Through the eye of a needle... advanced to the next round of the Fantasy Premier League Cup

This week in the  Fantasy Premier League I encountered an interesting situation. Here is what the points for my team looked like after all the games were played and the points had been rewarded

I ended up with 82 points.

And here is how many points my cup opponent had.

As you can see we both had 82 points. I then started to wonder who would advance?

I looked up the rules

How the cup works Each qualifying team will be randomly drawn against another in the first round. The winner (the team with the highest Gameweek score minus any transfer points), will progress to the second round and another random draw, the losers are out! This process continues until the final round when the two remaining teams contest the cup final. If a cup match is drawn, then the following tie-breaks will be applied until a winner is found: 

Most goals scored in the Gameweek 
Fewest goals conceded in the Gameweek 
Virtual coin toss

So then I checked the goals scored. We both had 5 goals scored. I then checked how many goals we conceded. I conceded 3, while my opponent conceded 5.  I also was very lucky that his bench looked like this, there was nobody to replace his defender  :-)

The end result was this.




If this was reversed, I would have been really pissed

I am sure that I will be eliminated from the cup next week now that I made this post....  :-(

TWID Dec 24, 2017

This is a post detailing some stuff I did, learned, posted and tweeted this week, I call this TWID (This week in Denis). I am doing this mostly for myself... a kind of an online journal so that I can look back on this later on. Will use the label TWID for these


Finished Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World 
It's on okay book and I said this before, it's not technical. Sometime I think the authors live in some utopia thinking the blockchain will solve everything. The issues they list are either already solved or have no need for blockchain per se

See also this part from a review here: Only good for the kool-aid

The thing is, many of the things Tapscott claims CAN be fixed by blockchain could ALSO be fixed with a decent website. May of the problems he highlights are social, human problems that remain unsolved because they are hard and no one has rallied the will to tackle them. For example, the problem with governance isn't that there isn't a way to expose all the corrupt interactions to trace who paid for what and which parts of which bills were advocated by which legislator. It's that those in power don't have the will to build a system to expose all of that. Blockchain isn't going to magically convince governments to change how they do business any more than the ability to post their correspondence, schedules, donations, and votes on the web did.

 I had a hard time finishing the book. The *one* thing it is good for is giving the reader a sense of the insane hyperbole that many blockchain advocates spew. Tapscott drank the kool-aid, and it is useful to understand how many miracles people say this stuff will create. Not because the miracles are likely, but because making a coherent case for the actual changes that blockchain will catalyze requires understanding the entire context of the conversation that has gone before

I completely agree with that what's written in the review

Worked from home two days in a row and had a huge podcast backlog, this is just part of it

This is supposed to be a quiet period at work however one co-worker is on vacation, the other had a kidney transplant so I am responsible for their stuff while they are out till January 12th or so. So far I have been bombarded with requests by business folks.

This Week I Learned

This week I learned that the chocolate puzzle I have is really hard to finish  :-(

This Week I tweeted

Bitcoin Takes Bigger Wall Street Stage With Smooth CME Debut

Bitcoin futures started trading Sunday night at CME Group Inc.’s venue, a week after Chicago rival Cboe Global Markets Inc. introduced similar derivatives on the volatile cryptocurrency. CME is a much bigger player in futures, so many traders expected it to make a bigger splash in the nascent space.

CME got off to a faster start with more efficient pricing. Its most-active contract changed hands 221 times in the first hour versus 570 during Cboe’s debut. But that’s a win because CME’s contracts are five times more valuable -- they’re tied to five bitcoins compared with only one with Cboe’s futures.

Smooth sailing....


European Ruling Buries Uber’s Platform Myth
The European Court of Justice has ruled, without the possibility of appeal, that Uber is a taxi company, not a software one. This is the official beginning of the end of the tech industry's deceitful attempt to present its innovation as something outside previous human experience and therefore outside the scope of previous regulation.

