ever produced. The pattern is kept in DNA. Whenever she wants to play dice with the universe, Cupid sends an arrow thru the hearts of polar opposites in the fat tails of a population distribution, and interesting things happen -usually in a manner where interesting is like circus-interesting.

So back to databases. Other than keeping an entry of identifying things like name and address, why do we have to have multitudinous tables for metadata about a specific humanoid. Why can't be have a classifier that stores a short hand model like DNA? This would be helpful for merchants holding customer data. After all, any merchant has a finite number of customer types. There has to be a better data way.

(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Blockchain Confusion



If confusion is the first step to knowledge, the world is full of geniuses. I am still regularly confused by many things, including supporters of the US President & why a round pizza comes in a square box with triangular slices.
There are still people out there who understand the basic tenets, benefits, disadvantages & potentials of blockchain without an intrinsic understanding of blockchain transactions. For simplicity, lets define transactions as an entry to the blockchain.
Do transactions get pooped out in neat, little, synchronous, linear blocks? Yes, No & Maybe.  How's that for a quantum answer?
In many blockchains, there are blockweights or block size. Transactions go into a transaction pool & nodes start to pack them in blocks. Once the limit is reached, a block is emitted. When you expand the 2nd pic below, you will see that a Bitcoin block has between 750-2,700 transactions. Transactions may not be in order. If a transaction is stalled because of validity or any other reason, or arrives after the packing process starts & other later transactions in the pool get picked up first, then the transactions aren't in order. But there are also blockchains where a single transaction is a block. It depends on the guts of the blockchain.


(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/ )

Excited About Tech



Excitement in Life is usually like your dog's experience of going to the vet. They get all excited about the car ride until they find out where they are going. Unlike the mundanities of life, I can get excited about applying new concepts to things like blockchain and coming up with neat stuff that could disrupt so many things. If I wasn't busy earning a living, I would build stuff in a skunkworks. If I had money, I'd be dangerous (and rich)!

So what is some of the stuff that is whetting my excitement (and wetting my pants)? How about concepts in secure multi-party computation? This is a hugely under-exploited field. I would find/build/buy the hardware for a blockchain mobile phone. I would do some applications in Oblivious Transfer Cryptography (google it). I would invent a small footprint blockchain for personal use (Ken Olson, founder of DEC said in 1977 that there is no reason that anyone would want a computer in their home. Blockchain is at the same stage.) And who wouldn't be excited by conceptualizing Utility Fog ( https://lnkd.in/dJfjVpg ). So much to do and so little time.

Of course, it wouldn't preclude me from fun. I'd also make a lot of fun stuff too, like the electric dog polisher, instant water powder (just add water), and a fur-lined sink.

(originally appeared as a Linked In post: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-bodnar-57b635133/)