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Kubernetes: the story of innovation | kubernetes logo
What is Kubernetes?
Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes progressively rolls out changes to your application or its configuration, while monitoring application health to ensure it doesn’t kill all your instances at the same time. If something goes wrong, Kubernetes will rollback the change for you. Take advantage of a growing ecosystem of deployment solutions.
Use cases
babylon
The story of Babylon unfurls as one of the greatest tales of innovation in the Medical AI sector supported by the Kubernetes framework. A large number of Babylon’s product use machine learning models, however the in-house computing power was fairly inadequate to sustain large scale experimentation.
This called for automation in the terms of application of Kubeflow, a tool of Kubernetes used for deploying machine learning models. This caused landmark changes in terms of service. Client validation came in faster and it was no longer required to wait for hours to be able to deploy computation.
Based on that experience, Vallée’s team was tasked with building a self-service platform to help Babylon’s AI teams become more efficient, and by extension help get products to market faster. The main requirements: (1) the ability to give researchers and engineers access to the compute they needed, regardless of the size of the experiments they may need to run; (2) a way to provide teams with the best tools that they needed to do their work, on demand and in a centralized way; and (3) the training platform had to be close to the data that was being managed, because of the company’s expansion into different countries.
Once the team decided to build the Babylon AI Research platform on top of Kubernetes, they referred to the Cloud Native Landscape to build out the stack: Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring; an Istio service mesh to control the network on the training platform and control what access all of the workflows would have; Helm to deploy the stack; and Flux to manage the GitOps part of the pipeline. | https://medium.com/@abhiroopbasak/kubernetes-the-story-of-innovation-86013a094266 | ['Abhiroop Bas'] | 2020-12-25 11:21:32.531000+00:00 | ['Automation', 'Cloud', 'Google', 'Kubernetes Cluster', 'Kubernetes'] |
1 thing you need to be happy in your life | Gratefulness — You can be grateful at anytime of the day, no matter what the situation is. Being grateful at least once in a day can cause positive energy to flow through you which can ultimately lead you to have a better perspective of your life.
You can make it a habit daily to be thankful for one good thing that happened to you. It could be anything, be thankful for the good friend that you have in your life, or your co-worker, or your family. You do not need a set time to think about all these things, you could be driving to work or getting ready for your bedtime or could be enjoying your own company.
Always be thankful for the life that you are living right now, because remember, there is always someone out there who is having worse than you are.
Stay Positive! Be thankful! | https://medium.com/@chandermitali/1-thing-you-need-to-be-happy-in-your-life-4d3ff04ff11e | ['Mitali Chander'] | 2020-12-21 18:38:09.292000+00:00 | ['Positive Thinking', 'Happiness', 'Life Lessons', 'Motivational', 'Thankfulness'] |
CHARGER | Introduction
On a bright sunny weekend we executed our plan to go for a long ride which we have been planing throughout our weekend. My bike was ready for the trip and just the day before he had been to the service center for all the essentials it needs to be to function great. The oil meter displayed on the medium block. We planned for Kolaghat where Sher-e-Punjab is the heart of the place. Any person going there or passes by for at least once visits the place “I was just creating a great scenario in my mind” By the time she was getting ready, I was gearing up myself for the ride. All I was doing was thinking how would I click pictures, how important would this ride be for me,what impact it would bring on my experiences. My Budget mind was also calculating the expenses, I made a rough estimate and I was all ready by now.
Phase I
She came running down the stairs just like a wind with al, the thrills. It seems that even she was equally excited with me. After all it was our first long trip since we met each other. She came down and said “I am ready” I have kept all the essentials my lipstick, my eyeliner and then I simply interrupted that its a day plan and we would return by evening, Let’s leave now. We are already an hour late as per the schedule.
Phase II
I had already decided on my playlist while I would be riding. I had simply popped in one of my earphones and the other she took it. We sang them while riding, It felt that I was Ranveer Kapoor of Roy. It was like one of my dreams come true. It was already an hour and we have reached our first tool gate. I paid 70 Rs and headed ahead. It showed more than 45 Kms to reach. My battery had drained by now to 45% and then we decided to stand in a nearby shop and refresh ourselves with a cup of tea. While we took a short break I decided to charge my phone. Then there a shocking realization that I realized that I have just forgot my charger. It simply made me mad. I was sweating, I had no idea what to do, she was trying to console me saying its Ok to be without charge but I did not feel consoling.
Truth | https://medium.com/@viveksingh95urpal/charger-47c4534c6a4b | ['Vivek Kumar Singh'] | 2020-05-13 16:47:15.009000+00:00 | ['Bikes', 'Dreams', 'Truth', 'Charger', 'Reality'] |
Essential Rules For Online Customer Service | Treating your business clients well is fundamental on the off chance that you are maintaining a business association. How you treat your customers enlightens a ton concerning you and your business. No client needs to take the administrations from a business that isn’t worried about their customers. On the contrary, the primary inquiry that emerges is how to continue your business customers by keeping them upbeat. All things considered, you can do such by employing client support on the web.
Truly, you read it right.
Recruiting client service online is an important response to every one of your concerns. Being an entrepreneur it turns out to be significant for you to consider your customers. This is the motivation behind why we prescribe everybody to take the help of client care administrations. They will end up being exceptionally useful for your business firm. You will be shocked to realize that client care administrations are specialists in their field and have the correct information to manage various business customers. Before taking the help of customer service online ensure that you distinguish their administrations dependent on some significant things that we will discuss underneath.
Things to look for before selecting the client administrations on the web:
Do they make it easy to work with:
Ensure that the client care specialists you are recruiting are specialists in portraying the business cycle with your clients. Try not to make your clients recruit a lawyer to comprehend your agreement to work with you. This doesn’t mean totally disregard the lawful cycle. Nonetheless, a lawyer’s responsibility is to shield you from all liabilities, even the little things that may have a little probability of really happening.
Do they make it simple for the customers to reach you:
Nothing is more upsetting than standing by to meet a real, live individual for help and every one of your clients find is a contact structure or an email address. Make an effort not to disregard your customer’s introduction. Offer a couple of decisions for contacting you, whether that is by email, phone, messaging system, live visit on your site, or a help work region/bother ticket structure.
If you have any doubts, ensure that you get some information about the things they generally need from you. This will be an immediate and simple approach to know your customers. In actuality, on the off chance that you are searching for proficient customer service online, at that point we would prescribe you to take the help GetCallers. It is outstanding amongst other client care benefits and will help your business association in growing. Ensure that you snatch this chance and take the help of “GetCallers”. | https://medium.com/@getcallers/essential-rules-for-online-customer-service-8e80d622d0b6 | [] | 2020-12-21 11:39:02.788000+00:00 | ['Virtualassistants', 'Customerservice', 'Leadgeneration', 'Coldcalling', 'Freelancers'] |
They solve the Schrödinger equation with the help of Artificial Intelligence | This is a review of some artificial intelligence news that happened throughout the week
Quantum chemistry aims to predict the chemical and physical properties of molecules based on the arrangement of their atoms in space, without time-consuming and resource-intensive laboratory experiments. This can be achieved by solving the Schrödinger equation, but in practice this is too difficult. A team of scientists from Freie Universität Berlin has developed a deep learning algorithm that can achieve a combination of precision and computational efficiency. The professor leading the research believes the approach may have a significant impact on the future of quantum chemistry. | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/they-solve-the-schr%C3%B6dinger-equation-with-the-help-of-artificial-intelligence-b9b7d8b0ec7 | ['Andrey Chi De Robles'] | 2020-12-28 16:36:14.391000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Science', 'Deep Learning'] |
Phoenix/Elixir: Chain Composable Queries with Ecto Named Bindings. | Make Easily Composable and Reusable Queries.
In my earlier article, Ecto with Phoenix in 4 Minutes, I summarized how Ecto handles data persistence and validation in your phoenix app. If you would like a refresher on Ecto queries, I recommend you start there.
Photo by Karine Avetisyan on Unsplash
What are composable queries?
Composable queries are a way of building queries to your database such that you can combine them.
For example, let’s pretend you are building a blog app. You may wish to query posts for a variety of reasons. For example, you might want to find all posts for a particular author, written in a certain year, with a certain tag, etc.
Normally with Ecto, that code looks something like this:
Writing reusable chainable query methods saves you from rewriting similar code over and over. So you can refactor the above into:
Composable Queries
Query methods like join , select , and where take in a query and return another query.
Thus you can compose them together, typically using Pipe-based syntax.
Pipe-based syntax
Pipe-based syntax in Ecto composes queries together, passing the query through a series of query methods. Here’s an example using multiple join calls to add the author, comments, and tags for a list of posts:
To make it more clear that the query is being passed through to each query method, here’s the same code without using the pipe operator:
Positional Bindings.
Notice that when you call the join method and attach another schema such as Author or Comment onto the post, the binding for the post’s comment and author are based on the position in the list.
Here’s the same code, but with the post, author, comment, and tag bindings written more verbosely to clarify their position.
Positional bindings are a problem when trying to chain queries together Because you run into positional conflicts if the order changes. Thus you couple your code to the order that the queries are called in.
For example, you cannot retrieve the comments before the tags. You would need to change the position of the comments and tags in the list of bound values.
Chain Composable Queries.
The goal is to create reusable and chainable methods by extracting common queries you make into their own method. When I say chain, I mean that you can call the extracted query methods in a pipe chain like so:
However, because of positional bindings, these methods are coupled to each other and their order.
Named Bindings
You can solve the problem of positional bindings by using named bindings. Where positional bindings are bound to the next position in a list, named bindings allow you to set their name. Like so:
Then you can use the named binding instead of a position if needed for a later query. Here’s an example method that filters posts for a specific author.
This prevents position conflicts across joins so that you can chain your methods in any order.
So long as you do not reuse the same name, you can compose the methods in any order.
However, if a method requires a named binding, it will still have to follow the function that creates it. For example, a for_author method would have to be called after the with_author method because it relies on the author: named binding.
Conclusion
You learned about composable Ecto queries using the Pipe-based syntax. You learned how to extract those composable Ecto queries into separate methods, and you learned how to use named bindings to deal with the position conflicts caused by positional bindings.
Have a comment or question? I’d be happy to help. You can reach out on Twitter https://twitter.com/BrooklinJMyers or here on Medium! | https://medium.com/@brooklinmyers/phoenix-elixir-chain-composable-queries-with-ecto-named-bindings-7a3ec5ba93 | ['Brooklin Myers'] | 2021-08-27 19:27:10.347000+00:00 | ['Functional Programming', 'Elixir', 'Phoenix', 'Query', 'Ecto'] |
Solving Ancient Puzzles | Solving Ancient Puzzles
How technology can help to reconstruct age-old manuscripts
The Papyrus Collection of the University of Basel holds a small fragment that appears insignificant at first sight: It fits the palm of a hand and only bears the first or two words of a dozen lines. The initial editor of the collection, Professor Ernst Rabel, did not consider it important enough to include it in the volume he published in 1917 and, thus, the fragment remained unnoticed — until very recently.
Ever since digital technologies have been introduced to the Humanities, the work of papyrologists has changed quite a bit. Take for instance the international database papyri.info, which contains the texts of all papyri that have already been published. In the case of the Basel fragment, it took only a few keyword searches to find out that it is part of a much larger papyrus housed in the collection of the British Library in London.
And just as in a jigsaw puzzle, once the fragment was put back in its place, the text was legible again. After all, the document is a land lease — but not the type so commonly known from Late Antique Egypt. Here, the tenant is the father of the landlord, which is quite unusual; and both men are known to us from other sources, a dozen of papyri that have survived from this family of soldiers who lived in the city of Hermopolis in the 6th century CE — a family and a society that the Basel fragment now helps to better understand.
A new approach to search ancient sources
Like the Basel artifact, most of the ancient papyri reach out to us by fragments. There are tens of thousands scattered in collections around the world. To piece them back together by means of a word search is only possible when the text contains rare proper names or uses recognized terms like the lease mentioned above. Other than that, the field of papyrology has been relying on experts with a sharp “paleographic eye,” combining an immense visual memory with an ability to recognize unique patterns in handwriting. And yet, even the most recognized experts will admit that sometimes a little bit of luck is required!
The author viewing an ancient document in Strasbourg’s collection
But what if, instead of keywords, we could systematically look for shapes of letters, for similar handwriting patterns in all the papyri around the world? Imagine, a machine could be trained to develop a “paleographic eye.” In fact, that`s what new computational methods allow us to do and, in a nutshell, the goal of my Ambizione project called D-scribes, which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Together with a computer scientist and several research assistants, I am building a program that recognizes fragments with very similar handwriting, potentially written by the same person. The challenges in developing such a program are many. For example, how to isolate the handwriting from a yellow-brownish background with holes, stains, and breaks? This is task much more complicated than even analyzing medieval parchment. Or, how to prove that the same person has written two texts, which, even in nowadays forensics, is far from being straightforward!
Digital Paleography | https://medium.com/sci-five-university-of-basel/solving-ancient-puzzles-73dfaab76b92 | ['Isabelle Marthot Santaniello'] | 2020-01-31 08:33:32.062000+00:00 | ['Digital Humanities', 'Ancient History', 'Algorithms', 'Open Access', 'Science Communication'] |
Where is my Bitcoin? | You’ve just bought Bitcoin. What now?
Now that you have purchased your first bitcoin it’s a good time to review exactly what you’ve just bought, and how to safely store it.
To begin, consider that while it’s easier to think about a bitcoin as an object existing somewhere in cyberspace, this is not exactly the case. It’s more like a balance in an account, known as a wallet. The list of all wallets and their balances is called the blockchain.
Wallets can be thought of as the basic structure of Bitcoin. If you control a wallet, no one can take it away from you without your permission. It is the most secure way to hold a currency or asset in history. Controlling a wallet takes some work and knowledge, but as a Bitcoin user the option is always there for you.
An easier method for new users would be to trust a company like us to hold them for you. Here’s how that works.
You just bought bitcoin through Blockchain.com, or some other provider. That means you have an account with the service you used, and they show you the balance of bitcoins you have.
You own these coins, and we will be happy to send them wherever you like. But it is important to remember that we are holding your coins for you. You trust us. The wallet on the bitcoin blockchain that controls these coins is controlled by us, not you. When you ask us to send your coins somewhere, we make a transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain on your behalf.
Sound familiar? This is similar to how the financial system has worked for ages. You trust the bank to hold your money and when you make a payment you are authorizing them to move it on your behalf.
With Bitcoin however, the revolutionary concept of self-custody becomes possible. The tools are available to you, through longtime trusted services like Blockchain.com, to actually create your own wallet address on the Bitcoin blockchain that you and you alone control.
If you do this, you don’t have to trust anyone, not even us, to keep your bitcoin safer than you can.
You could have 100% control of when and where your bitcoin moves. You can sleep tight knowing that no matter what happens to any cryptocurrency company, you will always have access to your bitcoin. That advantage comes with risks. You could improperly secure your wallet. If that happens and you lose your bitcoin, there is no recourse. In other words, this is an advanced concept but it is worth learning.
There are many factors that go into cryptocurrency storage decisions. There is an ever growing set of standards and practices for securing cryptocurrency that can get as extreme as vaults built into mountains in Switzerland. Or as simple as a private key wallet made through Blockchain.com.
It’s up to you to learn what solution works best for you.
Don’t have a Blockchain.com Wallet yet? Create one today at blockchain.com/signup. | https://medium.com/blockchain/where-is-my-bitcoin-21f028f7da4c | [] | 2021-01-06 20:20:00.203000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Blockchain Wallet', 'Bitcoin Wallet', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain'] |
My Readlist Vol. 1 | I run a startup, pretty lean, as of date just 10 people, and it's our 3rd year. Alongside this journey, I always felt books are something that always helps you transform from what you are today to a better person consuming and conceiving the facts, knowledge, experiences of the author.
2 years back, and I had developed this practice of reading at least 2 books a month, though as of now staying back at home quarantined due to COVID-19 situation, I thought of writing this short article on a few books that I really found interesting and developed me personally in my business.
As of date while I am writing this article, I have finished reading 40 books, just to keep this article short and crisp, I haven’t added them in the list, I will publish more articles on the books related to biographies and/or cycling (something I follow as a hobby)
Following are 10 books (in a random sequence) with a brief on what I learnt from each of them, in case anyone wishes to get an insight or discuss on these books, feel free to leave a comment.
1. Hooked
Nice book to improve your customer engagement, especially if you are a product manager or you are trying to get into any domain that needs an understanding of customer or user engagement.
The book explains the entire model in 4 phases — Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment.
2. Zero to One
Either you are a founder of a startup or planning to start one, this can be a must-read for you. Starting with a simple concept to scale your business/idea either horizontally or vertically, latter part emphasizing on uniqueness and value proposition with a gist of economics.
3. The Lean Startup
Published in 2011, this book turned out to be the bible for startups, and it is indeed one of the best books I have read. The author argues that in order to build a great company, one must begin with the customers in the form of interviews and research discovery. Building an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and then testing and iterating quickly results in less waste and a better product-market fit. Ries also recommends using a process called the Five Whys, a technique designed to reach the core of an issue.