The ruling ends a legal battle started in 2014 by a taxi drivers' association in Barcelona, called Associacion Profesional Elite Taxi. It accused Uber of unfair competition: The Uber Pop service used unlicensed drivers and wasn't authorized to carry passengers. Uber, as it always does, claimed it was just an intermediary connecting drivers with passengers

Of course it's a cab, instead of using your hand or a phone, you use an app to hail it.


Like Black Monday....

Bitcoin crashed hard on December 22nd. I decided to create a poll and ask if people thought that this was a crash or a correction., You can see the results below

A correction that was due or the start of a crash... what is your opinion https://t.co/aOGB0cFJZT #BTC #Bitcoin #CryptoCurrencies #link

— Denis Gobo (@DenisGobo) December 22, 2017

Netflix Now Supports HDR on Windows 10

We are thrilled to announce the addition of High Dynamic Range (HDR) support on Windows 10 for both the Edge browser and the Netflix app. With this update, Netflix members who have a supported device and a premium plan can enjoy amazing Netflix movies and shows in HDR. 
With HDR enabled, fans can immerse themselves in the delicious colors of Chef’s Table, the terrifying depths of the Upside Down in Stranger Things 2, and enjoy the upcoming Netflix film Bright starring Will Smith. And this is just the beginning! Today, we have over 200 hours of HDR entertainment, and in 2018 even more HDR PCs will enter the market and support the growing number of Netflix originals.

I am still waiting on 4D TV.....


Why hasn’t The Year of the Linux Desktop happened yet?

Having spent 20 years of my life on Desktop Linux I thought I should write up my thinking about why we so far hasn’t had the Linux on the Desktop breakthrough and maybe more importantly talk about the avenues I see for that breakthrough still happening. There has been a lot written of this over the years, with different people coming up with their explanations. My thesis is that there really isn’t one reason, but rather a range of issues that all have contributed to holding the Linux Desktop back from reaching a bigger market. Also to put this into context, success here in my mind would be having something like 10% market share of desktop systems, that to me means we reached critical mass. So let me start by listing some of the main reasons I see for why we are not at that 10% mark today before going onto talking about how I think that goal might possible to reach going forward.

I think Apple is the biggest reason here, all those people who might have switched to Linux, they switched to MacOS instead.  Will 2018 be the year of the Linux desktop.... answer is NO!!

Some cool stuff you might enjoy

United States of Greater Austria

The United States of Greater Austria (German: Vereinigte Staaten von Groß-Österreich) was a proposal, conceived by a group of scholars surrounding Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, that never came to pass. This specific proposal was conceived by the lawyer and politician Aurel Popovici in 1906 and aimed at federalizing Austria-Hungary to help resolve widespread ethnic and nationalist tensions.

Who knows what Europe would look like today if Gavrilo Princip didn't fire those shots that  killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914

More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria

Some pics I took

Power Breakfast.... Eggs, sweet potatoes, peperoncini, arugola and spicy tomato sauce

TWID Dec 17, 2017

TWID Dec 17, 2017 This is a post detailing some stuff I did, learned, posted and tweeted this week, I call this TWID (This week in Denis). I am doing this mostly for myself... a kind of an online journal so that I can look back on this later on. Will use the label TWID for these

Married 20 years this week, amazing how time flies, I can still remember like it was yesterday.

Started to read: Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World ..
Read about 30% or so until now. This book is OK, nothing special. This is not a technical book, it is a chronology and prediction of blockchain itself. If you want a technical book, take a look at Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

Went to the gym, had to bike 5 miles in 15 degree weather without a hat. Man it was brutal when you go downhill, my feet were still frozen 45 minutes after I arrived at the gym, don't even ask about my ears, they were red like Rudolph's nose

Transferred some bitcoin to my blockchain wallet from bitminter, I mined these 3 years ago, not sure what to do next with it. Should I leave it or convert it into cash? When I say bitcoin I mean a fraction of a bitcoin not a whole bitcoin.

