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Upload to AWS S3 Using a Node.js Script or AWS Lambda | Okay, S3 and and our programmatic IAM user are done.
So now for a basic test using a Node.js script. I’m making the assumption you are using Linux or a Mac and have at least Node v12.* installed. Here are the steps to create a basic project.
~ % node -v
v12.14.1 ~ % npm -v
6.13.4 ~ % mkdir ~/mediumtutorial
~ % cd ~/mediumtutorial mediumtutorial % npm install aws-sdk
npm WARN saveError ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Users/REMOVED/mediumtutorial/package.json'
npm notice created a lockfile as package-lock.json. You should commit this file.
npm WARN enoent ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/Users/REMOVED/mediumtutorial/package.json'
npm WARN mediumtutorial No description
npm WARN mediumtutorial No repository field.
npm WARN mediumtutorial No README data
npm WARN mediumtutorial No license field. + [email protected]
added 14 packages from 66 contributors and audited 14 packages in 1.353s
found 0 vulnerabilities
Now create a file called helloworld.js using your favourite text editor.
const AWS = require('aws-sdk'); const BUCKET_NAME = "YOUR_S3_BUCKET";
const IAM_USER_KEY = "YOUR_IAM_USER_KEY";
const IAM_USER_SECRET = "YOUR_IAM_USER_SECRET"; const s3bucket = new AWS.S3({
accessKeyId: IAM_USER_KEY,
secretAccessKey: IAM_USER_SECRET
}); function uploadObjectToS3Bucket(objectName, objectData) {
const params = {
Bucket: BUCKET_NAME,
Key: objectName,
Body: objectData
}; s3bucket.upload(params, function(err, data) {
if (err) throw err;
console.log(`File uploaded successfully at ${data.Location}`)
});
} uploadObjectToS3Bucket('helloworld.json', 'Hello World!');
If you have been following the steps with me in this tutorial if you run the script it will create an object in your S3 bucket called “helloworld.json” with the content ‘{ “message” : “Hello World!” }’.
mediumtutorial % node ./helloworld.js
File uploaded successfully at https://mediumtutorial.s3.amazonaws.com/helloworld.json
A tip here that had me a little flummoxed was when I ran this script I didn’t see the object in S3 automatically when I opened my bucket. I had to click the refresh icon in the S3 bucket for it to show.
So hopefully this worked for you.
So now to show you how to do this with Lambda. I could not get it working exactly using the same code so I had to tweak it a little.
The first step is to log into the Amazon AWS Console and search for Lambda under Find Services.
Click on the orange “Create function” button.
For the purpose of this tutorial you will want to select the default “Author from scratch”, give your function a name (in this case “mediumtutorial”, select the Runtime (in this case “Node.js 12.x”), and for the Execution role make sure you select “Create a new rule with basic Lambda permissions”. If this isn’t your first Lambda function you may want to “Use an existing role”.
It will take some time to create the function but once completed you will be on the Configuration screen. There are many useful options there but for the purpose of the tutorial I want to keep this as simple as possible. Please scroll down to the “Function code” section to find the default “Hello from Lambda!” code.
Please replace the default code with this… | https://medium.com/swlh/upload-to-aws-s3-using-a-node-js-script-or-aws-lambda-e1877960bcea | ['Michael Whittle'] | 2020-09-25 09:43:48.502000+00:00 | ['Storage', 'AWS', 'Nodejs', 'Lambda', 'S3'] |
Thermal Imaging Market to See Wonderful Rise during 2021–2026 with High CAGR Growth | Thermal Imaging Market 2021–2026
Straits Research has recently added a new report to its vast depository titled Global Thermal Imaging Market. The report studies vital factors about the Global Thermal Imaging Market that are essential to be understood by existing as well as new market players. The report highlights the essential elements such as market share, profitability, production, sales, manufacturing, advertising, technological advancements, key market players, regional segmentation, and many more crucial aspects related to the Global Thermal Imaging Market.
Thermal Imaging Market
The Major Players Covered in this Report:
FLIR Systems
Fortive
Axis Communications
Leonardo
BAE Systems
L3 Technologies
United Technologies
Sofradir
Testo
Xenics
Seek Thermal
Get a Sample PDF Report: Thermal Imaging Market
Segmentation is as follows; -
By Type,
Cameras, Modules, Scopes
By Application,
Security & Surveillance, Monitoring & Inspection, Detection, Others
By Vertical,
Aerospace & Defense, Industrial, Healthcare & Life Sciences
The report specifically highlights the Thermal Imaging market share, company profiles, regional outlook, product portfolio, a record of the recent developments, strategic analysis, key players in the market, sales, distribution chain, manufacturing, production, new market entrants as well as existing market players, advertising, brand value, popular products, demand and supply, and other important factors related to the Thermal Imaging market to help the new entrants understand the market scenario better.
Important factors like strategic developments, government regulations, Thermal Imaging market analysis, end-users, target audience, distribution network, branding, product portfolio, market share, threats and barriers, growth drivers, latest trends in the industry are also mentioned.
Regional Analysis For Thermal Imaging Market:
North America (United States, Canada, and Mexico)
Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia, and Italy)
Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India, and Southeast Asia)
South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, etc.)
Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa)
In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of the Thermal Imaging are as follows:
• History Year: 2014–2019
• Base Year: 2019
• Estimated Year: 2020
• Forecast Year 2021 to 2026
The main steps in the investigation process are:
1) The first step in market research is to obtain raw market information from industry experts and direct research analysts using primary and secondary sources.
2) Extracts raw data from these sources to extract valuable insights and analyze them for research purposes.
3) Classify the knowledge gained by qualitative and quantitative data and place it accordingly to make final conclusions.
Key Questions Answered in the Report:
• What is the current scenario of the Global Thermal Imaging Market? How is the market going to prosper throughout the next 6 years?
• What is the impact of COVID-19 on the market? What are the major steps undertaken by the leading players to mitigate the damage caused by COVID-19?
• What are the emerging technologies that are going to profit the market?
• What are the historical and the current sizes of the Global Thermal Imaging Market?
• Which segments are the fastest growing and the largest in the market? What is their market potential?
• What are the driving factors contributing to the market growth during the short, medium, and long term? What are the major challenges and shortcomings that the market is likely to face? How can the market solve the challenges?
• What are the lucrative opportunities for the key players in the Thermal Imaging market?
• Which are the key geographies from the investment perspective?
• What are the major strategies adopted by the leading players to expand their market shares?
• Who are the distributors, traders, and dealers of the Global Thermal Imaging market?
• What are sales, revenue, and price analysis by types and applications of the market?
For More Details On this Report: Thermal Imaging Market
About Us:
Regardless of whether you’re looking at business sectors in the next town or crosswise over continents, we understand the significance of being acquainted with what customers purchase. We overcome the issues of our customers by recognizing and deciphering just the target group, while simultaneously generating leads with the highest precision. We seek to collaborate with our customers to deliver a broad spectrum of results through a blend of market and business research approaches. This approach of using various research and analysis strategies enables us to determine greater insights by eliminating the research costs. Moreover, we’re continually developing, not only with regards to where we measure, or who we measure but in how our visions can enable you to drive cost-effective growth.
Contact Us:
Company Name: Straits Research
Email: [email protected]
Phone:
+1 646 480 7505 (U.S.)
+91 8087085354 (India)
+44 208 068 9665 (U.K.)
Thermal Imaging Market Growth, Thermal Imaging Forecast, Thermal Imaging Industry Trends, Thermal Imaging Market Share, Thermal Imaging Industry Size, Thermal Imaging Market Data Analysis, Thermal Imaging Market Overview” | https://medium.com/@shubhamk.straitsresearch/thermal-imaging-market-to-see-wonderful-rise-during-2021-2026-with-high-cagr-growth-b42775d869b7 | ['Shubham K'] | 2021-12-30 07:09:56.154000+00:00 | ['Market Research Reports', 'Thermal Imaging Camera', 'Thermal Camera', 'Thermal Imaging', 'Thermal Imaging Market'] |
3 Pieces of Relationship Advice I Wish I Got Earlier | Compromise Does Not Mean Sacrifice.
Writer Anjali Sareen Nowakowski for Elite Daily puts it perfectly,
Compromise is mutual, while sacrifice is disproportionate. Compromise inspires a visual image of two people, coming from two different perspectives, and finding a mutual solution to a problem.
When you compromise in a relationship, it usually means that both of you have come to a problem that you’re not entirely sure how to deal with, but you know the best way to resolve it is by both of you making some adjustments to your behavior as well as desires to keep your relationship healthy and happy.
Meanwhile, sacrifice is one-sided. It usually means that one of you is doing the heavy lifting and giving something up for the other over and over again.
Compromises are healthy in a relationship; they allow you to stay focused on problem-solving together in an effective manner rather than fighting with one another.
For example, I used to date a guy that I was always making sacrifices for. Instead of spending time with my friends or having fun, I would always cater to his needs because I knew he didn’t like it when I’d spend time with anyone but him. I sacrificed my relationship with my best friend constantly, flaking on lunch dates, or leaving early because he would ask.
Instead of traveling during the holiday season with my family, I would stay behind to spend time with him. At the time, I thought it was love, I thought I was doing the right thing for the person who claimed he cared about me, but at the end of the day, it was a plate full of manipulation with a huge side of sacrifice on my end.
If you’re constantly making sacrifices in your relationship without your partner doing anything, it’s a recipe for disaster. A relationship based on one person’s sacrifice won’t continue to work over time. A relationship based on healthy compromises, however, will.
Work on You With YOU.
I took a hiatus from dating in 2018; I was fed up with boys thinking they were men when in reality, they still lived under their parents’ roof and had their moms making them breakfast.
Hello, can I get an adult in here, please?
During that little hiatus, I invested a lot of time into myself. I was working three jobs, applying for colleges, and planning to move to Los Angeles from Seattle. Surprisingly enough, I was happier during that time than I ever was when in a relationship.
When you start living for yourself, and working on yourself, and figuring out the relationship you have with yourself, you start to peak. You blossom and flourish into the person you were meant to be the entire time.
And, little by little, you begin to see and understand not just what you want, but what you deserve.
The guys before — they didn’t deserve me. I deserved 10x better, and I was determined to have that when the time was right. I allowed the universe to do its thing. I wasn’t going out, and I wasn’t exactly putting myself on the radar either, but something inside of me told me that the universe would give me exactly what I wanted and what I deserved, just not according to my timetable.
Writer Dina Marais from Thrive Global says,
You have relationships with everything in life, and the quality of every relationship is determined by the quality of the relationship you have with yourself.
Take some time to focus on yourself. Have you ever really been alone for an extended period of time? Or have you always had someone blowing up your phone and calling you at 2 am because they’re “lonely”.
Do this for yourself, do this for the future you that will thrive and be significantly happier if you learn to understand and develop the relationship you have with yourself first.
Be With Someone Who Challenges You.
Have you ever been with someone who just coasts through life?
They have little to no ambition; they go with everything other people say, they never state their opinion, hell as far as you’re concerned, they don’t even have an opinion. Their interest in life and anything else is so minuscule it influences you…and not for the better.
I used to imagine my dream guy having the same taste as me in everything. We would read the same books and like the same food and watch the same movies, and everything would be picture perfect. I didn’t give a damn about politics, and neither would he; I don’t care for sports, and he would scoff at them too.
But if that’s the case, you’re never going to grow. Having different interests and different perspectives enhances your relationship. You’ll always have something new, exciting, and different to learn about one another.
For example, my partner is the complete opposite of me. He’s a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, and I like to think of myself as brooding and mysterious, but mostly I’m just bitter and closed off at times. I’m working on it.
He loves politics. He isn’t necessarily involved in them, but he likes to educate himself on what’s going on in the world. Me? I couldn’t be bothered. However, him educating himself about it influences me in a positive way, I know more about what’s going on and I can actually carry a political conversation now.
You might come together because of your similar beliefs and morals, but you stay together because you complement each other and challenge one another to share new experiences, push personal boundaries, and grow together.
That’s what will keep your spark burning and keep your relationship strong. | https://medium.com/the-shadow/3-pieces-of-relationship-advice-i-wish-i-got-earlier-18098112eb05 | ['Dayana Sabatin'] | 2020-12-11 17:49:55.134000+00:00 | ['Self', 'Relationships', 'Life Lessons', 'Love', 'Self Improvement'] |
Why might Agile not be working for you?! | Having worked as an Agile Coach for close to nine years, and for almost as many projects, I can now boil it down to the following reasons as to why might Agile not be working for your organization.
1) You are going Agile because everyone else around is
Most organizations that I have seen adopt Agile is simply because another company is doing it, and hence want to appear modern. Moreover, it is not because the other company (usually a competitor) has benefitted out of it, but because this company now cannot stay behind. Since Agile is also the buzzword everywhere, it kind of becomes imperative for the Executive Management to introduce Agile to their firm, while also get to boast about it. This may not necessarily ensure successful adoption of Agile in an organization.
2) You approach is not purely Agile, but combined with Waterfall
Most organizations that I have talked to confide to be using the traditional waterfall approach under the umbrella of Agile. It has commonly been termed as the ‘water-scrum’ or the ‘scrum-not’ methodology. This can be most disastrous as one can end up having worst of both the worlds. However, the hard truth is that only 5% of all Agile projects end up being purely Agile.
3) It is about Practices and not Methodology
Agile is more about mindset than methodology. It defines twelve principles and four values. As long as your process or practices adhere to these, it will be considered Agile. While one team may adopt ‘Scrum’, the other may adopt ‘Kanban’. But if the decision-making is based on more about being Agile, then that does not bode well for the implementation. By merely recruiting a Scrum Master or a Coach will not suddenly transform the team to Agile.
4) No Buy-in from the Leadership and Management
The biggest resistance when moving to Agile usually comes from the leadership. The leadership and management need to adopt and respect the values as much as any team member in the organization. This resistance is often accompanied by unfamiliarity, which in turn, tends to oppose values and principles. This is the very same reason that we see the Product Owner (from the business/leadership team) mostly missing from the stand-up meetings.
5) Your Scrum Master is a Project Manager
The Scrum Master is supposed be a servant leader for the team. However, more often than not, it is a Project Manager from the traditional waterfall model that is assigned to the role of a Scrum Master while moving to Agile. This person usually dictates what the team and micro-manages all the activities. Whereas a Scrum Master is supposed to remove the impediments that the team might encounter, while at the same time coach and mentor the stakeholders, this Project Manager ends up damaging the team moral and ultimately prevents the team from achieving its goals. The Scrum Master should be approachable and should actively work towards resolving issues, while shielding the team from distractions.
To be successful in adopting Agile, the organization (and the teams) should be ready to adopt changes, constantly. They would oftentimes need support in the form of coaching. While individual teams may start getting a grasp of things one by one, organizational agility takes time. Like any component of company culture, it requires constant fostering and nurturing. | https://medium.com/@saurabh-kewlani/why-might-agile-not-be-working-for-you-f938b427ebf0 | ['Saurabh Kewlani'] | 2021-04-09 10:55:35.210000+00:00 | ['Agile', 'Agile Methodology', 'Agile Mindset', 'Scrum', 'Agile Coaching'] |
International Update : People running out of food, water in Ethiopia’s Tigray — UN | People in Ethiopia’s conflict-ridden Tigray state reportedly are running out of food because of a lack of access for the UN and its partners, it was announced.
In a statement on Thursday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that while the full extent of the humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia’s northernmost regional state remains unclear, food for the displaced has run out, reports Xinhua news agency.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said that it has also received worrying reports of refugees leaving camps in Tigray due to violence and the lack of food and services.
The US has been complaining for weeks that the Ethiopian government has not granted access to the needy in Tigray and adjacent states. Communication lines were also reportedly down.
“The delivery of essential humanitarian assistance to the region by the United Nations and its partners depends on a security risk assessment of the roads leading to Tigray and a humanitarian assessment of basic needs,” OCHA said.
“The UN and its humanitarian partners reiterate the urgent call on all parties to the conflict in Tigray to allow unconditional, unfettered and safe humanitarian access to the whole region, where people are now in their fifth week without food, water, and power,” it added.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has said that regaining access to refugees and other people in need in Tigray is urgent and critical.
The number of refugees who have fled Tigray for Sudan is now up to 49,500, said the UNHCR.
A three-month humanitarian preparedness plan, covering from last month through next month, targets an additional 1.1 million people likely to be affected by the crisis in Tigray and parts of the adjacent Amhara and Afar regions, OCHA said.
The crisis erupted early last month during clashes between Tigray rebels and the federal government, cutting civilians from necessities, forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes and refugee camps running out of supplies.
Source: https://insightonlinenews.in/international-update-people-running-out-of-food-water-in-ethiopias-tigray-un/ | https://medium.com/@insightnewshindi/international-update-people-running-out-of-food-water-in-ethiopias-tigray-un-3cffb498f4b6 | ['Roshan Bhatia'] | 2020-12-11 13:33:33.783000+00:00 | ['News', 'Breaking News', 'Unitednation', 'Onlinenews', 'Ethiopia'] |
Data Analytics: Best technology to learn for future | Undoubtedly we can state today that businesses are going digital to generate traffic to their websites or to increase their reach and showing great growth potential with the advent of new software and techniques. So, Do you know what is driving this growth and development? Unquestionably it is Data Analytics acting as a fuel that is smoothly running the organizations and leading to profitability. Over the past few years, data analytics is helping organizations make more informed and rational decisions and launch best-in-class products or services that are greatly impacting the lives of people and the behavior of businesses.
As a result of this hapless year of pandemic, the Analytics space in 2020 has seen modifications and churns in terms of job losses and inactivity in job creation. Despite that, the zeal around the analytics function in India remained high, and people are desirous to see what the future holds for jobs in Data Science. Data analytics applications have expanded to all segments of individual lives and they are improving public health in this covid-19 pandemic. Arogya Setu App which everyone is aware of is based on the application of data analytics which is not only motivating individuals to adopt healthier habits, alerting people to take precautions but also predicting areas that are most vulnerable to the illness.
“According to AIMResearch, India came up with 9.8% of the total global Analytics job openings in August 2020 and during the same period (Aug 2019) last year, India contributed approximately 7% of worldwide job requirements. There are three major factors for the increase of the share of India in job openings in the field of data analytics:
The year-on-year rise in the number of start-ups which in turn leading to more funding in Indian analytics.
Knowledge Process Outsourcing firms, Multinational Corporations, and IT firms are dominating in the creation of jobs in analytics.
Almost every job opening in this particular sector is full-time jobs and only 2% are part-time which is building up the Indian Analytics market.
Highly differentiated and specialized knowledge and skills are needed in the Data Science field, that is why there is a gap between the supply and demand of people from data science’s background. It’s a career path that runs side by side with all the changes occurring in the sphere of digital technology on the horizon and modifying the landscape of technological progress. If you look at those professionals who are already working in this industry and they’re changing the move to the future. The increasing importance of data analytics is leading organizations to restructure and rethink their methodology to specific data analytics talent roles. If you are dedicated and decided to enter into the data analytics world or maybe you aim to be a data scientist in the future then it is necessary to master these data analyst skills to land a good job:
Structured Query Language (SQL)
Python Statistical Programming
Machine learning
Data Visualization
Microsoft Excel
Linear Algebra and Calculus
R Language
Critical thinking
Domain Knowledge
Data warehousing
Well said by Bill Gates, “The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” | https://medium.com/@indywise/data-analytics-best-technology-to-learn-for-future-6238546541b0 | [] | 2020-12-17 13:46:42.543000+00:00 | ['Mentor', 'Mentorship', 'Data Analytic Training', 'Guidance', 'Mentoring'] |
Is it a good idea coming to study in Cuba? | So, is it a good idea to come to study in this country?
My short answer is no, it is much more worth studying elsewhere in the world. I know that many students come to Cuba attracted by how little a career here can cost them, however, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
However, if you want to come to Cuba for a short time to give one or two courses, I think it would be a great idea. Here are three important reasons I have for recommending this:
Share with Cuban students
In January 2020 I began in my Faculty what seemed like one of the most exciting semesters of my entire journey through the University. The reason? There were a lot of foreign exchange students, the opportunities to share about our ideas and culture were endless. Sadly, Covid-19 shattered those and many other expectations. However, the previous semester we had had Maria, a wonderful girl from Boston, in our Semantics course. Sharing with her was a more than pleasant experience for our entire group.
My point is this, by coming to Cuba as a student for a short time, you are not only giving yourself the opportunity to meet wonderful people, but you are also giving Cubans the opportunity to share with other types of students outside of their circle. Keep in mind that we will rarely be able to go on a university exchange to another country.
Improve your language skills
If you are not a Spanish speaker, coming to Cuba as a student for a short time can help you improve your Spanish language skills. It is true that Cubans speak very fast among ourselves and we run over words, as most native speakers do in their own language. However, you cannot imagine how attentive we Cubans are when communicating with people who do not speak our language. I would venture to say that the patience we have with non-Spanish speakers, motivated in part by the enthusiasm with which we welcome foreigners, is hard to find anywhere else.
Photo by Spencer Everett on Unsplash
Know our reality from within
Voltaire already said it, in his famous Candide, that it is a great thing to travel to be disappointed in a thousand nonsense. If you want to know about Cuba, especially if your studies are related in any way with our reality, don’t let anyone tell you about it, come and see for yourself. | https://medium.com/@elisabet_calas/is-it-a-good-idea-coming-to-study-in-cuba-dd800d51ed4c | ['Elisabet Calas'] | 2021-11-11 04:11:07.015000+00:00 | ['Spanish', 'Cuba', 'Learning', 'Study Abroad', 'University'] |
East Bengal vs Chennai Football Match PreviewEast Bengal vs Chennai Football Match Preview: Indian Football League 2020–21 | Welcome to the Preview of East Bengal vs Chennai Football Match of Indian Football League 2020–21.
Match Preview
East Bengal has experienced a great deal of frustration in this season and has neglected to keep up their heads as they are as yet winless now of the opposition. They are following behind at the base most situation of the season table and need to record just 2 points from their six games. Robbie Fowler will have a tight talk with this team and the crew will definitely struggle ahead.
Chennai team figured out how to get their second win of the ridiculously into this game with 1–2 triumph over the Goa team. They have an even score of 2 successes, 2 draws, and 2 thrashings and are as of now possessing the eight spot of the season table. Csaba Laszlo will work with his team to improve the form of themselves and there is no rejecting that they are the harder ones in this game.
Date: 26th December 2020, 7:30 PM IST
Venue: Tilak Maidan, Vasco da Gama, Goa
Key Players: East Bengal vs Chennai
East Bengal key players
Jeje Lalpheklua
Eugeneson Lyngdoh
Daniel Fox
Scott Neville
Anthony Pilkington
Chennai key players
Rafael Crivalloro,
Anirudh Thapa
Memo Moura
Lallianzuala Chhangte
Enes Sipovic
Head-to-Head Record
East Bengal : 0 (W), 0 (L), 0 (D) Chennai: 0 (W), 0 (L), 0 (D)
East Bengal vs Chennai Playing XI
East Bengal Predicted XI
Debjit Majumder, Surchandra Singh, Scott Neville, Daniel Fox, Sehnaj Singh, Bikash Jairu, Matti Steinmann, Haobam Tomba Singh, Mohammed Rafique, Jacques Maghoma and Anthony Pilkington.
Chennai Predicted XI
Vishal Kaith, Edwin Vanspaul, Eli Sabia, Enes Sipovic, Jerry Lalrinzuala, Deepak Tangri, Anirudh Thapa, Fatkhullo Fatkhuloev, Rafael Crivellaro, Lallianzuala Chhangte and Jakub Sylvestr. | https://medium.com/@primecaptain11/east-bengal-vs-chennai-football-match-previeweast-bengal-vs-chennai-football-match-preview-indian-3d7889005c57 | ['Prime Captain'] | 2020-12-26 12:30:34.451000+00:00 | ['Fantasy Football', 'Football', 'Indian Super League', 'Fantasy Sports', 'Isl 2020 21'] |
Kwanzaa Is Not Black Christmas | Kwanzaa Is Not Black Christmas
Photo by Askar Abayev from Pexels
From November to December there are many holidays celebrated both religious and cultural so one shouldn’t forget about Kwanzaa. Once Christmas is over people generally sigh a big sigh of relief as Kwanzaa is one of the lesser recognized holidays which deserves a little more attention. Kwanzaa is celebrated from December 26 — January 1st.
Kwanzaa is not black Christmas. Kwanzaa is not a religious celebration. Kwanzaa is not the rival of Hanukkah.
What is Kwanzaa?
Kwanzaa is 54 years old this year so it’s a very young holiday. You do not have to be of a particular race or creed to celebrate. It’s a cultural celebration. Similar to everyone of all races celebrating and learning about Cinco De Mayo or Mardi Gras. Everyone should try to celebrate or learn more about Kwanzaa in someway during the celebration. Celebrating other cultures can break barriers and be a good step in uniting everyone.
Kwanzaa centers around 7 principles that are inclusive.
Umoja (Unity)
Kujichagulia (Self-determination)
Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility)
Ujamaa (Cooperative economics)
Nia (Purpose)
Kuumba (Creativity)
Imani (Faith)
It’s important to learn more about these principles and how you will harness them in your own life throughout the new year.
How you can celebrate at home?
I’ll repeat this again because I don’t want it to be overlooked. You do not have to be of African or African American or Black descent to celebrate. Please find a way to bring unity in this world of chaos by learning about other cultures. The pandemic has put a damper on most outdoor celebrations but here are some ways to celebrate at home.
Buy seven candles and light them at home (one each day). 3 red candles represent the struggles of the people, 3 green candles represent the land and provide hope for the future, and 1 black candle representing people of African descent. Decorate your home with Kwanzaa colors (red, green, and black). If you haven’t taken your tree down then swap out some of the ornaments to represent the Kwanzaa celebrations. Learn a new Swahili phrase daily. “Habara Gani” is a Kwanzaa greeting which means “How are you?” Buy an item from a black-owned business. Search YouTube for an online dance class from Zumba to Stepping to West African Dance. Find a new Creole, Southern, or Cajun recipe to cook. The 7-day celebration normally ends with a feast on the 6th night but try a new recipe on any day during Kwanzaa. Jerk Chicken, Fried Catfish, Candied Yams, Cajun Jambalaya all sounds delicious and is a good way to end the holiday season with more unhealthy eating. Print an online craft and complete it at home (great to do with younger kids). Join a free online Kwanzaa celebration.
There are many ways to learn about this cultural tradition and to celebrate it from home. This is our first year celebrating and we couldn’t be more excited.
Furaha ya Kwanzaa! Happy Kwanzaa!
Danita Hall is a human by day and a Humor, Parenting, Lifestyle, Ranting, Poem Writing Blogger by night. Click here to read past blog posts and stay connected on Facebook and Twitter | https://medium.com/illumination/kwanzaa-is-not-black-christmas-244bf9868449 | ['Danita Hall'] | 2020-12-26 18:23:10.529000+00:00 | ['Holidays', 'Culture', 'Illumination', 'Kwanzaa'] |
Violence against women intensified since coronavirus outbreak: UN | Women around the world on Wednesday marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, highlighting how lockdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic have left many trapped with their abusers and exposed to greater danger.
The United Nations said since the outbreak of COVID-19, all types of violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, had intensified, with shelters at capacity and helplines in some places seeing a five-fold increase in calls.
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https://www.vec.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/filefield_paths/macys-thanks-giving-day-parade-20-20-livestream-tv101.pdf
https://www.vec.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/filefield_paths/macys-20-20-livestream-tv1010101.pdf
https://www.vec.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/filefield_paths/macys-jaig.pdf
https://www.vec.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/filefield_paths/kochu-thanksgiving-parade.pdf
https://www.vec.virginia.gov/sites/default/files/filefield_paths/livestream-macys-thanks-giving-day-parade-20-20-tv1010.pdf
UK report calls out Saudi Arabia over women’s rights abusesForgotten women: The overlooked victims of serial killersWomen journalists are facing a growing threat online and offline
“Men’s violence against women is also a pandemic — one that pre-dates the virus and will outlive it. It too needs our global, coordinated response and enforceable protocols. It too affects vast populations of all ages,” said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka in a statement.
Last year, 243 million women and girls experienced sexual or physical violence from their partner. This year, reports of increased domestic violence, cyberbullying, child marriages, sexual harassment and sexual violence have flooded in, she added.
In the Turkish city of Istanbul, several hundred people gathered to protest against domestic violence against women.
One woman taking part, who declined to give her name, said: “The law does not protect women as it should. We are here to make our voice heard. There are femicides happening almost every day in this country but people who are committing the crime are walking free.”
In Italy, protesters gathered outside Parliament bearing banners reading “If they touch one [of us], they touch all” and “Women are not toys”.
Italy went through one of the world’s strictest lockdowns between March and May and last month introduced new restrictions.
Its quarantine is creating conditions for increased murders of women by family members in the same home, according to a study by the Italian Economic and Social Research Institute.
“We have witnessed an increase in domestic violence during confinement measures,” said protester Serena Freddi. “This shows the home is still a place of conflict and violence for women.”
Spain held a minute’s silence for murdered women on Wednesday and in Portugal, the OMA observatory, which monitors femicide, said so far in 2020 30 women had been murdered, half of them victims of domestic violence.
The country’s Interior Minister Eduardo Cabrita said there was a 6 percent drop in the number of complaints about violence in the first 10 months of 2020 from a year ago, which he said was a worrying sign that women were struggled to access help during lockdown.
The government launched a video campaign called #ISurvived, which warns of the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and hopes to spread the word about the support available to victims of domestic violence.
In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her weekly podcast, “statistically, every 45 minutes a woman in our country is attacked by her current or former partner. These are the cruel facts. Every single case tells a horrible story…We must never look the other way when girls or women are threatened with violence or attacked.” | https://medium.com/@me-chudon/violence-against-women-intensified-since-coronavirus-outbreak-un-ae088b78af8b | ['Khali Vakka'] | 2020-11-26 13:25:02.496000+00:00 | ['News', 'Politics', 'Violence', 'Coronavirus', 'UN'] |
The Art of a Graceful Tumble | When you are friends
With a beautiful woman,
You are bound to take a spill.
Don’t boast —
You are no better than the rest of us.
Pretending is no use.
Don’t make the mistake of denying it.
Don’t say:
Who me?
Her?
Together?
Honestly, that’d be so weird — Honestly!
We’re just friends.
I’ve never, NEVER thought of her that way.
Literally not ever. Not once in my life.
Never.
Never EVER.
Let’s be honest:
The most fictional part about Harry Potter
Is the fact that he and Hermione Granger didn’t bang even once
In the whole series.
Not once!
Me? Her? No way!
I’m Harry… Just Harry!
You’re going to take a spill.
So when you find yourself in this precarious situation —
When you’ve found the rare friend
Who knows you
And loves you
Who happens also to be stunning.
Do you very best,
To not fuck that up.
When you take a tumble
(Trust me, you will take a tumble)
Try to do so gracefully.
On the verge of divulging, vulnerably,
The incoherencies of your diverging interests
(Namely, to be friends and also to be making out)
Perhaps
Put down a mat.
And maybe a tea table.
So that while you are falling, miraculously,
You may land on your left elbow
Teacup in hand, pinky up
And say:
“Oh my! Just found myself in the mood for a cup of tea!
Didn’t even know I was here ‘til I was…
What a surprise!
Just — tea!”
And then say no more
Can it with a cup of chamomile.
Drink the tea
And shut your goddamn mouth.
In the end, there’s simply no need to say more
No need to ask questions,
To try to “figure things out”
Best to stay as far away as you can
From making out with your friends.
Certainly — whatever you do — don’t bottle your feelings
Into some poem
And then read it to her.
Damn it. | https://psiloveyou.xyz/the-art-of-a-graceful-tumble-6b8579c04ad4 | ['Luke Brennan'] | 2020-12-06 13:02:42.404000+00:00 | ['Growth', 'Poetry Sunday', 'Love', 'Life', 'Friendship'] |
Achates | Brother John tottered into the cloister, drunk on the hymns of St. Peter. The rain poured into the courtyard, moisture with no other alternative collected itself on his brow. A bible lay at the brother’s feet, fallen open and soggy in the night. The brother peered out into the wet, rubbed his bald head for luck, and downed the remaining dregs from his cup.
“John is that you?” the voice echoed in the hall, echoed in the humid air. “John, you’ll catch a cold again if you — ”
“Aye?” John slurred, looking for the source of the voice. His eyes fell on the brimmed hat shadowing the face of Father Achates. The Father stood barely above eye level of the sitting brother, but he stiffened with the air of a disciplined man, aided with the fervent belief in the abolition of gluttony, that most grievous of the seven deadly sins.
“Is that a holy book at your feet, brother?” John reached down to pick the soaking book up, but the Father grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. “Are you so superior to the word and decree of the lord,” the Father continued, “that you must desecrate it and tower over it?”
John blinked, then rubbed his eyes. With reality back in focus, he managed to stammer, “No, Father.”
“Then why, John? Why do you stain the word of God with dirt and drool?” Achates picked the book up by the corner and shook the collected puddle from its pages. He snapped the book shut and tucked beneath his arm.
“Was reading, Father.” John pushed himself up from his perch and swayed as his feet struggled to get underneath him. “Studying. Freshening myself up on Job when the rain caught my eye. Swept me up. Distracted me, Father.” John stumbled and reached for Achates, who caught the brother in his arms.
“Are you well, Brother?” The Father pulled the drunk man into his arms and made to turn him towards the dormitories.
“Always have loved the rain,” Brother John whispered staring out into the courtyard. He stood up straight and looked Father Achates in the eye. The Father started to turn and walk away but the Brother took a step forward and retched, soiling the Father’s robes. John fell to the ground, vomiting, as the Father reeled in disgust, clenching his nose at the stench.
John lurched again and again on the ground before regaining his senses. Through ragged breaths he tried to talk, “I’m sorry Father…Forgive me, I didn’t mean — ”
“Didn’t mean!” The Father stood three feet taller. “You wretched piece of filth! You say you love the rain, but you fail to understand this, brother. The Lord sends this rain as a punishment! It is fallacy to think it heals you, it merely misguides you.” The Father put a finger in John’s face. “Devout and pious men must suffer the fear and the wet because of you drunkards, you gluttons!” John began to weep and the Father screamed into the night, then knelt beside the Brother. He spoke gently, “Weep not from your eyes, John. Do you not realize your pain falls from the sky at this very moment? I pray for the likes of so called men like you.”
The Father put a hand on John’s shoulder and wiped vomit from the Brother’s cheek. He stood and strode to the edge of the courtyard, hands clasped behind his back. The two men reveled in the silence, one standing, the other still on the ground.
“Are you familiar with the book of Genesis, John?” Achates’ voice was soft, almost indecipherable as the wind ran through the cloister.
“Of course, Father.”
“Of course, you say.” The Father turned to the Brother. “Then you can tell me, after six days of creating, what did the Lord do?”
Brother John looked up without understanding, “He rested, but surely, Father, you must know that.”
Achates snapped, “What I know is neither here nor there, John. It is true, yes, our Lord rested on the seventh day, but it is not because of His labor on the previous six.”
“It isn’t?”
“No, you fool,” Achates hissed, “Do you truly believe the Lord, in His omnipotence, needed rest?” The Father took two quick steps forward and towered over the drunk man. “No. He merely witnessed something that shook Him to His core. On the seventh day, He wept. He gathered His might, for the greatest work was to come on the eighth day.”
“The eighth day, Father?”
“On the eighth day, God looked down on a bunch of drunks. This angered Him to no end; His sadness and pity left Him, only to be replaced with fury. He waved his hands and proclaimed, ‘Those who be pious and devout, strike down these sinners from my sight. Cast them aside as Satan’s whelps, for they are good for naught.’”
John screamed as Achates struck him over and over with the holy book in his hands. The blows came down harder as the brother grew limp. The cloister flooded and Achates stood up, breathing no harder than he had before. John’s broken body lay face down, blood pouring from his ears into the water flowing past.
Father Achates made the sign of the cross and licked the blood from his hands. He wrestled open the bible, its spine bent from where it had collided with John’s skull. The Father’s hat had fallen off in his rage, he bent down to pick it up. He shook the water from its brim and donned it once more, shadowing his face in the dawn light.
He peered at the words in front of him, the words John had been studying. He read aloud, “Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves, therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty. He binds up, but He wounds, His hands heal, but also shatter.”
Achates marched down the hall, hands clasped behind his back. The rain stopped and the sun rose again to beat down on this Holy land. | https://medium.com/literally-literary/achates-df51978bf747 | ['Ryder Pittz'] | 2020-06-09 04:20:15.294000+00:00 | ['Fiction', 'Christianity', 'Culture'] |
LSTM Framework For Univariate Time-Series Prediction | Code & Data Walkthrough — Data Prep
The data is the US/EU exchange rate from 2010 to present, not seasonally adjusted. You can pull the data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve here.
The Data
Before building the model, we create a series and check for stationarity. While stationarity is not an explicit assumption of LSTM, it does help immensely in controlling error. A non-stationary series will introduce more error in predictions and force errors to compound faster.
We filter out one ‘sequence length’ of data points for later validation. In this case, 60 points.
Our Dickey-Fuller — Shows Stationarity
The data format required for a LSTM is 3 dimensional, with a moving window.
So the first data point will be the first 60 days of data.
The second data point is the first 61 days of data but not including the first.
The third data point is the first 62 days of data but not including the first and second.
Our Training Data Frame
The last major step of prep is to scale the data. Here we use a simple minmax scaler. Our sequence length is 60 days for this part of the code.
Code Walkthrough — Building the LSTM
The next part of the analysis is pretty straightforward code-wise. We first create a learning rate scheduler. This scheduler will monitor the validation loss and modify the learning rate on plateaus.
We create a method to reset all of the weights in case we want to re-train with different parameters (the method is unused in my code but it’s there if you need it).
We then build an LSTM with 2 layers, each with 100 nodes and build an output function with a sigmoid activation.
The history object stores model loss over epoch, which can be plotted to evaluate whether an adjustment is needed in the training process.
Model Loss by Epoch
Code snippet | https://towardsdatascience.com/lstm-framework-for-univariate-time-series-prediction-d9e7252699e | ['Joseph', 'Iosif'] | 2021-03-31 23:38:41.635000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Python', 'Keras'] |
Two Eiders | A female King Eider
Two Eiders
I biked down to the Leslie Street Spit the other day to look for winter birds and brought a camera with me in case anything good turned up. “The Spit,” as it’s known in Toronto, is a former landfill in the east end of the city that juts into Lake Ontario for about five kilometers (three miles). A disused lighthouse stands at the far end, and a paved loop road makes cycling an easy affair. Otherwise, the land is covered with habitats that include wetlands, wildflower meadows, and patchy forests of cottonwood, poplar, and birch. In winter, with the wind off the lake, the place acquires an ambience so bleak and grey that it’s almost Scandinavian.
Oh, Canada. One of the stone constructions that appear (and disappear) as if by magic along the southern shoreline of the Spit.
Ever since it first took shape 40 years ago, the Spit has functioned as a magnet for birds and for the people who love them. Thanks to its mix of habitats, the place attracts a wide variety of bird species — not just songbirds, but waterfowl and waders, hawks and owls, terns and gulls. More than 300 species of birds, some of them quite rare for the Toronto area, have been recorded on the Spit, and with the advent of global warming, new species are seen almost every year.
The Purple Sandpiper, an otherwise uncommon visitor to the Great Lakes, is a shorebird that can be seen almost every fall somewhere along the Spit’s rocky coast.
When I arrived the other day, I biked straight out to Pipit Point, the Spit’s southeast extremity and a good spot to scan the lake for different types of ducks and gulls. The point takes its name from the American Pipit, a robin-sized bird that forages there regularly during spring and fall migration.
The American Pipit travels in small flocks, and its flight call sounds something like the noise made by crystal wind chimes.
When I scanned the waters around the point, I could see a pair of King Eiders quite far out. This is a type of sea duck that nests on the tundra surrounding Hudson’s Bay and that winters along the northeast coast of Canada and the United States. Eiders seem to prefer salt water to fresh, and only a few of them appear in the Great Lakes in any given year. The birds I was looking at were so distant that it was difficult to get a decent photo.
The Eiders at a distance. This is what we call a “record shot.” It’s sufficient to identify the birds, but otherwise nothing to write home about.
I decided to sit on the rocks at the tip of the point and see if the ducks would drift in closer. Just as I settled myself, a flock of Common Redpolls — a type of winter finch that sports a red beret and black goatee — flew in, and a few of them consented to pose for photos.
A Common Redpoll, frontal view. Redpolls are sociable birds that travel in flocks. They have a habit of muttering to themselves as they feed in bushes or on the ground, making a soft, twittering sound that is soothing to the nerves.
Common Redpoll, side view. The Redpoll’s plumage serves as an effictive camouflage in the waste areas that it tends to frequent.
King Eiders are large, powerfully built ducks, and they’re famous divers. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says they can probably “dive to greater depths than any other duck species.” The two I was watching would disappear below the water’s surface — usually together — for more than a minute at a time. When they popped into sight again, they always had something black and shiny in their bill. They were feeding on the Zebra Mussels that coat much of the floor of Lake Ontario.
Zebra Mussels are so large that an Eider often looks like it’s choking when it tries to swallow one. The crustacean passes into the duck’s crop, where the shell is crushed to pieces and the nutritious meat then goes into the duck’s stomach.
After swallowing a mussel, the Eider would often rear up, look around, and flap its wings in satisfaction, the eiderly version of a victory dance.
One of the Eiders strikes a joyful pose after swallowing a Zebra Mussel.
The Eider flaps its wings, revealing the white axillary feathers in its armpits.
Each time the ducks dove to get another mussel, they would resurface closer to where I was sitting. Since the day was cloudy, the light wasn’t great, but I began to get shots that showed plumage and feather patterns in more detail. I wondered how far in the birds would come.
As the two Eiders approached, I could see they were both females. A young male King Eider would have a white breast, and a mature male would have an orange bill.
Drifting closer and closer, the two ducks rounded the point and disappeared to my left. I got up and followed and was surprised to find that they’d drifted right in to shore and were feeding on the algae and barnacles that covered the boulders there.
The Eiders were attracted to the barnacles and algae attached to the boulders along the shore.
With the Eiders closer to shore, it was easier to take photos that reflected the warm color of their plumage and showed the feathering in some detail. By any standard of judgement, these are magnificent birds.
I started taking photos of the ducks that by now were practically at my feet, and the camera clicked and buzzed. But nothing distracted the Eiders, and they continued feeding until they’d eaten their fill. Only then did they allow themselves to drift out into the lake again. As they were leaving, one of the ducks flapped her wings again, as if in farewell. I watched them go, marveling over the rare gift of their presence.
A final salute from one of the Eiders as she headed back out to the lake. | https://medium.com/@edtoronto/two-eiders-f3d33616317c | ["Edward O'Connor"] | 2020-12-22 23:51:42.602000+00:00 | ['Ducks', 'Toronto', 'Birds', 'Nature Photography', 'Nature Writing'] |
Yoga Psychology: Changing Habits | Yoga Psychology: Changing Habits
Flexing your free will by cultivating conscious awareness of your inner life
Learning to witness your habitual actions in mind and body allows you to see what was once unconscious. Learning to change these deep habits allows you to flex and tone your free will, increasing your personal empowerment to make decisions that are best suited to the present moment. It is a freedom from the weight of the past, creating a fresh ground for the Now to lead to a future in which you continue living fully, freely.
Daily yoga practice is where I can most clearly see my own habits
To elevate free will, we need intentional awareness of the causes and effects of our actions. Without this discernment, freedom becomes freewheeling, the empowerment to make choices weakened by a lack of purpose. Cultivating calm, clear vision as well as intuitive inner listening empowers you to use your strength of will to make decisions that create your highest-potential life.
Only when you deeply believe that you create your life do you have the power to change the circumstances of your life. With that faith, and clarity of vision, you will be able to see the conditions that create and sustain your habits. Once you notice a habit that no longer serves you well, you need to cultivate a patient and expansive mindset to consider:
— Why is this habit in me? What purpose did it serve, what need did it fulfill?
— Is that purpose still valuable? Do I still have that need?
If you still have the need, then the habit needs to be altered to not only continue fulfilling its purpose but also in a way that creates more positive effects in your future. Sometimes, a habit continues long after its original purpose has changed or completed itself. In these cases, you’ll realize that you have an outdated perspective that needs to change. Changing your perspective — realizing that past conditions are no longer current — breaks attachments to your old ways of thinking, which is a very liberating and energy-releasing experience.
Use that energy responsibly, to elevate the effects of your new way of being. Consider: what kind of space, time and energy do I want? And let that vision guide you.
Trusting your inner strength and resilience supports you as you make life changes
Being conscious in your home yoga practice is an ideal lens into the nature of your habits, how to identify them, to discern which you want to change, for what purpose, and how effective your efforts are. This work translates off the mat: most of our habits live within us, and transcend our external circumstances.
For example: you may notice that you always jump slightly to the right when you are doing Sun Salutations. Consider how long that habit has existed, what caused you to notice it, and how long you continue the habitual action before deciding to change. Do you wait for an injury to occur, responding to emergency, or do you act with foresight, changing an imbalanced action?
Ask what created the habit. Is your left side stronger, or do you have your gaze point off center, or does your pelvis tilt away from horizontal, or perhaps all of these things? Is it related to the way you carry yourself off the mat, habitually picking up heavy things with your left hand and strengthening your left shoulder over a lifetime of unconscious habit?
Changing the carriage of the body requires firm intention and an alert mind. The body receives change easily, and you will see how quickly a change in mental habit/perspective translates into a discernible change in your body’s actions. Practicing this level of awareness, vision, and focused work in your yoga practice will empower you to make changes in other areas of your life as well, supported by fact-based confidence and a strong, balanced, physique. You’ll see how your mind and body reflect one another, and you’ll have the daily time to step into yourself. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/yoga-psychology-changing-habits-2e16940c625f | ['Megna Paula'] | 2020-10-09 16:16:53.830000+00:00 | ['Self-awareness', 'Yoga', 'Habits', 'Change Your Life', 'Self Improvement'] |
Life as a Polyglot of Four Languages | Living in a interconnected, globalized world, more and more people are likely to adopt a language other than his or her mother tongue. English has become a norm over non-Western continents, and the second, third, or the n-th language can be easily learned and trained through the internet, self-learnable text books or schools right at the city you live in. According to Google search, 40% of the people in the world are monolingual, 43% are bilingual, and 17% know more than two languages, those who can be called “polyglots”. Roughly, more than half of the globe can understand at least two languages, although the level of proficiency would be different. Literacy in three languages is also quite common in the instance of third culture kids whose family, school, and the country he or she lives in each use different languages, thus learning to understand all three languages due to the environment.
Let me tell you my story of becoming a polyglot.
I grew up in a Korean family but in a totally exotic place of Thailand, not at all like Korea. My parents were missionaries who came to Thailand 27 years ago, when my sister was just one year old and I was not even born yet. Born in Bangkok in a warm December of 1994, this was the start of my life.
The earliest memory I have in my childhood was church. My dad planted a church in an old condo which was also our home. I still remember what it looked like, even though I was not yet kindergarten age. Maybe I was five or six. I don’t remember what floor, but we had to use the worn out elevator to go up to where the church was. The elevator often malfunctioned, so I remember I was always frightened to take it. The church had an “L”-shaped corridor where one room was the bedroom where my sister and I watched video tapes like Teletubbies, another room was something like an office or meeting room, and finally the room for worship services. My sister and I were some of the youngest around the church, and we always played with older kids and teenagers who chased me around saying how adorable and cute I was (because I was only five or six!). The church was for the local people, so most of them were Thai. Being around with Thai people, my sister and I could speak Thai just like anyone our age. Yet, my mother tongue was Korean, which mother tought us as babies and at early age. So that was how I started out, bilingual at young age.
I soon got to the age for school. My parents decided I should go to an international school rather than a local one. I did not even know one bit of English at that time, so I was put in the ESL class for kindergarten. Day by day my ears were hearing English and one day, when we were playing vocab cards in ESL class, I remember clearly how I suddenly started to speak up in English, just like American accent. The English teacher looked very proud of me, and that’s how I passed ESL.
Since my elementary years, I learned every subject in English. I was in the American curriculum, so most teachers where from the US or Canada. I adopted the American accent which follows until today. I can also follow Thai English accent for fun, if I want to.
Mother let me study Korean through some textbooks and internet courses, and I think they really helped me sustain my own language. I could speak Korean with no problem, but writing Korean was hard for me even until university.
In fifth grade, my friend’s mother asked if I want to learn Chinese with that friend. My mother consented and so did I. It was a Taiwanese teacher and she taught us the Chinese alphabet pronunciation in “pinyin” which was Chinese phonetics. My friend gave up the class quite soon, but I continued to learn one to one with the teacher. She taught me traditional characters after I mastered pinyin. But then, she had to go back to her country, so mom found another teacher for me. She was an old Taiwanese women who taught me “zhuyin” which were pronunciation symbols that look quite complicated, but I memeorized them all soon. However, I didn’t use them for so long that I forgot it now. The teacher also taught me traditional characters, but once I got into highschool I had to learn simplified characters, and now I am used to the most common simplified and pinyin.
