title
stringlengths
1
200
text
stringlengths
10
100k
url
stringlengths
32
829
authors
stringlengths
2
392
timestamp
stringlengths
19
32
tags
stringlengths
6
263
A letter to a young organizer
There’s no getting around it. Organizing is hard. But the context you are organizing in? It’s a whole different thing. When I was coming up, the expectations felt big. People in the neighborhood were being screwed seven ways to Sunday. So, each night we’d knock 50 doors, have a dozen conversations, and go deep with three or four folks — sign them up as members committed to hosting a house meeting. We were expected to build a neighborhood base, organize actions, put 200 people in a room every couple months, and win. None of this was easy. And, it’s different from what’s required today. You are organizing in an era of constant crises. You feel the weight of a country coming apart at the seams. You have to build a base, develop community leaders, engage in local fights AND you are called to spring into action as soon as another Black person is killed by police, even if a thousand miles away, when children are separated from their parents at the border, a Supreme Court seat opens, a pandemic strikes. After you’ve put it all on the line to defeat Donald Trump, you pivot to Georgia. The most important election of a lifetime is followed by the two most important runoffs of a lifetime. The results from Georgia come in. You’ve pulled off what they say could not be done. You feel proud. Hopeful, even. Finally — after four years of Trump — maybe you can be more at ease, if just for a bit. Apparently in today’s America, “a bit” lasts around six hours. Because before you catch your breath, when you should be celebrating, armed white supremacists storm the U.S. Capitol. The celebration and rest will have to wait. Another of the most important moments in American history is unfolding on your watch. All of this because you are no spectator. You hold the beauty and the responsibility of being an organizer. You know good and well you can make a difference. And still, you gotta hit 50 doors a night, have those 12 conversations, sign up a few new members, move people into action or whatever the expectations are in your organization (and in the context of a pandemic). And most importantly, you need to teach others to do all of these things too. If all the pivoting means you can’t be doing these things, you wonder. Am I making the right choices? What are the costs of constantly reacting? What is my compass in this chaotic period? Twenty-five years into organizing, I ask the same questions. When unsure, I go back to the fundamentals, as I understand them. I’ve had periods where I’ve been grounded in these, and times I’ve lost my way. The most fulfilling have been marked by a deep commitment to these fundamentals. 1. Start Where People Are At The best organizing starts not with mobilizing, but listening. Always be listening, seeking to understand people’s most pressing struggles, greatest hopes, and what is front of mind for them. The first public meeting I organized in Chicago was an accountability session with the city’s Deputy Director of Rodent Control (yeah, I didn’t know there was such a thing either). Taking it to the rats is not why most people get into organizing, but that’s what people wanted. And if we aren’t organizing around what people want — and they wanted the rats gone — are we really organizing? Or are we doing something else? 2. It’s Not Where People Start, but Where They Could End Up Organizing is the process of creating a path for the still waking. We are not here to organize the converted. In her new book, The Purpose of Power, Alicia Garza spells this out plain as day: “We can’t be afraid to establish a base that is larger than the people we feel comfortable with. We have to reach beyond the choir and take seriously the task of organizing the unorganized — the people who don’t already speak the same language.” Our primary challenge is not that the choir is unorganized, but that the choir is too damn small. 3. Master the One-on-One A good one-on-one meeting helps you understand someone’s path, their motivations, and what is keeping them from realizing their fullest potential. Done right, they can literally be life-changing. A conversation that starts with someone wondering why they even said “yes” to the meeting, turns into a gift — revealing things about themselves and society they had never seen so clearly until you, the organizer, came into their life. What an amazing thing to be able to offer to another person. The pace of today’s organizing can tempt us to skip this practice, because we “have to get down to business.” But this IS the business. Something profound about organizing will be lost if we don’t continue to invest in the art and craft of a good one on one. 4.Create the Arena for People to Become Leaders As organizers we create the arena for people to become leaders. From the house meeting to the biggest direct action you ever organize, you are building opportunities for people to step into leadership. Little builds the connective tissue of it all like going into the battle together. Whether a protest outside the Mayor’s office, a direct action at the bank’s shareholder meeting, or helping lead a meeting with elected officials, these big moments advance our campaigns, but also transform us as individuals, and can transform entire organizations. There’s an intensity to going into battle together. Going public is a risk. Taking that risk together builds bonds between each other and the organization. This allows us to take even greater risks, and hold together when the chips are down. 5. Don’t Do for Others What They Can (and Would Gladly) Do for Themselves Our job is to create opportunities for others to develop. This is how we develop skills in the community and build broader ownership of it all. It’s also how we get bigger — we can only grow so much if we are holding all the work. Each time we fail to share responsibility is a lost opportunity for others to develop. I’ll never forget my first public meeting. My mentor at the time, Mike Evans, noticed I was doing most of the work to set up the meeting. He pointed out that the people who showed up early could remain spectators, or they could be a part of making the meeting a success. Picking up on the point, I invited folks to help set up tables and put up signs. They were happy to help, and they instantly became more invested in the meeting. Lots of small acts like this add up. 6. Life Is Hard, Winning Is Important Securing victories — big and small — builds faith in the work. Wins provide evidence for members that the process of organizing — with all of the other demands on their time — does create real impact in their community. We have to be winning. Nearly as important is celebrating the wins. A while back, one of the founders of National People’s Action, Anne-Marie Douglas, stopped by to share some stories. When asked what was something the organization did really well in her time, she paused, then said, “we always celebrated the victories. Always.” It’s true. I remember as a young NPA organizer, when we’d win, the leadership would shut down the office and we’d head out to a bar or to the Italian joint around the corner. Hell, sometimes we celebrated the anniversaries of our victories. Sometimes the wins are few and far between. When they come, enjoy them, and do it together. These are some of the fundamentals that I try to return to. If you crave more grounding in these fundamentals, seek out that support. Find the great practitioner of the one-on-one meeting, the time-tested creator of the arena, the folks who know how to craft the campaign to win tangible and structural change. You’ll be surprised how thrilled they will be to hear from you. We are in a critical period in the project of truly becoming an America that has reckoned and reconciled with all the contradictions between our founding words and so many horrific acts, and the structures that allow them to continue. Many days, the work of becoming a new America is a beautiful thing. Other days, that progress is met with the hateful backlash that you would expect. Because of this, organizing is as relevant as it has ever been, and as needed. And you are the young organizers doing it in this most critical period in our history. You are an organizer. You bring not bread, but yeast. You are here to agitate and inspire more people to ask hard questions, to uncover hidden truths, to realize their power, and to do all of this with lots of other people. What an amazing thing. With love and respect, George Goehl
https://medium.com/@georgegoehl/a-letter-to-a-young-organizer-c0eebd3d1c59
['George Goehl']
2021-02-12 02:35:42.016000+00:00
['Movement', 'Racial Justice', 'Social Change', 'Social Justice', 'Community Engagement']
Royale Partners with DeFi Insurance Industry Disruptor TIDAL Finance
We at Royale strongly identify with TIDAL as they too are looking to disrupt an already established and lucrative mainstream industry with the future-proof tools DeFi has to offer. With our commitment to the Buyback & Make model made possible by the Balancer protocol, we were instantly intrigued by TIDAL’s proposition to create “a Balancer-like insurance market built upon Polkadot that allows users to create custom insurance pools for one or more assets.” This unique design rewards insurance pool creators with a portion of returns from their deposits while at the same time provides competitive insurance premiums to prospective insurance buyers. At Royale, our aim is to integrate the TIDAL protocol into our platform. Not only do we intend to use TIDAL insurance markets to provide our own coverage to the monolithic Royale optimised stablecoin liquidity pool, but we also plan to make it easy for our platform users to buy their own coverage from TIDAL as well. Our developers will work closely with their team to share DeFi insights and cross-chain experience to deliver superior performance and sustained impact across our respective target industries. We are excited to harness this tidal energy governed by the moon as we bring iGDeFi to the world and be among the first DeFi platforms to be able to offer this insurance coverage as soon as the TIDAL protocol goes live. Royale continues its mission tidally locked in the orbit of the effulgent binary stars of our modern era, iGaming and DeFi, building an armada of blockchain partners along the way. It will be hard to follow up our first public partnership, among many to come, because this one covers more than two-thirds of the Earth’s surface. Yes, we took the tidal analogies there! That is just how amped we are about this coupling! We look forward to the discussions and community engagements in the coming weeks ahead as both projects propel forward into the cross-chain DeFi future. Stay tuned for more information as we continue to bound from strength to strength, building a better and fairer iGaming future with DeFi. About TIDAL TIDAL is a multi-chain open market for programmable insurance, empowering users to create custom insurance pools for multiple assets. With pool statistics and ranking, it is the most efficient smart contract insurance market, launching on the Polkadot Ecosystem. Please visit our partners on Medium or Twitter. About Royale Royale Finance is an industry-focused decentralised lending protocol. Its purpose is to create Web 3.0 smart-backed funding solutions using DeFi primitives in order to support the innovation of iGaming products and platforms. The combination of iGaming returns, uncorrelated to DeFi cryptoassets but powered by base layer DeFi protocols, we call iGDeFi. Follow us on Twitter and join our community on Telegram.
https://medium.com/officialroyale/royale-partners-with-defi-insurance-industry-disruptor-tidal-finance-549ece289eae
[]
2020-12-14 18:02:52.960000+00:00
['Polkadot', 'Cryptocurrency News', 'Defi', 'Insurance', 'Protocol']
Reflections from the past year
End of a chapter is always a good way to summarize and reflect back on what happened. The final weeks of a year are usually a good time to review the events of the past 12 months. For me the inspiration to reflect was not the year end, but the arrival of the freshly printed “The Light Book” of which I’m a co-author. 53 chapters of inspirational reflections, written by leaders from around the world. Depending on your personality, it’s either a chapter per week, or a one time year end injection of inspiration. So what are my reflections of this year, as the YoungBlood head coach? Well, you can’t get away from the fact that 2020 was the year of the pandemic, which had a significant impact on all of us. My main reflection is that we ALL were in this storm together, however in very different boats. Some were in a giant cruise ship, and barely even noticed the huge waves, whilst others had to battle the hurricane winds in a kayak. We made a decision early on in the year, that we would try to practice as much as possible. When the restrictions prevented us from having physical practices, we moved online and did a lot of theory sessions. Speaking to the players and coaches, they all agree that the practices were a crucial part of helping them manage this tough time. When you’re an athlete, there is something special about the football field. It’s a sanctuary, it’s a safe place, it’s a location where everything apart from sport disappears. The atmosphere in a locker room is always special, but this year it was almost electric. Our players really looked forward to spending the time together, and the hours on the field were really treasured. As much as kids love sitting in front of a computer, this year they grew to appreciate other things in life, like sport.
https://medium.com/@kings-insider/reflections-from-the-past-year-39edf6c881e4
['Dawid Ostręga']
2020-12-22 11:44:58.559000+00:00
['Sports', 'Leadership', 'Management', 'Coaching']
The Next Big Things in Machine Learning Is Coming Sooner Thanks to Covid-19
Technology The Next Big Things in Machine Learning Is Coming Sooner Thanks to Covid-19 Amazon and Apple already have a huge head start. Photo by Clark Street Mercantile on Unsplash Covid-19 has caused massive disruption to industries around the world. Airline and tourism were among the first ones to be hit hard due to entry restriction by most countries in an effort to curb the pandemic’s spread. Giant startups like Airbnb and Uber, among others, have also laid off some of their workers in an effort to shed expenses. Famous consulting firms, Accenture and Deloitte, did the same thing a couple of months ago. The list goes on and on. Among these industries, there is one, in particular, that may usher in the next trend in machine learning and AI— the retail industry. The following headlines hint at why: These global fashion companies have decided to close down physical stores and move their focus to online sales. The main reason, aside from shopper’s reluctance to venture into public places, is staggering rents. Take Singapore: when the “circuit-breaker” provisions went into effect — the national stay-at-home order—retail stores were closed. However, these stores still need to pay rent even though it could not operate. Meanwhile, online retailers’ stock prices, such as Amazon and Sea Group’s Shopee, are rising sharply amidst the spread of Covid-19. Mostly because people who are staying at home can still do online shopping even during lockdowns. The shift from companies having thousands of offline stores into focusing mainly on online sales is paving the way for retail AI. What is retail AI? Retail AI is essentially AI-related technologies that help the retail industry, from enhancing customer experiences, demand forecasting, inventory management, recommendation engines, chatbot, and so on. AI for retail has been around for a while now, such as H&M using AI to manage inventory and Sephora’s Color IQ for personalized make up recommendations. However, with big companies shifting to online sales, new use cases for AI in retail will surely emerge. New startups that specialize in providing retail AI solutions have also emerged, such as vue.ai and syte.ai. However, there are two major players that have been preparing for this shift. Amazon and Apple. Amazon’s Outfit-VITON Example of Outfit-VITON (source) Amazon recently published a paper on CVPR 2020. CVPR stands for Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, it is by far the most prestigious conference un the field of image processing and computer vision. Outfit-VITON (Virtual Try-ON), as they called it, will let them generate an image of how a combination of various outfits may look on a particular model. In other words, it would let users shop online and try on outfits virtually. The paper shows a promising result, producing better images than the previous state-of-the-art models. However, we have yet to try it since Amazon has not released such a feature on its website at the time of writing this. This technology may not be that accurate to help people choose their sizes for now, but it will help people to see how they would look like using a combination of clothes without having to go into physical stores. In the near future, it may be possible for a machine learning model to recommend the size of outfit that will match you the best, or even recommending outfit style for you. Oh, wait, Amazon already did that last one. Apple’s Augmented Reality Screenshot by Author from Apple (source) Did you remember when Apple first released the Measure app and everyone with an iPhone posts Instagram stories and tweets about them? Shortly after, the more critical people started questioning the accuracy of the app when they tried to measure the same object more than once and got different results. But that is about to change with the addition of this component in Apple’s latest products. The LiDAR. LiDAR stands for Light Detection And Ranging. It works by emitting laser to the environment and measuring the time it needs to bounce back into the sensor to calculate the distance of each point. The sensor will give extra information about the depth to the device, which would greatly increase the distance perception needed for AR. When Apple first announced iPad Pro with LiDAR sensors, the first thing that came to my mind is “Apple is really getting serious with AR.” With the release of iPhone 12 Pro with LiDAR, they are further confirming their intention to focus on AR in the coming years. Screenshot by Author from GANs for Good video (source) In the recent GANs for Good video, Ian Goodfellow explains how he and his team at Apple use GAN to enhance the user’s experience on AR. He explains that placing a shiny object that is supposed to have reflections on them is quite hard due to the fact that the camera could not see objects and environments outside of its point of view. Their solution? They use GAN, Ian’s creation back in 2014, to generate how the environment might look like and use it to help generate a more realistic reflection for the virtual object. If a company is not serious about developing AR, having a special team with Ian Goodfellow as the director is not something they would do. You can watch the part where Ian explains about how Apple use GAN to enhance their AR experience here. Retail AI x Augmented Reality So what will happen if we combine the power of retail AI and Augmented Reality? Advertisement of IKEA Place by IKEA (source) IKEA had developed IKEA Place using Apple’s ARKit to let its customers virtually place furniture inside their home through AR. This application is arguably easier than the one for online fashion retail, due to the fact that they do not have to take into account the dimension and body shape of people who would use the furniture. IKEA Place is just one of the examples of what retail AI and AR can do together. With the superior AR performance of LiDAR equipped iPhones, it will be far easier to achieve better results for retail AI that use image processing. For example, having the exact measurements of a person will produce better product size recommendation rather than having to predict the measurement of said person from a flat image and dealing with the prediction errors. Other use cases? The first thing that comes to mind is using AR to superimpose a virtual interior design of a building to help the users better visualize living inside the new design instead of just seeing it through rendered pictures. Not just furniture though, imagine something that can superimpose 3D design to the current building. An even more complicated AR use case is for beauty products and hairstyles. This would let users try on make-up, color their hair, and even switch their hairstyles using the help of machine learning. L’Oréal collaborated with Modiface to make an app for styling your hair, but it was not… refined. I tried downloading the application to see how it works but it was very glitchy and hard to make it work. Since then, Modiface has been acquired by L’Oréal. Last year, L’Oréal and Modiface has also teamed up with Amazon to let users virtually try make-up products while shopping through Amazon. Final thoughts The retail AI industry is growing rapidly, with syte.ai raising 22 million and vue.ai raising 17 million, both on their Series B funding. With big fashion companies such as Topshop, Zara, and H&M moving to online sales, the industry might be growing even more rapidly now. Augmented Reality is still in the phase where it is considered as something high tech and fun to play with, but not something that most people want to use yet. Apple might change that. They had a history of moving the market. Apple may not necessarily be the first-movers, but they are the one who actually make the masses want to use new technologies. Take the iPhone and the Apple Watch for example. Touchscreen phones have been around for a while before Apple introduced the iPhone, but a lot of people still used Blackberry phones before that. Similar with Apple Watch, the smartwatch industry had existed long before Apple released theirs. However, not a lot of people wore one back then. If history repeats itself, Apple could make Augmented Reality way more popular and mainstream when they release their AR Headsets and AR Glasses, which is rumored to be in the next couple of years. These advancements in AR coupled with Amazon’s recent research to let buyers try on outfits virtually and a lot of popular clothing brands moving to online sales might be the spark that AR needs to make it trending. We might see the adoption of retail AI and AR by companies in near future. Trying on outfits and other products online will greatly enhance the online shopping experience and might become a catalyst for fully online brands with no physical store. One last thing, if, or when, the retail AI and Augmented Reality finally takes off, Amazon and Apple might become two of the biggest players with the head start they have right now.
https://medium.com/swlh/the-next-big-things-in-machine-learning-is-coming-sooner-thanks-to-covid-19-df259d35aac5
['Rionaldi Chandraseta']
2020-10-29 17:32:26.568000+00:00
['Artificial Intelligence', 'Technology', 'Machine Learning', 'Retail', 'Augmented Reality']
The Day I Buried the Horse Tooth
I can’t remember now where I got the horse tooth. But where does a boy get any of the junk he collects? I remember I had a winter coat, the kind I called a caterpillar coat. Had a red bike reflector in the pocket for quite a while. A couple of little stones that struck sparks. A series of pocket knives. Who knows what all stuff I’ll never think of again. The horse tooth was special because it was part of an animal, and came from its mouth. So I’d carried it around for a very long time, a good portion of my life when you come to think about it, and back when time moves so slowly, too. Somehow I felt like I was its guardian. And then it wanted to be buried. The urge came on me several times before I acted on it. It seemed crazy, like a betrayal. This, after all, was the coolest thing I had, and I had been entrusted with it. But the urge got stronger and one day I stopped on my way to school, dug a hole in the ground, and buried the horse tooth. This was back when we did walk to school, or ride bikes. Milk cartons and computers hadn’t scared the bejeezus out of everyone yet, so we enjoyed a longer leash. It was, in a way, a cowardly choice of time and place, because I figured I could come dig it up on my way home if I felt I’d done the wrong thing. And sure enough, by lunch I had repented. Why, God knows. But it had come to feel bad, and after school I went back to the grave. But one patch of smalltown Georgia looks pretty much like any other, and it wasn’t in any of the places I was certain I had buried it. Which meant, I suddenly realized, that I had done absolutely the right thing. The spirit of the horse was now back in the earth completely. Balance had been restored to the universe. Still, you wonder what it is that can change a child’s heart like that, to invest so much into an object then so quickly want nothing more to do with it. It’s hard to recall anything so early with any real clarity. The brain can’t take that shape anymore. So many of the old patterns in the neural geography are lost in the overgrowth, or pruned out forever. So you look at it, your deepest past, and you feel it and you smell it, in shifting pieces and patches like light underwater. Maybe I wanted to get rid of it because it was important to me. And because it was just a thing. Every toddler is at heart an animist. And then somehow the spirits dissolve from out of the stuffing and the wood and the rocks, and it’s all just the furniture of the world now. So maybe it was either a ritual burial or enduring the sad dissolve of the mirage, to wake up one morning and put on my coat and come to understand I had a damn dirty horse’s tooth in my pocket for no real reason. Still, I think of it from time to time. Especially in the fall, not just because it happened then, but because fall is kind of a tooth burying season anyway. You want to shrug off your old habits like dead leaves, strip things down, get a little leaner, get your mind right to learn a few lessons from the winter because you know they’re coming. And besides, empty pockets are just open options after all.
https://medium.com/thinkpiece-magazine/the-day-i-buried-the-horse-tooth-aa91fd41e6ad
['Paul Thomas Zenki']
2020-12-26 06:34:08.056000+00:00
['Childhood', 'Thinkpiece Magazine', 'Nonfiction', 'Memoir', 'Life']
Q#10: Picking a survey group
You work for a large hardware company (one that manufactures watches, computers, and phones) and you’re trying to understand user sentiment towards the company’s brand and the products. You decide to send out a survey to a random set of users across different products. Can you create a query that samples across the different product offerings? The output of your query should be user_id and group (e.g. the sampling group the user belongs to). Your team will use this output to distribute the survey. You have a table with all users and their registered devices. The schema of the table is below: Table: user_devices Question from: [email protected] (Subscribe for free interview prep questions) Try it Youself! Answer: This question tests your understanding of the SQL (Structured Query Language) architecture, the go to tool for programmers who want to retrieve information from large databases. The typical pattern in SQL is to SELECT the columns of interest FROM the table/database name and then condition it using the WHERE clause. (Note: SQL statements and clauses do NOT need to be capitalized but it is usually done so by convention, the “;” is necessary to end your query as it is whitespace indifferent) # Example SELECT user_id FROM user_devices; Here we want to query a random subsample of users and we can do that with the more advanced SQL statements, such as TOP *N which allows us to select how many rows we want and ORDER BY Rand(), implementing our psuedorandom pick.
https://medium.com/foundational-data-science-interview-questions/q-10-picking-a-survey-group-20ea1be37217
['Abish Pius']
2020-12-15 18:18:07.210000+00:00
['Interview', 'Data Science', 'Beginners Guide', 'Sql']
[S9xE2] “Letterkenny” Series 9 Episode 2 || Full-Episode
☆~Stream : Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Full ☆ Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Full Episode ☆ Watch Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Full Series ☆ Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Full Episodes ☆ Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Stream Online ~☆ ☆ Watch Or Download : Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Full Episode ☆ Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 tv shows Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 television Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 series Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 FULL Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Trailer Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Promo Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Full HD Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 FULL EPISODE Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 FULL EPISODES Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Air date Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Sneek peek Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 HD Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 watching Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Full Eps. Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 watch Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 episode Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 google Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 Watch online Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 stream online Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 tv Letterkenny Season 9 Episode 2 online Overview Letterkenny follows Wayne, a good-ol’ country boy in Letterkenny, Ontario trying to protect his homegrown way of life on the farm, against a world that is constantly evolving around him. The residents of Letterkenny belong to one of three groups: Hicks, Skids, and Hockey Players. The three groups are constantly feuding with each other over seemingly trivial matters; often ending with someone getting their ass kicked. ❏ STREAMING MEDIA ❏ Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider. The verb to stream identifies the process of delivering or obtaining media in this manner.[clarification needed] Streaming refers to the delivery method of the medium, instead of the medium itself. Distinguishing delivery method from the media distributed applies particularly to telecommunications networks, as almost all of the delivery systems are either inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, music CDs). There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. For instance, users whose Internet connection lacks satisfactory bandwidth may experience stops, lags, or slow buffering of the content. And users lacking compatible hardware or software systems may be unable to stream certain content. Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real-time much as live television broadcasts content over the airwaves with a television signal. Live internet streaming takes a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio tracks interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is. Streaming is an option to file downloading, a process where the end-user obtains the entire file for this content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to get started on playing digital video or digital sound content before the complete file has been transmitted. The word “streaming media” can connect with media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are considered “streaming text”. ❏ COPYRIGHT CONTENT ❏ Copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to make copies of a creative work, usually for a limited time.[1][2][3][4][5] The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself.[6][7][8] A copyright is subject to limitations based on public interest considerations, such as the fair use doctrine in the United States. Some jurisdictions require “fixing” copyrighted works in a tangible form. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rights holders.[citation needed][9][10][11][12] These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and moral rights such as attribution.[13] Copyrights can be granted by public law and are in that case considered “territorial rights”. This means that copyrights granted by the law of a certain state, do not extend beyond the territory of that specific jurisdiction. Copyrights of this type vary by country; many countries, and sometimes a large group of countries, have made agreements with other countries on procedures applicable when works “cross” national borders or national rights are inconsistent.[14] Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction. Some countries require certain copyright formalities[5] to establishing copyright, others recognize copyright in any completed work, without a formal registration. It is widely believed that copyrights are a must to foster cultural diversity and creativity. However, Parc argues that contrary to prevailing beliefs, imitation and copying do not restrict cultural creativity or diversity but in fact support them further. This argument has been supported by many examples such as Millet and Van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, and Monet, etc.[15] ❏ GOODS OF SERVICES ❏ Credit (from Latin credit, “(he/she/it) believes”) is the trust which allows one party to provide money or resources to another party wherein the second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but promises either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date.[1] In other words, credit is a method of making reciprocity formal, legally enforceable, and extensible to a large group of unrelated people. The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment.[2] Credit is extended by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.
https://medium.com/@docosaj403/s9xe2-letterkenny-series-9-episode-2-full-episode-40976aac0f91
[]
2020-12-27 13:15:13.732000+00:00
['Letterkenny', 'Television', 'Season 9 Episode 2', 'Comedy']
Building An Interactive Stock Market Profile Chart Using Streamlit and Python Plotly Library
Market Profile Chart Development Setting Streamlit Configuration In the beginning, it is important to set our Streamlit app layout in landscape mode to offer an extended horizontal view of our stock market profile. Line 1: Use Streamlit set_page_config to set the required configuration for the Streamlit app. Line 2: Define the browser tab title. Line 3: Set the layout to “wide” so that it can fit all the chart components in a landscape view. Note: set_page_config must be the first Streamlit command and it can only be set once. Any violation will result in an error. Create two drop-down lists Here we create two drop-down lists using Streamlit in the sidebar. One drop-down list is to select an S&P 500 stock and another one is to choose a time interval to query historical stock prices using yFinance at a later stage. Line 1–3: Use selectbox method to create the first drop-down list. selectbox accepts two parameters: label and options list (e.g. symbols). The selectbox is preceded by sidebar so that the drop-down list is created in the sidebar corner. Line 4–6: Repeat a similar way above to create another drop-down list to select the time interval of the stock price. We limit our choice to only 4 options (“1m”, “5m”, “15m” and “30m”) with “m” referring to “minutes”. We can instantly visualize the two drop-down lists we have just created above by running our Streamlit app. To run the app, simply type the following command in our terminal/command prompt. streamlit run YourPythonFileName.py The Streamlit app will be up and running on our web browser and we shall see the two drop-down lists appears at the sidebar corner. Image prepared by the author Whenever we select a stock or a time interval from the drop-down lists, the chosen values will be stored at the variable ticker and i, respectively. Create a Numerical Input Field Now, let us add another numerical input field to the sidebar. The numerical input field will accept an integer to denote the number of end-of-day (EOD) stock prices data. Line 1: We use the Streamlit number_input method to create a numerical input field. The method enables us to define the minimum input value (min_value), the maximum input value (max_value) and the incremental step (step). Here we limit the input value in a range of 1–30 with an incremental step of 1. Image prepared by the author The numerical input field will appear at the sidebar corner below the second drop-down list created earlier. Acquisition and Processing of EOD Stock Price Data With the dropdown lists and the input field ready, we can now proceed to use the input values to acquire EOD stock price data using yFinance API. Line 1: yFinance offers a Ticker object which accepts a ticker symbol as an input parameter. When we choose a ticker symbol from the first drop-down list, the symbol value will be stored at the variable ticker and accepted as an input to the Ticker object. This will prompt the yFinance API to query stock data from Yahoo Finance and return all the relevant stock data to variable stock. Line 2: We make use of history method to selectively obtain the EOD stock prices within a defined timeframe. We set the interval and the period, using the input time interval, (i) and the number of days, (p) from the second drop-down and the numerical input field, respectively. This will return the EOD stock prices in a dataframe format and store them to the variable history_data. Line 3–4: Assign closing prices and volume to variable price and volume, respectively. Line 7–9: We are going to break down our stock prices into 20 bins. To do so we first get the min and max of the stock prices and then use NumPy linspace to create 20 equally distributed bins. (This is a required preliminary step to build a horizontal bar chart at a later stage.) Line 11: Create a 20-elements zero list, vol_ax, using the Numpy zeros. (This is also a required preliminary step to build a horizontal bar chart at a later stage.) Accumulating Volume for Each Price Level At this stage, we have already created 20 equally distributed bins which are stored at the prices_ax list. and each bin represents one price level. As mentioned in the early beginning, a market profile is a chart used to displays the total of stock volumes executed at each price level. To do so, we will need to create a mechanism to accumulate the stock volume for each price level. Line 1–3: Create a for loop to iterate through the stock prices and check if the current stock prices, prices[i], fall within the range of the first price level, price_ax[0] and the second price level, price_ax[1]. If so, accumulate the current volume, volume[i], to vol_ax[0]. Line 5–60: If prices[i] doesn’t fall within the range of the first and second price level, the app will move the program flow onto the next elif block to check the prices[i] against the subsequent price levels until the condition is met and accumulate current volume, volume[i] to the correct vol_ax element. Create Plotly Subplots At last, we are ready to use Plotly Library to create our desired market profile chart which consists of two subplot components. First subplot: A horizontal bar chart to show the distribution of total volume for each price level. Second subplot: A candlesticks chart to show the fluctuation of stock prices over the time series. Line 1–6: We use Plotly make_subplots method to define a plot figure made of one row and two columns of subplots. We can also configure the column width and horizontal spacing here. Line 8–17: Create a horizontal bar chart using Plotly go.bar object. We set the vol_ax as the values of the x-axis and the prices_ax as the values of the y-axis. We display the price level as the annotation text on the bar chart. The orientation is set to “h” so that the bar chart is rendered horizontally. Once the configuration of the bar chart is done, set the bar chart as the subplot positioned in row-1 and col-1. Use add_trace method to add the first subplot to the plot figure. Line 19–30: Create candlesticks chart using Plotly go.Candlestick object. Building a candlestick chart in Plotly is as easy as just assigning the opening prices, highest prices, lowest prices, and closing prices values obtained from the yFinance API in the earlier step to the attributes of open, high, low and close in the go.Candlestick object. We also need to set the date & time of the stock prices as the values of the x-attribute. (There is a caveat to handle the date & time values. We have to convert the date & time into a string format (Line 19). This is to avoid a broken date range in our Candlestick chart due to the stock market closed over the weekend or public holiday) Once the configuration of the candlestick chart is done, set the chart as the subplot positioned in row-1 and col-2. Use add_trace method to add the second subplot to the plot figure. Line 32–52: Use the update_layout method to configure the layout of the plot such as setting the title, turning off the x-axis and y-axis labels and aligning the y-axis to the right. Line 54–56: Add a line drawing toolkit to our generated Plotly chart. This is a useful feature offered by Plotly which enables us to interact with the plot by interactively drawing lines onto the plot surface. Line 58: At last, we use the Streamlit plotly_chart method to render the completed market profile chart onto the web browser.
https://python.plainenglish.io/building-an-interactive-stock-market-profile-chart-using-streamlit-and-python-plotly-library-d7ad10938e00
['Bee Guan Teo']
2021-03-17 05:03:33.783000+00:00
['Streamlit', 'Stock Market', 'Data Science', 'Plotly', 'Python']
How to use TypographyJS in NetlifyCMS Previews
Today is a little different from the usual longer posts and lot more niche. This is about an issue that I ran into recently and thought it would have been nice if somebody had written about it. Let me explain! Table Of Contents About NetlifyCMS and Typography.js As a big advocate of the JAMstack and in particular Gatsby, I have tried out numerous different CMS and they all have their use cases, but one I often come back to for smaller projects is NetlifyCMS. It’s free for my use cases and just so easy to use that once set up, it’s very easy to teach my clients how to log in and change content on their own. There is a lot to say about NetlifyCMS, but that is not what this post is about. This post is about one specific problem that I ran into while I was working on a project recently. I had started working on a Gatsby site with Typography.js & NetlifyCMS. Not thinking much about it in the beginning. Typography.js is quite a powerful tool to set up your typography and font styling, so it looks nice and consistent throughout the project. (You can learn more about it here) However, Typography.js uses JavaScript to inject the styling into your project. Once I had started my NetlifyCMS and started preparing custom previews for some of my pages, I realised: None of the font styles were applied to the previews within the CMS! With CSS files you can simply import them to your preview JSX file, but how would I have to go about injecting Typography.js not only into one custom preview but into all of them? Always read your documentation First I started reading through the NetlifyCMS documentation to see if there was a more general way to add styling sheets to the CMS instead of manually importing them to each custom preview. And lo and behold, there was! Here is a snippet from the documentation. But this didn’t completely solve my problem and so I started wondering, maybe there was a way to get the CSS styles from Typography.js. Because if you think about it, it ends up being injected as CSS later on anyway, right? And I was right. After going through the documentation, Typography.js had a function to output the CSS styling as a string. Just what I needed. import Typography from 'typography' const typography = new Typography({ baseFontSize: '18px', baseLineHeight: 1.666, headerFontFamily: ['Avenir Next', 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', 'Helvetica', 'Arial', 'sans-serif'], bodyFontFamily: ['Georgia', 'serif'], // See below for the full list of options. }) // Output CSS as string. export const typographyCSS = typography.toString() The Solution I have always loved how coding is solving one problem after another and this was exactly that. Now that I knew that I could output my typography styling as a CSS string, I only had to register that styling inside the CMS config file. Here we go: import { typographyCSS } from '../utils/typography' CMS.registerPreviewStyle(typographyCSS, { raw: true }) It’s a CSS string though not a file However, you might have noticed the { raw: true } , the second argument in our registerPreviewStyle function. This is because the function usually expects a CSS file instead of a CSS string. We can fix this by setting this second argument. You can read more about it here! That’s pretty much it! Thanks so much for reading this far and feel free to reach out to me anytime, on my website or Twitter 🙂 And if you like to read more, make sure to check out my other posts on my blog!
https://medium.com/@codetraveling/how-to-use-typographyjs-in-netlifycms-previews-723d15431291
['Lars']
2020-12-26 13:29:50.108000+00:00
['Typography', 'Netlify', 'How To', 'Web Development', 'Netlifycms']
Tennis Data Storytelling Challenge
It is a brand new year and we are excited to present the first tennis data storytelling challenge! This was originally a competition due August 15th, and there were ~40 people signed up but no one submitted an article. Therefore, I will now open this up as a “prompt request.” The Challenge Click the image for the challenge. The Data All the data from Tennis Abstract is openly available on GitHub. As more fans contribute to the Match Charting Project, more data is available. There are currently over 1500 matches with full detail. Unfortunately, most detailed tennis data is under lock and key so if you need more data, then the best way to get it is to chart your own match and contribute.
https://medium.com/the-tennis-notebook/tennis-data-storytelling-challenge-acf8a76558c8
['Nikita Taparia']
2016-08-19 23:57:20.024000+00:00
['Write For Us', 'Patterns Of Play', 'Data Visualization', 'Call For Submissions', 'Tennis']
Understand and Reframe the Traditional Concept of Failure So You Never Fail Again
The traditional concept of failure is formulated largely by what society has told us is failure. It’s definitive, cold and above all else: incredibly negative. A shame-inducing label, if there ever was one. To be defined as a “failure” is a fast track way to make even the most positive of person feel truly terrible about themselves. It’s simply and callously defined as: “a lack of success” — which is often so far from the truth. Failure often isn’t for lack of trying, and isn’t categorically a result of lacking in success. Failure is often one of the biggest learning curves we will ever encounter, yet these societal notions cloud our judgement of what we can benefit from experiencing what we think is failure. The only way to definitively label something as a failure is that it hasn’t lived up to your pre-conceived expectations. Expectations of which, are beliefs, predictions, hope — not fact. So by your belief of the unknown not orchestrating as you’d imagined, simply is not a failure. Failure isn’t something to brand yourself with for the rest of your waking days, yet the notion of failing, and subsequently being a failure, sits with us much longer than the feeling of success ever does. It’s far quicker, and easier, to recall the moments in life where you felt your lowest — because they’re the ones that stung, that hurt, that caused pain. A short-lived concept of failure can unconsciously brand itself to you, become part of your personality and fester into all parts of your life. Despite all your prior and subsequent successes, failure sits the heaviest. You haven’t failed because you haven’t succeeded, yet The feeling of failure is often sharp, short-lived and instantaneous. You didn’t get the job, you’ll get another one. You didn’t get the expected grade on your exam, you can resit it. You didn’t secure the client you wanted, you can book another one. A few years ago you’ll likely have had a vision for your life. Not a detailed step-by-step plan, perhaps a little murky, but some resemblance of how you’d like your life to pan out with a few key factors you’d like to have come close to making a reality. Even if you’re still nowhere near your goals, think about how far you’ve come. If you’re an aspiring author and you’ve taken steps to plan out your novel; you’re not a failure for not having it published yet, you’ve succeeded in taking one step closer to your ambition. If you’re an aspiring homeowner and you’ve started saving but aren’t on the property ladder yet, you’re a success by taking the steps necessary to make it a reality. Just because you haven’t reached that goal you set for yourself doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It just means your circumstances, mentality or emotional wellbeing haven’t been equipped for you to do so. If you’re sitting with the feeling of failure, examine why you believe it to be a failure. Is it because you haven’t accomplished something quickly enough? Is it because you’re comparing yourself to others? What would, or could, you have done differently, if you had the opportunity? Would someone else in your position equally attribute it as a failure? It’s all too easy to unconsciously get wrapped up in our own thoughts and allow them to escalate to unprecedented levels. What may have been a small moment becomes a big moment. What may have been a snap judgement becomes a branded label. What may have been a success becomes a failure. Asking questions, both big and small, and putting yourself in the position of an objective other removes you from your own spiral and rationalises those thoughts. Quite often, you’re not a failure. You’ve taken steps. You’ve made progress. You’ve kept to your goal, you haven’t abandoned it. That alone, is a success. Unrealistic examples of success results in unrealistic comparisons Young entrepreneurs now are almost famous because of their perceived success, and more specifically, the speed of which they reached that level of success. “Overnight success stories” are pushed in front of our eyes most, if not every, day. They’re placed on a pedestal as though that’s the true resemblance of success in our society. Almost as though anything but inconceivable levels of success is the only level to aim for, and everything else below is a failure. That’s not reality, it’s not the norm, and it’s not achievable, for the 99.9% majority. Yet when comparing to this, it’s hard not to feel like a failure. Not to question your own self, your own progress, your own story, where you are in life. Because in comparison, anything looks to be less than. Because that level of success is so far being in-obtainable, it’s not even a comparative measure. This is where failure in itself roots: comparison to others. Because if there was nothing to compare yourself to, then you wouldn’t understand the concept of failure, therefore would be unable to label yourself as a failure. Remove comparison from the equation and no-one is a failure. We’re all just navigating our own lives on our own terms. To our own timelines, to our own beat, to our own desires. Not to what we think is “success” by comparative measures. Comparison is the root of all evil and forces us to unconsciously label ourselves with notions we don’t deserve. Comparison is equally often formulated based off half-truths. Comparing your wholehearted, full and entirely human life to someones Instagram highlight reel isn’t a valid comparison. While someone may have a thriving relationship, they may have had many debilitating ones before. While someone may be thriving in their career, they may have had many failed job interviews before they thrived. While someone may be thriving with clients in their business, they may have been working a part-time job to support themselves. Unless you know all the details about someones perceived success, it’s not a valid comparison. And even then, it’s still not. Because you’re on a different path in life, one that’s yours.
https://medium.com/be-unique/understand-and-reframe-the-traditional-concept-of-failure-so-you-never-fail-again-13ce390c26b5
['Katie Weisz']
2020-11-04 06:36:09.965000+00:00
['Self Improvement', 'Mindfulness', 'Life', 'Self', 'Personal Development']
Why I Love This, By The Little Monsters Community
Little Monsters by Lady Gaga is a unique place filled with passionate fans that love to connect with not only Lady Gaga, but with others who share the same love and passion. It’s a home built by Little Monsters, For Little Monsters. Born This Way Is A Staple Of Lady Gaga’s Community The Challenges Of Large, Flat Social Platforms Specialized content, unique experience, and exclusive access can be a driving force behind the power of a social network. There’s much to be said on delivering loads of great content and information to your audience, but the power of a connected network must go deeper than simply the platform itself. The unifying component in large platforms is often times the diversity of the content and network-effect of content potentially going viral and reaching the masses. In focused networks, the central component or, “Why Am I Here” question has to be a bold vision that unites the community and brings people together for reasons other than simply the appeal of going viral. Communities need leaders; not owners. Little Monsters is a place where Gaga fans want to be because the leaders in the community consistently reinforce the mission and vision that Lady Gaga has set forth. Monsters are accepted for who they are, regardless of religion, sex, skin tone or beliefs. All users and members of the community have a unique place and are welcome in this community. Little Monsters Is Special We asked the Little Monsters community why they love being apart of the community and how this unique space is something near and dear to their heart.
https://medium.com/honeycommb/why-i-love-this-f563c4938653
['Jeremy Ross']
2019-02-06 14:56:07.587000+00:00
['Social Media', 'Community Engagement', 'Audience Engagement', 'Lady Gaga', 'Little Monsters']
Yuletide Greetings Across the Centuries
Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted it in 1565 as part of a series depicting the months of the year, which was commissioned by wealthy banker and royal official, Niclaes Jonghelinck to decorate his Antwerp townhouse. Hunters in the Snow depicts a landscape in the depths of winter and was also known simply as January and nowadays is often called Bruegel’s Winter. The ‘labours of the months’ were often used in illuminated books. One of the most outstanding examples created by the Limbourg brothers for the Duc de Berry’s Book of Hours, in the fifteenth century, and their ‘template’ was later adopted throughout Europe. Yet Bruegel brought a fresh vibrancy, an immediacy to his painting that still holds us enthralled. Though fragile, painted on a large wooden panel with oils, the vivid mineral pigments have survived well over the centuries. The composition was an innovation for its period and remains striking. We first follow the weary hunters and their pack of dogs in the foreground, plodding home through bare trees and the ankle-deep snow as they return from what appears to be an unsuccessful hunt. One hunter carries a single dead fox slung over his shoulder — it’s January and game is no longer as easily tracked down. One distinguishing aspect here, and in many of Bruegel’s landscapes, is the ‘wide-angle’, elevated view that seems to open up the scene and invite the viewer to step into it and explore. We are also brought into the frame by the glance of one of the hounds that looks out of the image and makes eye contact, acknowledging our presence. The figure of the foremost hunter seems to have been added late in the composition to ensure that we share his point-of-view, looking almost directly over his shoulder. The line of trees on the left gives a visual rhythm that emphasises the heavy trudge of the huntsmen and leads us to look beyond the precipitous slope that they crest, which forms a diagonal slash in the landscape, to the snowy vista beyond. The limited palette of black, browns, whites, and grey-green convey the chill of winter and the quality of dull light against bright snow in a way which almost makes you shiver.
https://medium.com/signifier/yuletide-greetings-across-the-centuries-eed873acbfe8
['Kim Vertue']
2020-12-22 12:26:28.507000+00:00
['Art History', 'Art', 'Painting', 'History', 'Landscape']
Meet a Latina Marketer: Margarita Rojas
This profile is part of a five part series in which the Kapor Center for Social Impact is sharing stories from our diverse tech community in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month! Margarita Rojas| Asana| International Marketing & Localization Lead How do you identify/What is your background? I identify as Latina. ​I was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia. After finishing high school, I moved to San Francisco for six months to study English. I fell in love with the city and always knew I had to come back. After graduating from college, getting my master’s, and working for P&G and Colgate for two years, I decided it was time to move to San Francisco, and enjoyed the rest of my 20’s in this magical city. ​I started my career in the US at La Cocina as their Marketing and Communication Manager. It was an incredibly fulfilling experience, as I had a direct impact on the lives of low-income immigrant women entrepreneurs as I helped them to launch and grow their food businesses. After two years at La Cocina, I decided to find a position in tech. I joined Evernote in 2012 as one of the first customer support agents. I was able to launch CS for Latin America and Spain, moving my way up to Senior Marketing Manager for Latin America. After almost 4 years, we grew the region from 2 million to 20 million users and I was ready to try bringing my talent and skills to a new company and product. In 2016, I joined the International team at Weebly, where I launched Latin America, Spain and Taiwan, and localized the website and product in 16 languages. I’m currently working at Asana, where I’m now leading the company’s international marketing and localization efforts. I sit on the board of Latinas in Tech, a non-profit organization that operates under the umbrella of the Latino Community Foundation, with the mission to connect, support and empower Latina women working in technology. How has your ethnicity/nationality/sexual preference/culture played into your story/brand? My culture and background has been really important to my continued success and growth. I came to SF with a strong background and experience in CPG but zero experience in technology. I didn’t graduate from a US University, and I didn’t have a strong network of people working in tech. After finding a great mentor, and meeting some Latinx in tech, I decided to build my narrative around my nationality, my working experience in Colombia, and the fact that I spoke three languages. This shift definitely helped me to get my first job at Evernote. What brought you into tech? When I moved to San Francisco, I was exposed to a lot of tech companies. At La Cocina, I had volunteers who worked for well-know Silicon Valley companies, and I even started dating an engineer (now my husband!). Everything was new to me, and I started absorbing a lot of information, attending events, and meeting people. I was curious about the products created in Silicon Valley, and I wanted to contribute. As I started looking for new opportunities, I found a role that combined both my experience in Marketing and my knowledge in the Latin America market, helping me feel connected to my home, which was also really important to me. What do you enjoy most about your role and the work you do? I enjoy making Asana available in other languages and creating go to market strategies to get more people to use our product across the world. I love learning about language nuances, and how this can impact the way you internationalize a product for a specific market. I feel fortunate to have the impact that I have at Asana, and help teams from all over the world achieve their goal no matter where they are or what language they speak. How do you think tech can help bring more opportunities to the Latinx community?
https://medium.com/kapor-the-bridge/meet-margarita-rojas-afc8e5d3b663
['Josh Torres']
2017-09-20 02:14:05.392000+00:00
['Latinx', 'Latin America', 'Hispanic Heritage Month', 'Tech For Good', 'Startup']
Why Java Won’t Die?
