#Industrial Engineering for Self-Improvement

[inspirespirit-with-lety]

Welcome to InspireSpirit with Lety: Sustainable Solutions & Personal Development.

Greetings, wonderful souls! I’m Leticia, but you can call me Lety. I’m beyond thrilled to welcome you to our cozy corner of the internet, “InspireSpirit with Lety,” a space devoted to the seamless blend of sustainable living and personal growth. At InspireSpirit with Lety, we set out on a journey that is as dedicated to nurturing our planet as it is to nurturing our inner selves. It’s a place…

[boinkingbattlemechs]

Wasp

Introduced in 2464 as an attempt by General Mechanics to create a fast and maneuverable recon BattleMech for the Terran Hegemony, the Wasp was revolutionary for being the first 'Mech capable of jumping, sporting a prototype jump jet system; however, the system was not perfected for most of the next decade. After improvements in production and jump jet technology progressed, the modern WSP-1A Wasp began production in 2471. Centuries later, it is still considered a valued asset for recon work and is one of the most numerous 'Mechs in existence.

The initial design was built without monomolecular stress-resistant materials (MMSR) in the lower leg actuators. This wasn't identified as a flaw until the 2580 Battle of Imbros III when many Wasp MechWarriors practiced the jump-kick maneuver. After performing the maneuver even once, so much stress was put on the actuator that any subsequent jump-kicks immediately amputated the lower leg upon impact. By 2610 nearly all Wasps had been retrofitted with MMSR actuator bars.

The classic WSP-1A has a ground speed that could be considered lackluster when compared to many modern light 'Mechs, but this was offset by its jump capability. While carrying heavier weapons than 'Mechs like the Locust, the Wasp would generally only engage other light 'Mechs, using its jump capabilities to avoid conflicts with larger foes. The Wasp was also used in the role of raider because of its ability to hit and fade in rough terrain.

Even after the sheer destruction of the Succession Wars, the Wasp still remained the most numerous 'Mech ahead of the Locust and Stinger; many thousands were in use by all of the Great Houses and in the Periphery while 100 or more were built each year from factories across known space. Nearly half of all newly built Wasps came from IBMU's and Kali Yama's factories located in the Free Worlds League on Shiro III and Kalidasa respectively. Among other major Inner Sphere Wasp manufacturing sites were Defiance Industries' Furillo factory in the Lyran Commonwealth and Achernar BattleMechs on New Avalon in the Federated Suns. Many of the Great Houses had Wasp variants built specifically for them, as did Wolf's Dragoons. Even out in the Periphery the Wasp was manufactured on Taurus, Perdition, Canopus IV and Alpheratz, making it equally common among the Periphery States.

The WSP-1A Wasp was not designed as a line combat unit. It carries a light weapons payload meant primarily for self-defense against other light 'Mechs and was not meant to engage heavier 'Mechs, resulting in tactics such as the jump-kick in order to deal more damage. The primary weapon is a Diverse Optics Type 2 medium laser carried in the right arm, backed up by a Bical SRM-2 launcher that is curiously mounted in the left leg which can carry one ton of standard or Inferno rounds in the left torso, making it useful against enemy 'Mechs and a good deterrent against infantry and vehicles. Published schematics indicate that the leg-mounted SRM-2 launcher is located near the hip.

The six jump jets, split between the Wasp's legs and torso sections, are responsible for its jumping distance of 180 meters and its longevity as a recon 'Mech. These also make up for the relatively slow 66.5 km/h cruising speed produced by its four-ton fusion engine. 10 single heat sinks are more than enough for the Wasp - it can actually fire both of its weapon systems continuously with little to no issue unless the jump jets have been overused. The three tons of armor protection is average for light 'Mechs, and with its placement around the chassis essentially two shots to the same spot anywhere will punch through and cause damage.

[justforbooks]

Sir Kenneth Grange

A giant of 20th-century design whose products – from food mixers to lamps and trains – became staples of British life

Kenneth Grange, who has died aged 95, was the leading British product designer of the second half of the 20th century. Even if unaware of his name, most people in Britain are familiar with his output: the Kenwood Chef food mixer, the Kodak Instamatic camera, the Ronson Rio hairdryer, the Morphy Richards iron. These everyday objects are part of all our histories. Grange was also responsible for the restyling of the InterCity 125 high-speed train and the 1997 TX1 version of the London taxi.

He was a tall, handsome, ebullient man, a joker with that element of inner moral purpose often found in the designers of his postwar generation. He grew up imbued with a determination to make the world a better place visually, his emphasis always on functional efficiency. Grange was a master at reassessing usage, but he also viewed design in terms of sheer enjoyment. He wanted us to share in the surprising grace of the experience as the 125 train comes hurtling down the track.

When he set up his own design consultancy in 1956, Grange was one of just a handful of designers operating in the world of what were then quaintly called consumer goods. Many of his early commissions came via the Council of Industrial Design (now the Design Council), a governmental body set up with the remit of improving national design standards. Grange’s commission to design Britain’s first parking meter, the Venner, introduced in 1958, came via the council. So too did his introduction to Kenneth Wood, proprietor of the firm in Woking whose domestic products were marketed as Kenwood. Grange’s clean-lined and user-friendly Kenwood Chef food mixer became a housewives’ status symbol of its time.

Like his near contemporary Vidal Sassoon, Grange came from a non-artistic background and had a similarly innate sense of visual style. Both men were quintessentially 1960s talents, Sassoon with his geometric haircuts, Grange with a succession of urbane modern products for a new, self-consciously fashionable age. He became a prime designer for the growing market in “portable accessories”: pens for Parker, cigarette lighters for Ronson, the melamine and smoked perspex Milward Courier shaver which, in 1963, won the Duke of Edinburgh’s prize for elegant design (now known as the Prince Philip Designers prize). Did Prince Philip himself use it? Grange insisted that he did.

In 1972 Grange joined four of the rising stars of his profession – Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes, Theo Crosby and Mervyn Kurlansky – in founding the ultra-modern design group Pentagram. This was a multidisciplinary consultancy described by Grange as “a one-stop shop” providing specialist services in graphic design and advertising, architecture and – Grange’s own area – product design.

Pentagram became the bee’s knees of design consultancies: ambitious, professional, intelligent and jaunty. It attracted loyal clients, including Reuters, for whom Grange designed the Reuters monitor, a state-of-the-art computer terminal and keyboard, superbly well engineered in heavy silver aluminium sheet.

Through the 70s Grange was occupied with the most high profile of his design commissions: the aerodynamics, interior layout and exterior shaping of the nose cone of British Rail’s High Speed Train (HST). The InterCity 125 was a key element in BR’s strategy to woo passengers away from cars and planes and back on to the trains. However the first HST prototype they came up with was, in Grange’s opinion, “a lumpish, brutish thing”.

He realised he could only improve the appearance by first tackling the aerodynamics. On his own initiative (and at his own expense) he spent a week at night working with a consultant engineer at Imperial College London, where there was a wind tunnel. In the course of these experiments they developed a number of new ideas, getting rid of the buffers, hiding the couplings in the underside of the nose cone, and giving the train a more futuristic look.

It was launched in 1976 with its radical, dynamically angled nose design. Grange was always careful to give credit to the expertise of the engineers he worked with. All the same, it was his major triumph and a lasting symbol of the best of mid-20th-century British design. The HST – still in use today on selected passenger services after almost 50 years – transformed the public experience of travelling by train.

He was born in east London, the son of Hilda (nee Long), a machinist, and Harry Grange, an East End policeman. Kenneth was brought up in what he once vividly described as “a bacon-and-eggs kind of house”, respectably furnished with a three-piece suite and flowery curtains, the dominant colour being brown. Nevertheless his parents supported his chosen career in what was then termed “commercial art”. During the second world war, the family had moved to Wembley in north London, and Kenneth won a scholarship to Willesden School of Art and Crafts where, from the age of 14, he studied drawing and lettering.

These basic skills gave him the entree to a succession of architects’ offices: Arcon; Bronek Katz and R Vaughan; Gordon and Ursula Bowyer; and, from 1952, the remarkably versatile architect and industrial designer Jack Howe – all of these were modernists and prime movers in the postwar campaign to rebuild Britain using newly available materials and techniques.