In 11th grade, junior year, I took the HSK level 5 test and passed. I was so thankful to have that certificate for my application for university.
I was accepted to Seoul National University for the college of humanities. In my second year, I majored in Chinese Language and Literature. There, I realized how low my level was in Chinese. I learned so much from university, but I still couldn’t be as fluent as I wanted to be.
Today, I still study Chinese and plan to take the HSK level 6 soon.
For my Thai to not deteriorate, I meet a Thai friend once a month and talk with her in Thai.
Actually learning many languages could make it all mediocre. I needed to work hard to not forget amd keep on using Thai, Chinese and even Korean and English! That is why I have a vocab notebook for all four languages. I should keep reading as well, but I am not really engaged in reading.
I would rather write a lot, though reading is also very important.
Being a polyglot is a great privilege. However I must overcome mediocrity and really be fluent. That is a real polyglot. | https://medium.com/@jinyoungj/life-as-a-polyglot-of-four-languages-23879f481254 | ['Jinyoung Jang'] | 2021-12-22 15:15:09.845000+00:00 | ['Childhood', 'Chinese', 'Language', 'Polyglot', 'Thai'] |
Plants can be endangered, too? | Written by Conservation Associate Julia Walker
When you hear ‘endangered species’, what do you think of? I would bet you’d think of manatees, panthers, sea turtles, and other animals. I’m here to shed some light on a few other endangered species that you might find right in your back yard!
Protecting our endangered species is important work. We are losing species at an alarming rate, and often it is due to human causes. With hard work from scientists (and people like you), species can be removed from the endangered species list.
The bald eagle is an excellent example; after a steep population decline, scientists discovered a major cause of this sudden drop. DDT, an insecticide, was contaminating their food source and causing the shells of their eggs to be too fragile. By banning DDT, bald eagles rebounded, and are no longer listed as an endangered species.
There is still a lot of work to do, though. In the United States alone, there are 1,662 endangered and threatened species. (See the breakdown here from USFWS).
However, did you know: 946 of those listed species are plants?!
Florida has many natural treasures, but perhaps none quite so coveted as the orchid. It may be because Florida is a hot-spot of orchid diversity. The National Park Service reports orchid diversity is the highest here in the Everglades, over any other NPS unit in the continental US. In such a warm and humid climate, orchids receive plenty of moisture and nutrients, without hurting the trees they grow on.
As a result of their beauty and prestige, their populations have been exploited for commercial gain. In the 1800s, the railroad first came to Florida and began shipping orchids north as a house plant. Due to a century of over-harvesting, their populations have steadily decreased. According to the National Park Service, they believe collection is the direct cause of the loss of three species in Everglades National Park.
So now, we have determined that plants can be endangered, too. The good news is we have started to protect these precious plants.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 protects both plants and animals on a federal level, but 32 states have laws that also protect endangered plants. (USFS). This means endangered plants are protected from the trade industry, and require permits to collect or study these species.
Here in Florida, we have some beautiful and interesting orchids. The five species below can all be found here in Collier County. Take a look to see some of Florida’s hidden treasure.
Craighead’s Noddingcaps
The Craighead Noddingcap is a small orchid, just 4–6 centimeters high, which blooms in late June to early July. They grow in forests and woodlands, and open at night to show their beautiful purple and white flowers. However, this orchid is incredibly imperiled. Due to habitat destruction and over collecting, there are only three known occurrences of this species. (North American Orchid Center) | https://medium.com/environmental-education/plants-can-be-endangered-too-369c0c71e10a | [] | 2018-07-20 15:42:54.697000+00:00 | ['Endangered Species', 'Orchids', 'Conservation', 'Florida', 'Plants'] |
IQ Tests Best Measuring Tools and Some Examples | Brain Games- DOWNLOAD LINK:
smartbrain.onelink.me/BYZh/57eef02a
We live in a society where people see intelligence as a way to measure a person’s value and is considered to be one of the fundamentals for their intellectual capacity. Smart people get into the best colleges, get the best job, receive the highest salaries, are leaders in schools, these are the kind of examples that probably describe the term intelligence among people.
So if you are the smartest of a designated group, it is quite normal that people follow you, or some are advised to follow your footsteps as a lot of doors might open for you. Being smart is considered a crucial component in the success of a person, but…
How is intelligence defined?
At the individual level, most people who are not familiar with the term ‘IQ’ define intelligence in their own terms. Human understanding of intelligence is just limited to traditional thinking and performance in academics rather than seeing and measuring in terms of IQ tests for kids and adults. There will be always a considerable diversity in definitions of intelligence as well as a considerable overlap. For instance, when you ask an engineer they would describe it in ways of being a good engineer. Similarly, artists define it in ways that describe a great artist.
How then, can intelligence be measured? And do IQ tests for kids function as valid measures of intelligence? And when we measure intelligence through an IQ test for kids, does it really capture what we are trying to measure- Intelligence? If the scores are high, does it mean that he or she will go on to do great things- like Albert Einstein? Maybe.
Let’s explore more about IQ tests and how these were developed before coming to a conclusion.
What is an IQ test?
IQ, short for intelligence quotient, is one of the fundamental tools to measure the intellectual capability of kids through a test or assessment. These also provide an educated guess on how an individual will perform in their academics. While you may be familiar with the term ‘IQ’ and already have associated with intelligence, what is it really? IQ test for kids or adults describes a score earned on a test that is designed to measure intelligence- which has been a subject of debate since they are developed.
Imagine you have a ten-year-old child, who has trouble in school, learning how to spell all those English and French words, and how to read words. But have you ever thought about why they struggle? Is it because they are low in intelligence? Or simply because of the environment or the reason that you are not able to provide the same resources as a wealthy family? Maybe they have the capabilities, but the main problem is the lack of books.
To put it simply, your child might be struggling but don’t think the reason is due to a lack of intelligence. It is very important to understand the distinction between things.
Some children will do badly in academics because they simply are not intelligent so there is not much to improve their grades. On the other hand, other children have plenty of learning ability and potential to do well, but they struggle merely because of the situations.
This distinction is what paved the idea of intelligence quotient or IQ for short. The purpose of an IQ test for kids is not to enrich the educational offerings but to filter them. The IQ scores indicate the inherent ability of a person to learn instead of the knowledge they are already equipped with, everyone will have an individual intelligence quotient. If your child scores high, it means that they have the intelligence required to do well in school because they have the ability or potential to succeed.
What do these tests measure anyway?
You might have the idea about how intelligence is defined- the capacity to solve problems and understand concepts and the potential to resolve the situations included on the test. Several tests evaluate different types of intelligence that combine with IQ to measure- memory, reasoning, attention, planning as well as the information on the test taker’s background.
You can try Brain games to check how fast you respond to question or puzzles:
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1535521299?pt=122096296&ct=Fborganic&mt=8
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=game.mind.teaser.smartbrain&referrer=utm_source%3DFBorganic%26utm_campaign%3Dfborganic
Tests are also built to assess a single skill or help teachers figure out which student would do well in fast-paced educational programs and which would benefit from such extra help. Many colleges, universities, and organizations also use IQ tests to shortlist people. It has all the right components to measure and predict which people would make good leaders and if a student can navigate standardized learning or has the skills to think outside the box.
IQ tests for kids
There are various IQ tests for kids out there, that said, you should not trust the kind of 5-minute test that might pop up in your Facebook feed. A comprehensive test at least takes over an hour and is ideally administered by professionals.
Currently, most tests provide a general indication of someone’s ability and tend to measure both verbal and performance IQ. For vocabulary and arithmetic, there is a section of verbal IQ which can be measured through both comprehensions and working on memory skills. Matrix completion and symbol coding are included in performance IQ which is measured through perception and processing skills.
All in all, IQ tests for kids are designed to assess precisely those cognitive skills that constitute intelligence, so these might contain a series of subtests that cover reasoning, vocabulary, mental processing speed, spatial ability, and more, therefore covering a wide range of different types of intelligence.
Below are some general examples and the type of questions that you might come across in an IQ test:
1. Logical puzzles and questions include the ability to reason
2. Pattern driven questions, brain games contain spatial and mathematical questions
3. Analogies contain mathematical and verbal questions
4. Classification
5. Visual based puzzle games
While these are some general areas that IQ tests cover, it would be interesting to see some of the specific questions. Here are some of the examples:
1. Knowledge-based questions test what a person knows about the basic things happening around the globe or simple questions. For instance, they might ask a question like- whether people know why it is important to wash hands before they eat.
2. There might be reasoning questions, which may ask test-takers to figure out what would come next in the pattern. For instance, which number would come next in the pattern? 40, 46, 52, 58,…
3. There might be harder questions as well, which will test the thinking skills like, What is the difference between weather and climate?
4. And questions like the odd one out or synonyms and antonyms. For instance, which one is the odd one out? Congregation, dispersion, compilation, convocation, aggregation
Bottom line
Many tests are used depending on a specific situation, an IQ test is just one way to measure someone’s intelligence. To know the full story about someone’s potential, there are additional tests and observations.
Rather, IQ tests favour people who can think on the spot, but it is important not to rely on them as the sole measure of intelligence. What we need in these tests is that they assess the diverse ways in which people approach knowledge and problem-solving and how these can be taught. To take an obvious example, knowledge of basic mathematics enables a person to perform the questions that will be otherwise impossible. | https://medium.com/@jessicawlm/iq-tests-best-measuring-tools-and-some-examples-5f58d9ce62cd | ['Jessica Williams'] | 2020-12-15 14:42:38.901000+00:00 | ['Puzzle', 'Trivia', 'Iq Test', 'Brain Games', 'Mobile Apps'] |
Presale for rTAX3 is live! Would you rather be the tax collector or the tax payer? | Presale for rTAX3 is live! Would you rather be the tax collector or the tax payer?
The rTAX3 presale is live for you on our website:
https://defidisciplelabs.finance
Audit Completed by Solidity with no security issues:
https://solidity.finance/audits/rTax3/ (Additional security audit performed in-house with SmartCheck, Mythril, Slither)
https://solidity.finance/audits/rTax3/ (Additional security audit performed in-house with SmartCheck, Mythril, Slither) Code is opensourced on Github:
https://github.com/defidisciplelabs/contracts
https://github.com/defidisciplelabs/contracts 440 ETH to be locked: in Uniswap Liquidity Pool with Team.Finance
in Uniswap Liquidity Pool with Team.Finance Dextools Sponsored: Most projects on listing Dextools perform well on Uniswap launch so we thought it makes sense to partner with them
What does rTAX3 do?
rTAX3 in one line is: tax redistributed to citizens of the world.
The concept and idea started in our banking days while making massive profits investing in crypto. Obviously, with any capital gains the tax authorities would eat up the gains like crazy. We started pondering if there was some way that this unfair treatment can be corrected and then shared with other tax payers.
With the explosion of crypto and decentralized networks and protocols, we saw this was very possible which is how the concept of rTAX3 came to life!
We want to enable everyone int he world to become a tax collector. Not a tax payer. rTAX3 charges every token transaction a 3% fee (a.k.a indirect tax) and simultaneously redistributes that fee to all rTAX3 token holders via a rebase mechanism. That means token holders are rewarded directly in their wallets without having to initiate any stake or claim transactions. It’s all handled through our innovative rebase mechanism allowing users to save on transaction fees.
Token Utility
As mentioned, this is a community project. We need to engage them closely and take a decision on what the additional utilities are and the timing for releasing them.
We can increase utility and get to high TVL like other defi projects. There is always Staking, Liquidity Mining, LP token staking, etc.
From building out the tax protocol perspective and driving adoption of the taxation system, we will need to develop things that never have been done before. Should we create LPs with other pairs in the ecosystem to drive interoperability, multichain usage, and growth? Let’s decide this together.
Our focus is on the use case of putting taxes into the hands of the people. if you are thinking of just where we are today and the token contract that is launched, then yes it will probably moon like any RFI clone with strong tokenomics and supporters.
Defi Disciple Labs hopes that the community is not joining us because people think RFI clone and moon. We want them to join us in building the long term utility of the token.
Token Metrics
Total Token Supply: 100,000 rTAX3 (Fixed Supply)
Presale: 60,000 rTAX3 (60%)
Uniswap Liquidity: 20,000 rTAX3 (20%)
Ecosystem: 15,000 rTAX3 (15%)
Team: 5,000 rTAX3 (5%)
rTAX3 Token Contract Address: 0x2fBF522c8A514CdeE64E5E3FBd37fAA1555DfF4C
Presale Information
Presale link: https://defidisciplelabs.finance
Presale Price: 1 rTAX3 = 0.02 ETH
Initial Price on Uniswap Liquidity: 1 rTAX3 = 0.022 ETH
Presale is 10% cheaper: The initial launch price will be higher than the presale price to create an initial floor for presale contributors.
Liquidity will be locked in Uniswap: To support the initial floor price, 440 ETH and 20,000 rTAX3 will be added in the Uniswap Liquidity Pool.
LP Tokens will be locked: We will use a protocol like team.finance to lock and be transparent with the community the location of LP tokens.
rTAX3 token claim will be available right after the token sale ends.
rTAX3 Presale Contract Address:
0x027b60572d3ac2393a6ed5249ea1956b3c1b6109
Want a chance to win $100 worth of rTAX3 tokens?
Give this Medium article 50 claps
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We will randomly pick one winner. Maybe 2 or 3 if the hype is strong!
Who are the early supporters?
So many smart and influential crypto adopters have supported this project from the very beginning. Now we share the fruits of our labor and can celebrate with a big Uniswap launch.
Official Links
Website: http://defidisciplelabs.finance
Twitter: https://twitter.com/defidisciplelab?s=03
Chat Group: https://t.me/defidisciplelabs
ANN Channel: https://t.me/defidisciplelabsann | https://medium.com/@0x0000000000dev/presale-for-rtax3-is-live-would-you-rather-be-the-tax-collector-or-the-tax-payer-c3a22c8da27d | [] | 2020-12-20 18:04:17.483000+00:00 | ['Web3', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Uniswap', 'Blockchain', 'Token Sale'] |
How to get the most out of the cloud | Over the years, building and testing software that runs on physical servers has become the status quo. The database is the most important part of the application. Usually, it’s the only dependency an application has. Testing has become a no-brainer. Most of the tests are unit-tests and we run end-2-end tests manually or with Selenium to see if everything integrates properly.
Moving an application to the cloud is usually not too difficult. It will require some minor modifications. So why change anything to the way we build software?
1.) The difference between on-prem and cloud
In the end, every application runs on a computer. The cloud, and on-premise both depend on physical servers in a datacenter. The difference is who owns them, who’s responsible for maintenance, and who pays for them.
In the cloud, servers are shared amongst customers. On-premise, the company owns its hardware. On the bottom line that makes a difference:
The pricing model
Buying a server is a one-time investment. It’s a matter of buying the hardware, some operating system licenses, and probably a database license. That should be sufficient to run some applications for a couple of years.
To get the most out of the investment, the server will probably run as many applications as possible. And it will probably always be “up”. Shutting it down is probably more expensive than shutting it down. The only thing it needs is electricity, and that’s not expensive.
Cloud is different. The biggest difference is: You can pay as you go. Rent a server for a day, delete it when you’re done. You’ll be charged for a single day of usage, not for one physical machine.
Server maintenance
To host a website on a server, for example. First, you’ll need a server with an operating system. Then, you’ll need to install and configure Apache or IIS. They require an operating system.
In the Cloud, you don’t need a server to get a website up. Just purchase the application-runtime instead. You’ll get a place where your application runs without having to purchase and configure a server, nor do you have to patch, or secure the operating system. That’s done by the cloud-vendor. That saves a lot of time, resources, and money.
Cloud doesn’t mean you can’t use Virtual Machines anymore. If you want, you can get one. But typically, they’re more expensive than using cloud-native components.
2.) Getting the best out of the cloud
Moving to the cloud may be a matter of replacing the servers you have on-premise with virtual machines in the cloud. But a lift-and-shift approach has a down-side. It’s relatively expensive in the long run. Moving away from virtual machines to a more cloud-native approach creates opportunities and maybe cheaper.
Cloud-native applications aren’t just cheaper to host, they’re cheaper to build too. Using off-the-shelve components vastly shortens the time it takes to build an application and thus gives a business a competitive advantage.
Use the cloud to build software faster
Nobody builds software from scratch anymore. Many generic parts of an application are available as an NPM- or a NuGet package. Cloud takes that to the next level:
Software as a Service, the building blocks of a project
How many log-in screens have you built in your career? Finally, there’s no need to do so anymore. Such components are available as building blocks in the cloud. They provide user-management screens, MFA, and lots more. Auth0 and AD Connect offer this service for example. All you need to do is configure it, and wire it to your application.
Lots of functionality is available in the cloud. Functionality like logging in, sending e-mails and text messages, facial/object recognition APIs, Blockchain, billing, support-ticketing, you name it. Combining these components with open-source packages makes it possible to build an application with very few lines of code.
How many log-in screens have you built in your career? Finally, there’s no need to do so anymore. Such components are available as building blocks in the cloud. They provide user-management screens, MFA, and lots more. Auth0 and AD Connect offer this service for example. All you need to do is configure it, and wire it to your application. Lots of functionality is available in the cloud. Functionality like logging in, sending e-mails and text messages, facial/object recognition APIs, Blockchain, billing, support-ticketing, you name it. Combining these components with open-source packages makes it possible to build an application with very few lines of code. Infrastructure- and Platform as a Service and containers, the building blocks of the infrastructure
Setting up a SQL server or an Active Directory server is history. All of that is available as a service in the cloud or a Docker container.
A lot of products are available as a service or have been containerized. There are two ways of getting SQL Server up and running, for example. Either pull a Docker image and run it or get a managed instance on Azure. This applies to a lot of different services. As a result, often, there’s no need to configure, maintain, and pay for a virtual server anymore.
For a lot of applications, either the cloud or open-source provides the building-blocks of an application. That changes the way an application is built. It requires fewer lines of code to build a working application. And compared to on-premise code, a lot more code will invoke third-party APIs or store state somewhere.
Different services have different fees. In an early stage, it might be cheaper to store data in Azure Storage whereas when the amount of records increases, it might be more appealing to store (parts of) the data in a SQL Server instance. Applying patterns like Hexagonal/Ports-and-Adapters makes migrating easier.
The down-side
There’s a down-side, too. Your application has to be able to deal with services that are temporarily unavailable. Consuming SAAS products has an impact on the availability of the application. Most of the services have an uptime guarantee of 99.99%. But not every service will be down at the same moment. Imagine having an application that has a dependency on 3 services. The downtime is:
99.99% * 99.99% * 99.99% = 99.97% uptime guarantee
The more services are used, the lower the uptime guarantee gets. That’s why circuit breakers and Event-Driven Architecture is applied in cloud-native software.
Save money by not paying for idle resources
Imagine running a web-store. Usually, it has a couple of thousand visitors a day. On Black Friday, millions of customers visit the site. Hosting an application in the cloud could pay off in this scenario.
An on-premise configuration has a maximum capacity. The amount of hardware the business owns is probably an optimum between the cost of the hardware and the profit they will make with it. That might mean some potential customers are unable to visit the web-store on Black Friday because the server can’t handle the number of requests. It also means some of the servers the company owns have been purchased for the sole purpose of handling traffic on Black Friday. They’re idling for the rest of the year.
In the cloud, it’s possible to scale up and down, vertically and horizontally whenever you want. As a result, it’s possible to scale up to the capacity needed to serve the site to every potential customer on Black Friday, and scaling down the next day. That way, the company can serve the site to every customer without having to pay for that capacity for the rest of the year.
Horizontal scaling
Just like on-premise, there’s a maximum to the vertical scale of a resource in the cloud. Under the bonnet, there’s always a physical server that has a limited number of CPUs.
The difference is in scaling horizontally. Cloud vendors have a vast amount of hardware available, allowing clients to scale horizontally, almost endlessly. An application doesn’t scale horizontally out of the box. It needs to be built in a certain way. How to, depends on the nature of an application, but commonly, APIs are made stateless, and read-, and write operations are separated with the CQ(R)S pattern. These patterns make it possible to use replica’s of the data sources for querying, decreasing the number of operations the main data source needs to process. To ensure every request can be processed, write-operations are queued.
Relational databases don’t scale well. Consider using a NoSQL database instead.
Improve user experience by minimizing the impact of deployments
Imagine running an international webshop. Typically, when you’re deploying a new version, it’s a good practice to take the current version offline when the newer version is up and running. But how do you know it’s up? Is it up when a given endpoint returns a 200 OK? Or is it up if customers keep ordering products on the webshop?
Being able to run multiple versions of the same software makes it possible to serve the newer version of the software to a small number of end-users. Undo the deployment automatically if the newer version causes issues that haven’t been identified during the testing process. Monitoring the conversion-points on the website makes will tell if the newer version of the software is still functioning correctly. In the example of the webshop, an indicator could be: Are people still ordering products? If they aren’t, roll back the deployment!
These concepts (blue-green, ring-based, and canary releasing) have been around for some time. They aren’t cloud-specific concepts, but they’re easy to apply in the cloud and they minimize the impact of deployments. As a result, potential issues have a much smaller impact on the business.
3.) How it impacts the software and the tests
To build an application faster, to deploy it smarter, and to scale it more efficiently, the software can’t be built the same way on-premise oriented applications are built. To get the most out of the cloud, it needs to have the following characteristics:
It needs to be backward compatible, to support running different versions simultaneously.
Read- and write operations need to be separated to support horizontal scaling.
APIs need to be stateless to support horizontal scaling.
The application needs to cope with the fact that parts of the infrastructure may be temporarily unavailable.
The tests need to be quick enough to support deploying multiple versions of the software a day
Common patterns
On-premise, when a server is down, every application on the server is down. With cloud-native applications, that’s not the case anymore. Probably, only a little part of the infrastructure will be down. When the application is built right, just a little part of it is impacted. And by having multiple small applications, instead of one giant application, the impact of an outage may even smaller.
Assume we’re still running a webshop and there’s a database outage. Normally, it would be impossible for a customer to complete his order in that case. It can’t be stored in the database. Event-Driven Architecture makes the application more robust. Event-Driven applications treat the event of a customer completing his order is an “event”, which is stored in a queue. If the database is down, the event can’t be processed and will be saved so it can be retried later.
There are several ways to build an Event-Driven application. Commonly, Command Query Responsibility Segregation is applied, meaning one part of the application is responsible for processing all write operations, and another is responsible for handling all read operations. The read operations use a separate, dedicated read-model; a queryable representation of the main data source of the application.
The write-part of CQRS works with events, event-handlers, commands, and command-handlers. By increasing the number of nodes that process these commands and events, by introducing replicas of the read-model, and by increasing the number of nodes that process the read operations, the application scales horizontally, endlessly.
The tricky part is to model the commands and events correctly. Often, people use Domain-Driven Design to create the model.
Continuous Delivery? Progressive delivery!
Backward compatibility doesn’t have that big an impact on the software itself. It impacts the software delivery process. The database is usually the dependency that needs to be backward compatible. Removing a column isn’t a matter of just dropping it anymore. When two different versions are used simultaneously, they write data to the same data source differently. The software needs to cope with that. As a result, it takes quite some releases to change a data-schema.
To change a database in a backward-compatible way, use a method called Expand and Contract or Parallel Change and approach releasing the software differently.
Typically, a release contains one or more features. With Expand and Contract, it takes five releases to change a database-schema. As a result, it takes at least five releases to create a new feature. In other words:
Release != feature
Having backward-compatible versions of the software makes it possible to do:
Canary releasing
Bring a new version to production and introduce it to a small group before deploying it to all of the end-users. Get real user feedback and be sure the new release doesn’t cause trouble.
Bring a new version to production and introduce it to a small group before deploying it to all of the end-users. Get real user feedback and be sure the new release doesn’t cause trouble. Blue-green deployments
Deploy new versions of the software anytime a day without causing downtime.
Deploy new versions of the software anytime a day without causing downtime. Dark-launching
Ship new functionality to a small group of end-user and get real user feedback.
Testing
In many cases, an end-2-end-test requires a system to be in a given state. To get it in that state, usually, database scripts populate the database with test data.
Having multiple, smaller applications, which all have their own (type of) data-source, makes end-2-end testing very complicated. Every individual microservice needs to be set-up differently.
And cutting big application into small ones, and deploying it frequently introduces a problem: Versions… Every environment will have different versions of the software all the time. And if it has the correct version today, it’s will be replaced with a newer one tomorrow.
To cope with that, the test suite needs to have the following characteristics:
Daily releases are impossible if the testing process takes longer than a day. The faster the test-suite, the better. The test-suite needs to be able to run in less than half a day.
Maintenance of the test cannot take longer than half a day.
They can guarantee working software, end to end, in every environment (even in production)
Maintenance to an end-2-end test makes changing the software fast, and frequently they’re too complex. There’s a new alternative: Contract testing. As a result, every individual application gets its testing pyramid which looks like this:
Being able to run different versions of the software opens another door. Testing changes into a process you do in production, too. By being able to run different versions of the same software it’s now possible to:
Do dark launches
Do A/B testing
Ring based deployments
Canary releasing
And so forth…
Summary
Cloud is more than server virtualization. In fact, for many applications, there’s no need to have a server at all. Cloud vendors offer infrastructure as a service. All you need to do is select the components the application needs, and the cloud vendor supplies it. It’s a lot cheaper, too.
Because you’re not owning any hardware, when you’re in the cloud, it’s possible to scale up, and down, whenever need be. That way, you can always get the capacity you need at a particular moment.
The cloud offers software as a service, too. Building your own log-in screen may be a thing of the past. Selecting the components you need to build your application, makes building the software a lot simpler.
Build applications differently to exploit the possibilities of the cloud.
Use Event-Driven Architecture and CQRS to be able to scale horizontally
Apply Domain-Driven Design to cut your monolith into little pieces
Stop releasing when a feature is done, release all the time
Do not use E2E testing, use Contract Testing instead
What to do next
Applying Domain-Driven Design, CQRS and the testing pyarmid is complex. Read how to, and find example code in the following articles: | https://medium.com/vx-company/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-the-cloud-eb1b8b2826fe | ['Albert Starreveld'] | 2020-09-12 12:03:44.120000+00:00 | ['SaaS', 'Software Development', 'Iaas', 'Progressive Delivery', 'Cloud'] |
How To View iPhone Call History | It’s really simple and easy to learn how to check call history on iPhone devices. Whatever your reason may be for viewing an iPhone call history, you’ll be able to see incoming and outgoing calls, the phone numbers involved, date of the calls, and their duration. Below, I’ve detailed the different ways in which you can view your own call history along with viewing someone else’s using PhoneSpector.
*Side Note: PhoneSpector is only intended to be used by parents to monitor their children or employers to monitor their employees’ company-owned devices with permission.
How To View My iPhone Call History
Step 1: Click On The Phone Icon
Step 2: Select The Recents Icon
Once you open the Phone icon, you should see a bar at the bottom of your screen that includes Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Voicemail. Click on the Recents icon that looks like a clock.
Step 3: View All Of Your Phone Calls
Now, you can view all of your iPhone call history including incoming, outgoing, and missed calls. To learn more about a specific call, click the (i) icon to find out the date the call was made on, the time of it, and the call type (missed, outgoing, or incoming.) If the call was with someone in your contacts, you’ll be able to view other information about them (if entered) like their email.
How To View Your iPhone Call History Via iCloud
Step 1: Go To Your iCloud Account On Your iPhone
Go to your settings and click on your name. Then, tap on iCloud.
Step 2: Back Up Your iPhone
From iCloud, you need to choose iCloud Backup. Then, you click on Back Up Now. Make sure your iPhone is connected to Wi-Fi during the backup process. You also get 5GB of iCloud storage for free.
Step 3: Log Into Your iCloud Account
Now that your iPhone information is backed up, you need to log into your iCloud account. Visit iCloud.com and enter your login information. This site you can access via any web browser on any device.
Step 4: Review Your iPhone Call History
Once you’ve logged into your iCloud account, you can view your phone call history like you would via your iPhone. You’ll also be able to view your iPhone’s photos, videos, app data, iMessages, and more. | https://medium.com/phonespector/how-to-view-iphone-call-history-faca0d993b58 | ['Doug Brennan'] | 2020-12-16 14:54:14.958000+00:00 | ['iPhone', 'Phone Calls', 'How To'] |
How to install postgreSQL and pgAdmin4 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | PostgreSQL is a relational database management system, which is used widely and very much loved by the professionals. It is one of the most advanced database management system.
In this guide I will provide you instructions for the installation of postgreSQL and pgAdmin4 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS operating system.
Installing postgreSQL
We can use apt install command to install the package as Ubuntu have Postgres packages in its repositories.
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install postgresql postgresql-contrib
Now, you have system with PostgreSQL installed on it.
Using PostgreSQL
After getting installed, PostgreSQL creates a default user named “postgres”. Functionality of users are similar to that of other database management system like MySQL. We can start using PostgreSQL by typing following command on terminal.
$ sudo -i -u postgres
You will see something like this :
postgres@hostpcname:~$
You can then enter the PostgreSQL terminal by typing :
psql
Now you can access the databases.
To exit the PostgreSQL type:
\q
postgres@hostpcname:~$ exit
Installing pgAdmin4 inside a python environment :
pgAdmin4 is a free software project released under the PostgreSQL/Artistic licence. This software package helps in managing the databases.
Installation
As you are going to install pgAdmin4 on the a python environment, make sure that you have python installed on your system.
Checking python version :
$ python3 --version
Python 3.6.8
If you get this then you have python 3 installed. Now install virtualenv by using pip (pip3 for python 3).
pip3 install virtualenv
Working in a virtual environment make tasks isolated and easier to handle. Now create a virtual environment by using following command:
$ mkdir pgadmin4
$ cd pgadmin4
$ virtualenv pgadmin4
To activate the virtual environment type :
$ source pgadmin4/bin/activate
Now, we can install pgAdmin4 in this virtual environment.
Download the whl file:
Now install the package by typing :
$ pip install pgadmin4–4.8-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Afterwards, we need to configure and run pgAdmin4.
Create a new file called config_local.py in pgAdmin4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pgadmin4/ by using following command:
$ gedit pgadmin4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pgadmin4/config_local.py
Add the following text inside the file.
import os
DATA_DIR = os.path.realpath(os.path.expanduser(u"~/.pgadmin/"))
LOG_FILE = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, "pgadmin4.log")
SQLITE_PATH = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, "pgadmin4.db")
SESSION_DB_PATH = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, "sessions")
STORAGE_DIR = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, "storage")
SERVER_MODE = False
You are done with the installation and configuration.
let’s check if it works, you can run the pgadmin through following command.
$ python pgadmin4/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pgadmin4/pgAdmin4.py
You will see something like this :
Starting pgAdmin 4. Please navigate to http://127.0.0.1:5050 in your browser.
As it is already telling, copy this url onto your browser and access pgadmin. You will see similar interface on your browser as shown in the screenshot.
To test that it is connected with the postgresql create a server. First tap on add new server and Configure the things as shown in the screenshots. | https://medium.com/@akash16s/how-to-install-postgresql-and-pgadmin4-on-ubuntu-18-04-lts-c19895548df8 | ['Akash Srivastava'] | 2019-12-04 05:07:29.291000+00:00 | ['Postgresql', 'Postgres', 'Installation', 'Ubuntu', 'Python'] |
Introducing kafkaQ: a real-time monitoring tool for Kafka applications | A critical gap in monitoring capabilities
In 2011, LinkedIn developed Apache Kafka — an event streaming platform that uses the publish-subscribe (pub-sub) architecture. Since then, companies like Twitter, Netflix, and Uber have integrated Kafka to scale their distributed systems. With Kafka’s design, companies are able to process high volumes of event-driven data, such as clicks, searches, etc. For more information about the Kafka architecture, see this article.
Naturally, Kafka applications generate large amounts of data. These analytics, however, can enhance more than just product decisions. In fact, if a company has an intimate familiarity with their system’s performance, operations, and weak points, they can rapidly improve the user experience.
For this reason, an effective Kafka monitoring tool can supercharge a company’s engineering process. So far, however, this field is lacking, which has created frustration for Kafka developers.
How does kafkaQ solve this problem?
kafkaQ aims to solve the need for a robust, open-source Kafka monitoring tool. Our Electron app features a dashboard that allows you to track your system’s performance in real-time. Individually, we track each of the following metrics for both producers and consumers:
Data Size — the volume of data flowing through a given producer/consumer at any point in time (in bytes)
— the volume of data flowing through a given producer/consumer at any point in time (in bytes) Processing Time — the amount of time your system uses to process each request (in milliseconds)
— the amount of time your system uses to process each request (in milliseconds) Pending Duration — the quantity of time each request spends in limbo before being processed (in milliseconds)
Under the hood, kafkaQ uses the KafkaJS API to connect with your Node.js backend and extract data. This information is then routed through an Express server to the Electron UI via WebSocket. However, all these details are abstracted away from the user through our NPM package. For this reason, kafkaQ can be integrated into a preexisting Kafka application in a matter of minutes.
Installation
Now that we understand the problem kafkaQ aims to solve, along with the functionality it provides, let’s see how to integrate kafkaQ with your application! In total, it takes just 4 lines of code to be able to view our metrics.
To get started, you’ll need to install our NPM package. To do so, run npm install kafkaq-monitor
Now, let’s track your producer analytics. In your producer file, you’ll need to import our trackProducer method (see line 2 of the code snippet below), and then invoke it (see line 12) just after connecting your producer (make sure to pass your producer as an argument). See the example below:
Similarly, in your consumer file, import our trackConsumer method (see line 2 of the code snippet below), and invoke it (see line 20) after your consumer subscribes to a topic. Again, pass your consumer in as an argument. Here’s an example:
And that’s it! You’re done integrating kafkaQ with your application. To view your metrics, simply run npm run electron-app and you should be able to track your system in real-time. Here’s an example of how your dashboard should look:
Your kafkaQ dashboard
A final note
The kafkaQ team welcomes any suggestions, so if you find any bugs or have other feedback, feel free to submit a GitHub issue here. We’ve also written thorough documentation which you can find on our companion website here. If you’ve benefited from kafkaQ or are inspired by our vision, we sincerely appreciate each GitHub star we receive.
kafkaQ Engineers:
Jonathan Barenboim, GitHub & LinkedIn
Kai-Wei Hsu, GitHub & LinkedIn
Micah Y. Turan, GitHub & LinkedIn
Shreshth Srivastava, GitHub & LinkedIn | https://medium.com/@shreshthsrivastava2/introducing-kafkaq-a-real-time-monitoring-tool-for-kafka-applications-f26cbaeccf2 | ['Shreshth Srivastava'] | 2020-11-11 21:18:17.501000+00:00 | ['Pub Sub', 'Kafka', 'Distributed Systems', 'JavaScript', 'Nodejs'] |
Microsoft 365 features that will enhance efficiency in remote work life | As we head into 2021, we continue to face the reality of a remote work life. With the pandemic still raging high in parts of the world, businesses continue to grapple with the new normal of working from home. Many adopted tools and software to support and enable their teams and operations, while several businesses are still struggling to find the right support. The year saw an immense increase in Cloud adoption, too, and the migration to one, single Cloud platform as this model proved to benefit operations and collaboration between employees and teams. Has your business pivoted or changed their internal systems this year? Or are you still wondering what’s right for your business? Take a look at some of the top Microsoft 365 features that make it an industry-leading software to enhance productivity and efficiency.
1. Real time co-authoring of documents using MS Excel, PowerPoint, and Word
Easily collaborate with teammates and managers to get feedback or approvals on your work. Work on documents or presentations together, plan strategies, campaigns, projects or review performance at the same time, without any hassle. The ‘sharing’ feature allows multiple people to work on documents at the same time, make edits and plan while working remotely in different locations.
Collaborating on documents
2. Microsoft Teams
Communicate and collaborate with teammates and employees using Microsoft Teams. This application enables you to build stronger teams by enhancing productivity levels. Within the Teams app, employees can chat, call, attend meetings, design and automate workflows together and share documents with ease. Team members can also access shared files from one single place. Furthermore, Microsoft Teams also allows you to integrate with third party tools such as Survey Monkey, Zendesk, and many more.
Collaborating with teams
3. Work from any device, any where
You can access all your Microsoft 365 applications across multiple devices from your laptop to phone or even a tablet. Now work at ease, any time anywhere, without compromising on quality or commitments.
Any device, any time
4. Cloud based shared storage
Being a Cloud based application that allows employees to access files anywhere, any time, the same file can be edited or reviewed without saving multiple versions. You can still access any version at any time.
5. A secure work environment with Enterprise Mobility and Security
We understand how important data and business security is today, considering the remote environment we work in. Microsoft 365 comes with additional layers of security through Enterprise Mobility and Security, reducing the possibility of hackers or any breach of data.
6. Encrypted and secure data
Further to Enterprise Mobility and Security, data is also stored on Microsoft’s physically secure servers and is protected with continuous threat management and security monitoring. In 2014, Microsoft became the first cloud provider to receive approval from the Article 29 Working Party, an independent advisory body established by the European Parliament to focus on data protection. The ruling confirmed that Microsoft meets the high standards of EU data protection legislation so, regardless of where data is stored, it’s protected to a standard approved by EU authorities.
7. My Analytics
This reporting feature allows employees to track their usage of the various Microsoft applications and even enables you as an employer to track your employee’s usage. It acts as your personal dashboard, providing you with necessary information and data.
Schedule a consultation today with our in-house experts to learn more about how Microsoft 365 can be useful for your business and enable efficient, productive functioning of your teams and business operations. | https://medium.com/@pacticalsolutions/microsoft-365-features-that-will-enhance-efficiency-in-remote-work-life-2cca8e8f26c5 | ['Jay Hajeer'] | 2020-12-23 05:52:20.719000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Microsoft 365', 'Cloud', 'Office 365', 'Cloud Computing'] |
Old-fashioned Remote Test Tasks for IT Specialists must be Replaced | Old-fashioned Remote Test Tasks for IT Specialists must be Replaced
Because these tests are a waste of time
Photo by wu yi on Unsplash
By remote test task I mean a test which a company sends to you after considering your cover letter and resume.
For example, for developers, a test can be writing a script, a program, a website, an application and so on. You perform this work at home and send a solution when it is finished. The main idea of a test or pre-employment test is to check a candidate’s skills in a specific area and their ability to perform a task during a limited time.
I spent a substantial amount of time doing tests, talking to companies and below I share some of my observations, actual situations and an answer to a question “What is another way of testing a candidate’s skills?”
Test != Skills. What is Wrong with Tests
Some could say “If you want to find a job, you need to do a test otherwise how do people assess your skills for a position?”.
I do not mind tests that actually check my skills. I mind tests which you need to perform remotely without any discussion and then get a rejection.
So you do a test, spend your time on it, and send it. What’s next? You either will be invited to the next step or rejected without any information why. Actually, every candidate wants to know why you send them a usual rejection without any feedback about the test.
A rejection without feedback tells me that tests from all candidates were slid across a monitor and compared with each other. Which is the best?
Most tests check not your actual skills but your interest in a company because you spent time on this. And if your work is so good (what means good to them is a very intriguing question), they might think you are very motivated to work for them. As you see, sometimes your performed test does not relate to skills at all.
Some companies hire people according to only performed tests. It is very clear when they say “We will send you an invitation to the next interview if your test will satisfy our engineers etc”. Because, it takes a long time to identify your skills, ability to work and many more parameters which are really significant as well as experience. And actually, it takes more than one call with an HR manager and others. It is time, and time is money. Checking test is so easy. No efforts required.
There is no correct or incorrect performed test. A company uses this test to see whether the candidate’s style matches their style or not. This is the most common way of checking tests.
They forget that skills are what you can improve and/or achieve. We are not born with the ability to code high load applications.
Test Before the First Interview. This is not Funny
The most interesting story is when they send you a test before the first interview.
You just read a vacancy, company’s blog, search in Google, and apply to their position. Sometimes a job description is poorly written and your future responsibilities are very far from the specified. That’s why you need to have a call with them before spending your time on some unknown test.
I guess, performing a test before an interview is like a guarantee that you are a real professional and you are who you say you are and you have skills that they really need. Otherwise, they will not spend time on conversations with you.
Whatever it is, this way of communication you should avoid.
You do not know much about the vacancy and the company, but you already have been rejected. This is absolutely ridiculous.
I got into a situation where a manager who considered my resume, without any doubts, sent me his test and added that he sent this test only to the “best” candidates. Okay. I should have believed in this fairytale that he copied, pasted, and sent a short text (all these actions take less than 10 seconds) only to the special candidates, not all, of course. According to our conversation, this guy seemed drunk.
Another uncommon situation is when a company reviews your portfolio, and sends you a message about how they liked your code/text and they are glad to ask you to perform their test. You have 24 hours on the test and the assignment in already attachments. Let the games begin. No one asked you if you have time for this work or not. However, you already have the obligation to perform this test. This is absolutely insane.
Time == Money
I do not understand why companies do not pay money for your time. Actually, they get your work for free. This is absolutely ludicrous. Time must be paid. No one asked these companies to send a test to everyone who applied to their position. They could pick several strong candidates, pay their time, receive their work, and talk to them.
Candidates, who receive a test, struggle to perform it as best as they can. They spend time, energy, and make huge efforts. Sometimes for nothing. Unfortunately, they have a 50% chance to get a rejection.
Portfolio == Actual Skills
Even though you have a portfolio, a company asks you to perform a test. From this perspective, it seems that their test is the most valuable thing which can show everything that you know, you can do etc. And your portfolio is just worth nothing.
Every time I receive a test in my email I ask myself if it really is not enough to figure out what I can do according to my portfolio, higher education, and GitHub. Why can’t you just talk to me and ask everything you want instead of sending this test to me?
Once, I got a negative review about my portfolio (I had not even asked their opinion about my work) from an IT company. Just to somehow show that they are totally right, they send me comments that their style of writing is not equal to mine and that’s why my writing is poor. I do not know how to respond to this.
Anyway, a portfolio can show how the skills of one have been changing during a period of time. In some detailed research, you can even see how a person thought during a text, code etc.
A portfolio is a perfect, underestimated way to check knowledge because people usually feel rewarding of what they do for their blog or website. They get comments, claps etc. That’s why they are trying to do their best.
Test != Responsibilities
For example, you need to code a back-end service in Go that receives an image from a web-page and saves this image on your local computer. This is your test. You have 1 week.
Don’t you think that after being hired for this position, 8 hours of your day you will just spend on writing a back-end that just receives images and saves them in your local computer?
Answer: of course, not.
Another Way of Testing. Yes, it exists
I have seen that some companies do not practice old-fashioned tests.
I asked some of them why they can’t just send a test in email. They told me that they are more interested in the way of thinking of a candidate, than the actual result.
So, instead of a test, they have an online conversation with you, give you a small task and ask you to share your screen to see what you are doing and how you’re thinking.
So, they can see:
your thoughts,
how you communicate,
how you use your environment, applications,
how you can deal with problems and unknown information,
how you search for information.
This method is a way better than sending a test. But I practised this way of testing only once, which tells me that for most IT companies a remote one-week long test is still a priority. Instead, they could have a discussion with a candidate and learn a lot about this person just in a conversation. | https://medium.com/illumination/old-fashioned-remote-test-tasks-for-it-specialists-must-be-replaced-a867d5e250b3 | ['Jane Kozhevnikova'] | 2020-07-09 11:59:31.439000+00:00 | ['Work', 'Job Search', 'Job Interview', 'Job Hunting', 'Skills'] |
Extend a hand | Creating an empathic world
This poem remained my wallpaper for more than 2 years. And those two years were the loneliest ones. I had to carry a smile with all the negativity going on in my head. I had to meet the people who caused me pain, and I had to pretend that I know nothing about what they did to me. And the worst of all, I had no one with whom I can share my feelings.
“You never realize how lonely you are until it’s the end of the day and you got a bunch of things to talk about and no one to talk to.”
We live in a world where the taboos and stigmas are prioritized over a person ‘s well being. Our society is so accustomed to sweeping psychological imbalances under the carpet that no one ponders on the increased rate of suicidal attempts. The absence of empathy makes young people uncomfortable in seeking medical help for their anxiety and depression. Fear of judgment blocks their way to a normal life.
Therefore, I have developed my problem statement as,
Young people suffering from depression and anxiety face difficulties in coping up with their conditions alone. This results in abnormal behavior leading to suicide in the worst cases.
That is why, I want to provide a platform for such people where they can vocalize their feelings to non-judgmental listeners and empathic speakers. This will be a small step towards overcoming loneliness, that often lead to aggression, frustration and suicidal thoughts.
To gain further insight on this matter, I reached out to my cousin, who is currently doing her M.Phil in Clinical Psychology. She told me about the pros and cons of stepping forward in this direction since I do not have a medical background. Moreover, she also informed me about multiple harmless activities that may ease their suffering. I came to know that not only the patient needs counselling but their friends and family should also be educated so that they are able to offer help the right way. | https://medium.com/@abeermujahid/extend-a-hand-7e9d9ca089ba | ['Abeer Mujahid'] | 2020-12-25 10:11:20.954000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Mental Health', 'Anxiety', 'Awareness', 'Help'] |
Democracy Requires Legitimacy | Photo by Joshua Sukoff
This is madness and unprecedented.
Texas is suing battleground states and asking the Supreme Court to invalidate millions of votes and overturn the election. An election with a historic 66% voter turnout during a global pandemic. This turnout is democracy at its best but instead, key actors are trying to push the guardrails of our democracy. 106 Republican congress members have also signed onto the case as well as other GOP stronghold states. There’s been zero evidence of voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.
Here’s why this is dangerous.
For democracy to thrive and remain stable it needs legitimacy. The system requires actors who abide by democratic established norms and the masses willing to safeguard these institutions. Without this legitimacy, our democratic institutions will collapse. It’s really no surprise it had come to this absurdity, the President of the United States has constantly attacked the media, our court system, and those that opposed him. A strategy we’ve seen by dictators and authoritarians in non-democratic countries. This strategy allows them to suppress opposition to remain in power and further their own selfish interest. A set of established norms, legitimate democratic institutions, and a strong judicial system are exactly what those who seek to abuse power fear the most. Without legitimacy, the US will be more susceptible to abuse by politicians who seek office for their own selfish reasons.
It is important that the people feel safe to actively engage in the political arena and to advocate for the government to address issues within their community. People who participate in the voting process must believe in the system. They must believe that their vote counted even if their preferred candidate loses. Another fundamental aspect of democracy is that people see one another as legitimate rivals. Republicans and Democrats understand that they have different viewpoints in policy and governing but the important aspect is to see the other side as a legitimate rival. What this simply means is you accept the person has different opposing views and you don’t view them as an enemy of the public for doing so. That’s how a healthy functioning democracy would look like.
However, we’re not at the point yet.
State’s suing other states to overturn election results, congress members calling on the Supreme Court to void the election and a wave of misinformation has crippled not only the trust in our democratic institutions but I think it has also crippled our trust in one another. If Democracy is to thrive then we need to also be willing to discuss issues with the other side and we can’t do that if we do not trust one another. Free speech, the right to assembly, the free press, the military and the right to bear arms are all cornerstones of our country to protect Democracy and hold the government accountable.
However, democracy has another ally that it relies on. Average people like you and I. Just average people who care about issues within their community, who work a 9–5 but still vote, the single mother/father advocating for better childcare, the truck drivers, the healthcare workers, the accountant, the non-profit worker, the fast-food worker, the welder, the mechanic, the small business owner and so forth. Democracy can only protect us as much as we are willing to protect it. It calls on us to hold the line during these troubling times. | https://medium.com/@marcacerv/democracy-requires-legitimacy-22fd9ddeaba5 | ['Marcus Cervantes'] | 2020-12-11 16:19:40.435000+00:00 | ['Democracy', 'Political Reading', 'Congress', 'Call To Action'] |
Let’s Fight it Together! | “Awareness is the First Step”
DriveU is committed to providing you with awesome drivers whenever and wherever you need. In our pursuit to keep our service at par, we strongly encourage that all of our drivers wear face masks and to consistently use hand sanitizers to prevent the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). We have trained our drivers, and will continually inform them of the best practices to maintain hygiene at all times for the best interest of their own health and the health of those around them.
Being India’s №1 driver services platform with a vast reach across major metros, we are equally responsible to proactively spread awareness for the well being of all stakeholders — car owners, drivers and employees. This blog is not intended to provoke panic, but to share useful information and resources to aid our customers and driver-partners. Aside from prevention efforts of facemasks and hand sanitizer, here are other important measures that we’ve informed our drivers to take:
Immediately seek medical consultation and inform the DriveU team if any symptoms are noticed. Discontinue a drive, even mid-way, if symptoms are noticed. We will provide a replacement driver and earnings won’t be affected. If a customer is showing symptoms, discontinue the drive immediately, and inform DriveU team, our driver earnings or customer fare will not be affected.
What are we dealing with here?
As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), COVID-19 is caused by a virus called coronavirus. Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. Some patients may have aches and pains, nasal congestion, runny nose, sore throat or diarrhoea.
These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but don’t develop any symptoms and don’t feel unwell.
Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing special treatment.
Spreads from person to person through small droplets from the nose or mouth which are spread when a person with COVID-19 coughs or exhales.