4. Extreme Productivity
A nice book to read if you got complaints regarding your time management. Book simply focuses on 3 interesting areas — improve productivity by managing your time and schedule, improve your reading, writing, and speaking skills, manage your team and boss.
5. Digital Selling
I started reading this book, when I wanted to peek into digital marketing fundamentals, but the book focuses on both traditional marketing fundamentals and their equivalent digital versions. A must-read for someone who is willing to start learning about digital marketing.
6. Sprint
The core idea is to help users understand how to solve big problems and test new ideas in just 5 days. This is essential for anyone who wants to understand how design thinking works with pure practical. It covers the below topics and essential and easy tools on how to accomplish them
How to make a map and choose a target, Sketching competing Solutions, How to decide on the best ideas, Building realistic prototypes Testing with target customers.
7. Remote
We recently started the remote culture, which I guess would be a common thing in IT startups post the current pandemic phase.
This book covers unique challenges and difficulties that can come across working remotely, but at a superficial level. This book emphasises more on remote as a culture, with a few tools and technologies that could be used to make the process more structured, being a simple and short book, I guess real-words cases are not covered in this book, I would rather say its more of an individualistic approach of the reader to implement the principles.
8. Startup Diaries
A book based on case studies or rather I would put them as interviews of 6 startups in India — One97, EKO, Coloseum Media, RedBus, The Loot, Yo!China. Personally I like reading about case studies, which attracted me towards this book, I believe a case study shares insight about a company's struggle, hard work, concluding it to either success or a failure.
9. Founders At work
30 interviews with tech business founders, and it's a great read.
The book distils fundamental concepts such as team building, creating a good product and founder’s perseverance.
10. Lost and Founder
The author describes his journey from an early idea to startup. Unfortunately, I think many of the lessons in this book can’t be taught via books. The book highlights the softer parts of running a tech startup — parts that are usually ignored as they fall behind more urgent tasks.
The book includes some very valuable perspectives on different kinds of investors and the pros and cons of a founder’s perspective. These may be valuable regardless of where you are in your founder journey — assuming you are on the brink of bringing in external capital or at least consider it. | https://medium.com/@rishioid/my-readlist-vol-1-2585531c4186 | ['Rishi Kolvekar'] | 2020-04-23 09:57:50.214000+00:00 | ['Book Review', 'Startup Lessons', 'Startup', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Books'] |
Ethereum 2.0 Staking Too Demanding? Here’s an Affordable Solution for You | The blockchain community is watching closely on Ethereum 2.0, the next big upgrade for the Ethereum network. Ethereum 2.0 is scheduled to launch on December 1st, 2020. It will bring Proof of Stake (POS), eWASM, and sharding. This will also bring more scalability to the Ethereum network. After several phases of the upgrade, the Eth1 and Eth2 chain will gradually merge with each other.
On Nov 5, the contract deposit was announced by Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, on Twitter.
The deposit contract is like a bridge between Ethereum’s current proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain, and its much-anticipated proof-of-stake (PoS) vision. Vitalik himself has already sent around 3,200 ETH, worth about $1.5M, to this new deposit contract in preparation for staking. By staking, you can become a validator to run a node on Ethereum 2.0. A validator must be consistently connected to the Eth2 Beacon Chain & Eth1.
So here come the questions: To stake or not to stake? If the answer is yes, then how to stake?
Let’s solve the problem one by one.
The rewards of ETH2 staking is huge, including yields north of 20%. But you also need to balance the rewards with the cost and risk. First of all, a minimum deposit of 32 ETH (worth around $14,800 at the press time) is needed to stake on the new contract we mentioned above. These ETH you stake could be locked up for about 2 years. Another barrier is that, technically, you need high-quality equipment and a great amount of power to do your mining.
It’s definitely a rather high entry for normal users to DIY staking. So you can select from 3 different types of third-party staking services. They will help you run the node. But you still need to become a validator and have your own node.
(Source: Blox Staking Blog — All the Ways to Stake)
Complicated, isn’t it? Don’t worry, besides DIY staking and staking services, we are introducing an affordable option. If you want to share the promising rewards of ETH2 staking, the most user-friendly way is to stake your ETH into ETH2.0 staking pools on platforms.
Let’s meet 3 staking pools that make Ethereum 2.0 staking easy and accessible.
Stkr
Stkr is a decentralized platform with ETH2.0 staking pools, built by the Ankr team.
With Stkr, you can stake from as little as 0.5 ETH to as much as 1,000 ETH, and automatically join other stakers in Micropools. By staking ETH, you’ll receive aETH. With aETH, you can hold or trade your staked assets at any time, without having to wait until transactions are enabled on Ethereum 2.0. Your funds are kept under your own custody, so that you always remain in full control of your assets.
There are simply 3 steps to stake your ETH into the Micropools.
Step 1: Connect your wallet
Step 2: Click “Start staking”
Step 3: Drag the button on the bar to change the amount of ETH you’d like to stake, click the box at the bottom to confirm, then click “Stake”
Rocket Pool
Rocket Pool is a centralized staking pool that offers ETH2 staking for any user: normal users, Dapps, SaaS provider and more.
With Rocke Pool, there’s no need to run a node yourself, setup monitoring or anything else complicated. You can stake as little as 0.01 ETH and instantly receive rETH, a tokenised staking deposit. The rETH token does not need to be locked to gain rewards and it can be traded/sold/held as the user desires, all from the moment they deposit ETH. All rETH holders share the risk of nodes being slashed or penalised equally. If a node fails, all holders lose a tiny amount of value, rather than one unlucky person losing everything.
The project’s Medalla Beta is running right now with over 250,000 Goerli ETH staked so far. You are 3 steps away from completing your ETH2.0 staking.
Step 1: Go to the Rocket Pool Beta web, click “select wallet”
Step 2: Connect your Metamask or Ledger wallet.
(Ledger wallet has partnered with Compound to enable interest earning and borrowing directly in Ledger)
Step 3: Enter the staking amount of ETH to replace the “1.00”, then click “start”
Blox Staking
Blox is an open-source, fully non-custodial staking platform for Ethereum 2.0.
Staking with Blox requires no key sharing. In fact, you have a dedicated remote signer stored directly on your own cloud account. The remote signer, KeyVault holds your private validator keys and executes duties sent from the blockchain via Blox Infra nodes. You just manage your validator by using Blox’s Desktop App, where you can check a performance monitoring dashboard.
Currently, the minimum staking deposit is 32 ETH. Soon when the staking pools are released, you’ll be able to do micro ETH staking.
You may also like: | https://medium.com/dapp-com/ethereum-2-0-staking-too-demanding-heres-an-affordable-solution-for-you-74feb351a3b9 | [] | 2020-11-19 07:38:38.871000+00:00 | ['Ethereum', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum Blockchain', 'Eth', 'Staking'] |
Miracle Happens Everyday: The Marine Migrations | They come from the cold deep sea and are extremely greedy for Plankton. Moreover, their schedule is very tight, because when the sun shines on the sea again, all these creatures must go back to the darkness again to avoid being swallowed by predators roaming the sea during the day.
This “Dance” between light and darkness, warmth and cold, Predator and Prey is called “diel vertical migration” (DVM). This is considered to be the largest animal movement on the planet. Whether it’s the Wildebeest on the Serengeti grassland, the monarch Butterfly migrating on the North American continent, or the Penguin that traverses the Antarctic Continent of Vietnam, none of them can be compared with the simultaneous global migration of marine life every day.
Of course, most people still know very little about this migration, although DVM plays a huge role in absorbing carbon from the deep sea and fattening the fish we eat.
Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at the University of North Carolina at Asheville in the United States, said: “When you think of an animal living in an open ocean, it is likely to experience a certain Vertical migration of form.”
Although the details of the model of the day and night vertical migration of marine organisms may be complicated and will vary depending on the species and location, a Copepod may only move a few meters, while a Gelatinous Sea Squirt may move nearly 1,000 Meter. However, the basis of this migration seems fairly simple-mainly about sunlight and food.
Throughout the day, the sunlight has been providing the energy base for the tiny Algae — Phytoplankton — at the top of the ocean. Although these organisms are small, they are numerous and form the basis of the food chain.
They nourish countless life forms, from Crab Larvae as small as a few millimeters to Car-Sized Whale Sharks. The problem is that to maintain life-sustaining photosynthesis, Phytoplankton must stay on the surface of the ocean within 200 meters of water because that is the longest distance that sunlight can penetrate.
Rebecca Helm said. “You can think about the entire depth of the ocean, and you can find that this layer of photosynthesis is like the skin of an apple — it’s too thin”, “So, to make the most of this In rich areas, the creatures in the ocean must migrate here to collect all the food”.
It is difficult for us to intuitively understand how many animals participate in this daily migration, but we can think about it this way. During the Second World War, when scientists first tried underwater sonar to detect German U-shaped submarines, the navy’s echo sounder consistently showed a “solid layer” between about 120 and 180 meters below the sea surface.
At first, scientists inferred that sonar had detected the seafloor
But here comes the problem. This “sea bed” has been moving, becoming shallower at night and deeper during the day. Over time, the scientists discovered that what they saw was a “fake seabed”. This dense “solid layer” is actually composed of densely packed large groups of Shrimp, Squid, and Pipe Jellyfish.
Echo detection image was taken in Saanich Bay, British Columbia, Canada. Krill is a small shrimp-like crustacean whose population forms a thick layer that looks almost like a solid seabed
More importantly
Scientists have found that the gathering of these lives is so regular and predictable. In the end, Sonar researchers named this “deep-sea scattering layer”, which is a dense horizontal area of organisms that can scatter or reflect sound waves. This scattering layer is so thick that there is still some debate about whether the enemy submarine can hide it.
Rebecca Helm said,
“A lot of scientific research is promoted by the military personnel, and their thinking is, We must figure out what is going on!, “If it weren’t for these underwater During the war, we may not know what this strange mysterious layer is”.
Since the Second World War, scientists have mastered a lot of knowledge about the ocean, and each discovery paints a more complex picture of marine life.
For example, although day-night vertical migration is mainly a biological phenomenon, it is also influenced by physics.
Philip Hosegood, a physical oceanographer at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom, said that the maximum depth of photosynthesis that Phytoplankton can carry out is determined by factors such as water clarity.
The clarity of the water is determined by a series of other variables, such as water temperature, wind speed, tides, ocean currents, salinity, and light.
Hosgood said,
“The ocean is a three-dimensional space,” “Of course, in fact, it is four-dimensional because it not only changes horizontally and vertically but also changes over time.”
If you have some understanding of Fluid Dynamics, you can have a deeper understanding of the distance that micro-organisms migrate. Otters, Octopuses, and even humans can slide in the water with relatively low resistance, but the smaller the size of the organism, the more difficult it is to overcome the natural viscosity of water (this is why ants are trapped on the water, and we can be free in the pool, the reason for swimming, all this is due to the difference in Reynolds number).
For the particle-sized Zooplankton, swimming in the water is like a person paddling in molasses-and these creatures have to trek back and forth in the sea more than 100 meters deep every day!
Although there is some form of Diurnal vertical migration where Plankton grows, there are still many mysteries that have not been solved.
For example, many animals move vertically in the reverse direction of day and night, they migrate to places with sunlight during the day and leave the water when they leave at night.
Even within a species, migration behavior changes due to different locations
Sammy Andrzejczak, a shark researcher at Stanford University in the United States, co-published a review of the vertical movement of large fish in 2019. “Coral reef ghost manta rays can carry out normal day and night vertical migration.
For example, in places like the Chagos Islands, they swim deep during the day and shallow at night,” He said. “But in some areas, they behave oppositely. For example in the Red Sea and Seychelles.”
Day-night vertical migration is not only important for filter-feeding animals such as Manta rays, but also animals at all levels of the food web.
Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat dried shrimps, dried shrimps eat zooplankton
The larger the animal, the larger the Predators that will Prey on it. The team of Anjay Zach mainly studies how some shark species use lateral migration to Prey on fish that migrate vertically day and night, especially tuna.
David Curnick, a marine biologist at the Zoological Society of London and a colleague of Anjay Zach, said: “The sickle shark seems to stay near the seamount during the day and go out to feed at night.”
This means that marine animals will not only migrate up and down but also laterally, from relatively safe areas to areas with higher productivity.
Perhaps the most interesting point is that what happens in this thin layer of the ocean surface has an impact on the world above and below.
Rebecca Helm said that when all these tiny Phytoplankton photosynthesizes on the surface, they consume a lot of carbon dioxide, and when they are eaten, the carbon will be taken to the deep ocean.
In fact, scientists created a model in 2019 to determine how much carbon is deposited into the deep ocean by vertical migration day and night
They found that those Squids, Juveniles, and Shrimp Larvae can carry 1 pg (Pg, 1 pg = 10¹⁵ grams, or 1 billion tons) of carbon to the deep seabed every year.
Kevin Archibald, a biological oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States and the lead author of this study said,
“All vehicles on the roads in the United States generate approximately 1.5 Pg of carbon per year.” In other words, the day and night vertical migration of marine life offset two-thirds of the total U.S. car emissions.
Photo by David Clode on Unsplash
Archibald said that day and night vertical migration accounts for only 16% of the total carbon captured by the ocean
Other contributing factors include natural water movement, sinking Phytoplankton Cells, and marine animal Feces-indeed a massive phenomenon on the ocean scale.
The sinking of Feces will also be greatly affected by vertical migration day and night. Vertical migration day and night also accelerates the rate of nutrient digestion.
Some studies have shown that day and night vertical migration transports nutrients to the deep sea faster than the sinking speed of these substances themselves. It is precise because of the vertical migration of marine organisms day and night that these substances can reach the deep sea faster instead of endlessly drifting.
The vertical migration of day and night also means that many underwater creatures that have never been exposed to sunlight also rely on the sun upon the final analysis.
In fact, we are not much different from them. Although we are basically unable to witness these activities in our lifetime, the vertical migration of marine life not only provides us with food but also plays an important role in the rapidly changing Earth’s climate.
Changing climate will also affect the vertical migration of day and night, although the exact method of impact is still unknown.
Higher water temperatures may reduce the day and night vertical migration activities in tropical seas, which are less active in these areas, while in cold regions such as the Poles, day and night vertical migration activities will be larger and more active.
There are still many uncertain issues, and scientists still need to further study the mechanism of day-night vertical migration. Although most people just know the existence of this phenomenon, we have to say that we should still be grateful for the marine creatures who trek back and forth every day.
Gain Access to Expert View — Subscribe to DDI Intel | https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/miracle-happens-everyday-the-marine-migrations-2c762874a861 | ['Arslan Mirza'] | 2020-12-06 15:35:32.125000+00:00 | ['Migration', 'Miracles', 'Underwater', 'Marine', 'Ocean Life'] |
Unknown thoughts | The stars, the space, the idea of multiverse, anything to do with astronomy and every single stuff about the universe gets my attention. Science fiction movies really awakens me, the space I just feel like i have some kind of connection with it or maybe just a feeling it is weird if you think but I don’t really care about it as long as it interests me. Black holes, wormholes, white holes and what not this universe consists of so I don’t really blame the people who had the idea of parallel universe. Just imagine how big and deep the whole universe is and milky way being one of the galaxy out of many many known and unknown galaxies. Earth? Well, as I think earth doesn’t even make 0.1 % of the universe but whatever it is, it’s still the known planet to support life. As Carl Sagan said it is just a tiny dot, the tiny dot where we are born and eventually die here sooner or later, at this point I don’t even know what else to write about and I don’t know what topic should I give this writing, it’s not much but at least much as my overthinking mind could possibly think of. But yeah we live in a floating tiny planet and currently writing this from another corner of the world. Also this is my first writing which is also my first publish here. Feedbacks would be much appreciated. Thank you! | https://medium.com/@rishav-shrestha/unknown-thoughts-2de2b5932d78 | ['Rishav Shrestha'] | 2020-12-25 13:42:32.451000+00:00 | ['Reaching Out', 'First Post', 'Thoughts', 'Life', 'Space'] |
Good Things Happen in Book Stores | It was in Athens in the 4th Century BC that a man named Zeno walked into a bookshop. He had been a successful merchant, but suffered a terrible shipwreck on a journey out of Phoenicia, losing a priceless cargo of the world’s finest dye. He was 30 years old and facing financial ruin, but this catastrophe stirred his soul to find something new, though he didn’t quite know what.
One day, immersed in browsing a bookstore collection, many volumes of which have been lost to history forever, Zeno heard the bookseller reading out loud a passage from a book by Xenophon about Socrates. It was like nothing he had ever heard before. With some trepidation, he approached the owner and asked, “Where can I find a man like that?” and in so doing, began a philosophical journey that would literally change the history of the world. That book recommendation led to the founding of Stoicism and then, to the brilliant works of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius — which, not lost to history, are beginning to find a new life on bookshelves today. From those heirs to Zeno’s bookshop conversion, there is a straight line to many of the world’s greatest thinkers, and even to the Founding Fathers of America.
