Kozminski Techblog

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, our life has changed drastically in ways we’ve never thought about, and as it is more visible to the human eye, we are headed to an inflationary/stagflationary economy that does not help our spending habits. Tough 1 in 3 people in Poland are cutting costs when it comes to daily shopping, it is the same thing for citizens around the globe.

That is why Uber decided to plan ahead and disrupt their well-known and used business model. They are introducing a ride-sharing option called – “UberX Share”. It focuses on taking a ride with a stranger along the way to our destination while cutting costs for customers. In a market where oil prices have risen in a fashion that surprised every economist, especially adding the current war in Ukraine and political moves by Russia, cheaper individual transport is definitely needed, if Uber or their competitors want to stay in business in these extraordinary times.

UberX Share is already implemented in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and 6 other cities, and they are planning to expand to other cities in the summer of 2022.

Immutable, an Australia-based web3 gaming firm, launched a $500 million developer and venture investment fund. The Capital will be used in building web 3 games and NFT-concentrated companies on layer-2 Ethereum-focused platform, Immutable-X

Immutable X has many strategic partnerships including Marvel, Dinsey, TikTok, OpenSeas, Illuvium, and GameStop which is creating a layer-2-based revolutionary low-fee NFT marketplace with Loopring.

Why NFT gaming is so revolutionizing? It opens up a completely new spectrum of investing spectrum for individuals and changes the game in the area of crowdfunding. It gives a possibility for the investor to apply early for a statement that one invested, and in the future, when the game is finished, enables one to profit passively being a shareholder of a game that rips benefits, directing a percentage to the investors. It cuts out the aggressive middle man and gives more possibilities for the entrepreneurs.

What is layer-2 in the blockchain world? While layer-1 blockchain relies on the blockchain itself (Bitcoin, Ethereum), layer-2 enables to compute transactions besides the main blockchain, and input it back to the mainnet. One of those techniques is called Zk-rollups (Zero-Knowledge Rollups) which can decrease the fees for one transaction up to 1000 times, and so it allows for the mass adoption in the gaming space, which will finally give real ownership to every gamer, playing games with NFT layer-2 based solutions.

Many while hearing about NFTs, see meaningless pixelated pictures worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, though many are missing the point. Blockchain and NFTs are not about “Pumps&Dumps” or “Getting rich quick” schemes. They are about real ownership with no middleman throughout the transaction process making banks and centralized platforms obselete.

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Many of us who are interested in sport, meet from with some kind od doping scandal from time to time.

Whether it was Olympics in Russia or a biker using enhancing drugs, doping is present and many of us disagree with it ultimately. This story is a little different from the others. We are in times that allow us to build, engineer, and construct such products that make us faster and stronger while using them. The most trivial examples is a technological advancement in every sports equipment we use such as bikes, skateboards, swimwear (one was banned as it was too good, but it’s a story for another paper), snowboards, skies and many more, but what those objects have in common, is that they are based on our leg movement so finally, I can say that shoes made huge progression too, why am I mentioning this all?

Well, NIKE lately introduced it’s newest product shoe product called by most people as “Nike Vaporfly” that by many are called as best running shoe. It is so good that many sports enthusiasts and officials have big concerns over it. It is made out of super spongy foam, carbon fiber part inside of the shoe, plus the combination of design, supposedly gives an unfair advantage for those who don’t wear it and statistics speak for themself, as 5 new running world record was established by Olympians that were wearing the shoe after it was released almost day after day. How does these shoes work exactly, we don’t know specifically yet, but a question rises to my mind. Should we stop the technological advancement of clothing companies just for the sake of the sport and so-called “fairness”, how will we regulate those things from happening, and on what standard should we do so? Well, although I’d wish to answer this question, I think we’ll have just to wait and observe.

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A long time ago and even now we were wondering about what the future can bring us. Most of our visions were focused on enormous skyscrapers, flying cars, and the immortality of humankind due to technological advancement we weren’t able to achieve just yet. Well, know we are another step closer to match our future-like dreams.