Droplets land on objects and surfaces around the person. Other people then catch it by touching these objects or surfaces, then touching their eyes, nose or mouth.
People can also catch it if they breathe in droplets from a person with COVID-19 who coughs out or exhales droplets.
Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs. If you think a surface may be infected, clean it with a simple disinfectant to kill the virus and protect yourself and others. Clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water. Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, or nose.
If the symptoms are becoming severe with breathing issues, the person should immediately call the health department or see the nearest doctor with their recent journey details and people they have been in touch with.
Medication:
There is no evidence that current medicine can prevent or cure the disease. WHO does not recommend self-medication with any medicines, including antibiotics, as a prevention or cure for COVID-19.
Wear a mask or not?
Only wear a mask if you are ill with COVID-19 symptoms (especially coughing) or looking after someone who may have COVID-19. A disposable face mask can only be used once.
The most effective ways to protect yourself and others against COVID-19 are to
Frequently clean your hands.
Avoid touching eyes, nose and mouth.
Avoid sneezing or coughing on your hands.
Cover your cough/sneeze with the bend of the elbow or tissue.
Maintain a distance of at least 2 meters from people who are coughing or sneezing.
Stay away from latest COVID-19 hotspots (cities or local areas where COVID-19 is spreading widely)
“An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.”
Important links and resources:
WHO (Q&A on Coronavirus) https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India http://www.mohfw.gov.in/
National Helpline (As per MoHFW, GOI) | https://blog.driveu.in/lets-fight-it-together-d9973dea9aff | ['Raman Kumar'] | 2020-03-12 12:30:21.137000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'News', 'Awareness', 'Responsibility', 'Prevention'] |
Building Cross-Platform Apps With SwiftUI | Coding Time
Our application will be a very simple article listing app. We’re going to make a really simple application. Maybe I can develop this application further in the articles I’ll write about universal apps in the future.
Final app
Creating a new Xcode project
First of all, let’s create a new Xcode project. We need to create this project as a multiplatform app.
Of course, you can give the project any name you want. After that, the only thing left is to start making your project.
My advice to you while developing a project is to divide your files into folders. While doing this project, you can use folders in the same way I use them.
Building the data model
There will be only one data model in our project. As our application is an article-display application, as you can understand, an article has a data model. This model has four properties: id , title , description , type .
struct Article: Identifiable {
// MARK: - Properties
var id = UUID()
let title: String
let description: String
let type: String
}
Of course, we need objects created with the Article model. We’ll create this data by writing it directly.
let techArticles = [
Article(title: "AirPods Max: This is Expensive", description: "Let's take a closer look at AirPods Max, Apple's last product in 2020.", type: "Tech"),
Article(title: "Mac Apps are Back!", description: "With first Apple Silicon -M1- Macs, many applications that we use on iPhones and iPads come to the Mac App Store! Here is why.", type: "Tech"),
Article(title: "How to Create an Onboarding Screens in Your App", description: "Onboarding screens are very important for new users to fully understand the application and have a smooth user experience.", type: "Tech")
] let scienceArticles = [
Article(title: "Are Apple Products Becoming More Cheaper?", description: "In recent years, when I looked at the price of Apple's newly introduced products, I saw a slight decrease in the price of new products.", type: "Science"),
Article(title: "Limit Properties", description: "Limits can also be evaluated using the properties of limits.", type: "Science"),
Article(title: "Direct Substitution", description: "We can find any limit of a definite function with direct substitution. Let’s find out how we can do this!", type: "Science")
] let designArticles = [
Article(title: "Euler Number", description: "What is the number of e that we usually encounter in calculators? What does it do? Let’s find out what this number is!", type: "Design"),
Article(title: "Introduction of Limits", description: "Now that we have defined the limit, let’s try to better understand the limit by giving an example…", type: "Design"),
Article(title: "Find Limits Using Graphs", description: "Graphs are a great tool for understanding the approaching values. Let’s see how this happens!", type: "Design"),
Article(title: "Find Limits Using Tables", description: "A noteworthy method to understand limits. How, you ask?", type: "Design")
]
Now that our data model and the data sets are ready, let’s create the interface elements to display this data.
Building views
First, let’s create an ArticleView object that shows the properties of a single Article object.
struct ArticleView: View {
// MARK: - Properties
let article: Article
// MARK: - UI Elements
var body: some View {
VStack(alignment: .leading, spacing: 5) {
Text(article.title)
.font(.title)
Text(article.description)
.font(.headline)
Spacer()
}
.padding()
}
}
Now to show these ArticleView elements together, create a new View object. It’s called ArticlesListView .
struct ArticlesListView: View {
// MARK: - Properties
let articles: [Article]
// MARK: - UI Elements
var body: some View {
Text("Hello, TurkishKit!")
}
}
We won’t create the List object directly in the body because when the application is opened on a Mac device, it’s better to set the size accordingly. As you can see below, we adjusted the size of the Mac app with the frame method.
struct ArticlesListView: View {
// MARK: - Properties
let articles: [Article]
// MARK: - UI Elements
var body: some View {
#if os(macOS)
return
view
.frame(minWidth: 400, minHeight: 600)
#else
return view
#endif
}
@ViewBuilder
private var view: some View {
List(articles) { article in
NavigationLink(destination: ArticleView(article: article)) {
ArticleView(article: article)
}
}
.navigationTitle("\(articles[0].type)")
}
}
Now it’s time for the important part: SideBar and TabBar . TabBar and SideBar elements are extremely important for the structure of our application. Usually we divide our applications with these elements. In this app, the TabBar element will also be used for the iPhone version, and the SideBar element will be used for the iPad and Mac devices.
Let’s start with the TabBar element. The only thing we do in this element is arrange our main screens. We use the tag method to position the screens truly.
struct TabBar: View {
// MARK: - UI Elements
var body: some View {
TabView {
ArticlesListView(articles: techArticles)
.tabItem {
Image(systemName: "newspaper.fill")
Text("Tech")
}
.tag(0)
ArticlesListView(articles: scienceArticles)
.tabItem {
Image(systemName: "paperclip")
Text("Science")
}
.tag(1)
ArticlesListView(articles: designArticles)
.tabItem {
Image(systemName: "rectangle.and.paperclip")
Text("Design")
}
.tag(2)
}
.navigationTitle("Articles")
}
}
Let’s move onto the SideBar element. We have a basic View element in the SideBar element, similar to the TabBar element: List . We’ll use the NavigationLink object to orient in the List object.
struct SideBar: View {
// MARK: - UI Elements
@ViewBuilder
var body: some View {
List {
NavigationLink(
destination: ArticlesListView(articles: techArticles),
label: {
Label("Tech", systemImage: "newspaper.fill")
}
)
.tag(NavigationItem.tech)
NavigationLink(
destination: ArticlesListView(articles: scienceArticles),
label: {
Label("Science", systemImage: "paperclip")
}
)
.tag(NavigationItem.science)
NavigationLink(
destination: ArticlesListView(articles: designArticles),
label: {
Label("Design", systemImage: "rectangle.and.paperclip")
}
)
.tag(NavigationItem.design)
}
.navigationTitle("Articles")
.listStyle(SidebarListStyle())
}
}
Develop the code as follows to ensure the correct positioning of the NavigationLink elements.
enum NavigationItem {
case tech
case science
case design
} struct SideBar: View {
// MARK: - Properties
@State var selection: Set<NavigationItem> = [.tech]
// MARK: - UI Elements
@ViewBuilder
var body: some View {
List(selection: $selection) {
NavigationLink(
destination: ArticlesListView(articles: techArticles),
label: {
Label("Tech", systemImage: "newspaper.fill")
}
)
.tag(NavigationItem.tech)
NavigationLink(
destination: ArticlesListView(articles: scienceArticles),
label: {
Label("Science", systemImage: "paperclip")
}
)
.tag(NavigationItem.science)
NavigationLink(
destination: ArticlesListView(articles: designArticles),
label: {
Label("Design", systemImage: "rectangle.and.paperclip")
}
)
.tag(NavigationItem.design)
}
.navigationTitle("Articles")
.listStyle(SidebarListStyle())
}
}
Important: You have to locate the files of the SideBar and TabBar elements as done below — otherwise, problems will occur.
If your files can’t communicate with each other, you may need to edit your Target Memberships. Our project is very small, so you can have the two existing targets open in each file.
Finally, it’s time to edit the ContentView . Here we need to run different elements depending on which device the app is running on. For this, we’ll use tools like #if , which we also used earlier, and then we’ll use the horizontalSizeClass property. Thanks to horizontalSizeClass , we can detect whether the device running the application is an iPad or an iPhone.
struct ContentView: View {
// MARK: - Properties
#if os(iOS)
@Environment(\.horizontalSizeClass) var horizontalSizeClass: UserInterfaceSizeClass?
#endif
// MARK: - UI Elements
@ViewBuilder
var body: some View {
NavigationView {
#if os(iOS)
if horizontalSizeClass == .compact {
TabBar()
} else {
SideBar()
}
#else
SideBar()
ArticlesListView(articles: techArticles)
#endif
}
}
}
Thus, our application is officially completed! | https://betterprogramming.pub/building-cross-platform-apps-with-swiftui-3fea88cdb0ae | ['Can Balkaya'] | 2021-03-01 20:15:54.296000+00:00 | ['Swift', 'Mobile', 'Swiftui', 'iOS', 'Programming'] |
Earthquake Damage Prediction with Machine Learning — Part 2 | By — Jen Neng Ng
Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash
This story is continue from a Series of :
Part 1: Background Research
Part 2: Data Analysis
Part 3: Implementation
Part 4: Implementation (Continue)
Part 2: Data Analysis
This tutorial is using R language, the reason is less coding effort and quick plotting. The drawback may be syntax is not understandable (syntax too short) and less deep learning model support.
There are 39 columns in DataDriven.org. The main objective is to predict the ordinal variable “damage_grade”. This column presents the level of damage grade affected by the earthquake. There are three grades of damage measurement: 1: Low damage 2: Medium amount of damage 3: Almost or completely destructed.
Data Exploration
Figure 1 Data structure
This data structure plot is useful when the dataset has multiple files, especially on Kaggle competition. You can have a glance at how to combine it into a single data frame.
Run the above code will generate a quick EDA report
Figure 2 Data Statistic
Figure 3 Data Statistic
Figure 4 Data Statistic
Figure 2 shows the overall data statistic, it shows 32 continuous columns (Binary+Numeric) and 8 discrete columns (Category). Since there is only 8 discrete columns, it will be faster when we perform one-hot encoding and consume lesser ram to store the data into the dataframe.
Another thing to take a look at is the missing observations and columns, it could be possible that some of the dataset provided has missing data in particular observation (row). These steps determine whether we should perform data cleaning/imputation process.
Figure 5 Histogram
The histogram above shows the frequency distribution, it provides a quick view of numeric continuous variable distribution. The interesting point to observe is the small outlier point on the right side of the age and height_percentage plot.
Figure 6 QQ Plot
QQ plot is quite common for data science to verify the normality of data distribution. The observation here is to verify whether the head and tail curve is close to the normality line. The plot above shows building_id, geo_level_1_id, geo_level_2_id, and geo_level_3_id is “fat tail” means it has more extreme data than normal distribution and less data at the center of the distribution. (plot reference)
On the other hand, the QQ plot indicates how the variable range or measurement for each damage_grade. From there, you can identify which color line are stacking together and which do not. The color line that is not stacking together, measure that the variable is useful to distinguish whether the particular observation data is under which damage_grade. The plot has shown us that all of the numeric continuous variables is useful.
Optionally, you can also apply a log function to fix the data distribution. (reference)
Figure 7 Correlation Heat map
Correlation heat map is a useful plot to analyze the multivariate relationship. It defines the relationship for each individual variable. The plot has identified that count_floors is highly correlated with height_percentage. Also, has_secondary_use and has_secondary_use_agriculture has high correlation too.
When variables are high correlated mean both of them are having almost the same distribution, It won’t provide useful variance if you have a duplicate variable. So, we can determine later whether to remove the high correlated variables or combine them with PCA.
Figure 8 PCA Plot
Figure 9 PCA Plot
Figure 10 PCA Plot
The PCA plot above (Figure 8–10) measure the PCA for numeric variables. Based on the plot, it suggests combining these 8 variables into 6 components. Then these 6 components are able to explain 86% variance. In general, we will pick the high score and combine it into a component for each group which is called “Factor loading”. However, the plot above shows us that some variables have able to load into multiple components such as geo_level_3_id and count_families. (Cross-loading) We can use another library to perform VARIMAX rotation:
Figure 11 PCA Rotation
The VARIMAX rotation helps us to solve the cross-loading issue. It is now provides a better view of what variable we should combine. The best to combine is rotated component 1 by loading height_percentage and count_floors_pre_eq. Other components just have one variable, it is not worth to perform.
Figure 12 Chi-square and P.value
You may also check the chi-square and p.value. When p.value is less than 0.05, it means it is significant. (useful)
Figure 12 Box Plot
The box plot here can help us to find out that the damage_grade is higher when count_floors_pre_eq or height_percentage is getting higher. On the other hand, damage_grade is getting lower when geo_level_1_id is getting higher.
Another advantage of using box plots is outlier identification. At the age box plot there, it indicates some black dots are on the far right side. It can be removed in the data cleaning section, but we must verify it in the experiment section.
Table 4 EDA Finding
The data preprocessing step can go through as:
1) Data Splitting (perform splitting before upsampling to avoid interpolate data used for validation )
2) Data Cleaning (remove outlier and duplicate row)
3) Data Sampling (up-sampling to balance dependent variable data before any encoding)
4) Data Scaling (rescale continuous variable data)
5) Data Transformation (One hot encoding & PCA transformation)
6) Feature Selection (Optional) | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/earthquake-damage-prediction-with-machine-learning-part-2-611d05bd391a | ['Ng Jen Neng'] | 2020-11-27 16:42:15.079000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Data Science', 'Data Visualisation', 'R Language'] |
Perfect Graphics: The Show Stopper In Branding your Business | First Impression
Providing a brand to a business is important to make a recognizable name in market space either online or physical. Graphics play a major role to reach to audience in a visually pleasing way and with an, on point, lasting impression. Branding your business through perfect graphics becomes more important then. Business logos, business cards, social media designs and images, website design and marketing material designs and so on with correct color combinations, perfectly placed, rich content, play major role to make business stand out and accompanying audience bandwagon!
Logo Design
Some brands are immediately recognized by the logo from a distance or even from corner of the eye or vague glimpse. Thanks to the power of logo!
Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
A lot can be said about the company, its core values and belief through design of a logo. Logo may be a mix of description and be catchy at the same time!
Website Design
Same is true for company websites. A beautifully designed website with simple features engage more traffic than plain one. Attractive colors and designs draw attention more than poorly designed websites.
Photo by Igor Miske on Unsplash
Well planned website designs convey a positive message about brand being professional and powerful.
Email Design
People always retain visually pleasant design elements, images and graphics in their minds for longer period than the actual content. People cherish the reading experience and images and design and retain the reading resource in mind for longer period of time.
Would like to thank Medium publications, newsletters, writers, editors and Medium Staff for one such pleasant reading experience throughout the year 2021. Looking forward with Best Wishes, for yet another upcoming wonderful year 2022.
@Datadriveninvestor Thanks! @Codex Thanks! @towardsdatascience.com Thanks! @The Startup Thanks!
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
Some like a email newsletter in their inbox to keep flowing as they love the graphics in it! @DBCX! Yaay! Comics! Thanks for posting!
Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash
Keep company’s brand colors well matched with newsletters and other marketing materials and documents to create awareness about your brand and stand out!
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
Social Media Design
Social media page design and cover page designs and attached images also play a critical role in driving audience traffic and making a noise in digital market.
Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash
Carefully crafted images and designs of Facebook page, Instagram, posts with small and simple and powerful message is the winner always.
Thanks to @Medium for awesome platform.
LinkedIn and Twitter header designs can not be overlooked too. Properly crafted header designs make impact.
Photo by Balázs Kétyi on Unsplash
Creative and catchy content with impressive graphics stand in crowd well and also bag acclamations!
Company Utility Item Design
Company notepads, writing materials, posters and templates should also be properly printed with company logos and brand colors to increase awareness about brand and remain in memory of the users all the time.
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
Graphics should be simple, attractive, visually pleasing and above all memorable to linger in minds longer!
I, personally appreciate, the appealing images attached to rich content and well crafted impressive titles and weigh them higher and think the same is true for any other fellow reader!
All these above mentioned marketing activities if coupled with awesome graphics and images will impart a branding to your business or craft and you will stand out as winner! | https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/perfect-graphics-the-show-stopper-in-branding-your-business-ad0fb2361e27 | ['Shikha Saxena'] | 2021-12-14 12:43:18.941000+00:00 | ['Graphics', 'Graphic Design', 'Design', 'Logo Design', 'Web Design'] |
Making $10k per month after only 3 months freelancing, and what that means for my business finances | How did I get here?
I started freelancing in July 2020. We were in the middle of a lockdown at the time, due to the Covid pandemic, and I was on the verge of being made redundant from my current firm. I’d been considering freelancing for a while, so I’d been doing my research and figuring out the best way to approach the change, which I’ve written about here.
For context, my salary before going freelance was £40,000 per year, which is around $53,000 (both numbers are before tax).
Breaking down my financials
Income
So far I’ve worked for 2 clients. One as a once-off project and one which is a continuing long-term relationship. For my first 2 months, I only worked for a single week, but for the third month, I worked most days which you can see in the graph below.
Graph showing income per month from July 2020 — November 2020
While these numbers look great, keep in mind that we’re only looking at the good part. We still need to consider all of the expenses which come with running a business, even one conducted entirely online.
Tax & Insurance
As with all businesses, I am charged tax on my income. This means that I do not get to keep everything I earn. A good estimate is to keep 30% of your income aside to pay for tax and other government expenses. I like to be cautious so I actually save slightly more than that, as I will not know the amount to pay until the end of the tax year.
Graph showing income vs income after tax has been deducted
Business Expenses
Of course, no business is without expenses. Especially one starting from nothing. Most of the expenses incurred were “optional”, by which I mean I did not need to purchase them immediately and as you can see, I waited until I had work (and therefore, income) lined up before buying the larger purchases. I could have delayed these purchases until I had more income if required, at the expense of some performance or ergonomics.
July — Largest expense: Learning materials at $24
August — Largest expense: Software Licenses at $131
September — Largest expense: New laptop at $3315
October — Largest expense: New desk/chair setup at $530 each
November — Largest expense: Learning materials at $53
(All expenses have tax included in their price)
Graph showing income after tax vs income after business expenses have been deducted
Of course, business expenses are not the only expenses to worry about when working for yourself. You also need to consider personal expenses — you need to buy food and pay rent after all. Just covering your business expenses isn’t enough. Ensure you are earning enough to cover both your business and personal expenses.
On average, my personal expenses are around $1600 (£1200) per month so it’s essential I earn more than this. Personal expenses are always something to consider when calculating how much your freelance business needs to earn, as you still need to earn enough to pay your bills and effectively pay yourself a wage. Below is a new graph, taking personal expenses into account.
Graph showing income after tax vs income after business + personal expenses have been deducted
Summary
These graphs may look like they are getting worse and worse, and over the course of 5 months, I’ve not made a lot of money considering how flashy “earning $10k in a month” sounds. I earned very little for the first 3 months due to the time and effort required just finding the work. These are only the first few months of freelancing, and this is why starting any business is hard, and it’s always possible for there to be more periods where I don’t have much work.
I needed to improve my setup and order some new equipment (an ergonomic chair, desk and a new laptop) which were a significant cost but could also have been delayed if necessary and did not have to be as expensive as the ones I chose. I could have opted for cheaper equipment or delayed the purchases if I was worried about the expenses. These are expenses which won’t occur for another 3–5 years, however, so this upfront cost doesn’t concern me.
With the major expenses now paid for, all further income can be used for future business growth and ensuring stability. | https://medium.com/@danspratling/making-10k-per-month-after-only-3-months-freelancing-and-what-that-means-for-my-business-finances-3dbbbfc915af | ['Dan Spratling'] | 2020-12-15 10:15:47.178000+00:00 | ['Career Paths', 'Consulting', 'Freelance', 'Advice'] |
In the Ghetto | “Nothing happened to them,” runs Kevin D. Williamson’s refrain in Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the “Real America,” a region stretching from Northern Mississippi to Upstate New York whose struggling residents, unsympathetically but honestly limned by the longtime National Review writer, have become arguably the most scrutinized demographic in contemporary America.
Part Matt Labash-style gonzo travelogue, part Jacob Riis-mannered socioeconomic expose, part J. D. Vance-inspired tearful elegy, and part Ross Douthatian lament of decadence, Big White Ghetto covers the social, cultural, medical, and economic ailments distressing the American white working class. Appropriately enough, the peripatetic Williamson, NR’s “roving correspondent,” traverses the country to observe, diagnose, and treat these illnesses, which he accomplishes in his characteristically devastating fashion. The common causes: drugs, booze, dice, and smut — the cornerstones of American vice.
A common thread runs through this acerbic, illuminating collection of essays. All capable members of the white working class inhabiting these dying (if not already dead) towns, Williamson argues, need to quit their self-pitying, self-indulgent, self-destructive behavior and take This One Surprising Step That Changes Everything: relocate.
But while this advice should resonate among many, it’s not likely to appeal to a good chunk of the so-called left-behinds.
“Like its black urban counterparts,” Williamson contends, “the Big White Ghetto suffers from a whole trainload of social problems, but the most significant among them may be adverse selection: Those who have the required work skills, the academic ability, or the simple desperate native enterprising grit to do so get the hell out as fast as they can, and they have been doing that for decades.”
Williamson’s depiction of this blighted region is bleak indeed. “All across the Big White Ghetto,” he notes, “‘WE ACCEPT FOOD STAMPS’ is the new E pluribus unum.” Plentiful opioids (prescription or otherwise), ubiquitous beer, and shuttered factories have crippled the region for decades. “It’s a classic economic death spiral,” he concludes. “The quality of the available jobs is not enough to keep good workers, and the quality of the available workers is not enough to attract good jobs.” This death spiral can lead to white supremacy, flat eartherism, QAnon, and other dysfunctional philosophies that Williamson encounters and exposes during his travels.
Occupying the lowest-lying zone of the Big White Ghetto are the homeless, who live squalid existences on the outskirts of many (mostly liberal) cities in the American West and Southwest in what Williamson aptly characterizes as a “refugee camp for a particularly American kind of refugee.” The residents of these camps — “Americans who cannot or simply will not deal with the complexities and administrative burdens of modern life” — subsist on what ostensibly passes for compassion from rich, white progressives who disdain actually rehabilitating and integrating the refugees into civic life, preferring instead to isolate them indefinitely in camps.
Williamson also forays into non-white ghettos, such as the Cabrini-Green housing projects in Chicago and elsewhere in that battle-torn city, some 80 percent of whose homicides — more than 750 in 2016, easily the most of any American city — are gang-related. He visits Philadelphia, “a combination of failed civic institutions, a deeply embedded racial paranoia that undermines law enforcement, and a local culture that shrugs at the urban chaos this produces.”
But Williamson trains his most powerful rhetorical weapons on the notion that the white working class has anyone or anything to blame but itself. Far from perceiving themselves as victims of malign globalist or elitist forces that have conspired against them, or complaining about factories that closed a half-century ago, residents of the Big White Ghetto should take responsibility for their lives and get the hell out of Dodge.
Here, Williamson has little patience for the likes of Michael Brendan Dougherty, his National Review colleague, who writes movingly and nostalgically about the fate of fading Rust Belt working-class towns like the upstate New York burg of Garbutt. Reviving their vigorous 2016 debate in the pages of NR and The Week, Williamson contends that “to invoke Burkean conservatism in the service of preserving a community that was exnihilated into existence around a single commodity and lasted barely a century is to indulge absurd sentimentality. Yes, young men of Garbutt — get off your asses and go find a job.”
For his part, Dougherty mocks this suggestion: “If the conservative movement has any advice,” he wrote, “it’s to move out of Garbutt and maybe ‘learn computers.’” Williamson is equally harsh in his rejoinder: “The truth about these dying communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. … If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.”
This guidance makes a good deal of sense and likely represents the only way forward for those in the Big White Ghetto who truly wish to thrive in contemporary America. But it’s not suitable for everyone, and it’s distinctly possible that Williamson has overlearned the lessons of his own remarkable life.
As he succinctly and candidly puts it, “I was born to a girl in her early teens whom I have not met, a trimester before Roe v. Wade.” He recounts a horrifying, deeply personal childhood story of domestic abuse, which he’s partially told elsewhere, that casts his upbringing in Lubbock, Texas in stark relief: his mother and stepfather(s) fall firmly into the category of self-absorbed “victims” incapable of asserting agency over their actions, and but for the grace of God, Williamson himself could easily have succumbed to their sense of helplessness.
But how widely applicable are these lessons? After all, most troubled youths aching to escape from the Lubbocks and Garbutts of the world lack Williamson’s prodigious gifts. Vanishingly few are talented enough to become successful journalists, bankers, or advertising executives. Instead, for many, the best-case scenario likely involves vocational training and middle-management employment in a stable company. More likely outcomes involve manual labor.
But quite apart from nostalgia, are those prospects, superior as they seem to a dead-end career in a dying town, sufficiently appealing to inspire them to overcome decades of inertia and relocate? Not for everyone, surely.
Of course, Williamson is no social scientist, and his polemical treatment of these challenges isn’t surprising, given the journalistic and impressionistic, rather than academic, nature of Big White Ghetto, which also suffers from the typical maladies afflicting compendia of previous columns, such as datedness (like the Philadelphia chapter on crime, which dates to more than 12 years ago) and an occasional lack of coherence (like the Portland chapter on Antifa, whose themes don’t quite connect to the rest of the book).
But Williamson remains one of the great magazine writers of our time — biting, insightful, assured, and fluid — and his latest book furnishes powerful, persuasive, and contrarian (though somewhat incomplete) guidance on a burning issue we cannot afford to ignore. | https://arcdigital.media/in-the-ghetto-531f5441d134 | ['Michael M. Rosen'] | 2021-03-01 20:44:31.087000+00:00 | ['Society', 'Culture', 'Poverty', 'Economics', 'Books'] |
Should there be a dog size limit in your condo? | So you’ve talked your condo association board into allowing pets? Congratulations. But now comes the next big discussion: Should there be a size requirement for pets? Apartment building landlords, property managers and condo boards often include a size requirement in leases and bylaws. However, these size requirements too often come from people who don’t particularly know the ways of dog breeds — and how every dog has his or her own individual personality.
I’ve boarded several dogs in my condominium. One was a Louisiana Catahoula Leopard/Beagle mix. Another was a Rhodesian Ridgeback/Pit mix. The third was a Brittney Spaniel. The only people who knew these dogs were here for almost a week were neighbors who happened to see me outside for the occasional potty break or passersby who noticed eyes looking at them in the window. Other than that, all of the dogs were stone-cold quiet. Can they bark? Absolutely. Loudly. And all are somewhere between 50 to 60 pounds. If they run or bark, the whole building would hear them. But they had no desire to do so inside.
Meanwhile a Chihuahua Mix and a Shih Tzu barked or growled every single time someone walked by the lobby door or entrance door. At one point, the Shih Tzu tilted his head back so far I thought it was going to fall right off his body, howling away. If I was trying to sneak dogs in the building, these two would’ve gotten me busted.
This howling Shih Tzu would rear his head back so far I thought it would fall off. (Photo credit: Shamontiel L. Vaughn)
Too often, property managers assume that bigger dogs mean bigger problems. Dog owners know better; it’s all about whether the dog is trained. The Louisiana Catahoula Leopard/Beagle mix and the Chihuahua mix tie as my favorite dogs; but the Chihuahua has “grumpy old man” tendencies, according to his owners. Every blue moon, it showed up when he didn’t feel like walking. The Rhodesian Ridgeback/Pit was a primary example of why people should never do too much assuming about Pit bulls. Out of 80 dogs, she is the most easygoing of them all — until there is prey around. Then all bets are off. (She is so sneaky that she caught a skunk and a bird in mid-air. A house mouse would not stand a chance against a dog as fast as this pit is.)
Meanwhile the Shih Tzu was terrified of a printer being cleaned and needed anxiety medication just to be able to deal with me going to the bathroom. Separation anxiety was the reason he needed a dog boarder in the first place.
So between these four dogs, who do you think would be more likely to be the biggest noisemaker? If your answer was the smaller dogs, you’d be correct. And if your answer was the bigger dogs, you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong there either. Over the past year, I’ve dogsat enough other dogs to see them flying through apartments, condos and houses. When big dogs run, it can sound like a treadmill for residents on the floor underneath. But when big dogs are trained and used to being in smaller spaces, it is obvious from first glance — even when they enter a new space. In my case, the bigger dogs in my own condo usually just trotted or walked pretty much all of the time.
Instead of condo boards and apartment landlords insisting on a particular pet size, they may want to approach a pet friendly environment the same way pet adoption agencies do — require that all pets must get their annual (and immediate) recommended vaccinations and require new pet owners to take their pets in for some form of training. (While some property managers will insist on spaying or neutering, that is often to avoid unwanted puppies or menstrual cycles. According to veterans in an Insider interview, this procedure does not really change the dog’s personality.)
If pet owners refuse to show proof of vaccinations and/or training — and the pets become problematic for other residents — set a specific number of days that the pet(s) must be removed from the facility. As long as the condo owners are legally tied to the condo bylaws and tenants are tied to the lease beforehand, those pet agreements will be much easier to follow and enforce as needed. | https://medium.com/doggone-world/should-there-be-a-dog-size-limit-in-your-condo-98e3a023b25d | ['Shamontiel L. Vaughn'] | 2020-11-22 00:45:21.658000+00:00 | ['Dogs', 'Property Management', 'Apartments', 'Landlords', 'Pets'] |
Their Cries Still Heard | 50 Words
Their Cries Still Heard
@Melissa R. Mendelson
They wanted to tear the statues down. The woman holding her child with one hand and the other held out. The old man with his hands pushed into his face. The three behind them ready to fight because of perception. Lives gone to ash because there was no stimulus check. | https://medium.com/the-bad-influence/their-cries-still-heard-2286b640c6f7 | ['Melissa R. Mendelson'] | 2020-12-23 12:48:02.503000+00:00 | ['Melissarmendelson', 'The Bad Influence', 'Trump', 'Stimulus Check', '50 Word Stories'] |
Doctor Who — ‘Orphan 55’ [12x3] ★★☆☆☆ | I don’t mind Doctor Who using stories to make salient points about issues affecting us in reality, as that’s often been something sci-fi does in general, but there’s a way to do it with grace and subtlety. The worst offending moment was the denouement, where The Doctor all but stared down the camera and delivered a sermon to kids at home about treating the planet better… or else… before cutting to a Dreg roaring before the credits rolled. It was too on-the-nose for my taste.
To be positive, Jodie Whittaker’s still improving as The Doctor. She feels more like the character with each passing episode, although once again she tends to be best whenever she’s separated from her three companions. Maybe because being around them drains her of the spotlight The Doctor needs to flourish and take charge of the story. I just wish the writers would stop giving The Doctor masses of exposition, as she’s practically narrating the episodes and it feels awkward and clunky.
“Orphan 55” would’ve been better had they pared down the number of new characters jostling for attention and streamlined the story, with better pacing and smarter reveals of the big twists. It quickly became too frantic for its own good in the final third and some of the characters had peculiar arcs, like Kane going from security head… to evil property developer… to a gun-toting Ripley analogue from Aliens (1986).
Ultimately, this episode was shambolic and felt like a hybrid of too many previous — a touch of “Voyage of the Damned”, a bit of “Midnight”, a dose of “Smile”— but it wasn’t a total mess because the production design was solid and some of the funny lines worked nicely. It’s just a shame the story lost all sense of subtext and beat viewers over the head with ‘the moral of the story’ towards the end. It was mostly a workmanlike example of a Who adventure where a bunch of thinly-drawn characters grapple with monsters in an isolated environment… so your mileage may vary on how much that thrills you at this point in nu-Who’s 15-year lifespan. | https://dansmediadigest.co.uk/doctor-who-orphan-55-12x3-7ac258c7c5a6 | ['Dan Owen'] | 2020-05-09 17:08:28.327000+00:00 | ['Doctor Who', 'TV', 'Review', 'Culture', 'Television'] |
Configure Multiple Data Sources — Postgres & Oracle in a Spring Boot Application | Configure Multiple Data Sources — Postgres & Oracle in a Spring Boot Application Himanshu Pratap Follow Aug 27 · 3 min read
Recently, I had the requirement to connect a spring boot application to two different databases. Details as follows
Postgresql 13.1, host- server1, port 5432, database — mydb1 Oracle 12c, host — server 2, port 1521, database — mydb2, service name — mydbservice
Steps -
Add following dependency to pom.xml
<dependency>
<groupId>com.oracle.database.jdbc</groupId>
<artifactId>ojdbc8</artifactId>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency> <dependency>
<groupId>org.postgresql</groupId>
<artifactId>postgresql</artifactId>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency> <dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-configuration-processor</artifactId>
</dependency>
2. Modify application.properties files
spring.jpa.show-sql = true
spring.jpa.generate-ddl=false //ddl disabled spring.db1.datasource.username=pguser
spring.db1.datasource.password=pguser
spring.db1.datasource.jdbc-url=jdbc:postgresql://server1:5432/mydb1
spring.db1.datasource.driver-class-name=org.postgresql.Driver
spring.db2.datasource.password=orauser
spring.db2.datasource.jdbc-url=jdbc:oracle:thin:
spring.db2.datasource.driver-class-name=oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver spring.db2.datasource.username=orauserspring.db2.datasource.password=orauserspring.db2.datasource.jdbc-url=jdbc:oracle:thin: @server 2:1521:mydbservicespring.db2.datasource.driver-class-name=oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver ## Note : For oracle, we specify database name in entity class
## using annotatiton @Table(schema="mydb2", name="mytable")
3. Ensure that repository classes that connect to mydb1 or mydb2 should belong to a different package. Model, Service, and Controller classes can be in the same package.
Here, my folders details are as follows:
Application name — myapp
GroupId — com.example
ArtifactId- myapp
Base Package that conatins main() method— com.example.myapp
Separate Package for repository classes for each database -
com.example.myapp.db1repo,
com.example.myapp.db2repo
package for model class — com.example.myapp.domain
Package for Controller classes — com.example.myapp.rest
Package for Service classes — com.example.myapp.service
Package for config classes — com.example.myapp.config
4. Create two config classes having a configuration for each database source.
In the config class, we will configure domain and repository package to specific datasource.
Db1Config.class
// db1 is our primary database package com.example.myapp.config;
@Configuration
s(
entityManagerFactoryRef = "db1EntityMgrFactory", transactionManagerRef = "db1TransactionMgr",
basePackages = { "com.example.myapp.db1repo" })
agement
public class Db1Config { @EnableJpaRepositorie s(entityManagerFactoryRef = "db1EntityMgrFactory", transactionManagerRef = "db1TransactionMgr", @EnableTransactionMan agementpublic class Db1Config {
ies(prefix = "spring.db1.datasource")
@Primary
public DataSource dataSource() {
return DataSourceBuilder.create().build();
}
@Bean (name = "datasource1") @ConfigurationPropert ies(prefix = "spring.db1.datasource")public DataSource dataSource() {return DataSourceBuilder.create().build();
@Primary
public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean db1EntityMgrFactory(
final EntityManagerFactoryBuilder builder,
return builder
.dataSource(dataSource)
.packages("com.example.myapp.domain")
.persistenceUnit("db1")
.build();
}
@Bean (name = "db1EntityMgrFactory")public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean db1EntityMgrFactory(final EntityManagerFactoryBuilder builder, @Qualifier ("datasource1") final DataSource dataSource) {return builder.dataSource(dataSource).packages("com.example.myapp.domain").persistenceUnit("db1").build();
@Primary
public PlatformTransactionManager db1TransactionMgr(
return new JpaTransactionManager(entityManagerFactory);
} @Bean (name = "db1TransactionMgr")public PlatformTransactionManager db1TransactionMgr( @Qualifier ("db1EntityMgrFactory") final EntityManagerFactory entityManagerFactory) {return new JpaTransactionManager(entityManagerFactory); }
Db2Config.class
package com.example.myapp.config;
@Configuration
s(
entityManagerFactoryRef = "db2EntityMgrFactory", transactionManagerRef = "db2TransactionMgr",
basePackages = {"com.example.myapp.db2repo" })
agement
public class EpinetConfig {
@EnableJpaRepositorie s(entityManagerFactoryRef = "db2EntityMgrFactory", transactionManagerRef = "db2TransactionMgr", @EnableTransactionMan agementpublic class EpinetConfig {
ies(prefix = "spring.db2.datasource")
public DataSource dataSource() {
return DataSourceBuilder.create().build();
}
@Bean (name = "datasource2") @ConfigurationPropert ies(prefix = "spring.db2.datasource")public DataSource dataSource() {return DataSourceBuilder.create().build();
public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean db2EntityMgrFactory ( final EntityManagerFactoryBuilder builder,
@Bean (name = "db2EntityMgrFactory")public LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean db2EntityMgrFactory ( final EntityManagerFactoryBuilder builder, @Qualifier ("datasource2") final DataSource dataSource) { final Map<String, String> properties = new HashMap<>();
properties.put("hibernate.physical_naming_strategy",
"org.springframework.boot.orm.jpa.hibernate.SpringPhysicalNamingStrategy"); return builder
.dataSource(dataSource)
.properties(properties)
.packages("com.example.domain")
.persistenceUnit("db2")
.build();
}
public PlatformTransactionManager db2TransactionMgr(
return new JpaTransactionManager(entityManagerFactory);
}
@Bean (name = "db2TransactionMgr")public PlatformTransactionManager db2TransactionMgr( @Qualifier ("db2EntityMgrFactory") final EntityManagerFactory entityManagerFactory) {return new JpaTransactionManager(entityManagerFactory); }
Note: In Db2Config class, we have explicitly specified the property value of hibernate.physical_naming_strategy. This was done because during jpa hibernate query to oracle databases, entity class attribute names, were not auto converting to snakecase from camelcase . For postgresql, the default conversion of attribute name from camelcase to snakecase was working fine, so this was not added to Db1Config class. You can ignore this, if you have explicity specified the column name using annotation like @Column(name=”first_name”) in entity class.
5. Sample domain class that connects to Postgresql database.
package com.example.myapp.domain; @Entity
public class Student {
@Id
private Long id;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
// constructors and getter setter methods
}
6. Sample domain class that connects to Oracle database
package com.example.myapp.domain; @Entity
@Table(schema = "mydb2", name = "teacher")
public class Teacher {
@Id
private Long id;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
// constructors and getter setter methods
}
That's it.
Resources: | https://medium.com/javarevisited/configure-multiple-data-sources-postgres-oracle-in-a-spring-boot-application-72b28a9e6ea9 | ['Himanshu Pratap'] | 2021-09-07 11:08:02.129000+00:00 | ['Postgresql', 'Multiple Datasources', 'Oracle', 'Spring Boot', 'Hibernate'] |
Starting your Philanthropic Journey | When deciding to become a philanthropist, there are many different aspects to consider. One of the first details to focus on is why you would like to give. Philanthropy can be very rewarding for everyone involved, but it’s essential to be passionate to achieve the best outcome. The reasoning for beginning this journey should come from a genuine place of aspiration. One detail to remember is that everyone’s philanthropic journey will be different. But, by taking note of these three stages, entering the world of philanthropy can be a smoother experience.
As stated in an article by Bridgespan, the first stage of philanthropy is the exploration process. During this period, it is advisable to be strategic about what you choose to target. It is understandable and expected to care about many different interests and causes, but by tackling too many ideas at one time, one can quickly become overwhelmed. Bridgespan recommends engaging in “pilots,” which allows a beginner philanthropist to learn about multiple areas they care about while simultaneously producing results.
After you feel comfortable with your exploration process, it’s time to start experimenting. This stage is usually where a philanthropist starts to make firm decisions about their funding priorities. The funder needs to ask themselves questions about what resources they are willing to invest in and what interventions and precautions they will take when working with grantees. During this stage, the funder’s primary goal is to develop a strategy to achieve the best results. In contrast, this stage contains the most “traps” due to trial and error, so it is imperative that the funder continuously evaluates their priorities.
Bridgespan defines stage 3 as “Swinging For The Fences.” Not every philanthropist makes it to this stage, but you know you by making grant decisions that align with your strategy and assessing your progress compared to your desired results. During this stage, some important questions to ask yourself as a funder include how to improve and ways to use your resources most efficiently. Although this is stage three, it’s imperative to avoid becoming stagnant. Continue to re-design your strategy and re-evaluate your priorities as your philanthropic journey grows. The main goal of this stage is continuous progression and knowing when to adjust your position. Philanthropy is an ever-growing learning process, but by staying focused and organized during these three stages, the funder’s possibilities are immeasurable. | https://medium.com/@anslemoshionebo/starting-your-philanthropic-journey-f2417f4a6b0 | ['Anslem Oshionebo'] | 2020-12-08 19:56:00.109000+00:00 | ['Philanthropy'] |
Welcome Clint Walker to the IOTA Foundation | Clint Walker is joining the Supervisory Board of the IOTA Foundation. In this role, along with Richard Soley, Clint will be responsible for the general oversight and guidance of the IOTA Foundation.
Clint lives in Wilmington, Delaware in the United States. He is an attorney and banker by trade. Clint recently retired from Barclays Bank Delaware, a bank that he helped form in 2000, which grew to be the seventh-largest issuer of Visa and Mastercard in the US, with 6,000 employees. Prior to that, Clint was General Counsel of First USA Bank, which at that time was the largest Visa issuer in the world. Prior to that, he also served as regulatory counsel in Washington DC for Citibank. Clint started his career as a litigator for Cravath Swaine and Moore in NYC. In addition, Clint serves on numerous government commissions and charitable boards.
His expertise lies in governance, consumer banking, regulatory affairs, compliance, and controls.
On joining IOTA:
“I believe that IOTA has the very real potential for radically transforming how machines and people interact with each other in a way that will create a new paradigm for conducting business. Whether it is the enablement of novel business models through microtransactions, the cooperation between new and traditional legal frameworks, or the creation of solutions to some of society’s thorniest issues,(e.g., environmental, medical) and everything in between, such as smart contracts and smart cities, IOTA can make this interconnected world a better place. I am excited to join the team and play my role in helping make this happen.”
We are proud to announce Clint Walker as our newest Supervisory Board member of the IOTA Foundation. His combined legal, financial and regulatory experience will be a valuable asset to the foundation as we accelerate our North American expansion efforts. Please give him a warm welcome! | https://medium.com/iotatangle/welcome-clint-walker-to-the-iota-foundation-d8dc3d240890 | ['Iota Foundation'] | 2019-09-11 15:38:00.525000+00:00 | ['Distributed Ledgers', 'Iota', 'Clint Walker', 'Supervisory Board', 'Welcome'] |
IBM’s new 2nm chip | A little over a month ago, IBM announced that it had taken a very important step in chip design, developing a 2nm chip.
For those who do not know, chip manufacturing technology is measured in “nm” nano-meters (one billionth of a meter), which is the size of a transistor inside the chip. And the smaller the size of the transistors, the more they fit on the silicon wafer, giving the chip more computing power and at the same time consuming less power.
In the case of these new 2nm chips, their power consumption is reduced by a quarter and their computing power is increased by 45%. In other words, if it is placed on a mobile phone, it would last us operating 4 times longer than the current ones. Which is an important advance.
The chips being manufactured today are in the 10 and 7 nm scale, and there are already announcements from TSMC to start manufacturing 5 nm chips within 2 years.
The new chips announced by IBM could begin to manufacture within 4 years, and since IBM does not manufacture chips, it sells the license of its technology to other companies that are dedicated to manufacturing them.
For years it has been announced that the physical limit in the manufacture of silicon chips is being reached, but a way is still being found to reduce its size and improve its performance. We still have silicon chips for more than a decade.
Which is not to say that there are others looking for alternatives for the future, and those alternatives are in gallium arsenide (GaAs) and in carbon nanotubes that were also introduced by IBM more than 20 years ago.
These are alternative technologies that are not yet known when they will hit the market.
At the moment the chip market is very lively as these components are used in all kinds of products, and all large companies try to have their own designs to differentiate themselves and not depend on others, but in the end they all depend on the chip manufacturers that they are very few and are almost all in Asia (Korea, Taiwan and China).
The recent lack of chip supply has been a wake-up call for Western governments and large companies to be aware of the mistake they have made by trusting most of their manufacturing to distant countries. What is cheap today can be very expensive tomorrow.
And the most expensive thing is when you don’t have what you need.
IBM has its clear ideas and maintains the technology of chip design, even if it does not manufacture them. And it has the most advanced technology in the world and is a vital technology for everyone.
IBM’s people are not stupid at all. | https://medium.com/@amadorpalacios/ibms-new-2nm-chip-cd3b70a30d93 | ['Amador Palacios'] | 2021-06-17 06:12:32.755000+00:00 | ['IBM', 'Chips'] |
Epstein-Linked Modeling Agent Charged With Rape of Minors | A modeling agent associated with disgraced U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein has been charged in France with sexual harassment and the rape of minors over 15 years old.
https://www.bkreader.com/events/streaming-live-ohio-state-vs-northwestern-big-ten-game-live-free-19-dec-2020/
https://www.bkreader.com/events/livestreams-official-big-ten-championship-game-2020-live-stream-free-ncaa/
https://www.bkreader.com/events/streaming-live-texas-am-vs-tennessee-live-free-19-dec-2020/
https://www.bkreader.com/events/streaming-live-oklahoma-vs-iowa-state-big-12-game-live-free-19-dec-2020/
https://www.bkreader.com/events/livestreams-official-big-12-championship-game-2020-live-stream-free-ncaa/
https://www.bkreader.com/events/streaming-live-washington-state-vs-utah-football-live-free-19-dec-2020/
https://www.bkreader.com/events/streaming-free-gonzaga-vs-iowa-live-19-dec-2020/
https://www.bkreader.com/events/streaming-live-wisconsin-vs-louisville-live-free-19-dec-2020/
https://paiza.io/projects/crpNwqIwrg3xCTLRXmoECw
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Jean-Luc Brunel was arrested as part of an ongoing investigation on Wednesday at Charles de Gaulle airport as he was preparing to take a flight to Senegal.
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The Paris prosecutor announced in a statement Saturday that the charges were handed out Friday by a magistrate at the end of Brunel’s custody period. It said Brunel was not handed any human trafficking charges, which was one of the main lines of inquiry. The magistrate decided that there was not currently enough evidence to rule on that count, but he was not acquitted and could be charged in the future if anything new emerges. Brunel was remanded in custody.
Brunel is being investigated as part of a broad French probe into alleged sexual exploitation of women and girls by Epstein and his circle. Multiple women have identified themselves as victims and spoken to police since the French probe was opened in August last year, the same month in which Epstein committed suicide in jail.
A former model who testified to French police that she was drugged and raped as a teenager by Brunel said she wept tears of joy at the news of his detention.
Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | https://medium.com/@san-caselynn/epstein-linked-modeling-agent-charged-with-rape-of-minors-b6b772ece67e | ['San Caselynn'] | 2020-12-19 13:09:58.011000+00:00 | ['New York', 'News', 'Networking', 'Newsletter'] |
What Is Factor Analysis In Machine Learning | Factor Analysis in Machine Learning :
Reduce a large numbers of variables into fewer numbers of factors.
2. Puts maximum common variance into a common score.
3. Associates multiple observed variables with a latent variable.
4. Has the same numbers of factors and variables,where each factor contains a certain amount of overall variance .
Eigenvalue : A measure of the variance that a factor explains for observed variables. A factor with eigenvalue < 1 explains less variance than a single observed value.
Factor Analysis Process :
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
Extract the hidden factor from the dataset. Defines data using less numbers of components,explaining the variance in your data Reduce the computation complexity . Determine that the new data is the part of the group of data points from the training set.
Linear Discriminant Analysis(LDA)
Reduces dimensions. Search the linear combination of variables that best separates two class. Reduce degree of overfitting. Determine how to classify the new observation out of group of classes.
Direction of Maximum Variance:
PCA seeks the linear combination of variables in order to extract the maximum variance. 2. Compute Eigenvector that are principal components of the dataset and collect them in projection matrix. 3. Each of the Eigenvector is associate with Eigenvalue,which is magnitudes. 4. Reduce the dataset into smaller dimensional subspace by dropping the less informative Eigenpairs.
PCA finds line depending on two criteria :
The variation of values should be maximal along this line.
2. The error should be minimum if you don’t reconstruct original two positions of a blue dot from the new position of the red dot.
First Principle Component : | https://medium.com/@seeve/machine-learning-factor-analysis-887436c0c648 | ['Kartikeya Mishra'] | 2020-04-18 14:03:03.832000+00:00 | ['Data Analysis', 'Factor Analysis', 'Feature Engineering', 'Data Science', 'Machine Learning'] |
List of Pure Vegetarian Bollywood Celebs | Bollywood is India’s major film industry, similar to Hollywood in the United States. Hindi is the language in which Bollywood films are released. India’s official language is Hindi. In India, the majority of people live vegetarian diets. Because the majority of people in India are Hindus, and slaughtering animals is against Hindu principles. However, some Hindus consume non-vegetarian cuisine, while others do not. So there are some vegetarian male performers in Bollywood. Let’s see which Bollywood stars have adopted a vegan diet. Here is the List of Pure Vegetarian Bollywood Actors.