Grange took part in the 1951 Festival of Britain, working alongside Gordon and Ursula Bowyer on the Sports Pavilion for the South Bank exhibition. For so many of Grange’s generation of designers – including Sir Terence Conran and my husband, David Mellor – the festival would be a lasting inspiration. As Grange later recollected: “You couldn’t walk a step without seeing something unlikely – the cigar-shaped Skylon, the huge Dome of Discovery, extraordinary metal sculptures, waterfalls that twisted and turned. Nothing was like anything I had ever seen before.”

Where much of British design was still craft-based, dominated by ideas that went back to William Morris, Grange felt the fascination of machine production. He was excited by the sleek designs based on new technology beginning to infiltrate Britain from the US, describing the moulded plastic Eames chair for example as “a rocket ship exploding into our narrow world”. I remember being impressed on my first visit to his house in Hampstead, north London, to find him the possessor of not just one Eames lounge chair but three.

Grange’s natural resilience stood him in good stead through the 70s and 80s, those lean years for designers when British manufacturing lost its way and, as he described it, “unbridled accountancy became the new dynamic in British industry”. He was glad of foreign clients, especially enjoying working in Japan where the innate Japanese awareness of design delighted him. An especially successful commission was a sewing machine designed for the Maruzen Sewing Machine Co in Osaka, to be marketed in Europe. On trips to Japan he started what became a considerable collection of beautiful wooden geisha combs.

Pentagram itself was flourishing, moving in 1984 from Paddington to larger and more stylish premises in a renovated dairy in Notting Hill. At this period it employed more than 80 designers and assistants in different disciplines, and the communal dining room became an ever-welcoming talking shop, a gathering point for London’s design world of the time. I remember some marvellous parties at Pentagram, including the celebration of Grange’s marriage in 1984 to Apryl Swift.

For Grange himself the 1980s brought increasing public recognition. In 1983 a solo exhibition of his work was held at the Boilerhouse at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

At this point he was already being lauded as Britain’s most successful product designer. He was made CBE in 1984, and knighted in 2013. In 1985 he received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art and in 1986 became master of the elite group of Royal Designers for Industry. Success never spoilt him. He had a streak of self-denigrating humour and retained a kind of boyish innocence, as if he could hardly believe his good luck.

The sheer challenge of the job had always been his driving force. After his retirement from Pentagram in 1997, after 25 years as a partner, he and Apryl embarked on a project of their own, converting an ancient stone-built barn in the remote countryside near Coryton in Devon into a spectacular modern home with a spiral staircase of highly ingenious modular construction. Completion took five years; Grange commuted weekly between London and Devon, travelling on his familiar High Speed Train.

In 2011 the Design Museum held a retrospective, Kenneth Grange: Making Britain Modern. He continued to design into his 80s. Late commissions included the perfect men’s shirt for the fashion designer Margaret Howell; an updated range of classic lights – the Type 3, Type 75 and, in his 90th year, the Type 80 – for Anglepoise, for whom he had been made design director in 2003; and a really comfortable collection of chairs for elderly people. General levels of design for the aged population made him angry. “Where is the decent modernist care home?” he would ask.

Typical of Grange’s zany 60s humour was his design of a man-shaped timber bookcase that converted to a coffin, the ultimate exercise in recycling. “If I ever pop my clogs, it’s books out and me in, with the lid fixed, up to the great client in the sky.”

Two earlier marriages ended in divorce. Apryl survives him.

🔔 Kenneth Henry Grange, designer, born 17 July 1929; died 21 July 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[cleolinda]

In defense of astrology, slightly

I am generally a fairly private person, save for the topics I have decided to be embarrassingly detailed about for the greater good (the greater good). Bipolar! I'm it! Therefore, however, there are many topics I have not really weighed in on, and THAT IS FOR THE BEST. This is a policy that Cleolinda Industries will largely continue.

However, this also means that you do not know that I am a crystal-loving weirdo. Listen, I love shiny rocks as much as I love vaccinations and democracy, that's just how it is. I really like essential oils because I like perfume, not because I think they cure miasma or wifi emanations. I am vaguely interested in past lives, but not to the point that I think hypnosis (or crystals, or essential oils) would really tell me any details. Maybe it would! Life is a rich weird tapestry.

(I do suspect that I was some kind of governess or housekeeper or lady-in-waiting in a past life, but that may be my love for Jane Eyre talking. You know, the kind of person who just stood back, clutching a tea tray in amazement/horror, while Things Insisted On Happening. Probably while keeping a diary about it. Don't lie, you know I'm onto something here.)

What I am really here today to talk about is: I love astrology. BUT. The "but" is very important here. To me, astrology is a uquiz on steroids, or maybe shrooms. People love it because it's just another way of talking about themselves, and I am no exception. Downside: there are angles and degrees and, if you get deep enough into it, math, and I didn't ask for homework in my navel-gazing. However, I admit that the math is a plus for some people. They can be the ones to explain quincunxes to me.

So, I can't read your chart for you (I could take a messy stab at it), because I am interested in astrology insofar as it helps me become less of a disaster. I use it for journaling, mostly. As prompts for calling myself out on my own shit. "You know, perhaps I AM too much of an absent-minded dreamer! Thanks, South Node!" But that's the thing: I am very good at reading my own chart therapeutically, or maybe making up bullshit therapeutically, and either way, if it helps, it helps. I don't know what your placements mean for you. I know that I am a Sagittarius sun with negative athleticism who never leaves the house—a very lacking Sagittarius, in other words—but my moon and ascendant and whatever-all account for that. Maybe I should aspire to be more Sagittarius-like. Maybe I should look into traveling more! This too shall be journaled upon.

I do have a Sagittarius mug from when I was a kid that I still use to hold pens. The knick-knacks are the best thing about astrology, honestly.

So I can't explain anyone else. I reverse-engineer my interpretations from what I know about myself, because I'm the person I intend to help. I don't try to predict the future, because obviously I would get that wrong. I don't wring my hands about Mercury retrogrades (because I was born during one. Bring it). I definitely do not judge people by their signs, a thing I have actually heard people complain about. They are probably Scorpios. My Venus is in Scorpio and I very much enjoy this sign (I believe this placement explains why I love vampires), so I'm the last person to judge them.

Anyway, I felt like discussing my approach to astrology because I think it can be very helpful, even for skeptics, if you use it—I won't say "the right way," but a particular way. I don't know which planet indicates self-improvement, but mine is probably somewhere very earnest.

NEXT TIME ON: HALF-HEARTED APOLOGIA: my tarot decks, let me show you them.

[dhaaruni]

Self-help has always been a woman’s game. Not that men don’t also seek to improve themselves, but the books targeted to them tend to assume an existing state of self-confidence: You’re great as you are, you could just be a little better. Men learn optimization, life hacks, the power of thinking without thinking: four-hour work weeks and other highly effective habits that are meant to help them build upon their innate perfection, like a software upgrade. Women, on the other hand, have faulty wiring that needs ripping out. Our most beloved self-help books are all about fixing something that came broken, delving into the psyche and excavating everything that’s wrong with you: Women are exhorted to work on themselves the way a weekend warrior might work on a vintage TransAm, tinkering endlessly, replacing parts, fixing one flaw only to find that the engine still won’t turn over, the real problem still buried somewhere under the hood. That you might actually get behind the wheel and drive out of the garage someday is a possibility so distant that it’s hardly worth thinking about. What matters is that whatever is wrong—with the engine, your life, the world—it’s definitely all your fault. (“YOU have to DO the work.”) Is it socialization? Evolution? A bit of both, nature and nurture at once? Whatever the reason, women’s feelings of inadequacy have always been a gold mine for savvy salespeople, with entire industries springing up around the insecurity du jour. 

— "Master Cleanse" by Kat Rosenfield

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Single drop of ethanol to revolutionize nanosensor manufacture

Macquarie University engineers have developed a new technique to make the manufacture of nanosensors far less carbon-intensive, much cheaper, more efficient, and more versatile, substantially improving a key process in this trillion-dollar global industry. The team has found a way to treat each sensor using a single drop of ethanol instead of the conventional process that involves heating materials to high temperatures. Their research, published in Advanced Functional Materials, is titled, 'Capillary-driven self-assembled microclusters for highly performing UV detectors.' "Nanosensors are usually made up of billions of nanoparticles deposited onto a small sensor surface—but most of these sensors don't work when first fabricated," says corresponding author Associate Professor Noushin Nasiri, head of the Nanotech Laboratory at Macquarie University's School of Engineering.

Read more.

