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I Cannot Believe I Hitchhiked to Ukraine | Disclaimer: this article is not an article, is a script for my youtube
sadness:
Hey, 44 year old version Eric, you might thought you have always been a mentally tough human animal. But you are wrong. Let me tell you the part that you’ve already forgotten but you should not.
@11 I feel worthless: This hitchhike mission from Vladivastok to Sainktpeterurg wasn’t scary for me. I mean I have already done some thoughts experiment. But I can understand why most human animals that I’ve encountered think it’s super hard or fearful to hitchhike across Russia especially as a asian foreigner in covid19 and winter(I’ve even never seen snow before this trip when I was still in Taiwan) . To sum up, I knew I will be successful.
12But
Being refused and ignored by god knows how many human animals is different stories.
I thought human ignoring me on the street only happened in Taiwan, afterall, I subscribed to so many social experiments youtuber from america, their interactions are pretty damn well.
I expected humans live in Russia will talk to me. I expected humans live in Russia will welcome me. I was very well prepared, to be liked, licked, and make friends.
But umm, I guess I umm I really know nothing. I thought my “Do you want to make friend with me” questions , is pretty straightforward, quite polite, rather friendly. But umm, whatever reason it is, for me is so damn hard to find people who want to spend adequate attention on me.
I failed more than 9000 times to find people who want to talk to me longer than 2 minutes, I feel like nobody wants to make friend with me, I feel like I am no longer interesting and friendly. My brain happened to be the most powerful, it helped me connected the time when I was bullied at school, being unloved by my narcisstic parents and brother (I am sorry dad and mom, I gotta be honest with my own story.) Do you know what’s the most devastating part? Is when Russian laughing at me on the street, it’s not like “ohh there is a funny looking traveler with peculair outfit”. No it’s not. It’s whenever I approached them, they refused to talk to me, walk away. But after we separate for 3 seconds. They laughed out loud, they probably thought I don’t understand Russian at all. But my ear, hear very clearly when they talked behind my back and laughed: “What the fuck he want to make friend?
what hurt me the most is people say :“wow this stupid guy want to make friend with russian, look at what he is wearing” “do you listened to his russian? do you see his hair? do you see his eye?” “so funny right?” or They would try to be funny by imitating chinese pronunciation or appearance kind of classic joke.
I thought being funny is a good characteristic, but umm. now I dont know.
But I know one thing , I am not a fake warrior.
13 I never give up. I still tried countless method like scientists, countless approaching people questions, scripts, different walking speed, different weather. Yeah it’s certainly true that I probably haven't tried hard enough. BUt i dont understand why the hell making friend in public is so hard? Maybe I did something wrong again i guess.
ohh one more thing, approaching strangers is fucking exhausting man.
I have two heavy backpacks with me, with big laptop, entire filming camera equipment and thick winter clothes.
And even though I said hitchhiking is easy for me, when hundreds of cars, and 2 hours has passed, I could not stop thinking that I am loser, “what the hell i am doing , what a stupid idea” this kind of negative self talk will come up in my head. or “I should have listened to my parents.” I feel worthless when drivers in the gas station stop their car but don’t even turn their head to me when they obviously know I am trying to communicate with them. I feel scared when some drivers point middle finger at me. I was horrified when some russian shouted at me for not acting according to what they wish. sadness 5063
Eventually, I was depressed in Siberia. I feel like no one wants me anymore, and no one know me here, and most people on this planet don’t even come to this place. It was, you know is russian we say пизде
I was so happy when I found out what was wrong, I realized I was making unrealistic expectations and negative interpretations.
This trip is probably all about lowering expectations.
But this is not what I only learned | https://medium.com/@ericqaz11/i-cannot-believe-i-hitchhiked-to-ukraine-5afbb0846c1c | ['Mengan Yang'] | 2020-12-27 04:57:19.444000+00:00 | ['Creativity', 'Travel', 'Enlightenment', 'Russia', 'Self Improvement'] |
The Story of the Three Little Hoarders | The Story of the Three Little Hoarders
a surreal fable for our times
Once upon a time, Three Little Hoarders got wind of a new pandemic sweeping through their countryside. They set out to build their bunkers, to ride out the storm.
The First Little Hoarder built his bunker out of toilet paper. He stacked the rolls as tightly as he could, stretched a few reams across the top for a roof, and cozied himself inside.
Along came the Big Bad Virus, and yelled “Come out you Little Hoarder, for I will Spread, and Disperse, and I’ll blow your house in!”
“No! I’m the heir of survivalist kin!”
And so the Big Bad Virus Spread, and he Dispersed, and he knocked down the toilet paper bunker of the First Little Hoarder, and vanquished him on the spot.
The Second Little Hoarder built his bunker out of non-perishable food items. He stacked the canned beans and Spam as tightly as he could, filled the gaps in with granola bars, tiled a roof out of cereal boxes, and barricaded himself inside.
Soon enough, the Big Bad Virus appeared, and roared “Come out you Little Hoarder, for I will Spread, and Disperse, and I’ll blow your house in!”
“No! I’m the heir of survivalist kin!”
And so the Big Bad Virus Spread, and he Dispersed, and he toppled the canned food bunker of the Second Little Hoarder, and ravaged his body for weeks.
The Third Little Hoarder built his bunker out of surplus medical protective equipment. He layered the boxes of N-95 masks as tightly as he could, filled the gaps in with rubber gloves, fashioned a tarp out of surgical gowns, and snuggled himself inside.
The Big Bad Virus eventually found this bunker as well, and fumed “Come out you Little Hoarder, for I will Spread, and Disperse, and I’ll blow your house in!”
“No! I’m the heir of survivalist kin!”
And so the Big Bad Virus Spread, and he Dispersed, and he tried his hardest to infiltrate the bunker of the Third Little Hoarder. The bunker held up for a long time, but the Big Bad Virus eventually managed to squeeze through a narrow opening. He found his way into the orifices of the Third Little Hoarder, traveled down his air passages and burrowed himself inside his lungs.
This laid the Third Little Hoarder out pretty bad. He ached, shivered, sweated, ran a fever, gasped for air.
But after a few days he recovered.
Because Statistics.
Oh yeah, and the Big Bad Virus lived on happily ever after.
Life isn’t always like a fairy tale, kind readers. | https://medium.com/afwp/the-story-of-the-three-little-hoarders-5c0adf7ee0f | ['Joe Váradi'] | 2020-04-17 00:31:19.365000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Satire', 'Survival', 'Fiction', 'Fairy Tale'] |
Mars Is Overrated and Going There Isn’t Progress | I am a techno-optimist at heart. Although it is difficult, I believe that we can engineer our way out of a lot of problems. I believe that internet has democratized education. I believe that social media has helped demystify authorities and establishment media. I believe that, if we play our cards right, the proliferation of automation could lead to a world of abundance and equality.
Tech, science, and engineering have done a lot. It hasn’t been all perfect, but rather than slowing down, I believe our solution is to build and progress more.
This does not, however, mean that I will kiss the feet of the futurist-demigods of our tech culture. I will not subsist on soylent. I will NEVER let Elon Musk put a chip in my brain. I refuse to believe anyone’s “consciousness” will ever be uploaded to a computer. And, most of all, I will not fetishize going to Mars.
Photo by Daniel Olah on Unsplash
My belief has little to do with whether we can deal with the technological challenges of getting there. The space blindness, radiation, and general desolation of the planet are all daunting, but it seems possible that we will be able to overcome a lot of these problems. In general, I’m not convinced terraforming will work, but, as a species, we are typically good at adapting to living in barren, unforgiving places.
Instead, my problem is opportunity cost.
Every brain cell and every dollar spent trying to make sense of getting to Mars is energy that is not going towards improving the welfare of our own planet, or, better yet, improving the lives of the billions of people who live on Earth and will likely never have the chance to consider life anywhere else.
Going to Mars is mostly just the science fiction dream of our techno elites. Many billionaires have poured billions into their respective space ventures with the ultimate goal of getting to Mars. On the private dime, I’m not sure what to think. I would never want anyone to be forbidden to spend their money this way, but I still can’t pretend like it’s worth it.
I can’t begin to convince myself that it’s a good thing that our current levels of wealth inequality have enabled tech founders to not only capture unimaginable portions of global wealth, but to also have the opportunity to spend it on pet projects that have uncertain benefits for human wellbeing.
However, there are some good arguments on the other side.
For instance, you often hear people like Neil deGrasse Tyson arguing for publicly funded space exploration because it has positive side effects on technological innovation. The space program gave us tons of innovations in computation, electronics, aeronautics, and materials science that have undoubtedly improved the lives of many. But isn’t it a little unusual to argue for something for it’s uncertain side effects rather than it’s actual purpose?
If a doctor offered you a $10,000 dollar pill for stomach pain that might also have the side effect of helping you lose weight, would you take it? Of course not! Fixing stomach aches for $10,000 isn’t worth it and there are cheaper ways to lose weight. This is the logic we are supposed to accept from Mars proponents. We are supposed to invest billions in Mars exploration because it might give us better tech.
Another common argument is built on hedging existential risks to future humans. Meteors, nuclear proliferation, and climate change (oh my) could make earth uninhabitable, and, if we want to secure the welfare of billions of possible future people, then it may be necessary to secure the technology to be able to colonize Mars.
Maybe this sounds more convincing. After all, would you ever question someone who uses the term “existential risk”?
The “existential risk argument” is unconvincing for the same reason that the “side effect argument” is: it tries to tell you to go to Mars rather than deal directly with the primary issue. Don’t try to prevent risks to earth, instead give up on it. Don’t try to directly improve technology, instead hope that it will all get better if we sink billions into Space.
The only argument I care about is that you just think it’s cool. That’s fine. I get that there’s some human urge to explore and conquer. I get that Mars just seems interesting.
I also have my own biases. I have a deep love for the planet. I’m blown away by it’s natural beauty and I have equally inexplicable urges to defend it all costs. Those urges may be similar to the urges of the Mars-fanatic to leave the planet. That’s also fine.
Photo by alyssa teboda on Unsplash
I have friends who have visited the Grand Canyon and just don’t care. I took my sister on a hike to see Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, and she said “yeah I don’t know, I just think it’s kind of boring.”
My frustration with Mars exploration comes partly from the opportunity cost of money not going towards securing the welfare of our already beautiful planet. If that’s not for you, I get it. I won’t police your thoughts on that, and if you don’t think that Delicate Arch is majestic, I think you’re wrong, but I won’t try to convince you.
The argument I will stand by, though, is the broader issue of funding Mars-anything while poverty and inequality still persist.
Isn’t it insulting to the 730 million people experiencing abject poverty that a few men can capture the wealth of massive countries and then use that money to fund rockets while others starve?
And so, I will end it here.
“A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face and arms began to swell.
(and Whitey’s on the moon)
I can’t pay no doctor bill.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still.
(while Whitey’s on the moon)
The man jus’ upped my rent las’ night.
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon)
No hot water, no toilets, no lights.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
I wonder why he’s uppi’ me?
(’cause Whitey’s on the moon?)
I was already payin’ ‘im fifty a week.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Taxes takin’ my whole damn check,
Junkies makin’ me a nervous wreck,
The price of food is goin’ up,
An’ as if all that shit wasn’t enough
A rat done bit my sister Nell.
(with Whitey on the moon)
Her face an’ arm began to swell.
(but Whitey’s on the moon)
Was all that money I made las’ year
(for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain’t no money here?
(Hm! Whitey’s on the moon)
Y’know I jus’ ‘bout had my fill
(of Whitey on the moon)
I think I’ll sen’ these doctor bills,
Airmail special
(to Whitey on the moon)” | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/mars-is-overrated-and-going-there-isnt-progress-9d73dc41d5d6 | ['Corey Keyser'] | 2020-10-31 00:41:04.393000+00:00 | ['Politics', 'Science', 'Space', 'Economics', 'Startup'] |
Fiction | Fiction
Free pic from Pixy
Fiction
What a beautiful world it is
Even if someone dies, is killed, is incinerated
it’s not real, it’s fiction, not reality
unless, of course, it’s more nonfiction than fiction
and then it’s hell turned loose
I prefer fiction
Reality, I know too well
Even the good is laced with bad
And the perfect can never be found
There’s always a problem
She’s on the Moon
and travel only occurs rarely in a dream
Or there is an unsurmountable circumstance
to even entertain any closeness
Fiction can contain all that
and make it occur
No one is going to get hurt
unless, of course, they recognize themselves
in this unusual couple
It’s an insult to the word
to call them a couple
It’s almost a fiction
except that with them
the words continue to grow
the text is flowing
this fiction is continuing
through gadgets, of course
not real living words
that are wet with love
No
these words are part of the universe
no feeling
utter randomness
but according to universal laws
unless we can show otherwise
Fiction is better
I can even fly to the Moon
Take her for a spin to Mars
She loves red
I’m in love
even if I love blue
And then take a stroll near the waters of Bora Bora
knowing the years are numbered
when this heaven will disappear from the sky
Patrick M. Ohana | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/fiction-db529312d9b8 | ['Patrick M. Ohana'] | 2020-12-15 19:24:27.460000+00:00 | ['Words', 'Fiction', 'Bora Bora', 'Reality', 'Love'] |
Can you Really Make a Difference in Corporate America? | Why tough conversations are important and how we all have a part to play
Starting out my career, like many young professionals fresh out of college, I had this ideological belief that I could make a difference. I was determined to make an impact on so many people. I believed working in government was the way to do that. What I didn’t expect was that there would be so much red tape. After some time, I got disheartened that I couldn’t effect true change.
Fast forward a few years, I moved to Oregon for family reasons and took the opportunity to start over. I was working for a startup as an Human Resources professional, responsible for creating programs and procedures for more than 400 employees in three different locations. As the workload was starting to take its toll, I heard about Chegg, the direct-to-student learning platform. Chegg’s mission of ‘helping students save time, save money, and get smarter’ was compelling to me. I didn’t apply to any other companies! I wanted to work for Chegg to help students on their path from learning to earning. The mission also resonated with me personally because I have school age children.
In May 2019, I walked into the Portland office for an interview and straight away I was struck by people like me. I scanned the office floor and I saw right away faces from all backgrounds and people groups. I was interviewed by a black woman in a leadership role. I met two or three other people on the interviewing panel who were people of color, women, and, ranged in diverse ages and experience. This hadn’t happened before during job interviews. (Most of the time I was the only female of color.) Chegg had me sold by the interview panel alone.
Shortly after, I was hired at Chegg as the HR manager, supporting Chegg’s Portland office. The team comprised mostly of the Student Advocacy Team (SAT), our student support representatives. Most of them are young professionals at the start of their careers. I gain so much satisfaction from seeing them grow, and I am so proud to help them on their own journeys from learning to earning.
As soon as I joined Chegg, I expressed a passion to make a difference. Every time I raise my hand, I feel my desire to contribute is heard. I love all the avenues that Chegg has — Chegg Chats, development workshops, Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), etc. I’ve been involved with Chegg’s ERGs from the beginning. Being a part of these groups is welcomed even if you don’t specifically identify with them. We learn and we have difficult, supportive conversations. I had never experienced the power of an ERG and the sense of community that it brings to the workplace is powerful — until now!
I truly feel at Chegg that I can drive change. Even if it’s not part of my job description, I feel I can help and I have been encouraged to make my voice heard. For instance, I’m an avid reader. I read about 30 books a year. As this pandemic began and everyone started working from home, it was important for us at Chegg, to remain connected with one another. I wanted to help reduce the feeling of isolation, so I started a Chegg book club. My goal was to get to know people beyond Portland, across the offices.
For our first book club meeting, we chose two books: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. We wanted to have the tough conversations, but also be mindful and inclusive to those that might not be ready to have those conversations. We got a fabulous turnout at each meeting with people from all different backgrounds and the true value of those conversations was hearing people’s real stories and experiences. They were so powerful.
We’re just wrapping up our third book this year, having read More Than Enough by Elaine Welteroth. The book touches on topics about race, standing up for yourself as a female, and many more. It built upon a workshop we hosted last year with the CheggHer ERG to discuss compensation negotiation, a topic that’s difficult for many to talk about.
These are just some of the examples of where I think I am making a difference. And with Chegg’s ongoing support of me and our diverse employees, we can continue to grow and support our employees and students. | https://medium.com/@jrachal/can-you-really-make-a-difference-in-corporate-america-98b8a1e0eca1 | ['Jillian Rachal'] | 2020-12-18 18:03:37.818000+00:00 | ['Belonging', 'Life At Chegg', 'Diversity And Inclusion', 'Human Resources', 'Diversity'] |
Top 4 Enterprise Networking Magazines | Network World
Network World provides deep domain expertise on the modern enterprise data center, including the latest networking, storage, servers, and virtualization technologies. Focused on the decisions faced by data center managers who must build out agile infrastructure and extend their networks to embrace the internet of things, Network World is an invaluable resource in helping enterprises meet strategic business goals.
Enterprise Networking Planet
Enterprise Networking Planet a place for News, trends and advice for network managers and admins. This website provides latest updates in networking world to stay ahead of the competition.
Information Week
Information Week provides a trusted environment for IT decision-makers to learn from experienced journalists, subject matter experts, and their peers to explore new ideas, find answers to their business technology questions, and solve their most pressing problems. If an IT product or platform isn’t tied to delivering on business goals, it’s of little interest to Information Week.
Enterprise Networking Magazine
Enterprise Networking Magazine is a monthly magazine that keeps the readers abreast of the recent trends in the networking space, innovative technology solutions currently being used in the industry and profound insights from the CIOs of leading networking companies on the changing market scenarios.
To bring out the best in a business and boost operational excellence within the organization, the CXOs need to stay connected with the rest of the world to receive updates on the latest news and views in networking arena. | https://medium.com/@chrishtopher-henry-38679/top-4-enterprise-networking-magazines-581755c58bd8 | [] | 2020-12-01 14:21:35.933000+00:00 | ['Organization', 'Business', 'Solutions', 'Technology', 'Enterprise'] |
Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber New Song — “I Don’t Care” Lyrics | [Verse 1: Ed Sheeran]
I’m at a party I don’t wanna be at
And I don’t ever wear a suit and tie, yeah
Wonderin’ if I could sneak out the back
Nobody’s even lookin’ me in my eyes
Can you take my hand?
Finish my drink, say, “Shall we dance?” (Hell, yeah)
You know I love ya, did I ever tell ya?
You make it better like that
[Pre-Chorus: Ed Sheeran]
Don’t think I fit in at this party
Everyone’s got so much to say (Yeah)
I always feel like I’m nobody, mmm
Who wants to fit in anyway?
Learn Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber’s “I Don’t Care” only on Guitaa : https://www.guitaa.com/chords/ed-sheeran-justin-bieber-i-dont-care-chords
[Chorus: Ed Sheeran]
’Cause I don’t care when I’m with my baby, yeah
All the bad things disappear
And you’re making me feel like maybe I am somebody
I can deal with the bad nights
When I’m with my baby, yeah
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
’Cause I don’t care as long as you just hold me near
You can take me anywhere
And you’re making me feel like I’m loved by somebody
I can deal with the bad nights
When I’m with my baby, yeah
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
[Verse 2: Justin Bieber]
We at a party we don’t wanna be at
Tryna talk, but we can’t hear ourselves
Press your lips, I’d rather kiss ’em right back
With all these people all around
I’m crippled with anxiety
But I’m told it’s where we’re s’posed to be
You know what? It’s kinda crazy ’cause I really don’t mind
And you make it better like that
[Pre-Chorus: Justin Bieber]
Don’t think we fit in at this party
Everyone’s got so much to say, oh yeah, yeah
When we walked in, I said I’m sorry, mmm
But now I think that we should stay
[Chorus: Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber]
’Cause I don’t care when I’m with my baby, yeah
All the bad things disappear
Yeah, you’re making me feel like maybe I am somebody
I can deal with the bad nights when I’m with my baby, yeah
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh (Oh yeah, yeah, yeah)
’Cause I don’t care as long as you just hold me near
You can take me anywhere
And you’re making me feel like I’m loved by somebody
I can deal with the bad nights when I’m with my baby, yeah
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh (No)
[Bridge: Justin Bieber & Ed Sheeran]
I don’t like nobody, but it’s like you’re the only one here
I don’t like nobody but you, baby, I don’t care
I don’t like nobody but you, I hate everyone here
I don’t like nobody but you, baby, yeah
[Chorus: Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber]
’Cause I don’t care (Don’t care)
When I’m with my baby, yeah (Oh yeah)
All the bad things disappear (Disappear)
And you’re making me feel like maybe I am somebody (Maybe I’m somebody)
I can deal with the bad nights (With the bad nights)
When I’m with my baby, yeah
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh (Oh yeah, yeah, yeah)
’Cause I don’t care as long as you just hold me near (Me near)
You can take me anywhere (Anywhere, anywhere)
And you’re making me feel like I’m loved by somebody
(I’m loved by somebody, yeah, yeah, yeah)
I can deal with the bad nights
When I’m with my baby, yeah
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh | https://medium.com/@musician7799/ed-sheeran-and-justin-bieber-new-song-i-dont-care-lyrics-a674a537c4f9 | ['Jack Music'] | 2019-05-10 13:03:54.068000+00:00 | ['Musicians', 'Songs', 'Music', 'Guitar', 'Lyrics'] |
Lonely Lesbian | Lonely Lesbian
I am by no means a writer, but I do have a story to tell. Let’s see where to start. I’ll start with some basic information about me. My name is Jamie, I’m 31 years old, and I am gay. I feel the need to tell you that mainly because the story I’m getting ready to share revolves around that subject a little. This isn’t my coming out story. This is just a snap shot of a moment in my life that revolves around a really lonely lesbian.
Back when I was a baby gay some mere 4 and half years ago, I did what many baby gays do. I took to the internet!!! Now in the spirit of full transparency I must say that I wasn’t Looking for someone to date or looking for someone to be in a relationship with. I was naïve and honestly looking for community. More on that subject of gay “community” later.
In one of my internet dives into the gay world I came across a social platform called meetup. I quickly joined 2 groups and started to attend events. I will be honest and say I wasn’t really impress with a lot of these meetup gatherings because most of the time I was the only one my age and the only woman of color, but I continued to go. I’m glad I did because I ended up meeting a really good friend. However that wasn’t the case for most of the people I met.
Insert Lana. I’m going to call her Lana for the sake of anonymity. Yes Lana the lesbian. I first met Lana at an art gallery. We were surrounded by a group of fabulous gay men and we were the only two lesbians. She was older and loud and seem like fun. She approached me and asked if I would be interested in joining her and her friends at the local lesbian bar. I said sure. I was happy to go because I’ve always wanted to go to that bar. I know you are reading that and screaming red flag, BUT did I mention how naïve I was. The first night out with her was fine. I had fun with her friends and I danced the night away surrounded by people like me. The night ended with me just going home and her staying out with her friends. We text from time to time and our text messages mainly were about upcoming meetup events, and all the ones we would attend. She kept telling me that it would be best to go to these things with a partner (red flag number 2).
We went to a few events together mainly gallery events as friends, and each time it would end on a platonic note. I would later realize dating looks differently in gay world than straight world especially for older gay women (well for some older gay women). On the last event I attended with Lana things got really weird. She text me earlier that night and asked if I could pick her up. She was really apologetic for asking, she kept saying she lives really far out of the city but she wanted to attend. I told her I didn’t Mind the drive and that I would come pick her up. Soon after we Hung up she sent me a text, and asked me for my address, I did think that was strange and asked her why, if I was picking her up. she explained that she feels bad for having me drive all that way and she would just Uber to me and then we can drive together (red flag number 3), and of course I gave her my address minus the apartment number. So here’s when the story finally gets interesting.
I wait 2 hours for her to show only to have her call me and ask that I come pick her up from a place that’s only 20mins from my apartment. She said that she got all the way to my apartment complex and didn’t think it was correct and had the Uber take her to another location. My dumb ass went and got her. Still to this day I laugh at my stupidity. When I picked her up I immediately picked up on the fact that she was really intoxicated, and maybe that’s where the Uber drive decided to drop her off.
We made it to the event, and normally what we do at these things is go our separate ways once we arrive, but this time she was following me around and it was really uncomfortable. There was a lady there that she knew and she introduced me to this lady as her girlfriend. That’s when I looked at her and said you and I aren’t in a relationship at all. Why would you say that. The lady she introduced me to kind of laugh and then walked away. I felt bad that I embarrassed her in front of her friend but that wasn’t ok.
I told her I was leaving and she apologized and said she was only joking and asked if I could give her a ride to that lesbian bar, I took her mainly because I was going over there myself anyway. We got there and went our separate ways. I’m sitting at a table by myself and all of a sudden she plops down and starts talking to me like nothing happened.
She grabbed my hands and started asking me weird questions like “where did you put the ring I gave you?” And saying things like “I can’t believe I ran into you after all of these years” I realize that she’s almost black out wasted and even though she made me uncomfortable I wasn’t comfortable with leaving her there and would feel really bad if something happened to her so I offered to take her home since I had her address.
I had doubts about taking her home because I was afraid of what she could do, but I’ve been in the car with her all night, and nothing happened. Plus I figured I’d crash my car before I allow anything to happen lol. On the car ride she kept thanking me for taking her home and asked me if I still danced at the club. I asked her what she was talking about, and she flat out said you are the stripper I fell in love with. Y’all when I tell you I was shocked and entertained at the same time. I laughed and said I’ve never been a stripper In my life and you must have me mixed up with someone else.
We went back and forth on this car ride from hell about me NOT being a stripper. When we finally got to her house she refused to get out of my car until we talked though some things. I resisted the urge to call her crazy and repeatedly said you need to get yourself in your home. She FINALLY got the message and got out of the car.
She intentionally walked behind the back of my car so I couldn’t back out and waited next to my driver window. I didn’t fully roll the window down, but she proceeded to have one last awkward exchange with me. She asked if I would come in, and offered to make me a bath and listen to the twilight soundtrack. She said in the morning she would make me breakfast while I played with her dogs. Dumbfounded I just slowly started to back out of her drive and watched as she stumbled towards her house. She text me and said she left her keys on the top of my car and that they fell off the roof. I didn’t reply
And as I drove away from Lana the lesbian I had a deep sinking pit in my stomach. Lana wasn’t weird (well not fully) or even crazy. Lana was just lonely. She was searching like me for connecting with someone, although her way was a little frightening, and I didn’t Want to be like Lana the lonely lesbian. In my 40s and no one to come home to.
In that moment the fantasy facade I had about my lesbian journey faded and I was forced to face the harsh reality of it all. It scared me so much that it started my spiral back into the closest and the idea of maybe I can just fake heterosexuality. What the heck I’ve been doing it for 27 years already. I was half in and half out of the closet. | https://medium.com/@jamiefitzpatrickelliott/i-am-by-no-means-a-writer-but-i-do-have-a-story-to-tell-209ffbfa85ff | ['Jamie Fitzpatrick-Elliott'] | 2020-12-20 21:50:30.194000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Lesbian', 'LGBT', 'Growth'] |
“You are too into your head” | “Relationship” Inktober | Day 09 by annamachtart
“You are too into your head”,
she said and a thunderlight struck my body.
First of all, word lightning feels like an unbearable fire
gorging and boiling within every cell;
Then comes the shock, the shivers and a
penetrating cold rises as the lone remnant of the previous fire
giving way to a moment’s realization:
You are
too much
into
your head.
Each line by itself is not threatening at all,
and perhaps each showing the way I conceived myself.
But put together, in the form of words within a whole stanza, it was as enlightening as flames:
I reckon that before I had felt blocked,
wordless among empty dunes of white,
without a fire to light the imagery in the middle of a thick dark night.
But it was precisely that,
an excess within one’s own head
that I somehow forgot how to see
whatever also lies around.
How’d I forgotten to see outside,
perhaps a bit too caught up among weeds
in the ways of thick jungles of fumes.
It was only a set-up forged by a clouded head
and the key was seeing a bit above
and realize
the key to getting out of one’s head
is mind itself. | https://medium.com/@isabel-ahermosillo/you-are-too-into-your-head-c1cb00f6f268 | ['Isabel A Hermosillo'] | 2020-12-27 02:07:49.852000+00:00 | ['Meditation', 'Poetry', 'Anxiety', 'Mind'] |
Accountant in Oran Park- A Perfect Option for Every Business! | The accounting service is indeed a crucial part of every business. Taking assistance from an expert- ‘Accountant in Oran Park’ is actually important for the growth of your business. With this article, you will get the chance to learn the benefits of choosing a reputed accounting service.
Studies over the years have shown that organizations which have considered hiring an accounting team done a splendid job. It has not only helped them to save time and money but also given them the chance to maximize the growth of their business without even putting much effort. Choosing an accounting firm is indeed a very necessary decision, as the growth of a company depends on accounting and the people who are actually taking care of it. So, in case if the people who are managing it are uncertain about all the latest techniques then how would it even help your company to grow? Hence, you need the professional assistance of the Accountant in Oran Park who can actually help you to evolve your company and also enhance productivity.
Accounting is undoubtedly the most critical and essential part of every business. Being a business owner, managing business and accounting simultaneously is quite a difficult task to perform as it is very time-consuming. Thus, it is always great to have a financial advice provider to help you throughout.
Accounting service providers offer a total range of services so that you can focus on other important works instead of worrying about managing your accounts. There are some accounting firms which are specialized in tax strategy, business planning, and also consulting. Therefore, you should make sure that you are choosing a trusted firm to achieve and exceed your goals. | https://medium.com/@oranparkbusiness/accountant-in-oran-park-a-perfect-option-for-every-business-52ab43dd826b | ['Universe Tax'] | 2019-11-22 14:48:35.768000+00:00 | ['Accounting', 'Accountant'] |
Tujhe Paane Ko| Shalin Bhanot,Priyanka Agrawal | Jubin Nautiyal,Neeti Mohan |MP3 SONG DOWNLOAD PAGALWORLD.COM | Tujhe Paane Ko
Published on Oct 12, 2019
T-Series Presents latest Hindi Video Song of 2019 “Tujhe Paane Ko “ , In the voice of “Jubin Nautiyal & Neeti Mohan “, composed by “ Abhijit Vaghani “ and the lyrics of this new song are penned by “Manoj Muntashir “. The video features Shalin Bhanot & Priyanka Agrawal in this romantic track.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
SONG CREDITS
Song — Tujhe Paane Ko
Singers — Jubin Nautiyal & Neeti Mohan
Featuring — Shalin Bhanot & Priyanka Agrawal
Music — Abhijit Vaghani
Lyrics — Manoj Muntashir
Mixed & Mastered By — Aftab Khan (Headroom Studio)
Mix Assistant — Vatsal Chevli
Music Label- T-Series
VIDEO CREDITS
Director — Luv R Isrrani
Production House — Isrrani Productions
Cinematographer — Jay Bodas
Creative Head — Shiv Dube
Assistant Director -Jayadev Satapathy, Sagar Patil & Karan Dave
EP — Kajal Rajput
Art Director — Barkha Kanjariya
Ariel Cinematographer — Haresh Dawra
Choreographer — Aatish Devrukhkar
Editor — Hrushikesh Nikam
Digital Colorist — Manoj Singh, Afterplay Film Studio
VFX: Lucia Entertainment
Assistant Photographer — Akshay Jagtap, Sanjay Bisht
End Credit Scroll: Shivom Shukla
Makeup — Manoj Verma
Hair Stylist — Arifa Shaikh
Stylist — Megha Kothari
Wardrobe for Shalin — Shirrin Design Co.
Wardrobe for Priyanka — Azuli By Nikki, Gangore Bridal Studio
Location: Casa Bella | https://medium.com/@avinashkushwaha137/tujhe-paane-ko-shalin-bhanot-priyanka-agrawal-jubin-nautiyal-neeti-mohan-mp3-song-download-56d592966cb6 | ['Dj Alen Official'] | 2019-10-12 15:55:24.778000+00:00 | ['Bollywood', 'Songs', 'Music', 'Free Download', 'Film'] |
One Time, I Met a Flying Cockroach | This is a true story
My Childhood, Los Angeles Neighborhood.
In the year of 2005, Los Angeles seemed eternally hot. My family did not believe in AC, so everything was always sticky inside the house. Most days were spent inside with AIM, Xanga, YouTube, Yahoo Mail, New Grounds and an extremely smelly dog. I became extremely well-versed in never leaving any food exposed to the air. Otherwise, you may just end up eating a soup full of flies or a flying cockroach.
Most days felt like time was just slowly melting away under the extreme layer of smog and heat. Someone that was there through it all with me was a this golden, flying cockroach. Yup. It was a big one too. I am sure the roach interbred with a grasshopper and that is how it grew wings. I am also sure that it was always the same little thing. Now, I am not sure where the golden exterior came from. I am not an insect/ bug doctor.
As a very awkward, conventionally unattractive and introverted teenager, it is always important to have social consistency. Asides from my internet dwellers, mine was this golden cockroach that lived outside, sometimes inside. My aunt had definitely made attempts to end my friend’s life.
My family thought this was a very unhealthy relationship, but what do they know. It was me and roachy against the world, mostly. This supposed, unhealthy attachment also became apparent to my one other real life friend at the time. She ended up naming my nameless friend “Chaos”, because chaos is often nameless. I am not sure where that even came from. It worked.
Gradually, my flying friend stopped visiting me. I cannot remember exactly how or when. Altogether, I never saw him/ her/ it or whatever — ever again. What has this relationship taught me? I cannot really say, we did not talk much. This flying creature was not much of a talker if you must know. There is no real point to this story. Possibly, other than I did not live in the most sanitary home or the most climate change friendly place. Oh yeah, and do not leave food exposed in for long periods of time without Saran wrap/ lid.
Like what you’re reading? You’ll love Buibui — Have you tried reading from there lately? Click here to learn more | https://byrslf.co/one-time-i-met-a-flying-cockroach-42ed30b953b1 | ['Yena Choi'] | 2020-12-14 15:49:04.192000+00:00 | ['Los Angeles', 'Adolescence', 'Beyourself', 'Heat', 'Cockroach'] |
Mercy as a spiritual practice | Early in my foray onto the spiritual (not-religious) path, it seemed that all the FABULOUSLY spiritual people had perfect yoga pants; plump, designer floor cushions; and all the appropriate accoutrements, expertly displayed in a special room. They seemed to have all the accessories associated with “being spiritual“. Today I know that those things are nice, but they have absolutely nothing to do with walking a spiritual path. The most important accessories are those we carry with us, every day.
I came home from work yesterday to find that the 2 cans filled with garbage that morning were still standing. That was a bad sign, since usually I have to park on the street to pick up the discarded, upended and empty cans from the middle of my driveway before I can pull in. In addition, one of the cans still had its lid on, tight.
I parked, got out of my car and walked over to confirm that indeed, the can with the lid on had not been emptied into the garbage truck — while the open-topped one was now empty.
My initial response was to be aggravated — maybe even a little angry — that I had a full can of garbage that would need to sit for another week; then I remembered that I could call the township and complain, and they would report it to the waste management company who would dispatch a truck to pick it up the next morning.
As I thought more about the issue, I felt that I had an opportunity: I could be (rightfully) indignant, irritated and annoyed and insist that they circle back around to this street and empty this can; or I could practice mercy.
I have been in management for many years, and as soon as I thought of calling to complain, I wondered about the team that would be marked as deficient. Some may say “they deserved it — they dropped the ball” and in terms of the facts, that is true. What I also know from my years in supervision and management is that my call may be the “last straw” for someone who is experiencing a tough time. It may be the thing that causes someone to be moved to the “do not retain” list or to be let go during their probationary period.
I thought about that as I pulled the cans back to the side of my house. It’s cold out now and I have a well-fitting lid. Will it really hurt anything to pull it out again next Monday to be picked up? Is my aggravation with the principle of the circumstances truly worth the possibility that someone could experience difficulty with their boss, or even the loss of their job — especially in the middle of a pandemic?
The answer to all of these questions is NO. But this goes beyond me simply being merciful because I have an opportunity. How many times has someone granted me mercy when I missed a deadline, dropped the ball on a project or made a mistake? Many times. And while I am aware of a number of these instances, how many MORE have come into my life as unknown blessings that protected me and gave me the opportunity to get up the next day and keep moving forward?
Spiritual teachers tell us that what we put out, returns to us. It’s a teaching as old as humanity, but it seems at times that it is one of the hardest ones to grasp. In traffic yesterday on my way home from work (before I encountered the garbage cans), I merged in front of someone who didn’t like it. I was not even close to them, and had plenty of room for the merge but for a reason that remains unknown to me, the driver laid on their horn and sped up to ride my bumper for a while in traffic.
I remained calm, and ignored them, but I wondered at the (sadly) common need for humans to correct others who don’t follow the rules as we see them.