All from a chance encounter in a bookshop.
It would be an understatement to say that great things begin in bookstores, and that countless lives have been changed inside them.
Stephen Greenblatt’s wonderful book The Swerve was inspired by a chance discovery of Lucretius at the Yale Co-Op almost fifty years ago. George Raveling, the Hall of Fame basketball coach, stops at the local indie in every town he visits and leaves with a bag or two for that reason. He discovers authors and subjects he wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to at home or online. In 2012, a woman tweeted her adoration for whoever was behind the Twitter account for the Waterstones Bookstore in London; the two were married four years later.
In my own life, I remember quite fondly where I came across certain books and the effect they had on my life. There were the Louis L’amour books I got at Bookworm in Sacramento when I was in elementary school. I remember reading Flint under my desk instead of paying attention to my fourth grade teacher. Mrs. Whittaker was so happy when she caught me, she sent a note home to my parents.
There were the countless hours spent in the philosophy section of the Borders in Riverside, California while I was in college. Today it’s a Forever 21, but it was where I bought my first copy of Epictetus, and it’s where the woman who would become my wife bought her copy of Marcus Aurelius shortly after our first date. There was Robert Greene’s 33 Strategies of War, purchased at the front table of the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, who I became lucky enough to work for. There were the used copies of Aeschylus and Euripides and Sophocles from The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA, which taught me that I could understand plays. There was discovering Walker Percy’s novels at Faulkner House Books in New Orleans — which happens to be in the very apartment complex where William Faulkner once rented rooms and worked on his first novel — and returning the favor as the epigraph to my book, Conspiracy. There were the Hemingway novels I got at the airport bookstore in Oslo, and Ambrose Bierce’s Civil War Stories from The Strand. There was the copy of Mama Lion Wins The Race, which the saleswoman at Book Passage in San Francisco recommended for my son, and which we have now read together at least 150 times.
There was the time I was in a Barnes and Noble in Portland and a man buying some manga books seemed to be a couple dollars short. I fished some money out of my pocket and paid the difference. He started to cry. “I’ve just recovered from cancer,” he told me. “I was buying these books tonight to restart my normal life. I’m supposed to begin looking for a job tomorrow.” It was an experience far more gratifying to me than the first time I saw my own name up on a bookstore marquee for a signing.
These are not special experiences, although they were special to me. They are, in fact, incredibly ordinary experiences in the sense that they happen constantly, day-in-and-day-out, wherever bookstores exist. One only need see the nostalgic memes inspired by the Scholastic Book Fairs to be reminded of that.
In these divided, distracted times, we need the unmitigated joys that bookstores offer more than ever, to say nothing of the knowledge contained within them.
It was both interesting and unfortunate to see the controversy earlier this month over an altercation at a bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, where the alt-right propagandist Steve Bannon was accosted by an angry stranger. I’m no Bannon fan — in fact, he more than just about anyone has contributed to how divided the world is right now — but I love what the bookstore owner said when she explained why she called the police to protect him:
We are a bookshop. Bookshops are all about ideas and tolerating different opinions and not about verbally assaulting somebody, which is what was happening.
Damn right.
It’s exciting to see authors like James Patterson take active steps to support local indies. Ann Patchett even owns her own bookstore — Parnassus Books, in Nashville. A few years ago I followed the lead of an author I knew and started offering signed copies of my books through my local indie, Book People. I could probably make extra money buying the copies from the publisher and selling them directly, but I’d much rather create another reason for people to support a retailer.
Amazon has done wonderful things for the publishing industry — there are millions of titles in print and the average independent can only carry a small fraction of that — but the local bookstore provides an irreplaceable service (so do libraries, but there is something special about owning and writing in books). Bookstores curate and support and get behind authors that would be otherwise lost in the noise — particularly local or regional authors. There has been some worry about “showrooming,” where customers discover books at retail shops but buy online. In reality, the relationship cuts both ways. I have an “Amazon Wishlist” of books on my phone that I often pull up in bookstores when I am looking for something to buy right then and there.
Bookstores also host events. Bookstores get kids hooked on reading with weekly story time. Ethnic bookstores provide community for refugees and immigrants; feminist bookstores are a launching pad for political activism; for over a century, Christian Science Reading Rooms have provided a quiet place for prayer and study. Porter’s Square Books in Boston recently launched its own “writer in residence” program. Recovery Cafe and Bookstore in Florida hosts meetings for recovering addicts.
Great things begin in bookstores, and have for centuries. They serve, along with libraries, the function promised in an ancient inscription above the books belonging to King Ozymandias: Ψυχῆς ἰατρεῖον, or, “A House of Healing for the Soul.”
So here’s to bookstores: A haven and a lighthouse guiding us beyond the catastrophes and discord of our daily lives.
Like to Read?
I’ve created a list of 15 books you’ve never heard of that will alter your worldview and help you excel at your career.
Get the secret book list here! | https://medium.com/s/story/good-things-happen-in-book-stores-c446eae1e210 | ['Ryan Holiday'] | 2018-10-19 02:18:53.575000+00:00 | ['Reading', 'Books', 'Community', 'Publishing', 'Bookstores'] |
Zinzi | One week was all it took. The bridge between now and then. Between certainty and incertainty. Between the past and the future. Between health and disease. Just one week and then everything changed.
******
Zinzi blinked, trying to dislodge the words that were stuck in her mind. She closed her eyes for a moment to arrange the words so that she could form a sentence. “Caleb,” she said to her husband, “Jeph needs..” but the words got stuck in her throat. She pointed her frail finger at Jeph’s diaper but the fog was so thick the words got lost in there.
“What about Jeph?” Caleb asked.
She tried to point again but her hands trembled; her index finger swung like a pendulum and instead pointed at his mouth. “Jeph has eaten already,” Caleb inserted words into her unfinished sentence.
She took exaggerated offence to his response. Because she couldn’t form words fast enough to tell him off, she scowled and took her fist to the couch, startling him. She closed her eyes and gripped the side of the chair. “Babe ever since you left the hospital, you have been so irritable,” Caleb said. And he was right. Well, partly so. It was more of frustration than anger. She was just recovering from the physical scourge of the illness only to realise her mentation had been affected as well. Everything in her life was moving in slow motion. Her movements, her thoughts. Even Jeph their year old son was too quick for her.
Two weeks prior, Caleb had come home feeling unusually tired. He had been working from home since the inception of the nationwide lockdown but then had been required to report physically to the office. One board meeting was all it took and he started to feel as if he had been run over by a track. “I am so exhausted. I feel exactly the same way I felt when I had that blood infection,” he told Zinzi. A few days later, she accompanied him to hospital where they ran a panel of blood tests that turned out normal. He was sent home with some meds to quell his symptoms which had barely started to wane, when Juliet started to feel the same way.
Being pregnant and in the third trimester, she was not going to take any chances so she wasted no time in seeking medical care. Any other time, she would have bought into the blood infection vibe but Kenya had just announced that they were in the second wave of the Pandemic so it was likely that they could have gotten infected. A nasal swab later, she was called into the lab where a lady disclosed her positive results to her. “Don’t worry. Just rest, hydrate, eat a balanced diet and keep a positive attitude. You will be ok.” Because she knew of friends who had been infected in the past, she was not too shaken by the results. She called her gynecologist, “Boss I have covid.”
“Don’t we all?”
“ Boss I am serious.” They had a semi casual relationship.
“For real? Man I am so sorry. What are your symptoms?”
“The usual. Headache, joint aches, fatigue. Like I have malaria.”
“So home isolation right?”
“Yeah.” They spoke some more then she called a friend — a medic — who gave her a python list of home remedies to take.
By this time Caleb was beginning to feel better so she figured it was only going to be a couple of days before she too felt well. But as the days progressed, instead of her symptoms waning, they increased. When before she had no cough now she did.
Then she developed difficulty in breathing which became worse on mild exertion.
When they updated their medic friend she said, “I think you should go to hospital. Let them check your oxygen sats.” At the A and E of the nearest satellite clinic, her oxygen levels were between 83–87%. They immediately put her on oxygen and made a decision to transfer her to a hospital of her choice for further management.
You see Juliet’s case was not just any other case. A few years ago she had a pulmonary embolism ( which I wrote about here: https://medroomeyes.medium.com/he-was-startled-from-his-sleep-by-the-sound-of-her-breathing-9d27d99a6ebc?sk=1c0cdf818e2a352e774c93ae3357767e) and she ended up in an ICU, her life hanging by a thread. By God’s grace and timely intervention she survived. Only to get pregnant a few months later, and suffer a miscarriage. She then conceived again and carried the pregnancy to term only to deliver a still born.
The buffet of this medical past was not encouraging to her current situation. Covid in itself was a risk factor to a repeat clot in her lungs; and so was the pregnancy. The pregnancy complicated the management of the covid and the covid and it’s complications put the pregnancy at risk.
By the time they arrived at the hospital, her thoughts were running like charged electrons. Would she reach term? would the baby be ok? would the insurance cover her treatment if she needed admission?
During the transfer, she was off oxygen so she was more breathless than before. They decided to admit her. There was only one problem, they had no beds. So the search for a covid bed began. It was about 9pm when they started to make calls looking for a bed. She and Caleb scrolled down their phonebooks calling anyone they thought could help. A bed was found in one of the elite private hospitals but they were reluctant to take it because of costs; so they continued to search. They exhausted all the hospitals in Nairobi and started to search for beds in nearby counties. One was found in Gatundu, 50 km from Nairobi and Zinzi’s gynecologist was like, “You are not going that far. No way.”
“But now what do we do?” she asked him, her mouth covered by an oxygen mask, her chest heaving.
“We keep looking.” He stayed with them, pacing the corridors making calls until about 10pm when he said, “Found one! Let’s go for it.”
It was in a hospital in Eastlands. They took it. And that was the beginning of the week that changed her life.
First, they waited in the A and E for the bed for six hours which would have been ok except that they couldn’t put her on oxygen before she was keyed into the system. As they waited, she lay in a stretcher in the casualty area taking in her surroundings while Caleb nodded off in a seat next to her. At 4am, Zinzi was finally wheeled to the ward. It was a general ward that was previously a pediatric ward but due to the rising cases, had been converted to a covid ward. There, she found seven other female patients, separated from each other by thin curtains.
She was placed at the far end of the room by the window. Next to her bed was a common sink that was the meet and greet spot. It was only when she settled in that she remembered she had not eaten all evening. An attempt to get food at that time was like oozing water from a stone. “ Please I am so hungry. You don’t have anything? Not even tea?”
“The kitchen closes at some point but we will see what to do.” One nurse told her.
“We are waiting to update your details in the system to be able to get you something.” Another one said.
By the time the food came she was feeling faint. She held her breath and wolfed it down.
When they brought her hospital gown and bedding, they both had huge stains spread across them. “Are these clean?” she asked.
“Yes yes.” And the nurse moved on.
Zinzi barely slept that first night or morning. The breathlessness kept getting worse as dawn approached. Plus there was an old lady across from her who would belt out a scream every few minutes. At first it unnerved her. The way she would yelp as if she was wretching or in intense pain then go silent only to repeat the sound again. Everyone else seemed accustomed to it and in the days to come, she got used to it too.
The following day, the physiotherapy team came for their rounds. She heard them say to one of the patients, “Morning. How was your night? We are here for chest physio.” Then there would be the sound of somebody shifting in the bed and without warning a loud slap! The first time it happened Zinzi’s body twitched. The physio guys would slap those backs as if trying to dislodge a foreign body. And then after a while the patient would wretch, making gurgling sounds as they tried to empty their lungs of clogs of sputum. Thank God she was pregnant they didn’t have to do that to her.
The days were convoluted. And lonely. The only connection she had to her loved ones was through the screen of her phone. And even that was limited because it was exhausting to speak while on oxygen. She would look out the window and her only view was a construction site. Even amongst themselves, they rarely spoke unless when someone used the sink by her bed. The only time she heard another voice in the ward was when it was deathly silent. Something was missing. When she drew the curtain she noticed the old lady’s curtains had been drawn and the periodic shouting had stopped.
“What has happened to Cucu?” She asked no one in particular.
“By the way. I have not heard her groan this morning.” Someone responded.
Zinzi had a bad feeling. Even if they rarely spoke, she felt a silent camaraderie to her fellow patients. They were in this together.
When one of the nurses walked in, she asked, “Where is Cucu? Is she…”
“Oh she has gone for dialysis.”
And when Cucu came back, they sighed because she carried on with the groaning.
The covid ward was unusual. The medical team would attend to them only for a few seconds and leave. When food was served, you had to eat it immediately because if it got cold it couldn’t be warmed. “We don’t take these plates back to the kitchen. That’s why they are plastic. You eat and throw,” one nurse told her. Few words were exchanged between them except for what was absolutely necessary. “Here are your drugs.” or “ Your sugars are high.” or “ Here is your food.” Covid was physical and mental torture but she was yet to see the brunt of it.
Once, when she needed to use the restroom she rang the bell. Because of her level of breathlessness she wasn’t allowed to use it unaccompanied. But no one responded and she really needed to go. So she got up and walked 20m to the nearest bathroom. When she was there, it took considerable amount of effort to sit on the toilet bowl. When she was done she had to give herself a pep talk to rise back up. And when she did, she felt the walls of her chest closing in.
Suddenly she began to gasp for air. How could something that God gave for free feel so impossible to use? She tried to open her mouth wide to trap in some air but the more she did the more she felt like she was losing control. Because the main door was open, she gestured frantically to one of the male nurses who could see her to come to her.
She heard him to say to a colleague, “Leta wheelchair. There is a patient who needs help.” She saw a head emerge into the corridor to glance at her, then the head retreated. Seconds passed without any sign of a wheelchair. And the more she stood there waiting, the more she became more anxious. The nurse she called to, got to her and opted to half lift, half drag her back to bed. All the while she was emitting crackling and whistling sounds from her mouth. When they crossed the nursing station she saw there were other staff there and wondered why only one had come to her aid. It is only later that she came to learn that the staff were afraid to assist her because she had no mask.
When her sugars spiked the nurse came to her bedside and said, “Your sugars are in the 20s so I need to administer insulin.”
Zinzi was not the kind of person to just accept meds without detailed information.
“Why do I need insulin? Did my doctor prescribe it? What are the side effects to me and the baby?”
“Zinzi listen. Do you want to go into a coma?”
Her eyes grew wide and without saying another word she stretched out her hand for the shot.
If Zinzi were to compare her time in ICU when she had the pulmonary embolism and her time with covid, the most significant difference was people. Both illnesses were life threatening. Both times she couldn’t breath. But it hit her at that moment just how quality of care can vary when a health system is overwhelmed. How insurance affords you certain care and comfort that you tend to forget what could happen when that priviledge is stripped from you. How in leading private hospitals you only need to ring a bell and someone is by your side in a snap. How all your questions and concerns are addressed.
By the end of that week, Zinzi stabilised and was discharged from hospital on oxygen. The experience she went through humbled her. Luckily, her insurance covered the cost of her treatment.
Back at home, she thought the worst was behind her but then she started to develop memory lapses. Her cognitive functions diminished and she became slow at everything. Initially she thought it was due to the physical fatigue of covid but a friend shared her own experience and told her about brain fog and covid 19. It affected her so badly she couldn’t align her thoughts to form sentences. Friends and family would visit and she would want to make conversation but her mind would just pause and remain in that state for hours.
She would forget names of items, obvious words and would resort to pointing. Caleb started to finish her sentences but sometimes he would be so off the mark, it frustrated her.
Once she was to have a zoom meeting for work but had forgotten how to initiate a meeting let alone converse with a client. She became incoherent and slow. And it has taken a while for these functions to resume.
Zinzi went on to deliver a bouncing baby girl at term and she is now ok.
*I had many titles for this article but I chose Zinzi because it’s such a unique name that glides easily off the tongue. Plus she has featured on this blog several times her life hanging by a thread. Yet each time, she lives to tell the story.
Zinzi
As narrated to me by Juliet Zinzi Karichu | https://medium.com/@medroomeyes/zinzi-ca668ef9669d | [] | 2021-06-08 18:34:57.621000+00:00 | ['Covid 19', 'Brain Fog', 'Isolation', 'Health Systems'] |
How to teach yourself JavaScript, with video games | Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
I’m a child of the 90s, born in the late 80s, who spent as much time with dirty on his knees as he did with a controller in his hand.
I am a gamer. In the classic sense of the word. I enjoy all kinds of games, beyond the common favorites of today.
I’m also, professionally, a web developer. I know JavaScript well enough, but I spend the majority of my day in PHP.
But here’s the thing: I was a programmer long before I was a professional. I fell in love with code when I was a kid, so it’s hard to turn it off. So how does one continue to love what they do, without burning out?
Tie it into a hobby.
