Tag Archives: Barcelona

Attending Mobile World Congress? Check Out Our Connected Car Demo!

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/attending-mobile-world-congress-check-out-our-connected-car-demo/

Are you planning to attend Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona (one of my favorite cities)? If so, please be sure to check out the connected car demo in Hall 5 Booth 5E41.

The AWS Greengrass team has been working on a proof of concept with our friends at Vodafone and Saguna to show you how connected cars can change the automotive industry. The demo is built around the emerging concept of multi-access edge computing, or MEC.

Car manufacturers want to provide advanced digital technology in their vehicles but don’t want to make significant upgrades to the on-board computing resources due to cost, power, and time-to-market considerations, not to mention the issues that arise when attempting to retrofit cars that are already on the road. MEC offloads processing resources to the edge of the mobile network, for instance a hub site in the access network. This model helps car manufacturers to take advantage of low-latency compute resources while building features that can evolve and improve over the lifetime of the vehicle, often 20 years or more. It also reduces the complexity and the cost of the on-board components.

The MWC demo streams a live video feed over Vodafone’s 4G LTE network, with Saguna’s AI-powered MEC solution that leverages AWS Greengrass. The demo focuses on driver safety, with the goal of helping to detect drivers that are distracted by talking to someone or something in the car. With an on-board camera aimed at the driver, backed up by AI-powered movement tracking and pattern detection running at the edge of the mobile network, distractions can be identified and the driver can be alerted. This architecture also allows manufacturers to enhance existing cars since most of the computing is handled at the edge of the mobile network.

If you couldn’t make it to Mobile World Congress, you can also check out the video for this solution, here.

— Jeff;

Mission Space Lab flight status announced!

Post Syndicated from Erin Brindley original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/mission-space-lab-flight-status-announced/

In September of last year, we launched our 2017/2018 Astro Pi challenge with our partners at the European Space Agency (ESA). Students from ESA membership and associate countries had the chance to design science experiments and write code to be run on one of our two Raspberry Pis on the International Space Station (ISS).

Astro Pi Mission Space Lab logo

Submissions for the Mission Space Lab challenge have just closed, and the results are in! Students had the opportunity to design an experiment for one of the following two themes:

  • Life in space
    Making use of Astro Pi Vis (Ed) in the European Columbus module to learn about the conditions inside the ISS.
  • Life on Earth
    Making use of Astro Pi IR (Izzy), which will be aimed towards the Earth through a window to learn about Earth from space.

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, speaking from the replica of the Columbus module at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne, has a message for all Mission Space Lab participants:

ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst congratulates Astro Pi 2017-18 winners

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://rpf.io/ytsub Help us reach a wider audience by translating our video content: http://rpf.io/yttranslate Buy a Raspberry Pi from one of our Approved Resellers: http://rpf.io/ytproducts Find out more about the Raspberry Pi Foundation: Raspberry Pi http://rpf.io/ytrpi Code Club UK http://rpf.io/ytccuk Code Club International http://rpf.io/ytcci CoderDojo http://rpf.io/ytcd Check out our free online training courses: http://rpf.io/ytfl Find your local Raspberry Jam event: http://rpf.io/ytjam Work through our free online projects: http://rpf.io/ytprojects Do you have a question about your Raspberry Pi?

Flight status

We had a total of 212 Mission Space Lab entries from 22 countries. Of these, a 114 fantastic projects have been given flight status, and the teams’ project code will run in space!

But they’re not winners yet. In April, the code will be sent to the ISS, and then the teams will receive back their experimental data. Next, to get deeper insight into the process of scientific endeavour, they will need produce a final report analysing their findings. Winners will be chosen based on the merit of their final report, and the winning teams will get exclusive prizes. Check the list below to see if your team got flight status.

Belgium

Flight status achieved:

  • Team De Vesten, Campus De Vesten, Antwerpen
  • Ursa Major, CoderDojo Belgium, West-Vlaanderen
  • Special operations STEM, Sint-Claracollege, Antwerpen

Canada

Flight status achieved:

  • Let It Grow, Branksome Hall, Toronto
  • The Dark Side of Light, Branksome Hall, Toronto
  • Genie On The ISS, Branksome Hall, Toronto
  • Byte by PIthons, Youth Tech Education Society & Kid Code Jeunesse, Edmonton
  • The Broadviewnauts, Broadview, Ottawa

Czech Republic

Flight status achieved:

  • BLEK, Střední Odborná Škola Blatná, Strakonice

Denmark

Flight status achieved:

  • 2y Infotek, Nærum Gymnasium, Nærum
  • Equation Quotation, Allerød Gymnasium, Lillerød
  • Team Weather Watchers, Allerød Gymnasium, Allerød
  • Space Gardners, Nærum Gymnasium, Nærum

Finland

Flight status achieved:

  • Team Aurora, Hyvinkään yhteiskoulun lukio, Hyvinkää

France

Flight status achieved:

  • INC2, Lycée Raoul Follereau, Bourgogne
  • Space Project SP4, Lycée Saint-Paul IV, Reunion Island
  • Dresseurs2Python, clg Albert CAMUS, essonne
  • Lazos, Lycée Aux Lazaristes, Rhone
  • The space nerds, Lycée Saint André Colmar, Alsace
  • Les Spationautes Valériquais, lycée de la Côte d’Albâtre, Normandie
  • AstroMega, Institut de Genech, north
  • Al’Crew, Lycée Algoud-Laffemas, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
  • AstroPython, clg Albert CAMUS, essonne
  • Aruden Corp, Lycée Pablo Neruda, Normandie
  • HeroSpace, clg Albert CAMUS, essonne
  • GalaXess [R]evolution, Lycée Saint Cricq, Nouvelle-Aquitaine
  • AstroBerry, clg Albert CAMUS, essonne
  • Ambitious Girls, Lycée Adam de Craponne, PACA

Germany

Flight status achieved:

  • Uschis, St. Ursula Gymnasium Freiburg im Breisgau, Breisgau
  • Dosi-Pi, Max-Born-Gymnasium Germering, Bavaria

Greece

Flight status achieved:

  • Deep Space Pi, 1o Epal Grevenon, Grevena
  • Flox Team, 1st Lyceum of Kifissia, Attiki
  • Kalamaria Space Team, Second Lyceum of Kalamaria, Central Macedonia
  • The Earth Watchers, STEM Robotics Academy, Thessaly
  • Celestial_Distance, Gymnasium of Kanithos, Sterea Ellada – Evia
  • Pi Stars, Primary School of Rododaphne, Achaias
  • Flarions, 5th Primary School of Salamina, Attica

Ireland

Flight status achieved:

  • Plant Parade, Templeogue College, Leinster
  • For Peats Sake, Templeogue College, Leinster
  • CoderDojo Clonakilty, Co. Cork

Italy

Flight status achieved:

  • Trentini DOP, CoderDojo Trento, TN
  • Tarantino Space Lab, Liceo G. Tarantino, BA
  • Murgia Sky Lab, Liceo G. Tarantino, BA
  • Enrico Fermi, Liceo XXV Aprile, Veneto
  • Team Lampone, CoderDojoTrento, TN
  • GCC, Gali Code Club, Trentino Alto Adige/Südtirol
  • Another Earth, IISS “Laporta/Falcone-Borsellino”
  • Anti Pollution Team, IIS “L. Einaudi”, Sicily
  • e-HAND, Liceo Statale Scientifico e Classico ‘Ettore Majorana’, Lombardia
  • scossa team, ITTS Volterra, Venezia
  • Space Comet Sisters, Scuola don Bosco, Torino

Luxembourg

Flight status achieved:

  • Spaceballs, Atert Lycée Rédange, Diekirch
  • Aline in space, Lycée Aline Mayrisch Luxembourg (LAML)

Poland

Flight status achieved:

  • AstroLeszczynPi, I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Krola Stanislawa Leszczynskiego w Jasle, podkarpackie
  • Astrokompasy, High School nr XVII in Wrocław named after Agnieszka Osiecka, Lower Silesian
  • Cosmic Investigators, Publiczna Szkoła Podstawowa im. Św. Jadwigi Królowej w Rzezawie, Małopolska
  • ApplePi, III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. prof. T. Kotarbińskiego w Zielonej Górze, Lubusz Voivodeship
  • ELE Society 2, Zespol Szkol Elektronicznych i Samochodowych, Lubuskie
  • ELE Society 1, Zespol Szkol Elektronicznych i Samochodowych, Lubuskie
  • SpaceOn, Szkola Podstawowa nr 12 w Jasle – Gimnazjum Nr 2, Podkarpackie
  • Dewnald Ducks, III Liceum Ogólnokształcące w Zielonej Górze, lubuskie
  • Nova Team, III Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. prof. T. Kotarbinskiego, lubuskie district
  • The Moons, Szkola Podstawowa nr 12 w Jasle – Gimnazjum Nr 2, Podkarpackie
  • Live, Szkoła Podstawowa nr 1 im. Tadeusza Kościuszki w Zawierciu, śląskie
  • Storm Hunters, I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Krola Stanislawa Leszczynskiego w Jasle, podkarpackie
  • DeepSky, Szkoła Podstawowa nr 1 im. Tadeusza Kościuszki w Zawierciu, śląskie
  • Small Explorers, ZPO Konina, Malopolska
  • AstroZSCL, Zespół Szkół w Czerwionce-Leszczynach, śląskie
  • Orchestra, Szkola Podstawowa nr 12 w Jasle, Podkarpackie
  • ApplePi, I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Krola Stanislawa Leszczynskiego w Jasle, podkarpackie
  • Green Crew, Szkoła Podstawowa nr 2 w Czeladzi, Silesia

Portugal

Flight status achieved:

  • Magnetics, Escola Secundária João de Deus, Faro
  • ECA_QUEIROS_PI, Secondary School Eça de Queirós, Lisboa
  • ESDMM Pi, Escola Secundária D. Manuel Martins, Setúbal
  • AstroPhysicists, EB 2,3 D. Afonso Henriques, Braga

Romania

Flight status achieved:

  • Caelus, “Tudor Vianu” National High School of Computer Science, District One
  • CodeWarriors, “Tudor Vianu” National High School of Computer Science, District One
  • Dark Phoenix, “Tudor Vianu” National High School of Computer Science, District One
  • ShootingStars, “Tudor Vianu” National High School of Computer Science, District One
  • Astro Pi Carmen Sylva 2, Liceul Teoretic “Carmen Sylva”, Constanta
  • Astro Meridian, Astro Club Meridian 0, Bihor

Slovenia

Flight status achieved:

  • astrOSRence, OS Rence
  • Jakopičevca, Osnovna šola Riharda Jakopiča, Ljubljana

Spain

Flight status achieved:

  • Exea in Orbit, IES Cinco Villas, Zaragoza
  • Valdespartans, IES Valdespartera, Zaragoza
  • Valdespartans2, IES Valdespartera, Zaragoza
  • Astropithecus, Institut de Bruguers, Barcelona
  • SkyPi-line, Colegio Corazón de María, Asturias
  • ClimSOLatic, Colegio Corazón de María, Asturias
  • Científicosdelsaz, IES Profesor Pablo del Saz, Málaga
  • Canarias 2, IES El Calero, Las Palmas
  • Dreamers, M. Peleteiro, A Coruña
  • Canarias 1, IES El Calero, Las Palmas

The Netherlands

Flight status achieved:

  • Team Kaki-FM, Rkbs De Reiger, Noord-Holland

United Kingdom

Flight status achieved:

  • Binco, Teignmouth Community School, Devon
  • 2200 (Saddleworth), Detached Flight Royal Air Force Air Cadets, Lanchashire
  • Whatevernext, Albyn School, Highlands
  • GraviTeam, Limehurst Academy, Leicestershire
  • LSA Digital Leaders, Lytham St Annes Technology and Performing Arts College, Lancashire
  • Mead Astronauts, Mead Community Primary School, Wiltshire
  • STEAMCademy, Castlewood Primary School, West Sussex
  • Lux Quest, CoderDojo Banbridge, Co. Down
  • Temparatus, Dyffryn Taf, Carmarthenshire
  • Discovery STEMers, Discovery STEM Education, South Yorkshire
  • Code Inverness, Code Club Inverness, Highland
  • JJB, Ashton Sixth Form College, Tameside
  • Astro Lab, East Kent College, Kent
  • The Life Savers, Scratch and Python, Middlesex
  • JAAPiT, Taylor Household, Nottingham
  • The Heat Guys, The Archer Academy, Greater London
  • Astro Wantenauts, Wantage C of E Primary School, Oxfordshire
  • Derby Radio Museum, Radio Communication Museum of Great Britain, Derbyshire
  • Bytesyze, King’s College School, Cambridgeshire

Other

Flight status achieved:

  • Intellectual Savage Stars, Lycée français de Luanda, Luanda

 

Congratulations to all successful teams! We are looking forward to reading your reports.

The post Mission Space Lab flight status announced! appeared first on Raspberry Pi.

Court Orders Spanish ISPs to Block Pirate Sites For Hollywood

Post Syndicated from Andy original https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-spanish-isps-to-block-pirate-sites-for-hollywood-180216/

Determined to reduce levels of piracy globally, Hollywood has become one of the main proponents of site-blocking on the planet. To date there have been multiple lawsuits in far-flung jurisdictions, with Europe one of the primary targets.

Following complaints from Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner, Spain has become one of the latest targets. According to the studios a pair of sites – HDFull.tv and Repelis.tv – infringe their copyrights on a grand scale and need to be slowed down by preventing users from accessing them.

HDFull is a platform that provides movies and TV shows in both Spanish and English. Almost 60% its traffic comes from Spain and after a huge surge in visitors last July, it’s now the 337th most popular site in the country according to Alexa. Visitors from Mexico, Argentina, United States and Chile make up the rest of its audience.

Repelis.tv is a similar streaming portal specializing in movies, mainly in Spanish. A third of the site’s visitors hail from Mexico with the remainder coming from Argentina, Columbia, Spain and Chile. In common with HDFull, Repelis has been building its visitor numbers quickly since 2017.

The studios demanding more blocks

With a ruling in hand from the European Court of Justice which determined that sites can be blocked on copyright infringement grounds, the studios asked the courts to issue an injunction against several local ISPs including Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange and Xfera. In an order handed down this week, Barcelona Commercial Court No. 6 sided with the studios and ordered the ISPs to begin blocking the sites.