I’ve written before about the possibilities for World Peace that may be achievable if each of us would get into the habit of practicing peace on the road during our morning and afternoon commutes. Yesterday, I considered also the great possibilities that lie in cultivating a practice of mercy.
Now, some will say “we shouldn’t reward bad behavior“. I don’t entirely disagree, but I also believe that we do more Good when we act in an energy of peace instead of an energy of retribution. Last year I had an extremely frustrating experience with a cashier at a local drugstore. She had a name tag on and later, when I received the email asking me to rate my experience at the store, I was tempted to tell my story.
Instead, I decided to speak affirmatively about her, calling into form the behaviors I knew she could exhibit; behaviors that I would much prefer to experience. I wrote that she (mentioning her name) was knowledgeable, helpful and kind and that I appreciated her assistance and positive attitude. In biblical language, I chose to “…call into existence the things that do not (yet) exist“.
The HUMAN response would have been to let her have it, and rant and rave about what poor customer service she provided to me. The more Divine response was to call into existence the behavior that did not seem to be present at the time. I chose the latter, and have had multiple interactions with this woman since then which have been GREATLY improved.
Some may believe that while I did not call her out, others surely did; hence the reason for the change, but I’m not so sure. A few weeks ago I ran into her in another store in a neighboring borough. I asked if she left the other store, and she said “No — I was recently promoted to a Lead Cashier, which means I get sent to other stores sometimes to help“.
I smiled as I left the store that day, grateful that I had quelled my initial urge to call her out and thankful for the reinforcement that these ancient, spiritual Truths are as applicable today as ever.
My garbage will sit out another week, and I won’t want to open that lid. Thankfully, I have other cans, and will not be inconvenienced by this minor issue. I will be reminded, each time I walk past those cans, of the times I have been granted mercy by someone else, and will say a quiet “Thank You” for the people and circumstances in which I received mercy. And I will remember that developing a spiritual practice is less about the cushion we sit on and the decorations in the room (the where) and more — perhaps ALL — about the what. Standing there between my garbage cans, I honored the mercy I have received, and vowed to continue to practice mercy toward others.
I know myself well enough to understand that I will not move forward from this incident like some saintly monk. I will again find myself cursing in traffic, getting angry with subpar behavior and maybe even starting to write a 1-star review for bad service. I am human and fallible, which is why these things are known as spiritual PRACTICES. Still, I will not forget it and like time spent in meditation that builds that skill, time spent in spiritual practices like being merciful build those skills, and make them easier to choose as we walk through our lives.
Lastly, we never know what mercy we may need from someone down the road. The Law of Circulation is about more than money: it is the Law that describes the natural flow of life that brings into our experience the things we align with (or as Abraham would say “match our vibration”).
It’s good for OTHERS when we practice mercy; it’s also good for us. | https://medium.com/@practitionerspath/mercy-as-a-spiritual-practice-3de9c2b2bb3b | ['Rebecca Harmon'] | 2020-12-11 17:42:12.908000+00:00 | ['Kindness', 'Mistakes', 'Spirituality', 'Forgiveness'] |
Bill Maher Gave Me the Best Advice by Way of Josef Stalin…Sort Of | No Person, No Problem
I was crying. I usually called Bill when I was crying. Twenty-two years my senior, he was old enough to be my father. Though there was nothing paternal about him, he was never shy about dispensing compassionate, sometimes fatherly advice that would turn my tears into a laugh and my laughter into a good day.
On this particular afternoon, someone had broken my heart. Bill and I ended our relationship the year prior, and I was still reeling from the finality of it all. I still loved him but was doing my best to move forward. In the interest of full transparency, I have since dated and married nothing my losers, abusers, and straight-up crazy people since Bill and I split, so he has often been called upon to ease my tattered spirit –– and he has always answered that call.
I sobbed as I recounted the events of my personal life and the crushing weight of all that had gone wrong. Bill listened before he spoke, and when he did, what came out changed my life.
“No person, no problem,” he said. “They say Stalin said it, but that doesn’t make it any less true,” he continued as he chuckled in his trademark way.
And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
A brief search of this famous quote. which has been largely attributed to Josef Stalin, the former Premier of Russia, uncovered that, “No person. No problem,” isn’t the exact quote and that it hadn’t derived from Stalin at all!
Russian author Anatoly Rybakov wrote the original quote in his novel Children of Arbat. In this fictional account, Stalin is speaking about an army officer’s execution in Tsaritsyn and says, “Death solves all the problems. No man, no problem”.
Yikes.
Taken out of context, “No man, no problem,” or rather, Bill’s version, “No person, no problem,” has solved alot of conundrums for me throughout the years. Naturally, I wouldn’t wish death on a man just because I’m sick and tired of looking at him, nor do I think “death solves all problems.” However, what Bill helped me realize that day is all my heartaches were attached to other people, and once I got rid of those people, the hurt would go away.
After all, I’m not out here breaking my own heart.
So, to this day, when I find myself in a situation the makes me feel unhappy, I remind myself that even though I cannot control others' actions, I can control mine and other people's proximity to me. I can walk away. I can put space between the source of my discontent and me. I can get rid of the person and with them goes the problem. I don’t have to try to solve or resolve it. There is often no working it out, and that’s okay!
Once I’ve removed someone from my life, I always feel lighter. I feel refreshed and renewed. The arguments stop, and so do those long-drawn-out conversations where nothing gets resolved. Gone are those fake understandings we agree to just so the other person can shut the fuck up. It’s nice not feeling drained from having to talk to them or from complaining about them when they’re not around. It’s lovely not to commiserate. | https://lilibetovesen.medium.com/bill-maher-gave-me-the-best-advice-by-way-of-josef-stalin-sort-of-e1ec01bf435d | ['Elisabeth Ovesen'] | 2020-10-12 21:30:45.068000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Life Lessons', 'Inspiration', 'Mental Health', 'Advice'] |
Airbnb Open Homes: Who Belongs? | Note: this article was written before the recent announcement of Airbnb.org, a non-profit that incorporates the Open Homes initiative.
via Airbnb.org
The words Airbnb and Global Refugee Response Manager flashed across my inbox. I would have never imagined those two words in the same sentence. Airbnb, established in San Francisco in 2008, has grown globally as a “trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world.” There are over 5.6 million active listings worldwide, with 800 million guest arrivals, and as of October 2020, over $110 billion has been earned by 4 million hosts on the platform. It’s an app that I, along with friends and family, have used numerous times when traveling to different countries and cities. So how do refugees, individuals fleeing from various forms of persecution, come to be a part of this online marketplace?
The answer is Airbnb’s Open Homes initiative, officially launched in 2017, which has a mission to “connect people with a free place to stay in times of need.” Open Homes partners with various non-profit organizations including Mercy Corps, the International Rescue Committee, and the Bone Marrow & Cancer Foundation to connect their clients with places to stay. Hosts on the platform sign-up to include their listing as a part of the initiative. There are currently three types of eligibility for the program: disaster relief, medical stays, and refugee/asylee housing. In the case of disaster relief, people impacted by a disaster, including relief workers, can apply for emergency housing. However, in order to be eligible, guests are required to provide proof of address or employment during the application process. For medical stays and refugee housing, guests must be referred by a nonprofit partner. Refugee and asylee guests must be legally recognized as such by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and/or have begun the process of seeking asylum. While this initiative has good intentions to provide free access to housing, the ethical concern comes into the fairness of this initiative. Who is creating the standards for individuals who are qualified and “worthy” of having access to Open Homes? What happens to the many individuals who are most marginalized in our society, particularly during natural disasters, without any proof of an address or a job? What happens to individuals who aren’t connected to non-profits, and are in need of housing? What about the many internally displaced persons worldwide, who are without a legally recognized status? It seems that Airbnb has created a stratification system of who belongs in their program.
The Open Homes initiative is one aspect of Airbnb’s intentional social impact efforts, yet the company has had many other unintended impacts. A recent study showed that in New York City, Airbnb “has increased annual rent for the median tenant by $380, and over $700 in some neighborhoods” (Bach, 2019). This “Airbnb effect,” is evident in housing markets worldwide, in taking long-term housing stock off the market and consequently driving up house prices and rents (Barker, 2020; van Doorn, 2020). It has caused cities from San Francisco to Barcelona, to create regulations surrounding short-term rentals and implement tourism taxes on the platform to offset the economic costs of Airbnb’s presence.
The platform is also not created in a way to facilitate and uphold Airbnb Community Standards which emphasize “fairness” and a stance against discriminatory behavior. For one, hosts are allowed to reject guests that they are not comfortable with, without needing to explain why. In one case, Reed Kennedy, a Black tech entrepreneur and investor, reached out to Airbnb suspecting discrimination, as he was being repeatedly rejected on Airbnb (Luca & Bazerman, 2020). Hosts were not seeing anything more than his profile, which includes a name and picture. An Airbnb representative informed Reed that he could increase his chances of getting a room by including references on his profile, who could vouch for him (Luca & Bazerman, 2020). This is not Reed’s experience alone, as studies have shown there is discrimination against Black guests along with, “ documented discrimination on Airbnb against same-sex couples, against guests with Arabic-sounding names, and against guests with disabilities” (Luca & Bazerman, 2020).
It is evident that Airbnb is employing the “New Jim Code,” which Ruha Benjamin defines as “the employment of new technologies that reflect and reproduce existing inequities but that are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of a previous era” (Benjamin, 2019, p. 19). Airbnb’s stratification of eligibility for Open Homes, and the pervasive discrimination on the platform, mirrors the stratification of “worthiness” and exclusion that exists in many social service programs and our greater society at large. Taking into consideration the many effects Airbnb has on local communities and economic markets, would it even be ethical for Open Homes to continue their initiative and to expand their eligibility to include everyday individuals experiencing houselessness? Just last year Airbnb announced a partnership with San Jose State University, and a non-profit, the Bill Wilson Center, to help house students experiencing houselessness (Deruy, 2019). This is yet another example of prioritizing certain individuals, who need a free place to stay, over others. In this case, with the condition of those pursuing an education.
In thinking more deeply about Open Homes, I took to my real and virtual friends on Instagram, to ask them their thoughts. In poll results, 87% respondents said they have used Airbnb, yet 93% of respondents had not heard of Open Homes before. Additionally, 88% said that there should be an expansion of eligibility for Open Homes to include everyday individuals who experience houselessness. While the idea seems beneficial, some raised the point that a company like Airbnb, which creates housing crises, should not be facilitating this process, rather it is the role of governments. Others noted that Airbnb’s growing influence in the sphere and collaboration with government entities surrounding Open Homes initiatives, would increase Airbnb’s influence and sway city regulations in Airbnb’s favor.
I’ll leave you with words of Ruha Benjamin, who writes “the public must hold accountable the very platforms and programmers that legally and often invisibly facilitate the New Jim Code” (Benjamin, 2019, p. 54). It will take collective effort to hold Airbnb accountable, even as it pursues to create a positive social impact. Who is with me? | https://medium.com/@ghazalrezvani/airbnb-open-homes-who-belongs-98b78c8bf1a9 | [] | 2020-12-15 03:32:39.719000+00:00 | ['Airbnb', 'Technology', 'Homeless', 'Refugees'] |
9 Key Digital Marketing Trends to Prepare For In 2018 | Digital Marketing has become an essential tool for endorsing any brand in less time. It is considered as the most efficient and convenient technique in today’s world to reach your potential customer and grow your business across the globe. Many new digital marketing trends and strategies are evolving in this time, and a large number of consumers are engaging with brands on various channels.
However, the goal remains still constant. The only change we observed is creativity and innovation for new digital marketing trends. So it is necessary for an employer to hire a marketer who can easily communicate the right message at various stages of marketing process that helps in raising your brand awareness.
Why should businesses opt new digital marketing trends?
New marketing trends have shaped the businesses in 2017 and planning to achieve new marketing goals in 2018. Moreover, Digital marketing is now a customer-focused approach. All marketing activities are customer-centric which give a push to factors such as customer-focused user experience, digital automation, analytical intelligence etc.
But all this was not possible with traditional marketing approach. That’s why businesses should move to opt for new digital marketing trends for better growth opportunities and excellent lead generation.
In this article, I have listed out top 9 key digital marketing trends that you need to integrate into your 2018 marketing plan.
In-Store Marketing campaigns
To run a successful in-store marketing campaign, it requires a team of talented staff which must carry a skill-set of analytics, brick-and-mortar promotions, mobile, traditional marketing and location technology. In fact, In-store analytics helps in measuring the performance of marketing campaigns and other activities analysed real time.
Key Benefits:
Measures store performance in real-time
Optimizes bricks and mortar layouts
Improves shopping experience
Helps in improving marketing ROI
Invest in Social Media Marketing
It is worth dealing if you invest in social marketing to promote your brand. Social media platform is the one which takes information from you and prevails this information among thousands of people in few seconds. Facebook’s News Feed is such an example which is adopted by almost every business today for generating good revenue.
Key Benefits
Take away low investment
High ROI approach
High engagement on social media
More traffic
Nice approach to lead generation
Marketing automation
Marketing automation is a great tool in marketing which automates all marketing activities easily. It mainly includes behavioural Email marketing, CRM and web personalization. It allows marketers to use their time and efforts in an efficient way to get potential customers and for lead generation. Moreover, it combines your marketing campaigns across all channels from direct mail to social initiatives.
Key Benefits
Enhances user experience
Handles lead management
Reduces manual errors in marketing campaigns
Reaches to right prospects and customers
Fights with Ad blockers
Influencer marketing
Transforming potential customers into strong influencers always seems challenging to marketers. The only way to ensure good influencers is to offering good solutions to your customers that truly understands and solves their problems. This would surely make them more loyal brand. To get benefits from your influencers, first, benefit them and fulfil all their needs.
Key Benefits
Good brand recognition
Effective brand promotion
High ROI
Video Marketing for better visualization
A video is a key element in the video marketing. Whether it is a simple ad, top commercial regarding anything or any other informative thing, videos if embedded into this would surely attract most of the people and provide visually-rich, interactive content to them in order to convey their message. As a result, the audience takes considerable action towards it and further like it or post it or share it by making use of various social channels viz. Facebook, Instagram etc. The high quality content video is the demand of future now.
Key Benefits
Increases the engagement
More traffic
Large number of real time video news
Helps in promoting your brand
Concept of micro-moments
The concept of micro-moments involves providing right and reliable information at right time to its customers whenever they needed it. Only well-known brands can do this successfully as they have the tendency to provide information correctly and address the exact micro-moment needs of their customers. It is an effective, quick and one-touch access to the needed information.
Moreover, Micro-moment concept has powered the shift to mobile phones. With this, customers expect reliable information instead of time and location.
Key Benefits
More customer engagement and interaction
Give brand recognition across the globe
More caters to reliable information
Builds long lasting relationship
Builds trust with customers
Big data integration
A professional digital marketer understands better the exact customer behaviour if they have right data with them. In fact, associating data with the right tools has become a vital need of this year where real-time responses are provided to customers whenever it is required.
Big data has its great emphasis on various digital marketing cultures viz. native marketing, segment marketing etc. and further its implementation into current marketing strategies is quite complex. However, big data marketing applications include predictive analytics, market and customer insights.
Key Benefits
Improves decision-making process
Helps sales agents dealing with large heap of data
Helps marketers to understand consumer’s behavior
Smart Content Marketing
Content marketing is all which can win the whole game of marketing in future. Quality content is what which is prepared after understand the needs of your potential customers. For this, the smart content approach is used by various marketers nowadays.
Content marketing professionals used to add personalization elements in their content in order to drive better performance. Moreover, customer-centric content is prepared by them to fulfil the needs of their customers.
Key Benefits
Dynamic rich content
More engagement with clients
Attract new visitors
Gives a good brand recognition
Reach your target customers
Propel the desired conversions
Promotion via Native Ads
Native ads are the most effective marketing method if you want to grab a plain sight exposure in front of your target audience. It has proven as the best alternative for interruptive ads which are often frustrating and irrelevant to users. These ads provide the right information to its users when they actually need it. Overall, it provides better visibility to its target audience only.
Key Benefits | https://medium.com/digital-ready-official/9-key-digital-marketing-trends-to-prepare-for-in-2018-caa48a30031f | ['Rajesh Kumar'] | 2017-12-15 10:53:55.219000+00:00 | ['Digital Marketing', 'Digital Marketing Company', 'Digital Marketing Tools', 'Digital Marketing Tips', 'Digital Marketing Agency'] |
How To Quickly Loose Weight | It is very possible to loose weight quickly, and you can do it in a healthy way.
I have been advising people for many years now how they can loose weight and get the body they have always wanted while also making sure that they develop better eating habits. When you develop better habits as you diet, you are more likely to keep the weight off once you lose it.
I don’t want to just show you how to loose weight quickly, I want to show you how you can keep it off once it is gone.
Over time I have seen people talk about crash dieting, but the problem is that it is always not sustainable. This means that even if you loose the weight, you are going to gain it all back and most likely damage your metabolism so when you try to loose that weight again, it will be even more difficult.
Here are a few tips that will help you loose weight a great deal.
#1 Cut Sugar
If you want to lose weight rapidly, you need to cut added sugar from your diet. This means sugar that comes processed foods and refined carbs. Eliminate all added sugar from your diet.
#2 Focus on Sweet Potatoes and Quinoa
The carbs you eat matter, and if you are eating refined carbs, like the ones found in bread, then you will not only have a difficult time losing weight, but you will gain weight. Instead, replace these carbs with sweet potatoes or quinoa. These carbs should take up 75% — 100% of your daily carb source.
When you stick to these types of carbs, you won’t have to worry about calories. Have you ever tried to overeat quinoa? It is incredibly difficult to do.
#3 Moderate Protein
Protein will help keep you satiated and full longer, and if you are trying to lose weight, you want to stick to about 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. This means if you weigh 200 pounds, you want to consume about 20 grams of protein a day. You can then adjust this amount as you are losing weight.
#4 Consume Healthy Fats
It may seem that eating fats will cause you to gain weight, but eating the right fats will actually help you lose weight. Stick to healthy fats, such as avocados, coconut oil, olives, salmon, etc.
#5 Do HIIT Workouts
In fact, go to your app store and download HIIT MAX. These are workouts that you can do at home with no equipment in 15–20 minutes a day. That’s it.
HIIT workouts are great because they are specifically made to target body fat, and when you do these exercises, you actually continue to burn fat for hours after your workout. Plus, they can be done anywhere and with no equipment.
#6 Get Plenty of Sleep
When you don’t get enough sleep, it can actually raise your cortisol levels, which causes you to gain weight. It can even mess with your hunger signals.
Be sure you are getting 6–8 hours of sleep every night. Turn off your devices and stop eating about two hours beforehand, and you will find that you can get to sleep quicker and have more quality sleep. Turn your thermostat to 66–68º because studies show that this is the best temperature for quality sleep.
Implement these tips, and you’ll see the weight coming off, AND it will be healthy, and this is something you can do to keep the weight off.
Click Here To Find Out How this Helped a friend of Mine get His Life back | https://medium.com/@jighitmart/how-to-quickly-loose-weight-edd030e8fb6 | ['Dr Gifty Mark'] | 2020-12-27 16:04:44.520000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss Tips', 'Weight Loss', 'Weight Loss Supplements', 'Weightloss Recipe', 'Weightloss Foods'] |
Network Engineers : A Community of Experts | Multiven provides its worldwide customers its collaborative platform called Pingsta.This solution allows network engineers to be remunerated for tasks performed at the request of Multiven’s customers, but also to share their expertise to help make the Internet more secure and efficient.
Multiven customers have access to a passionate community of experts.
Pingsta was founded in 2007 in Palo Alto, California, USA, by Multiven CEO Peter Alfred-Adekeye. It is a collaborative, community-based solution with more than 1,200 experts in 55 countries around the world, with an average of 20 years of experience.
Thanks to their expertise, some members of the community take charge, in exchange for a remuneration, of the tasks in support of Multiven’s customers via their dedicated dashboard. The « pay per task » mechanism allows members to earn $ 100 per support task or per hour, for consulting work. So far, the most a Pingsta engineer has earned in a year is $245,000.
« Through Pingsta, we offer a service of quality at competitive prices. That aims to enable our customers to improve the security of their networks and their solutions. » Said Peter Alfred Adekeye, CEO of Multiven.
Pingsta: Decisions affecting the future of the Internet
Pingsta also allows its members to extend their intellectual heritage by contributing to mySolvr, the open knowledge base specialized in Internet engineering. For experts, this represents a real opportunity to transmit their passion and participate in the security and reliability of the Internet network, which benefits all its users.
The community is composed of several experts in the world of Internet engineering who contribute to mySolvr, such as Dr Lawrence Roberts, MIT Doctorate and designer of the Arpanet network, the precursor of the Internet; John Nagle, inventor of the Nagle algorithm, which improves the functioning of the TCP / IP protocol governing all communication rules on the Internet.
Pingsta membership is by invitation only and its members are directly connected to each other. Being part of the community allows them to participate in discussions that will impact the future of the Internet.
Source
Originally posted on : www.multiven.net | https://medium.com/multivengroup/network-engineers-a-community-of-experts-32167c21b1b9 | ['Mom Foundation'] | 2017-06-14 09:23:44.256000+00:00 | ['Software Engineering', 'Cybersecurity', 'Engineering', 'Network Security', 'Community'] |
I Changed My Career By Launching A Resale Business | There goes my pop careening down the aisles of a T.J. Maxx, clutching a pair of silver stilettos in one hand and a delicate pair of heels adorned with silk butterflies in the other. They have Prada! Dolce & Gabbana! He was fresh out of the shower, but he had bits of hay in his hair from the thoroughbreds he groomed and loved. My pop broke Triple Crown babies for million-dollar trainers. But there he was, beaming. Expensive heels in calloused hands.
On the weekends, we watched Video Fashion Weekly and pored through the latest issues of InStyle and Elle. Market research, I said. He nodded, schooled himself on cheetah prints and the business of finery. My pop considered The Gap the height of sartorial sophistication, caring for his meager collection of flannels and button-downs like small children.
He was saving up for a leather Kenneth Cole jacket when I told him to think big. We were about to hit Woodbury Commons and we needed to be versed in all things Chanel, Prada, and Gucci. We had a business to run.
In the late 90s, I decided I’d rather have surgery without anesthesia than waste another day in banking. I’d spent three years at two investment banks and while I rose up through the ranks — unusual for an analyst, especially if you were a woman — I had issues with sexual harassment, authority, Ivy League trust-funders, PowerPoint, and stockings. These were the halcyon days before Casual Fridays, where motherfuckers still wore suspenders and Cerruti suits, and I’d have to sardine myself into a subway car. In a gabardine skirt suit. In 101-degree heat.
I hated everyone and let them know it on a daily basis by spending forty-five minutes at Starbucks and humiliating mangy men until their hands shook.
HI, BOB! ARE YOU SEXUALLY HARASSING LISA AGAIN BECAUSE YOUR WIFE REALIZED SHE MARRIED A BAG OF SHIT? POOR BOB! I tormented Bob (not his real name) until the men on the floor tormented Bob and Bob asked HR to move him to a different department. HR wanted to discuss my “aggressive behavior.” Lisa and I became close for six months until I learned I’d been accepted to Columbia’s MFA program and would leave my days of stock options and suits behind.
I’ve never been china, the kind of woman who could slide on a pair of hose with ease. More like I tore three of them out of the pack, and then I’d get reprimanded for wearing long skirts and bare feet in heels and I might have called my boss a bitch, which made me think I had to consider a new career path. But this was the time of the paper resume and myopic recruiters, and I kept getting interviews at outfits like Merrill Lynch where the selling point was a shower installed on the office floor.
Did I mention these were two-day interviews over a weekend? I had to bring a bagged lunch, which I couldn’t eat during the interview but could snarf bites of in between inquisition sessions where associates and managing directors said vahz instead of vase.
I wanted to murder my recruiter with common household appliances.
Since I considered everyone older than me a complacent idiot, I created experience where none existed. Back then, I considered myself hip — I had an AOL account and a buddy list when my peers thought the internet was a pedophile’s paradise. I signed up for this new site, eBay, and sold clothes I’d scored at sample sales. It occurred to me not every city was like New York. A woman confessed to traveling across state lines to find a Saks or Nordstrom. It was the late 90s — people were flush and women were hungry for the pretty things they saw in fashion magazines.
There was no Google or Rent The Runway or Saks.com. There was, however, a search engine called “Excite.”
An idea was born. My ticket out of pantyhose purgatory was a cringeworthy html website, weeks of filing LLC paperwork, and sordid credit card machine applications (yes, people would email me their credit card information and I had to process their orders via a hand-held machine, which introduced all sorts of fraud-related hijinks). I launched “The Collection,” a website that offered high-end designer clothing at rock-bottom prices. The site might have been royal blue with cream font, but I was proud and ordered a pile of glossy business cards with orchids printed on the background.
I was a hip one, I tell you.
My pop and I lived in a small apartment perched over a barn. Our home had become refuge to dozens of shoe boxes and garment bags, beaded gowns and cinched skirts. I styled and photographed all the wears on a mannequin, and can I tell you I felt more professional in those moments when I came home from my Morgan Stanley job and sifted through the orders that had come in. How my pop and I screamed when the bidding on eBay on a dress we purchased for fifty bucks soared into the four figures?
To quote Angela Chase from My So-Called Life, we had a time. Cue 10,000 Maniacs’ “These Are Days” for the five Gen-Xers in the cheap seats.
The little resale shop that could captured the attention of the burgeoning Oxygen network, who ended up making the trip out to Long Island to interview the young entrepreneur selling high fashion out of a barn. The segment caught the attention of the wife of my future boss — my first pivot away from a career in banking.
I interviewed for at a luxury goods dot.com, and although the salary and benefits paled in comparison, everyone at my new job was young, foxy, and stylish. A Vogue vibe minus the foolery. Editors chattered in Italian in the hallways. We went out to bars in the Meatpacking District. Everyone used Macs and we wore what we wanted. Venture money paid for catered lunches and town cars, and soon I shuttered my little shop for a life seemingly lived in sepia.
I never considered how much this business bonded me and my pop. My life was simple and clean. But when I moved out of the barn and into an apartment in Morningside Heights and switched up red wine in Columbia bars for cocaine on the Lower East Side, the chasm between us widened and we would never be as close again. It never occurred to me, until now, that those years spent in Long Island with my pop was when I was most happy. And it would take over a decade to unravel my obsession with status and things to fill a gaping hole that was forever bottomless.
A hole so dark no light could squeak through. | https://medium.com/falling-into-freelancing/i-changed-my-career-by-launching-a-resale-business-f71a76926904 | ['Felicia C. Sullivan'] | 2020-10-30 02:57:26.287000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Creativity', 'Business', 'Writing'] |
Why Do We Use 911 For Emergencies? | The number 911 is used for emergencies in North America, but why is that particular number used, and how did it all start?
The original 911 system began in the late 1960s, but the earliest system in the United States for someone to make a request for emergency assistance started just after the turn of the 20th century. The communications company, Ericsson Incorporated, developed a portable phone handset and crank in the early 1900s so people could communicate an emergency.
Their device used two metal hooks that were placed on bare phone wires to form a connection. The hand box was then cranked, a connection was made, and it was hoped that someone would answer the signal on the other end of the line. While it was a crude beginning to an emergency communication system, it was credited with success in reporting a train robbery around 1907 that led to the arrests of the criminals.
It took a series of tragedies to get to the basic 911 system we know today. The most prominent was the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, which highlighted the need for better disaster communications. Radio communications were regularly used between ships, but when the Titanic had signaled an emergency, it was never received by the nearest ship because the radio operator was off duty.
In response to the disaster, the United States Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912. It required that all ships at sea had to have a radio operator on duty at all times so a possible distress call wouldn’t be missed. The passing of the Radio Act established a connection between the government and emergency communications.
It would be more than 50 years before the basic 911 service would be implemented, however. Prior to that time, if someone had an emergency, the person would dial zero to get an operator. It became apparent that the operators weren’t specifically trained to handle an emergency situation, and they didn’t have the necessary tools to answer or handle an emergency call effectively.
In response to these problems, the National Association of Fire Chiefs recommended a single telephone number to report fires in the 1950s. The request was never implemented, but it did highlight to the government the inadequacies of the current system.
In 1967, a report from the Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Lyndon Johnson recommended that citizens should be able to contact police departments using a single number. In January 1968, AT&T announced that 911 would be the universal emergency number. The first 911 call was made by Senator Rankin Fite the next month in Haleyville, Alabama. It wouldn’t be until 1999 and the signing of the Public Safety Act that 911 was officially designated as the nation’s emergency number.
But why was the number 911 picked to be used in an emergency in the first place? AT&T designated the numbers 9–1–1 because they wanted a number that was short and easy to remember, and one that hadn’t been used as an area code. Since rotary phones were the main phones being used at the time, a shorter number was also a lot easier to dial.
The 911 system allowed local control over emergency communications, but by the early 1970s, 911 operators were beginning to see the value of having a person’s name, phone number, and address show up when a person called in an emergency. This led to the Enhanced 911 system in the mid-1970s. This allowed a call to be routed to the proper authorities, it identified the location, and it also identified the number.
With the rise of cell phones, however, the ability of a precise location has become a problem. According to a 2015 report by USA Today, many places in the country report that the location of an emergency call is not showing up accurately. Operators can sometimes only locate the cell tower that was used for the call.
In California alone, just under 50% of the calls included a location. Since more than 70% of 911 calls originate from cell phones, the government has proposed a new 911 system called Next Generation 911. The technology is in place for the new system, but it has not yet been implemented.
While 911 is the emergency number for North America, in the United Kingdom, the emergency number is 999. The United Kingdom’s emergency number is actually the earliest. It was established in 1935 when five women died during a fire in London. Though neighbors tried to dial zero for the operator, they found that it was jammed, and they couldn’t alert anyone about the fire.
Another method for calling in an emergency was to dial the police by asking the operator for Whitehall 1212. In response to the tragedy, the General Post Office proposed a three-digit number of 999 that would alert operators through a special signal that the call was an emergency.
The system went into place in 1937 and first covered a 12-mile radius in London. One of the first calls was from a woman saying that her husband was chasing a burglar. The burglar was quickly caught. The United Kingdom and its territories still use the 999 number for emergencies today.
Sources: NENA, The Industry Council, PBS, USA Today, The Desert Sun, 911.gov, BBC
Want to delve into more facts? Try The Wonderful World of Completely Random Facts series, here on Medium. | https://medium.com/knowledge-stew/why-do-we-use-911-for-emergencies-fa657a60e6d5 | ['Daniel Ganninger'] | 2020-10-12 13:07:37.312000+00:00 | ['Police', 'Mobile', 'History', 'Fire', 'Government'] |
How To Create Horizontal + Vertical Scroll Shadows | Note: if you’re truly intent on understanding the exact internals, use different colors for the linear gradient so you can visually see how each background contributes to the total effect.
Javascript Scroll Shadows
The same effect can be achieved through Javascript. By listening on scroll events, you can enable / disable absolutely positioned before and after pseudoselectors that create the shadows. Using React and Styled Components, the code would look something like this to achieve the same effect:
const Shadow = styled.div`
position: relative;
border: 1px solid black;
${props =>
props.showStart
? css`
::before {
content: '';
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
height: 10px;
background: linear-gradient(
to top,
rgba(255, 255, 255, 0),
rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25)
);
}
`
: ''}
${props =>
props.showEnd
? css`
::after {
content: '';
position: absolute;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
height: 10px;
background: linear-gradient(
to bottom,
rgba(255, 255, 255, 0),
rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25)
);
}
`
: ''}
`; const Container = styled.div`
height: 200px;
overflow: auto;
`; const Content = styled.div`
padding: 10px 20px;
`; const VerticalJSScrollShadow = () => {
const [showStart, setShowStart] = React.useState(false);
const [showEnd, setShowEnd] = React.useState(false);
const ref = React.useRef(); React.useEffect(() => {
const onScroll = () => {
const { scrollHeight = 0, scrollTop = 0, offsetHeight = 0 } =
ref.current || {};
setShowStart(scrollTop > 0);
setShowEnd(scrollTop + offsetHeight < scrollHeight);
};
onScroll();
const node = ref.current;
node.addEventListener('scroll', onScroll);
return () => {
node.removeEventListener('scroll', onScroll);
};
}, []); return (
<Shadow showEnd={showEnd} showStart={showStart}>
<Container ref={ref}>
{Array.from(Array(20)).map((i, idx) => (
<Content key={idx}>{idx}</Content>
))}
</Container>
</Shadow>
);
};
A similar effect can be achieved for horizontal scroll shadows by using left, right, and widths instead. See here for the full implementation.
Pros + Cons
Given these two drastically options to create a same effect, there are some small important differences.
Performance: The CSS approach is significantly better as it is achieved through a single render whereas the Javascript approach requires multiple renders to set the showStart and showEnd states.
Browser Supportability: The CSS approach does not work in Safari (as of Safari 14). The shadow will appear, but will not disappear as you scroll. The Javascript approach does not have this supportability issue.
Development: The CSS approach is a lot simpler than the Javascript approach. The CSS approach only needs to set background styles while the Javascript approach requires refs, state, and scroll listeners. | https://medium.com/javascript-in-plain-english/how-to-create-horizontal-vertical-scroll-shadows-26aa7a7f00a0 | ['Michael Chang'] | 2020-12-29 07:10:21.401000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'React', 'Web Development', 'JavaScript', 'CSS'] |
Riyadh’s King Khalid airport to handle 600k tonnes of cargo annually after terminal construction | Construction of the SATS Cargo Terminal in KKIA will take place over two phases with the first phase expected to be completed in mid-2022
By Our Correspondent
January 15, 2020: King Khalid International Airport (KKIA) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia will be capable of handling up to 600,000 tonnes of cargo annually, once completed. SATS Saudi Arabia Company has won a 25-year cargo terminal concession for the airport.
Construction of the SATS Cargo Terminal in KKIA will take place over two phases with the first phase expected to be completed in mid-2022. There will also be a purpose-built cold-chain facility for the special handling of temperature sensitive perishables and a dedicated lane for pharmaceutical products.
Alex Hungate, president and CEO of SATS said, “KKIA serves Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, and handles close to 40 percent of air cargo volume in the Kingdom. Connected to our stations in Dammam and Oman, and our extensive Asian network, KKIA will extend SATS’ network of quality cargo corridors to offer our customers greater connectivity and quality assurance, while supporting Saudi Arabia’s rapidly growing cargo market and logistics infrastructure.”
SATS operates 10 cargo terminals in Asia in Beijing, Dammam, Ho Chi Minh, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Oman, and Singapore. In line with SATS’ vision to feed and connect Asia, the company enables greater traceability, efficiency, and speed through digitalising and linking its cargo operations. The investment in the Riyadh cargo 2 terminal concession is not expected to have any material impact on SATS’ net tangible assets per share and earnings per share for the current financial year.
The Riyadh cargo terminal will be the second cargo operation in Saudi Arabia for SATS, after its first win at King Fahd International Airport in Dammam in 2016. | https://medium.com/@info-85820/riyadhs-king-khalid-airport-to-handle-600k-tonnes-of-cargo-annually-after-terminal-construction-d604781e59cd | ['Logistics Update Africa', 'Lua'] | 2020-01-15 07:29:00.528000+00:00 | ['Aviation', 'Saudi Arabia', 'Logistics'] |
Electric Vehicle Market Worth $1,212.1 Billion By 2027 | The global electric vehicle market demand is expected to reach $1,212.1 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 38.1% over the forecast period, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. The market is driven by initiatives taken by governments of various countries to promote manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (EVs). For instance, the Electric Vehicles Initiative (EVI), a multi-government forum, aims at increasing the adoption of EVs globally. As of now, there are thirteen countries participating in this forum, namely Canada, Chile, U.K., Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Finland, France, China, Japan, India, and New Zealand. Several campaigns and programs have been launched under this forum such as the EV30@30 in 2017, which sets a target for 11 countries to have at least 30.0% sales of new EVs by 2030.
Rising investments in the EVs by numerous manufacturers is one of the key market drivers over the forecast period. For instance, in January 2020, General Motors announced its plan to invest USD 2.2 Billion in its Detroit plant to manufacture electric trucks and SUVs. The company plans to introduce over 20 EVs by 2023. Furthermore, in 2018, the demand for global electric cars surpassed 5 million units, more than 2 million units from 2017. China is considered as one of the major markets of electric cars along with Europe and U.S. However, lack of infrastructure is anticipated to hinder electric vehicle market growth over the forecast period.