[blackhistorychatgpt]

Black inventors

From Perplexity:

Famous black inventors have significantly contributed to various fields, from everyday household items to groundbreaking technological advancements. Here are some notable figures:

George Crum (1824-1914): A chef who is credited with inventing the potato chip in 1853[1].

Frederick McKinley Jones (1893-1961): Developed refrigeration equipment for trucks, trains, ships, and planes, receiving over 40 patents. His invention, the Thermo King, revolutionized the food and medical transport industries[1].

Granville T. Woods (1856-1910): Accumulated almost 60 patents, improving railroad functioning. Notably, he invented the induction telegraph system for train communication[1].

George Washington Carver (1864-1943): An agricultural chemist who developed 518 products from peanuts and sweet potatoes, including ink, dye, soap, and synthetic rubber[1].

Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919): Became the first African American woman self-made millionaire by creating a line of hair products for African American women[1].

Garrett Morgan (1877-1963): Invented the traffic signal and a safety hood that served as a prototype for the gas mask[1].

Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner: Patented the sanitary belt in 1957, a significant advancement in women's health and hygiene[1].

Thomas L. Jennings (1791–1859): The first African American to receive a U.S. patent, for a dry-cleaning process[4].

Patricia Bath (1942-2019): Invented a laser cataract treatment, becoming the first African American female doctor to receive a medical patent[4].

Mark Dean (1957-present): Holds over 20 patents, including contributions to the creation of the color PC monitor and the first gigahertz chip[4].

Elijah McCoy (1844-1929): Known for his invention of the automatic lubricator for oiling steam engines, leading to the phrase "the real McCoy" to denote something authentic[4].

These inventors have left a lasting impact on society, demonstrating ingenuity and perseverance in the face of challenges.

Citations: [1] https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/work-money/g30877473/african-american-inventors/ [2] https://www.parents.com/kids/education/world-changing-black-inventors-that-every-kid-should-know-about/ [3] https://www.black-inventor.com [4] https://www.biography.com/inventors/g46697619/famous-black-inventors [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_inventors_and_scientists

From Gemini (formerly Bard):

20 Famous Black Investors with Short Descriptions:

Dr. Shirley Jackson: First Black woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear physics, invested in research and development for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Robert F. Smith: Founded Vista Equity Partners, a private equity firm with over $85 billion in assets under management. Known for his philanthropic endeavors.

Oprah Winfrey: Media mogul and investor, known for her investments in cable channels, production companies, and Weight Watchers.

Udayan I. Lekhraj: Founded CMG Partners, a private equity firm specializing in healthcare investments. Advocate for diversity and inclusion in venture capital.

Catherine Hughes: Founded Urban One, a media company serving the African American community. First Black woman to chair a publicly traded company in the U.S.

Rodney Bryant: Co-founded JUST Capital, a firm that measures and incentivizes corporations to prioritize stakeholder capitalism.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Former President of Liberia, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Focused on economic development and investment in her country.

Ronald Lauder: CEO of Estee Lauder Companies, known for his investments in the beauty industry and philanthropic work.

Charles R. Bronfman: Chairman of The Seagram Company Ltd., invested in various industries including entertainment, real estate, and philanthropy.

John Rogers Jr.: Founded Ariel Investments, a mutual fund company with over $28 billion in assets under management. Advocate for responsible investing.

Marc Morial: Former mayor of New Orleans, currently president of the National Urban League. Focused on economic empowerment of Black communities.

Ronald Watkins: Founding CEO of Watkins Investing Group, invests in real estate and businesses within the Black community.

Melody Hobson: President and CEO of Ariel Investments, known for her work on financial literacy and diversity in boardrooms.

Aisha Evans: Founded BE Capital, a venture capital firm focused on Black and Latinx tech entrepreneurs.

Kevin Hart: Comedian and investor, known for his investments in production companies, streaming platforms, and sports teams.

Jay-Z: Rapper and entrepreneur, known for his investments in music streaming, sports teams, and venture capital funds.

Will Smith: Actor and investor, known for his investments in production companies, media platforms, and venture capital funds.

Serena Williams: Tennis champion and investor, known for her investments in venture capital funds focused on women and diverse founders.

Rihanna: Singer and entrepreneur, known for her investments in beauty brands, fashion lines, and technology startups.

LeBron James: Basketball player and investor, known for his investments in media companies, production companies, and technology startups.

Please note: This list is not exhaustive and can be debated in terms of individual importance and impact.

Reading List on Black Inventors:

Black Inventors: Lives That Mattered by Darlene R. Medford

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly

Lifting the Veil: Celebrating the Unsung Heroes of Black History by Michael Hill

Lost Genius: The Forgotten Black Inventors Who Changed the World by Dennis Freeman

Pioneering Women in American Mathematics: From Agnes Scott to Emmy Noether by Pamela Prochazka

Black Inventors in Science and Technology by Shirley J. Smith

A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James M. Whitfield: With Recollections of the Early Struggles of Colored Men in Boston by Wilbur H. Siebert

Inventing the Future: Black Inventors in Science and Technology by Geneva Gay

African Americans in Science, Math, and Invention by Darlene R. Medford

Black Inventors in the United States by Darlene R. Medford

This list offers a variety of books covering different periods and areas of innovation by Black inventors. Consider exploring further based on your specific interests.

I hope this information is helpful!

[shadowfaxnews]

Shadowfax Rolls Out AI-Backed Address Intelligence System For Seamless Deliveries

SUMMARY

Shadowfax launches SF Maps, an AI-powered address intelligence system for accurate deliveries.

2. The new system predicts customer locations with over 90% accuracy within 100 meters, reducing cancellations by 10%.

3. SF Maps uses artificial neural networks and real-time data integration to navigate India’s complex addressing system.

Shadowfax, India’s leading provider of cutting-edge e-commerce logistics solutions, proudly introduces SF Maps, an advanced AI-based address intelligence system designed to enhance delivery accuracy and efficiency. This innovative tool predicts customer locations with unparalleled precision, setting a new industry standard with over 90% accuracy within 100 meters of the intended destination. SF Maps greatly improves navigation for delivery partners, thereby assisting e-commerce platforms and Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands in reducing cancellations due to address inaccuracies on their platforms.

In contrast to standardized address formats prevalent in Western countries, Indian addresses often lack structure, are susceptible to language and understanding-based gaps, and are highly prone to input error posing challenges in pinpointing exact locations during delivery. SF Maps addresses these complexities by leveraging a sophisticated AI/ML model trained on a vast dataset of Shadowfax’s past deliveries and pickups exceeding 1.5 billion data points. This model adeptly handles incomplete addresses, ambiguous area names, reliance on distant landmarks, and inaccurate pincodes, ensuring smoother operations. Further, precise navigation to customer addresses enables seamless deliveries without the need for additional calls, effectively reducing instances of missed deliveries and improving overall efficiency. Since the introduction of SF Maps, Shadowfax has achieved a significant reduction in customer cancellations or RTOs (Return to Origin) by almost 10% and boosted customer Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 25%.

Vaibhav Khandelwal, Chief Technology Officer at Shadowfax, “SF Maps represents a significant leap forward in our mission to optimize the delivery speed and elevate customer experience while solving fundamental problems in last-mile logistics. This innovative AI model trained on our vast set of historical delivery data drives significant operational efficiencies for us. We deeply understand the problems that arise due to incomplete addresses and how it hinders further innovation and hence we aim to make this AI model generally available for research in the future.”

Under the hood, SF Maps uses an in-house Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-based embedding model, trained using a Siamese Network architecture. The generated embeddings are fed into VectorDB and the extracted locations are passed through H3 geospatial indexing, further fine-tuning location intelligence. This custom-built model captures complex contextual relationships between address components and their geographical associations, leveraging deep learning algorithms to discern intricate patterns for more accurate location-based intelligence. The underlying algorithms and design architecture allow SF Maps to be a self-correcting engine that captures changing ground operations realities. The feedback loop is powered by real-time delivery partner geolocations that Shadowfax captures every 5 seconds while they are on their platform. Shadowfax also deploys a WhatsApp-based conversational bot that interacts with customers and gathers address information for improved results and error correction.

