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Review of the "Chinese Social Credit System" group work

 The topic of this group work is quite interesting and peaked my interest. I have heard that China has an influential system of social credit that affects every citizen in a lot of areas but never took time to thoroughly read about it. Now I took this opportunity and dived right into the paper. The amount of text felt just right to me. Not overly detailed but with enough information to cover most of the aspects. The wiki-based format contributed a lot to ease of following the paper since it is quite clear and logical - much easier than reading a PDF, for example. However, I think that authors of the paper could have worked a bit to make it look more homogeneous. Right now chapters somewhat differ in style - some have a lot of subchapters and are easier to follow and navigate through (correct wiki style) and some are just too big and are just marked with paragraphs instead of subchapters. That makes a person who is interested not in the whole topic but rather some specific sub-topic spe
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A disabled gamer who beats opponents with his mouth (week 14)

 In 2006 Rocky Stoutenburgh wrestled with his friends at the party and got severely injured after landing on his head. He tore his spinal cord and became a tetraplegic - meaning he lost use of all four limbs and a torso. Before that Rocky was a pretty active guy and he became so depressed that he was forced to eat through a feeding tube. One day his younger brother who was into video games brought home an interesting device called QuadStick - it's an analog stick with 3 holes and a lip trigger that one can sip or puff into and it can be programmed to emulate any button of keyboard or game controller. Rocky got so good at playing games with his mouth that he started moving up ranks and winning rounds of quick-paced competitive games against people who played with their hands. He started going by the name "Rocky No Hands" and started streaming as well. He plays pretty competitive games like PUBG and Fortnite and now he is quite an established streamer and Guiness record hol
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Linux (week 13)

 There is a large variety of different Linux distros so I have decided to find and write about 2 of them that iI found the most interesting.  1) Linux From Scratch Linux From Scratch is a type of Linux installation (as well as the name of accompanying book) that gives users instructions on how to build Linux system from source. This is naturally a longer process than installing a pre-compiled Linux distro however it is stated that this way the system is going to be more compact, flexible and secure and user that went through the process will have greater understanding of what happens under the hood. This project has grown quite a bit since the beginning and has spawned a couple other books, that are more focused on different aspects. Hardened Linux From Scratch, for example, focuses on security enhancements, and Automated Linux From Scratch focuses on the aspect of automation. It is a well-documented (obviously) project that is actively developed and has helpful community of users. It
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Modern values of hackers (week 12)

 Pekka Himanen has defined seven values of the modern hacking world in his "Hacker Ethic". Let's discuss how practical they are. Passion - this is a really important value. Passion is the core and heart of any activity. However I would say, that this value is not really practical. Plenty of people (and I assume hackers) are passionate about one thing (or project) or another but might never get involved. Freedom - I think this is the true core value of  hackers. Hacking means first and foremost exploring something and not necessarily exploiting. I believe that it is really hard to "hack" anything without freedom because it would just mean that there is no creativity involved, you just abide the rules and might only find some bugs lying on the surface but not the hidden ones. Work ethic - In my opinion this one is also really important and practical. Without diligently working through system or code and dedicating vast amount of your time, none of the goals can be
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Censorship, Privacy and the Internet (week 11)

1) Twitch.tv and Corporate censorship Twitch.tv is far far from dying. On the contrary, it is seeing greater viewership than ever before. However, the heart of Twitch seems to be withering away. It started way before becoming Amazon-owned but now it is in full swing. Twitch used to burst with copyrighted music. Creators would play whatever they felt like, and it made streams look lively and organic. In late 2020 Twitch finally started regulating content under DMCA and pretty much forced streamers to delete their videos on demands (or VODs - recorded streams) and clips that contained copyrighted music. For many long-time streamers this meant taking down years' worth of archived video content.  These DMCA issues not only affect streamers but also seem counter-intuitive for musicians. Some Twitch streamers are extremely popular and their content, playlists included, gets millions of views. Ultimately, music played on streams was promoting artists and their songs to a larger audience.
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Good and bad usability (week 9)

 It is of utmost importance to make things easy to read and as foolproof as possible. It can be a decisive factor since many disasters can be avoided or happen because of that. 1) Air Inter Flight 148 crashed because of the small screen This disaster happened in 1992 because pilots practically descended into mountain. A two-year investigation concluded that ridiculously small display screen was most likely at fault. The pilots intended to descend toward the airport at an angle of -3.3 degrees, so they likely entered "-3.3" into the autopilot and proceeded with landing procedures. However the autopilot happened to be sent in the wrong mode of feet per minute instead of degrees. So those entered digits were interpreted as 3300 feet per minute - over four times faster than pilots originally intended. Autopilot display screen was simply a two-digit screen and it gave no hints as to what mode was actually used. Even the simplest alarm clocks have more safeguards! Another problem w
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Portrait of IT pro in Estonia (week 8)

 In my opinion, some aspects of IT pro in Estonia (and in the world) remain and will remain the same but others are shifting. Experience is still majorly more valued than university diploma. Unless person wants to move into academia field, Estonian companies don't really care about his education. However, even for junior position 1-2 years of experience are sometimes required. I know a few stories where people who finished their BSc in IT were struggling to find a job and had to go the tech support route. At the same time, I know a few people who went to "Java courses" for 3 months and managed to land development position right after that. That leads to another universal skill - the art of self-presentation. I believe this skill is relevant with Estonian IT pros. A lot of companies still do hiring through their HR and IT departments (in contrast to using some testing-and-hiring websites like hackerrank for example) so there is some room for maneuvering if one's skills
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