I know how to write JavaScript, but I don’t know JavaScript. I can’t see the code in my head the way I can with PHP. I can’t imagine what it would be like to type that arrow function I just thought up. Or how to layout my exports so I can architect my project just right.
All of that comes with the amount of time that I just don’t have to devote strictly to JavaScript right now. So I have to fit that time in when I’m able. And that comes in the form of games.
Enter, Screeps
Screeps is about as niche of a video game as they come. Their subtitle is “MMO strategy sandbox game for programmers” and it is that, and more.
Without making this entire article an advertisement for Screeps, I’ll summarize it like this: Screeps provides you everything that your game requires, except the players.
That’s where you come in.
To play Screeps is to build Screeps. Your entire interaction with the game is by writing legitimate JavaScript code. Unlike some similar games like Gladiabots, that gives you a visual coding environment, Screeps forces you to write, and learn, actual JavaScript.
It’s easier if you already have some understanding of JavaScript to begin with, but if not, you can use it as a way to learn.
Which is what I’m doing.
What I’m teaching myself
With Screeps I have two distinct goals:
Learn ES6 syntax, including JavaScript classes Design a modular state machine
See, with Screeps you’re building the actual artificial intelligence for your Creeps — that’s what they call the characters that float around the screen. I’ve decided to learn a simple form of AI right now by designing a state machine, and I want to do so using JS Classes which I haven’t used in my day to day job yet.
I could learn this, and more, in other ways, I’m sure. I could go out and come up with an idea for a side hustle, and launch a SASS. I could take on projects at work that force me to dive more into the front end.
The problem is, all of those involves struggle without the little highs along the way that games give us.
Learning through play is actually something that I learned from my wife, who works with kids of all ages with development disabilities. She’s explained to me on numerous occasions how much she prefers teaching through play, and how much better it seems to work for her.
Given she’s smarter than I am, I figure there must be something to it.
Some of the benefits I’ve seen so far are:
Less Burnout
I have a lot of side projects already. I consult. I build affiliate websites. I design apps, and I build games. I even have an idea for a SASS, like I mentioned above.
The problem is, all of those use my work brain. Including the games. I’m not an expert in how the brain works, but I am the foremost expert in how my brain works. And my brain will always go into work mode if there is a dollar figure attached to my code.
With Screeps, I don’t have that. The code I write for Screeps is for me, and me alone. My code is my controller, and I’m not working, I’m playing.
As much as you would think it would burn me out, it actually has the opposite effect. I tend to only write my Screeps code over work vacations, simply because of the amount of time it requires. But whenever I come back from work, even if I’ve spent every day writing code, just like I do at my job, I am reinvigorated.
The combination of writing code for pleasure, like I used to, and spending so much time playing games, like I always want to, allows my work brain to relax. For however long I’m playing Screeps, I’m a kid again.
I’m not worried about bills. I’m not worried about the next release, or if that server is going down. I’m just worried about why this Creep has decided it wants to mine all of the energy from that source, and then just sit there doing nothing.
Experience with Build Tools I’ve never used
Before Screeps I had never used Grunt before. Now? I have a custom workflow that processes my development directory, flattens it into a single directory, and rewrites all of my requires. It then handles adding a version file, and uploads to my private Screeps server, committing to a Screeps branch with the same name as the Git branch that I’m developing on.
That seems like a lot, but it’s all due to the nature of how I prefer to develop, and how Screeps requires files to be laid out. Screeps doesn’t let you use folders, so if I have files laid out as Folder/Filename.js when I require it, I need to be able to rewrite both the filename and the require to use Folder_Filename.js otherwise things will break.
Sounds a heck of a lot like what we used to do in PHP before we had proper namespaces.
JavaScript Unit Testing
This is one that I haven’t really dived into much yet, but had never touched before now. I test my PHP code extensively. In fact, I wrote a whole article about test driven development, and why I think it separates the computer scientists from the random devs.
The problem is, I don’t write JavaScript code. So I don’t have all the tools figured out like I do in PHP.
That’s where Jist comes in. Right now I have it installed in my repository, and I’m prepared to use it. For now, though, I’m simply taking my time to learn the basics of Screeps, while learning some of the more advanced aspects of ES6.
Once I feel comfortable with both of those, I’ll likely wipe my repo, and start from scratch using TDD and Jist.
Am I going to become an expert?
No. Without hesitation no.
But I can surround myself with experts, and that’s good enough for me. The Screeps community is unique in that it is a self selected group of people who both love programming, and gaming.
Consider this: Where else can you talk about the intricacies of state pattern? What about custom building an operating system in JavaScript? How about event driven development?
All of those conversations can be had on the Screeps Slack, with other players who are as invested in gaming and Screeps as you are. Given some of the more advanced bots that you can see running around in the online worlds, you are definitely among experts there. | https://medium.com/dev-genius/how-im-teaching-myself-javascript-with-video-games-13d9f4470244 | ['Travis Weston'] | 2020-12-25 00:36:16.177000+00:00 | ['Learn To Code', 'Learning To Code', 'JavaScript', 'Self Taught Developer', 'Screeps'] |
Healthful Monday~ 07/13/2020 | Today's Healthful-Amusement share worth reviewing and considering to amuse your thoughts with! Self-care toward supporting a healthier mind and body in support of achieving and accomplishing further in your successes! I am simply here assisting you with better self-care for healthier decisions and healthier choices for a healthier lifestyle. So, self-improve your overall well-being not just for yourself but for those you love. Besides, you'll surely achieve and accomplish more with a healthier better version of yourself! You deserve greater bliss and fulfillment~
So, invest in your education by increasing your knowledge regarding your health. Check out this bit of information I am sharing today, and learn more about what energizes you as you continue moving forward! This is just some info to assist you towards the better. Remind yourself that, "I deserve better moments of today for an appreciative yesterday as I create my ideal tomorrow! I deserve to enjoy every day that much more!"
CHEERS~ to your bliss everywhere in between your lessons and wins... 😉
Source: https://edwardcharfauros.tumblr.com/post/623521576916320256/healthful-monday-07132020
#healthful #nutritionalguidance #selfhealing #vitamins #infographic | https://medium.com/@edwardftcharfauros/healthful-monday-07-13-2020-465ba2bc7c44 | ['Edward F. T. Charfauros'] | 2020-07-13 13:57:00.246000+00:00 | ['Infographics', 'Nutritional Guidance', 'Vitamins And Minerals', 'Healthful', 'Self Healing'] |
Time Complexity Analysis of Dynamic Data Structure | Whenever we need to analyze the time complexity of a particular operation, most of the time, we go with worst-case time analysis.
Worst-case time analysis
We find where the maximum number of code executions(code-wise) is executed for the given operation and calculate for n number of operations.
When we need to find the element which is last in the array, all n elements will be checked in linear search and this is the worst case. Based on this worst case, linear search time complexity will be defined as O(n).
If we consider the worst-case time analysis in data structure operations, For example, we consider the ith insertion operation in a dynamic array.
We insert an element in a single operation when the size of the array greater than i. Time complexity → O(1)
we insert an element with a total of i operations when the array size equals to i since at that time, we need to adjust the array. Time complexity →O(i)
Based on this worst-case time analysis, insertion operation of the dynamic array time complexity will be O(n) but this is too pessimistic because we insert the element with O(1) cost most of the time.
We need some better approach and that is amortized analysis.
Amortized analysis
Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
An average of a sequence of operations costs on a time period. Here, we are not averaging the all possible inputs like average time complexity and also we are not averaging over all possible random inputs like the probabilistic analysis. We just average the sequence of operations cost.
Let's look at how this amortized analysis can be done in dynamic array insertion operation
If you look insertion operation of dynamic array java code
public class DynamicArray{
private int[] array;
private int size; public DynamicArray(){
this.array = new int[0];
this.size = 0;
} public void insert(int num){ if (this.array.length == 0){
this.array = new int[1];
} if (this.size == this.array.length){
int [] temp = new int[2*this.array.length];
for(int i = 0; i< this.array.length; i++){
temp[i] = this.array[i];
} this.array = temp;
} this.array[this.size] = num;
this.size = this.size+1;
} //length method, delete method, search method }
If I say the cost of ith operation Ci then it can be defined as follows
i if i is an exact power of 2
Ci =
1 otherwise
When the array is full which means the exact power of 2 operations ( 1st insertion, 2nd insertion, 4th insertion, 8th insertion, …) we need to copy all the (i-1) elements to the double-sized temporary array. This is expensive and it takes i cost for the insertion operation ( because i -1 elements are copied and the ith element is added to the array)
When the array is not full we only need to add the element in the correct location and it takes only a single cost operation.
Our sequence of cost for operation looks like below
1 + 2 + 1 + 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 8 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 16 + 1 + 1 + .............
So we need to average the above sequence of operations.
So the equation looks like below
When we n insertions it takes roughly 3n times so when we average it
average time = Total time for n sequence operations/ n
average time = 3n/n = 3
Simply for n insertions, the amortized cost is O(n) and for single insertion operation, the time complexity is O(1). this is not the case when we look for worst-case time complexity. So The key point is when we do time complexity analysis on dynamic data structure operations, better to go with amortized cost analysis because the high-cost operation of dynamic data structure is occasionally happening (Adjusting its structure) and most of the low-cost operations are faster.
Amortized cost analysis is a better approach for the dynamic data structure.
Reference
Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, Stein (CLRS book), Introduction to Algorithms, 3 rd Edition (2009), Indian edition available at the bookstore. ISBN: 978–81–203–4007–7 | https://medium.com/swlh/time-complexity-analysis-of-dynamic-data-structure-3b79fe9bc721 | ['Sivaram Rasathurai'] | 2020-12-25 22:56:26.327000+00:00 | ['Datastructure', 'Amortized', 'Algorithms', 'Time Complexity'] |
Not Every Space Is Yours | Photo by Mitchell Luo on Pexels.com.
An essay on knowing our place within different cultures.
I had just become accustomed to the cold that Chicago winters brought. Growing up in the warm climate that Los Angeles brings forces you into a constant comfort. It was new, but it was necessary. I decided to do more at school this year. Waking up from the stress and trauma the prior year in Chicago brought. I bundled up in my black coat, my snow boots, and my black beanie with a pom-pom ball atop of it. I walked across the parking lot to attend a panel discussion I read about on one of the flyers hung around campus. I wanted to attend more panels and chapels for Black History Month at Moody Bible Institute, but being a graduate student and going to work, and the exhaustion that comes with being Black and woman and introverted in both forced me to choose wisely. As I made my way up the stairs to the panel, just a few minutes late, I sat and observed. It was odd to me that a White woman sat on a panel during Black History Month. Even if she had been a missionary in an African country for 10 years or so. Nonetheless, I listened to what she had to say. Then one of the final questions came up: Have you seen the way that colonization in America has also impacted colonization in Africa? I’m paraphrasing, of course. Before the other Black panelists could answer a question that was in its nature straightforward, she puts her microphone up to her mouth and says,
“I saw that question in the email and didn’t understand it and I’m sure that the other panelists were confused by it too.”
I sat there as other students mumbled and under my breath said, “That question isn’t for you.”
Of the Black panelists, the Black woman spoke up and said,
“I saw that question in the email, too, and I understood it quite well.”
We won’t go into how missionaries started going to Africa to spread the gospel because their true motive was to whiten it up. That’s my phrase for it. Because let’s be honest: White people have quite some work to do on themselves and within society before I, myself, hand out the ally card. We’re too quick to claim the bare minimum as “woke.”
But, this correction by the Black woman, was the start of showing that not every space is for everyone. The fact of the matter is: we can engage with other cultures, we can appreciate the beauty that those cultures bring, but there is a time for you to stand back and recognize that this space is not for you. This question is not for you. And that goes beyond understanding the question. This White woman was and continues to be in no way affected by colonization on any continent. Because years of slave trade and colonization have made her the standard. She stands as both the issue and the solution to it. So, why insert her into a panel? I don’t know. It could be her mission work. It could be her standing at the school.
What I do know is that there is so much power in Black women sharing their voices and perspectives. There is so much power in Black women and Black men coming together to correct and clarify. Though, it is not on us alone.
This simple action gives space for so many others to recognize the power and beauty of their voices and perspectives. To help us to see that there are spaces that belong to us where we are allowed to invite others in, but we are also allowed to create it for ourselves alone. And, for that, we owe no explanation or silence to anyone. | https://medium.com/@shonette-reed/not-every-space-is-yours-ff56f3c5ee02 | ['Shonette Reed'] | 2020-12-10 00:17:55.261000+00:00 | ['Personal Essay', 'Essay Writing', 'Black Women', 'Christian', 'Black'] |
Next Generation Distributed Systems On The BEAM | The correct way to do this is a proper structured survey of BEAM shops with a well designed questionnaire — but it is possible to sketch out a vision of what that world might look like.
The key elements are mainstays of distributed systems as they are built:
causality
consensus
some sort of hashing/routing/distribution algo
distributed Finite State Machines
separation of the control plane from the data plane
streaming/back-pressure and overload protection
shared config
cluster management/cluster join/leave for various cluster types
So a NewTP would aim to give your unwritten software the ability to:
have pre-defined causal properties
have pre-defined consensus
use predefined hashing/routing/distribution mechanisms
be composed of understandable, testable and documented distributed FSMs
have plane separation between data/control
be overload resistant
be part of a well-behaved and operationally-manageable cluster
etc, etc
The challenge, as always, is how to eat the elephant. Notwithstanding that the right place to start is a with a properly structured survey, we can have a stab at that as well.
An Architecture Of Distributed Systems
Finite State Machines are simple and well understood things:
this FSM has three states A , B and C
, and A is ready for work, the start and end state
is ready for work, the start and end state B is attempting to do work
is attempting to do work C is cleaning up after work
is cleaning up after work the following transitions are allowed A -> B, B -> B, B -> C, C -> B, C -> A
Simple Finite State Machine
Traditionally we think of an FSM as being uni-polar — but that is just a degenerate case, more often we build multi-polar FSMs:
Multi-polar Finite State machines
In this world the state B of the first FSM actual contains the remote FSM — B wishes that some thing remote happens and I is the clean initial state on the remote node that it contacts to make it so.
J tries to do it, and K and L report back success or failure. (This is a happy-path diagram only).
There is on top of that a set of failure states associated with partition — did the remote machine get the message? Did the ack just time out? and all the other normal dist-sys problems.
In this world we start seeing a separation of concerns:
Separation Of Concerns
Many of the things we want out NewTP to have can be implemented as standard libraries — we can cleanly separate the plane of data from control at this point as well.
The plane of control needs additional things tho:
Configuration And Manageability
There are additional problems that we need to systematise the handling of. For reliability you need multi-polar FSMs, not bi-polar ones, and multi-polarity means you must handle consensus and causality:
Consensus And Causality
This functionality needs to be baked into our FSMs.
In addition the clusters so-built must be upgradeable incrementally — by moving individual nodes from version N to version N+1 including full and partial roll-back.
Upgrade And Roll-Back
A Possible Way Forward
Needless to say, it must be re-iterated that the correct way to go about this is to do a survey of major BEAM shops and get confirmation about exactly what design patterns are in use and represent major blocks of commonality that could be systematised.
That notwithstanding, here are my thoughts.
The big shift from plain Erlang to Erlang/OTP came via the addition of two things to the language:
a new set of standard libraries
major software components that implemented new functionality and that were implemented as behaviours and customisable via callbacks.
I think there is a room for an auxiliary language on the BEAM for writing distributed FSMs. It is an auxiliary language only because the core business logic would be implemented in callbacks which would be written in Erlang, Elixir or LFE. You might consider it a specification language (supported by libraries) that helps the end user design and specify distributed, updatedable, robust multi-polar FSMs with standard routing/hashing and plane of data implementations available at write time.
The task is pretty large:
Components Of A Distributed FSM auxiliary language for the BEAM
Lots of the necessary library parts already exist — as other libraries — but systematizing them is not a small task. The issue of how to implement causality and eventual consistency mechanisms across dFSMs alone is a big task.
It is worth stepping through the toolchain.
Clearly the core output of the compiler is the behaviours that implement the distributed FSMs.
However, the dFSMs have plumbing built in — so there is an opportunity to make them sort of self-mocking where the plumbing is replaced by Erlang messages — and can be made to iterate over the failure modes (partition, remote node down, remote going down during comms, remote node coming back, etc, etc) — in otherwords you should be able to compile the code into testing dFSMs and run detailed extensive tests of many types (common test, fuzz testing, model testing, failure testing, upgrade/downgrade testing, etc, etc) on a single machine.
The toolchain/language will also need to be able to have versioned interfaces with upgrade/downgrade built into the contracts.
The language should be typed using the dialyzer typing — and this means that the compiler should spit out generators and (possibly) models for things like Quick Check model testing or Fuzz Testing.
There will be a need for config output to, to be able to bring the cluster up — things that both ends of a dFSM pair can talk to each other.
One of the key outputs of the toolchain should be state transition documents that reflect the actual state of the FSM — that is the diagrams should be first class objects that are in synch with the code and then enable detailed design review *prior* to the actual detailed implementation of the code.
