How to time-travel?

Time traveling is an exciting concept that has been portrayed in several fiction, literature, and movies. While I am not sure about its feasibility, at least we can simulate the feeling. :D

Let's try, step by step, to travel back in time.

The first step, pick a time and location that you like to time travel. It should be a location that you have been in the past time. It should have given you strong memories. It does not have to be happy memories. Not all the sad memories are necessarily terrible.

Have you decided a place and a time? I have for myself, chosen a few pairs of locations and years:  2017 in Louvain-la-Neuve, 2016 in Atlanta, 2015 in Rijeka, 2013 in Kista, 1987 until 2012 several parts of Colombo, and 2012 in New Delhi.

Now for this to work without causing confusion to you, you should not have visited the same places in between. Otherwise, the memories collide. :D For example, I haven't visited Rijeka after 2015 and Kista after 2013.

Also not all the places will take you back in time giving a time-traveling atmosphere. I was in Stockholm for the 2nd part of my EMDC MSc program in 2013. But I returned to Portugal for my thesis in 2014. However, it did not feel the same anymore. My friends did not return to Portugal with me. So make sure to bring the same people with you when you plan your time traveling. Might be a good idea to wear the same clothes too, to bring back the exact moment. :P

Next, are you back in your destination [location, time], such as [Rijeka, 2015]? Great. Make sure to go to the same restaurants, beaches, and universities that you frequented. Use the same mode of transport. If possible, eliminate anything new. Like, if you never owned a laptop in 2015, don't bring a laptop with you. :D

Great! Music plays a huge role in our memory. Listen to some songs or watch some music videos of the time. It works best if you did not listen to these songs in between. Otherwise, the original memories you allocated to the song might have faded away.

I have picked the below song, which was always playing in Rijeka wherever I went in 2015. I also did not listen to this song afterward. So it is my song of 2015 summer in Rijeka. :P

It is also important to create memories in the first place, to be able to recall them. Making memories is not easy. We don't remember every minor detail of our daily life. But we do remember when we do something remarkable or different. As a thought experiment, during my recent visit to Barcelona, I had Udon at the nearest restaurent for all 3 dinners. I am sure I will remember this forever. :D

Software-Defined Data Services: Interoperable and Network-Aware Big Data Executions

Today I presented my work titled "Software-Defined Data Services: Interoperable and Network-Aware Big Data Executions" at the Fifth International Conference on Software Defined Systems (SDS), in UPC Barcelona. This is my third time in Barcelona. However, this is the first time I am on my own here without my friends, as my previous visits were for the EMDC and EMJD-DC events in 2013 and 2015. This is my 4th time attending an SDS conference consecutively. 

I have attended the SDS'17 (Valencia, Spain), SDS'16 (Berlin, Germany), and SDS'15 (Tempe, AZ, USA) before. I have only missed the first installment of SDS (SDS'14), as I was doing my MSc those days, and my topic was not related to SDS. SDS started as a workshop co-located with IC2E in 2014, and promoted as a symposium in 2016. It graduated as a conference on its own in 2017.

Software-Defined Data Services: Interoperable and Network-Aware Big Data Executions from Pradeeban Kathiravelu

Abstract: Services that access or process a large volume of data are known as data services. Big data frameworks consist of diverse storage media and heterogeneous data formats. Through their service-based approach, data services offer a standardized execution model to big data frameworks. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) increases the programmability of the network, by unifying the control plane centrally, away from the distributed data plane devices. In this paper, we present Software-Defined Data Services (SDDS), extending the data services with the SDN paradigm. SDDS consists of two aspects. First, it models the big data executions as data services or big services composed of several data services. Then, it orchestrates the services centrally in an interoperable manner, by logically separating the executions from the storage. We present the design of an SDDS orchestration framework for network-aware big data executions in data centers. We then evaluate the performance of SDDS through microbenchmarks on a prototype implementation. By extending SDN beyond data centers, we can deploy SDDS in broader execution environments.


This paper received the Best Paper Award at the SDS 2018!

Please read more about this news at the INESC-ID web site.

Is freelancer.com legit or scam?