Why Enterprise Doesn’t Care About Hype Driven Tech? Learning Java is still lucrative. Java still holds well against another tech, according to this 2020 Developer Survey. Enterprise doesn’t care that much about new tech. They care about stability. Working with Pearson for over a year, they care about end consumers. Period. Providing accessibility, great service, and good customer support is essential. Tech comes after all this. Technology built around Java, provides security, confidence, and a great business experience. Learning Java opens door to new opportunities. Check this survey again, and see what are top-paying positions. Scala, based on Java criticism, still runs on JVM. Even though I would like to get a better frontend, that won’t happen. Business costs would go through the roof to develop, test, and release. From what I am aware, the backend is here to stay, changes are not even planned.
https://medium.com/dev-genius/why-java-wont-die-7046096d06da
['Živković Miloš']
2020-12-22 21:53:21.970000+00:00
['Software Development', 'Java', 'Software Engineering', 'Programming Languages', 'Programming']
Trickles
Trickles A Poem Photo by Andrej Lišakov on Unsplash In the shade of another brick wall dancing with the moths while trying to figure out how to really want you The trickles of the night before dished out like appetizers not really filling this morning but taking over this head I’d ache if I wasn’t already The trips all canceled stuck inside the drum while relentless hammering goes on where it’s least wanted To give something more to the beat then the odd drunken slur running its way up your leg till you can’t shut up I deem this misfortune but I don’t know that’s really my specialty and I act like it is The book of the hard-done-by castigated and still somehow forgotten keeps rearing its ugly pages Tomorrow then the wounds will be smaller I think
https://medium.com/the-rebel-poets-society/trickles-ac8527fa70bf
['J.D. Harms']
2020-10-01 13:29:23.747000+00:00
['Visions', 'Pain', 'Image', 'Poem', 'Frustration']
Dive into Deep Learning
What is a Neural Network(NN)? Neural networks are a set of algorithms, modeled after the human brain that is designed to recognize patterns. NN can interpret sensory data through a machine perception, labeling or clustering. The patterns that are recognized are either numerical contained in vectors into which all real-world data images, sound, text or time series must be translated. Neural networks can classify and cluster data. It works as a clustering and classification layer on top of data that needs to be managed and stored. Neural networks help to group unlabeled data according to similarities among the example inputs, and they classify data when they have a labeled dataset to train on. Neural networks elements Node — Just a place where computation happens, patterned on a neuron in the human brain. A node combines input from the data with a set coefficients or weights Node layer — A row of switches that turn on and off as the input is fed through the network. Each layer’s output is simultaneously the subsequent layer’s input, starting from an initial input layer receiving your data. Depth — Number of node layers Neural networks are composed of one input layer and one output layer. It can contain more than one hidden layers. If it contains more than three layers, (including the input and output layer) it qualifies as “Deep” learning. Activation function Activation functions are really important for a Neural network to learn and make sense of something really complicated and non-linear complex functional mappings between the inputs and response variable. The main purpose of an activation function is that it converts an input signal of a node in an ANN to an output signal. That output signal is then used as the input of the next layer in the stack. If an activation function is not available then the output signal would simply be a simple linear function. It decides whether a neuron/ node should be activated or not by calculating the weighted sum and further adding bias with it. Activation functions available — Sigmoid — ranges from 0 to 1. Also known as Logistic activation function. Used for binary classification problems. — ranges from 0 to 1. Also known as Logistic activation function. Used for binary classification problems. TanH — The output ranges from -1 to 1. — The output ranges from -1 to 1. Softmax — Outputs a vector that represents the probability distributions of a list of potential outcomes. Mainly used for multiclass classification problems. — Outputs a vector that represents the probability distributions of a list of potential outcomes. Mainly used for multiclass classification problems. ReLu — If the input is a positive number the function returns the number itself and if the input is a negative number then the function returns 0. Used in hidden layers. Epoch One epoch is when an entire dataset is passed forward and backward through the neural network only once. The number of epochs is traditionally large, often hundreds or thousands, allowing the learning algorithm to run until the error from the model has been sufficiently minimized. You may see examples of the number of epochs in the literature and in tutorials set to 10, 100, 500, 1000, and larger. Learning rate The learning rate (α) is a hyperparameter that controls how much to change the model in response to the estimated error each time the model weights are uploaded. It affects how quickly the model can converge to a local minimum. Types of Neural networks Feedforward NN This is one of the simplest types of artificial NN. In a feedforward NN, the data passes through different input nodes until it reaches the output node. The data moves only in one direction in FNN. There are loops or backward propagating in FNN. Feedforward NN is used in face recognition and computer vision tasks. 2. Recurrent NN This is also known as Long Short Term Memory. In this neural network, the output of a particular layer is saved and fed back to the input. This is used to predict the outcome of the layer. If the prediction is wrong, the system self-learns and works towards making the right prediction during the backpropagation. These type of NN are used in text-to-speech conversion technology. 3. Multilayer Perceptron A multilayer perceptron has three or more layers. It is used to classify data that cannot be separated linearly. It is a type of artificial neural network that is fully connected. MLP is mainly used in speech recognition and machine translation technologies. 4. Convolutional NN A convolutional NN uses a variation of the MLP. It contains more than one convolutional layer. Before passing the result to the next layer, the convolutional layer uses a convolutional operation on the input. Due to this convolutional operation, the network can be much deeper but with much fewer parameters. Because of this feature, CNN is used in image and video recognition, natural processing and paraphrase detection. 5. Modular NN A modular neural network has a number of different networks that function independently and perform sub-tasks. The different networks do not really interact with or signal each other during the computation process. They work independently towards achieving the output.
https://medium.com/swlh/dive-into-deep-learning-f21bef658da2
['Shanika Perera']
2019-06-26 15:27:32.955000+00:00
['Artificial Intelligence', 'Artificial Neural Network', 'Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Neural Networks']
20 Software architecture podcasts to follow | Apiumhub
At Apiumhub we listen to hours of working software and software architecture podcasts each week covering architecture patterns, DevOps and architecture, iOS architecture, Android architecture, Backend architecture, Frontend architecture, etc. Whether you listen to them on your way to work or while having lunch or fervently coding, I hope you find them inspiring, enlightening, and useful. 20 Software engineering podcasts to follow This Podcast is a Daily podcast about software engineering hosted by Jeff. Here you will find technical interviews about software topics. Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast. Three to four times per month, they publish a new episode talking to experts from the software engineering world about the full range of topics that matter to professional developers. Fragmented is a Software developer podcast where Donn Felker and Kaushik Gopal talk about building good software and becoming better software developers. They engage in bi-weekly banter about various tech platforms, tools, patterns and practices that helps a developer go from good to amazing. Occasionally, they interview the best of their trade and get their opinions and learnings. This is a podcast on Functional Programming, covering topics across multiple languages. CoRecursive features in-depth technical interviews with software developers. Learn about programming languages such as Scala, Haskell, Idris, Kotlin, Erlang and Functional Programming and Type Theory from experts in one on one interviews. If you are a software engineer who wants to listen to casual yet in depth technical interviews with expert software developers, this podcast is for you. This legendary software engineering podcast run by Aaron Delp & Brian Gracely has been consistently releasing weekly episodes for over six years. Now, 300 episodes later, you can still turn in for the latest insights related to cloud computing, serverless architecture, DevOps, and more. High-level TL;DR notes on each episode are available on their website. Conversations with the hackers, leaders, and innovators of software development. Hosts Adam Stacoviak and Jerod Santo face their imposter syndrome so you don’t have to. Expect in-depth interviews with the best and brightest in software engineering, open source, and leadership. This is a polyglot podcast. Conversations about Software Engineering (CaSE) is an interview podcast for software developers and architects about Software Engineering and related topics. They release a new episode every three weeks. Hanselman bills his show as ‘Fresh Air for developers,’ using interviews to explore a range of software development topics. No Dogma Podcast is about discussions on topics connected with software development; privacy, security, management, tools, techniques, skills, training, business. It takes more than great code to be a great engineer. Soft Skills Engineering is a weekly advice podcast for software developers about the non-technical stuff that goes into being a great software developer. The ThoughtWorks podcast plunges deep into the latest tech topics that have captured their imagination. Join their panel of senior technologists to explore the most important trends in tech today, get frontline insights into their work developing cutting-edge tech and hear more about how today’s tech megatrends will impact you. Software craftspeople discuss all things related to technology, agile, software development, and much more. Welcome to The Rabbit Hole, the definitive developers podcast. If you are a software developer or technology leader looking to stay on top of the latest news in the software development world, or just want to learn actionable tactics to improve your day-to-day job performance, this podcast is for you. Interviews and Q&A from my weekly YouTube Live show. Topics cover Docker and container tools like Kubernetes, Swarm, Cloud Native development, Cloud tech, DevOps, GitOps, DevSecOps, and the full software lifecycle supply chain. LambdaCast is a podcast about functional programming for working developers. Their focus is to describe concepts using clear everyday language without watering anything down. If you’ve ever been curious about FP but were turned off by the jargon or unfamiliar concepts, this is the place to be. The No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) Software Symposium Tour has delivered over 400 events with over 65,000 attendees. NFJS speakers are well-known developers, authors, and project leaders from the software development community. Join them for news and discussion around software development. Current topics include: Java, JavaScript, Scala, Groovy, Clojure, Cloud, Docker, Software Architecture, HTML 5, CSS, NoSQL, Spring, and other development technologies. The GitHub Community Cast features interesting community stories and news from around the GitHub universe. HashiCast is a podcast hosted by the developer advocates from HashiCorp. HashiCast is a light hearted and fun podcast where they can talk about the world of DevOps and cloud technology. Experience design insight and analysis.
https://medium.com/@Apiumhub/20-software-architecture-podcasts-to-follow-apiumhub-df44ea8d993c
[]
2021-01-12 12:51:06.591000+00:00
['Software Architecture', 'Podcasts For Startups']
I’ve decided to become a gold digger
‘Cause we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl — Madonna I’m in the toilet currently taking a shit (don’t worry you can’t smell it), and I’m wondering who “independent” ever helped in this life. Definitely not me. *sigh* It’s almost as if the moment you announce “I’m an independent woman” everybody seems to drop their responsibilities towards you. Sometimes you don’t even announce it, they just “assume” simply because you said “no, let me handle the bills today”. My parents don’t even give me money anymore, I have to work double, get myself in many jobs that’ll bring me money. It’s too much! Wayyyy too much! Then coupled with the fact that I’ve found my self in Nigeria? *steamy tears* *strawberry flavoured tears* I get ten thousand naira and it feels like one thousand naira in my account. How can I fund my baby girl life with one thousand naira? What am I supposed to buy with that? Lipgloss and shaving stick? No please! I know God brought me to this world to enjoy, I feel it in my soul. That kind of AC to AC lifestyle, if you know what I mean *wink*wink* Breakfast in bed, Lunch in Malay, dinner in Italy. You get the vibes. But no! I’m in my bed (oh yes! I finished my shit and it was so good *cheers*); under blanket; somehow, inhaling harmattan dust, typing on my Samsung J series with a broken screen. Silently praying for my mother not call me to come out of the room and sweep her house. A whole me? Sweeping house. Poverty really isn’t a good color on my skin TBH. Right now yeah? I’m in the mood for a steaming bath, I’ve asked my maid to get out one of my “Exquisite” boubou(s), my seasonal chef is fixing one of his specialties that he’d learnt at a Korean culinary school, I’ve rung my Alhaji of a husband to top up my account cas… shopping. Wait o, you think I want to be working? Independent? Please parade has changed. DFKM. Work is stress! Business is more stressful! I’m not supposed to be seen near those things. Ew! Anyways as I was saying, the driver is already washing the car downstairs. The life is good. Remind me to add to my extravagant collection of Arabian perfumes ay? It actually feels so good living off someone else’s money, someone’s sweat, it feels good that you don’t have to work for it, being a parasite, it is what it is. There are actually men willing to give you such lavish lifestyles, a bullion van with ease. Most of these “big daddies” prying to take on “fresh blood” as their third or fourth wife. Look at Regina Daniels, a very typical example. Just being the baby girl that she is. Omo let everybody just face the one that is doing them o. *proceeds to munch on some chin-chin* Incase you sha see me behind the wheels of an all tinted luxury car with my Alhaji in the streets of Abuja just mind your business. Independent girl cannot can anymore. Anyways, cheers to Alhaji’s money in advance. -Xoxo wallflower.
https://medium.com/@beingwallfl0w4r/why-ive-decided-to-become-a-gold-digger-5c047c868450
['Being Wallflower']
2021-01-22 19:05:49.054000+00:00
['Motivation', 'Inspiration', 'Blog', 'Lifestyle', 'Writing']
Approachable AI Applied: Defect Detection
Defect Detection The American Society for Quality (ASQ) suggests that the Cost of Quality is usually around 15–20% of sales, often as high as 40% in some organizations. The cost of poor quality includes both internal and external failure costs. In other words, organizations are spending a considerable amount of money correcting defects found both on the factory floor and in the customer’s hands. This not only leads to a direct monetary loss but also indirectly in the form of reputational risk. Currently, organizations try to minimize costs through inspections and ensuring specific procedures are followed. However, these are manual, time-consuming processes that become mundane and still lead to errors. The advent of computer vision opens up the possibility of companies automating inspections both on the line and in the field. Most public computer vision models are able to accurately classify things like faces, dogs, cars, etc. However, those models are not trained to identify the specific defects that are relevant to you and your process. Data scientists can build custom computer vision models to fit your needs but those resources are expensive and hard to come by. Certain vendors provide the ability for users to create their own custom models but they require the installation of a new end-to-end hardware solution. Elipsa’s goal with Approachable AI is to allow users to build custom defect detection models with their existing cameras and software, and without the need for a data scientist. Problem: Cost of Defects In our example, we explore examples of a casting manufacturing product found here. Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. A casting defect is an undesired irregularity in a metal casting process. There are many types of defects in casting like blow holes, pinholes, burr, shrinkage defects, mold material defects, pouring metal defects, metallurgical defects, etc. Product inspection is a very time-consuming process prone to human error. Defects can be cause to reject an entire order, leading to a large loss for the business. Our data consists of photos taken from the top view of a submersible pump impeller. The dataset contains a total 6,633 grey-scaled 300x300 pixels images. Elipsa’s Approachable AI Applied In the data used to build the model, we have historical images of defective examples (3,758 images) and images of quality products (2,875 examples). We also set aside a series of images to test against the model to analyze the final accuracy of prediction. To build the model in Elipsa, we simply create a folder for each label that we are classifying. In our case, there are two labels and thus two folders: defect (def_front) and ok (ok_front). Once our defective training images and ok quality images are uploaded to their respective folders, Elipsa is able to build the computer vision model with a click of a button and no need to write code. The system learns the patterns that are indicative of normal and defective products to be able to classify future examples accurately. Quality Example Defective Example Elipsa automatically splits the images into training (5,307 images) to build the model and testing (1,326) to automatically optimize the model. Results Computer vision models can take a considerable amount of time to train, depending on the number of images and the size of these images. Elipsa builds the model on its backend servers and notifies the user when it is complete. With the model built, we had a total of 713 (261 quality products / 452 defective products) images to run through the model for testing. These are new images that the model has not seen before. In other words, this is the equivalent of deploying this model to production and streaming new product images against it. Overall, the model was 99.29% accurate at predicting whether the product was defective or not. Drilling down into those results, the model was 100% accurate at predicting that quality products are OK. For defective products, we ran 452 images against the model. The model was 98.68% accurate at detecting whether they were defects, missing only 5. Deployment With high accuracy received, Elipsa users can easily deploy this model to the cloud or to their own edge device with a push of a button. If the accuracy is not to their liking, users can hold off on deploying into production and simply add new images to the respective folders to try and improve the model accuracy. Summary We were able to build a highly accurate image classification model for defect detection without the need for a data scientist. In addition, we were able to deploy this model to production without changes to infrastructure. The use of AI and computer vision for defect detection would allow an organization to cut down on manual processes, enabling more efficient use of the workforce. In addition, by catching defects through AI, companies can prevent defective products from leaving the factory floor; helping to eliminate recalls and buybacks and increase customer satisfaction. For more information book a demo @ www.elipsa.ai
https://medium.com/elipsa/approachable-ai-applied-defect-detection-f7a4ea7838f4
['Jeff Kimmel']
2021-05-17 14:58:01.314000+00:00
['Predictive Analytics', 'Quality Assurance', 'Industry 4 0', 'AI', 'Computer Vision']
ICONs ICX Staking is coming!
ICON — Well, a few people say, this is a car crash project, but I delve really deep into this project and I can come to the conclusion: it is definitely NOT! Despite the fact, that the bear market was the reason for quite some silence regarding most projects, ICON had a lot of great news. Almost unheard, unregistered, like whispering in the wind of icy times. – The project is more than healthy. It has good organic growth, employed many new people, got a real big new office and the whole korean office is like a giant coding factory running full steam! But it is even better: the Icon Foundation & Iconloop got some serious partnerships with the korean government and they are building many DApps and platforms with different use-cases. Seoul as a Smart City will be built in many ways on Icon. So, all in all, we can say: Icon is more than alive, even if some moonboys don’t want to see this, because they don’t get their quick gains. Icon is meant to be a long-term project, who aims to create a solid platform and exactly this is what long-term investors realize and appreciate. At the moment we can witness the whole ICONSENSUS campaign, the elections of the Public Representatives, the Community Representatives and the efforts to open the gates for new projects and DApps to Icons network of networks. Exciting will be the upcoming STAKING in AUGUST! In the following, I want to share some insights and information about it. Staking will be easy! Or: How much ROI will you get? If you walk through the different AMAs from the past months, we can summarize in short: Staking will be very easy! A new version of the Icon wallet ICONEX will have a voting implementation, where you can vote for your preferred P-Reps and you just delegate your ICX to them. You will be able to delegate in three different categories at the same time — Reps, EEPs and DApps — so you will get the reward times three. Of course you keep your own ICX and the best is: you can stake in an easy way via your Ledger device. There are no other contributing factors. Your actual reward will be a function of the percentage of network stacked. So if the percentage of network staked increases, the rewards decreases and vice versa. If you combine all three categories together, the reward will be between 6% and 36% per anno. For example if 50% of all ICX are staked, you will get approx. 8.5% annual ROI. More likely is a staking rate of 30% during the voting period and we should see an annual reward rate of 15.81% (5.27% times three) If you want to see the calculation in detail, please check out ICONs post here: Will there be a minimum of ICX for staking? The founder and CEO Min Kim gives us an answer on that in an interview: The plan is to give equal opportunity. Imagine if only the rich get to run for congress. Wouldn’t be fair. So, there won’t be a minimum to stake ICX; you even can stake 1 ICX and expect and annual reward in form of IScore, which you can echange for ICX — 1 to 1. Will there be an unstaking period? Yes, there will be an unstaking period. The period will be between 20 and 5 days and the actual time period also will be a function of network staked. So with a higher percentage of ICX staked, the time period of unstaking decreases. If 70% of ICX would be staked the time period would be 5 days. So far this are all information we have, but we can expect more information in the upcoming two weeks. In the following you can see the most important info summarized in an infographic.
https://medium.com/@chaintribe/icons-icx-staking-is-coming-ba1564123fd9
[]
2019-07-07 10:46:20.101000+00:00
['Icx', 'Icon', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Staking', 'Blockchain']
Mental Maps and the Inevitable March of the Isms
Photo by Menglong Bao on Unsplash I have found that one of the challenges of growing old is attempting to act as if arguments I’ve heard for decades are fresh and new. Marching as I often do under the banner of Humanism (yep, one of those pesky Isms), I’ve long listened to the theism / atheism debate, though I have to admit I tuned out several years ago. No, I don’t think the theism / atheism debate is engaging, because I don’t think atheism and theism are actually what people are talking about in that argument. We rely on that argument because marching in the Ism Parade is easier than lighting out for the territories of ambiguity. As I see it, the deeper debate — beyond anything to do with theism, a-theism, or any other Ism — is about the value of mental maps. The question is: How do we find a mental map that will suffice in giving our lives value, meaning, and purpose? Is a particular sort of theism (because there are oodles and gobs of theisms) an adequate mental map to withstand the slings and arrows of being alive? Is a particular sort of atheism (because there are oodles and gobs of atheisms and agnosticisms and pantheisms and on and on) an adequate mental map to withstand the slings and arrows of being alive? That’s the deeper question. A question that can’t be answered with an Ism. When we share our mental maps, it is well that each of us remembers the personal nature of the tool, even though just about everything we can think is some sort of Ism. When we forget the individuality of everyone’s experience, we join in the Death March of the Isms — a death march in more ways than one. In other words, my theism or atheism or humanism or what-have-you is mine and mine alone. And your . . . whatever . . . is yours and yours alone. Seen from this vantage point, I have to wonder if being “spiritual” is an attempt to hop out of the Ism Parade. The way we describe ourselves in American English is revealing: we tend to say, “I’m a Baptist” or “I’m a Humanist.” We don’t tend to say, “I’m the Baptist” or “I’m the Humanist.” (Even though in the narcissism of individuality we may actually think that!) This verbal habit springs, I suspect, from a tacit understanding that each of us represents an aspect of being the larger Ism or label, but our own mental maps don’t precisely map onto the prescribed map of a particular Ism. Meaning: we all know we don’t fit into the Ism Parade, try as we might. Oh, and note that sometimes we do say, “I’m liberal” or “I’m conservative,” a sure sign that politics is messed up! So why do so many of us even try to don an Ism’s uniform and march to its martial tune? Beats me! Perhaps because it’s shorthand and easy. I don’t know. Somehow, we have to participate in the Ism Parade before we can march toward an examination of our own values. But reflect on this: doesn’t the mere fact of the multiplicity of human maps of what we call “reality” signal a sure sign of one thing: We as a species don’t understand reality in one single way — and perhaps we don’t understand it at all. Sure, we get cues from our genes and our families and our cultures. And the mental maps that preexist help us to survive and thrive in this strange place called life and reality. Isms exist because they have served as handy frames. But the call of having an individual consciousness is to employ it. Which means, each of us will — ideally — parade with an Ism before and while we find our own drummer to march to. OK. I’m mixing my metaphors too much here. But perhaps you see what I’m getting at: an Ism is a fine thing to check out. But marching solely in one Ism Parade ultimately requires living an unexamined life. Sure, each of us can do that. But where’s the fun? Come on. Step out of line. Do a little dance. Tell the Ism Parade to go on without you. FirstUnitarian.org Listen to podcasts.
https://medium.com/humanism-now/mental-maps-and-the-inevitable-march-of-the-isms-c69deb58ea43
['David Breeden']
2019-11-05 17:13:09.688000+00:00
['Religion', 'Unitarian Universalist', 'Atheism', 'Spirituality', 'Humanism']
YE ALI RELEASES ‘TALK LESS’
Ye Ali releases the record of the summer, “Talk Less” featuring production by Jordon Manswell, Bizness Boi, and KRS. With an elegant flip of Ashanti’s “Rock Wit U.” Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/ye-ali/talkless
https://medium.com/ijeoma/ye-ali-releases-talk-less-fd5441f7e863
[]
2017-05-25 22:16:55.990000+00:00
['Bizness Boi', 'SoundCloud', 'Music', 'Ashanti', 'Ye Ali']
Top 10 Java Frameworks | Grails | Spring | Play | Vaadin | Vert.X
There are a plethora of Java frameworks available for software developers to develop mobile & web apps. The frameworks help a lot in developing large & multi-layered business solutions. Java frameworks are familiar with the developers’ community & have gained their trust with time. Also, in the ever-dynamic IT industry, it is inevitable for Oracle to update Java from time to time. Hence, Java is becoming more & more robust & feature-rich from time to time. This aspect of the Java technology helps developers to build web apps for enterprises, develop independent applications for Windows & other operating systems. When it comes to web app development, you don’t have to rely only on the Java programming language, but can also take complete advantage of the Java frameworks. Moreover, the Java VM offers support to the Read Once Write Anywhere (ROWA) process. Below are the top 10 Java frameworks for developing enterprise-grade web applications. 1. The Apache Wicket — Open-source Component-based Web Application Framework Under Apache License Wicket, aka Apache Wicket, is a lightweight framework to build intelligent user interfaces on Java EE. It is widely adopted to develop server-side web apps written in Java. Anybody can integrate HTML language effortlessly & it relatively reduces the complexity of web app development. Also, the framework ships with reliable test applications that improve the process of web app development. Key Points to Note Supports HTML5 & Java languages. Debug to test particular components of your code. Easy to write & organize your code. Documentation & support. 2. Grails (formerly Groovy on Rails) — Open-source Web Application Framework & Uses Groovy Programming Language Grails is a web app framework based on Groovy programming language built on Spring Boot and can be deployed into existing Java web servers such as Tomcat or Jetty. It comes with scaffolding capabilities that help you start fresh projects in no time. As the framework is based on the convention over configuration formula, instead of using XML files, it allows the apps to auto-wire automatically based on the naming schemes. Grails takes advantage of Java EE for architecture and Spring for structuring the app through dependency injection. Key Points to Note It comes with a set of flexible features that help to create RESTful APIs easily. GORM makes it easy to collaborate and/or communicate with any data source that supports GORM. Minimal server restart required during development. Grails makes it easy to modularize & use the view layer code several times. A very responsive & supporting community. 3. Google Web Toolkit (GWT) — Free & Open-source Web Application Framework Under Apache License It lets developers build & maintain JavaScript front-end applications using Java. Interestingly, certain Google products such as Google Adwords, Blogger, Google Wallet, etc. are developed using GWT. With this framework, developers are allowed to develop & test AJAX apps using Java. Some of the key industries where this framework is used predominantly are banking & trading. Key Points to Note Create highly responsive web applications with workloads on the client-side. Migrate from a typical web application to a GWT application iteratively. The IDE support for GWT is the best. Impeccable debugging support offered by the mature Java IDEs. 4. Struts — Free & Open-source MVC-Based Web Application Framework Favoring Convention Over Configuration Apache Struts helps to build attractive & interactive Java web apps. The interactive part of the Java web apps is achieved as a result of the MVC architecture. With the simple & easy-to-use plug-in architecture, developers can extend the framework by including a JAR file to the app’s classpath. As a result, the plug-ins available in the JAR file can be shared easily among the community. Apache Struts comes with several plug-ins out of the box & developers can integrate third-party plug-ins as well. Additionally, it allows you to integrate with various other Java-based web app frameworks. Key Points to Note Apache Struts works incredibly well with AJAX, REST API & SOAP. Supports various templates & themes. Develop web apps using Plain Old Java Object actions. It can be integrated into other frameworks with the help of plugins. Stable & well-tested framework. 5. Spring — Open-source Web Application Framework Offering Infrastructural Support at the Application Level Spring helps developers build flexible, simple, portable, & fast JVM-based systems & web apps. Also, it is an inversion of control container for the Java platform. The framework bundles all the necessary features, resources, & utilities that can be used to create almost any enterprise-grade web applications. Also, the framework collaborates well with other programming languages such as Kotlin & Groovy. Spring is an outstanding performer when it comes to executing recurring tasks such as messaging, security & data processing. With the Spring framework, you can produce the business logic of development. Key Points to Note It provides an efficient eco-system & community. Easy to check backward compatibility and run tests. Supports a large number of classes & packages. Documentation supports are available for quick learning of the framework. 6. Vert.X — A Tool-kit for Building Reactive Applications on the JVM. Eclipse Vert.X is an open-source polyglot event-driven web application framework that contains broad capabilities. Though the framework is capable of supporting other programming languages as well, it was primarily built for Java. If you already have a flair in programming languages such as Ceylon, Groovy, Ruby, or JavaScript, you are good to go with Vert.X. One of the best parts about Vert.X is that it is a library & not a container. Key Points to Note It is easy to use, scalable & concurrency. Event-driven run time, non-blocking. It supports several languages. 7. Vaadin — Open-source Web Application Framework Having a Large Library of Components & an Intuitive Java API. Vaadin helps developers build modern progressive web apps that help in delivering great user experiences with minimal effort. Further, it collaborates well with Spring, CDI, & all of Java. Moreover, it is a powerful tool with an active worldwide community for the incredible support. The architecture of Vaadin & the progressive web apps built using Vaadin prefer server-side to client-side. It is in contrast with the other solutions found in Java & JavaScript. The simple & user-friendly UI of Vaadin helps to develop progressive web apps in no time. Also, this is one of the features that set Vaadin a class apart from other Java frameworks. You can also extend the framework with GWT, as well as Ajax and methods & techniques that Ajax offers. Key Points to Note Useful documentation support for effective learning of the framework. It offers several plug-ins. Widespread community support. Enables you to create rich & interactive web interfaces. Uses server-side programming. Supports Google Web Tools & Ajax. 8. Play — Open-source Web Application Framework with MVC Architecture Under Apache License Play Framework is a high-velocity web framework for Java & Scala. It is built based on a lightweight, stateless, web-friendly architecture. It is developed with the help of one of the free and open-source toolkits — Akka. The open-source toolkit runs on the JVM. The framework predominantly increases the productivity of developers as it is bundled with essential tools that allow them to quickly design, test & write codes for web apps. Since the framework adheres to the principles of Reactive manifesto, web apps can be loosely coupled. Key Points to Note Improves developer productivity. Secure configuration. No Java EE sessions, & complete stateless connections. Available with unit Selenium, testing, & JUnit. 9. JavaServer Faces (JSF) — Standard Component-oriented User Interface (UI) Framework JavaServer Faces (JSF) plays a vital role in developing server-side UI components & for web apps. As it contains different sets of APIs, developers can easily manage the custom tag library & UI components for building the JSF interface. Also, JSF is a key framework in the Java Enterprise Edition. When you couple JSF with Integrated Development Environment (IDE), building web applications becomes easier. Key Points to Note User Interfaces can be developed effortlessly with its built-in UI component library. Robust event handling mechanism. Offers a clean separation between behavior & presentation. Component-level control over statefulness. Highly ‘pluggable’ — components, view handler, etc. 10. Hibernate — Free & Open-source Framework for Mapping an Object-oriented Domain Model to a Relational Database Hibernate is one of the Object Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks of Java predominantly used for developing database structures. The framework offers Hibernate Query Language (HQL) for database management. Thus, Hibernate helps in establishing seamless integration between the Java-based web applications & databases. Moreover, it supports the concept of lazy loading that helps loading only the class that is required for the query to load. As Hibernate implements the necessary changes made to the database automatically, it is highly developer-friendly as well. Key Points to Note It possesses the capability to generate primary keys automatically while storing the records into a database. It provides relationships such as One-To-Many, One-To-One, Many-To-Many-to-Many, Many-To-One. It supports inheritance, associations, collections. Java is the most popular language out there in the tech space for building web apps. Since all these Java frameworks are unique and offer useful features to develop web apps that solve different needs, it is a little hard for you to choose the perfect framework for your app idea. Our expert developers have hands-on experience in delivering industry-leading services to your web app development needs. No matter whether you want an enterprise-grade web app or mobile app, we have got you completely covered. You can schedule a meeting for a requirement discussion by dropping an email at [email protected] stating your requirement, and we will get in touch with you shortly.
https://medium.com/@techaffinity/top-10-java-frameworks-grails-spring-play-vaadin-vert-x-9afdffb36c88
['Tech', 'Marketing Blogs Techaffinity']
2019-10-08 19:42:30.199000+00:00
['Vaadin', 'Java', 'Web Development', 'Framework', 'Grails']
Don’t Be An Insecure Fool, Patch
In the wake of the Equifax act of corporate malfeasance (Read: this was not a breach. It was a terrible and continuing mistake on account of a company who exists solely to guard and protect sensitive financial data) let me ask you a question: when is the last time you actively patched your software or updated your firmware? If your answer is “never” or “I have no idea what a patch or firmware is”, the ongoing Equifax scandal (Read: Equifax is a legitimate societal scandal worthy of complete and swift corporate elimination) is all the information you need as to why paying attention to digital security is of dire importance. For those of you who haven’t been following the ongoing Equifax negation of duty, here is your timeline: February 2nd — March 7th, 2017 Over the course of around a month, Apache is notified of the security vulnerability, provides a security patch for the vulnerability, and publishes the update. March 10th, 2017 Alleged Equifax breach takes place. March 10th — March 14th, 2017 Over the course of four days, MITRE (National Security Engineering Center) and NVD (U.S. government repository of standards based vulnerability management data) add the vulnerability and resolution to their database. On the 14th, CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) releases a public advisory of the vulnerability. Additionally on the 14th, Equifax says they are aware of the issue. May 13th, 2017 Initial and verified Equifax breach occurs. July 29th, 2017 Equifax, nearly three months after the initial verified breach, first detects the intrusion. July 30th, 2017 Equifax patched vulnerability. August 1st and 2nd, 2017 Three senior leadership members of the Equifax team sell roughly $2 million shares of company stock. According to the US Security and Exchange Commission, Equifax CFO John Gamble Gr., workforce solutions president Rodolfo Ploder and U.S. information solutions president Joseph Loughran, all sell company shares days after they discovered the July 29th breach. August 2nd, 2017 Equifax contacts Mandiant to help with, what they must internally know, will be a perilous incident response. August 10th, 2017 Understanding their internal security protocols aren’t stringent or strict enough, Equifax acquires ID Watchdog, an identity theft protection service provider. September 7, 2017 Equifax, trying to get ahead of what they know will eventually blow up in their faces, announces systemic failure in responsibility. The now darkly hilarious and devious lead of the announcement is: No Evidence of Unauthorized Access to Core Consumer or Commercial Credit Reporting Databases. Company to Offer Free Identity Theft Protection and Credit File Monitoring to All U.S. Consumers Unauthorized access is an incredible phrase here because it honestly tells the truth: hackers entered the Equifax system with direct access to admin credentials which, no joke, amounted to: Username: Admin Password: Admin September 8, 2017 Equifax stock shares take a steep nose dive of 13.7% in the first day of trading since the breech announcement. September 12, 2017 Equifax apologizes in public op-ed in USA Today. September 15th, 2017 Equifax CSO & CIO resign. September 26th, 2017 Equifax CEO Richard Smith resigns. Equifax Specific Metrics Equifax time to patch: 138 Days Equifax time to notice compromise: 78 Days Equifax time to notify public: 117 Days Take a step back for a moment to think about this. Equifax, which holds and “secures” 143 million user accounts, knew about their failings for more than three months before they made any public statement. Moreover, understanding the coming stock plunge, three Equifax executives sell roughly $2 million in company stock and they hire two firms to help clean up their self-created mess. For a company who exists on the premise of the public knowingly or unknowingly trusting them with sensitive financial data, their lapse in judgement in terms of public disclosure, stock sell off, and childish server protection protocols, looms large. And that’s the point: if a company like Equifax exists on the premise of data security and they screwed the pooch as hard as they did, what makes you think not understanding or following Internet and IoT security updates is a good idea? Three Reasons Why You Need to Pay Attention On October 23rd, 2017, Krack had the security community scrambling to resolve an endemic vulnerability in the ubiquitous, secure Wi-Fi network standard known a WPA2. In August 2017, the FBI without warning, purged all Kaspersky Lab code from their networks. Upon execution, the FBI immediately began urging private sector companies to do the same. On October 20th, 2017, it was reported the IoT BOTNET known as Reaper evolved MIRAI BOTNET strategy utilizing software hacking protocols to hack directly into connected physical devices like cameras and routers. Reaper does this by leveraging known security flaws found in the code of insecure devices. Once inside, it spreads itself further, like a tumor, to other devices within a connected network. The rub: researchers believe the BOTNET is already installed across a million networks and counting. Put it this way, if the aforementioned events are taking place on a near daily basis and one of the largest supposed to be secure companies in the United States is protecting their severs with passwords built by the cast of Spaceballs, you should have all the motivation you need to patch your devices, update your firmware, and yes, change your password on a routine basis to something which isn’t easy to guess. The least you can do is visit Microsoft Security Bulletin and Apple Security Updates.
https://medium.com/healthwellnext/dont-be-an-insecure-fool-patch-687089fd4800
['Brad Yale']
2017-10-31 13:00:48.107000+00:00
['Equifax', 'Financial Services', 'Digital Security', 'Security', 'Passwords']
That ‘scientific study’ that makes you hate your race
That ‘scientific study’ that makes you hate your race Brown-skinned girls, look past racism to own your beauty Photo credit: Create Her Stock Update on October 18, 2019: Cosmetic surgeon Dr Julian De Silva is back to creating delusional and racist studies about the most attractive women again. To no one’s surprise, the top 10 list looks about as predictable and un-Afrocentric as the previous one from 2016 (written about below). At least Beyonce made the list this time, especially considering she proudly claims her “Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils.” She got points taken off for that when it came to nose dimensions. I was raised by family members who were adamant about embracing multiculturalism — confident men and women who embraced African-American history, literature and features. I’m a proud HBCU graduate who also did (college) time for two years in Marquette, Michigan. And although there were countless moments of culture shock for me in the upper peninsula, one conversation with a college friend still sticks out in my mind years later. Photo credit: Askar Ulzhabayev/Unsplash A Japanese friend of mine was complaining about her wavy hair, her fuller cheeks and the larger shape of her eyes. She told me: “Monnie-chan, people always think I am Hawaiian, anything but Japanese.” I shrugged and said, “What’s wrong with that? There are plenty of pretty Hawaiian women. That’s not an insult.” And my homegirl was very pretty. She looked at me with the “tsk-tsk” face and said, “You just don’t understand Asian beauty.” She looked at me with the “tsk-tsk” face and said, “You just don’t understand Asian beauty.” That comment was jarring for me. I kept thinking how miserable I would be if I was constantly comparing myself to somebody’s made-up standard of beauty that I would never reach. It seemed counterproductive, especially considering I think plastic surgery is almost always an absolute waste of money and I skip makeup 90 percent of the time (hey, Alicia Keys). “Embrace your face” is my motto. Photo credit: Cassandra Hamer/Unsplash However, a “scientific” study from Harley Street physician Dr. De Silva proved just how easily people can fall into this trap. The study claims to identify “the world’s most beautiful face” by using the ancient Greek beauty ratio Phi to make a determination. The top 10 list is full of the usual suspects found on the covers of pop magazines: Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Moss, Kendall Jenner and Selena Gomez. Judging from the list and the requirements to make the list, women with African features would be hard-pressed to qualify. Photo credit: Chris Murray/Unsplash Although it’s no surprise that they’re on the list (and I agree that they’re pretty women), the more troubling factor is how their beauty was measured: A certain size lips and nose, the distance from lip to mouth or eyes to nose, and even foreheads. Judging from the list and the requirements to make the list, women with African features would be hard-pressed to qualify. Jaw-dropping women such as Gabrielle Dennis, Janelle Monae, Kelly Rowland, Tika Sumpter, Angela Bassett, Regina Hall and King, Queen Latifah, Meagan Good, Phylicia Rashad, Joy Bryant, Jennifer Hudson, Lupita Nyong’o and Mary J. Blige probably wouldn’t make the cut. And these are women I find to be just as stunning as those top 10. Photo credit and edits: Asterio Tecson/Wikimedia Commons Studies that depict people’s beauty based on these tactics successfully marginalize certain groups so they’ll never make the quota. When Beyoncé says “I like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils,” studies like these basically respond back with “You shouldn’t.” (And who in their right mind would argue Beyonce’s not gorgeous?) When Beyonce creates songs like “Brown Skin Girl,” studies like these leave some perplexed. They’re wondering what in the world “black girl magic” is. That’s on them. Now does the study make me personally feel insecure? No. I was told one too many times as a child, teenager and adult that I was pretty. Nowadays, if someone tells me I’m not, my response would be to “take that up with your optometrist.” So why does this study matter? Because there are still entirely too many women of color who are going under the knife, packing on makeup, getting surgical eye color changes, moisturizing with skin lightener and photo-editing their own pics to try to meet someone else’s standard of beauty — not for themselves. Studies like these continue to perpetuate the stereotype that makes some women feel “perfect” while others feel perfectly less than. So to women who worry about meeting someone else’s standard of beauty, consider reevaluating that. Don’t diminish your pretty trying to keep up with petty “scientific” studies. The original version of this edited post was published on Blavity.
https://medium.com/i-do-see-color/that-scientific-study-that-makes-you-hate-your-race-d49c949ecd6a
['Shamontiel L. Vaughn']
2020-02-08 14:04:21.350000+00:00
['Beauty', 'Black Women', 'Black Girl Magic', 'Racism', 'Prejudice']
What Is Rotoscope Animation in 2021?
Animated movies are everyone’s favourite from 5 to 70, from Toy Story to Lion King, each has a delightful story to tell and bond to make with the audiences. While we enjoy the final visual delight did you know there are more than one ways to animate a movie? As leading videography experts our team has crowned rotoscoping as the most innovative way of creating animated videos in 2021!. Now that we have got you wondering what Rotoscoping is all about, let’s talk about it. What is Rotoscoping? Decades ago when animated movies took its birth in this world, audiences were not sure or comfortable with this format. Cartoons running, walking and talking was like living in another world. They were very curious to find out what was behind these animated figures. This is where rotoscoping came in. It is a graphic asset for animated and live action projects. First introduced by Animator Max Fliescher in the year 1915, while he was trying to make the process of animation simple he discovered tracing live footage would be the best way to do. He believed that drawing first hand was a time consuming process whereas tracing is much faster. This gave birth to the first rotoscoped cartoon character “Koko the Clown”. The cartoons were immediately popular. A reviewer for the New York Times wrote in 1919, “After a deluge of pen-and-ink ‘comedies’ in which figures move with mechanical jerks with little or no wit to guide them, it is a treat to watch the smooth action of Mr. Fleischer’s figure” The still at the head of this article features legendary band leader and singer Cab Calloway performing “Minnie the Moocher” in 1932. You can see the animation here At the start you see footage of Calloway’s idiosyncratic act, and then at various times like 1:52 or 2:25 you’ll see a walrus creature whose movement has been rotoscoped or traced from Calloway’s performance. The Evolution As technology evolved, movies did too and it was time for an upgrade for rotoscoping too. Unearthing the history our experts share, ‘In the 90’s due to technology intervention the process called interpolated rotoscoping was introduced’ Wondering what it is? Well it is a technique that allows you to use rotoscoping technique with a computer. Later this technique became popular by the name rotoshop. This software lets the user to trace figures and applies the basic forms to other movements. What do you achieve through rotoscopy ? Today with the techniques of rotoscoping is used to create a mask around the object that needs to be removed or added to another moving frame by using articulated rotoscoping. We human beings are programmed to notice movement. It’s an important quality for designers who help the audience to notice and connect with their work. But how can you incorporate motion in a way that enhances your art and doesn’t take advanced animation skills? With the right tools, you can create gif’s animation in just a few steps. Why is it important? Imagine tracing a shape around an object captured live frame, cutting it and then pasting in another to make the changes you desire to make. By doing this moviemakers create silhouettes they can use to extract the purpose from a scene for use on unique backgrounds. This has allowed a lot of improvement in visual effect in any process of recording using motion. With technology advancement all this manual process was replaced with rotoscoping after effects. These involve automated techniques and features from softwares like motion tracking, Roto and VFX. Rotoscoping animation aftereffects is the best way to get started in motion design. It lets you incorporate movements quickly without knowing all the principles of animation. Find out your movies that have used rotoscoping to give life to your favourite characters by reading more https://evolutionco.com/blog Know More About Us: https://www.evolutionco.com/ Follow Us on: Facebook Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Dribble Twitter
https://medium.com/@evolutionco/what-is-rotoscope-animation-in-2021-11d3fbf5d3f7
[]
2021-03-04 06:40:06.330000+00:00
['Illustration Design', 'Graphic Design', 'Design Service', 'Vfx']
Largest Flowers Cold Room in Singapore
For those who have not known yet, Far East Orchid has the largest cold room for flowers in Singapore so far. We have specialists in building cold rooms for various applications and features, which allow our flowers to be fresh even before getting to customers’ hands. Far East Orchid takes the freshness and the beauty of our flowers seriously. We believe that all stages of flowers are important because it will determine how beautiful they are when it gets to your hands. Our cold room provides the best protection for the flowers since the stem has been cut off. With the most modern machines, we will make sure that all the flowers are stored in a healthy environment where they will continue to extend their vase life to a maximum. Until the moment of transport, FEO understands that the ideal temperature and good air distribution needs to be maintained. With all the advantages we have for our flowers, FEO is proud to have the largest flower cold room in Singapore, where will allow FEO to bring the most beautiful flowers to our happy customers. Image source: Far East Orchid Facebook Page
https://medium.com/@fareastorchid/largest-flowers-cold-room-in-singapore-192d536c93a0
['Far East Orchid Singapore']
2017-11-20 02:49:32.536000+00:00
['Flowers', 'Singapore', 'Wholesale', 'Decoration']
History of Indian Furniture
Floor sitting culture of India Image Source: theatlantic.com For much of India’s history, furniture has never been a part of the home. Customs and traditions throughout most of India determine that people slept on the floor and meals were also enjoyed seated there. Therefore, homes usually had cushions for seating or perhaps even some low stools. There was definitely no need for other furniture items like beds, dressers, tables, or even desks. The culture of sitting on the floor is likely to develop etiquette like removing footwear before entering the house or wearing loose clothes and slippers and sandals rather than tight clothes and laced-up shoes. It might also have influenced the architecture of the house like a smooth floor with sitting place covered with mats, low cabinets close to floor level for convenience. 14th century Vijayanagar Empire in Southern India Image Source: scroll.in Few cultures were in furniture-making tradition, but it was mostly for palaces, temples, or public houses. It was mostly for ceremonial, like royal thrones. Furniture making was at that time more of art and trade than the utility. Craftsmen preserved and immortalized folklore and legends in wood. Charpai is one of the earliest pieces of furniture that has been used for sitting and sleeping. 15th-century Portuguese Influence Image Source: facebook.com Portuguese invaded and conquered parts of India. They established residential complexes as well as business settlements, with their headquarters in Southern India. The lack of furniture in India they used back at home dismayed them. They shipped some furniture from their kingdom and commissioned Indian craftsmen to replicate them and thus, influenced the domestic furniture of the country. This gave birth to the Indo-Portuguese style. Although the style was Portugal, the materials used were Indian. These included furniture like large cabinets with intricately inlaid and incised geometric patterns. Indian craftsmen created furniture that had very decorative qualities because of wood carving techniques and inlays. For the inlays, they used a variety of precious materials, like ebony and ivory, cut and placed so they lay flush, creating a smooth, flat surface. 16th-century Dutch Influence Following the Portuguese, Dutch formed trade bases in the Southern part of India. Their furniture making style gave rise to the Indo-Dutch style. These comprised of light-colored hardwoods with incised and inlaid decorations or dark woods like ebony with elaborate carved floral decorations. The indo-Dutch style was more contemporary than the Portuguese style. Mughal Style Image Source: google.com Mughals arrived in India around the mid-16th Century, bringing along their influence in furniture. Mughal style furniture is mostly found in Northern India. These include furniture like tables and writing desks made of dark hardwoods like ebony with decorations of inlaid bone or ivory or mirrors. It is mostly done in Jodhpur now, where the craftsmen use handcrafted pieces of camel bone put in a traditional motif. 18th-century British Influence Image Source: google.com By the 18th century, a lot of furniture increasingly echoed English styles like Chippendale and Sheraton. But even these furniture included Indian material and decorative flourishes. English cultivated teak as a ‘royal tree’ for the shipping industry as it is resilient to water and weather thus, teak gain popularity for quality woodwork. The furniture included chairs with flat seats and high and straight backs with intricate carvings. Post Colonisation The furniture industry in India evolved with the departure of the British, ornamentation and wood varieties have changed, mostly because of price considerations. As the 19th century brought along ornamentation, the 20th century moved to simple and utilitarian furniture. Price considerations have driven down ornamentation to the minimum, and cheaper wood varieties have come to be used to cater to the huge low-cost demand. Furniture eventually also became lighter and was customized to fit our households and busy lifestyle. Image Source: google.com The availability of quality wood has been one of the reasons behind the widespread furniture making in India. However, with the restrictions by the government on the cutting of trees not only the price of wooden furniture is affected but also compelled to explore other materials. Despite developments in manufacturing techniques and technology, Indian maintains its traditional way of using simple tools in the manufacturing process. Indian furniture is still carved from traditional tools that retain its ethnicity. The traditional furniture making process made Indian furniture the symbol of durability and elegance. This also makes each and every Indian furniture piece unique. But owing to present-day mass consumption, the mastery of making one piece of its kind seems to be vanishing.
https://medium.com/@artanya29/history-of-indian-furniture-64ec7b8a92ec
['Tanya Agrawal']
2020-11-17 12:00:22.811000+00:00
['Culture', 'Chair', 'Furniture', 'Design', 'India']
Sameer Sacranie Shares Seven Great Apps and Online Programs for Fitness Enthusiasts
Sameer Sacranie Shares Seven Great Apps and Online Programs for Fitness Enthusiasts Sameer Sacranie May 3·4 min read During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have had difficulty connecting with others with similar health goals. Gyms and classes have not been in operation, and people were often forced to work out at home by themselves. Fortunately, online communities can join if they want to enjoy fitness in a group setting. Sameer Sacranie, a fitness expert, shares the top seven places for people to share workouts online, including those that have created vibrant virtual communities. 1. My Fitness Pal My Fitness Pal provides individual tracking of diet, exercise, and other health measures. The program also offers the chance for members to connect with friends and family, and fellow users of the online platform. The app is easy to use and intuitive. It provides users with simple ways to count their daily calories and track their exercises. There is a robust online community of message boards and social feeds. Overall, My Fitness Pal is especially helpful if you want to lose weight or improve your overall activity level. My Fitness Pal offers a free app for iOS and Android. It also provides a premium version for users who want more control over their experience. It can also be used from a laptop or desktop PC. 2. Peloton Peloton manufactures both stationary bikes and treadmills that connect users to live online classes. Many people who have missed going to spin classes at the gym have taken to Peloton, using it to jump-start their fitness. The one disadvantage to Peloton is that it is only available if you buy a relatively expensive piece of fitness equipment. Most users become fans of the platform and encourage their friends and family to get involved. 3. Fitbit Fitbit is another online community that depends on purchasing a piece of equipment. However, Fitbit’s smartwatches and fitness trackers are far less expensive than Peloton products, leaving a lower barrier to participation. Fitbit’s app is in some respects similar to My Fitness Pal, allowing users to track their daily calorie intake and fitness activities. The difference with Fitbit is that it offers more effective tracking of calories burned because most models track a user’s heartbeat and give a GPS readout of where they have walked and run. Like My Fitness Pal, Fitbit offers a free app and a premium version. The premium version includes dozens of workout and mindfulness programs. 4. Jefit Jefit is designed for people who want to find or design their own fitness plans. You can connect with other members and friends to encourage each other, set personal goals, and share workouts. The basic app is free to use, though some features are only available to paying members. One potential downside of Jefit is that the discussion boards are less active than those in other communities. Nevertheless, people who are interested in fitness will get a lot out of this app. 5. YouTube YouTube has become an excellent place to find online fitness classes for all abilities. There are no real communities available to join, but the wide variety of classes makes up for the lack of personal connection. Two of the most popular fitness channels on YouTube are Yoga by Adriene and Fitness Blender. Both of these channels provide classes for beginners through expert-level athletes. One disadvantage to YouTube is that it is an ad-supported platform. However, you can buy a premium membership to avoid seeing the ads. 6. Bodyspace Bodyspace is the social side of Bodybuilder.com. The site allows you to choose your workouts, track all of your workouts and body stats, connect with current friends, and make new ones in the community. It is focused on serious bodybuilders, though beginners are welcome. One possible downside to this app is that it recommends that you buy certain nutritional supplements. If you do not buy them, your results may be different from those intended by the celebrity trainers who designed the programs. 7. NerdFitness NerdFitness is intended for people who are new to working out. It caters to people who have “nerdy” interests, and it concentrates on supporting members through non-judgmental help. The website has an extensive library of fitness articles. It is free to join, but certain programs are only available to paying members. The website is the only way to use NerdFitness. At present, it does not offer an app on iOS or Android phones. This can be a disadvantage for people who want to track their workouts in real-time while away from home. Connecting with Fitness Lovers All seven of these programs can help you create a robust online workout plan. Until gyms and classes reopen, they can be a great way to keep yourself in shape. Sameer Sacranie recommends checking out one or more of these programs to see whether they would be a good fit for you and your fitness ambitions.
https://medium.com/@sameersacranie/sameer-sacranie-shares-seven-great-apps-and-online-programs-for-fitness-enthusiasts-7fa7164b496c
['Sameer Sacranie']
2021-05-03 14:48:22.284000+00:00
['Fitness Apps', 'Sameer Sacranie', 'London', 'United Kingdom', 'Fitness Enthusiast']
But What I Really Want pg131
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic Russian Hill Roofs 1982 Las Vegas was where I tried to get satisfaction. San Francisco was where I found it. After many tries I finally landed on both feet in the city I loved. There was an itchy, niggling feeling it was all supposed to be better than this — that there were opportunities for worthy accomplishments just out of reach. But I usually felt like that. When wine didn’t make that feeling go away, something stronger would. I bought an easel table and painted watercolor portraits and rooftop views from my almost-perfect bay window atop Russian Hill. If I stuck my head out far enough I could see a sliver of the Golden Gate Bridge. — End of Chapter 6 During a powerfully real hypnosis session years after this point in the book, I witnessed the final planning meeting for this life. I was in a bright room on the other side with my spirit guides, and I was stubborn, blundering fool. Growing up I knew I was supposed to be an architect, but it didn’t happen. By experiencing that hypnosis vision, I finally understood why. I discounted wise advice to arrange an easier passage as a young child. Something bad happened, and I ended up too brutalized and traumatized to achieve loftier goals in this incarnation. The original blueprint of my life plan had me joining Gale, Hornberger and Worstell Architects as a young architect. But I ignored sage advice from sages, my life went off the rails and I ended up as their receptionist instead. A signed copy of Mernie’s memoir is available at www.etsy.com/listing/839838936 Unsigned copies can be ordered wherever books are sold.
https://medium.com/@mernie/but-what-i-really-want-pg131-595cf072379
['Mernie Buchanan']
2020-12-22 17:52:40.853000+00:00
['Spirit Guides', 'San Francisco', 'The Incompetent Psychic', 'Artist Memoir', 'Books']
Roles and Responsibilities of a Physician
Doctors forestall, analyze, and treat different illnesses to improve their patients’ general wellbeing. They are separated into two gatherings of health experts: General Practice Physicians and Specialist Physicians. It is the expert duty of doctors to utilize our clinical information, logical mastery, and moral preparation to work for better patient health. Most doctors and specialists work all day. Numerous doctors and specialists work long, sporadic, and overnight hours. Doctors and specialists may go between their workplaces and emergency clinics to think about their patients. While accessible if the need arises, a doctor may need to address a patient’s interests via telephone or make a crisis visit to a clinic or nursing home. Dr. Ryan Gorji is a best known General Physician who is situated in the United States and also completed his Medical Degree from Ross University School of Medicine. The thing that intrigues him the most about the field of primary care is the idea that he gets to build long-term relationships with his patients and facilitate their health as they grow. He likes the thought of getting to know the patients on both a personal and professional level. Essential Responsibilities of Physician: Here’s a non-comprehensive rundown of basic assignments Physicians are required to finish. Assessing patients’ clinical history and meds, just as recognizing and posting their side effects: Planning with some other Physician the patient may be seeing. Diagnosing ailments, wounds, and other wellbeing issues: Directing routine tests or potentially physical assessments; directing or requesting tests (for example research center tests, ultrasounds, electrocardiograms, and x-beams); and working and observing clinical hardware. Endorsing and managing suitable medicines (for example prescription, medical procedure, diet, or potentially work out), as per analyze, and alluding the patient to a Specialist Physician for additional assessment as well as therapy, varying: Giving sedation preceding performing or potentially aiding routine medical procedure or alluding patients to a more specific Surgeon, varying; and giving clinical help to patients in instances of crisis. Daily performed task by a Physician: Diagnosing and treating ailments, wounds, and other wellbeing issues by directing routine tests or potentially physical assessments. Endorsing and regulating suitable medicines, as per the analysis. Educating and guiding patients and their family members. Keeping up exact and definite patient records, observing changes in patients’ condition, and making changes in the line of treatment if the condition doesn’t improve. Dealing with an interdisciplinary wellbeing group and training them on the best way to execute, organize, and assess tolerant consideration. Academic qualification necessary to become a physician:
https://medium.com/@drryangorji/roles-and-responsibilities-of-a-physician-d20b1d57b763
['Dr Ryan Majd Gorji']
2020-08-26 07:52:30.229000+00:00
['Medical', 'Medicine', 'United States', 'Physicians', 'Doctors']
2018 Monthly Update II
Following the success of our first Meet the Managers event in Vienna, we will be hosting further events around the world, beginning in London on March 29. Don’t miss your chance to connect with other leading industry figures and join us in London! ICONOMI in the Media Colin Harper of CoinCentral, Jean-Pierre Buntinx of The Merkle, and Blockchain Relations produced well-researched overviews of ICONOMI: “..this new Digital Assets Management Platform is an intriguing technical service suited for novice investors, veteran traders, and blockchain experts alike.” Read full article in The Merkle>> “…the average individual can benefit from investment practices that used to exist solely for the elite and economically privileged.” Read full article in CoinCentral>> “A DAA allows anyone to instantly diversify funds across a wide selection of digital assets available on ICONOMI’s platform in seconds.” Read full article in Blockchain Relations>> If you have written a piece about ICONOMI, send it to [email protected] and let us know; if it meets our criteria, we’ll mention it in our next Monthly Update. New Features & Releases We introduced fees payable in ICN for DAA creation, rebalancing, and tokenization. To read more about these fees and about our new buyback system, read our full blog post. We will introduce DAA creation and rebalancing fees in May, together with a new back-end features related to these aspects of the platform. DAA tokenization fees will be introduced in April, and the adjusted buyback system will take effect on July 1. With the most recent Android app update, Android users can now verify for Tier 1 directly on their phones. Download the updated app in the Play Store. Android App Update Verifying through the ICONOMI mobile apps is a much easier and more efficient process for our users, and we recommend it over verifying through browser access. For the smoothest experience, please follow our recommendations and pointers for successfully verifying for Tier 1 verification. New Supported Countries Fourteen new countries are now supported for Tier 2 verification on the ICONOMI platform (Angola, Australia, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Namibia, Pakistan, Philippines, Senegal, Taiwan, and Thailand), bringing the total supported countries for Tier 2 to 63. Read more in our blog post. Two-Factor Authentication for Withdrawals Withdrawal 2FA allows users to divide authentication across two separate devices: one device can be used for login 2FA, and another device can be used for withdrawal 2FA, ensuring no single point of failure. It is especially applicable for company accounts, allowing these two roles to be split between two different people. Withdrawal 2FA adds a second layer of protection for assets stored on the ICONOMI platform. We always stress the importance of keeping your assets safe, and features like this really make a difference. Read our Knowledge Base article to learn how to protect your assets further. Community Rocket.Chat Last month, we successfully migrated from Slack to Rocket.Chat. To join the conversation, visit our #public channel, click “SIGN IN TO START TALKING” in the lower left corner of the screen, then click “Register a new account” and fill in the form. Q&A Session Once again, we will be answering your questions and taking time to discuss our current and future plans with our community during our March Reddit AMA. Be sure to join us on Wednesday, March 21 at 5pm CET! Read our previous Reddit Q&A here. What’s Next? New features for Android app We are currently developing Tier 2 verification and an activity section for the Android app. We would like to hear your input on which Android app features you want to see implemented first: Buy/sell feature Widgets: Display DAA prices or other statistics on your home screen Feel free to comment your preference below or on Reddit. We’ll decide which feature to implement first based on your feedback!