Implementation Notes
There is an anti-pattern of YASLs — Yet Another Shitty Lisp — and there are a range of suggested compiler targets for BEAM languages — like Core Erlang.
My proposal would be to use a hypothetical LISP called Liffey as a target — it would be a LISP composed of Erlang terms that would have a 1-to-1 correspondence with LFE so that the AST generated by the compiler could just be to_string()ed to LFE source code and then would be pushed though the LFE compiler.
The goal, obviously, would be do partial, iterative implementations — the old design-big-build-small way. | https://medium.com/@gordonguthrie/next-generation-distributed-systems-on-the-beam-cffc501cf320 | ['Gordon Guthrie'] | 2020-03-15 14:11:33.574000+00:00 | ['Software Development', 'Technology', 'Elixir', 'Erlang', 'Distributed Systems'] |
The Deep Learning Tool We Wish We Had In Grad School | Deep Learning
The Deep Learning Tool We Wish We Had In Grad School
How Determined could have fixed our deep learning infrastructure problems
Author(s): Angela Jiang, Liam Li
Machine learning PhD students are in a unique position: they often need to run large-scale experiments to conduct state-of-the-art research but they don’t have the support of the platform teams that industrial ML engineers can rely on. As a result, PhD students waste countless hours writing boilerplate code, ad-hoc scripts, and hacking together infrastructure — rather than doing research. As former PhD students ourselves, we recount our hands-on experience with these challenges and explain how open-source tools like Determined would have made grad school a lot less painful.
How we conducted deep learning research in grad school
Photo by Angela Jiang
When we started graduate school as PhD students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), we thought the challenge laid in having novel ideas, testing hypotheses, and presenting research. Instead, the most difficult part was building out the tooling and infrastructure needed to run deep learning experiments. While industry labs like Google Brain and FAIR have teams of engineers to provide this kind of support, independent researchers and graduate students are left to manage on their own. This meant that during our PhDs, the majority of our attention was spent wrangling hundreds of models, dozens of experiments and hyperparameter searches, and a fleet of machines. Our ad-hoc workflows prevented us from doing better research, as tasks like starting new experiments and distributing training would cause increasingly more strain on the existing workflows and infrastructure.
Every project started the same, with a lone graduate student tasked with implementing a research prototype and performing a virtually endless number of experiments to test its promise. There was little infrastructure, scarce resources, and no process. So we would start writing one-off scripts: scripts to create the prototype, scripts to kick off dozens of experiments, and even more scripts to interpret the logs from these experiments. These scripts were run on whatever machines we could find: the labs’ machines, friends’ lab’s machines, AWS spot instances, or even our professors’ personal machines. As a result, we’d have gigabytes of logs in various drummed up formats, model checkpoints, and PDFs of graphs showcasing our results, scattered about the file systems of the machines we used. We quickly learned that to survive as ML graduate students, becoming well-versed in engineering, system administration, and infrastructure management was table-stakes.
Photo by Ferenc Horvath on Unsplash
The first time each of us realized that it didn’t have to be this way was when we did industry internships. As interns in a place like Google Brain, we had access to Google’s internal training infrastructure that allowed us to focus on research as opposed to operations.
It was daunting to leave a place like Google, knowing that as independent researchers, we would be back to managing our own infrastructure and that this would come at the cost of doing our research.
Fortunately, you don’t have to do grad school the way we did. Open-source tools for deep learning training have matured and can empower individual researchers to spend less time wrangling machines, managing files, and writing boilerplate code, and spend more of their time forming hypotheses, designing experiments, interpreting results, and sharing their findings with the community. But in the throes of conducting research and surviving grad school, it is difficult to invest time to learn a new tool without the guarantee that it will increase your productivity. To help future graduate students get over that hurdle, we share the ML research pain points that Determined AI would have alleviated for us.
How Determined can transform the research experience
Throughout the life cycle of a deep learning research project, you’re bound to run into several common pain points. Today, many of these can be alleviated with foresight and the right tooling. In this section, we share the pain points we commonly encountered and how tooling like Determined can help.
Photo by Lauren Mancke on Unsplash
Monitoring experiments
A single deep learning experiment can run for days or weeks and requires constant monitoring. In grad school, we would typically monitor experiments by tailing a log file or SSH’ing into the cluster and using tmux to monitor the job’s console output. This required remembering to start the experiment in a tmux session, to log key metrics, and to manage output log file naming and organization. When running several experiments at the same time, this also required tracking which experiment was running on which machine. Tools like Determined shed this overhead by automatically tracking and persisting key metrics and by logging them to TensorBoard. These results and more are available in a web UI for users to monitor their experiments in real-time and can be shared with peers, advisors, and community members with a single link.
Dealing with failures
An experiment can also crash due to transient errors that are out of our control. This issue is exacerbated when running on preemptible cloud instances as a cost-saving measure. In these situations, we could easily lose hours or days worth of work and would then need to relaunch an experiment manually by passing a command via SSH. With Determined, the system automatically retries failed jobs for you, so no time is wasted when an error occurs. Automated experiment logging helps you diagnose and track where failures are happening across machines. Checkpoint saving also ensures that little progress is lost when a failure occurs. Determined manages checkpoints automatically: users can specify policies to control how often checkpoints are taken and which checkpoints should be preserved for future use.
Managing experiment results
The result of days and hours of experimentation are artifacts like log files, model checkpoints, and results from subsequent analyses. It’s necessary to persist results in all stages of the project to retroactively report them to the community. Initially, managing this data is straightforward to do on the file system with careful naming and folder organization. But as a project progresses, it becomes an unwieldy way to track the gigs and gigs of emerging data. For us, it was common to have to redo a long-running and resource-intensive experiment because we lost track of a particular experiment graph or the script and model checkpoint to reproduce an earlier result. Instead, it’s better to start with an experiment tracking platform early into a project’s lifecycle, so that all experiment data is managed for you. Using Determined, model source code, library dependencies, hyperparameters, and configuration settings are automatically persisted to allow you to easily reproduce an earlier experiment. The built-in model registry can be used to track your trained models and identify model versions that are promising or significant.
Distributing training
Deep learning training requires a huge amount of resources, with state-of-the-art results sometimes requiring tens of thousands of GPU hours. Almost inevitably, independent researchers need to scale their own training experiments to more than a single GPU. By relying on native PyTorch or TF distribution strategies, we were still left with tasks like setting up networking between machines and alleviating errors from machine failures and stragglers. At Determined, distributed training is rolled out for you by infrastructure experts. By writing your model code in Determined’s Trial API format, you can distribute your code with a single config file change. Determined takes care of things like provisioning machines, setting up networking, communicating between machines, efficient distributed data loading, and fault tolerance.
Managing experiment costs
Many deep learning practitioners rely on cloud platforms like AWS and GCP to run resource-heavy experiments. However, when operating within tight academic budgets, cloud platforms were often prohibitively expensive. Instead, we would run on cheaper spot instances without guaranteed uptime. Consequently, we had to manually restart stopped instances, checkpoint experiments constantly, or in absence of this, suffer lost results. To make the most use of available resources, Determined manages cloud compute resources automatically for the user depending on what jobs are queued. When using AWS spot instances or GCP preemptible instances to reduce cost, Determined maintains reproducibility with fault-tolerant checkpointing.
Hyperparameter tuning
Hyperparameter tuning is a necessary step to achieve state-of-the-art model performance. However, these were one of the most difficult experiments to run as they scale up all of the pain points previously discussed. Running a grid search is simple in theory, but ends up being orders of magnitude more costly and longer to run than traditional training. Algorithms that employ early-stopping like SHA and ASHA can be dramatically more efficient but are difficult to implement. (Well, not for Liam who invented these algorithms, but it’s difficult for the rest of us!) Hyperparameter searches also generate a lot more experimental metadata to manage and are harder to rerun when things go wrong. With Determined AI, you can run hyperparameter searches with state-of-the-art algorithms by changing a config file. And just like in regular training, you get experiment tracking, distributed training, and resource management out of the box. You can also pause, resume, or restart hyperparameter tuning jobs on-the-fly.
Ensuring reproducibility
Building upon empirical results, either by ourselves or the broader community, requires being able to reliably reproduce said results. Reproducibility is becoming a first-class goal of the ML research community, with initiatives like the Reproducibility Challenges or Artifact Evaluations. During our PhD, we found it difficult to anticipate all the data needed to ensure full reproducibility of our results. For instance, we may start by saving the experimentation script and the code (via git SHA) that led to a particular result, only to come to find that we could not reliably reproduce the result without knowing the machine the experiment ran on. With Determined AI, the data you need for reproducibility is automatically persisted for you, including the code used to create the model, the model weights, the full environment used to train the model, and the data preprocessing code.
If you are like us, you may find yourself spending most of your time on operations, not research. Fortunately, with the emergence of ML infrastructure tools, you don’t have to do ML research the way we did. Tools like Determined provide researchers the foundation to build state-of-the-art and even production grade models. If you feel like you could benefit from the backing of a training platform, we encourage you to give Determined a spin. To get started, check out our quick start guide. If you have any questions along the way, hop on our community Slack or visit our GitHub repository — we’d love to help! | https://medium.com/towards-artificial-intelligence/the-deep-learning-tool-we-wish-we-had-in-grad-school-3107f9a39efa | ['Angela Jiang'] | 2020-11-19 17:13:47.853000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Deep Learning', 'Technology', 'Software Engineering', 'Education'] |
Let Your Imagination Run Wild and Then You’ll Reach Your Dreams | Let Your Imagination Run Wild and Then You’ll Reach Your Dreams
The tools you need to break away from your self-imposed limits
Image courtesy of the author
If you had all the time and the money in the world what would you do? Don’t hold back, think big, unleash your wildest dreams and set your soul on fire!
Without financial boundaries or imposed time limits, where does your imagination take you?
How often do you let your mind take you on this ride? How often do you connect with these emotions and tune into your highest self and your fullest potential?
When it comes to self-improvement how can we grow if we can’t dream, be creative or simply try?
The problem with living your best life is that it often comes from stepping out from your comfort zone or striving for more (a.k.a a lot more) than what you are currently settled with.
As a society, we are told again and again to ‘settle down’ as if anything beyond the realm of a steady job and white picket fence is considered too outrageous, immature or just plain stupid.
But when you look around, when you think about those most inspiring and encouraging, those who are living to their greatest potential and making the greatest positive impact in our world, chances are they’re not playing to the ‘settle down’ rule.
These people are not playing small. They don’t care about society’s expectations and they certainly don’t fit into the traditional categories of a steady job. They are entrepreneurs, digital nomads and freedom seekers, looking for more and refusing to accept anything less than the fullest human experience.
So close your eyes and dream. If you could do anything, be anything, create anything what would it be?
There Are No Limits
Let’s hit pause for just one second. Before you jump into your wildest dreams, let me take a moment to remind you that you are worthy. You are deserving. And you are capable of anything. And so is every single human on our planet.
For years I lived my life, thinking that I was limited creativity, emotionally, spiritually. I told myself I was only deserving of a certain amount of happiness, of freedom and that I could only chase my dreams to a certain extent before I had to come back to reality. I was limited by a self-imposed glass ceiling.
Until it all changed.
I started to meet people from all over the world who were infinitely creating their dream lives, from scratch. They were limitless, free and contagiously happy.
I met an entrepreneurial family who had set off travelling ten years ago and since created nine online businesses, had two children and travelled the world. I met an incredible Brazilian woman who had quit law school, moved to Bali and became a vegan chef and pro surfer. I met couples who were paid to travel the world, stay in luxury hotels and take photos. I met other families whose children who had grown up on boats while sailing the world, learning solely from the languages, cultures and experiences which surrounded them every day.
It blew my mind.
For me, seeing these people not only creating but living the lives of my wildest dreams, with fun and ease, planted a seed of hope in my subconscious mind. It slowly chipped away at my self-imposed glass ceiling. Day by day, I gradually began to realise that if these people could live their lives to their fullest limitless potential, so too could I. The only thing holding me back was myself!
At the beginning of a journey, when the doubts creep in, such a life can feel trivial, scary and completely unattainable. I know, I’ve been there. But, dip your toe in, indulge your imagination for just a minute.
Here are some of my favourite tools to break away from the confines of your self-imposed limits.
Break-Away Tools
Vision Board
Cliche I know, but vision boards have been shown to increase motivation, improve follow-through and help individual’s gain clarity on what exactly it is that they want.
Use Pinterest, Instagram, whatever visuals you can find of exactly what you want. Get specific. And then put it somewhere where you will see it every single day- your bedroom walls, the fridge door, your laptop screensaver. Our minds are deep, complicated places, but they can also be guided over time to believe that which we surround ourselves with every day.
Hobbies
Think about what you enjoy doing most in the world. Even if you’re not ready to flip your world upside down. Even if you are feeling overwhelmed and/or stuck. Start with finding five extra minutes a day to do something you love- be it cooking, surfing, gardening, drawing.
I guarantee there is something in your life that brings you so much joy. Think about what you spend the majority of your free time thinking about? What do you spend your disposable income on? What topics do you love discussing? Now focus on that. Open your mind to the opportunities and endless possibilities of this topic and then sit back and see where it takes you.
Meditation
Another cliche, but for good reason. If you have trouble hearing your own unique voice or you feel creativity stuck when it comes to your goals and ambitions, try meditation.
Learn to still your mind for a few moments a day. Learn to listen to and reflect on your thoughts, conscious and subconscious. Questions the stories you tell yourself, are they actually true? Reflect on how far you’ve come and find strength from your past experiences.
Slowly as all the background noise starts to fade away, you might be surprised by what ideas come into your head.
Bucket List
Finally, write a bucket list, even if it’s outrageous, even if it feels impossible. If you can think of something that makes your heart sing, write it down! You are allowed to dream!
It can be corny (think sky diving or hiking Mt. Everest) or completely outrageous (say breaking a world record for eating pizza on a submarine- whatever floats your boat!).
Just be honest, open-minded and limitless with yourself because this is where dreams begin. | https://medium.com/journey-to-self/let-your-imagination-run-wild-and-then-youll-reach-your-dreams-73c80292db8a | ['Tori Nauer'] | 2020-10-17 22:32:02.307000+00:00 | ['Self Improvement', 'Advice', 'Mindset', 'Imagination', 'Personal Growth'] |
Do Not Forget This When Setting Your New Year’s Resolution | A question that most people never consider is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” — Mark Mason in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
As we near the end of the year, we find so many of us starting out on our new year’s resolutions. A new year brings a new start and a fresh page. It is the best time to eliminate bad habits and start something you always wanted to do.
But did you know that only 8% of people, achieve their New Year’s resolutions? Most of our new year’s resolutions look like this:
Lose weight Earn more money Buy X, Y, Z Find your passion Become a writer
…you get the point.
There might be so many different reasons for people not keeping up with their resolutions, like it being too many, or too unrealistic. But I am not going to talk about all those points in this article. I am going to focus on the one-step which a lot of us fail to do.
Disclaimer: This will only work when you set realistic expectations and resolutions.
You focus only on the goal and not the path.
This is the mistake that most of us do. For e.g., I keep a resolution this year, that I want to lose 20 kgs by the end of 2021. I am only focusing on the goal now. But what am I going to do for it? Am I ready to undergo the rigorous workouts, or controlling my intake, which is required for losing weight?
Most of us stop pursuing our resolutions because we do not see immediate results. Or, we only realize the reality aspect of the goal after we start pursuing it. All we set is this one big goal, a target that we have to reach.
How many of us decided the path we are willing to take?
1. Break the goal into smaller chunks
Again let me take the example of losing 20 kgs next year. So approximately, I would need to lose 1.67 kgs a month. This sounds less daunting than my earlier resolution, right? Because it is a smaller number.
Now the goal sounds realistic and more doable. One advantage of this method is that you stop procrastinating the effort. You stop doing stupid things like losing the same weight in 6 months using these “lose weight fast” methods.
Also, if I do meet my monthly/weekly goals, it would motivate me to pursue it further.
2. Next, what are you ready to do to achieve the goal?
I can fool myself by telling myself that I am never going to eat junk in my life. And I am going to work out every single day. But then, I will be the stupidest person in the world. Because I know it is impossible!!
Write down what you can and what you cannot do. These were some questions I wrote for myself
Can you walk X number of steps per week? Yes
Can you eat junk only on Sundays? Yes
Can you go to gym Y times a week? No (because I get claustrophobic there)
Deciding what you can and what you cannot do early on, will greatly reduce the chances of you stopping the process in between. Because you can always tell yourself that it was you who decided this. Again, the most important part of this task is to ask yourself and set a realistic list of what your boundaries are.
3. What are you going to do to achieve smaller goals?
Okay, now that you have decided your smaller goals, and what you can let go for them, it is time for you to decide what you are going to do every day for achieving the goal.
For e.g. I order food from outside, when 1) I do not know what to cook or I am too lazy or/and 2) When required groceries are not available at home. I know this. So what do I do to reduce my eating outside?