The following is a list of Bollywood male actors who are vegetarians:
Aamir Khan is a well-known Bollywood actor. As a lead actor, he made his Bollywood debut with the 1984 film Holi. He also acted as a child actor in the 1973 film Yaadon Ki Baaraat. He is one of Bollywood’s highest-paid performers. He also creates films and hosts the television show Satyamev Jayate. Taare Zameen Par, Ghajini, 3 Idiots, Dhoom 3, PK, Dangal, and Secret Superstar are some of his most well-known films. Dangal is the highest-grossing film of all time, while PK is the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time. Aamir Khan was a non-vegetarian who came from a Muslim family. However, after portraying a vegetarian character in the film Dangal, he became a true vegetarian.
Amitabh Bachchan is a Bollywood actor who rose to prominence in the 1990s. In 1969, he made his Bollywood debut with Saat Hindustani. He has received several honors in Bollywood for his performances. Sholay, Deewaar, Don, Amar Akbar Anthony, Laawaris, Agneepath, Black, Paa, and Piku are some of his most well-known films. For health or religious reasons, he eats a strictly vegetarian diet. The animal protection organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has named Amitabh as India’s Most Popular Vegetarian Celebrity.
R. Madhavan is a film actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. He appeared in films in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam. In 2001, he made his Bollywood debut in the film Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein. He also appeared in the well-known English-language film Inferno, which was released in 1997. 3 Idiots, Tanu Weds Manu, and Tanu Weds Manu: Returns are among his most well-known films. Madhavan is a vegan who lives a completely vegetarian diet. He is an animal lover who lives a brahmin lifestyle.
Vidyut is a Bollywood actor who also happens to be a martial artist. In 2011, he made his Bollywood debut with the film John Abraham’s Force. After the release of his starring role films, Commando and Commando 2, he gained a lot of attention. He also acted in Tamil and Telugu films in addition to Hindi films. He’s well-recognized for his ripped physique and mind-blowing feats. He eats a strictly vegetarian diet, and despite not eating non-vegetarian cuisine, he maintains a fantastic physique. He also is a member of PETA, an animal protection organization (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals). If you look at his body, you will be surprised.
— — — Please follow the link to read more
Originally published at https://www.kumarspeaking.in on December 15, 2021. | https://medium.com/@prsdkumar6/list-of-pure-vegetarian-bollywood-celebs-921a5d9a133a | ['Prasad Kumar'] | 2021-12-25 06:49:03.765000+00:00 | ['Bollywood', 'Bollywood News', 'Vegetarian', 'Celebrity Gossip', 'Bollywood Celebrity'] |
Installing and using Spark from Jupyter in three steps on Windows 10 | *Method 2: in your Command Prompt type the next command to check the installed Java version. However, be sure that you are in the correct Java path otherwise it will not work for you so go to your Java.exe file using:
cd your java path
java -version # after finding your Java.exe type this
If Java is installed you will got like this
If Java is not installed you will get the next sentence
‘java’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
All what you need to do is visiting the next site and following the indicated instructions, it is easy to install: https://www.java.com/it/download/
After installing close and re-open the Command Prompt to re-check the version!! (Pyspark requires 7 or later)
2.2- Apache Spark
Go to the next site and download hadoop spark: https://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.lua/spark/spark-3.0.1/spark-3.0.1-bin-hadoop2.7.tgz
Here it is not required to run any installer all what you need to do is to unzip the files from the downloaded spark-3.0.1-bin-hadoop2.7.tgz folder. You can create a folder called Spark (for example) in your workspace and put all unzipped files there.
The folder path will be like : C:\Users\your_name\Desktop\Spark\spark-2.4.0-bin-hadoop2.7 or you can create this Spark folder under C: in this case your path would be like : C:\Spark\spark-3.0.1-bin-hadoop2.7
I would recommend to copy this folder where all project using Pyspark exist and be sure that the folder path or name does have spaces.
Now you need to add the Spark_Home to your system environmental variable:
1- Right click on Computer and choose Properties
2- Choose the Advanced system settings then click on Environment Variables.
3- Add the variable Spark_Home under the section System Variables :
3.1- Click new and in the name space type Spark_Home
3.2- In the value space type : C:\spark\spark-3.0.1-bin-hadoop2.7 or C:\Users\your_name\Desktop\Spark\spark-2.4.0-bin-hadoop2.7 (depends on your path value)
To verify if Pyspark is installed successfully open Anaconda prompt and type :
Cd Spark_Home\bin and then type pyspark you must get a message like the one bellow (in the picture)
Spark installation is successful
Here our Spark version is 3.0.1 to exit type exit() | https://medium.com/@badiaa-makhlouf/installing-and-using-spark-from-jupyter-in-three-steps-on-windows-10-642dd7635221 | ['Baddy Mkh'] | 2020-12-23 22:14:24.235000+00:00 | ['Anaconda', 'Jupyter Notebook', 'Spark', 'Pyspark'] |
How to fill sandbags FAST and easily! | In this blog post I’m going to teach -you how to fill your own sandbags at home, so you can better secure your filming equipment, and not OVERPAY.
Here’s a video showing step by step:
This video came to be when I realized the price to purchase a Sandbag went up. It use to be a dollar per pound, so a 15 pound sandbag was $15.00 USD. However, since then the prices have changed. You can make multiple sandbags for just the price of ONE pre-filled which including shipping is almost $40.00.
Sandbag pricing including shipping from B&H photo.
I use sandbags to secure lights, Light Stands, tripods, sound blankets, my degree, myself, anything film related really! The last thing you want is to accidentally bump into your equipment, and it falls over and breaks. That’s where the sandbags come in handy!
Supplies List [Amazon Affiliate Store]: https://www.amazon.com/shop/wekangame?listId=2M2C7NCCZHHDZ
Once you have your sandbag items, you’re ready to get started! It’s important that you know the weight capacity of the bags you are using. Be careful, and don’t over fill the bags.
I know my two sandbags are rated for 18 pounds, so I’ll fill one sandbag to 15 pounds [6.8KG] and the other to 10 pounds [4.5KG]. Here’s how to fill the sandbags. Once you know that, here are the steps!
First, I recommend going outside to fill the sandbags! However, if that’s not possible. start by placing a garbage bag under your sandbag filling area, so if you make mistakes you don’t spill, sand or filler of choice.
Place your filler into your gallon bag, remember there are two sides to the sandbags, so whatever the weight of your bag, divide by two. Fill the bags until your desired weight. Since I’m using two sandbags, one for 15 pounds and one for ten pounds. My desired weight for the 15 pound bag would be 7.5 on each side, and for the 10 pound bag 5lbs on each side. Remember to get all of your air out of the bags, and zip them up. I double bag for extra protection, and in case one of the storage bags break. Place the bags into the sandbag, and then you’re done.
Now I have two sandbags for the price of about one filled. You can use sandbags for so many things. I’m using my two new sandbags right now to secure lighting equipment, and even a moving blanket!
Hopefully you can fill your own sandbags, and have multiple for the price of one!
I’m Andrew Kan, and Thank you so much for reading! | https://medium.com/@AndrewKanFilm/how-to-fill-sandbags-for-film-photography-and-youtube-bbd419a84b4e | ['Andrew Kan'] | 2019-06-30 22:24:17.385000+00:00 | ['YouTube', 'Gear', 'Filmmaking', 'Sandbags', 'Lighting Equipment'] |
Katie-Jane L’Herpiniere — Iceland Traverse — Hiking/FastPacking — 600km journey on foot traversing the land of fire and ice. | Katie-Jane is a British adventure girl living in the French Alps. She’s addicted to type 2 fun, powered by sugar and sunshine, and a lover of marzipan! Katie is mostly known for her organisation and planning skills (a queen of lists and highlighters), and her unwavering belief that anything is possible, whilst bringing a touch of pink and girly glamour to adventure.
Katie in her own words…
“My friends often refer to me as slightly crazy! But don’t be fooled… I’m not very brave, nor an adrenaline junkie or a daredevil, I’m just a normal girl, that through adventure is perpetually learning that ordinary people can do extraordinary things if they just can be bold enough to begin.
When I am not busy at my desk designing websites for clients, or organising expeditions, you might find me looking out of my tent on a mountain summit, snuggled deep in my sleeping bag, drinking a cuppa, watching the sun creep up over the mountains at dawn.
I have a passion for exploring this wonderful world in which we live. Having visited over 50 countries on 5 continents so far, I still feel there’s so much more to explore.
I have often found that stripped of comforts and faced with hardships and adversities, the completion of each journey becomes so much more rewarding.
My life goals are to fill my day’s with wonderful adventures, making memories, seeing new places, meeting new faces, doing things that are difficult, and scaring myself a little, so that nothing feels familiar & therefore everyday becomes extraordinary.”
Listen to Katie Now!!
If you can’t see the link above please click here.
Listen to the last Tough Girl EXTRA episode — Completing the 1911 version of the Tour de France (5,500km in 23 days) & the Silk Road Mountain Race in Kyrgyzstan.
Listen to Katie when we first spoke in March 2018 — walking the entire length of the Great Wall of China in 2007 & doing the longest crossing of the Southern Patagonian Ice Cap by a woman.
Show notes | https://medium.com/@_TOUGH_GIRL/katie-jane-lherpiniere-iceland-traverse-hiking-fastpacking-600km-journey-on-foot-traversing-4905f91d4ded | ['Sarah Williams'] | 2020-12-07 10:02:01.876000+00:00 | ['Adventure', 'Journey', 'Hiking', 'Women', 'Challenge'] |
The Ugly Truth about “Made in America” | We’ve all heard the term “prison labor.” It doesn’t, on the face of it, sound like such a bad thing. God willing, I’ll never have to go to prison, but if I did I’d want to be a contributing member of jail society. Maybe something like Red or Gloria from Orange is the New Black, serving up fantastic meals on a nonexistent budget.
But the reality is much darker than that. According to Bureau of Prisons statistics, the overwhelming majority of prison jobs are actually factory jobs of one kind or another. Most “Made in America” clothing, much like the lingerie featured in OITNB, comes out of these prison factories. Since it’s relatively easy to learn to use a sewing machine, with relatively little risk of injury, it’s the ideal trade to teach the thousands of inmates who are being required to work.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of “Made in America” items are produced by prison labor, aside from artisanal items. According to reporting by Rick Helfenbein in 2016, promises to increase domestic production is often coded speak by politicians for increasing contracts with the private prison systems. Since federal minimum wages do not apply to prisoners, based on the language addressing forced prison labor in the 13th Amendment, companies are able to pay pennies per hour to prisoners in order to turn massive profits on retail items. Indeed, according to UNICOR, a program of the BOP, the highest wage reported in a prison factory is $1.16 per hour, approximately 1/6 of the minimum wage.
According to a 2008 report by Mother Jones, companies that knowingly use prison labor include Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret, Microsoft, Costco… The list goes on. Prisoners staff meat packing plants. They build household items like brooms and flat pack furniture. They make law enforcement uniforms, in a move as tasteless as we’ve come to expect from the cops in 2020.
They’re also ordered to lie; in 2007, two men were sent to solitary confinement for admitting to a journalist that they were ordered to rip “Made in Honduras” labels off clothing and replace them with “Made in the USA.” | https://readcultured.com/the-ugly-truth-about-made-in-america-a6162ddda6b0 | ['Kirsten Porter'] | 2020-12-08 12:04:15.205000+00:00 | ['Prison', 'Mass Incarceration', 'Made In Usa', 'Politics'] |
It'll All Be Alright- Dolly Parton Told Me So | Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
My pulse drowned out the busy Saturday afternoon street around me. All I could hear were the sounds of my own chest: shallow breaths and thunderous heartbeats.
I dabbed my forehead and took a quick look around at the people bustling around me to see if anyone had noticed the sweat streaming down my face or the tears welling up in my eyes. With a sense of relief that my panic had gone seemingly unnoticed, I edged to the side of the sidewalk and leaned against a building two blocks away from my apartment.
Anxiety stormed inside as thoughts of my current situation swirled around. Things were looking bleak, and I couldn’t see how it would work out. Taking it minute by minute was the only way I could survive.
I was smack dab in the middle of an ugly situation with my (now former) employer that involved attorneys and a hell of a lot of uncertainty; in the middle of a global crisis, with an autoimmune disorder that made navigating a pandemic a bit tricky, and being unable to see my family back home in Texas due to international travel restrictions. To say that a lot was going on would be an understatement.
Three questions weighed me down as I attempted to make sense of it all.
“What happens if I lose this case and my job?”
“How will I go on from this?”
and finally, my old go-to:
“Will everything be alright?”
Taking deep breaths and stroking my arms, just as my therapist taught me to do, brought me back up to the surface, to reality in the present moment.
Inhale. Hold my breath. Exhale. Repeat.
Soon enough, both my heart rate and breath steadied as I gained control over the dwindling panic.
I took another breath and resumed my walk. Before I could take even ten steps, I saw a toy store I’d never noticed before, across the way from where I stood. Something about it drew me in, and as I remembered that I still needed to buy a gift for my friend’s upcoming baby shower, I allowed myself to take a detour on my way home.
Once inside, I immediately saw why I was being pulled to this particular store at that particular moment. There she was, sitting in the corner, smiling up at me from a pinball machine in the corner — my guardian angel.
Dolly Parton, the Backwoods Barbie herself.
Dolly found in the weirdest of places. Here on her very own pinball machine in a toy store in my neighborhood. Photo credit: author
Let me back up, and assure you that I am of sound mind.
A little woo-woo, yes. But not certifiably crazy.
For as long as I can remember, I have asked God/The Universe/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/Whoever-Is-Out-There-Watching-Over-Us for little signs in moments of need. It became my little secret game. Blame it on the day I started hopping over cracks to save my poor mother’s back when I was a kid. My reverence for superstition and spirituality has provided me with a very much needed perceived sense of control in situations that feel very much uncontrollable.
The rules of picking a sign go like this:
Designate something/someone that you aren’t likely to run into in an everyday situation. Pick a sign that’s obscure enough, so it sticks out when you aren’t actively looking for it. The more positivity associated with your sign of choice, the better!
Over the years, I’ve picked everything from purple flamingos to phrases like “see the forest for the trees,” to forgotten songs from the ’90s, and anything else random I could think of that would stick out like a sore thumb in everyday life.
And in present-day, during the ever so challenging year that is 2020, Dolly Parton, the inspiring go-getter of a woman, became the holiest of signs that I’ve picked yet.
Who better than Ms. Parton, an actual physical manifestation of positive feel-good sunshine, to bring comfort and inspiration during these “unprecedented times”?
Now, let me tell you. I’m a psychology grad. I am well aware of confirmation bias and Carl Jung’s concept of synchronicity, a.k.a Seek what you want to look for, and ye shall find it.
And found Dolly I did.
Despite being a native Texan who was brought up on a steady diet of country music, I never knew much about Dolly Parton except that she looked cheap and had big boobs and sang about some gal named Jolene.
When I got my first pushup bra as a teenager, I joked to my mom, “This must be how Dolly Parton feels like,” and that’s all I knew about her until this year.
My version of the Dolly Parton social media challenge. Photo credit: author
It started with the Dolly Parton challenge that spread like wildfire on social media back in January. Who would've thought a Country singer with a 50+ year career could be this hip and cool? I was impressed.
Then soon after, on a rainy Sunday afternoon with nothing else to do, the movie “9 to 5” popped up on my HBO app. I was thrilled as Dolly’s skills as a comedic actress won me over even more, and I became a bonafide fan of this female powerhouse who wrote the infamous titular song in one go.
And then, two weeks before COVID-19 shut down the world as we knew it, Spotify recommended a podcast on my feed that was hard to pass over. “Dolly Parton’s America” from WNYC Studios became my walking-buddy on my morning walks to work as I listened to various stories about the rags to riches life of Dolly Parton.
I learned just how extraordinary this darling gem of a person really was. She's not just a country music hall-of-famer but also an extremely talented businesswoman and philanthropist who holds a great capacity for spreading joy and love in every life she touches.
Subconsciously, I decided that Saint Dolly would be my new sign for when troubled times hit.
And it may have been either a little stupid or a little brilliant to subconsciously choose a person who has been making somewhat of a comeback in 2020 because suddenly I was seeing her everywhere as life continued to throw curveballs at me.
Despite her knack of popping up everywhere (breaking sign-picking-rule number uno), the true magic has been in the moments I truly wasn’t looking for her yet needed to see her most. Like that day in the toy store, after a near anxiety attack in the middle of the sidewalk on a busy day wondering, “Will everything be OK?”.
Seeing a Dolly Parton themed pinball machine with her signature poofy hair and large bosom made me smile. It was the sign I needed to release my worries and trust that things would be OK.
Two days later, I won the case against my former employer and signed an employment contract for a new job with a company that seemed so positively different than the one I had just left. My life took an incredibly positive turn, and the anxiety I felt about the situation melted away.
I asked if everything would be alright, received an “answer,” in an unanticipated way, and everything did indeed turn out A-OK. More than OK, in fact, I am actually happy.
Was it all just an ordinary coincidence?
Maybe.
But, who says magic can’t be coincidental?
My logical-psychology-degree-holding-self knows that it’s a basic human tendency to bend and twist ourselves to try to make sense out of things we can’t easily explain. We like to tell ourselves that things happen for a reason, like interpreting signs from everyday coincidences.
This tendency explains the unexplainable and helps us feel like we’re in the driver’s seat when we decide to assign meaning to the seemingly meaningless.
But, I am a strong believer that we create our own serendipity, whether in the form of luck or happy little coincidences. I do it every day by playing this little game of chance, daring the universe to show me my sign.
These days, I don’t need Dolly as much as life has somewhat stabilized. She still likes to pop up in weird little places. Like the other day, a new friend randomly said the original “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly is their favorite song of all time. When this happens, I take it as a little wink, as a little piece of magic, both from the higher beings at work and my conscience. It's a wink that tells me things are good, and hope is everywhere I look. | https://medium.com/live-your-life-on-purpose/itll-all-be-alright-dolly-parton-told-me-so-74994d48de05 | ['Kelsey L.O.'] | 2020-10-25 02:40:17.120000+00:00 | ['Mental Health', 'Inspiration', 'Spirituality', 'Life Lessons', 'Self'] |
Queer. Formation. | Queer. Peculiar, different, surprising, unexpected, even unwanted. While this word has been used to condemn and hurt sexual minorities, many of us are reclaiming it with pride, because it is precisely in our difference that we are a gift to the world.
Formation. The taking on of a certain character, a settled inner disposition to pick out certain facts in the world and respond to them. Against the obsession of contemporary ethics with elaborating rules or principles (the greatest good for the greatest number, or Kant’s universal maxim), formation seeks to understand what makes human persons good within, shaped into wholeness and capable of bringing about creative goodness in the world.
These two words—queer, formation—are perhaps the key interests of my life, along with a third: Jesus.
I do not here say “Christian,” although I could; but as this word has taken on resonances that directly oppose both “Queer” and “Formation” I want instead to talk about the way of Jesus, the unfolding of the peaceable shalom of God that Jesus called “the Kingdom.” I am deeply convinced that the way of Jesus is a lens that can help us understand more deeply what it means to be queer, what it means to be take on a formation befitting our humanity, that these are best expressed in a relationship of following the Jesus way.
This will take some unpacking, for these three sit in tension: Queer, Formation, Jesus. Most people I encounter will welcome perhaps one, at best two of these. For many reasons, queer and formation seem to pull away from one another. And Christendom has made it intensely difficult for queer people to welcome Jesus, or to see Jesus as welcoming them.
But for me, it is the in unexpected, peculiar — even queer — pulling together of these three themes that I find the playful fire, the fresh breeze of Spirit hovering over my chaos. So I want to hold these together and join the play, and see where this journey of Queer Formation with Jesus leads. | https://medium.com/queer-formation/queer-formation-f4e1a4d412a7 | ['Ben Barczi'] | 2018-05-02 03:41:12.923000+00:00 | ['Spiritual Formation', 'Christianity', 'LGBTQ', 'Queer'] |
How I got my first Blind XSS on Private Program | Hello everyone, I am Raghuveer Singh Chouhan and, this is my first blog on Blind XSS. Today I will explain how I found Blind XSS on a private program.
#What is Blind XSS
Blind XSS is a flavor of cross-site scripting (XSS), where the attacker “blindly” deploys a series of malicious payloads on web pages that are likely to save them to a persistent state (like in a database, or a log file).
#Where to look for Blind XSS
1. Contact page
2. Passwords(You never know if the other side doesn’t properly handle input and if your password is in View mode)
3. Address fields
4. Name field
5. forms
6. Set User-Agent to a Blind XSS payload(You can do that easily from Burp suite.)
7. Feedback page
8. Chat Applications
#! Tools for Blind Cross-Site Scripting
Normally I use XSSHunter for finding Blind XSS. There are more tools available on the Internet that are: XSSHunter, KnoXSS, bXSS Hunter, and many more.
As this was a private program so I will be using example.com
After signing in to the account now we are able to see all injecting points of the application so we can send our malicious payload to the backend team.
The application has a profile page where user can add their details like first name, last name, address, mobile no.,position,website etc. and upload a profile pic.
Right Now I have one question in my mind?
Can I inject any special character or not, if yes then I should try to inject XSS payload.
So I just tried to inject XSS payload in all input fields for reflected or stored XSS but unfortunately, the XSS payload didn’t execute.( Ignore my English & Grammar)
Now I started injecting my Blind XSS script/Payload in all the field except the field which contains email ID and Mobile No.
Payload: "><script src= "> https://@shr3e.xss.ht</a> > Tip: always check all input field
After 20–30 mins an email arrived on my Mail Account that is from XSS Hunter and it says your payload is just triggered. ‘’’’BOOM’’’’’
I just WOW!
I quickly visit my XSSHunter account to check all details about the vulnerability.
Thanks for Reading …..
Follow me : | https://medium.com/@shr3e/how-i-got-my-first-blind-xss-on-private-program-b1f9b12188c8 | ['Raghuveer Singh Chouhan'] | 2021-05-07 10:42:07.898000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Blind Xss', 'Xss Attack', 'Xss Vulnerability', 'Bug Bounty'] |
Smile | Bela is sick today. She is having severe headache and can’t move at all. She is waiting for the maid to come. As Saira is playing now, she is not paying much attention to her mother. Suddenly Bela calls Nil. She tells him to come home for a while. Nil is not surprised at all. Whenever Bela is sick she tries to seek attention a lot. He just comforts Bela and tells her that he can’t come right now. Bela cuts the phone with anger. Whatever, Nil isn’t bothered at all. The maid comes. Bela tells her what needs to be done and all. Distress is something that influences people too fast. The maid understands something is bothering Bela. She asks,
- What happened Bela?
- Nothing just a headache. Will you stay for longer today?
- Yeah, sure. So tell me what to cook now?
- Just make soup for Saira today. I won’t eat.
- Okay.
So Jamila makes soup and and plays with Saira for sometime.
It’s evening now. Time for Saira to have her milk. So Jamila asks Bela if there is anything further to do.Bela says no. Saira is playing there. She notices her mom is not talking much to her today. She understands Bela is sick, or maybe hungry. So she starts her tantrum. Bela is tired. She asks Jamila to play with Saira. But Saira starts to scream then.
-What is the matter?
-I will not have my milk unless you are drinking with me.
-What are you talking about Saira!
- You always let me have the milk alone. I don’t like milk. Today you need to have it too.
-Okay okay. Don’t cry baby.
So Jamila is playing with Saira now. Saira has finished her milk and is looking cheerful.
Jamila asks her in deep and soft voice.
-Hey baby, you look so jolly huh?
-At least I made mom drink the milk.
Saira replied with her beautiful smile. | https://medium.com/@aishwarjyo/smile-26c84fe0d69a | ['Roy Aishwarjyo'] | 2020-06-21 07:37:33.104000+00:00 | ['Baby', 'Smile', 'Innocence', 'Love', 'Motherhood'] |
Let’s Move Change Forward | March of the Poor and Unemployed in Europe. CC by Young FoEE
Let’s Move Change Forward
What activates the masses to save the planet?
“The Answer to How is Yes. How to start? Start. The rest will come.”
Here I am, frustrated civilian, surrounded by people who are hurting, as I am hurting, seeking how to address what ‘our (corrupt) leaders’ and, to be honest, all humans are doing to the planet. I feel weak and, like many, I wonder, what can I do? Is there even a ‘We The People (we’ve been waiting for)’ possible who help Nature on the Planet to Thrive (again)’ possible? How can we gather, voice our worries and pain and improve, let alone influence, our conditions? Is mass bottom-up change possible?
To start off, this story is not (yet) a heartwarming rally cry, nor a clear-cut model to engage the general populace to participate in transcending the infinite greed model towards a thriving planet for life. It’s an investigation, into the building blocks needed for that. Mind you, some suggestions even disagree with each other. This is a dialogue and research, not one fixed answer. Share your experiences in the comments and start making things happen and share with the world.
We are facing perilous times! But when an idea is borne in a time and place that propel it forward then people join in and push! ~Nate Peyman
From stagnation and depression to back into action.
In several conversations this theme came up. Many social activists I know experience frustration with the lack of change. They suffer lack of impact, lack action by the many, being ignored by main stream media and keep being considered crazy by friends and family. The people expressing this fatigue all feel dread for our planet, from global war to ecological breakdown. They wonder what can make the masses care for our planet. How to activate them? What can make us remind politicians to put the health of our planet center stage over political party or corporate interests? What can make corporations take full responsibility before they are forced by law? How can we make ‘(Exiting New) Progress Towards a Clean and Thriving Planet’ the main daily news in the media?
“The great thing is we don’t have to create the wave. Just ride the wave.”~Michael Josefowicz
We are all people and the health of our planet affects us all. Yet it seems many people feel their worry can’t make a difference (anymore). How to believe? How to be foolish enough to think your choices matter? Think about it: the first to raise the idea of the woman’s vote was considered an idiot, a crazy. Consider the end of slavery, the birth of the Christian Church, the historic rise of unions to end child labor and appalling work conditions and many more movements. These changes happened because many people put in an effort for ideas that felt essential for them. They did overcome seemingly impossible barriers or even died for these ideas. They were willing to take risks. Are we? With, quality of, life on the planet as a whole at stake, we just have to.
“How do you help someone fall truly and deeply in LOVE? It cannot be manipulated, and requires genuine Trust, and Hope. And unfortunately for many of us the late two are exceedingly rare and quickly becoming extinct, with a widespread disillusionment and fatalism already affecting a predominant Percentage of Humanity.”~Mieke Beyerley on how difficult this may be.
HOW TO ORGANIZE MASS BOTTOM UP CHANGE? HOW TO GET IT ROLLING?
So having asked this question in a few Facebook groups, many started helping answering it. This is my personal gist of these conversations. I’ve used many quotes to bring different nuances and viewpoints in.
“Figure out what kind of people you want. Then get ten of them together and get started.”~ David W Gray
1. Just Get Going
The quote above may be the gist of it. Just get going. Nobody said it would be easy. You may fail even. But hiding, ignoring, lying to yourself and others about our current destructive economy will surely deeply harm the lives of future generations. So how to start the global clean up and get everyone behind it? Start. There are millions trying, living, breathing, sharing answers too. You are not alone. Many however seem to act only within a bubble of like-minded people. How to burst the bubble and wake up the world? Because an even bigger number of people suffer. They’ve chosen to ‘play along’ because they don’t know what to do differently.
“Bottom up requirements for activation include that place and land and nature connection are actually part of this “bottom” up from which activity can spring. The healing or rewiring of the broken circuitry within the human body and psyche, now culturally numbed and maintained is an essential first step.” ~ Nathan Aitchtwo-oh Bixby
2. Begin With Your Own Attitude
When you think your suffering of depressions, pain for the world is a weakness, that doesn’t make you ruthlessly enough for a career, think again! You should see your pain or depression actually is caring that isn’t lived or accepted enough. So what we can learn, develop for ourselves to get going?
“Nothing ever changed because people put in effort. Things Changed because People BELIEVED they were included and it was relevant to them. And all these movements started from one individual in every case. An individual who held an uncompromising BELIEVE”~Mieke Beyerley
Check and decipher your own conditioning. There always will be voices who claim you can’t steer destiny or shouldn’t try to. They’ll claim it’s similar to the mass manipulation of the public by billionaires investing in lobbies, politicians, and media. Yes, we may even ask, why believe this post over other posts? Why not calm down, buy more, vote conservative or join a Zen monastery? It seems we need to know where to act from. What should steer our individual actions in our own situation?
“I am being counterproductive to the counterproductive by insisting we be productive and being productively productive.”~response in fb thread. This remark resembles, for me, a counter productive thread I got caught up in.
There is one question that impregnates everything. Does this help love? We can train our contact with this question. This is both the path many spiritual people are taking and those interested in improving their social skills take. The question helps to further any purpose we might have. I’m learning. Some days I’m not. I too made the quote above happen. Thus I realize more and more even in practical matters, either I help or I don’t. This goes from doing the dishes with attention (mindfulness), choosing an ecological kind of soap (awareness) to taking a rest from being a changemaker (self-love) to speaking up (showing care by taking a stand). For the spiritual people thinking they haven’t self-developed enough, this means go act, that’s the last phase of the education. Enlightenment in a room full of pillows and lovely people is easy. Now bring it to the streets.
“The outer change comes first from an inner change in the consciousness of people.”~Finn Jackson
And believe your caring matters. What else gives meaning to life? If so many of us can believe in God, can’t they believe that serving Him, or Her if you prefer, would be done best by safeguarding the health of our planet? We must believe our actions matter, because our presence matters. So, show up.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”
According to Charley Quinton the stripping away of the conditioning he endured through state-sanctioned education and profit-motivated media is essential. He mentions how it helped him tune his thinking to a metaphysical understanding of his role and function as a PARTICIPANT in the natural ecosystem. Exactly. You are playing a part in a bigger whole. When we see the interdependence of everything alive, see we have a role, we must bond and act according to our essential relationships, with everything that helps us breathe and live, and that’s so much more than your job.
“We can’t replace the fictions with better fictions. Money and finance for example are purely fictious replacements for unseen sources and resources. The only “reality” to them is the “fact” that they are believed in by an overwhelming majority if misguided people.”- Charley Quinton
3a. Storytelling: shaping imagination to tune into
Bébé Vundermann says, “Human based stories that connect individual transformation to real world changes are vehicles of the mind that can help people see a way to do it themselves and find pathways to others who are working to transform and save the world from our all too human tendency to descend to our lower impulses, emotions, choices, and behaviors — we need places, stories, and platforms where people can see how they (each individual) can ascend to their higher abilities, choices, and super powers of empathy, compassion, understanding, truth, justice, etc.
Imagine the greenest capital in the world. Concept by Callebaut.
For regenerative stories, the model arc of rising and falling action with a sequence of transformative stages would apply, since stories of change are conversations with nature. For regeneration in today’s world, the principle I hold to is that regeneration involves a transition. We must go from growth powered by paying the profits back to concentrate wealth towards paying profits forward to maintain whole system vitality. Finding the right story to show the path is not as easy to define perhaps.”
Chan Chan, Peru was the seat of the regional government long before the Incas. It was remarkable that the job of the government was to make sure the villages had all they needed to survive. So if they wove, they ensured they had wool, dyes, etc. If they were farmers, they made sure they had what they needed. In Peru, only 1/3 of the land is farmable, the rest stone. So I guess they had to be creative in farming. I do like this model for the future. ~Linda Justice
3b. Storytelling: Finding the seed story or examples
In “Leadership and the new science” Margaret Wheatley proposes that certain clusters of information can have many viral aspects, and may even have a self-prolonging life, like fairy tales. You’ll know Little Red Riding Hood from just these trigger words: delivery to a grandmother, wolf, trickery. So part of the work is to find triggers that make a message go viral. We are very perceptive to viral messaging. No wonder lobbyists across the world work overtime on feeding us viral messaging like: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” It’s stupid but clings to the mind. We can do better and more true to our deeper nature.
Symbol of the Standing Rock protests, offering a frame that brings the essential (water) together with our future (child) and a call to action (fist).
Marianne Connor proposes the following steps towards a better new story: 1. It seems important to get the word out that a far better world is possible, and that we have the agency to create it. (“A New Story” is an example of that.) 2. Study Living Systems Thinking, so humans have some roadmaps for designing a future in partnership with nature. 3. Develop inclusive stories that express that partnership. Most of our stories externalize nature, and that’s not going to get us through the 21st Century. (To which I add: Go somewhere where you can marvel at the beauty of nature. If that’s too far from your home, wonder why and possibly cry.) 4. Look to places that might already be in crisis or near crisis to train your skills, because where systems are already falling apart is a major opening for something new. The potential is unleashed in these places and the need for new structures are palpable. And by acting, we learn.
And, finally, for this point, realize that most people long to be really seen. No corporation, no lobby group, no politician making promises can replace you as someone who can really connect, be really part of the community. So really include those you are with. Really listen to, help, share with, include those you seek to reach. Because real bonds will beat all fake ones in the end.
“The active masses will be neither socialist, nor capitalist, neither left nor right. They will be both left AND right AND also above those sides, coming from a higher form of understanding the whole. It will be a mix of scientific understanding of reality and of deeper compassion for life as a whole. It will allow local iterations, pragmatic solutions, openness to new choices as new insights appear.”
Every little nudge may widen the circle of impact and strengthens resolve.
4. Facilitate Emergence
So change needs many people who feel they’re part of something bigger and that they help. Some people need alternatives they can commit to. Others need a movement to help direct their energy. Some people don’t dare to walk alone. Everyone in despair, in need, imprisoned within real or mental borders needs places to go where they too can reconnect. It heals to align to higher purposes than daily worry, daily greed or daily self-denial to hide the pain behind a mask. We can be guided to put down the mask of playing along because everyone else does; to put down the mask of pleasing bosses who protect the damaging ‘normal’. In all these cases facilitators can help. Not as leaders! Their work can help people and ideas find each other, bond and start collaborating.
We are not starting from a point of collective culture, but from multiple points of fragmented worldviews.~Neil Davidson
So many facilitators have been busy since Joanna Macy and many others started ‘The Work That Reconnects’. Everywhere in the world circles are organized, people are sharing worries, sharing community, sharing (re)connection, sharing solutions. We are humanities hope and we need each other. But from facilitating the seekers and likeminded people, we facilitators need to spread our nets. And those that seek change should seek them out. The government should hire them, rather than fear them. In the Netherlands, some civil servants have started to support city movements. They aren’t threatened by them, as they see it as helping constructive citizens with their needs and wants. So if you work for the government, learn from this example.
“We have to agree first of all on being ethical and secondly on protecting the commons. From there engaging means something different for everyone, based on talent and resources and opportunity.” ~Klaus Mager
5. End Politics as Usual and Shift Attitudes
And as peoples, we should refuse to die for our leader’s politics. Refuse to go to war for our countries(?*) squabbles. Refuse to accept war across the planet, when our own drinking water contains lead, our air fine dust, our forests dwindle, oil leaks soak our lands, our nature reserves are taken, (free) education broken down and the lack of health care kills thousands. We should refuse, or be able to refuse, to pay our taxes when they become funding for companies that don’t support a healthy existence for all life and people. We should be able to at no loss of money or job, to refuse unethical orders, that help destroy our collective future.
*) Our countries? Whose interests are really served with starting any conflict? Almost all ordinary citizens of all nations prefer peace, don’t care about starting a war, unless after a propaganda bombardment. But then, who is paying for that and with what motives? And even won wars hurt untold families through loss, trauma, and stress. And the last ‘won’ wars thus far only served to make a bigger mess and sow the seeds for more conflict. We must be way more scrutinizing towards whose interests a really served with any, threat of, conflict.
I believe we must avoid the worst case scenario and that will take enormous cooperation. Simultaneously we must dismantle the illusory perceptions of disconnection and necessity of machines for our daily routines. We need to begin to part mentally and emotionally from the system that is harming all of nature.~Nate Peyman
We tend to overlook our own wrongs on a huge scale. Black in the USA suffers enormously from racism, way more heavy sentencing than whites, blacklisted from voting and many other, often organized, disadvantages. Similar disadvantages happen to the very poor of all colors, Native Americans, the LGBT community, and other groups. The ones that benefit and profit the most are the corporations. Their actions even made farming practices, harmful to earth, soil & people. How can we consider all this ‘normal’?
Check Outside influences: The Maori Haka can be an inspirational approach to train inner strength in the West, like here at Knowmads Business School in Amsterdam.
Alison Fornes suggests, I think rightly so, that we should look to very different cultures and dynamics. Like micro-climates, there are communities where people of color feel much safer, where LGBTQ culture is vibrant, and where the relationship to earth has shifted food systems, or never fell into corporate hands. Instead of fearing the stranger, we can look, as Michael Moore did in “Where to Invade Next?”, to successful alternatives. If you really want solutions don’t be an ideological egghead but seek to implement what really works. And if your politicians stick to their narratives (‘trickle down’ anyone?) in the face of applied solutions, you know they have other interests than real solutions and you better follow the money. :)
“It’s in our diversity, where we find our collective strength.”~James O’Keefe
We tend to stick to our own collective field or culture as ‘the way it works’. We tend to protect our own culture we grew up in, as something fixed. We forget that the life, times and beliefs of our grandparents are so very different from our own. Paradigms, problems, culture have often changed in significant ways, and, true, not always for the better. We should see that even our newest tech hugely impacts the way we live. How easily do we embrace very different behavior on holidays? Then why not see our own future as a huge holiday?
Changing the collective field begins with individuals being able to acknowledge, recognize, interrupt and change the patterns that they engage in that are part of the old paradigm.- Allison Fornes
The time to refuse better solutions because of ideology, interests or pride is over. The time to listen to lobbies of industries who manipulate researches to hide their damaging of the planet and people is over. The time to accept laws that make such acceptable is over. The time to go to war over pride, interests or convictions is over. Every nation should look hard at their own mistakes, lies, and crimes and seek to right and heal them. Every nation claiming others should start should start themselves. The same for individuals: stop waiting for everyone else to act first. Seek out and help those that already offer real solutions, that benefit health of people and planet in all aspects, however small or local.
To unite the collective requires a common vision, at the highest level of awareness. Which makes it an insanity to not educate and inform the public about the challenges we are facing. ~Klaus Mager
6. Educate.
If there’s one thing that bothers the right, it’s that progressives seem to keep thinking, questioning stuff. They feel so much safer with clear answers. And yes, the power of wondering, critically examining can be upsetting, as it’s the actual driver of most change, from new inventions to mass movements waking up to an idea which time has come.
Jessie Henshaw and many others find that education needs a natural systems view. She says: “I think the answer for how to organize mass bottom-up change is to study how nature does it. Most people don’t do that but assume that social change involves the spread of popular concepts, but nature uses organization, not concepts. So natural change invariably involves system development, which is much more like organic growth with seed, sprout, plant, flower.
For a cultural change, the model is the same but the “seed” is some pattern of engaging people that grows like a business start-up, both expanding its organization and channeling energy for it, to first build then mature like organisms and cultures do. If you think of it, that’s also what a plant seed does, but our minds are not accustomed to thinking about the common patterns that natural systems all follow. The challenge for social change is like that of entrepreneurs. It’s first to be in a place where design patterns worth the investment of the start-up energy art found. That brings my comment back to where I started, that for people to use methods of natural change it seems they would need to study them, so as to improve the odds of finding a story that would actually work for the intended purpose, in what drifts by. : )”
“There are ancient ways of being, of living that have been eschewed for the new. There is great wisdom from the indigenous; from some of the ways of those before. Discernment of wisdom is not only about new…. it might also be about old, and the past rediscovered.”~Erik Jensen
Nathan Aitchtwo-oh Bixby offers as an example the school or ‘seed container’ he’s currently starting up: S.O.I.L. School of Interdependent Living. And with Facebook groups talking about such projects appear to be the fertile soil through which ideas and concepts like his can spread and take root, jumping from one local land regeneration project to another.
It starts with small groups working together. In my neighborhood in NYC we have a free Wifi system, dedicated by a man who charges a small fee for the router, and afterwards a donation; his tech crew are volunteers. We have a Hari Krishna priest who opened a bed and breakfast, not only does he employ people; but the profits he uses to feed the homeless three times a week in my park. Many volunteers come to help. This is important: during the Sixties we were a group of passionate young people, but no one really knew what to do, so we ended up back in the system. So this is the thing, now that young people are rising, we need systems that work, such as Wifi and feeding homeless, to start taking root. We need to listen to young people, and indigenous people and people with clean energy solutions.~Linda Justice
Also understand what you’re up against. This is an article on that looking at it from a global historic perspective.
It’s fun, healthy, brings people together and may even bridge cultural backgrounds.
7. Start Locally. Grow locally. Invest locally. Clean up locally.
Sadly the chaos and confusion about the big global and local problems seem to make many long for dictators, or leaders with clear-cut answers. Such dominant voices may sound like a solution, but they’ll make matters much worse. Aside from them using huge chunks of their power to keep their power, they offer simpleminded one focus solutions, where a multitude of voices and solutions and efforts is needed. To address all the different interlocked issues that create the chaos and confusion we need our collective intelligence and effort. The diversity of solutions needs can only be approached by a joint flock of collaboration, wherein each participant, each organization, even each movement within is doing their own thing, and adds their own voice.
“To spark a mass transformation in society, we need to get great at propagating transformation on the micro level of society.”- Craig Green
All little actions matter. Thus beginning at home, we should include thinking about the “smallest possible.” no global solutions will win hearts if it can’t be seen working at many local levels. If you can’t reach average people with easily accessible solutions you may end up reaching no one or just a happy few.
Graig Green points to Seth Godin’s ideas on growth. Seth claims that
fast growth comes from overwhelming the smallest possible audience with a product or service that so delights that they insist that their friends and colleagues use it. The more people they share it with, in their own authentic voice the better.
Public Piano’s improved the atmosphere in many railway stations. Rather than prohibit stuff, nudge people to enjoy to help change mindsets. CC by Matt Harrop
Thus start with nudging, local initiatives, dinners for friends, community gardens, homeschooling, anything that creates things that can scale up, offer hope, actions, solutions. Make it events that speak to the imagination, others will want to retell, even if at first it seems to do little more than having the neighbors ask you to come over for coffee and share your story. It’s on this level that ideas are iterated towards a fully functioning model and can start to spread. It’s on this level we can (start to) experience our personal impact, meaning and feel connected.
Also, don’t forget that our civilization also rests upon all those daily kind actions and empathic understandings. We even tend to forget that the biggest part of our safety rests upon upholding our own humanity and giving others no reason for aggression. And the same goes for all our little daily actions towards nature, education, work, justice, etc.
Here’s the shortcut version by Michael Josefowicz:
1. Find people who want to do what you want to do.
2. Define a micro project which means something that you can do with the resources you already have and can show something has been done. Show people what you have done, not what you want to do.
3. After you have a series of things that have been done, crowdsource to finance what you want to do next.
For example, the crowdsource for Atwongyeire Joseph has raised $394 in 4 days.
“Women need to wake up spiritually as well as otherwise. But to rally women to wake up is difficult, because not only do they not trust themselves, but they value a different skill set. Even the Dalai Lama says women will lead the way. But first they must wake up. Tough one.” ~Linda Justice
Many may not realize it, group hugs are feminine power to overcome and heal collective pain and help build communities. And no, it should never be compulsory. ;)
8. The Feminine
The feminine is waking up, slowly. Education still is very destructive to it. Many female students work very hard to prove themselves, yet forget to listen to their intuition. I find their intuition is often more on point than male mental rationality. The motherly in women, that wants a healthy safe nest for future generations is much more healthy that ambitious profit driven managers care to acknowledge. And we all pay the price for that.
“There’s a soft but strong power is just sensing what wants to be born.”
If you think this picture is scary, you may have a long way to go. If you love the feeling and want it too, go make friends the softer way. ;)
For the guys who don’t get it, consider table tennis. You can’t win by hitting as hard as you can. A true master shows careful and precise self-restraint for much better results. Self-restraint is equally essential in our economy. In “Where to Invade Next?” , the female bankers in Iceland showed this essential positive difference with their male counterparts. They chose long-term health for their bank over fast profits. When the 2008 crisis hit, they were the only Icelandic bank whose CEO’s weren’t arrested. Sadly the masculine drive still is seen as ‘winners mentality’. Improving the machine flattening the last true primal forests just isn’t worth the dollars it makes. The natural feminine knows such behavior is leading to a much bigger disaster than the 2008 financial crisis.
Also, councils of elders or grandmothers often offer long-term views including more wisdom and less profiteering strategies. They tend to think inclusive, rather than exclusive. They listen more and need to prove less. According to the masculine energy, it may be to slow paced, not decisive enough. In my idea, human leadership needs more consideration, council and balance. The connection to the abundance under our feet and around us must be reconstituted. That is a huge step away from nature as a profitable commodity. And it is the feminine, the inner mother in all of us, that embraces that as the essence of presence on earth.
“Instead of considering how to organize mass bottom up change each might consider how to organize an improvement here and now and induce others to also choose to organize and improvement… and actually follow through and accomplish what better and best be done even it such involves moving a stone from here to there… or getting someone to smile and opt to be in a better mood.”~Esteban Trev
9. Trust in the Power of Mass Involvement.
David Rotter wonders how to apply the extensive knowledge of “top-down” marketing to “bottom-up” movements? How can they provide community, identity, fun, pleasure, self-expression? How can we implement their advertising smarts used to get us to buy stuff to help solve actual real and tangible problems at an individual level, right now?
World Clean Up participants celebrating their work in Indonesia.
In 2008 a movement started in Estonia. A few committed citizens set out to clean up the whole country, all the illegal dumped garbage in forests, in one day. Now they have activists and World Clean Up days in countries all around the world. The 1st permaculture institute was set up in 1979, now there are activities all around the world. Ordinary citizens started schools, hospitals, replanted forests, protested nuclear projects, and a 1000 things more. There is not one solution, nor one aspect that needs attention above all others. We need to see we are all in it, and all help matters. Unlike politicians we should not fight, debate each other, but be supportive of everyone helping with one or more aspects.
“.. people must know who they are and what matters most to them and how to inspire themselves and others to make the change happen.”- Finn Jackson
Before the election of Barack Obama, many Americans in many different cultural groups felt alone and didn’t recognize what a massive longing to end the Bush era was present. Obama’s online campaign, however, brought it to the surface and his 1st election felt as a liberation. Sadly that feeling subsided with his support of corporate powers and helping Hillary to cheat Bernie Sanders out of being chosen as the presidential candidate. Similarly, our planetary societies are all fragmented voices with their own issues, kind of blind to how united we are in our worries and longings and being part of the same interconnected reality. How to bend the multitude of positive little local actions to make a difference into a global one? We may start with acknowledging we are already a movement! And have been for years already. We are not alone!
Bridge Builders, Movement Weavers, Bioneers, Katapulters, Impact Hubs, Impact Journeys, Edushifts United, Regenerative Designers, The Work That Reconnects, S.O.I.L., so so many are doing this. Hence even this blog: ‘The Gentle Revolution’ to celebrate all who help. We are not alone.
“A leader is anyone who acts to help.”- Margaret Wheatley
CONCLUSION
In the end it’s all our efforts together, the dialogues around the world, the initiatives of many that slowly sway the whole. Understanding all these aspects mentioned above, and many others not even named may help matters, making choices. But it all might go faster, more easily when there is a collective attention or story, like ‘end slavery’, or ‘women’s vote’ that the masses can gather around. And when you, in whatever position or context just start. Be willing to learn from whatever happens along the way and willing to help anyone whose energy and the message may help things move ahead. It’s a million little actions that make the change. So yours matter. You matter. The web of life, we are part of, matters.
Similar article by others on activism towards global healing.
How to start leaderless mass movements, or swarms.
Rebellion Class 1.01.
https://medium.com/@yangolding/my-theory-of-change-27b56f69f7e6
More on positive stories, Regenerative Story Design. Regenerative Development is the potential born through crisis to redesign human systems to work in co-creative partnership with natural systems.
THANK YOU
Thank You a Thousand Times, all those who replied on my calls on facebook with the question that drove this article: Neil Davidson, Klaus Mager, Estaban Trev, Finn Jackson, Eric Lynn, Linda Justice, Allison Fornes, Jessie Henshaw, Bébé Vundermann, Marianne Connor, Nathan Aitchtwo-oh Bixby, Craig Green, Erik Jensen, Mieke Beyerley, Erik Jensen, Nate Peyman, Michael Josefowicz, Yan Golding, David Rotter, Christian Wolf, Meredith Bricken Mills, Aruna Afeez Abayomi and possibly people I overlooked. | https://medium.com/the-gentle-revolution/lets-move-change-forward-8ae62538dc95 | ['Floris Koot'] | 2020-05-04 00:19:24.502000+00:00 | ['Social Movements', 'Activism', 'Paradigm Shift', 'Social Change', 'Leadership'] |
14 Ways to Add Social Proof to Your Sales Funnel | 14 Ways to Add Social Proof to Your Sales Funnel
Social proof comes in many forms.
Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash
Were you ever on the fence about buying a product but were ultimately convinced to make the purchase after hearing a friend tell you how much they liked owning one?
You were subjected to a form of social proof, your friend’s testimonial, which influenced your decision to buy.
Many entrepreneurs running businesses online don’t have the pleasure of meeting most of their potential customers in person to give them a face-to-face sales pitch. They must rely on other ways to convey that their products are the real deal, and subsequently, that the risk of purchase is low. The way this is done is often by showing social proof: showing potential clients that others trust your company and have found your products to be of high value.
Social proof comes in many forms, and there are many different ways to utilize it through your sales funnel. | https://medium.com/better-marketing/14-ways-to-add-social-proof-to-your-sales-funnel-603740736227 | ['Bailey Richert'] | 2020-10-12 03:22:14.960000+00:00 | ['Sales Funnels', 'Online Business', 'Selling', 'Online Marketing', 'Digital Marketing'] |
A really friendly guide to use of Wavelet Theory in Machine Learning (Part 1) | The first part of this series of blog posts will cover the basics of Fourier transform and Wavelets.
The Wavelet Transform is a very powerful time-series analysis tool that isn’t very popular among the Data Science community. We are already familiar with other signal processing tools like Fourier Transform which are very intuitive albeit a bit mathematical. These transformations have changed our perspective from focusing on the signal to being appreciative of the underlying building blocks.
It is expected of the reader to be familiar with the fundamentals of Fourier Transform. What the Fourier transform essentially does is transform a signal from its time-domain to frequency domain. Fourier transform works very well only when the signal in context is stationery i.e. the frequencies present in the signal are not time-dependent. This is not desirable as most of the signals we encounter in real life are time-dependent like Stock data, Sensor data, etc. Wavelets on the other hand are very good with these dynamic signals which are localized in both space and time.
Here’s a short description on how the fourier transform works: We multiply (dot product) the signal with a series of sine-waves with different frequencies. If the peak observed is high, this means that there is an overlap between these two signals and the selected frequency is observed in that signal.
We can see that regardless of how the signal is localized in time, the peaks obtained from Fourier transform focuses only on how the signals are localized in space. It cannot tell us about the location of these peak frequencies which is why these two signals are same to the transform. Short-term Fourier transform attempts to solve this problem by breaking the signal into shorter segments of equal length and computing the Fourier transform of each shorter segment.
25 ms window
125 ms window
375 ms window
1000 ms window
However the problem with this approach is that STFT has a fixed resolution (runs into theoretical limits in accordance with the uncertainty principle). The smaller we make the window, more precisely we can identify the time at which the frequencies are present but the precise frequencies becomes difficult to identify. Upon increasing the window size, we can identify the precise frequencies but the time between frequency changes becomes blurry.
This is where Wavelets come in. Wavelets are a better way of analyzing these dynamic signals because they have a relatively higher resolution in both time and frequency domain. Wavelet Transform tells us about the frequencies present as well as the time in which these frequencies were observed. This is done by working with different scales. First we work on the signal with larger windows and try and understand the larger features and then we move on to identifying the smaller features using a smaller window. The wavelet transform, for small values of frequency, has a high resolution in the frequency domain but less resolution in the time domain. On the other hand, it has large resolution in time domain for large frequencies but less in frequency domain. It is very important to understand this trade-off because this is the only reason wavelets are preferred over short-term Fourier transform.
So what are these wavelets? How do they look? Wavelets are ‘mini waves’ that have a short ‘burst’ and die away quickly, unlike sin() or cos() wave that goes on forever.
The fact that these wavelets are localized in time gives us an advantage over infinite waves as it gives us a better resolution in time domain. Instead of trying to model our signal with an infinite wave, like in Fourier transform, we are modeling here with a finite wave which is being slid across the time domain. This process of sliding is also called as convolution. After we have done this with the mother wavelet, we can scale it to accommodate lower and higher frequencies. This is essentially done by stretching or squishing our wave. There are hundreds of different wavelets, which is why there are hundreds of different transforms in hundreds of different domains. However each domain has scale in their x-axis, which can be easily converted to frequency domain by using Pywavelets function scale2frequency.
Below are the different families of wavelets with each of them having a different shape, smoothness and compactness.
We can design a new wavelet provided it follows the following two conditions: it has finite energy in time and frequency and it has zero mean. It should be also noted that there are two types of wavelets: Discrete and Continuous depending upon the scale and translation factors.
Hope this served as a healthy introduction to the concept of wavelets. I’ve tried to sum up as much fundamentals related to the subject as I could have without diving deep into the mathematics. I encourage the reader to go through various other resources to learn more about wavelets. The next part of this blog post will focus on visualization and classification of signals using continuous wavelets and Convolutional Neural Networks. | https://medium.com/intel-student-ambassadors/a-really-friendly-guide-to-use-of-wavelet-theory-in-machine-learning-part-1-d254125ac263 | ['Kaustav Tamuly'] | 2019-04-08 18:08:45.374000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Convolutional Network', 'Neural Networks', 'Computer Science', 'Programming'] |
Infrastructure as Code only works as Code… | The popular Serverless framework allows you to use YAML or JSON to describe and version your infrastructure configuration. The serverless.yml or serverless.json file stored at the project root is used by default to provision any project using this framework.
This is no revolution in the IaC frameworks world, where most of them rely on declarative file syntaxes to describe infrastructure.
However, a lesser known and recently introduced feature allows you to use a serverless.js or serverless.ts file as the default configuration file. In this article, I’ll describe the advantages of using such a format to build serverless applications faster and with a better developer experience.
TL;DR
You can use serverless.ts service file in the Serverless framework. You can benefit from:
Types : you can use service file definition types to get quick feedback on available properties for each block. However, the framework is not written in TypeScript, and so the definitions can sometimes be outdated. Regular community maintenance is required.
: you can use service file definition types to get quick feedback on available properties for each block. However, the framework is not written in TypeScript, and so the definitions can sometimes be outdated. Regular community maintenance is required. Imports : JavaScript file imports allow you to split the definition file into multiple files. This means you can have fine-grained function block definitions right next to your handler’s codebase.
: JavaScript file imports allow you to split the definition file into multiple files. This means you can have fine-grained function block definitions right next to your handler’s codebase. References: you can write custom-made functions to build AWS intrinsic syntax and navigate easily through infrastructure definitions, dependency by dependency, using the native click and follow features of your IDE.
TYPING
The TypeScript and Serverless communities joined forces to lay the groundwork for Serverless framework types, which allow direct feedback when writing a Serverless service file.
If you want to give it a try, just run serverless create --template aws-nodejs-typescript in a new directory (and make sure you’re using at least version 1.75 of Serverless framework to benefit from serverless.ts service file definition). The new Serverless type encloses all available configuration keys for the framework — which means you don’t need to go through the full serverless.yml configuration example to get the right syntax.
VSCode type suggestion for Serverless service file
As the framework evolves, all the definitions are maintained by the community within the DefinitelyTyped repository. Unlike the recently-added JSON schema validation, which was made directly within the framework source code, the definitions require constant improvement to follow the evolution of the service file definitions. Please report any issues you encounter, to make sure this definition stays up to date.
IMPORTS
JSON and YAML file formats cannot be split into multiple files. In order to avoid large service definition files when using those formats, Serverless came up with a dedicated variable resolver, allowing the use of the ${file(filepath)} function to import content from other files.
This can be leverage for example for function definition. An all-in-one serverless.yml file containing the entire service definition:
can be split in multiple files:
The problem with this approach is that you rely on the string definition of the other files to be accurate. This can result in bugs when a file path contains a typo, or when the source file is moved. It also impacts developer experience, because those links cannot be resolved by your IDE of preference.
Switching to JavaScript and TypeScript removes this issue. Dependent files are imported, and their links are usually dynamically updated whenever you change your project directory structure, thanks to your IDE. Any developer can click and follow referenced files to dive into specific service configuration blocks.
Using the power of Javascript imports, we can now keep function definition much closer to function handler code for complex Serverless applications :
As you see above, both function configuration and handler are within the same file. It considerably speeds up development, as no navigation is required between files to develop an end-to-end feature. Both execution context and instructions are located within the same easy-to-access file.
REFERENCES
You often need to inject specific attributes of provisioned infrastructure into other pieces of infrastructure within your application. For example, your Lambda handler’s code may rely on the DynamoDB table name to do the required feature.
The usual way of doing this is to use AWS native intrinsic functions throughout your serverless.ts configuration file. You inject AWS CloudFormation native syntax blocks into your service file’s resources property, and those services are provisioned together with your functions. You can then use the Ref intrinsic function to inject the generated DynamoDB table as one of your lambda’s environment variables in create.ts .
The problem with this syntax is the use of Ref with a string representing the provisioned DynamoDB table. There is no way for a developer going through the create function to easily trace back which resource is referenced in the handler’s environment. It is also quite easy to accidentally change this value without noticing its impact. You will not get any feedback saying you referenced a non-existing resource until you actually deploy to AWS.
To make it more developer friendly, you can write a small service handling the AWS intrinsic function writing for you. This service actually use both your whole resources value as well as the AWS CloudFormation single resource itself, to generate the correct output Ref syntax:
You can then use a much more natural syntax in your function configuration to let everyone know which definition you’re actually using the name of. It is also much easier to know which functions actually depends on the specified AWS resource, since your IDE can actively tell you all usage of the variable representing the MyTable resource.
CONCLUSION
Other IaC frameworks, such as the AWS CDK, have started using configuration syntax which allows a more functional definition of infrastructure.
The use of JavaScript and TypeScript objects to power definitions of the Serverless framework opens up a new world of possibilities — with fewer text-defined options, fewer errors, and making it easier for developers to know the extent of usage of a specific infrastructure block. | https://medium.com/serverless-transformation/infrastructure-as-code-only-works-as-code-a8f0072b29cf | ['Frédéric Barthelet'] | 2020-10-15 11:50:57.594000+00:00 | ['Infrastructure As Code', 'Serverless', 'AWS', 'Typescript', 'Serverless Architecture'] |
About Me — Corina Oana. My truth in this moment | My truth in this moment
The anti-immigrant sentiment in contemporary America reminds me of why, when my father settled in Paris, I chose America — Europe’s attitude towards immigrants didn’t make me feel cozy.
Back in 1991, here in America, people said my accent was cute. I couldn’t pronounce squirrel and scissors. Or was it my young adult age and America’s obsession with youth that made it cute? Now, it’s only when I fake my accent that people hear it, but ELL still sneaks up daily, as does living and writing with Dyslexia.
I don’t want to write my life story here. I do want to write about my life with writing:
⁃ it slows my mind down, and when I intentionally pick my words, the pause I take so the word can appear is a practice of mindfulness
⁃ it connects me to parts of myself which previously had no voice, and the more I get to know them, the richer I feel, and the more I feel a sense of belonging and intimacy
⁃ it connects me to you and you represent the world because when we write, we draw on the energy and consciousness of writers of the past and of the future
This isn’t an exhaustive list, it is what matters in this moment. In this, my now. It is what I craft now that my daughter is the independent teenager I’d hoped she’d be. Now, being a single mom allows me to keep some of my life-force.
Fun fact: I just moved to a 8 x 14 ft room in Cambridge, MA after cashing in on the one investment that worked: the purchase and sale of a home. This is an exercise in letting go of attachments. Prequel to life in a tiny house.
I’m drawn to spirituality and healing and fermenting and composting. Justice and non-normative ways of being and living. I have a toxic relationship with power and align myself with others who are committed to collective liberation. I’m out here looking for you.
Reciprocity is a practice, and below I thank a few of those who uplift me: publications, writers whose stories or style inspire me:
Illumination
Be yourself
Sayeh Behesh
Florence Wanjiku
Dr. Mehmet Yildiz
Mayank Pamnani | https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-corina-oana-5a9316a4dcba | ['Corina Oana'] | 2020-12-23 01:48:39.374000+00:00 | ['Introduction', 'Nonbinary', 'About Me', 'Justice', 'Immigrant Stories'] |
Building a data lake on AWS using Redshift Spectrum | Building a data lake on AWS using Redshift Spectrum Engineering@ZenOfAI Follow Mar 11 · 5 min read
In one of our earlier posts, we had talked about setting up a data lake using AWS LakeFormation. Once the data lake is setup, we can use Amazon Athena to query data. Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage. With Athena, there is no need for complex ETL jobs to prepare data for analysis. Today, we will explore querying the data from a data lake in S3 using Redshift Spectrum. This use case makes sense for those organizations that already have a significant exposure to using Redshift as their primary data warehouse.
Amazon Redshift Spectrum is used to efficiently query and retrieve structured and semistructured data from files in Amazon S3 without having to load the data into Amazon Redshift tables. Amazon Redshift Spectrum resides on dedicated Amazon Redshift servers that are independent of your cluster. Redshift Spectrum pushes many compute-intensive tasks, such as predicate filtering and aggregation, down to the Redshift Spectrum layer.
How is Amazon Athena different from Amazon Redshift Spectrum?
Redshift Spectrum needs an Amazon Redshift cluster and an SQL client that’s connected to the cluster so that we can execute SQL commands. But Athena is serverless. In Redshift Spectrum the external tables are read-only, it does not support insert query. Athena supports the insert query which inserts records into S3.
Amazon Redshift cluster
To use Redshift Spectrum, you need an Amazon Redshift cluster and a SQL client that’s connected to your cluster so that you can execute SQL commands. The cluster and the data files in Amazon S3 must be in the same AWS Region.
Redshift cluster needs the authorization to access the external data catalog in AWS Glue or Amazon Athena and the data files in Amazon S3. Let’s kick off the steps required to get the Redshift cluster going.
Create an IAM Role for Amazon Redshift
Open the IAM console, choose Roles. Then choose, Create role. Choose AWS service, and then select Redshift. Under Select your use case, select Redshift — Customizable and then choose Next: Permissions.
Then Attach permissions policy page appears. Attach the following policies AmazonS3FullAccess, AWSGlueConsoleFullAccess and AmazonAthenaFullAccess
For Role name, enter a name for your role, in this case, redshift-spectrum-role.
Choose Create role.
Create a Sample Amazon Redshift Cluster
Open the Amazon Redshift console .
. Choose the AWS Region . The cluster and the data files in Amazon S3 must be in the same AWS Region.
. The cluster and the data files in Amazon S3 must be in the same AWS Region. Select CLUSTERS and choose Create cluster .
Cluster Configuration :
and choose . : Based on the size of data and type of data(compressed/uncompressed), select the nodes.
Amazon Redshift provides an option to calculate the best configuration of a cluster, based on the requirements. Then choose to Calculate the best configuration for your needs .
. In this case, use dc2.large with 2 nodes.
Specify Cluster details.
Cluster identifier : Name-of-the-cluster.
: Name-of-the-cluster. Database port : Port number 5439 which is the default.
: Port number 5439 which is the default. Master user name : Master user of the DB instance.
: Master user of the DB instance. Master user password: Specify the password.
In the Cluster permissions section, select Available IAM roles and choose the IAM role that was created earlier, redshift-spectrum-role. Then choose the Add IAM role.
Select Create cluster, wait till the status is Available.
Connect to Database
Open the Amazon Redshift console and choose EDITOR. Database name is dev.
Create an External Schema and an External Table
External tables must be created in an external schema.
To create an external schema, run the following command. Please replace the iam_role with the role that was created earlier.
create external schema spectrum
from data catalog
database 'spectrumdb'
iam_role 'arn:aws:iam::xxxxxxxxxxxx:role/redshift-spectrum-role'
create external database if not exists;
Copy data using the following command. The data used above is provided by AWS. Configure aws cli on your machine and run this command
aws s3 cp s3://awssampledbuswest2/tickit/spectrum/sales/ s3://bucket-name/data/source/ --recursive
To create an external table, please run the following command. The table is created in the spectrum.
create external table spectrum.table_name( salesid integer, listid
Now the table is available in Redshift Spectrum. We can analyze the data using SQL queries like so:
create external table spectrum.table_name(
salesid integer,
listid integer,
sellerid integer,
buyerid integer,
eventid integer,
dateid smallint,
qtysold smallint,
saletime timestamp)
row format delimited
fields terminated by '\t'
stored as textfile
location 's3://bucket-name/copied-prefix/';
Now the table is available in Redshift Spectrum. We can analyze the data using SQL queries like so:
SELECT
*
FROM
spectrum.rs_table
LIMIT 10;
Create a Table in Athena using Glue Crawler
In case you are just starting out on the AWS Glue crawler, I have explained how to create one from scratch in one of my earlier articles. In this case, I created the rs_table in spectrumdb database.
Comparison between Amazon Redshift Spectrum and Amazon Athena
I ran some basic queries in Athena and Redshift Spectrum as well. The query elapsed time comparison is as follows. It take about 3 seconds on Athena compared to about 16 seconds on Redshift Spectrum.
The idea behind this post was to get you up and running with a basic data lake on S3 that is queryable on Redshift Spectrum. I hope it was useful.
This story is authored by PV Subbareddy. He is a Big Data Engineer specializing on AWS Big Data Services and Apache Spark Ecosystem. | https://medium.com/zenofai/building-a-data-lake-on-aws-using-redshift-spectrum-6e306089aa04 | ['Engineering Zenofai'] | 2020-03-17 11:15:39.768000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Redshift', 'AWS', 'Cloud Computing', 'Athena'] |
6 Best REST API Tools for Testing, Design, and Development | 6 Best REST API Tools for Testing, Design, and Development
My favorite tools to build and test REST APIs and web services include Postman for automation testing, curl a Linux command, Swagger, and a few more. javinpaul Follow Sep 4 · 8 min read
Hello folks, If you are a Java or web developer working on REST APIs and RESTful web services and looking for some testing tools to test your APIs and web services, or open-source tools to document your REST APIs then you have come to the right place.
Earlier, I have shared the best books and courses for RESTful web services and in this article, I am going to share five awesome but easily accessible and free tools to test your REST APIs.
These REST API testing and development tools will help you to test your APIs as you build, starting from unit testing to integration testing and then fully automating your resting to create a regression pack.
You can also use these tools to interact with your REST API during the development phase for quick tests.
Some of you might already be familiar with these tools, commands, and library in that case just chip in and share your experience so that we can all learn from each other.
If you ask me, I generally used the curl command for simple testing like to see what data a particular REST endpoint returns but for more sophisticated testing I generally use tools like Postman, RESTAssured, or SOAPUI.
Anyway, without any further ado, here are some tools you can use to test your REST APIs or RESTful web services, as we Java developer calls them. I will also add more tools and their examples as and when I find them, but for now I have shared the tools and resources for further learning them.
6 Best Tools for REST API Designers, Developers, and Testers
Without wasting any more of your time, here is my list of best tools for REST API testing for Java developers. You can use these tools to interact with your RESTful web services like sent HTTP GET and POST requests, monitor response code, examine headers and cookies and inspect data.
1. Postman [Best API testing tool]
If you are not a big fan of command-line tools and rather like a GUI client to test your REST API then PostMan is the best tool for you. It comes as a Chrome extension and you can install it on your chrome browser and from thereon.
It is probably the most popular tool to test your REST API. If you look at their website, you will find that Postman is used by 5 million developers and more than 100,000 companies to access 130 million APIs every month.
It’s also feature-rich and supports every stage of the REST API lifecycle. Through design, testing, and full production, Postman is there for faster, easier API development — without the chaos.
It doesn’t matter whether you are working in Windows, Mac OS, or Linux, you can download the Postman app to test your REST APIs anywhere.
If you want to learn more about Postman tools for REST API Testing, I highly recommend you join Postman: The Complete Guide — REST API Testing course by Valentine Despa on Udemy. It’s a great resource to effectively use the Postman tool. | https://medium.com/javarevisited/6-best-rest-api-tools-for-testing-design-and-development-1c5f69ed1f22 | [] | 2021-09-04 17:59:11.525000+00:00 | ['Postman', 'Web Development', 'Testing', 'Tools', 'Rest'] |
Why We Invested in Tailor-Ed | Benson Oak Ventures invests with the goal to support big ideas led by visionary and execution-focused entrepreneurs aiming to build transformative companies. We invest through a multi-stage and high-conviction model in our companies. We met Maayan and Yael and were immediately impressed by their passion, smarts and resounding Founder / Market fit for an EdTech venture. We originally met just before they were accepted to Y Combinator and upon their return, had an initial meeting and immediately invited them for a follow-up as we saw two founders with a global vision to impact students, teachers and classrooms under the mission of “reaching every student”.
With years of meaningful experience at the intersection of technology, edtech startups and pedagogy, Maayan and Yael share a tremendous ability to understand the problems in education as well as visualize the solutions, with a clear understanding of the challenges facing education startups, especially around monetization and alignment of interests for education stakeholders.
Maayan and Yael met at Stanford University and bring a unique complement of skills to tackle problems around education. With a degree in Engineering from Israel’s top tech school (Technion), dual MBA and M.Ed degrees from Stanford, plus experience at start-ups BloomBoard and Edmodo, Maayan is keenly familiar with teachers’ struggle to reach every student. With a degrees in computer science (focus on AI and machine learning) an M.A. in Learning, Design and Technology at Stanford’s School of Education Design, and her own experience at Smart Sparrow and another edtech startup, Yael brings the rare combination of raw technical talent with UX and UI that has translated into an early version of the product welcomed by early adopters. They successfully leveraged their experience and product to be accepted into Y Combinator and launched the product, already supporting thousands of students and providing value to students.
Tailor-Ed’s vision is to organize the world’s educational content by efficacy so that every student can get the most effective resource for their needs and understanding. There is a huge (and rapidly growing!) amount of educational content today (Pearson, McGraw Hill) as well as Khan Academy and many more open sources. But there has been great difficulty in closing the loop — of being able to say what content is best to teach which type of students — and assess what is most effective and provides better results. Tailor-Ed is the first company to close this feedback loop for content creators. It’s customizing and tailoring learning to better fit students and at the same time share this understanding with content creators, engendering a more effective virtuous cycle.
They have developed a platform to help teachers create customized lesson plans and curriculum for students. Teachers use Tailor-ED to send short quizzes to assess the students’ needs and then group the students by those needs. Tailor-ED then continuously finds the most effective lesson plan, built from existing educational content, for each student group.
Beyond proficiency — looking at student needs that include motivation, confidence, social aptitude, memory and focus
By leveraging all the education content out there, Tailor-ED provides a far more personalized lesson plan than anyone else out there. The team won the 1st place prize (funds included!) in prestigious PIE Challenge under Israel National Personalization Competition (piechallenge.org.il/en/) in part because an NYU research team found Tailor-ED statistically significantly in improving student achievement.
While having a transformational idea and goal is laudable and the type of journey we at Benson Oak want to support, the heart of the proposition is a financial investment and the ability to make money as a business. Our decision to make this investment was predicated on hours with the team, deep dive into product and — most of all — belief there is a viable business model on which this team can execute.
Seen through our 4 questions approach:
IS IT A B2M² COMPANY? Tailor-ED is addressing a global problem at the heart of education. Their technology enables them to execute across languages already proven by their implementations both in Israel and in the US in Hebrew and English content. Their capabilities of accurately grouping students (learners) according to their needs and then identifying best suited content has applications beyond K-12 in a world that is moving towards self learners and ongoing, independent education. HOW WILL THEY WIN? The team is initially building a community focused on teachers, rather than depending on ads that translate into numbers but weaker foundations. Teachers have the know-how and are pivotal in the engagement of the product with the students. The teachers also provide the gateway to the principals and school buy in. At the same time, the team will approach districts with bottom up data of results and adoption provides the real scale opportunity for the company and reaching a broad range of students. WILL WE ADD VALUE? We understand education is a long term play and requires patience to build a brand, develop and sustain a viable business model. Maayan and Yael are well connected to business and thought leaders around the world, and they have previously raised seed funds from edtech investors such as Emerge Education and as part of this round, Dr. Avraham Kadar, Founder and CEO of leading Edtech company BrainPop is to co-invest and is joining the Board. IS THE BUSINESS MODEL SCALABLE AND SELF-SUFFICIENT. Tailor-Ed has a business model revolving around school buy-in as well as teachers for whom they save significant amount of time and bring efficiencies around preparing class materials. The team is already showing adoption and monetization in Israel — both a valuable market and fantastic testing ground for implementation in the States. We’ve now seen multiple EdTech startups with global visions which have all been able to monetize and get significant traction in Israel — both a tribute to the companies and the forward thinking of schools locally. Integration into a number of Israeli schools under paid subscriptions shows the efficacy of their solution in multiple languages and the deftness to manage multiple revenue models and markets.
Founding a start-up is hard no matter what the field, focusing on EdTech in general is even more challenging and aiming to impact how content is consumed by teachers and schools on a global scale falls under the rubric of ambitious! We are excited to join Maayan and Yael in this journey and strongly believe they have the talent, passion and experience necessary to succeed and we are proud to be lead investors in the Seed Round. | https://medium.com/bensonoak/why-we-invested-in-tailor-ed-73ef89d7cb8b | ['Yoni Mindel'] | 2019-11-10 22:54:08.089000+00:00 | ['Education'] |
2 Pineapples, 6 Ways | “2 Pineapples, 6 Ways” by © Renée E. Winfield, 2021
Score the top, slice, stop,
going in this with doubt,
boring down though is
much like slicing cheese
a bit therapeutic, ease.
***
score 1/6: crown and body,
separate and combine,
rapt in feeling success.
Score bottom, slice, drop,
and take a first bite into
a juicy base handful of
green rubbery buttons
and yellow, soft spikes.
***
score 2/6: now, (the big picture)
sink in your teeth and tear in
a pineapple bottom and it’s
pure-pleasure, feeds.
Slice the side, pull, break,
amidst a metamorphosis:
polyhedral geometry,
slick texture, faded yellow.
***
slice 3/6: balance an organic weight,
glistens it’s full measure
Slice quarters, all around,
segment-task repeats.
***
slice 4/6: the simple forms the
complex parts or maintains
simplicity held by one and
each later to core; a second,
pineapple is removed from a
box, sliced at top and bottom.
Core by cutting center, push/pull
pineapple core; a procedure goes
faster, a mindless task requiring
nothing more than going through
the previous motions except that
this time you slice the outer skin,
and segment the fruit — later and
core now.
***
core 5/6: push/pull in action.
Pull core, pull core down.
remove and dispose core;
if eaten, the core has a strong, burning
sensation without permanent, harm.
***
pull 6/6: a core removal.
____
Note: Surprisingly, easier
if and when one may pare
than done above, it’s said:
handle it with best of care.
w/Thanks to: Reader/s
— r.e.w. | https://medium.com/rhymes-with-pick-ones-brains/2-pineapples-6-ways-bb5faa42cd5d | [] | 2021-04-09 00:45:52.008000+00:00 | ['Slice', 'Coring', 'Poetry', 'Cutting', 'Pineapple'] |
How to Measure Risk in Hotel Investing | How to Measure Risk in Hotel Investing
Commercial real estate (CRE) investments are risky. Of course, with CRE, you have the benefit of a physical asset backing the investment — unlike most public securities.
That said, the business plan and sponsor may add or subtract risk depending on the approach.
Risk Levels
CRE investors measure risk on a spectrum from Core to Opportunistic.
Core — stable cash flow and little to no deferred maintenance
— stable cash flow and little to no deferred maintenance Core Plus — stable asset with potential value enhancement from minor tweaks to operation or property
— stable asset with potential value enhancement from minor tweaks to operation or property Value Add — unstable asset with value enhancement from operational turnaround or renovation
— unstable asset with value enhancement from operational turnaround or renovation Opportunistic — defunct operation or non-existent property with value creation in construction or rebuilding operations
Hotels generally fall in the Core Plus to Opportunistic risk spectrum for a variety of reasons.
To start, every hotel will come with a brand-mandated change of ownership property improvement plan (PIP). This requires the new owner to make capital improvements to bring the hotel to current brand standards.
Additionally, hotel investments are more like an operating business with a real estate component than the other way around. This comes with a variety of risks associated with the strength of your operator.
As you would expect, the higher risk should accompany a higher return on investment.
Identifying Risk
Real estate investments trade within an opaque and illiquid market, which is in stark contrast to how public markets operate. Therefore, measuring risk is much more difficult than how you would approach a typical public equity or debt investment.
Hotel investment risks fall into three broad categories:
Operations — risks associated with the operation of the hotel. These are associated with both top line production and how much of that flows to the bottom. It also includes the general liability risks that are readily apparent and insured against. Property — risks associated with the condition of the property. These may include useful life of mechanical systems, quality of the building envelope, and binary risks associated with renovations (i.e. whether the work gets done). Property risks also include the natural disasters and other clear risk factors that you insure against. Market — risks associated with macroeconomic conditions. They may appear in the operation, property, or capitalization of the asset. This is a catch-all for everything out of the sponsor’s control. However, an astute sponsor will identify them and establish appropriate mitigation measures to address these risks.
This framework will give you an eye for what to look for in an investment’s offering documents. A private placement memorandum identifies these in a comprehensive legal way. However, you should look for indications of each throughout the presentation and discussions with the sponsor.
Evaluating Risk
Very few risks are easily quantified.
In many cases, you have to look to your gut for direction on how to evaluate risk. However, you should also rely on the sponsor to answer questions related to how she intends to address the three areas identified above, especially for items within her control.
Let’s look at an example.
Courtyard by Marriott in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It is, currently, not getting its fair share of bookings and the average daily rate is just below market average. The sponsor established an operational turnaround plan, and the PIP is expected to cost $20,000 per room.
This is clearly a value add deal because of the scope of the renovation and the need to catch up to the market. Therefore, I would expect the investment returns at the project level to be >20% IRR and >2.0x multiple.
The most glaring risks center around the operator’s ability to close the gap with the market. A renovation will probably have a big impact, but it must combine with a robust revenue strategy that includes corporate groups and airline contracts.
Courtyard is a strong brand, especially with business transient guests, so that doesn’t present a major challenge. Still, it’s important to evaluate the competitive set and proposed new supply to ensure you’re not splitting that distribution channel with a Residence Inn, full-service Marriott, or some other Marriott-branded property in the market.
About the Author
John Wijtenburg is a hotel investor and blogger at Hotel Investor Toolbox. You can connect with him at LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. | https://medium.com/@johnwijtenburg/how-to-measure-risk-in-hotel-investing-5428bd93216f | ['John Wijtenburg'] | 2020-10-13 15:32:48.178000+00:00 | ['Commercial Real Estate', 'Real Estate Investments', 'Investing', 'Risk', 'Hotel'] |
Success case: follow the goal, not the requirement | Several months ago we introduced OKR in our scrum-based process.
We build a personal cloud product made of a backend, an Android and an iOS app, a web portal and apps running on computers. Our business model is B2B2C, meaning that we sell the product to big companies, usually mobile operators, who integrate it into their systems, rebrand the apps and make them available to the end users.
Among the first set of Key Results associated with the Objective, we had to improve the rating in the app store for our iOS app.
A good rating is very important for several reasons directly tied to the business: the app becomes more visible, the rate of users installing the app improves, the activations increase, and so on.
One way to achieve this goal would be to work on the app quality, making it nicer and fixing some bugs, and indeed we did some improvements in these areas as well. However, we mostly focused on the rating process itself, which had to change also for compliance with some recent Apple guidelines.
The requirement
A comparison analysis with other apps was performed, and the input coming to the scrum team was to introduce a new interaction layer before the actual invitation-to-rate popup. In that layer, unhappy users would be invited to send a direct feedback, without going to the store. If this behaved as expected, happy users would give to the app 4 or 5 stars, thereby improving the rating.
In other times, the team would have worked as a feature factory, with the goal to build the requirement in a stable and beautiful way, as fast as possible.
This time, having a clear and explicit KR made the difference: the goal, or the expected outcome using an established terminology, was to increase the rating. In a problem solving mindset, the requirement was seen as a suggestion to get there, with the freedom to consider other paths. Definitely this change of approach brought more energy and engagement in the team.
Towards the sprint goal
During the sprint, UX and DEV people together actually worked on changing the flow (let’s call it the WHAT), introducing the ‘send feedback’ as required. While digging into the existing code, with the goal in mind, they came up proposing an orthogonal approach: why not also focus on the trigger that makes the flow show up in the user’s path (let’s call it the WHEN)?
In particular, the existing flow was presented after the successful completion of n actions in a row, counting any action. The team suggested instead to identify a few emotionally valuable actions, and present the flow upon the execution of one of those: it was likely that in such a moment the user was more willing to provide a good rating.
Going live
Once the changes were ready for being launched to get the first empirical results, we faced a showstopper: for bureaucratic reasons, our customers could not deploy the ‘send feedback’ as it was designed, a more complex implementation was needed.
We then decided to just quickly disable the WHAT, restoring the flow to how it was before, and send live the app with only the change to the WHEN as proposed by the team.
The results exceeded our expectations by a large margin. Here is the trend of the app store ratings for two of our main customers, monitored over a period of a few weeks:
App store ratings for the iOS app, labeled and branded by two different customers
Such a rapid improvement is the result of not only better ratings by each user, but also of a much higher number of users rating the app.
What’s next?
Having seen things going so well, we decided not to invest any more effort on the rating mechanism, except for applying the new logic to our Android app, which also got a boost in the Play store.
As of now, we keep monitoring the apps in the stores, and evaluating sprint by sprint if any of the new features that we introduce should be added to the list of triggers for the app rating invitation to appear.
Conclusions
As a result of this activity we could observe that keeping the team involved with the current company Objective and the related Key Results brings more motivation, better team work, and a higher quality in the decisions, as everyone can contribute with different perspectives; the price to pay, which — as a Product Owner — is to be able at a certain point to take a decision of what to do and, much more important, what not to do (by now), seems worth the benefit.
In this particular case, without the team’s input, the activity would have resulted in a complete waste of effort and time. | https://medium.com/funambol-techblog/success-case-follow-the-goal-not-the-requirement-8f51950204c6 | ['Mirco Porcari'] | 2020-12-21 15:43:19.846000+00:00 | ['Outcome Over Output', 'Ratings And Reviews', 'Scrum', 'Product Ownership', 'Okr'] |
HOW TO TURN A BLOG POST INTO AN INFOGRAPHIC | When you think about the amount of time it takes to write a blog post it would be a tragedy to not use the post in other ways. One thing you might not have thought of is turning a blog post into an infographic.
Why would you want to do this?
Well, infographics are one of the fastest ways to communicate a lot of information with your clients and customers. Plus in the small amount of time you have to capture your audience’s attention an infographic can keep them engaged. Infographics are also great for visual learners.
Here are three steps to follow to turn a blog post into an infographic.
Step 1 — Figure out your blog posts main points.
For this exercise I am pulling information from a blog post I wrote a few years ago called, Why you should use YouTube to market your business in 2018. In case you are wondering, it’s still a good idea in 2020.
My main points in that post are that:
One billion hours of content is watched on YouTube every day.
It’s the second most popular site in the world
Video creates trust with your client and customer.
It increases your SEO and brings your name up in Google searches.
If you get enough views, YouTube pays you.
You can reach a worldwide audience.
Step 2 — Create a catchy infographic
My favourite free sites for infographics are Canva and Adobe Spark. If doing this sparks fear inside you, give me a call and I can train you how to do this or create one for you. A few tips:
Think about your branding colours and personality when creating the infographic.
Don’t make your text too small.
Pay attention to your sizing. Every social media platform uses a different photo size.
Use icons or charts to visually express your main points.
If you are using an actual picture in the background, make sure you can still see the text.
Source statistics with small text.
Make sure to add your logo or website if there isn’t room.
Here’s what the YouTube blog post looks like in infographic form.
Step 3 — Post away
Some social media sites allow you to share a blog post URL while others do not. Another reason why infographics can be super useful. You can share your entire blog post on some sites and infographics on others with links back to the full post. This way, if you have the same followers on different platforms, they are experiencing the content in different ways.
You can also be proactive and add an infographic to all your blog posts. If you haven’t been doing this you can go back and add infographics to your old posts.
Lastly, you can show infographics and static images in your YouTube videos as well. There are so many options!
Blog posts aren’t dead. If you have read this far you have to agree. Neither are infographics. Consider adding them to your content today. | https://medium.com/@laura-watts/how-to-turn-a-blog-post-into-an-infographic-e73b79d6e0ea | ['Laura Watts'] | 2020-09-25 14:26:33.960000+00:00 | ['Blog Post Ideas', 'Infographics', 'Blogging For Business', 'Bloggertips', 'Blogging'] |
In Reality You Are a Multimillionaire | pexels-Evgeny Tchebotarev
Imagine you owned a field. And buried in that field was a pot of gold. Worth millions of dollars.
Only, you didn’t know it was there. And so, while you technically were a millionaire, because you were unaware of what you possessed, you lived very meagerly. You even often complained of money problems, and worried often about lack of finances. All the while the answer to all your problems was hidden in the very field which you owned.
Family, it’s the same with our riches in Christ. Christ was the sacrificial lamb that took away the sins of the world. Every sin, forgiven. But many do not know of their glorious inheritance in Christ. They don’t know they are forgiven. And so, they live in fear, in guilt, and in shame.
And even the ones that do know, they are usually preoccupied with trying to please God or themselves, when God has already said, he is well pleased with us because of Jesus Christ’s finished work on the cross.
Sister, Brother, this Christmas know for certain that you are loved and you are forgiven. Don’t sit anymore on the richest of Christ. Search deep within your heart and realize that Christ desires to make his home in your heart so you can sup together.
Dig up the lost and buried treasure and rejoice! You are more than a millionaire.
You have true riches in Christ. | https://medium.com/@mxchristopher/in-reality-you-are-a-multimillionaire-74984216f16e | ['M.X. Christopher'] | 2020-12-25 03:32:58.613000+00:00 | ['Millionaire', 'Christmas', 'Wealth', 'Jesus', 'Christianity'] |
Why users rule your development process | Understand the context of use
Start a conversation with your users. Structure your conversation with some questions. Is there a problem you can solve in their everyday lives?
There are several ways of understanding the context of use. There are several ways to collect data. For example, you can jot down notes on a piece of paper, use a computer, conduct a quantitative questionnaire or sound record the conversation to capture the requirements.
Refine the user requirements
The conversation with the target group has hopefully been fruitful and the paper is full of notes or low-fidelity prototypes. Structure the collected data by your choice, normally by functional and non-functional requirements.
Create prototypes
Visualize the collected data using pen and paper and show them to your target group. In the early stages of the prototype development, low-fidelity prototypes are favoured over high-fidelity prototypes.
Low-fidelity prototypes are cost-effective and provide the level of detail needed in the first iteration. In contrast, high-fidelity prototypes require more time and need a level of detail that is hard to capture in the first iteration.
Evaluate the prototypes
Evaluate and get feedback on the prototypes you have created. There are methods you can use to evaluate your prototype, such as the System Usability Score. The core concept with evaluation is to show and discuss the prototype with your users.
When the evaluation is reviewed, go back to the user requirements and readjust the prototype using the initial user requirements. Did you really understand the context of use? | https://medium.com/stacc/why-users-rule-your-development-process-faf68c96f647 | ['Aleksander Nygård Tonheim'] | 2020-09-29 14:02:51.785000+00:00 | ['Prototyping', 'Methodology', 'UX', 'Ucd', 'Interaction Design'] |
The Jungle of Koalas, Pandas, Optimus and Spark | If you are as excited about data science as me, you probably know that the Spark+AI latest summit started yesterday (April 24th 2019). And there are great things to talk about. But I will do it with a spin-off.
If you’ve been following me you now that I co-created a framework called Optimus. If you want to see more about that check these articles:
Where I’m explaining a whole data science environment with Optimus and other open source tools. This could have been part 3, but I’m more interested in showing you other stuff.
Optimus APIs
In the beginning Optimus started as a project for cleaning big data, but suddenly we realized that there was a lot of more opportunities for the framework. Right now we have created a lot of interesting things and if you are a data scientist using pandas, or spark you should check it out.
Right now we have these APIs:
Improved versions of Spark Dataframes (much better for cleaning and munging data).
Easier Machine Learning with Spark.
Easier Deep Learning with Spark and Spark Deep Learning.
Plots directly from Spark Dataframes.
Profiling Spark Dataframes.
Database connections (like Amazon Redshift) easier.
Enrich data connecting with external APIs.
And more. You can even read data directly from the internet to Spark.
So you can see we have been trying a lot to improve the world of the data scientist. One of the things we care was creating a simple and usable API, and we didn’t love Pandas API or Spark API by itself, but a combination of those with a little touch of awesomeness created what you can call today our framework.
Koalas vs Optimus vs Spark vs Pandas
Today Databricks announced the project Koala as a more productive way when interacting with big data, by augmenting Apache Spark’s Python DataFrame API to be compatible with Pandas.
If you want to try it check this MatrixDS project:
And this GitHub repo:
So instead of boring you with copy-pasting the documentation of Koalas that you can read right now, I created a simple example of the connection between Koalas, Optimus and Spark.
You’ll need to install Optimus
pip install --user optimuspyspark
and Koalas
pip install --user koalas
I’ll be using this dataset for testing:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/databricks/koalas/master/data/sample_stocks.csv
Let’s first read data with Spark vanilla:
from pyspark.sql import SparkSession
spark = SparkSession.builder.getOrCreate() df = spark.read.csv("sample_stocks.csv", header=True)
For that I needed to upload the dataset before. Let’s see that in Optimus:
op = Optimus()
df = op.load.url(" from optimus import Optimusop = Optimus()df = op.load.url(" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/databricks/koalas/master/data/sample_stocks.csv ")
That was one step simpler because with Optimus you can read data directly from the web.
What about Koalas?
import databricks.koalas as ks df = ks.read_csv(" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/databricks/koalas/master/data/sample_stocks.csv ")
This code will fail, would that happen in Pandas?
import pandas as pd df = pd.read_csv(" https://raw.githubusercontent.com/databricks/koalas/master/data/sample_stocks.csv ")
Well no. That would work. That’s because you can read data with Pandas from the web directly. Ok so let’s make the Koalas code work:
import databricks.koalas as ks df_ks = ks.read_csv("sample_stocks.csv")
Well that looks simple enough. By the way, if you want to read the data from the local storage with Optimus it’s almost the same:
from optimus import Optimus
op = Optimus()
df_op_local = op.load.csv("sample_stocks.csv")
But, let’s take a look at what happen next. What are the types of this Dataframes?
print(type(df_sp))
print(type(df_op))
print(type(df_pd))
print(type(df_ks))
And the result is:
<class 'pyspark.sql.dataframe.DataFrame'>
<class 'pyspark.sql.dataframe.DataFrame'>
<class 'pandas.core.frame.DataFrame'>
<class 'databricks.koalas.frame.DataFrame'>
So the only framework that created a Spark DF apart from Spark itself, was Optimus. What does this mean?
Let’s see what happens when we want to show the data. For showing data in Spark we normally use the .show() method, and for Pandas the .head() method.
df_sp.show(1)
Will work as expected.
df_op.show(1)
Will work too.
df_pd.head(1)
Will work as well. But what about out Koalas DF? Well you need to use the pandas API, because that’s one of the goals of the library, make the transition easier from pandas. So:
df_ks.show(1)
Will fail, but
df_ks.head(1)
Will work.
If you are running this code along with me, if you hit show for spark, this is what you saw:
+----------+------+------+------+------+----------+----------+----------+-------+-------+------+--------+----------+------+
| Date| Open| High| Low| Close| Volume|ExDividend|SplitRatio|AdjOpen|AdjHigh|AdjLow|AdjClose| AdjVolume|Symbol|
+----------+------+------+------+------+----------+----------+----------+-------+-------+------+--------+----------+------+
|2018-03-27|173.68|175.15|166.92|168.34|38962839.0| 0.0| 1.0| 173.68| 175.15|166.92| 168.34|38962839.0| AAPL|
+----------+------+------+------+------+----------+----------+----------+-------+-------+------+--------+----------+------+
only showing top 1 row
Which is kinda awful. Everyone prefers those pretty HTML outline tables to see their data, and Pandas has them, so Koalas inherits them from Pandas. But remember, this are not Spark DF. If you really want to see a prettier version of Spark DF with Optimus you can use the .table() method.
df_op.table(1)
and you’ll see:
which shows you the data better plus information about it like the types of the columns, the number of rows in the DF, the number of columns and partitions.
Selecting data
Let’s do more with our data. Like slicing it.
I’ll choose the columns Date, Open, High, Low and Volume with the frameworks. There may be more ways of selecting data, I’m just using the common ones.
With Spark:
# With Spark
df_sp["Date","Open","High","Volume"].show(1) # or
df_sp.select("Date","Open","High","Volume").show(1)
With Optimus:
df_op["Date","Open","High","Volume"].table(1) # or
df_op.select("Date","Open","High","Volume").table(1) # or with indices :) df_op.cols.select([0,1,2,5]).table(1)
With Pandas:
df_pd[["Date","Open","High","Volume"]].head(1) #or df_pd.iloc[:, [0,1,2,4]].head(1)
With Koalas:
df_ks[["Date","Open","High","Volume"]].head(1) # will work df_ks.iloc[:, [0,1,2,4]].head(1) # will fail df_ks.select("Date","Open","High","Volume") # will fail
So as you can see right now we have good support of different things with Optimus, and if you love the [[]] style from Pandas, you can use it with Koalas too, but you can’t select by indices, at least not yet.
The difference here is with Koalas and Optimus you are running Spark code underneath, so you don’t have to worry about performance. At least not right now.
More advance stuff:
Let’s get the frequencies for a column:
Pandas:
df_pd["Symbol"].value_counts()
Koalas:
df_ks["Symbol"].value_counts()
They’re the same which is very cool.
Spark (some of the bad parts):
df_sp.groupBy('Symbol').count().show()
Optimus (you can do the same as in Spark):
df_op.groupBy('Symbol').count().show()
or you can use the .cols attribute to get more functions:
df_op.cols.frequency("Symbol")
Let’s transform our data with One-Hot-Enconding:
Pandas:
# This is crazy easy
pd.get_dummies(data=df_pd, columns=["Symbol"]).head(1)
Koalas:
# This is crazy easy too
ks.get_dummies(data=df_ks, columns=["Symbol"]).head(1)
Spark (similar enough result but horrible to do):
# I hate this
from pyspark.ml.feature import StringIndexer,OneHotEncoderEstimator indexer = StringIndexer(inputCol="Symbol", outputCol="SymbolIndex")
df_sp_indexed = indexer.fit(df_sp).transform(df_sp) encoder = OneHotEncoderEstimator(inputCols=["SymbolIndex"],
outputCols=["SymbolVec"]) model = encoder.fit(df_sp_indexed)
df_sp_encoded = model.transform(df_sp_indexed)
df_sp_encoded.show(1)
Optimus (a little better but I still prefer Koalas for this):
from optimus.ml.feature import string_to_index, one_hot_encoder df_sp_indexed = string_to_index(df_sp, "Symbol")
df_sp_encoded = one_hot_encoder(df_sp_indexed, "Symbol_index")
df_sp_encoded.show()
So in this case the easier way was from Pandas, and luckily it’s implemented in Koalas, and this types of functions will increase in the future, but right now this is almost all we have as you can see here:
But they run in Spark so it rocks.
Plots:
Plotting is an important part of data analysis. With Pandas we are use to plot what ever we want very easily, but with Spark it’s not that easy. We are happy to announce that in the latest version of Optimus (2.2.2) we have created a way of creating plots directly from your Spark DataFrames, no subsetting needed.
Pandas:
df_pd.plot.scatter("Open","Volume")
df_pd.boxplot("High")
df_pd.hist("Low")
Koalas:
df_ks.hist("Low")
This will not work.
Spark:
Nope.
Optimus:
df_op.plot.boxplot(“High”)
df_op.plot.hist(“Low”)
df_op.plot.scatterplot(["Open","Volume"])
Apache Spark 3.x: | https://towardsdatascience.com/the-jungle-of-koalas-pandas-optimus-and-spark-dd486f873aa4 | ['Favio Vázquez'] | 2019-04-25 12:34:33.660000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Data Science', 'Business', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Machine Learning'] |
Deep Learning for EEGs and BCI : (How I Managed to get 94% score model.) | Severe Class Imbalance is Hell
Part of what made me spend a lot of time on treating this as a multi-class classification problem is that I thought I could fix this by either under or over-sampling. This introduced me to two Python libraries, imblearn and smote-variants. Let’s say that you have 1.5 million data points and about 90% of them are the ‘0’ category, which is [0,0,0,0,0] in original vector form. Well if you undersample it to about 50,000, then oversample the others, you could get something even. There are a few problems with this:
In theory, if the data set is balanced, the learner could learn each one almost equally, which would mean it would do well on any test data. However, in reality, there are certain categories that happen more than others. If you took value counts and just learned the top 3 well, you’d probably do decently in the test data (assuming test data isn’t wacky). How much? Category 0 has a1 million data points, and the smallest category might only have 2000 points. So you have to oversample using the SMOTE or other such methods. Now imblearn has classic, borderline and KNN type SMOTEs, and smote-variants has more SMOTE than you can shake a stick at. I thought I’d try one or two that I’d read about in papers, but the thing is, it’s a losing battle. Computational cost — only random undersampling is fast. Other methods took too long for my taste. Random undersampling can discard useful data. You have no idea if it’s outlier junk or decision boundary defining data. I tried using outlier detection to trim off the outliers before doing some undersampling…but again, there’s too much flying in the dark for me.