https://medium.com/iconominet/2018-monthly-update-ii-5645367f1273
['Tjasa Tolj']
2018-04-16 14:39:55.035000+00:00
['Blockchain', 'Iconomi', 'Ethereum', 'Updates', 'Bitcoin']
About Me —Lori Mann
About Me —Lori Mann Or you can call me Dr. Miss. Author’s Photo Big Picture I write and I teach. I live on the south side of Chicago. Up until recently, I spent 90% of my professional time teaching high school Spanish and then crammed in some writing on the side. However, I recently had to take a leave of absence from teaching — thanks, Covid! — and I now spend the majority of my time writing. Both endeavors are hard and humbling. My teaching days often ended with me feeling too mentally exhausted to even have a conversation with my family. And while my brain is sometimes just as tired now from writing, I am at my happiest because I’m creating something new every day. This new pandemic life is very quiet. I have named the four stray cats who periodically wander through our yard Choco, Oreo, Midnight, and Gus. If I haven’t seen one of them in a few days, I worry a bit because sometimes I’m ridiculous like that. We recently got new sod installed and I wondered how the sprinkler would impact their usual route through the gaps in the fence. You will be glad to hear that they adjusted beautifully. In addition to the four stray cats, I have three sons who are ages 18, 15, and 12. The eighteen-year-old is suddenly doing mannish things like attending university online and shaving regularly and working full time as a delivery driver. It’s all quite strange considering I was pregnant with him fifteen minutes ago. The other two refuse to stay nascent as well and instead are juggling remote learning and sports and eating everything in the house. They are all hilarious people and I’m lucky to be their mom. I keep by my front door the two trekking poles that I grab when I go hiking every week. I’m currently training for a ten-day trip to Philmont, New Mexico with my sons’ Boy Scout troop. There are many days when I have self-doubt about my ability to adequately prepare, but I push myself to keep training. I don’t want to be “that lady” on the trip who just couldn’t cut it. There are four cats, three sons, two trekking poles, and…one husband. I call him Mr. Mann and we got married in September 2019. All things considered, going through a pandemic as a newlywed has been quite nice. Mr. Mann is the best part of my life. Writing Things I write every day and strive to submit to a Medium publication several times a week. My cuticles bear the brunt of the waiting-related stress. I have contributed to the following publications so far: Noteworthy-The Journal Blog Teachers on Fire Magazine P.S. I Love You Heart Affairs The Startup Self, Inspired Climate Conscious Fellowship Writers Age of Awareness The Ascent The Synapse My goal is to contribute to Forge and Better Humans. Newsletter I have a newsletter that I send out weekly-ish. It’s a place to discuss our current writing projects and good books and any other cool stuff that pops up. I’d love to have you as a member of the Dr. Miss Community. This is the subscription link. My Topics I enjoy writing about teaching, intermittent fasting, parenting, relationships, feminism, and any other nonsense that floats through my head. Here are a few pieces that will give you a sense of my writing style. Contact Information Email: [email protected] Newsletter Twitter Instagram Facebook
https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-lori-mann-e73fac6a6fd9
['Dr. Miss']
2020-11-03 10:46:54.097000+00:00
['Writing', 'Blogging', 'About Me', 'Medium', 'Introduction']
Newsflash: Bookings Grow 527% Month over Month
We are happy to report that the recent upgrades made to LockTrip.com have truly transformed our marketplace, which has also been confirmed by the surge in bookings received over the past month. In case you have not read about our mega-inventory update yet, we recommend to go through the announcement below: In the meantime we have deployed a number of additional features, including the much requested search by map functionality: Great User Experience + Hypercompetitive Pricing = Growth For the time period between July 15 and August 15 (which is 1 full month after the major deployment), we have received bookings for a total of 138 room-nights, which is an increase of 527% compared to the previous month. Although starting from a small base, this shows that the marketplace is rapidly transforming into a mature product. It also proves how quickly booking numbers can grow, which is especially important since we are standing right before the marketing phase of the project. More than 120 affiliates have registered so far and are now preparing towards spreading the word about LockTrip.com. If you want to be part of the movement, you can register through the form below: The first 250 affiliates will enjoy priority features, such as those described below: We are looking forward to the coming months and wish you a great and safe traveling time! Join our Telegram Community 👇🏼 LockTrip is a blockchain-based travel marketplace that allows users to save up to 60% on their bookings by cutting out middlemen. Every booking burns LOC proportionally to its booking value, continuously reducing its total supply.
https://medium.com/locktrip/newsflash-bookings-grow-527-month-over-month-de3a9934594f
['Locktrip.Com', 'Loc Token', 'Official Blog']
2020-08-21 15:25:25.891000+00:00
['Travel', 'Vacation', 'Locktrip', 'Ethereum', 'Crypto']
Things You Can Do with JavaScript
1. Machine Learning Machine learning is a trending subject these days. You can add cool machine learning features to your next app using JavaScript. Since web browsers have access to webcams and mics, you have access to visual and sound inputs which can lead to some interesting machine learning features such as Face Recognition. Using the TensorFlow library for JavaScript you can build truly amazing projects that leverage machine learning such as real-time piano performance. It allows you to run as well as retain existing trained models, besides building new models from scratch. There are a variety of other libraries as well such as Brain.js and deeplearn. ml5.js is another friendly machine learning library to create and explore artificial intelligence in the browser. It provides access to algorithms and is built on top of TensorFlow.js.
https://lovecrashjan001.medium.com/things-you-can-do-with-javascript-52093db859c9
[]
2020-12-04 01:10:42.518000+00:00
['Technology', 'Coding', 'JavaScript', 'Programming', 'Web Development']
BitGreen Chain Swap Guide
The new BitGreen blockchain is here. Follow these steps to restore your balance in the new wallet. Remember — Never accept wallet advice or help via direct message — use public channels only, and accept help from verified team members who you messaged first and confirmed as a team member. Welcome To The New BitGreen Before proceeding, make sure to take your time with this process and prioritize the security and safety of your coins. The coin swap and masternode setup process are totally new. Take your time and securely update to the new chain. Don’t rush, you have until at least December 3 to swap coins before rewards start on the new chain. Chain Swap Guide This graphic outlines the process of the swap which began after the snapshot at block 870,000: Chain Swap Process Prefer the video guide? Click here. Step 1: Backup Your Wallet Always be safe. Before getting started, make sure your wallet is properly backed up. Do a simple backup (File — Backup Wallet): Step 2: Export Wallet Addresses (Private Keys) In this step, we use a command to instantly expose your private keys. Do this process securely and use the command below carefully. While your private keys are exposed, your coins are at risk. Do not share your private keys with anyone, and destroy the unencrypted version after this process. Open the debug (Tools — Debug console) in the old BitGreen Wallet 1.3.2: BitGreen Debug Console Type the dumpwallet command in the debug console: dumpwallet bitgwallet.txt You might have to type it twice if you get a warning message. You should now see the file on your desktop, or where ever your BITG Wallet is located: Once you have the bitgwallet.txt file saved, your ready to download the new BitGreen wallet! Step 3: BitGreen Wallet Download Next, it’s time to download the BitGreen wallet from Github. Only download the wallet from the official Github. https://github.com/bitgreen/bitgreen/releases Select your wallet. For this setup I used win64.zip: Download the wallet and extract. Open the “bin” folder to find bitgreen-qt. Step 4: Delete Old Blockchain Files Before installing the new wallet, you’ll need to clear out the old BitGreen configuration files. These are in the Roaming folder which can be found at: C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming Move the BitGreen folder to the trash. Step 5: Open Wallet & Add Peers Open the new wallet by running “bitgreen-qt” as an Administrator or right clicking and selecting Open on Mac: Now open the Console (Tools — Console) and enter the addnodes command: addnode 45.63.2.241 onetry addnode 104.156.249.186 onetry addnode 140.82.12.18 onetry addnode 45.77.201.238 onetry addnode 149.28.239.44 onetry addnode 149.28.61.99 onetry addnode 149.28.43.3 onetry The wallet should immediately begin synchronizing with the network and will quickly download the new blockchain. Step 6: Import Wallet The final step is to import your wallet that we saved on the desktop. Open the Console (Tools — Console) and type the following command using the destination where you sent the dumpwallet above: importwallet “C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\bitgwallet.txt” Wait about 2 minutes and your wallet balances will be restored. Step 7: Delete Private Keys & Encrypt Your Wallet Once your balance is restored, delete the Private Keys that are exposed from your dumpwallet. You don’t want to leave the keys file, it’s in an unencrypted form: Next, encrypt your new wallet. Go to Settings — Encrypt Wallet Watch the video guide here: Your wallet balances are now restored, configured, and secure. Next, check out our official BitGreen Masternode Setup Documentation and view the Step-by-Step process here:
https://medium.com/bitgreen/bitgreen-chain-swap-guide-4ca442b90e40
[]
2019-12-09 16:46:30.660000+00:00
['Bitgreen', 'Sustainability', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Proof Of Stake', 'Blockchain']
Convert/Unconvert using @DynamoDBTypeConverted Annotation
@DynamoDBTypeConverted annotation is used to transform data before writing and after reading from DynamoDB. This is the ideal place to put in logic to convert data before storing to DB and un-convert back while reading data into your application. Let’s take an example of using @DynamoDBTypeConverted to create a custom annotation that can be used to encrypt sensitive fields in the database and decrypt back when the data is read through the application. This way the sensitive data would be encrypted when engineers use DynamoDB console for any reason and the encryption key used is generated by your application and not by DynamoDB. Note: This is different from turning on encryption at rest for the entire table Step 1: Creating @Encrypted custom annotation in Java @Target({ElementType.FIELD}) @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME) @DynamoDBTypeConverted(converter= Encrypted.Converter.class) public @interface Encrypted { RootKey rootKeyName(); class Converter implements DynamoDBTypeConverter<String, String> { private RootKey rootKey; private EncryptionService encryptionService; public Converter(final Class<String> targetType, final Encrypted annotation) { this.rootKey = annotation.rootKeyName(); initEncryptionService(); } public Converter() { this.rootKey = null; initEncryptionService(); } private void initEncryptionService() { // initialize your Encryption Service } @Override public String convert(final String s) { return encryptionService.encrypt(s, this.rootKey); } @Override public String unconvert(final String s) { return encryptionService.decrypt(s, this.rootKey); } } } Step 2: Use @Encrypted in entity class to annotate sensitive fields @DynamoDBTable(tableName="contact") public class Contact { @DynamoDBHashKey(attributeName="contactId") private String id; private String firstName; private String lastName; .... @Encrypted(rootKeyName = RootKey.secretField) private String secretField; } This method of writing custom annotations becomes super useful in practical applications when we want the data format in the DB to be different from the data used in the application!
https://medium.com/@varsha.venkat93/convert-unconvert-using-dynamodbtypeconverted-annotation-b6627cc1916d
['Varsha Venkatesh']
2020-10-07 21:04:46.029000+00:00
['Aws Sdk', 'Dynamodb', 'NoSQL', 'Java', 'Aws Dynamodb']
In This Day and Age, Should I Use A Real Estate Agent To Sell My Home Or Sell It Myself?
With powerful sites such as Zillow and Trulia available in the palm of your hand, real estate information readily available on demand, and smartphone photography coupled with social media marketing, you may question the benefits of using a real estate agent to sell your home. For starters, let’s take a look at some numbers: - Having a real estate agent has been proven to net 25% more for your home - 89% of For Sale By Owner’s fail, eventually listing with an Agent Real estate agents sell homes every single day, which means they foresee issues and know the best sales and marketing strategies. Real estate agents can also help keep a seller’s emotions in check, which is important. But what about the cost? 6% can be a steep price to pay! It’s true. With a median sale price in New York of $549,000, the typical seller would be looking at paying almost $33,000 in commissions. Online brokerage NestQuest Direct thinks this is too much. They think you should be able to sell your home using a knowledgeable real estate agent who can get the most for your home, without having to pay so much. So they launched an innovative flat rate model that uses local agents who are paid a salary instead of commission. You simply choose one of their four flat rate packages and they go to work, saving sellers an average of $15,000! Chances are your home is your largest asset and therefore you have built up substantial equity. So selling your home can be your most important financial decision. When you are ready to sell, you have to ensure you keep as much of that equity as possible. With that in mind, many people think that selling their home themselves will save them money. However, real estate agents are proven to get up to 25% more for your home. For example, the founder of popular real estate website, ForSaleByOwner.com tried to sell his New York Apartment himself. But after 6 months with no luck, he enlisted a real estate agent who raised the price of the home by $150,000 and sold it within a few months. With NestQuest’s flat rate model, sellers get the best of both worlds: savings and a real estate agent. But if you are still not convinced, NestQuest Direct offers a basic package for owners to personally list their home. If you can find the time, put forth the effort, and utilize available resources efficiently to market and sell your home for top dollar, Go For It. But considering that 89% of FSBOs end up listing with a real estate agent, the majority of people who have the time and made the effort, simply may not have the knowledge. Poor pricing and marketing strategies are the main reasons for FSBO failure. Local agents have the knowledge and their brokers have spent years advertising, marketing and selling, so they know what works and what does not. Why are NestQuest Direct Agents different from all other Real Estate Agents? In addition to their 0% commission flat rate packages which save sellers thousands of dollars, they employ technology and creative teams who specialize in marketing your home. This allows your sales agent to spend 100% of his or her time selling. And NestQuest’s agents are not paid a commission either. Rather, they are paid a salary and bonus based on your satisfaction. So they will never rush a negotiation to get a deal done. They are paid regardless, ensuring they get top dollar for your home. NestQuest Direct has options for any seller out there, whether that be a FSBO, or a complete hands off seller who wants their home sold fast and for the most money. Contact NestQuest Direct today with any questions. They will send a local Agent to your home and tell you what your house is worth, and how much they can save you.
https://medium.com/@nickralph/in-this-day-and-age-should-i-use-a-real-estate-agent-to-sell-my-home-or-sell-it-myself-6708001a7413
['Nick Ralph']
2015-12-17 19:06:21.238000+00:00
['Real Estate', 'Real Estate Investments']
About super awesome marketing course
Its about CXL growth marketing course. Here I share a overview of important things I learned this week. YouTube ads: the youtube ads course was good. I learned people visit youtube for 3 reasons — 1. to know something 2. to do something (tutorial type) 3. to buy something (reviews, etc). youtube ads are better than Facebook ads in a way that youtube advertises on intent, that means showing an ad when someone has raised hands that they want help like if a person watches a video of ‘how to do meditation’ then youtube knows that person is interested in meditation and meditation advertisers can show ads to them. whereas on Facebook, it’s about advertising to interest. you think ‘revenue — cost = profit’, right? I know that’s true, but the instructor makes this equation fit for youtube ads. the equation for youtube ads is — ‘Revenue — profit = cost’. To put this in simple words, decide beforehand a percentage of profit that will make you happy, and then decide the revenue and whatever comes is your cost to spend on youtube. but remember, the more profit you take, the harder it is for you to scale your campaign. do rapid research. some insightful ways are to think about the 5 core keywords. these 5 core keywords are what your customers will be looking to know, do or buy. type them on youtube, see what comes up, take the top 10 video titles and copy them to your list. do this for each which means 5 x 5 = 25 keywords. did you know youtube charges you only if someone watches your ad past 30 seconds. (also if the ad is less than 30 secs, you get charged either way) So you don't want someone who isn’t likely to convert to watch past 30secs. how do you make sure this happens? here is a super insightful tip: In the first 5 seconds of the video, call out who this ad is for. now don't go and say “this ad is for men age between 30–40” — Nah!. Rather you should talk in your audience lingo. for example, mostly only a marketer can understand marketing lingo like — CTR, CPC, LTC, etc. so to others that may sound like Greek, but your audience gets it, and most probably only they are gonna watch past 30 seconds. Influencer marketing: I have seen many brands do influencer marketing to drive reach. just to tell people that they exist. Well, I have seen many of those brands’ ads and they sound nothing more than a billboard ad — the difference is that brand paid 100 times extra. So what should be our approach for doing influencer marketing? Our approach should be to tell our brand’s story that connects with the target audience. everyone loves stories you know. \ one big mistake most brands do that kill their influencer marketing a lot: they don't consult their influencers on how to market to the INFLUENCERS AUDIENCE. just think about it for a moment — the influencer is shining on the web because he knows what connects with his audience and he is producing it and he knows how to produce it. that’s why he is who he is. but many brands think they know better. they think they understand the influencer’s audience better than the person who created it — maybe they do. but it never hurts to ask the influencer for his/her opinion on how the creative should be . let them think about what they will do. I remember a while ago I was watching a youtube video about ‘John D. Rockafeller’ on ‘business casuals’. In the end when the Youtuber transitioned from John D. to his sponsor ‘dollar shave club’ was way too good. I still remember it and is surely one of the most sticky sponsored ads on youtube. Linkedin ads: let’s compare LinkedIn ads v/s google ads (say search ads) if someone is searching on google I can hardly say if he is a CEO or an intern cause everybody usually searches the same way. but Linkedin is different, here I can clearly say and market to a CEO or CMO if that’s my target audience. and that’s what gives LinkedIn most of its powers. giving free assets for leads works well on LinkedIn. key tips: avoid ‘audience expansion like a plaque’ as it wastes money. dont follow Linkedin’s bidding advice, as they’re just there to take most of your money out. bid as low as possible, start with the floor. Super insight: The best conversion boost in LinkedIn comes from sitting down with your sales team and telling them important things like — what ad the buyer has seen before they come, what was the messaging, and tell them these journeys of the prospect so that the sales team can customize their message accordingly. Account-based marketing: Sales and marketing alignment is a must for ABM. to do this you should take a few members from the sales team, a few from the marketing team, maybe a few from customer success, and put them in leadership roles. you want the sales and marketing team to co-own, co-lead and co-plan ABM. ABM should not be another marketing flavor in which you need some sales support. both the teams should work together and co-own it. There are 3 types of ABM — 1. strategic — targeting one-to-one accounts. 2. ABM lite — one to few account and 3. Programmatic ABM — one to many accounts. How to come up with the right list for your ABM campaign: first, the idea of dialing into your dream list accounts is bad. you should look for accounts for whom you are ideal. there are many ways to measure success, choose the right measure otherwise you will be measuring the wrong things and will lead to campaign failure. the most important question to ask is ‘From — to’ where are they now and where do you want to move them’ my views: all these courses at CXL Institute were very good. full of insider tips. The courses are long and engaging. I would suggest the CXL team make a way that helps us to keep track of how much should I do today that will help me to complete the course in x time.I know there is a feature for this but is not that helpful. Either way, the courses are all good, I liked them and learned a lot.
https://medium.com/@ayush91/about-super-awesome-marketing-course-677d63108e96
[]
2021-04-25 17:18:59.341000+00:00
['Cxl Institute', 'Cxl Minidegree', 'Marketing', 'Cxl Review', 'Course']
Introduction to Streams and Buffers
Reading from a Data Source A data-source is a data container (in memory or file storage) that can stream data. This container implements basic interfaces provided by the io package and exposes some methods to read data from. io.Reader To be able to read data from a source as a stream, the source must implement io.Reader interface. The io.Reader interface declares the basic Read method. Any type that implements the Read method is a type of Reader . type Reader interface { Read(p []byte) (n int, err error) } The Read method accepts a slice of bytes p and Read will copy first len(p) bytes from the source into the packet p . When next Read call is made, next len(p) bytes from the source is copied into p until there is no more data is left to copy from the source, in which case the Read method will return io.EOF (end-of-file) error. The n in the above definition is the number of bytes read by each Read method call. In some cases, actual source data length can be less than the len(p) or the data left in the source can be less than len(p) , hence n and err can be very helpful to identify such cases. When Read is reading the last packet of data, Read it can return io.EOF error so that we do not make Read call again and again. When there is some data still left to read, it should return a nil error. When there is absolutely no data left to read, Read call should return n=0 and err=io.EOF . Let’s first break down the implementation of the Reader interface. In the example above, we have a struct type MyStringData which holds a string str and a read index readIndex . The readIndex field will be used to hold the index of the character in str from which the Read method should return the next packet of data. This struct type implements Read method defined by the Reader interface. The receiver of this method is a pointer of MyStringData type, because this method will modify the readIndex field, hence we need the actual MyStringData object instead of just a copy of it. Inside Read method definition, we create a slice of bytes from the source which is myStringData.src since we are working with bytes than string characters. The readIndex tracks from where to start reading the source. Since the array index in Go starts at zero (as so for the slices), at an ideal end condition of the program, readIndex should be the length of the source. When the Read() call is made and the readIndex is greater than or equal to the source length, we simply return the EOF error with n set to 0 which indicates that the 0 bytes were read and it is an end of the file has reached. If that’s not the case, we simply get the limit to which data should be read starting from the readIndex . Since p packet is the data holder, we simply add readIndex and len(p) to get the nextReadLimit . However, we also need to consider if nextReadLimit exceeds the length of the source and if it does, we need to set it to a safe limit which is the length of the source and also specify that it is the end of the file condition. Next, we read from readIndex up until nextReadLimit and copy to these bytes nextBytes into the holder packet p . As we have learned from the slices lesson, we do not need a pointer of a slice as an argument to mutate it. The number of actual bytes read n can be less than len(p) , hence n is always the length of nextBytes . Before returning anything from Read method, we need to change the value of readIndex so that next Read call will start reading from the last cursor position. In the main function, we have created a src struct of type MyStringData and initialized the src field value with 20 character length string. We have set a buffer-packet of size 3 . This means, for every Read call, 3 bytes will be read. Then we have started an infinite for loop that reads from src until an error has occurred. Since io.EOF is not a serious error, we should have a separate handling mechanism for it. This program yields the following result. 🌶 go run go-streams.go 3 bytes read, data: Hel 3 bytes read, data: lo 3 bytes read, data: Ama 3 bytes read, data: zin 3 bytes read, data: g W 3 bytes read, data: orl 2 bytes read, data: d! --end-of-file-- Notice that the last Read call actually received only 2 bytes, because at that point, only 2 bytes were left to read. This is the reason we are using p[:n] slice extract operator to read up until the actual bytes read from the packet because packet could contain bytes from the previous Read call. 💡 There is a serious issue with the example above. Since were are using only ASCII characters in this example, this example works just fine. But if we have Unicode characters which take more than 1 code units (bytes), then we can have code units of the same character split between two Read calls and the program wouldn’t be able to print those characters successfully. strings.NewReader If you are thinking, all that for a drop of blood, I mean, for just a string, then do not panic. As I said, Go provides streaming capabilities over some built-in types. To get an object from a string that implements the Read method, we can use strings.NewReader function. This function returns a pointer to strings.Reader struct that implements the Read method defined by the io.Reader interface. Hence it is considered as a io.Reader object and we can stream data from it using the Read method. In the above example, though the implementation remains the same, we now create the Reader object from strings.NewReader function. This program yields the following result. 🌶 go run go-streams.go 3 bytes read, data: Hel 3 bytes read, data: lo 3 bytes read, data: Ama 3 bytes read, data: zin 3 bytes read, data: g W 3 bytes read, data: orl 2 bytes read, data: d! 0 bytes read, data: --end-of-file-- The last Read call might surprise you. The last Read call returned n=0 and err=EOF . In our implementation, we returned the EOF error with the last packet (when we’re sure that no further Read call was possible). ioutil.ReadAll If you want to read everything from a source which implements io.Reader interface, then you can use ioutil.ReadAll method. func ReadAll(src io.Reader) ([]byte, error) The ReadAll method will read from src until src returns an EOF error or some other uneventful error. The ReadAll method will only return an error if the underlying source src returns this uneventful error (other than EOF ). 🌶 go run go-streams.go Read data of length 20 : Hello Amazing World! io.ReadFull If you are interested in exactly x number of bytes from the source and somehow, if x number of bytes could not be read, get an error instead, io.ReadFull is the function for you. func ReadFull(src Reader, buf []byte) (n int, err error) The ReadFull function will read from the source src exactly len(buf) bytes. In an ideal condition, number of bytes read n will be len(buf) . If n is less than len(buf) because src returned EOF , then ReadFull will return an io.ErrUnexpectedEOF error. If ReadFull reads 0 bytes from src (when n=0 ), the error returned by the ReadFull is io.EOF . In a special condition, if an error is returned by src after len(buf) bytes were read, that error is dropped by ReadFull . In the above example, we have a source of length 20 and a buffer buf of length 14 . We can guess that first ReadFull call will be successful because 14 bytes can be read from the source src . Next call, however, won’t be successful because only 6 bytes are left to read and ReadFull will return io.ErrUnexpectedEOF error because src will return EOF before all 14 bytes are read. For any subsequent calls, ReadFull will always return io.EOF error because the source src has been exhausted and no more data can be read. Hence, the program above yields the following result. 🌶 go run go-streams.go Bytes read: 14, value: Hello Amazing , err: <nil> Bytes read: 6, value: World!, err: unexpected EOF Bytes read: 0, value: , err: EOF 💡 If you are interested in x number bytes of data from a source like we saw above but you are ok with at least y number of bytes, then you can use io.ReadAtLeast function. You can also implement the io.ReaderAt interface to provide capability to read from any index point of the source. io.LimitReader Many at times, we need to set a cap on a data source. The io.LimitReader takes a Reader object r and returns a Reader object with a cap of n bytes. func LimitReader(r Reader, n int64) Reader The LimitReader function returns a Reader object that abstracts source r . This returned Reader object will keep reading from r until n bytes are read and it will return io.EOF error once n bytes are completely read. In the example above, we have the main data source mainSrc of 20 bytes length. But we need to only read 10 bytes, hence we have created another source src from mainSrc using io.LimitReader . The packet size for the Read call is 3 which means 4 Read() calls will be successful until EOF is reached. Let’s see the result.
https://medium.com/rungo/introduction-to-streams-and-buffers-d148c0cda0ad
['Uday Hiwarale']
2020-09-01 06:41:21.077000+00:00
['Go Programming Language', 'Golang', 'Golang Tutorial', 'Go Programming', 'Programming']
Small Town
Smoky mind, mid July Dirty converse over rusty tracks short thoughts, long walks around this dog-eared wasteland Familiar sounds of the town echo in this volcanic heart Misty haze above the lake Where souls go to rot
https://medium.com/@kuhnkenz/small-town-9c7dddbe174e
['Kenzie Kuhn']
2020-12-16 14:36:45.060000+00:00
['Thoughts', 'Poem', 'Feelings', 'Musings', 'Poetry']
The Weather Corner: Institutions are taking note of the material risks of climate change and…
The Weather Corner: Institutions are taking note of the material risks of climate change and extreme weather. Are we at an inflection point? ClimateAi Feb 22·4 min read We’re bringing you exclusive content from our newsletter, The Forecast, right here on Medium. Sign up for our newsletter here. This story is from our feature called the Weather Corner, where we take a deep dive into weird weather around the world, from our January 22nd, 2021, newsletter. Source: United Nations IPCC Independent of President Biden, in the last year, the world and its institutions have showed further signs of officially taking note of and planning around the material risks associated with climate change. Severe weather events disrupt supply chains. In sectors like agriculture, for example, an unusual heat wave during flowering can cut down yields, while frequent storms can prevent farmers from getting out in the field + it might affect the distribution of the product. A research paper from 2017 showed that abnormal weather caused disruptions in the operating and financial performance of 70% of businesses worldwide. And those disruptions add up — estimates placed the cost of weather variability at about $630 billion for the U.S. alone. That’s 3.5% of the total U.S. GDP at the time. Yet severe extreme weather events are likely to become more intense or more frequent from human-caused climate change. In the US, wildfires have already become five times more frequent in California; the Midwest experiences once-in-100-year floods every five years. Policymakers are taking notice, and many nations have begun to put in place new climate-related regulations that mandate that publicly traded companies disclose their climate risks. France, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom are chief among them. These regulations have far-reaching impacts across the economy — on asset managers, lenders, insurers, retirement funds, and publicly traded firms. In addition, analysts say that stricter and more comprehensive legislation on climate risk assessment and disclosure is expected, especially in the U.S., European Union, and Japan. Some of these regulations on the horizon include: The U.S. The U.S. Federal Reserve (the U.S.’ central banking system): Outgoing chair Jerome Powell further stated in November that “climate risk is a material risk” and noted a likely expansion of the Board’s oversight duties to include climate risks. Incoming new chair Janet Yellen called climate change an “existential threat” and will likely implement new financial regulatory policy on climate risks. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (a government agency that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets): released a report in September that included 53 climate-related recommendations. The top three were a price on carbon; a mandate for disclosure of material climate-related risks in financial filings, including a universal definition of materiality for medium- and long-term risks (both qualitative and quantitative); and for regulators and financial institutions to “pilot climate risk stress testing” for sectors (particularly for agriculture, community and regional banks). released a report in September that included 53 climate-related recommendations. The top three were a price on carbon; a mandate for disclosure of material climate-related risks in financial filings, including a universal definition of materiality for medium- and long-term risks (both qualitative and quantitative); and for regulators and financial institutions to “pilot climate risk stress testing” for sectors (particularly for agriculture, community and regional banks). The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (independent oversight agency that regulates the securities markets and protects investors): Commissioner Lee said in November that, “there is certainly evidence that climate risks are currently underpriced, particularly with respect to long-dated assets, utilities, commercial mortgage-backed securities, and potentially municipal bonds, among others.” Commissioner Lee said in November that, “there is certainly evidence that climate risks are currently underpriced, particularly with respect to long-dated assets, utilities, commercial mortgage-backed securities, and potentially municipal bonds, among others.” The State of New York’s Department of Financial Services: announced in October 2020 that they expect climate risk disclosure from all regulated entities and non-regulated depositories starting in 2021, which includes all of the major banks on Wall Street. Internationally France: passed a law in 2019 that mandates that publicly-traded firms and asset managers report transition and physical climate risks. The United Kingdom: signed into law in 2020 a mandate for TCFD-aligned disclosures across the economy by 2025, with a significant portion of mandatory requirements in place by 2023 New Zealand: will require all banks, asset managers, and insurance companies with more than NZ$1 billion in assets to disclose their climate risks by 2023. In addition, regulators from Japan, Hong Kong, and the EU are also looking at laws on how companies should monitor, disclose, and address climate risks. Have any more questions about global weather events, their impact, and how they’re linked to climate change? Send them to [email protected] — we will choose one to answer in the next newsletter.
https://medium.com/@climateai/the-weather-corner-institutions-are-taking-note-of-the-material-risks-of-climate-change-and-987d0f165388
[]
2021-02-22 22:10:28.794000+00:00
['Climate Change', 'Climate Policy', 'Risk', 'Business Leadership', 'Extreme Weather']
Rethinking the Battle Against Depression
Rumination and Avoidance: The Twin Engines of Depression Photo by Viktor Forgacs The great unintended sin of our overly-medicalized approach to depression is that it encourages people to think about it as they would an infectious disease — as though it were a malicious bacteria you’ve caught that needs to be eradicated with a strong dose of antibiotics. But as I’ve hopefully shown above, far from a virus or bacteria, depression is often a perfectly understandable psychological response to a vast and complex set of individual-specific interpersonal, cultural, and societal stressors. If only the causes of depression were as simple as polio or influenza! Sadly, when we train people to think of depression this way — as an infectious disease — they begin to see their own experience of depression as bad, something to be quickly eradicated, preferably via a pill. Then, when pills inevitably fail in the long run, we turn to more subtle, but equally unhelpful, psychological attempts to eradicate the disease. And almost always, these attempts take the form of two habits: rumination and avoidance, the psychological equivalents of the proverbial “fight or flight” response. And while these attempts to fight or run away from our depression may give relief in the short-term, they inevitably exacerbate things in the long-run. In the rest of this article, I’m going to explain these two maintaining factors in depression and offer some thoughts for identifying them and working to lessen their influence by substituting healthier alternative habits. What is rumination, exactly? Photo by Ben White Rumination is the mental habit of persistent negative judgments about oneself, especially one’s perceived past failings and mistakes: If only I hadn’t been such a jerk, she never would have left me. I’ll never be truly lovable. I’m just a lazy bum. I’ve always been lazy. I’ll never amount to much anyway. I can’t do anything right and always screw things up eventually. Did I come across as rude? I shouldn’t have brought up that story about her mother. Why do I always put my foot in my mouth? Read through just a few simple examples like these and it should be obvious how badly you’re going to feel if this is the kind of self-talk you habitually engage in, day in and day out. The deeper question is, if we know that habitual negative self-talk and rumination like this make us feel bad about ourselves (guilty, hopeless, lonely, etc.), why do we do it? Why do we ruminate when it pretty obviously only makes our depression worse? Part of the answer is simple conditioning. If you’ve historically associated sadness and depression with the mental habit of rumination, eventually becoming sad will automatically trigger the mental habit of rumination. In fact, this is the same process (Classical Conditioning) that Pavlov discovered with his infamous drooling dogs. Like any habit — physical or mental — rumination can seem to “come out of nowhere” and be difficult to resist. Still, if a habit can be formed, it can also be broken. But for deeply entrenched habits like a lifetime of rumination, breaking out of it can be difficult, especially if that habit is filling some kind of important but unmet emotional need. In depression, for example, a common feeling is a lack of enthusiasm and motivation to do the things you know you should and want to do. In its extreme form, this lack of motivation can become what psychologist Martin Seligman termed Learned Helplessness, an almost complete despair of ever doing anything differently in the face of depression. While many people who struggle with depression often look quite passive, it can be amazing how active their minds are — specifically, how intensely they ruminate. In fact, it could be that because they lack so much motivation to physically do anything, rumination temporarily alleviates this need to take charge of their lives and do something. Like worry in anxiety, rumination offers the illusion of control and agency in depression. Of course, while hyper-analysis of one’s past mistakes and flaws is perhaps temporarily relieving in that it gives you something to do and feel in control of, the negative emotional side effects only contribute to one’s sense of sadness, shame, despair and apathy in the long run. In the next section, I’ll suggest some practical ideas for breaking out of the rumination habit. Why mindfulness is the cure for rumination Photo by Aleksandr Ledogorov You’ve likely at least heard the term mindfulness before. And while it’s typically thrown around quite casually and loosely as an apparently easy cure-all for anything that ails you, I’m going to explain why a very specific version of mindfulness can be not only helpful for dealing with rumination, but in fact, is the exact cure for it. Fundamentally, mindfulness is the capacity to be aware without thinking. It means learning how to observe things as they are in the present moment without getting lost in thoughts about what they mean, how good or bad they are, and what happened or might happen in the past or future. More specifically, mindfulness is the ability to control our attention — to notice when our awarenesses is consumed by thoughts (especially our own self-talk), and then to gently shift our attention to observing things (including our own thoughts) rather than engaging with them. For example: You’re lying in bed and can’t seem to fall asleep. You find yourself obsessing about that awkward conversation you had on your date earlier in the evening: Damnit, I always put my foot in my mouth on first dates! Why couldn’t I have mentioned another topic? Any other topic would have been better than my last girlfriend! I’ll never find someone. I should just give up and accept that I’m always going to be alone. Thoughts like these are a perfect example of rumination. It’s a kind of highly negative and judgmental (and usually irrational) storytelling about yourself. And each one of these negative thoughts generates more negative emotion (self-directed anger, sadness, hopelessness, etc.). But how do you stop ruminating? How do you stop thinking? How do you stop storytelling? Mindfulness is the answer. Although we rarely recognize it, it is possible to be aware without thinking. By cultivating our attention muscle via mindfulness, we can learn to more quickly recognize when we’re caught in unhelpful rumination spirals and then disengage from those unhelpful thinking patterns by focusing our attention elsewhere. When we practice mindfulness, we practice noticing ourselves getting sucked into thinking and then extracting our minds from that thinking back into simple observation (usually of something physical like our breathing). For people with depression, the mental habit of rumination is strong. In a sense, it’s an addiction to a certain self-critical way of thinking. In order to break out of that habit, we need to strengthen the competing mental muscle. We need to learn how to shift our attention and remain in observing mode without slipping back into thinking mode. Mindfulness is the most direct and efficient way I know of to build that mental muscle and ability. Ruminating less won’t cure your depression. But it will go a long way toward lessening your overall distress and negative emotionality. So much so that when you begin to lift the excess emotional burden of rumination, you’ll often be amazed at how much easier it is to address other aspects of your depression. While it’s beyond the scope of this article to walk you through how to get started with mindfulness, here are three resources that can help: Now that we’ve covered rumination, let’s move on to the second maintaining factor in depression — Avoidance. What is avoidance, exactly? Photo by Jose López Franco Avoidance is the habit of turning down opportunities and experiences that are in some way difficult or scary but likely to be rewarding and worthwhile in the long-run: Staying on the couch watching Netflix after work because we’re exhausted rather than going for a walk or to the gym. Canceling brunch with a friend because we’re a little anxious and just feel “off.” Eating lunch in our office instead of going out to eat with colleagues. Turning down the invitation to join that softball league with our sister-in-law. Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with canceling a meetup with a friend or eating lunch in your office. In fact, being able to say no to things you genuinely don’t want to do is a key component of assertiveness. Turning down opportunities like these become avoidance behaviors and problematic when they fit two key criteria: They’re habitual. We don’t just occasionally skip out on the evening walk and watch Netflix, rather, that’s the case more evenings than not. They’re motivated by feelings and in conflict with our values. It feels better in the short-term to stay on the couch, even though we know that walking regularly is good for our health (a value) and will actually help us feel better in the long-term. The reason a habit of avoidance is so detrimental to us — especially when we’re depressed — is that it robs us of meaningful and rewarding experiences in favor of short-term gratification or relief. And it’s this consistent lack of meaningful and rewarding experience that maintains and even worsens depression. When we’re depressed, it can seem like the hardest thing in the world to simply get up, get moving, interact with friends, and do some meaningful work. And yet, those are the things we need most when we’re depressed. The challenge, then, is to figure out ways to engage with life and begin to get more of those rewarding experiences even though every bone in our body tells us we can’t, that we don’t have the energy or motivation. Why Behavioral Activation is the cure for avoidance Photo by Tiago Rosado You can think about depression like having an empty fuel tank. And obviously, it’s hard to go anywhere or move at all when your tank is empty, which is very often how people describe their experience of depression. While getting a handle on your rumination habit is a good way to stop your tank from leaking and losing even more fuel, the other “half” of the problem is that you need more fuel in the first place. That’s where the concept of Behavioral Activation comes in. Behavioral Activation sounds technical but it’s actually simple: it means doing things you find rewarding. More specifically, behavioral activation is a structured plan for incentivizing yourself to engage in more rewarding (i.e. tank-filling) activities despite not feeling like it or having much energy/motivation. On a superficial level, behavioral activation resembles the famous Nike motto: Just Do It. But of course, if you’re depressed, that’s the whole problem — you don’t have the energy or motivation to do much of anything. Which is why the secret ingredient to effective behavioral activation — and what sets it apart from “Just do it” — is the concept of incrementalism. Incrementalism is the idea that if you’re having trouble making progress on any endeavor, including engaging in more rewarding activities, the solution is to break things down into smaller steps and pieces: Can’t seem to actually meet a buddy for dinner and drinks? How about meeting him for lunch? Still too much? How about coffee for 15 minutes? Still too hard? Try inviting him over to watch a game. Still too much? Send him a text after the game about the coolest thing that happened in it. Once you’ve found a small enough increment, do it until you begin to notice a small uptick in motivation and energy. Then, go for the next smallest thing on the list. Rinse and repeat. I had an old supervisor who used to say: I’ve never seen someone so depressed that they couldn’t go to the bathroom. If they can find the energy to get into the restroom, that’s a start, something we can build on. The key to breaking the cycle of avoidance, then, is to combine behavioral activation — a structured plan for doing things that are personally meaningful and rewarding — with incrementalism in order to get over the motivation problem. In fact, the most powerful effect of incremental behavioral activation is to chip away at the belief that because I don’t feel motivated, I can’t do anything. By showing ourselves experientially — in very small ways at first — that that belief isn’t entirely true, we can guide ourselves to ever-increasing levels of activation and therefore reward. We can start to re-fill the tank. Perhaps most importantly, in the long-run, we can construct a new belief about the very nature of motivation itself: Yes, motivation helps me do difficult things, but doing difficult (and rewarding things) actually leads to more motivation. In other words, we build a more sophisticated model of motivation and action, one that is bi-directional.
https://medium.com/the-understanding-project/rethinking-the-battle-against-depression-513f84a556
['Nick Wignall']
2019-04-03 11:49:45.758000+00:00
['Depression', 'Mental Health', 'Self Improvement', 'Self', 'Psychology']
Didn’t know about “Bit .
Didn’t know about “Bit . dev” but that looks like a perfect fit for added coded React components to my own DS. And builder X looks dope too. Thanks for the helpful article and resources! John
https://medium.com/@hellojohnnymac/didnt-know-about-bit-513c50326ddf
['John Macmenamin']
2020-12-04 13:57:23.255000+00:00
['Design System']
Context-specific Pre-processing for NLP with spaCy: Tweets
NLP with the spaCy library spaCy is an open-source python library for natural language processing. It integrates well with the rest of the python machine learning libraries (scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch) and more, and uses a object-oriented approach to keep its interface readable and easy to use. Notably, it its model returns Document type data, which consists of tokens with various useful annotations (e.g. its lemma, whether it's a stopword) as attributes. Let’s import spaCy, download the model for American English, and load the relevant spaCy model. # download spaCy model for American English !python3 -m spacy download en_core_web_sm import spacy import en_core_web_sm nlp = en_core_web_sm.load() How well does out-of-the-box spaCy do with tweets? Before we customize spaCy, we can take a look at how the out-of-the-box model tokenizes tweets with its default rules. I created a tweet that included a number, a contraction, a hashtag, a mention and a link. As shown below, out-of-the-box spaCy already breaks up contractions and gives us the relevant lemmas. It also recognizes numbers, mentions and URLs as their own tokens according to the default rules. That leaves us with hashtags, which are split into a ‘#’ punctuation and hashtag content, instead of it staying as a whole token. # Let's see what spaCy does with numbers, contractions, #hashtags, @mentions and URLs s = "2020 can't get any worse #ihate2020 @bestfriend <https://t.co>" doc = nlp(s) # Let's look at the lemmas and is stopword of each token print(f"Token\\t\\tLemma\\t\\tStopword") print("="*40) for token in doc: print(f"{token}\\t\\t{token.lemma_}\\t\\t{token.is_stop}" This prints: Token Lemma Stopword ======================================== 2020 2020 False ca can True n't not True get get True any any True worse bad False # # False ihate2020 ihate2020 False @bestfriend @bestfriend False <https://t.co> <https://t.co> False Modifying spaCy We can modify spaCy’s model to recognize hashtags as entire tokens. spaCy’s tokenizer can be modified (you can also build a custom tokenizer if you want!) by redefining its default rules. spaCy’s tokenizer prioritizes rules in the following order: token match pattern, prefix, suffix, infixes, URL, special cases (see How spaCy’s Tokenizer Works). In our case, we’ll modify the tokenizer’s pattern matching regex pattern (read more about regex here: A simple intro to Regex with Python) by appending '#\\w+' , which is a pattern for the hash symbol and a word. # We want to also keep #hashtags as a token, so we will modify the spaCy model's token_match import re # Retrieve the default token-matching regex pattern re_token_match = spacy.tokenizer._get_regex_pattern(nlp.Defaults.token_match) # Add #hashtag pattern re_token_match = f"({re_token_match}|#\\w+)" nlp.tokenizer.token_match = re.compile(re_token_match).match # Now let's try again s = "2020 can't get any worse #ihate2020 @bestfriend <https://t.co>" doc = nlp(s) # Let's look at the lemmas and is stopword of each token print(f"Token\\t\\tLemma\\t\\tStopword") print("="*40) for token in doc: print(f"{token}\\t\\t{token.lemma_}\\t\\t{token.is_stop}") Our code prints: Token Lemma Stopword ======================================== 2020 2020 False ca can True n't not True get get True any any True worse bad False #ihate2020 #ihate2020 False @bestfriend @bestfriend False <https://t.co> <https://t.co> False Pre-processing algorithm We can then proceed to create a preprocessing algorithm, and put it in a function so it can be called on every tweet in the training set. In the following preprocess function, each tweet: Is changed to lower case Is tokenized with our modified spaCy model Has its lemmas of tokens set unioned with our features set set Has its bag-of-words representation constructed in a dictionary freq Has its hashtags, mentions and URLs counted # Create a pre-process function for each tweet def preprocess(s, nlp, features): """ Given string s, spaCy model nlp, and set features (lemmas encountered), pre-process s and return updated features and bag-of-words representation dict freq - changes s to lower-case - tokenize s using nlp to create a doc - update features with lemmas encountered in s - create bag-of-words representation in dict type freq, including counts for hashtags, mentions and URLs """ # To lowercase s = s.lower() # Creating a doc with spaCy doc = nlp(s) lemmas = [] for token in doc: lemmas.append(token.lemma_) # Union between lemmas and our features set features |= set(lemmas) # Constructing a bag of words for the tweet freq = {'#':0,'@':0,'URL':0} for word in lemmas: freq[str(word)] = 0 for token in doc: if '#' in str(token): freq['#'] += 1 # Count number of hashtags, regardless of hashtag if '@' in str(token): freq['@'] += 1 # Count number of mentions, regardless of mention if 'http://' in str(token): freq['URL'] += 1 # Count number of URLs, regardless of URL freq[str(token.lemma_)] += 1 return features, freq Setting it up We’ll create a copy our de-duplicated data as a best practice, so that any pre-processing changes does not affect the original state of our training data. Then, we will initialize a python set features , which will contain all features of each tweet. In addition to all lemmas encountered via tokenization of each tweet, features will include number of hashtags ( # ), number of mentions ( @ ), and number of URLs ( URL ). preprocess_df = df # Duplicate for preprocessing features = set({'#','@','URL'}) # Using set feature to contain all words (lemmas) seen Using our preprocess function, we'll preprocess every tweet, updating features each time with new lemmas seen. With each tweet, the tweet's bag of words representation freq is also appended to an array of bag of words for each tweet ( bow_array ). # Array bow_array of bow representations for each tweet; # bow_array[i] is the bow representation for tweet id (i+1) bow_array = [] for i in range(len(preprocess_df)): features, freq = preprocess(preprocess_df.iloc[i]['text'],nlp,features) bow_array.append(freq) len(bow_array) # 7561 With all lemmas encountered across all tweets collected in features , we can create a dataframe bow to represent the features of all the tweets. # Create dataframe for bag of words representation for each tweet bow = pd.DataFrame('0', columns=features,index=range(len(preprocess_df))) bow['id']=preprocess_df.index bow.set_index('id',drop=True,inplace=True) Now, let’s update our dataframe with the feature values of each tweet. # Update bow[i] with bag-of-words freq of the tweet id (i+1) for i in range(len(preprocess_df)): freq = bow_array[i] for f in freq: bow.loc[i+1,f]=freq[f] Finally, we will join our training data dataframe with our bag-of-words. pandas Dataframe’s join method allows us to add columns from one dataframe to another for rows where the index matches. Note that we append '_data' as a suffix to all columns from the 'left' dataframe, which is preprocess_df . This is to avoid conflicts between the keyword given as part of the training data, and 'keyword' as a lemma-token-feature. Remember to save the preprocessed .csv file for easier next steps!
https://towardsdatascience.com/pre-processing-should-extract-context-specific-features-4d01f6669a7e
['Wei-Ting Yap']
2020-12-23 15:24:02.333000+00:00
['Getting Started', 'Spacy', 'Editors Pick', 'NLP', 'Data Science']
Employees, Customers and Shareholders — who comes first?
Key stakeholders of a company are its shareholders, customers and its employees. Businesses are organized for the benefit of its shareholders. Nevertheless, the question of corporate priorities and which one should come first, second, or last — is a never ending debate. From a company board and business order of priority perspective the answer would be shareholder because a company exist on its ability to attract shareholders to invest in their business. So shareholders should come first. Another point of view remains that at the end of the day it is about customers. A customer is the one who pays both employees and shareholders. And a business that can lead to happy and loyal customers due to its focus on customers — drive the growth of the business. A growing business — lead to happy employees and happy shareholders. So you could say Customers come first. Another point of view remains that a company need employees first who are motivated to use their skill and knowledge in creating happy (and repeat) customer experience that earn value on behalf of the shareholder. In that context — taking care of employees is more important that lead to happy customers and increase in shareholder value. Bottom line all 3 stakeholders in a company are interrelated. And in a healthy business these should be aligned. Taking care of employees and having a good people strategy is key to the success of customers; having happy and loyal customers is key for a growing business; and having a growing business is a key for shareholders to seek return they expect on their investment; and having a company that attract investment is key in having financially strong company that can provide safe future to its employees. What do you say?
https://medium.com/aloktyagi/employees-customers-and-shareholders-who-comes-first-91e36fdd3860
['Alok Tyagi']
2017-03-08 21:02:42.605000+00:00
['Personal', 'Enterpreneurship']
Merry Xmas and a prosperous new year to all my friends and new contacts.