Set a weekly calendar to go out and buy groceries. I usually buy them when something gets over at home.
Set time aside on weekends for deciding what to cook throughout the week. So that I do not spend time thinking about what to cook during weekdays, and end up buying food from outside.
Allotting a time for these activities in my calendar makes my resolution more realistic. You can also have other small tips and techniques for fulfilling your goal. For e.g., I am planning to complete the preparation part in bulk (once in 2 days) so that I would not feel lazy to cook later.
Tip: Keep a resolution journal to track your progress. When you write down what you have done and what you have not, things will become much more clear to you. | https://medium.com/be-unique/do-not-forget-this-when-setting-your-new-years-resolution-3b8f911db29b | ['Shruthi Sundaram'] | 2020-12-09 10:40:30.276000+00:00 | ['Resolutions', 'Advice', 'Personal Development', 'Self', 'Life'] |
3 Science-Based Reasons Why Buying Less Will Make You Happier | I have to confess, I have been a shopping victim. I needed to have the newest fashion it-pieces at the lowest cost to be happy. I made a 180-degree turn in my life when I noticed how destructive this behavior is. Not only for myself but also for the people who made this stuff and the environment.
When I moved to China, I came with only one suitcase. 4 years later, I had hoarded lots of bargains from Taobao and Tmall. When I decided to go back to Europe, I realized how much stuff I had accumulated and it made me feel sick. Studies prove clutter has a negative impact on our mood. The more stuff we own, the more stressed we feel.
So, I made a deal with myself, I would not buy anything for one year to ‘heal’ myself from this destructive behavior. In the beginning, it was hard. But after 3 months, I had changed my habits. I didn’t go online to search for the next thing to buy and avoided shopping malls.
With every month, my urge to buy new stuff became smaller. How I perceived owning all these things changed. It made me feel anxious and overwhelmed. So, I started sorting things out. The more stuff I got rid of, the calmer and happier I felt.
And this is not the only benefit. I must have saved a few thousand dollars and lots of time. Being less materialistic changed my life for the better. I am happier than ever before. But why? | https://medium.com/change-your-mind/3-science-based-reasons-why-buying-less-will-make-you-happier-81cc3e2f1ca9 | ['Karolin Wanner'] | 2021-01-02 16:59:41.726000+00:00 | ['Happiness', 'Life Lessons', 'Minimalism', 'Self Improvement', 'Life'] |
Choosing the Right Tools for Data Visualization | Information design is a highly multidisciplinary field. It involves elements of maths, statistics, graphic design, colour theory, code, psychology, neuroscience, and good old fashioned storytelling. It stands to reason, then, that data visualizers use an enormous array of different tools to do their jobs.
Most dataviz tools help their users save time and effort. They figure out annoying things like scale factors for you. They allow you to see your data represented in many different forms quickly and easily. They grant creative permission and can help circumvent impostor syndrome by allowing even novices to create beautiful and effective visualizations.
But they can also be a danger. Playing with a fancy tool can draw attention away from the data itself, allowing fundamental errors to go unnoticed. They can easily tempt the user into simply creating a colourful, eye-popping visual instead of telling a compelling story. Some tools, especially digital ones, may have presets which limit the imagination of the user if they jump in too early in the process. And some are not designed with a diverse audience in mind.
These kinds of discussions are why we have a channel dedicated to tools in the Data Visualization Society’s Slack community — #topic-tools , where people can get recommendations for the best way to approach a problem with different kinds of digital or physical tools. To mark the launch of the channel, myself and Andy Krackov hosted a Q&A session with members of the dataviz community to find out how different people use tools. Read on to find out which tools were our members’ favourites, how people approach learning a new tool, and why data sketching could change your life.
Choosing the right tool
I’ve already alluded to the diversity of tools available for visualizing data, and that was reflected in how people responded when we asked what their favourite tools are.
Jane Zhang wrote: “I’m a designer so I use a lot of pen and paper and [Adobe] Illustrator. I work with smaller data sets and use Excel or Powerpoint to help me see trends. I also use sticky notes a lot. My desk is always flooded with them.”
Amanda Makulec added that free platforms are often the most exciting because many people don’t have the budget to invest in anything fancy. “We did a lot with Google Data Studio, Excel, Powerpoint, Infogram, and Piktochart,” she explained. “The advantage to designing in tools that were in common use (e.g. Excel) was that a) they were more accessible to our colleagues in the field or local organizations and b) they could be updated by those same teams if the underlying data changed. ”
On the other hand, Hamza Amjad wrote that he found success by investing more money in the tools that he wanted to use. “While it is subjective (and, sometimes touchy) I think spending more on the pens, pencils, highlighters and notebooks I use to ensure I have a quality product makes me want to use it more, both due to a quality perception and skin in the game,” he said.
Other tools mentioned in the discussion included ggplot, D3.js, Tableau, Flourish, Google Sheets, R, Python, PowerBI, Looker, Three.js, HTML canvas, React, Matlab, Draw.io, Rawgraphs, Datawrapper, Figma, Sketch, OneNote, Keynote, the iPad Pro & Apple Pencil, Affinity Designer, QGIS, Observable, Data Illustrator, Charticulator, Script Lab, whiteboards and whiteboard markers, and coloured pencils/pens and a sketchpad. For an even longer list, check out Andy Kirk’s website.
Finding the time to learn a new tool
With such a lengthy list of options, people were keen to learn strategies for efficiently learning new tools.
“I’d rather just dive in,” said Charles Saulnier. “I find videos and articles are a great complement, but there’s nothing like exploring a tool to understand how it works and how you can leverage its strengths and weaknesses.”
He continued: “I personally just feel so lucky to live in a time where finding tips and tricks are so accessible, and communities are so active! I would not be half as comfortable in my work as I am now if I had to come up with new solutions all by myself, when you can tailor snippets of code or projects to your own reality. The different communities’ generosity in sharing problems and solutions feeds into everyone’s practice!
Nicholas McCarty added that he frequently blocks out time each day for reading and flagging articles of interest on Medium. “These are typically how-to guides, and I use pockets of idle time to replicate those works (if possible),” he said.
Finally, Amanda Makulec recommended that people: “Learn one tool really well and hone your craft there, but play and become familiar with others, which may be better suited to your need sometimes.”
Physical vs. digital tools
A large portion of the discussion focused on how to balance out the use of physical and digital tools.
“I’m a developer, but honestly my go-to tool is pen/paper/whiteboard,” said Jacque Schrag. “Especially when I’m in that initial stage of trying to take something that could be represented as a bar chart and make it a little bit more creative. I find that I can be a lot more iterative with low-tech tools, whereas once I start writing code, I begin to feel more invested.”
Others echoed the sentiment that starting with pen and paper is a good strategy. “I like to do a pen and paper sketch to show the stakeholder a rough idea of what it may look like,” said Kelly Tall, “and check to see if it makes sense/conveys the information in a helpful way.”
She continued: “Then I get some data and do a quick “sketch” using ggplot2 — just to see if the actual data will suit the idea. Nothing worse than designing and wire-framing and creating final art work for the dev team, then the data comes back as a less-than-exciting flat line and your beautiful design aiming to show variation shows there’s — erm — no variation…”
Phil Hawkins agreed. “A big deal for me is how I can sketch out a product before making it,” he said. “Clients will sometimes want a sketch before even letting me see their data so they know what I can do for them.”
His approach for that is currently “a lot of draw.io”, which comes with a library of useful shapes for infographics. “I used PowerPoint for that for a while but I find that the available shapes in draw.io are more true to life,” he said. “I’d be interested in other options, especially open-source. Earlier this year I did a whole data model and sample charts on a large pad with colored pencils. Amazing what a ruler and some careful handwriting can do to illustrate a data science workflow.”
Andy Krakov, who co-moderated the discussion added: “At a digital agency at which I worked, Velir, we turned data viz sketching into a group exercise to inform the build of an initial prototype. So we first would have a conversation with a client, then review their data, then hopefully talk with end-users, and come back together for a roughly 3-hour sketching session. The tool we used for this was a white board, where someone would begin to draw out how they envisioned the viz looking and functioning, then we all would build ideas off of that. It was so much fun!” | https://medium.com/nightingale/choosing-the-right-tools-for-data-visualization-4bab40f53cdc | ['Duncan Geere'] | 2019-12-10 15:13:46.905000+00:00 | ['Design', 'Data Visualization', 'Programm', 'Data Science', 'Topicsindv'] |
Mercan Becomes new Turkish Ambassador to the United States | Ambassador Hasan Murat Mercan has been appointed as Turkish Ambassador to the U.S. with a presidential decree issued on the Official Gazette on December 8th. Mercan was serving as Turkish Ambassador to Japan since 2017. Ambassador Serdar Kilic, who has served as the Turkish Ambassador to the U.S. since 2014, has been reposted to headquarters in Ankara.
Who is Ambassador Hasan Murat Mercan?
-Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey to Japan (November 2017-)
-Chairman, World Energy Council Turkish National Committee (April 2014 — April 2017)
-Deputy Minister of Energy (Feb.2012 — Sept. 2014)
-Deputy for Eskişehir, Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (2007- 2011)
-Deputy for Eskişehir, Chairman of the Turkish Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Interparliamentary European Defense and Security Assembly, Vice-President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (2002–2007)
-Member of the Justice and Development Party Central Decision Making and Administrative Board (2001–2009)
-Vice-President of the Party responsible from Advertisement and Media (2001–2005)
-Founding Member of the Justice and Development Party
ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS
-Associate Professor, Department of Management, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey (1995- 2004)
-Assistant Professor, Department of Management, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey (1992–1995)
-Assistant Professor, Department of Quantitative Business Analysis, Cleveland State University (1989–1992)
-Teaching Assistant, Department of Decision and Information Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 (1985–1989)
-Instructor and Researcher, Department of Industrial Engineering, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey (1981–1985)
-Teaching Assistant, Department of Industrial Engineering, Boğaziçi University, İstanbul, Turkey (1981)
-Published articles in several periodicals and papers
EDUCATION
-University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
Ph.D.in Decision and Information Sciences, December, 1989
-Boğaziçi University-İstanbul, Turkey
M.S in Industrial Engineering, March, 1984
B.S in Industrial Engineering, June, 1981
-Eskişehir Anatolian High School, 1970–1977
ORDERS AND ACADEMIC HONORARY TITLES
-Hiroshima University Honorary Doctorate, 01.12.2018
-Order of the Star of Solidarity of Italy, 18.03.2010
OTHER APPOINTMENTS
Yunus Demirer as ambassador to Slovakia
Hatun Demirer as the Permanent Representative of Turkey to OSCE
Ali Rıza Güney as ambassador to Iraq
Barış Ulusoy as ambassador to Lebanon
Burçin Gönenli as ambassador to Singapore
Turgay Tuncer as ambassador to the United Arab Emirates,
Zafer Ateş as ambassador to Mongolia
Volkan Işıkçı as ambassador to Cameroon.
Başar Şen as ambassador to Berlin
Refik Ali Onaner as ambassador to Paris
Ömer Gücük as ambassador to Rome
Burak Akçapar as ambassador to Madrid,
Hakan Olcay as ambassador to Dublin
Ahmet Demirok as ambassador to Baku
Korkut Güngen as ambassador to Tokyo
Hüseyin Müftüoğlu as ambassador to Uruguay
Munis Dirik as ambassador to Congo
Serhat Aksan as ambassador to Paraguay
Fırat Sunel as ambassador to India
Esin Çakıl as ambassador to Bahrain
Vehbi Esgel Etensel as ambassador to Cuba,
Volkan Türk Vural as ambassador to Guinea
Ledibe Gülhan Ulutekin as ambassador to Panama
Adnan Keçeci as ambassador to Morocco
Hüseyin Avni Aksoy as ambassador to Mozambique
Ömer Ünsoy as ambassador to New Zealand
Mustafa Pulat as ambassador to Yemen
Nilgün Arı as ambassador to Burkina Faso. | https://medium.com/@alicinarcom/mercan-becomes-new-turkish-ambassador-to-the-united-states-8939af23409f | ['Ali Cinar'] | 2020-12-09 08:48:47.696000+00:00 | ['Us Turkey Relations', 'Turkey', 'Hasan Murat Mercan', 'United States', 'Murat Mercan'] |
On My Touch | I can’t help myself
When I see a soul
I get interested in
People —
Well, plants and animals too,
On my gentle touch
I get to read the thoughts,
But the brain stops
The soul travels
To the infinity,
On my touch
Many panic
But that doesn’t help
Just embrace me when
I meet you! | https://medium.com/poetry-under-cover/on-my-touch-6c09f2424dff | [] | 2017-09-05 18:38:11.500000+00:00 | ['Death', 'Touch', 'Prompt', 'Poetry Under Cover', 'Poetry'] |
A World of Fairy Tales | After this first meeting with the lakes of the region, I go to Gérardmer to start my second loop. It takes about 1h45 to go around this second lake, so I decide to have my lunch break right after to rest my legs and regain strength before continuing my walk.
As I walk along the trail that borders the west side of the water body, turning my back to the city, I hear the clink of my metal canteen in my backpack. That’s all it takes to throw me back twenty-five years or so as I climb the stony paths of the Vercors mountains, with my father in the lead and my mother and sister closing the march.
When we would go hiking for the day, or even for the week with two donkeys — my best memories — we would take turns carrying the water bottles, which we would fill when drinking water sources were available. In addition to a large blue plastic water bottle, we also had two smaller ones made of metal, including a dented orange one that must have seen more countries than any experienced hiker.
I can still hear the sound of that canteen hanging on my belt, the characteristic click of its closing system. I remember us taking breaks to drink and catch our breath before resuming our assent. I remember my dad studying his IGN map to make sure his family doesn’t get lost en route and gets safely to their destination.
I hear him again telling me to be careful where I set foot and to look ahead while walking. I can see again his big brown leather hiking boots with big red laces. My dad, solid as a rock, helping me through difficult passages by supporting me with his steady hand.
All these images suddenly come back to me, without me expecting it.
Halfway around the lake of Gérardmer, I stop to nibble on a cereal bar on a small rock by the water’s edge. Two ducks approach me and deliver a charming tirade that makes me happy. I regret not speaking their language. | https://medium.com/scribe/a-world-of-fairy-tales-bbcb90426fd5 | ['Thomas Gaudex'] | 2020-12-17 17:00:06.848000+00:00 | ['Life', 'Nature', 'Stories', 'Travel', 'Writing'] |
Having Your Own Local Email Server? And Why You Should | Source: Deposit Pictures
Why would you want to have an independent email server?
Well, for one, it will be yours to have and to hold minus all of the intrusion.
Not to mention having total freedom to send emails from your IP address instead of the email provider’s IP address.
After reading the first few lines, you’re probably thinking.
“Why is he pushing double talk about having an email address?”
“I have one already!” :D
No, you don’t.
“YES, I DO SIR!”:-u
And I say again you don’t, and I’ll tell you why I say that.
It’s because the email you think you own is not yours “per se.”
It doesn’t matter if it’s on Gmail’s server or Yahoo’s, or Microsoft’s.
All three of the providers mentioned do one thing for you only, and that’s providing you a free spot on their server to retrieve and send your mail (or a from Point-A to B type system).
After hearing how it’s told to you, insinuates that you are not the owner of it.
Then you’ll say.
“Why does it matter anyway?”
“I go there and browse through my mail and call it a day, so who cares about something so mundane!”
Honestly, you should care!
Source: YouTube (Ray Tomlinson creator of email application)
Since 1971, the Guinness Book of World Records; documented the first email sent by its creator Ray Tomlinson.
Tomlinson experimented with a program known as SNDMSG, which led to the creation of the email.
And since that’s the case, you know he had to have been working for DARPA.
And to confirm this takes little or no effort.
I say that because one of the articles I previously wrote about mentions two unique systems to help bridge together with a network system that millions of users to this day still use.
THE INTERNET.
I can’t help but laugh because the majority of people are probably saying to themselves.
“SERIOUSLY?”
“Email is that old?”
Yes. It is nearly 40 years old.
IT’S SO MANY SECRETS I TELL YOU! JUST WAITING TO BE…
Well, you should know the rest of that statement!
Source (Wikipedia): By ARPANET — The Computer History Museum Arpnet Map March 1977, Public Domain
ARPANET was a HUGE breakthrough at the time, and it’s categorized under one of DARPA’s many stoic projects.
And that brings us to why having a self-established email server would be a better alternative than creating one on the net.
Source: YouTube (Raspberry Pi Component)
What Are The Significances To Having A Local E-Server?
Having a local E-Server means that all of your information sent and received can be backed-up on an external drive device. It’s a preferred practice to abide by to ensure electronic documented information is retrievable if it ever needs to be.
Having one also means YOU ARE NOT BOUND to following terms & conditions that online email providers demand you to uphold.
You can customize it to your liking, which means you will have FULL control of its configurations how you wish to send or specific ways it will retrieve incoming emails. You can even control the stylization of your email content.