Nevertheless, I persisted
I wanted to use Keras. Now, using imblearn means we have this thing called BalancedBatchGenerator — just for keras — which is a data generator like the kind you find in keras for time series or images, most notably. Rather than augmenting data, it mostly just creates balanced training mini-batches. Now if you’ve already done some a priori balancing, like I did before, you might not think there is a need for this — but that depends on how balanced you want things. If you decided YES, I will use BalancedBatchGenerator (hereafter BBG), you will have to decide how to achieve balance in the mini-batch — you can either use the over or under-sampling (or combo) methods in imblearn — but remember each one of these comes with a cost. If you do CondensedNearestNeighbour under sampler in auto-mode, it will have to re-sample EVERY class in the mini-batch until you get your perfect balance. tl;dr: NOT WORTH IT, takes forever. Too much computational cost just to get one friggin training mini-batch. I thought: this way I don’t have to undersample ahead of time — locking in my data loss, a priori. If you randomly undersample you will probably, on average, get mini-batches that have ‘good’ data that will help define a clear decision function. Still, in the end, I never got good results when I submitted my predictions to the Kaggle site. I never got about 65% on the AUC. The high score was 98%.
Here’s what worked, and fairly easily too:
Considering this a time series classification problem. First, preprocess using MNE library to bandpass from .1 to 40Hz. I thought using the mu bands, eg 8–12Hz and 16–30 Hz, might be enough. You could concatenate them or even just combine using 8–30Hz bandpass. But I never got great results. I also thought that just using C3, C4, Cz electrodes would be enough, since they have a lot to do with left/right hand motor functions. Still, not great results. So I stuck with 0.1–40Hz, then normalized. Here’s some code:
X_gen = mne.filter.filter_data(data = Xt, sfreq=500, l_freq=0.1, h_freq=40, picks = None)
somescaler = StandardScaler()
X = somescaler.fit_transform(X)
Then: segment the signal into ‘epochs’ (in the signal processing sense), which means short segments, maybe 0.5 seconds, maybe 3 seconds. I used keras’ TimeSeriesGenerator — which is awesome — to sample the last 1000 points, but at a rate of 10. This means I am using 100 data points to cover the last two seconds of signal, or put another way, I’m working at 50hz. I figured that two seconds before or after a signal is enough time to see your brain waves doing the ‘desynchronization’ thing or at least just ‘gearing up’ to do whatever motion you’re told to do.
Furthermore, I used a stride of 125 seconds or so — which means I made overlapping 2 seconds epochs every 0.25 seconds. Here’s the code:
trainX, valX, trainY, valY = train_test_split(X, y, test_size=0.30, random_state=3249, shuffle = False)
print(trainX.shape, trainY.shape, valX.shape, valY.shape) train_gen = TimeseriesGenerator(trainX, trainY, length = 1000,
stride = 50,
sampling_rate = 10,
shuffle = True,
batch_size = 1000)
val_gen = TimeseriesGenerator(valX, valY, length = 1000,
stride = 50,
sampling_rate = 10,
shuffle = True,
batch_size = 1000)
The Shootout: LSTMs vs Temporal Convolutional Networks vs EEGNet.
This is the LSTM model:
i = Input(shape=(100,32))
out = Bidirectional(LSTM(8,return_sequences = False, dropout = 0.2))(i)
#out = GlobalAveragePooling1D()(out)
out = Dense(6, kernel_initializer = 'he_uniform')(out)
model = Model(inputs=[i],outputs=[out])
This is my generic temporal conv1D type architecture:
from keras.layers import AveragePooling1D
model_m = Sequential()
model_m.add(Dropout(0.50, input_shape=(100,32)))
model_m.add(Conv1D(128, 4, kernel_constraint = max_norm(1.),padding = 'same'))
model_m.add(Conv1D(128, 4, kernel_constraint = max_norm(1.),padding = 'same',)) model_m.add(BatchNormalization(axis = -1))
model_m.add(Activation("relu"))
model_m.add(MaxPooling1D(2))
model_m.add(Dropout(0.50)) model_m.add(Conv1D(128, 10, kernel_constraint = max_norm(1.),padding = 'same'))
model_m.add(Conv1D(128, 10, kernel_constraint = max_norm(1.),padding = 'same'))
model_m.add(BatchNormalization(axis=-1))
model_m.add(Activation("relu"))
model_m.add(MaxPooling1D(10))
model_m.add(Flatten())
model_m.add(Dropout(0.50))
model_m.add(Dense(64, kernel_regularizer = l2(1e-5), activation = 'relu', kernel_constraint = max_norm(1.)))
model_m.add(Dense(6, kernel_regularizer = l2(1e-5),activation = 'sigmoid',kernel_constraint = max_norm(1.)))
model_m.summary()
model_m.compile(loss = "binary_crossentropy", optimizer = adam(lr = 0.001), metrics = ["acc"])
Here is the temporal convolutional network from the awesome implementation of Phillipe Remy:
i = Input((100,32))
o = TCN(nb_filters = 64, kernel_size = 8, nb_stacks = 1, dropout_rate = 0.4, dilations = [2,4,6,8])(i)
#o = Dense(64, activation = 'elu', kernel_initializer = 'he_normal')(o)
o = Dense(6, activation = 'sigmoid', kernel_initializer = 'he_normal')(o)
model1 = Model(inputs = [i], outputs = [o])
And here is my implementation of EEGNet. This is based on the 2018 paper by Lawhern et. al. Now, EEGNet is touted as a general EEG/BCI type classification architecture. It’s meant to be fairly simple and shallow, but achieve good results. Which it does. The original implementation in keras, by the authors of the paper, uses channels_first, but I could never quite get used to it, so I changed it to channels_last. Some other details, like dropout rate and pooling size, might also be different from their ‘standard’ model:
F1 = 16
from keras.layers import SpatialDropout2D
D = 4 ; F2 = D * F1
nb_classes = 6; norm_rate = 1.
kernLength = 10
Chans = 32
Samples = 100 input1 = Input((100,32))
block1 = Lambda(lambda x: K.expand_dims(x), output_shape = (100,32,1))(input1)
#block1 = ExpandDimension(axis = -1)(input1)
block1 = Conv2D(F1, (1, kernLength), padding = 'same',
input_shape = (1, Chans, Samples),
use_bias = False)(block1)
block1 = BatchNormalization(axis = -1)(block1)
block1 = DepthwiseConv2D((1,Chans), use_bias = False,
depth_multiplier = 4,
depthwise_constraint = max_norm(1.))(block1) block1 = BatchNormalization(axis = -1)(block1)
block1 = Activation('elu')(block1)
block1 = AveragePooling2D((4,1))(block1)
block1 = SpatialDropout2D(0.50)(block1) block2 = SeparableConv2D(F2, (1, 16), use_bias = False, padding = 'same')(block1)
block2 = BatchNormalization(axis = -1)(block2)
block2 = Activation('elu')(block2)
block2 = AveragePooling2D((5,1))(block2)
blok2 = SpatialDropout2D(0.50)(block2) block2 = Flatten()(block2)
out = Dense(6, activation = 'sigmoid')(block2) ##################################################################
model2 = Model(inputs = [input1], outputs = [out])
model2.summary()
Caveats before the final conclusion
The training was per-subject — I never got around to training an overall model. Also, I didn’t train them equal number of epochs — sometimes 40, sometimes 60. I used cosine-annealing sometimes, didn’t other times. Mostly it was Adam at .001 learning rate, with gradient clipping set at .10.
Some of my final scores.
Conclusion
Overall, the best score was the conv_bn one — which corresponds to my generic TCN model with a few layers of convolutions and batch normalization. EEGnet and the longer temporal convolutional network, with various dilations built in, did similarly well. The LSTM based architecture can do over 90%, which isn’t shabby — however, it was a shallow LSTM. I didn’t have the patience to train some deep stacked LSTM type network. The second place winner of the actual competition used recurrent convolutional combinations, the exact form of which I am unsure, so there is something to explore there.
This whole thing took me damn well near 4 months and I wish it hadn’t, but I did learn some good things from all the pitfalls. I’m especially psyched by learning about the SAX_VSM, WEASEL, and other such methods of time series classification, all of which involve discretization of time series data into ‘words’ which are then classified using tf-idf, bag of words type methods. Another thing worth looking into is Learning Shapelets method of time series classification. Stay tuned! | https://medium.com/@peijin/deep-learning-for-eegs-nad-bci-some-notes-and-some-warnings-28cfc3015a98 | ['Peijin Chen'] | 2019-04-01 16:43:42.996000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Eeg', 'Time Series Analysis', 'Bci'] |
3 Reasons Why You Don’t Get Things Done With Your To-Do List | 3 Reasons Why You Don’t Get Things Done With Your To-Do List
And how to fix them.
Photo by Breakingpic on Pexels
To-do lists are one of the most popular productivity tools ever, and that is for a good reason. It’s crazy simple, you write your tasks and then you check them off after you finish them, but the question is are they really effective in helping you get your tasks done? Well the answer depends on who you are asking.
There’s really a mixed consensus, there are people who view to-do lists as pointless because it is much more effective to schedule your time using a calendar. Although these people are not wrong in any way (because what’s important is what works for you) there are just ways that make to-do lists better and not at all futile.
On the other hand, there are people who actually use to-do lists and get a ton of stuff done, and they cite reasons on how it works for them. | https://medium.com/the-innovation/3-reasons-why-you-dont-get-things-done-with-your-to-do-list-338f11bc6312 | ['Ronald Mathew'] | 2020-07-13 13:29:43.055000+00:00 | ['To Do List', 'Productivity'] |
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe Anthology | MANGROVE
When Frank Crichlow (Shaun Parkes) opens up Caribbean Restaurant, Mangrove, in Notting Hill, it becomes a pillar for the community of West Indians who view it as a piece of home.
Unfortunately, the police, specifically led by PC Pulley (Sam Spruell) see it as a symbol of Black people not knowing their place. Pulley rains down raid upon raid putting Frank’s business at risk.
A peaceful protest, Hands Off Mangrove, is arranged to combat the clear discrimination Frank is facing but wounds in nine protestors including himself, and activists Altheia Jones-LeCointe (Letitia Wright) and Darcus Howe (Malachi Kirby) being arrested, and on trial, for conspiracy to incite a riot.
What is there to say about Mangrove? It was an enjoyable historical drama movie, and I was glad that, although it featured discrimination and racism — it wasn’t as upsetting and enraging for me as other shows and films have been/are. This meant I could focus on the story instead of being blinded by the hatred. So that’s always nice.
As said, this was a historical drama, the Mangrove Nine (as they are dubbed), existed, and hearing their story, one that took place in London and in a time that still feels so recent was incredibly impactful. These characters, these people who lived the experience made history by protesting institutional racism in the Metropolitan police and went a step further by having this formally acknowledged by the courts.
And this was only fifty years ago.
Whether or not this was the movie's intent, or it’s just an accurate reflection of how things were, the audience felt a unified disturbance with the treatment of Frank Crichlow and his restaurant Mangrove. It enforced existing notions of the unfair treatment of Black people at the mercy of those in power, and typically white.
As most people have reflected online, Mangrove is an important piece of British History that has otherwise gone unknown by many. Even those who live around the corner from where Mangrove was and its resurface couldn’t have come at a more poignant time.
Back to the piece of drama itself — it was incredibly well written, lyrical and moving with stand out performances from the majority of the cast members. It managed to shine a light on the happier moments of living while Black in London in the 1960s, the suffering that was simply unavoidable, and most importantly, the hopeful ones which is something that is still carried through today. | https://medium.com/cinemania/steve-mcqueens-small-axe-anthology-172ecc11fea0 | [] | 2020-12-26 19:51:42.974000+00:00 | ['Film', 'Movie Review', 'Steve Mcqueen', 'Movies', 'British Film'] |
Major Depression is relieved by Psychedelic Treatment with Psilocybin | Psilocybin, a compound contained in so-called magic mushrooms, causes visual and auditory hallucinations as well as dramatic changes in consciousness after a few hours. In people with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, psilocybin therapy under psychologically supported conditions substantially reduced existential anxiety and depression. According to a new review, psilocybin could be useful in a much larger population of patients with major depression than previously thought. Moving forward, it was said that these other companies intend to supply psychedelics to global clinical research studies while developing micro-dosing therapies for trials and pharmaceutical medicine. (1) Very interesting right? You could read here another mind-blowing information about that one.
Pharmaceutical companies are researching these mind-altering prescription medications in order to enhance our health and well-being. By de-stigmatizing the drugs and making their absorption smoother and more comfortable, the new concept was to use psychedelics to minimize trauma and improve results. Check the disclaimer on my profile and landing page. Psychedelic therapies, according to some studies, can help differentiate particular characteristics of specific drugs and have previously unknown effects for the treatment of specific mental disorders. (2) This is an innovative solution to our society’s mental health crisis! Let’s take a closer look at psychotropic medications and their applications. Let’s take a look at how far we’ve come in our quest to solve this conundrum.
Given that drug rehabilitation is an aspect of the care of people with psychiatric illnesses, patients’ commitment to the use of psychoactive drugs can be viewed as a collaborative effort in which they not only obey medical guidelines, but also recognize, engage in, comply with, and adopt the recommended treatment. sponsored post. Our everyday lives are influenced by our mental health and well-being. Psychotropic drugs could be a vital part of our toolkit for staying healthy! Let’s keep each other informed about these findings!
Source: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/psychedelic-treatment-with-psilocybin-relieves-major-depression-study-shows | https://medium.com/@michelleyoung791/major-depression-is-relieved-by-psychedelic-treatment-with-psilocybin-7966382e3039 | ['Michelle Young'] | 2021-05-14 12:14:49.659000+00:00 | ['Treatment', 'Stocks', 'Finance', 'Health', 'Psychedelics'] |
Recap of Live AMA Session held on September 22nd | Here’s a little recap of our Live Session on “Investing for Passive Income” held on September 22nd. The webinar was hosted by Nitin Agarwal, Founder of B21 Invest.
AMA Session:
Q — While investing in Crypto, what is your strategy? Can you share some of your experiences?
A — I am a believer in Crypto and I believe that it is the next asset class. So, while I have kept some of my money in safety instruments but the rest of the money I do invest it in Crypto keeping it for the long-term. I look at the price and buy the coins if there’s an opportunity but I don’t’ buy and sell it frequently meaning I do not trade.
Q — How to invest in Crypto?
A — It is very easy to invest in Crypto. There are many platforms available including B21 where you can go and invest easily. It’s better to start investing small.
Q — Harshit: Is it good to hold crypto for long as in more than 2 years?
A — That’s how I would do it. In a shorter period of time, the prices always go up and down but if you look for a longer horizon, it is going be the winner.
Q — Golden Janek: Old Solid Coins or New Coins, your suggestions?
A — It would be best to do your own research by looking at the project, the team, know your strategy, and then invest. Coming to me, I look at the older ones, I hold them for a longer period of time, and because I like to support the ecosystem so I do try to play on shorter ones as well.
Q — Bharat Ogirala: Based on your experience, where do you foresee Bitcoin going in the next 2 years?
A — I think in 2 years, we’ll see more and more businesses and individuals using Crypto as an asset class, it will be also be used as a transactional currency.
Q — Shivangi Khanna: Staking how does it work on B21?
A — On B21, staking is coming very soon. We are building to help you stake the entire portfolio in one go, it is going to come in a few weeks and we hope to do a Live Demo session when that happens.
Q — Janek: Are investment platforms safe to keep crypto?
A — There are many platforms for that, it’s better to do your own research and then keep your assets in the place where you trust.
Q — With B21, can I diversify my portfolio? Some in Stocks, some in MF, some in crypto?
A — That is exactly where we are going. Today on B21, you can do it in crypto only that too in different types of Crypto, it does take time to build that but we are for the investors’ community and we’re building a place where you can in the future invest in Crypto, Mutual Funds, stocks and more.
Q — Manoj: How are Crypto and DeFi expected to transform business in the future?
A — It is bringing more competition in the financial space. Banks are becoming creative, regulators are becoming creative and it is going to be easy to invest slowly and steadily.
Q — Which is better, SIP or Mutual Fund?
A — The basics of investing says that you one can never time the market, so you should always invest in a diversified portfolio and invest regularly.
Q — Parth: SIP on B21?
A — Yes, it is a work in progress. Stay Tuned!
Q — Sagar Sarda: Are you planning to bring Mutual Funds as well on the B21 app? Can we get one platform that will let us invest across all asset classes available to invest on earth?
A — That is exactly what our mission is. We are building step by step, we have cryptos right now, we’re working on Mutual Fund, global share, and various other asset classes. So, we are looking to build a place that will enable you to invest in several assets.
Q — Boris: Why staking interest is higher on Stable coins like USDT?
A — The reason behind this is the people are borrowing more USDT right now because I think in a stable coin world, USDT is the most paired and has a larger trading volume even more than the Bitcoin.
Q — Anuj Singh: Will B21 be simplifying investing in DeFi?
A — Yes, we are working on bringing the DeFi projects very soon.
Q — Anuj Singh: When B21 is coming live on exchanges?
A — Very Soon, but at present, we are focusing more on the product and bringing more users to the platform.
Q — Aman Gangawani: How can crypto be converted to common monetary incomes?
A — It is very simple. You can invest in crypto, and earn staking rewards on certain platforms. You can see it on the B21 app, and it is easy to convert your crypto to fiat on the platform.
We look forward to conducting more such live sessions and will keep updating about it on all our Social Channels, so don’t forget to follow us!
Stay Safe. Invest Regularly.
JOIN US ON:
Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Telegram | Reddit | https://medium.com/b21official/recap-of-live-ama-session-held-on-september-22nd-15a55ff3d207 | ['Shivank Mishra'] | 2020-09-23 13:28:41.103000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrencyportfolio', 'Investing', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Passive Income'] |
When It Comes To Ending Racism, Most White People Can’t Focus | For most Black people, our issues evolve around social, systematic, and institutional racism. No matter how much evidence we provide on systemic racism against Whiteness, White people will find some insignificant side issue to make the point they want to make, invalidating victims of racism if not muting their points altogether.
White people work wonders, muddying subjects involving racism with anything they can to avoid having a discussion of race, which is currently deemed a public health crisis for us. They must have a school for that shit. They will find any, and I do mean any reason, to not address racism. If they aren’t trying to tell us what we mean, they are trying to force their wills upon us or control our bodies and minds. It’s the most unbelievable shit to witness.
It’s damned near impossible for White people to change. The only thing White people will change is the subject to avoid discussing and ending racism. Changing their ways, changing their thinking, listening and comprehending racism from victims, and addressing problems head on are not their concern unless it’s fashionable like this past summer’s with Black Lives Matter protests. Black people are out here screaming and stomping in the streets telling White people what the hell is wrong, and what do they do? They tell us what we meant to say and create a new damned slogan for us.
White folks changed the subject, shifted attention away from the problem, centered on Whiteness, and made the problem about systems instead of Black people. Others have moved on, thinking the threat to their freedom is over with the last election. For these folks, they don’t have the attention spans to change anything except a television channel. I like to call White folks’ inability to focus on matters of race, Racism Attention Deficit Disorder (R.A.D.D.). R.A.D.D is White folks’ limited attention span any matters relative to White Supremacy and racism and their hyperactivity about any and every nonsensical thing except controlling their racism is the official diagnosis many Black antiracists warriors have given White people, a diagnosis that comes from the National Institute for Genetic and Astronomic Superpowers (N.I.G.G.A.S). If you don’t know what this institute is, please see Black Twitter. It coincides with our superpowers we received on December 21st during the negrosolstice.
For White people and those not on Twitter, it’s a joke.
White folks seem to be always changing the conversation, centering whatever irrelevant, ancillary views they’ve deemed important to avoid addressing the point we Black folks want to talk about, and that’s racism.
They Intentionally Ignore Racism
I recently wrote a piece about medical racism and Dr. Fauci’s pleas specifically to Black people about our lack of interest in taking the Covid vaccine. White people never let us get to the front of the line in front of them for anything, and they never offer to help us without a motive, so Black folks are looking for the motive. Most of us Black folks aren’t buying the “we care about you now” line. We know White people. Fauci’s pleas skimmed over our concerns and went right to taking the vaccine so that White people can get back to doing normal business and not doing shit about racism in peak White folksiness. White folks’ attempt to sell the vaccine has been centered on the caring about our health. They’ve failed to realize racism will be around long after Covid is gone, and the financial, emotional, and mental impacts of racism harm us far longer than the pandemic. For Black folks, racism is the pandemic we’re most concerned about, and we’re the only ones worried about it.
One of my examples in my piece referring to medical racism and Black skepticism was a magazine article about an autism study about African Americans that has since been recanted. The story was about 6-years old, and I wasn’t aware the medical had recanted or disavowed it. I remember when it was released and doctors at my husband’s clinic were discussing it. I had no clue the data had been re-analyzed by researchers and the anti-vaxxers had been reprimanded, and how would if I’m not affiliated with any autism communities. Black people aren’t anti-vaxxers (myself included), were just suspicious of White people touching Black bodies because we know they don’t care about us. We also fear the medical community.
But for a lot of White commenters, reading the one or two lines in my piece sent them into a tizzy. They couldn’t focus on the racism in the essay because they were side-tracked on the irrelevant debunked MMR study example. Some White commenters even went as far as calling me an anti-vaxxer, knowing nothing about my health situation to know whether I had a legitimate reason for suspecting the vaccine to begin with. My piece was centered on the concerns of Black people, not the comfort of White folks. The number of White people who weren’t able to see the racism in any of their actions was astounding.
Most of the White readers completely ignored everything in the piece about the medical racism and the nation’s history of anti-Blackness honing in on the two sentences of the now recanted and irrelevant example, demonstrating how White people will intentionally muddy the waters to ignore racism. Some readers shared their personal experiences with vaccines, as if I’ve had no vaccines. I had chicken pox, and I had a chicken pox vaccine. I’ve had Tetanus shots too. My kids were also vaccinated. I’m not anti-vaccines, I’m anti racism, and racism is more of a threat to me than Covid most days. The White people discounting the entire piece to focus on the two sentences have R.A.D.D along with the White folks who read that and their take away was Black folks are anti-vaccinations. Trust me, we’re not. If you listened more, perhaps we could have productive conversations on race.
My essay was talking about racism in medicine, questioning why suddenly White people care about our health outcomes, and the lack of interests of the White healthcare community to do something other than overlook racism by practitioners. White readers were talking about something else altogether. I had countless links provided by “helpful” White readers redirecting me and other Black readers to info on the recanting of the study they’d deemed important.
Ask me how many of those concerned White commenters wanting to make sure we got “good,” vaccine info provided good links on plans to address anti-Blackness and antiracism in medicine?
Not a one. Not. A. One.
Us taking the Covid vaccine, or any vaccine, is all about White comfort, nothing more. Fuck our suffering, screw systemic racism, forget all about the American Medical Association apologizing for not addressing anti-Blackness and blatant racial discrimination about which explains the lack of Black physicians in healthcare today, and Black folks’ experiences with medical racism. White people in the comment section of my piece without realizing it revealed their extreme biases, their true motives, their insensitivity to Black voices and issues on race and systemic racism, and their inability to stay focused.
White folks’ R.A.D.D. is bad!
White folks have all the energy to snatch Black folks’ autonomy. They love correction. They love telling us what’s best for us, while in the same year telling us they’ll never know what it’s like to be us. White people think Black people should just shut up, trust them (the people who can’t address racism or control their own racist behavior mind you) throw our caution to the wind, and vaccinate ourselves to save White people again this year after we just saved their asses from self-imposed tyranny.
White people are probably the most ungrateful, disrespectful people on earth. They are the reason White Supremacy never ends. The lack of interests in understanding and ending racism and their inability to follow the winding road and turns of White Supremacy will forever prevent us all from living in a more ethical and compassionate society. White people intentionally ignore racism because it means they’d have to be uncomfortable.
White people aren’t concerned about Black people, they are concerned about themselves, and they’ll ignore anti-Blackness and racism if it means they get to remain comfortable. Changing subjects and decentering Black people is all about ignoring racism and recentering White people. It’s just more of the casual racism we endure every day, and it’s why we ain’t never outgrowing racism. No matter their ages, White people just aren’t vested in antiracism as Black people are.
We’re tired.
White Folks Keep Misplaced Priorities
Let’ be honest. All White people care about is getting back to normal. They don’t have serious plans to address racism, because racism requires them to sacrifice, give up some things, and change. The expectation is that it’s our jobs to do the sacrificing for everyone. Black folks should do all the teaching and correcting. Clearly America believes it’s up to us to save this country and ourselves. We cannot be the priority, even when we try to make ourselves the priority, and White folks consciously and subconsciously work to make certain we Black folks’ priorities are misplaced. That’s the only way they can sustain White Supremacy and capitalism.
White folks’ incessant pushes for our compliance despite our concerns has been laid bare. Whether it’s getting a shot or voting, White people believe we our born to prioritize White people, and our mistreatment in the process concerns no one. Those days are over. Black people have gotten the memo. No one cares about us. Caring about Black people comes with conditions and limitations, and as soon as we center ourselves and our safety, White folks revolt. We don’t need conditional allyship. We need White people who can make us a priority and fight racism at the same time.
The fact White people blame us for not wanting the vaccine instead of the Chinese Province Wuhan (where the flu originated), Europe (for not closing their borders sooner and ending air travel into the U.S.), Trump (Black baby Jesus in a golden diaper where do I begin), White people (for being so gullible for Trump’s bullshit, for not following social distancing orders, for opposing mask ordinances and suggestions, bucking state closures early on, etc., or the government’s mostly White practitioners on the Coronavirus Task Force failing to honor their Hippocratic oaths to do no harm as they stood by and allowed Trump and his family to kill us highlights White folks’ inability to see racism and how it impacts our everyday life.
White voters aren’t blaming their collective for electing the most evil, incompetent fucking president in modern American history (beating out Dick Cheney, mind you), or White governors deciding to put business over people which is nothing more than Racism Attention Deficit Disorder.
White folks don’t blame Trump for making it impossible for us to get masks to stop the spread of Covid, or the Black Surgeon General telling Americans to stop buying masks. Instead, White folks are blaming me and other Black people for rightly not trusting the medical community or our federal government that has always been gunning for us. White folks choose time and time again to bully the victims of racism.
White folks’ priorities (and blame) stay misplaced.
No one cared about Black people during this pandemic until the help began dying and not wanting to take part in the economy anymore. America needs its most hated and least respected workers to keep the economy going. Without us, America collapses.
Black folks have always been expendable to America, and up until recently, they could afford to lose us. We have been invested in making America fair and fair for everyone, but America hasn’t reciprocated. Now, many Black folks no longer see themselves in the American dream. The fish scales are falling off the eyes of Black folks, and White folks are getting nervous. We’re all living a real life modern spread of disease here in America because White people have felt they had the right to do whatever they want, just like they have throughout history. White people are infamous for spreading diseases through Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, which is one reason many nations communities that have long histories with colonization are looking for ways to reduce the footprints of colonization. They’ve learned the hard way White folks will kill you and blame you for dying or being ill. There is nothing new under the sun, including how White folks’ memories work. Black folks in America are being singled out for it because White folks refuse to treat their R.A.D.D.
Fix racism, all of it, and we have no problems White people. There is a lot to do, and ya’ll have no time to lose focus. A race war is a brewing, one that White people started. An economy is collapsing because White men and women collapsed it. White lawmakers are breaking the very laws White people created to govern us, because we’re all learning laws and governance is really for non-White people, not Whites, and the institution of racism created by White people is at the center of it all.
Fix racism and you’ll fix America, so stay focused, White people. We ain’t going back to the way it used to be, ever. So any other side discussions that don’t include how you all are going to fix racism is a fucking waste of time and an insult to Black folks’ our intelligence. We know your hustle, and we your R.A.D.D. is intentional.
White folks’ inability to see the correlation to national systemic racism as the root of all Black folks’ problem and to stay focused on us long enough to solve racism is why racism will never end and why so many Black people have zero interests in trusting White people. White folks can’t gain our trust if they keep hurting us, and you damned sure can’t be respected if your solutions for solving social problems is to ignore the shit you’ve always ignored, blame the victims and talk over them. That’s bullying and abusers do it all the time to avoid taking responsibility for their behavior. That’s exactly how you don’t earn trust. It’s how your voices and opinions become mute.
Black folks don’t have time to go up and down trees to show White folks their racism and lack of focus, because we’re too busy preparing for White folks’ 2021 shittery. Either you get it by now, or you don’t.
With Racism, Trust Is Always The Real Issue,
Racism breeds untrustworthiness. Every time White people display their racism, regardless of whether the racism is consciously or implicitly, a red flag goes up for us. Those red flags are protecting us from getting our hopes high and our feelings hurt. Most Black people live their entire lives seeing the same things our parents, grandparents, great-grand parents experienced, even when we move to do what should be better settings, and we live and among White people. Black people have testimonies from Malcolm X, Dr. King, Frederick Douglass, and former slaves, both free and those enslaved. We keep checking in on White people waiting for change, and all we get are excuses and prompts to wait longer.
White people have the attention span to put a man fucking man on the moon, but they can’t fix racism. They had the time to invent automobiles to drive us from one coast of the country to the other, but they can’t fix racism. They had the time to create hybrid versions of fruits, flowers, dog breeds, and vegetables, but they can’t fix racism. White people had the time, energy, and focus to create systems and schemes to extract wealth from Black and poor people, but they can’t fix racism.
Where White people spend their time, energy, and attention shows what they care about most, and we know White people don’t care about ending racism. So save those lectures White people and focus your energy and attention on racism, White behavior, White pathologies tied to racism. If White people can’t do anything about their own behavior, how dare they lecture us about ours? If they are doing untrustworthy shit, how dare they insist we trust them? People when they feel protected and when they see change. White people asking Black people to not only trust with no evidence of change, but to ignore the past is untrustworthy, and no one should be second guessing themselves about it.
Trust is a personal choice, and White people don’t get the right to demand we trust them when they show us they can’t be trusted. Black folks might have been born one night, but it wasn’t last night.
Racism Is Not Our Fault, So Stay Focused
Photo by Andre Mouton from Pexels
Let me make this clear. White folks created racism and they maintain White Supremacy, sometimes, we Black folks foolishly help. But the state of America is because of White people. They made this nation, and they’ve always had all the power. White people have all the authority. They make all the laws and they created this fatally flawed system. White people are at the top of the social hierarchy, and they influence everything that has anything to do with how we live. The buck stops with them. White folks choose not to focus on racism, because racism doesn’t affect them, they only feel the effects from racism when we rebel, march, or complain after decades/centuries of mistreatment. All that mistreatment led to the mistrust in the Black community today, and White people will need to take time and pay close attention to fix it, or not. At this point, we’re at the “have no more fucks to give” about White folks’ half-hearted, fair weather allyship efforts. We’re in self-preservation mode because we know we’re all we got.
White people will make everything and everyone the problem except White people and their racism Their R.A.D.D. works double-time, and is often used to absolve them of any wrongdoing, while aiding in disassociating White folks from the collective group of Whiteness altogether. I don’t care how many attempts White folk make to try to decenter us and their racism, I’m putting them right back on their squares. Their constant refocusing won’t work. Nice try though.
White People, Normalize Focusing Solely On Racism
Refocusing is taxing, and it wastes valuable time. We never move forward because we stay moving backwards. It’s the reason so many antiracism activists get so burned out or quit all together. White folks’ inability to stay focused on racism is like teaching little children to walk in a straight line. It’s ridiculous. For most Black folks, racism is the single most important issue, because it drives inequality. The two are married to us. For most White people, its not.
Racism is at the root of every problem this nation has, and we’re tired of White folks not having attention spans long enough to address it.
Racism is the problem, not Black people.
Racism is the problem, not Black people.
Racism is the problem, not Black people, the victims of the racism.
“It’s not hard at all to understand a person; it’s only hard to listen without bias.” ~ Criss Jami (Killosophy)
With racism, most White people have Racism Attention Deficit Disorder. Because of their inherent racism, it’s damned near impossible for them to listen to us without bias, which is why in my opinion racism will never end.
White people don’t have the desire or the mental stamina to stay focused on racism long enough to discuss it or address it, because there is nothing tangible in it for them in their view. If there is a straight line leading from the problems of racism and White Supremacy to their sources, you count on White people not to stay on the path that would take them to the root of the sources, because that’s too much like right (and they’d have to look in the mirror).
White comfort is all that matters, and how they achieve that comfort not of their concern. It means they’ll ignore us, deny our pain, change the subject, and push their personal agendas on us to achieve their personal goals, regardless of if we view them as racist. We Black folks and People of Color can’t continue to allow White people to decenter us and their racism. As long as we do, they will always change the subject or move on from subjects that focus on racism, which means we’ll never get change to ease our discomfort. It would also save our lives.
Changing subjects and ignoring victims of racism is racist. And if you want to know how wrong you are, listen to or read the comments of Black people. If you find your point is off point, you missed the mark. While we all make mistakes, recentering and changing subjects happens too much with White people for it to be accidental. It needs to be called out a lot more often. As we live through this soft coup, that’s looking more like a hard one more each day, never forget racism got us here.
Racism birthed birtherism, which led to Trumpism. Racism is the virus. Racism is America’s 500-year pandemic. White people did that. To blame Black people for anything linked to a pandemic, or the economy is to use us as a scapegoat, and we’re tired of being racist America’s scapegoat.
Black existence in America is about being frustrated because we cannot exist, and if you can’t understand our fears, frustrations, and trust issues without being insensitive, judgemental, or selfishly dismissive, you can’t be an ally. In fact, it’s probably best that you not be one.
Just be self or collective-centered, racist, and White. That’s safer for all involved.
The focus should always be on racism. Conversations by White people should always include racism and how it harms others, until its no longer a thing. And if it can’t be, don’t expect us to stop talking about it because you can’t or won’t. We want to address our discomfort the same way want to center yours.
White people changing subjects created by and about Black people and having short attention spans on matters of race shows their racism, and it needs to end.
But it won’t, because White people just don’t have the time or attention spans for that.
Marley K in Quarantine 2020, sick and tired of racism.
If you enjoyed this essay, you may enjoy these others related to racism, Black issues, and Black autonomy: | https://medium.com/@marleyk/ef56904f20ce | ['Marley K.'] | 2020-12-22 17:40:47.622000+00:00 | ['Racism', 'America', 'Inequality', 'Life Lessons', 'Systemic Racism'] |
2020: The year in review | Firstly, I hope you’re keeping well and looking forward to the holiday season. This has been a difficult year for many, but I’m pleased to say progress has continued unabated here at Nuggets. In fact, we’ve made some significant strides forward.
We’ve all been working remotely for the past 10 months, with no in-person events since early March. But everyone has adapted well, and the pandemic restrictions haven’t held us back.
Looking back at some of the highlights from the last 12 months, I’m extremely proud of what we’ve been able to achieve — and enormously excited for 2021.
Here’s a quick recap…
Product
Our big product news this year was the iOS and Android releases across Europe in May, and shortly after in Australia. This was a huge step for us: making Nuggets available to any business that wants to protect its customer data. Now, anyone can enjoy the privacy, security and simplicity of Nuggets.
across Europe in May, and shortly after in Australia. This was a huge step for us: making Nuggets available to any business that wants to protect its customer data. Now, anyone can enjoy the privacy, security and simplicity of Nuggets. We also launched our own demo store , which allows businesses to test the platform in a live environment. Any business can download Nuggets and experience the onboarding, log in and payment flows — without sharing or storing their data. It gives potential partners a full overview of exactly how the platform works, and allows them to run through the user experience.
, which allows businesses to test the platform in a live environment. Any business can download Nuggets and experience the onboarding, log in and payment flows — without sharing or storing their data. It gives potential partners a full overview of exactly how the platform works, and allows them to run through the user experience. Our engineering team grew this year — and will again in 2021. As always, there’s been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes.The team has been hard at work on UI/UX, infrastructure and architecture updates, continually improving the platform’s resilience, robustness and functionality. This puts us in a great position for the exciting things we have lined up for 2021.
this year — and will again in 2021. As always, there’s been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes.The team has been hard at work on UI/UX, infrastructure and architecture updates, continually improving the platform’s resilience, robustness and functionality. This puts us in a great position for the exciting things we have lined up for 2021. In June we created a liquidity pool for NUG on Uniswap, meaning NUG is now available to swap with any other ERC20 token available on the platform.
Partnerships and memberships
We announced our commercial partnership with LexisNexis Risk Solutions in November, after working with them for some time. This is a big one. LexisNexis is one of the world’s largest protectors of private and confidential data, and one of the biggest risk and fraud companies in the world. And this partnership has huge, positive implications for us. Specifically, we’re working together to deliver self-sovereign digital identity (SSI) solutions for existing and prospective customers. There’s more on this on Alastair’s blog.
in November, after working with them for some time. This is a big one. LexisNexis is one of the world’s largest protectors of private and confidential data, and one of the biggest risk and fraud companies in the world. And this partnership has huge, positive implications for us. Specifically, we’re working together to deliver self-sovereign digital identity (SSI) solutions for existing and prospective customers. There’s more on this on Alastair’s blog. We joined the Open Identity Exchange (OIX) earlier this year, complementing our existing membership of the Decentralized Identity Foundation. Formed in 2010 to address the increasing challenges of building trust in online identity, OIX is uniquely dedicated to ID Trust. As a member, we’re collaborating on thought leadership initiatives and getting involved in sector-specific working groups. Fellow members include companies such as Barclays, Microsoft, LexisNexis and HSBC. We’ll also be able to support pilot projects, working alongside other members. For more on OIX, read my blog from September.
Awards and recognition
We’ve done well on this score in the past, and thought last year would be hard to beat. Little did we know! We don’t celebrate these accolades just to show off — they’re important evidence of the impact we’re making.
Let’s start with the awards:
We were nominated for other awards too:
We were named as one of the 10 Best Payments Startups globally in Efma-Capgemini’s Financial NewTech Challenge 2020
globally in Efma-Capgemini’s Financial NewTech Challenge 2020 We were nominated for ‘Best Enterprise Security Product’ at Computing.co.uk’s Technology Product Awards, and were up for a Financial Services Forum’s Product and Service Innovation Award, in the Security category
There was plenty of high-profile recognition for Nuggets too:
Team
Our sales team grew this year, and we were delighted to welcome Ben Geleit as Director of Partnerships and Alliances. Ben’s been driving all the end-to-end go-to-market activity and commercialisation. We’re now working through a number of great opportunities, and hope to reveal more in the new year.
Events and media
We haven’t been to as many events as previous years — for obvious reasons! But we did manage to get to a few at the start of the year.
I took part in a fireside chat as part of the European Women Payments Network Meetup, held at legal firm Allen and Overy’s offices in London in February.
Meetup, held at legal firm Allen and Overy’s offices in London in February. In January, I was invited by MasterCard to speak at Paris FinTech Forum . I showcased Nuggets during a session entitled ‘Building trust in the future with…Data’.
. I showcased Nuggets during a session entitled ‘Building trust in the future with…Data’. I was also involved in a panel discussion at February’s Women in Identity Meetup, where the discussion focussed on ‘Diversity and Identity’.
Meetup, where the discussion focussed on ‘Diversity and Identity’. Our last event before the lockdown was in March, when Alastair took to the stage at London Blockchain Week — twice! On Day One he was on a panel on Decentralised Finance. Day Two saw him discussing data sovereignty on the Decentralised Data Marketplace panel.
Once again, there’s been a huge amount of media coverage throughout the year. We’ve been in titles like CoinDesk, RetailWeek, Cointelegraph (here and here), TechRadar, The Fintech Times, Ledger Insights and Biometric Update, to name but a few. Visit the Media page on our website for a full list of this year’s coverage.
Alastair continued to publish his influential thought leadership articles on Forbes. This year’s highlights included:
What’s next…
With positive news on vaccines, we’re all hoping for a return to some form of normality in 2021. What that will look like is still uncertain, but we’re more sure than ever of the need for Nuggets.
Millions of people have moved large parts of their lives online this year. And this accelerated switch from physical to digital is unlikely to be reversed.
Unfortunately, if unsurprisingly, this has led to an increase in various types of fraud across sectors like banking, payments and logistics. The need for Nuggets is more pressing than ever. We’re in a fantastic position to help businesses and consumers transact safely online, protect their privacy, and take control of their data.
Nuggets has gained real momentum in 2020, and we’re incredibly excited about 2021. We’ll be enabling more partners and customers, and expanding the team. As consumers’ demand to take back control of their data grows, we’ll be able to offer our platform to new customers in more territories.
Thanks again for your continued support, and here’s to a healthier, happier, and even more successful new year. | https://medium.nuggets.life/draft-1-2d390f6ee54a | ['Seema Khinda Johnson'] | 2020-12-18 13:27:46.223000+00:00 | ['Identity', 'Blockchain', 'Payments', 'Fintech', 'Privacy'] |
SOLID Principles using Typescript | Liskov Substitution Principle
Description
Imagine you have a class S which has subtypes S1 , S2 , S3 . In object-oriented terms, assume a class Animal which is extended by subclasses like Dog , Cat etc. The Liskov Substitution Principle states that any object of type S (Animal in our case) can be substituted with any of its subclasses ( S1 , S2 , S3 ). Since this type of substitution was first introduced by Barbara Liskov, it’s known as the Liskov Substitution Principle.
Now if our Animal class has a walk method, it should work fine on instances of Dog and Cat both.
The Challenge
Suppose we’re building an Error handler for a particular web application and the requirements are to perform different types of actions based on the type of error. In this scenario, let’s just take 2 types of errors:
Database Error Connection Error
Both of the above error classes extend an abstract class called CustomError
Custom Error abstraction using Typescript
Now, the ConnectionError class implements the CustomError class using a constructor and two abstract methods — createErrorMessage and logError .
Connection Error extending our CustomError class
But the DatabaseError class is also implemented similarly, except for one requirement change wherein the database error — being critical in nature also needs a createAlert method.
DBError extending CustomError class
Where This Fails
The above example clearly violates the Liskov Substitution principle. Using a subclass of DBError can be an issue when you try to use it in a common error handler function:
Workaround for Liskov Substitution Principle
In the above example, line 41 is a code-smell — because it requires knowing the instance type beforehand. Extend this case to future errors of APIError , GraphError and so on, and it results in a series of never-ending if/else cases. The problem arises because of the overgeneralization of use cases.
Solution
Predicting the future of these types of classes is where the problem exists. It is better to be defensive in such assumptions and go for “has/a” class type instead of “is/a” class type. Let’s take a look at an example to understand this better:
Liskov Substitution Principle in action
Considering our example of error handlers again:
One approach can be to compose our logging method with an alerting mechanism. The AlertSystem is now used in composition and added to DBError’s logError instead. Another viable approach would have been to completely decouple the AlertSystem from both the errors.
When compared to our previous examples we do not have any more if/else conditions on the type of class instance.
Summary
In my opinion, the Liskov Substitution principle should be treated as a guideline and not as a strict rule because in practice this principle is the hardest to keep an eye on during development. This could be for a number of reasons— implementations might be in the different codebases, use of an external library in the codebase etc.
The key focus should be on 2 ideas- | https://medium.com/proximity-labs/solid-principles-using-typescript-5175aa06b583 | [] | 2020-12-17 12:51:06.454000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Software Architecture', 'Best Practices', 'Design Patterns', 'Typescript'] |
Money problems during COVID-19 lockdown? Make money from YouTube | Money problems during COVID-19 lockdown? Make money from YouTube
Greetings! Like most people, my cash flow was negatively impacted during lockdown. After some research, I came across some nice AND VERY QUICK, EASY ways to make money from watching YouTube videos. I’m talking hundreds of dollars per day!
My easiest came from the following: making-money-from-watching-videos. Here’s a few steps below:
Step 1: Find a topic and a relevant YouTube video like this one.
Step 2: On a separate tab, sign up to this site. It’s absolutely free and you can link it to your existing or new Gmail account. Below is a snapshot of what this site will pay you for every view
Step 3: Copy the YouTube video link and shorten it on your recently created account. Now you have to find a place to promote it
Step 4: Find and register on an affiliate marketing site like this one.
Step 5: Once you have registered, find a product similar to the topic/video whose link you have just shortened.
Step 6: Click on the product to get a promoter link. On some sites, you may need to be given permission to promote, other sites are instant.
Step 7: Create a Google Sites page (under your existing or new Gmail account). This gives you your own webpage on which you can promote write articles, add images, add affiliate links, etc.
Step 8: Find a Google article most relevant to the topic (same topic as YouTube video and product from affiliate marketing site). Copy & paste (with necessary credits of course) and edit at will, it’s your site.
Step 9: Publish your site and also promote on platforms like this one!
See how easy it is? With this article, video and product, there is information shared to empower someone, and also make nice money on the side. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!
More detailed breakdown and references on my Google site (https://sites.google.com/view/lockdown-hustle/home)
Regards and all the best! | https://medium.com/@malishitrading/money-problems-during-covid-19-lockdown-make-money-from-youtube-f6fcfba20642 | ['Andre Eastwood'] | 2020-10-07 11:11:03.552000+00:00 | ['Earn Money Online', 'Make Money Online', 'Easy Money', 'Hustle', 'Financial Freedom'] |
If You’ve Never Tried Evernote, Now May Be the Perfect Time | Anyone who has read my recent articles (linked below) may be surprised at this title. After all, I went from stating that Evernote was the best at what it does in July, questioning that theory in October, then asking, basically, WTF and telling people how to get out in December.
As many of you know, the problem is that after two years of bluster, they finally released the ‘new’ version of Evernote in October with a lot of fanfare on their side and not so much on the user’s. As a former developer, I kind of get why they did it. Their position was to bring the app forward, they needed to release it on a common platform. And while that isn’t necessarily true or the only way to get the job done, it is, as they say, what it is.
The result of this common platform, ‘Electron,’ for those interested, is a stripping away of features that weren’t common to all platforms at that time. This is partly why so many people began ranting on the forums and looking for alternate solutions, myself included. Most people had a favorite feature or set of them that was now missing. Workflows were disrupted, and users that relied on those features were pissed.
Buried very deep in the announcement that the new version was ready for prime time, and even though it uninstalled your old version was an odd discrepancy to everything that was said before. Some of the features you relied on may not be in this version, so feel free to use the old version. Sort of a pre-emptive strike to the reaction they must have known was coming.
The bad news was, you had to have or find the old version and reinstall it. Eventually, the din got so loud, they announced the ‘Legacy version’ and made it more accessible. They also allowed you to test the new version if you had the time and patience without uninstalling the legacy version.
Since then, they have released frequent updates, fixing bugs that shouldn’t have been in a production release, and replacing a few missing features. They have also backed off on some things they initially said wouldn’t return and placed them in the future release category. My primary way of getting data into Evernote was one of those features and, to me, the one that set it apart from the competition.
Needless to say, I am running the legacy app and only give an occasional cursory glance to the new one after each update.
So, why I am I recommending that it may be time for you to try it? Well, recommend, maybe too strong a word, but I stand by the title.
If you have never tried Evernote, now may be the perfect time.
Why? Simple. You have no expectations. You don’t have a workflow you have followed for a decade that has been flushed down the crapper. You are starting with a clean slate. And the good news is, (hopefully) things will only improve from here.
Depending on what you have been using for document storage and retrieval, Evernote may, at the very least, be a lateral move. I need to state here despite what you have seen in many posts on the Internet, Evernote is not a ‘note-taking app.’ Sure, you can take notes with it, but why would you. There are much simpler and mostly free apps that do that perfectly well. Evernote is for storing and finding any document you want, including, but certainly not limited to, notes.
It was, and I hope it will be again, the best at doing this. It had a simple interface that got out of your way. The search feature was flawless and lightning-fast. Many people used tags, and others used notebooks, but the speed, thoroughness, and accuracy of the search engine made that, for the most part, a moot point. And most importantly, it had more and better ways to get your data into the system than all of the competition. The web clipper was state of the art. The input folder mechanism made getting existing or scanned files a seamless method of loading your data.
Some of that is gone now, but hopefully, not for long.
But, if you are using something else that you aren’t happy with, or even better, don’t have a system in place for this, try Evernote. You don’t have a bar that needs to be lowered. You don’t have high expectations of the app that created this entire genre. And you don’t have existing workflows that have been broken.
If New Coke had been the first cola you ever tasted, it probably would have been just fine.
So, if you are looking for an app in which to store your documents, notes, articles, recipes, or whatever, now may be the perfect time to try Evernote. Don’t be dissuaded by all of us nay-sayers out there. If you are new to the app, give it a go. If you have been using another app and have become dissatisfied with it, moving to Evernote now would be much better than having done so a few months ago. Try it out.
If you left Evernote sometime in the past because you were unhappy with the slow development, this may or may not be the right time. If you didn’t like things that were missing before, you certainly aren’t going to like this version. But if you were unhappy with virtually non-existent updates, now is a great time to come back. I hope.