2020 has been one heck of a year for sure. I want to thank the almighty that I am still alive, and I still have you all as my contacts, who would have thought a fellow human would one day try eating a bat and the whole world would be upside down in just such a short period. I am lucky that you guys have kept me real and helped me stay focussed under these bizarre times. One good thing about life is that change is the only constant thing, as explained in many Bhagavad Geeta verses [Ch.II verse.13]. Meaning 2021 is NEW A YEAR. I think that people worldwide have finally woken up and realized just being alive and having our loved one safe is the only thing that really matters. If it means we will see the return of respect and empathy for each other as human beings, I certainly hope so. It is my wish and my desire that this message brings hope and joy; I am humbled and happy for the contacts and friends I have made this year. I am looking forward to a great 2021. and I am not going to miss this one for sure. Saludos Ashish Punj
https://medium.com/@ashishpunj/merry-xmas-and-a-prosperous-new-year-to-all-my-friends-and-new-contacts-9b0dfd2d4e68
['Ashish Punj']
2020-12-24 00:50:34.443000+00:00
['2021 Trends', 'Happy New Year', 'Logistica', 'Linkedin Marketing', 'Influencer Marketing']
How to Create and Load Custom Modules Dynamically in Node.js
4. Loading Dynamically with Glob Loading each module manually can be tiring, as you need to append an extra line of code each time you add a new module. A good alternative is to utilize the glob module to search all of the js files in a directory and load them automatically. The result will be stored in a JavaScript object that can be referenced easily using the name of the module. Replace the date and math import statement with the following code: var glob = require( 'glob' ); Create a new JavaScript object called module_dict : var module_dict = {}; Next, we are going to search the module folder and get the path of all the files, ending with js extension. You can test it by adding a console.log statement to print out the path of all the js files. glob.sync( './modules/*.js' ).forEach( function( file ) { console.log(file); }); You should see the following output at the terminal. The next part is to extract the name of the file without the name of the folder and extension. I am going to keep it simple and extract it using the split function. Please be reminded that this code will not work if you change the structure of your project. Modify it accordingly based on your use cases. Replace the console.log statement with the following code: let dash = file.split("/"); if(dash.length == 3) { let dot = dash[2].split("."); if(dot.length == 2) { let key = dot[0]; //reserve for assignment } } Replace the reserve comment with the following code, which loads the module and adds it as property to the object. module_dict[key] = require(file); Then, you can easily call the module using the following syntax: module_dict["math"].addition(8, 10); The key is tied to the name of the file that you have placed inside the modules folder. When you add a new module, you can simply reference it without the need to import it. However, one major disadvantage is that you might input the wrong name for the key, and the following error will be displayed: Cannot read property 'key' of undefined You can do a property check before calling the function via the hasOwnProperty function: if(module_dict.hasOwnProperty("date")) { //implementation here } The complete code for dynamic loading is as follows:
https://medium.com/better-programming/how-to-create-and-load-custom-modules-dynamically-in-node-js-9f1174a39341
['Ng Wai Foong']
2020-06-04 12:16:49.846000+00:00
['Programming', 'Nodejs', 'JavaScript', 'Tutorial', 'Modules']
I have docker setup on my both machine (PC1 and PC2).
I have docker setup on my both machine (PC1 and PC2). Docker system environment (Both machine same setting) Docker Environment same setup on PC1 and PC2 DOCKER_TLS_VERIFY 1 1 DOCKER_HOST tcp://192.168.99.100:2376 tcp://192.168.99.100:2376 DOCKER_MACHINE_NAME default default DOCKER_CERT_PATH C:\Users\Admin\.docker\machine\machines\default Wireless LAN adapter WiFi PC1 Ip Address: 192.168.10.51 PC2 Ip Address: 192.168.10.56 PC1 proper working container as well as created genesis.block PC1 successfully generated genesis.block and join channel PC1 docker container automatically stop CA container PC2 machine container start and working but not fetch and join network docker exec -e “CORE_PEER_MSPCONFIGPATH=/etc/hyperledger/msp/users/[email protected]/msp” peer2.org1.example.com peer channel fetch config -o orderer.example.com:7050 -c composerchannel Network error on PC2 — Container start properly but peer connection error docker exec -e “CORE_PEER_MSPCONFIGPATH=/etc/hyperledger/msp/users/[email protected]/msp” peer2.org1.example.com peer channel fetch config -o 192.168.10.51 orderer.example.com:7050 -c composerchannel Please help me, how to resolve this problem. (on Physical machine PC2)
https://medium.com/@subhashpatel8108/i-have-docker-setup-on-my-both-machine-pc1-and-pc2-5e74488132b1
['Subhash Patel']
2019-02-07 09:18:23.218000+00:00
['Hyperledger', 'Blockchain', 'Distributed Ledgers', 'Fabric']
Our uniqueness becomes clear when we find our complementary role in Humanity and Nature’s system
Question from the Internet: “If the human mind is so different and unique from one another, how can we all have the same qualities it has such as thought, imagination, etc. shouldn’t every single one of us extremely unique mental faculties and for some, even disorders?” In our initial, instinctive form — most Human beings in right now — we are not that different from each other. According to the inherent program Nature’s evolution installed in us, we are all, ceaselessly chasing selfish pleasures, fulfillment while try to stay away, run away from unpleasant, painful situations, states. And in terms of our desires, we want to fulfill we all have a unique set, combination, strength from the available “animate” desires of food, sex, family; and the “social” desires of wealth, power, fame, and knowledge. The combination of how badly, at all cost we want to fulfill those desires and in what priority, importance those desires drive us. And even in this respect, we are pretty close, after all, most of our desires are implanted into us by the surrounding environment, peer pressure. Thus in today’s global environment, with the media, marketing, “circus and bread” entertainment we are brainwashed by very similar “needs”, “values”, “goals”. If we want to find our true uniqueness, the “root of our being”, if we want to find and fulfill our individual, irreplaceable, irrepressible role, purpose in reality, we would need to develop through a special, closed environment. We need a methodical and purposeful environment that uses the appropriate, practical method to help us map reality’s integrated, interdependent system, help us understand the system’s developmental plan with our predetermined role in it. Then by fulfilling that role nobody else could fulfill we would finally recognize and cherish our true individual uniqueness in most optimally serving, complementing Humanity and Nature’s system through our role in Humanity. This is when we truly become Human beings.
https://medium.com/@samechphoto/our-uniqueness-becomes-clear-when-we-find-our-complementary-role-in-humanity-and-natures-system-9c9ada094f6d
['Zsolt Hermann']
2020-12-20 00:08:06.714000+00:00
['Environment', 'Purpose', 'Goals', 'Education', 'Humanity']
Has Mumbo Jumbo Taken Over the World?
Instead of letting the mumbo jumbo take over, let’s stop it. Here are three tips to consider: Create your own operating “encyclopedia.” Hear a new word or an intriguing new theory? Write it down! Then, when you have a few minutes, create an entry in an operating encyclopedia. Be honest with yourself about what you know and what you don’t know. Also, write down how you obtained this existing knowledge. Both of these are essential parts of this process! Clearly outlining what you know and don’t know helps draw boundaries around your memory when you recall the knowledge later on. This step also enables you to keep a record of how you obtain knowledge. After doing this for a while, you might find many of your misconceptions and incorrect background “facts” come from a specific source (like that one friend on Facebook). Once you know where you need to focus on, fill in your knowledge gaps. Multiple sources are critical here, and not merely to parse out bias. There are often equally valid ways to describe something, and seeing each perspective broadens your own. I like to record my knowledge journey for every concept, charting the evolution in my thinking. I have found that it helps me create empathy for others that might be where I was earlier in the process, rather than being frustrated they aren’t at my stage of thinking. It also enables me to track my “ah-ha’s” and share those with others. Record yourself. I know, it sounds weird. Try it sometime — record yourself explaining a concept or debating with someone. Why? How we speak and engage in dialogue is different from how we write. By recording yourself and critically analyzing how you presented facts or an argument, you can determine where and how you embellish. I’m sorry to tell you, but you do it. I do it. We all embellish. Try answering a few of these questions: Why did I use that word? What value did that word have? Did my discourse partner understand that word? How would I know? Did I have empathy for the other perspective? How did I express that? When I talked about “X,” did I stay true to my operating encyclopedia? After you critically analyze the dialogue, ask yourself one last question: how should I change my operating knowledge set (or at least study more)? Then, do it. The pursuit of knowledge is cyclical — it is when we stop interrogating our thought processes that misinformation thrives. Reconsider the article you are about to share on <social media of choice>. When you find an article that jives with your perspective, engages your thinking, and inevitably makes you want to share, don’t. At least not yet. Take a step back and consider if the article is accessible to those without foundational knowledge. If it does, you have three choices: Share it anyway, and probably contribute to the problem of “mumbo jumbo.” Share it, but also link to a foundational perspective. Find a more accessible article to share. Does this seem like overkill? Maybe. But you will likely fail to do what you were hoping to do: engage others with your perspective. Instead, people may skip over it entirely, apply misinformation to the article to “understand” it, or write you off as <insert rude stereotype or classifier here>. My favored approach is usually the second bullet. I will look through my operating encyclopedia and find a foundational article that was helpful for me. Then, when I share, I’ll do something like this: I loved this article about “mumbo jumbo.” Sums up exactly what I have been thinking about for a while. Would love your thoughts. By the way, if you aren’t sure what “mumbo jumbo” is, you should read this: <article>. It really helped me grasp what was at play here. Look, I am a realist; I acknowledge that many people will not broaden their perspective or take responsibility for educating themselves. However, I have been pleasantly surprised at how many people actually do.
https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/has-mumbo-jumbo-taken-over-the-world-yes-here-are-three-ideas-to-stop-it-f393efa9bc0d
['Alexander Lovell']
2020-09-03 21:34:53.327000+00:00
['Politics', 'Thinking', 'Conversations', 'Social Change', 'Social Media']
Roman to Integer
Roman to Integer Problem Roman numerals are represented by seven different symbols: I , V , X , L , C , D and M . Symbol Value I 1 V 5 X 10 L 50 C 100 D 500 M 1000 For example, 2 is written as II in Roman numeral, just two one's added together. 12 is written as XII , which is simply X + II . The number 27 is written as XXVII , which is XX + V + II . Roman numerals are usually written largest to smallest from left to right. However, the numeral for four is not IIII . Instead, the number four is written as IV . Because the one is before the five we subtract it making four. The same principle applies to the number nine, which is written as IX . There are six instances where subtraction is used: I can be placed before V (5) and X (10) to make 4 and 9. can be placed before (5) and (10) to make 4 and 9. X can be placed before L (50) and C (100) to make 40 and 90. can be placed before (50) and (100) to make 40 and 90. C can be placed before D (500) and M (1000) to make 400 and 900. Given a roman numeral, convert it to an integer. Example 1: Input: s = "III" Output: 3 Example 2: Input: s = "IV" Output: 4 Example 3: Input: s = "IX" Output: 9 Example 4: Input: s = "LVIII" Output: 58 Explanation: L = 50, V= 5, III = 3. Example 5: Input: s = "MCMXCIV" Output: 1994 Explanation: M = 1000, CM = 900, XC = 90 and IV = 4. Constraints:
https://medium.com/@soomyung/roman-to-integer-c814be74d03c
[]
2020-12-13 15:28:03.691000+00:00
['Leetcode', 'Roman To Integer', 'Leetcode Easy']
One-Stop Guide for Plotly and Dash Text Dataset Visualization Using Big Query and Flask: Good to Great
One-Stop Guide for Plotly and Dash Text Dataset Visualization Using Big Query and Flask: Good to Great Jayce Jiang Jun 3, 2020·13 min read Background: In the previous tutorial, we created an advanced data extraction pipeline from Airflow and discussed the different types of data engineering frameworks. If you are interested in Google Cloud Platform with Airflow, you can check out the first and second posts of this blog series. In this tutorial, we will build a visualization with the Twitter data we harvested in the previous blog post. I will show you how to create an app leveraging python viz libraries Plotly and Dash, all within the Flask framework. Visuals will include frequency bar charts and Word Cloud plots. I will also provide an overview of some handy Dash library components, such as multi-callback, cross-filtering, and data sharing between callbacks. Data Visualization Is More Important Than Ever We are in the age of Big Data, a time when companies like Google and Facebook harvest petabytes of data from billions of individuals’ web searches and demands barked at IoT devices. Visualization skills have grown increasingly vital as the ability to interpret and analyze this unprecedented amount of incoming data has only become more challenging. Proper visualization aids analysts in making sense of the data, leading to better storytelling and ultimately more informed decision-making by you and your stakeholders. Let’s dive in and build our story, starting with quick bullets on Plotly and Dash, the two python visualization libraries we will be using. I will also cover the advantage of Plotly/Dash versus other visualization tools such as Tableau and Qlik. Plotly is a visualization library used to build many graphs, including 3D scatter plots, bar charts, radar charts, and much more. Dash is a python library that compliments Plotly by providing interactive components within a Flask framework. Plotly is built on D3.js; thus, it is more versatile than Tableau’s easy drag-and-drop graphical input. However, Tableau doesn’t require writing code, which can be more comfortable for non-coders. It can be difficult to make complex, multi-field input/output charts using Plotly without essential coding ability. than Tableau’s easy drag-and-drop graphical input. However, Tableau doesn’t require writing code, which can be more comfortable for non-coders. It can be difficult to make complex, multi-field input/output charts using Plotly without essential coding ability. Plotly has more control and flexibility. However, off-the-shelf tools, such as Tableau and Qlik, are much better for prototyping and more reusable than Plotly. Using Plotly on a different project usually requires it to be entirely rewritten. It is a significant downside of Plotly. For example, if you are presenting a report in a meeting, your boss asks you some mid-meeting questions. This situation can be solved by implementing a dynamic filter with a few clicks using viz tools such as Tableau or Power BI. However, off-the-shelf tools, such as Tableau and Qlik, are much better for prototyping and more reusable than Plotly. Using Plotly on a different project usually requires it to be entirely rewritten. It is a significant downside of Plotly. For example, if you are presenting a report in a meeting, your boss asks you some mid-meeting questions. This situation can be solved by implementing a dynamic filter with a few clicks using viz tools such as Tableau or Power BI. Plotly library allows for statistical and AI analysis, including curve fitting, moving average, and modeling result integration. It is excellent for people who use python already. Plotly is relatively easy to pick up, and the developers provide plenty of documentation with examples for each visual, but more advanced documentation is difficult to read. Every tool has its pros and cons. I recommend readers follow up with additional research to determine the best tool for them. In my case, Plotly and Dash were the clear winners, as I am already coding transformations, statistical analysis, and AI models with python. Plus, I prefer the customizability in comparison to enterprise viz tools like Tableau. Setting Up Plotly on BigQuery API on Flask Let’s set up Flask boilerplate on our local computer from Github. cd flask-boilerplate git clone https://github.com/realpython/flask-boilerplate.git cd flask-boilerplate Initialize and activate a virtual environment to isolate the environment and avoid dependency issues either using Virutalenv or Anaconda Prompt. #virualenv virtualenv --no-site-packages env source env/bin/activate #Anaconda Prompt conda create --name myenv python=3.7 conda activate myenv Before installing the dependencies, add the following lines to the requirements.txt file. google-api-python-client==1.6.2 pandas==0.23.4 plotly==4.2.1 google-cloud-storage==1.28.1 google-cloud-bigquery==1.24.0 nltk==3.5 dash==1.12.0 dash-core-components==1.10.0 dash-html-components==1.0.3 Install the dependencies and run the Flask App. Go to http://localhost:5000 pip install -r requirements.txt python app.py Simple Graph Using Plotly: After we had our Flask App setup, we can start using basic Plotly to implement interact graph using any data in BigQuery. Let’s get started. First, add the following block of code to app.py to access the BigQuery table-set. Be sure to use your project_id and credential_path . I created a folder call dashboard and saved my credential JSON file in it. from google.cloud import bigquery from google.oauth2 import service_account project_id='trusty-charmer-276704' #remember to use your own project ID credentials_path='./dashboard/gcp.json' #use your own bigquery credential json file credentials = service_account.Credentials.from_service_account_file(credentials_path) if credentials_path else None client = bigquery.Client(project=project_id, credentials=credentials) Then modify the content in the home route controller inside our app.py from plotlydash.dashboard import create_plot def home(): """Landing page.""" table, plot = create_plot(client) return render_template( 'pages/placeholder.home.html', title='Plotly Dash Flask Tutorial', description='Embed Plotly Dash into your Flask applications.', template='home-template', body="This is a homepage served with Flask.", plot=plot, table=table ) @app .route('/')def home():"""Landing page."""table, plot = create_plot(client)return render_template('pages/placeholder.home.html',title='Plotly Dash Flask Tutorial',description='Embed Plotly Dash into your Flask applications.',template='home-template',body="This is a homepage served with Flask.",plot=plot,table=table Now we need to modify the placeholder.home.html to display the graph by adding these few lines. <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>My First Dashboard</title> <script src=" </head> My First Dashboard https://cdn.plot.ly/plotly-latest.min.js</a> "> {% extends 'layouts/main.html' %} {% block title %}Home{% endblock %} {% block content %} <div class="row"> <div class="col-md-12"> <div id="bargraph"> <script> var graphs = {{plot | safe}}; Plotly.plot('bargraph',graphs,{}); </script> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <div class="col-lg-12"> <div id="table"> <script> var table = {{table | safe}}; Plotly.plot('table',table,{}); </script> </div> </div> </div> Then create dashboard.py in the dashboard folder created earlier. Here is the result you should see in your browser. Mid-Example: Moving On to Dash: What if I tell you that you can have everything Plotly offers but without the need to create the relative UI elements such as dropdowns, slider, etc. Dash saves the day! It allows you to build an interactive dashboard with ease. Dash is written on top of Flask; however, usually, you just run Dash as an independent data visualization apps. You can easily incorporate the Dash app with our Flask app. Here is the best way to do it, so you don’t need to run two or multiple instances of Flask. Let registers our separate Dash app with our parent Flask app by adding these few lines in our app.py . It allows us to pass our Flask instance to create_board function as a parameter. #dash with app.app_context(): # Import Dash application from dashboard.dashboard import create_dashboard app = create_dashboard(app, client) In the dashboard.py file, add a new function call create_dashboard() that allows us to pass our Flask Instance into Dash as a server. This will create a Dash instance using our Flask app’s core. import dash import dash_table import dash_html_components as html import dash_core_components as dcc from .dashboard_layout import html_layout def create_dashboard(server, client): dash_app = dash.Dash(server=server, routes_pathname_prefix='/dashboard/' ) Now let's create the same frequency graph as the Plotly example but in Dash. Here is a complete function. from .dashboard_layout import html_layout def create_dashboard(server, client): dash_app = dash.Dash(server=server, routes_pathname_prefix='/dashboard/', external_stylesheets=[ '../static/css/main.css' ] ) # Prepare a DataFrame query = """ SELECT * FROM tweetScraper.tweet """ df = client.query(query).to_dataframe() stop = stopwords.words('english') #convert to lower df['newTweet'] = df['tweet'].apply(lambda x: ' '.join([word for word in x.lower().split() if word not in (stop)])) #Remove Punctuations df['newTweetRemove'] = df['newTweet'].str.replace('[^\w\s]','') #Count Words countFreq = df.newTweetRemove.str.split(expand=True).stack().value_counts()[:100] # Custom HTML layout dash_app.index_string = html_layout # Create Layout dash_app.layout = html.Div( children=[dcc.Graph( id='frequency_word_bargraph', figure={ 'data': [ { 'x': countFreq.index, 'y': countFreq.values, 'name': 'first example in Dash', 'type': 'bar' } ], 'layout': { 'title': 'Coronvirus Tweet Word Frequency.' } }) ], id='dash-container' ) return dash_app.server Here is a brief summary of the two main Dash components: dash-core_components and dash_html_components. dash_core_components — described the higher-level elements that are interactive and generated with the React.js library — contains the graph, tabs, dropdown, and other input/output components. dash_html_components — has a component for every HTML tags. It generates the HTML element in the application — <Div><H3> are all examples of these components. In the above example, we use the dcc.Graph components and dhc.html.Div components. We use these two components to create the layout of our Dashboard. Let’s create a custom template file call dashboard_layout.py. It is the main.html file inside the templates folder but stores inside a variable call html_layout . For the full file, use this link. html_layout = ''' <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> {%metas%} <title>{%title%}</title> {%favicon%} {%css%} ........ </head> ............ {%app_entry%} </div> <footer> {%config%} {%scripts%} {%renderer%} ... </footer> </body> </html> ''' Now, finally, let’s add custom CSS inside the main.css inside of the static/css/ folder. This step is how to include custom CSS inside of the Dash Html Component. /* need to overwrite css in dash-container and table so bootstrap works*/ #dash-container{ margin-top: 50px; } .dash-table-container .row { margin: 0; } If you remember, we have a table showing our dataframe in our first example in Plotly. Let’s create a similar table inside Dash. def generate_table(df): """Create Dash datatable from Pandas DataFrame.""" table = dash_table.DataTable( id='database-table', columns=[{"name": i, "id": i} for i in df.columns], data=df.iloc[:30].to_dict('records'), sort_action="native", sort_mode='native', row_selectable="multi", style_table={ 'maxHeight': '50ex', 'overflowY': 'scroll', 'width': '100%', 'minwidth': '100%', 'display': 'block' }, style_header={ 'fontWeight': 'bold', 'border': 'thin lightgrey solid', 'backgroundColor': 'rgb(100, 100, 100)', 'color': 'white' }, style_cell={ 'fontFamily': 'Open Sans', 'textAlign': 'left', 'width': '100px', 'minWidth': '10px', 'maxWidth': '180px', 'whiteSpace': 'normal', 'backgroundColor': 'Rgb(230,230,250)' } ) return table Now we need to use bootstrap to format our Dashboard, here is a new create_plot function. def create_dashboard(server, client): """Create a Plotly Dash dashboard.""" dash_app = dash.Dash(server=server, routes_pathname_prefix='/dashboard/', external_stylesheets=[ '../static/css/main.css', ] ) # Prepare a DataFrame query = """ SELECT * FROM tweetScraper.tweet """ df = client.query(query).to_dataframe() stop = stopwords.words('english') #convert to lower df['newTweet'] = df['tweet'].apply(lambda x: ' '.join([word for word in x.lower().split() if word not in (stop)])) #Remove Punctuations df['newTweetRemove'] = df['newTweet'].str.replace('[^\w\s]','') #Count Words countFreq = df.newTweetRemove.str.split(expand=True).stack().value_counts()[:100] # Custom HTML layout dash_app.index_string = html_layout # Create Layout dash_app.layout = html.Div([ html.Div([ dcc.Graph( id='frequency_word_bargraph', figure={ 'data': [ { 'x': countFreq.index, 'y': countFreq.values, 'name': 'first example in Dash', 'type': 'bar' } ], 'layout': { 'title': 'Coronvirus Tweet Word Frequency.' } }, style={ 'display': 'block' }, className='twelve columns' )], className='row') , html.Div([ html.Div(className='col-sm-0 col-md-1 col-lg-1'), html.Div([generate_table(df)], className='col-sm-12 col-md-10 col-lg-10'), html.Div(className='col-sm-0 col-md-1 col-lg-1')], className='row')], id='dash-container' ) return dash_app.server Now you should see the following in the localhost server. Advance Example: Dash Advanced Topic Let’s make dynamic graphs with a basic dash callback function. Basic Dash Callbacks: Callbacks are how you make your Dash apps even more interactive by allowing you to utilize inputs to modify Dashboard’s graph output. I will show you a simple example by using a slider that would allow you to dynamically change the frequency bar graph’s output in the above example. Since we use Flask in conjunction with Dash, we need to modify our Dash file structure. It is relatively simple, first, initialize the callbacks inside the create_board function and, inside the init_callbacks function, create your callback as normal. Here are the templates. import dash from dash.dependencies import Input, Output import dash_table import dash_html_components as html def create_dashboard(server): app = dash.Dash(__name__) app.layout = html.Div([ # ... Layout stuff ]) # Initialize callbacks after our app is loaded # Pass dash_app as a parameter init_callbacks(app) return app.server def init_callbacks(app): @app.callback( # ... Callback input/output ) def update_graph(): # ... Insert callback stuff here Now you know the template, let’s get started with the Slider example. We need to add this block of code inside the init_callbacks function: dash.dependencies.Output('frequency_word_bargraph', 'figure'), [dash.dependencies.Input('range_frequency_number', 'value')]) def update_graph(value): def init_callbacks(app, countFreq): @app .callback(dash.dependencies.Output('frequency_word_bargraph', 'figure'),[dash.dependencies.Input('range_frequency_number', 'value')])def update_graph(value): newGraph = countFreq[value[0]:value[1]] return { 'data': [ { 'x': newGraph.index, 'y': newGraph.values, 'name': 'first example in Dash', 'type': 'bar' } ], 'layout': { 'title': 'Coronvirus Tweet Word Frequency.' } } Then we need to change the dash_app.layout to include the RangeSlider: # Create Layout dash_app.layout = html.Div([ html.Div([ dcc.Graph(id='frequency_word_bargraph', style={'display': 'block'}), dcc.RangeSlider( id='range_frequency_number', min=0, max=100, step=1, value=[0, 100], marks={ 0: {'label': 'Top(min)', 'style': {'color': '#77b0b1'}}, 50: {'label': 'Top(50)'}, 100: {'label': 'Top(Max)', 'style': {'color': '#77b0b1'}} }, allowCross=False )], className='row') , html.Div([ html.Div(className='col-sm-0 col-md-1 col-lg-1'), html.Div([generate_table(df)], className='col-sm-12 col-md-10 col-lg-10'), html.Div(className='col-sm-0 col-md-1 col-lg-1')], className='row'), # Hidden div inside the app that stores the intermediate value html.Div(id='intermediate-value', style={'display': 'none'})], id='dash-container' ) init_callbacks(dash_app, countFreq) Sharing Data Between Callback As you seem in my init_callbacks function, you can pass variables and data between different callbacks using three methods. Storing Data in the Browser with a Hidden Div — data is converted to a string like JSON-there would be network transport cost but does not increase the memory footprint of the app. data is converted to a string like JSON-there would be network transport cost but does not increase the memory footprint of the app. Computing Aggregations Upfront — Better than storing the entire data in browsers, first compute the aggregations in servers then send the aggregation to the client-side — You don’t need the entire dataframe, your app will usually only display a subset or an aggregation of the computed/filtered data Better than storing the entire data in browsers, first compute the aggregations in servers then send the aggregation to the client-side — You don’t need the entire dataframe, your app will usually only display a subset or an aggregation of the computed/filtered data Caching and Signaling — three different types Lru_Cache Flask_Caching: Local System or Redis User-Based Client Caching I did the second method: computing aggregation upfronts and pass it down into our callbacks function. For other method implementation, you can refer to this documentation. Once you added these two blocks of code, your dashboard should now be dynamically change depending on the range slider like the following video. WordCloud Example — Advanced Dash Callbacks and Error Catching: Let’s create an interesting graph in our application, how about a WordCloud plot using our dataset. First, we need to WordCloud library, so add the following in the requirements.txt #requirements.txt wordcloud pip install -r requirements.txt The WordCloud library utilizes matplotlib, and Plotly currently does not support this type of figure. Thus, we need to convert it into a PNG image. Here are the new dash_app layout and callbacks functions . from wordcloud import WordCloud # Display the generated image: # the matplotlib way: import matplotlib.pyplot as plt import io import base64 ... # Create Layout dash_app.layout = html.Div([ html.Div([ html.Div( [html.Img(id= 'matplotlib-graph', className="img-responsive", style={'max-height': '520px', 'margin': '0 auto'})], className='col-sm-12 col-md-6 col-lg-6'), html.Div( [dcc.Graph(id='frequency_word_bargraph', style={'display': 'block'}), dcc.RangeSlider( id='range_frequency_number', min=0, max=100, step=1, value=[0, 100], marks={ 0: {'label': 'Top(min)', 'style': {'color': '#77b0b1'}}, 50: {'label': 'Top(50)'}, 100: {'label': 'Top(Max)', 'style': {'color': '#77b0b1'}} }, allowCross=False)], className='col-sm-12 col-md-6 col-lg-6') ], className='row') , html.Div([ html.Div(className='col-sm-0 col-md-1 col-lg-1'), html.Div([generate_table(df)], className='col-sm-12 col-md-10 col-lg-10'), html.Div(className='col-sm-0 col-md-1 col-lg-1')], className='row'), # Hidden div inside the app that stores the intermediate value html.Div(id='intermediate-value', style={'display': 'none'})], id='dash-container' ) ... Multi-outputs Callbacks It is as simple as including multiple Output in our callbacks function. Now you should see the WordCloud generate based on the range slider as well. Here is what it looks like. It is a bit slow since it requires a brand new creation of an object every time. Multi-Inputs Callbacks: Determine which Input has fired You can do multiple inputs in a callback easily. Simply added your desire inputs in the callback function as an array . You can also determine which input has been fire using dash internal callback context like this. def example(): ctx = dash.callback_context if not ctx.triggered: button_id = 'No clicks yet' else: button_id = ctx.triggered[0]['prop_id'].split('.')[0] #ctx.triggered is a object containing prop_id and value #ctx.states is the state of the input #ctx.inputs is all of the inputs' values Memoization from Cache: Lru_cache Since Dash’s callbacks are functional and do not contain any state, you can quickly improve performance with memorization by allowing you to bypass long computations by storing results of the function calls. You can use memoization using the functools32 built-in library. import functools32 @functools32.lru_cache(maxsize=32) def slow_function(input): #long computation like the image generation below return 'Input was {}'.format(input) Calling slow_function for the first time takes a considerable amount of time, depending on the computation. However, call the same function with the same input again is instant, since the previously computed results are saved in memory. However, the limitation of lru_cache is that each process/thread contains its own memory, and doesn’t share memory across different instances. There is a better solution: the Flask-Caching library. Advance Memoization: Shared Memory Database We can use the Flask-Caching library that saves results in a shared memory database such as Redis or our local filesystem. This library also has some excellent features like expiration token, cache reset, and many others. Here is a quick template of how to use it with our application. from flask_caching import Cache def create_dashboard(server, client): """Create a Plotly Dash dashboard.""" dash_app = dash.Dash(server=server, routes_pathname_prefix='/dashboard/', external_stylesheets=[ '../static/css/main.css' ] ) cache = Cache(dash_app.server, config={ 'CACHE_TYPE': 'filesystem', 'CACHE_DIR': 'cache-directory' }) dash_app.config.suppress_callback_exceptions = True ..... code .... .... inside callback .... [dash.dependencies.Output('frequency_word_bargraph', 'figure'), dash.dependencies.Output('matplotlib-graph', 'src')], [dash.dependencies.Input('range_frequency_number', 'value')]) def init_callbacks(app, countFreq): @app .callback([dash.dependencies.Output('frequency_word_bargraph', 'figure'),dash.dependencies.Output('matplotlib-graph', 'src')],[dash.dependencies.Input('range_frequency_number', 'value')]) #add this new line @cache .memoize(timeout=timeout) # in seconds def update_graph(value): WebGL: GPU Computation You can also use the WebGL to render our Plotly charts. WebGL uses the GPU to render graphics and provide a huge performance gain for dataset over 15k of points. Here is a simple example provided by the Plotly: import plotly.graph_objects as go import numpy as np fig = go.Figure() trace_num = 10 point_num = 5000 for i in range(trace_num): fig.add_trace( go.Scattergl( x = np.linspace(0, 1, point_num), y = np.random.randn(point_num)+(i*5) ) ) fig.update_layout(showlegend=False) fig.show() Deployment: Heroku (Optional) With the template we download, you can easily deploy our application in Heroku. Create a free account in Heroku and install the Heroku Command Line Interface Use heroku login Create a local Git repository $ git init $ git add . $ git commit -m "initial files" 4. Create and deploy your app on Heroku. Then open your app in Heroku. heroku create <name_it_if_you_want> git push heroku master heroku open Conclusion: With this tutorial, you should able to build and deploy a complete dashboard app. You can do a lot more with Dash than shown here; you can have multiple tabs, 3D map graphs, and graph to image downloader. I recommend taking on a self-interest project with Dash or incorporate Dash into an already existing Flask App. Some last-minute tips before you create your Dashboard App: Make sure you understand what story you are trying to tell with the dashboard — keep it simple and focus on the font, color, and label. Download boilerplate from GitHub, no need to reinvent the wheel. Add dash components and callbacks one by one, then combine them if you see redundant data or code. Modularize your code with functions and individual py files. It makes debugging more straightforward. Test and deploy your app at each significant step to ensure the app is functioning purpose in production. Our third tutorial ends here! Finally, I would like to thank my friend, Danny, for helping me with this article. If you like this article, please like, share, and subscribe for more content. Thanks again. If you want to check out a full production dash app, you visit my SBTN’s Player Comparison Data Visualization Tool and SBTN’s NBA Player Cluster Analysis.
https://medium.com/@junjiejiang94/one-stop-guide-for-plotly-and-dash-text-dataset-visualization-using-big-query-and-flask-good-to-c089a30e9569
['Jayce Jiang']
2021-04-19 04:35:02.098000+00:00
['Data Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Plotly', 'Dashboard', 'Python']
The Many Faces of THC
One of the biggest perks to being a journalist and writer in the cannabis industry is that I frequently get the opportunity to try new products — many before they hit the market. With a niche in cannabis technology, I often get the chance to use and evaluate new tech gadgets, like the tCheck, Gpen Connect, and even the new DAVINCI vaporizer. As an experienced cannabis consumer living in a legal state, I also have sampled a broad range of products available in Colorado — mostly out of curiosity. I will seek out products with interesting new features, such as nanoformulations. Through my career and involvement in the cannabis industry, I have had the opportunity to learn that not all forms of THC are created equal. So, let’s explore the variations and what consumers can expect from each of them. Various Forms of THC Tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, is the most widely known and infamous cannabinoid because it is the compound in cannabis, creating the euphoria cannabis consumers love. However, what many don’t realize is that there are many forms of this exciting compound. THCa We can look at this cannabinoid as the raw, natural form of tetrahydrocannabinol. This cannabinoid is the acidic version of the compound and is found in the raw plant material. THCa, in this form, is non-psychoactive. Many hemp and cannabis advocates swear by consuming raw cannabis leaves or even juicing them, as THCa is purported to carry a wide range of health and wellness benefits. Delta-9-THC This is the form of THC most everyone is familiar with because when you put flame to dry cannabis, the heat converts most of the THCa to Delta-9-THC. This conversion is referred to as ‘decarboxylation.’ Most home cannabis bakers use this process to increase their butter and oil potency by heating cannabis before they extract it. Most legal cannabis producers use Delta-9-THC to make various products like edibles and beverages. Delta-9-THC binds with the CB1 receptors in our brains to create the iconic effects of cannabis. THC works very similar to anandamide, an endocannabinoid produced by the human body, that scientists call “The Bliss Molecule.” 11-Hydroxy-THC This form of THC does not exist in the plant itself. Instead, when someone eats Delta-9-THC, enzymes produced by the liver metabolize the compound. This process changes Delta-9-THC to its more potent metabolite, 11-Hydroxy-THC. Because it takes digestion, this causes a delayed effect from edible products, but this form of THC packs a punch when it does kick in. Often, this gets consumers in trouble. A THC overdose won’t kill you, but it can be terribly uncomfortable for the duration. *Note: When you’ve overconsumed a THC edible — do NOT eat fatty, greasy foods. THC is a lipid, so it binds with the fat calories in your digestive system. Therefore, the more fat calories in your system, the more THC you will metabolize. To balance out too much THC, consumers need to do two things: 1. Use CBD if you have it. CBD can deactivate the receptors in your brain and prevent THC from binding. 2. Drink water and try to relax with a funny movie, good music, or a coloring book. Take your mind off the moment. The THC Newcomers in the Cannabis and Hemp Industry With improved extraction technologies and laboratory processes, cannabis and hemp producers are expanding their range with new cannabinoid concentrations. Delta-8-THC This form of THC is a newcomer to the legal market and the dark horse of the hemp industry. Delta-8-THC is psychoactive, but the effect is much lighter than Delta-9-THC and creates less paranoia than its more infamous predecessor. Naturally, as with all cannabinoids, more research is necessary to determine the medical potential for the cannabinoid, but preliminary studies are promising. Delta-8-THC in the legal hemp industry presents an interesting conundrum. As the hemp legislation is written, all cannabinoids derived from hemp are legal. However, in hemp, Delta-8-THC is produced in tiny amounts. Therefore, many producers use a synthesis process to convert CBD to Delta-8-THC to produce enough of the cannabinoid for commercial purposes. And the DEA is beginning to question the legality of this process. My Experience with Delta-8-THC: I had the opportunity to try products made with Delta-8-THC when LiftedMade sent me samples of a few of their products. Naturally, as a cannabis patient, I have a higher tolerance to most THC products than the Average Joe, but I did feel like this was a ‘happier’ more uplifting experience than Delta-9-THC. I felt the onset was relatively similar to other THC edibles, but without the heavy, body effect of most edibles. I believe Delta-8-THC would be enjoyed by novice consumers looking for something a bit more than CBD, but not as heavy as THC. Want to try Delta-8 for yourself? Check here to see if you can order it in your state! THC-O-Acetate Another cannabinoid that is not present in the plant itself and requires laboratory processes to create, THC-O-Acetate, is still relatively difficult to find in the legal market. Last year, Honest Marijuana, a legal cannabis company here in Colorado, let me try their new products: a THC-O vape pen, pain cream, and infused honey. Unlike Delta-8, THC-O is not produced naturally — it is a cannabinoid made from THC, using chemicals to alter the cannabinoid. THC-O is said to be about 3x as potent as THC and is supposed to create a more psychedelic, spiritual effect. My experience wasn’t extraordinary with THC-O, but you can read all about it here. Long story short, THC-O felt more like a rave drug than a natural compound. THC is Not the Big Bad Wolf While THC has received a bad reputation based on outdated stereotypes and myths, THC can be consumed with responsibility. As science continues to uncover the mysteries in the various compounds in cannabis, expect to see more in terms of THC’s medicinal uses in all its forms.
https://medium.com/seed-stem/the-many-faces-of-thc-ec9cbf9a0eb
['Kristina Etter']
2020-10-27 22:39:39.014000+00:00
['Cannabis', 'Marijuana', 'Hemp', 'Cannabis Education', 'Cannabinoids']
The Magic in the Music
“Ah, music,” he said, wiping his eyes. “A magic beyond all we do here!” Music. The chirping of the birds.The strings of a guitar.The vocals of Beyonce. And so on. According to Wikipedia, Music is an art form, and cultural activity, whose medium is sound. Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash But to me and to so many people it’s not just that.Music is something that soothes our soul.Music is something which makes us feel things.Music is a way of expressing our feelings.Music is happiness.Music is sadness.Music can be almost everything.Music makes you what you are. “Can we live without music?” No! I cannot. A party is incomplete and really lame without music.An introvert can live without friends but without music? No chance.A heart break can be cured with sad songs playlist on loop,tissues and some ice cream.You can’t enjoy your high without right music.You want some relaxation,so you play calm instrumental playlist on spotify. You are mad at some one.You wanna blow off some rage.Play some rock and scream along the song and may be beat your chest like chimpanzee.And there are so many other instances but let’s stop because what I am getting to. Scientifically, musical tones, rhythmic structure, or lyrics each have a unique and distinct effect.Some people like songs for the lyrics and others ,may be for the tones or rhythmic nature.We have created certain set rules for how the mind is supposed to function in the rational realm so anything that seems beyond rationality — like being able to understand foreign music without knowing the language — seems to have something to do with the soul, when it really doesn’t. In conclusion, Music has no language boundaries and it really can speak to our soul and it really can change the vibes and has the power to make you feel anything .I wrote this article because, today I was feeling crappy then I started to listen to this song which came randomly in my app and While I was listening to the song, I really felt happy at that time without any worries or crappiness.Only that song made me feel like that and when I suggested that song to a friend, she was like, “yeah. It’s okayyy…” But I felt that the song really talked to me.I felt like the song was made for my situation.So I began to think.We all react to the same music in different ways.WOW!Even though we all know it, I once again realized Music is such a powerful tool.Right song can make people do things, make them feel beautiful, motivate them or make them believe in theirself and what not.That is the magic of music.I wonder,
https://medium.com/@info.ddor/the-magic-in-the-music-f548ed2ae1c1
['Daily Dose Of Randomness']
2020-04-27 07:42:43.264000+00:00
['Sad', 'Music', 'Songs', 'Happy', 'Life']
The New Covid-19 Variant Might Not Even Be a ’British Mutant’
The New Covid-19 Variant Might Not Even Be a ’British Mutant’ Photo by Matthew Waring on Unsplash A Logical Fallacy It is commonly considered nowadays that the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’ probably wasn’t originated in Spain at all. During World War 1, Spain remained neutral and wasn’t subjected to censorship of the press. The local Spanish media was the only one extensively reporting about the pandemic spreading through the country. As it was the only one reporting, the international community mistakenly assumed it was the first one affected. The most severe pandemic in recent history was attributed to Spain by a simple case of fallacy. On December 14, the British government announced that a new variant of the Covid-19 virus was identified. Over 1,100 cases were diagnosed, mainly in the South and East of England. It took a few days, and the world reacted in concern and panic. More than 40 countries banned UK arrivals. European countries, mainly France and Ireland, closed their borders to the UK. Hundreds of delivery trucks were barred from crossing the border and left stranded. There’s a fear of a food shortage due to the travel ban. Many feared of medicine shortage and possible problems with the transport of the Covid-19 vaccine coming from Belgium to the UK. All over the world, people were talking about ‘the UK variant’. Admittedly, a much catchier name than the official ‘VUI — 202012/01’.
https://medium.com/discourse/the-new-covid-19-variant-might-not-even-be-a-british-mutant-ee048a840e75
['Elad Simchayoff']
2020-12-25 02:45:39.019000+00:00
['Health', 'UK', 'World', 'Science', 'Covid 19']
The Sociologist
The Sociologist Short story: A men’s room in a park late at night. The sociologist watches. Content warning: sex, public sex, alcoholism, violence & threats of violence, age gap The Sociologist by Joe Shetina The sociologist stood with his notepad in the corner of the men’s room and waited for the action to start up again. Outside, the park lay still and quiet. Abandoned playground equipment, wood chips, and rusted water fountains dotted the black landscape. In here, the room was stuffy and empty and smelled of sweat and piss. The floor was covered in grime and emissions that could have been weeks old. No action for at least a half-hour. It was a slow night. With a squeak, the door swung open. He was an unassuming man in his early 40s; slight hairline recession over the temples. He looked the part with his long trench coat. He was nervous. The kind of guy who’d say he’s never done this before even though he is suspiciously savvy to how it all works. He offered a curt nod to the sociologist. The sociologist nodded back, a friendly ’I’m just here to watch’ kind of nod. The man got the message. Voyeurs were common. They had just as much to lose in being there as any of the guys who did anything, so there wasn’t much harm in their hanging around. With nothing else to do, the man sidled up to the urinal and dropped trou. Just as piss started hitting the porcelain, the door swung open again. A second man, about 25, stepped in. Blondish brown hair, a little scruff over his chin and jaw, and cheeky smirk on his face. He nodded to the sociologist who nodded the same polite nod he gave the first man. ‘I’m just here to watch.’ “I’ll be done in a minute,” said the first man. His stream had yet to peter out. “Yeah, yeah, take your time,” said the second man. He threw a smile at the sociologist. “Just occupy yourself a little bit,” said the first man, “I’m gonna be a minute.” “Yeah, no, that’s fine.” The sociologist scratched a few notes on his pad. The second man still smiled at him. Blue eyes sparkling with cheeky invitation. He pretended not to notice. The door swung open again. A third man walked — shambled — in. He wore a flannel jacket, a handlebar mustache, and a scowl. It wasn’t clear whether he was there to fight or fuck. Either might have suited him fine. He didn’t acknowledge the sociologist. “Kneel,” he said to the second man. The second man turned to him. He had about six inches on the third man, but lacked his bulk. “Kneel,” the third man repeated, “Kneel, dog.” The second man did as he was told. His knees met the grimy floor. From this view, the sociologist could only imagine his face. How it must look as it came down level with the groin, scruffy and eyes sparkling, lips cleaving toward the ear in that cheeky grin. “Good dog,” the third man said. He patted the second man’s head with an unexpected tenderness. A small burning in the sociologist’s stomach. Jealousy. It wasn’t until the third man unzipped his jeans that the first man, just finishing, realized he had been poached. “Hey, he’s mine.” The first man turned around. His dick was hanging out of his pants. A droplet or two of piss rolled off the head and hit his shoes. “Snooze, you lose,” the third man replied. “Come on, man, this isn’t fair.” “You wait your turn,” the third man was growing angrier. It was clear now how drunk he was. “I saw him first, though.” “You wait your turn.” The two glared at one another. There was silence except for the scratching of the sociologist. The second man remained on his knees, expecting to be claimed by the winner. The first man, unassuming as he may have looked when he walked in, wasn’t going quietly. “I saw him first, though.” With a flash of fury, the third man leapt, fist flying, and tumbled toward the first man. He misjudged the distance and came crashing down with as much fury. His body slammed against the stained men’s room floor. His face came to rest inches from a piss spot under a nearby urinal. The sociologist craned his neck to see just how close — and continued taking his notes. The third man lay unconscious. The second man stood to greet the first man. “I know you, don’t I?” “You know me?” The first man asked, his dick still hanging from his open trousers. “I think so.” He asked again: “You know me?” “Maybe,” the second man said. “Maybe…” the first man repeated. The sociologist furiously copied the exchange. The pen scratches made the first man flinch. “I know your wife,” the second man said. The first man’s face flushed with relief. “Oh… maybe!” “We’re in the same cardio class.” “Oh, yeah, at the — ” “I didn’t mean to scare you.” “You didn’t.” “She’s nice.” “Who? Oh! Yes, she is,” the first man said, “At least, I think so.” The first man closed the distance between them. He became softer. “Sorry, for a second I…” “You thought you knew me from somewhere else?” “No, no,” the first man said. For a married man who spent so much time in men’s rooms, he was a poor liar. “Do you want me to suck you?” “Absolutely,” the first man was face to face with the second man now. His hands went traveling. One on the young man’s chest and the other made its way unceremoniously to his ass and gave it a squeeze. Throughout the pawing, the second man invariably let his eyes drift to the watchful sociologist. Watching him watching. There was a spark of conspiracy in his expression. ‘Watch this,’ it seemed to say. “I do know you from somewhere else, though…” “Oh?” the first man mumbled against the skin of the second man’s neck. “Honors English 3,” the second man said, “You made us read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. That book changed my life. You made me want to be a teacher.” The first man stopped his nuzzling. “You… Were you a student of mine?” The second man nodded. The first man stood upright again. “You’re a teacher?” “No, but you made me want to be,” the second man said, “Does your wife know about you?” A creeping shudder traveled up the first man’s body. He had lost his nerve with his erection. “My wife knows a lot of things about me.” “Not too much, though, right?” The first man sighed as if disappointed. He backed away and lurched upward when his heels tapped against the third man’s limp, unconscious body. “I thought you wanted this,” the second man followed him as he squirmed his way toward the door. “I don’t anymore. You’re too… you’re real now. I don’t want to fuck you if you’re real.” He stepped out of the men’s room and back into his life. The second man approached the third man on the ground, gave him a gentle push with his foot. Still out cold. Only then did he talk to the sociologist. “What about you? What’s your story?” The sociologist gazed at him. The firm and healthy v of his jaw cast a downward shadow over the throat where the man’s mouth had been. He looked as if he had been marked there. “I’m just here to watch.” The second man wasn’t deterred. “Married, not married?” “Will it make it easier for you to speak to me if I’m married?” “Sure,” he said with a shrug. “Then, yes,” the sociologist said, “I’m married.” “You’re just here to watch.” “Yes.” “Why?” “I”m fascinated.” The second man smirked again, then teasing, craned his neck and looked at him like he might a child, “Fascinated? By me?” “Yes.” “I don’t know why.” “Why do you come here?” The second man scoffed and repeated, “I don’t know why,” but it wasn’t clear if he was answering the question or just repeating himself. “You don’t know why?” “I mean… I guess I come because…” he started, “You know, I don’t know why.” “What about you? Are you married?” “No,” the second man said. “Did you ever have a girlfriend?” “I had friends I was close to, but no. No girlfriends.” “Why do you come here?” “I want to be touched, I guess,” the second man said. “I don’t know why.” “Do you…” he began to ask, “Do you like the men who touch you here?” “Sometimes,” he answered. Then, “Not really… Sometimes. They’re okay sometimes.” “You…” The sociologist had stopped taking notes. When he noticed, he started again. Scribbles. Nonsense. But it kept him from meeting the young man’s eyes too much. If he looked too long, he started to feel… “You want to be touched…” he said, trying to ignore the young man’s intense gaze. “Yes,” the second man breathed. “Fascinating.” The sociologist wrote the word as he said it. “Should I tell you more?” The second man moved closer. His words dripped with seduction. The sociologist kept scribbling. “Yes.” “Sometimes I come in here and I feel like a piece of meat and that’s very okay with me and I know it shouldn’t be.” He drifted across the men’s room floor. Stepped over the third man. The sociologist made another note. The word “MEAT.” “Do you… like feeling like a piece of meat?” “Yes,” the second man said, “Sometimes. But then there are men who make me feel like I’m actually being seen.” “Do you like to be seen?” “Sometimes,” the man said, “It depends. I like to be seen by someone who deserves to see me.” “How do you know?” “That’s the thing though you don’t know until he touches you and it’s either like ‘Oh fuck this is real’ or ‘Oh fuck I made a big mistake’ and it’s all in how he touches you.” “How does it feel, though?” “I don’t know. It just feels how it feels.” “Why do you do it? Why leave it up to chance?” “Because even when they touch me and I think I’ve made a mistake it’s usually over really quickly.” “I see,” the sociologist said. He made a note. “I think you see me.” The sociologist noted this. “Do you?” “I do,” the second man said. “Fascinating.” “Or maybe you don’t. I don’t know. I won’t know until you touch me.” The second man edged closer. “I see,” the sociologist said. He made another note. “Do you want to… You know?” The second man stared him down. His fingers drifted downward and fiddled with his belt buckle. “I’m sorry,” the sociologist said, “I’m just here to watch.” They stared at each other for a long time. The third man began snoring. His hot breath made the piss puddle near his head tremble. “Believe me,” said the sociologist, “I wish I could.” “Why?” “You seem… free.” “I’m not,” the second man snorted. “Okay.” “So.” The sociologist felt his cheeks burn. “No, that was stupid. Of course you’re not free.” “Then what am I?” The sociologist’s eyes drifted down to his notes. The word ‘MEAT’ stared back at him. When he looked up again, the second man was unbuttoning his shirt. He made slow, agonizing work of it. “That man called you a dog. Told you to kneel. And you just did. Why?” The second man said nothing. He finished unbuttoning the shirt, but didn’t slip it off. His pale, flat stomach suggested he had missed a meal or two. The tuft of hair over his sternum was just enough to bury your face in. “Why did you let him do that?” “Why did you?” “I told you,” the sociologist said, “I’m just here to watch.” The third man shot a breath out of his throat with such explosive power he stirred awake. He rolled onto his side. Through his slack, swollen lips, he began to slur his way through a Leonard Cohen song. The second man slipped his shirt from his body. His shoulders and ribs made hills and valleys in his form. The tight, pale sheath of skin over it stretched to its breaking point as he maneuvered out of the shirt. He massaged it into a ball in his hands and tossed it to the sociologist. It draped itself over his notepad. A sleeve dangled over, grazing his knee. The sociologist held the shirt in his own hand. It was worn, thinning in some places, but heavy with musk. The sociologist brought the ball of shirt to his face and lost himself in the bittersweet odor. It hit like cheap liquor — the initial, eye-watering burn followed by the swimming euphoria. He drank it in with his breath. Then, he tore himself away from it and scratched a note onto his pad. When he looked up from his notes, the second man had gone. Slipped away into the night. He left the shirt behind like a playful entity in a ghost story. The third man sat up. Confused at where he was, but too drunk to truly be startled. He scanned the room, noted the sociologist, then came to a shaky standing position, unzipped, and hugged the urinal. The trickling sound filled the room. The sociologist made a note and waited for the action to start up again.