For more information, visit https://www.shadowfax.in/

[viktorviolettaenterprises]

Finnish Army WW2 Light Tanks

One Of My Patron Request and Also Part Of Great Projects about Weapons and Heavy Machinery That Used During Winter War (1939-1940) & Continuation War (1941-1944) About The Finland Wars Against Soviet During during early and later Stages Of World War 2. For Your Informations Finnish Army During WW2 Heavy Machinery During Winter Wars Are Rely On Captured Soviets Tanks, Obsolete WW1 Products  Or Licensed Products From Allied Countries Disclaimer:Due Heavy Censorship Regarding Swastika Usage in Western Society, The Details of The Tanks Are Replaced With Roundel Instead of Finnish Hakaristi. However It Just A Minor Details that May Missed.

DOWNLOAD Support Me In Patreon for Exclusive Business Agreement Or Support Me In Paypal For One-Time Support

BT-5 Light Tank The BT tanks (Russian: Быстроходный танк/БТ, romanized: Bystrokhodnyy tank, lit. "fast moving tank" or "high-speed tank") were a series of Soviet light tanks produced in large numbers between 1932 and 1941. They were lightly armoured, but reasonably well-armed for their time, and had the best mobility of all contemporary tanks. The BT tanks were known by the nickname Betka from the acronym, or its diminutive Betushka. The successor of the BT tanks was the famous T-34 medium tank, introduced in 1940, which would replace all of the Soviet fast tanks, infantry tanks, and medium tanks in service. 

This Particular Variant is BT-5: Armed larger cylindrical turret, 45 mm 20-K gun, coaxial DT machine gun. Earlier tanks used simpler fully cylindrical bolted turrets with rear bustle welded on. 

BT-42 Light Tank During the WWII, the Finnish Army utilized captured Soviet tanks as their significant armament. Among these was the BT-42 assault gun which the Finnish Army created by pairing the hull from a captured Russian BT-7 Model 1937 light tank with a British 114mm howitzer and a redesigned BT-7's large boxy turret. 18 units were produced from 1943 to 1944 and they were deployed to the Svir River region to attack the Russian bastion. In June 1944 during the Battle of Vyborg, BT-42s saw fierce combat against advancing Russian forces.

Renault FT-17 Light Tank 

The Renault FT (frequently referred to in post-World War I literature as the FT-17, FT17, or similar) was a French light tank that was among the most revolutionary and influential tank designs in history. The FT was the first production tank to have its armament within a fully rotating turret. The Renault FT's configuration (crew compartment at the front, engine compartment at the back, and main armament in a revolving turret) became and remains the standard tank layout. Consequently, some armoured warfare historians have called the Renault FT the world's first modern tank.  Over 3,000 Renault FT tanks were manufactured by French industry, most of them in 1918. After World War I, FT tanks were exported in large numbers. Copies and derivative designs were manufactured in the United States (M1917 light tank), in Italy (Fiat 3000) and in the Soviet Union (T-18 tank). The Renault FT saw combat during the interwar conflicts around the world, but was considered obsolete at the outbreak of World War II. 

This Model Armed with Puteaux SA 1918  37 mm gun While The Other , Equipped With 8mm Hotchkiss Mle 1914 Machine gun for Anti-Personnel Purpose (Not Showed in Review)

KhT-130 

KhT-130 is Flamethrower variant of model 1933 which is Variant Of Soviet T-26 Tank, The Most Successful and Most Modular Pre-WW2 Light Tanks  using a larger 45 mm gun turret (a gun was replaced with a flamethrower for Anti-Personnel Purpose).

Landsverk L-62 Anti II 

Landsverk L-62, also known as Landsverk Anti II or a combination of both, Landsverk L-62 Anti II, was a Swedish self-propelled anti-aircraft gun construction that was specifically designed for Finland by Landsverk between 1941 and 1942. 

The vehicle was an improved Landsverk L-62 Anti I where the turret and chassis had been improved for better protection. The chassis was based on the Landsverk L-60 tank but was lengthened with one extra roadwheel per side. The turret was circular and open for a better view against planes. The gun was a 40 mm Bofors L/60 anti-air gun which was already in service with the Finnish military as the 40 ItK/38.

Vickers Mark E 

The Vickers 6-ton tank or Vickers Mark E, also known as the "Six-tonner" was a British light tank designed as a private project at Vickers. It was not adopted by the British Army, but was picked up by many foreign armed forces. It was licensed by the Soviet Union as the T-26. It was also the direct predecessor of the Polish 7TP tank. 

Hotchkiss H39 Light Tank (German:PzKpfw 38H-735) 

The Hotchkiss H39 (a variant of the Hotchkiss H35) was captured and used by Germany as the PzKpfw 38H-735.

The Hotchkiss H35, or Char léger modèle 1935 H, was a French light tank developed prior to World War II. Despite having been designed from 1933 as a rather slow, but well-armored, light infantry support tank, the type was initially rejected by the French Infantry because it proved difficult to steer while driving cross-country, and was instead adopted in 1936 by the French Cavalry. In 1938, an improved version was produced with a stronger engine, the Char léger modèle 1935 H modifié 39, that from 1940 was also fitted with a longer, more powerful 37 mm gun. It was intended to make this improved variant the standard light tank, and was to be produced in a number of at least four thousand in order to equip new armored divisions of both the Cavalry and the Infantry. However, due to the defeat of France in June 1940, total production of both subtypes remained limited to about 1200 vehicles. For the remainder of the war, Germany and its allies would use captured Hotchkiss tanks in several modifications. 

Hotchkiss H39 Light Tank (German:Panzerkampfwagen 38H 735(f)) 

Variants of A Captured Hotchkiss H39 Tank by German, Outfitted with Nebelwerfer 42, A 30mm German Rockets.

Soviet T-50 

The T-50 was a light infantry tank built by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II. The design for this vehicle had some advanced features, but was complicated and expensive, and only a short production run of 69 tanks was completed. 

Soviet T-26 

The T-26 tank was a Soviet light infantry tank used during many conflicts of the 1930s as well as during World War II. It was a development of the British Vickers 6-Ton tank and is widely considered one of the most successful tank designs of the 1930s. It was produced in greater numbers than any other tank of the period, with more than 11,000 produced. During the 1930s, the USSR developed approximately 53 variants of the T-26, including other combat vehicles based on its chassis. Twenty-three of these were mass-produced. The T-26 was used extensively in the armies of Spain, China and Turkey. In addition, captured T-26 light tanks were used by the Finnish, German, Romanian and Hungarian armies. Though nearly obsolete by the beginning of World War II, the T-26 was the most important tank of the Spanish Civil War and played a significant role during the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 as well as in the Winter War in 1939-40. The T-26 was the most numerous tank in the Red Army's armored force during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. The Soviet T-26 light tanks last saw use in August 1945, in Manchuria. The T-26 was reliable and simple to maintain, and its design was continually modernized between 1931 and 1941, with a total of 11,218 vehicles built. However, no new models of the T-26 were developed after 1940. 

Soviet T-26E 

Variant Of Soviet T-26 tank with additional armour plating (appliqué armour). Some modern sources mention this tank as T-26E (E stands for ekranirovanny or "screened"). The Factory No. 174 developed the design of 30–40 mm appliqué armour for all types of single-turreted T-26s during the Winter War. On 30 December 1939, factory tests proved that the T-26 with appliqué armour successfully resisted fire from a 45 mm anti-tank gun at a range from 400 to 500 m. Side and front armoured plates were mounted with the use of blunt bolts and electric welding. Toward the middle of February 1940, the RKKA received 27 screened T-26 mod. 1939 tanks and 27 KhT-133 flame-throwing tanks; an additional 15 T-26 mod. 1939 tanks were armoured by workshops of the 8th Army in Suoyarvi in the beginning of March 1940. All in all, 69 T-26s with appliqué armour were used during the Winter War and 20 more were delivered to tank units after the end of the war. Combat use proved that Finnish light anti-tank guns could not penetrate the armour of these tanks.

[tobiasdrake]

Sonic the Hedgehog borrows from Dragon Ball a lot. It's an open secret. Everyone knows it. Even Frontiers could be argued to be Sonic's version of Namek, which gets harder to unsee when you notice Eggman's conspicuous saucer ships dotted around the landscape.

But do you know what strikes me as interesting?

The Chaos Emeralds are Sonic's version of Dragon Balls. In fact, they even shored up the number to seven, matching Dragon Ball, in the same game that they introduced Sonic turning into a Super Saiyan. Originally it was six Emeralds and no Super Sonic.

But the staying power of the Chaos Emeralds has far outshone the Dragon Balls. The titular Dragon Balls often end up being dialed down to a background MacGuffin. Characters will collect the Dragon Balls offscreen because they're too busy doing plot stuff to have a serious gathering arc.