Growing awareness regarding reduction of air pollution is propelling the demand for EVs during the forecast timeframe. EVs produce less carbon emissions as compared to conventional gasoline cars. It is estimated that EVs emit an average of 4,450 pounds of CO2 equivalents every year, which is almost half of the carbon emissions generated by conventional gasoline cars annually. Thus, EVs help in reducing air pollution and improve the air quality, thereby improving public health. This has led various government agencies promote the usage of electric vehicles. For instance, the U.S. Department of Transportation, Great Plains Institute, and Pollution Control Agency are working in tandem to accelerate the adoption of EVs in Minnesota, U.S.
Click the link below:
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/electric-vehicles-ev-market
Further key findings from the report suggest: | https://medium.com/@marketnewsreports/electric-vehicle-market-71043ac6131b | ['Gaurav Shah'] | 2020-11-25 11:16:25.122000+00:00 | ['Japan', 'Electric Vehicles', 'New Zealand', 'France', 'China'] |
Implantation, mobilité interne: les nouveaux défis de l’entreprise | in In Fitness And In Health | https://medium.com/data-rh-france/comment-extraire-la-valeur-des-profils-de-vos-employ%C3%A9s-4e4d50b76fd9 | [] | 2016-02-29 11:23:08.861000+00:00 | ['Recrutement', 'Ressources Humaines'] |
Learn Solidity: The Factory Pattern | Clone Factory Pattern
The problem with the previous pattern is that it wastes lots of gas since all child contracts will have the same logic and we redeploy almost the same contract each time — same code but different context. We need a way to deploy only one child contract with all the functions and make all other child contracts act as proxies that delegate calls to the first child contract we created and let functions execute with the context of the proxy contracts.
Photo by the author.
Fortunately, there is the EIP-1167 specification that defines how to implement a proxy contract cheaply. This proxy will forward all calls and 100% of the gas to the implementation contract and then relay the return value back to the caller. The bytecode of the proxy contract according to the specification is
363d3d373d3d3d363d73bebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebebe5af43d82803e903d91602b57fd5bf3 . The bytes at indices 10-29 (inclusive) are replaced with the 20-byte address of the master functionality contract (the contract to which we will delegate the calls).
The whole magic of the proxy contract is done using delegatecall . You can get an idea of how it works by reading this article.
Let’s see now how to make this work. First, you need to grab the implementation of this specification, which you can find on GitHub. Copy-paste the code of CloneFactory in your project.
The code we’re going to use this time is as follows:
This time, we used the createClone function from the GitHub repository to create child contracts instead of the new keyword.
You can deploy the contracts by creating a new migration file in Truffle that looks like this:
To test if the code works, I created a test file that you can try on your own to make sure that everything is working as expected: | https://medium.com/better-programming/learn-solidity-the-factory-pattern-75d11c3e7d29 | ['Wissal Haji'] | 2020-12-17 15:50:00.847000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'Solidity', 'Ethereum', 'Smart Contracts', 'Cryptocurrency'] |
Top 10 Online Education Company In India — mktop10.in | The online education market in India is forecasted be worth over $18 billion by 2022.
The reason behind this huge growth is latest technologies like cloud computing that leads to success of many startup companies in India.
Edutech startups are changing the face of education in India in a rapid way.
The cloud technology enables e Learning companies in India save a significant amount of data, content, and information on a single platform.
The saving of data makes easier for users and providers to manage, procure, process and access information from anywhere possible.
While some startups are providing online courses in various fields, some are providing career advice.
Let’s have a look at the Top 10 edutech in India:
BYJU’s
Byju is a giant in online education companies in India with 35 million registered students and 2.4 million annual paid subscriptions that spreads around 2000 cities in across India.
Company has primary focuses on math and science and the concepts are explained using 12–20 minute digital animated videos.
Company has K12 learning smartphone app that offers highly effective, adaptive, and engaging learning programs.
These programs not only serve school students but also train students for various competitive exams such as IIT-JEE, CAT, UPSC, GMAT, GRE, and Engineering & Medical.
Byju’s app is available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
BYJU’S has also won many awards like CRISIL Emerging India Award and Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Award, and is available on Android and iOS platform.
Founded 2011
Founder Byju Raveendran
Headquarter Bangalore
Educomp Solutions
Educomp group has around 30 million learners across 65,000 schools and having more than 25 offices worldwide.
Company is a globally diversified education solutions provider and the largest online education company in India.
The Company operates through its various subsidiaries including authorGEN, Threebrix eServices, Learning.com, USA, AsknLearn Pte Ltd, Singapore and Savvica in Canada.
Educomp smartclass brings about a complete transformation in classrooms by producing and making the best use of digital products
Educomp Solutions has aim and focus on smarter way of learning rather than the traditional.
The company deals in four segments — Higher Learning Solutions (HLS), School Learning Solutions (SLS), K-12 Schools, and Online, Supplemental and Global business (OSG).
IGNOU
IGNOU is a government entity distance and open education with around 67 centers across the country.
IGNOU is the largest distance learning university in the world with active enrollment of over 4 million students.
The University provides degrees that valid and recognized not only in India but abroad.
Edukart
Edukart lists among the top eLearning companies in India.
Edukart provides a wide range of courses from a range of Indian and international providers including universities as well as other edutech portals.
Company has various certification programs through which helping students and professionals to enhance their skills.
Edukart has more than 2000 courses in degree, diploma, certificate, entrance coaching and K12 categories.
Founded 2011
Founder Ishan Gupta, Mayank Gupta
Headquarter New Delhi
Simplilearn
Simplilearn is one of the leading professional certification company and successfully ranks among the best eLearning companies in India.
Company has aim and primary focus on IT professionals who are wishing to upgrade their skills through a certification and structured program.
That is why company provides online professional courses in disciplines such as Cyber Security, Cloud Computing, Project Management, Digital Marketing, and Data Science.
60% of it’s takers belong to US where online learning is more prevalent but India is fast catching up. It provides more than 300 courses.
Founded April 2010
Founder Krishna Kumar
Headquarter San Francisco, California
Zeus Learning
Zeus Learning, headquartered in Mumbai, stands ninth among the list of top eLearning companies in India.
Zeus Learning concentrates in the development of HTML5-based Interactive Learning Assets, Mobile apps, technology solutions for LMS, CMS and TEI systems, Software Simulation Training, and Content-rich Courseware and Learning Experiences designed using the latest trends for the web and mobile world. The business of imparting education online is slowly becoming its forte.
Founded 2000
Founder
Headquarter Mumbai
Meritnation
Meritnation is one of the topmost edutech companies in India.
It is a complete social network experience for education, where you can connect with other students of others schools and colleges.
By conducting regular tests and giving time-bound assignments and also provides learning content for students for classes 1st to 12th — CBSE, ICSE and leading state boards.
Meritnation provides its users with study material, tests, proficiency tests and Olympiad packs.
Meritnation has their own online portal from where students can easily get learning needs.
The compnay has facility of live video lectures and interactive recorded videos to impart the best knowledge to the students.
Company has their own apps that they use to track every student’s progress and with analytical data reports, they focus on their strength and improvements areas.
Founded 2008
Founder Pavan Chauhan, Ritesh Hemrajani
Headquarter New Delhi,
Unacademy
This company started as a YouTube channel by Hemaash Singh in 2010, Unacademy is now a famous name in the education technologies market of India.
Unacademy is one of e learning startups in India.
Unacademy has provided lessons to more than 3 million students. They have tied up with some of the most famous and experienced teachers to teach the students.
Company has over 2400 online courses and most of the courses are free on this platform, however, you might have to pay for certification.
Unacademy has a goal of providing all the education in the world for free.
It has ventured into numerous fields like Banking, CA, CAPF, UPSC, CLAT, CAT, JEE, Pre-Medical and more.
The video tutorials are also available in various languages.
UpGrad
Ronnie Screwvala, the media magnate started Upgrad in July 2015. But in a very short span of time, company has become fastest edutect company in India.
UpGrad is an online edutech platform that provides higher education programs.
They provide an immersive learning experience with the latest technology and well-designed courses.
Company has designed the courses that cover the almost all areas from entrepreneurship to digital marketing.
Founded 2015
Founder Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgum Komapalli and Ravijot Chugh.
Headquarter Mumbai
Toppr
Toopr is a Mumbai-based company founded by Zishaan Hayath in 2013.
It also offers courses for medical and engineering examinations, board examinations, and Olympiads.
The Toppr app includes goal based learning, adaptive question practice, performance report, concept sheets and previous year question papers.
It provides students access to 24×7 e-learning, solving doubts, and personalized coaching from quality educational professionals across the country.
Toppr also started focusing on junior and senior grades (Classes 5 to 12).
Company has tremendous achievement from 40,000 pieces of content in 2013 to two million pieces of learning material till now. Toppr has aim to reach three million by the end of 2020.
It has solved more than four million doubts, and more than three million tests have been taken on its platform.
It offers structured courses that feature interactive video lectures, practice question sets, doubt clearing by professionals and all India test series. | https://medium.com/@mantosh2k8/top-10-online-education-company-in-india-mktop10-in-838401f416be | ['Mantosh Kumar'] | 2021-01-05 17:15:17.174000+00:00 | ['Unacademy', 'Online Education', 'UpGrad', 'Education', 'Edtech'] |
How I got a life Changing Orientation… | There are moments in our life that we feel alone, depressed, and unwilling to keep going, we struggle with different situations throughout our life that not always can be solved on our own, sometimes we need someone to talk to, there are moments that we really need advice.
I’ve been just like you, stressed, anxious, depressed and I didn’t know what to do. If you can relate to any of these statements. It is right time to make you life change positively,
After some days of coaching with Annhope, my attitude about myself, my career and my business has shifted 180 degrees. I find myself returning to the same feelings and attitude I had when I started my business, the courage to make and even embrace change and to move forward by making choices that benefit me, not just looking out for everyone else.
I want to emphasize that Annhope does not make decisions for me but instead has helped me develop ways to deal with situations using my own knowledge and self-awareness, and she helped me at least develop a plan or concept for what I want my career to look life for the next 25 years of my life. I have come to regard Annhope as a valued friend as well as life advisor.
henry ford | https://medium.com/@henryfo75691670/how-i-got-a-life-changing-orientation-446dd968ad70 | ['Henry Ford'] | 2020-12-25 14:01:11.680000+00:00 | ['Fear', 'Listening', 'Advice', 'Purpose', 'Psychology'] |
A Peek into the Backend Test Automation @ Dream11 | The Dream11 user experience is built on top of a micro service architecture which serves a unique and personalised experience for all 100M+ users. Our team extensively uses a Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) approach and BDD-based test framework for automating backend micro services.
Backend is a piece of software that runs on remote machines called servers. It can be accessed through the internet/VPC via API. The backend is not meant to be used by humans directly, but rather by applications (frontend apps). Its purpose is to perform remote tasks which cannot be performed by the frontend apps. Backend Test Automation is a testing method that checks the backend of a software or web application. Since repeating the manual tests for the backend is a cumbersome process, our team has written additional code to reduce manual intervention and chances of human error.
All the backend actions are done through different micro services. For instance, when a user logs in to the app, they interact with the user micro service and similarly there is a deposit micro service to take care of users depositing cash. These micro services are tested end-to-end before every release. Each micro service has its own independent releases. Owing to this, incorporating an integration test suite became vital and depending on the level of success, it is further shipped to production.
We came across the following problem statements based on our previous experiences of introducing test automation at Dream11 and existing test frameworks:
The framework should be able to run tests across multiple environments: At Dream11, we have multiple teams which provision multiple environments in terms of Feature, Integration and Load Testing, where heterogeneous workloads get provisioned from containers to VMs (EC2s). This provides flexibility for our product teams to iteratively build features with all the other dependent services onboarded and move forward with release cycles to ensure that all environments are functional. As they get provisioned through automation, it was difficult to validate each and every environment and identify functional gaps around them. It was a bare necessity that the automation tests should run across environments based on user input. This would mean endpoints for micro services or edge layers should be generated at run-time and not hard-coded in the system. Minimal or no data dependencies: Having the tests rely on certain data on the environment was not preferable. Data dependency would mean manual intervention for data creation before we run automation, which would defy the whole purpose of automation. Ease of maintenance and reusability: It should be convenient for any new member to write tests and contribute without any difficulty. The automation should be easy to maintain and debug and in addition, the functions, methods, or classes should be reusable Easy Onboarding: For members not familiar with BDD, it should be easy for them to adopt it. Easy for new members on the team to understand and get acquainted with the framework and start contributing almost immediately. Ease of adding new test cases: For every modification or new addition, there should not be the need to do a lot of rework. It should be a straight-forward method for even manual QA engineers to add test cases to the framework.
The tests are primarily based on three criteria: context (a prerequisite given, like certain data-based values, event (API call) and possible outcomes.
Solution:
After a few incremental experiments, we finally built a framework that checked all boxes. The implementation used Java, TestNG, Cucumber along with a few additional custom utilities.
An Android or an iOS app interacts with a backend service over http with JSON payload. For instance, on logging in, one might receive three values: Name, Age and Balance.
Consider the following JSON response:
When we test backend services, we test the responses that it returns, based on schemas and certain guidelines (API contracts). Schema for this JSON would look like:
Understanding the JSON schema:
The ‘ required’ attribute indicates the properties/objects/arrays that are a must have in the response.
attribute indicates the properties/objects/arrays that are a must have in the response. The ‘ additional properties’ attribute tells us if additional keys/objects are acceptable. If this attribute is set to ‘ false’ , the schema check will not allow any additional keys in the response.
attribute tells us if additional keys/objects are acceptable. If this attribute is set to ‘ , the schema check will not allow any additional keys in the response. The ‘type’ attribute indicates the data type of the key in JSON. In the example above, ‘Name’ is declared as “string”, ‘Age’ as “integer” and ‘Balance’ as “number”. This means that if the response is:
{ "Name": 123, "Age": 28.1, "Balance": "144.25"}
all schema checks will fail since the name in response is not a string, age is not an integer and balance is a string.
Apart from schema/contract checks, we also have a lot of functional and database level validations as a part of the test suites.
To understand how this is orchestrated in our system, from wire-framing a new feature/enhancement to getting the tests to make it a part of regression suite, we have taken up the following process:
If the API signature is unknown, a pending exception will be triggered. Thus, whenever a test is run, there will be a pending result as there is not adequate information to fill the criteria. But they can still prepare the basic framework of the test.
Since there is a large influx of interaction with the backend, Test NG runner runs the tests in parallel for maximum output. While the test is running, it keeps shipping logs which the developer can refer to in case the test fails. These are auxiliary elements which can be used to deep dive into the issues.
When the test is running, all data is recorded. Once the test run is complete, there will be 3 reports; in Jenkins, on slack and one on a dash-boarding tool called Grafana. Jenkins is where the tests run, so by default, it gets added there. Slack is to ensure that whoever the specific stakeholder is, they do not have to go back to Jenkins to know the details. They can simply get an alert on slack with the link to the test results. Grafana is where the trends are shown. These three sources can be used to analyse the results.
If all test cases pass, then the feature is ready to be shipped and is taken live. If there is one aspect of the test that is failing, then the developer has to identify a fix, deploy it and run that Jenkins build again.
Jenkins pipeline job used for test automation uses groovy script with multiple stages. Each stage in the pipeline script is used for performing certain tasks which is required pre/post/during test execution.
The steps involved in triggering Jenkins Build eventually lead to test run management. The machine on which the test runs has a log archival logic. So, it will archive logs for, say, n-20 runs. Supposedly, if the 1000th test is running, then it will archive everything that is beyond 980
How does a developer debug a failing test?
A failing test can be debugged using one of the 2 approaches:
Viewing cucumber reports in Jenkins: Reports are embedded within each Jenkins job with details of steps that failed along with API details (endpoints, params, body, headers, etc) Viewing real time logs in Grafana using Loki: Logs can be accessed within Grafana using Loki. The logs provide details like:
Curl request for failing tests
Response received for failing steps
Any additional info, debug, and error level logs in the test scripts.
Test Results:
Test results are attached within Jenkins job for each complete run for all behaviours using default cucumber reports. Below are a few samples:
The output section within each behaviour can be expanded to view details for requests and responses.
Trends for test runs are logged in InfluxDB for each test run and visualised using dashboards on Grafana. Furthermore, various rule-based alerts are configured using Grafana that publish test results and trends on Slack.
Wrapping it up:
It takes a great deal of effort and mechanism to put everything in place for users to seamlessly navigate the Dream11 application with smooth functioning backend automation. The failure and success of tests restores our faith in a tactful solution which caters to the customers and developers alike.
The framework has helped the team to overcome all the challenges pertaining to environments and test data dependency. It has also enabled the teams to test the system efficiently and provide faster release sign offs with more confidence.
If you are interested in solving complex problems, we are looking to hire talented SDET & Performance Engineers! Apply Now.
Authored by : SDET team @ Dream11 | https://blog.dream11engineering.com/a-peek-into-the-backend-test-automation-dream11-fef17d1c3448 | [] | 2021-07-06 05:19:55.219000+00:00 | ['Automation Testing', 'Dream11', 'Sdet'] |
The Trouble With Adult Acne | One thing that adults don’t tell you growing up is that, for some, acne continues even after puberty. Somewhere along the way, I became part of the statistic of adults that has adult acne.
Weirdly so, when I was a teenager my acne was at bay all the way through my early 20s. My skin was relatively alright and when I started birth control it got even better. Since the results of my skin from birth control were positive, I stayed on it for a few years.
Birth control isn’t what I’m going to talk about, but I did believe birth control was amazing. My skin was great and most of the things that you hear about birth control are all good stuff — but it really isn’t. I had to find out the hard way of the downsides to birth control than what is advertised. Ladies, if there’s no birth control out there that is 100% effective, don’t sacrifice your body and sanity for it. It’s not worth it.
Maybe I’ll write about it another time.
That’s what insecurity does to you. It makes you feel like there’s a spotlight on the things that you wish you could hide about yourself.
Last year when I finally got off birth control, there it was…the truth of my skin. Acne. Not just normal acne, but adult acne. It took a while for me to get used to, I hated looking in the mirror and my usage of makeup, especially foundation, increased. Which ultimately made my skin worse but that was the vicious cycle that I was on.
What people don’t tell you about living with adult acne
People stare at you..all the time. Working in the industry I’m in, I rarely ever wear makeup. There’s no point considering I’m sweating all day, so I just go out bare-faced every day. And people stare.
They look at you while you speak and I can feel when I meet potential clients that they’re not just looking at me, but they’re looking at my skin. Sometimes people even tell me what I should do and products to use to get my skin right. Yes, I’ll take all the recommendations, it’s really appreciated…but not while I’m talking to you about work.
Not only that but looking for a job is difficult too. When I was unemployed was the first few months of my acne acting up, it wasn’t easy. It was horrible and difficult to cover up the acne so going to job interviews was a hassle. Just like racial or gender discrimination, a survey has shown that 78% of respondents were less likely to be hired based on acne or blemishes on their skin. I’m already brown and a woman, I guess life couldn’t just make it easy for me…
I’m happy to show others there’s nothing to hide, but that’s not my main intention neither is it my life goal. I just want to be comfortable in my own skin.
Self-esteem? Never heard of it
Instagram culture has created a false sense of image for everyone. As someone who has worked with multiple “Instagram influencers,” I just have to say…they don’t look like that in real life. Huge pores, old acne scars and pigmentation is so normal, don’t let photoshop fool you.
Somehow that doesn’t stop me from looking into the mirror all day. I examine my skin from my hairline all the way down to my jaw, if I had one of those magnified mirrors, I’d never leave my bathroom.
Pictures? Yeah, that’s never going to happen either. Since my adult acne came in strong last year, I haven't taken a picture of myself ever since. My phone is only filled with pictures of me where I have makeup on and a filter added over it. The pressure to look beautiful has never been up this high.
It gravely affects your mental health as well. There are days when I never leave the house just so I don’t have to put makeup on and when I do, I never stop looking at myself sometimes. I fear so much that people can see the acne I’m hiding under all that makeup.
It sounds self-centred, but that’s what insecurity does to you. It makes you feel like there’s a spotlight on the things that you wish you could hide about yourself. The trouble is though, your face is the first thing people see so you just want to hide forever.
I’m not brave, I’m just trying to live
When Lizzo said that she’s not being brave by being her true self, I’m not being brave by bearing my skin out to the world either. It’s so hard to pick myself up after talking myself down without people trying to think that I’m trying to be an “inspiration.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to show others there’s nothing to hide, but that’s not my main intention neither is it my life goal, I just want to be comfortable in my own skin. Saying that I’m “brave” is a back-handed compliment. Am I not supposed to be the way that I am due to my acne? Am I suppose to be hiding too? | https://medium.com/writers-blokke/the-trouble-with-adult-acne-ecdd3a9c33c7 | ['Najwa Helyer'] | 2020-12-22 12:17:11.699000+00:00 | ['Women', 'Personal', 'Life', 'Acne', 'Adult Acne'] |
教育未來在哪裡 :《2020臺灣教育科技展》 | Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more
Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore | https://medium.com/%E4%B8%80%E5%A1%8A%E8%A8%AD%E8%A8%88%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2%E5%A4%A7%E8%9B%8B%E7%B3%95/%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2%E6%9C%AA%E4%BE%86%E5%9C%A8%E5%93%AA%E8%A3%A1-2020%E8%87%BA%E7%81%A3%E6%95%99%E8%82%B2%E7%A7%91%E6%8A%80%E5%B1%95-64a475202820 | ['Jade 三三'] | 2020-12-07 17:50:50.403000+00:00 | ['AR', '老師', '遠距教學', '學生', '教育科技'] |
Expectations | Commitment brings assurance
Assurance leads to anticipation
Anticipation is expectation that has been proven
Proven expectation happens when in relationship with the Creator
Expectation is not a right
Expectation is a granted privilege
What a privilege it is to carry… | https://medium.com/spiritual-secrets/expectations-38c056520ef3 | ['Sharon Brandon'] | 2020-09-26 06:09:06.193000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Spiritual Secrets', 'Illumination', 'Spirituality', 'Enlightenment'] |
Sky TV Effed-Up Captioning | Is it deliberate
Do you think
that your captions really stink?
Say her name fills the screen
But her name is nowhere to seen
The life and death of…
Space found for ‘new, exclusive,
really, moving’
By leaving out her name
What are you proving?
That Black lives matter not to you?
The truth of the matter is fully on view
Say her name, you mock with derision
And anger is all that fills my vision
Her name is SANDRA BLAND
SANDRA BLAND SANDRA BLAND
Put it IN where it belongs
And stop adding more wrong on wrongs | https://medium.com/illumination/sky-tv-effed-up-captioning-145f53eb5ca | ['Marla Bishop'] | 2020-06-27 16:46:34.801000+00:00 | ['Television', 'Poetry', 'BlackLivesMatter', 'Change', 'Activism'] |
Podržite Nearby Hostel Prvi Mobilni Hostel na Svijetu | in Both Sides of the Table | https://medium.com/sidrome-freelance/podr%C5%BEite-nearby-hostel-prvi-mobilni-hostel-na-svijetu-d0d197b9f24f | [] | 2017-01-11 10:09:08.226000+00:00 | ['Crowdfunding', 'Featured', 'Startup', 'Projekti'] |
The CIAM Industry Is Projected to Reach $15.3 Billion in a 5-Year Span at a 15.1% CAGR | Due in part to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have become significantly dependent on online transactions. Consumers expect to access most necessary services through the Internet and across different devices and web applications, driving companies to adopt advanced technologies that can prevent cybercriminals from accessing sensitive data.
Among the security requirements that users expect and industries are incorporating are biometric and biographic information. Identity documents and knowledge of personal data or events are also used to guarantee the uniqueness and validity of an individual’s identity before they can access a service or receive an entitlement.
Identity and access management solutions are being widely adopted by the public sector, healthcare, financial institutions, retail, education, telecommunication, transportation, and media and entertainment. A key concern across all these industries has been the increasing cyber threat landscape, where cybercriminals use advanced attack techniques supported by artificial intelligence and machine learning. The threats are diverse and keep increasing in volume, breadth, and complexity, as they help criminals steal sensitive data from an organization’s network. Therefore, businesses feel compelled to invest in consumer identity and access management to deliver frictionless and enhanced customer experiences.
Fortunately, the growth of cloud-based CIAM services that are easier to implement and require a lower capital investment has made it possible to adopt measures widely.
CIAM in Asia-Pacific
The highest CAGR in the global consumer identity and access management market is in Asia-Pacific, which includes major economies such as China, Japan, Australia, and India. The region has dynamically adopted new technologies and is expected to register high growth rates, particularly in China, the fastest expanding country in the region. It’s estimated that India will have 50 billion digital identities in three years, as local companies accelerate their adoption of cloud technologies and increase their demand for CIAM.
A key player in Asia-Pacific is Fujitsu, named to FORTUNE Magazine’s 2020 List of “World’s Most Admired Companies” two consecutive years. The company, founded in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, launched Fujitsu Security Solution AuthConductor Client in 2018 and upgraded it to V2 in 2019. The product includes biometric authentication and was first made available for Oceania and later rolled out to Asia and North America. V2 uses various authentication methods such as palm vein, facial and fingerprint authentication, and IC card authentication for PC logons. Fujitsu had a revenue of $7.466 billion for the quarter ending June 30, 2020.
Another major player in Asia is NEC Corporation, with development laboratories in North America, Europe, China, Singapore, and Japan. As of late 2019, NEC was the largest non-Chinese supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance technology globally and had developed several manual and automated border control solutions using leading-edge biometric technologies. After Huawei’s 5G equipment suffered a suggested ban by the United States, Nec Corp ramped up its small 5G network business with an investment of $596 million from NTT, the largest carrier in Japan. For the year ending March 31, 2021, the company expects an attributable net income of ¥90 billion ($846 million).
CIAM in North America
North America held a prominent share of the global consumer identity and access management market in 2019 and is expected to hold the largest one, $120 million, in 2020.
Among the key and innovative vendors are, from the US, IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce, Broadcom, Okta, Ping Identity, ForgeRock, and LoginRadius, and from Canada, Akamai Technologies. These companies have adopted various growth strategies such as product launches and enhancements, partnerships, and acquisitions to expand their market presence.
IBM, a prominent provider of consumer identity and access management solutions, launched VeridiumID in 2019. The product supports native iPhone and Android biometrics like Touch ID and third-party biometrics. As of September 1, 2020, IBM’s net worth was $109.82 billion.
Broadcom Inc. solutions include enterprise and mainframe software focused on automation, monitoring, and security. In 2019, the company announced they would be acquiring the Enterprise Security software division of Symantec for $10.7 billion. Symantec (through their Norton-branded services) operates with consumer and enterprise security and information management, offering multi-layer security and identity protection for desktop and mobile operating systems. NortonLifeLock’s net worth as of September 1, 2020, was $13.9 billion.
In 2020, Microsoft also partnered with Citrix to help Citrix customers transition to Microsoft Azure, while IBM and Wipro developed hybrid cloud offerings to manage security across different IT environments.
CIAM in Europe
Financial information is among the most sensitive data cyber-thieves try to gather. This is particularly important for economies with large financial and banking sectors, such as Germany, the UK, and Switzerland. For these countries, consumer identity and access management is paramount. With identity at the center of online services, banks understand that customer-friendly IAM is crucial for protecting highly sensitive customer data and ensuring seamless experiences.
German giant SAP SE is a leading company offering enterprise solutions for software and software-related services. The SAP Single Sign-On application allows users to access all IT systems with one password, protecting businesses from cybersecurity threats using smart cards, two-factor authentication, digital signatures, and encryption of communication channels. They also work with Kerberos/SPNEGO authentication tokens, digital certificates, and mobile sign-on. SAP SE’s revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2020, was $7.425 billion.
In France, Thales Group (Gemalto NV), a company that provides services for the aerospace, defense, transportation, and security markets, acquired international security company Gemalto in early 2019. Their identity management and data protection technologies help more than 30,000 organizations worldwide and have a strong presence in Africa thanks to GhIPSS (Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems), which manages the country’s interbank payment processing system. In 2020, Thales reported $3.2 billion order intake (up 17%) and $4.6 billion sales (up 16%), with the most significant gains belonging to their Defense & Security sector.
CIAM in Latin America
Finally, Latin America is a region that has seen significant growth in the consumer identity and access management sector due to the increasing connectivity in personal, urban, and corporate environments, and the adoption of big data, cloud computing, and IoT solutions.
In 2017, Mexico’s National Banking and Security Commission (CNBV) issued a regulation requiring all banks in the country to incorporate fingerprint scanners to be used by their clients at the time of account creation and for loan and credit card applications. For services transacted online, banks are allowed to use facial and speech recognition technologies. Companies like FacePhi (a global leader in Facial Recognition technology and Mobile Biometrics technologies) and Credence ID (mobile biometrics and credential reading technology) both have offices in Mexico City.
In May 2020, Seguridad América and Ubisecure announced a partnership for delivering Customer Identity and Access Management to new regions. Their identity platform can be deployed as IDaaS, cloud, or on-premise software, working for the Chilean, Peruvian, Argentine, and Colombian markets.
The Next Five Years
The growth of online transactions and, consequently, of cyber threats creates a strong demand for the identity and access management market across the world.
As companies adopt advanced technologies, the sector continues to grow thanks to product launches, partnerships, and acquisitions. It’s expected that the industry will grow from $7.6 billion to $15.3 billion in the next five years. | https://yisela.medium.com/the-ciam-industry-is-projected-to-reach-15-3-billion-in-a-5-year-span-at-a-15-1-cagr-74d805fffbeb | ['Yisela Alvarez Trentini'] | 2020-10-24 12:28:39.339000+00:00 | ['Ciam', 'Business', 'Identity Management', 'Access Control Systems', 'Technology'] |
D-Day — Texas Rudder’s Rangers at Pointe du Hoc | The Texas Veterans Land Board recalls D-Day, June 6th, and the special mission that Texas native James Earl Rudder and his Rangers received to scale the large cliffs rising over the beaches. It was a mission many knew they would never return from, and yet Rudder asked them and they climbed. They climbed not only because he asked, but because they knew that if those machine gun nests at the top of the cliffs were allowed to fire on the incoming boats, there would be no invasion. There would be no rescue of Vichy France, there would be no crossing of the Rhine. There would be no rescue from the Nazis. There would just be wholesale slaughter of American, British and Canadian soldier boys, pinned down on a beach with no aid.
As General Omar Bradley pointed out in his 1951 book, A Soldier’s Story, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than that which befell the 34-year-old commander of this Provisional Ranger Force.”
Pointe du Hoc is a clifftop located between the beaches nicknamed Utah and Omaha, and its cliffs tower up to 100 feet in height. Allied planners had named it one of the most dangerous German fortifications on the southern French coast.
Rudder, originally from the area around the geographical center of Texas, had graduated from Texas A&M in 1932, and by the time of the D-Day landing, was a Lt. Colonel leading the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Rudder was put in charge of the 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions, which together comprised the Provisional Ranger Force. This group of Rangers was tasked with climbing Pointe du Hoc early in the morning of June 6, 1944, before the sun rose, in order to disable the machine guns that overlooked the beaches. The Nazis thought this position impregnable.
The Rangers tackled this quest head-on, and more than 50% of their force was decimated during the attack. Rudder himself was wounded twice. Despite the ferocity of the fighting, the Rangers achieved the climb, disabled the defensive weapons and dug in to protect the clifftop from German reinforcement forces. They remained there for two days until relieved by new Allied troops.
After the war, Rudder would go on to serve as the mayor of Brady, Texas Land Commissioner, the president of Texas A&M University, and president of the entire A&M system. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest peacetime service award. When Rudder passed away in 1970, an annual memorial service was begun in Normandy, France, which continues to this day. In the spring of 2019, a statue of James Earl Rudder, in full battle dress, was installed on the grounds of the Brady courthouse, the seat of McCullough County, where he grew up.
Even Rudder, on a trip back to Normandy, when he was looking at the cliffs from the beach, remarked, “How did we do this? It was crazy then, and it’s crazy now.”
The Texas Veterans Land Board salutes the men of the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions, who accomplished the crazy miracle which allowed the D-Day invasion to succeed. It was certainly a huge moment in world history and made a difference to millions.
If you are a Veteran, thank you for your service. Click Here to Sign Up to stay informed on your benefits with the Texas Veterans Land Board. | https://medium.com/texas-veterans-blog/d-day-june-6-texas-rudders-rangers-at-pointe-du-hoc-3a2db57b7ef6 | ['Texas Vlb'] | 2020-06-05 13:51:17.854000+00:00 | ['Veterans', 'Normandy Landings', 'Wwii', 'Operation Neptune', 'D Day'] |
Motorcycle gloves market to gain huge growth by 2026 with Adidas, PUMA, Eska, Alpinestars, Kadena Sportswear, Held, MSR, Fly Racing, Olympia Sports, Kawasaki | Motorcycle gloves market to gain huge growth by 2026 with Adidas, PUMA, Eska, Alpinestars, Kadena Sportswear, Held, MSR, Fly Racing, Olympia Sports, Kawasaki Shreya Mali Sep 5, 2019·2 min read
Motorcycle gloves market
Motorcycle gloves are generally gloves made of leather. They may have gloves to protect the cyclist’s wrists from injury and help reduce drafts while driving in colder climates. Motorcycle gloves generally have reinforced palms designed to protect the cyclist from abrasion injuries in the event of an accident.
Report Consultant has added a report, entitled “Motorcycle gloves market”, which provides an overview of the various factors that allow market growth. The statistical report offers a primary source of applicable information for global business progress.
Download Sample Copy of Motorcycle gloves market report:
https://www.reportconsultant.com/request_sample.php?id=46894
Key players in Motorcycle Gloves Market: Adidas, PUMA, Eska, Alpinestars, Kadena Sportswear, Held, MSR, Fly Racing, Olympia Sports, Kawasaki, Fox Racing, JRC Glove
Motorcycle gloves market segmentation by type:
· Classic Motorcycle Gloves
· Gauntlet Motorcycle Gloves
· Open Tip Motorcycle Gloves
· Seamless Motorcycle Gloves
· Lined Motorcycle Gloves
Motorcycle Gloves Market Segmentation by Applications:
· Road Racing
· Off-road Racing
Motorcycle Gloves Market Segmentation by channels:
· Specialty Stores
· Sports Goods Stores
· Supermarkets and Hypermarkets
· Online Retailers
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The report estimate industry development trends through past study and estimate future prospects based on comprehensive research. The report largely provides market share, growth, trends and forecasts for the 2019–2026 period. It also provides key figures on the state of the motorcycle gloves market and is a valuable source of guidance and path for companies and individuals interested in the industry.
The report answers following questions:
· What will be size and growth rate of the market in the forecast year?
· What are the key factors driving the motorcycle gloves market?
· What are the risks and challenges facing the market?
· Who are the main suppliers in the motorcycle gloves market?
· What are the trend factors that influence market shares?
· What are the key results of Porter’s five forces model?
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Finally, the researchers shed light on the precise analysis of the dynamics of the market. It also measures the sustainable trends and platforms that are the basis of market growth. The degree of competition is also measured in the research report. With the help of SWOT and Porter’s five analyzes, the market has been thoroughly analyzed. It also helps to address the risks and challenges facing companies. It also offers extensive research on sales approaches.
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www.reportconsultant.com | https://medium.com/@shreyamali0603/motorcycle-gloves-market-to-gain-huge-growth-by-2026-with-adidas-puma-eska-alpinestars-kadena-4836aff098d6 | ['Shreya Mali'] | 2019-09-05 12:47:36.172000+00:00 | ['Manufacturing', 'Safety', 'Motorcycle Gloves', 'Sports'] |
6 Most Common Types Of Documentaries — Elias Daughdrill | Film Courage: We may have touched on this earlier but I was hoping we can go over the modes of documentary film?
Long Beach City College Film Professor/Filmmaker, Elias Daughdrill: Okay, so these are not my modes, these are Bill Nichols modes — there is expository, the observational mode which is completely “objective,” right?…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here). | https://medium.com/film-courage/6-most-common-types-of-documentaries-elias-daughdrill-312eba2dc05c | [] | 2020-12-07 04:54:52.439000+00:00 | ['Movies', 'Journalism', 'Filmmaking', 'Documentary', 'Film'] |
Best Diets and Exercises For the Beginners | Best Diets and Exercises For the Beginners
Knowing the best diet and exercise for eating a nutritious diet and starting a proper workout is new to most people. Proper discipline can be followed after a good fitness schedule. Editing diet and classification patterns will lead to weight loss with increasing weight problems around the world. A recent study confirms that diet changes, especially modifications to low-fat exercise, lead to more weight loss.