https://medium.com/the-red-sweater/the-sociologist-76b49b97866e
['Joe Shetina']
2020-10-02 17:57:36.830000+00:00
['Short Story', 'Fiction', 'Story Sketch']
IoT Applications in Manufacturing (Production & Supply Chain)
Photo by NASA on Unsplash Industrial IoT (IIoT), a key enabler of Industry 4.0 & smart manufacturing, is widely adopted by manufacturing companies across the globe to improve operational visibility, productivity & efficiency. According to Forbes, IIoT platforms are beginning to replace MES and related applications, including production maintenance, quality, and inventory management. As per the survey by IoT Analytics, IIT spend would be split 60%/40% between within and outside the factory, respectively. And most importantly, discrete manufacturing companies will outpace process/batch manufacturing companies in the IIoT adoption race. Find out how IoT for manufacturing is transforming production and supply chain in the sections below. Why IIoT projects are widely used in manufacturing MarketsandMarkets has forecasted that the IoT in the manufacturing market will grow from USD 12.7 billion in 2017 to USD 45.3 billion by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 29.0% during the forecast period. IoT implementations are solving the below manufacturing challenges for industries. Data collection for OEE Unplanned machine downtime Inefficient Inventory management Under-utilized assets & resources Increasing labour and machine maintenance costs IoT applications in manufacturing IIoT is the process of implementing IoT enabled devices and integrating with processes to track and improve production efficiency, product quality, and speed. IoT in production The implementation of IoT has transformed manufacturing production. Manufacturing involves lots of resources and managing them efficiently is critical for achieving planned production. IoT helps manufacturers to track and manage machines, humans effortlessly. Let’s get started with equipment/machine utilization. Monitoring machine utilization Machine utilization — IoT enables operators to facilitate business processes by collecting machine data in real-time and sharing it instantly for making informed decisions. The devices help operators to track everything under different conditions starting right from volume to the temperature where humans cannot intervene, and this helps to utilize equipment to the fullest for achieving planned production. Improving production quality In the digital era, a product’s quality shortcomings will impact a company financially and its branding. Monitoring production processes, making adjustments wherever needed is the best way to produce quality products that delight customers. Manual product quality controls are time-consuming and error-prone, resulting in defective products in the hands of customers. By collecting data and other metrics with IoT sensors, manufacturers can determine product quality standards expected. A physical inspection may be required to rectify the problem. So, there is no wonder why manufacturers are turning to IoT solutions to maintain quality standards Product traceability Tracking product movement when they are on the move is always challenging. The inability to find products on the move during production delays project delivery. With IoT devices, tracking products between two production points is simple. Real-time tracking of products on the move enables manufacturers to save time and cost, ensuring faster time to market. Predictive maintenance Predictive maintenance or Conditions Based Maintenance (CBM) uses embedded sensors and devices to monitor a machine’s critical parameters. With such a setup, monitoring the signs of machine failure or abnormalities is effortless. By studying these data using machine learning, advanced analytics and AI, developing a well-defined maintenance strategy is always simple. The analyzed data helps with making adjustments during run time and reduces unplanned maintenance costs. As the entire process is performed using the real-time data, identifying problems proactively and making informed decisions on maintenance cycles is effective. This approach has helped manufacturing companies to reduce downtime by 75% and its associated maintenance costs by 75%. IoT in supply chain management IoT has re-invented supply chain management (SCM). It is simple and seamless to discover where goods are, how to store and where they are within the manufacturing unit. Asset tracking & management IoT-enabled smart asset monitoring solution lets manufacturers locate the asset’s condition, lifecycle, etc. accurately. Adding intelligence to the system powers the asset management process with automated workflows, real-time alerts, data insights, and real-time visibility. Combining the power of IoT devices with mobile apps will ensure on-the-go and faster asset tracking. Identifying and authenticating an asset’s location at any time By attaching IoT devices to storage containers, identifying assets within a container is easy. Along with other technologies like RFID, Barcode, NFC, etc. operations can easily locate assets using the real-time data pushed to through mobile applications. This saves time and improves productivity. Inventory management Even storing the products in ideal conditions is possible, as IoT devices can help in monitoring the conditions of storage spots exposed to different environmental conditions. Setting up an alarm on such conditions will help staff to immediately act and avoid product damage. Tagging the materials with IoT devices (along with sensors) will simplify locating a product in a warehouse. In this way locating any product in a large warehouse is easy and accurate. Conclusion In short, IIoT adoption has created new revenue streams for manufacturing and the industry can mitigate the production, operational efficiency challenges with this strategy. Are you ready for the Industrial 4.0 revolution? Get started. Disclaimer: Being a follower of ‘The IoT Magazine’ offers lots of perks :) A consultation session with experts from across the industries is a major one. Submit your query here and we will connect you with the right IoT experts. He might be sitting next door, you never know.
https://theiotmagazine.com/iot-applications-in-manufacturing-production-supply-chain-c8f0698f5fa7
['Siva Prasadh G']
2020-05-27 14:02:23.718000+00:00
['Iiot', 'Manufacturing', 'Internet of Things', 'Predictive Analytics', 'Industry 4 0']
The Write Plan. Plan on writing a novel in one month…
The Write Plan To Draft Your Novel, in One Month Plan on writing a novel in one month? It’s easy to dream, and much harder to achieve. My suggestion: go into this with a goal and a plan. Maybe you want to participate in NaNoWriMo. Or maybe you have a vacation, a chunk of free time, and want to finally write that book. Fine, but how? Before I wrote my first novel, I had no clue where to start, and had only ever written short stories up until then. I dreamed about writing a book. There was a goal, but no plan. Need structure? No matter where you’re starting today, follow these tips. Your writing will be the better for it. I recommend considering 2 important factors, before jumping into a fiction project: 1. Set an end goal, and 2. Develop a plan. Set an end goal NaNoWriMo begins on November 1st, with a target of 50,000 words. This can be a good approach, but can also be scaled up, or scaled down. Only have one week? Shoot for an average length short story of 7,000 words. Don’t have a lot of writing experience? Start with smaller incremental goals, and build up stamina over time. Develop a plan In a “pantser” approach, writers draft freely, without a clear goal where the story is headed. But if your time is limited, consider not wasting that valuable asset. Have a system, and there is no need to invent one. Years ago I stumbled on Book in a Month by Victoria Schmidt quite by accident. I go back to it time and time again. Start with the section on creating an outline. Create scenes, character maps, turning points, generate backstory and identify potholes. Write the whole damn first draft, or as much as you can muster, straight through from the opening sentence to the last line. Don’t write and edit at the same time! If you aim to reach the full 50K word count goal, I recommend setting up the outlines, characters and plot points in October — ahead of time. The limitations No, you won’t end the month with a complete novel. It won’t be ready to “hit send” to agents or publishers. You might pull that off with a short story, but probably not if it’s your first time. What will you have? A first draft; which must be shared with critique partners, and rewritten based on their feedback. Perhaps by that point it will be ready to self-publish or submit to publishers. Don’t skip professional editing if you’re going to independently publish. It’s not easy to write a fully complete novel, but it can be done. Who knows? If you have a good hook, well-paced plot, and put in the work, it might even be a great novel. You’ll never know until you try.
https://medium.com/nanowrimo/the-write-plan-to-draft-your-novel-in-one-month-4967f46a6085
['Chad Schimke']
2020-11-14 23:12:58.684000+00:00
['Fiction', 'NaNoWriMo', 'Writing', 'Nonprofit']
How LUKS works with Full Disk Encryption in Linux
How LUKS works LUKS (Linux Unified Key Setup), in particular LUKS2, provides a generic key store on the dedicated area on a disk, with the ability to use multiple passphrases to unlock a stored key. LUKS2 has a more flexible way of storing metadata (redundant information to provide recovery in the case of corruption in metadata area). LUKS header provides metadata for encryption setup. The followings are some of the features: Checksum mechanism to detect corruption and manipulation in header Metadata area is stored in two copies for a possible recovery Metadata are stored in JSON format. It allows future extensions without modifying binary structures Header contains objects called token, which contains information to where to get the unlocking passphrase Header LUKS Header explaination LUKS header are basically divided into three parts: Binary header (4096 byte, only 512 bytes are used) Metadata in JSON Keyslot area As you can see in the image above, the binary and JSON areas are stored twice and in normal condition they contain the same values. The size of the binary header ensures that it is always written in only one sector (atomic write) to prevent errors and/or corruptions. Binary Header The binary header contains all the information needed to inform the system that is going to approach a LUKS device. The information saved here are basic information such as labels, a signature that indicates this is a LUKS device, header size and the metadata checksum (very important!). The primary header must be stored in sector 0 of the device, the second one starts after the first JSON area at fixed offset position as indicated below: Offset | JSON [bytes] | [kB] --------------- 16384 | 12 32768 | 28 65536 | 60 131072 | 124 262144 | 252 524288 | 508 1048576 | 1020 2097152 | 2044 4194304 | 4092 JSON Area The JSON Area starts after the binary header and the end must be aligned to 4096-byte sector offset, so JSON area size is JSON_Area_size = header_size - 4096 So the offset where the second binary header starts (reported in the table above) now makes sense: JSON size + bin_header_size (4096 byte) must match with the Offset. The unused space is filled with zeros. Keyslot Area Keyslot area is space on disk that can be allocated for binary data from keyslots, in fact there are stored encrypted keys referenced from keyslot metadata. The allocated area is defined in a keyslot by an area object that contains offset (from the device beginning) and size fields, both fields must be validated otherwise will be rejected. Alignment padding The alignment padding has the purpose to align the encrypted data at the beginning of a block (block are encrypted one by one, typically a block is 512 byte) with the right offset to make LUKS properly work with the encrypted sectors. Metadata LUKS metadata allows defining object with a specific functionality. Objects not recognized are ignored, but still maintained into JSON metadata. The implementation must validate the JSON structure before updating the on-disk header. LUKS has some mandatory objects as follow: config — which contains persistent header configuration attributes — which contains persistent header configuration attributes keyslots — that are objects that describe encrypted keys storage areas — that are objects that describe encrypted keys storage areas digests — used to verify that decrypted keys are correct — used to verify that decrypted keys are correct segments — describe areas on disk that contain user encrypted data — describe areas on disk that contain user encrypted data tokens — can optionally include additional metadata, bindings to other systems Binary data inside JSON are stored in Base64 encoding and 64-bit integers are stored as string in decimal notation. The following is a drill-down of the mandatory objects in LUKS metadata: Config object The config object contains these fields, that are global for the LUKS device: json_size — JSON area size (in bytes), this fields must be equal to the binary header — JSON area size (in bytes), this fields must be equal to the binary header keyslots_size — binary keyslot area size (in bytes), this must be aligned to 4096 bytes — binary keyslot area size (in bytes), this must be aligned to 4096 bytes flags — array of string objects with persistent flags for the device — array of string objects with persistent flags for the device requirements — array of string objects with additional required features for the LUKS device Keyslot object Keyslot objects contain information about stored keys, areas, where binary keyslot are stored, encryption type, anti-forensic function used, password-based key derivation function and related parameters. Each keyslot object contains: type — keyslot type — keyslot type key_size — key size (in bytes) stored in keyslot — key size (in bytes) stored in keyslot area — allocated area in binary keyslot area — allocated area in binary keyslot area kdf — PBKDF — PBKDF af — anti-forensic. Not in use in modern systems (LUKS2) — anti-forensic. Not in use in modern systems (LUKS2) priority — is the keyslot priority: 0 = ignore, 1 = normal, 2 = high. Digest object To verify that a decrypted key (from a keyslot) is correct, LUKS uses digests object. These objects are assigned to keyslots and segments, if not assigned to a segment the digest is used for a unbound key. Digest object contains these fields: type — digest type — digest type keyslots — array of keyslot objects names assigned to the digest — array of keyslot objects names assigned to the digest segments — array of sement objects names assigned to the digest — array of sement objects names assigned to the digest salt — binary salt for the digest — binary salt for the digest digest — binary digest data Segment object Segment object contains the definition for encrypted areas on the disk. For a normal LUKS device there is only one data segment present. These are the fields: type — segment type (only crypt is currently used) — segment type (only crypt is currently used) offset — offset from the device start to the beginning of the segment — offset from the device start to the beginning of the segment size — segment size (in bytes) or dynamic (for the dynamic resize of the device) — segment size (in bytes) or dynamic (for the dynamic resize of the device) iv_tweak — starting offset for the Initializaion Vector — starting offset for the Initializaion Vector encryption — segment encryption algorithm in dm-crypt notation — segment encryption algorithm in dm-crypt notation sector_size — sector size for the segment (512, 1024, 2048 or 4096 bytes) — sector size for the segment (512, 1024, 2048 or 4096 bytes) integrity — LUKS2 user data integrity protection — LUKS2 user data integrity protection flags — array of string objects with additional information for the segment Token object Token object is an object that describe hot to get a passphrase to unlock a particular keyslot, and can contain additional JSON metadata. These are the mandatory fields:
https://infosecwriteups.com/how-luks-works-with-full-disk-encryption-in-linux-6452ad1a42e8
['Mattia Zignale']
2021-09-16 13:23:29.197000+00:00
['Computer Security', 'Cryptography', 'Linux', 'Encryption', 'Technology']
Financial Literacy Group
With the raising interest in financial schooling because of the monetary downturn felt across the world there has been an increase in financial mindfulness just as Federal and State programs intended to assist with providing instruction. On the Federal level Congress ordered the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act likewise alluded to Dodd-Frank Act. Because of this Act the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was set up as the guard dog association overseeing the execution of the Acts arrangements. Part of the obligation of the CFPB is to advance financial schooling through what’s called Consumer Engagement and Education groups. The CFPB works with these groups all over the nation spreading the uplifting news of financial literacy. Why Financial Literacy Strategy is significant The President’s Advisory Council defines financial literacy as “the capacity to utilize information and abilities to oversee financial resources successfully for a long period of financial prosperity.” According to Ron Lewis; Financial literacy is an issue that should command our consideration on the grounds that numerous Americans are not enough organizing finances for their schooling, medical services and retirement. Certainly on the off chance that we examine the insights as to the financial prosperity of individuals in this country we see some alarming numbers that appear to indicate a radical requirement for instructive strategy across all age groups and sexual orientations regarding finances. For a long time we have looked to our schooling framework to help give a financial literacy strategy to our childhood. This framework has not given nor lives up to our desires in this space and we should devise an arrangement to introduce this idea to all age groups in this nation to help guarantee their financial future and prosperity. In request to instruct individuals of the significance of this expertise we should have at a nearby level instructive groups and projects that are effectively open by people in general providing key training that tends to the majority not simply the rich. Church’s and nearby clubs are an extraordinary resource effort to the community that can have a significant effect. It is likewise vital for little, medium and enormous business to help these associations alongside providing representative projects. Financial literacy training can profit the individual as well as also the country all in all. The hard chilly truth is we have an economy that is powered by buyer spending and obligation. The key is to have an equilibrium with the goal that you get an opportunity at financial achievement. A financial literacy strategy is straightforwardly identified with that achievement.
https://medium.com/@mstmahfuza350/financial-literacy-group-8719c6a21306
['Mst Mahfuza']
2021-04-09 13:39:28.110000+00:00
['Financial Literacy Group', 'Financial Services', 'Financial Literacy', 'Financial Planning', 'Financial Literacy Tips']
Why Can’t I Stop Procrastinating?
Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash This piece isn’t an answer. It’s not some kind of insight, or magic moment. If anything, it’s more procrastinating. I want to do the things I have to do. I want to work on my script rewrites. I mean, are you kidding me?! I never thought I could actually write for money, and now I have this beautiful magical opportunity, and I really truly am excited about it and appreciate it, and yes writing is hard but it’s so much fun, but I feel incapable of starting it. It’s not just writing; I procrastinate cleaning, I procrastinate texting back, some days I even procrastinate taking a shower. I‘m not proud of it but sometimes I’ve even procrastinated feeding myself, feeling the pang of hunger and knowing all I have to do is walk to the fridge to get a prepackaged salad. And yet somehow I remain planted to my desk chair. I’m not depressed; I’ve known depression and I know what it looks like, and I know this isn’t that. This is more so like a car that won’t start. I want to go to my next destination, very much actually, but when I put the key in the ignition it seems to just putter and stall out. More accurately, I want to put my key in the ignition and I’m holding the key in my hand and I’m sitting in the car but I’m somehow just static, unable to move my wrist downward to do it because my brain seems to be moving a million miles a minute and yet not moving at all. My head is buzzing but it’s also still. I don’t understand it. I know this is a symptom of the pandemic and being quarantined. Being an overweight asthmatic on an immunosuppressive steroid, I have been particularly religious about quarantine and haven’t hugged my own mother who lives twenty minutes from me since March. However I also know deep down this is a problem I’ve always had. I did this in high school, and I did it in college, and I’m doing it now. Generally I’ve been able to push through it or miraculously work around it, but quarantine and the combination of a giant workload yet unending listlessness seems to have exacerbated it. The thing is, I do my day job as a (now remote) script coordinator really freaking well. I meet my deadlines and if anything I anticipate future issues. And also, even when I procrastinate, scripts and materials are turned in before deadline. The procrastination impacts things more on my end than it does on the actual project’s side. A little voice in the back of my head is screaming that I have ADHD but I think the fact that I perform so well at my day job and with deadlines negates that. You can’t pick and choose when you have attention deficit, right? If you can’t focus but still turn things in within deadline, is that ADHD? I honestly don’t know. I know I should see a therapist, but again, procrastination. The biggest thing I’m procrastinating about right now is these rewrites that I really have to do. And listen, I care deeply about these rewrites. This (unannounced) show means the world to me. And also, I’m looking forward to them! They will only make the script better. So then is that the issue? That when I really care I cut myself off at the knees by procrastinating? But see, that doesn’t track, because for the most part when I’ve written things I cared about, I’ve surpassed deadlines. I used to be so proud of that when it happened. I think deep down I know what the issue is. I have to confront the ugly thing that I know deep down is true. I mean honestly, if you’ve read this far, you probably know it too. I’m sad. And I procrastinate when I’m sad. And I’m fucking sad. Oh my god, I am so sad. In college I procrastinated like hell when I was going through really difficult personal family issues. After college I procrastinated when I was deeply insecure about what my path was. Now in my late 20s, I seem to be procrastinating at an all time high when I, fully, deep down in my core, could cry at the drop of a hat. I miss hugging my parents. I miss whispering shady comments to my little sister. I miss grabbing my boyfriend’s face and holding his hand and ordering different boba drinks so we could try them both. I miss going on adventures with my friends. I miss wandering the aisles at Target. But more than anything I miss not being hyper aware of my own fleeting mortality from the morning I wake up to the moment I finally lose the struggle and drift off to sleep. I’m just tired. And even if I take time off work and go “easy” on myself I’m still tired. But this needs to get done, so I’m going to go get it done. I don’t have a cure for it or anything wise to say. I’m frustrated and stuck and I have to work up some momentum to push through the fog. So I’m going to go do that. Right now. I’m going now. Bye. I’m going to go do it right now. One sec. Okay I’m ready. Doing it now. Yup. Heading off. Now’s the time. Maybe later.
https://medium.com/curious/why-cant-i-stop-procrastinating-fca5f9ecf216
['Ellie Guzman']
2020-12-11 04:19:13.980000+00:00
['Life', 'Self', 'Procrastination', 'Mental Health', 'Writing']
4 Business Lessons From The Man Who Made Louis Vuitton An Empire
1) Allow Creators To Run The Inventions What I have fun with is trying to transform creativity into business reality all over the world. To do this, you have to be connected to innovators and designers, but also make their ideas livable and concrete. I’ve been working on the Louis Vuitton Foundation for the past decade. I worked with Frank Gehry on this fantastic building dedicated to the arts. We have a very good relationship. I told him you can do anything you want on the outside, but on the inside, I want something that is usable. — Bernard Arnault about giving creative freedom to his artists. When we look at Louis Vuitton’s creators, it’s as if they are the ones running the business. It’s rare I find any statements from Bernard Arnault himself about the products that they are launching, it’s always the creators doing it instead. This showed that Bernard Arnault gave so much freedom to the creators. We see it so much in the designs released every time there is a fashion show event. He allowed the designers to be as wild as possible and let them do the final decision. This leadership is called laissez-faire, where the leaders allow their employees to run the business, create the decision, and are okay when facing mistakes. It’s not usually common in the business world, since the most common one is democratic leadership. However, Bernard Arnault seemed to believe in the creative directors and designers the company hired. Therefore, he allowed them to take over the departments and be innovative. I’m sure that he probably said a few words to them, but the bottom line is, the designers are the ones in control when creating new products, not him. Thus, giving them no limits on the canvas to paint. 2) Quality Before Marketing “If you do marketing like consumer goods, I don’t think that’s possible (for LVMH). But if you produce something that is really unique, I think that’s possible” — Bernard Arnault at Oxford Union, 2016. Most companies that involve art in their business are always approaching quality first. We’ve seen this a lot in Disney, Apple, Youtube videos, and books. Businesses like Louis Vuitton are no exception. If you notice, Louis Vuitton’s marketing is mostly just from Social Media. They don’t do massive advertisements the way grocery stores/consumer goods do. They just announce one thing on Instagram, and that’s it. Sometimes they’ll call the product back to the internet, but they don’t do massive marketing. And yet, when I worked at Louis Vuitton, every day was always a busy day in stores. Clients keep coming to buy their luxury products. Bernard Arnault said that they don’t do marketing. He believed that marketing is against what LVMH must do, which is quality. For them, marketing is product creation. In other words, he let quality speaks and let word of mouth from their clients do the marketing. Therefore, the quality will always exceed everyone’s expectations, so the phrase quality over quantity is very true. 3) Create Timeless/Evergreen Products/Contents “When I see a product of some of our best brands, it has to be timeless but also it has to have in it something of the utmost modernity in it. That is the key to success.” — Bernard Arnault, 2017. This is why Bernard Arnault allows his creative designers to go wild. Whether it’s in writing, stocks, or fashion, always aim for the long-term, which is timeless. Timeless, according to the CEO of LVMH himself, is a brand that lasts forever. That means no matter the generations to come, even when the culture change in time, the company can still adapt and live on. Louis Vuitton was created in 1837 by Louis Vuitton himself when he was 16 years old. This means that the brand is already more than 165 years old and today, it’s still as good as new. They made sure that the company keeps innovating and lasts. Bernard Arnault made sure that the products his companies produce are crafted to their best. He mentioned how his team sets a Louis Vuitton suitcase in a ‘torture’ machine where the bag would be opened and closed every five minutes, thrown around, and even dropped with a loud bang. This is their way to test its quality and see how long it lasts (though I’m certain that they had more ways of doing that). Today, Louis Vuitton is still selling the same bags since the 19th century such as the speedy bag launched in the 1930s. Over the years, the designers made sure that the bag can still fit into the modern world as a classy bag and people are still loving them. We can also apply this in our own lives. No matter how many products we create, make sure we innovate and be creative on how to make the product long-lasting, ultimately how to make your business long-lasting. 4) Always Treat Your Company Like A StartUp “I often say to my team we should behave as if we’re still a startup. Don’t go to the offices too much. Stay on the ground with the customer or with the designers as they work. I visit stores every week. I always look for the store managers. I want to see them on the ground, not in their offices doing paperwork.” — Bernard Arnault, 2017. I agree with this quote very much. If a company thinks that they are good enough already, one day, someone else will catch up with them. Plus, I find that people who treat themselves as startups are very humble. A startup's main purpose is to grow its business. This includes their product, people, and systems. When I worked at Louis Vuitton, when my trainer identified one of my weaknesses in public speaking, which is speaking in my own native language, he drilled me and worked harder to help me surpass my weakness. This is why out of all the companies I worked at, Louis Vuitton was the place where I grew the most. Today, Louis Vuitton grows tremendously beautiful and powerful. It’s so powerful that they managed to acquire 75 different brands, some that are not even related to their main industry, and today, Bernard Arnault is the third billionaire in the world. I don’t know about the people there but as a former employee, but I learned so much from the company. Public speaking, the fashion world, its businesses, and so many more. It was one of the biggest highlights of my whole career.
https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/4-business-lessons-from-the-man-who-made-louis-vuitton-an-empire-768df2f46568
['Nicole Sudjono']
2020-12-24 21:01:09.869000+00:00
['Leadership', 'Business', 'Productivity', 'Life', 'Self Improvement']
The Denon Home series of wireless speakers will soon answer to Alexa
The Denon Home series of wireless speakers will soon answer to Alexa Carol Jan 27·3 min read Denon Home wireless speakers are about to get smart, with an upcoming firmware update that will add Alexa to support. The Home series is part of Denon’s HEOS multi-room audio ecosystem. Alongside the Alexa news, Denon is unveiling the Home Sound Bar 550, an all-in-one Dolby Atmos soundbar that’s also in the HEOS family. Related products Denon DHT-S216H Read TechHive's reviewSee it Denon says that a firmware update coming this spring will add Alexa support for its wireless Home speakers, including the 150, 250, 350, and new 550 models. Each of those speakers and soundbars already come equipped with built-in microphones, which have been dormant up to this point. After installing the update, users will have the option to enable Alexa, and once they do, their Home speakers will act just like standard Echo speakers, complete with the ability to play music, adjust the speaker volume, answer questions, and control smart home devices, all via voice command. [ Further reading: The best soundbars ]The built-in microphones in Denon’s Home speakers won’t be activated unless they’re manually enabled, and users can choose not to enable Alexa if they wish, Denon said. The firmware update will essentially turn Denon’s Home speakers, which are capable of decoding high-resolution audio—including DSD files—into full-on smart speakers, making them poised to compete with the likes of the Amazon Echo, the Google Nest Audio, and the Sonos One (which comes with both Alexa and Google Assistant on board, although only one can be active at a time). Meanwhile, Denon has just unveiled the Home Sound Bar 550, an all-in-one soundbar that supports immersive Dolby Atmos and DTS:X audio. You can read more about those home theater audio formats in this story. Slated to ship in February for $599, the Home Sound Bar 550 will come equipped with a fabric-covered front panel, complete with controls that light when built-in proximity sensors detect an approaching hand. The Sound Bar 550’s six-driver array includes four two-inch full-range drivers and two 0.19-inch tweeters, while two passive radiators provide low-frequency effects. You can upgrade the HEOS-enabled Sound Bar 550 by adding a pair of smaller Home speakers as surrounds and Denon’s wireless DSW-1H subwoofer, although doing so would push the overall price well north of $1,000. Denon You can upgrade the sound of the all-in-one Denon Home Sound Bar 550 by adding a pair of smaller Home speakers as surrounds and Denon’s DSW-1H subwoofer. While the Home Sound Bar 550 supports Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, it lacks upfiring drivers that bounce the required height cues off the ceiling. Instead, the Sound Bar 550 uses virtualization to achieve its height effects, an increasingly common (and often effective) solution to delivering 3D audio without upfiring drivers or in-ceiling speakers. As for inputs and outputs, the Sound Bar 550 comes with two HDMI ports: an HDMI-ARC port that supports eARC, an “enhanced” version of ARC that can handle lossless audio, and a standard HDMI input with 4K video passthrough. There’s also an optical (Toslink) port, a 3.5mm jack, a USB port that supports music playback on a thumbdrive (including FLAC, WAV, ALAC, and DSD files up to 24-bit/192kHz), and an ethernet port. Besides its upcoming Alexa support, the Home Sound Bar 550 is a Roku TV Ready soundbar, which means users will get on-screen setup instructions and settings when using the soundbar with a Roku TV. The Sound Bar 550 also supports Apple’s AirPlay 2, as well as direct streaming from subscription music services such as Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music HD, and Tidal. Even better, smart home enthusiasts will be able to take advantage of the soundbar’s included software drivers for Control4, Crestron, URC, and Elan smart platforms. We’ll have a full review of the Home Sound Bar 550 once we spend some time with a sample unit. Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
https://medium.com/@carol67897948/the-denon-home-series-of-wireless-speakers-will-soon-answer-to-alexa-38c4c781dd60
[]
2021-01-27 19:08:35.110000+00:00
['Electronics', 'Surveillance', 'Music', 'Security Cameras']
Changing Your Mind with Ayahuasca:
Changing Your Mind with Ayahuasca: Instructions for those Seeking to Attend Training & Ceremony with our Traditional Community in New Mexico For a Video on What is a Medicine Person: https://youtu.be/fUte2pwVwpY www.FindingTheForce.com You Can Change Your Mind. Your brain is like the Earth, and your thought patterns are much like flows of water. The longer and harder the patterns have been flowing, the deeper the river and the harder the change. But the earth of your brain can be molded, the flows of water (neural pathways) redirected and retrained with the assistance of Sacred Plant Medicine Ceremonies and personal work. The Ancient Peoples understood from experience and insight that we have an Achilles Heel. Human beings, once programmed, for better or for worse, will continue to behave the same way without much consciousness. Old patterns become worn in, unless we have the Sacred Science of Ceremony and assistance of Plant Medicine. At Retreat, during Ceremony and Training, You are here to make NEW neural networks, not to reinforce old patterns. Neural Plasticity (the ability to rewire our nervous system/ redirect the flows of water) is real, and we can assist you in your Journey to change your mind, literally. We are not actually tied to suffer from disease, our parents’ mistakes, or anxiety, substance abuse etc. But What do You Want? You have a Driver (Spirit) and a Vehicle (Body). They are not one and the same. You will have to do the personal work on your body as it is the vehicle for your spirit. You will have to examine your Road Map too and ask yourself important questions about where you are going. Your vehicle and your Spirit will Need taking care of like Driver and Vehicle do. We’re here to help you understand your Road Map of life, and Your Connection to Spirit, your Journey and it’s meaning. Being consciously connected to your own Spirit and the Greater Spirit. And to your Inner World, a Road Map of the terrain of Your Feelings that determines how you perceive the world. On Your Map, there are Symbols for mountains, rivers lakes…they are all shorthand for your feelings and experiences and they are the underworld that actually move a great deal of your actions thoughts and feeling patterns. Your Journey, Map and Compass We are here to teach you how to use your Compass, which we also call the Medicine Wheel. Every person is here to do their own work. No one can do that for you. If your coach at the gym lifted the weights for you, would your muscles grow? If your friend takes a road trip it’s not your Journey, it’s theirs! Do you want someone telling you the answers, or do you want Training you on How to Journey and find them yourself? We all have the right to a Spirit Connection in our Body. Why wouldn’t you want a Spiritual GPS? The Medicine Wheel takes you into the Vortex of Power, connects you to your Spiritual GPS. Higher Consciousness is accessible with the right tools, much like Internet is invisible, so is Spirit, but it is still there! With time and dedication you can learn to use the Medicine Wheel to access Spiritual GPS, no different than plugging into WiFi. When you have a better connection, you can download and unzip huge files on your own. Yoga, meditation, drumming, Ceremony, chanting, work with mandalas, chanting and reiki are just a few disciplines that will grow your ability to tap into your Spiritual GPS. But if you want to be part of this magic, you must Surrender to a Set of Rules and swear on your honor that you will do your best. Sacred and only for the Select are these Teachings and yet anyone with a Pure Heart and determination will prevail! You will have to sort through some of your Demons (limiting beliefs and trauma) and then understand, release, rewire. New insights and meaning are available, growth and happiness as well. But we can only give you training and tools, and only you can take the Journey of your Life. If you make it through the Training, which consists of 1) Reading the Manual, 4 Steps Into the Vortex, beforehand 2) Participating in Talking Stick Circle and demonstrating some understanding of the purpose of Plant Medicine and Sacred Ceremony 3) Sweat Lodge 4) Kambo 5) Orientation before Tea Ceremony 6) Journaling 7) Personal Practice and Dietary Restrictions Unless limited by medical conditions, we ask that you participate in these cleansing and purifying ceremonies. For Those of you who make it through the Training to the Tea Ceremony: We will take your keys and phones and will not return them for ANY reason before 12:00 noon on Sunday or everything is in good order. Everyone must stay on campus. No outside substances. No rude or disrespectful behaviour. Silence in the Kiva. Talking stick by the fire for personal reflection assisted by our trained staff, or the firekeeper. When you are under the influence of the Medicine, it’s going to light up your panel of damaged wiring and triggers to see which ones it can repair. This often causes people to “trip” or to have an overwhelming sense of their emotions as those pathways light up again. If you lay silently or sit quietly by the fire, the Medicine can do its work better. It’s a little like brain surgery on the level of Light. She (Grandmother, the Vine) is going to go in there and look at what’s going on, and try to mend the tapestry where it’s knotted. Those knots are energy blockages, like logs blocking the flow of a river of water. Once the logs are moved then things can flow again. But there may be emotional discomfort involved in the process. You will be able to see the world in new and different ways. New pathways for the flow of thoughts and feelings that are healthier and happier, more in alignment with purpose. Most people are happy when they have a purpose. Especially happy if it’s a sacred one, kind of a magic one that really lights you up. Grandmother knows a lot about your Heart and your Inner World. She is going to light up all of the tapestry threads that are possible for the pathways in your mind and for your purpose and abilities. Everyone has a connection to a higher source and came here with a purpose and often times when we left that purpose then we are missing a key part to our existence. Many of us are wounded and not able to connect to higher source (Spiritual GPS) because we have been given a glitch when we were too young to argue about it. That glitch is the belief that we are limited. We are infinitely powerful, but we trade in our absolute freedom in order to be part of something that we feel is special and important, or at least vital to our survival: family, friends, society. We become domesticated in our bodies and surroundings, like a herd of animals. In the process of domestication, or being socialized, to be a good part of the herd, many of us were injured or frightened off and haven’t had a great experience. Our parents didn’t have perfect experiences either. The behavior that caused our parents to injure us, or our teachers or lovers, was not their conscious choice either. It’s been passed on for a long time. Forgiveness is Something We do for Ourselves. We have armoring and wounds and they show up in different ways. Self-medication and numbing as well as disease and fat/ eating disorders are common symptoms also. At the root it is the same. The Illusion of Lack of Love, the inability to connect to our Spiritual GPS and read our Map, which gives us meaning and purpose on our Journey. The belief in the Lie of Separation from Spirit or Banishment from our happy, innocent place on Earth, once called Eden. But Eden is everywhere, we never left the garden, never have been truly disconnected from our spirits. We were made to believe that we don’t deserve to be happy, and incentivized to throw away our lives for material things and miss the moments. Feelings Matter. They are what actually attracts reality. And your “reality” is actually only a tiny fragment of the actual reality surrounding you, a little tiny speck at the end of a ten foot pole. You are only registering 3% of reality. Your brain can only process 3% of what’s going on and selects it out based on your programming. Medicine will allow you to experience a great deal more. Your programming, your panel so to speak, the neural networks that light up, are actually able to change to perceive things differently and experience a different set of responses. You’ll need to detox and nourish with some supplements before and after Ceremony, but it’s all possible. We can also live longer and healthier if we want to. Most diseases can be repaired and we can even change our DNA. The Vine, or Grandmother, has a Consciousness Connecting ability and can assist you in plugging into things you were not previously aware of. We are Light-and-Body, Car and Driver. But what is the purpose of your Journey? Why are you here? What makes you feel good? It’s NOT the same answer for everyone and that’s your personal treasure. Finding the Force means figuring out what Lights You Up. What we have is a time tested formula for assisting you in that Journey. It’s called Ceremony and Community. But it comes with Rules of Engagement and you must have respect for this Ancient Tradition, as it is very Sacred and many people have sacrificed their lives to protect it. Golden Rule — Church of the Natural Law We have a Universal Native American Church which allows us to legally work with Plant Medicine in a Traditional Native way. It’s your right to this Religious Freedom whether you are Native or not. We have one main law, (a Shamanic version of the Golden Rule): As you do Onto Others you are Doing Onto Yourself. When you send poison to others you are actually only poisoning yourself. When you forgive and hold love in your heart, they also feel that love and so do you. You don’t have to hold onto the past. It’s gone and you can’t change it, except by freeing yourself. You can make any dream you want come true, or at the very least you can Enjoy the Journey of trying. It’s the experience and the Consciousness of our Journey that makes it amazing. Getting to know other people, falling in love with Life, releasing and growing. That’s our purpose. To make a garden together. What most people feel sad about and what is missing is Connection to others and connection to purpose, because connection gives us Meaning. It remains part of our nature to want to be part of something, and if we can reverse engineer or something that will allow for us to have a beautiful community and live in harmony together, that is our highest goal in our Community. But we have to debug each other and whether or not you remain part of our community, it does exist, like an Urban Tribe. We are what is re-emerging and we are honest, kind and fair. You will need to learn to trust and behave in a way that makes you trustworthy. You will have to follow ALL of the rules AT ALL times. When triggered, people project on each other. The deeper the wound, the more invested they are in protecting it. If you are feeling angry, it is because fear is beneath there. There is a pattern you learned when you were so young that you don’t remember where the pattern of pain comes from. Someone scratched your record and you need to decide what you want to rewrite. When we were branded as property of the Machine, it was done without our actual consent. But now… You are at a Monumental Crossroads of Opportunity. You are at an intersection where you can Consciousness choose your Emotional Freedom. No one can make this choice for you. The Medicine and the Technology to choose the Highest and Happiest Path for yourself is Here and Now. If you have chosen to attend this Training to undergo Neurological rewiring, reweaving, then, know that you will not come back as the same person. It will require effort and courage and transparency, vulnerability. Emotional Bullying, projecting or aggression will get your removed from the group until you can personally process what your reaction is trying to help YOU release. Guidelines for you to Understand. No Cross-Talk Allowed. Period. In the Jungle, most people are not able to communicate with their shaman. The good news is that we are able to communicate with each other. But that does not give anyone the right to abuse that privilege. Be respectful at all times. It is my absolute right to keep you all safe that at any moment in time for any reason, and it may not even be discussed with you, that you will leave the Sacred Lodge. When we are in Ceremony you will be silent and still. Respect what the staff asks you to do, no matter how you feel about it. Having a tantrum or a punishing attitude will get you removed to a tent where you will take a sleeping bag and lay silently. Like a belligerent drunk, you are not able to make good decisions, you’re having a trip where you are projecting your beliefs into someone. The Ceremonial Leader is not your mom or dad, and does not at all possess the same characteristics. If you are feeling anger or cannot follow the rules, it’s your issues coming up. Sit quietly with it and ask yourself how it feels to carry around that toxicity. Wouldn’t it feel better to just leave it outside for a while and try something new? Based on the Courage and Work you put in, you can have whatever you want. Still, it is likely that you will feel triggered and not have the courage to face that it’s your own issue, at some moment. It can be overwhelming to experience the things we have buried, which are painful, and are blocking our connection to Spirit. As the Medicine is opening up that panel in your nervous system in order to examine and repair it, there will be some discomfort. It’s ok, but don’t freak out and spew or project that on others. Breathe and be Brave. Take Heart and remember that Sacred Space. There is goodness and light at your core. You are beautiful and meaningful. It is never too late to have Courage. Corazón, heart, sacred, curar, these are all the Language of the Heart. 99.9% of our Universe is Consciousness. She is the Feminine Matrix, and she is a field of light seeds, willing and responsive to respond. Those Light seeds travel a web of electromagnetic fields in order to congeal, become Manifest. They filter down like jewels and become solid. A lot of your experience is dictated by beliefs. Belief actually is Reality. You are here to receive the Teachings, or Instructions you will need in order to be successful. When we are in Ceremony it’s not a trip or a place to air dirty laundry. It’s a place to learn how to Heal and Grow, and it needs to be a safe, clean, natural and transparent place. You must listen carefully to others and be quiet, listen with both ears and your heart and a quiet mind. Learn to breathe deeply. Your actions and decisions will affect others. If you directly disrespect the Ceremonial Leader or the Staff you will not be invited back until you have made enough personal progress so as to be able to follow the guidelines. In thought, word and deed. If you do not like following the rules of Respect (Personal Responsibility and Absolute Do No Harm) and Silence, you should not come here. At Retreat, during Ceremony and Training, You are here to make NEW neural networks, not to reinforce old patterns. Read Aloud By the Sacred Fire, Before We Enter the Lodge: We are here to enter into Sacred Space. The purpose of working this way is to shift previous thoughts, feelings and patterns. At this point all of you need to have fully read and understood the rules and conditions of your training. Silence during Ceremony in the Lodges. Respectful appropriate dialogue by the Sacred Fire. Personal accountability for emotions. This is a Teaching and a Training. Not a recreational adventure or pleasure TRIP. And we have Rules, which you must follow at all times, period. If you cannot follow the rules of silence and respect, you will have to leave. Do your own personal work and take responsibility, for that is the only way to Change Your Mind and heal. You cannot buy Medicine, or a Journey!! We are a Church and only members that have shown a sincere desire to know the greater truths are eligible to receive our most sacred sacrament “The Medicine Tea” — IF you make it through the Training. What you purchase when you come here is our time and training. A set of teachings, in writing, in a manual, combined with an Experience we call Ceremony. This retreat is not about your parents, or your romantic partner. If we allow you to come as a couple do not engage in touching or personal history dialogues. If you are unwilling to follow instructions respectfully, it’s best you go it alone somewhere else. Medicine is NOT a magic wand. I am not your waitress and you will not ask for more tea. We all take the same amount, and quantity will not shift your experience quality. Only your attitude can do that. The Ceremonial Leader is to be held in the utmost respect, and her Staff and other community members are also Sacred Beings, just as yourself, and no one may stay who lacks respect. Though we do care about your history, it’s not a place to air dirty laundry or rage out. As You do Onto others you do Onto yourself. Your feelings are yours, just a compilation of choices which you now have the golden opportunity for an evolutionary rewire.