New revolution might’ve just started with this simple technology use, exploiting the vision and giving a route a future logistics might go in. Medical drones delivery is just about to start and it might be closer than we think!

The idea behind it is to grant people with medical supplies in places that are unachievable by simple medical care or for those who need it immediately. What it means, is that medical supplies are attached to a precisely built drone, which then flies to marked destination making the delivery by dropping the supplies on target. Many big corporations may think alike or are even contributing to the idea of drone delivery just like this startup, shown in the video above. This is profoundly fascinating from a futuristics standpoint as this might be the thing called “flying cars” before even drones were available to the public!

No matter how beautiful the idea of “drone delivery everything” is going to happen, many logistic and privacy complication have to be discussed with the official and new laws have to made, especially for this kind of subject. Nevertheless our future and present is changing in front of our eyes, we just have to know where to look to oversee the upcoming revolution, as for this moment the sky… is the actual limit.

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Whoever asked about the future, whether the topic was directed into flying cars (presumably drones) or, how our jobs are going to change, and how much of them will vanish due to technological advancement.

Anyone who’s researching autonomous startups and projects already can see a trend where monotonous jobs like cleaning, driving, and even shopping can be done without human effort to do so. What about all of those fields when the human precision is necessary to achieve targets and goals, like teaching, being a psychiatrist and scientific topics in general, excluding computation parts. Well, we might’ve not yet achieved human-like bot, but we are one more step forward, that will make “technological advancement” in the field of chemistry much faster. What it means is better and faster drugs, materials, and everything that chemistry covers, development.

It all thanks to a revolutionary project where chemists do not have to touch crucial samples at all. Where our hands are replaced by a steady robot’s arm, and results can be seen on our monitors at home. Also, it means that those very dangerous chemical and viruses can’t be transmitted or spreaded due to human error what will definitely reduce the risk of future pandemics and biological weapons, but before tht statement will be true, more development and security bridges in all form have to go in place so the technique can be shared around the globe. Thanks to troubles and mistakes of the past, we can make a wonderful change for tomorrow and upcoming generations.

Reading Time: 2 minutesMany of us are struggling with current social media. Especially “Facebook” or “Instagram” owned by Mark Zuckerberg. As his businesses went worldwide Mark decided to begin a special yearly routine he will post online and then share it with the world throughout the year. Obviously, I’m talking about new year’s eve resolutions. This time he decided to plan 10 years into the future. What it is then? Here we go:

1. Facebook AR-glasses
2. Contributing to the development of Oculus glasses so we can work from everywhere
3. Making Facebook more customizable allowing with more closed groups and messaging options
4. Implying the government into Facebook headquarters.

Some of those plans look astonishing but I wanted to focus on the darker side of this story.

First of all. Mark Zuckerberg is getting into every part of our life, and I’m not talking about abusing our privacy by containing all our social interactions on one platform and collecting data from cookies. We are talking about getting into our real life and senses. Let’s imagine those perfect glasses Facebook is going to make. Are you really thinking no date will be collected by wearing them? Sight and hearing will be no anonymous no more. Oculus Rift will also steal our privacy. Our performance and side things we do during work will be definitely observed also. Before we get to the most worrying point four, let’s talk about the black horse of all. Closed groups and chats mean more precise targets for all companies so much so that (as a joke of course) no cookies will be needed on Facebook. As a little explanation, as I jumped into conclusion very fast Cambridge Analytica made little games on Facebook that collected data from users and tools of this company was so precise that they were able to guess which regions in America are most likable to vote for Donald Trump. As we all know, he won. Now imagine doing the same thing only as an excuse to be more “connected” to the people you share interests with. You will definitely be more “connected” also with companies that want to sell you their product. Now the government part. It’s not about the company that knows a thing or two about you and what ads show up on your board. It’s also about safety and privacy and I can’t imagine a world when for a single message I can get arrested not mentioning Facebook glasses, coming into your job so daily life. Our life, unfortunately, will be fully interrogated as Mark Zuckerberg wants it. Democracy died.