It is important to remember that abstinence is a habit, which ensures that for the rest of your life, you must monitor what you eat and drink to gain or maintain controlled weight. You just have to be more discriminating with the help you render toward other people.
About the best diet and exercises for beginners to choose a diet plan
At the same time, let’s start with our goal of healthy eating and staying healthy in general. You can first check your body mass index or BMI, which is an indicator of one’s weight and height. Visit the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to help calculate the correct BMI. The second step is to keep a list of what you eat and drink on a regular basis. I concentrate on drinking, so people prefer not to indulge in what they drink. It is important to appreciate that sodas, juices and liquids contain calories in addition to water. This will save about 300 calories or more a day by removing soda from your diet. Approximately 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day is a maximum calorie intake for each individual (we’ll talk about that later), but using some sodas a day is a regular calorie intake. Will have a dramatic effect on the targets. Know that this is a lifestyle change and, let me remind you of it. | https://medium.com/@funnyclip800/best-diets-and-exercises-for-the-beginners-fa3ec266fd62 | [] | 2020-12-23 15:02:32.229000+00:00 | ['Diet', 'Food', 'Diet Plan', 'Exercise', 'Workout'] |
Gun violence is traumatic, but it is over-represented in the media. | Gun violence is traumatic, but it is over-represented in the media. Mass shootings especially account for a small fraction of premature deaths. The bigger issues though are as follows. First, gun control is enforced by the police, which are a group of terrorists. After all, police brutality is a human issue.
Do we really want more contact between police and the general population? Are we going to increase stop and frisk? Are we going to assume guilt until innocence is proven?
Furthermore, the epidemiology of gun violence isn’t really indicative that further gun control is the answer. Hell, the New Zealand mass shooting, and its gun control and gun violence history are indicative that it isn’t law, but rather attitude, that must change.
Of course, there’s also the issue of the second amendment, and as importantly, the fifth amendment. The more hurdles you place on constitutionally protected rights, the greater the violation of the constitution. What we really should focus on is the mass murder committed by government, including through the wars on drugs and terror. | https://medium.com/@dgoldman0/gun-violence-is-traumatic-but-it-is-over-represented-in-the-media-ceb4f7b9f1a9 | ['Daniel Goldman'] | 2019-11-15 14:39:00.656000+00:00 | ['Guns', 'Public Health', 'Science', 'Violence', 'Government'] |
Deceptive Advertisement In The Philippines | Deceptive Advertisement in the Philippines has been ever so slightly present in our market, being seen across on multiple mediums e.g. social media or television.
According to the Consumer Act of the Philippines (Republic Act №7394, 1992), it is said that in any advertisement, in Art. 72, that falsely represents the existence of a warranty or guarantee is prohibited.
In other words, it is the dissemination of false, deceptive, or misleading advertisements by Philippine mail or in commerce by print, radio, television, outdoor advertisement or other medium for the purpose of inducing purchase of consumer products or services.
In the Philippines, the long lasting bizarre popularity of supplements is known to have practices of Deceptive Advertising. These supplements, in some cases, offer incorrect medical advice that leads to miss use of these products, therein causing damages. Though being FDA approved (Food and Drug Administration), the businesses behind these supplements insist on the wrong medical uses of their products.
Example. In Glutalipo’s website, where it explains how Glutalipo works, the Glutalipo drinks specifically, its states that it has the following benefits: whitening, slimming, prevents colon cancer, prevents constipation, detoxes and cleanses, and anti-aging, according to Doc Adam (Adam, 2020). But the main thing that Glutalipo claims is that their product helps with weight loss. However, this is all false, you will not get any of these benefits (Adam, 2020). The aforementioned benefits constitute the deception of the viewers, as this is all medically wrong.
Whether the intentions of harm are clear or not, false advertising is rightfully illegal. Promising something that isn’t true, and that being the reason why the product is sold, that is deception. If you are selling goods or services, you have a responsibility to be aware of the facts that say about your product, as it represents what the business’s beliefs are. Business should be careful about what their words imply.
There are a lot of ways to maintain the truth amidst the widespread deceptive advertisement. For one, I strongly believe that people should put in the effort in learning. People should automatically, when or before buying, check for official sources. Ask “where the information comes from–who gave the information?” “ Do they have a good reputation?”. We should check the support of these claims. Ask “What is the evidence? Who else supports these claims?” Learning what is really true is important. We can’t just rely on, for example, some celebrity says about a product. Using critical thinking is very important when seeing new information. | https://medium.com/wireless-bidet/deceptive-advertisement-in-the-philippines-85011e109de3 | [] | 2021-07-04 14:08:02.270000+00:00 | ['Philippines', 'Scam', 'Doc Adams', 'Deceptive Advertisement', 'Filipino'] |
Building a glossary: the importance of a collaborative construction | Building a glossary: the importance of a collaborative construction
More than identifying terms and their meanings, we need to understand what they mean in people’s daily lives.
Scrabble game pieces
Do you know that talk that a company’s voice is unique? Well, in practice it is not that simple because a company is made up of people and each person has their own voice.
Here at Gympass, the voice-building work has several initiatives, one of the most important is our glossary.
Doing this type of work requires time and dedication, but more than that, it requires the effort of many people. After all, all these people stop talking as individuals to speak the same language as the company.
Precisely for this reason we chose to create our glossary in a collaborative way.
Collaboration for satisfactory results
In our experience, involving people from different areas with a common objective — even in many cases, increases the duration of the process — always leads to amazing results.
Now, taking some steps back, how did we come up with the idea of a collaborative creation and how has it worked in practice?
Understanding the pain points
We realized that some words that we use in the product, for example, have different meanings in other areas, which causes a lot of confusion for our clients, users and employees.
Considering that, we decided to interview different areas of the company to discover the most problematic words and understand the biggest pains and language challenges.
By creating a glossary, besides unifying all terms used in the company, both for internal and external audiences, we ensure consistency and clarity in our communications.
Important to know:
All of this we’ve been talking about is beautiful in the theory, but it only works if everyone uses this material daily as a source of truth.
In other words, more than a practical work of research and writing, there is also a serious evangelisation effort.
Beta version
Well, with this first information collected and analyzed, we were able to start the beta version of our glossary.
We did it in a spreadsheet format, with the following columns:
- Term
- Definition
- Example of a sentence using the term
- Name of the contributor
- Department
- Questions (I will explain the last item in a bit)
When we got to a consistent amount of words, we opened the material for collaboration, distributing it through all the company and leaving the access granted to any employee.
“Okay, but what about when there is a question of meaning?”
This is where the ‘question column’ comes in.
Whenever someone has a problem with the meaning, they just have to use this space to talk about it. So, we got together to specifically discuss each question, involving the areas of interest in that word.
How is the glossary nowadays?
The glossary has been progressing a lot, after all it is a living document that evolves with each change of terminology or new appearance of a new term, and has become an official document.
Today it is divided into 5 sections, with terms alphabetically ordered in each one to facilitate navigation.
They are:
Business protagonists, the terms that define our stakeholders, our departments, and our types of business.
Inside the product, the terms used on the product (both app and website) to describe actions, define next steps or describe a section.
Tools and processes, the terms that define the tools used internally or to improve the external stakeholders’ experience, plus our internal processes and methodologies.
Data definitions, those global terms usually used to define important data for business tracking, strategy, and decisions.
Inclusive language, alternative terms everyone can start using in place of more common options, to make language more inclusive and be thoughtful of all kinds of audiences when communicating.
Next steps
The idea is to make the glossary more and more useful.
Ideally, we would like to add hyperlinks and make them interchangeable, as it happens in an online dictionary; if a term is mentioned in one of the descriptions, you could click on it and go to their own definition.
On the platform we currently use, this is not possible, but the plans exist and, as soon as possible, we will evolve the project to this direction :)
—
Someone with a similar experience? Let’s chat! | https://medium.com/gympass/building-a-glossary-the-importance-of-a-collaborative-construction-aa4eecec93b7 | ['Suzana Demetrio'] | 2020-10-21 16:25:08.889000+00:00 | ['Gympass', 'Glossary', 'Ux Writing', 'Content Design', 'UX'] |
The skills of the doll-grabbing machine, successful online doll-grabbing | 1. When you put in the coin, the machine will make a sound to start you, pay attention to see if there is a place where the time is displayed (usually 10 seconds), if you don’t move for 10 seconds, the claw will automatically go down and grab, pay attention to the time, move to first The top of the doll you want to grasp, people with poor visual perception can confirm from the side of the glass or call a friend to stand next to it, because the orientation error is prone to appear in the next layer of glass.
Tips: The moving process should be steady, don’t shake your hands, otherwise the claws will follow, move the stalk when fine-tuning, and wait for the claws to stabilize and grab
2. After confirming the position, you can press the button next to the stalk to lower the paw. When the paw is lowered, when the paw is halfway to the doll’s body or head, press the button again (this is the key, and it is also the direct reason why many people grab the paw and release it. ), and then the paw will bring the doll up, you just have to wait.
Technique: The second time the key is pressed is to increase the power of the paw. Many people ask me: “Why do I release the paw as soon as I grab it?” The reason is here, you know the fundamental difference between pressing once and twice. Up. | https://medium.com/@daylongtech168/the-skills-of-the-doll-grabbing-machine-successful-online-doll-grabbing-942bdb69cd6d | [] | 2021-12-10 10:20:05.617000+00:00 | ['Gaming', 'Arcade Games', 'Casino', 'Coins', 'Slots Machine'] |
Feature Toggles at Tout | How Tout uses feature toggles in their development process, post by Javid Jamae, Principal Engineer (Growth at Tout).
Tout is a video platform for media brands and content publishers. We have video players on hundreds of prominent high-traffic media websites and blogs across the United States. Using our video marketplace, websites can show premium video content from producers such as Time, Yahoo, Condé Nast, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and dozens of others. The sites can also let their journalists and authors capture their own video content using our Android and iOS apps, and then play their content on their sites.
The way our service works is that we provide a Javascript embed code that our partner sites place within their website template. When their page loads, we inject our video players into various parts of the page. Deciding everything from where the video players placed, what video content it has, and how it appears can be decided on the server side, thus minimizing configuration and code changes for our customers.
In the early days, we only had a few sites using our new products. To keep things simple, we kept most of our product configuration in the code and consistent across all of our partner websites. When we wanted to make a change, we would negotiate with all of them before rolling out a new feature. This was manageable because there was little to no variability and notifying individual partners of changes was easy.
As our customer base grew, we found it increasingly difficult to maintain a single product configuration, so we introduced a way to configure products differently for each partner website. But, due to the nature of being an embedded product, we started finding it difficult to test changes internally and to demonstrate changes to our partners.
We did internal testing using a web debugging proxy software called Charles. We would deploy an updated version of our code to our staging (i.e. internal test) environment, then we would configure Charles to proxy our production server to our staging server on the machine we were testing on. Though there are a few snags with this process, it works relatively well overall. The problem with this approach is that it only works for internal testing.
Our customers often wanted to preview new changes to their site before we rolled them out so that they could do their own verification and training. As the demand for customer previews increased, we started looking into feature toggles as a solution.
Conceptually, feature toggles are simple, you just keep the old version of your code in place, but wrap it in a conditional clause that does the new thing if the feature is enabled:
iffeature_enabled(“blah”) run_new_code() else run_old_code() end
Since we are using Ruby on Rails, we started by using a Ruby library appropriately called ‘feature’. The feature library is an open source library hosted on Github. The great thing about this library is that it enabled us to create feature toggles in our code within minutes.
Using this library had several downsides as well. Since it’s just a library, it has no user interface for creating or modifying feature toggles. It also has no functionality for passing in feature toggles from web browsers using request parameters or cookies, which is tremendously useful for testing a specific state of your toggles. Another thing that is missing is metadata around when and who modified the state of the toggles, which is really useful for debugging and forensic purposes. Nevertheless, with a bit of work building out those tools, the feature library was great for getting up and running and we were able to deploy our code to our production with a new feature toggled “off” and then enable it for testing or demo purposes.
After starting to use feature toggles, we realized several unintended benefits. First, if we found any issues with the new version of the code, we could merely roll back to the old version by switching a toggle. We no longer needed to do roll-back or roll-forward deployments to undo a mistake in production.
Another great benefit was that it minimized environment contention. Since our team is still relatively small, we only have one test environment. By using feature toggles, everybody could merge and deploy their changes to the staging environment and just toggle “on” the features that they want to test by setting cookies in their browser.
We also started using feature toggles as a way to do zero-downtime feature cutover. Since we’re using a microservice architecture, we have multiple systems that all talk to one another. Previously, if we needed to roll out a new feature that required communication between multiple systems, we would have to bring down all of the related systems and deploy all of the appropriate code changes before bringing the systems back up. But with feature toggles, we were able to deploy each system code change when it was ready and then just synchronize toggling the new functionality on. Effectively, this eliminated the need to have complex blue-green deployments since we just managed it all with feature toggles.
However, using toggles comes at a cost, though I feel like the cost is definitely justified. First, not all of our developers were thrilled about having temporary if/else statements littered throughout the code. They felt that this added extra complexity in the code and in the unit/integration testing effort. We started developing some good best practices around where to put the feature toggles and updated our development process to include the proper removal of features that had already been rolled out. While unit testing did become more complex, the overall complexity of our process was simplified. We no longer required as many unnecessary feature and merge branches and the deployment and process became simpler as I mentioned earlier.
All in all, I’d say that using feature toggles has been a great tool in our tool belt and has had significant positive benefits to our development process. Though we used an open source library and grew the tools that we needed around it, tools like LaunchDarkly (which didn’t exist when we got started) would quite possibly have gotten us to where we needed to be much faster by providing us with all the tools that we had to build from the ground up and the support that we didn’t have. | https://medium.com/launchdarkly/feature-toggles-at-tout-ae86ffaf3b47 | [] | 2018-01-05 01:07:33.906000+00:00 | ['Continuous Integration', 'Feature Flags', 'Case Study', 'Continuous Delivery'] |
How to care for your first canary | I came to love canaries late… I inherited Happy, shown in the photo, from a dear relative that passed away a couple of years ago. Her beloved canary filled my condo with song and made me happier than I expected. What started as an act of service became a gift to me. I loved that little bird. He was an older bird, and he passed away recently at the ripe age of about 10. My home was uncomfortably quiet, and still after he passed. This is dedicated to Happy, aptly named because he embodied happiness with his cheerful song and easy nature.
The canaries are often considered to be the perfect bird for first-time bird owners since they require less attention than, for example, cockatiels or budgies. These finch family members are tiny, usually about 4–5 inches, while some breeds can grow up to be about 8 inches. The canaries have been bred into more than 200 breeds, each of which is renowned for either its song, coloring, or behavior. With good care, a canary can live about 10 years, so make sure you are in it for the long haul.
History of Canaries as Pets
The canary is originally native to the Azores, Madeira, and the Canary Islands, after which it got its name. After the Latin word for dog, canis, the islands themselves are named after the inhabitants’ dogs. In the 1500s, Europeans fell in love with the canary due to its beautiful song and began to export, domesticate, and breed it. In his article The Origin and Dispersal of the Domesticated Canary, James Parsons calls this a prime example of domestication for non-utilitarian purposes. Instead of cattle or sheepdogs and watchdogs, canaries were not chosen as pets for their immediate practical usefulness.
Once its sensitivity to carbon monoxide was discovered, the canary was used as an indicator for toxic gases by mine workers in the 1800s and early 1900s. Workers would carry a small cage with a canary into a tunnel to be alerted to the presence of toxic gas. The bird would stop singing, start panting for air or be unable to grasp its perch.
During the First World War, canaries came to fame in Britain for their service in the trenches. They were kept at rescue stations to test the tunnels below the trenches for carbon monoxide. Of course, the soldiers, so far from home and in a mentally and physically destructive situation, also bonded with their canaries as can be seen in heartwarming photographs.
Setup
If you want to keep happy and healthy birds, buy the largest cage possible. Being able to fly is indispensable for a canary’s health, so provide them with a big flight cage and never clip their wings.
The cage’s height is less important than its length to allow for their natural flight since they fly horizontally, not vertically, and enjoy flitting back and forth. The cage should be at least 24 inches long and have no more than 1/2 inch spacing between the bars. Avoid round cages since they do not allow for the natural flight patterns of canaries.
Inside their cage, your canary will need smooth but slightly irregular perches, so the bird has something to grasp on. Good materials are cement, cotton rope, or natural branch perches. Do not use sandpaper perch coverings since they are abrasive to birds’ feet. Provide your pet with perches in a variety of heights, as they like to hop from perch to perch. Perches in different sizes and materials will prevent sore feet and other foot-related health issues.
As toys, they like swings, mirrors, bells. Make sure that the toys are hung in a way that still leaves room for flying!
You should place sand sheets or bird sand at the bottom of the cage since canaries need this to help digest their food. Replace this cage liner at least once a week, more often when needed.
The canaries are not very social birds and are happy to be kept alone. Unless you plan to leave your pet home alone for a great deal of time, in this case, it would be better to keep your bird with a mate. But be careful, canaries are very territorial — never house two male canaries in the same cage!
Temperature-wise, a canary will be happy at normal room temperature. Make sure not to put the cage directly next to air conditioning units, any draft, or windows that receive direct sunlight. The canaries need a light/dark rhythm that announces the difference between day and night. It is best to cover the cage when the sun goes down so that your canary can get enough rest. Do not put the cage in the kitchen — even a small amount of smoke can be fatal!
Caring for Your Canary
70% of a canary’s diet should consist of a seed mixture suitable for canaries. Store birdseed in airtight containers to avoid a pantry moth infestation. Birdseed often has pantry moth eggs in it. Pet shops will offer you a variety to chose from. Pellets are not as nutritious as seeds, but you can feed them once in a while for a bit of variety. You should also offer your bird fresh fruit or vegetables every day to get all the nutrition it needs. The canaries like, for example, apples, bananas, pears, peaches, strawberries, corn, cucumbers, cooked broccoli, and raw spinach. If your bird is of a red or orange coloring, orange food like carrots will help keep this color bright. Cooked egg is a good source of vitamin A and protein. They do not need much of this, though, except during the molt, the shedding and replacing of their feathers usually happen in late summer or early fall.
The canaries also enjoy sprouted seeds — they will leave the hulls in the dish, so a dish that looks full can already be empty.
The only supplement, healthy birds with balanced diets, will need calcium. You can get a calcium block for birds in any pet store.
Always have fresh drinking water available in the cage. Use bottled drinking water or fresh spring water for this. The water should not contain calcium, fluoride, or heavy metals — if you need to use tap water, treat it with a water conditioner first.
Keep water, dry food, and fresh food in different bowls.
Do not feed canaries lettuce, avocado, or lemon, and do not give them drinks made for human consumption, like soft drinks. Make sure to remove any food that has not been eaten in a 24 hour period.
The water bottle and the feed bowls have to be cleaned daily. Make sure to thoroughly clean the entire cage with a pet-friendly disinfectant at least once a month.
The right perches and toys will help to keep their nail short. If your bird’s nails have to be trimmed, it is best to go to a veterinarian experienced at trimming avian nails since this process is very stressful for your canary and can easily lead to injuries.
Provide a bath for them a few times a week. Bathing helps canaries to cool off and cleans dust from their feathers. Some canaries also like to be sprayed with tepid water.
Keep your eye on any signs that your canary might be ill and inform a veterinarian when you are worried. Common indications that something might be wrong are, for example, eyes that are red or swollen, eye or nasal discharge, a canary sitting on the bottom of its cage, favoring one foot, loss of appetite, and runny or discolored stool. The canaries are susceptible to mite infections that can be treated when caught early. In the summer months, especially with canaries kept in an outside aviary, avian pox transmitted by mosquitoes poses a risk.
The Canary at Play
The canaries are very playful and should be provided with a variety of toys. No matter how many opportunities for playing they have inside their cage, they will also need regular exercise outside of their cage! Be sure to turn the ceiling fan off and cover fireplaces when your canary can explore a room.
Male canaries will sing very loudly during the mating season. Female canaries chirp rather than sing. Male canaries learn their song by imitating adult males, often their father (see research done by Fernando Nottebohm and colleagues). Since you will be most likely keeping only one canary, you can play recorded birdsong to your pet as well as other types of music. It will often incorporate parts of the songs it hears into its own personal song.
The canaries like being talked to and will answer in their own way, but they do not imitate human voices like other birds. And while they are not as cuddly and hands-on as other pets, they enjoy it when you spend time with them and hang out in the same room as they are in.
Because they are so small and friendly, people think that canaries are good pets for children. Because they are fragile and easily frightened, likely, children cannot treat them with the care they need.
Additionally, canaries do not like being handled. When you need to pick up your canary, cover its back and wings with your palm and surround its neck with your middle and index finger. Use your other fingers to support its feet and body. Be very gentle. The canaries will bite when they feel threatened.
Final Words
When caring for birds sounds intriguing to you, but you do not want an all too noisy companion or a pet that needs constant attention, a canary may be just right for you. But keep in mind that even a pet that is relatively “low maintenance” requires care. When you are willing to put thought and effort into selecting a canary that goes well with your expectations and the care you can provide, you might soon join the thousands of canary enthusiasts all over the world. | https://medium.com/@mrycpetcare/how-to-care-for-your-first-canary-4c09dadf0bbb | ['Mry Contreras'] | 2020-12-12 04:47:33.867000+00:00 | ['Pet Birds', 'Birds', 'Canaries'] |
My Flatiron Bootcamp Experience | When I first figured out I was interested in product design, I researched the field and spoke with product designers at my current company in order to get advice. Through my research, I noticed the product designers who had similar backgrounds to me, all took courses at a coding/technical Bootcamp.
My first choice was the Lambda School for UX/UI design. I proceeded to apply and was ecstatic when I got in! Unfortunately, a few weeks before starting, the program got canceled due to reasons unknown. I felt crushed and defeated in the moment. I felt stuck in my current job with no room to grow. I let a week go by as I vented to family and close friends. In the midst of it all, I remembered that a recruiter had reached out to me from the Flatiron School, months ago. I did further research on the Flatiron School and spoke to one of their admissions coaches, and from this point, I knew that I had nothing to lose.
I learned that the Flatiron School had a part-time program that integrated with my full-time workload seamlessly. I also learned that Flatiron had a money-back guarantee if you did not get a job in the field that you study. And a bonus was that all of the classes were online and recorded. From here, I was sold.
The course extended over about 10 months that were broken down into 5 phases. The first phase focused heavily on understanding the basics of UX/UI. After the first phase, you have to choose a path that you want to dedicate most of your studies. I choose UI being that I have previous experience as a graphic designer and found user interaction quite intriguing.
The next 2 phases ramped you up to gain the skills needed to become a product designer. The class was small with about 8 students at most. We learned the best industry and design practices for product designers. We also learned advanced skills in Sketch, Figma, Principle, and others.
In the last two phases, learning was more of a hands-off approach. Phase 4 was designing a product for an actual client which was really fun! I got to work with 2 other designers to build the most viable product for a real-life company. I would say this is when I learned the most. We didn't have any mandatory classes, rather we had meetings with clients and teachers.
The last but most important phase was building our portfolio. Even though we were so close to the finish line, we still had to push through and build a portfolio that ultimately lands us a job. Most of the work in this phase was done on our own time. We just had to schedule times to speak with our teacher about the updates we are making and changes that needed to be made.
Overall, my experience with the Flatiron School has been a great one. I would not know what I know today about product design without them. Also, my career trajectory has done a complete 360 as well. I am now heading closer in the direction of being a product designer than I could have ever done on my own!
Unfortunately, this program has shut down due to COVID. If you are interested in a career in product design, one that I can recommend is the full-time UX Design Immersive course at General Assembly. The only downside is that this course is full-time. If you work full-time like me, I would look at other technical schools that have similar qualities to my experience! | https://medium.com/@alexiousross/my-flatiron-bootcamp-experience-7cf6380285e | ['Alexious Ross'] | 2021-03-24 23:45:13.949000+00:00 | ['Flatiron School', 'Career Change', 'UI Design', 'Codingbootcamp', 'Product Design'] |
I have some thoughts on perceived strength. | I have some thoughts on perceived strength. We look at the people who seem to have their emotional $h!t together and assume that they don’t need help.
Instead, we see the visibly damaged and expend our resources on helping them. Those who are seen as able to persevere spend their time triaging the everyday dramas of the admittedly broken. All the while, they feel the cracks below their tough exterior continue to deteriorate their perception of the obvious iniquity.
Everyone is deserving of compassion and care. Not just those who seem to need it. I encourage you all to look to the people right now who you assume are strong enough to withstand any storm. Ask them if they’re okay. Because it’s highly likely that they are not. | https://medium.com/a-little-bit-better/i-have-some-thoughts-on-perceived-strength-1c1e31e71960 | ['Michelle Loucadoux'] | 2020-12-09 20:54:39.838000+00:00 | ['Compassion', 'Emotional Health', 'Inspiration', 'Emotional Intelligence', 'Community'] |
5 points You Need to Know How To Start Your Modeling Career? A Beginner’s Guide. | Lets Start. So you want to do modeling? this is the perfect class for you!
Fashion Modeling.
Fashion Modeling is a business, and like all businesses require investment by you. These investments may be in time and effort or in money, but you cannot hope to be successful as a commercial model without making them. Some of the traits that are important for working in modeling are a good sense of style, a positive attitude, excellent stamina, communication skills, the ability to look good on camera at all times, and outstanding facial projection.
At a minimum, you will need to invest in a portfolio. To start your modeling career.
Develop your skills.
Fashion Modeling is an art. Study and understand posing. Practice runway walking. What separates a pretty model from another model is going to be their posing ability and their walk. Posing and walking on a runway is very awkward at first. Practice.
Here is a Fashion modeling tip for you: Have a friend shoot photos of you to get comfortable with posing, both in front of a camera and another person. Or start smaller and put a camera on a tripod and practice by yourself until your confidence grows before you start your journey to become a fashion model.
Practice posing in front of the camera.
The next step to know how to start Fashion modeling is to practice in front of the camera. The supermodels you see in gorgeous magazine photos did not just sit in front of a camera and get lucky when the photographer took a picture of them.
Both equally skilled in their respective trade, a model will use her posing, facial expressions, and artistic intuition to help create the photographer’s vision. Having the right posing skills is an essential requirement for becoming a model.
The photographer will use his knowledge of lighting, aperture, framing, etc. to bring everything to life on his end. If you can’t pose and don’t feel confident in front of a camera, it will be 20 times harder to get a great shot. Work on becoming the best model you can be!
Get a Modelling portfolio.
A great modeling portfolio is a collection of 6 to 12 photographs that shows your ability as a model. The portfolio needs to show what you are capable of.
In short, the modeling portfolio is not about YOU. It is about what /who you can be. As an aspiring model, you need an amazing modeling portfolio to kickstart your career. It’s your chance to make a great first impression on agencies and clients. One of the most critical steps to become a model and to make a stable career is to have a well-rounded modeling portfolio that showcases your strong points through high-quality, stunning images.
One of the first requirements from a model that agencies and clients will look at to make a great first impression is the modeling portfolio. It helps to have both an online version or you can send it to anyone via an email and a printed version that you can show when you meet someone face to face. You need all the exposure you can get to move up the ladder in the modeling industry.
Learn to embrace rejection.
Mentally prepare yourself for rejection- a lot of it. Even the most stunning supermodels/ Actors to ever walk the planet was told “NO.” Rejection is part of the territory.
The sooner you not only understand but accept that, the better off you will be. Don’t base your self-worth on appearance or anybody else’s approval of you. Start practicing now: See if it was easy or difficult. Start practicing the ability to let all criticism roll off your back! But don’t worry, everybody is capable of learning this skill with enough practice.
Maintain your look.
Take care of your skin, hair, body, and health. However, for fashion models, the height/weight standards are more rigid and inflexible than with any other genre in modeling.
Many supermodels use the following habits as part of their beauty routine, including but not limited to the following: drinking water like a fish throughout the day to stay hydrated.
Other habits include exfoliating/washing/moisturizing face every morning and evening, wearing SPF, never going to sleep in their makeup, regular manicures, and hair appointments, taking a multivitamin, working out 4–5 days per week, maintaining a strict diet/meal plan, among many more.
Looking and feeling your best will only benefit you no matter how you look at it — Professionally or Personally.
Follow me on Instagram @vikramrajaofficial | https://medium.com/@vikramrajaofficial/5-points-you-need-to-know-how-to-start-your-modeling-career-a-beginners-guide-b8bda55ee77a | [] | 2020-11-18 06:38:26.566000+00:00 | ['Model', 'Beginners Guide', 'Fashion Modeling', 'Vikramraja', 'Modeling Career'] |
Accuracy on Imbalanced Datasets and Why, You Need Confusion Matrix! | Confusion Matrix
If you have an imbalanced dataset to work with, it’s always better to use confusion matrix as your evaluation criteria for your machine learning model. It gives you a very simple, yet efficient performance measures for your model. It also helps to provide a clear idea if the model you have created is performing well on your primary goal. First let’s see how a confusion matrix looks like, then I will tell you what I meant by performing well on your primary goal.
Confusion Matrix
True Positive (TP): It refers to the number of predictions where the classifier correctly predicts the positive class as positive.
True Negative (TN): It refers to the number of predictions where the classifier correctly predicts the negative class as negative.
False Positive (FP): It refers to the number of predictions where the classifier incorrectly predicts the negative class as positive.
False Negative (FN): It refers to the number of predictions where the classifier incorrectly predicts the positive class as negative.
This matrix will give you more insights as to why just using accuracy as a performance measure for your model doesn’t give you the whole picture. Now let’s look at different performance measures you can use by using the confusion matrix.
Precision: It tells you what fraction of predictions as a positive class were actually positive. To calculate precision, use the following formula: TP/(TP+FP).
Recall: It tells you what fraction of all positive samples are correctly predicted as positive by the classifier. It is also known as True Positive Rate (TPR), Sensitivity, Probability of Detection. To calculate Recall, use the following formula: TP/(TP+FN).
Specificity: It tells you what fraction of all negative samples are correctly predicted as negative by the classifier. It is also known as True Negative Rate (TNR). To calculate specificity, use the following formula: TN/(TN+FP).
Now, in a perfect world we’d want a model that has a precision of 1 and a recall of 1. That means a 100% accuracy which is often not the case for a machine learning model. So what we should try, is to get a higher precision with a higher recall value. But there is often a trade-off between these two metrics. There is a general inverse relation between these two metrics. Meaning if you increase one, more often than not you will decrease the other. Let’s look at the following examples and remember when I said “performing well on your primary goal”, okay let’s talk about that now.
High Precision, Lower Recall
High Precision, Lower Recall
As you can see, this confusion matrix gives a perfect precision of 1.00, but at the cost of a lower recall of 0.47. We use this kind of scenario when it is significantly important to have a model that gives a lower number of FP. For example, if your model ranks the results of search query, then you need to give less mismatched results (meaning, lower FP) to your user. This kind of tasks are called precision-oriented problem. So, if your goal is to build a machine learning model where it is also important to get the negative cases right, you need to build a precision-oriented model.
High Recall, Lower Precision
High Recall, Lower Precision
As opposed to the previous example, this one gives you a perfect recall of 1.00 but a lower precision of 0.36. Now when it is important to have a model that gives a lower number of FN, then we use such scenario. An example of such case would be if your model tries to detect a disease in patients, then it is far more important to minimize negative prediction (meaning, lower FN) that are actually positive cases. This kind of tasks are called recall-oriented problem. So, if your goal is to build a machine learning model that is mainly focused on getting the most positive cases right, you need to build a recall-oriented model.
Finally, I hope you have a clear idea now to why use confusion matrix rather than just taking a typical accuracy percentages for machine learning models. Thanks for reading. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/accuracy-on-imbalanced-datasets-and-why-you-need-confusion-matrix-937613bf89bf | ['Joydwip Mohajon'] | 2020-05-28 14:43:33.355000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Imbalanced Data', 'Data Science', 'Confusion Matrix'] |
¿Qué es la correlación? | Head of Decision Intelligence, Google. Hello (multilingual) world! This account is for translated versions of my English language articles. twitter.com/quaesita
Follow | https://medium.com/datos-y-ciencia/qu%C3%A9-es-la-correlaci%C3%B3n-c677a74483a0 | ['Cassie Kozyrkov'] | 2020-12-10 18:02:26.951000+00:00 | ['Experiment', 'Correlation', 'Data Science', 'Ciencia Y Datos', 'Statistics'] |
The Fault In Our Loyalties | The plan is nothing, strategery is everything
For most of my life, commitment & accountability have gone hand-in-hand as the formula for success. Set a goal, commit, and get it done. So, as I’ve landed in leadership roles, it’s something I’ve emphasized a lot with my teams.
That’s not bad, per se, but I was encouraging commitment at the wrong level. I wanted team members to commit to completing an assignment within a certain timeframe, then hold themselves accountable to get it done. However, that sort of commitment has proven to be too low-level and individual-focused.
You can’t emphasize execution without buy-in on strategy.
What I’ve come to realize is that commitment is much more effective when used to obtain buy-in from the team on a particular strategy. In other words, it’s really powerful when the team can agree, “We’re going to accomplish X by doing A, B, & C,” and commit to the approach. You can’t emphasize execution without buy-in on strategy. I’d been looking for people to commit to A, B, & C without understanding or agreement on what we were trying to accomplish.
I was doing everything I could to make execution of assignments go as smoothly as possibly — and being marginally successful — but it wasn’t until I read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni that I came to see I was prioritizing my teams incorrectly and creating unnecessary turbulence as a result.
In the book, members of a fictional executive team learn to prioritize shared objectives above the goals of their individual departments so the company can succeed. They prioritize themselves as a team and align on strategy. Departments begin working together to achieve common goals rather than competing for resources, and they experience success as an organization rather than as disconnected teams. It’s beautiful. | https://medium.com/illumination/the-fault-in-our-loyalties-72dea3789410 | ['Adam Prescott'] | 2020-12-23 09:04:17.498000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Startup', 'Productivity', 'Leadership', 'Business'] |
Introduction: Why Study Politics? | Why should politics be learned? For Aristotle politics is considered as 'master science’, where students learn about all branches of human activities from several aspects. Politics is considered as a central to an understanding of our society and what happens around the world. The systematic study of politics or political science lets the students explore the world through how public decisions are made on important issues beginning from health care to policy to human rights to business to government and to environment.
As an international relations student, we are supported to observe the political phenomena much like a natural scientist, watching every issue around the world which has no ends and tends to have no best solutions to come up with, like voting patterns, form of governments, regulations and policies, ect. This course literally encourages the students to think around the topic which is being discussed in class, and teaches students not only to think, but also to have a strong argument. Every nation, every country has its own political concepts and beliefs, and conditioned by environment and by the scope and limitation of mind, answers by political philosophers as well as the knowledge and arguments of their times. It is why this branch of philosophy is important to learn in order to understand the concept before jumping to learn anything deeper. Take democracy as an example. Democracy was first held in BC, and today there is already modern democracy which has been revised by the previous ones. There were times when democracy failed in a country, no matter what democracy is still held by many countries around the world.
How does the country survive? You won’t know unless you dig into political ground. | https://medium.com/@melania.aseng/introduction-why-study-politics-2a23c799bc05 | ['Melania Sarah Aseng'] | 2020-12-12 18:37:06.907000+00:00 | ['Students', 'President University', 'International Relations', 'Political Science', 'Politics'] |
IS IT TIME TO GET REAL? | IS IT TIME TO GET REAL?
I seldom pay attention to opinion posts unless they are truly beautiful or intensely abhorrent — like the Orange Man’s tweets.
But recently, I came across two posts on FB that have me somewhat riled up.
The first is a black-and-white photograph of a village scene in India.
Yes. It is gorgeous. A single pot of water. Light smeared on the portico of a hutment. A tattered red scarf, like a brave flag, tied to a tree.
But it is the caption below that makes me furious:
“Ah! How I miss traveling through the villages of yesteryear. A way of life that was indescribably beautiful.”
Seriously? I have lived in a village. I have seen those hutments up close.
They are empty. Empty of water, electricity, food. A family of four or seven or ten sleeps side by side on the floor without beds and without coverlets.
Without hope.
Yes. Nature has a way of making all things luminous.
Who hasn’t seen the face of a tribal woman, weathered as a tree, reminiscent of the inextirpable mountains, captured by a photographer — possibly on National Geographic or some other Travel brochure?
But the photographer knows to not comment on the woman’s way of life. He does not pretend to know anything of her life except intuitively, that it was inexorably harsh.
The second post is a long, meandering essay written by someone I recently friended on FaceBook. A writer, according to his profile. Usually, once I start to read, I get through the entire post. Having read the post, I thought I would move on.
