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.
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).
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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…
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.
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.
One of the nicest types of lamps I know is depicted on this photo:
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!
One of the nicest types of lamps I know is depicted on this photo:
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!
I finally found the time to sort my photos from Vilanova i la Geltrú and Barcelona.
My Windows of Barcelona series:
A few other nice shots:
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:
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:
I finally found the time to sort my photos from Vilanova i la Geltrú and Barcelona.
My Windows of Barcelona series:
A few other nice shots:
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:
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:
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