Someone will just turn up going, "Yo, I got all the Dragon Balls. Let's resurrect everyone who died or whatever we're doing with them."

But the Chaos Emeralds have remained front and center for much of the franchise. Where the individual Emeralds got scattered to and how to bring them all back together comes up a lot in Sonic the Hedgehog, as does the lore and history behind them.

Why is that? Well. Here's the thing.

The decision to tie the Emeralds into Sonic's central themes and especially into Super Sonic makes them critical to the story.

Goku's Super Saiyan form is a power that he has, independent of the Dragon Balls. This works for the central themes of Dragon Ball, which are about hard work and self-improvement to overcome obstacles. Ultimately, Dragon Ball is the story of Goku, not the story of the Dragon Balls. So the gathering of the Dragon Balls often becomes a vestigial element.

Sonic's central themes are about the effects of industrialization on the ecological world. Eggman represents the cold, uncaring advance of "progress" turning forests into lumber yards and fields into factories. Like, the fact that his murder robots are being powered by innocent woodland creatures is pretty unsubtle about what's being said here. The Chaos Emeralds are much more firmly tied to that theme.

The Chaos Emeralds are presented as a natural resource. They're mysterious artifacts of ambiguous origin that produce immeasurable power. To Eggman, they exist to be exploited. They're something he can plug into his latest machine. He doesn't really care about the Emeralds, so much as he cares about what he can build with the Emeralds.

But the Chaos Emeralds aren't his. They're something raw and wild and majestic in their own right. They have no real origin because they don't need one. Nature doesn't stop to explain itself. Ultimately, Sonic's goal is typically not to get the Emeralds for himself, but to simply keep them away from Eggman's ever-expanding industrial engines.

Eggman wants to take these ancient, mysterious natural artifacts of immeasurable wonder and turn them into batteries. Sonic says, "No, you can't do that, I won't let you." This ties into the greater conflict, where Eggman wants to turn the whole world into a chain of factories, warehouses, and production lines, and Sonic won't let him.

Sonic is basically a more aggressive Lorax who isn't taking any of the Once-ler's shit.

By contrast, Super Sonic is the result of Sonic taking the Emeralds as they are and channeling their power in its raw, unmodified form. This is something Eggman would never do because, as mentioned above, he doesn't really care about the Emeralds themselves. But Sonic does. Sonic respects the unchecked power of nature. And he uses that power to wreck Eggman's stuff and free the enslaved woodland creatures within.

Dragon Ball was able to ultimately move on from the Dragon Balls because, at the end of the day, they're just a neat plot device that Goku can sometimes use, but they aren't really central to the story. The story is about Goku and his journey to expand his horizons.

But you can't really divorce Sonic the Hedgehog from the Chaos Emeralds. They are the ultimate manifestation of everything Sonic's story is about.

[volturialice]

ok I wasn't gonna do this twilight advent thing because y'all know I'm Not Great at consistent participation but if it's Jasper's Hobbies Day I obviously have to weigh in so here goes

listen. the important thing to keep in mind about jasper is that he's boring. he's soooooooo boring. he has all the tastes and proclivities of a middle-aged dad. just utterly bland dadcore taste in everything. I have this little remix snippet of one of @goldeneyedgirl's human alice/vampire jasper stories where even in human!teen!alice's wildest, horniest fantasies she can't imagine him as a peer or cool fellow teen and instead casts him as a 45-year-old nerdy professor.

which is what makes SUCH a hilarious contrast with his anything-but-boring background of violence and drama. he's kind of a jon snow-esque character in that his skills do not at all line up with his desires. by age 25 or so his only real want is to be Left Alone and yet life will not stop putting him in Situations. even when he manages to escape the cycle of violence, he ends up brother to the Main Character and husband to the World's #1 Meddler And Architect of Situations. even if alice were not an irrepressibly active person who loves nothing more than Doing Things, she's so overpowered that she creates international political incidents just by existing. jasper will never truly know a moment's peace and that's so funny and delightful.

but when he does get a moment's peace, here's what he'd like to do with it:

I agree with the canon/fanon that he's into scholarly pursuits like philosophy and history. I think history-wise he often overlaps rosalie's interest in technological history, because he blinked and missed the entire industrial revolution. I mean, he went from being human during a time without indoor plumbing to rejoining society around the time of stuff like the Space Race and the development of nuclear weapons! that's bound to pique anybody's interest. the rate of technological development is so much faster now! I can see him spending long hours talking with rose about robotics and space exploration and the future of green energy. I think he likes the logistics side of engineering because of the emphasis on efficiency and elegant solutions.

he's also happy to take all the Crime hobbies from carlisle. a whole new area of strategy where he gets to pull out all the stops and use his intimidation skills but doesn't even have to kill anyone!! what a rollicking good time.

I also agree with the fanon that as a human, jasper was a total Horse Girl who liked animals. as a vampire I can see that manifesting as an interest in conservation and biodiversity, or sustainable agriculture.

also as a human, he's very into athletic pursuits. his natural talent is for team sports and even coaching, but his interests lie more in the direction of stuff like swimming and climbing and martial arts—anything with a big emphasis on self-discipline and improvement.

in terms of the cullen family dynamic, his extreme patience means he's also voted #1 Most Likely To End Up Helping Other People With Their Hobbies. esme needs a hand with construction or renovation? he's there. rosalie needs someone to stand around and act as a car jack for hours? that's a jasper task (emmett would be her first choice except that he always gets bored and ends up trying to distract and seduce her, which inevitably works.)

the only people who can ever really coax jasper out of the dadcore mold are alice and especially emmett. emmett is a veritable genius for tapping into jasper's secret petty side. he can transform that jaded ex-war criminal nerd into a stupid goofy teenage oaf in 3.5 seconds, usually by goading him into some kind of competition. whenever they invent new games like Emmett And Jasper Ultimate MegaChess together, jasper tries to focus on developing a complex system of rules and emmett provokes him to smash right through them and play. ditto when it comes to things like pranking edward (pranks involve a lot of strategy and skill ok. they're totally a mature grown-up activity!!)

I think when he and alice first joined the cullens, jasper had lowkey forgotten how to have hobbies and considered them frivolous. until he saw how much joy and fulfillment alice got out of her hobbies and realized he'd better find some of his own or he was gonna feel lost and clingy. luckily for him these megarich vampires who never sleep have nothing but time and resources on their hands, and were happy to help him find some!

[dailyanarchistposts]

I.8.8 But did the Spanish collectives innovate?

Yes. In contradiction to the old capitalist claim that no one will innovate unless private property exists, the workers and peasants exhibited much more incentive and creativity under libertarian socialism than they had under the private enterprise system. This is apparent from Gaston Leval’s description of the results of collectivisation in Cargagente in the southern part of the province of Valencia:

“The climate of the region is particularly suited for the cultivation of oranges … All of the socialised land, without exception, is cultivated with infinite care. The orchards are thoroughly weeded. To assure that the trees will get all the nourishment needed, the peasants are incessantly cleaning the soil. ‘Before,’ they told me with pride, ‘all this belonged to the rich and was worked by miserably paid labourers. The land was neglected and the owners had to buy immense quantities of chemical fertilisers, although they could have gotten much better yields by cleaning the soil …’ With pride, they showed me trees that had been grafted to produce better fruit. “In many places I observed plants growing in the shade of the orange trees. ‘What is this?,’ I asked. I learned that the Levant peasants (famous for their ingenuity) have abundantly planted potatoes among the orange groves. The peasants demonstrate more intelligence than all the bureaucrats in the Ministry of Agriculture combined. They do more than just plant potatoes. Throughout the whole region of the Levant, wherever the soil is suitable, they grow crops. They take advantage of the four month [fallow period] in the rice fields. Had the Minister of Agriculture followed the example of these peasants throughout the Republican zone, the bread shortage problem would have been overcome in a few months.” [Anarchist Collectives, p. 153]

This is just one from a multitude of examples presented in the accounts of both the industrial and rural collectives. We have already noted some examples of the improvements in efficiency realised by collectivisation during the Spanish Revolution (section I.4.10). Another example was the baking industry. Souchy reported that, ”[a]s in the rest of Spain, Barcelona’s bread and cakes were baked mostly at night in hundreds of small bakeries. Most of them were in damp, gloomy cellars infested with roaches and rodents. All these bakeries were shut down. More and better bread and cake were baked in new bakeries equipped with new modern ovens and other equipment.” [Op. Cit., p. 82] In Granollers, the syndicate “was at all times a prime-mover. All kinds of initiatives tending to improve the operation and structure of the local economy could be attributed to it.” The collectivised hairdressing, shoe-making, wood-working and engineering industries were all improved, with small, unhealthy and inefficient workplaces closed and replaced by larger, more pleasant and efficient establishments. “Socialisation went hand in hand with rationalisation.” [Gaston Leval, Collectives in the Spanish Revolution, p. 287] For more see sectionI.8.6 as well as section C.2.8 (in which we present more examples when refuting the charge that workers’ control would stifle innovation).

