Today (12 September 2021) is a big day for Cardano because the Alonzo hard fork upgrade will finally bring smart contracts and NFT support to this third-largest blockchain. This upgrade means that Cardano will finally be able to compete with Ethereum because of the added functionalities.
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After my previous post about the history of bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain, I wanted to get a better understanding of how bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain work and to share this with you. Please note that I purposely distinguish between bitcoin and Bitcoin. The reason I do this is that bitcoin refers to the cryptocurrency “bitcoin” and Bitcoin refers to the software that facilitates the transfer and safekeeping of bitcoin, the currency. In this post, I take bitcoin and the Bitcoin blockchain as an example but the main concept works the same for every blockchain of any cryptocurrency.
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When I open my Google Chrome browser, I know there are certain risks involved when I enter “Battlefield Internet”. But like a lot of people out there, I have a busy job and when I get home I’m tired and I don’t want to bother about things that don’t immediately impact my general life. This type of unawareness is exactly what web specialized companies (legal) and cyber criminals (illegal) take advantage of with only one goal: financial benefits.
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Blockchain has always fascinated me but I never took the time to get a grasp of the concept of blockchain. This changed in March of this year. I decided to do a deep dive into blockchain and did some research about both blockchain and cryptocurrency. I started with the history of blockchain and cryptocurrency (especially Bitcoin where it all started) and the basic mechanics behind this. After this research, I still can’t say that I’m an expert on blockchain and cryptocurrency but I think it gave me a better understanding of the basics.
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In my journey to get a better understanding of how current web-based technology works, I run into a lot of technical terms. A lot of terms are abbreviations and known to me but if I start thinking about these terms (for instance HTTP) I have no idea what it precisely does and why it’s used. To get a better understanding of all this terminology and its use, I decided to write down these terms now and then and explain them in one of my posts. The first items I would like to dive into are the key concepts of the web: Hypertext, HTTP(S) and URI/URL/URN.
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Everybody loves free (digital) services. But as many people know, these so-called free services have a catch most of the time and are not completely free. Unfortunately, not everybody is a good samaritan. The devil is in the details and these details are in complicated Terms and Conditions that nobody reads. Additionally, free services can lack proper security measures. A good example is the free WiFi service. In this post, I will provide tips on how to protect your privacy and your data against attackers on public WiFi.
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In the first part about building a blog, I discussed the first steps you have to take before starting to build the blog itself: acquiring a domain name and a host. In this part, I will continue to show you my journey and explorations in the world of building a website. For myself, it was important to at least get a bit of understanding of how everything works and mainly to answer my question: “what kind of technology is behind the fact that building a website is so easy nowadays?”. You don’t have to be a wizkid anymore with insane programming skills to build a great website and I wanted to know why.
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