Kozminski Techblog

So an NFT is not the artwork itself, but a kind of digital certificate or signature. You can think of the NFT as a unique notation of who owns a particular thing. This thing can be, for example, a small pixel image like the now famous Cryptopunks, but also the very first Twitter tweet or digital music. The NFT serves as a certificate that states: person X is currently the owner of file Y, which is located at Internet address Z.

The abbreviation NFT stands for a non-fungible token. Without foreign words: a non-exchangeable token. A token is an asset, in simpler terms, a token. A counterexample to the NFT, i.e. a fungible, exchangeable token, would be a ten-euro bill. You can exchange this banknote at will for other ten-euro bills. The value and function of the banknote remain identical. (The serial number of the banknote is different – but that doesn’t matter for the purpose). A bitcoin or a beer token at the funfair would also be fungible tokens.

Now, what makes such a token non-exchangeable is that it is part of a blockchain. All transactions are publicly recorded in such a digital register. The blockchain is also distributed decentrally in different locations and represents a sophisticated accounting system. It is therefore not possible to transfer an NFT to someone else without authorization, without this transaction being visibly stored in the blockchain. The provenance history is therefore always clear – unlike with analog artworks, where provenance is often a problem. At the same time, the NFT records to which object it refers. Therefore, an NFT that refers to the picture of a cryptopunk is something different than an NFT that refers to the album of a music group.

Multiple NFTs can belong to one object. This may be by design when the NFTs are created. One use case would be “limited editions” of artwork, perhaps 1,000 copies of a graphic or piece of music. It is also conceivable that an NFT refers to a part of an object, for example, a tenth of a painting or a third of a piece of real estate. One problem: NFTs can also be created for an object without permission. The NFT Thefts initiative calls plagiarism, or pirated art, a growing problem in the NFT space.

You may have heard two similar terms in the cryptocurrency world: proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. These terms are used to distinguish whether a cryptocurrency is mined or not. However, sometimes the distinction between these terms can be confusing. Let’s take a look at what the difference between these terms is.

Let’s start with the simplest part – the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm. This algorithm requires people to use computer hardware to process transactions. This hardware, also known as mining, uses its computing power to solve mathematical problems and is rewarded with a cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, and now Ethereum, still run on this algorithm. It was the first generation of blockchain, used in Bitcoin as the first cryptocurrency to use it.

The goal of proof-of-stake (PoS) is to achieve the same result as PoW – secure verification of transactions on the blockchain, but in this case, verifiers do so by providing a certain number of cryptocurrency tokens to a so-called staker, where they lock up their cryptocurrency and get a chance to verify the transaction, thereby receiving the associated reward and ensuring the security of the network. PoS is the next generation of how blockchain can work. It has several advantages over proof-of-work, such as you don’t need a super-powerful computer to verify transactions.

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As almost everyone knows, our phones slow down over time and unfortunately, there is no hack to avoid it. We are already used to the fact that mobile devices will last for around 2 or 3 years. It starts with frustrating phone jamming, then it comes to bugs in simple applications, and ends up with buying a new model. Producers already made statements about the problem and some of them are really interesting, taking into consideration that users often blame the companies for maximizing profits, by forcing people to buy their new products. This time, we will take Apple as an example.

At the beginning of 2017, few months after the new iPhone 7 was released, users of iPhones 6, 6s, and 6s Plus, started to complain that their phones do not work as well as they used to. The biggest issue was the battery, whose life was decreasing with every update. John Poole, founder of Primate Labs and Geekbench developer, decided to make some research and compared the data from iPhone 6 and 7. He found out that Apple uses much faster processors than other companies and that is why the battery is also more overloaded. After his publishment, Apple made an official explanation that lithium-ion batteries may not work properly in cold conditions and the phone might shut down to protect its electronic components.

The accusations made the CEO of Apple Tim Cook publish a statement that their actions were all in service of the user and they should have been clearer at the beginning. Since then, the firm added the function to control the condition of the battery and informing the users when an eventual update would be harmful to their devices. As users, we are also able to get guidance on how to maximize the potential and health of the battery.

Does Apple slow down your phone to maximize the profits? In my opinion, they do not. The company provides updates directed to the newest models whose parameters are always more modern comparing to the older ones. Also, software houses and developers write new applications in code dedicated to the latest version of iOS.

Sources:

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/iphone-slow-why-running-apple-ios-update-battery-performance-a8926781.html

https://www.vox.com/2017/12/22/16807056/apple-slow-iphone-batteries