If you left Evernote when they changed the free plan, I’ve got bad news. It is now even more restrictive. One workaround to the two device limit if you had three devices was to use the web app on your computer, freeing up the other two for your phone and tablet. But now, the web version counts as a device.
However, I have little sympathy for people who use an app so much that they need it on every device they own but won’t pay the fee for it. And don’t whine to me about your limited income or whatever. Add up the total annual cost of ownership of your three or more devices, including connectivity and other services you use, plus the annualized cost of new hardware. Now add $100 to that number. By what percentage did it go up? But I digress.
The point is that, if you are investigating Evernote for the first time, you probably see a lot of negative posts. For the most part, I recommend you ignore those. Give Evernote a try. The free version is more than capable of letting you figure out if it’s right for you. If you are happy with it now, I think you will like it going forward.
It will only get better. | https://medium.com/swlh/if-youve-never-tried-evernote-now-may-be-the-perfect-time-7a6526519674 | ['Darryl Brooks'] | 2020-12-30 05:56:01.823000+00:00 | ['Technology', 'Software', 'Productivity', 'Review', 'Evernote'] |
7 Foods You Should Consume for Total Body Transformation | Photo Credit: Pinterest
I pass this secret to all my supporters so please enjoy! The List below shows 7 food types that help cure each problem in its respective category.
1.Crown Foods
Problems: Issues with sleep/wake cycle, feeling, disconnected from your body or others, difficulty meditating, spiritual discomfort.
Foods: Mother Nature :) Fresh Air, Sunlight, Nature
2. Throat Foods
Problems: Thyroid Disease, Frequent Sore Throat, Difficulty Expressing Feelings
Foods: Blueberries, Blue Raspberries, Figs, Kelp
3. Eye Foods
Problems: Depression, Poor Eyesight, Hormonal Imbalances, Poor Intuition
Foods: Purple Potatoes, Blackberries, Plums, Purple Grapes
4. Heart Foods
Problems: Heart, Lung Problems, Asthma, Allergies, Fear of Intimacy
Foods: Broccoli, Kale, Chards, all other Leafy Greens
5. Solar Food
Problems: Gas, Bloating, Liver Issues, Stomach Ulcers, Eating Disorders, Lack of Confidence, Procrastination
Foods: Yellow Peppers, Yellow Lentils, Yellow Squash, Oats, Spelt
6. Sacral Food
Problems: Infertility, Hip Pain, Sexual Dysfunction, Emotional Imbalances, Creatives Blocks
Food: Seed, Nuts, Oranges, Carrots, Pumpkins
7. Root Foods
Problems: Colon Issues, Lower BackPain, Varicose Veins, Emotional Issues, Surrounding money and security
Foods: Beef, Parsnips, Rutabaga, apples, pomegranates, protein
If this blog offered you any value, please recommend it and share it with others!
Also please connect with me on my website, Facebook page, and Instagram if you want to stay in touch or give me any feedback! | https://medium.com/gethealthy/7-foods-you-should-consume-for-total-body-transformation-7178dd7cd5e2 | ['Jeremy Colon'] | 2017-02-16 04:58:08.396000+00:00 | ['Health', 'Diet', 'Nutrition', 'Metabolism', 'Food'] |
What’s in your “2021” Toolkit? | Drumroll, please!
It is December, and we have finally reached the end of the “What’s in Your Toolkit?” series and I am in awe and thankful.
In awe of all the amazing women who chose to tell their stories and thankful for the tools they shared.
As I shared with all the women when I reached out to them and also in a post from earlier in the year where I shared Five Tools in my Personal Toolkit.
“I started this blog in 2017 to tell However, one of my 2020 blog goals is to share the broken pieces of other women’s stories sprinkled with silver lining perspectives…” . Funny stories like that time I got drunk for the first time and drunk dialed my mom, reflective stories about stupid choices and God’s redeeming love, and jaw-dropping tales like that one time, more like four times, random guys on the D.C. metro decided I was the perfect centerpiece to jerk off to. Ultimately, I have shared “my life’s broken pieces sprinkled with silver lining perspective” through personal narratives. And I want to keep doing that.
Hence, the birth of the monthly “WHAT’S IN YOUR TOOLKIT?” series.
To finish out the year and series, we are focusing on 2021, and I am excited to share wisdom from another formidable woman who is also my friend. Let’s get to it!
Feyisola Ogunfemi — Wedding Planner & Owner, Statuesque Events| Business Coach
Tool: Abundance Mindset
One of the most powerful items that I have in my 2021 toolkit is an abundance mindset. This is fueled both by my faith as a Christian and one of the books that I read in 2020 called Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. I mention my faith because the bible tells us to speak things though they are not as they are. That essentially is telling us to speak things into existence. The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind book also talks a lot about our capacity for wealth, and how we sabotage increase when we aren’t mentally ready for it.
One of the first places that I’ve chosen to apply this principle is with my wedding planning business, Statuesque Events. It’s amazing that as soon as I made the decision to seek abundance, I started to attract some of the highest paying and easy to work with clients even in the midst of a pandemic. Instead of closing the doors to my business, or waiting it out until the world “returns to normal” I’m actually looking forward to a phenomenal 2021 wedding season all because I chose to focus on abundance (and then do the work of course).
Another place that I’m choosing to apply this principle is in my coaching business for other wedding planners. I chose to invest time and energy into launching a robust coaching program for wedding planners, and just after doing so, I began to receive some of the most amazing testimonials from past event professionals that I coached. All of them had actionable and revenue based results from the coaching that I provided which is perfect for promoting my upcoming program. I’m choosing to apply this principle in just about every area of my life — time, dating and more while enjoying the ride in the process! The news may be negative, but I’ve chosen to receive abundance in 2021. Its the biggest tool in my 2021 toolkit.
What are your thoughts and your tools? I’d love to hear them all!
FEBRUARY: What’s in your Mental Health Toolkit?
MARCH: What’s in your Feminist Toolkit?
APRIL: What’s in your Entrepreneur Toolkit?
MAY: What’s in your Faith Toolkit?
JUNE: What’s in your CAREER Toolkit?
JULY: What’s in your FRIENDSHIP Toolkit?
AUGUST: What’s in your MOTHERHOOD Toolkit?
SEPTEMBER: What’s in your ROMANCE Toolkit?
OCTOBER: What’s in your “9–5 with a Side Hustle” Toolkit? | Jasmine Smith | Dr. Chinasa Elue | Nicole Amma Twum-Baah
NOVEMBER: What’s in your FAMILY Toolkit? | https://medium.com/@adeolafadumiye/whats-in-your-2021-toolkit-95dcc0d38b1f | ['Adeola Crystiana Fadumiye'] | 2020-12-15 23:33:50.702000+00:00 | ['New Year', 'Abundance Mindset', '2021', 'New Year Resolution'] |
5 Ways My Husband Holds Space for Me | Here I am today at thirty, married to a man who, when I told him at 20 that I didn’t want to kiss a man again until I was married (after having men kiss me unwantedly and pressure me to have sex) said, “Okay, that’s fine. Whatever you need.” I didn’t end up holding to my resolve on that decision, kissing him a few months into our dating relationship, but his initial response was one of complete respect for me and my decisions.
On that day, the man who would become my husband showed me what it felt like to have a man hold space for me.
In that vein, I would like to share ways my husband holds space for me in hopes to help other good men hold space for partners with a history like mine:
1. He recognizes that I need to control my own body.
This runs deeper than just not pressuring me to have sex when we were dating, but to a deeper knowledge about the power that has been stolen from women in regards to their bodies. He has supported me when I was younger and didn’t drink alcohol at all for fear of not being in control of my body and he takes seriously my pondering over whether I want to experience the physical changes of pregnancy.
2. He doesn’t try to fix me.
When it comes down to it, we are all broken people. We come to relationships with our past heartaches, fears, and insecurities. But my past is not an area my husband can fix. He can listen to me tell my story, and he does. He can be a voice to end violence against women, and he does. But my past is still my past. It’s up to me to work through.
3. I feel safe enough to fail in fixing myself.
It turns out you can’t process all this in a day or a year, or even a few years. It takes a while. I don’t always get things right. But he doesn’t need me to be whole. I can be broken and that can be okay.
4. He offers me humble guidance and a willingness to help should I desire it.
In my mid-twenties, after I had confronted my mother about my father’s rape of my sister, it was the first time I really started to deeply process that part of my past. To put it bluntly, I was a mess. I am normally a fairly cheery person, so after seeing me struggling for weeks, he gently suggested that it may be time that I seek counseling. I had been so wrapped up in my head that I hadn’t even seen that option, but his gentle suggestion was what I needed in order to find extra support.
5. He never makes it about him.
About 97% of the time, we lead a very normal life for a young married couple. We both work full-time and I’m in grad school. We go hiking and we hang out with our friends. But every once in awhile, something happens and I’m forced to process the past in a new way. Maybe I go back to my childhood home to visit family or I’m faced with a reading for class that parallels my experience. Whatever the case, no matter my expression of it, he remains focused on supporting me. He goes home with me, not advising me how to deal with my family, but as a support. He listens even though he’s heard it before because he knows it’s what I need.
He holds space for me.
I know good men because I married one of the best.
—
The story was previously published on The Good Men Project. | https://medium.com/hello-love/5-ways-my-husband-holds-space-for-me-88dffb779854 | ['The Good Men Project'] | 2020-11-28 18:47:42.682000+00:00 | ['Rape', 'Masculinity', 'Relationships', 'Sexual Assault', 'Marriage'] |
Reserve, the app that is helping Venezuela overcome hyperinflation | Venezuela has had much crisis in its young republican years, we’ve been through dictatorships, wars to reach independence. Long story short, most recently we’ve been struggling with a political and social crisis that has led many to flee the country creating yet another crisis for countries in our region, but that’s another topic.
2016 was a particularly difficult year for many Venezuelans. Hyperinflation was just getting started. As an economic phenomenon, it was getting the best of us, prices were soaring, salaries were getting smaller, everyone was poorer than the day before. As a way to fight back and survive, many started using hard currency, US dollars, to save money and pay for services. This phenomenon exploded in 2019 when the big blackout left almost all the country without power for almost 4 days. There were no banks, no internet connection, no phones, everything was 10 times harder. Those were difficult days that left many of us scarred. As a consequence, those who had access to US currency started exchanging it for goods, many even charging three times as much the value of any service (what you may call inflation in American Dollars). It began to become more frequent as the months and years went by, more people had access, somehow, to cash dollars. It became our unofficial currency.
Going back in time a little, in 2018 cryptocurrencies became legal in Venezuela, but they really took off in the past couple of years. This helped those who had the capabilities to mine Bitcoin, trade cryptos, or simply buy. But this wasn’t an easy task, and for many, unknown territory.
Most recently, an app for phones was starting to get a lot of attention, people were starting to turn their heads curious and wanted to know what was the buzz in social media about. It’s a FinTech that was born in San Francisco, California. It is called Reserve. It is a project born to eradicate hyperinflation and help people reach economic freedom.
It has helped many people being able to access hard currency (US Dollar) in a country where only the privileged have access to a US bank account. Now anyone with a smartphone and internet access can easily exchange their VES to USD, helping many save money, buy goods, send money to their loved ones. Reserve it’s more than a crypto token, it’s more than just another startup in Silicon Valley, it’s a human project, aiming at helping Venezuelans and those countries going to similar issues, changing lives one by one.
As Reserve, there’s a growing phenomenon of new FinTech aiming to help Venezuelans fight back and regain control of their finances, this has been a huge relief and a lifeboat, all thanks to the power of cryptos and decentralized finance, that have literally saved lives. | https://medium.com/@pedro-alvizu/reserve-the-app-that-is-helping-venezuela-overcome-hyperinflation-8cbb5987f3f1 | ['Pedro Alvizu'] | 2021-06-16 13:17:37.807000+00:00 | ['Venezuela', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Rsr Stories', 'Reserve', 'Crypto'] |
5 Things You Stop Chasing Once You Realize Your Worth | 5 Things You Stop Chasing Once You Realize Your Worth
It all boils down to one thing everyone wants in life.
Photo by Davide De Giovanni from Pexels
For many people, there’s a wound inside them. I had this wound. You most likely have this wound.
It’s a value wound.
People grow up thinking they need to prove their value in this world. That if they hustle, improve themselves, find a gorgeous partner, and become rich, a stamp of approval is placed upon them that says they’re of worth.
But that’s where most people go wrong; that’s why there are so many unhappy people in this world, no matter their wealth, fame, or success.
They let their value wound drive them. They live from a place where they’re never enough; they think that proving their worth is just a promotion away. Or they make choices based on believing they’ll never deserve love.
But if people stopped to consider where this feeling of unworthiness comes from, they’d see how it only exists because of outside influences. Maybe a parent shaped their self-esteem, or they hold a grudge from long ago.
The reasons aren’t inside them; they’re outside of them.
Why is it that unworthiness isn’t internal? Because people’s worth is inherent. You can’t take away or add to it. It’s why Elon Musk is no better than the man taking out the trash at Tesla’s warehouses. People — stripped away of everything that sets them apart from others — are worthy.
That includes me. That includes you.
And the moment you decide to start living from a place of worthiness, rather than feeling like you’re unworthy, some big changes happen. You realize that things you chased most in life aren’t important or never needed to be chased in the first place.
And when you make that realization, your whole life changes for the better.
Here are the things you stop chasing once you accept your worth:
Proving people wrong.
Do you feel the need to prove your parents wrong? Are you obsessed with having a glow-up that makes your ex wish they never dumped you?
Maybe you’re like I was; someone who wanted everyone who bullied me in high school to see that I moved out of our hometown and became rich like they never could.
If so, you’re heading down a path for a miserable life.
These scenarios thrive on the belief that your purpose for living is to prove something to others. The focus is on how others perceive and think about you, even though you probably spend little to none of your time around them anymore.
When I strived to be someone people from my high school would see on Facebook and be envious of, I stopped asking myself what made me happy.
Because even if you get to the point where you finally show your good-for-nothing dad you can make it without him, that moment is fleeting. What’s not fleeting is all the time you spent crafting a life that’s not even something you enjoy.
Happiness.
Why do people think obtaining new things will make them happy? That a new car, promotion, or life milestone will finally be the turning point at which eternal happiness comes?
I used to live this way. I thought marriage or a well-paying job would make all my worries disappear. But no matter the job or relationship, I still felt this lingering unhappiness deep inside me.
That’s because I bought into the idea of the pursuit of happiness. Under this idea, happiness is something that needs to be earned. It’s a reward for great decision-making and building self-worth.
The above believes happiness is a destination, not a journey.
But if that’s the case, why is it that people from all walks of life experience happiness? That a mere shift in mindset can have a pessimistic person smelling the flowers and enjoying a sunny day?
That’s because happiness isn’t something you have to earn. It’s all around you, every single day. Happiness is a choice, one you’ve always been deserving of.
Only you are stopping yourself from enjoying it.
“I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness — it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention.” — Brene Brown
The future.
Everyone’s chasing this dream life: a big house, fancy car, highly-respected job, and a hot spouse. You know the deal.
And while people can widely agree that’s “the dream,” have you ever stopped to consider if it’s your dream? That this future you’re working so hard towards is one that would make you happy?
For me, none of the above would make me happy. I prefer a job I love over a highly respected one. I want a partner who loves and respects me than someone who’s a trophy husband. A big house sounds like a lot to clean and nice cars have never interested me.
In fact, the future doesn’t interest me all that much. What I care about is what’s happening in my present. I know that I can have what I want right now. I don’t need to do more so I can have my desires in the future.
There’s nothing to prove about myself, so I enjoy the ride of life as it happens to me.
People who don’t love you.
People with low self-esteem tend to suffer from a lot of dating issues. They have a harder time setting boundaries and don’t believe they deserve healthy love.
Because of this, they end up chasing love rather than experiencing it as it comes. They’re more likely to try to convince people why they should be chosen, rather than asking themselves if they even want the people they date in the first place.
They’re the people who find themselves in messy relationships or unhappily dating. They stay stuck in their ways because they don’t believe they deserve more.
But for people who realize their worth, they don’t invest energy into people who aren’t interested in them. They don’t bend over backward to convince someone to love them. They don’t inflict unnecessary pain on themselves.
When you recognize your worth, you recognize you deserve more than one-sided love, which includes yourself. You stop looking to other people to care for your unmet needs and start meeting them for yourself.
The hustle.
Gary Vaynerchuk, famous entrepreneur and internet craze, advocates for closing your eyes in your 20’s and working hard to make something of yourself.
He promotes the idea of hustling, that if you work harder and longer than everyone else, you’ll be more successful than everyone else (that success being monetary gain and sometimes fame).
But what this philosophy thrives off is people’s beliefs that working hard will mean they’ve more valuable. And, under that idea, giving up spending time with family, friends and enjoying being young is a worthy sacrifice.
But if you believe in your worth and value your time, the hustle seems pointless. Sure, working hard towards a job you love or an idea you’re passionate about is great.
But hacking how to drop ship cheap products from China simply because of the promise of a six-figure income? Not so great.
I once took a technical recruiting job because it promised that if I worked hard, I’d earn a lot. I got into the office at 7 am and didn’t leave until 7 pm. On weekends, I was expected to still be working.
And all that led to was me feeling miserable. I never saw my friends. And I never felt like I was working hard enough at my job.
When you value yourself, you value your time. This means you won’t trade seeing your family for Thanksgiving for a larger paycheck. You won’t forgo sleep simply to get in more hours of hustle time.
You stop hustling for everything outside of you and start hustling for your happiness. | https://medium.com/the-ascent/5-things-you-stop-chasing-once-you-realize-your-worth-4a76fa83ac8a | ['Kirstie Taylor'] | 2021-01-05 17:06:44.719000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Inspiration', 'Life', 'Culture', 'Life Lessons'] |
Irrational. Emotional. Unreasonable. | TRIGGER WARNING: Narcissistic abuse, bullying, intimate partner violence, metaphor about drug use, metaphor about hanging.
Image from lyricslove.tumblr.com. Lyric by Lorde.
“You’re a little much for me. You’re a liability.” — Lorde
The simple yet arresting lyrics slow-dance with a melody that transforms from a hug into a noose.
If you have never been told that you are “Too much” or that your emotions are a burden to others, I simply do not trust or understand you. If you have never been discredited for expressing feelings and facts simultaneously, I am jealous and deeply confused.
I’m not saying the song “Liability” by Lorde is obligated to make you weep on a certain kind of day in order for us to be friends, but I’m also not not saying that.
For those of you who know me personally, I talk and write about narcissism and bullying a lot, because I try to turn my traumas into paper tigers to be played with. I pin down my experience and dissect it like a frog in a biology lab.
When I worked as a nanny, I overheard elementary-age, fairly popular girls repeatedly refer to one of their classmates as ‘Sensitive.’ I knew the little girl they were discussing; she was a delightful, kind, creative, and, yes, sensitive kid carrying the weight of experiences the girls discussing her didn’t understand.
But those kids used the word ‘Sensitive’ with the most distinctive tinge of predation. They used it the same way I remember different words from my childhood and adolescence.
Worrywart. Victim. Martyr. Melodramatic. Sick dog.
And my personal favorite, being cornered while crying, grabbed by the face, and screamed at:
“What is wrong with you?”
Narcissists and bullies alike seek out and weaponize sensitivity against their victims, which is part of why it is very common for folks who are targeted by bullies and narcissists as children also to be targeted by them as adults.
Unfortunately, most children who are bullied are told by adults that they should just ignore it, that it’s normal, and that it will go away on its own.
It doesn’t go away in childhood or adulthood. The face and flair may change, but the objective of the bully-narcissist remains the same: They see your brokenness, your tiredness, your desperation, and they want to use it as fuel to turn you into a hollow machine whose sole function is to make them feel powerful.
Artwork by David Garza for Vulture. Lyric by Fiona Apple.
“I wasn’t afraid of the bullies, and that just made the bullies worse.” —Fiona Apple
When you recognize that a bully or narcissist’s behavior is wrong, it ignites the most apropos buzzword of the last five years. Say it with me: Gaslighting.
Recently, I joked with a friend that I wish I could add the phrase “Being Emotionally Abused” to the special skills list on my resumé. Here’s my tutorial:
Befriend a charming, gregarious, talented person who needs to be the center of attention. But that’s not enough! They have to believe that they are exceptional, infallible, and/or above the rules. Fall in love with them, at least platonically or in a familial bond. Make sure you really work for their approval. If they’re exceptional and they approve of you, that means that you might not be the defective piece of shit you’ve been made to believe you were since childhood. They’re going to show you a beautiful performance of the love you’ve always craved. Grow crookedly in the direction of their sunlight. Get trained like the sick dog you’ve been called. Become the thing they want. You are Tinkerbell, and their applause will keep you alive. The performance will end, as all performances do. But you will not be lulled out of the theatre with exit music or a chance to donate to Broadway Cares. You will be catapulted into a stifling Queens studio apartment in the September summer, trapped with someone who you don’t recognize. Someone who mocks you or even puts their hands on your body, saying it’s to restrain you. Tap your toes along to the refrain of the song “You’re Crazy.” Some verses sub in a different adjective, like ‘Depressed,’ ‘Irrational,’ Emotional,’ ‘Unreasonable,’ ‘Too much,’ and, of course, ‘Sensitive.’ The bridge of the song, includes a lyric along the lines of “I have been so good to you.” Because that’s what people say when they’re actively being so good to you. Brace yourself for the one-two punch of being called crazy and emotional. This is what happens when you try to stand up for yourself or ask what warranted the mockery, the disparaging remarks, the hostility. If you try to defend yourself or show any anger or frustration , you’re going to be accused of being the abusive one. Also the chorus of “You’re Crazy” will come in for a reprise. Memorize the choreography of their threatening saunter toward the door. They will dangle the possibility of abandonment in a lofty arabesque. You will try a grand-jêtée to block their exit, dizzy from the heights you’re willing to leap to keep them. You’ve been getting so high off the fumes of their past approval that you’ve lost the memories of life before them. You hold on as tightly as you can. You need to. It’s time for your monologue. Apologize for how crazy you are. You will become a beautiful writer with the precision of the Designated Driver soberly playing darts in a suburban sports bar. Not only will your apology convey your desperation, but it will also say just the right things to bolster your bully-narcissist’s ego. You will be granted a night of uncomfortable sleep once they are too tired to bat your feelings around like an ungroomed cat pawing at a wounded mouse. Give gratitude for the abundance that appears after that restless night. Maybe it’s tickets to a Broadway show, affection, a connection to a job, public praise, that new laptop you’ve needed, or maybe even a surprise puppy! Look at how loved you are. They really are so good to you. See, you really were crazy. The abundance runs dry. You’re catapulted back into claustrophobic, warped denigration, but this time you don’t fight back. This time, you tell yourself that you’re blowing things out of proportion. This time, you find a tiny corner, curl up on the floor, and try to sleep it off.
After all, you’re just sensitive. You’ll be fine. | https://medium.com/@maddiemcclouskey/irrational-emotional-unreasonable-4374c90f40a4 | ['Maddie Mcclouskey', 'She They'] | 2020-12-02 04:28:07.708000+00:00 | ['Bullying', 'Poetry', 'Emotional Abuse', 'Trauma', 'Narcissism'] |
There’s no doubt about my faith | But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. — James 1:6
Faith can be delicate. It just doesn’t make “sense” sometimes and we can’t always “prove” it. Like a wave it goes up and down, to and fro. We go back and forth between belief and doubts.
Believe it or not, theologians and philosophers have spent lifetimes trying to figure out what “proving something” means. But the faith that God asks us to have is not about proving or not proving. It is about trusting Him because we have a loving relationship.
We don’t have to prove to anyone if we love someone, we just do and we know it. We may show it through our actions and kinds deeds, but it’s not like we can prove to anyone else how we feel. We know how we feel, but think about what that really means! We can never prove it to anyone else, but we know.
This is why we go up and down, and to and fro like those waves. We can tell ourselves our faith is in the all-powerful creator of the universe and we don’t have to worry. But perhaps the next moment we wobble a bit because that is a normal part of our emotions.
As we get to know Jesus better, these kind of doubts will get smaller and smaller. We love Him and experience His love, and our trust will grow. Jesus will keep showing us we can rely on him and our faith will get bigger and stronger! | https://medium.com/@smallvoicetoday/theres-no-doubt-about-my-faith-f84c9e1768e8 | ['Small Voice Today'] | 2021-02-03 09:11:59.552000+00:00 | ['Bible', 'Faith', 'Doubt', 'Designed2encourage', 'Devotional'] |
My ongoing 2021 GRE Prep. Not an Educational Post! Part 2 | After reading https://www.julian.com/guide/write/intro and making my girlfriend understand why I started logging my prep in the first place I realised that my current analytical skills will fetch me not more than a 3 out of 6. So I decided that despite having 4 views which include two of my friends, my girlfriend and someone from the middle east and an average viewing time which says N/A I would continue my series till I reach score 5 and that’s it. There’s no “and”.
After a rough comparison between my post title and content I realised that this is becoming a personal blog not GRE preparation experience. But as the saying goes, “All press is good press”, I feel like all write-ups are good write-ups.
After a bit of research which includes reading the GRE docs, I discovered that all analytical writing topics will be picked from https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/issue/pool and https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/argument/pool, so if you are preparing for GRE, here you go.
While reading this post I realised that I have started the first three paragraphs with “After”, and I don’t think that’s a good practice conventionally.
During my school days I used to write a lot of thriller stories but as time progressed and our tech-savvy generation became familiar with acronyms, not the conventional acronyms but the “IDK”, “LOL”, “LMAO”, “JK”, “ILY”, the freedom of expression became easier and less time consuming. We stopped saying “I don’t know” and started using “IDK”[ai de k]. Instead of writing, “It was so funny that I was fell down on the floor laughing” we started using “LOFL”. I don’t want to be an outcast or boomer so I will stop ranting about acronyms. But TBH acronyms are a pretty cool thing these days.
I don’t really have a concluding statement to this খিচুড়ি/खिचड़ी that I have typed, but I really hope to reach a score 5 before paying 14K and enrolling for the GRE exams. | https://medium.com/@souvikdas2411/my-ongoing-2021-gre-prep-not-an-educational-post-part-2-c3a21d8c4 | ['Souvik Das'] | 2020-12-26 14:42:44.427000+00:00 | ['Toefl', 'Ielts', 'Article', 'Gre', 'Fun'] |
Our Experts Transformed Shopping Online Into Successful Discounts | Our Experts Transformed Shopping Online Into Successful Discounts
Exactly how do you spare when purchasing on the web? Is it required to devote lots of opportunity trimming promos as well as searching for purchases. This short article is going to educate you conserve funds going shopping online.
Regularly look for coupon codes when buying on the web. Lots of on the internet stores hand out discounts for several traits and also these simply need a straightforward search. Performing this makes certain to spare you tons of money when purchasing online.
Read the terms and privacy policy on any kind of brand-new outlet you prefer to shop at. This will definitely possess the relevant information on how the business gathers, just how they protect it, as well as what you’re consenting to when you acquire one thing coming from all of them. If you differ with the outlet’s plans, carry out not purchase just about anything without speaking to the company. Don’t buy points coming from them if you don’t concur in all with the policy.
Surf a number of various outlets as well as review items and also rates prior to making your decision. Pick one with the correct functions and also is actually valued relatively. Look into your beloved Web vendors regularly to find what brand-new product offerings.
Look at customer reviews for a retailer you are thinking about. This normally gives you an excellent idea of the high quality of the company’s products as well as customer service. If you find a store with reduced ratings, you may want to go shopping in other places.
Merely shop online coming from protected Internet link which is actually safe. Hackers typically try to find unsecured cordless hookups to steal people’s information.
Locate sizing graphs on garments web site you utilize. A major concern with obtaining apparel via the World wide web is that it is tough to know whether things are going to suit. This will help you a measurements that is much too huge or even tiny for you.
Check out on public auction as well as savings on-line suppliers just before purchasing a product from a large seller’s site. Sites like Amazon as well as ebay.com often tend to possess much better bargains than standard retailers. You can easily spare a lot of Do be careful to examine the return plans. This could be different based on where you are actually purchasing.
Register on any type of shop you look around from regularly. Set your tastes up in order that you acquire emails related to exclusive deals before the public.
Look at the item web pages of items you desire thoroughly. Remember that item picture might certainly not specifically like the thing you are actually acquiring.
Review your whole shopping pushcart to be specific you know what you wish.
Browse through on The S Deals the internet promo and also packages websites before you start your shopping. The concern is that you need to always remember to examine just before you go looking around to guarantee you obtain the discount rate.
On the internet establishments often provide coupon codes for associating with all of them with social media sites or even registering to receive their e-mails.
A lot of retail stores additionally give price cuts, therefore you need to visit deals web pages prior to buying. Also discount coupons for general shipping costs a handful of moments of traits.
Now that you have actually read this write-up, your upcoming measure is to learn from it. If you carry out, you are going to certainly save on your own some cash. If you can easily stick with these straightforward regulations, you are nearly certain to conserve money and accomplish this in a safe fashion.
Enjoy the Best Online Shopping Offers and Promotions Now | https://medium.com/@thesdealss/our-experts-transformed-shopping-online-into-successful-discounts-3429b296979b | ['The S Deals'] | 2020-12-19 14:56:04.264000+00:00 | ['Online Shopping'] |
Don’t quit Facebook. Do this instead … | The election and its aftermath have yielded another Facebook exodus.
We all have those friends. They can’t take any more vitriol and fake news, so they make an announcement. “I’m leaving, but you all have my mobile number.”
Well, no, we don’t. And in any case, it would feel weird to text you specifically instead of sharing with hundreds of people at once.
The strangest cases are those who leave Facebook … and go to Twitter, the biggest portal to Hell the world has ever seen. I’ve had hundreds of people come after me on Twitter for such offenses as disagreeing with Q-Anon and doing the math on the U.S. women’s soccer team’s pay demands. The trending topics these days are mostly alerts that something that has gone viral is fake.
The only rationale I’ve seen for leaving Facebook friends for Twitter twits is that you can create your own lists on Twitter and therefore have more control over what you see.
That rationale is wrong.
Frankly, that rationale smacks of privilege. What I deal with on Twitter is nothing compared to what women go through:
You want to support that and not Facebook?
Yes, you can block people on Twitter. But only after the fact. If you have a public profile, which these women need to share their work, you’re opening the door for anyone to say they hope you get beaten or raped.
The other reason this rationale is wrong: You can indeed control what you see on Facebook.
Facebook has a help page that explains the process:
But the links you need aren’t always easy to find, so here are a few visuals to walk you through:
Making your own lists
Start from your FB home page. (Not your profile page.)
Look in the left-hand column. Note that you can also find “Groups” here — that’s another way to put together a restricted … um … group.
Hit “See More.” Scroll. Hit “Friend Lists.” You’re in business.
Adding people to those lists
You can retrace your steps to the Friend Lists page, which is best for bulk editing. But you can also add one person at a time, which is good when you see someone’s post and think, “Oh, I want that person on my Close Friends or my Alma Mater list.”
Why do this?
My stepmom was a delightful extrovert. As her condition declined, Facebook was her lifeline. She struggled to talk on the phone, but she could still type. She died a mere three days after her final post. She had some family with her, but she had hundreds more liking and commenting on her posts.
My friends are scattered all over, and in this time of COVID, I’m rarely getting together with friends who live a mile away. The two activities that have sustained me over the past couple of years have been curling and playing in a band at School of Rock. The band is playing, but it’s a little awkward these days. (Singing in the shower is one thing, but singing behind a shower curtain they put up for virus containment is much less fulfilling.) Curling has shut down for the entire season — by the time we get back, nearly 18 months will have passed. My new shoes are still sitting in my locker.
I don’t mind saying that I need Facebook. If someone with a whole bunch of money creates an alternative, I’ll happily check it out. (Or maybe someone with a bunch of money can buy the thing and force out Zuckerberg.) Until then, it’s the best thing we have for dealing with the isolation imposed on us by the modern world and a pandemic.
If you really don’t want to be on Facebook, fine. But you’d better comment on all my posts so I know you’re out there. | https://medium.com/x-temporaneous/dont-quit-facebook-do-this-instead-ca809f85cff2 | ['Beau Dure'] | 2020-11-10 19:43:44.876000+00:00 | ['Social Media', 'Facebook'] |
100 Funny Programmer Quotes | 100 Funny Programmer Quotes
For when coffee isn’t enough to bring a smile to your face
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
As I was looking for some useful coding quotes, I discovered many funny ones. Enjoy reading them — I thought these should be compiled together.
Most are from other sources (as per linked), with the exception of a handful that are my own.
I have separated them down into:
Hope you enjoy at least some of them! | https://medium.com/better-programming/101-funny-programmer-quotes-76c7f335b92d | [] | 2020-10-22 08:34:44.982000+00:00 | ['Humor', 'Software Development', 'Coding', 'Software Engineering', 'Programming'] |
NFL Star Tajae Sharpe Tribute Cleats To Late Chicago Rapper King Von | Chicago,IL — - Hip Hop has always played a special part in this world starting from the beginning, Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tajae Sharpe pays tribute to Chicago rapper King Von making his cleats go viral after posting them on the internet. The cleats appear to have King Von image of his face on each cleat with his block name “ O Block “ also his nickname “ Grandson “ giving to him by the fan’s appears to the side of his face with F63rd in the corner of the cleat. Although Von is not alive to see all of this, the young star is definitely looking down smiling right now as he continue to receive love from all over the world.
Sharpe stated that King Von was one of his favorite rappers, he would listen to him before the game getting crazy energy before kickoff.
Sharpe just recently signed a contract with the Kansas City Chiefs this week, hopefully we get a chance to see the custom cleats in a live game.
The artist who did the paint job name is Castro, he has done great jobs for plenty stars like Desean Jackson. The 6 hour paint job looks like a day’s worth of work, but Castro is just that good at making artwork pop, the minute he received the project he gat right to work.
King Von would have been a major rap star coming from Chicago, the city has always been great as the fan’s embrace the whole city music scene. | https://medium.com/@stlo/nfl-star-tajae-sharpe-tribute-cleats-to-late-chicago-rapper-king-von-b497a577caf5 | ['Omotayo Hassan'] | 2020-12-20 15:50:05.932000+00:00 | ['NBA', 'NFL', 'King Von', 'Cleats', 'Rapper'] |
Jocelyn Jones and Jane Sibbett Win Best Non-Fiction Writing Scholarships for Their Memoirs | Jocelyn Jones and Jane Sibbett Win Best Non-Fiction Writing Scholarships for Their Memoirs
Jocelyn Jones, a professional acting teacher and creative consultant, and Jane Sibbett, an actress best known for her role on the sitcom, Friends, tied for first place- honors in the non-fiction category for the Winter Story Summit. The non-fiction scholarship is underwritten by Michael D Publishers, a company specializing in successfully launching books into global distribution, onto best-sellers lists and into book stores around the planet.
In what was described as a “very intense and populated competition” by Story Summit Director, Thom Black, Jocelyn Jones won for her unfinished memoir, Artist , and Jane Sibbett won for her four-year chronicle of spiritual awakening, About Jane.
“We are honored to be able to acknowledge both authors for this award,” says Story Summit Mentor, Tab Murphy, the screenwriter of such animated Disney classics as Tarzan, Brother Bear, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. “Both Jones and Sibbett are in command of their vision, and their writing is lively, entertaining, and eminently readable.”
Tab Murphy directing actor Tom Berenger from the screenplay he wrote, Last of the Dogmen
Joining other writers in the Caribbean in February, 2020, Jones and Sibbett will take advantage of a writing week in warm weather focused on art, commerce, craft, and community at the writers’ summit.
Each season, Story Summit gathers award-winning professionals from across the globe to provide intimate, meaningful and productive relationships with screenwriters and authors in an inspiring, immersive and naturally beautiful environment.
David Kirkpatrick, Story Summit Founder
“The vision of the Story Summits,” says David Kirkpatrick, Story Summit Founder, former President of Paramount Pictures and former Production Chief of Walt Disney Pictures, “ is not only to encourage the art of writing but to help authors launch commercial products in film, TV, and literature. More than ever before the world is in need of strong, wise voices and Jocelyn and Jane respond to that need.”
“Jocelyn Jones is working on a memoir as thrilling as James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,” says Michael D Butler of Michael D Publishers. Jocelyn grew up in the Hudson River Valley. She is the daughter of character actor, Henry Jones, known for his work from Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Stephen Frear’s The Grifters.
“Jocelyn Jones’ memoir is about process, and connecting to the creative spirit in us all,” says Butler. “ Artist is undoubtedly influenced by her work as an actor with roles in Larry Pierce’s The Other Side of the Mountain, Clint Eastwood’s The Enforcer, and the cult classics, The Great Texas Dynamite Chase and Tourist Trap. Artist not only traverses the road from her troubled youth to the emergence of an artist and teacher but, also in an extraordinarily unique manner, intertwines the keys to good acting with pathways to a deeper spiritual sense for artists and civilians alike.” Jocelyn has shepherded 100 hand-picked actors at a time, at her esteemed actors and directors lab, the Jocelyn Jones Acting Studio.
Jones’ filmmaker husband, Miles Watkins , is currently working on a documentary of the thespian’s famous acting studio, entitled Masterclass.
Lana Parrilla (From ABC’s Once Upon a Time) and Joey Nisivoccia in a scene from Italian American Reconciliation
Rich Ting (Warrior & The Man in the High Castle) and Jeannie Lee in a scene from Crazy Rich Asians
“When I read the chapters from Jane Sibbett’s manuscript, About Jane,” says Michael D Butler, “I was riveted in the same way as when I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s mesmerizing best seller, Eat, Pray, Love. Jane’s journey is really the hero’s journey. Jane answered a call that took her from the safety net of Los Angeles to the sacred and unknown lands of Tonga, Machu Picchu, and Santiago, Chile. For a successful actress to pursue a higher-purpose which she is compelled to answer is both courageous and inspirational.”
Jane Sibbett as Carol and David Schwimmer as Ross in Friends
“This Winter Story Summit is shaping up as a wonderful dream-community of exceptional talents, especially for books,” says Summit Director, Thom Black. “It was so exciting to be able to phone Jane and Jocelyn with the news.
“One of our mentors is best selling author and legendary writing coach, Deb Engle whose new novel, Twenty, will be in bookstores in January 2020. Along with Tab Murphy, Deb will be working with both Jane and Jocelyn.
“Another one of our scholarship winners, Patricia Horan, who won an award from Tito’s Handmade Vodka for her delightful story, Bring Me Your Paws, is a forty-year veteran of New York book and magazine publishing. Patricia is the founding editor of a longstanding Crown/Random House division — Random House Value Publishing. It’s going to be wonderful to see how these synergies between all these great women play out against the blue skies of the Caribbean. I can hardly wait.”
“I believe the professional acting experience of both winners has helped them with their observational and character-building skills,” says writing mentor, Tab Murphy. “I am hoping to learn as much from Jocelyn and Jane, as they hopefully learn from me.” | https://medium.com/@thegoodage/jocelyn-jones-and-jane-sibbett-win-best-non-fiction-writing-scholarships-for-their-memoirs-fd700bc96249 | ['David Paul Kirkpatrick'] | 2019-12-12 15:23:58.113000+00:00 | ['Jocelyn Jones', 'Creative Writing', 'Winter Story Summit', 'Jane Sibbett', 'Writers Life'] |
Home charging on the cheap | by Maxine Joselow and Kristi E. Swartz, E&E News reporters
A Home Depot employee helps Alan Shedd, center, and Kristi Swartz, left, pick out components for a home EV charging system. Maxine Joselow/E&E News
ATLANTA — We got a fascinating lesson in home charging yesterday.
So far on the Electric Road Trip, we’ve mostly charged our Kia Niro electric vehicle at public charging stations owned by EVgo, Electrify America, Blink and other networks. But that’s not a typical experience. Eighty percent of charging happens at home, according to the Department of Energy.
So when we arrived in Atlanta, we saw the perfect window of opportunity to try out home charging for ourselves. After all, we were staying at Kristi’s house in East Atlanta rather than a hotel or Airbnb close to a public charging station.
Many people hire a company to install a Level 2 charger in their garage or driveway. The charger typically costs around $500 to $700, while the labor runs $1,200 to $2,000. But in the interest of saving money, we decided to configure our own home charging system.
We’re not the most tech-savvy people. (Maxine is embarrassed to admit she asks extremely basic questions of the E&E News tech team, such as how to access Microsoft Outlook on her phone.) So we enlisted the help of Alan Shedd, the director of sustainability at Oglethorpe Power Co., an electric utility. Alan has been driving a plug-in hybrid for years and is an expert on all things related to electric cars and the grid.
Alan Shedd of Oglethorpe Power Co. wires a charger together at the company office. Maxine Joselow/E&E News
Alan offered to take us to Home Depot, where he helped us pick out the right cables and outlet converters to configure a home charging system. At the checkout, we were surprised by the total on the receipt: $31.
With these inexpensive supplies in hand, we headed back to Oglethorpe, where Alan helped us assemble the charging system. As he worked, he cautioned that building this kind of system can be downright dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Touch the wrong wire, for example, and you’ll get a shock of 240 volts.
Thankfully, Alan knew what he was doing, and the system was configured in less than 15 minutes. We then hopped into our Kia and drove to Kristi’s house. There, we plugged the converter into the right outlet behind Kristi’s dryer to charge.
Alan, if you’re reading this, we can’t thank you enough for your help. To everyone else, as our company lawyer would like us to say, “Don’t try this at home.” And if you do try it, just be careful. | https://medium.com/the-electric-road-trip/home-charging-on-the-cheap-63c59b020936 | ['E E News'] | 2019-09-24 18:31:48.020000+00:00 | ['Electric Car Charging', 'Roadtrip', 'Electric Vehicles', 'DIY', 'Electric Car'] |
Louisa May Alcott and Charles Follen | Transnationalism in Little Women
Charles Follen
Charles Follen
Louisa May Alcott was a transcendentalist. Transcendentalism was an American religious-philosophical movement that was largely based to the transnational philosophy of German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Transnational philosophy is based on the idea of a universal family and that all nations can learn and embrace one another. Transnational themes are very common in Louisa May Alcott´s works. For example in Little Women Amy, who is American marries Laurie, who is Italian-American, Meg is American she marries John, who originates from England, Jo marries Friedrich and he is from Germany. Little Women is not the only novel with transnational marriages, In Rose in Bloom, but a Chinese character also marries an American.
In Louisa May Alcott´s cosmopolitan circles the response to the global changes was not to privilege the near and familiar by excluding or demonizing the “other” but value “the other” and work towards connection. Louisa by-passed her own English-puritan inheritance entirely. Jo falls in love with a poor German philosopher, from an Anglo-American perspective such choice has seemed bizarre but from a transnational perspective, it makes perfect sense (Walls).
Expedition of American scholars to Germany in 1815 eventually resulted in Harvard’s efforts to acquire a collection of German literature and to hire its first instructor of German, Charles Follen, in 1825. Historian Laura Dassow Walls has made extensive research on Charles Follen´s influences on Friedrich´s character. Charles was a good friend of Louisa´s uncle Samuel May. Everyone in Louisa´s circles knew the remarkable story of Charles (Karl) Follen. As a young man in Germany, he was the leader of Giessen Blacks — a radical student group and became an axe of revolution. He was hounded out from German to Switzerland where he became an honoured professor of law and philosophy. From there he fled to Paris and finally immigrated to America in 1824. Charles was known from his deep learning and unbending integrity, very much like Friedrich Bhaer. Same way as Fritz, Charles also spoke multiple languages (Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian and German). Charles was drawn to ministry. Maybe this is why Jo´s and Friedrich´s youngest son Ted becomes a priest?
His full name was Karl Theodore Christian Friedrich Follen
(I rest my case)
Charles was very liked. He shared similar religious and educational ideas with unitarian preacher William Elley Channing and this was the birth of transcendentalism. Louisa’s father, Amos Bronson Alcott, consulted him about German schools before founding his own school in Boston. Louisa met Charles when she was 8-years old. He was in fact, the first person who introduced German Christmas tree-tradition to Americans. As all Little Women fans know, Louisa loved Christmas, Little Women begins with Christmas. Charles had a gentle, sweet presence and self-deprecating humour. Same way as fellow transcendentalists, Charles was an abolitionist, and because of his views, he lost his professorship at Harvard and eventually his principles cost him his life.
Louisa´s knowledge about Charles most likely came from her uncle and biography that his wife Eliza wrote and published after her husband´s death. Friedrich´s speech at the symposium nearly reprises his speaking presences as reported by the contemporaries. Eliza describes the courtship and marriage of her and Charles. Louisa seems to have been impressed by both Eliza and Charles as people and their egalitarian relationship. Follen´s open up their homes to all, very much the same way as Marches and Jo and Friedrich.
If the German immigrants represented a generally stable, hardworking, religious addition to America, and the German writers suggested a glorious, independent, imaginative, if the somewhat dangerous element, the combination of the two strains in her work allows her to blend the practical and the romantic — to create characters who embody some of the best of both aspects of what “German” represented to her (Doyle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzuK9xH54KQ&ab_channel=SmallUmbrellaInTheRain-LittleWomenChannel | https://medium.com/@fairychamber/louisa-may-alcott-and-charles-follen-bcf360dbf331 | ["Niina'S Fairychamber"] | 2020-12-10 16:30:08.136000+00:00 | ['Germany', 'Louisa May Alcott', 'USA', 'History', 'Immigration'] |
How to make the best Movie? | Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
There are several thousand movies produced in the World every year. Some of them go to Grammy’s and others are lost in the abyss of movie charts. Almost all of the movies are produced on the basis of subjective assessment of what is best for a good movie. There are some wide known actors and producers whose presence in the credits make the movie shine in the market. All these factors are subjective, and no one can say for sure how this movie will perform on the box office.
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We felt like there should be a method to this madness. Continuing our work from “3 decades of cinema : what makes a movie successful?”, we tried to predict what type of a movie will be the best scoring in the industry.
Summer Blockbusters?
After doing EDA on our dataset, we saw in our dataset that movies released in “Summer” are making much revenue than movies released in other seasons but ‘Other movies revenue are closer to revenue of movies released in ‘Summer’. So, we decided to do the hypothesis testing on our observation to see which season movies make greater revenue.
Our dataset had the season column and we decided to divide it into “Summer” and “Other” season categories and added the TF column that shows True for Summer and False for ‘Other. We took the mean of ‘Gross’ between groups of ‘True/False’.
Now, let’s look at the distribution of ‘Gross’ between Movies released in ‘Summers’ and ‘Other seasons. The distribution of gross for movies that released in ‘Summer’ are slightly right to distribution corresponding to ‘Other’ movies.
So the question raises of whether the difference reflects just chance variation or a difference in distributions in greater number of movies. So, our main goal is to see whether our analysis is correct or is it just because of the movies selected in our dataset are of ‘Summer’ having greater revenue.
Hypothesis:
That our dataset represents any number of movies.
Null hypothesis
In the dataset, movies released in ‘Summer’ earn more revenue than movies released in other seasons.
Alternative Hypothesis:
In our dataset, movies released in ‘Summer’ do not earn more revenue. So, our gross will not depend on any season.
Test Statistic:
The alternative hypothesis compares the average gross of 2 groups and says that the movies released in ‘Summer’ earn more revenue.
The observed value is calculated by taking the difference in average gross of 2 groups.
Predicting the statistic under the Null Hypothesis
We have used random permutation for predicting the statistic under Null Hypothesis. We have drawn the random sample without replacement and sample include all rows of dataframe in random order. We have simplified the dataframe to just ‘Gross’ and True/False representing Summer/Other.
After taking samples, we merged our sampled and original dataframe.
Now the shuffled dataframe has average gross for both groups and their difference is 6805250.25
We decided to take samples 3000 times and see the difference in average gross for both groups and plotted their histogram.
Conclusion: The histogram shows the distribution of 3000 values. It is the empirical distribution of the test statistic simulated under the null hypothesis. This is a prediction about the test statistic, based on the null hypothesis.
Our P value is 0 and so this shows that Null Hypothesis is wrong and Alternate Hypothesis is Correct so we concluded that Movies gross doesn’t depend on which season movies are released.
Does Budget guarantee a high score?
We decided to see if budget of a movie impacts it’s score
Let’s do some basic EDA:
We divided the movies in two groups based on score
Good movies: score 8 or above
Not-so-good movies: score below 8
Average budget for good movies: $59.8 Million
Average budget for Not-so-good movies: $36.8 Million
This clearly shows that high scoring movies generally have a higher budget, but does that mean high budget will yield a high score?
We use statistical inference to determine the answer.
Null hypothesis:
Budget does not affect movie score.
Alternative hypothesis:
Budget has an impact on movie score.
Our test statistic was the difference of mean budgets in both groups.
Budget being in millions and score in range 1–10, we had to use a normalization function of log10() to ensure proper statistical comparison.
If the null hypothesis is to be true, there shouldn’t be much difference for a distribution if we shuffle the scores.
So we form another column in the dataframe “shuffled” which contains all the scores, but shuffled.
We then use 1000 bootstrap samples and extract a distribution :
It appears that all our values are below the observed test statistic from the original data, larger values would support the alternative hypothesis however smaller means that our null hypothesis holds True! Whoops
Gods of data have bestowed their wisdom: A huge budget simply cannot guarantee you a great movie; there’s more to it than film locations and all-star casts!