“They damage the legitimate rights of those who own the films and series, which these pages illegally display and with which they profit illegally through the advertising revenues they generate,” a statement from the Spanish Federation of Cinematographic Distributors (FEDECINE) reads.

FEDECINE General director Estela Artacho said that changes in local law have helped to provide the studios with a new way to protect audiovisual content released in Spain.

“Thanks to the latest reform of the Civil Procedure Law, we have in this jurisdiction a new way to exercise different possibilities to protect our commercial film offering,” Artacho said.

“Those of us who are part of this industry work to make culture accessible and offer the best cinematographic experience in the best possible conditions, guaranteeing the continuity of the sector.”

The development was also welcomed by Stan McCoy, president of the Motion Picture Association’s EMEA division, which represents the plaintiffs in the case.

“We have just taken a welcome step which we consider crucial to face the problem of piracy in Spain,” McCoy said.

“These actions are necessary to maintain the sustainability of the creative community both in Spain and throughout Europe. We want to ensure that consumers enjoy the entertainment offer in a safe and secure environment.”

After gaining experience from blockades and subsequent circumvention in other regions, the studios seem better prepared to tackle fallout in Spain. In addition to blocking primary domains, the ruling handed down by the court this week also obliges ISPs to block any other domain, subdomain or IP address whose purpose is to facilitate access to the blocked platforms.

News of Spain’s ‘pirate’ blocks come on the heels of fresh developments in Germany, where this week a court ordered ISP Vodafone to block KinoX, one of the country’s most popular streaming portals.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN discounts, offers and coupons

Съд на ЕС: Uber предлага транспортна услуга, а не услуга на информационното общество

Post Syndicated from nellyo original https://nellyo.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/uber-2/

Днес стана известно решението на Съда на ЕС  (голям състав)  по дело C‑434/15 с предмет преюдициално запитване, отправено на основание член 267 ДФЕС от Juzgado de lo Mercantil n° 3 de Barcelona (Търговски съд № 3 Барселона, Испания)  в рамките на производство по дело Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi срещу Uber Systems SpainSL.

Преюдициалното запитване се отнася до тълкуването на член 56 ДФЕС, член 1 от Директива 98/34/ЕО   за определяне на процедура за предоставяне на информация в областта на техническите стандарти и регламенти и правила относно услугите на информационното общество, изменена с Директива 98/48/ЕО, член 3 от Директива 2000/31/ЕО за електронната търговия  и членове 2 и 9 от Директива 2006/123/ЕО.

Това запитване е отправено в рамките на спор между Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi (наричана по-нататък „Elite Taxi“), професионална организация на таксиметровите шофьори в град Барселона (Испания), и Uber Systems Spain SL, дружество, свързано с Uber Technologies Inc., във връзка с предоставянето от това дружество, без административни лицензи и разрешения, чрез приложение за смартфон на платена посредническа услуга, позволяваща да се осъществи връзка между непрофесионални шофьори, които използват собствените си превозни средства, и лица, които желаят да ползват градски превоз.

Според Elite Taxi дейността на Uber Systems Spain нарушава действащото законодателство и представлява заблуждаваща търговска практика и нелоялна конкуренция. Нито Uber Systems Spain, нито непрофесионалните шофьори на съответните превозни средства притежават лицензите и позволителните, предвидени в Наредбата за таксиметровите услуги на агломерация Барселона. Uber установява контакт или се свързва с непрофесионални шофьори, на които предоставя поредица от ИТ инструменти — интерфейс — позволяващ им на свой ред да се свързват с лица, които нуждаят от превоз в рамките на населено място и имат достъп до услугата посредством едноименното информационно приложение. Дейността на Uber се извършва с цел печалба.

Следва да се определи дали предоставяните от това дружество услуги трябва да се разглеждат като транспортни услуги, като услуги на информационното общество или като комбинация между тези два вида услуги. Всъщност от правната квалификация, която ще бъде възприета, зависи дали дружеството  може да бъде задължено да разполага предварително с административно разрешение.

Съдът:

38        в ситуация като посочената от запитващата юрисдикция, в която превозът на пътници се извършва от непрофесионални шофьори, използващи собствените си превозни средства, лицето, предоставящо тази посредническа услуга, същевременно предлага услуги по градски превоз, до които предоставя достъп по-специално чрез ИТ инструменти като разглежданото в главното производство приложение и чието общо функциониране организира в полза на лицата, желаещи да се ползват от това предлагане, за да бъдат превозени в рамките на населено място.

39      В това отношение от сведенията, с които разполага Съдът, следва, че посредническата услуга на Uber предполага подбор на непрофесионални шофьори, използващи собствените си превозни средства, на които шофьори това дружество предоставя приложение, без което, от една страна, тези шофьори не биха предоставяли транспортни услуги, и от друга страна, лицата, желаещи да ползват градски превоз, не биха прибягвали до услугите на посочените шофьори. Нещо повече, Uber упражнява решаващо влияние върху условията на предоставяне на услугата от такива шофьори. Във връзка с последното се установява по-специално че Uber определя посредством едноименното приложение най-малкото максималната цена на курса, че това дружество събира тази цена от клиента и след това плаща част от нея на непрофесионалния шофьор на превозното средство и че то упражнява определен контрол по отношение на качеството на превозните средства и на техните шофьори, както и по отношение на поведението на последните, който може евентуално да доведе до изключването им.