Having one eliminates the element of “intrusion” that email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and a host of others tend to engage in unbeknownst to their users.
Honestly, it’s ideal to have it; and people are getting sick and tired of having their information mishandled and auctioned off to whoever is willing to pay top-dollar for it. Not to mention, what they are intending to do what with it.
The government believes you should NOT have the right to go ‘rogue’ over the internet wireways.
And then I say, who said the government should have easy access to your sacred information?
Exactly! They did! NOT YOU!
Necessary Components Needed For Running A Local E-Server:
Raspberry Pi 2, 3, or 4 (Recommended Versions)
Micro SD Card (Recommended)
An Ethernet Cord (Wired Connection), or the alternative is having a WIFI dongle USB adapter receiver.
The Raspberry Pi is a miniature-sized single computer board that was developed in Great Britain (United Kingdom) in 2012.
There are three variations of the component (the most recent is the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B).
The estimated cost depends upon what projects you are doing with your Pi 4, for it may require a decent amount of memory needed to carry out specific tasks and functionalities.
Here Is A Few Of The Varying Memory Raspberry Pi Components:
For those who didn’t know, (GiB) also means “Gigabytes.”
Here Is The Various Operating Systems To Run With Your Raspberry Pi Components:
Raspberry Pi computer boards are great for a multitude of projects essentially it’s used to conduct “Do It Yourself” projects (hence the abbreviation “DIY”). Overall, these smaller computer components are referred to as “upgraded” technology used with a PC or can serve as a stand-alone unit.
Using them to provide added performance for a home project (which may vary depending on what type that may be) should turn out fine.
If it’s a more complex project you have in mind (which could involve a dozen of Pi’s linked by Wi-Fi or ethernet via USB port, then don’t be surprised if the performance level suffers from the excessive demand placed upon your network).
Understanding The STMP, IMAP, & POP Protocols:
So, you might be wondering what helps to send and receive emails.
Part of the element that helps makes that possible relies on a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.
The proper abbreviation is known as an STMP Server, and it sends data from an email recipient to another email server.
To make the STMP Server send and receive electronic mail to an attended IP address requires the assistance of the POP and the IMAP Configuration and Protocol Scripts.
The POP (Post-Office Protocol) is a method suitable for reading messages from a single client computer. Messages are removed from the server mailbox after retrieval. The master copy of a message is the one in the local mailbox.
The IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) retrieves messages from multiple clients by allowing remote management of the server mailbox. The master copy stays on the client’s server; an additional copy is sent to the recipient’s inbox.
Both the IMAP and POP Servers have a configurations that can be selected for optimal settings.
Source: In Motion Hosting (Example of the IMAP, POP, & STMP “Port Settings”)
Settings on the left are (recommended) because has been sent from an “SSL Secure” server, while the settings on the right are NOT properly SSL Secure; which could result in a hacked database by cyber thieves.
Interested In Setting It All Up?
I say why not. It never hurts to learn something beneficial.
I checked out a video over at Crosstalk Solutions on YouTube, and the narrator of the show Chris, gave great insights on setting up an E-Server.
If anyone interested in learning how to do it, then stop there to see all of what he will share with you (the link to his channel is two sentences about this one).
Remember one thing, and one thing always.
Strive to take back what is rightfully yours; and that’s your rights as a private citizens of this nation!
And that brings this entry to an end.
See you again soon!
A SPECIAL THANKS GOES OUT TO THE READERS WHO LOVE READING GREAT CONTENT.
Because without them to read through it, would be pointless to write it! | https://medium.com/@ironsjaye/having-your-own-local-email-server-and-why-you-should-ec04dbebd42 | ['Jaye Irons'] | 2020-11-25 07:23:33.359000+00:00 | ['Raspberry Pi', 'Citizenship', 'Email Marketing', 'Privacy', 'Servers'] |
7 things to consider when choosing the right bot platform for your business | If you’re looking to make customer experience (CX) a core part of your offering, there’s no way your strategy can leave out conversational AI. And why would it? Customers expect fast answers around the clock and a whopping 93% will make repeat purchases based on excellent service. Integrating a virtual agent into your CX can help you meet and even exceed those expectations, translating to higher retention and revenue.
The daunting question for many companies is: how do we get there? How do we transform fragmented processes into deep CX automation and highly personalized service delivered by bot and human agents working seamlessly together?
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. And right now the number of options on the market is overwhelming. If you’re deep in the bot platform rabbit hole and feeling more confused than when you started, keep reading. I’ve compiled a list of the seven most important questions you should ask yourself when evaluating solutions.
Spoiler alert: Flexible is always best
Rather than sending you deeper into the rabbit hole, I’ll share the takeaway upfront. You need a solution that evolves with you. Thinking long-term about this investment (we’re talking years, not months) could save you loads of time, money and effort. That means choosing a flexible platform that allows you to pivot your approach as needed so you can keep driving revenue and giving customers the best experience possible.
You need a solution that evolves with you. Thinking long-term about this investment (we’re talking years, not months) could save you loads of time, money and effort.
With that big-picture consideration in mind, let’s break down everything you need to think about, end to end. There’s a lot to consider, but you’ll be glad you did — especially once you start seeing the benefits of the right bot platform.
1. Will the CX capabilities meet my business needs?
The use cases for CX automation are growing every day. Some brands use conversational AI as a first-stop virtual agent that resolves simple customer issues so human agents don’t have to. Others use it to deliver holistic CX that actually develops stronger relationships with customers.
What role will automation play in your CX today and years down the road? A free or cheap bot you can set up in a few minutes might be able to automate simple activities, like answering FAQs. But if you want to automate specialized tasks, provide deeper experiences and support, and take pressure off human agents, you’ll need a more robust platform. Here are some things to consider when selecting a platform that meets your CX goals:
Conversation focus: Whether you want to resolve customer issues, market a product or generate leads, determine what you want to achieve with conversational AI and whether the platform can deliver on that goal. Is the platform focused on marketing, sales or support? Does it let you do all of that and more?
Whether you want to resolve customer issues, market a product or generate leads, determine what you want to achieve with conversational AI and whether the platform can deliver on that goal. Is the platform focused on marketing, sales or support? Does it let you do all of that and more? Horizontal or vertical application: You’ll also want to know if the AI is horizontal or vertical. Vertical AI is optimized to address specific use cases and tasks. It uses data from a particular industry or context to train its algorithms. Horizontal AI is more general. Designed to be good at a lot of things and able to solve a wide range of problems across contexts (e.g., HR, sales, IT, etc.), horizontal applications can sometimes falter when it comes to completing more specialized tasks.
Your bot should be able to take on the burden of time-consuming tasks and help you serve customers better by collaborating with employees.
Workflow automation: Over the last few years workflow automation has infiltrated every corner of business, including CX, as companies realize the dramatic productivity boost it enables. Your bot should be able to take on the burden of time-consuming tasks and help you serve customers better by collaborating with employees. You’ll want to ensure human agents can trigger the bot to perform certain tasks and vice versa.
Over the last few years workflow automation has infiltrated every corner of business, including CX, as companies realize the dramatic productivity boost it enables. Your bot should be able to take on the burden of time-consuming tasks and help you serve customers better by collaborating with employees. You’ll want to ensure human agents can trigger the bot to perform certain tasks and vice versa. Personalization: In our data-driven world, customers expect a high degree of personalization in their experience. According to Accenture, 91% are more likely to shop with brands that provide relevant offers and recommendations. Given those expectations, you’ll want to explore what level of personalization the platform can offer. Having access to authenticated users, for example, allows you to deliver highly personalized service. When customers are logged in, you can use all of the data you have stored about them, from what they last ordered to any previous issues or complaints, to tailor their experience.
2. Does the dev process fit my internal capabilities?
One of the biggest missteps businesses make in building bots is misjudging the amount of internal effort it can take to do it yourself. Some companies sink lots of resources into building a high-maintenance bot that doesn’t deliver. What they really needed all along was the help of an experienced provider with a flexible platform. With that in mind, consider what the experience of building the bot will be like, including these factors:
Customization: Is the platform fully programmable and is it possible to run custom code? Make sure you can build a complete solution that can be extended in every aspect, including custom triggers and elements to accommodate more complex steps in your workflow.
Is the platform fully programmable and is it possible to run custom code? Make sure you can build a complete solution that can be extended in every aspect, including custom triggers and elements to accommodate more complex steps in your workflow. Level of coding required: What level of coding suits your internal capabilities: no code, low code or deep code? And what does the platform you’re considering require? Can anyone use the app? Ideally the platform is customized to your comfort level and flexible enough for stakeholders to build and edit the app. Check to see if it supports a visual editor, which is more accessible for non-technical users.
One of the biggest missteps businesses make in building bots is misjudging the amount of internal effort it can take to do it yourself.
Programming language: What’s the programming language? Will it be easy for your team to learn? What resources are available to get them up to speed?
What’s the programming language? Will it be easy for your team to learn? What resources are available to get them up to speed? Support: What support is available through the build process? Understand what channels the provider uses to communicate with your team, what professional services they offer, how they manage the project, whether there is an active roadmap with opportunities for feedback and what depth of documentation they provide.
3. Can it integrate with my existing systems, processes and brand?
Connecting to your existing ecosystem is one of the secrets to building a satisfying, frictionless and personalized experience for your customers and employees. Consider these key things:
Depth of integration: Know which enterprise platforms and tools you need to connect with and evaluate whether the platform is capable. You’ll want to integrate with all aspects of your tech stack, including your backend system and existing tools, so data gets to where you need it.
Know which enterprise platforms and tools you need to connect with and evaluate whether the platform is capable. You’ll want to integrate with all aspects of your tech stack, including your backend system and existing tools, so data gets to where you need it. Messaging channels: Does the provider support the customer-facing channels you already use? Do they have their own live chat? Is there on-page or in-app support? And do these options align with your processes and workflows? Ensure you can be present 24/7 on all the customer-facing channels you need, on both mobile and web.
Connecting to your existing ecosystem is one of the secrets to building a satisfying, frictionless and personalized experience for your customers and employees.
User interface (UI): When it comes to what users see and interact with, can you create a look, feel and experience that aligns with your brand personality? Is there a rich UI toolkit? Look for sophisticated UI elements that help make conversations with customers easier and faster.
4. Is it flexible enough to evolve with my business?
Customers’ needs can change and so can the world we live in — rather drastically, as the coronavirus pandemic has shown. The best bot platforms give you the flexibility to adapt your CX program over time as your business context evolves. When considering the flexibility of the solution, make sure it meets these criteria:
Commitment level: Some companies shy away from platform offerings because they’re worried about getting locked into a particular solution. To avoid that, you’ll want a platform that gives you ownership of your solution, data and natural language understanding (NLU) models, so you have the flexibility to walk away at any time if you decide you need to pivot. (More on that in the next section.)
Some companies shy away from platform offerings because they’re worried about getting locked into a particular solution. To avoid that, you’ll want a platform that gives you ownership of your solution, data and natural language understanding (NLU) models, so you have the flexibility to walk away at any time if you decide you need to pivot. (More on that in the next section.) UX enhancements: Does the platform expand and scale to support user experience enhancements? Over time, can you introduce new ways to improve their journey? Consider features like proactive messaging, which helps them along the way before they ever have to reach out to support.
Does the platform expand and scale to support user experience enhancements? Over time, can you introduce new ways to improve their journey? Consider features like proactive messaging, which helps them along the way before they ever have to reach out to support. Customer volumes: Can the platform support an increasingly higher volume of customers as you grow? Make sure there are no limits to how much you can take on — or how successful your CX program can be. You need a provider that supports your growth and high performance for the long haul.
5. Does it use natural language understanding and how does it work?
While a simple rule-based bot works for some applications, more advanced interactions use NLU as well, which allows bots to make sense of words, intent and even sentiment. Intelligent bots built on NLU correctly analyze, process and respond in a natural way, even if the input contains slang, jargon or spelling and grammatical errors.
Every bot platform will vary in terms of its NLU. Here are some things to consider:
Ownership: Be aware of who owns the NLU model in case you need to switch platforms. If the provider owns it, then you won’t be able to export the model to a new platform and you’ll lose all of the time spent training it — amounting to thousands of phrases and significant amounts of data.
Be aware of who owns the NLU model in case you need to switch platforms. If the provider owns it, then you won’t be able to export the model to a new platform and you’ll lose all of the time spent training it — amounting to thousands of phrases and significant amounts of data. Type: Is the NLU from a third party or proprietary? Typically third-party NLU, such as Google’s best-in-class Dialogflow, is the stronger option. Some platforms use white-label Dialogflow or a subpar version that’s less accurate and has a lower F-score.
Is the NLU from a third party or proprietary? Typically third-party NLU, such as Google’s best-in-class Dialogflow, is the stronger option. Some platforms use white-label Dialogflow or a subpar version that’s less accurate and has a lower F-score. Languages: Think about what languages your customers speak. Does the platform support all of them?
6. What are the deployment options?
Whether you host the bot yourself or use a cloud service provider, you’ll need a stable hosting environment that gives you the flexibility to expand if and when you need to. When weighing bot deployment options, think about these factors:
Hosting: Depending on your business, you may want the provider to take care of the hosting and scaling. Decide whether you want hosting on prem or in the cloud, and evaluate what the platform can offer. Look for secure, scalable hosting in any region.
In order to keep customer and enterprise data safe, you’ll need full support for encryption of sensitive and personally identifiable information (PII).
Speed and responsiveness: When it comes to delivering good customer service, 73% of customers say valuing their time is a brand’s most important differentiator. To support your CX goals, conversational AI needs to respond quickly, resolve issues efficiently and be available 24/7. Make sure the bot’s latency is a top priority for the platform. Delays are barely noticeable when they’re between 100 and 300 milliseconds. A delay of over 300 milliseconds will feel like the bot is “thinking”, but anything over 1,000 milliseconds could lead the customer to switch tasks.
When it comes to delivering good customer service, 73% of customers say valuing their time is a brand’s most important differentiator. To support your CX goals, conversational AI needs to respond quickly, resolve issues efficiently and be available 24/7. Make sure the bot’s latency is a top priority for the platform. Delays are barely noticeable when they’re between 100 and 300 milliseconds. A delay of over 300 milliseconds will feel like the bot is “thinking”, but anything over 1,000 milliseconds could lead the customer to switch tasks. Compliance and security: Is the platform an enterprise-level solution that meets your requirements for information access, permissions, compliance and security? In order to keep customer and enterprise data safe, you’ll need full support for encryption of sensitive and personally identifiable information (PII). Enterprise-grade permissions ensure you only give access to team members in accordance with your company’s rules.
7. What performance insights are available?
I think we’ve shown that CX automation can transform your business over many years, helping you achieve higher levels of customer service, satisfaction and retention. To optimize those results, you need access to rich data insights that let you learn, grow and continuously improve. Consider how well the platform stands up to performance-related requirements, including:
Analytics: Can you analyze bot performance? Does it have built-in or external analytics? Look for out-of-the-box analytics and a reporting dashboard for the most important metrics, as well as full performance and event logs with customizable retention periods. Consider full event tracking of your users, including transcripts to know how they interacted with your bot so you can identify areas for improvement. To keep your data scientists happy, make sure the platform lets you track or export bot data to your data centers.
Can you analyze bot performance? Does it have built-in or external analytics? Look for out-of-the-box analytics and a reporting dashboard for the most important metrics, as well as full performance and event logs with customizable retention periods. Consider full event tracking of your users, including transcripts to know how they interacted with your bot so you can identify areas for improvement. To keep your data scientists happy, make sure the platform lets you track or export bot data to your data centers. Continuous learning: Does the bot improve over time? Conversational AI should become more sophisticated as it processes more data about how customers communicate and what information they need. The best platforms allow you to understand your missed intents, flow funnels and if your bot is meeting its goals.
The takeaway
Building a bot is like most things in life: you get out what you put in. And while the fix you need isn’t a quick one, that doesn’t mean it has to be complicated, resource-intensive or expensive.
It should, however, be flexible. Your CX strategy evolves as you go, incorporating new customer insights and offerings. And, since the purpose of conversational AI is to support that strategy, your bot needs to be able to adapt too. The answer? A bot platform delivered by experienced partners who give you the flexibility to expand and the support to modify your CX — whenever and however makes the most sense for your business. | https://medium.com/think-outside-the-bot/7-things-to-consider-when-choosing-the-right-bot-platform-for-your-business-bef8b7b7c3d1 | ['Dani Stock'] | 2020-12-07 18:27:05.380000+00:00 | ['Chatbots', 'Conversational Ai', 'Automation', 'Customer Experience', 'Bots'] |
The Entrepreneur’s Essential Financial Tips | Small businesses owners should conduct an annual assessment of their personal finances. Owners of small businesses have much the same concerns as everyone else, except they are personally responsible for the fortunes of their enterprise. In a sense, a small business is like a family. And these are important families in American economic life. After all, small business is vital to the U.S. economy, employing half of private-sector workers and creating two-thirds of net new jobs, according to federal data.