The substantial evidence available, of which these examples are but a small number, proves that the membership of the collectives showed a keen awareness of the importance of investment and innovation in order to increase production, to make work both lighter and more interesting and that the collectives allowed that awareness to be expressed freely. The collectives indicate that, given the chance, everyone will take an interest in their own affairs and express a desire to use their minds to improve their lives and surroundings. In fact, capitalism distorts what innovation exists under hierarchy by channelling it purely into how to save money and maximise investor profit, ignoring other, more important, issues. As Gaston Leval suggested, self-management encouraged innovation:

“The theoreticians and partisans of the liberal economy affirm that competition stimulates initiative and, consequently, the creative spirit and invention without which it remains dormant. Numerous observations made by the writer in the Collectives, factories and socialised workshops permit him to take quite the opposite view. For in a Collective, in a grouping where each individual is stimulated by the wish to be of service to his fellow beings, research, the desire for technical perfection and so on are also stimulated. But they also have as a consequence that other individuals join those who were first to get together. Furthermore, when, in present society, an individualist inventor discovers something, it is used only by the capitalist or the individual employing him, whereas in the case of an inventor living in a community not only is his discovery taken up and developed by others, but is immediately applied for the common good. I am convinced that this superiority would very soon manifest itself in a socialised society.” [Op. Cit., p. 347]

Therefore the actual experiences of self-management in Spain supports the points made in section I.4.11. Freed from hierarchy, individuals will creatively interact with the world to improve their circumstances. For the human mind is an active agent and unless crushed by authority it can no more stop thinking and acting than the Earth can stop revolving round the Sun. In addition, the Collectives indicate that self-management allows ideas to be enriched by discussion.

The experience of self-management proved Bakunin’s point that society is collectively more intelligent than even the most intelligent individual simply because of the wealth of viewpoints, experience and thoughts contained there. Capitalism impoverishes individuals and society by its artificial boundaries and authority structures.

[tokenlauncher]

Which Blockchain is Better: Ethereum or Solana?

Introduction

The blockchain industry has seen tremendous growth and innovation over the past decade, with numerous platforms emerging to offer unique solutions and capabilities. Among these, Ethereum and Solana have stood out as two of the most influential and widely used blockchains. While Ethereum has long been the standard for decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts, Solana has quickly gained attention for its impressive transaction speeds and low costs. In this blog, we’ll compare Ethereum and Solana, highlighting why Solana is becoming an increasingly attractive option for investors and developers alike.

Understanding Ethereum

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum, launched in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin, is a decentralized blockchain platform that enables developers to build and deploy smart contracts and dApps. Ethereum was the first blockchain to introduce the concept of programmable contracts, which can automatically execute transactions when certain conditions are met.

Key Features of Ethereum

Smart Contracts: These are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. They automatically enforce and execute agreements between parties.

Decentralized Applications (dApps): Ethereum allows developers to build dApps that run on its blockchain, offering a wide range of services from finance to gaming.

Large Developer Community: Ethereum boasts a large and active developer community, contributing to continuous innovation and improvement of the platform.

Challenges with Ethereum

Despite its pioneering role, Ethereum faces several challenges:

Scalability: Ethereum can process around 15–30 transactions per second (TPS), leading to congestion and slower transaction times during peak usage.

High Gas Fees: Transaction fees on Ethereum, known as gas fees, can be prohibitively high, especially during periods of network congestion.

Energy Consumption: Ethereum’s current consensus mechanism, Proof of Work (PoW), is energy-intensive, raising environmental concerns.

Understanding Solana

What is Solana?

Solana, launched in 2020 by Anatoly Yakovenko, is a high-performance blockchain designed to support fast and scalable decentralized applications. Solana’s architecture addresses many of the limitations faced by earlier blockchains, making it an attractive option for developers and investors.

Key Features of Solana

High Transaction Speed: Solana can process over 65,000 transactions per second (TPS), significantly higher than Ethereum’s capacity. This high throughput ensures quick and efficient transaction processing.

Low Transaction Fees: Transaction fees on Solana are typically less than a fraction of a cent, making it cost-effective for both developers and users.

Scalability: Solana’s architecture is designed to scale seamlessly as the network grows, ensuring consistent performance even with increased usage.

Energy Efficiency: Solana uses a combination of Proof of History (PoH) and Proof of Stake (PoS) to achieve consensus, which is more energy-efficient than Ethereum’s PoW.

Innovations in Solana

Proof of History (PoH): This unique feature timestamps transactions, creating a historical record that proves that an event has occurred at a specific moment in time. PoH enhances the efficiency and speed of the network.

Sealevel: Solana’s parallel smart contract execution engine allows multiple smart contracts to run concurrently, improving the platform’s scalability and efficiency.

Comparing Ethereum and Solana

Transaction Speed and Scalability

One of the most significant differences between Ethereum and Solana is transaction speed and scalability. Solana’s ability to process over 65,000 TPS dwarfs Ethereum’s 15–30 TPS. This makes Solana much more suitable for applications that require high transaction throughput, such as decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, gaming, and high-frequency trading.

Transaction Fees

High gas fees on Ethereum have been a major pain point for users and developers. During periods of network congestion, these fees can skyrocket, making it costly to execute transactions or interact with dApps. In contrast, Solana’s transaction fees remain extremely low, even during peak times. This cost-efficiency is a significant advantage for projects with high transaction volumes or those targeting users in regions where affordability is crucial.

Developer Ecosystem

Ethereum has a well-established developer ecosystem with a wealth of tools, resources, and community support. However, Solana is rapidly catching up. With an increasing number of developers and projects migrating to Solana, its ecosystem is expanding. Solana offers robust developer tools and resources, making it easier for new projects to get started and for existing ones to migrate.

Security and Decentralization

Both Ethereum and Solana prioritize security and decentralization, but they take different approaches. Ethereum’s PoW consensus mechanism, while secure, is energy-intensive and less scalable. Ethereum is transitioning to Ethereum 2.0, which will use PoS to address these issues.

Solana, with its PoH and PoS hybrid model, offers high security and decentralization while maintaining energy efficiency and scalability. This innovative approach allows Solana to offer robust security without compromising performance.

Energy Efficiency

Environmental impact is an increasingly important consideration for blockchain platforms. Ethereum’s PoW mechanism consumes a significant amount of energy, contributing to its environmental footprint. Solana, on the other hand, uses PoH and PoS, which are far more energy-efficient. This makes Solana an attractive option for environmentally conscious developers and investors.

Why Solana is an Attractive Investment

Rapid Growth and Adoption

Solana’s growth has been impressive since its launch. The platform has attracted numerous high-profile projects and partnerships, boosting its credibility and market presence. The rapid adoption of Solana by developers and the crypto community is a testament to its technical capabilities and potential.

Diverse Use Cases

Solana supports a wide range of applications, from DeFi and NFTs to gaming and Web3 projects. This diversity in use cases broadens Solana’s appeal and opens up multiple avenues for growth and innovation.

Strong Community Support

A strong and active community is crucial for the success of any blockchain platform. Solana has built a vibrant community of developers, investors, and enthusiasts who contribute to its continuous development and adoption. Community support drives innovation, provides valuable feedback, and helps promote the platform.

Backing by Major Investors

Solana has garnered support from major investors and venture capital firms, providing the financial backing needed for continued development and expansion. This investment ensures that Solana has the resources to maintain its technological edge and support its growing ecosystem.

Potential for High Returns

Given its technical advantages, rapid growth, and increasing adoption, Solana offers significant potential for high returns on investment. As more projects and users migrate to Solana, the demand for SOL (Solana’s native token) is likely to increase, driving up its value.