Well, my finger did. His opinion (couched in flowery language and many literary allusions), however, prickled then bloomed like a rash that just won’t go away.
It is now a week since he made his ruminations public and I am still scratching.
Here is his opinion-post in a nutshell:
The writer is attracted to a homeless man — there is a spontaneity, a sense of joy about him, that he believes is extraordinary.
Perhaps a glutton for experiences, he spends time with the beggar. Buys him a beer. A meal. Then moves on.
From time to time, he feels compelled to seek out the beggar, share a joint. They seldom talk, he says. They sit in silence. Companionably.
The dilemma?
He is afraid, he will lose his sometimes companion, to well-meaning activists, social workers who believe the homeless man needs a clean bed, a shower, some dignity.
He is afraid, once the homeless man gets a taste of comfort he will not want to return to his previous Zen-like existence. And the writer will lose this karmic connection with the minor character in his writing life.
Does this story bother you in any way, dear Reader? I for one can taste the bile in my mouth, even as I write.
The writer fears the loss of a beggar’s way of life? Fears that a superior quality of life — by superior I mean, three meals a day and a real bed — will alter the man’s mute acceptance of his shitty fate and send him on a downward spiral of food-comfort-shelter-dignity?
Like many writers, I borrow my characters from real life. But surely, I should want more for the downtrodden than have them remain like fixed points in a place and a page of my life? Surely, they ought to be more than literary fodder for self-absorbed dreamers?
Gather all the ambiance you want for your novel, I want to tell my FB friend. But don’t be so naïve as to romanticize the lives of others. Unless you have been in their ravaged feet, their flea-ridden mats, their watered-down meals, do not pretend you know them.
A shared meal. A beer. A joint does not make you brothers under your skin. The reason the homeless man sits in silence is that he needs the respite of a cigarette. Or because he is hungry. He does not need you. He may not remember you until it’s time for another meal. It is you who needs him — for your work of fiction.
In order to make a difference, we need to get real. | https://medium.com/@poonam-a-chawla/is-it-time-to-get-real-6eb9f344a7d6 | ['Poonam Chawla'] | 2020-12-21 21:09:25.021000+00:00 | ['Reality', 'Opinion', 'Writer', 'Life Lessons'] |
Hiraeth -PROLOGUE | PROLOGUE
This is it. Every year, on the fourth of July, we celebrate a special day. Even more, we experience that special day. Because every year, when the third of July turns into the fourth of July, we get the chance to find each other. We get the chance to find our soulmate.
Every year at exactly midnight, following our eighteenth birthday, we possess the body of our soulmate for twenty-four hours. We get only one chance in life to find them. Once we have found them, our new life begins. We see life in a new way. We see ‘colours’, as the elders call it. We see the world as it was meant to be seen.
There are only a few weeks left for me. For everyone born in the year 2002. This is our chance to find love. | https://medium.com/@yanaalmadani/hiraeth-prologue-a0ee8cae05ce | ['Yanaal Madani'] | 2020-12-22 13:53:21.331000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Storytelling', 'Hiraeth', 'Fiction Writing', 'Soulmates'] |
Lessons from the PICU: How my Worst Moments Resulted in the Best Gratitude | Lessons from the PICU: How my Worst Moments Resulted in the Best Gratitude
The tough times taught me how the ultimate beauty lies in the mundane.
Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash
“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” Robert Brault
I have always prided myself on my ability to practice gratitude.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve thanked the Lord for my blessings on the majority of my days.
Still, even as someone who continuously reminds themselves of their blessings, I admit, I take so much for granted.
Due to the state of our world, I’ve been reflecting on which moments in my life have impacted my gratitude the most.
Ironically, I found the key moments in my life that truly reflected my gratefulness are also my worst.
Here’s why.
Like most parents, my kids are my world.
I write this post as my almost 3-year-old dances to a Blippi song. His long golden hair flops all about, and he grins at me with this smile representative of the ultimate happiness.
I’m grateful for all of this, and it’s hard to believe we almost lost him when he was a mere 5 weeks old due to bronchiolitis complications.
And when reflecting on memories that impact my gratitude, my head still travels to that horrible week in the PICU almost three years ago.
To put it bluntly: My now bubbly dancing boy spent a week in the PICU, and we almost lost him.
I vividly remember his tiny, frail body covered in tubes, and how, for a few days, I couldn’t even hold him.
The images resonate as if this only happened yesterday.
I remember how I prayed and confided to God that I had taken the simplest moments for granted.
Brought to my knees, I promised I would do better.
I told him all I wanted was for my family to be healthy and home again.
As my newborn son gasped for air in the hospital, I reflected on life a lot.
Oddly, I didn’t think about any extraordinary moments. Instead, I replayed a series of small moments.
Trickling memories of my family of four spending time together during the first five weeks after my youngest son’s birth.
I didn’t care about any of my accomplishments and victories. I cared most about everyday things.
As is said in Vanilla Sky, “The little things . . . there’s nothing bigger, is there?”
I thought of morning snuggles.
The sweet smell of my baby’s breath.
The four of us watching Elmo on a Saturday night.
I thought of double stroller walks.
Family dinners.
My oldest son and husband rolling play cars on the floor as I held my youngest and watched.
This series of small, mundane moments ran through my head when we didn’t know if our son would make it.
I admit, it’s now been over two years, and there are times, as an imperfect human, I still feel sorry for myself.
There are times, especially now with a worldwide pandemic going on and a nation more divided than ever, when I get sucked in by the chaos and forget about those small moments.
There are instances when the gratitude escapes me again.
But, there’s a difference: I catch myself sooner than I once did.
When I start to tumble and forget my abundance of tiny blessings…
When I catch myself going through the rabbit hole of darkness, I wise up as soon as I remember those moments in the PICU.
That’s all it takes.
Once I remember those terrifying feelings that sit raw in my skin almost three years later, the sulking ends and the gratitude overflows again.
I’ve learned that even though I have had many significant moments in my life, accomplishments I worked hard for and am proud of, nothing matters more than the series of small simplicities I’ve shared with my family.
When I think of gratitude, I think of my family of four together: healthy, happy, and strong.
It’s simple.
After almost losing my youngest son, I learned that the simple should not go underrated when it comes to gratitude -
because the series of little things hold the most meaning. | https://medium.com/family-matters-2/lessons-from-the-picu-how-my-worst-moments-resulted-in-the-best-gratitude-6630610a96d8 | ['Amanda Clark-Rudolph'] | 2020-12-04 21:55:00.191000+00:00 | ['Gratitude', 'Self', 'Family', 'Simple Living', 'Parenting'] |
Do you make this mistake in your .NET Core API project? | Data models are the backbone of any .NET Core API server.
At least, that’s been my experience.
And building on the data models are the API controllers that give the world access to your data.
A common mistake I often see is a .NET API server project that has repeated CRUD operations for each data model. In other words, you have CRUD functions for each data model. And every time a new data model is added to the project you have to create a new controller and write the CRUD end-points from scratch.
Why is this a mistake?
Because it adds repetitive code to your .NET Core application. And because any developer worth his dough knows that the fewer lines of code it takes the better.
Elon Musk says that he would pay developers at least twice as much for removing lines of code from an application without removing functionality.
So, wouldn’t it be clever to create a base controller with CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) functions for every data model you have?
Depending on the size of your project you could save yourself thousands of lines of code.
And become the hero of your development team? 🤩
Today, I’ll give you the complete guide on how to create CRUD controllers for your data models. Without breaking DRY principles. 🥳
Yes buddy, using a base controller in your .NET Core API application will make you shine. And it’s not complicated. In fact, it’s so easy to do it’s underwhelming.
So, how do we create a CRUD controller for every data model in our .NET Core project?
Create the demo API server with .NET Core
For this post, I’ll create a demo project using the .NET CLI.
dotnet new webapi -o BaseController
This will generate a basic API server with one controller called the WeatherForecastController.cs .
On to the next important step!
Installing and configuring Entity Framework Core
To keep this demo simple, we’ll use the InMemory package that allows us to spin up a fake database in memory. Here’s how we install it.
dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.InMemory --version 3.1.15
Next, we’ll create our database context. I put the code below in a file called BaseControllerDBContext.cs .
And last of all, we’ll need to add our database context to the Startup.cs file.
Good going! This is coming together lickety-split! 🎺
Create the data models
Our next step will be to create a base class that all other data classes will inherit from.
Here’s what it looks like.
To keep the example simple, I’ve only included a Id field. But for other scenarios it's common to also add a Created and Updated and anything else that you want all of your data models to include.
Now we need to update the WeatherForecast class to inherit from our base model.
Bravo! Our data models are ready! The next step is to create a base controller with CRUD operations.
Create base controller
We’ve reached the secret sauce.
This, my friend, is where you will start to shine. So sit up and pay attention.
In our Controller's folder we’ll create a file called BaseController.cs . This API controller is going to have 5 different CRUD functions.
Create a record
Get a record
Get all records associated with type
Delete a record
Update a record
Here’s the code.
Nice going! Things are coming together fast. And we’re almost done!
Extend that controller
Now, we’ll grab the WeatherForecastController.cs file and change it to inherit the functionality of the base controller.
Here’s what it needs to look like.
BOOM! 💥
You’ve created an end-point for the WeatherForecast data model without having to re-create CRUD functions for that model.
Conclusion
In this article we’ve discovered how to create a base controller with CRUD operations. We then took that base controller and used it to create an API end-point for our other data model without re-coding the CRUD operations.
This approach could save you thousands of lines of code. And it will make you a more productive developer. Cool stuff if you want to know what I believe!
If you enjoyed this article please share the energy and bang the 👏 👏 👏 button. And don’t forget to follow me for more cool articles like this one.
Follow Me: GitHub, Medium, Personal Blog | https://medium.com/c-sharp-progarmming/do-you-make-this-mistake-in-your-net-core-api-project-7d1d6bb19306 | ['Daniel Kreider'] | 2021-05-31 13:10:09.353000+00:00 | ['Dot Net Framework', 'Dotnet Core', 'C Sharp Programming', 'Api Development', 'Dotnet'] |
Using Notion to be a More Productive Writer and Reach your Goals | I’ve tried and tested various systems against my goal of writing 4 Medium articles every week.
Being a lover of stationery, I started with a good old pen and paper but found it too confusing to track what I’d submitted to which publication.
I moved onto an excel spreadsheet and this worked for a while until I came across Notion.
If you follow any productivity YouTubers, you will have noticed that many of them were being sponsored by Notion towards the end of 2019 and throughout 2020. A neat marketing tactic to get others to create Notion advertising content.
Top productivity YouTubers, Ali Abdaal, Thomas Frank and MuchelleB are all Notion fans.
The beauty of Notion is its flexibility. While it’s not a productivity panacea, for me it comes pretty close. For example, it doesn’t yet have recurring task functionality, which is a big downside.
It’s flexible templates and functionality makes it a decent one size fits all to avoid the need for switching between Trello, Todoist, Google Calendar and Evernote.
I value the seamlessness between the desktop version and the mobile app version of Notion. This means that I can capture ideas when on the go — I get all my best writing inspiration while running.
Only skimming the surface of Notion’s versatility and uses, I’ll focus here on how you can use Notion to set up a system for tracking your Medium writing goals.
This system will enable you to;
Keep a note of article ideas you have wherever and whenever they come to you.
Have a convenient way of keeping rough notes on the story behind the title, including links to websites and other source information.
Have an immediate visual record of the status of each of your articles
Have a simple way of keeping track of which publications you have been rejected from prior to acceptance. This is important to ensure you don’t inadvertently resubmit to a publication that has previously rejected your story. It’s happened to all of us once and not a good way to make editors happy.
A handy record of publication guidelines to maximise your chances of getting accepted by top publications.
A Notion System for Medium Writers
I will demonstrate setting up the desktop version.
After you’ve set up your account, I recommend you install the app on your phone. The app is automatically updated when you enter information into the desktop version and vice versa.
An account for a single user is free.
Sign up at notion.soy
Start with the following steps;
Create your Medium tracker using Add a Page found at the bottom of the menu bar on the left.
found at the bottom of the menu bar on the left. Give your page a descriptive title such as ‘Medium Tracker’.
Turn this page into a database by selecting ‘table’ as shown below.
Your blank table will look like this;
Click on the + in the third column header cell three times to add 3 more columns — 5 columns in total.
Rename your column headings by clicking on the heading cells and change to the headings ‘Story Title’, ‘Status’, ‘Publication’, ‘Publication Date’ and ‘Comments’
Like this —
As well as changing the titles, you need to change the format of the data in each column — date format for publication date and so on.
To do this, simply click on the column header cell to change the data format. See an example below for how to change the second column to ‘Status’ by typing this word in the blue box and choosing the ‘Select’ data format.
I use the status options of ‘idea’, ‘draft’, ‘submitted’ and ‘published’.
The table below is a snapshot of my current tracker.
I use the ‘Story Title’ column to make note of draft ideas that come to mind wherever I am — the app version on the phone is great for this. I often stop mid-run and quickly type the idea that’s popped into my head as a new title.
The ideas with a page symbol immediately before the title are those that I’ve added an embedded page to make further notes to shape the article. And also to include links to information sources that I want to cite.
The ‘Status’ column is a nice visual reminder of which articles are in draft format — I typically have at least 2 drafts in parallel at any time. This column also tells me which I’ve submitted and am waiting to hear back from a publication.
The ‘Publication’ column is either showing my target publication if in idea, draft or submitted stage. Or the publication that accepted the article if the status is ‘published’.
I enter the publication date when published — a pleasing sense of achievement. And this is the main column that helps me ensure I’m keeping on top of my target number of articles each week.
And finally, the handy ‘Comments’ column for keeping a note of which publications I’ve submitted to before eventual acceptance. This helps you notice patterns such as which publications will always let you know about rejections and which you should assume have rejected after a set number of days.
Making Sure you Respect the Publication Guidelines
Essential for maximising your chances of getting accepted by the top publications is to regularly refer to their guidelines. And to respect the types of articles they are looking for.
Notion is good for this too.
At the top of my Medium Tracker table, I’ve embedded a sub-table to summarise publication guidelines. I include a link to the original articles for further details and to ensure I keep track of any updates to the guidelines.
This is a long table that I’m adding to all the time. I currently have easy access to the summary guidelines for over 20 publications — a snapshot below.
Summary
I’ve shown you here a simple system for using Notion to keep track of your Medium writing.
This system is adaptable to your own personal writing goals.
Having a system that you follow is the surest way of working towards your writing goals.
Notion is free to use for single-user accounts and can be accessed through a desktop or mobile phone app, making it convenient to update whenever and wherever inspiration strikes.
Having a record of your progress in a format that isn’t all about the number of followers you have, the money you’ve made or the number of readers will encourage you to stay motivated and keep doing the writing that you love. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/using-notion-to-be-a-more-productive-writer-and-reach-your-goals-21ce577e7a90 | ['Dianne Sullivan'] | 2020-12-27 16:16:13.509000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Productivity', 'Notion', 'Motivation', 'Writing Tips'] |
The Biggest Obstacle to Sales Isn’t Pricing, It’s Customer-Perceived Value | How to Raise Perceived Value
In the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, large advertising companies were laying off videographers and selling video equipment. That’s when I co-founded a video production company. We ran everything through a contract model and only rented what we needed for each shoot. This kept our overhead low, allowed us to offer great prices, and serve clients who were no longer able to produce their own in-house video content.
Even though we didn’t have a local competitor who could even come close to the value we offered, we still had potential clients eschew our services, thinking we were overpriced. Instead of lowering prices we knew were fair, we took a different approach. We raised the value of our product and services by teaching clients how to shoot the best video possible, even if they didn’t want to hire us.
We crafted DIY blog posts like, “How to Get the Best Quality Video Without Hiring Us.” We showed potential customers how to position their cameras in relation to light sources. We offered suggestions on the best cameras and editing software for a low budget. We wrote lengthy explanations on how to overcome limitations with DSLR cameras. We did it all with a “no pressure, no obligation” approach. And we learned some things about how to make a sale and form great long-term relationships with clients.
There were a few customers we just couldn’t win over. They shot their own crappy videos and didn’t listen to our free advice or take our offer for free help. Their little startups didn’t survive the year. Others took all the advice we offered and tried it on their own for a little while. It wasn’t long before they realized making a great video required specialized knowledge, high-end equipment, and editing skill.
Suddenly, the value of our services skyrocketed in their eyes. They hired us and loved the finished product. Others still saw the value of our product, but truly had budget constraints. They traded services with us — created logos, wrote copy, and designed websites. Both our businesses prospered, and we referred clients to each other.
Too many businesses are greedy in their endeavors, but no one enjoys doing business with someone who is greedy. If your potential customer truly has a budget issue preventing them from hiring you, listen to their limitations. See if you can help them learn how to do the best they can with what they have. Ask questions and offer to help.
When you are open with what you know, it convinces people you are for them. This builds trust. And when a potential customer trusts you, they want to do business with you. Share your knowledge and teach a potential customer how to do your job. This displays your expertise and raises customer-perceived value. When you do this, you may just find your potential customer becomes a paying one. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/teach-them-how-to-do-your-job-and-they-will-hire-you-5f57fce31bdd | ['J.A. Taylor'] | 2020-04-27 14:43:07.349000+00:00 | ['Sales', 'Marketing', 'Customer Relationships', 'Pricing', 'Customer Service'] |
When Tara Westover Questions Her Own Narration Throughout *Educated* It Undermines Her Story | Tragedy With a Hopeful Ending
By the book’s end, we are informed Westover is estranged from parts of her family. As readers, we are relieved she has escaped and hope she will not return, though she has returned so many times, we wonder about the odds.
While the premise of the book is Westover overcoming impossible odds to earn an advanced education, I don’t believe that’s what Educated is really about. It would more aptly be titled Questioning or Who I Am or Fragmented Family, Fragmented Memory, or The Nature of Memory. The title is a bit misleading. It feels like Westover wants Educated desperately to be about her overcoming the odds and escaping her family, but in the end, it doesn’t feel as though she’s yet escaped. Physically? Yes. Mentally? Not all the way; not yet.
Westover’s ending is abrupt — the last paragraph a statement that reads more like a question — but also a tidy bow. Life is never tidy; Westover’s story is in many ways tragic. I hope to read a sequel to Educated when Westover is a bit older and is more equipped to discuss what she has learned, what questions she still has, and encourages readers to ponder along with her.
That Westover is a highly wounded woman seeps through the pages of Educated. She’s grappling with her abusive childhood — trying to make sense of the details, yet she hasn’t come up with a deeper meaning of what she has gone through. She doesn’t analyze why her siblings, her mom, or dad, are the way they are, except to emphasize her suspicion of her dad’s mental illness and the way in which they use religious fanaticism as an excuse for extreme abuse.
Perhaps, what’s missing, in the end, is an acknowledgment of the grief Westover experiences when she finally releases her family. Maybe she hasn’t yet felt this grief. In some ways, it feels like a numb, dissociated retelling. Although Westover has gone to talk therapy, she doesn’t indicate that she’s been through much healing beyond telling her history, which is certainly a necessary step, but I’d argue the healing journey goes beyond this. I hope the future brings more healing to Westover’s life. | https://baos.pub/when-tara-westover-questions-her-own-narration-throughout-educated-it-undermines-her-story-74d31672307b | ['Aimée Gramblin'] | 2020-12-23 14:23:17.656000+00:00 | ['Books', 'Memoir', 'Mental Illness', 'Reading', 'Psychology'] |
Value Vector: Your Next Colleague Might Be a Robot | Value Vector: Your Next Colleague Might Be a Robot
Cobots have been called the fastest growing segment in automation with two companies Rethink Robotics and Universal Robots most frequently name-checked. But it’s only been in the last decade that they’ve really come into their own and their functionality has been largely overlooking by futurists in the hysteria we’ve all been reading about robots and automation taking our jobs. You’ve probably seen cobots when visiting IoT conferences with their arms almost waving during demos.
Before their creation, robots in factories were typically large, caged devices that perform repetitive, dangerous work in lieu of humans. As hardware has gotten cheaper and smaller, more dexterous robots have come onto the factory floor. These lighter weight, lower cost robots can be outfitted with sensors that allow them to work collaboratively alongside humans in industrial settings, creating “cobots” — robots that can perform tasks like gripping small objects, seeing, and even learning to tackle “edge cases.”
Take Rethink Robotics’ Sawyer cobot (pictured above) With 7 degrees of freedom and a 1260 mm maximum reach, Sawyer fits into a variety of work cells — even ones already designed for people. It can maneuver into tight spaces, and around fixtures and doors, much like a human arm.
Nelipak Healthcare Packaging implemented Sawyer to assist with loading trays and lidding to their heat tray sealer. It can pick up several products at once while human operators carry out tasks that are more complex and harder to automate. Interestingly, Sawyer has a screen with eyes to make it more approachable and encourage human co-workers to be comfortable working with it (Surely that’s a whole article in itself!).
According to CB Insights, rising labor costs worldwide are increasing demand for cobots. This is particularly apparent in agriculture, manufacturing, and construction where there are no willing workers to overtake those retiring. Estimates say that roughly 22% of skilled manufacturing laborers in the US (or 2.7M workers) are set to retire in the next decade — and the industry will be about 2 million workers short if trends continue. They’re certainly not limited to the factory floor, with the introduction of Flippy, the burger-making robot in hospitality, and Abundant Robots’ apple picking robot.
Cobots Are Only as Safe as Their Master
Sensor technology helps ensure their safe use: force feedback sensors enable the cobot to identify when it comes into contact with an object or person, reducing its impact to avoid even the possibility of injury. They also move slowly and predictably, and future sensor tech will enable them to see what’s around them, noticing a human co-worker and adjusting what they’re doing to improve safety.
That said, it’s not all peace and harmony. Last year Trend Micro security researchers released research showing how easily factory and industrial robots could be hacked and used for malicious purposes. Industrial robots are mechanical multi-axis “arms” used in modern industries for automating operations such as welding, packaging, food processing or die casting. They consequently play a key role in Industry 4.0 initiatives focused on automation and smart factories. Many robots from manufacturers including Kawasaki, Fanuc and Yaskawa were found to vulnerable to enabling hackers to make changes that alter the way they operate. The researchers explained:
“By leveraging the remote code execution vulnerability, we modified the control loop configuration files, which are naively obfuscated and thus easily modifiable. In particular, we changed the proportional gain of the first joint’s PID controller, setting it to 50% of its original value. Then we programmed the robot to perform a straight horizontal movement. The trajectory of the end effector projected on the horizontal plane was notably altered. Although the maximum difference between the position under normal conditions and under attack is small (less than 2mm), according to the specific machining that the robot is performing, it can be enough to destroy the workpiece.”
Beyond simply altering machines, researchers were also able to inject faults and micro-defects into the workpiece with the potential to control a robot, damage its parts or even cause injuries to people who work in close collaboration with it by disabling or substantially altering safety devices. Additionally, the Trend Micro Forward-Looking Threat Research Team found tens of thousands of industrial devices residing on public IP addresses which could include exposed industrial robots, further increasing the risk that an attacker can access and hack them. Trend Micro duly contacted manufacturers in response to its findings.
It’s also worth noting that mistakes happen without human malice. 24 workers were hospitalized in early December this year after one of Amazon’s automated robots punctured a nine-ounce can of bear repellent spray, exposing employees to the concentrated form of Capsaicin released in the air.
Cobots and Moratov’s Paradox
Hans Moravec, a renowned roboticist, sums up perhaps the biggest challenge of robotics, known as Moravec’s Law: “It is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility”.
It’s further worth noting that at present cobot tasks focus on the dull, dirty and dangerous — at least until robotic hand dexterity improves. Linguist and cognitive scientist, Stephen Pinker notes in The Language Instinct:
“The main lesson of thirty-five years of AI research is that the hard problems are easy and the easy problems are hard. The mental abilities of a four-year-old that we take for granted — recognizing a face, lifting a pencil, walking across a room, answering a question — in fact solve some of the hardest engineering problems ever conceived… As the new generation of intelligent devices appears, it will be the stock analysts and petrochemical engineers and parole board members who are in danger of being replaced by machines. The gardeners, receptionists, and cooks are secure in their jobs for decades to come…” | https://medium.com/@catelawrence/value-vector-your-next-colleague-might-be-a-robot-1faa996556eb | ['Cate Lawrence'] | 2019-01-02 18:54:40.122000+00:00 | ['Robotics', 'Robots'] |
NETWORK COMMANDS IN LINUX | Linux is very important for Network World. In many operations Linux is usually used by Network Engineers. So, A networkm engineer should know Linux, espeacialy Network Commands in Linux. In this article, we will focus on these Linux commands related with Network World.
Network Commands in Linux
There are many usefull Linux Commands but some of them are more important in Networking. What are these commands? Below, you can find the Top 35 Linux Network Commands!
arp command arpwatch command bmon command curl command dhclient command dig command dstat command ethtool command ftp command host command ifstat command ip addr command iptables command iftop command ifup/ifdown command iwconfig command netstat command nload command nmap command nslookup command ping command route command scp command sftp command ss command ssh command tshark command hping3 command tcpdump command telnet command tracepath command traceroute command w command wget command whois command
Now let’s start to talk about these protocols one by one.
arp command
arp command is used to view ARP Table of your Linux Server. You can use various parametersof arp command to get information about these tables and table entries. For example, you can use arp -e to reach the default Linux ARP Table.
Below, you can find an example for Linux arp command:
$ arp -e
Address HWtype HWaddress Flags Mask Iface
192.168.2.1 ether bb:12:cc:24:10:18 C eth0
192.168.3.1 ether 11:87:2c:88:ab:c1 C eth0
arpwatch command
arpwatch command is the Linux commanf that is use to view Ethernet activity, Ethernet/IP pairs. There are diffferent parameters of arpwatch command. If you would like to use this command for a specific interface, you can use arpwatch -i command with related interface.
$ sudo arpwatch
$ sudo arpwatch –i eth0
You can read the full article below:
Specically, you can reach Linux Ping command options below:
Ping Command options in Windows: | https://medium.com/@gokhankosem/network-commands-in-linux-dec823cdb96f | ['Gokhan Kosem'] | 2020-02-20 13:15:21.393000+00:00 | ['Network Engineering', 'Linux', 'Network', 'Linux Tutorial', 'Ccna'] |
My Elephant Butt and Some Other Embarrassing Facts | Back in early June, it feels like years ago, Tim Maudlin proposed a way to build rapport with readers by using his template.
He suggested that we use our stories to reveal information about ourselves, instead of simply writing a bio. I thought it was a great idea and then proceeded to put it on the back burner.
I guess that reveals my tendency to procrastinate.
I finally got around to it.
People have always loved stories.
Cave drawings and sign language were early attempts to communicate, to tell each other stories about where to find food, and how to stay away from predators.
The act of story telling breathes life into an experience and makes a connection with the reader.
Here are my Know, Like, and Trust-You stories.
Something personal
In my early thirties, I found myself a single mom of two small boys. One thing I missed was the quiet moments in the evening, marveling at the events of the day. Then I met the love of my life and this is how it happened. | https://medium.com/illumination/my-elephant-butt-and-some-other-embarrassing-facts-e9cbf51fe943 | ['Tree Langdon'] | 2020-12-05 20:16:35.330000+00:00 | ['Stories', 'Readers', 'Writing', 'Trust', 'Relationships'] |
BABY JOY CONVERTIBLE BASSINET BABY STROLLER 2-IN-1 RECLINING STROLLER BLUE | The exact opposite thing that a parent needs to do on an excursion is to carry their infant around. In the event that you need to have the option to put your little child down, you need a buggy that will be agreeable yet smaller. The BABY JOY Baby Stroller Convertible Bassinet 2-in-1 Reclining Stroller Blue is light to the point that it tends to be lifted with one finger.
It additionally has highlights like EVA wheels, a removable overhang to shield your little one from the sun, and a lean back capacity. I picked it as the best umbrella carriage for Disney and excursion.
The usefulness of BABY JOY Baby Stroller
The entire family ought not to need to pass up the sights since you are going with a lethargic little child. This model offers all the nuts and bolts your little child should be happy with, including a lean back capacity, an agreeable padded seat, and a shaped footstool.
This light buggy additionally has a lot of extra room and can be carried around with the advantageous conveying lash. The huge EVA haggles planned handles mean you won’t need to stoop down while strolling and exploring will be a breeze.
Notwithstanding the movement includes, this buggy has a 5-point wellbeing tackle that makes it alright for newborn children as much as 50 pounds. It includes a huge work stockpiling container that is anything but difficult to get to and a cup holder. Another pleasant element of this umbrella buggy is the UV-evidence overhang, which shields your little one from the sun’s destructive beams.
When collapsed, there is a conveying tie and lock bar that lets you convey your child in one arm and the carriage in the other.
The one drawback of this buggy is that it doesn’t have a plate, which would be valuable for get-away in the event that you have to cut toys onto the carriage while voyaging or stop and give your little one a tidbit.
On the off chance that you need a model that has a plate for movement, the BABY JOY Baby Stroller Reclining Stroller Blue audited next has a significant number of similar highlights. It is somewhat bulkier, however, it likewise accompanies a conveying plate.
Pros BABY JOY Baby Stroller Convertible Bassinet Blue | https://medium.com/@harryoscar786/baby-joy-convertible-bassinet-baby-stroller-2-in-1-reclining-stroller-blue-2d55a65a585 | ['Harry Oscar'] | 2020-02-14 09:55:47.474000+00:00 | ['Moms', 'Stroller', 'Baby', 'Baby Joy', 'Parenting'] |
You can be anyone you want online- that apparently includes me. | A little more than fifteen years ago, my ex-husband pulled the car to a stop on a pitch dark stretch of gravel road in the middle of a snowstorm. He proceeded to beat me as I sat in the front seat. When he stopped to catch his breath, I crawled to the back seat, unbuckling my infant daughter from her car seat, and stepped outside of the vehicle. There was a light on at a house a quarter mile away and I thought I could get me and her to safety in fairly short notice. I started screaming for help as I ran toward the house and he fled in the car.
When I got to the house and knocked, there was nobody home. The doors were locked and there wasn’t another house around for at least five miles. I carried the baby to the shelter of the barn and sat with a friendly gray horse for about an hour, hoping someone would arrive. They didn’t, but the snow let up. Fearing we’d freeze, or that he would come back, I took my coat off, wrapped it around my daughter, and walked five miles to town. It took hours. Fortunately, I knew a couple that lived right on the edge of the small town I arrived at. I knocked on their door and they called the police.
This was not the first or the last time I’d be attacked by him, physically. I have stab scars in my legs. I have 2 collapsed vertebrae. I have a burn scar under my hairline at the back of my neck. That’s just the start.
But, by far, the worst of what he’s done has been the psychological abuse.
Eventually, based on the physical abuse, I was able to get the court’s permission to take my daughter out of state. We moved to Tennessee, where I have family, to get away from him. Shortly after arriving in Tennessee, though, I started having issues with cyberstalking. My picture and pictures of my daughter were being pulled off the now-defunct social media platform of Hi5 and winding up in ads on Craigslist claiming I’d kidnapped her, that I was abusing her, or that I was a prostitute.
An unfortunate legal requirement was that I had to provide him my phone number at that time so he could call and check on his daughter- the one he’d never paid any attention to.
I started having midnight callers from all over the country wanting to talk dirty to me. When I’d hang up, they’d call back angry. Every time I’d change my number, I was required to give him the new one and every time the calls would pick up again.
Eventually, he lost his parental rights and I was no longer required to provide him my contact information. I moved from the house with the address he had into a different home. Things settled down for a while, but when my first book was published, things started up again. Every time my book would be featured on a website, the comments would fill with his usual lies about me in an attempt to assassinate my character.
As I stopped advertising the book and doing interviews, that round of terror fizzled out.
In 2015, I posted a Facebook comment on a popular page’s post. There was an online discussion going on about children who don’t know their fathers for varied reasons. I explained that I have always answered my daughter’s questions in an age-appropriate way, but with as much honesty as that allowed. The post went viral because the advice resounded with some other mothers. Then, as it became popular and a screenshot of the comment started surfacing on various other pages, the comments again filled with his hatefulness- lies about me, personal information, and vile, vulgar stories about our former relationship. My dignity will not let me repeat them, but you can imagine the things a hateful man can think up to say about a woman he has previously been intimate with and now seeks to ruin.
At the age of 13, our daughter came out as a lesbian. Part of her coming out was launching her own social media campaign to bring awareness to anti-LGBT bullying she had endured. She received a lengthy message to her campaign page almost as soon as it opened from an “anonymous friend” who told her they were concerned that she had been tarnished by her mother’s “neo-liberal” beliefs. They told her that if she’d been allowed a better relationship with her father, she’d be “normal” and that they were “so very sorry” her head had been “warped.”
Now, let me explain something here- I am very much a liberal on many subjects. However, there are certain policies I do find myself leaning more to the right on. I am married to a man who considers himself a conservative. I am the daughter of a man who considers himself a conservative. Many of my friends are conservatives. I have never had an issue with opposing beliefs. I only ask that opposition is met with kindness and intellect.
Recently, a false post was created and circulated on the internet. It was created to look like I had posted it at 12:50 a.m. on March 21st (when I was fast asleep- I assure you). The post is written in a syntax that is not mine claiming that I was proud to have broken the law to ruin the business of a conservative white man.
Not something I’d do. Not something I’d brag about. And the business described in the post does not exist where I live.
The photo accompanying the post does not exist where I live.
It was not me. But in the online storm that followed, the post was shared to multiple forums where someone discovered the name of my former employer. Not only did I suffer dozens of emails and comments on my articles and posts found across the internet, but a very good and respectable business was caught in that crossfire. They have had to remove their social media because of the aggressive way in which people responded to a fake post.
It is not fair.
Unfortunately, though, after speaking with officers, there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about it. At worst, it’s a misdemeanor here, and to charge that, there needs to be a significant reason to believe that someone wishes to do me bodily harm.
In short, abusers have a new way to abuse without repercussion.
When your job is to be online, you can’t hide, either.
All you can do is this: | https://medium.com/thrive-global/you-can-be-anyone-you-want-online-that-apparently-includes-me-ba6afa94cf8b | ['Jenni M'] | 2019-03-29 14:12:58.462000+00:00 | ['Wisdom', 'Wellness', 'Abuse', 'Cyber Bullying', 'Advice'] |
Why twice as many Blockchain teams are distributed | Why twice as many Blockchain teams are distributed
The days of water-cooler moments, office politics and 9 to 5 work days are officially numbered. Co-working has gone mainstream, remote working is ‘the new normal’ and DAO’s are seriously on the horizon. Now a significant number of businesses are proactively choosing distributed global teams over a central office location.
As usual, tech businesses are leading the way, with brands such as Basecamp and Github getting on board early. Most of all blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), Zeppelin, Consensys, Status and Bitpesa have built it into their DNA from day one. That makes sense, the technology is founded on the principle of decentralisation and Bitcoin and Ethereum are distributed team success stories. Other than these innovators, how many tech companies are distributed?
Blockchain jobs are twice as likely to be remote
We analysed data across three major job boards and found that there’s roughly twice as many remote developer roles in companies that had blockchain or DLT in their job specs.
1% of developer jobs with blockchain on Indeed are remote >>>>>> 0.3% of other developer jobs on Indeed are remote.
of developer jobs with blockchain on are remote of other developer jobs on are remote. 29% of developer jobs with blockchain on Angelist are remote >>>> 15.7% of other developer jobs on Angelist are remote.
of developer jobs with blockchain on are remote of other developer jobs on are remote. 12.1% of developer jobs with blockchain on StackOverflow are remote > 6% of other developer jobs on StackOverflow are remote.
Data collected: 22/11/18
This data isn’t surprising since the values of blockchain technology companies often align with the sentiment of remote working. Democratisation of power, privacy and decentralisation.
The drivers and the deterrents to distribute
There are a number of drivers behind the move to distributed teams, not least the battle for the best people. Tech talent is hard to find and extremely expensive, which means young start-ups have been priced out of the traditional hotspots, like Silicon Valley, London and Berlin.
Many have responded by scrapping the idea of having a permanent base altogether, instead embracing the opportunity to pluck tech talent from every corner of the hyper-connected world, and the chance to get shot of staid office structures at the same time.
It sounds like workplace utopia, however shifting to a fully distributed model isn’t without its challenges. In fact there’s a plethora of problems that come with these perks. There’s naturally an impact on company culture, team trust and collaboration, which means getting the recruitment and peopleOps processes right is vital.
Building a distributed team: Making it work for everyone
Invest in workstations: Every employee needs to have fast internet and easy access to video conferencing software to give them the opportunity to excel in your organisation. Distributed employees may well have access to great personal technology but provision of top end equipment needs to be default for any company practising the distributed model. Of course you have no control over the environment that equipment sits in — that’s part of the empowering perk for each individual.