https://medium.com/medicine-nm/changing-your-mind-with-ayahuasca-1991e492fb83
['Courtni Hale']
2020-03-08 01:31:22.078000+00:00
['Shamanism', 'United States', 'Retreats', 'Ayahuasca', 'PTSD']
First Chapter: The Loneliness of the Black Republican by Leah Wright Rigueur
Below is an excerpt from Leah Wright Rigueur’s 2015 book The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power. An Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, Wright Rigueur’s research interests include 20th century United States political and social history and modern African American history, with an emphasis on race, civil rights, political ideology, the American two-party system, and the presidency. Hear more at our book talk with Wright Rigueur on April 1, 2015. The book examines the “intersection of race, civil rights, conservatism, and party politics” and traces almost half a century between 1936 that marked the political realignment of the new deal and 1980 that heralded the beginning of the Reagan revolution. The author peels away the stereotypes and simplistic characterizations that deem to define African American Republicans. She studies the motivation, efforts and contributions of African American conservatives: activists, officials, middle class professionals and politicians at the local, state and national level who “attempted to influence the direction of conservatism — not to destroy it but rather to expand the boundaries of the ideology in order to include black needs and interests.” In the chapter excerpted below, Wright Rigueur posits that Conservatism and African American interests are not as mutually exclusive as they seem but only “seemingly incongruous” and in doing so offers new insights on “a group who have long been both a political minority in their racial community and a racial minority in their political party.” This post is part of an occasional series highlighting the first chapters of recent books by speakers and participants in the Challenges to Democracy public dialogue series. Many thanks to Princeton University Press for allowing us to re-print this excerpt from The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power. Readers who enjoy this excerpt should consider reading the whole book, which can be purchased online here. Introduction: The Paradox of the Black Republican There is a fascinating Saturday Night Live sketch from 1980, a piece almost entirely forgotten by most viewers of the NBC comedy show. The sketch survives in the pop culture arena only because it features the SNL debut of comedian Eddie Murphy. Airing about a month after the country elected an ex-actor to the presidency (ousting a former Georgia peanut farmer in the process), the skit is a spoof of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, that unconventional animal wildlife series sponsored by an insurance company. In the SNL piece, a Jim Fowler–type zoologist braves the “savage” landscape of a tony Manhattan cocktail party in search of an elusive subject: the Negro Republican. Tracking the “migratory patterns” of African Americans “fleeing the liberal lake wastelands” for the “fertile promised land of the GOP,” the scientist stumbles badly — a hilarious case of mistaken identity — when he assumes that a black funeral parlor director must be a member of the GOP. Undeterred, he spots another black man nearby — a thorough examination of speech patterns, clothing, musical tastes, and economic interests confirms that the subject is indeed the evasive Negro Republican. With great care, the zoologist sedates the “exotic creature,” attaching a blinking transmitter disguised as an American flag pin to the man’s lapel. As the disoriented man awakens, the scientist quickly hides, emerging to take notes on his subject from afar once the Negro Republican has wandered back into the “wild.”1 “In Search of the Negro Republican” is a riveting political satire, interesting not for the writing or the cast’s performance but for the ideas conveyed by the sketch — ideas about popular perceptions of African American members of the GOP. A black Republican, it would seem, was a rare fellow in 1980 — a political opportunist and an economic conservative who, seduced by the promise of a Reagan Revolution, had disavowed his longtime home in the Democratic Party. By that same token, a black Republican was a racial turncoat — a Benedict Arnold in blackface who had appropriated clichéd notions of middle-class whiteness: a stuffy voice, a preference for the Carpenters over the Isley Brothers, the choice of a drab, unsophisticated suit, and a degree of comfort with the quintessential symbol of American patriotism, Old Glory. A black Republican was a curiosity — a creature to be observed, sedated, and studied. The SNL sketch, as with any satire, is a primer in exaggeration, entertaining precisely because it taps into stereotypes of black Republicans — caricatures that we know logically are absurd, yet nevertheless still make some kind of intuitive sense. The uneasy racialized undertones of the sketch are rendered practically invisible because something about the parody resonates. Stripped of nuance, the stereotype works because it exposes the fundamental question that so many of us ask: Why would an African American join the Republican Party? The question is an old one, an ubiquitous inquiry that many people, Democrats and Republicans alike, have posed consistently since the 1930s — the decade when black voters first began to flee the Republican Party, then known as the “Party of Lincoln,” an ideological home so very different from what “Republican” means today. Since then, the link between blacks and Democrats has become a knee-jerk one, a relationship that is taken for granted by all sides. Over the decades, the concept of a “black Republican” has come to seem a contradiction in terms, invested with an odd kind of alienness. “Since President Franklin and the New Deal,” wrote the editors at the Chicago Defender in 1976, “being black and Republican was about as compatible as being black and aspiring to leadership in the Ku Klux Klan.”2 Beneath the stereotypes and the made-for-TV satire, our notions of black Republicans rest on two basic truths. First, without question, blacks are the most partisan of any racial group in the United States.3 Since 1948, a substantial majority of African Americans has identified as Democrat; since 1964, that lopsided figure has only increased, as more than 80 percent of black voters have cast their ballots for the Democratic Party nominee in every presidential election. By 1980, more than 90 percent of the nation’s five thousand black elected officials were Democrats, including all of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus. And in 2012, African Americans played a vital role in helping reelect Barack Obama to the White House, offering the president 94 percent of their votes. This partisanship, as Michael Dawson, Nancy Weiss, and others have suggested, “was never blind or random but was based on a realistic assessment of which party would best further black political and economic interests.” And as the extensive histories of civil rights and black politics make clear, African Americans made critical and significant advances for racial equality and social justice by way of the New Deal and the Great Society programs, thereby “anchoring” African Americans in Democratic liberalism.4 Second, the GOP of today bears little resemblance to the “Party of Lincoln” to which black voters had been fiercely loyal since the era of Reconstruction. Instead, the modern Republican Party is indelibly associated with Herbert Hoover’s “lily-white” movement, “Operation Dixie” of the 1950s, and Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy.” It is a party whose 1964 presidential candidate voted against the landmark Civil Rights Act passed in that year, and whose 1980 nominee launched his official presidential campaign with a now-infamous “states’ rights” speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the town in which three civil rights workers were murdered sixteen years earlier.5 As politicians shaped the GOP from the “top down,” ordinary white city dwellers and suburbanites from all backgrounds and income levels along with an “army” of conservative activists, influenced the direction of the GOP from the grass roots, reacting to changing social and cultural norms, the liberalism of the civil rights movement and the radicalism of Black Power. In short, the GOP is a party whose conservatism, to quote Robert Smith and Hanes Walton, seems to make it “virtually impossible for blacks, given their history and condition,” to accept.6 These two strands of thought are mutually reinforcing, confirmed through our everyday experiences: individual encounters, media reports, fictional depictions in television and film, and scholarly studies all work in concert to produce a pervasive vision of the past century that leaves little room for the coexistence of African Americans, conservatism, and the Republican Party. All of our instincts, scholarly and otherwise, tell us that African Americans should not be Republicans, nor should they be conservatives. Yet black Republicans do exist — and their inevitable existence, of course, complicates our assumptions. Some black families never left the Republican fold, while other individuals have found their way back to the GOP. The past three decades alone have witnessed the rise of a number of prominent African American members of the Republican Party: Samuel Pierce, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, J. C. Watts, Condoleezza Rice, Michael Steele, Constance Berry Newman, Alan Keyes, Robert A. George, Herman Cain, Michael Powell, Lynn Swann, Allen West, and Tim Scott, to name a few. But rather than erasing public curiosity, the appearance of black Republicans merely intensifies it, often infusing a new urgency into the original underlying question of why. That curiosity is often suffused with a measure of frustration: the question of why quickly becomes a more loaded inquiry: How could they? For some, anger with black Republicans is an implicit rejection of a larger accommodationist tradition. To their critics, black Republicans are Booker T. Washington’s successors, racial apologists whose affiliations and beliefs mark them as traitorous individuals, complicit in an age-old crusade to “delegitimize the black quest for racial and social justice.”7 A black Republican, the Pittsburgh Courier spat in 1992, “is a kind of bogeyman dressed in a Black tailored suit or immaculate silk dress, to cajole Blacks into believing the Republican Party and its brand of conservatism is a trumpet-tongued angel playing the jazz of economic salvation and racial harmony.” Such music, the black newspaper criticized, “is nothing more than bubbles of gas emanating from the butt of reptiles.” However, as we shall see, the “songs” of black Republicans are far more complicated and multivocal.8 In contrast, white Republicans often heap gratuitous public praise on African American members of the GOP, applauding them for having the gumption to leave the “plantation politics of the Democratic Party,” as Pat Buchanan did on CNN in 2011, while defending Herman Cain. This line of thinking stems from the flawed and simplistic belief that African Americans have been brainwashed into voting for the Democratic Party and, as a result, ignore the benefits of belonging to the GOP. The trope of the Democratic Party as a slave plantation has been a recurring feature of GOP rhetoric since at least 1968, when Richard Nixon mentioned it in an interview with Jet magazine; predating even this, black Republicans have used the phrase regularly since 1964. Such thinking is problematic — often condescending and occasionally even bigoted, insinuating that Democrats have “bought” the black vote with “government handouts,” and that African Americans are therefore unable to make their own rational political choices, thereby sidestepping the GOP’s role in repelling black voters.9 More broadly, however, both of these perspectives, like much of our understanding of black Republicans, are deeply unsatisfying. They tell us little about who black Republicans are, why they join the GOP, and what they really believe and why. Our assumptions about blacks in the Republican Party are teleological and ahistorical, informed by the Republican Party as it exists in the present; thus our views are often flat, lacking historical depth. Surely this understanding denies us the messiness that is at the heart of our beliefs and at the core of our personal politics: the ongoing debate that each one of us has with ourselves and with others about which politicians and policies we should support and about what ideologies we should embrace. Our implicit views of black Republicans — either as strange alien creatures or as noble exceptions among their duped Democratic brethren — reject the notion of political choice; too often we assume that blacks in America are Democrats by default; though not intentional, that assumption denies agency to an entire group of citizens. In this scenario, black Republicans are simultaneously invisible and hypervisible: isolated political misfits who provoke extreme reactions. These views, whether voiced by liberals or conservatives, of any race, are troublesome, muting reality and history and ignoring the complex ways that race and politics intersect in the United States. Simply put: our views obscure the fascinating diversity that exists within this “strange” group known as black Republicans, obscuring their historical significance over the past three-quarters of a century; this, in turn, conceals a richer understanding not only of black politics but of American politics more generally. My aim in this project is to offer a new understanding of the interaction between African Americans and the Republican Party and provide insights into the seemingly incongruous intersection of civil rights and American conservatism. Exploring black politics over nearly half a century, as we will see, disrupts many of our perceptions about African Americans who support the GOP; at times we find not a peculiar group of blacks, desperate for white acceptance or out of touch with American realities but rather a movement of African Americans working for an alternative economic and civil rights movement. At other moments, we see a cadre of figures who make cynical concessions in order to maintain a modicum of power. I argue that the complex nature of this story reveals the links between the black freedom struggle and the American conservative movement, uncovering the forgotten efforts by African Americans, some of whom attempted to forge new pathways to equality, even as many within the GOP appeared hostile to that very idea. This study illustrates that black Republicans occupied an ostensibly irreconcilable position in that they were simultaneously shunned by African American communities and subordinated by the Republican Party. In response, black Republicans vocally, and at times viciously, critiqued members of their race and their party, attempting to regulate and influence the attitudes, behaviors, and public images of both black citizens and the GOP. Over the past two decades, there has been an explosion of first-rate scholarship that explores the intersections of race, ideology, and American politics through local histories and studies of the lives of “ordinary” American citizens.10 My study, by contrast, is by necessity national in emphasis, with a focus not on a particular local community but on African American involvement with the Republican Party on every level — local, state, and national. The most crucial figures in this narrative were a relatively small group of black men and women — activists, leaders, officials, politicians, and occasionally intellectuals — who helped steer the machinations of the GOP on a national level; still, from time to time, I also take into account the efforts of a much larger group of African Americans who were solely active in local and state-level politics. This is an expansive endeavor, covering forty-four years of American social and political history, tracing black involvement in the Republican Party from the political realignment of the New Deal to the beginning of the so-called Reagan Revolution. And though the importance of local studies on social and political history cannot be overstated, adopting a wide yet targeted framework is crucial to this book, allowing me to examine the ways in which members of a group who have long been both a political minority in their racial community and a racial minority in their political party interacted with each other, with the Republican Party, and with other African Americans. Moreover, employing a national focus also allowed me to tell a subtle but important story about the evolution in the opinions and behaviors of rank-and-file blacks who voted for Republicans in local, state, and national elections between 1936 and 1980. By no means have scholars ignored the political ideologies of African Americans; the sheer amount of work on black political thought and action is tremendous, offering critical and nuanced readings of African Americans’ embrace and rejection of philosophies, including liberalism, radicalism, feminism, and nationalism, and nearly any combination and variation thereof. Because so much of the “action” has taken place on the left, most of the scholarship has concentrated on this political history. More recently, however, a rapidly growing body of literature has started to address the dearth of scholarship on African American “conservatives,” focusing exclusively on black conservatism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, offering interpretive readings of the black tradition, and highlighting the existence of an “everyday” form of conservatism among almost a third of African Americans (which rarely translates into votes for the Republican Party). In addition, many of these texts illustrate the development of a form of “black neoconservatism” in the 1980s and 1990s, wherein some black men and women became vigorous spokesmen for contemporary right-wing Republican policies and programs, placing the “onus of responsibility” on African Americans for their social and economic woes and urging black voters to join the GOP.11 Similarly, a small group of historians has turned its attention to expanding the scholarship on race and the Republican Party, revealing the existence of a moderate and liberal tradition within the GOP, one that consistently clashed with the party’s more reactionary elements over the course of the twentieth century and pushed Republicans to address equality in a way that spoke to the needs of all American citizens.12 While the perspectives on black conservatism and liberal and moderate Republican politics are unequivocally important to this project, readers will notice that my project differs from this scholarship, as my focus is on the intersection of race, civil rights, conservatism, and party politics and addresses both the “nuts and bolts” of black Republican activism and the ideas that motivated these actions. My choice of historical period is also distinct, for most studies of black conservatism focus on either the late nineteenth or late twentieth century, while most works on the Republican Party view African Americans as only adjacent to Republican politics, focusing instead on the actions of white members of the GOP. This “middle period” between 1936 and 1980 is devoid of scholarship, in part, for two reasons: we focus on the most evident and productive centers of action — the liberal coalitions between blacks and the Democratic Party; and we assume that no African American would want to be associated with the Republican Party after the rise of Barry Goldwater in 1964. I revise this broader narrative by pointing to a long history of black Republican activists, a cadre of figures who were middle-class professionals — lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, and businessmen and women — who hailed primarily from California, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. They were mostly men — at least until the 1960s, when black women, despite being the least likely of any racial demographic to vote for the Republican Party, increasingly played an important public role in party affairs. Many were members of local chapters of civil rights organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Urban League (NUL), and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) — and some were even leaders and officials in local and state chapters of these groups. At the same time, many black Republicans actively distanced themselves from the directaction and civil disobedience protests that characterized the classical civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and publicly repudiated the Black Power cries that exploded in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Most of these black party members joined the Republican Party (or never left it) out of a belief in what they called “traditional” conservatism: anticommunism, free market enterprise and capitalism, self-help and personal responsibility, limited government intervention, and a respect for authority, history, and precedent, along with Western institutions and traditions. In this sense, their beliefs were aligned with those of their white counterparts; and like their white counterparts, black Republicans’ traditional conservatism also reflected their dissatisfaction with the Democratic liberalism of the New Deal and the Great Society. Reflecting the political diversity of the Republican Party more generally, there were three broad wings of black Republican thought, a great ideological gamut that encompassed liberal, moderate, and conservative factions. Equally important — and especially baffling to critics — most black Republicans, regardless of their ideological differences, believed that racial egalitarianism was in keeping with the Republican Party’s principles. Indeed, the majority believed that in times of crisis, the government had a right to intervene on behalf of the nation’s citizens; consequently, African American party members’ traditional conservatism often included a belief in federal intervention in specific matters of civil rights and racial equality. Black Republicans’ faith in traditional conservatism was not their sole motivator for working with and within the Republican Party; they also did so for pragmatic purposes, viewing two-party competition as the most efficient and practical way to achieve sociopolitical power. Sharing their Democratic Party counterparts’ mistrust of third-party political systems, black Republicans were committed to working within a two-party system. Still, they differed from their Democrat peers in seeking to push an agenda of equality through conservative networks and institutions of power. This allegiance to two-party competition was, and still is, central to black Republican thought and action. Since 1936, when more than 70 percent of African Americans first cast votes for Franklin Roosevelt, African American Republicans have consistently argued that large black constituencies could mean substantial black influence if applied to both political parties, insisting that the black vote should be “flexible enough to swing between the two parties according to the momentary interests of Blacks.”13 In theory, this strategy would allow African Americans to institute major social and economic changes from within both political parties. Neither were black Republicans alone in advancing this thesis: prominent black Democrats made similar arguments throughout the twentieth century with the hopes of forcing concessions and instituting reform within their own political party.14 As we shall see, however, the notion of two-party competition was, and still is, deeply flawed, causing black Republicans endless frustration. A central problem that this study bumps up against, again and again, is exactly what — or better yet who — a conservative is. What did it mean to be “conservative” and black during the twentieth century, and what did it mean to affiliate with the Republican Party? Some may argue that the black Republicans at the heart of this story were not “authentic” conservatives. Such a notion of authenticity assumes that conservatism is a rigid ideology, fixed over time and space, when in fact the reality is far more complicated and interesting.15 I have identified various black individuals and groups as “conservative” because they identified as such or were so labeled by political observers of the period.16 Furthermore, the more we look across the decades in question, the more we see how intellectual and political ideas of conservatism changed for black Republicans between 1936 and 1980. Their definition of “conservative” and “conservatism” was not constant; they used the terms in a myriad of contradictory and confounding ways, as we shall soon see. In an attempt to provide the reader with clarity, I have outlined four of the most common manifestations of conservatism among black Republicans between 1936 and 1980, keeping in mind the advice of Peter Eisenstadt, who has suggested that the dilemma for those studying black conservatism is that the ideology “will not be true of all black conservatives” and “may be true for many who are not black conservatives.”17 To put it another way, the boundaries between these manifestations of black conservatism are messy at best and at times fragile. First, black Republicans’ brand of conservatism was an ideology rooted in nineteenthcentury middle-class mores of respectability, built upon a faith in the Protestant work ethic and the lodestones of self-help, personal responsibility, morality, and political involvement. This was a model propagated by the black elite, as many scholars have convincingly argued, and was an imperfect challenge to white supremacy in an era of second-class citizenship; it was reflected in the economic and business ethos embodied by Booker T. Washington and the class privilege inherent in W.E.B. Du Bois’s theory of a talented tenth uplifting the “best” of the race.18 The second manifestation of conservatism was as a traditional set of broad principles, as we have already seen, historically connected to the Republican Party. Likewise, the third manifestation was a wing of black Republican thought; these were the conservative African Americans who held a more rigid interpretation of traditional party principles, despite their racially egalitarian beliefs. The final manifestation of conservatism among black Republicans is perhaps the most complicated to outline, since it includes those who affiliated with the reactionary wing of the mainstream Republican Party. None of the four manifestations are static categories, of course, but arguably, this is the display that changed the most dramatically throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. At first, these figures sat at the margins of black Republican thought, including those who opposed the civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s; yet as the GOP’s right wing adjusted the language of its conservatism — polishing it into a seemingly race-neutral ideology of individual rights, freedom of choice, and free market enterprise — more and more African American party members came to support it, despite regular opposition from their more liberal black counterparts. Moreover, in spite of conservatism’s association with the right wing of the modern GOP, black Republicans have long seen the ideology as a legitimate solution, one that should be considered seriously in the struggle for racial equality. Thus, African Americans attempted to influence the direction of conservatism — not to destroy it but rather to expand the boundaries of the ideology in order to include black needs and interests. This interpretation of conservatism has been flexible, by both definition and necessity, since issues of race, representation, and power guided black Republicans’ actions. Perhaps even more remarkable, in the half century between 1936 and 1980 this pragmatic definition of conservatism was broad and elastic enough to encompass black citizens from across the political spectrum, including African American leaders outside of the Republican Party. As civil rights leader Jesse Jackson argued in 1978, African Americans “must pursue a strategy that prohibits one party from taking us for granted and another party from writing us off. The only protection we have against political genocide is to remain necessary.”19 And as we shall see, even President Barack Obama, the scourge of Republicans everywhere, has sounded a lot like the black Republicans of the 1960s and 1970s since taking office in 2008. This book covers three different waves of national black Republican thought and activity, a period that begins in 1936 — significant not only for the major political realignment of African American voters but also for the remarkable voting fluidity of the black electorate (see tables 1–3 in the appendix); in fact, through 1962, nearly a third of black voters pulled the lever for Republican candidates in midterm and presidential elections. The decision to nominate Barry Goldwater as the GOP presidential nominee in 1964 marks the beginning of the next wave of black party activity, as the Arizona senator’s right-wing agenda sent shockwaves through black Republicans’ ranks, motivating them to organize on a national scale in pursuit of intraparty reform. Many began to look to state and local politics, hoping to duplicate the electoral success of Massachusetts’s Edward W. Brooke; and, as we will see, the black senator reinvigorated the idea of pragmatic politics for black Republicans, or, rather, the pursuit of power through party hierarchies in a way that could reconcile conservatism with African American needs. Likewise, they also looked to the Republican-led White House in the late 1960s, where a small band of black appointees was able to introduce an economic civil rights agenda. The third and final wave reflects the confusion and chaos of the 1970s, a period in which black Republicans, ousted from the White House, turned to the Republican National Committee (RNC) to push party reform, still invested in a pragmatic approach to achieving power. Though their solidarity movement found moments of success, black Republicans also experienced colossal failures. Just as significant, the second and third wave of activity coincided with the passage of the major federal civil rights laws of the 1960s and a society-wide shift from explicit forms of racism to implicit and institutional forms of discrimination.20 The enactment and the enforcement of this legislation gave black Republicans a kind of freedom, or the leeway, to become more conservative, and adhere to mainstream party ideas about racial equality, if they so chose. This distinct outlook enabled black party members to concurrently embrace new types of nonpartisan strategies for wooing black voters and partisan techniques for nullifying the black vote. Our story ends in 1980, with black Republicans placing their hopes in the ascent of Ronald Reagan — a man many of them had once rejected. The year 1936 is an obvious point at which to begin this book; less clear are my reasons for ending in 1980. No one, least of all black Republicans, could have predicted the fundamental way that Ronald Reagan’s victory would alter the American political landscape; nor could they have anticipated the way in which some of their ideas — a nuanced and often conflicting set of beliefs articulated over forty-four years — would suddenly gain widespread traction in both the mainstream GOP and broader American political culture. This brings us to one of the many paradoxes posed by the disjuncture between historical and contemporary black Republican politics: it is difficult, if not impossible, to categorize African American members of the GOP, because they do not square neatly with any existing narrative nor do they fit within our modern understanding of the state of American politics. In other words, we do not have an adequate name for the black Republicans described in this book, nor do we differentiate between the types of black Republicanism. Thus, I end the narrative in 1980 to demonstrate just how different the pre-1980 period was for our reality, in order to bring a better sense of understanding to contemporary American politics; indeed, the preceding period represented intense variety, possibility, and flexibility, whereas the following period witnessed the hardening of the ideological boundaries that divided liberal, moderate, and conservative black Republicans. Having spent much of this introduction defining the scope and nature of this study, I think it is reasonable for me to provide the reader with some boundaries by devoting a few words to what this project is not. This book is not a comprehensive study of all black ideologies or politics, nor is it focused on Democratic Party politics or liberalism. It is not an expansive guide to the black freedom struggle; and it is not a primer on the twentieth-century American conservative movement. I do not offer a study of white Republicans, whether conservative or moderate or liberal. Neither is this book an investigation of famous black Republicans or conservatives, although some do make appearances in the narrative. I intentionally chose not to focus on figures like George Schuyler and Clarence Thomas because there is a strong body of scholarship on both of these men; furthermore, one of the reasons that we have such a limited impression of black Republicans is that our understanding of this slice of the political sphere is dominated by the individual stories of a few notorious yet significant individuals. By looking past these few men (and, to date, nearly all have been men), it is my aim to reveal a much larger national community of black Republicans. Throughout this book, I employ polls, statistics, and studies from the period, analyzing them as primary source documents. While such figures are important, they are also flawed. In fact, public opinion data and voting statistics on African Americans are terribly inconsistent, offering contradictory information through the 1980s — a problem often bemoaned by political scientists and historians alike. I have attempted to cobble these facts and figures together in a way that makes sense, pointing out patently obvious issues whenever necessary. But more important than these data, I believe, is the content of black Republican activity; at the center of this story stand the discussions and arguments that black members of the GOP had with themselves and with others, in their perpetual attempts to make conservatism a beneficial option for African Americans.21 This study introduces readers to key figures across a spectrum of black Republican politics and examines their ongoing struggles to effect meaningful change both for African Americans and within the Republican Party over the course of nearly half a century. This project illustrates the ways in which black Republicans were conservative and not conservative, and how their ideas overlapped and clashed with even the most reactionary wing of the Republican Party. Most important, this project demonstrates how they tried to reshape and expand the boundaries of conservatism to incorporate a racially egalitarian perspective. In no uncertain terms, black Republicans offer a dilemma of sorts; they were far more conservative than their Democratic counterparts but far less conservative than white reactionary Republicans. They identified with a traditional conservative ideology, to be sure, but they also identified with the various wings of the Republican Party. Above all else, most held fast to a pragmatic ideology that was informed by their day-to-day racial experience rather than by an abstract, dogmatic interpretation of American politics. Reprinted with permission from The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power, published by Princeton University Press. © 2015 Leah Wright Rigueur. Readers can purchase the book here.
https://medium.com/challenges-to-democracy/first-chapter-the-loneliness-of-the-black-republican-by-leah-wright-rigueur-86a820ba8707
['Harvard Ash Center']
2018-07-31 14:20:26.530000+00:00
['BlackLivesMatter', 'Harvard', 'Politics', 'Republicans']
How journalists can use Instagram to engage and inform
During the process of redeveloping Me Explica in the Tow-Knight Center program, I have experimented with different tools and strategies to create engagement around my content. In my last article, I explained how my new strategy is to focus on social media because that is where citizens are mostly getting their news from. In its past iterations, Me Explica was an article-based publication, first as a blog, then as a site. As the years went by, I noticed that being on social media requires much more than simply posting links to your content. You need to truly engage with the reader, answer questions, address criticisms and sometimes even accusations. As a small publication, I am able to do it with little effort but I believe even bigger ones need to commit to talking directly with their readers. Having this in mind, I have been conducting a few experiments on Instagram. Once defined as a "photo-sharing" app, IG is very versatile and allows for the publication of text, photos, videos, cards (images with text), and videos with text (either with subtitles or only text). I will share what I have been doing, the tools used to create the content and brief observations about the results. Experiments My tests revolved around three kinds of content: (1) Cards Explainers on images that are perfect for the photo feed and can easily be shared on other platforms. Card about Petrobras' losses after a statement by the Brazilian President (2) Video explainers The presenter (me) talks directly to the audience in native videos that can be short (1 minute for the feed) or long (up to 10 minutes os IGTV). Video explainer about the militias in Brazil (3) Video Stories Even though the Stories feature only allows for smaller videos, creating the content on an external tool can be helpful in order to do something that lasts a little while longer. Considerations These experiments have shown that there is an opportunity to create engaging and informational posts on Instagram. The audience is interested in consuming journalism on a platform that is not made for long-form content but still allows establishing a quick connection to the news. Instagram may not be the best place to break the news but is a good tool to build on it. One major difficulty for journalists and outlets is to monetize their Instagram profiles. There is no option for doing that and there is no news showing that Facebook might be interested in building such features. Yet, we have plenty of success stories of news delivery on Instagram, such as former CNN White House correspondent Jessica Yellin, Poynter's Media Wise, and Uno.ar (from Argentina). Toolkit Having decided what kind of content you will post, you can use the many tools that can help journalists create posts quickly and efficiently at a low cost. I will share some of the platforms and products used to conduct the tests on Me Explica. Visuals: Canva Canva is one of my favorite tools. I use it to make presentations, design posts and covers for social media and to create the card I showed above. It is very intuitive: you need only to drag and drop. There are thousands of templates to choose from. The free version is already very good, but the pro subscription allows you to resize projects so you can post in multiple social media channels. https://www.canva.com Video: Lumen 5 I have only recently come across Lumen 5 but I'm already a fan. I used it to create the Stories video shown above. It helps you create social media videos very easily -from text or your own audio. Its artificial intelligence creates new frames automatically, speeding up the process. Anyone with little to or no design experience can use it and have great results. https://lumen5.com/ Smartphone videos: Cheap tools Showing my gear on Instagram I shared on my Instagram account some of the accessories I have been using to film my explainer videos and some people got interested in the equipment. Amazon was the source for both the selfie ring light that can be attached to any smartphone and the lavalier microphone. Considering that Instagram allows for more informal and amateur-ish videos, this set up is very helpful for filming on the go. All for less than 20 dollars. Here's the microphone: And here's the light: Conclusion Instagram is a great tool to explore new ways of delivering information to audiences that no longer want to visit homepages in search of news. It is a good testing ground to get a sense of what might and not might work to engage citizens. Even with its limitations in terms of generating revenue, it can be a good way for smaller outlets and individual journalists to get a sense of what resonates with audiences. It is worth experimenting.
https://medium.com/journalism-innovation/how-journalists-can-use-instagram-to-engage-and-inform-62b0ad80b74b
['Diogo A. Rodriguez']
2019-05-10 02:43:21.857000+00:00
['Journalism', 'Storytelling', 'Social Media', 'Instagram', 'Innovation']
As Women, We Need to Feel Safe to Enjoy Sex, it’s That Simple
As Women, We Need to Feel Safe to Enjoy Sex, it’s That Simple You can only feel secure when your needs are met. The most important ingredient for delicious sex is not what you think it is. It’s not about ambiance and lingerie. It is not penis size or vaginal tightness. It has nothing to do with whether it is sacred or not. For women, one of the most important components for sex to be satisfying and fulfilling is safety. And I am not talking about prophylactics and birth control. I’m talking about feeling physically and emotionally safe and secure with your partner. You can feel sexually and emotionally confident… but that does not mean that you feel safe. For women, safety/security is often enmeshed in societal conditioning. A partner’s financial stability, social status, familial relationships, children (how many they have/want), and a slew of other ideas and perceptions that have been embedded into the psyche of our culture. Our perception of these things shape how we show up in the bedroom… or not. Because a woman’s body is designed to receive. And receiving requires surrender. But it is difficult to open up and surrender if you do not feel safe. Safe about whether your emotional needs will be tended. Whether your feelings will be regarded. Whether this person will be able to care for you (in whatever way that looks) in the long run. Whether they are generous, with their time, money, and love. Their attitude towards life, politics, spirituality, and creativity. And more importantly, how much (or how little) you can trust one another. Keeping in mind that these things change over time. What might be true today, may or may not be true 10 years from now. You might tell yourself the story that tangible things do not matter. And that it is what’s inside that is important. Which may be true… but it also might be a story that you are telling yourself out of fear of being alone. But your body will always tell the tale. It is essential that you be honest with yourself about what is truly important to you, without judgment. Your truth is your truth — own it. Casual sex is casual. But if you sleep with someone more than once, it is no longer casual. And safety/security will be factored into the equation. You can only feel secure when your needs are met. So I invite you to ponder… What are your basic security needs? The image above is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And as you can see this hierarchy is pretty similar to the chakra system… coincidence? Nah. Remember, what happens outside of the bedroom matters just as much, if not more, as what happens inside. Getting clear about what you want and need is a priority. Clarity will allow you to create boundaries that make you feel safe. If you are already in a relationship, revisit your needs often. Check in to see where you are. Communicate your truth to your partner. Reevaluate your agreements, commitments, and your partner's security needs as well. Your needs will change because you will change. But always keep your finger on the pulse of your own truth.
https://medium.com/candour/as-women-we-need-to-feel-safe-to-enjoy-sex-its-that-simple-94d442a2f323
['Stacey Herrera']
2019-09-13 17:21:40.102000+00:00
['Relationships', 'Love', 'Sex', 'Self', 'Women']
Blackjack Game Logic Basics — Built With React Hooks
Before I decided to make the career change to tech and become a software engineer, I worked at a casino for a few years as a table games dealer. I learned all the major games, including craps, roulette, blackjack, baccarat, and also learned the “carnival” style games offered too. Naturally, I felt it would be a good exercise to work through how to develop a blackjack game. This post is going to break down some of the game logic required, and won’t go into any detail about styling. I am most familiar with React, and have recently started using Hooks for my state management and lifecycle method type events, so that’s what I have used to build my app. Before we get started, for those who don’t know much about Blackjack, here is an explanation of the game progression: — Face cards are valued at 10, number cards are valued by their number, and an ace can be valued as 1 or 11. The player and the dealer both receive two cards, the dealer keeps one card face down until his/her turn. Dealer checks for blackjacks, which is an ace paired with any card valued at 10 (makes 21). If the dealer has blackjack, the player instantly loses their wager unless they too have blackjack. If the player has blackjack and dealer does not, the wager gets paid 3 to 2, that is to say, 1.5 times the original bet. (There is also something called blackjack insurance in the casinos if the dealer is showing an ace, but I did not include it in my app) If there are no blackjacks, it is now the players turn, who has the choice to either hit, stay, or double. Hit, meaning add a card to their hand, stay, meaning keep their current score, and double, meaning take only one more card, after doubling the original bet. Actual blackjack games allow players to also split hands that have are pairs, such as two 8’s, but I have not yet added this capability. The player’s goal is to achieve a score of 21, although in some cases it is best to stay at a low number and not risk “busting” (going over 21) because the dealer also has a chance to bust which causes the player to win too. If the player does not bust, and stays, the dealer reveals their face down card, and draws cards as necessary until they achieve a score of 17 or higher (most casinos make their dealers hit when they have what’s called a “soft 17”, meaning they have an ace in their hand that can still be valued as a 1 or an 11, my app stays on all 17s). If the dealer count goes over 21, he/she instantly pays out every player who still has a hand, but if the dealer does not bust, he/she compares the player count to the dealer count and pays or takes the bet accordingly. The player picks up winnings/places their next bet after a loss, and the cycle starts again. That’s pretty much it — as short as possible, get as close to 21 as possible without going over, and hope the dealer either scores lower than you or busts. Jumping right into it, I thought a good way to start would be to create an array with every playing card as a string, and set it to a variable. const deckOfCards = [ "A of Hearts", "2 of Hearts", "3 of Hearts", "4 of Hearts", "5 of Hearts", "6 of Hearts", "7 of Hearts", "8 of Hearts", "9 of Hearts", "10 of Hearts", "J of Hearts", "Q of Hearts", "K of Hearts", "A of Clubs", "2 of Clubs", "3 of Clubs", "4 of Clubs", "5 of Clubs", "6 of Clubs", "7 of Clubs", "8 of Clubs", "9 of Clubs", "10 of Clubs", "J of Clubs", "Q of Clubs", "K of Clubs", "A of Diamonds", "2 of Diamonds", "3 of Diamonds", "4 of Diamonds", "5 of Diamonds", "6 of Diamonds", "7 of Diamonds", "8 of Diamonds", "9 of Diamonds", "10 of Diamonds", "J of Diamonds", "Q of Diamonds", "K of Diamonds", "A of Spades", "2 of Spades", "3 of Spades", "4 of Spades","5 of Spades", "6 of Spades", "7 of Spades", "8 of Spades", "9 of Spades", "10 of Spades", "J of Spades", "Q of Spades", "K of Spades" ] I used regex to find the letter or number at the beginning of a string, and determine that cards value, and used a switch statement to determine what image should be used for which cards. Following this, I made it into two decks, and shuffled them using a ‘lodash’ shuffle function I imported, found here. const twoDecks = [...deckOfCards, ...deckOfCards] const shuffledDoubleDeck = shuffle(twoDecks) Now that I have a shuffled array of two decks of cards, the next step is to set the shuffled decks to a variable in state when a hand begins. Below is a look at all the state I used in my app, keep in mind, my blackjack app allows a player to bet, then hit, double, or stay, but for simplicity sake, does not currently include the ability to split. A lot of the logic lies with changing these state variables when certain events happen and conditions are met, but there will be more about that and how to use the useEffect Hook later on. To learn more about React Hooks, you can visit the documentation here. const [randomizedDecks, setRandomizedDecks] = useState([]) const [chipCount, setChipCount] = useState(1000) const [betAmount, setBetAmount] = useState(0) const [lockedBet, setLockedBet] = useState(0) const [previousBet, setPreviousBet] = useState(0) const [dealersCards, setDealersCards] = useState([]) const [dealerCount, setDealerCount] = useState(0) const [playersCards, setPlayersCards] = useState([]) const [playerCount, setPlayerCount] = useState(0) const [isBlackjack, setIsBlackJack] = useState(false) const [isPlayerBusted, setIsPlayerBusted] = useState(false) const [didDouble, setDidDouble] = useState(false) const [isDealersTurn, setIsDealersTurn] = useState(false) const [isDealerBusted, setIsDealerBusted] = useState(false) const [isHandComplete, setIsHandComplete] = useState(true) const [winner, setWinner] = useState("") For those who just want a quick refresher about the useState Hook, the left side of the destructured variable has 2 parts; The first part is the variable name we’ll call to retrieve our current state, and the second part is a function which allows us to set that state to a new value (convention is to use the variable name and add a prefix of “set-”). On the right, we call the useState Hook, and pass it an argument of our choosing, which will become the default value. Now I’ll briefly go over each line of state and give an overview of how it is used in the app (I attempted to order them as sequentially as possible): const [randomizedDecks, setRandomizedDecks] = useState([]) This is where the shuffled decks of “cards” will get stored at the beginning of every new hand. const [chipCount, setChipCount] = useState(1000) Player’s running chip total, default set at 1000 which I felt was an appropriate starting amount. const [betAmount, setBetAmount] = useState(0) The pending bet amount to be placed on the table, increases as the player clicks on poker chips with corresponding values on them. const [lockedBet, setLockedBet] = useState(0) When the player hits the “Place Bet” button, it places the lockedBet amount on the table, and the hand is now ready to be started. const [previousBet, setPreviousBet] = useState(0) Once the hand is started, the lockedBet becomes the previousBet which allows me to create a “Same Bet” button, allowing the player to effortlessly start the next hand with the exact same size of bet. const [dealersCards, setDealersCards] = useState([]) An array containing all of the dealers cards, starting initially with two, and as mentioned earlier, one of them starts face down. const [dealerCount, setDealerCount] = useState(0) The score associated with the dealersCards , used in a lot of places in the logic to decide who the winner is, if any. const [playersCards, setPlayersCards] = useState([]) An array containing all of the players cards, starting initially with two. const [playerCount, setPlayerCount] = useState(0) The score associated with the playersCards , used in a lot of places in the logic to decide who the winner is, if any. const [isBlackjack, setIsBlackJack] = useState(false) Stores a boolean that keeps track of whether or not a blackjack has occurred. Used in conjunction with winner state to determine which hand is a blackjack. const [isPlayerBusted, setIsPlayerBusted] = useState(false) If there is no blackjack, we’ll store this boolean that keeps track of whether the player has busted or not upon hitting. const [didDouble, setDidDouble] = useState(false) If the player still only has two cards, and has enough points in their chipCount to cover the value in their current bet, upon clicking the “Double” button, set didDouble to true which calls for a different pay/take amount (twice as much, hence “Double”) const [isDealersTurn, setIsDealersTurn] = useState(false) This boolean informs our app whose turn it is. Upon the player staying or doubling, we call this function to set isDealersTurn to true , indicating it is no longer the players turn, the dealer then draws cards as necessary. const [isDealerBusted, setIsDealerBusted] = useState(false) If the dealer scores over 21, then we set isDealerBusted to true to indicate that the dealer has lost, ultimately triggering the payout sequence. const [isHandComplete, setIsHandComplete] = useState(true) A general catch-all for if a winning event happens, for example, blackjack, or busting, we’ll flip this boolean to true so we can use it as a means to know which elements we should display, and when. I won’t go through all of the logic, because I am linking the Github repository here for anyone who wants to check it out (a little messy, but it works!), but I want to show at least one example of a useEffect Hook I used because they were essential in making certain events happen based on specified state changing — I’ll explain in more detail below. First, let’s take a look at a working version I have right now to get a visual of how some of the different states affects the app. I made this diagram to help give a better idea of how each piece of state is being used, but doesn’t highlight all states used to make it. This is a screen you might see after a hand has been completed:
https://medium.com/dev-genius/blackjack-game-logic-basics-built-with-react-hooks-8e7e41fbbb87
['Tyler J Funk']
2020-10-05 08:59:37.879000+00:00
['Blackjack', 'Game Development', 'React', 'React Hook', 'Software Engineering']
Considering Robotic Process Automation? 7 Common Questions Answered
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an innovative technology that aims to free up resources within organizations by performing manual and repetitive business tasks, providing new opportunities for businesses to transform and scale. Increasingly, executive interest is being piqued by the return on investment that RPA can offer. But what exactly is RPA, and how can you use it to transform your business? Every day when Cervello offers RPA services to our clients, we field many common questions — and a few myths. Here’s a list of what we think you should know. 1. What is RPA? RPA uses software robots to mimic human actions on a user interface (UI) to complete rote, rules-based tasks. These robots perform actions by following a defined set of business rules and criteria. RPA platforms allow developers to design these bots, build the logic that controls them, and deploy them at scale. What is unique about RPA is its ability to automate on both the application and operating system level. Unlike traditional automation, which can be expensive and time consuming at the application level, RPA enables rapid, comprehensive, and lightweight integration at the UI level. 2. What are the benefits of RPA? RPA offers a multitude of benefits across industries and use cases, but at a high level, here are the most common benefits our clients have realized: Multi-application and system automation: RPA can automate processes from the system level to the application level. One RPA bot can achieve what multiple, traditional automation tools could do with complex integrations. RPA can also automate scenarios that might not have been possible with other tools, in a rapid and lightweight manner. Elimination of human error: Humans are prone to error because they can misinterpret data, process it incorrectly, or become overwhelmed by volume. In contrast, bots only do what they are programmed to do, working 24/7, 365 days a year, with no sick leave or holidays. Frees people to focus on creative, meaningful tasks: RPA takes the robot out of the human. The type of work RPA excels at doing just happens to be the work that most people don’t want to do. RPA frees people up to focus on innovative, higher-value work, which can lead to a happier, more empowered, and more engaged workforce. 3. What are the biggest myths? There are no physical bots: The term “bot” might conjure up images of physical machines, but RPA bots are actually software scripts that run on a computer. Furthermore, the actions a bot takes are not tied to a monitor or keyboard. The commands a bot is given are a virtualization of the physical inputs it is mimicking, so it could work on a piece of hardware with no input devices. Robots will take my job: RPA’s greatest abilities are predominantly mundane, repetitive, and task-oriented. Bots cannot replace humans because they cannot replicate human cognizance, judgment, and creativity. RPA can also create jobs in skilled areas such as design, development, monitoring, and maintenance of their growing digital workforce. RPA implementation is a big endeavor: RPA projects have much shorter timelines than traditional automation projects and can be designed and deployed in weeks rather than months. 4. What are some RPA use cases? Bots can interpret characters from handwritten text (OCR), compare images, browse the internet, and follow logical, branching paths. With these capabilities, here are a few RPA use cases: · Log in to a vendor portal, such as Amazon Vendor Central, pull strategic and operational sales diagnostics data, and clean the data prior to export into your forecasting tool. · Create new leads or cases in a CRM tool, such as Salesforce. · Rapidly extract data from ERP tools such as SAP or Oracle, processing the data in Excel and creating a dashboard with a visualization tool, such as Tableau, for downstream business users. 5. Which business functions can benefit from RPA? RPA is suited to well-defined, repetitive processes or industries that have strong audit and compliance obligations: HR: Tasks such as onboarding, candidate verification, and benefits administration often require gathering and checking data in multiple systems. Many clients have introduced RPA to protect sensitive or personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, salaries, and protected classes. Compliance plays a big part in shaping HR processes, and bots can enforce compliance, and ensure the entire process is auditable. As regulations and laws continuously evolve, RPA’s quick turnaround also benefits HR organizations looking to quickly adapt to an ever-changing landscape. IT: IT is responsible for many contained and well-defined processes, such as provisioning user access, downloading and backing up files from a server, or monitoring the status of business applications. These tasks are prime candidates for RPA thanks to their well-defined, repetitive nature. Bots can lend capacity to highly leveraged teams, enabling them to focus on other long term projects. Finance: Financial services are governed by strict adherence to rules and process. Many of the core tasks of accounting and finance are recording and reporting transactions, processing and approving orders, and ensuring compliance. Similar to the benefits seen in HR, bots can gather and compare data quickly and accurately. 6. Who are the common RPA vendors? The most common RPA vendors are: UiPath: Founded in 2005, UiPath was started by two Romanian entrepreneurs, Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă, in Bucharest. Blue Prism: Blue Prism is one of the earliest pioneers in the RPA space. Founded in 2001 by automation experts Alastair Bathgate and David Moss, Blue Prism is headquartered in the UK. Automation Anywhere: Originally founded as Tethys Solutions in 2003, Automation Anywhere is a San Jose-based RPA company. Automation Anywhere most recently attracted the investment of SoftBank and Salesforce. These companies offer their own comprehensive platforms, providing certification and training in addition to tools to build and deploy robots. Each platform is constantly evolving and are working toward a road map that incorporates AI and machine learning. 7. What does deployment look like (cost and implementation)? The cost of RPA varies across platforms, but the average bot costs between $5,000 and $15,000. A single bot is the equivalent of two to three full-time employees, when not accounting for cycle time. One of the biggest advantages of RPA is its quick implementation. Based on your use case, an RPA implementation timeline can look like this: · 4–6 weeks for simple processes (small number of applications and clicks, simple business rule complexity) · 6–8 weeks for medium complexity projects (navigating multiple apps and screens, clicking throughout, medium business rule complexity) · 8–10 weeks for complex processes (remote desktop applications, complicated and nuanced business logic) Cervello have developed a number of tools and accelerators to expedite an RPA implementation. Our delivery teams can work from proof of concept to production: Proof of Concept: Rapid automation assessment of business processes to quantify the opportunity and highlight key areas of automation opportunity. Process Assessment: Identify low complexity and high value business processes across the organization, and subsequent prioritization of ‘low hanging fruit’ that will deliver large ROI. Implementation: Design, develop and deploy multiple bots to production environments. Establish: Establish a Robotics Centre of Excellence and operating model, supporting the development of an internal automation capability. Scale: Support the wide spread standardisation and digitization of business processes organization wide, capturing benefits delivered and integration of intelligent automation capabilities, leveraging AI and ML. This post was written in collaboration with my colleague Ali Jameel. If you have an interest in discussing anything mentioned here further, feel free to connect on LinkedIn. About Cervello, a Kearney company Cervello, a Kearney company is a data and analytics consulting firm and part of Kearney, a leading management consulting firm. We help our leading clients win by offering unique expertise in data and analytics, and in the challenges associated with connecting data. We focus on performance management, customer and supplier relationships, and data monetization and products, serving functions from sales to finance. Our Robotic Process Automation (RPA) expertise allows us to transform back-office functions for our clients, providing streamlined operations, enhanced insights and consistent analytics, enabling better decision making across your organization.
https://medium.com/cervello-an-a-t-kearney-company/considering-robotic-process-automation-7-common-questions-answered-fc647af81862
['Michael Burns']
2020-08-20 17:17:04.254000+00:00
['Rpa Tools', 'Roboticprocessautomation']
Slice from a Sven: Unwrapping the gift (category) 🎁
With Father’s Day just behind us and Mother’s Day shortly before it, I thought now would be a great time to unwrap that all-important Gifts category in your 22seven budget. Now, I don’t know about you, but my budget’s certainly been thrown off once or twice in the past because of an unexpected gift. But, the thing is, oftentimes we do actually have all the special gifting dates available to us…we just fail to plan in advance. And suddenly, Father’s day creeps up on us and we have to scrounge around in the piggy bank to make a plan (sorry for another pair of socks, dad!). Plan ahead I like to check my calendar for the full year, and mark off any special days where I may need to spend a little money to spoil someone. Then, I use 22seven’s future budgeting feature and plan my gift budgets for the year. You could also plan your gifts on a monthly basis, checking your calendar (or Facebook) each month and budgeting accordingly. Just in case If planning is not your thing, you could try setting a standard budget for gifts each month, say R500, for example. This method definitely involves less work, but it’s also less accurate. If you want to cover all your bases, you could plan your gift budget ahead of time and add a little extra on top of that for anything unforeseen. Or even better, put that extra amount towards an emergency savings fund. Then, if you don’t use it, it will grow, and if you do use it, well that’s what emergency savings are for! At the end of the day, budgeting is a very personal thing, so it’s best to do what works for your lifestyle and personality. Which Spending Group do I choose? We Svens get this question surprisingly often, and again, I’ll stress that your budget is personal. If you usually spend on gifts every month, then Day-to-Day is probably the group for you. If it tends to be a rare spend for you during the year, you might want to consider allocating your gift spend to your Exceptions Spending Group. You can read more about our Spending Groups and how to use them here. It’s the thought that counts It’s cliche, but that usually means it holds true. The important thing is to show the people in your life that you care, without breaking the bank. You can always find a budget friendly way to spoil your loved ones, whether it be a homemade card or a picnic in the park. Remember that your financial journey is exactly that — a journey! You might slip up and forget to plan for gifts, or you might end up spending more than you bargained for. The important thing is that you learn along the way and ultimately make your budget and the different categories work for you!
https://medium.com/@22seven/slice-from-a-sven-unwrapping-the-gift-category-f1b973438808
[]
2021-06-22 07:12:51.311000+00:00
['22seven', 'Finance', 'Financial Freedom', 'Budgeting', 'South Africa']
Blended Model of Remote Work: Are you ready for the Future of the Office?
Blended Model of Remote Work: Are you ready for the Future of the Office? Rowena Hennigan Jul 6·6 min read Since COVID19 has disrupted our office routines, employees and companies around the world have recurred to remote work as an emergency measure: the sudden onset of the pandemic has made working from home more than a possibility a real question of survival. With vaccine programs being rolled out in record time, will companies go back to the office or will they stay remote? The answer may lie somewhere in between. Work from Home VS Remote Work — Avoiding Technostress and Isolation For more traditional and office-centred businesses, from one day to another, lockdowns showed that knowledge workers could do their job at home. However, if on the one hand, it is true that during forced remote work productivity has not dropped, so is the fact that these results often hide a human cost that is not always taken into proper consideration: the massive interaction with the technology required by remote work has triggered forms of “ technostress”, work exhaustion, isolation and depression. Over 40 billion e-mails, plus 148% of online meetings, plus 45% of chats: these are the numbers detected between February 2020 and February 2021 by the Microsoft research entitled The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work — Are We Ready? carried out by interviewing 31,092 full-time employees or self-employed in 31 markets. It is important to highlight that work from home as a response to COVID and remote work as a purposeful strategy are two completely different concepts: having a distributed workforce comes with its set of challenges and may result in an unsuccessful experiment if not accompanied by a clear mission. In fact, way before the coronavirus pandemic made home-working a commonplace, many tech companies adopted full remote work as a business strategy. Automattic is one of the most famous examples, with a workforce of 1277 employees working entirely remotely and receiving perks such as allowances for their home office setups or co-working spaces. Despite its remote spirit, Automattic does not expect its employees to work in isolation every day. The company, in addition to offering a monthly stipend to be used for a remote work setup, promotes an idea of social interaction for distributed workforces with events, off-sites and other occasions where employees can socialise, bond and learn from one another. Flexibility is what makes remote work powerful The rewards of true remote work are indeed substantial. Employees have reported higher job satisfaction because of the flexibility and have proven they aren’t slacking off just because they’re home. With the end of the pandemic finally in sight, and with many workers not willing to go back to pre-pandemic arrangements, companies are focusing on future work organisations for their employees. The situation is being handled in varied ways: some giving their employees permission to work remotely until the end of 2021; others recalling their workforce to the office on different schedules in an attempt to manage logistical concerns brought by the ongoing pandemic. Employees seem to have settled into the rhythms of mandatory remote work and while companies decide the best way forward, workers may not want to stuff the genie entirely back into the bottle. Towards a Mixed Model: The Hybrid Future of the Office A recent survey by Stanford University shows that 55% of US workers want some mix of office and home time, while in the UK, home-working appears to be set to more than double compared to pre-pandemic levels once the crisis is over. Businesses around the world are also starting to think about a different long term arrangement, one that allows structuring a-sync work communication and hours as well as a physical presence. Big companies like Salesforce, Google, Amazon and Facebook are transitioning to a “hybrid or blended” model, in which there will be a combination of both working inside an office and at home. To sum up, this blended model of work arises from the mix between remote work and face-to-face work. It is not simply a compromise between old and new but a method that aims to synthesise the best of the two experiences by responding to the changing needs of workers and at the same time creating increasingly competitive organisations. To date there is no defined hybrid work model: there are companies that are moving towards a “remote-first” mode, that is, they plan to adopt remote work as predominant with an occasional presence in the office, and companies that, instead, favour an “office-first” approach, in which the office remains the main place to carry out the activity. Six steps to prepare yourself for the return to the physical office In the post-pandemic era, blended remote work is configured as a valid alternative between the definitive return to the office and working from home. Compared to the traditional model, this offers more flexibility to employees and resilience to organisations. However, no matter how companies choose to pursue the next model of remote work, it is essential that workers are fully prepared to enter this new reality. Here are six tips to get ready for the future of work: 1/ Rest & Recovery — As we enter the Summer months and holiday season in Europe, ensure you prioritise rest and recovery. Regardless of what is the next model of remote working, everyone deserves a significant holiday break to recharge and refresh. 2/ Human Connection Needs — Many workers expressed that they missed their colleagues and the social interactions that normally would take place in the physical office. (Source: Remote Working in Ireland, April 2021, Survey of Employees). Some people have found themselves withdrawn, removed from social interaction — do you recognise that in your current behaviour? If so, make a concerted effort to start (slowly, if needed) to move back to social interactions. It could be as simple as asking a colleague to meet for a virtual social coffee or, even better if possible, to meet safely in person. 3/ Make a list of your own personal learnings — Take some time to reflect on your intentions, the learnings, and any new skills you developed thanks to the imposed work-from-home situation. Use these prompts — Have you fully mastered video conferencing? Have you gotten comfortable with instant messaging? Has your work routine and approach improved overall? Have you maintained healthy habits and a work-life balance? Writing and reviewing this list helps to shine a positive light on recent times and can give you a comprehensive clearer perspective. 4/ Establish your own personal context for the next phase — Some workers already know where and when they will perform their job duties, with a blend of days remote and physically in the office. Use the exercise of writing your own personal status statement to describe yourself, expanding on the details as appropriate and starting to embed your new routine mentally. e.g. “I (Mary Murphy) work three days from home, on a Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and commute two days a week (Wednesday and Friday) to the HQ in Dublin. My availability can be seen in the centralised shared calendar and I generally take Thursday as a no-meetings (deep work) day. For meetings, my preference is for video calls requests which include a clear agenda, a meeting with the camera on and if possible no longer than 40 minutes in length” 5/ Preparation via Calendar Management — If you know your new routine, focusing on the setup and structure of your work calendar can also help establish a healthy habit. Be proactive in prioritising your wellbeing: add coffee breaks and lunch breaks as recurring items; establish your self-care by adding any exercise classes, holidays days or personal appointments; consider calendar blocking for deep work or days without any meetings to support productivity. 6/ Setting and writing intentions to support success — After reviewing the previous steps you may be ready to write some simple yet intentional mantra or positive statements to support yourself. For example: “I am planning to move to the mixed model of remote work, moving back to the office with positive intention and taking my existing healthy habits with me”. After writing some positive statements, pin these intentions in view on a mirror, fridge or notice board. Take a moment each day to read and repeat them to yourself, affirming to yourself your clear intentions to move positively to the next phase. Use these six steps above proactively to prepare yourself for the next phase of remote working, whatever it may look like. Visit RoRemote for more information on our training support and consultancy services.
https://medium.com/@rowremote/blended-model-of-remote-work-are-you-ready-for-the-future-of-the-office-b01068f393de
['Rowena Hennigan']
2021-07-06 09:25:51.338000+00:00
['Mental Health', 'Remote Work Tips', 'Future Of Work', 'Hybrid Work', 'Employee Experience']
Our 10 Most Popular Articles Of 2020
We love writing great articles and sharing them with our audience. Our topics range from Personal Growth to People Development, from Leadership to Human Resources. We also share articles on Business too. There are two ways people can source and access our articles. One is through a search engine, where a reader is looking for something specific and Google or Bing delivers them one of our articles. The other is when readers see something that takes their fancy across our Social Media platform. So collectively, our most popular articles are a result of you our readers searching for them, or they have taken your fancy in your social media feed. So we thought we would celebrate you and our brilliant authors by highlighting the 10 most popular articles for 2020. We hope you enjoy them! Author: Rick Riddle Twitter @rickrddl While it shouldn’t be a surprise given anyone interested in people development will be looking to see how they can find reliable information on the internet. Rick’s article has consistently reached our top five with some 30k views. Rick’s article goes to the heart of what “reliable” means, looking at factors such as author credentials, quality of the website, and how the information you are seeking links with what the information provider is selling. A good guide for anyone wanting to check out the information they are sourcing across the web. Author: Christina Lattimer Twitter @pdiscoveryuk There isn’t that much out there about how to write a people strategy, yet it’s a vital activity for businesses to put people at the heart of the organisation. Here are some helpful steps which you can follow to make sure your strategy includes all it should. Author: Julie Gordon Twitter @juliegordon16 In the words of John Kotter, the main issue for leaders is not carrying out Change, it is the sheer amount of Change they have to contend with. There is not one business or individual in the land who is not involved in some type of Change. It’s not difficult to understand then, that one of our most popular articles is all about Change. These tips from Julie Gordon about the attributes needed in someone who champions Change is essential reading. Author: Tasneem Hameed Twitter @taseed Human Resources practice must align with organisational strategy. In this article, Tasneem sets out some of the activities undertaken by HR to underpin any business strategy. He also covers why HR is so important in their role within a business. Author: Frederika Roberts Twitter @Frederika_R “If you don’t inspire your teams to achieve greatness, you’re not a leader, you’re a manager, at best” That is the test Frederika challenges all leaders with. How are you inspiring your teams? Are you an inspirational leader? Here are 7 essential attributes of leaders who inspire their teams. Author: Oliver Christen Twitter @PEAQPartners Oliver explores the reasons why you should develop people in your organisation. Many business leaders question whether if they spend time and resources on developing their people and they leave, then what is the return on investment? Oliver tackles this by setting out ways people development should be approached. Author: Robin Hills Twitter @ei4change Articles about emotional intelligence are popular but when you combine EI with Change then it’s no wonder this is one of our most popular articles. Robin goes into a great deal of depth about the Change process and the emotions involved in each stage. A must-read for anyone wanting to manage people through Change. Author: Holger Arians Twitter @pldxorg There is no doubt that very few organisations can exist without technology. Corporations and big business include technology at the heart of their operating and planning for the future. The question about how Technology impacts on Leadership is so pertinent. Holger sets out some pointers for leaders in how they should lead differently in a world of technology. Author: Julie Gordon Twitter @juliegordon16 Julie’s article on Self-awareness is our overall most-read article of all time. I think this is indicative of how people are keen to explore self-awareness and learn about themselves. Pointing to research that most successful companies have employees who have fewer blind spots, Julie sets out 4 simple but effective ways anyone can increase their self-awareness. Author: Christina Lattimer Twitter @pdiscoveryuk Author: Christina Lattimer Twitter @pdiscoveryuk You just know when you meet someone open-minded. Even better when that open-minded person is your leader. So what do we mean by open-mindedness? Here I set out 5 traits which are noticeable about open-minded leaders and how they put you at ease, accept you and know how to get the best out of you. So there are our 10 most popular articles for 2020. Do you have a favourite article in the magazine? If so, do let us know. Would you like to be a contender for our most popular articles for 2021? Sign up to write for us here, we’d love to have you on board. Originally published at https://peopledevelopmentmagazine.com.
https://medium.com/@peopledevelopmentmagazine/our-10-most-popular-articles-of-2020-62db4fc518c5
['Christina Lattimer']
2021-01-17 10:42:41.565000+00:00
['Leadership', 'Personal Growth', 'Human Resources', 'Development', 'Business']
Apple macOS M1 as a startup platform.