40      Ето защо тази посредническа услуга трябва да се разглежда като неразделна част от една обща услуга, чийто главен компонент е транспортна услуга, и следователно да се квалифицира не като „услуга на информационното общество“ по смисъла на член 1, точка 2 от Директива 98/34, към който препраща член 2, буква a) от Директива 2000/31, а като „услуга в областта на транспорта“ по смисъла на член 2, параграф 2, буква г) от Директива 2006/123.

47      съгласно действащото към момента право на Съюза държавите членки са тези, които трябва, при спазване на общите правила на Договора за функционирането на ЕС, да уредят условията за предоставяне на посреднически услуги като разглежданите в главното производство.

Filed under: Digital, EU Law Tagged: съд на ес, uber

[$] The rise of copyright trolls

Post Syndicated from jake original https://lwn.net/Articles/721458/rss

At the 2017 Free
Software Legal and Licensing Workshop (LLW), which was held April 26-28
in Barcelona, Spain, more information about the GPL enforcement efforts by Patrick McHardy
emerged. The workshop is organized by the Free Software Foundation Europe
(FSFE) and its legal
network.
A panel discussion on the final day of the workshop discussed
McHardy’s methodology and outlined why those efforts are actually far from
the worst-case scenario of a copyright troll. While the Q&A portion of the
discussion was under Chatham House
Rule (which was the default for the workshop), the discussion between
the three participants was not—it provided much more detail about McHardy’s efforts, and
copyright trolling in general, than has been previously available publicly.

AWS Week in Review – September 12, 2016

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-week-in-review-september-12-2016/

Wow! Twenty five (25) external and internal contributors worked together to create this edition of the AWS Week in Review. If you would like to join the party (with the possibility of a free lunch at re:Invent), please visit the AWS Week in Review on GitHub.

Monday

September 12
Tuesday

September 13
Wednesday

September 14
Thursday

September 15
Friday

September 16
Saturday

September 17
Sunday

September 18

New & Notable Open Source

New SlideShare Presentations

New Customer Success Stories

  • City of Chicago used AWS for the flexibility and agility to launch OpenGrid, Chicago’s highest profile technology release to date. OpenGrid is a real-time, open source situational awareness program intended to improve the quality of life for citizens and improve efficiency of city operations.
  • Dable develops Omni-channel Personalization Platforms that recommend products/contents customers might be interested in based on big data. The company uses AWS Lambda, Amazon Lambda, and Amazon Redshift to analyze data in real time so it can provide customers with recommended services in a short period of time and in the most cost-effective way.
  • Gett scales to keep up with 300 percent annual growth, saves $800,000 yearly, and gains new business insights using AWS. The company provides an online taxi reservation service used by millions of people in Europe, Israel, and the US. Gett runs its website and mobile web application on AWS, relying on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances to optimize costs.
  • Kyowa Hakko Kirin began using AWS with its production run for SAP ERP, an enterprise resource-planning software. Kyowa Hakko Kirin is a pharmaceutical company that manufactures and sells prescription drugs. As the company continues migrating nearly all its systems and data off of physical servers and into the cloud, it is making further progress and reducing costs through strategies such as using reserved instances and stopping unnecessary instances on weekends. The company is developing its cloud data center as a result.
  • National Bank of Canada’s Global Equity Derivatives Group (GED) uses AWS to process and analyze hundreds of terabytes of financial data, conduct data manipulations in one minute instead of days, and scale and optimize its operations. GED provides stock-trading solutions and services to a range of organizations throughout the world. The organization runs its data analysis using the TickVault platform on the AWS Cloud.

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Airbnb – Reinventing the Hospitality Industry on AWS

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/airbnb-reinventing-the-hospitality-industry-on-aws/

Airbnb is a classic story of how a few people with a great idea can disrupt an entire industry. Launched in 2008, over 80 million guests have stayed on Airbnb in over 2 million homes in over 190 countries. They recently opened 4,000 homes in Cuba to travelers around the globe. The company was also an early adopter of AWS.
In the guest post below, Airbnb Engineering Manager Kevin Rice talks about how AWS was an important part of the company’s startup days, and how it stays that way today. —
Jeff;
PS – Learn more about how startups can use AWS to get their business going.