Every employee needs to have fast internet and easy access to video conferencing software to give them the opportunity to excel in your organisation. Distributed employees may well have access to great personal technology but provision of top end equipment needs to be default for any company practising the distributed model. Of course you have no control over the environment that equipment sits in — that’s part of the empowering perk for each individual. Reduce geographical bias: We talk a lot about tackling unconscious bias at Zinc and the detrimental effect it can have on hiring; access to talent and diversity. Geographical bias is almost unavoidable for centralised teams. We will often look at CV’s and discount those who don’t live locally, naturally favouring those who have an easy commute or don’t have to relocate. Building a distributed team immediately removes this bias.
We talk a lot about tackling unconscious bias at Zinc and the detrimental effect it can have on hiring; access to talent and diversity. Geographical bias is almost unavoidable for centralised teams. We will often look at CV’s and discount those who don’t live locally, naturally favouring those who have an easy commute or don’t have to relocate. Building a distributed team immediately removes this bias. Distribution for built-in diversity: Without geographical bias we can build in diversity by design. You can hire by meritocracy — the best skills and fit from your global talent pool win the job. Restricted communication channels do have some benefit — they block bias to different shapes, sizes, skin tones and supposed abnormalities in individuals.
Without geographical bias we can build in diversity by design. You can hire by meritocracy — the best skills and fit from your global talent pool win the job. Restricted communication channels do have some benefit — they block bias to different shapes, sizes, skin tones and supposed abnormalities in individuals. Feeding back and spending time ‘together’: One of the big dangers of distributed teams is that people will feel disconnected from their colleagues. A method to avoid this is through a structured routine of phone or video-based ‘get-togethers’, on a daily or weekly basis. How you choose to run these is up to you but ensure that everybody feeds in about what they’ve achieved since you last caught up and what your focus is for that day or week. Make sure these happen come rain or shine, giving your team time to connect, hear each other’s voices and stay in the loop of what everybody else is doing.
One of the big dangers of distributed teams is that people will feel disconnected from their colleagues. A method to avoid this is through a structured routine of phone or video-based ‘get-togethers’, on a daily or weekly basis. How you choose to run these is up to you but ensure that everybody feeds in about what they’ve achieved since you last caught up and what your focus is for that day or week. Make sure these happen come rain or shine, giving your team time to connect, hear each other’s voices and stay in the loop of what everybody else is doing. Physical contact not ‘FaceTime’: And yes, it also helps enormously to actually meet up from time to time, to strengthen those team bonds. Nothing beats spending physical time together to build trust and relationships so, even if it’s just once every six or 12 months, it’s worth the challenge of coordinating diaries and spending a bit of cash to make it happen.
Remote by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash
This is part 1 of our distributed teams series. Maybe I’ve wet your appetite to find out how to build a distributed team, maybe you feel like a duck out of water. If the former, stay tuned for part 2 to read about creating an effective interview process for building distributed teams.
This post was written in collaboration with Recruiting Brainfood (www.recruitingbrainfood.com).
Get in touch if you’d like support using the Zinc’s blockchain based hiring toolkit to build a distributed team; [email protected].
Website: https://zinc.work
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zinc_work
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zinc-work/ | https://medium.com/zinc_work/why-twice-as-many-blockchain-teams-are-distributed-ca1065ba973b | ['Luke Shipley'] | 2018-12-09 19:06:59.459000+00:00 | ['Future Of Work', 'Workplace', 'Blockchain', 'Work', 'Remote Working'] |
Why do people take the man’s side? | I lost my soulmate in December a few years ago and my male friend lost his wife 9 months earlier.
I don’t understand people.
On the day that he lost his wife. He told me that he loved me and wants to marry me. I was so annoyed and upset because his wife had just died and my husband was ill and alive. I thought it was disrespectful to both spouses.
When my husband died, I was heartbroken. My friend said again that he loved me and wanted to marry me. He was drunk both times. (No excuse)
I lost my temper.
Most people thought that my male friend was grieving and needed company and that he hasn't done anything wrong.
People don’t realise that he was being disrespectful to his wife and my husband. Also, people were joking that he was my boyfriend.
When I mentioned to people that I was upset. They generally replied that he was grieving and he needs support. What people don't realise, he was trying to take advantage of a grieving widow at my weakest time.
No one seems to be concerned for the grieving widow. Luckily I am very strong emotional and enjoy my independence.
People seem to be more worried and concerned about the man and ignore the female’s feeling or needs.
I am still friends with him, but I won’t give him hugs. I hug other people. I won’t allow people to say we are boyfriend/ girlfriend.
He has accepted that we will be only friends and no more.
Society expectations seem to differ for men and women. I hope in the future that it changes. | https://medium.com/@eidnyl52/why-do-people-take-the-mans-side-14388abdff05 | ['Lyndie Dempsey'] | 2021-06-21 04:13:22.752000+00:00 | ['Marriage', 'Support', 'Relationships', 'Disrespect', 'Grieving'] |
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If you are among those who fears the failure in the Oracle 1Z0–071 exam, then you don’t have to worry more as the Oracle 1Z0–071 exam simulator provided by the DumpsWorld comes with the full 100% passing guarantee. You can’t think of getting failed in the Oracle Database 12c SQL test question with 1Z0–071 braindumps on the DumpsWorld. You may also get the idea in the Oracle Database 12c SQL exam dumps by checking the reviews in the 1Z0–071 dumps questions where Oracle Database 12c professionals have shared their experience with the Oracle Database 12c SQL dumps. In short, if you want to get succeeded within the 1Z0–071 exam questions within the first attempt then the DumpsWorld simulator download may be the perfect choice for you. | https://medium.com/@carlene.mclean/prepare-with-valid-1z0-071-exam-simulator-for-much-better-possibilities-a5656f73a18 | ['Carlene Mclean'] | 2019-09-14 13:30:50.117000+00:00 | ['Oracle', 'Education'] |
COIN vs TOKEN. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE? | Enlighten people with blockchain values - We provide blockchain solutions for helping SMBs to automate business, make growth & enjoy freedom, by education, adoption & development of blockchain technology.
Follow | https://medium.com/ihashing/coin-vs-token-whats-the-difference-3eb688b2758d | [] | 2018-09-11 12:32:09.843000+00:00 | ['Altcoins', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Token', 'Blockchain', 'Coins'] |
How To Deal With The Keto Flu While Losing Weight | An Important Topic — We’re Sharing Our Tips
by Richard | Dec 21, 2021 | Ketogenic Diet, Weight Loss |
This article is from www.wholehealthemporium.com and may contain affiliate links.
The dreaded keto flu is a common occurrence when you’re first starting on the ketogenic diet.
It’s exciting that you’ve started your weight loss journey — and we’re proud of you!
But the keto flu can be concerning — it’s nothing to panic about.
While uncomfortable and mildly annoying, this is a natural reaction by the body. This is a normal process when becoming “keto adapted” when you suddenly minimize your carb intake drastically.
Some people like extra help to to get into ketosis, and lose weight — these can help.
What Is Keto Flu?
Harvard health describes keto flu as a group of symptoms that may appear two to seven days after starting a ketogenic diet.
The majority of people are used to a diet that’s mostly comprised of carbs followed by smaller portions of protein and an even smaller percentage of fat.
However, when you get on a ketogenic diet, you’ll be turning the tables on your diet and doing the total opposite.
80 to 90 percent of your daily calories will come from fat, and the remaining 10 percent will be from protein with a miniscule portion of carbs, if any.
This is something that will come as a shock to most people. The body is just not used to the diet.
Here are some of the keto flu symptoms you may experience while trying to make the change:
Body aches
Cramps
Difficulty concentrating/focusing
Dizziness/drowsiness
Fatigue
Insomnia
Irritability
Nausea
Stomach issues
Sugar cravings
Millions of people are addicted to sugar and carbs. So, weaning yourself off these foods is akin to quitting an addiction and going cold turkey. It’s inevitable to face some discomfort.
Is There Treatment For Keto Flu?
The good news is that the keto flu is only temporary.
You can look at our other article here for more information on the keto flu.
Within a week or two, your body will adapt and be able to function as normal with the higher fat intake and carb restriction.
It’s imperative that you stay the course and not throw in the towel because of the keto flu symptoms.
Quitting will mean that your weight loss will take longer and will be more difficult. So, endure the symptoms till your body adapts.
How To Avoid Keto Flu
One of the best ways to adopt the keto diet will be to ease into it instead of making the switch overnight.
You can start off with a low carb diet and give your body time to adjust.
Gradually, lower your carb intake and increase your intake of healthy fats until you’re on a keto diet.
This will give your body time to adapt and you can escape the keto flu symptoms.
Inch by inch, life’s a cinch. Yard by yard, life is hard. Go slow.
It’s also essential that you stay hydrated.
Drink sufficient water throughout the day and watch your caloric intake.
You should be at a daily caloric deficit of about 500 calories. You do not want to go too low.
Don’t cut both your carbs and fats. That’s a recipe for a weight loss plateau.
Instead, eat more healthy fats so that you’re meeting your calorie needs for the day.
Coping With The Keto Flu
Should you get the symptoms mentioned above, there are a few ways you can alleviate the discomfort.
Engage in exercise daily. This will improve your mood and get your blood pumping.
Keep the exercise relaxed and gentle, like a brisk walk or a leisurely swim.
Drink some bone broth or mix some Himalayan salt in water and drink.
he loss of sodium and electrolytes in your body could be causing some of the problems.
You may also wish to consume a magnesium supplement and eat foods that are rich in potassium (avocados, spinach, mushrooms, salmon, and nuts).
“You can combat the keto flu by staying hydrated, replacing electrolytes, getting plenty of sleep, avoiding strenuous activities, eating enough fat and cutting out carbs slowly over time.” Jillian Kubala, MS, RD
Adding certain superfoods are an excellent way to boost energy levels, without knocking you out of ketosis.
Conclusion
The keto flu is a myriad of symptoms of keto flu are not fully understood by doctors or healthcare professionals.
If you follow the pointers above, you’ll be able to avoid keto flu or at the very least, you’ll be able to mitigate the symptoms.
Stick to the plan and give your body time to adapt. Once you’ve found your footing with the keto diet, you’ll become a fat burning machine, and that’s when the fun starts.
Superfoods can make a world of difference in how you feel.
Thank you for reading!
Did you experience the keto flu? How did you cope with the symptoms?
Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with us!
© Copyright 2021 Whole Health Emporium. All Right Reserved.
Edited by Pauline D. and Richard Tracy
Works Cited
Campos, Marcelo. “What Is Keto Flu?” Harvard.edu. N.p., 18 Oct. 2018. Web. 24 Oct. 2021.
Kubala, Jillian, MS, and RD. “The Keto Flu: Symptoms and How to Get Rid of It.” Healthline.com. N.p., 3 Apr. 2018. Web. 24 Oct. 2021. | https://medium.com/@wholehealthemporium/how-to-deal-with-the-keto-flu-while-losing-weight-b3241229fe4c | ['Whole Health Emporium'] | 2021-12-22 00:55:19.699000+00:00 | ['Weight Loss', 'Health', 'Healthcare', 'Keto', 'Weight Loss Tips'] |
The New UK Coronavirus Variant Is Troubling, But No Reason To Panic. | The New UK Coronavirus Variant Is Troubling, But No Reason To Panic.
There’s no evidence it provokes more severe disease or impacts on vaccines.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
Since early December, a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has been identified in the United Kingdom (UK). Baptized B.1.1.7, this new strain appeared after diverse mutations of the virus.
What do we know about the new variant of the coronavirus?
1. The new variant seems more contagious
In the evolution of a virus, mutations are frequent events. Concerned the SARS-CoV-2, numerous mutations were observed those last months, but still had no significant effect on the transmission of the virus, its contagiousness, or its severity. Differently, B.1.1.7 seems more contagious and seems to explain the acceleration of contaminations observed in December in England.
According to Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London, this variant has an cumulated transmission rate of 50 to 70% compared to other strains present in the UK.
2. B.1.1.7 variant doesn’t appear to cause more severe forms
The new variant does not seem to lead to more severe manifestations of covid. Studies are awaited to confirm this theory, especially with what happens in South Africa, where a variant close to the B.1.1.7 was observed. This African variant spread fast, and preliminary studies have shown that people infected express higher viral load. And it’s known that a higher viral load is usually associated with the severity of symptoms.
3. Children would be more sensitive to it
The increased transmissibility could be due to the way the virus infects children. According to Wendy Barclay, a UK government adviser and virologist at Imperial College London, the new strain could make children “as sensitive as adults” to covid. Analysis has started to confirm this hypothesis.
4. Vaccines would remain effective against this variant
For now, scientists doubt that the mutation has an impact on vaccines. The effectiveness of the two vaccines Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, already authorized in several countries of the world, is based on creating immunity against the coronavirus by preparing our immune system to recognize a viral protein: the protein S (spike protein). Prof Uğur Şahin, CEO of BioNTech, says about this new variant: “Scientifically, the likelihood is high that this is the case because even though this variant has multiple mutations, only 1% of the relevant protein has changed. That means 99% are still the same, and we know that the immune response that our vaccine uses is attacking this protein from multiple sides. So the likelihood is high that the vaccine will still work. But we will get the results in two weeks, and then we can be sure”. | https://medium.com/illumination/the-new-uk-coronavirus-variant-is-troubling-but-no-reason-to-panic-72123212a5fa | ['Rachid Meharich'] | 2020-12-27 09:03:14.756000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Covid 19', 'Health', 'Coronavirus'] |
Breaking down the Forbes Blockchain 50 | Playing the field
We were interested to see what the most popular development platforms are for these unicorns. Ethereum is being used for developing blockchain applications by 22 companies on the Forbes 50. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as Ethereum was designed to accommodate decentralized applications and smart contracts. Following closely behind are the 21 companies building on the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Fabric. The appeal of this system is that it is still open source, but is designed to be natively permissioned. Large corporations find the appeal of a permissioned blockchain like Hyperledger to be quite compelling, though Ethereum also supports similar configurations despite its more utopian origins.
Corda is the next most popular platform with 14 companies. Corda is enterprise distributed ledger technology (DLT) from the R3 consortium, which is made up of 200 of the world’s biggest banks and multinationals. JP Morgan’s Quorum, which powers its Interbank Information Network of 75 worldwide banking partners, is being actively developed on by 11 of the Forbes Blockchain 50. Like Ethereum, Hyperledger, and Corda, Quorum is open source and is being contributed to by developers all over the world. IBM, one of Hyperledger’s primary supporters, has five of the Forbes Blockchain 50 developing on its own platform.
The most interesting trend across these 50 companies is that nearly all of them are building on more than one blockchain platform. While these firms may end up committing to developing on a singular technology (such as Ant Financial or Oracle), it is clear that for now, they are hedging by working with multiple platforms. In the diagram below, you will see these company logos appear in multiple columns. | https://medium.com/blockdata/breaking-down-the-forbes-blockchain-50-2f44e9902537 | [] | 2020-03-04 15:51:57.790000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Blockchain', 'Technology', 'Hyperledger', 'Bitcoin'] |
Hi, my name is Jude, and these are my thoughts after six weeks on T. | Hi, my name is Jude, and these are my thoughts after six weeks on T.
I think for a lot of transmasculine people, having a period can be really distressing, and it is a source of gender dysphoria. While I found my period to be annoying, messy, and sometimes painful, it never really caused gender dysphoria for me. Looking back now, though, I think there was one major thing about my menstrual cycle that kept nagging at me: my hormones.
I knew that it was normal to experience heightened emotions and irritability during PMS, but that did little to ease my anxieties about my monthly mood swings. I was angry and sad and irritable and I would cry over the smallest things. That is all normal, but I could never accept this part of me. It always felt like I had lost control, like my body and my emotions were betraying me. I was helpless, at the mercy of my fluctuating hormones.
I lived with this feeling that something was wrong, that while this was normal and natural for many women, it wasn’t supposed to be happening to me. It is only now that I have started testosterone that I realize those feelings were probably gender dysphoria.
Starting T feels like I am taking back control of my hormones. It feels like I am finally correcting an error with my coding. Things are slowly falling into place. It’s funny, because hormones are such a wacky rollercoaster ride, and each transmasculine person is rolling the dice — if and when they start T. While my new chest was literally shaped with surgical precision, I do not get to choose what changes I want to experience from hormone replacement therapy. I’ll get a mixture of good changes, weird changes, and bad changes, but to me, it’s worth it.
When I started T, I thought I would feel that familiar helplessness, that loss of control I experienced every month with my “female” hormones, but instead I feel more in control than I have ever been. It is still early in my hormonal transition, but so far I’m happy, and all I can really do is continue to pursue that feeling of being happy and in control. | https://medium.com/@thejudeschroder/hi-my-name-is-jude-and-these-are-my-thoughts-after-six-weeks-on-t-df2d118211fd | ['Jude Schroder'] | 2020-11-15 02:00:21.023000+00:00 | ['Gender Dysphoria', 'Non Binary', 'Transgender', 'LGBTQ', 'Transmasculine'] |
Redesigning a Process to Improve the Customer Experience and Increase the Capacity of a System | Redesigning a Process to Improve the Customer Experience and Increase the Capacity of a System Conor Byrne Sep 3, 2020·4 min read
This piece will give a brief overview of a project I worked on for the Process Modelling, Simulation and Optimisation class I took in Technological University Dublin.
I’ll show how the capacity [0] and the throughout [1] of a system can be improved by making simple adjustments to the process layout [2], leading to improvements in the customer experience.
Consider the process sketched out below. This is the checkout queue at a real retail store in Dublin City.
Existing Process Design
The Process
Customers enter the process at the right foreground of the image. When they reach the top of the queue, seen at the left foreground, they proceed to the closest available checkout to pay for their items. When they have paid, they leave the process through the exit seen in the right middle ground.
There is quite a bit of waste in this process. Can you see it? If not, read on!
When a cashier at a checkout has processed a customer, and their station becomes available, there is an idle-period [3] as they wait for the next customer to travel [4] from the top of the queue and arrive at their checkout station. For cashiers operating Checkout Station 1, this idle-period is negligible, as customers travel a short distance from the top of the queue to their checkout. However, this cashier idle-period increases incrementally for each checkout station along the line, as customers have to travel further distances to reach their checkout. The highest cashier idle times, and the highest customer travelling distances, are at Checkout Station 15, with the second highest being at Checkout Station 14, and so on.
In practice, this inefficiency means the cashier at Checkout Station 1 is working considerably harder than the cashier at Checkout Station 15 over the course of a busy shift.
If the average distance from the top of the queue to a checkout could be reduced, the average idle-period for cashiers would be reduced. This would improve the utilisation of the resources available, and the capacity and throughput of the system would increase. In turn, this would create a better customer experience, as queuing times would be reduced if customers moved through the checkout process more quickly.
Process Redesign
My idea for achieving this is sketched out below.
Proposed Process Redesign
By moving the top of queue point to the middle of the checkout line, the average customer travel distance to the checkout will be significantly reduced. For example, the travel distance from the top of the queue to the furthest Checkout Stations (now 1 & 15) will be roughly halved, removing a substantial amount of the travelling waste present in the previous design.
This means the idle-period for staff members between the serving of customers will be decreased, increasing their utilisation, and improving the efficiency of the system. Ultimately, this translates to an improved customer experience, as customers will spend less time queuing in the new system. Crucially, this improvement comes at no expense or investment from the business — it is 100% efficiency gains.
Results
I modelled this process change using a simulation tool called ExtendSim. My model was based on real data collected from the store, such as time customers spent moving through the process, processing times at the checkouts, the rate at which customers enter the process, and distances from the top of the queue to each checkout.
After running simulations of the existing and proposed designs, I found that the redesign could reduce the average customer queuing time from 2 minutes down to 1 minute and 9 seconds, a ~43% improvement. This was driven by two factors 1) Reduced average customer travel distance, from 7.5 metres to 5.3 metres, a ~30% improvement. 2) An increased utilisation of cashiers at the Checkout Stations furthest from the top of the queue — rising from 62% to 74%.
Notes
[0] Capacity refers to how many people / items a system can serve, or how much output it can produce, in a given time. For example, a checkout system that can serve 1,000 people between 9AM and 6PM has a capacity of 1,000.
[1] Throughput refers to the rate at which a system can process people / items. For example, Checkout Station 1 can serve two people per minute. Crucially, in this example, each checkout has a different throughout rate, as the time it takes to get from the top of the queue (beginning of the process) to each checkout is different.
[2] Process flow refers to how the queue and equipment are arranged on the shop floor, and how people pass through each step.
[3] In this example, the idle-period refers to the cashier time that elapses between the serving of customers.
[4] In Lean operations management, travel is one of the eight process wastes. It refers to the inefficient or unnecessary transportation of people, materials, information or products. The other seven wastes are inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over-processing, defects, and underutilisation of skills. | https://medium.com/@conorbyrne133/increasing-the-capacity-of-a-system-through-process-improvements-17161aba1e1 | ['Conor Byrne'] | 2021-02-14 19:47:36.689000+00:00 | ['Lean', 'Optimization', 'Efficiency', 'Process Improvement', 'Simulation'] |
Solar Sails: A Far-Sailed Concept | The common person would think that sending robots, satellites, probes, and even humans throughout the Solar System is possible, and quite an outlook into the future. Any further, however, and you encounter mind-bending distances incomprehensible to the human brain. Sending anything out beyond the solar system seems outlandish as well as far-fetched as anyone would think. Or, is it? Perhaps there is a way right in front of our eyes, perhaps we didn’t think of an obvious solution? Allow me to explain to you a crazy yet simple idea, something easy to develop yet so hard to make. I introduce you to the solar sail.
The Solar Sail
A Solar Sail is a massive sheet of Mylar that uses the pressure from sunlight to propel itself to unthinkable speeds. It can carry few basic scientific pieces of equipment with it to help with the observation of exoplanets and carry that information back to Earth.
Solar Sails are around 344 square feet or 32 square meters. However, their size varies, and some can be as large as a football field! While their size may vary, the solar Sails are consistently very, very thin, comparable to that of a piece of paper.
The solar sail was made like this because it needs to absorb the energy of the photons coming from the sun as said earlier, as well as keeping the mass as low as possible for maximum efficiency. It isn’t just the sun, however. Even photons from a laser can accelerate the Solar Sails.
The Purpose
Solar Sails primarily serve as a beacon, marking the extent of human technology reaching a symbolic milestone in space travel as well as scientific progress. However, as stated earlier, the solar sails can be equipped with scientific equipment that allows the solar sails to observe any exoplanet in the given vicinity.
Interstellar travel may be the most prominent promise given by the Sails, though it isn’t the only one. They can observe many planets within our own system and small asteroids, especially the 2 ice giants Uranus and Neptune as well as their respective moons, which haven’t been observed by any other satellite besides the Voyagers, launched in the '70s.
Solar Sails can also go into close vicinity to the sun, an object so dangerous most satellites cannot go within 27 million miles of it! However, it is severely outclassed by the recent Solar Parker probe that has far better equipment for observing the sun and orbits 4 million miles from the sun!
History of The Solar Sail
The concept of a Solar Sail has been around for centuries, albeit merely a concept until recent years. Solar Sails were first made as an idea in 1608 by the famous astronomer known as Johannes Kepler, who shared it with his friend Gallileo Galilei, and from there became well known as a concept.
In 1873, a major scientific discovery by James Maxwell proved that sunlight can put pressure in the form of a photon on a given object. This discovery is the basis of the operation of a solar sail and proves that the Solar Sail concept is possible.
Solar Sails were eventually be constructed and launched centuries later. In 2005, when the companies “The Planetary Society” and “Cosmos Studios” launched the first solar sail called the Cosmos-1. The purpose of this experiment is to test if a solar sail truly worked and can accelerate using the sun’s photons.
After that launch, many other Solar Sail launches such as Sunjammer and IKAROS were launched by big companies like JAXA and NASA respectively. In 2016, a Russian Billionaire by the name of Yuri Milner invested $100 million in the launching of Breakthrough Starshot, which aims to send Solar Sails to Alpha Centauri. More on that below.
Progress
The breakthrough Starshot Seems to be the most promising project to send solar sails out into the stars and their exoplanets. A launch with these solar sails is likely to come within the 2030s and arrive in the Alpha Centauri system 4.37 light-years away in around the 2050s. However, it will be impossible to attach a human onto any of these solar sails, as it will add too much mass.
There will be an extra lazer propelling these solar sails as well, allowing them to accelerate to 20% the speed of light or a whopping 100 million miles per hour! The observational technologies that are supposed to be attached to the Sails are currently in development, as well as the lazers needed to accelerate the sails to this speed.
Conclusion
Basic Interstellar Travel may be possible, and the work of Solar Sails is proof. Science Fiction often describes travel on such scales with futuristic gargantuan ships, or through warping in space through wormholes like in the hit movie series star wars. However, none of this is necessary for basic observation of exoplanets far outside our system. Solar Sails are the most prominent form of interstellar travel with our current technology. But, the universe is vast, so vast even, that any galaxy and even most stars in our own galaxy are far, far out of reach even with this new technology. However, the universe is yet so big that there are endless possibilities, and even what seems impossible now may be normal arbitrarily far into the future. Only the power of the human brain, even yours, can make any dream come true.
Resources:
https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3#:~:text=This%20involves%20a%20ground%2Dbased,100%20million%20miles%20an%20hour.
https://www.livescience.com/32593-how-do-solar-sails-work-.html#:~:text=Inflatable%20booms%20provide%20the%20sheets,sun's%20light%2C%20according%20to%20NASA.
https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/31jul_solarsails#:~:text=In%201873%2C%20James%20Clerk%20Maxwell,pressure%20effects%20loudly%20and%20clearly.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/IKAROS_solar_sail.jpg
https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/web/assets/pictures/20190611_history-of-solar-sailing-ls2.png | https://medium.com/@auyushg/solar-sails-a-far-sailed-concept-df3542cf775a | ['Spatium Nuntius'] | 2021-07-25 01:10:49.443000+00:00 | ['Space Exploration', 'Solar Sail', 'Science', 'Space Travel'] |
How to show your current Firebase project name on the command line prompt to prevent dangerous errors | Firebase
When working on a project with multiple stages (development, staging, production), developers use the command firebase use to switch between projects. It’s very easy to run a command on the production environment instead of the development. This is very dangerous.
Command to switch between firebase project
Note: You can always find the latest script at my GitHub repository.
Normally, developers only work on the development project. They only switch to production in case of checking or doing a hotfix. There have been a few times when I forgot to switch back to the development project. I accidentally changed the database without thinking that it could impact the actual users.
Digging into the firebase CLI, I found that it uses configstore to manage local configuration. All config is saved in a JSON file and reads easily. I created a small script which is intended to show the firebase project name on shell prompt.
How to set it up
Bash
Add the following script to the end of ~/.bash_profile :
Add script to ~/.bash_profile
Then run source ~/.bash_profile or open a new terminal window:
Firebase project name is displayed as dev-project, stage-project and prod-project
iTerm2 with oh-my-zsh
Oh-my-zsh is a popular open source framework for Zshell. I like it because it has many beautiful terminal themes and many useful plugins.
Here, I will make an example with the agnoster theme:
Edit ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes/agnoster.zsh-theme
Script for oh-my-zsh
and then add prompt_firebase to build_prompt functions:
Change build_promt function
For the final step, run source ~/.zshrc or open a new terminal window:
saas-cs-deploy-taguro-5c55e is displayed as last text in terminal prompt
I hope this can help you prevent the an unexpected (and bad) situation.
Note: You can always find the latest script at my GitHub repository. | https://medium.com/free-code-camp/how-to-show-your-current-firebase-project-name-on-the-command-line-prompt-to-prevent-dangerous-1bfee6293811 | ['Thang Minh Vu'] | 2018-12-03 21:36:40.518000+00:00 | ['Terminal', 'Zsh', 'Bash', 'Tech', 'Firebase'] |
Motion | Motion
A pause for some poetic thought
Artist unknown from my collection (circa 1940's)
I have an obsession with waves this is my sketch of motion… AS always thank you for reading and or listening to my poem it means the world to this old poet. Audio link at the bottom of my poem:)
I gesture in the regard of a sunset smile
As I passage my inscription of minutes
In the grace obscured by the mundane beguiled
I was once told “young man, don’t race through the visit.”
I’m the old man now, contemplative is my pace
I strike motion in the reverence of fascination
The adoration of prosaic bloom is my chase
In the interlude movement of conversation
In the trickle of peach juice dripping down my face
I crawled,
Tottered,
Walked,
Dashed,
Danced,
Paced and limped
And soon I will crawl again
But I never learned how to move
Until I learned how to pause | https://medium.com/illumination-curated/motion-68c954b7fc1a | ['Robert Trakofler'] | 2020-09-30 02:10:07.121000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Life', 'Art', 'Motion', 'Writing'] |
Everything You Want Starts With Believing You Can Have It | I’ve been working on a goal-setting workshop for my clients recently. In the process, I came across this quote:
The strongest single factor in prosperity consciousness is self-esteem: believing you can do it, believing you deserve it, believing you will get it. — Jerry Gillies
I share this quote in my workshop because of how deeply it resonated with me about setting goals and achieving them.
We make the mistake of thinking that we need external things to accomplish what we want. We think we need:
· Money
· Experience
· Education
· Talent
· Specific relationships
· Other resources that come from someone or somewhere other than us
And it’s not entirely wrong to think so. You can’t buy a yacht without money. You can’t be a lawyer without the education and training. You can’t be a singer if you can’t sing.
But here’s the raw truth: those are all secondary to what you have inside you.
Do you believe in you?
You have to believe you can do something, that you deserve it, that you’ll get it, in order to accomplish anything you want in your life. If you don’t believe in yourself, in your ability to do it, in your worthiness of having it, you won’t achieve it.
You could have all the money, experience, education, talent, contacts, and everything else you could ever possibly need at your fingertips. But if you don’t believe you can do it, that you’re worthy of it, and that you can get there, all that money, experience, and everything else is worthless. It won’t help you achieve that goal because you don’t believe in yourself.
You could have a red carpet laid out at your feet that would lead you directly down the straight path from where you are to what you want with complete ease and no obstacles. But if you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t pick up your foot to take that first step.
There’s just no shortcut around this: you must believe in yourself first.
Photo by Katie Harp on Unsplash
Do the external things make it easier?
Absolutely! Put two people side by side, one with money and one without but both believing in themselves, and the one with money is likely to accomplish the same goal much more quickly and easily. The same applies to education, experience, and anything else external.
Those resources will always make things easier. Not having one or more of them is always going to be an obstacle to achieving your goal.
But that’s why belief in yourself matters so much. Because it’s that belief that will push you to take on the challenge of finding those resources or finding a way to get what you want without those resources. It’s that belief that keeps you going when the path to your goal gets a little bumpy or gets cut off and requires a major shift.
It can be a struggle after divorce
I’ve been there. I can remember the days after my divorce when I questioned every decision I’d ever made. I wondered how I could move forward. I wondered what I wanted to do with my life now that the dreams I’d always pursued had been shattered.
And it was because I had so much self-doubt that I spent so long just drifting along and not really getting anywhere. I didn’t believe in myself, so even when I thought of something I might want to do with my life, I’d shrug it off and think it wasn’t possible.
It doesn’t matter whose idea the divorce was or why it came about. Self-doubt and lowered confidence happen to almost everyone after a divorce. What matters is not that you feel them but that you recognize them and start working to overcome them instead of letting them linger on.
How to build your belief in yourself
When you’re struggling with self-doubt and lacking confidence, it often feels easier to just go with it. It doesn’t feel good but finding the strength to change it just feels too hard.
So that’s why you start small. You don’t need to take gigantic steps to turn this around and start believing in yourself. You can start with tiny steps.
Start by reminding yourself of everything you’ve accomplished before. Make a list. Write down all the things you can think of that you’ve ever done in your life. Write down stuff like passing each grade in school, getting your driver’s license, learning to cook, keeping your house clean, even getting out of bed every morning.
By reminding yourself of even the simplest things you’ve managed to achieve over the course of your life, you start to build that confidence back up. And as you continue to remember these simple things, you’ll start to remember bigger things, like having your children, surviving the loss of a loved one, attending and graduating college, and so many other things you’ve done.
Each thing you remember accomplishing in your life is another brick in a wall of self-confidence and self-esteem. And eventually that wall will be high enough for you to stand on top and see the vastness of how incredible you are and all that you can achieve.
Wendy Miller is a Single Mom Coach & meditation teacher. She helps moms use mindfulness and meditation to create the life they really want. She lives in Florida with her two sons, where she homeschools while solo parenting, while surrounded by what feels like a zooful of animals.
You can follow her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. You can also sign up for her newsletter where she offers more insights, tips, tricks, advice, and information to help single moms find purpose, creativity, passion, and peace.
You might also enjoy: | https://medium.com/@wendymillermeditation/everything-you-want-starts-with-believing-you-can-have-it-f9d8dcdd31d5 | ['Wendy Miller'] | 2020-12-15 14:47:41.271000+00:00 | ['Self Love', 'Self-awareness', 'Goal Setting', 'Confidence', 'Self'] |
Best Design Websites to Inspire Your Creativity | It’s 2017, and I hark back to sharing best places which are mines of inspiration and information, and where you can find a lot of brilliant tips. This time I will present you a list of truly inspiring design blogs highlighted by our Graphic Designers.
Thomas A. Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” I can’t fully agree — when it comes to web design (and design in general), inspiration plays a huge role, it’s an essential part of the creative process.
When you’re a Graphic Designer, you have to stay up to date with fresh web design trends. You need to spot things regularly, read articles and books as well as scour the internet to get inspired.
If you’re looking for the best design blogs to follow, you’re in the right place. Merixstudio’s folks put together the hottest IT blogs that you can bookmark and come back to when you need a dose of inspiration or information (check out Best Frontend Blogs and Tech Blogs You Need to Follow in 2017). Here you have design blogs selected by us, which challenge us to break out of our unexpected.
This is the blog where you find the latest and greatest news, resources, tips and techniques for web designers. Since 2010 when Webdesigner Depot was founded, it has been read all over the world. It’s also covering the business side of design work and working as a freelancer.
#8,427 Alexa global ranking
210,547 Facebook fans
612,458 Twitter followers
Big fish among design websites. The goal of Awwwards is to recognize and promote the work of talented designers, developers, and agencies in the world. Besides its awards and certificates, Awwwards offers a meeting point, where digital designers can find inspiration, knowledge, and experience. While visiting Awwwards, you’ll come across a lot of great tutorials, tips, trends, interviews, videos and more by browsing the blog.
#4,094 Alexa global ranking
180,371 Facebook fans
105,610 Twitter followers
If you’re working on web projects, you’ve probably heard about Creative Bloq before. Using a fresh and unconventional style, it delivers the very best in the fields of web design, graphic design, digital art and more. The blog is focused on creative as well as inspirational tips. The main aim of the website is to help readers stay on top of current trends in design.
#2,595 Alexa global ranking
326,593 Facebook fans
168,031 Twitter followers
Dribbble is actually the community of web designers, graphic designers, illustrators, and other creative types who shares shots showing their work. It’s a perfect place for inspiration and exploring design. Besides, you can also promote there your works.
#1,040 Alexa global ranking
43,548 Facebook fans
167,720 Twitter followers
I listed Codrops in the previous article about best Fronted Blogs. I want to mention it again in the case of design websites because of its articles, tutorial, blueprints, freebies and all sorts of other stuff focused on web design and the latest trends. You can always count on Codrops’ useful and innovate content.
#4,135 Alexa global ranking
89,707 Facebook fans
166,338 Twitter followers
Envato’s Tuts+ is all about helping people the creative skills in areas like coding, photography or web design. If you’re looking for free tutorials, learning guides, and online courses to help you learn web design, it’s a right place. You can expand your learning across a wider range of topics as well as dive deep into a specific stuff.
#1,691 Alexa global ranking
210,115 Facebook fans
115,223 Twitter followers
It definitely isn’t easy to find the best and the most up to date blogs on web design that inspires to doing incredible things. I hope that the above list can help solve that problem as you move forward with your work.
If I’ve left any incredible design blogs out of the list, you feel should have made the cut, feel free to leave a comment. Which blogs do you love the most? Share your thoughts! ;)
In the next article, I will write up a list of the most inspiring UX blogs. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/wdstack/best-design-websites-to-inspire-your-creativity-35f101b8e9b8 | [] | 2017-01-12 08:12:04.909000+00:00 | ['Web Design', 'Blogging', 'Design', 'Graphic Design', 'Web Development'] |
How to Get Started with Express, Sequelize and Passport | As a person who is just getting started with Node.js and API building, you will definitely run into major errors and confusions. To save yourself some time and spending countless hours on Google Search, I’ll demonstrate how to set up a simple Express API with Node, Sequelize and Passport.js integration. On a side note, we will be using PostgreSQL as a database with Sequelize and hopefully you find this article helping with your journey as a Web Developer.