In this post, I am considering an emerging alternative to fulfill the computational needs of the modern company, the Apple M1 platform. This post is written from the machine learning developers’ point of view. Most of the “cloud” servers run on the Linux operating system. Linux is primarily a command-line platform. You can cut down on a lot of computing power if you connect to your servers via a command-line terminal (i.e. ssh) to send all instructions as text. This works computational wonders, and it is very stable. Linux rules in this arena, and it is the king of the “cloud”. I have to mention a “little lie” about “cloud” computing. There are many free instances of virtual servers and there are free online hosts for your Jupyter notebooks. I have tried and benchmarked many and they kept me wanting. My local computer was always easier to use and faster, especially when considering massive data transfers. Then, there are instances of the powerful NVidia GPU-enabled servers for machine learning training, but they are super expensive (few bucks per hour which adds up quickly). Except for some specific cases, you might want to consider setting your own training machines, especially if you train your models regularly. The valid exceptions might include training using super-powerful Google TPU servers that are not yet available locally to us, mere mortals. When you actually try to do work on Linux using it as a personal computer, the problems start accumulating fast. I am currently using various Linux distributions varying from multiple, yet humble, Raspberry Pi, edge-AI NVidia Jetson, a dual-boot Linux and a Windows with Ubuntu subsystem, to a dedicated Linux tower with NVidia GPU for machine learning training. There will be plenty of readers at this point to say that they use Linux on a daily basis and it works “fine”. I trust you, I will not try to steer you away. It is my personal observation the Linux PC still sucks. On the opposite end of the spectrum are countless legions of corporate employees using the Windows operating system. Windows offers the graphical user interface (GUI), and notably, Windows does have an installable application for every work task, however dubious in its implementation quality. If you hire a person and pay them tens of thousands of dollars each year, if not much more, then maybe you should give them the best choice of a computer, for the equivalent of $8 per working week. Sadly, corporations are in love with Windows PC, the rationale that has always escaped me. Let me elaborate on the subject for a second. Ever since I lived and studied in Japan, I marveled at certain aspects of that culture which permeates many aspects of their life. For example, I love traditional Japanese (and Chinese) wood joinery. They were able to build items ranging from furniture to buildings that are beautiful, often delicate, yet are able to withstand centuries of daily use in the earthquake zone, all of that without any use of glue or metal fasteners. One of the secrets of the Japanese master builders is the tools they use, and the time they spend to care for them. In a great simplification, they always keep their tools sharp. To be fair, you do not have to travel to Japan to see the same, many European masters would tell you the same. Even our own Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” This idea pertains to both, the tools you use, as well as to your mental attitude. I have to admit the guilt here, I have been a Mac user since 2001. I have also been lucky to attend many technical conferences in both Chicago and California, and whereas, at first, Macs were a rarity, but starting at around 2009 majority of the attendees were sporting Macs. These people were representing the technologists (many from Apple and Google) and many startup employees. In 2020, Apple released the ARM-based, AI-accelerated M1 chips and the new Mac OS. The M1 is currently faster and by far more efficient than traditional Intel and AMD personal computers of a comparable cost. The following question started to nag me, do I need to use a separate PC or a MacBook to write software and then to deploy the code on a Linux box, or can I do both using Apple Mac Mini M1? The Apple Mac Mini has by far the best cost-to-power ratio, not to mention the stability, security, and beautifully manicured software. If I was just hanging around the old-school corporate world, I might think that Windows 10, however an excellent improvement, is the pinnacle. After two decades of shuffling Linux, Windows, and Mac on regular basis, I am already sure that the macOS is the best platform to do software development which was also proven true by Google, and some other 46,715 companies (look it up). In addition to running your traditional programming languages such as C/C++, Java, Python, now I have a choice of Julia and Apple’s own Swift. What I love about macOS that it is a UNIX compliant operating system with the bash shell Terminal as a first-class resident and not an afterthought. Image lifted from greenminihost.com (no affiliation) I imagine the next startup getting a stack of Apple Mac Mini and running them right from their office closet, as a micro-service center, or edge devices, cracking up the data and running neural networks without breaking a bank, power consumption cost, noise, nor heat. I think the era of inexpensive multi-AI core computing is upon us. I am betting on some combination of Apple M1 hardware, macOS, and a language designed for math, AI, parallelism, and multi-process processing such as Julia.
https://medium.com/@ukidlucas/m1-c72ea7b0f0a1
['Uki D. Lucas']
2020-12-31 15:55:44.572000+00:00
['Linux', 'Mac', 'M1', 'Apple', 'Microservices']
BMW Digital Car Key Case Study
Background The concept of the car key was formulated in 1910 but was only meant for the ignition then two separate car keys were introduced for the ignition and the locks. Fast forward over a hundred years, the evolution of cars in the 21st-century meant that technology has become increasingly involved in the way cars are produced and in the way users interact with their cars; from the promise of autonomous cars taking over in the future to smart car technologies, the concept of controlling your car without physically having to control it or even be in it is fast becoming our reality. Digital car keys are also becoming more popular especially as each brand releases its newest collection of cars. A digital key car key can now allow you to open and close your car and to even adjust the heating. Its not just car brands releasing digital car keys but there are third-party apps and even Apple is trying to infiltrate the automotive industry. This is unsurprising given that in the western world almost every aspect of people’s lives can be easily managed from their phones, so who is to say your car cannot be one of them? Outline of the Brief The brief is to select a mid to high range car and to launch an android/iPhone app that will allow car owners to use their phones to replace the need o traditional car keys and more. This app aims to be as functional possible so that car will want to use this app daily as opposed to carrying physical car keys. Chosen car brand: BMW My Role UI Designer, UX Designer, UX Researcher Task Design a positive user journey Use Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines to support your design decisions and understand best practices for designing iOS applications Involve your end to end design process within your case study Create a style guide that includes: brand assets, design components etc Finalise your designs with an interactive prototype that shows a walkthrough of the design Provide a user journey map within your case study writeup A bit about BMW BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke GmbH, which roughly translates to the Bavarian Engine Works Company. BMW started off producing Aircraft engines in 1913, it then transitioned into an automobile manufacturer in 1927 with their own version of the ‘dixie’ as its first car launch. Pain points No extra reassurance when it comes to the app’s security icons are not distinct or bold enough which could impact on accessibility No clear indication of the status of lock status limited amount of features, therefore, reduced functionality in comparison to previous versions Problem Statement Whilst digital car keys pose a hassle-free and efficient future, this concept is still in its infancy. One of the most prominent threats to digital car keys is security. One user stated that ‘most of the cars getting stolen are the ones with the digital car keys’ and this was the main reason why she wouldn’t be getting one. The fears surrounding the lack of security means that users would rather continue using their traditional keys as it ensures that they are the only ones with access to their car. This type of reassurance is something digital car keys may not be able to offer. Hypothesis Include more steps to lock and secure the car include more security measures that are more specific to the user but is also quite a familiar way of ensuring security, i.e. Face ID, fingerprint. Create a more sleek design that is more engaging, modern and reflective of the luxury element of BMW My Design Approach The Double Diamond process consists of 4 four different phases, Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. The visualisation of this process helps me clarify what each phase consists of and will serve as a good reference point to come back to throughout my case study. Discover During this stage, I will conduct business and user research, the aim of this stage is to challenge my initial assumptions of what the pain points are so I can better tackle the problem. Business Research For my business research, I have decided to do a competitor analysis in which I chose three direct competitors (BMW, Mercedes, Tesla) and one indirect competitor
https://medium.com/@benita-n/bmw-digital-car-key-case-study-6989e42f5cb
[]
2021-01-18 18:52:40.223000+00:00
['UI', 'UX Research', 'UI Design', 'UX Design', 'Ui Ux Design']
Data Science Methodology
In this session, we will learn techniques and best approaches to scale in your Data Science project. Data Science Methodology In the domain of data science, solving problems and answering questions through data analysis are standard practice. Often, data scientists build a model to predict outcomes or discover underlying patterns, with the goal of gaining insights. Organizations can then use these insights to take actions and make a decision ideally, improve future outcomes. They are various tools and technologies for building and deploying models. The volume of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data is rapidly increasing. A 10-stage data science methodology that spans technologies and approaches As data analytics inclinations become more open and widespread, data scientists need a foundational methodology competent enough to provide a strategy, despite the technologies, data volumes or approaches involved. The methodology consists of 10 stages that form a loop process for using data to reveal insights. Each stage plays an important role in setting the overall methodology. What is a methodology? A methodology is a comprehensive approach that leads the processes and exercises within a given domain. Methodology does not depend on particular technologies or tools, nor is it a set of techniques or recipes. Rather, a methodology provides the data scientist with a framework for how to proceed with whatever methods, processes, and heuristics will be used to obtain answers or results. Stage 1: Business Understanding Every project begins with a business understanding. The business advocates who need the analytic solution which plays the most significant part in this stage by describing the dilemma or problem, project objectives and solution requirements from a business view. This first stage lays the foundation for a successful interpretation of the business problem. To help ensure the project’s resolution, the advocate should be involved throughout the project to provide domain expertise, review intermediate findings and ensure the work remains on track to generate the intended solution. Stage 2: Analytic approach More than anything else, an analytical approach is the use of an appropriate process to break a problem down into the smaller pieces necessary to solve it. Each piece becomes a smaller and easier problem to solve. Once the business problem has been clearly stated, the data scientist can define the analytic approach to solving the problem. This stage entails expressing the problem in the context of statistical and machine-learning techniques, so the organization can identify the most proper ones for the aspired result. For example, if the goal is to predict a response such as “yes” or “no,” then the analytic approach could be defined as a building, testing and implementing a classification model. Stage 3: Data requirements The first move in the data requirement is to determine what data is required for building the model. This should be dictated primarily by the scope and level of detail required to achieve the model objectives as described earlier. The chosen analytic approach determines the data requirements. Specifically, the analytic methods to be used require certain data content, formats, and representations, guided by domain expertise. Stage 4: Data collection is the process of gathering and measuring information on variables of interest, in an established systematic procedure that qualifies one to answer stated research questions, test hypotheses, and evaluate outcomes. In the initial data collection stage, data scientists recognize and collect the possible data resources — structured, unstructured and semi-structured — relevant to the problem domain. Typically, they must choose whether to make additional investments to obtain less-accessible data elements. It may be best to defer the investment decision until more is known about the data and the model. If there are gaps in data collection, the data scientist may have to revise the data requirements accordingly and collect new and/or more data. While data sampling and subsetting are still important. Stage 5: Data understanding The main goal of data understanding is to gain general insights about the data that will potentially be helpful for the further steps in the data analysis process, but data understanding should not be driven exclusively by the goals and methods to be applied in later steps.After the original data collection, data scientists typically use descriptive statistics and visualization techniques to understand the data content, assess data quality and discover initial insights about the data. Additional data collection may be necessary to fill gaps. Stage 6: Data preparation This stage encompasses all activities to construct the data set that will be used in the subsequent modeling stage. Data preparation activities include data cleaning (dealing with missing or invalid values, eliminating duplicates, formatting properly), combining data from multiple sources (files, tables, platforms) and transforming data into more useful variables. In a process called feature engineering, data scientists can create additional explanatory variables, also referred to as predictors or features, through a combination of domain knowledge and existing structured variables. When text data is available, such as customer call center logs or physicians’ notes in unstructured or semi-structured form, text analytics is useful in deriving new structured variables to enrich the set of predictors and improve model accuracy. Data preparation is usually the most time-consuming step in a data science project. In many domains, some data preparation steps are common across different problems. Automating certain data preparation steps in advance may accelerate the process by minimizing ad hoc preparation time. With today’s high-performance, massively parallel systems and analytic functionality residing where the data is stored, data scientists can more easily and rapidly prepare data using very large data sets. Stage 7: Modeling Starting with the first version of the prepared data set, the modeling stage focuses on developing predictive or descriptive models according to the previously defined analytic approach. With predictive models, data scientists use a training set (historical data in which the outcome of interest is known) to build the model. The modeling process is typically highly iterative as organizations gain intermediate insights, leading to refinements in data preparation and model specification. For a given technique, data scientists may try multiple algorithms with their respective parameters to find the best model for the available variables. Stage 8: Evaluation During model development and before deployment, the data scientist evaluates the model to understand its quality and ensure that it properly and fully addresses the business problem. Model evaluation entails computing various diagnostic measures and other outputs such as tables and graphs, enabling the data scientist to interpret the model’s quality and its efficacy in solving the problem. For a predictive model, data scientists use a testing set, which is independent of the training set but follows the same probability distribution and has a known outcome. The testing set is used to evaluate the model so it can be refined as needed. Sometimes the final model is applied also to a validation set for a final assessment. In addition, data scientists may assign statistical significance tests to the model as further proof of its quality. This additional proof may be instrumental in justifying model implementation or taking actions when the stakes are high — such as an expensive supplemental medical protocol or a critical airplane flight system. Stage 9: Deployment Once a satisfactory model has been developed and is approved by the business sponsors, it is deployed into the production environment or a comparable test environment. Usually it is deployed in a limited way until its performance has been fully evaluated. Deployment may be as simple as generating a report with recommendations, or as involved as embedding the model in a complex workflow and scoring process managed by a custom application. Deploying a model into an operational business process usually involves additional groups, skills and technologies from within the enterprise. For example, a sales group may deploy a response propensity model through a campaign management process created by a development team and administered by a marketing group. Stage 10: Feedback By collecting results from the implemented model, the organization gets feedback on the model’s performance and its impact on the environment in which it was deployed. For example, feedback could take the form of response rates to a promotional campaign targeting a group of customers identified by the model as high-potential responders. Analyzing this feedback enables data scientists to refine the model to improve its accuracy and usefulness. They can automate some or all of the feedback-gathering and model assessment, refinement and redeployment steps to speed up the process of model refreshing for better outcomes. Now you have a clear perception of Data Methodology, we have come to the conclusion of this lesson. At the end of this lesson, we have been able to understand: 1. Data Methodology When you done with this session kindly share your progress on your social media account Hints Day 11–12: Data Methodology Day 11–12 Lesson: Today we learned Data Methodology which gave me an insight on the algorithmic approach on starting a Data Science Project. #100daysofcode #100daysofDscode #100days #Day11–12 #DataScience #MachineLearning #Ai #Probability
https://medium.com/100daysofdscode/data-methodology-1fa727efbaf2
['Emeka Boris']
2019-03-21 12:00:29.614000+00:00
['Deep Learning', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science']
Sexual Harassment at Work — Here are 3 Tips You can Use To Conquer It
Mental health, Body Language and Harassment Ann does not have a stable life at home, she suffers from depression (being medicated), a controlling boyfriend and low self-esteem. She desperately needs to move out of that situation and start fresh, but for that to happen we all know money can be an issue. My thought was: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”- Lao Tzu This way she can have the satisfaction to climb out of that hole and have the pride of having done it herself! However sometimes when we’re at our lowest we tend to attract “garbage” like a magnet! Body language, I believe had a great impact on Ann’s case. Her state of mind was such that she displayed clear physical signs of being nervous, which in turn sabotaged her best intentions: Fidgetiness, Repeated gestures like touching her face and hair “Smallness” postures, like slouching and hunching over her shoulders To an empathetic human being, those types of visual cues signal a person’s discomfort and alert them to the need of making the other person feel welcomed. “I tried to ignore the comments, and stay away from their gaze but no matter where I went their eyes would follow me” — Ann To a malicious intentioned person that could trigger the opposite reaction — they may see the other has an easy target.
https://medium.com/todays-rosie/sexual-harassment-at-work-it-is-still-a-thing-but-here-are-3-tips-you-can-use-17c7f6fdfb99
['Vera Allen']
2021-09-12 19:11:53.999000+00:00
['Woman', 'Work', 'Life Lessons', 'Whistleblower', 'Sexual Harassment']
Visualize your plots like a Pro
Styling, on the other hand, is something that a person can tell whether your plots are professional or not. You have to consider the thickness of the edges or the thickness of scattering dots and the proportion of that thickness compare to each other. Matplotlib library usually does all the works of styling automatically. And most of the time those default parameters are not the best choice you could make. To avoid it, don’t trust the Matplotlib and stylize your plots by your will. One of the best tools you can use to master your plots is seaborn. Seaborn is a library for styling and has a wide range of plot types. It can help you save time spent on styling the basic elements of your plot. And you can use that time on other aspects of your plots. Scales and ratios: Matplotlib usually chooses a default value for the scale of your plots. And as we know already, default parameters are not something we want. Base on the size of your presentation or the standard template of the journal you’re submitting your paper or even base on the webpage you’re going to put your plot, modify your plot scale and ratio. You should also consider the fact that ratio can emphasize your x dimension or y dimension. For instance, if you use a ratio of 3:4 for x:y, you’ll show your y data with a bit more resolution. If you have multiple plots to compare, using subplots to show all of them in the same figure would be a perfect choice. This way you can also emphasize the data you want by changing the ratio and scale. Informations: Last but not least, don’t forget to put enough information in your plots. Usually, as we work on a project, we adapt to the situation and get familiar with all the details of the plots. But this is not true for others. When someone else looks at your plots, it’s not obvious what’s the meaning of the individual colors in your plot. What are that x and y-axis represents? I know it’s something obvious, but sometimes we forget to put that information on the plots and when we remember that is too late. Some examples: So to show how much you can make the change with manipulations to your plots, I want to compare some routine plots, one without manipulations and only using default parameters and one with spending time on making it better.
https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/visualize-your-plots-like-a-pro-18cd51914e8a
['Nosratullah Mohammadi']
2020-02-29 12:17:59.747000+00:00
['Data Analysis', 'Analytics', 'Python', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Science']
A Thought: The Impact of Hypebeast Culture on Self-Esteem
Do you feel like you need fancy clothes to help you fit in? Photo by Satria Aditya on Unsplash A hypebeast is a term to describe someone who follows trends in fashion (particularly streetwear) that are “hype”, and usually branded with an extremely high price tag, to make a social statement and impress others. Basically, it’s a term to describe those young people who you see showing off their Supreme outfit on Instagram. Even though hypebeast is now its own fashion category, the term sometimes still has a negative connotation to it. Honestly, between my friends and I, when we call someone a “hypebeast”, it implies that they’re a spoiled brat who just spends their money on streetwear just to show it off and rub it into our broke faces. Do you use the term “hypebeast” the same way we do? It’s kinda tricky to distinguish brands simply based on whether they are a hypebeast or “high-end” brand. Sometimes, it’s easier to classify individual pieces into those two categories, instead of the entire brand itself. Clothing brands have very diverse products these days, especially luxury brands. Based on what I’ve seen from my friends and on social media, hypebeast culture represents teenagers who want to fit in and gain self-confidence. Nowadays, the culture develops the perception that when teens purchase and show off their branded, trendy streetwear, they are “cool” and will, therefore, be accepted in their peer groups, and in society. But I feel like fashion companies are exploiting teens’ and young adults’ insecurities and self-consciousness for their own profit. They keep feeding the idea to these individuals that they will never be enough if they don’t own their products. They keep telling them that wearing their clothes is one of the most evident ways to make a statement of their wealth and thus claim their rightful prestigious spot in society. They keep reinforcing these ideas through social media by showing that those who use their products are those who are living the best lives, so those who don’t have said products are missing out. This leads young people to think that they need to own these luxury products to be validated. Young people are especially vulnerable to this type of distorted thinking because teens use their self-esteem as a way of identification. When a teen commits their identity to just one part of their life — to owning luxury apparel, for instance — they will become distraught and their self-esteem will come crashing down when the luxury apparel isn’t available to them. They might think “I’m nothing without my New Balance sneakers!” As luxury brands keep reinforcing this mindset, more and more teens are insecure with what they already have and insist that the only way to feel validated was to purchase those items. They would beg their parents to buy it for them, even when the product has an extreme price tag. I knew a kid (13-year-old) who begged his mom for a supreme hoodie despite its unbelievably high price tag, and the reason for it was to fit in because many of his friends own supreme clothing. He’s such a brilliant kid. I wish he realised that a hoodie isn’t the key to fitting in. Even when it doesn’t seem like it would have much of an impact, these insecurities will have a big impact on other aspects in life. Insecurities related to self-identity and prestige can even have an impact on relationships. An individual’s insecurity can have a negative impact on how they view others and therefore will affect their relationships with them. If they aren’t able to accept themselves for who they are, how do you expect them to accept others? There’s so much damage put into young teens’ self-esteem these days to the point where it’s damaging to their mental health. Unfortunately, luxury fashion brands are fully aware of this but they only utilise it for their own benefit for the sake of profits, while disregarding young people’s mental health. But we can’t rely on these companies with young people’s mental health and self-esteem. I get it, these companies need to make money — they’re not therapists, after all. These teens are the ones who can help themselves. They are the only ones who can change their own mindsets about their identity and what being validated in society means for them. They can’t find the answers to those issues from hypebeast clothing. This post isn’t to throw shade at fashion brands out there. It’s totally okay to show off your luxury clothes to the world. What’s important is that it’s done at a healthy level. Do not let these products define who you are to the point where your sense of self is only associated with them. Your passions and your attitude are more important aspects that define you. Don’t reduce your self-worth to a piece of clothing. You are more than that.
https://medium.com/@fayrenheit/a-thought-the-impact-of-hypebeast-culture-on-self-esteem-cbcb19b98ae4
['Fayren Chaerunnissa']
2019-06-24 05:34:17.226000+00:00
['Fashion', 'Lifestyle', 'Self Esteem']
Top 5 Software Testing Companies
Outsourcing software testing has become a common practice for software organizations as it is known to be beneficial to the software development process in many ways. For one, the process can be accelerated as certain tests can be carried out simultaneously with development. It is also a great way of avoiding redundancies in the organization. In this case, these redundancies could be recruiting an in-house testing team, setting up the infrastructure for test environments, and investing in the necessary tools and technologies. Myths Related to Outsourcing: By outsourcing the process, organizations can cut down on costs significantly as almost all of the above-mentioned things are taken care of by software testing companies. Here are a few myths revolving around outsourcing that have essentially stopped many companies from even thinking about it: Costly Service Charges: Many have given the view that the services rendered by software testing companies cannot be termed affordable. This is a myth because software testing companies charge lesser than what an in-house testing process might cost you. Delayed Delivery: The second myth is that software testing companies delay the delivery of an application. This is not true as most testing companies are known to actively collaborate with developers and business analysts to deliver applications at the earliest. Lack of Communication There is no lack of communication between you and the software testing company you choose. Because there are many decisions in the testing process that require your consent as the client. Therefore, this is a myth that must be busted. Best Software Testing Companies: Now, we know that outsourcing is an ideal solution for delivering defect-free software to the market on time, but choosing the right software company can be a conundrum. This is where we can help as we have narrowed down five of the best software testing companies you can outsource your services to. They are: Testrig Technologies: Testrig Technologies is one of the leading software testing companies currently. They are known for rendering quality services in web application and mobile application testing. Through the brilliant implementation of QA and agile testing strategies, they aim to deliver defect-free applications. They value high-quality end deliverables. Regardless of whether you are a start-up or an established organization, they prioritize you as their clients and guarantee a handsome ROI. They manage processes based on the condition of your business with their broad QA involvement. Sapizon Technologies: Highly recommended by industry experts, Sapizon Technologies have made great strides in the testing domain in very little time. They have a flawless track record and their clients are always rendering glowing testimonies in their favor. Known to possess a very experienced and skilled team of testers, Sapizon is very much disciplined and well accustomed to the handling of complex processes. They are offering services in diverse testing criteria which involve automation testing, web and mobile app testing, and AR/VR app testing. They are considered a pioneer in both QA and agile methodologies. Software testers at Sapizon possess the knowledge of various industries which has made them one of the top software testing companies. ImpactQA: The next one on the list is ImpactQA. Very much like its name, it has created a significant impact in the IT industry with its valiant contributions to deliver defect-free software applications. They are known to hold great technical expertise in both functional and non-functional testing. They are rendering their services across various testing domains which include automation testing, performance testing, mobile application testing, cloud testing, IoT testing, security testing, DevOps testing, and AI testing. They possess a selected team of brilliant QA engineers who utilize the best tools and result-driven strategies which have helped them achieve great productivity in client businesses. A1QA: A1QA has been one of the leading software testing companies for more than a decade now. They are known for rendering independent QA testing services to various clients who range from budding start-ups to Fortune 500 giants. Providing services in all criteria of business have given their testers great experience and also the opportunity of exploring how processes are handled for big money clients. It has enhanced their reputation and improved the skills of their testers. QA Source: QA Source is one of the top software testing organizations in the industry that specializes in providing eccentric QA services. Driving success on the back of immense dedication and discipline of their team of software testers, QA Source has made a mark in the industry. They are brilliant in collaborating effectively with development and business-oriented teams. It has allowed them to deliver technically and fundamentally correct applications in minimal time. Conclusion: We have shown you the way of where to go looking to choose the right software testing company. You can make your decision based on quality, costing, and other factors that you are deliberating.
https://medium.com/@sapnasapusapzion/top-5-software-testing-companies-58ed872a059b
['Sapna Sapu']
2020-12-07 11:46:54.006000+00:00
['Software Testing', 'Testing Companies India', 'Software Tester', 'Testing', 'Test']
📆 Reflections on 2018 — My Year In Review
🏠 New House = New Lifestyle The starting of the my 2018 year wasn’t an ideal one. It was rather exhausting one. We recently (November 2017) moved to a new house, so it was a tough time to adjust to the new neighborhood, make new friends, memorize new travel plans and routes etc. On top of it, we had these huge loans and debts to repay to all the people who helped us in our tough time with purchasing our dream house. (We love you all ❤️ and will always be grateful to you 😊️). We were on track of clearing debts month by month and sacrificing almost everything such as the pizzas, movies, shopping etc. Told you this was exhausting time. And then January passed and come 1st February. This exhausting starting became a “disaster starting”. I got fired from my newly joined job out of blue. Why? Because my employer was crazy. Or because I was stupid enough to join that company in the first place. Or because I was tired of fighting negative energy and dirty politics at my previous job. Or because I wanted to switch the job faster. The employer couldn’t achieve the projects they bid for and I was hired early. Way too early. And now I was a useless resource on payroll for them. So, they asked me nicely to go home and cleared all my dues. So, does asking nicely to go home without any prior notice counts as nice? I don’t think so. To That Employer: It was not nice. It wasn’t even close to the nice. You shattered my life in an already tough time. I won’t be able to forget that horrible day and that humiliation you caused. At least you could have asked for an apology. Maybe that could have given me some relief. I spent two months in that toxic workplace and it made me a lot depressed already. I was living like a dead man walking. I had already started looking for new job, but I wasn’t ready to leave before I get any new job to keep the income steady. In order to appreciate the life and good things, you must experience the bad or even worse things first. The only good thing in that company was a very good friend who gave me hope, positive energy, made my day laughable, spent good time, and gave best memories.
https://medium.com/hackernoon/reflections-on-2018-my-year-in-review-e88f45ee4211
['Wajahat Karim']
2019-03-03 20:32:30.753000+00:00
['Wajahat Karim', 'Reflections', 'Open Source', 'Year In Review', 'Android']
Why You Should Choose Commercial Snow Removal Services for your Business
Watching the first snowfall of the winter is a beautiful sight. The graceful way the snow cascades from the white canopy in the sky, and lands in a chilled pool at your feet is quite a show. But dealing with the aftermath of snow can be detrimental to your business. As the snow builds up, so could your potential problems. So put your shovel down and read over the advantages of choosing snow removal services for your business this winter. Challenges Snow Brings to your Business Dangerous for Employees/Customers Too often, employers rely on their employees to clear off the freshly fallen snow on property. Employees are already there, after all, and they often complete routine maintenance tasks. But that can lead to several issues including your employees getting injured, not having access to the proper tools, and pushing aside their main responsibilities. Having a poor snow removal strategy can lead to people getting hurt and even possible lawsuits. Snow is Heavy It may look light and magical when its falling from the sky, but snow is heavier than you think. The sheer weight of snow can bow trees down — imagine what it can do to your roof and gutters. As snow builds up, it can do damage to the structure of your property such as your roof and gutters. Ice Can Be Dangerous As we unfortunately know, when snow turns to ice, it becomes a serious threat to road conditions. When snow turns to ice, it compacts and gets heavier and more difficult to remove. Without a plan for ice management, things can become dangerous quickly. If the temperature gets above freezing for just a few hours and then drops there is a chance for ice. Outside, conditions can become slippery and dangerous for customers and employees. Securing high-traffic areas and maintaining them can become a full-time job. Snow Melts You would think when the snow melts, so do the problems and headaches. Unfortunately, that’s wrong in this case. A lot of the damage done by winter snow isn’t done by the snow itself, but the water which pools after it melts. This can cause leaks throughout your property leading to expensive and redundant repairs. Less Customers While most people like to look at snow, very few people like to get around in it. If your property is hidden amongst a snow-covered path, you’re far less likely to attract customers. When snow isn’t removed or dealt with properly, it creates a dangerous environment. Customers instinctively know this and will begin avoiding your business. Ultimately it means less people purchasing your products and services. Benefits of Commercial Snow Removal Luckily, while winter snow can be a chore to deal with, you don’t have to deal with it by yourself. Your Employees Will Be Safe Without having the responsibility of snow removal, your employees can rest easy and get back to their main duties. Hiring a snow removal company saves your employees from back pain and you from liability all in one shot. Better Equipment and Resources Commercial snow removal service providers have high-quality equipment. They have fully functioning trucks, snowplows, salt spreaders, and other effective equipment. They also know how to troubleshoot issues that arise with the machines they use. Snow removal services are good for businesses of any size. Whether you have customers that frequent your establishment or employees that come into the office, safety is key. Purchasing enough snow removal equipment for a large property can be costly. So, can getting quality equipment that provides safety for a small property. Monitoring the Weather Snow removal companies regularly and diligently monitor the weather. This helps them have the necessary crews and equipment prepared for emergency situations. You can rest easy knowing your snow removal company has its own strategy, even with the unpredictable changes snow brings. Proper Insurance Coverage Along with required safety training, snow removal companies have comprehensive insurance coverage. This is beneficial in case there’s an accident or other emergency issue. Good insurance coverage is necessary for property owners to have peace of mind about accidents or other liabilities. Trained Professionals Professional snow removers are trained to work under low temperatures and at night with little visibility. They are familiar with managing commercial properties such as shopping plazas, hotels, office buildings, schools, government facilities, restaurants, multi-family units, or malls. What may take you or your employees hours of work, a professional can most likely handle in less than half the time. Customized Services Whether you want a full snow removal package or need help during a particular storm, establishing a relationship with a commercial snow provider is important for your business. Discuss the plan that is right for you and get the services you need most. You can get separate or all-inclusive contracts for snowplowing, snow hauling, or de-icing. So, don’t worry if your snow removal needs change throughout the year, you can personally work with snow removal professionals to choose a strategy that is perfect for your business. Any time of year is the right time to think about your snow removal strategy. Leave the stress behind and hire professionals to get the job done. This year, instead of reaching for the shovel, reach for the phone and call Landscape Solutions to get a quote!
https://medium.com/@landscapesolutionnj/why-you-should-choose-commercial-snow-removal-services-for-your-business-landscape-solutions-2e6d7905a530
['Landscape Solutions']
2020-12-27 12:33:14.422000+00:00
['Property', 'Snow Removal', 'Commercial Property', 'Landscape', 'Snow']
Applying the Four A’s of Stress Relief to Your Life
in Stress by Tony Stress relief begins by knowing specific coping strategies that you can apply to your life every day. We can never eliminate all our stress, but we can learn ways to decrease it and deal with it. This can help to prevent stress-related illnesses, and ensure you live a healthier life. Avoid Avoid the stressful situation altogether. For example, if you find driving during rush hour causes you undue stress, you should make other transportation arrangements at that time. Or perhaps socialising with a particular couple causes you a lot of pressure, then it is better to stop spending time with this couple. Alter Alter the way you approach things during your day. When you cannot avoid a situation, then you need to alter it. For example, if you are a list maker, make sure to prioritise tasks that must be done that day and those that can always be completed on another day. Remind yourself that Rome was not built in one day either! Change the way you do things. For example, suppose grocery shopping causes you to stress. In that case, you can alter the situation by phoning in your order and having the groceries delivered to your home, or by going shopping when fewer people are in the store. Accept You need to be able to identify when something is not in your control. You have probably heard of the Serenity Prayer that states you need to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and have the wisdom to know the difference. What is lesser known is that this prayer was written by American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr at the height of the Great Depression in 1932, when people across the globe were faced with unprecedented difficulties. Adapt If you cannot change the situation, you need to learn how to adapt to it. Life is full of ongoing changes, and the earlier you realise this, the less stress you will experience. It helps if you can look at the positive things that can come out of a new situation, rather than the negative. For example, if a beloved co-worker is retiring, this could be very stressful for you. However, if you can look at the positive things that could come out of this such as working with a new person who could become your friend, this can help alleviate some of the stress you are feeling. In summary, the four A’s of stress are to avoid, alter, accept, or adapt to situations. If you can apply what the four A’s are teaching, you can eventually find some stress relief in your life by using those rules.    Related Posts Don’t Waste Your Life! How to handle stress Five Benefits of Daily Optimism Protected: How to stay balanced during a major life change Ways to Manage Stress Learn to Love Stress Work-related stress Meditation and relaxation exercises to help deal with stress Tony
https://medium.com/@anthonythomas-31694/applying-the-four-as-of-stress-relief-to-your-life-df7e445ee4b1
['Anthony Thomas']
2020-12-26 17:03:11.712000+00:00
['Stressreliefbegins', 'Adapt', 'Stress']
Intra-Party Conflict and Future of Nepal’s Relations with India and China
BY MANISH JUNG PULAMI · 15TH JULY 2020 Image source: My Republica In May 2018, the two communist parties in Nepal, CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist centre), merged together to form the Nepal Communist Party (NCP). But now the ruling party NCP is at the crossroads of a political crisis. The co-chairs of the party, Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal are caught in a tug war. Also, a long political instability in Nepal was halted by the merger and now again Nepal is at the brink of going back into political instability. Amidst the border dispute with India and PM Oli’s discontent towards India against his government, many have analyzed PM Oli to be “pro-China” and NCP Co-Chair Dahal to have been influenced by India to oust PM Oli and induced intra-party conflict. And a recent meeting of Chinese Ambassador to Nepal with senior leaders of NCP has fueled the situation more. Thus more talks have been started in Kathmandu about Indian and Chinese influence in Nepal. Is domestic/party politics obstructing Nepal’s foreign policy? The most disastrous incident in Nepal-India relation is the 2015 Economic Blockade by India towards Nepal. This induced among the youths of Nepal high anti-Indian sentiments. Thus, this generated a powerful force for nationalism and created more anti-Indian sentimentalities in Nepal. Moreover, these nationalistic drive cum anti-Indian sentiments were directed towards Nepal’s proximity to China. And China’s development assistance towards Nepal has also enhanced this situation. There is no doubt that India has had and has political influence in Nepal. In the early 1950s, India had a significant influence in Nepalese politics, and the influence seemed to continue at a different degree and time. Similarly, China’s influence in Nepal through different means, either by economic or cultural, has increased in recent times. Many senior political analysts in Nepal have compared the Chinese Ambassador’s meetings with senior party leaders as of the Indian Ambassadors in the past regarding this NCP party feud. Concerning Nepal’s relations with India and China, the policy of equi-proximity is the major foreign policy choice of Nepal, a concept guaranteeing a balanced relationship. In the current situation of Nepal-India border dispute, India-China border dispute and intra-party dispute in NCP, and without proper knowledge of China factor, it is harmful to call PM Oli’s government to be “pro-China” and “anti-Indian”. Also, it is not fair to accuse Dahal of having Indian support against Oli. PM Oli’s unilateral decision to prorogue the budget session of the Parliament, disappointing response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his unilateral actions circumventing the party has have led to the conflict within the party. But deep inside the conflict, the senior leaders are all seeking a bigger role in the party, and by extension, the government. But whatever the situations and conditions may be in the NCP conflict, the conflict has a direct impact on the foreign policy of Nepal. The factions in the party are the symbol of distrust. Inline to foreign relations, some leaders in the party accuse PM Oli of giving anti-Indian statements publicly and degrading the relations with India, whereas some of the leaders have been praising PM Oli for directly confronting with India and publishing the map including the disputed territories of Nepal. This imbalance within the party has brought an imbalance in the relationship. This has provided leverage for China regarding the “influence” and the Chinese Ambassador’s activities show it. It also symbolizes that Nepal has shifted the fulcrum away from Nepal regarding the equi-proximal/balanced foreign policy of Nepal. Future of Nepal’s relations with India and China “You can change your friends, but not neighbours.” Regardless of disputes within the party or with any neighbours, Nepal should adopt a balanced relationship with both the neighbours. An “all-party national consensus” should be there regarding the relationship with India and China. Nepal needs the support of both the neighbours for her development and can benefit immensely due to her geostrategic location. It is not an option for Nepal to side with one of the neighbours and has a feud against another. Hence, the intra-party conflict within NCP should be halted immediately for a harmonious and peaceful relationship with neighbours. Regarding the conflict within the ruling party can only create a space and symbolize neighbours’ influence and Nepal’s inclination respectively. Whatever the situations in the party, the leaders should have united policies towards the neighbours. Thus, Nepal should have a neutral stance regarding India-China dispute as well, and maintain an equi-proximal relationship with both the neighbours. Also, both India and China should revisit their policies regarding Nepal and maintain a cordial and mutual understanding of foreign policy towards Nepal for the betterment of the whole region. Disclaimer: The article was originally published in The Kootneeti.
https://medium.com/@manishjungpulami/intra-party-conflict-and-future-of-nepals-relations-with-india-and-china-96c4fcdfae7d
['Manish Jung Pulami']
2021-07-06 06:51:15.396000+00:00
['Nepal', 'Conflict', 'Communist Party', 'Politics']
City Tools: shining a light on the technologies powering London’s boroughs
All London boroughs care deeply about providing amazing services for their residents. To do that, they need to have great technology and strong relationships with the best suppliers. And yet, as anyone who has worked in the local government technology field will testify, that is not always the case. Doing anything about this is challenging. One reason is the sheer scale. Collectively, boroughs and the city spend over £14 billion a year delivering their services. The technology that powers those services is inevitably complex and difficult to track, decode and understand. Second, the examples we hear — of good news stories and frustrations alike — are mainly based on anecdote. What we’ve lacked is an evidence base to more systematically look at how we can improve the system. Until now. On 13th November, the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) and Bloomberg Associates, a pro-bono municipal consulting service, released City Tools: London, an interactive dashboard that maps the technologies, suppliers and contracts used to power each service and function across London’s boroughs. The project is based on Bloomberg Associates’ Digital City Tools report, but adapted for a London context with the expert local knowledge of consultant CIO, Omid Shiraji. 22 boroughs submitted data on their technology via a survey, which was combined with open data from all 32 boroughs and the City of London to build up a richer picture. Data specialists Eden Smith have added a visualisation layer in Power BI to allow the data to be interrogated from different angles. In the public dashboard, you can filter by the supplier, system, service area, contract end dates and borough. The City Tools Dashboard, available at http://loti.london/citytools Some of the key insights from the data are captured in the accompanying report. Among a list of potential benefits outlined there, I personally hope LOTI can facilitate the use of this data to: Help boroughs see where their contracts for particular service areas or with a particular supplier end at a similar time. They could use this information to share their experiences, discuss their needs and improve their approach to the market, potentially exploring joint procurement opportunities. Enable boroughs to share their expertise with each other. In the survey to collect the data, many boroughs also shared their level of confidence in supporting and developing different systems. Seeing details of their individual and collective expertise should enable better peer support and the ability to form new partnerships. Make it easier for SMEs to identify which boroughs have contracts ending in service areas where they have products to offer. This should help them target their engagement at boroughs most likely to be receptive to new approaches. For those SMEs who offer products that integrate with legacy IT systems, knowing exactly which legacy providers are used and where should help prioritise product development. Understand and address some of the causes of dissatisfaction. A striking insight from the report is that boroughs with fewer vendors overall feel they aren’t getting good value for money. We want to understand what factors are at play there. This should be a chance to engage the market constructively, clearly stating what good looks like, and ruling out the behaviours that have a negative impact. Top of my list would be ending the practice whereby some suppliers charge local authorities to access their own data (where it’s not part of their standard dashboard). Clearly, suppliers have frustrations of their own, and we want to understand those, too. What next? We are under no illusions that data is a cure-all. We also know that the first version of the dashboard is just a prototype that needs to be enhanced and accompanied by many other things to deliver real change. To that end, over the next few weeks, LOTI will be: Engaging with boroughs to identify areas where the current data can provide immediate value. With the data revealing that a substantial number of contracts end in 2020, there is real scope to trial some new collaborative approaches to thinking about the technology they want to procure. Exploring real user needs — from both the local government and supplier side — to inform how the tool is developed and used in future. We are not interested in building a platform for its own sake. We equally recognise that we need to understand what changes in process, policy, culture and mindset are required to make the data useful. Working with the GLA’s Economic Development team to see how City Tools can be developed in a way that fully complements their recent initiatives to develop tools that help Govtech SMEs more easily navigate the London public sector market. Based on all the above, making decisions on how to automate (where possible) elements of the tool, and properly resource the initiative so that it becomes sustainable. In short, the dashboard and report are just the start, but I believe they provide a strong foundation on which much else can be built. You can follow LOTI’s progress on this front on Twitter and Medium.
https://medium.com/loti/city-tools-shining-a-light-on-the-technologies-powering-londons-boroughs-d909a7d74a73
['Eddie Copeland']
2019-11-19 06:01:01.418000+00:00
['Local Government', 'Procurement', 'London', 'Government', 'Govtech']
Anorexia Has A Bacterial Origin, Researchers Say
Infection | Brain Anorexia Has A Bacterial Origin, Researchers Say It’s too naive to think anorexia arises from psychosocial factors alone, researchers argue. Image by CoxinhaFotos from Pixabay Sitting at the 3rd most common disease affecting adolescent females, anorexia is characterized by severe calorie restriction — comorbid with anxiety and depression — that lead to the starvation and malfunctioning of many other organs. Anorexia is titled the most fatal mental illness. Anorexia Etiology Revisited “Psychological factors might be important but are unconvincing as the primary or major cause [of anorexia],” James Morris and colleague from Lancaster University, UK, wrote in Medical Hypothesis in 2016. Anorexia is a functional or psychosomatic disease; psycho means mind and somatic means body. It’s a mind-body disease caused by a combination of psychological and physical factors. Modern views of anorexia, however, neglect the physical cause of the disease, as Morris and team argued: There might, for instance, be an increased incidence of physical and sexual abuse in childhood in those who go on to manifest functional disorders. It is easy to see how this could influence symptoms in adults but it stretches credulity to imagine abuse as the sole and sufficient cause of the functional disorder. Equally modern concepts of the perfect physical form promoted by the fashion industry will influence teenagers to diet but surely there must be something more profound and fundamental to induce emaciation and death by starvation or suicide. Basically, Morris et al. question the idea of psychosocial factors being the sole cause of anorexia. It’s too simplistic and crédule, they thought. It doesn’t explain why a subset of adolescents do not develop anorexia when they have been exposed to similar childhood and cultural experiences. Many will quickly attribute this to differences in genetics, social support or individual’s innate resilience. While these may also contribute to the overall likelihood of developing anorexia, Morris et al. asked: What if bacteria also play a role? When Bacteria-Fighting Antibodies Attack the Brain Morris et al. first observed that anorexia nervosa is 10x more prevalent in females than males, and so are autoimmune diseases. They then cited several studies that found the presence of autoantibodies — that attack the serotonin neurons and appetite-regulating hormones/peptides— roaming in the blood and hypothalamus of anorexics. The levels of these autoantibodies also correlated with the severity of the eating disorder. The hypothalamus is a brain region that controls human's basic needs such as sleep, body temperature, thirst, and appetite. It’s also part of the limbic system — also called the reptilian brain — which is an ancient set of structures in the brain that governs instincts and emotions. Where did these auto-antibodies come from? The studies that discovered them raised the possibility of bacterial infection(s). Upon encountering foreign entities, the immune system makes antibodies that bind to the bacteria surface — to neutralize or marked it for destruction by other immune cells. If the bacterium shares a similar structure to some of the host’s proteins — a phenomenon called molecular mimicry — the antibodies will target both the bacteria and the host own proteins. The fact that these antibodies — now autoantibodies — are considered as allies makes things worse. The blood-brain-barrier, for example, doesn’t see it as a threat — enabling these autoantibodies to easily enter the brain’s limbic system. “Auto-antibodies acting on the [brain’s] limbic system could induce extremes of emotion including disgust and fear,” Morris et al. wrote. “These then become linked, in the minds of adolescent girls, to culturally determined ideas of what is, and what is not, the ideal body shape and size. It is then a small step for disgust and fear to be directed to food and obesity which the fashion industry currently demonises.” Linking to Gut Dysbiosis While Morris et al. have not pinpointed a specific bacterial agent, current scientific evidence suggests that it could be gut bacteria. Sergueï Fetissov, MD and Professor of Physiology, and colleagues from Rouen University and Hospital in France published a pioneer finding in this regard — which Morris et al. cited in his Medical Hypothesis paper. Fetissov and team found that autoantibodies — attacking appetite-regulating peptides — in the bloodstream of anorexics have substantial sequence similarities to few known gut microbes and external pathogens. Proteins having a similar string of amino acid sequence likely have similar structures. And similar structures indicate a higher chance of getting bound by the same antibody due to molecular mimicry. “Numerous cases of sequence homology with these [appetite-regulating] peptides were identified among commensal and pathogenic micro-organisms including Lactobacilli, Bacteroides, Helicobacter pylori, Escherichia coli, and Candida species,” the authors wrote. These are just some examples as they have also discovered 20 other such microbes that have similar protein sequences as the human appetite-regulating peptides. The team further showed that mice without a gut microbiome have lower levels of such autoantibodies than normal mice. “Our data demonstrate multiple cases of molecular mimicry of regulatory peptides with microbial proteins, identifying micro-organisms as putative biological targets to be tested for their relevance to the normal or pathophysiologic mechanisms of appetite and emotion,” Fetissov et al. continued. Linking to the Gut-Brain Axis A 2019 review — written by Jochen Seitz, MD, and coordinator of eating disorders research at University Aachen and colleagues from Germany — took a more holistic approach to the bacterial implications of anorexia. They look at the gut-brain axis and its associated immunology as a whole. They look at it as intricate biological machinery or systems that interact with one another (see figure below). While providing evidence supporting that bacterial infection may confuse the immune system to make antibodies attacking the brain’s appetite-regulatory signals, they added more recent evidence on the gut microbiome profile of anorexics. Compared to non-anorexics, their gut showed a reduced microbial diversity and abnormal outgrowth of certain microbes. “These digestive products of [microbial] protein fermentation [in anorexics] were previously found to increase PYY-production, a gastric peptide known to decrease appetite and increase depressive symptoms,” the German researchers wrote. Image credit: Open-access publication. Caption: Gut microbiome interactions in patients with AN. Citation: Seitz et al. (2019). The Impact of Starvation on the Microbiome and Gut-Brain Interaction in Anorexia Nervosa. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 10(41). doi: 10.3389/fendo.2019.00041 To Wrap It Up A gut dysbiosis or dysregulated gut-brain axis leads to systemic inflammation, autoantibodies, and harmful microbial metabolites — all of which negatively affect the brain’s appetite signals. This may trigger — or at least contribute to — the downward spiral leading to anorexia, in addition to genetic and psychosocial factors. To this end, Seitz et al. (2019) proposed for gut microbiome interventions in addition to traditional therapy for anorexia. “The goals could be to increase the amount of energy harvested from the same quantity of food and to decrease gut permeability, inflammation and antibody formation, with the potential consequence of reducing depressive and anxious symptoms,” Seitz and colleagues emphasized. Likewise, Andrew Radford, the Chief Executive of Beat, an eating disorder charity told The Telegraph:
https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/bacterial-origin-of-anorexia-a-2016-medical-theory-7dd167e92b5
['Shin Jie Yong']
2020-04-21 00:02:37.531000+00:00
['Innovation', 'Mental Health', 'Health', 'Psychology', 'Science']
Medical Tourism — Malaysia. Malaysia is quickly becoming a leader…
Malaysia is quickly becoming a leader in medical tourism. Md. Bipul Nazir, Managing Director of H Healthcare Berhad is at the forefront of medical tourism. H Healthcare Berhad will soon have over 300 clinics and 30 medical centers catering to offering health screenings, procedures and treatments to tourists. Tourists can enjoy the rich culture, delectable foods and beautiful accommodations while receiving excellent medical care. In terms of capturing medical tourism, Malaysia has spent the past few years becoming one of the best destinations of healthcare service providers. There are many facilities where tourists can find English speaking doctors and nurses. Tourists can make an appointment with a specialist by simply walking into the hospital. Malaysia offers quality healthcare that is just as good as what is offered in Singapore, at a better price. Many of the nurses and doctors in Singapore are Malaysian so tourists can expect the same quality services from the medical system in Malaysia. When people come to Malaysia for medical tourism they get quality healthcare for a value. Tourists have many options for different packages and services to choose from. Various service providers offer unique holiday experiences paired with their services. Executive health screenings are one of the most popular services sought in Malaysia. The Malaysian health care system offers comprehensive screenings that tourists and foreigners trust. Malaysian doctors use high technology medical equipment when screening and they pay close attention to the patient’s medical histories. The doctors teams of doctors that make decisions regarding diagnosis and treatment. The government is invested in developing medical tourism in Malaysia as well. Government officials pay a lot of attention and put a lot of effort in supporting the medical tourism industry and making it into the industry it is today. Mr. Nazir feels that H Healthcare Berhad plays an important role in growing Malaysia’s medical tourism industry. They are expanding to offer specialized, executive facilities with one-stop services while still offering convenience and value. H Healthcare Berhad is focusing on really understanding the needs of the patients and providing a satisfying experience.
https://medium.com/@eacoo/medical-tourism-malaysia-d5402c846908
[]
2021-07-07 08:51:43.884000+00:00
['Medical', 'Malaysia', 'Tourism', 'Healthcare', 'Healthy Lifestyle']
Gender Equality
The word gender is here and there mistook for sex, in which case the last methods an organic piece that recognizes people. Gender tends to define the feminine or masculine characteristics of an individual. In more extensive terms, gender identifies with variables, for example, psychology, physiology, anatomy, society, and culture that make up an individual. From this definition, it very well may be reasoned that an individual would allude to these variables when alluding to an individual as one or the other feminine or masculine. A few issues identifying with sex have been raised, and numerous individuals continue discussing sexual orientation practically every day. One of the known issues is gender equality, which identifies with the arrangement of equivalent chances, treatment, and condition to the two people so they can understand their latent capacity to empower them to contribute and pick up from financial, social, social, and political turn of events. All the more explicitly, such issues have been noted in regions, for example, instruction, work, and society. In light of the above illustration, the objective of this paper is to fundamentally investigate and clarify the issues encompassing gender in education, work, and society. Do you think that girls and boys should be separated as students?? Gender equality in training allows girls and boys to have reasonable conditions for instruction just as treatment and openings, there are various reasoning for development. In such manner, there is a more prominent need to address gender inequality in education and how it can affect on the Millennium Development Goals. Gender in education has become a social issue particularly when separation is noticed after the infringement of different privileges of women and girls in learning institutions. A wide range of and different links between gender equality and the achievement of the common freedoms to teach exist. However, there has been an unavoidable forswearing of the human rights to education as experienced by women and girls all through the world that around 66% of ignorant and uninformed individuals are women. This sort of declaration confirms that gender discrimination is genuine, and something should be done to control it. One obvious reality that should be underscored is the way that education is seen as an empowering just as extraordinary right. Right to instruction can be improved to mean financial right, social right, and social right that everybody should be concurred. Along these lines, by underscoring on the privilege to instruction, the last appears to epitomize the inseparability just as the reliance in every basic freedom. www.bartleby.com/essay/Research-Proposal-Gender www.bartleby.com/topics/Gender-Differences-Essay Gender in work is regular practically in each association, and the businesses through the human asset group have put forth an attempt of having a work environment climate that is liberated from separation. Nearly everybody is very acquainted with the outlining structure of the 1950's. Back then, men were viewed as providers of some random organization. For instance, the father was considered as a persevering individual while then again; the ones who were left while resting by their spouses focus on an entire story and make it totally conceivable of certain results. Men rule the workplace environment, something that can make ladies question their worth and commitment in such associations. Genuinely, it is significant that simply like men, ladies get extra beneficial force, and absent a lot of uncertainty, they contribute tremendously to the development and advancement of the economy. In the most recent many years, the quantity of women being utilized has kept on expanding somewhat on account of governmental policy regarding minorities in society that has been taken to guarantee gender equality and balance. In view of the current jobs that people do in the working environment, each association needs to comprehend gender with total decency and unprejudiced nature to the extent rights, advantages, commitments, and openings are concerned. In that capacity, it makes it workable for businesses to comprehend why it is basic why rehearsing gender value is concerned. Through this, they analyze the different jobs that people do in the association since this would cause them to figure out what assets they need to give just as their needs inside the association. All in all, leading gender analysis can uncover what exercises are needed to be done, and for what reason should they be finished. In this manner, keeping an ideal gender balance in the working environment will cause the representatives to have equivalent and dynamic cooperation without depending a lot on a specific gender in completing things. This is significant as it permits the two people to have an equivalent possibility of being associated with dynamic for the association. As a variety of gender turns out to be more normal, the way of life ends up being explicit with regards to how they handle various activities in the network. For instance, in the general public, in some culture, more duties are agreed to men in the private field and the other way around. This is the place where gender analysis can help in distinctive these roles and obligations. Through this, a reasonable line can be set up in the way in which people, girls and boys should communicate in the society. Conclusion: The advancement of the society with respect to how worth a woman has in the long run changed the manner society saw women. The conventional gender roles that many have known in the past have absolutely changes on the grounds that a male-predominance society is progressively getting neutral. This difference in functions in the society is making women more dynamic at home and in the society overall. Subsequently, women inspiration is rising, and they have been striving to accomplish independence that would at last restrict them from thoroughly relying upon men. In this manner, the balance of gender role is unbalanced.
https://medium.com/@malikk5000/gender-equality-24dcadf34fde
['Muhammad Hamza']
2020-12-21 15:27:19.274000+00:00
['Gender Equality']
Returning to the Track with MSXII
Midnight Sun XII (MSXII) — 3rd place at the American Solar Challenge 2018 The Midnight Sun Solar Car Team has been designing and building solar-powered electric vehicles at the University of Waterloo since 1988. We proudly represent the University at the American Solar Challenge and the World Solar Challenge. While we have started designing our next vehicle, we will be returning to competition with MS-XII at the FSGP 2019. The Formula Sun Grand Prix is an annual competition that brings together post-secondary students from around the world to race self-constructed solar-powered electric vehicles. With the next race only three weeks away, we are busier than ever preparing MSXII for its return to the roads for the first time since the 2018 American Solar Challenge. After placing third last year at the ASC, we have set the bar higher and will be attending the FSGP 2019 with a fresh team of new leads and recruits. These last few weeks before departing for the competition are being used to make improvements to MSXII and vehicle testing at track days. Last week, we had our first track day of the term, where we conducted roll-down and brakes tests. UW Midnight Sun Solar Car Team arriving bright and early for track day By 9:45am on June 1st, the team was packed and ready to rollout. Guided by police escorts, we drove MSXII from our work bay to one of the University of Waterloo’s campus parking lots, the testing location for the day. We started with roll-down testing first as the weather forecast predicted that the winds would be higher later in the day. The roll-down test is used to determine the aerodynamic losses and the rolling resistance of the car . It consists of accelerating the car to a desired speed, and once achieved, the driver removes their foot from the accelerator and waits until the car coasts to a stop. We then obtained a relationship for aerodynamics & rolling resistance by plotting telemetry data on a speed vs. time graph. Additionally, wind speed and direction were measured using an anemometer, which were then factored into our calculations. During preparation for brakes test, we noticed that the vehicle was taking longer than expected to come to a stop. On one of our practice runs, we accelerated to ~36km/hr and it took 4.6s for the car to come to a complete stop after flooring the brake. We then found that brake fluid was leaking from the front wheels, which put our testing on hold. Over the next two hours, the mechanical team removed the wheels and took off one of the brake calipers. After replacing the caliper, the mechanical team re-assembled the wheels and bled the brakes. Finally, the car was ready to resume testing at 5:30pm. Rolldown testing in progress The brake test involves the vehicle reaching a certain speed, then braking when a flag is dropped. Using a stopwatch, the deceleration of the vehicle can be determined based on its initial speed and time to come to a complete stop. To qualify for the race, teams must pass an official brakes test where the car must decelerate to a stop within a tenth of the speed of the car in miles per hour (i.e. if the car is travelling 30mph, it must stop within 3 seconds). This year, our brakes have been remodelled with a new master cylinder and during our track day wet brake testing, MSXII managed to stop within the required time frame. However, the top speed MSXII hit was 26mph, and with the real test being run at 30mph we will need to test in proper conditions before concluding that MSXII will consistently pass. Firmware and Hardware teams inspecting Solar Array System Leading into next week’s track day, the team is looking to have the entire car put together and fully prepared to do simulated scrutineering and dynamics testing on the emergency services track nearby. The team will be pushing hard this week to make final adjustments and calibrations leading into the second round of testing to be ready for the FSGP. See you at FSGP 2019!
https://medium.com/@uwmidsun/returning-to-the-track-with-ms-xii-9773c1d1dab2
['Midnight Sun Solar Rayce Car Team']
2020-01-07 00:05:31.464000+00:00
['Solar Energy', 'Solar Power', 'University Of Waterloo', 'Race', 'Solar Car']
Image Composition with Transparent Image by OpenCV
In this article, I write two ways to Image Composition, addWeighted and roi. Images do not need transparent png and 3 channel reading in opencv is ok. But, be careful to image size. Used Image img1.jpg img2.jpg 1. addWeighted : the function of OpenCV cv2.addWeighted(img1, α : transparency of img1, img2, β : transparency of img2, γ) import cv2 # read images img1 = cv2.imread('./img1.jpg') img2 = cv2.imread('./img2.jpg') # make image result = cv2.addWeighted(img1[0:img2.shape[0], 0:img2.shape[1]], 0.5, img2, 0.5, 0) # show image cv2.imshow('result', result) cv2.waitKey(0) cv2.destroyAllWindows() The output is this. If the size of transparent parts have difference, error will occur. cv2.error: OpenCV(4.2.0)/io/opencv/modules/core/src/arithm.cpp:669: error: (-209:Sizes of input arguments do not match) The operation is neither 'array op array' (where arrays have the same size and the same number of channels), nor 'array op scalar', nor 'scalar op array' in function 'arithm_op If you change the transparency, img4 = cv2.addWeighted(img1[0:img2.shape[0], 0:img2.shape[1]], 0.8, img2, 0.2, 0) img2 is thiner. More over, γ is changed, img5 = cv2.addWeighted(img1[0:img2.shape[0], 0:img2.shape[1]], 0.4, img2, 0.4, 0.2) the image is darker. If you want to show all of img1, you show composited image over img1. img6 = img1.copy() img6[0:img2.shape[0], 0:img2.shape[1]] = img3 2. Roi : Logical Sum by Bit # clip img1 : the size is same as img2 roi = img1[0:img2.shape[0], 0:img2.shape[1]] # theoretical sum f_roi = cv2.bitwise_and(roi, img2) # show original size img7 = img1.copy() img7[0:img2.shape[0], 0:img2.shape[1]] = f_roi Cutting from img1 as the size is the same as img2. Composited f_roi is below, the colors are mixed, it is different from addWeightd.
https://medium.com/@ugetsu-clown-crown/image-composition-with-transparent-image-by-opencv-bd62a23ef9c
['Ugetsu Crown']
2020-10-23 10:03:42.367000+00:00
['Python', 'Composition', 'Opencv', 'Roi', 'Image']
Is Evernote Still the Best?