Early Days Our founders recognized that for Airbnb to succeed, they would need to move fast and stay lean. Critical to that was minimizing the time and resources devoted to infrastructure. Our teams needed to focus on getting the business off the ground, not on basic hosting tasks.
Fortunately, at the time, Amazon Web Services had built up a pretty mature offering of compute and storage services that allowed our staff to spin up servers without having to contact anyone or commit to minimum usage requirements. They decided to migrate nearly all of the company’s cloud computing functions to AWS. When you’re a small company starting out, you need to be as leveraged as possible with your available resources. The company’s employees wanted to focus on things that were unique to the business success.
Airbnb quickly adopted many of the essential services of AWS, such as Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. The original MySQL database was migrated to the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) because RDS greatly simplifies so many of the time-consuming administrative tasks typically associated with databases, like automating replication and scaling procedures with a basic API call or through the AWS Management Console.

Sample Airbnb Listings for Barcelona, Spain as of March 23, 2016

Continuous Innovation A big part of our success is due to an intense focus on continual innovation. For us, an investment in AWS is really about making sure our engineers are focused on the things that are uniquely core to our business. Everything that we do in engineering is ultimately about creating great matches between people. Every traveler and every host is unique, and people have different preferences for what they want out of a travel experience.
So a lot of the work that we do in engineering is about matching the right people together for a real world, offline experience. Part of it is machine learning, part of it is search ranking, and part of it is fraud detection—getting bad people off of the site and verifying that people are who they say they are. Part of it is about the user interface and how we get explicit signals about your preferences. In addition, we build infrastructure that both enables these services and that supports our engineers to be productive and to safely deploy code any time of the day or night.
We’ve stayed with AWS through the years because we have a close relationship, which gives us insight and input in to the AWS roadmap. For example, we considered building a key management system in house, then saw that the AWS Key Management Service could provide the functionality we were looking for to enhance security. Turning to KMS saved three engineers about six months of development time—valuable resources that we could redirect to other business challenges, like making our matching engine even better. Or take Amazon RDS, which we’ve now relied on for years. We take advantage of the RDS Multi-AZ deployments for failover, which would be really time-consuming to create in house. It’s a huge feature for us that protects our main data store.
Supporting Growth As we’ve grown from a startup to a company with a global presence, we’re still paying close attention to the value of our hosting platform. The flexibility AWS gives us is important. We experiment quickly and continuously with new ideas. We are constantly looking at ways to better serve our customers. We don’t always know what’s coming and what kind of technology we’ll need for new projects, and being able to go to AWS and get the hosting and services we need within a matter of minutes is huge.
We haven’t slowed down as we’ve gotten bigger, and we don’t intend to. We still view ourselves as a scrappy startup, and we’ll continue to need the same things we’ve always needed from AWS.
I should mention that we are looking for developers with AWS experience. Here are a couple of openings:

Software Engineer, Site Reliability.
Software Engineer, Production Infrastructure.

— Kevin Rice, Engineering Manager, Airbnb
 

Airbnb – Reinventing the Hospitality Industry on AWS

Post Syndicated from Jeff Barr original https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/airbnb-reinventing-the-hospitality-industry-on-aws/

Airbnb is a classic story of how a few people with a great idea can disrupt an entire industry. Launched in 2008, over 80 million guests have stayed on Airbnb in over 2 million homes in over 190 countries. They recently opened 4,000 homes in Cuba to travelers around the globe. The company was also an early adopter of AWS.
In the guest post below, Airbnb Engineering Manager Kevin Rice talks about how AWS was an important part of the company’s startup days, and how it stays that way today. —
Jeff;
PS – Learn more about how startups can use AWS to get their business going.

Early Days Our founders recognized that for Airbnb to succeed, they would need to move fast and stay lean. Critical to that was minimizing the time and resources devoted to infrastructure. Our teams needed to focus on getting the business off the ground, not on basic hosting tasks.
Fortunately, at the time, Amazon Web Services had built up a pretty mature offering of compute and storage services that allowed our staff to spin up servers without having to contact anyone or commit to minimum usage requirements. They decided to migrate nearly all of the company’s cloud computing functions to AWS. When you’re a small company starting out, you need to be as leveraged as possible with your available resources. The company’s employees wanted to focus on things that were unique to the business success.
Airbnb quickly adopted many of the essential services of AWS, such as Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. The original MySQL database was migrated to the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) because RDS greatly simplifies so many of the time-consuming administrative tasks typically associated with databases, like automating replication and scaling procedures with a basic API call or through the AWS Management Console.

