FREELANCE ISN’T FREE: THE HIGH COST OF NEW YORK CITY’S FREELANCE ISN’T FREE ACT ON HIRING PARTIES

Recently, the New York City Council enacted the Freelance Isn’t Free Act (FIFA) to protect freelancers from non-payment. Among FIFA’s protections is the requirement that hiring parties provide a written contract to freelancers for any work exceeding $800 over a 120-day period. As the nation’s first legislation ensuring freelancers’ rights, FIFA marks a major turning point in the development of protections for the gig economy’s growing independent workforce. While its purpose is laudable and necessary, this Note argues that FIFA is currently too ambiguous. To resolve FIFA’s ambiguity, this Note recommends, at the very least, amending FIFA to include: 1) a specific jurisdictional provision; 2) a clarification of the definition of a freelance worker; and 3) a good faith defense provision for hiring parties. Additionally, this Note suggests that all hiring parties—whether located in New York City or conducting business with freelancers located in New York City—take the following actions: 1) confirm whether their workers are acting as freelancers under FIFA’s protections or employees; 2) enter into written contracts with any existing and future freelancers; 3) pay freelancers as agreed; and 4) be proactive if a complaint is received from a freelancer under FIFA

MapReduce Operations with WS-VLAM Workflow Management System

AbstractWorkflow management systems are widely used to solve scientific problems as they enable orchestration of remote and lo- cal services such as database queries, job submission and running an application. To extend the role that workflow systems play in data-intensive science, we propose a solution that integrates WMS and MapReduce model. In this paper, we discuss possible solution of combining MapReduce and workflow applications, we describe the implementation of chosen solution based on metaprogramming approach in Ruby programming language and evaluate it with an example of word count application

Enhancing VLAM workflow model with MapReduce operations

MapReduce frameworks proved to be a good solution for storing and processing large amounts of data. Thanks to data parallelism, they allow to move computations very close to the storage and therefore to reduce an influence of "I/O bottleneck". Workflow Management Systems, in turn, are widely used for modeling of scientific applications. Users that are willing to use MapReduce frameworks in their workflows have to run separate environment to develop Map/Reduce operations. In this paper we propose an approach that will allow to extend existing application models by MapReduce routines. Our solution bases on DSL constructed on top of Ruby programming language. It follows examples of Sawzall and Pig Latin languages and allows to define Map/Reduce operations in minimalist way. Moreover, because the language is based on Ruby, the model allows to use user defined routines and existing Ruby libraries. A particular model of the workflow management system can be extended with our DSL letting users to use one environment for developing the workflow and MapReduce application.</p

Convergence of Laguerre Impulse Response Approximation for Noninteger Order Systems

One of the most important issues in application of noninteger order systems concerns their implementation. One of the possible approaches is the approximation of convolution operation with the impulse response of noninteger system. In this paper, new results on the Laguerre Impulse Response Approximation method are presented. Among the others, a new proof of convergence of approximation is given, allowing less strict assumptions. Additionally, more general results are given including one regarding functions that are in the joint part of and spaces. The method was also illustrated with examples of use: analysis of “fractional order lag” system, application to noninteger order filters design, and parametric optimization of fractional controllers

Perspective on the physics of two-dimensional perovskites in high magnetic field

Two-dimensional (2D) metal halide perovskites consist of atomically thin layers composed of low bandgap metal-halide slabs, surrounded by high bandgap organic ligands, which behave as barriers. In this Perspective, we highlight how the use of large magnetic fields has been an extremely insightful tool to unravel some of the fundamental electronic properties of 2D perovskites. We focus on the combination of magnetoabsorption measurements and theoretical modeling to extract the carrier effective mass, on the use of magnetic field to clarify the fine structure of the exciton manifold, and on how magnetic fields can be helpful to correctly assign side peaks in the complex absorption or photoluminescence spectra displayed by 2D perovskites. We finally point out some challenges which might be successfully addressed by magneto-optical experimental techniques