Getting Started
Before we begin, I’ll assume you have Node.js and PostgreSQL setup on your system. There are numerous articles out there that help with this so I’ll skip this part and jump right into it
Step 1: Setting up your database
In my scenario, I’m using PgAdmin 4 to play around with my Postgres database. Open PgAdmin and start with creating a new database. Right click on “Databases” listed in the left hand side pane and select “Create Database”
Give your database a simple name and click ‘save’. This should refresh the left pane and your new database will appear there. That is pretty much it with setting up your Database.
Step 2: Setting up Node
Begin by creating an empty folder to house your project files. You can name your project folder anything you like. I like to use Visual Studio Code to keep my code and files organized. If you are using another editor, feel free to follow along as most of the commands will be same.
Open up a terminal inside the directory of the project folder you created. As I named my folder “Express-Sequelize-Passport”, my terminal shows this:
C:\Users\author\Desktop\Express-Sequel-Passport>
Start by typing “npm init” and perform the steps as shown below:
package name: (express-sequel-passport)
version: (1.0.0)
description:
entry point: (index.js) app.js
test command:
git repository:
keywords:
author:
license: (ISC)
You can keep pressing enter to have these fields pop up one by one. The only change I did was to change my “entry point” to “app.js”. This keeps my directory structure tidy and helps me remember where what code is. On a side note, the “entry point” is where your main code will run.
Once you have completed these steps, you’ll notice a “package.json” file created in the directory. That is good. You are now ready to move on to the next step.
Step 3: Directory Structure
A big part of writing clean code is to have a clean directory structure. With that said, I have attached a directory tree that you should replicate as shown by creating the necessary folders. Typing ‘tree’ in the terminal will show you your directory tree
└───Express-Sequel-Passport
├───config
└───src
├───db
├───models
└───routes
Step 4: Install node modules
In your project folder, open up the terminal and copy paste the following code to install the necessary modules that we’ll use along the way
npm install --save express nodemon passport passport-local dotenv body-parser express-session morgan pg pg-hstore sequelize
I’ll explain each of these modules as we build our code. So don’t worry as to what each modules does for now.
Step 5: Add Nodemon and Babel
Nodemon helps with automatically restarting your script when ever you make changes to your code. This is a very convenient tool to have. As we have installed nodemon in the previous steps, lets configure our package.json file to use it. Make the changes as shown below:
Be sure to add the correct path to your ‘app.js’. | https://medium.com/@itswagi/how-to-get-started-with-express-sequelize-and-passport-cc405391a3de | ['Wajahat Zia'] | 2020-11-23 12:50:18.536000+00:00 | ['Node Js Tutorial', 'Sequelize', 'Passportjs', 'Expressjs', 'JavaScript'] |
In Memoriam: Rachel Held Evans | I feel like I lost a close friend this weekend. I did, really. More than a friend — a mentor, a guide, a hero.
I never met Rachel Held Evans personally, but we were bound to, sooner or later. Maybe this summer at the Wild Goose Festival. Perhaps at a conference or concert or a Liturgists gathering. But it was going to happen. We were going to be friends. I could feel it in my bones.
I’ve told people before that Rachel and I share a patronus, usually when I’ve pressured them to accept one of her books from me as a gift. I think she had that effect upon a lot of us who followed her over the years. I discovered just today that Rachel’s birthday is the day before mine, 7 years prior. I’m just superstitious enough to think that’s really cool, and think that it explains in part the deep connection I felt with her, like we were best friends that just hadn’t met yet. #geminiforthewin
Rachel spoke with both a language and a tone that were wholly unique to her. She made us all feel like intimate friends, spilling her guts onto a page with such reckless and poetic abandon that we felt as though we had known her our whole lives, as if her voice was an echo of our own in some strange, yearning, primal way, like God herself breathing into life things that as yet were not, words that we could not rightly form into our own phrases, sentences, coherent thoughts on our own… but she did that for us, somehow.
I don’t cry, really. I barely cry over death, even. It’s not that I don’t want to — it just usually feels like I can’t — it’s always been like that. Dobby the house elf and Robb Stark remain the only untimely démises outside those of close family members’ for whom I have shed real tears.
I wept when I heard that Rachel was gone. I’m weeping now. It feels like something so very good, so very beautiful, and so very rare has been taken from this earth, a wholly singular work of art that cannot be replaced. I want her back. I want her voice, her courage, her vision in the wind of this new decade, helping to lead the charge of this reformation that she helped to start, but will never get to see to fruition.
Rachel is a prophet. William Matthews said it on Twitter the day she died, and if there is one word that sums up her public presence, I think that does it perfectly. Rachel taught me it was okay to question things, even if you don’t have the right degrees or pedigrees. She taught me that it is okay to be discriminating in your deconstruction, that your doubts don’t have to look like anyone or everyone else’s. She taught me how to rage against injustice while simultaneously extending grace and finding common ground with aspirants, real or imagined, the sincere ones and the trolls. She taught me how to rebuke hypocrisy without demonizing opponents. She introduced me new mentors that have joined her as guides for me along the way, like Nadia Bolz-Weber and Barbara Brown Taylor. Rachel is a bridge-builder, a truth-teller, a peace-maker. There are far too few of her kind left in the world.
It has been said before, but it’s a strange peculiarity of life and loss that you have no idea how much someone means to you until they are gone. I really had no idea how pivotal Rachel had been for me in my spiritual journey over the last few years, until she was gone, and the weight of the loss crashed in on me like a single-wide in a tornado. She had a knack for saying what I wanted to say…what I needed to say. She put into words some of the deepest, wordless aches of my heart, as I wrestled with God, for years on end, like Jacob on the banks of the Jabbok. Rachel has been a shepherd for me, a guide in so many ways through a very dark and treacherous night of the soul, through questions I still have no idea how to answer, and don’t know if I ever will. She got it. She got me. She taught me how to embrace tension and lack of certainty, to worship and wonder and wail, even when I couldn’t see or understand, or didn’t want to. She taught me that it was possible to have faith, even if I didn’t believe.
If there was ever someone who could truly be called an “old soul,” it is Rachel Held Evans. If she were a singer, her records would be on my shelf next to Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon.
The very first Rachel in the Great Book that our own Rachel loved so much was the wife of Jacob, the patriarch of Israel. She was his rock, his inspiration, his magic, his everything. She gave birth to his two sons Joseph and Benjamin, the most beloved of all of Israel’s children. She delivered her youngest through a long and painful labor, naming him Ben-oni — “son of my sorrow” — succumbing to death shortly after giving him life, her body irrevocably wrecked and broken from the lengthy travail. She never got to see her boys become the earth-shakers that they were. She had no idea that her eldest would literally rule the world, or that a descendant of her youngest would become known as the most influential man in history, second only to the Messiah himself.
Like your namesake, you’ll never get to see what comes next either, but something shifted in me yesterday, Rachel. I thought you’d like to know.
I’m tired of living my life in fear. I’m tired of being told by old white men that I have “plenty of time” to make a mark on this world, that my best days and brightest energies are best spent sitting down and shutting up and listening to them until I am old and wise enough to have something worthwhile to share with the world. None of us are promised tomorrow. Your death brought that reality painfully front and center for me, like a shepherd’s smooth stone square into the forehead of a Philistine giant.
I don’t want to wait anymore to find my voice, to say what needs to be said, to do my part to lead this beautiful reformation forward, to love and serve others in the unique way that I alone can, like you did in your way that only you could. I’m not alone in this sentiment, I know. There are so very, very many of us that will take up your mantle, pick up where you left off, and keep marching on.
No one can ever replace you, friend. I hope that all this faith-God-Jesus-heaven stuff really is for real, and that one day I’ll get to actually meet you, in that sweet by and by where we can finally be friends indeed. No, no one can ever replace you, but there is today, in the aftermath of this loss, a veritable host of us scattered all over the world, in all kinds of different churches, denominations, and even faiths who have been quietly waiting and watching you and your compatriots being brave — wishing we had your courage, your tenacity, your way with words, or just your platform.
I’m not going to stand by anymore and wish the risk wasn’t so high for speaking out against injustice and hypocrisy in the church. I’m not going to wait anymore to say the words on my heart the way only I can say them, because someone else needs to hear those very words, the same way I needed to hear yours. I’m going to be an agent of change, courageous like a true Gryffindor, brave like the true kings and queens of Narnia, Divergent in all the ways that I am uniquely purposed to be… because you showed me how to be all of those things. I know I can because I’ve watched you do it. We all feel the same way about this, I know it.
You’re only 7 years older than I, but in so many ways — and to so many of us, even those older than you —like your namesake, you feel like a spiritual mother.
Thank you, Rachel. Thank you for being brave.
Rest easy, friend. We’ll see you on the other side. | https://medium.com/@joelherbert/in-memoriam-rachel-held-evans-fd7d242f9244 | ['Joel Michael Herbert'] | 2020-04-06 01:13:48.878000+00:00 | ['Religion', 'Evangelicalism', 'Death And Dying', 'Rachel Held Evans', 'In Memoriam'] |
Why I don’t Drink Alcohol? | People have their creative reasons for drinking I have my reasons for not drinking. By drinking, I mean alcohol or any other type of intoxication like smoking or drugs.
I don’t drink not only because I never found a valid reason for drinking, but also never saw the greatness or the enhancement of life in the people who drink.
My first reason for not drinking is that it makes me cool. In a world where most of the people are drinking a person not drinking alcohol makes that person unique. It is good to be unique in a good way.
I don’t want to lose control of my motivation, being happy, or dealing with sadness to a chemical that is not adding value to anyone I love in any way
It is good for my family that I don’t drink. I’m yet to find a family that can proudly say that they are blessed as they have heavy drinkers in their family.
When I drink I tend to attract the most hated people who have weakness in their Character, problems with integrity and holes in their behavior. I don’t want to have any relations with this type of people.
Alcohol tends to make me lose control of my mind and body, which I don’t want.
I know alcohol can never make me happy, solve my problems, or help me deal with sadness. It has no place in my life.
Alcohol can bring the worst out of me. It can make me act like an animal or the most despicable human I have ever seen. I don’t want that.
Alcohol can never give me the high or the relaxation which I can get from meditation or spending time with my loved ones.
Alcohol damages my natural abilities, willpower, self-belief, passion, love, self-respect, and everything else connected to it. Without these qualities, I cannot consider myself as a human being.
I know and strongly believe that alcohol is not good for my health. It will never make me healthier.
I don’t want to waste my hard-earned money on alcohol. It’s my choice to use my money to add value to myself, to my family, or my community.
In English, it is categorized as intoxication and we all know the meaning of toxic, which is poison.
These are my reasons for not drinking or push any intoxicating material in my body. In the end, it is your choice. But, if you smoke I would ask you to reconsider it as smoking is not good for your health and your life. | https://medium.com/@anshumanblog/why-i-dont-drink-alcohol-14ea9715c33a | ['Anshuman Sharma'] | 2020-12-21 11:41:17.286000+00:00 | ['Wine', 'Drinking', 'Not Drinking', 'Beer', 'Alcohol'] |
Job Hunting Tips for Veterans Entering the Workforce | Trying to find a job can end up being quite a job in itself, but it can prove to be even more challenging for veterans who have returned home. Reentering the civilian workforce is quite an adjustment after spending years in the military.
And while some aspects will remain the same for veterans and civilians alike, there are a few things that veterans need to keep in mind when leaving the military and looking for a job.
Have Copies of Your DD214 and DD2586
You’re likely very aware that your DD214, Report of Separation, and DD2586, Verification of Military Experience and Training, are extremely important for Veterans Affairs, should you want or need to access benefits such as health care, disability, or the GI Bill.
However, you might not be as aware that having these records might prove important when searching for your next job. Make sure that you have these important records to show your school or employer so that they can verify your service, training, and experience.
If you are missing any necessary records, you can get replacements through an online application with Veterans Affairs.
Translating Your Military Experience
Most of your military training and experience can be applied to a post-military career. However, some career choices might require an additional exam or recertification course in order for you to use those skills in the civilian workforce. Certain states or even the federal government might require their own licenses and certifications. Jobs involving treating patients, using certain kinds of machinery, or flying aircraft are good examples.
If you’re unsure of how you can effectively translate your military experience and skills into a civilian occupation, the Veteran Employment Center, which is a division of Veterans Affairs, can help you. They will not only help you put together a list of civilian skill equivalents for your resume, but they can also help guide you toward potential career paths that you’re qualified for.
Start Networking!
After you know which career path you’re looking at, it’s time to get out there and start the job search. Networking is always key when looking for the perfect job, both for veterans and civilians alike. Start by letting your friends, family, acquaintances, and even other veterans know that you’re ready to enter the civilian workforce.
Reaching out to those that are already in your chosen career path is also extremely important. They might know of open positions at their companies that you’re qualified for. And even if they don’t have any current openings, it won’t hurt to go ahead and get your resume on file in case they do have a position open in the future. | https://medium.com/@gojobboxseo/job-hunting-tips-for-veterans-entering-the-workforce-c7039e34a082 | ['Job Box'] | 2019-09-23 11:02:29.070000+00:00 | ['Jobs', 'Job Hunting', 'Workforce', 'Blog', 'Employment'] |
Why younger real estate agents are dominating the marketplace. | When I got into real estate in my early 20’s I am fairly certain everyone in my family and friend circle thought I was crazy. There was a lot of competition in my small town of 56,000 people and “everyone knew the successful realtors”. But, I had passion in my heart and hustle on my mind. Within just two short years I was ranked very high globally.
Not only in my market, but in others across the country there are plenty of expired listings that did not sell. These sellers are completely defeated and are sick of real estate agents that have no idea how to online market telling them their home did not sell because it’s overpriced. Granted, that sometimes can be the case.
The world of social media is handled the best through the younger generation. The older generation of downsizers may not fully understand the power of social media, or even how to use it, but they know it’s needed to be successful. They are absolutely correct.
I was able to take expired listings and put them on social media, virtually stage the vacant ones, provide professional photography and videography, and create a lifestyle around the home I was selling. The key was… online exposure. A millennial that has a strong work ethic holds in their hands the power and ability to reach way more people than a print ad, or open house.
We are seeing throughout the country younger real estate agents dominating market places. There is no secret here, the power lays in social media marketing and home sellers and buyers are changing the ways from the good ole days of sphere of influence. | https://medium.com/@ashleykblackmore/why-younger-real-estate-agents-are-dominating-the-marketplace-d77e58d9213b | ['Ashley Blackmore'] | 2020-12-27 20:48:03.184000+00:00 | ['Realtor', 'Buying A House', 'Business', 'Selling A Home', 'Real Estate'] |
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A Simple And Practical Guide To Getting Things Done | How do you keep track of all the bits of information in your life? When I say bits of information, I am talking about ideas, things to remember, and information you may need to reference at another time. We need to keep track of things, but how do we do it? Especially if we want to reference them later.
This has been a constant struggle for me.
When life was less complicated, when I was single, I didn’t have any issues keeping track of things. Yet, when I got married and added three kids to the mix plus assets it got much more complicated. Each time we have added something new to keep track of I have had to change up my system a little bit.
However, lately, I have gone back to a much more simple system with a very simple application.
While I have been thinking a lot about systems for managing my ideas, files, documents, and anything else that comes to me, I realized this is a struggle for other people. As I talk with friends, family, and coworkers, I realized that many people don’t have a good set up for keeping track of everything in their lives.
Everything Needs To Be Digital
While I understand that people are uncomfortable with the idea that things can get “hacked,” I have come to the conclusion that everything we keep needs to be digital now. There is no reason to have boxes and boxes of paper sitting around your house.
I do have one caveat to this, financial paperwork that you should keep for tax reasons should probably stick around. This amount of paperwork will likely only require one box however and you can shove it in the back of a closet.
All that to say, everything in our lives should be digital now. Paper is nice to hold, but it takes up space, kills trees, and is really easy to lose. When we are looking to keep track of everything in our lives, we have tools that are completely digital which we can use.
Creating Your Digital Filing System
When I first started keeping track of everything going on I used a series of notepads and an alphabet filing system. The notepads were for different projects I had going on at any time and the filing system was where I would deposit anything based on the first letter of the title I put at the top of the page.
This system worked great for a few years right after college. However, as I moved into a digital, remote work role, I had to change things up quite a bit.
With the changes to my work environment, I had to learn to go digital and make it work for me. I couldn’t carry around the notepads and filing folders everywhere I went. So, I started using Evernote. Evernote is like a giant filing cabinet/notepad rolled into one space. This would be the space I would keep everything for years.
Over the last couple of years, I have migrated everything from Evernote to several other applications, however, the principle has been the same no matter the application I have used. The key was keeping information for reference and having a place to store my work-in-progress projects.
I also use a very simple filing system for word processing documents, spreadsheets, and other files on my computer. Focusing on the year and the project. It is simple so I can move ongoing projects to the following year if I need to and if not, they can stay in place to reference later.
In this post, I will share with you how to create your system for reference and project management. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/a-simple-and-practical-guide-to-getting-things-done-371fac107797 | ['Jack Heimbigner'] | 2020-12-03 17:02:05.858000+00:00 | ['Life Lessons', 'Productivity', 'Self Improvement', 'Advice', 'Life'] |
Palm Oil Vs Us | Photograph by Pascal Maiter, Natioal Geographic
Palm oil is everywhere. It is an ingredient in thousands of everyday products around the world, such as: baked goods, hair products, cosmetics, fast food, and vehicle fuel (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2013). Yet, it is a foreign product that most North Americans know nothing about. Chances are that if you looked in your refrigerator, medicine cabinet, or makeup vanity then you would find several products with palm oil as a listed ingredient. Unfortunately, it is the heavy reliance on this vegetable oil that raises concerns about environmental and social issues within the palm oil industry. Its unique qualities, versatility and relatively low cost have positioned it as the world’s most used vegetable oil (Stolton, 2020). Therefore, it has become crucial that we sharpen our knowledge about this issue and explore solutions to find a resolution. Although palm oil is economically beneficial for companies seeking its versatility and spoilage prevention, the harvesting and production has led to several environmental issues; such as; deforestation, loss of habitat for endangered or rare species, disruption of peatlands that negatively impact global warming, and increased risk of zoonotic diseases. In this article, I will define palm oil and its characteristics, explain the multitude of risks associated with palm oil production, present some solutions, and give a call to action for individuals seeking to make a difference.
What is it?
According to WWF (2020), It’s an edible vegetable oil that comes from the fruit of oil palm trees, the scientific name is Elaeis guineensis. Two types of oil can be produced; crude palm oil comes from squeezing the fleshy fruit, and palm kernel oil which comes from crushing the kernel, or the stone in the middle of the fruit. Although palm oil is native to Africa, it is now being harvested in mass quantities from Indonesia and Malaysia. Those two countries produce over 85 percent of the global supply (WWF, 2020).
Why is it everywhere?
Palm oil is extremely versatile and offers different properties and functions which makes it so useful and so widely used. It is semi-solid at room temperature so can keep products like peanut butter and Nutella spreadable (WWF, 2020). Also, it is resistant to oxidation and so can give products a longer shelf-life, and it is stable at high temperatures which helps to give fried products a crispy and crunchy texture (WWF, 2020). Furthermore, palm oil is odourless and colourless so it does not alter the look or smell of food products. For example, other countries use palm oil as a cooking oil just like Americans use olive oil or castor oil. Unfortunately, palm oil is often disguised behind names that are unrecognizable. Here are a few (Schaeffer-Yildiz, 2020):
PKO — Palm Kernel Oil
PKO fractionations: Palm Kernel Stearin (PKs); Palm Kernel Olein (PKOo)
PHPKO — Partially hydrogenated Palm Oil
FP(K)O — Fractionated Palm Oil
OPKO — Organic Palm Kernel Oil
Palmitate — Vitamin A or Asorbyl Palmitate
Palmate
Sodium Laureth Sulphate
Sodium Lauryl Sulphates
Sodium dodecyl Sulphate (SDS or NaDS)
Elaeis Guineensis
Glyceryl Stearate
Stearic Acid
Chemicals which contain palm oil
Steareth -2
Steareth -20
Sodium Lauryl Sulphate
Sodium lauryl sulfoacetate
Hydrated palm glycerides
How is it a risk?
Palm oil is really a victim of its own success. Its usefulness has led to increased demand which has translated into greater production (Stolton, 2020). High demand for the production of palm has led to deforestation, global warming, loss of habitat, and increased risk of zoonotic diseases.
A study conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that palm oil plantations worldwide take up 40.6 million acres of land at the expense of forests and its inhabitants.The issue is both (1) how palm oil is being harvested, and (2) the amount of forest land being taken over. All of which can lead to deforestation, which is the clearing, destroying, or otherwise removal of trees through deliberate, natural or accidental means (Dictionary.com, 2020). In Borneo, farmers are clearing the land the quickest way possible, by burning trees down. The reason is to keep up with the ever climbing demand. In the process, peatlands–an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter–are being destroyed. Peatlands are vital to the reduction of global warming (UCS, 2020). Peat soils are found in swampy areas (i.e the Amazon and Borneo rainforest) with a high water table, and contain 18 to 24 more carbon than forests do (UCS, 2020). When burned the peat soils release carbon into the atmosphere. It is equivalent to 9 years worth of global fossil fuel use (van der Werf et al. 2008). Yikes!
If that is not reason enough to end this then consider how much oxygen we are losing. Clearly burning trees is extremely destructive. But people native to the surrounding areas are also paying the price. In June 2013, such fires in Indonesia became an international health concern (UCS, 2020). They caused smog, haze, and respiratory problems as far away as Malaysia and Singapore. For more information read the CNN article titled, “Borneo is Burning.” Deforestation is not the only issue here. Burning down the rainforest for palm oil affects everyone including our furry friends.
As a result of deforestation, animals are losing their habitats and their lives. Endangered species like the Orangutan, pygmy elephant, and Sumatran rhino are fighting for survival but the battle is an uphill climb. Because of the palm oil industry these animals are dying from fires, smoke inhalation, other predators, and farmers. An article from the HuffPost reveals that palm oil plantations are expected to encroach even further on what little habitat there is left for many critically endangered species. And scientists believe many more species will soon be extinct in the wild (Calvert, 2017) as the global demand for palm oil increases (WWF, 2020).
Photograph by Discover Wildlife
Of all the endangered species residing in Borneo, the Orangutan–translates to “man of the forest” (CNN, 2019)– is the most at risk. According to Calvert (2017), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced the Borneo orangutan was “critically endangered” because of shrinking forests in July 2016. Ever since several articles about orangutans being spotted in human-populated areas have surfaced. It is a tragedy because many of these creatures are being killed on the spot instead of sent to animal conservation centers. This segways into another glaring issue with deforestation, zoonotic diseases.
Where do animals go when their habitat is destroyed? Human-populated areas. It may not be on purpose but in order to survive animals are retreating into villages, towns, and possibly cities to seek shelter. It makes sense because humans are not destroying THEIR homes. The risk is that several animals are carriers for diseases. When animals come into contact with humans all it takes is a bite, scratch, or even a meal for an individual to contract a disease. Zoonoses, or zoonotic diseases, are infectious diseases transmitted from animal to human (Smith, 2020). Currently, the world is facing a pandemic called COVID-19, which is a zoonotic disease that scientists suspect was caused by bats. Imagine what other diseases could be lurking in the rainforests. As the palm oil plantations increase and the forest decreases there is a chance we may find out. Monkeys are known to carry several diseases. So, I spoke with Kent State University’s College of Public Health professor Tara Smith to gain more insights into this risk.
Dr. Tara Smith, Kent State University
“I suspect we are seeing a lot more outbreaks because of deforestation and because of that intersection of humans and animals populations,” Smith said. If you are interested in the connection between deforestation and zoonotic diseases please read the second part to this article called, “Palm Oil Vs Us: Deforestation and Zoonotic Diseases.” The second part of this article will include the full interview and be published on exclusively on Medium in 2021.
Solutions
Alone, there is a limit to what you can do. This issue is beyond any individual. A majority of the solutions presented here will require government intervention and company policy changes in order to implement significant changes, but here are a couple:
Produce more sustainably
Decreasing demand
Using alternative oils or different ingredients
Establishing policies and best practices that avoid conversion of forests
Government intervention with strict regulations
Education local palm oil farmers on the dangers of burning the forest
Assisting the government and law enforcement in Borneo to control unregulated forest burning
It can be overwhelming taking on an issue such as this. There is much to be done in order to turn the palm industry around and protect the environment, the animals, and ourselves in the process. Here is what you can do to get involved.
Call to action
It is not realistic to boycott all brands and companies that use palm oil because it is everywhere. First, I am calling for a nationwide boycott of brands that use high levels of palm oil. Second, buy locally sourced products and fresh produce from your local markets and vendors. Third, write a petition to your favorite company to only use palm oil that has been certified according to the criteria of the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Together we can make a difference. All it takes in one decision to set change in motion. | https://medium.com/@tiamyers-rocker/palm-oil-vs-us-95fbb4c01655 | ['Tia Myers-Rocker'] | 2020-12-16 03:35:20.876000+00:00 | ['Boycott', 'Deforestation', 'Global Warming', 'Palm Oil', 'Zoonotic Disease'] |
“HOW TO REPURPOSE CONTENT” | What do you know about micro content?
Are you a creator or influencer looking to expand your reach on social media platforms? No matter your niche, repurposing content is essential in our modern-day society. The ability to repurpose one page of written content into five different platforms is what I can do for your brand. I’m intentional with my words so you can act with a direct purpose. My goal is to give your community a unique perspective that grabs their attention. The intention is to focus on delivery and tone. Give your community to power to take action with your words! There are ways that you can command attention without creating a complicated message. The power is within the process.
You might be wondering how one page of content can turn into content for five different platforms. Well, the truth is that everyone is creating micro content, it’s no secret. However, are you really dissecting your words? No! I perform surgery on your words and give them purpose and power in a short amount of time. As a result, one paragraph turns into five different messages for your community. It’s a unique process that is overlooked by most but appreciated by few. Micro content is a unique way to gather engagement, reach, and attention in short periods of time as you look to expand your brand or business. A great way to maximize micro content is to focus on your communication channels. What communication channels are you creating? Most entrepreneurs or small business owners focus on when and where they communicate, not how and why they communicate.
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash
We live in a society where technology has crippled us to a certain extent. Attention spans have decreased tremendously to less than 8 seconds. Amid a pandemic, we are now finding the best ways to grow and expand our businesses. A great way that you can grow your business is by using micro content. As a writer, a specific structure will convey a powerful message. Micro content will give your message purpose. The structure that I’ve created with a unique platform for me has turned into multiple opportunities. Currently, I hold positions as a public speaker, writer, and consultant all under the niche and brand of a Micro Content Strategist. I’ve created three clear roles that will enable me to expand further in 2021.
If you’re ready to take the next step and learn the basics of micro content structure then click the link below. Everything you need to know about this emerging field of micro content will be explained once you book a FREE CONSULTATION! | https://medium.com/@itzprogressj/how-to-repurpose-content-337e0484f687 | ['Micro Content Strategist'] | 2020-12-14 16:50:12.201000+00:00 | ['Development', 'Branding', 'Writer', 'Blogging', 'Content Strategy'] |
Paedophiles and rapists? Who cares? | To the prosecco feminists of the UK media, transgender is the real threat
Through work with Trans Media Watch, i am all too aware that the UK press is obsessed with trans people. A mix of insomnia and curiosity led me to do some very basic research and the results are shocking.
Now read on.
Media obsession
It has long been a given that the obsession shown by the mainstream media with anything trans-related is unbalanced. Out of all proportion to either the numbers involved or the actual impact on society at large, i noted sourly a year or so back, as the Times monstered yet another trans campaigner. Their crime? No more nor less than holding views on trigger warnings and student safety that just happened to be the exact same views held by many feminists and progressives since pretty much forever.
As it is, there are probably little more than 300 or so actual trans “activists” in the UK. Yet to read the “respectable” press, one would think we were an international crime syndicate, up there with the mafia in terms of our threat factor.
“…i could get used to [being treated like a mafia don], if it meant we were allowed to tease the likes of Piers Morgan with the occasional horse’s head in his bed scenario”
Which i could get used to, if it meant we were allowed to tease the likes of Piers Morgan with the occasional horse’s head in his bed scenario. But sadly, far too many trans folk are vegetarian for such a move ever to find community favour.
No matter. I contented myself with counting the instances of trans bias and bemoaning the absence of stories that COULD be told about trans people. The violence directed against us. The discrimination. The years long waiting lists for health care. But still, it grated.
Last night, tossing and turning in bed and unable to sleep, my mind turned to wondering just how this obsession was reflected in the numbers. So, i know, i thought: what about counting how often particular terms turn up in the UK press.
Some basic news stats
The result, counted in pages of Google links was “interesting”, in the sense that discovering your next-door neighbour has been sneaking over your fence in the middle of the night to sniff your panties is “interesting”. Here goes:
Stats re pages linked to various keywords in a google search
Of course this is not entirely scientific. I know, from regularly carrying out this search for the Trans Media Watch news feed, that a proportion of “stories” on any topic are no such thing. They are either articles that reference a term “en passant”. Or they are pages in publications where they have ONE trans story and have then helpfully stuck a link to that story on every single other page. Yes, Spectator, i’m looking at you: also Yahoo News.
Too, some links get missed on a basic search. I am pretty sure we have long been under-reporting Suzanne Moore’s views on trans people. Not because we have any beef in respect of Moore: but because neither she, nor the Guardian, where, until recently she was a regular writer, seem very to include the word “transgender” into stories about trans people. Further, the Guardian appears to prefer not to use the t-word as a tag on articles.
Still, we don’t use this approach for analysis of pieces: pre-pandemic, my preferred tool for more in-depth work was the full text news databases that i could access via the British library. And you’d need to dig deeper to get a more realistic picture.
Just as links to stories over-estimate the frequency of stories around any subject, so the use of synonyms and sensationalist terms moves the figures back the other way. So a proper estimation of the press view of murder would include murder, murderer and synonyms like “killer”: and a trans study should examine not just transgender, but trans, non-binary and other terms too.
But it works well enough when scanning the news for pieces of interest to the wider community, so that’s OK.
More stats: this time from books
What about the words used more widely. Well, i don’t have access to the sort of databases i’d like to access. Here, though, are a couple of charts from Google’s ngram app which counts word use in books.
Comparison of word counts from Google’s ngram app
On the plus side, we are still less of concern to the average writer than murderers or terrorists (who may be dropping down the public interest league table after a sharp spike in mentions post-2001).
Comparison of word counts from Google’s ngram app
“…while interest in rape and paedophilia appears, on this evidence, to be ever so slightly heading downward, the obsession with trans folk has yet to abate.”
On the other hand, we have stormed past rapist and paedophiles as topic of interest in the years since 2000. And while interest in rape and paedophilia appears, on this evidence, to be ever so slightly heading downward, the obsession with trans folk has yet to abate.
Obsessing over trans people…
Does this mean anything? Well, yes, and no. This piece and the accompanying stats are no more than a momentary spasm. Stuff i found by means of some quick and dirty searches in the middle of the night. At the same time, they are not nothing. They are indicative of two things, neither good.
The first is that they confirm, in the starkest terms just how obsessed the media are with trans people, and therefore why trans people are currently in the midst of a collective nervous breakdown. Compare and contrast, for instance, the term “traveller”. That turns up some 25 pages of news links in the past month.
So, great: another minority gets treated just as badly? But, no. Because the vast majority of those links — maybe 90% — relate to pieces concerning what will happen to everyday travellers going on holiday next year post-Brexit: or now, during the pandemic.
…means ignoring women’s issues
“…if you are due to file one piece a week, a fortnight, a month, then every piece you write about trans people is a piece you are not writing about issues, like violence or rape,”
Second, insofar as press coverage of certain issues — like violence against women — is dominated by government statements and the current focus of the various prosecco feminists writing for them, this is missed opportunity writ large. Because if you are due to file one piece a week, a fortnight, a month, then every piece you write about trans people is a piece you are not writing about issues, like violence or rape, even though i suspect these are of direct concern to rather more women than stories about trans folk.
Given, too, the fact that the press like to present themselves as just worried about the children, the fact that transgender is on a par with paedophile in the first table — and attracts about twice the interest as paedophilia is likewise a highly concerning statistic.
This is neither gospel nor peer-reviewed academic paper. It is me, jotting down some thoughts: thinking aloud. I know this is not an end point and it is for the various academics and feminists, corpus linguists and gender theorists to step up and do some of the harder work.
Still, it highlights a depressing, disturbing trend in the UK media. And it does not look like it is going away any time soon. | https://medium.com/@jane-67706/paedophiles-and-rapists-who-cares-e05528db205f | ['Jane Fae'] | 2020-12-12 11:46:58.771000+00:00 | ['Media', 'Transphobia', 'Uk Press', 'Bias', 'Trasngender'] |
Wear a mask — please. January 26, 2021 | January 26, 2021
It’s not something being forced on you. It’s being asked of you. For your own health and safety, and everyone around you. Nobody has “freedom” to do as they please if it endangers others. That’s not “freedom,” it’s irresponsibility. Mask wearing is good citizenship. Good humanhood.
Do we really, at this point, still have to persuade anyone covid is no hoax? Where did that idea come from anyway? Over 400,000 American corpses disprove it. Many of them believers in the “hoax” lie, who didn’t wear masks, and paid for that mistake with their lives.
On one recent day I counted nine obituaries in the local paper citing covid as cause of death.
And this is not merely like the flu. I had that wrong idea myself at the beginning, but facts quickly changed my opinion. This is much deadlier than flu — and even many who survive go through hell first. And/or then suffer long term health impairments. Covid is also more contagious. Especially the more virulent British strain that recently evolved.
Developing vaccines so quickly is a fantastic achievement. However, it will take time to manufacture enough vaccine and inject enough people to achieve the “herd immunity” to finally defeat the virus. And that will be impeded, if not derailed, by many people refusing vaccination. Which makes no sense, because whatever you imagine (wrongly) are the vaccine’s risks, covid’s are surely far greater. As evidenced again by that mountain of corpses. No way could a vaccine kill that many people.
So that mountain will grow during the coming months. Probably by a lot. The time ahead could be the deadliest.
Masks can help tremendously. Our 400,000+ death toll would already have been far lower had America been more sensible about masks. They can still save a huge number of lives. One October 2020 study calculated that universal masking would prevent 130,000 U.S. deaths in just the ensuing three months.
It’s true that in the beginning experts gave mixed messages about masking. A big reason was a mask shortage raising concerns that widespread everyday use could cause health workers to go without. That’s no longer an issue. And the benefit of masking isn’t rocket science. We know now that covid is transmitted mainly by droplets coming out of noses and mouths and getting into other noses and mouths through the air. Masks help to block them both ways.
Okay, masks are no fun. A bit uncomfortable, a bit of a nuisance. But the notion of masks being somehow bad for your health is simply nonsense. To the contrary, they can literally save your life. Hundreds of thousands are walking around now because they did wear masks and thus didn’t get covid. Given that, calling mask wearing an imposition is pretty silly. Death is a much bigger imposition.
America’s record on covid is much worse than most other rich countries. Of course that’s mainly because our government leadership was so abysmal — indeed, missing entirely for the last months while infection and death rates accelerated. The most obvious avoidable failure was the refusal to push masking — indeed, doing the opposite. Insane, really. The tragic legacy still bedevils us. A New York Times reporter recently wrote of a long road trip, with masks everywhere notable for their absence. Many places having signs up requiring masks, but they’re widely ignored. Violators getting no pushback. In fact there’s still much pushback when people are asked to wear masks. Bleating about their “freedom.” To be covidiots.
The good news is that mostAmericans — despite Trump — have been masking. But the bad news is that the minority who refuse are the cause of nearly all our covid infections and deaths. President Biden is asking for 100 days of masking. If every American complied, then by the end of that time, the virus would actually have virtually died out, being unable to infect anybody. Every non-masker will make it take longer. Please wear a mask. Please. | https://medium.com/@franksrobinson/wear-a-mask-please-d234506220bf | ['Frank S. Robinson'] | 2021-01-27 01:21:27.193000+00:00 | ['Coronavirus', 'Masks', 'Covid 19', 'Pandemic'] |
another day at the office | Photo by Jessica Knowlden on Unsplash
We were in the break room staring at our paper coffee cups in silence. Curtis was fidgeting. I could tell he was having a rough day. I saw the general manager in his office reaming him a new one earlier. Financing is a rough job. One minute you are the company hero, next minute your head’s in the guillotine. I had to ask.