This Week I Learned

Alphabet City.. what the cops say those letters stand for
Listened to the latest London Real podcast episode with John Joseph from the Cro-Mags some crazy stuff that this guy went through. At one point he discusses Alphabet City, this is a part of Manhattan that used to be really bad. Here is what the cops said about it

Avenue A: Adventure
Avenue B: Bold
Avenue C: Crazy
Avenue D: Dead

I have only been up till Avenue B when I left in the city. On Avenue B there was an after hour bar I used to go to, I believe it was called La Barca, and the only reason I ended up there is because Save The Robots was closed one night and these dudes were handing out business  card for this joint. I have been to Avenue A many times, a buddy of mine had a bar on 10st and A, this was near the Russian bath house. Not far from Alphabet City was St. Mark's Place and Webster Hall, I spent many evenings there between 1993 and 1996.

This Week I tweeted

Hundreds of Tesla Model 3 vehicles spotted at delivery centers as regular customer deliveries start

Hundreds of Tesla Model 3 vehicles were spotted at delivery centers in California this weekend as regular customer deliveries are reportedly starting.
As expected last week, the early Tesla Model 3 reservation holders that were in the first batch to be invited to configure their car without the Tesla employee priority delivery are starting to take delivery this week.

It looks like this is finally getting some traction. Have not seen as model 3 in the wild yet. At the Princeton Junction train station there are about 5 Tesla model S cars, I also see a model X regularly


Yahoo Finance has added over 100 cryptocurrency quote pages

Here is what the heatmap page looks like

I like they way this looks, I actually haven't visited Yahoo finance in a very long time, I was using Google finance for the last 10 years or so. The latest redesign made Google finance unusable for me, maybe I will use Yahoo finance instead, I do still use Google sheets with their finance formulas.

SpaceX uses SQL Server

Yes, it's true, the position is still open, Elon Musk knows when he sees a good thing  :-)

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop code for automation of tasks in T-SQL, PowerShell, and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

• Set up database monitoring

• Develop stored procedures and optimize queries via T-SQL

• Develop detailed test conditions and test cases to ensure quality of queries and reports

• Research and troubleshoot data questions

• Collaborate on problem resolution, team decisions and project planning

Check it out here: http://www.spacex.com/careers/position/209011

Twenty companies including Unilever and the Virgin Group announced on Tuesday that they will phase out usage of coal in order to combat climate change

Twenty companies including Unilever and the Virgin Group announced on Tuesday that they will phase out usage of coal in order to combat climate change.

The companies announced their decision at the One Planet Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Coming a month after the COP23 in Bonn, Germany, the announcement puts the companies in a position similar to the "Powering Past Coal Alliance," a partnership of 26 nations founded in Bonn by Britain, France, Mexico, New Zealand, Costa Rica and the Marshall Islands.

Among the list of companies committing to the coal phase out are BT, Engie, Kering, Diageo, Marks & Spencer, Orsted and Storebrand.

That's a good thing

The Trump administration banned CDC officials from using certain words

In a 90-minute briefing on Thursday, policy analysts at the nation's leading public health institute were presented with the menu of seven banned words, an analyst told the paper. On the list: "diversity," "fetus," "transgender," "vulnerable," "entitlement," "science-based" and "evidence-based."

Alternative word choices reportedly were presented in some cases. For instance, in lieu of "evidence-based" or "science-based," an analyst might say, "CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes," the source said. But those working on the Zika virus's effect on developing fetuses may be at a loss for appropriate -- or acceptable -- words.

It's not April 1st, fake news or the year 1500, this is just incredible.

Some cool stuff you might enjoy

I discovered OneTab this week. The OneTab browser extension collapses a messy browser full of tabs into one tab with a bulleted list of your previous tabs! This helps conserve computer memory, it also declutters your browser. You can also share all your collapsed URLs with someone if you wish to do so

Here is what it looks like

To restore a tab, all you have to do is click on the link. Get it here https://www.one-tab.com/

Some pics I took

Took this pic after it snowed a little, pretty don't you think?