It is 5.5 years since I reviewed Freelancer.com in my blog post "Is Freelancer.com a scam?". The post remained my most viewed blog post with 200+ comments for quite a long time. Most of the comments are from the users who agree that Freelancer.com is indeed a scam site. I can understand that they found my blog post by doing a quick Google search on "Freelancer.com scam." However, what is more interesting, some readers actually defended Freelancer.com. Interestingly, some of them did not really look genuine (why would you search and land on a blog post discussing whether freelancer.com is a scam unless you were searching for it?) But that it is just a guess. I also noticed canned comments from Freelancer.com employees (most likely bots), suggesting the concerned users to email their support team.

There have been alternatives popping up every once in a while. For example, the HubStaff. However, I am not really comfortable with recommending any of these. As in the past, the ones that many of us suggested as better alternatives to Freelancer.com were later acquired by Freelancer.com anyway. So the new ones can come to the same fate, or they themselves can turn into large evil corporations.

Apart from the issues of landing with a scam employer or a scam employee, Freelancer.com itself is a heavily unethical platform. By searching around the Internet (for example, read Freelancer.com is destroying my life), or reading the tens of comments in my previous blog post on Freelancer.com, you can get a taste of it. Most of the blame on the platform comes from its unethical way of charging. One particular case even I encountered was, the employee is charged the Freelancer.com 10% fees (which can be as high as 100$, if the project is 1000$) even if the employer turns out to be just a scammer. Since the employee did not get any benefit of the platform, any ethical organization would just refund the money. Other obvious issues are lower transaction rates, even lower than your banks, and the painfully long time they take to transfer your money! Transferwise does it at least 10 times faster! That is one ethical company. Freelancer.com on the other hand, an unethical bullying company. The most inhumane characteristics of Freelancer.com is when they randomly choose to block your account and ask for random verifications (as reported by commenters, sometimes driver's licenses are not accepted despite being listed as an accepted form of verification in the Freelancer.com itself).

If you must use sites such as Freelancer.com, try to work from a cheaper third-world country such as Bangladesh or Thailand. Not from Liechtenstein. Because you are not going to get paid higher just because you live in a more expensive or more developed country. 

Moreover, you real-world credentials do not really matter in the Internet world. It is hard to verify on the Internet whether you are who you claim to be. So even if you are an expert, you still have to build your online empire from ground-zero. Start this when you do not really need money, as a past-time. Working on Freelancing websites is not going to give you money quick unless you already have an account with justified success. The early days will be plainly painful as you put in work to a negligible payment (since your competitors are from cheaper countries anyway). 

There are of course many success stories. Many were just lucky or from the third-world countries with a competitive advantage on such global platforms. For example, 5$/hour is high in many South or South East Asian countries, while it is very little for most of the western countries. Others had the patience and time to build their profile slowly, till they can reach the 40 - 50$ hourly rate.

My verdict: Find a real job in the real world if possible. Want to be self-employed? Find local employers and build up a brand, so that you can find clients without greedy middlemen such as Freelancer.com. Freelancer.com is not entirely a scam. But it operates in a gray area with shady business practice (non-existing customer service paired with questionable antics to extract more money from the clients/users), acquiring competitors aiming to operate in a near-monopoly.

The horror of losing access to your email

Shenzhen Skyline

There are a few free and trialware VPN services (such as Psiphon and LanternPro) that come handy when you travel in countries with censorship. I had a hard time recently with Google locking my account due to suspicious activity (logging in from a random location via VPN). It was not letting me in since I could not remember the answer to my security questions and I did not have my phone working with me as I was traveling. Eventually, I restored the access to my account. However, it was quite a scary experience given how much I rely on my email account.

Inconsistencies at the Airports

Raspberry and Green Tea KitKat from Jeju

Airport security can be confusing. In the US airports, you should remove your shoes and belt, and also take out the laptop and big tablets from your bag, as you pass through the security scanner. Elsewhere, it is not necessary to remove your shoes as long as the shoes do not look bulky or big. In China, I found that removing belt is not necessary. However, in addition to the laptop, you should also take the camera, power bank, and umbrellas out. It is interesting to note these differences though I am not quite sure of the reasoning behind these choices.

Traveling is always fun, though preparing for it and its aftermath are not always fun. Due to deadlines and busy schedules, I usually have to work while on travels too. This time was no exception, with a deadline to submit my paper coming close by. However, it is all good memories.