We have to Create our own solana memecoins tokens because it’s future. And we must recommended about solanalauncher platform, Here you can generate our own memecoins token on solana in just less than three seconds without any programming knowledge, Also they have 4 Tools like Mint tokens, Multi sender, Revoke freeze authority, Revoke Mint Authority.

Conclusion

Both Ethereum and Solana are powerful blockchain platforms with their unique strengths and use cases. While Ethereum has been a pioneer in the industry with its smart contracts and dApps, it faces challenges related to scalability and high transaction fees. Solana, on the other hand, offers high-speed transactions, low fees, scalability, and energy efficiency, making it an increasingly attractive option for developers and investors.

For those looking to invest in the future of blockchain technology, Solana presents a compelling case. Its innovative approach, strong community support, and rapid adoption position it as a leading platform in the space. Whether you’re a developer seeking a robust platform for your next project or an investor looking for promising opportunities, Solana is worth considering.

Investing in Solana could be a smart move as it continues to gain traction and demonstrate its capabilities. By understanding the unique advantages of Solana and staying informed about its developments, you can make informed decisions and potentially benefit from its growth in the dynamic world of cryptocurrency.

[sarnalichatterjee898]

Understanding Backlinks: Essential Strategies for SEO Success

Understanding Backlinks

Backlinks are a fundamental component of search engine optimization (SEO). They are links from one website to a page on another website. Also known as "inbound links" or "incoming links," backlinks are essential because they represent a "vote of confidence" from one site to another. When a webpage links to another, it signals to search engines that the content is valuable, credible, and useful. This article will explore the intricacies of backlinks, their importance, and how to effectively utilize them to enhance your website's SEO.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are hyperlinks that direct users from one website to another. They are a crucial element in the algorithms of major search engines like Google, as they help determine the popularity and relevance of a webpage.

Types of Backlinks

1. Natural Backlinks

Natural backlinks occur organically when other websites find your content valuable and link to it without any direct effort from you. These are the most desirable type of backlinks as they indicate genuine approval from other site owners.

2. Manually Built Backlinks

Manually built backlinks are acquired through deliberate link-building activities. This might involve reaching out to other website owners, bloggers, or influencers to promote your content.

3. Self-Created Backlinks

Self-created backlinks are created by adding a backlink in an online directory, forum, blog comment signature, or a press release with optimized anchor text. While these can offer some SEO benefits, they are often considered less valuable and can sometimes be seen as spammy if overdone.

Why Are Backlinks Important?

Backlinks are important for several reasons:

1. Improved Search Engine Rankings

Search engines like Google view backlinks as endorsements. The more high-quality backlinks your website has, the higher it is likely to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. Increased Organic Traffic

When your website ranks higher in the SERPs due to quality backlinks, it naturally attracts more organic traffic. Users are more likely to click on the top results, leading to increased visibility and visits.

3. Faster Indexing

Backlinks help search engine bots discover links to your site and crawl your site effectively. Particularly for new websites, obtaining backlinks can help with faster indexing.

4. Referral Traffic

Backlinks provide a pathway for users from other websites to discover your content. If a popular site links to your page, it can drive significant referral traffic.

Qualities of a Good Backlink

Not all backlinks are created equal. The quality of a backlink is determined by several factors:

1. Relevance

A good backlink comes from a site that is relevant to your niche or industry. Relevance ensures that the link is beneficial to users looking for related information.

2. Authority

The authority of the linking site is crucial. Backlinks from high-authority sites (those with a high domain authority) carry more weight and positively impact your SEO.

3. Anchor Text

The anchor text (the clickable text in a hyperlink) should be relevant to the page it’s linking to. Descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text is often more valuable than generic phrases like "click here."

4. Placement

The placement of the backlink on the page also matters. Links within the main content area are more valuable than those in the footer or sidebar.

How to Acquire High-Quality Backlinks

1. Create High-Quality Content

The foundation of acquiring backlinks is creating valuable, high-quality content that others naturally want to link to. This can include comprehensive guides, in-depth articles, infographics, or original research.

2. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging involves writing articles for other websites in your industry. It’s a mutually beneficial strategy where you get a backlink, and the host site gets quality content.

3. Broken Link Building

Broken link building involves finding broken links on other websites and suggesting your content as a replacement. This helps webmasters fix broken links and provides you with a valuable backlink.

4. Build Relationships

Building relationships with influencers, bloggers, and webmasters in your niche can lead to natural backlink opportunities. Engage with them on social media, comment on their blogs, and collaborate on projects.

5. Use Social Media

Promoting your content on social media platforms can attract attention and potentially lead to backlinks. When people share and discuss your content, it increases the chances of earning backlinks.

Analyzing Your Backlink Profile

Regularly analyzing your backlink profile is crucial to understand your website’s SEO performance and identify areas for improvement.

1. Use SEO Tools

SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz can help you analyze your backlink profile. These tools provide insights into the number of backlinks, referring domains, anchor text distribution, and more.

2. Monitor Competitors

Analyzing your competitors’ backlink profiles can reveal valuable link-building opportunities. Identify where they are getting their backlinks and try to acquire links from those sources.

3. Disavow Toxic Backlinks

Not all backlinks are beneficial. Toxic backlinks from spammy or low-quality sites can harm your SEO. Use tools like Google’s Disavow Tool to remove such links from your backlink profile.

The Future of Backlinks

The landscape of backlinks and SEO is continuously evolving. Search engines are becoming more sophisticated in assessing the quality and relevance of backlinks. It is essential to stay updated with the latest SEO trends and algorithms to maintain a strong backlink profile.

Conclusion

Understanding and effectively utilizing backlinks is vital for improving your website’s SEO and driving organic traffic. By focusing on acquiring high-quality, relevant backlinks and continuously monitoring your backlink profile, you can enhance your search engine rankings and online visibility.

Source :- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlink

[nicklloydnow]

“Surreal characters, simple controls and a catchy soundtrack turned the 2004 PlayStation 2 title into a masterpiece. Last month its sequel, We Love Katamari, which arguably perfected those qualities, was rereleased with improved graphics and new levels.

But Takahashi ended his involvement with the franchise and its publisher, Bandai Namco, long ago. He continues to live in the shadow of the katamari, experiencing the strange conditions of an industry where artistic creations become valuable intellectual property for companies. He says he does not receive any royalties from the sales of Katamari games.

“That is the nature of the business,” Takahashi said. “I am not important. The game is important. But myself? Who cares?”

Takahashi, 48, never intended to become a game designer; he originally trained as a sculptor at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. However, the young artist became disillusioned as classmates disposed of their creations after each assignment. “I realized that making art was not exactly useful,” he said.

That is why when a professor asked him to create a goat sculpture, he decided to turn the animal into a flower pot that drained excess water from its udders.

“I cannot forget that moment when everyone started laughing,” Takahashi recalled from his office in the garage of the San Francisco home where he lives with his wife, Asuka Sakai, a composer, and their two children. “That was when I realized what I should do, and I believed video games could provide joy and fun to people.”

(…)

A demo at the 2003 Game Developers Conference in San Jose caught the attention of industry leaders at a time when the market was mostly focused on multiplayer shooters like Medal of Honor and Halo. Here was something new and unusual for American audiences, invariably described as a “dung beetle” game or a “snowball simulator.”

(…)

“It feels like Katamari Damacy escaped Japan by accident,” said Paul Galloway, a collection specialist at the Museum of Modern Art who helped establish its video game program, which includes Takahashi’s debut. He added that “it presages a lot of aesthetics found during the 2010 indie gamer boom.”

(…)

But by 2009, Takahashi announced he was leaving video games, saying he would help design a playground in England.

“He is a very singular creator,” said Laura E. Hall, a game designer based in Portland, Ore., who wrote a book about Katamari Damacy. “And that is often at odds with the need to move units in the video game industry.”

Takahashi was coming off the self-described “beautiful failure” of a project called Noby Noby Boy, the one with the alien caterpillar, which received tepid reviews and had lackluster sales. The playground was also doomed; city commissioners were not too keen on the designer’s circular doughnut slide or the giant climbing frame that seemed to extend five stories in the air.

He returned to the gaming industry, but this time wanted more control over the creative process. He had left Bandai Namco because he did not think its other engineers were passionate enough.

“They were making games for the money,” he said. “And if I wanted to make a new project, I would need to hire staff from the company, which was super limiting.”