“So what happened with you and Jerry today bud,” I asked.
Curtis was silent for a moment. He looked into his coffee.
“Do you know what he said to me man,” he asked, “He walked into my office, shut the door and started going on and on about how we need to get better at cleaning up our deals this year. He told me that I was either getting sloppy or I didn’t give a fuck. ‘Which one is it?’ he said. I just stared at him. I mean, we had a record year last year and this motherfucker has to come into my office and bitch about finding little mistakes in deals last month because he has nothing else to bitch about.”
Curtis paused again. He was getting worked up. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, taking a sip of his coffee.
“You know what man,” he continued, “it doesn’t matter if you’ve been here one year or ten years, you never know with these guys, it’s never good enough. I mean, ten years I’ve been here and I have to hear this shit. You know what I wanted to say to him? He said that I was either too dumb to realize I was missing funding papers or I just didn’t care enough to do my job properly. You know what I wanted to say back to him?”
Curtis leaned back in his chair. He took a deep breath.
“I wanted to tell them that I appreciate all the money and the time that they invested in me but I’m not about this life anymore. I just can’t do it. I can’t come in here every day and just gouge people’s eyes out over interest rates and product sales. I can’t take any more of their bullshit. I just can’t. So I quit. But I can’t say that to them. I’m in too deep. They pay me too much, I can’t just walk away. I’m in crippling debt. I can’t afford to not have this job.”
“Yes you can,” I said. “You just have to figure out a way.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You drive an old piece of shit. You don’t have car payments. You don’t understand the debt I have.”
“Well, why are you in so much debt, dude? Sell it all and see where you can go with it.”
“It’s not that easy. See that’s how they get you, they pay you an enormous amount of money and then you’re in the club. Then you begin to live a lifestyle that is comfortable. I don’t even care if most of the debt goes away. I don’t need the fucking house, it’s too big anyway. It’s the lifestyle that’s got me. I like eating out at restaurants whenever I want. I like Kali being able to be a stay at home mom. I like being able to afford buying my daughter whatever she wants, man. I can’t just give that up.”
“I get that dude but how often do you even get to see your daughter?” I asked.
Curtis looked out the window. It was raining. The heavy rain started coming down a few minutes ago. He stood up and threw his coffee cup in the trash.
“I don’t know what to do man. I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I guess I’ll figure something out.” He stood up. “You got any hash, dude?”
“Yeah, in my drawer. The key’s in my cubbie.”
“Thanks man. I’m going around back.”
He walked into the hallway and back into his office. Leaving me there to sort through my own future. I’m about one promotion away from getting into the finance office where Curtis is. That has been my goal for the past three years.
I walked out the back door and got into my car. I sat in the driver’s seat and stared at the back of the building. I looked at my watch, it was three o’clock. Cambria would be getting home from school soon and I would be getting off at eight. If I was lucky I might be able to kiss her goodnight tonight before she goes to bed. Quite unlikely though. It’s rare when that occurs.
I started my car and began to drive out of the parking lot. I called Ann and put the phone on speaker. She answered on the second ring.
“Hello”
“What’s up babe?”
“Just picking bear up from school. What are you up to?”
“I’m on the way to the house to meet ya’ll.”
“Oh yeah, you got off early? How did you pull that one off?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just been a rough day at work. I want to talk to you about something.”
“What’s up?”
“It can wait until we get home, my love.”
“Okay, everything alright?”
“Oh yeah, everything’s going to be fine. Just need to make some changes is all.”
“Okay babe, well I’ll see you at the house.”
“See you soon.”
.
. | https://medium.com/lit-up/another-day-at-the-office-3c24892779f | ['Austin Briggman'] | 2019-03-03 18:08:36.562000+00:00 | ['Work Life Balance', 'Work', 'Friendship', 'Fiction', 'Short Story'] |
The 10 Commandments of Self-Taught Machine Learning Engineers | The terms commandments and self-taught are not to be taken lightly. One must be in charge of their own education and enlightenment. Ignore this and someone else will choose it for you.
1. Math, Code and Data are your holy trinity
Any effective machine learning pipeline leverages the crossover of mathematics, code and data. Each is only as effective as the other.
If your data is of poor quality, it does not matter how elegant your mathematics or efficient your code is.
If your data is of the highest quality but your mathematics is off, expect your results to disappoint, or worse, harm.
If your data and mathematics are world-class but your code is inefficient, you will fail to reap the benefits of scale.
Data provides you with a mining site containing the gems of nature. Mathematics is your pickaxe. And code allows you to create a fleet of pickaxe-wielding machines.
The trinity is the bridge between the inputs (what you have) and outputs (what you want) of your system.
Note: The mathematics branch of the trinity also contains statistics and probability. If you do not like this, think of the trinity as a starfish. | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-10-commandments-of-self-taught-machine-learning-engineers-9e810971ed34 | ['Daniel Bourke'] | 2020-10-28 03:01:37.031000+00:00 | ['Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning', 'Software Development', 'Data Science', 'Software Engineering'] |
I am a linguistics student who learn programming. | Learning a language is very emotional. We put matter and abstract concepts in language. For this reason, language also contains the emotions and value judgments of those who contain it. This is why I became a linguistics student.
I’m a Korean. So the language I use has oriental values. The proverbs, etymology and grammar structure of Korean contain values, hatred, and fear that our ancestors cherish. I learned (so hard) the values of our ancestors for 20 years until high school. It was a little tired. So I choose something a little different. It was Spanish.
I enjoy meeting people. and I love to study and analyze others. If that person is a stranger, I go crazy. Spanish is very efficient in that sense. The only languages distributed over the largest geographical area are Spanish and English. Arabic and Chinese were also nominated. However, Chinese has a limitation in that it is an Eastern language. In Arabic, I gave up for the first time because I had so poor background knowledge about the culture(but, because it is as strange as that, I will definitely learn someday). So, I learned Spanish in university for five years.
For me, learning a language wasn’t academic. Rather, it is more experiential. Through Spanish, I learn how they see things and ideas. Why are they angry, and what makes them ecstatic. Of course, academic courses are also essential. But, over two years in Latin America, I realized that while learning a language, experience is essential. As I eat their food, learn to dance, and love, my understanding is completed. Now, there are words and sentences that have a ‘meaning’ that is so precious to me. When I think of the word ‘chino’, I remember the ‘mocking’, ‘contempt’ and ‘prejudice’ that I felt. On the other hand, I remember the compatriot consciousness I felt with the Chinese and japanese people I met in South America (at the same time because we were tied to the category of chino). In this way, countless words have been inscribed in my life. I hope I can tell you all those stories little by little.
In March of 2020, after a year of volunteer work, I returned from the Dominican Republic. I was used to feeling and experiencing while bumping into people. The non-face-to-face environment brought by the coronavirus collapsed everything. Now it’s hard for me to feel them abroad. It seemed like a conversion was needed.
The continuing pandemic clearly imprinted two beings on me. The first is family. Virtual classes and work environments have relatively increased contact with families. Some families said that this led to increased conflicts. It was good for me. I was able to get a deeper understanding of my family. But more importantly, it was the embossing of the second. It is the computer. The growing number of family encounters taught me how much I didn’t know about them. And the increasing use of computers also made me feel how ignorant of this. And it leads to deep thoughts.
How long should I spend with this friend in the future?
Obviously, I will have to spend time with this friend even after my family dies. The non-face-to-face and growth of the IT industry foresee this friend and I will inevitably become closer. By this point, the choice became clear.
“I must understand this friend.”
And I took a very linguistic approach.
“To understand him, I must learn his language.”
24.01.2021 | https://medium.com/@materokatti/i-am-a-linguistics-student-who-learn-programming-e1cd4b13a8e9 | [] | 2021-01-24 12:55:23.515000+00:00 | ['Linguistics', 'Programming', 'Spanish', 'Choices', 'Programming Languages'] |
No Internet, no lockdown: The vulnerability exposed by the Nashville bombing | Lockdowns are only a viable policy because of the availability of the Internet. Without Internet, there are no Zoom calls, no remote working, no connectivity through messaging, and no shopping at Amazon. Lockdowns as a policy cannot be sustained without these functions, and are not profitable for any of the companies that have reaped the benefits of lockdowns over the past year.
It is conceivable, though unlikely, that whoever was responsible for the #Nashville bombing may have opposed lockdowns and identified this crucial necessity for the continuation of these restrictions
This should be much more alarming to the authorities than it appears to be. For, whether or not this proves to have been the terrorist’s motive, attacking Internet providers presents a clear and present danger to the maintenance of the policies most US officials believe are vital to combatting the pandemic; and it may well inspire others whom regard lockdowns as fundamental violations of their freedom.
We do not know yet why this bombing occurred, nor who perpetrated it; but whoever it was, and why ever they did it, they have exposed the most vulnerable linchpin of the lockdown policy, and one can imagine, for instance, Right wing radicals quickly recognizing the effectiveness of attacks on Internet infrastructure for undermining the feasibility of covid lockdown measures.
Quite simply, no Internet, no lockdowns. Yet, strangely, I do not detect a level of official concern commensurate with the threat. People in Tennessee have noted that local media is barely covering news of the bombing and its investigation.
This was the largest terrorist attack in the US in almost two decades. Never mind that there appear to not have been any significant casualties. It was a very deliberate, very well-planned and executed massive bombing in the middle of downtown in a major American city. It disrupted Internet service and telecommunications, not just in Nashville, but reportedly around the country. It almost doesn’t matter whether or not this was the terrorist’s desired result; it was the result, and the vulnerability it revealed is highly dangerous. Whoever can disrupt a system, can control it.
We have spent so much effort trying to safeguard against hacking as our primary concern regarding Internet security, that we have perhaps been negligent about protecting the actual hardware and facilities that make Internet services possible in the first place.
Authorities should recognize that what happened in Nashville can be repeated elsewhere, and that if Right-wing opposition groups understand the vital role the Internet plays in maintaining lockdown measures, attacks like these may indeed be replicated. | https://medium.com/@shahidkingbolsen/no-internet-no-lockdown-the-vulnerability-exposed-by-the-nashville-bombing-211cc612de2a | ['Shahid King'] | 2020-12-27 21:03:15.809000+00:00 | ['Nashville', 'ATT', 'Right Wing Terrorism', 'Terrorism', 'Nashville Bombing'] |
This is Your Brain on Weed | Illustration by Graham Roumieu
In the back yard of the Wu Wei Tea Temple, a café in Fairfax, California, Brant Hindman, operations director of a new cannabis social club, HerbaBuena, held court with patrons in their 40s and 50s on a Saturday afternoon. He stood behind a table filled with biodynamic, sun-grown cannabis flowers on display under glass bell jars, each with a description written like wine-tasting notes on fancy cards: “amazing balance of THC to CDB,” “pain-easing” and “bright high.”
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Hindman, tall with a shaved head, laughed and half jokingly called himself a “sensimelier” as he advised the club’s members toward the flower “with fruit in the terpenes” or the one with “a more earthly, marigold nose.”
“When your brain is somehow deficient in some kind of cannabinoid, when you smell it or taste it, you’ll get a sense of whether it’s the right cannabinoid for you or not,” he said. “Say, you’re leaning towards ‘Ooh, tangy, this is the right thing for me. It works for my anxiety.’ If your body leans in or leans out, you’ll get a good sense of whether it’s the right strain for you.”
This is a new way of selling pot. Not only is the artisanal texture of HerbaBuena’s spiel familiar to wine aficionados, it’s also sprinkled with claims that certain chemical compounds in the plant — especially cannabidiol, or CBD — are just what your body needs for improving your sleep, your mood and other aspects of your health. Yes, this sounds like what you’ve heard medicinal marijuana advocates touting for decades. But new research is beginning to support the idea that CBD is a key and underappreciated ingredient.
What makes CBD particularly intriguing as a potential health aid is that it doesn’t get you high. That effect primarily comes from THC, or delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. But while CBD can be distilled from pot, it’s not considered as effective when isolated from the other chemicals in the plant. (This is known as the “entourage effect.”) So growers are developing strains with higher CBD-to-THC ratios — and businesses like HerbaBuena are walking people through these new choices.
Some of HerbaBuena’s products, including pot that is high in CBD. (Courtesy of Alicia Rose)
Wearing a belted sun dress, HerbaBuena founder Alicia Rose brushed her long honey brown hair back before leaning over a display of products inside the tea house, including micro-dosing tinctures, CBD-heavy chocolates and dried fruit edibles. She described the alchemy and effects of her different products to new members of the social club who sat along a counter. One member, Laura Bailey, told Rose that she had problems falling asleep. “Then you’ll want to keep this right by your bed,” Rose said, holding a small medicine jar with a dropper. “Along with organically grown cannabis, it has passionflower, hops, flower and gemstone essences, along with glycerin.”
“I think I also want to take this before yoga class,” Bailey responded. She held up a box of OARA CBD chocolates. The label announced “hand poured, couverture dark chocolate, infused with biodynamic sun-grown cannabis and a daily probiotic.”
“That’s a good choice,” Rose said.
It’s no accident that HerbaBuena’s potions, blends, tinctures, patches, gels and even sprays for pets that suffer from anxiety are beautifully packaged like high-end wine or gourmet food. Rose was raised on a farm in New York by hippie parents who grew their own marijuana, but she spent the last 15 years as a marketing and branding consultant at boutique California wineries. And just as most people don’t buy a high-end Napa Cabernet to get drunk, she’s predicting that many adults want the medical benefits of cannabis without intense highs. | https://medium.com/@mahfujkhan805/this-is-your-brain-on-weed-3ad1e8aa0a8a | [] | 2020-12-19 12:52:26.755000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Marijuana', 'Health', 'Cannabis', 'Research'] |
A Love Letter to My Mentees | To my beloved mentees:
I hope I have helped you as much as you all have helped me. While mentors are expected to give advice and perspective, mentors also have the exceedingly delightful benefit of tacitly (or sometimes explicitly) receiving advice and perspective from their mentees. Now with my new job and this global pandemic, we have fewer opportunities for coffee chats in the Building 37 atrium and impromptu hallway meetings, so I wanted to make a “greatest hits” list of the best advice I have received and/or given. These have been carefully shaped over six years of interacting with some of the best people I know at Microsoft — mentors, mentees, colleagues, executives, etc. None of these are original and none of these are particularly complex. Consider this a cultural anthology of success that I have put together over time. Being a great mentor is a collaborative practice and I thank every single one of you for helping me become a better mentor, for adding clarity to my values, and making me so proud of y’all every single day.
Build your board of mentors
This is the easiest piece of advice I can give. I think a lot of folks envision having a single mentor who simultaneously serves as a guru, therapist, confidante, business coach, etc. That’s a lot to put on a single person. Instead, it is your job as a potential mentee to tap into the specific and special strengths of people you admire. Over time, you will eventually build a “board” of mentors and know exactly who to tap for specific topics/problems. Your board should consist of people with different perspectives, expertise, personalities, etc. so you have a complete picture of your growth and potential. In fact, you don’t have to officially label someone as a “mentor” for them to have a seat on your board. Some people want to have a clear established relationship while others may just be colleagues that you turn to for advice. Formal or not, you will benefit immensely from having this diverse steering committee give input on different aspects of your life. Here’s what my board looks like:
Manager Mentor — If you’re lucky, you’ll have a manager who also fills the role of a mentor with ease. After all, you’re likely interfacing with them regularly and are expected to report your successes, failures, and roadblocks to them. My manager mentors helped me navigate the tactical everyday of my job — how to show up with presence in an executive meeting, how to navigate the bureaucracy of a team, how to build specific skillsets that will set you up for future roles. If your manager is not immediately a great mentor, this is where you have the opportunity to manage up and ask pointedly for advice on things you would find helpful.
General Mentor — While most of the mentors on your board will have specific expertise, one of them should be a general, catch-all mentor. This is the person whose office you can pop into when you have a bad day so you can have a good cry, the person who will celebrate your wins with you, and the person who is just chock full of great advice all the time.
Therapist Mentor — This isn’t a mentor position that I was specifically looking to fill, but I had a colleagues who eventually became a mentor because he was so phenomenal at asking me tough, soul-searching questions. His infinite wisdom lies in his ability to ask the right questions so that he empowers me with self-discovery. He is who I go to with some of my bigger existential crises.
Peer/Work BFF Mentor — The traditional notion of a “mentor” dictates that the person is older and more experienced than you, but you can also gain immense insight from someone who is closer to your age. Just like you turn to your friends for advice, you’ll want this person on board to tell it to you like it is from someone who is more likely to immediately understand your position.
Vent Mentor — Also a mentor position I was not specifically looking to fill, but sometimes you just need to grab a snack, get some tea, close the office door, and have a good vent session. For me this required someone with infinite patience, great active listening skills, the right amount of sassy commentary, and the ability to create space.
Mom Mentor — This is the person who will tell it to you like it is and tell you to know your worth. For me this mentor came in the form of a fellow small Korean woman who I could rely on for a pep talk and bonding over Korean food.
Functional Mentor — Finally, you want someone who you can learn more technical/tangible skills from. I turn to my functional mentor for what I think might be “stupid” questions about all things marketing & advertising. Your functional mentor should be able to answer day-to-day questions about the actual work you do, catch you up on the latest and greatest within your discipline/industry, and share amazing examples of work that you can aspire towards.
Be generous with your time (within reason)
General rule of thumb: investing your time in others pays dividends. Especially at a company like Microsoft where everyone knows everyone, it pays to dedicate some of your time to helping others, meeting others, and connecting others. Obviously do not go overboard and overbook yourself, but with the time you do have be willing to lend a hand. Making myself available has led to others helping me in a million different ways. This is truly karma at work.
Trust in the goodness of others
On a related note, I truly believe that your career grows and thrives when you trust in the goodness and kindness of others. And when you believe that about other people you end up reflecting goodness back. Some may say this perspective is naïve, but I have constantly approached people with the assumption that they have some good in them and found that to be true. You’ll be surprised at the amount of wisdom and advice you receive for free when you approach networking and relationship building with this philosophy.
Every job is an opportunity
The most common theme across my mentees is that everyone is somehow looking to make a positive difference in this world, but a lot of us were thrown into the rat race of recruiting for jobs like tech, finance, and consulting and realized just a little too late that we were actually selling our souls. What I do want all of you to know is that being at Microsoft, no matter what your role is, is a privilege in and of itself. Think about all of the incredible resources you have at your disposal from big marketing budgets and great healthcare to a vast network and job stability. Things aren’t so bad…but how do you start pivoting towards opportunities that align closer to your goal of doing something good? The first step, and a key step, is to get the most out of the job you’re in. Even if your current job doesn’t seem directly related to what you eventually want to do, you’re likely building a skillset that will help you get there and will help you thrive in that dream job. Sometimes it’s technical — for example, through the various roles I’ve had I have built up a pretty impressive array of marketing tactics. Sometimes it’s more soft skill oriented — for example, one of the biggest skills I learned in my role is how to lead a campaign team comprised of people with different business priorities. I’m not telling you to be complacent in your jobs. In fact, I’m telling you to do the harder task of doubling down and squeezing all the juice of or your current while while simultaneously continuing your search for what’s next.
Be on that side project hustle
Another fantastic way to start moving towards what you’re actually passionate about is by shamelessly pursuing a side project. Just like a side hustle where you’re doing a gig outside of your immediate day job, doing a side project/passion project internally stretches you outside of the confines of your day-to-day job description. Passionate about D&I? Volunteer your time to join an employee resource group and find out how you can get involved. Want to learn a new skill? See if you can shadow someone you admire in a different organization. When I was working in advertising, I really admired some of the social good work that was being done on the brand team. After digging around a little bit and finding a champion on the brand team, I worked with my manager to carve out some time to help that team with a campaign I was passionate about. Like with most things in life, all you have to do is ask. The worst they can say is no and then you move onto looking for a different side project! The beauty of being at a company like Microsoft is that it’s kind of like college in a lot of ways — you have your classwork (your 9–5 job) but you also have a lot of amazing extracurricular activities to choose from.
Give back your skills, talents, passions
Now that we’ve talked about side projects inside your company, let’s talk about looking outside the office walls. With all of that great professional clout you are gaining from doing side projects and building your board of mentors, you are poised to help another organization out there thrive. I would encourage every single one of you to find a non-profit organization that you’re passionate about and see if they have any board openings or volunteer opportunities. This is an easy win-win — you’re able to continue building on your skills and expanding your network while also contributing your skills to an organization that needs them. More to come on this in a future piece, but for now I would recommend even a simple www.volunteermatch.org search to get things started.
Orient yourself by your values — keep your eye on the prize
And finally, the best piece of advice I can give — orient your career by your values. Trust me, I know how easy it is to get sucked into the daily drudgery of your job. And of course, knowing all of you, you want to do well in the current job you’re in. HOWEVER! That shouldn’t stop you from guiding yourself through your career journey with your eye on the prize. Whether you want to eventually land a job in social impact, switch industries, go to grad school, run for president, etc., do something for yourself regularly to remind yourself what your ultimate goals and values are. Talk to a mentor, journal, network inside and outside the company, find side projects…do what you have to do to stay true to your passions. No one else can dictate that for you so you owe it to yourself to look inward and figure out how to manifest those dreams into reality.
I’m sharing this with the hopes that you’ll find this helpful and also to keep myself accountable. It is an active journey to take some of these and put them into action. I should also note that while I find these generally helpful, they’re certainly not one size fits all so if you ever find yourself needing to delve into these philosophies further, know that I am here for you to help you in whatever way I can. I love all of you and miss you dearly.
Love,
Vivian | https://medium.com/@vivianejlee/a-love-letter-to-my-mentees-da9a981abb41 | ['Vivian Lee'] | 2020-12-15 18:36:46.813000+00:00 | ['Careers', 'Mentorship', 'Mentoring'] |
How to quickly Grow on Instagram in 5 steps | You can check my #1 recommended growth tool Instagram by
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1.Plan Out Your Content Strategy
you most likely definitely realize it’s insufficient to post a couple of photos or videos and trust that the crowd will come surging in. Rather, you need to manufacture a substance methodology simply like you would for some other marketing campaign.
Here are a few specific guidelines for Instagram:
Research the best photos in your industry and track your competitors.
Start building a plethora of content around a similar theme or idea. You’ll get greater consistency in your quality and message by planning out enough posts that could provide at least a month or two of content.
2.Use Branding hashtags
As a brand on social, you need some form of marketability. It’s a thin line between being promotional and resourceful.
To avoid being overly promotional but still market your brand, consider branded Instagram hashtags. An important start to know is seven out of 10 hashtags on Instagram are branded.
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4.Instagram Captions
Instagram captions are essential for a successful account. They give your audience everything from context for your products and services to essential calls to action to drive conversion forward. For example, Bucketfeet, a shoe manufacturer, uses Instagram captions to highlight collaborations and new or limited designs.
5.Connect With Influencers
As we previously mentioned, many brands incorporate user-generated content to connect with users, collaborate on content, and promote one another’s Instagram. But these people don’t need one million users or have to be a celebrity to help you gain more exposure.
It’s smart to nature and values your connections because just like your audience, influencers deal with robotic messages all the time. Try to build real relationships by meeting up at industry events or asking to host joint webinars.
But of course, don’t forget to try
UpLead for 300% faster growth on Instagram ▶ https://upleap.com/?ref=idrissabdessalam | https://medium.com/@kistanova/how-to-quickly-grow-on-instagram-in-5-steps-dadbfd1640bb | [] | 2020-12-25 23:24:20.434000+00:00 | ['Instagram', 'Grow On Instagram', 'How To', 'Steps', 'Followers'] |
Level Up Your SQL Skills | Level Up Your SQL Skills
Image from Caspar Camille Rubin on Unsplash.
According to JetBrains’ 2020 Developer Ecosystem Survey, 56% of developers utilize or interact with a SQL database in their development environment. Even so, most developers view SQL concepts as a secondary concern, as they are often interacting via their chosen language and do not play much of a part in the design. Generally speaking, being able to connect and run basic queries will get you through the day.
At many companies, there is even a separate database team that will be handling the database design and optimization, so you will never get first-hand exposure. I think this is often the deterrent to learning more about SQL. It’s viewed as a utility that is often handled by others. Software developers have enough on their plate, right? Fair enough.
However, in our industry, having full-stack skills is always a good idea. You never know what will be thrown at you. We interact with SQL daily, so more knowledge will always come in handy. Additionally, if you end up at a smaller company that does not have the resources for a full database team, more of those responsibilities will fall on you. Being able to state that you are confident in your database skills during an interview will open up many interesting career paths.
I personally enjoy SQL development more than most. I interned early in my career with a team of outstanding database administrators and quickly fell in love. I had taken my database courses in school, so I had some basic knowledge, but what I learned during that internship has been invaluable to me. Not only did it teach me that I have a secret passion for data, but the technical understanding I gained has been a boon in every job I’ve gotten going forward.
There is a lot to database development and administration — there are experts out there who can work magic. However, as a developer and not an SQL wizard, these are the topics that will set you apart from the pack when it comes to SQL knowledge.
Note: I have experience with Microsoft SQL Server, so that is what I will reference throughout. However, these concepts absolutely apply to other SQL DBMS options. | https://betterprogramming.pub/level-up-your-sql-skills-d80b6dd34bb6 | ['Mandi Gunningham'] | 2020-12-03 18:00:23.737000+00:00 | ['Programming', 'MySQL', 'Database', 'Sql', 'Software Development'] |
The misogyny of women. | I would like to believe that the vote was specific to Hillary. An old GOP-er businessman told me back in the day that Bill Clinton would win over George H.W. Bush because women vote for the man they’d sleep with. And Bill was way more charismatic than George. But maybe in 2016, the vote that turned out for Bill back in 1992 decided it’s time to punish Bill the serial cheater we slept with all those years ago. 2017: the year to punish Bill. For Hillary. A vote for Trump was a proxy vote against Bill. We support Hillary. Just not for President.
And Hillary had e-mails.
And Benghazi.
And eye-rolling at Senators.
And a basket of deplorables.
And a lackluster campaign.
And an electoral orienteering map that did not include swing states and woo for the deplorables.
Did I mention Bill? This is also a long list.
Hillary Clinton had all that baggage, but I’m still going to go with the other explanation. This vote, the 53% — and let’s face it, a small percent of the 53% are lifelong registered GOP-ers that will run out and vote for any name identified as an (R), we’ll give that league of troubled women voters a pass for now, they are doing what they’ve always done — but the remainder couldn’t stand to vote for the experienced Democrat who happened to be a woman with steamer trunks full of who-knows-what baggage in tow. They couldn’t stand to just stay home and sit this one out.
And now they claim ‘I can’t be bothered with the latest tweet, the latest horror. I’m not political.’
Then why, why pray tell, did you vote?
And I return to bedtime and sleep. | https://medium.com/@vivaescritora/the-misogyny-of-women-4da82ec69d4f | ['Viva Escritora'] | 2019-08-23 17:27:09.627000+00:00 | ['Hillary Clinton', 'Teflon Cheeto', '2016 Election', 'Politics', 'Misogyny Of Women'] |
Spring Boot Transaction of Management | After giving a short information about transaction,we can directly pass to features of transaction.
What is Transaction ?
Transaction processes are the realization of one or more database transactions as a whole.In other words, after all transactions in the method have been successfully performed, the database processes will be able to be performed.if any problem from other processes occurs,all database process should be taken back.Thus, we preserve data integrity, We call this mechanism the rollback mechanism.
For example:Let’s imagine that we will insert to 5 different tables on the database side in one of our methods.Let’s say that we inserted to 4 tables but the code failed before the method had been completed. At this point ,the rollback mechanism runs and takes back all of the data base operations.
Features of Transaction
And now ,we can start to examine the features one by one from the chart below
1.Propagation:
In the service method, it determines the behavior of the transaction,such as whether the transaction in our hands will be initiated when we call, or if there is an existing transaction, whether it will continue with it or whether it will need to create a new transaction.So now ,we can start examining the propagation’s features.
1.1 Required :
It’s a default property of propagation. It goes on if there is an active transaction, if not ,creates a new one. If it only uses the @Transactional annotation, it behaves like @Transactional(propagation=Propagation.REQUIRED)
Let’s check the example that is given through code
function1() and function2() work in the same transaction.Until the save() method ends, the same transactions manage function1() and function2(),
2:Propagation.SUPPORTS: if there is a transaction ,uses it.If not,it acts like lazy. Doesn’t create a new transaction and works without it. Let’s check the code below.
if the addProduct method is called directly,it will not create a transaction for itself.
if the addProduct method calls another service and that service has a transaction,uses it.If the service is called doesn’t have a transaction,it doesn’t new one.
3:Propagation.NESTED: In fact,certain inferences are made from the name.If there is an existing transaction,it opens another transaction in parallel,and while this transaction becomes rollback,the other continues to run.It is used with savepoint developed by JDBC technology and I will share another writing by showing it on the code for this feature.
4:Propagation.NEVER:
İf the method is called directly,it will not create a new transaction.If the above method calls another service and this service already has a transaction,throws an exception.You can examine the error in the image below.
If the service that it calls does not have a transaction, it will not create a new transaction and continues its life without a transaction.
5:Propagation.MANDATORY: As it understood from it’s name,it works the opposite of the NEVER property.It throws an exception of there is not transaction.
If the method is called directly , throws the following error “throw an exeption”
If the method calls another service…
If that service has a transaction,it uses that transaction.If not ,it will throw an exception.
6:Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW: I tried to draw as you can see the below,I draw a little badly,but I know that you can handle it for now :)
As I have drawn in the image above,if there is an active transaction,it holds that transaction and creates new transaction.After completing the necessary transactions,it continues on the old transaction from where it left off.
7:Propagation.NOT_SUPPORTED: Let’s examine the image above again.The only difference is : If there is an existing transaction,it holds that and doesn’t creates a new transaction. After completing the process,it continues on the old transaction from where it left off.
3.TimeOut: It makes rollback when the processes do not take place within a certain period of time.For example ,you are communicating with an external system and you can make a rollback system for a long time.
@Transactional(timeout=25)
4.rollbackFor: This feature is actually my favorite feature…
While we are doing our transactions,we use them in certain situations when we want them make a rollback or not.
@Transactional(noRollbackFor = {SocketTimeoutException.class,HttpHostConnectException.class)
as you can see in the example above,I do not want it to make a rollback when ı get SocketTimeoutException and HttpHostConnectException exceptions.It is used in such cases. | https://medium.com/@bestasyusuf8/spring-boot-transaction-of-management-efeb0b099830 | ['Yusuf Beştaş'] | 2020-12-12 20:15:56.168000+00:00 | ['Spring Boot', 'Transactional'] |
Requiem For A City | In a recent article by Carl Swanson in New York magazine titled “Reasons We’ve Loved New York” — he laments the loss of over 500 beloved restaurants, bars, bodegas, and other societal establishments during the Covid-19 pandemic. Reading this article, pouring over the names of the padlocked businesses and establishments, I couldn’t believe how personal it felt — like someone hit me in the gut. This is in no way to disparage those who’ve lost friends, lovers and family members; this, of course, is the true tragedy of 2020.
Cities are made of people — and with them or without them — so goes the republic. Because of this, the fabric of New York, undeniably, has unraveled. The ultimate cost of financial loss (let alone the dreams of small business owners) in addition to the mass exodus of those that abandoned New York in the last eleven months, one could say the city has been possibly and permanently injured. An afternoon walk through midtown Manhattan proves the millions of footsteps in ‘regular’ times have become a march of invisible ghosts. Now the streets are full of drug dealers, the mentally ill, brave, but skittish tourists, and those, like myself, who remain here, trudging on, trying to keep afloat any way we can.
Some of the establishments mentioned in Swanson’s article are above my pay grade — i.e. the underground clubs and swanky restaurants of Tribeca or SoHo weren’t in my purview during my 15-year tenure in New York City. No, I don’t share any empathy for the closing of large chain clothing stores or one less Starbucks dissolving a block away from the other that miraculously survived.
The sting came from reading of the end of lesser-known (and without a dutiful obituary deemed by New York magazine) establishments that made my experience here all the more rewarding.
It was reading about the closing of the 24-hour diner Odessa in the East Village, where I spent more than enough time eating a four in the morning breakfast. I loved grabbing an early brunch at Egg and Jimmy’s Diner and taking first dates to the bizarre and deliciously kitsch Snacky in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I remember taking a drink at Jameson’s (mainly for the namesake), when I was unfortunately stuck in the Upper East Side after a rough 15-hour shift. How many nights did I spend listening to the late show over at Jazz Standard in the Flat Iron District? I celebrated my fortieth birthday with my mother, sister, and then wife at the 41-year old Ipanema (the glorious Chimichurri steak followed by a Caipirinha will be missed) in Midtown. Least to say my own honorable tenure as a cocktailer at the great and sturdy Daddy-O bar in Greenwich Village, which closed after 21 years of loyally serving the neighborhood.
Reading the names of the places I’ve walked by a thousand times as a licensed tour guide in New York City coolly brought upon a subtle melancholy: Chumley’s, Fedora, Gem Spa, Khyber Pass, The Monkey Bar, Max Fish, The Hog Pit, Karma Lounge, Pig N’ Whistle, Atlas Café, Blue Smoke, Foley’s Bar, Bouchon Bakery, Trophy Bar, Pearl’s — the list reads like a litany of the dead — names I’ve known for years that will never return.
Swanson does end his article with a message of aspiration and I too wish to return the favor. No actual New Yorker believes things will last forever — it’s a fact each of us tenants must reconcile with and endure. I used the word ‘requiem’ in the title of this piece and I don’t use it lightly. A requiem is not just a mass for the dead. It is a solemn chant for the things that have passed. For several hundred years, New York City has worn many faces and will continue to do so. We have faced challenges most American cities have never dreamed — and we will do it again, pridefully, and always with sarcasm and jaded hope.
For those that have left, we here in New York City do bid thee adieu — perhaps we’ll see you again — but please forgive us if we give you a side-eye glance and mutter under our breath for not bearing with us during our struggle. But we are happy to have you back. Like any war, we need soldiers.
But for those that stayed, despite these epic challenges, I tip my hat to you as a fellow traveler, and wish to add one more fact. New York City will never be defeated, unless we defeat ourselves. New business, new people, and new energy will return. It has before, and will again.
Our song has not yet been sung.
This solemn chant may be a whisper now, but the roar of this international experiment of population, art, business, and people will be heard from again.
It just takes time. A thing, us New Yorkers, will just have to learn the hard way — like every other time before. | https://medium.com/@matthewdabate/requiem-for-a-city-6d6f8b787ac | ['Matthew D Abate'] | 2020-12-13 18:04:34.664000+00:00 | ['Brooklyn', 'Covid 19', 'New York City', 'New York', 'NYC'] |
How Kubernetes solve the Problem Of One the Old Telecom Company NOKIA ? | Problem Statement :
Nokia core business is building telecom networks end-to-end; its main products are related to the infrastructure, such as antennas, switching equipment, and routing equipment. “As telecom vendors, we have to deliver our software to several telecom operators and put the software into their infrastructure, and each of the operators have a bit different infrastructure. There are operators who are running on bare metal(Base OS). There are operators who are running on virtual machines(VM’s). There are operators who are running on VMware Cloud and OpenStack Cloud. They want to run the same product on all of these different infrastructures without changing the product itself.
So, Nokia company decided that moving to cloud native technologies would allow teams to have infrastructure behavior in their products. So, Teams at Nokia began experimenting with Kubernetes in pre-1.0 versions. The first Kubernetes-based product, the Nokia Telephony Application Server, went live in early 2018. “Now, all the products are doing some kind of re-architecture work, and they’re moving to Kubernetes.”
Kubernetes has enabled Nokia’s foray into 5G. When the Company develop something that is part of the operator’s infrastructure, then it have to develop it for the future, and Kubernetes and containers are the forward-looking technologies. The Nokia team using Kubernetes are already seeing clear benefits. By separating the infrastructure and the application layer, So Nokia team have less dependencies in the system, which means that it’s easier to implement features in the application layer. And because teams can test the exact same binary artifact independently of the target execution environment, then they can find more errors in early phases of the testing, and they do not need to run the same tests on different target environments, like VMware, OpenStack, or bare metal. So that they save several hundred hours in every release. | https://medium.com/@singhshashwat658/how-kubernetes-solve-the-problem-of-one-the-old-telecom-company-nokia-3ed986195ceb | ['Mr Robot'] | 2020-12-26 17:36:31.986000+00:00 | ['Infrastructure', 'Nokia', 'K8s'] |
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