Is Evernote Still the Best? Will It Ever Be Again? Photo by Inbetween Architects on Unsplash About three months ago, I wrote an article entitled, Why I Think Evernote Is Still the Best. It was (and still is) a very popular article, and I got mostly positive feedback. So what happened to Evernote? It’s hard to say. Hubris? Arrogance? Or an honest attempt to improve a legacy app and bring it into line with the competition. A few days ago, Evernote made available version 10 of its popular note-taking app. The release was met with everything from wild applause to outright disgust and hatred. Why the disparity? Well, for one thing, there are many different types of users out there. People that actually use it as a simple note-taking app were probably pleased. It had a more modern, cleaner look and, of course, it took notes. But many of us that have been using it for a long time, ten years in my case, used it for much more. We used it for what it was truly designed for, a document storage and retrieval system. Sure, some of those documents were simple notes we type on the fly. But many of us used it as a full-fledged paperless environment. And at that, it excelled. This new app, not so much. As I said in the other article, I occasionally go out and try the competition. In my mind, that is primarily Notion, OneNote, and Nimbus Notes. There are others, including relative newcomers like Roam Research and Joplin, but they didn’t really click with me. A lot of people are excited about Roam, especially backlinks, which apparently, Notion now has. But, I’m not sure what that even means, so I wasn’t as attracted to it. I’ve never gotten up in the morning, poured some 2% milk over a heaping bowl of Post Toasties, and said, “Man, if only I had me some backlinks.” So, for various reasons, those three were the ones I focused on. The problem is, they just didn’t have key features that I relied on in Evernote. For me, the most important of these and a deal-breaker was the input folder. None of the others had it, so I stuck with Evernote. Now, they’ve taken it away. The input folder is a simple concept but was vital in my workflow. Any file that got put into a particular folder on my hard drive was automatically and immediately uploaded into Evernote. Apparently, this is a Windows-only feature, so maybe Mac users aren’t as disappointed as I am. (That’s not the case as apparently, the new IOS apps are a disaster also). But it has been my primary way of getting data into Evernote for years. Email attachments get saved into that folder. Everything I scan goes directly into that folder. But here’s the thing that I think has everyone so upset. For ten years, there has been a feature request section in the Evernote forum. And long term users have requested a lot of things. Several of those things were extremely popular and asked for a multitude of times. Then two years ago, Ian Smalls, the new boss, began working on a new version of Evernote that was going to be better and faster. That app was finally released into a closed and then an open beta. During the beta process, veteran users made suggestions and requested changes and features. Almost everything people have been asking for from the early days of the forum right up through the public beta was ignored. But that’s not the worst of it. They not only didn’t add much new stuff, they took away a lot of the old stuff. Like the input folder. For me, the main differentiating feature between it and the competition was now gone. They also broke or removed other features that have users up in arms. To be fair, Evernote is trying to explain what it did and why. They needed to get the platform pared back to common ground so that all systems’ development could proceed on a level playing field. The problem is that all Operating Sytems aren’t the same. What’s easy in one system is problematic in another and vice versa. So they had to get down to the least common denominators. Least being the operative word. Now they can build and move forward. But the problem with that is, it took two years to get here. Two years! And this is the result. So, how long do we have to wait for missing features to be returned if they ever will be, much less the ones we’ve been clamoring for the last decade. So now, the forums are full of three basic camps. Long-time users who are pissed, canceling their premium subscriptions and jumping ship, cooler heads with a wait and see what happens attitude, and the people who think everything is fine and the new version works great. I suspect that the last group has only used a small set of Evernotes power, and thus, nothing has changed. For people in the second group, the legacy version still works and can even be installed side-by-side with the new version. Side note, the legacy version is 6x — they jumped all the way to 10 for some reason, most likely marketing. Then, there is the first group. They are angry, they are vocal, and they are leaving. They are all over the forums, including Evernote’s own, discussing what they are moving to and how. I have no idea what percentage of users are in each group, but the first is the most vocal. And most of them are long-time premium subscribers. I suspect most of the third group are free users. I fall squarely astride the first two. Wait and see or taking action sound like two separate things, but you can do both. I’m not deleting my account or canceling my subscription yet. (Easy for me to say because I’m only six months into my last payment) So, I will keep checking on the new app and watching the forums in hopes they can fix this mess. But I’m not standing around either. First, I finally jumped into my long-time planned, never executed process of cleaning up Evernote. The beauty of Evernote used to be the ease of getting stuff in, but that also led to getting a lot of things in that didn’t really need to be. Also, a lot of stuff should have had a short shelf life that’s still sitting around. Because, why not? So, I’m not done, but I’ve paired by 12K notes in half. First, using their import process, I put a copy of everything into OneNote. More on that later. Now, I had a backup of everything. Being an Office 365 subscriber, I have 1Tb storage there, so that just made sense. Next, I purged all old and archival notebooks from Evernote. That took care of about 25% of my total volume without impacting my day to day use at all. I hadn’t referenced most of that stuff in years, and I had the copy in OneNote if needed. Next, I did a quick scroll through, deleting things that are no longer relevant. I also got rid of most forwarded email. Months ago, I decided to start using my email system to organize my email, only sending to Evernote things that had long-term relevance and use, or those things I didn’t want to lose track of. Finally, I spent time in each notebook, scanning each note and deciding two things, do I need this and where and how would I use it. That is where I began my evaluation process of an Evernote replacement. Again the three I looked at were Notion, Nimbus, and OneNote. Apparently, there has to be a capital N in the name for me to consider it. Back about the time I wrote the previous article, I began building systems in Notion. They had improved their free plan, as opposed to Evernote, who crippled theirs. I wasn’t looking at replacing Evernote at that time, but Notion is just better at some stuff, and I wanted to take advantage of those features. A few things, such as books, movies, and recipes, got copied from Evernote to Notion with the intention of those things getting permanently ported over. I had an account at Nimbus from evaluating them a couple of years ago. It also had a copy of my Evernote data as it existed at that time. For anyone unfamiliar, if you are looking for an Evernote replacement and you don’t want the pain of learning a completely new system, Nimbus Notes is your guy. It’s very similar but has added a lot of the features people have wanted in Evernote. They have also added many features that attract people to Notion. And of course, I had a copy of OneNote/OneDrive from being a Microsoft customer. So, as I evaluated each notebook in Evernote and continued to purge things that weren’t current, I also began porting them to all three. I wanted to do some real-life testing of the three systems and see which one(s) I might want to move to. The import methods are fast and straightforward; either point to a notebook in Evernote or export a notebook as an .enex file and import that. Of course, you can import your entire Evernote, but except for a quick archival copy like I did, I wouldn’t recommend it. I’ve only been at this for a few days but wanted to give you my impressions so far. Before I delve into the individual programs, I should let you know a couple of things. I am a Windows/Android user. Second, concerning Android. All three have Android apps, and before I got much further, I wanted to test their search capabilities. That’s how I use Evernote 90% of the time on the Android. I think of something, I search for it, and find it quickly. The good news is, all three performed just as well. Nimbus had a slight edge, but from touching the icon, typing in a search term, to seeing the results, all apps worked in 15–20s. I’ve read horrible things about Notion, and it used to be worse, but whether it’s because of their recent update or my new phone, it was just as speedy as the rest.
https://medium.com/swlh/is-evernote-still-the-best-c4a5736f0b72
['Darryl Brooks']
2020-12-13 14:51:00.114000+00:00
['Review', 'Productivity', 'Evernote', 'Business', 'Software']
SOLID Design Principles. Single Responsibility Principle
If you are reading this article, at least my initial goal is achieved and I got one stranger who I virtually can talk to throughout next several minutes. Solid, I mean S O L I D(just spell it:). If you are involved with computer science, probably the very first thing that comes to your mind after hearing this word is some kind of “structure”, a “rule” or if u are a bit more advanced u may think of some kind of design principles that were introduced by the guy called Robert C. Martin a.k.a Uncle Bob(Don’t confuse names with 2 different people, like I did in the beginning of my journey to CS world:))). To understand the exact idea of design principles, first we have to dig deeper into metaphysical understanding of human mind, and investigate quantum nature of the universe. Theory of special relativity states ………………………Come on. Who cares about this stuff here. That’s definitely out of the scope of our topic. Let’s get back to earth. Single Responsibility Principle aka SRP, aka the first letter in SOLID. As the name suggests itself, we are dealing with some kind of separation or partitioning of our program. One of the most common problems in software development is extreme coupling of software components. The moment when you discover, that after adding a single button on the UI, your program may crash for some other reason. It’s like bringing your car to service for seat belt issue. And next day when you get back the “Fixed” car discover engine problems. Here comes the definition of SRP[1]: A module/class should have one, and only one reason to change. There should be no reason of changing a car engine, while fixing seat belt issues. Other wise you will have to revisit car service, this time for engine problem. And who knows which part will be next… Let’s get back to the software. What makes a software system to change? Definitely not us, developers. Systems are changed to satisfy users and stakeholders requirements’. It’s them, who tell us what to change. They are “the reason to change”. Let’s redefine the definition[1]: A module/class should be responsible to one, and only one, user or stakeholder. To understand it better, let’s have a look at an example. You can search for “Employee SRP example” the famous one, but here let me introduce a different case. Take a look at the image below. Imagine, in your system you have a class “Data”, which has 2 methods. getWebPageData, returning data to display on web-site and getDatabaseData, returning data to be stored into a database. In the company, that uses your software, there are 2 dudes. Bob is responsible for marketing and therefore proper UI of the web-site, whereas Rob is responsible for technical side and therefore properly storing data into the database. Bob’s responsibility covers using getWebPageData method, correspondingly Rob uses getDatabaseData method. One day you receive an email from Rob(the tech guy) stating that after some technical updates, their database no longer supports storing images of current format. He asks to change image format in getDatabaseData method. Of course you immediately accept Rob’s demand. It appears that images are generated from the “getImageData” method. And you just change it’s implementation to return image of new format. Then you proudly deploy the software and get deserved credits from Rob(the tech guy). After brilliant evening, you open your inbox next morning and unfortunately receive a complaint email from Bob(the marketing guy), stating that since last night, the web-site was down. Literally it’s crashed. That’s the moment when you realized the true nature of single responsibility principle. It appears, that both getWebPageData and getDatabaseData methods, use same getImageData method to get image. While changing implementation of getImageData method to satisfy Rob’s(tech) needs, you accidentally messed up with Bob(marketing). The example shows that it’s extremely bad idea to have several responsibilities able to change same things. In this case Tech and Marketing responsibilities are mixed and a change in the one has a negative effect on the other. This is the violation of Single Responsibility Principle.
https://medium.com/@achosharashenidze/solid-design-principles-2ded41935f73
['Acho Sharashenidze']
2020-12-26 08:41:28.327000+00:00
['Solid', 'Uncle Bob', 'Design Patterns', 'Software Architecture']
NE : The Neglected East
“India is going through it’s political semi-final”, proclaim some of the prominent media outlets, actively analyzing the political scenario in India on whether or not Congress would retain the states, on whether or not BJP would clean sweep and whether or not a new party in Delhi would pose a challenge to the national parties. Of special mention is the fact that Delhi election were treated in a manner that it is going to decide the national polls scheduled for next year. Amidst all this analysis and panel discussions, one doesn’t find a mention of what is going to happen in Mizoram. Mizoram elections attracted almost no print or television real estate. All the prominent media panelists sitting in Delhi seem to care less as you go farther from Delhi. Obviously for reasons best known to media personnel Mizoram was the last on the agenda, probably because of it’s small size and distance from Delhi (farthest among the NorthEastern states) and that it is not going to affect anything in Delhi panel discussions or the LokSabha polls anyways. Mizoram was not even polled by the agencies doing exit poll analysis, except the special mention of IndiaTV-CVoter (the only agency I have heard) who cared to do some post poll analysis on Mizoram. Stock markets too showed that it did not care about who wins in Mizoram. In fact the stock market did not even care if Congress was going to retain Mizoram, (according to IndiaTV exit poll analysis) since it surged ahead based on exit polls suggesting a big win for BJP (having a business friendly PM candidate) in other four states. It personally took me some effort to go and find out about what actually happened in Mizoram polls, who is going to win, who are the prominent parties. Despite the painstaking efforts of our forefather to unite the country after it was in shambles post Independence, we often forget that NorthEast India matters and people there are as much Indian as from (supposed) ‘mainland India’. With the increasing number of students and economic migrants coming to Indian metros from seven sister states, there still seems to be a prejudice against them evident not only in form of crimes but that our own government had to intervene to protect Indians from Indians. One can only be sad when MHA has to issue an advisory stating ‘zero tolerance’ policy for crimes against people from NE. It was a sorry state when NE people had to leave their own country to relocate to their own land. And despite all the rhetoric in espousing the cause of NE, there is little evidence to suggest that things are changing on the ground. There is negligible understanding about the people from NE in other parts of India because we have chosen to neglect it. It irks me when we blame westerners/outsiders for our problems, but behave like westerners to our own people from the east. Probably a day would come with our collective efforts that we would have at least one chapter in study books, one program on television, one article in newspapers and a real place in our hearts devoted to the land that brings light to India.
https://medium.com/all-things-philosophical/ne-the-neglected-east-4a17871eacb0
['Anshul Pandey']
2017-12-09 02:42:45.077000+00:00
['My Thoughts', 'Delhi', 'Loksabha', 'Media', 'Mizoram']
A Deep Dive into Self-Driving Cars
History of Self-Driving Cars With the rapid development of technology and urbanization, there is growing demand for traveling in a more convenient, labor-efficient and safe way. One of which is through self-driving cars. Scientists and tech corporations in a multitude of industries have been exploring the automation of vehicles for a long time. There’s data showing that experiments have been conducted on self-driving cars since at least the 1920s and people never stopped to optimize and explore this field since then. As of 2019, twenty-nine U.S. states have passed laws permitting autonomous cars. In Europe, cities in Belgium, France, Italy, and the UK are planning to operate transport systems for driverless cars, and Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain have allowed testing robotic cars in traffic. Self-Driving cars in Industry There’s data showing that 40+ corporations are working on autonomous vehicles. Beyond trendy names like Tesla and Alphabet chasing self-driving cars, a host of auto brands and other tech heavyweights are also investing in autonomous R&D. Many major automotive manufacturers, including General Motors, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Audi, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, and Volvo, are in the process of testing driverless car systems. Private companies working in auto-tech are attracting record levels of deals and funding, with autonomous driving startups leading the charge. Along with early-stage startups, VCs, and other investors, large corporations are also angling to get a slice of the self-driving pie. The operating systems of level 4 (see below for an explanation on the levels) are currently being tested by Google, Uber, Apple, and Samsung. These systems have already been tested in trucks by Volvo, Otto (Uber owned) and Daimler (Mercedes Benz). The Five Stages of Self-driving Cars Society of Automobile Engineers’ International standard J3016 defines six levels of automation for automakers, suppliers, and policymakers to use to classify a system’s sophistication. The pivotal change occurs between Levels 2 and 3, when responsibility for monitoring the driving environment shifts from the driver to the system. Level 0: As usual, a human driver is required to do all tasks related to operating the vehicle safely at all times. Examples: A 1967 Porsche 911, a 2018 Kia Rio. Level 1: An automated system on the vehicle can sometimes assist the human driver. Example: Adaptive cruise control. Level 2: An automated system on the vehicle can actually conduct some parts of the driving tasks while the human driver monitors the environment and performs the rest of the required driving tasks. Examples: Audi Traffic Jam Assist, Cadillac Super Cruise, Mercedes-Benz Driver Assistance Systems, Tesla Autopilot, Volvo Pilot Assist. Level 3: An automated system can do both actually conduct some parts of a driving task and monitor the driving environment in some instances, but the human driver must be ready to take back control when the system requests. Example: Audi Traffic Jam Pilot. Level 4: The car is capable of performing all safety-critical driving functions while monitoring conditions in defined use cases. Self-driving is fully possible in most road conditions and environments without the need for human intervention. A functional driver cockpit is still in place (steering wheel, brake/acceleration pedal, etc.). An automated system can both conduct the task of driving and monitoring the environment, without the need for a human driver to take back control. However, the operation of the system is limited to certain environments and conditions. Example: Google’s now-defunct Firefly pod-car prototype, which had neither pedals nor a steering wheel and was restricted to a top speed of 25 mph. Level 5: The vehicle in this stage can be called an actual “driverless-car” and is completely driverless, full-time automated driving in all conditions without a human driver. These vehicles will not feature driving equipment and will no longer look like the vehicles of the past. An automated system that can perform all driving tasks, under all conditions that a human driver could perform. Example: None yet, but Waymo — formerly Google’s driverless-car project — is now using a fleet of 600 Chrysler Pacifica hybrids to develop its Level 5 tech for production. Image from: Internet of Business Challenges to Self-Driving Cars It is obvious that we still have a long way to go before reaching the final stage, as there are difficulties still very much up in the air. Ford CEO Jim Hackett expressed a conservative stance, admitting that the company had initially “overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles.” It still plans to launch its first self-driving fleet in 2021, but with significantly dialed-back capabilities. As for the intelligence, practicability, maneuverability and safety of autonomous driving, there are still many difficulties in science and technology. At the same time, it is hard to achieve a fully autonomous driving infrastructure and develop legal provisions applicable to the traffic environment with driverless cars. Image from: RAC Road Perception: Cognition while driving is complicated. It is challenging to build a self-driving system that can perceive the road better than the best human driver. A self-driving car’s perception system needs to ensure a lower car fatality rate, even though the current car fatality rate is already low (about one death per 1 million hours of driving). Cognition while driving is complicated. It is challenging to build a self-driving system that can perceive the road better than the best human driver. A self-driving car’s perception system needs to ensure a lower car fatality rate, even though the current car fatality rate is already low (about one death per 1 million hours of driving). Navigation: A perfect navigation system is essential for the higher stages of autonomous vehicles. It is difficult to build a navigation system that is updated in real time, intelligent and flexible, covering all geographical areas as well as all the traffic information. Image from: IEEE Computer Society Performance: Developing a perfect internal system is challenging. The high-quality power management is needed to control power, overall consumption, and thermal dissipation. There is always a trade-off between safety and efficiency. For example, for the automatic driving system to make decisions while driving, it is safe for the system to decide to drive very slowly. However, for the customers, a very slow and inefficient car is useless and tedious. Developing a perfect internal system is challenging. The high-quality power management is needed to control power, overall consumption, and thermal dissipation. There is always a trade-off between safety and efficiency. For example, for the automatic driving system to make decisions while driving, it is safe for the system to decide to drive very slowly. However, for the customers, a very slow and inefficient car is useless and tedious. Handling the Unexpected : The driving regulations in the real traffic environment are very complicated. It is difficult for the automatic driving system to understand the complicated traffic regulations as a reasonable person does, and make the most appropriate choice in some special emergencies, including the choice between humanity and rationality. For example, what happens when there is a conflict between following the traffic rules or reducing casualties when other vehicles or pedestrians do not follow the traffic rules? : The driving regulations in the real traffic environment are very complicated. It is difficult for the automatic driving system to understand the complicated traffic regulations as a reasonable person does, and make the most appropriate choice in some special emergencies, including the choice between humanity and rationality. For example, what happens when there is a conflict between following the traffic rules or reducing casualties when other vehicles or pedestrians do not follow the traffic rules? Liability : There is still a great deal of controversy over the possible liability for car accidents. Who is responsible for the accident — the car manufacturers, the retail company or the owner? Is it the operating system or hardware that’s at fault? Should we apply strict liability to the manufacturer to ensure they are prudent enough while building the car? If so, if the companies are willing to shoulder that liability? These are just some of the questions we face while building self-driving cars. : There is still a great deal of controversy over the possible liability for car accidents. Who is responsible for the accident — the car manufacturers, the retail company or the owner? Is it the operating system or hardware that’s at fault? Should we apply strict liability to the manufacturer to ensure they are prudent enough while building the car? If so, if the companies are willing to shoulder that liability? These are just some of the questions we face while building self-driving cars. Consumer Trust: The public lacks trust in the automated system for safety reasons, and most people tend to trust their driving skills, instead of completely trusting and relying on artificial intelligence. Image from: Seagate Blog There remain a multitude of challenges facing the development of fully autonomous driverless cars. Yet one thing is for certain: the driverless car industry will continue to expand with an optimistic future. Many companies around the world are striving to align their business models accordingly with this innovation of self-driving cars, which includes hiring highly sought-after yet low-supply talent in this area.
https://medium.com/ds3ucsd/a-deep-dive-into-self-driving-cars-f1d9e947889
['Wenqi Gao']
2019-11-18 21:37:10.517000+00:00
['Autonomous Cars', 'Self Driving Cars', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Data Science', 'Autonomous Vehicles']
The Berlin Wall explained in 500 words
A divided city within a divided country Despite falling entirely within the boundary of Soviet-controlled East Germany, at the end of World War II the administration of the German capital was divided into four separate zones, with one each being controlled by Britain, The United States, France and the Soviet Union. Less than a year later, fundamental differences between the communist and capitalist systems resulted in the agreements breaking down. As a result, the western powers moved to combine their three zones into a single, centrally administered western zone, and on 23 June 1948, the West introduced a new currency into their combined zone. Fearing the combined western zone would have considerably more power in the repatriation of Germany than it did with its single zone, the Soviet Union cut off land access to West Berlin. In what became known as the Berlin Blockade, the western allies commenced a series of massive airlifts, flying vital supplies of food, fuel and other necessities into West Berlin. A situation that continued until May 1949 when the Soviet Union abandoned their blockade. By 1958 the divided city was an increasingly liability for the Soviet and East German government. Its existence highlighting the sharp contrast between the communist and capitalist systems, and freedom of movement between the sectors had resulted in a mass exodus from the East. In a speech on 10 November 1958, the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev called for the Western powers to pull their forces out of Berlin. Khrushchev’s speech was interpreted as an ultimatum by the west and resulted in further tension as U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower refused point-blank to give in to Soviet demands. Between 1959–1961 bilateral talks were held been the U.S. and the Soviets; however little was achieved. On 13 August 1961, under orders from East German leader Walter Ulbricht, a barbed-wire fence was erected dividing East and West Berlin. This barbed wire fence was quickly expanded to include cement walls and guard towers. Shortly after the erection of the wall, a standoff between U.S. and Soviet troops at the diplomatic checkpoints became one of the tensest moments of the Cold War in Europe. The dispute, which centred on whether East German or Soviet guards were authorised to check travel documents of U.S. diplomates, resulted in the U.S. positioning tanks at the checkpoints. Fearing that the U.S. would attempt to remove the wall, or force their way through, the Soviets responded by placing their tanks on the East facing the West. The standoff had the potential to spark a war between the two nuclear superpowers, however, back-channel negotiations ended the stalemate with the Soviets agreeing to remove their tanks on the condition that the U.S. did the same. It is estimated that during the 27 years that the wall divided Berlin over 5000 people managed to escape from East to West. However, doing so was not without risk as during that period at least 101 people, most of whom were shot by East German border guards, died while attempting to get past the wall. The Berlin Wall remained in place until 9 November 1989, when the border between East and West Berlin reopened, and the wall was dismantled.
https://liamsaville.medium.com/the-berlin-wall-explained-in-500-words-5a4e09a489a0
['Liam Saville']
2019-11-11 19:48:48.431000+00:00
['Berlin Wall', 'History', 'Berlin', 'Cold War', 'Germany']
jQuery for Beginners: Intro to Some Groovy Event Listeners
Photo by Cookie the Pom on Unsplash Super Brief History on jQuery: On August 26th, 2006 a 22 year old named John Resig released the jQuery library to the world. John and his library had one simple but prudent goal, to make the use of JavaScript much easier and less time consuming for developers. w3schools.com explains it best, “jQuery takes a lot of common tasks that require many lines of JavaScript code to accomplish, and wraps them into methods that you can call with a single line of code.” If you have any doubts if John saved you time, energy, and sanity just look at this code comparison from Dr. Angela Yu’s Udemy course below: A lot less coding, right? Here is a picture of the the man, the myth, the legend: Now that we have a general understanding of what jQuery is, let’s dive into some event listeners. Events: Mouse Beginners, like myself, can easily be intimidated by event buttons and event listeners because they are so important to a website’s quality. My hope, like John’s, is to make life easier for you and save you some time. Mouse: Mouse events are simple applications that make a website/app much more interactive and user friendly. In the tech-world and real world, it’s the little things that make one user experience better than the others. .click — when a mouse is clicked. This is a pretty general concept. When you click on something a function or action occurs. For an example of this look to the code provided above that shows a button that changes the <h1> to red when it is clicked. NOTE: events are just function methods that John(jQuery) has simplified for simple intuitive use. .dblclick — when a mouse is double-clicked. This is a nice attribute that can be useful for buttons or pictures. This example below will have an alert pop up to tell you that “You just double-clicked!” whenever you double click on whatever “img” that you wish to refer to (line 3). This can also be a function that leads to another page or does some other function. Think about when you double on a picture to make it larger on ebay. 3. .mouseenter / .mouseleave — when mouse enters into an elements region a written code will run. Very common example of this is when you place your curser over a word or picture that can be clicked and it highlights, pops out, or changes colors. In the below example whatever you decide reference (button, picture, text) will magically turn the <h1> heading to green causing a very agreeable sensation for the user. The same kinda of code can be written using .mouseleave The Groovy Part: Now that you see its not very difficult to add event listeners, here are some more ways to spruce up a website with these additions that can be connected inside the function of the above methods: .hide/.show — This will do what you think it will. Once a button is clicked or if the mouse goes over the referred picture or text, jQuery will either hide or show whatever you designate it. Good example of .hide is if you are trying to make an exit button. Once you hit the exit button it will “hide” whatever you tell it to hide in your function. In the example below, we are hiding or showing the <h1> heading as soon as button is clicked. 2. .slideup/slidedown — This is the fancy way to hide or show whatever you want. This would work perfect for a situation where you wanted an image to be revealed after the user clicks on a button labeled “view” or if you wanted to make a button that made an image disappear and make more room on the web page. The below example would make the <h1> heading disappear or appear. 3. .animate — Animate offers the most artistic liberties for your fonts as it can use css to change your text to whatever you can create font-wize with css. If you want to change the color, opacity, size, whatever… all you have to do is tac-on this method. Thanks for reading!
https://medium.com/@eellin6/jquery-for-beginners-intro-to-some-groovy-event-listeners-7e5eb552049
[]
2020-12-14 07:15:32.907000+00:00
['Beginner', 'Jquery']
2019 UI and UX Design Trends
The reason this works in movies and video games is the short time these images are being displayed for. They call for a superficial impression, not diligent study. Combined with purposeful animation, 3D becomes a powerful design tool. The mobile industry with new powerful chips made it possible to not only render 3D objects but use them within the interface. Smaller screens are perfect for that. Cards 3D transition by Gleb Kuznetsov 3D flip menu by Minh Pham ✪ Flat UI design has been a dominant trend for over 5 years and hasn’t really changed. Lately, we’ve witnessed a clear shift towards adding depth and dimension to flat design without changing its main idea. Why depth is necessary is also why flat design came to exist — we need symbolism to make sense of everything. Flat is symbolic to the core. Deep flat is the new flat. Real 3D and CG combo revealed a customer response to life-like objects that they can interact with. Flat design is also capable of doing that in a unique and yet-to-be-explored way. They call it pseudo 3D. It’s flat layers stacking up to create a three-dimensional feel. The main asset adding dimension to flat design will be shadow and light positioning, and reflections. ARTA / Art Gallery by Mike | Creative Mints There is also a fake 3D trend on the rise which uses conventional design tools like Principle and After Effects to create motion pattern emulating 3D. Astronaut by Markus Magnusson In 2019 we might even see the return of skeuomorphism in a new fashion. If flat can be deep, it can be isometric as well. Retaining flat symbolism while tapping into a realistic view is a trend to explore. 😑 Yeah, but we will eventually run out of options. Already, there is no certain direction 3D UIs are moving towards. It goes both ways — simplification and sophistication. While it takes more technological effort to impress us, it takes just as much courage to throw complexity out of the window and roll out a crazy concept. However, if the most complex interfaces lack meaning or the boldest ideas are nothing but a curtain wall, all the efforts will be useless. We can do impressive imagery. It’s time to fill it with sense for humanity and address deeper issues. How can we make this happen? Surreal design All the 3D and motion design opportunities brought by better technologies don’t mean a thing if they fail to make an emotional impact. Ironically, you don’t need complexity to make the most impact. The reason why renegade attitude has always been a satellite of mainstream trends is its natural appeal. We need something to balance out the common sense, we need a devil on our shoulder, and sometimes we are playful. Some of the biggest redesign campaigns and associated illustrations came out as playful as it gets: How to stay scrappy by Justin Tran for Dropbox Design Shop Small by Joe Montefusco for Mailchimp This cartoonish style of illustration and even UI has one purpose — maintain freshness of the look. When your brand name is a staple, you can surround it with a never-ending buzz. Doesn’t matter who this style speaks to, it has to be weird or even ugly. Expect to see more of that vanguard and surreal design in 2019. 😑 Yeah, but not all companies and products can afford this impudence. The wider the audience, the more neutral the design has to be. Even though this might work for established brands, smaller companies and the ones struggling with exposure will have to play it safe and stick to commonalities. Build a following first, and then take them for a ride. Gradient 2.0, blazing colors, and darkness New screens have a fantastic rendition of colors. They even have to show this through default wallpapers. Designers explore the boundaries of accessibility and impressive gradients in UIs. Gradients are no longer for attention, they are now bringing depth and dimension to the interface. Grabient 2.0 by Eddie Lobanovskiy Gradient 2.0 is subtle and simple. It uses no conflicting colors. It has a clear light source and it aligns with the shapes to bring depth. Vibrant colors aren’t going anywhere. We will see more combined colors and layers. In fact, even the monochrome palette will present some sort of visual aesthetic through depth and dimensioning. Valley Illustration by J.HUA for Tunan We lack trust and optimism. Blazing colors promote positivity. Would you trust a crypto app like this? crypto app by uixNinja Even cooler is the fact that vibrant colors and meaningful gradients stand out better in the dark background. Dark themes are here to stay and they will only get better. Here, we took an anthropological approach to figuring out dark themes and why they work. Those who can find the balance between the accessibility of dark UI and emotive response of glaring colors, will be on top next year. Deep flat, colors, and 3D, in the dark. Dashboard by uixNinja 😑 Yeah, but accessibility is not the only problem with gradients, colors, and dark themes. Bright colors are traditionally used to enforce accents. When everything is color, how can you emphasize? Not all users have access to OLED screens. Some of the gradients can be lost. Too much contrast can impede user’s focus. Dark themes don’t work on a sunny day outside. That might actually be a good thing though. Variable fonts Traditionally, typefaces are perceived as static entities with a limited set of adjustable parameters. Designers and writers have to consider legibility in the context of x-height, stroke and letter width. Whenever the design requires multiple typefaces, designers have to provide all the files for the font styles used. You can’t fully commit to rich typography in a product unless you cover all the bases. With variable fonts you just need one file because variable or generative fonts provide infinite number of letter weight and width adjustments. Variable fonts can cover any portion of the design space left for the text. Variable fonts thrive in responsive design and localization. In the places where designers had to rack their brains about fitting text into smaller screens without losing the zest or stretching it for a different language which utilizes less characters. VOTE by Josh Rinard When web fonts were introduced, responsiveness was an aspect they were lacking. Not enough flexibility resulted in legibility issues and misalignment of the design itself. Variable fonts are fairly recent and they help deliver fonts for the web faster and help streamline design process in general. And that’s just the beginning. The artistic options of variable fonts are yet to be explored in 2019. 😑 Yeah, but how long till a smart and adjustable font becomes a means of promoting a sell? If you can have your text replying to the subtleties of every digital context available, how does it protect a reader from manipulation? Parametric text has roots in book printing which is a context limited by objective physics. This prevented people from saving on paper and ink and also made reading one of the most important reasons for our progress. Figma Today we ask the age-old question: “do designers need to code?” And then, “do developers need UX knowledge?” The point of these is simple — avoid pain and discrepancy implementing the design. So if it’s about the purpose, it should also be about ways to get there. Learning to code is a logical option. If you are the one who executes your own design, you avoid a bunch of issues. However, the amount of knowledge you need to maintain to be a relevant designer and a potent developer is exceptional. Can you do it? Good for you. For those who can’t, there should be other options. The purpose is not breeding a universal designer. It is about building better products, with delight. Another way to achieve this goal is to use and promote better tools. Figma is one of those tools. Before, designers had to consider a lot of variables like operating systems, integrations, plugins, storages, synchronization, collaboration, and finally, ways to assemble them all in one place. Those who did develop a workflow, deserve all kinds of respect. But we want less stress. Totally switched to Figma by Alexey Kolpikov Figma is a for-us-by-us design tool. It anticipated a lot of what-ifs and stuffed a lot of skepticism. Figma destroyed Sketch. It does everything Sketch and Adobe XD does but more and better. More importantly, Figma is aimed at building what will be implemented. Every Figma component can be turned into a React component via API and implemented on the front end. So far, Figma beats competition in cost, performance speed, collaboration, sharing, embedding, support, and so on. With that said, Figma is still developing and in 2019, there’s more to come. 😑 Yeah, but whenever we develop better products and fail to establish ethical use of the above, we only contribute to our own demise. Look at Twitter that is struggling to gain back its good name. 2018 was fruitful in tech executives testifying in court. Turns out, it’s not enough to put tools out there, we also have to watch how people use them. Will Figma protect users from dark patterns in UX, bad design, and fake news? Voice UIs Design does not have to be visual or visible to work. Through bumps and bruises, we realized that tools don’t really matter if we are building experiences that are not tactile. Designing logic means operating psychology. Building voice controls means dealing with natural language processing. Voice UI is as sensual as it is sophisticated. Voice UI realizes the concept of no UI to its finest. The process is internal and has more to do with writing, building context, and synthesizing data, than with actual design. Even so, designers are obsessed with finding ways to represent voice UI. Mainly it comes through impressive minority-report-like interfaces and animations. Organic Artificial Intelligence design by Gleb Kuznetsov Most of the times they have nothing in common with the reality of voice interfaces but they prepare a user for the absence of controls and teach them how to treat technology that does not need any. In 2019, we can hope to witness the deepening of the voice UI knowledge as more designers transition to meaningful experience from plain visual aesthetic of design. 😑 Yeah, but the biggest challenge with voice UIs is, ironically, not the human-to-machine interaction, but the human-to-human one, mediated by technology that has to be smarter than the two. We live in a massively imbalanced global society. We are struggling with the understanding of one another on many terms, technology included. Voice-controlled phones, cars, and homes might just broaden the gap between us. As designers, we should always consider well-being of humanity as our top priority. If technology, even the beautifully designed one, serves some at the expense of the others, it has to be tackled relentlessly. That’s not happening. UX Writing & UX Editing Last year, designers started paying attention to the meaning of the words that bear typefaces. Fiction and tech writers, epistolary hobbyists, and journalists got an adjacent industry for their skills. One thing led to the other and we defined the role of writing in design: You have to be in control of the way your business talks to your customers. Before, there was a mix of pompous narcissistic bullshit and technical nomenclature. Things a business was doing was mistaken for the value it could give its customers. Even though businesses were great, they suffered from the lack of definitive, simple, and persuasive wording to use with their audience. UX writing is based on two simple principles: be respectful and be useful. Everything else stems from them. Being concise means respecting people enough to value their time more than yours. It’s you who has to die over the text, not the user. Being clear means avoiding being twofold, protecting from bad experiences, thus, being useful. Being expressive means being truthful and hiding no flaws. Always focus on helping a user first, don’t show off your eloquence, don’t SEO it, and never use marketing cliches — enough is enough. UX writing is easy once you embrace being respectful and useful. People don’t want to see you flex and promote yourself. They want to know if you can help them. Make your service do the talking. In 2018, we’ve witnessed a noticeable rise in voice and tone design in major companies. They stopped pursuing ingenuity and focused on customer value. In 2019 we are yet to see the development of UX editing is a design discipline. The difference between UX writing and UX editing is the bandwidth. UX writers produce user-facing text. UX editors analyze, morph, bend, and twist any copy to turn it into a simple humane text. There is no crash course for UX editing. It is experience, observation, and kindness. Every major redesign campaign in 2019 will require a UX editor. 😑 Yeah but every trend goes through a set of stages. The first one is skepticism, then fascination, and then, bore. Fascination is the most dangerous because it often gets out of hand. It can turn the idea into a caricature and distort the value. UX writing is no different. When being simple is mistaken for dumbing down. When being clear becomes impudence, and being persuasive turns into condescendence. There is still a place for creative writing in product design. But not where the product meets a user. For example, Nike and Boeing are paying sci-fi writers to predict their futures. Product designer as a job title UX design is a very broad term. It is a part of service design which is cross-industrial. As the result, designers and design firms gather extensive portfolios of projects ranging from simple utility apps to complex FinTech platforms. Service design is a blanket. It can cover every industry and apply what works universally. Service designers can have their own style which they can apply to any product. That’s what they get famous for and that’s what businesses are willing to pay for. It’s like buying parts from a respected supplier. However, most companies are product companies and they might require a deeper level of understanding from a designer. These companies require a product designer who is integrated deeply into the team, has all the data available, and all the tools to influence the system as a whole. Product design has a significant advantage over service design. That’s the access to the analytics and the ability to test design decisions live. Product designers have the ability to focus on the specifics of the product they are associated with and let go of everything else. They are deeply informed about the user demographic they are designing for and have real data to operate on, as opposed to the assumptions most service designers have to work with. Innovative Eye Pillow Landing Page Design by Sasha Turischev 😑 Yeah, but transitioning to product design requires vigor. By risking to immerse yourself with a certain industry or a product, we are making a choice that we might never return from. In that case, the decision has to be factored. We have to consider the viability of the industry and the perspectives of the professional development within it. Fortune favors the brave and in 2019, we’ll see even more dedicated designers taking a shot at becoming specialists and sacrificing their universal skills. Time will tell.
https://uxplanet.org/2019-ui-and-ux-design-trends-92dfa8323225
['Moses Kim']
2018-12-12 07:37:42.960000+00:00
['Tech', 'Trends', 'Design', 'UI', 'UX']
In-Car Entertainment Technology. With autonomous cars taking the world…
With autonomous cars taking the world by storm, human drivers will become essentially redundant. Cars have become an additional living space as commutes get longer. So, if driving is not necessary, commuters can get bored during transit. Music can get tiring after a while and they start looking for better in-car entertainment. Car manufacturers are looking for ways to incorporate better in-car entertainment options. Soon, personal hologram shoppers will be projected to cars and passengers can shop without having to drive all the way to the store. Not a fan of long road trips? Play fun games with fellow cars on the route using V2V gaming options. Read on to find out how in-car entertainment will revolutionize driving. Holographic Personal Shoppers Many of us shop online and on our smartphones. And over the next decade will see exciting kinds of in-car shopping and retail experiences emerge. In the in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) scheme, vendors are already exploring and playing with different ad modules. And companies like TELENAV are designing systems that provide the car with vehicle payment and order-ahead capabilities. Store technologies will be supplemented by in-car shopping technology. We can expect customized AI shopping assistants and holographic personal shoppers beamed directly into the car. The main advantage of shopping with virtual reality and augmented reality is that they allow buyers to visit a store anywhere. Car shoppers can see the entire inventory of items put in their virtual library by a store owner and compare the dimensions and styling, even if the vehicle itself is in a remote area. This allows them to skip the time-consuming process of visiting shops and being confused with many choices. Before even talking to a salesperson, it helps them solidify their decision. For many, not only is this transformation of the purchasing phase into the digital space unique and exciting, but it is also relaxing. Binge Watch on the Go Source: C! Magazine Music is the most popular form of in-car entertainment, but as soon as autonomous car drivers become popular, new movie and gaming experiences will flourish. HD gaming, movies, and modern types of multiplayer digital entertainment can be brought to the car by universal 5G connectivity. The car with its high-definition graphics, surround-sound, and VR technology, will become a traveling entertainment pod. Apple and Google have launched car-centric versions of operating systems. Essentially offering laptop-like services on the car’s entertainment display. This evolution means in-car streaming will allow passengers to stream their favourite movies and series through smartphone networks or the car’s eSIM. Passengers will also be able to experience immersive movies with breakthrough VR entertainment content platforms. V2V Gaming — Play with Fellow Drivers Source: ET Telecom Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications involve a wireless network in which cars transmit messages with information about what they are doing. Speed, position, the direction of travel, braking, and loss of stability are details that are shared. The range is up to 300 meters. Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communications at highway speeds can encourage creative in-car gaming. Many smartphones and social online games have been specifically developed for the in-car experience. These games have been developed for semi-autonomous vehicles at level three and higher. Autonomous Level 3 vehicles are self-driving cars that are considered fully autonomous. These are commonly referred to as “eyes-off” cars, allowing the driver to sit back and relax when driving down the road while the car takes care of everything. Via an app, the passenger can choose a number of gaming experiences. By integrating XR with live physical vehicle input, such as speeding, braking, and steering from the driver, each ride or game can never be the same. Voice Assistance — Just Ask to be Entertained The versatility of voice assistants means that from the comfort of your couch or from the driver’s seat, you can now switch on the lights or do the shopping. You can now turn up the heating, do the shopping, or inquire about the news headlines from your car with voice assistants. Even from your home, you can monitor your vehicle, unlock car doors, start the engine, and change the temperature so you’re ready for your next drive. As part of an in-vehicle infotainment program, car manufacturers also have artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Security Challenges Source: Government Technology Minimizing cybersecurity threats is important for any gadget that can access your data. The more devices your car is linked to the more opportunities hackers have. There is potential for hackers to steal personal identifiable information (PII) from vehicle systems, such as personal travel and location details, entertainment habits, and even financial information. New attacks are constantly being developed. This means that it will be difficult for automakers to predict where hackers will strike next. A vehicle can experience malfunctions that put the lives of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians at risk, if a few sensors are misinformed or if unauthorized messages are sent. Conclusion The number of IoT devices on the market means that no security solution is one-size-fits-all. But we can stay safe and entertained on the road by using trusted products that encrypt and tokenize sensitive data. We are approaching a new age of mobility. Connected cars will change the way we think about driving, or rather, how our connected cars think about driving, by combining AI with in-car internet connectivity, car manufacturers will revolutionize the idea of human mobility for years to come.
https://medium.com/@tanveerinamdar/lynxotic-7bdd23703314
['Tanveer Inamdar']
2020-12-16 02:08:25.637000+00:00
['Technology', 'Mobike', 'Tech', 'Transportation', 'AI']
Cleaning Better (The 5-Minute Method)
We’ve all been there. When your work week becomes so chaotic that Clothes Chair has morphed into Clothes Mountain, and your small to-do list feels so long you can’t breathe. I am a binge cleaner. A no-good, cleaning for five hours until 3 a.m., procrastinator. There were times when I was so mentally exhausted throughout my work week that I let my dishes and laundry pile up until it was unbearable to look at. The only fix was doing it all at once. I felt good after those nights. Really good. As if I had climbed Clothes Mountain and placed a flag at the tippy top. I’m never letting it get this bad again, I would think. I’ll stay more on top of it. My intentions were in the right place (for the most part) and I absolutely would stay on top of it for a few days. Then, after a particularly exhausting week, the cycle would repeat itself again and again. Spoiler alert: saying I’ll do it tomorrow was just one of the many reasons my house had become a disaster. I’ll let you in on a secret: your problem isn’t that you have too much to do — even though it’s absolutely true — your problem is that you have an unhealthy relationship with cleaning. Take a deep breath. Think about everything that has piled up in your life and how it weighs down on you. When all of these chores and responsibilities add up, you’ll notice that you want to spend less and less time in places that used to make you feel relaxed. Even while your scrolling through your phone on the couch to unwind, the dishes piling up in the sink are like a dark cloud looming over you. It almost takes more work to avoid them than to face it head on, but you’re stuck in a vicious cycle that is hard to break out of. How do you fix it? Let’s start simple. No matter how busy your work week is, you have time at the end of the day to tackle one thing. Just one. Over a year ago, I moved to a new city where I didn’t know anyone. This move had been planned for months and I was excited to get out of my comfort zone, make new friends, and have exciting adventures in a new place. Instead, I was inside (as most of us were) during the peak of the pandemic for a year. And as the months dragged on, the motivation to take care of the things around me slowly dwindled until all of my responsibilities were locked away in a box. Even though I knew things were bad, knew that it had gotten out of hand, I had lost all hope that it could ever get better. I couldn’t see the floor of my room. I had planned to do laundry and threw all the clean clothes on the bed and then never got to them, so my one place of peace and comfort — my own room — became stressful to walk into. That’s when the thought struck me: five minutes. I will clean for five minutes. What resulted was something more amazing than I could have possibly imagined. Five minutes of cleaning a day was actually showing results, and that excitement helped me work up to ten minutes, then fifteen. Fifteen minutes of cleaning a day and, within a couple of weeks, my house was spotless. It wasn’t perfect. On days where I felt emotionally yucky, I set the timer back down to five minutes. Other times, I felt ready for a challenge and bumped it up to thirty or an hour. That’s the thing: regardless of how much was getting done, something was being accomplished each day, and the results did wonders for my mental health. The Five Minute Method (FMM) will also help you with balance, where you aren’t spending all of your free time over the sink or cleaning out the fridge. If this goes well for you, you can dig a little deeper and make yourself a weekly cleaning schedule, like this: Believe me, I know this looks intimidating, but the good thing about this list is that you have complete control. If you aren’t feeling great, pick out a couple of important things from each day (or just one if it’s a really rough day) and set your timer. Don’t follow every bullet on my list and don’t feel bad if your list is small — make something that works best for you and your lifestyle. Whatever you don’t tackle, you can get to next week or move it over to an easy day. I promise, it gets easier. The first step is to forgive yourself, and to create an environment that makes the weight on your shoulders feel a little bit lighter at the end of the day. You deserve it.
https://medium.com/@chelseyblogs/cleaning-better-tips-for-the-overwhelmed-depressed-de3fa7486cf2
['Chelsey Louise']
2021-12-15 06:18:52.650000+00:00
['How To', 'Cleaning', 'Lifehacks', 'Depression', 'Cleaning Tips']