Aspiring filmmakers would sure be happy to hear this.
Dataset
Our dataset contained 3726 rows and 17 features. We checked the dataset for uniqueness and if there were any nulls in the dataset. We made sure there were no nulls or non-unique items.
After that, we dropped columns which we did not need such as release date, country, name and year. In order to understand the current state of our data, as to how each of the variables is related to each other we drew a pairplot and we came to know that none of the variables are related linearly to each other. It is a good sign because that gives us a better chance of running linear regression.
There were some outliers visible in the data. These outliers may affect the ability of our model to predict correctly, so we need to eliminate those. We eliminated the movies which had less than 10,000 votes, budget less than 20,000, gross profit of less than 50,000 and runtime of less than 80 minutes. Most of the good movies do not lie in the given criteria. We left with 3011 rows even after dropping the rows by given criteria. It is 80% of our initial data which is sufficient to say that our criteria do not affect most of the data in our initial data set.
Feature Engineering
Feature Engineering was done to make our dataset conform to the requirements of linear regression. We dropped all non-numerical columns to make our data sleeker and test it by running linear regression on it. We will add these columns one by one again to see how performance of our model increases.
We needed to make dummy variables for qualitative features as linear regression only takes numerical values. Handling this much data with dummy variables may get tricky. When there are too many columns and there are not enough rows, an issue of cardinality arises. Although it still gives a high value of R² on training data but that’s flying too close to the sun re: it results in overfitting when we test. We needed to limit our number of columns to avoid these issues.
We decided to create another variable named “others”. Every column which had more than a specific number of values were classified as others. For example there were more than 50 company names. We decided to put the Pareto principle here and select only 20% of the company names and the rest of them were replaced by “other”. It helped us to restrict our number of columns.
Modeling
We were left with only 4 columns after dropping the other ones. Running regression on this data gives us an R-square of 35.8%. This is a pretty sweet R² value but we wanted better.
We added variables one by one to the model to see how the performance of our model increases. We were able to reach a maximum R Square of 46%.
The coefficient R², basically is (1 — u/v), where u is the residual sum of squares ((y_true — y_pred) ** 2).sum() and v is the total sum of squares ((y_true — y_true.mean()) ** 2).sum(). In simple words it means that the best possible score is 1.0 and it can be negative (because the model can be arbitrarily worse) but a constant model that always predicts the expected value of y, disregarding the input features, would get a R² score of 0.0.
Next we split the data into train and test data and tried linear and polynomial regression. Degree 3 polynomial regression did not perform well as well as linear regression. So, we stuck to linear regression.
It gave us a negative value with a magnitude of more than one which is clearly a very bad result. To understand how our data and our predicted results look like we drew a plot:
Our values were a little spread out as is visible in this graph. So, we decided to try different forms of linear regression like ridge and lasso.
Even though simple and ridge regression had the same mean of R-squared but Ridge was giving us better values overall and so we decided to hop onto Ridge regression for the rest of our work.
The magic of regularization! Ridge regression regularized our values which is very noticeable with the outliers. Regularization is essentially a technique used to reduce error by adding an additional penalty term in the error function. It helps avoid overfitting as well.
These are some decent plots. Our regression did a good fit. Our residual plot is mostly centered around 0 without any specific trend. And our Q-Q plot also shows that our theoretical quantities lie on or near the line for the most part. Our model is only affected by a few outliers.
This was a pretty good regression model. But we tried to do even better. We removed outliers that were affecting our model by eliminating all the movies with a score less than or equal to 4 and movies with a score greater than or equal to 8. Our dataset went from 3011 rows to 2885 rows. Not a big loss. What was next was to tune the alpha parameter for an even better R² value with Ridge Regression. We let sklearn’s RidgeCV do the job for us. RidgeCV uses cross validation to pick the best alpha from the list provided.
The ideal value of alpha that we stuck to was 18 which gave us a final R² value of 0.4608.
The final plots weren’t perfect but they were big improvements over our previous ones as is visible in the extremities and good enough to give us a final mean absolute error of 0.48003.
We then saw which features affected our score the most. The first one is very obvious because votes are directly related to score on IMDb. But the next find is very interesting because it means that a high budget does not improve the movie ratings. Runtime has a positive effect on score whereas gross revenue does not. The genre of animation has a positive affect whereas horror does not. Biography and drama are also well-liked but action movies tend to not improve the score.
But what do we know? This is just our model speaking.
So we can conclude that budget does not matter if you want to predict the best movie, but there are good chances of your movie being the best on the box office if you create and animation movie. Runtime is also critical to decide before starting off a movie that contributes to your overall IMDB Score.
There are several subjective factors still unmeasurable which our model may not incorporate but at least now we know what objective factors can influence your IMDB Score.
This blog would not have been possible without the help of Hamd Jalil, Ahmed Qazi, Abdullah, Awais Hassan, and Furqan Tahir.
[email protected] — Hamd Jalil
[email protected] — Abdullah
[email protected] — Ahmed Qazi
[email protected] — Awais Hassan
[email protected] — Furqan Tahir | https://medium.com/@netaka9139/how-to-make-the-best-movie-b941eadf25b0 | [] | 2020-12-05 00:20:34.784000+00:00 | ['Causal Inference', 'Science', 'Movies', 'Linear Regression', 'Towards Data Science'] |
Traditional VS Blockchain #1 | The first industry which could significantly benefit from this digital transformation would be the global real estate market, where blockchain technology could help in revolutionising core operations, from the purchase of property to the execution of due diligence and title management.
According to Yolande Barnes, head of the world research team at London-based real estate advisor, Savills, real estate is “the pre-eminent asset class which will be most impacted by global monetary conditions and investment activity and which, in turn, has the power to most impact national and international economies”. Savills’s report in 2017 stated that global real estate values totalled US$228 trillion, an increase of five per cent from the reported figure of US$217 trillion in 2016.
However, despite this incredible potential, there have been several problems known to affect the industry and deter investors, which blockchain technology can help to overcome.
Blockchain Benefits
Accessibility — By allowing fractional asset ownership and tokenization of real estate property, blockchain can effectively lower barriers to entry for investments and encourages better and equal global participation opportunities for property owners.
By allowing fractional asset ownership and tokenization of real estate property, blockchain can effectively lower barriers to entry for investments and encourages better and equal global participation opportunities for property owners. Transparency — With immutable public ledgers, parties are able to transact directly with each other without the need of a trusted third party and the peer-to-peer distributed network will retain a secure and clear record of all transactions and proof of ownership.
With immutable public ledgers, parties are able to transact directly with each other without the need of a trusted third party and the peer-to-peer distributed network will retain a secure and clear record of all transactions and proof of ownership. Flexibility — Fractional ownership also allows individuals to diversify and have more control over their portfolio and spread risks by owning various shares of several assets.
Fractional ownership also allows individuals to diversify and have more control over their portfolio and spread risks by owning various shares of several assets. Cost efficiency — Incurred costs are significantly lowered with the removal of intermediaries like brokers, transfer agents, registrars and clearing firms, benefiting both investors and property owners.
Incurred costs are significantly lowered with the removal of intermediaries like brokers, transfer agents, registrars and clearing firms, benefiting both investors and property owners. Speed — With no more paperwork processes required, trade settlements and transactions can be completed instantly via blockchain technology.
Blockchain Applications
1. Real estate investing
Traditionally, real estate investing requires large sums of capital and the engagement of expensive third parties, like fund managers. However, asset tokenisation can decentralise the process via blockchain technology and create potential for a property to have numerous co-owners — each having a stake in potential returns with their share of the property.
2. Title management
Title management processes are often paper-based and most property owners incur high legal fees to mitigate the high likelihood of errors and fraud of their documents. Blockchain can build immutable digital records of these property titles, effectively minimising time and effort during the process while making it transparent and secure.
3. Financing & payment systems
Transactional processes including financing and payment can be slow and tedious due to the requirement of various documentation and intermediaries. Through the application of blockchain technology, these processes can be simplified with easily verifiable digital identities and immutable smart contract-based documents.
4. Property management
With most properties either being managed offline by agents, or online through different programs and platforms, property management can be overtly complicated and tedious. A single decentralised application or platform utilising blockchain-based smart contracts can conduct the same procedures in a more secure and efficient manner without any risk of fraud and corruption.
5. Due diligence & financial evaluation
Manual verification procedures can require significant time and effort with the review of the physical paperwork and documentation and coordination of third-party service providers. With the digitization of identities on blockchain databases, which can include information like tenant profile and financial and legal status, the entire process can be streamlined, thus increasing efficiency and security while reducing costs and chances of manual errors.
6. Property search process
Storing and accessing property listings through multiple listing platforms can often cause data to be outdated, inaccurate or incomplete. However, blockchain technology can consolidate all of these listings on a single, decentralised database and the implementation of standardised processes can allow brokers and participants to have more control over their data. | https://medium.com/blue-whale-foundation/traditional-vs-blockchain-1-a279af89fc22 | [] | 2019-07-01 09:46:49.926000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Asset Tokenization', 'Blue Whale Global', 'Bwx', 'Content'] |
Anticipatory Anxiety in 2020. Human beings are wired to want to… | Anticipatory Anxiety in 2020
What it is and How to Effectively Cope With It.
Photo by Artem Kovalev on Unsplash
Human beings are wired to want to control their surroundings. Anxiety often arises in circumstances that we are not able to control or predict the future outcome…now add anticipation into the mix. 2020 has been a year where most of the events have been out of our control and there is high anticipation for what is to come.
So what does this do to our mental health?
Numerous research studies find that anxiety is three times more prevalent now than at the start of 2020. Anticipatory anxiety has taken over many people’s mental state — about a lot of things going on in our world right now. Anticipatory anxiety is defined as heightened anxiety, worry, or fear about future events. It is when we are fearful or worried about an outcome that is uncertain or the end result is out of our control. The worry and distress associated with anticipation can impact one’s social, emotional, and physical functioning.
The past six months have consisted of prolonged fear and worry, which most people are not used to experiencing. Anxiety here and there is common, however anticipatory anxiety for months on end has been contributing to many people reporting a decrease in their mental health state, resulting in them feeling hopeless, exhausted, and defeated. Being in a chronic state of heightened anxiety and fear of future events can result in people having difficulty concentrating, feeling emotionally numb, loss of interest in hobbies or social activities, sleep problems, rumination, or appetite loss.
There is a lot of uncertainty this year that individually and collectively we are not used to coping with. A global pandemic, civil unrest, a monumental election around the corner, awaiting a vaccine, worries about finances, and more. As a community, we are encountering ongoing anxiety and fear of what will happen in the months to come. The question “how will 2020 turn out?” is at the forefront of most people’s minds. To be honest, we do not know what will happen a week from today, in a month, or even at the end of the year. What will our lives look like as we enter 2021 in a few short months? Will we ever have a sense of ‘normalcy’ again? That safety net of familiarity or control has been taken away or minimized for many of us over this past year. The control we are used to, such as power over our daily routine, no longer exists as it used to eight months ago. When we are in the ‘driver’s seat’ of our day to day routine, we feel psychologically safe. We are programmed to want to control our surroundings and be the ‘driver’ of our lives — not a passenger along for the ride, waiting in anticipation for an outcome. Most of us can say that we have been in a situation where we have had anticipation about an outcome — such as a job interview, waiting on the results of an exam, waiting to get a text message, or even waiting for a ‘follow back’ on Instagram from a crush. This anticipation is typically temporary, opposite to the prolonged anticipatory anxiety we are facing individually and collectively in 2020. Anticipatory anxiety for long periods of time leaves us feeling in danger (physically and psychologically), constantly worrying, and in a state of panic about what is to come.
Not knowing when we can start returning to a pre-COVID work routine, a vaccine will be distributed, the outcome of the election, and the state of the future of the world is a lot to be alarmed about. If you are feeling increased anxiety during this time you are not alone. In a survey taken in June of 2020, over 40% of U.S. Adults reported increased struggling with mental health or substance use (with anxiety and depressive symptoms being most common) since the COVID-19 Pandemic. To cope with these new circumstances, people must start to pivot how they take care of themselves and their mental health. This may require some new coping strategies, emotional regulation skills, and seeking help in ways they may have not in the past.
Here are some ways to cope with Anticipatory Anxiety:
Get Enough Restful Sleep
Sleep and anxiety can form a cycle together as issues with sleep and anxiety often go hand in hand. Lack of sleep can increase anxiety and continue to worsen this cycle. Sleep gives your body and brain time to heal and rest from the stressors of the day. A rested mind can also better cope with anxiety and stress than a tired and exhausted mind.
Stay Present in the Moment
When we are anxious about the future, it is natural for our thoughts to go to the ‘worst case’ scenario. We do this as a coping mechanism when faced with uncertainty as it is easier to craft and control a ‘worst case’ situation than sit and wait for an outcome that is out of our control. When you find yourself in a negative mental spiral, gently bring yourself back to where you are in the present moment.
Talk to Yourself With Compassion
Anxiety and negative-self talk often do a dance with one another. When we are anxious, we speak harshly to ourselves. Negative self-talk can be damaging to our mind, body, and outlook on life. The way we speak to ourselves determines the way we act. Notice when you speak to yourself in a cruel manner (e.g. “why can’t I just do anything right?!” or “I am never going to be good enough”) and replace critique with compassion. Affirm yourself that you are doing the best you can during a very difficult time.
Take Care of Your Body
Ever heard of the ‘mind-body connection?’. Your mind and body are constantly working with one another. Research finds that one’s mindset has a direct impact on their physical health. When we are anxious, it can cause our body to respond with painful headaches, tense muscles, stomach problems, difficulty sleeping, dizziness, or high blood pressure. Moving your body can increase your serotonin levels (the chemical that impacts mood) and improves cognitive functioning. Set goals to move your body every day for at least 30–45 minutes a day to aid positive physical and psychological outcomes.
Stock Up on Self-Care
Self-care is an essential activity we must incorporate into our daily lives (especially during times of escalated and prolonged stress) to nurture our well-being and mental state. Taking care of ourselves is absolutely necessary to ensure a healthy mind and body. Self-care activities look from different person to person based on what their specific needs are. Activities can include mediation, doing an activity you enjoy, getting a seasonal latte, exercising, taking a warm bubble bath, doing a puzzle, painting, or reflective journaling.
Know That You are Not Alone in Your Experience
Even though your own anticipations and fears are unique to you, many of the experiences that we are going through as a world and society are new for people. Newness inevitably increases anxiety because we are fearful of the unknown. You are not alone in being anxious about what is to come. Your worries and anxieties are valid and shared amongst the rest of the world.
Talk to a Mental Health Professional
Many people have experienced an increase in stress and a decrease in their mental health during the past year. Mental health professionals are trained to help people navigate difficult circumstances, life transitions, anxiety, depression, loss, and other mental health conditions. A therapist can work with you to identify circumstances, thoughts, and behaviors that are interfering with your ability to live a mentally healthy life. They are also able to provide you with psychologically-researched methods to improve your well-being with emotional regulation strategies, cognitive behavioral therapy, and techniques for psychological distress symptom reduction. Find a therapist near you at Psychologytoday.com.
Photo by Anthony Tran on Unsplash
As circumstances shift, the ways we physically, emotionally, and mentally cope must shift as well. New circumstances call for new coping strategies. During unprecedented times, it is even more critical to take care of your mental and physical health. Remember, our minds and bodies are not used to managing anxiety for extended periods of time. As we come toward the end of the year and await answers and outcomes- make sure to prioritize sleep, self-care, and utilize coping strategies that reduce anticipatory anxiety.
Make sure you are taking time out of your daily routine to nurture your needs and seek the appropriate help you need from loved ones or a mental health professional if needed. | https://medium.com/joincurio/anticipatory-anxiety-in-2020-what-it-is-and-how-to-effectively-cope-with-it-fe0ee4afc3bd | ['Divya Robin'] | 2020-10-27 14:01:09.184000+00:00 | ['Depression', 'Self Improvement', 'Anxiety', 'Mindset', 'Mental Health'] |
MTLX Airdrop for FET Holders on Binance | MTLX Airdrop for FET Holders on Binance
The Fetch.ai and Mettalex teams are thrilled to announce that Binance.com, the global blockchain organization behind the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume, will support an MTLX token Airdrop to FET holders!
The initiative is yet another confirmation of the Fetch.ai team’s continued regard for FET token holders who share the project’s long-term vision.
Airdrop Details
Duration : The MTLX Airdrop will be held over a period of 50 days — starting at 11:59 PM UTC on April 13, 2021, and ending at 11:59 PM UTC on June 1, 2021.
: The MTLX Airdrop will be held over a period of 50 days — starting at 11:59 PM UTC on April 13, 2021, and ending at 11:59 PM UTC on June 1, 2021. Eligibility : Binance.com users who have held an average amount of 10,000 FET tokens in their Binance.com wallets at the time of the eight snapshots will be eligible for the Airdrop.
: Binance.com users who have held an average amount of 10,000 FET tokens in their Binance.com wallets at the time of the eight snapshots will be eligible for the Airdrop. Ratio : Eligible holders will receive one MTLX for every 10,000 FET tokens they have held on their Binance.com accounts. The average amount of tokens held throughout the eight snapshots must be at least 10,000 FET.
: Eligible holders will receive one MTLX for every 10,000 FET tokens they have held on their Binance.com accounts. The average amount of tokens held throughout the eight snapshots must be at least 10,000 FET. Snapshot Times: Snapshots will be performed weekly. The dates and times of the snapshots are:
Total Airdrop Value : The number of MTLX tokens to be distributed depends on the number of FET tokens held in Binance.com users’ accounts.
: The number of MTLX tokens to be distributed depends on the number of FET tokens held in Binance.com users’ accounts. Rewards Distribution : The MTLX tokens will become available in the users’ Binance.com accounts after the end of the Airdrop.
: The MTLX tokens will become available in the users’ Binance.com accounts after the end of the Airdrop. Minimum FET amount: An average of 10,000 FET over eight account snapshots.
An average of 10,000 FET over eight account snapshots. MTLX Contract Address: 0x2e1E15C44Ffe4Df6a0cb7371CD00d5028e571d14
FAQ
How do I join the MTLX airdrop?
All Binance.com users can join the MTLX airdrop by holding a minimum average number of 10,000 FET tokens in their FET wallets on Binance.com at the time of the eight snapshots from April 13, 2021, to June 1, 2021.
How do I get FET tokens in order to join the MTLX Airdrop?
You can buy FET tokens on Binance.com with BTC, BNB, or USDT.
How much FET should I have in my Binance.com account to be eligible for MTLX rewards?
Users must have at least 10,000 FET on average during the time of the eight snapshots to be eligible to receive MTLX tokens.
What if I move/sell some or all FET that I have on my Binance.com account during the MTLX airdrop?
If users decide to move or sell part or all of their FET during the Airdrop campaign the number of MTLX tokens they are eligible to receive will be proportionally modified. For example:
In the above case, the user both removes and adds FET tokens to their Binance.com balance. At the time of the second snapshot, the user has less than 10,000 FET on their account but then compensates by holding larger amounts during the next snapshots. The average amount of FET that they have held during the Airdrop is calculated in the following way:
(100,000 + 5,000 + 150,000 + 50,000 + 100,000 + 500,000 + 250,000 + 650,000) / 8 = 225,625
The number of MTLX tokens that they will receive is:
225,625 / 10,000 = 22.56 MTLX
Is this airdrop part of the FET staking program announced in the Mettalex Economics Overview blog post?
Yes, the MTLX tokens used in the Binance Airdrop are part of the third FET staking program announced by Fetch.ai and Mettalex.
I have questions. Which communication channel(s) should I use?
If you have any questions related to the Binance MTLX Airdrop to FET holders, please get in touch with us on either Fetch.ai’s Telegram group or Mettalex’s Telegram group. | https://medium.com/mettalex/mtlx-airdrop-for-fet-holders-on-binance-cb34809ac3ff | ['Vlad Dramaliev'] | 2021-04-12 11:49:23.841000+00:00 | ['Binance', 'Mettalex', 'Fetch Ai', 'Airdrop', 'Blockchain'] |
An Introverts Guide to Writing Better | An Introvert’s Guide to Writing Better
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
I used to think that being an introvert would severely limit my success in life. I’ve since discovered that the opposite is true. However, it took some trial and error to understand this.
Growing up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh, PA, I knew most people in my community. As an introvert, this was a huge blessing for me socially. Making friends with, or even talking to, people is much more manageable when you already know someone. Eventually, I graduated from high school and was preparing for my first year at Penn State University. Situated in the middle of Pennsylvania, the university is home to more than 46,000 students — an intense step up from my 1,200-student high school.
I knew no one. After several months of worrying leading up to it, move-in day was incredibly stressful. While the actual moving itself was irritating, navigating a brand-new social structure was what really had me frazzled. Coming from a town where I knew pretty much everyone, making friends in this new environment was foreign. Pretty much every first-year student there was like me and knew no one.
However, as an introvert, I struggled to make the first move towards building a friendship. I frequently found myself lonely and sitting in my dorm room, waiting for someone to talk to me. Eventually, I did make friends due to some great extroverts that came and talked to me.
Regardless, I couldn’t help but think that being an introvert would severely limit my success in life.
Talking to people is such an essential part of being a human. If I couldn’t even do it with kids at school, could I ever do it? Would I ever find success?
Eventually you’ll learn what you’re really good at
As the years in school progressed, I joined a fraternity and met many great friends through that. My social life was flourishing, but at the same time, I found myself diving deeper and deeper into career paths that primarily required me and my computer.
I loved business and information systems, but what I loved even more was when I could put my head down and work on a problem — completely alone.
I hated it when the teacher would assign group projects or force us to do in-class group activities. I loved learning, however, I just preferred to do it alone. While I did okay in these group projects, I really flourished on the solo assignments where I could be alone with my thoughts—the projects where I could dive deep into a problem head-first and run away from everything else.
Ultimately, this habit where I excelled at working alone did well for me in college. I ended up graduating manga cum laude from Penn State with a 3.9 GPA, majoring in Risk Management with a minor in Information Systems. I don’t say this to humblebrag or show off, but rather to explain how I succeeded despite being an introvert. When I first arrived at college, I thought I would struggle because I was an introvert. However, this was the exact reason why I ended up doing so well.
Being an introvert is an advantage to be utilized
When I graduated, I finally understood that being an introvert wasn’t a weakness but rather an advantage to be exploited.
I loved working alone on problems to figure out a thoughtful solution. I loved being alone with my thoughts. I loved typing away on my computer, with music in my ears and no one to talk to.
Other people, extroverts, for example, often hated this. They needed human interaction in order to thrive. I, on the other hand, did just fine without human interaction. And that, the difference between extroverts and introverts, was my advantage. I was looking at the problem in the wrong way. I wasn’t doomed for failure, I was simply comparing myself to the wrong group of people.
Being an introvert gives me an inherent advantage of being alone with my thoughts. At thinking through problems alone and coming to a thoughtful conclusion.
Introverts are great at thinking and writing
I’ve since dropped the ideology that I’m doomed for failure just because I’m an introvert. That was such a silly notion, and a quick Google search helped me squash that belief in a few seconds.
Screenshot take by the author.
There are thousands of uber-successful introverts. From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, it’s clear that being an introvert isn’t a disadvantage but rather a unique skill set to wield with power.
One specific field that is uniquely suited for introverts is writing. As New York Times bestselling author John Green once said:
“Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it.” — John Green
Writing is perfectly suited for me as an introvert. I get to be alone, with my thoughts, thinking about the world. I get to tell a story that everyone loves to do, but I don’t have to do it in front of other people.
“The reality is that we often enjoy our time alone, thinking, and pondering the most profound questions of life.”, writes fellow Medium writer and introvert Matt Lillywhite.
Final thoughts
If you’re an introvert, you are not doomed to failure. Being an introvert is an asset to be utilized, not a liability. Some professions and activities are perfectly suited for the introvert skillset.
Writing is a perfect example of one.
Writing requires the strength to go deep inside. To be alone with our thoughts in a way that empowers us to carefully consider what’s going on around us. And then, to write about it all in a way that makes sense to other people.
The truth is, being an introvert helps us do this in a more impactful way. Because introverts prefer to be alone, we are perfectly suited to write and tell stories. | https://writingcooperative.com/an-introverts-guide-to-writing-better-eef46fbf3f27 | ['Devin Arrigo'] | 2021-03-03 01:19:15.110000+00:00 | ['Writing', 'Writing Tips', 'Growing Up', 'Society', 'Introvert'] |
Data Augmentation | How to use Deep Learning when you have Limited Data — Part 2 | Getting Started
Before we dive into the various augmentation techniques, there’s one issue that we must consider beforehand.
Where do we augment data in our ML pipeline?
The answer may seem quite obvious; we do augmentation before we feed the data to the model right? Yes, but you have two options here. One option is to perform all the necessary transformations beforehand, essentially increasing the size of your dataset. The other option is to perform these transformations on a mini-batch, just before feeding it to your machine learning model.
The first option is known as offline augmentation. This method is preferred for relatively smaller datasets, as you would end up increasing the size of the dataset by a factor equal to the number of transformations you perform (For example, by flipping all my images, I would increase the size of my dataset by a factor of 2).
The second option is known as online augmentation, or augmentation on the fly. This method is preferred for larger datasets, as you can’t afford the explosive increase in size. Instead, you would perform transformations on the mini-batches that you would feed to your model. Some machine learning frameworks have support for online augmentation, which can be accelerated on the GPU.
Popular Augmentation Techniques
In this section, we present some basic but powerful augmentation techniques that are popularly used. Before we explore these techniques, for simplicity, let us make one assumption. The assumption is that, we don’t need to consider what lies beyond the image’s boundary. We’ll use the below techniques such that our assumption is valid.
What would happen if we use a technique that forces us to guess what lies beyond an image’s boundary? In this case, we need to interpolate some information. We’ll discuss this in detail after we cover the types of augmentation.
For each of these techniques, we also specify the factor by which the size of your dataset would get increased (aka. Data Augmentation Factor).
1. Flip
You can flip images horizontally and vertically. Some frameworks do not provide function for vertical flips. But, a vertical flip is equivalent to rotating an image by 180 degrees and then performing a horizontal flip. Below are examples for images that are flipped.
From the left, we have the original image, followed by the image flipped horizontally, and then the image flipped vertically.
You can perform flips by using any of the following commands, from your favorite packages. Data Augmentation Factor = 2 to 4x
# NumPy.'img' = A single image.
flip_1 = np.fliplr(img) # TensorFlow. 'x' = A placeholder for an image.
shape = [height, width, channels]
x = tf.placeholder(dtype = tf.float32, shape = shape)
flip_2 = tf.image.flip_up_down(x)
flip_3 = tf.image.flip_left_right(x)
flip_4 = tf.image.random_flip_up_down(x)
flip_5 = tf.image.random_flip_left_right(x)
2. Rotation
One key thing to note about this operation is that image dimensions may not be preserved after rotation. If your image is a square, rotating it at right angles will preserve the image size. If it’s a rectangle, rotating it by 180 degrees would preserve the size. Rotating the image by finer angles will also change the final image size. We’ll see how we can deal with this issue in the next section. Below are examples of square images rotated at right angles.
The images are rotated by 90 degrees clockwise with respect to the previous one, as we move from left to right.
You can perform rotations by using any of the following commands, from your favorite packages. Data Augmentation Factor = 2 to 4x
# Placeholders: 'x' = A single image, 'y' = A batch of images
# 'k' denotes the number of 90 degree anticlockwise rotations
shape = [height, width, channels]
x = tf.placeholder(dtype = tf.float32, shape = shape)
rot_90 = tf.image.rot90(img, k=1)
rot_180 = tf.image.rot90(img, k=2) # To rotate in any angle. In the example below, 'angles' is in radians
shape = [batch, height, width, 3]
y = tf.placeholder(dtype = tf.float32, shape = shape)
rot_tf_180 = tf.contrib.image.rotate(y, angles=3.1415) # Scikit-Image. 'angle' = Degrees. 'img' = Input Image
# For details about 'mode', checkout the interpolation section below.
rot = skimage.transform.rotate(img, angle=45, mode='reflect')
3. Scale
The image can be scaled outward or inward. While scaling outward, the final image size will be larger than the original image size. Most image frameworks cut out a section from the new image, with size equal to the original image. We’ll deal with scaling inward in the next section, as it reduces the image size, forcing us to make assumptions about what lies beyond the boundary. Below are examples or images being scaled.
From the left, we have the original image, the image scaled outward by 10%, and the image scaled outward by 20%
You can perform scaling by using the following commands, using scikit-image. Data Augmentation Factor = Arbitrary.
# Scikit Image. 'img' = Input Image, 'scale' = Scale factor
# For details about 'mode', checkout the interpolation section below.
scale_out = skimage.transform.rescale(img, scale=2.0, mode='constant')
scale_in = skimage.transform.rescale(img, scale=0.5, mode='constant') # Don't forget to crop the images back to the original size (for
# scale_out)
4. Crop
Unlike scaling, we just randomly sample a section from the original image. We then resize this section to the original image size. This method is popularly known as random cropping. Below are examples of random cropping. If you look closely, you can notice the difference between this method and scaling.
From the left, we have the original image, a square section cropped from the top-left, and then a square section cropped from the bottom-right. The cropped sections were resized to the original image size.
You can perform random crops by using any the following command for TensorFlow. Data Augmentation Factor = Arbitrary.
# TensorFlow. 'x' = A placeholder for an image.
original_size = [height, width, channels]
x = tf.placeholder(dtype = tf.float32, shape = original_size) # Use the following commands to perform random crops
crop_size = [new_height, new_width, channels]
seed = np.random.randint(1234)
x = tf.random_crop(x, size = crop_size, seed = seed)
output = tf.images.resize_images(x, size = original_size)
5. Translation
Translation just involves moving the image along the X or Y direction (or both). In the following example, we assume that the image has a black background beyond its boundary, and are translated appropriately. This method of augmentation is very useful as most objects can be located at almost anywhere in the image. This forces your convolutional neural network to look everywhere.
From the left, we have the original image, the image translated to the right, and the image translated upwards.
You can perform translations in TensorFlow by using the following commands. Data Augmentation Factor = Arbitrary.
# pad_left, pad_right, pad_top, pad_bottom denote the pixel
# displacement. Set one of them to the desired value and rest to 0
shape = [batch, height, width, channels]
x = tf.placeholder(dtype = tf.float32, shape = shape) # We use two functions to get our desired augmentation x = tf.image.pad_to_bounding_box(x, pad_top, pad_left, height + pad_bottom + pad_top, width + pad_right + pad_left) output = tf.image.crop_to_bounding_box(x, pad_bottom, pad_right, height, width)
6. Gaussian Noise
Over-fitting usually happens when your neural network tries to learn high frequency features (patterns that occur a lot) that may not be useful. Gaussian noise, which has zero mean, essentially has data points in all frequencies, effectively distorting the high frequency features. This also means that lower frequency components (usually, your intended data) are also distorted, but your neural network can learn to look past that. Adding just the right amount of noise can enhance the learning capability.
A toned down version of this is the salt and pepper noise, which presents itself as random black and white pixels spread through the image. This is similar to the effect produced by adding Gaussian noise to an image, but may have a lower information distortion level.
From the left, we have the original image, image with added Gaussian noise, image with added salt and pepper noise
You can add Gaussian noise to your image by using the following command, on TensorFlow. Data Augmentation Factor = 2x.
#TensorFlow. 'x' = A placeholder for an image.
shape = [height, width, channels]
x = tf.placeholder(dtype = tf.float32, shape = shape) # Adding Gaussian noise
noise = tf.random_normal(shape=tf.shape(x), mean=0.0, stddev=1.0,
dtype=tf.float32)
output = tf.add(x, noise)
Advanced Augmentation Techniques
Real world, natural data can still exist in a variety of conditions that cannot be accounted for by the above simple methods. For instance, let us take the task of identifying the landscape in photograph. The landscape could be anything: freezing tundras, grasslands, forests and so on. Sounds like a pretty straight forward classification task right? You’d be right, except for one thing. We are overlooking a crucial feature in the photographs that would affect the performance — The season in which the photograph was taken.
If our neural network does not understand the fact that certain landscapes can exist in a variety of conditions (snow, damp, bright etc.), it may spuriously label frozen lakeshores as glaciers or wet fields as swamps.
One way to mitigate this situation is to add more pictures such that we account for all the seasonal changes. But that is an arduous task. Extending our data augmentation concept, imagine how cool it would be to generate effects such as different seasons artificially?
Conditional GANs to the rescue!
Without going into gory detail, conditional GANs can transform an image from one domain to an image to another domain. If you think it sounds too vague, it’s not; that’s literally how powerful this neural network is! Below is an example of conditional GANs used to transform photographs of summer sceneries to winter sceneries.
Changing seasons using a CycleGAN (Source: https://junyanz.github.io/CycleGAN/)
The above method is robust, but computationally intensive. A cheaper alternative would be something called neural style transfer. It grabs the texture/ambiance/appearance of one image (aka, the “style”) and mixes it with the content of another. Using this powerful technique, we produce an effect similar to that of our conditional GAN (In fact, this method was introduced before cGANs were invented!).
The only downside of this method is that, the output tends to looks more artistic rather than realistic. However, there are certain advancements such as Deep Photo Style Transfer, shown below, that have impressive results.
Deep Photo Style Transfer. Notice how we could generate the effect we desire on our dataset. (Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.07511)
We have not explored these techniques in great depth as we are not concerned with their inner working. We can use existing trained models, along with the magic of transfer learning, to use it for augmentation. | https://medium.com/nanonets/how-to-use-deep-learning-when-you-have-limited-data-part-2-data-augmentation-c26971dc8ced | ['Bharath Raj'] | 2018-06-04 12:15:12.573000+00:00 | ['Deep Learning', 'AI', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Neural Networks', 'Machine Learning'] |
Exploring Face Detection process, and usages in AR | Facial recognition vs. face detection: a major difference
Although “facial recognition” is generally used as a general term, it is not entirely accurate. There is a key distinction between facial recognition and face detection.
Facial detection is the process of finding human faces in an image, without actually identifying people:
Face detection occurs when a system simply tries to establish that a face is present. Social media companies use face detection to filter and organize images in large photo catalogs, for example.
Instead, facial recognition is going one step further: we not only look for faces, but we also try to verify the identity of the people who appear in the image.
Facial recognition describes the process of scanning a face and comparing it with the same person in a database. This is the approach used to unlock phones or authenticate a person entering a building.
The tools used to train the two systems are different. Desired levels of precision also vary. Clearly, facial recognition used for identification purposes must score higher than any system used solely to organize images.
The confusion between the two processes has caused some controversy. In 2019, a researcher revealed that Amazon’s systems were far better at classifying the gender of light-skinned men than dark-skinned women. That led to fears that surveillance systems could yield more false matches for some ethnic groups. However, Amazon responded that the error rates were related to face detection, which is not used to identify individuals.
Viola & Jones to detect faces
Viola & Jones is an algorithm to detect faces, which since its publication in 2001 is probably the algorithm par excellence to do this type of task. This algorithm is designed to detect specific objects, be it faces, cars, cats, bananas…
In order to detect objects, you need a classifier. We can imagine classifiers as a kind of “template” to detect a certain type of object. This classifier is trained by providing hundreds of example images of the object to be detected.
The classifier looks for visual characteristics in the sample images. The characteristics that are used are the so-called “Haar-Like Features”, which have this form:
When training the classifier, combinations of these characteristics are sought in the example images and the most significant ones are chosen to form part of the classifier.
When you want to detect objects, the algorithm applies a series of classifiers (a “cascade of classifiers”) on a region of interest in which it considers that the object in question could be found. If all the classifiers are positive, the algorithm considers that there is a match and the desired object has been found. In our case, a face.
2D technology
2D technology works well in stable and well-lit conditions, as is the case in passport control. However, it is less effective in darker spaces and may not deliver good results when subjects are moving. It is easy to fool with a photograph.
One way to overcome those flaws is through proof-of-life detection. Those systems will look for indicators of a non-live image, such as inconsistent foreground and background features. They can ask the user to blink or move. They are necessary to defeat criminals who try to fool facial recognition systems by using photographs or masks.
Another key advance is the ‘deep convolutional neural network’. It is a type of learning machine in which a model finds patterns in the image data. It displays a network of artificial neurons that mimics the functioning of the human brain. In effect, the network behaves like a black box. You are given input values whose results are not yet known. It then performs checks to ensure that the network is producing the expected result. When this is not the case, the system makes adjustments until it is configured correctly and can consistently produce the expected results.
3D technology
3D facial recognition software is much more advanced, using depth-sensing cameras, the facial imprint can include the contours and curve of the face, as well as the depth of the eyes and distances from points of view. reference as the tip of your nose.
Today, previously advanced processes are reaching mass-market devices. For example, Apple uses 3D camera technology for the Face ID infrared-based thermal function on its iPhone X. IR thermal images map face patterns derived primarily from the pattern of superficial blood vessels under the skin.
Apple also sends the captured face pattern to a “secure enclave” on the device. That ensures that the authentication is done locally and that Apple cannot access the patterns.
Analysis of skin texture
It is the most recent technological development and differs from the others because it works on a much smaller scale. Instead of measuring the distance between your nose and your eyes, measure the distance between your pores. Then convert those numbers into a mathematical code. This code is known as the “skin print.” In theory, this method could be so precise that it can distinguish between twins. | https://medium.com/@alexander-urrego/exploring-face-detection-process-and-usages-in-ar-a7ee88d4fc6e | ['Alexander Urrego'] | 2020-12-16 00:20:07.619000+00:00 | ['Face Recognition', 'Augmented Reality', 'Face Detection Software'] |
How to set-up ADDS on a Windows Server 2019 | ADDS or Active Directory Domain Services simply is a distributed database of objects in the network. An object could be a user, a computer, a domain or a tree. It maintains a hierarchical organization of objects which is also known as logical structure.
Broad use cases of ADDS include
Authentication — validates a user or a computer which is trying to access the network is a valid user or not.
— validates a user or a computer which is trying to access the network is a valid user or not. Authorization — used to grant and revoke permissions of the users connected to the network.
— used to grant and revoke permissions of the users connected to the network. High Availability — We know ADDS is like a distributed database service which allows high availability even when some components fail or break.
— We know ADDS is like a distributed database service which allows high availability even when some components fail or break. Storing Information — It stores all the information about objects in the network.
This is a brief overview of ADDS I will link references if you want to dive deep. For now, we will focus on setting up ADDS on a Windows Server.
PS — Read the disclaimer at the end, before proceeding further.
I will be using AWS (Amazon Web Services)for this tutorial. Launch an EC2 instance with AMI of Windows Server 2016 or 2019. This post won’t cover setting up an EC2 instance.
RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) into the instance that you have created, then we will begin setting it as an ADDS. Once you successfully RDP into your instance you will be able to see the desktop for your machine.
Windows Server 2019 Desktop
Steps to Set up Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) on a Windows Server
Step 1 — Open command prompt type “servermanager” or search from taskbar and search “server manager”. Hit Enter.
CMD “servermanager” Command
Step 2 — Open Server Manager, then Add Role and Feature either from Manage or from Add roles and features.
Server Manager Dashboard
Step 3 — A wizard will pop up that will help in adding the role. | https://medium.com/@ihimanshurawat/how-to-set-up-adds-on-a-windows-server-2019-4d6d589f34bf | ['Himanshu Rawat'] | 2019-08-28 05:52:57.940000+00:00 | ['Microsoft', 'Windows Server 2019', 'Aws Ec2', 'Adds'] |
Using Illustrations To Change The Face Of Business | Using Illustrations To Change The Face Of Business
Illustration by issam laaziz
Have you ever had a professional photoshoot for your website or resume? Why, if you could just take some selfies? You choose professional photographers because good-looking, polished photos made in one style increase your reliability and status in the eyes of others: either a target audience or employers.
Similar principles apply to design, especially where illustration is used. Professional illustration has a number of benefits that, like a photoshoot made in a studio, cannot be substituted.
Let’s discover why and how often companies use IT outsourcing services to create illustrations, and take inspiration from some of the best practices among our case studies.
If design solves business problems and fine art predicts the future, then illustration is a medium between them.
— Sergiy Maidukov, The NY Times & The Washington Post illustrator
Why do companies outsource graphic design and illustration?
Graphic design implies creating visual content that communicates a certain message. Illustrations may be considered part of the former, but the major difference between graphic design and illustrations is where/how you use it. Graphic design projects have more commercial meaning. Meanwhile, illustrations are somewhere on the borderline between creating fine art and making profits.
Graphic design vs illustration by Vladanland
There are several reasons why companies pay someone to create visuals for them:
Saving money . Yep, paying for these services pays off in the future, and never mind the wordplay. In-house design team equals payroll costs, taxes, buying licensed software like Adobe After Effects, time to find the employees that get you. Design agencies charge only for the work done.
. Yep, paying for these services pays off in the future, and never mind the wordplay. In-house design team equals payroll costs, taxes, buying licensed software like Adobe After Effects, time to find the employees that get you. Design agencies charge only for the work done. Collective expertise and experience . Design agencies cooperate with companies of different profiles, so they have a broader knowledge of what’s good. They are also up to date with the latest trends in design and the market in general. If you would like to learn more about them, check out our article on top-2022 UI/UX design trends.
. Design agencies cooperate with companies of different profiles, so they have a broader knowledge of what’s good. They are also up to date with the latest trends in design and the market in general. If you would like to learn more about them, check out our article on top-2022 UI/UX design trends. Saving labor resources and outsourcing human resources. When a company doesn’t have in-house designers or expertise in a specific area, it doesn’t need to train its team. Especially if the project is not long-term or when the tasks are one-time. Also, an external team solves the problem of insufficient workload or overload of staff personnel.
When a company doesn’t have in-house designers or expertise in a specific area, it doesn’t need to train its team. Especially if the project is not long-term or when the tasks are one-time. Also, an external team solves the problem of insufficient workload or overload of staff personnel. Results without managing the working process. The company’s own design team needs guidance and management, and in a design agency, all processes are built by project managers, an art director, etc.
The company’s own design team needs guidance and management, and in a design agency, all processes are built by project managers, an art director, etc. Efficiency of core business. When a company chooses to outsource, it is not distracted from its strategic objectives and product development.
There’s no strong brand without competent design. The design, especially creative illustrations, requires a significant investment of money, time, and effort. But the good news is that illustrating is not usually a recurring process, but a one-time project. So companies hire professionals without pausing their strategic management.
How often do brands rely on professionals to create illustrations?
Illustration by Shakuro
The IT outsourcing services market is huge. Some time ago, Statista published research that shows that the IT-application outsourcing services market revenue in Poland is expected to reach $540 million by 2021. And that’s data for only one of the member states of the EU. The global IT outsourcing market amounted to $92.5 billion in 2019.
And what about graphic design and illustration services? $45.8 billion — is the global graphic designers market size in 2021:
Graphic design market size according to IBIS
Where illustration is used? As of 2018, 73% of businesses invest in design to help their brand stand out against the competition. In the same research by Adobe, it was also reported that 71% of companies are now creating 10x the number of design assets than they did in previous years.
Excerpts from the research by Adobe
Most small businesses acknowledge that design is important to their success. Only 3% indicated the opposite. With this data, we can conclude that most of the companies choose to outsource their design to professional agencies like Shakuro.
How do illustrations change the face of business?
Creative illustration is a mediator between mass consumer and high art. Modern European trends come from 20th century art.
Soviet poster (constructivism) via creativebloq
Skyscrapers and Tunnels by Fortunato Depero via guggenheim.com (futurism)
Andy Warhol by Shakuro (pop art)
If design solves problems and art looks to the future, then illustration is a medium between them. An illustration is a layer of information between the meaning of a certain object and the way that viewers understand it for themselves. The illustration has no purpose in realistically conveying reality. It can be abstract and convey emotions.
Illustrations are a powerful tool for bonding with a target audience. There are several ways illustrations can change the face of business:
They show your story
How to convince others to invest resources in your brand? Sometimes it’s hard to find the words. Sometimes there are too many words and no one reads them. Show your purpose, values, processes with illustrations. Don’t tell. We talk more about this point in this article.
They create an emotional bond
How illustration shows emotions? They can be positive or negative. Some of us were legit horrified by Francisco Goya’s paintings when we were kids. But art can convey love and hope too. Custom illustrations will make other people feel: trust, warmth, even the “uwus”. And feelings = bonding, important for all businesses alike. At Shakuro, we create illustrations for both B2C and B2B industries. People are more likely to associate themselves with cartoon characters than with the models in the photo. Looking at the staged photos, it is immediately clear that this is just a written script. Illustrations evoke the feeling of “yeah, I feel the same”:
The coziness of Shakuro’s 2D illustration
They convey the mood and imprint on others’ memories
All successful brands have one thing in common — personality. You can design a brand to be friendly, broadminded, optimistic, memorable. Running a successful business already, but want to show its new side? Make your brand more human with illustrations, as Etsy did. But not with stock photos — they are like Comic Sans nowadays. Leave the work to Shakuro’s professional artists.
With animations, they make a product to really stand out
Have you heard that awful joke about a snail? One man wanted his snail to be more aerodynamic and took off its shell, but it just made the snail more sluggish. What really could’ve added dynamic to a poor creature, are animated illustrations. In the right doses, they can be a real eye-catcher.
Illustrations are a visual soundtrack to your brand
For our visual cortex neurons, custom illustration is like music to our ears. It can turn your existing website or application into a symphony, minimalistic — or art-deco piece of art. Good design agencies make illustrations without disrupting the visual identity of a brand or company. They enhance things, and make art work.
Case study: creating a friendly environment
Craftverse is an aspiring crowdfunded platform for cosplay enthusiasts from around the world to share knowledge, seek advice, socialize, and explore job opportunities in this exciting creative industry.
They came to Shakuro seeking to create the site and the mobile application. You can learn more about the step-by-step process of our work with this case in our article. This cartoonish style of illustrated characters makes the overall look of the cosplay platform more open-minded and friendly. It creates an atmosphere of understanding and sincerity.
Craftverse website by Shakuro
Craftverse illustration by Shakuro
Case study: connecting a product with its audience through a mascot
A mascot is a character who embodies an idea, be it a company, a product, a team, or a brand. To put it simply, it’s a character you think of whenever a brand’s name pops up. Mascots are different, but in most cases they are animals. Anthropomorphic or not — it’s up to a client to decide. Often you can see mascots as 2D animated characters.
Mascots unite people of different ages, professions, and nationalities. Look at the character that we created for Crizit:
Crizit mascot by Shakuro
Crizit mascot by Shakuro
Case study: adding meaningful details
Page 404
404 not found. Error 404. No one likes this message.
Competently designed, page 404 is able to keep visitors on the site, reduce bounce rates and increase traffic conversions.
404 Page Design by Shakuro
Food illustration
When it comes to food illustrations, the goal is often to celebrate, convey a sense of joy, and emphasize its ability in bringing people together. Color handles this perfectly.
Chinese food illustration by Shakuro
Sushi restaurant illustration by Shakuro
3D illustration
3D illustrations can fit perfectly into the concept of your web resource. They not only make the site more memorable, but also improve the user experience, allowing you to control the attention of the visitor. They also look more expensive, especially if the 3D characters creation is included. The main thing is not to overdo it: such elements should look appropriate, not complicate the interaction with the site and not slow down its loading.
3D illustration by Shakuro
Illustration by Shakuro
How to start outsourcing illustrations?
Illustration by Shakuro
If you decide to outsource, the next question is where to start? Posting your job on collaboration platforms is not enough, and even dangerous if you are on to something special about your product. Usually, clients turn to digital agencies to create visuals within a new web development project. But illustration, especially animated characters, can also improve an existing website or an app.
You can post your web development project that includes illustrations with just a brief statement of what you want and how you want it, and let agencies contact you.
You can research competition and see who does illustration for them.
You can formulate a list of requirements for your illustration and, eventually, you will narrow the circle to the outsourcing companies that fit best.
You can just write to a certain agency of your choice. This option is best for those who don’t really know how they want their illustrations to look like, except from competitors’ examples, but don’t want to copy or create indistinguishable/stock pictures.
Finding the balance and the best-fitting expertise for your custom project is the main challenge. From our experience, people who are satisfied with our work willingly recommend us to their connections. You can learn more about how to outsource web development processes in our separate article.
Finding the balance and the best-fitting expertise for your custom project is the main challenge. From our experience, people who are satisfied with our work willingly recommend us to their connections. You can learn more about how to outsource web development in our separate article.
In conclusion
Graphic illustration is not just pretty pictures. They unite and enhance the entire user experience as a whole. Any business can be successful in design, whether it’s a product or a service. It all depends on a wise choice of outsourcing company. BTW, if you want to create an app, you might want to read our article on how to hire an outsourcing agency that gets you right.
Take a look at more examples of illustrations on our graphics page on Dribbble, in Behance, and read some stories in our portfolio where we tell more on how we used illustrations in commercial projects.
by Rita Kind-Envy, copywriter at Shakuro | https://uxplanet.org/using-illustrations-to-change-the-face-of-business-7f646d6f2ed2 | [] | 2022-01-10 09:08:52.252000+00:00 | ['Graphic Design', 'Design', 'Outsourcing', 'Illustration', 'Web Design'] |
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