(…)

By the time Takahashi released Wattam, featuring the green cube, in 2019, Bandai Namco was already remastering his katamari games without his input.

(…)

Galloway said it was normal in the gaming industry, as in other design fields, that individual creators don’t own their creations. After all, games are a collaborative art form, typically requiring dozens of people to make.

“Someone can take Katamari and do something wildly different,” Galloway said. “But there is something that can be lost. Keita’s unique vision for Katamari was lightning in a bottle, and after a while it becomes a bit diluted when you milk the same formula over and over again.”

Takahashi does not want to repeat himself. “Recently, I realized that I don’t really know what a video game is,” he said, explaining his attempts to shed his preconceptions about what defines a good game.

His new definition is much simpler: Bring joy back into people’s lives.

(…)

“I know our lives are not so fun. They are boring. We do the same things over and over,” Takahashi said. “But we should be celebrating the good things in life. Then we can become better people. That’s my thing right now.””

“Katamari Damacy is a special sort of game. So special in fact, that it sidetracked me from writing this several times, playing the game in an absent-minded daze, marvelling at how 塊,the Kanji for katamari, already looks like a small prince rolling stuff up. It worms itself inside your brain by giving the mundane a unique sort of whimsy.

Whimsy, silliness and fun on first glance seem like something unrestrained and purposefully difficult to capture, but Katamari's game director Keita Takahashi made these feelings into substantial pillars of the design philosophy that informs all of his games. Katamari is meant to convey novelty, ease of understanding, enjoyment, and humour, all in a neat little package.

(…)

Yet most of the motivation comes from how you receive encouragement much more frequently than punishment. You're not told to hurry, all items you pick up are equally valid to build your clump with. The consequences of bumping into something are never catastrophic. The King of all Cosmos often reacts enthusiastically to your efforts and the nature of the things you roll up, which is understandable, given I'm generally just as overjoyed whenever I find a spare pound between the couch cushions. The wrath of your father the king is severe, but easily soothed by success. The knowledge that it was his drunken debauchery that nearly caused the collapse of the entire cosmos in the first place makes it difficult to take him seriously in his anger. This way, the king is a quintessential dad - a stern, occasionally threatening force on one hand, the guy who falls asleep with his mouth open at a rerun of "I'm a celebrity" on the other. (I'm absolutely not drawing on personal experience here.)

Narratively, Katamari could make a dire point about the dangers of consumerism and the fact that there really is quite a lot of stuff on earth, but as with every other aspect, it's lenient and careful not to hamper your enjoyment. There is a joy in collecting, after all, preserved all the way from collecting shells from the beach, shiny buttons or stickers as children. Why not virtual thumbtacks and cucumbers?

Nothing about Katamari Damacy would work quite as well, however, if it weren't for its laid-back visual aesthetic. With his background in art, Keita Takahashi isn't so much interested in games as he is in playfulness. You can immediately see influences like Taro Okamoto or Yayoi Kusama in the way he uses colours and shapes.

(…)

By not taking itself too seriously, Katamari allows you to do something that may not serve a distinct purpose. It invites you to look at something visually pleasing and hum a happy tune, to unite what by all accounts shouldn't be united into a satisfying shape. Takahashi's games are different to us because we already have an idea in our minds of how games work, how fun is facilitated and how you maximise engagement. Takahashi found his own answers to all of these questions and instead drew on ideas that are equally familiar to his players from other aspects of life.

Katamari Damacy is designed to appear mostly unconcerned with design, at least the right kind of design. Instead, it's something that simply feels good, and that feeling never goes out of style.”

“Katamari Damacy achieves all of its emotional weight without any complex story or characters, without surmounting any gameplay challenges. This simple game only occasionally deviates from your goal of making your Katamari as large as possible under a time limit.

(…)

Just like any mythology, this simple plot and characters themselves express a deeper network of meanings and associations. In Steven Reale’s Chaos in the Cosmos: The Play of Contradictions in the Music of Katamari Damacy, he notes that the King often dashes the Prince’s attempts to live up to his approval throughout the game. The King towers over the tiny Prince, and even when a level is successfully completed, the King still asks that next time, “we want a bigger one” (Reale, 2011). At its heart, Reale suggests the story of Katamari is that of the frustrations of childhood.

(…)

Katamari Damacy was often referenced by game content producers on YouTube, and its praise by some of my favourite reviewers is what initially piqued my interest. It was through the nostalgic lens that drives so many classic game enthusiasts that I learned an important lesson: the games that I played during these developmental years will have an unrivaled amount of cultivated memories associated with them. More importantly, this is worth celebrating and sharing with others.

(…)

Katamari Damacy captured everything that made childhood special, and more precisely, why it was so joyous to reclaim “play time” all to the tune of “Cherry Blossom Color Season”, one of the most powerful and serene tracks on the soundtrack. The game’s composer, Yuu Miyake even cited it as his favourite song from the whole series, a simple but powerful showcase of his ability to compose a song only with simple chords and melody (Napolitano, 2009).

The moment was pure bliss. I have never felt so completely and holistically happy playing a game, and I think Katamari Damacy achieves this moment by virtue of its simplicity, which consistently evokes a sense of childhood, imagination and free play. Miyake’s simple song was coupled with straightforward gameplay and tactile controls. Together, these elements created the sense of pure joy and discovery that comes with exploring levels and discovering hundreds of new objects.

(…)

In a 2009 Game Developers Conference talk, Takahashi confirmed that Katamari Damacy was about consumption society. This presented a problem: his goal to make things light-hearted, silly, and fun was wrapped up in work that expressed a cynical stance towards society. He stated, “I wanted to make more objects. If there are few objects, I feel lonely. If there are more objects, they will make things more colourful. But when they’re rolled up, they’re gone. I felt empty” (Welsh, 2009).

Takahashi’s dilemma was that the game presented his signature simple, soft, and colourful aesthetic, but it came from a place that was fundamentally cynical. He wanted to critique our desire to collect, consume, and progress. The gameplay necessitated that we participate in that consumption.

But even before this confirmation, critical commentators were already reading the game as an anti-capitalist, Marxist text. In Ryan Stanci’s Katamari Damacy – A Critique he argues that if the Marxist critique of art links that work to enforce or challenge the values of consumer society, then Katamari specifically comments on a culture obsessed with collecting and archiving (2006).

(…)

Despite Stanci’s conclusion that our desire to collect is what hits the right buttons for consumers, and our innate desire to collect it all, perhaps there is something inherently innocent about that desire, even if it can result in destruction. Stanci quotes Joseph Lewandowski’s Unpacking: Walter Benjamin and His Library, where he says the following about the children and collecting:

“They collect forgotten and ignored phenomena, they name “dead” objects. According to Benjamin, such an alternative world-view accomplishes a kind of renewal and rescue – children retrieve objects and stimulate life in a frozen cultural modernity; they re-enchant, albeit momentarily, a disenchanted world […] It is precisely in collecting as a child-like ‘mode of acquisition’ that a genuine collector emerges” (1999).

I believe that the childlike practice of collecting to re-enchant the disenchanted word is the ultimate achievement of Katamari Damacy.

(…)

While it is clear that Takahashi is critical of his own work, ultimately, I don’t think our experiences with his work are in conflict. Takahashi designs works to make people happy, even if it’s only for a brief moment. Katamari, to me, perfectly encapsulated the joy and the silliness of childhood, however brief that experience may be.”

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Researchers have developed a new mechanism to make water droplets slip off surfaces, described in a paper published in Nature Chemistry. The discovery challenges existing ideas about friction between solid surfaces and water and opens up a new avenue for studying droplet slipperiness at the molecular level. The new technique has applications in a range of fields, including plumbing, optics, and the auto and maritime industries. All around us, water is always interacting with solid surfaces. Cooking, transportation, optics and hundreds of other technologies are affected by how water sticks to surfaces or slides off them. Understanding the molecular dynamics of these microscopic droplets helps scientists and engineers find ways to improve many household and industrial technologies. Liquid-like surfaces are a new type of droplet-repellent surface that offer many technical benefits over traditional approaches -- a topic recently reviewed in Nature Reviews Chemistry by Aalto University professor Robin Ras. They have molecular layers that are highly mobile yet covalently tethered to the substrate, giving solid surfaces a liquid-like quality that acts like a layer of lubricant between the water droplets and the surface itself. A research team led by Ras used a specially-designed reactor to create a liquid-like layer of molecules, called self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), on top of a silicon surface.

Read more.