Sample Airbnb Listings for Barcelona, Spain as of March 23, 2016

Continuous Innovation A big part of our success is due to an intense focus on continual innovation. For us, an investment in AWS is really about making sure our engineers are focused on the things that are uniquely core to our business. Everything that we do in engineering is ultimately about creating great matches between people. Every traveler and every host is unique, and people have different preferences for what they want out of a travel experience.
So a lot of the work that we do in engineering is about matching the right people together for a real world, offline experience. Part of it is machine learning, part of it is search ranking, and part of it is fraud detection—getting bad people off of the site and verifying that people are who they say they are. Part of it is about the user interface and how we get explicit signals about your preferences. In addition, we build infrastructure that both enables these services and that supports our engineers to be productive and to safely deploy code any time of the day or night.
We’ve stayed with AWS through the years because we have a close relationship, which gives us insight and input in to the AWS roadmap. For example, we considered building a key management system in house, then saw that the AWS Key Management Service could provide the functionality we were looking for to enhance security. Turning to KMS saved three engineers about six months of development time—valuable resources that we could redirect to other business challenges, like making our matching engine even better. Or take Amazon RDS, which we’ve now relied on for years. We take advantage of the RDS Multi-AZ deployments for failover, which would be really time-consuming to create in house. It’s a huge feature for us that protects our main data store.
Supporting Growth As we’ve grown from a startup to a company with a global presence, we’re still paying close attention to the value of our hosting platform. The flexibility AWS gives us is important. We experiment quickly and continuously with new ideas. We are constantly looking at ways to better serve our customers. We don’t always know what’s coming and what kind of technology we’ll need for new projects, and being able to go to AWS and get the hosting and services we need within a matter of minutes is huge.
We haven’t slowed down as we’ve gotten bigger, and we don’t intend to. We still view ourselves as a scrappy startup, and we’ll continue to need the same things we’ve always needed from AWS.
I should mention that we are looking for developers with AWS experience. Here are a couple of openings:

Software Engineer, Site Reliability.
Software Engineer, Production Infrastructure.

— Kevin Rice, Engineering Manager, Airbnb
 

La petita rambla del Poble Sec

Post Syndicated from Йовко Ламбрев original http://yovko.net/la-petita-rambla-del-poble-sec/

Няколко приятели вече ме попитаха дали Барселона няма да ми липсва. И единственият възможен отговор е: „Разбира се“. Вероятно точно както ти липсва всяко място, където ти е било уютно. Но пък със сигурност ще се връщаме често насам, даже първото вече е планирано. Затова днес – седмица преди заминаването – споделям една песен вместо довиждане.
Cesk Freixas е музикант с позиция и мисия. От тези, които днес са тъжно малко. Такива, които творят заради посланията в музиката и думите, с които да събудят останалите. Творци-знамена. Затова избрах именно негова песен за довиждане, въпреки че не споделям особено политическите му възгледи. Тя е от албума му „La Mà Dels Qui T’esperen“ – може да се намери в Apple Music, вероятно и в Google Play. Така се случи, че с тази песен започнахме преди време обучението си по català.
Песента се казва „La petita rambla del Poble Sec“ и в превод означава нещо като „Малката уличка в Поблa Сек“. Poble Sec е квартал в Барселона, близо до пристанището, а името на уличката, възпята в текста е Blai – която всъщност е една пешеходна алея с много чаровни заведения по нея.
Песента е типична за т.нар. стил rumba catalana, който е смесица от фламенко, рокендрол и кубински вокални влияния. Създаден е в един друг емблематичен квартал на Барселона – Gràcia – от местните роми през петдесетте години на миналия век.

Опитах да направя един нескопосан превод на текста, но… домашното Grammar Nazi не го одобри и се възползва от правото си на президентско вето, затова комуто е любопитно за какво иде реч в песента ще трябва да се задоволи с този горе-долу читав превод на английски.
А ето го и самият бар La Bohème – той си се казва точно така и си е там – накрая на улица Blai, точно както започва песента…
DSCF5822

San Francisco

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original http://0pointer.net/blog/photos/san-fran.html

As a followup to my Windows of Barcelona series I prepared Windows of San Francisco:

Windows of San Francisco

A few other series :

Adjazenz Nummero 47, aka Triptych to the City of San Francisco (shown below)
Kongruenz Nummero 22
Korrespondenz Nummero 105
Resonanz Nummero 62

Adjazenz!

No, the German names and numbers of the series don’t have any special meaning, their sole purpose is to sound “artsy”, in the spirit of the famous work “Fluktuation 8” by a certain polish action artist.

The remaining photos I made during my visit in San Francisco after the
Ubuntu Developers’ Summit in Mountain View in November are now online,
as well.

San Francisco

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original http://0pointer.net/blog/photos/san-fran.html

As a followup to my Windows of Barcelona series I prepared Windows of San Francisco:

Windows of San Francisco

A few other series :

Adjazenz!

No, the German names and numbers of the series don’t have any special meaning, their sole purpose is to sound “artsy”, in the spirit of the famous work “Fluktuation 8” by a certain polish action artist.

The remaining photos I made during my visit in San Francisco after the
Ubuntu Developers’ Summit in Mountain View in November are now online,
as well.

Dear Lazyweb!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original http://0pointer.net/blog/mexico-lamp.html

Let’s see how well Lazyweb works for me!

One of the nicest types of lamps I know is depicted on this photo:

mexico lamp

This lamp is built from a number (16 or so, it’s so difficult to count) of
identical shapes which are put together (a mano) in a very simple, mathematical
fashion. No glue or anything else is need to make it a very robust object. The
lamp looks a little bit like certain Julia fractals, its geometrical structure
is just beautiful. Every mathematical mind will enjoy it.

