Facebook Tests A New Nearby Friends Feature

One of the hallmarks of Facebook has involved trying to connect people, and one of the newer features that the social media platform is testing is going to do just that. This new feature, as spotted by Jane Manchun Wong, is called Nearby Friends, and the main use for it would involve making it...

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Face Swapping Memes: Snapchat Prepares to Launch Exciting New “Cameo” Feature

Deepfakes is one of the most unnerving pieces of technology in the world today, and a big part of the reason why people find it to be so unsettling has to do with the fact that it can end up creating a fake video of you that no one would be able to tell as a fake. However, not all instances of your...

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

How We Can Solve the Cryptocurrency Energy Usage Problem

Bitcoin is still the most important cryptocurrency people know about, and it serves as the entry point of the crypto space. However, every innovative project has to pay its price. For Bitcoin, it is its high carbon footprint created by mining.

Bitcoin mining works by solving cryptographic puzzles, also referred to Proof of Work (PoW). The miner that’s first to find the solution receives a Bitcoin reward. However, this race towards finding the solution comes with high energy usage, as it’s a resource-intensive process requiring a lot of electricity.

Currently, Bitcoin mining uses 58.93 TWh per year. An online tool by the University of Cambridge showed that Bitcoin uses as much energy as the whole of Switzerland. More important is the carbon footprint of Bitcoin. The electricity generated for powering the Bitcoin network equals 22 megatons of CO2 on a yearly basis. You can compare this carbon footprint with the footprint of a city like Kansas City (US).

This article will cover the following topics:

• how the amount of energy consumed by each blockchain project differs depending on the implemented consensus algorithm
• possible solutions for the high energy usage of Bitcoin
• the effect of the Bitcoin network using a lot of excess and green energy.

To get started, let’s discuss if Bitcoin’s energy usage really is a problem?

Are We Thinking the Wrong Way about Bitcoin’s Energy Usage?

Let’s take a moment to think about where the energy for Bitcoin mining comes from. It’s worth questioning if the electricity the Bitcoin nodes use does harm the environment?

Many countries have an excess of electricity, especially when it comes to green energy solutions. The energy coming from green solutions like wind farms or solar plants is often hard to store or sell when the supply outweighs demand. This is true for many countries, especially China, which is responsible for 70 percent of the world’s Bitcoin mining.

As Bitcoin mining requires a lot of energy, node operators look for countries with cheap electricity prices. Reuters reported that “wasted [Chinese] wind power amounted to around 12 percent of total generation in 2017”. This means that node operators often end up in countries with an excess of energy. In those countries, Bitcoin mining plays an important role in neutralizing the energy market. Besides that, without Bitcoin mining, this excess of electricity is otherwise wasted.

Is it safe to say that Bitcoin does not contribute to environmental CO2 production? No, it does contribute for sure. However, the energy usage and CO2 pollution we think Bitcoin is responsible for is actually much lower.

Think about making a credit card payment. Every time you pull out your credit card to make a transaction, you also contribute to environmental pollution. You are not aware of the gigantic server plants of up to 100,000 square-feet to store and process all your transactions. Not to mention other things like their offices, payment terminals, or bank vaults.

It’s easy to attack Bitcoin for its energy usage. Therefore, it’s important to know that there is also an enormous hidden energy usage behind the VISA network. On the other side, the Bitcoin network only processes 100 million transactions per year, whereas the financial industry reaches up to 500 billion transactions per year.

The post How We Can Solve the Cryptocurrency Energy Usage Problem appeared first on SitePoint.

by Michiel Mulders via SitePoint

It’s Time to Start Making Your Web Apps Reactive

This article was created in partnership with Manning Publications. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

You’ve heard of the principle of “survival of the fittest”, and you know that it’s especially true in web development. Your users expect split-second performance and bug-free interfaces — and if you can’t deliver them, you can be sure they’ll go straight to a competitor who can. But when it comes to survival, it’s important to remember the full principal of evolution: the best way to thrive is to be adaptable to change.

That’s where reactive programming comes in. Reactive applications are created to be adaptable to their environments by design. Right from the start, you’re building something made to react to load, react to failure, and react to your users. Whatever being deployed to production throws at your application, reactive programming will mean it can handle it.

How does reactive programming achieve this? It embeds sound programming principles into your application right from the very beginning.

Reactive Applications Are Message-driven

In reactive programming, data is pushed, not pulled. Rather than making requests of data that may or may not be available, client recipients await the arrival of messages with instructions only when data is ready. The designs of sender and recipient aren’t affected by how you propagate your messages, so you can design your system in isolation without needing to worry about how messages are transmitted. This also means that data recipients are only consuming resources when they’re active, rather than bogging down your application with requests for unavailable data.

Reactive Applications Are Elastic

Reactive applications are designed to elastically scale up or scale down, based on the amount of workload they have to deal with. A reactive system can both increase or decrease the resources it gives to its inputs, working without bottlenecks or contention points to more easily shard components and then distribute resources among them. Not only does this save you money on unused computing power, but even more importantly, it means that your application can easily service spikes in user activity.

Reactive Applications Are Responsive

Reactive applications must react to their users, and to their users' behavior. It’s essential that the system responds in a timely manner, not only for improved user experience, but so that problems can be quickly identified and (hopefully!) solved. With rapid response times and a consistent quality of service, you’ll find that your application has simpler error handling as well as much greater user confidence.

Reactive Applications Are Resilient

Reactive applications need to respond, adapt, and be flexible in the face of failure. Because a system can fail at any time, reactive applications are designed to boost resiliency through distribution. If there's a single point of failure, it’s just that — singular. The rest of your reactive application keeps running, because it’s been built to work without relying on any one part.

Further Resources

Reactive programming can be challenging to master. Fortunately, there’s lots of resources to help you out. Some of the best are the books and videos of Manning Publications, publishers of the highest quality tech books and videos you can buy today.

Exploring Modern Web Development is a 100% free guide to the most common tools for reactive programming. With this well-rounded sampler, you’ll have a firm foundation for developing awesome web apps with all the modern reactive features and functions today’s users expect.

SitePoint users can get 40% off top Manning reactive programming and web development books and videos with the coupon code NLSITEPOINT40. Check out popular bestsellers here.

The post It’s Time to Start Making Your Web Apps Reactive appeared first on SitePoint.

by SitePoint Sponsors via SitePoint

There might soon be a QR code-based page sharing feature on Google Chrome

If you take a look at the technology a few years back and the technology we use nowadays, you’ll see an evolution of products within the past few years. The interests of people in technology evolve way faster than the changing seasons and to avail this opportunity and to attract potential customer...

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by agha ali via Digital Information World

Website Inspiration: Adverts of Britain’s Yesteryear

Centrally-divided Landing Page selling a book containing vintage Adverts of Britain’s Yesteryear.

Full Review

by Rob Hope @robhope via One Page Love

The Biggest Social Media Marketing Trends for 2020

In order to make the most of the social media marketing campaigns that you might be embarking on, it is important to try to get ahead of the curve. What this means is that you must try to ascertain what trends are going to be prevalent in the coming year so that you can deal with them accordingly...

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World