This particular specimen has been bought from a street dealer in Mexico
City, and has been made of thin plastic sheets. I saw the same model made from
paper on a market near Barcelona this summer (during GUADEC). Unfortunately I
didn’t seize the chance to buy any back then, and now I am regretting it!

I’ve been trying to find this model in German and US shops for the last
months (Christmas is approaching fast!) but couldn’t find a single specimen. I
wonder who designed this ingenious lamp and who produces it. It looks like a
scandinavian design to me, but that’s just an uneducated guess.

If you have any information about this specific lamp model, or could even
provide me with a pointer where to buy or how to order these lamps in/from
Germany, please leave a comment to this blog story, or write me an email to
mzynzcr (at) 0pointer (dot) de! Thank you very much!

Dear Lazyweb!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original http://0pointer.net/blog/mexico-lamp.html

Let’s see how well Lazyweb works for me!

One of the nicest types of lamps I know is depicted on this photo:

mexico lamp

This lamp is built from a number (16 or so, it’s so difficult to count) of
identical shapes which are put together (a mano) in a very simple, mathematical
fashion. No glue or anything else is need to make it a very robust object. The
lamp looks a little bit like certain Julia fractals, its geometrical structure
is just beautiful. Every mathematical mind will enjoy it.

This particular specimen has been bought from a street dealer in Mexico
City, and has been made of thin plastic sheets. I saw the same model made from
paper on a market near Barcelona this summer (during GUADEC). Unfortunately I
didn’t seize the chance to buy any back then, and now I am regretting it!

I’ve been trying to find this model in German and US shops for the last
months (Christmas is approaching fast!) but couldn’t find a single specimen. I
wonder who designed this ingenious lamp and who produces it. It looks like a
scandinavian design to me, but that’s just an uneducated guess.

If you have any information about this specific lamp model, or could even
provide me with a pointer where to buy or how to order these lamps in/from
Germany, please leave a comment to this blog story, or write me an email to
mzynzcr (at) 0pointer (dot) de! Thank you very much!

Photos from Vilanova/Barcelona

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original http://0pointer.net/blog/photos/barcelona.html

I finally found the time to sort my photos from Vilanova i la Geltrú and Barcelona.

My Windows of Barcelona series:

Windows of Barcelona

A few other nice shots:

Photo #361
Photo #371
Photo #366
Photo #381
Photo #386

Photo #222
Photo #210
Photo #125
Photo #137
Photo #5

Photo #311
Photo #301
Photo #317
Photo #281
Photo #269

Photo #268
Photo #89
Photo #49
Photo #35
Photo #95

These are:
1st row: Casa Milà; dito; dito; dito; dito;
2nd row: Palau de la Música Catalana; dito; Mies van der Rohe Pavilion; dito; Vilanova Lighthouse;
3rd row: Sagrada Família; dito; dito; Hospital de Sant Pau; dito;
4th row: Sagrada Família, seen from Sant Pau; City Center/Barri Gòtic; dito; dito; Plaça Reial

A panoramic view of Barcelona photographed from the Montjuic towards the north:

Barcelona Panorama

Those “thunderclouds” on the right side of the image are actually a
result of not using the same exposure settings on all photos that are
part of the panorama. Which is a mistake I didn’t repeat with my
second panoramic view, which again shows Barcelona from the Montjuic, but this time towards the east:

Barcelona Panorama 2

Dont miss the the entire album!

Photos from Vilanova/Barcelona

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original http://0pointer.net/blog/photos/barcelona.html

I finally found the time to sort my photos from Vilanova i la Geltrú and Barcelona.

My Windows of Barcelona series:

Windows of Barcelona

A few other nice shots:

Photo #361
Photo #371
Photo #366
Photo #381
Photo #386

Photo #222
Photo #210
Photo #125
Photo #137
Photo #5

Photo #311
Photo #301
Photo #317
Photo #281
Photo #269

Photo #268
Photo #89
Photo #49
Photo #35
Photo #95

These are:
1st row: Casa Milà; dito; dito; dito; dito;
2nd row: Palau de la Música Catalana; dito; Mies van der Rohe Pavilion; dito; Vilanova Lighthouse;
3rd row: Sagrada Família; dito; dito; Hospital de Sant Pau; dito;
4th row: Sagrada Família, seen from Sant Pau; City Center/Barri Gòtic; dito; dito; Plaça Reial

A panoramic view of Barcelona photographed from the Montjuic towards the north:

Barcelona Panorama

Those “thunderclouds” on the right side of the image are actually a
result of not using the same exposure settings on all photos that are
part of the panorama. Which is a mistake I didn’t repeat with my
second panoramic view, which again shows Barcelona from the Montjuic, but this time towards the east:

Barcelona Panorama 2

Dont miss the the entire album!