Here are 10 entrepreneur essential financial tips:
10. Budget/Saving. The general financial planning rule is that you should save AT LEAST 10% of your income on an annual basis. You should also review short-term and long-term goals to ensure you are saving enough to meet your objectives.
9. Maximize Contributions to Retirement Plans. Depending on the size of the company and number of employees, there are many different methods to save for retirement. On an annual basis, business owners should work with their accountants/advisors to determine the most appropriate savings vehicle. Retirement plans include: 401(k)s, individual 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts, Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRAs, Roth IRAs, defined benefit and defined contribution plans. This will not only help achieve the goal of saving 10% of your income, but it also can help minimize taxes.
8. Create/Review Estate Planning Documents. It is important to create wills, living wills, medical and financial power of attorney documents. These documents should be reviewed annually as your personal goals and estate laws change.
7. Life Insurance. Various types of life insurance are available, including whole life, variable life, universal life, universal variable life and term policies. They provide a death benefit when the owner of the policy passes away. It is important to review your policies yearly to ensure the coverage is adequate to protect your loved ones. Also, financial situations may change, and you may no longer need the full amount or type of coverage you own.
6. Disability Insurance. Statistically, you have a greater chance of premature disability than premature death. Therefore, it is very important to own adequate coverage to provide for you and your dependents if you are not able to work. Annually, you should review your policy for the type and amount of coverage.
5. Business Insurance. As a business owner, it is important to own insurance that will allow your company to run if you are unable to actively participate in its daily operations. This insurance may be used to hire a person to substitute for you, or to replace income from your business if the company no longer exists.
4. Long-Term Care Insurance. Due to the increasing costs of health care, long-term care insurance policies are evolving to deal with them. Many older policies have become more expensive to maintain or no longer provide enough coverage to meet long-term care expenses. Each year, review the costs and necessity of these policies.
3. Tax Planning. Annually, you should meet with your accountant to discuss tax-planning strategies. Tax laws frequently change. In addition, there may be changes to your business that could affect your taxes both at the business and individual level.
2. Investment Allocation. Review your entire investment portfolio to ensure it is allocated to meet your current and future goals. As your goals and needs change, your portfolio allocation should be readjusted accordingly.
And finally, last but not least on the list of the entrepreneur’s essential financial tips is — Educational Planning: 529, Coverdell, Uniform Gift to Minors Act (UGMA), Uniform Transfer to Minors Act (UTMA) Plans. Much like health care costs, college education expenses have increased well beyond average inflation levels throughout the past decade. This is a surprise but it is seriously worth noting!
And there you have it, The Entrepreneur’s Essential Financial Tips!
R. Kenner French, is an executive of VastSolutionsGroup.com, an author of two books, a keynote speaker, and lives on an island — Bainbridge Island, WA. | https://medium.com/@vastsolutionsgroup-com/the-entrepreneurs-essential-financial-tips-3cf316ff568a | [] | 2020-12-04 17:03:05.916000+00:00 | ['Taxes', 'Financial Planning', 'Investment', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Retirement'] |
How to Use the iOS Translation App Like a Pro | How to Use the iOS Translation App Like a Pro
Now that the Covid-19 vaccine is around the corner, leisure travel and tourism is set for a triumphant comeback. The Apple Translate app released with iOS 14 is a handy tool with features like voice translation, offline translations and conversation mode — you get the essentials to avoid miscommunication as you get out and into the wild once again.
Like most of Apple’s utility apps this one contains the essentials; let’s call it utalitarian: It avoids superfluous features. Its competitor, the Google Translate app does have one advantage and pretty good one — the ability to take a snapshot of a document and translate it on the fly (Whaaat?). Since Apple’s released one of its own, the market must be juicy, so let’s get started.
Translating text using the simple interface
Whether you’re studying French, German or Russian, it’s super easy to translate to English, just launch the app and type or talk:
Most of the tools you’ll use are available on startup.
Tap the Translate app icon to launch it. Select the two languages to translate. Tap on the Enter text field to type, or tap the Microphone button and say the word or phrase you want to translate. When the translation is finished, you have these options:
● Replay the translation by tapping the Play button.
● Bookmark the translation as a favorite by tapping the Favorites button.
● Go old school and look up a word by selecting it and tapping the Dictionary button.
● You can also select any word in a phrase to display it’s meaning.
● Tap and drag up the drawer handle to reveal more definitions.
The Dictionary can be opened by tapping any word in the translation as well.
When a word or phrase is underlined, tap it to reveal more suggestions.
The Favourites list comes in handy if you have commonly used phrases, like dietary preferences, to access them quickly. All bookmarked phrases or words can be accessed by tapping the Favourites tab at the bottom.
One of the best translation apps for travel
Tilt the screen sideways to enter Conversation Mode. This feature allows you to select two languages and speak back and forth with another party. The only caveat is that you must speak at a steady pace and emphasize pronunciations, otherwise the app will use the closest word it recognizes.
To give you an idea how valuable this feature is, imagine speaking to a waiter, ticket agent, bus boy, police officer or any emergency personnel and you’ll understand why this feature is amazingly simple to use, and useful.
The high-contrast screen isolates important messages with voice playback available.
Flip your iPhone on its side. Tap the Microphone button and speak. Tap the Pause button to freeze the screen and read the text. Tap the Play button to listen or play back the translation.
Offline translation and Automatic Detection
The iOS Translation app lets you download languages for offline use. They do take up memory space, but you won’t have to worry being left to fend for yourself when your iPhone is out of range from a cell tower, or if you’re in a jungle or a desert, or simply stuck with an unreliable service provider.
You can choose from 11 languages to download and translate:
Arabic
Chinese (Mandarin)
English (US)
French (France)
German (Germany)
Italian (Italy)
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese (Brazil)
Russian
Spanish (Spain)
Automatic Language Detection enables jumping into conversations quickly.
Tap on either Language Selector button. Tap the Download button to store the language on your iPhone. Tap Done. To delete the stored language swipe left > tap the Delete button.
While on this screen you can also switch Automatic Detection to On or Off. This lets your iPhone detect what language either person is speaking:
Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and toggle Automatic Detection On or Off. Tap Done.
Tip: One last item that you won’t find in other tutorials is that you can also use voice dictation as you speak into the microphone. For more information on how to use Apple Dictation, check out my tutorial on this topic.
The following screenshots demonstrate how a typical conversation in a might look like, while you are using the app in a foreign country: | https://medium.com/@roguescript/how-to-use-the-ios-translation-app-like-a-pro-999de81785dd | ['Rogue Script'] | 2020-12-11 22:59:35.424000+00:00 | ['iOS Apps', 'iPhone', 'Travel Tips', 'Translation', 'iOS App Development'] |
I Don’t Want a Rockstar President. | I want a president who is bad at selfies. Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash
I don’t want a rockstar president.
I don’t need a president who can YEET or DAB or does it for the gram (dabbing is old, by the way — We hittin’ the woah now).
I don’t need a president who coke Tweets at 2 a.m. to other countries with nuclear bombs.
I don’t need a president with rapper-style beef with other presidents.
I don’t need a president who is too busy competing with other rockstars to focus on things like healthcare, human rights, immigration, and debt.
I need a president who does not know how to use Snapchat because they are busy reading feminist theory, gender theory, and the constitution.
I need a president who does not know which filter best suits their dick.
I need a president who uses words and knows what they mean.
I need a president who is well-spoken enough that they can be easily translated into other languages.
I need a president who knows that some millennials are almost 40.
I want a president who doesn’t think it’s beneath them to know more than one language…fluently.
I want a president who has tried to live on minimum wage and realizes how much it blows.
I want a president who has had to pull all-nighters just to be able to afford college.
I want a president willing to fight in the wars they start.
I don’t want a president who has to spend most of their presidency defending against allegations.
I don’t want a president I’m ashamed of when I travel abroad.
I don’t want a rockstar president. I don’t want an entertaining president. I don’t want a president who makes my phone light up with new, grotesque headlines day after day.
I don’t want a president who breaks the internet.
I want a boring one.
I want a qualified one. | https://medium.com/are-you-okay/i-dont-want-a-rockstar-president-4dc5ae2e1612 | ['Lisa Martens'] | 2019-06-22 16:20:54.394000+00:00 | ['Elections', 'Humor', 'Politics', 'President', 'Satire'] |
Work From Home — An Introvert’s Perspective | We are introverts!
As soon as our world was hit by one of the most disastrous pandemics, there was a steep increase in organizations adapting remote work as the final resort to continue their operations.
It perfectly made sense as there was a dire need to maintain social distancing and break the exponential curve. In a time when people can’t go to their offices, school, or any other places — it was a golden opportunity for companies offering remote work or team collaboration suites to increase their customers.
And, yes, we did see blatant one side marketing from corporates to encourage remote work. The problem doesn’t lie in promoting remote work — the real issue is that none in the media paid heed to about one-third or half the population — yes, the infamous introverts!
Every second article or video on the internet stated how remote work is revolutionary and how much employees would benefit from it — saving commuting time, travel expenses, etc., etc.
But what about employees who are introverts? These people are the most misunderstood in society. Every second, people think introverts are shy, suffer from social anxiety, or, simply put — are ineffective communicators.
There are several other myths related to introverts. Still, the fact is that they are often misunderstood and awarded with ridiculous adjectives such as arrogant, cocky, full of himself, and what not!
The hard truth that everyone is unaware of — except introverts — is that they are selective interactive. They are quiet because, unlike extroverts, they first need to know the other person to open up a bit more.
Introverts do take more time to form bonds, just because we are not easily available to everyone. We have our own sacred space that we expect our colleagues to respect.
Now, where does it causes trouble in a remote work scenario? The answer is plain simple: introverts vs. extroverts — the team collaboration and bonding process is unpredictably hampered.
The miscommunication arises because of introverts' nature and the understanding of extroverts — especially those who are new to the organization as they don’t know the introverts in-person.
Remote work solutions can always bring all stakeholders on a single platform, but they can never replace the basic necessity for creating trust — face-to-face interactions.
Please don’t scream video conferencing inside your head! That crappy solution can only be good for formal meetings, not when you need to create a bond between people of opposite personality types.
Of course, introverts will not speak up unless there is an utmost requirement. And, don’t you even think of those boring online team engagement activities.
The bottom line is team bonding and trust are two critical ingredients of your business success, and you will have to put in more effort to establish these core values in your team.
Whatever the differences may be — introverts and extroverts should keep them aside and bear until the offices are restored to normalcy. Having face to face conversations during lunch and coffee breaks are irreplaceable by any work from home solution and can only solve the issue of team members respecting each other personality types.
Being an introvert doesn’t make you abnormal and being an extrovert doesn’t make you act cool. We must believe in the concept of the individuality and try hard to respect each other's opinions — the only way forward to a peaceful coexistence otherwise the war between introverts and extroverts may end in broken dreams and unachieved business goals.
P.S. I am an introvert. Couldn’t sleep at night and thought to write something close to my heart.
P.P.S I belong to a rare personality type — INFJ (rarest personality types which account for only 1–2% of the overall population).
Source: Very Well Mind
If you are an extrovert, then I would like to hear the other side of the story too. What issues you are facing during this work from home period? | https://medium.com/@himtyagi/work-from-home-an-introverts-perspective-f148ae8390d9 | ['Himanshu Tyagi'] | 2020-12-09 21:23:20.817000+00:00 | ['Team Collaboration', 'Team Building', 'Business', 'Work Life Balance', 'Introvert'] |
Toxic work culture | When employees fight between them for wrong reasons, or there is competition for wrong thing or smart people stop providing feedback- that’s a signal of a toxic culture. It stops people to enjoy work and put out their best. Work is extremely transaction at that point and it would be impossible to get some good output from this kind of team. If I have a chance to lead a team, I will remember to -
Give people the space to think, say and express loudly
Trust people and build relationships
Solve their problems so that they solve mine
Appreciate their good works
Be respectful on providing feedback
Never be an asshole
Provide monetary and ornamental awards for good works
Manage team with compassion
Never react. Always interact | https://medium.com/@pintsalt/toxic-work-culture-8f057b10c4c4 | ['Pint Salt'] | 2020-12-15 04:35:56.229000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Corporate Culture', 'Work'] |
What’s My Prompt? Day 1: Bodega Cat | As a creative challenge to myself to close out 2020 with inspiration, I decided to do What’s My Prompt. Encouraged by brainstorms at work and inventive spirits like my friend Bianca and the Mo Betta Live crew, I’ll take creative prompts I come up with, along with prompts from others.
I won’t go over 10 minutes of thinking and typing either. The constraint applies the pressure to accelerate my ideation and make something.
This unrefined work of Jeff will either show me an ingenious side of my mind or serve as a reflective reminder that my creative spirit is still a work in progress. Most likely it will demonstrate both sides of that coin. I did something similar on a blog long forgotten where I would write nonstop about whatever and wouldn’t spellcheck. I think it was called “Spellcheck Not Included” or some shit. Needless to say, this new challenge is a long time coming. I plan to do this all December. The best time to start is now, right? Cool. Let’s set it off with Bodega talk
What’s My Prompt?
Write a 1 paragraph narrative from the perspective of a Bodega Cat | https://medium.com/@jeffjohnson/whats-my-prompt-day-1-bodega-cat-3a8369e87401 | ['Jeff J.'] | 2020-12-01 22:23:22.790000+00:00 | ['Bodegas', 'Prompt', 'Creative Writing'] |
Environment and Inhumanity | A dialogue from animated film The Jungle Book, characterizes elephants as, “The elephants created this jungle. Where they made furrows with their tusks the rivers ran.”
Nature gives us everything.
The Environment, on hearing this word, creates an image in our mind, in which we see trees and plants laden with fruits and flowers, the rivers that make the noise of continuity, the tranquil and immaculate picturesque reservoirs, the snow sheet covered clouds, so many rare flora-covered mountains, greenery covered plains, forests and many animals living in them. Whether it is the desert or the poles of our earth made of ice, it is the environment for all of us humans, whose shadow or rather say that under the protection we have a happy and prosperous life.
Nature wants some sympathy from us.
The truth is that we cannot even imagine our environment at once when thinking about it. Just understand that this is the environment that contains the infinite ocean and the infinite sky inside you. So where is the detailed study possible?
The meaning of Environment can be taken in a broad way.
There is a different environment of the house we live in, the room we sleep in, the roads we travel, the morning walk, where we play, the office we work in, the restaurant we eat. And we can also change all these according to our requirements.
But the environment that is in our urban areas is in a groaning, injured state of pollution. He needs complete recovery. The environment of our rural areas has also started showing signs of disease, which if not tested and treated in time, their condition will become as miserable as that of cities. Rich in natural wealth, our forest areas which were till now protected, are now offering unmatched tourism, commercialization, pollution and the needs of an unruly population.
A recent report found that every 6 seconds, a forest area equal to a football field is razed to meet human needs and to be settled.
Therefore, what environment we want to live in, and what environment we want to give to the coming generation, depends on our choice. If we want to live in concrete jungle instead of trees, then it is our desire. If we want to open the doors and windows of our houses to face the duality of pollution instead of the pleasant cold winds, then it is our desire.
There is talk of preserving our environment, or rather it is trying to save whatever it is. Because the period of preservation seems to be passing.
A number of international, national or regional meetings, seminars, treaties are being held. Every major and small country of the world participates in these campaigns. The United Nations also campaigns for environmental protection. The ridiculous and worrying thing is that even in these campaigns, the country has kept these campaigns as a mere show and artificial effort in view of its personal interests.
But between all these things two arguments are clear that,
“The environment doesn’t want us, we need the environment.”
And “the environment needs not only conservation but also fixed improvement.”
There are many natural assets in the earth’s environment, there are other rare creatures too, which we humans have the responsibility to protect, they are not unjust to humans, because we have also caused them the most harm.
Elephants are worshiped in India.
On 5 June 2020, when ‘World Environment Day’ was being celebrated. A few days before this, some inhuman beings killed a pregnant, hungry elephant in the state of Kerala by feeding a fruit full of explosive substance to the temptation of easy diet. This act cannot in any way be called a sign of human qualities.
The explosion after eating that fruit must have caused immense pain and distress to the elephant, with the dream of becoming a mother, whose imagination is dishonest, but still that pregnant calmly took place in a stream without harming any other creature. After three days of unimaginable suffering, she gave up her life and proved herself to be a superior creature to humans.
Humanity is unforgivable for this act. | https://medium.com/presentink/environment-and-inhumanity-4ff7fd056978 | ['Satyam Pathak'] | 2020-12-27 05:46:54.496000+00:00 | ['India', 'Elephants', 'Nature Writing', 'Environment', 'Environmental Issues'] |
Co-creating a better future with Comunal: Expanding to Mexico, investor behavior, and other uncomfortable truths - Part 2 | Puedes leer este artículo en español aquí.
Read part 1: Co-creating a Better Future With Comunal - Part 1
I asked Ernesto a question that had been bugging me: Why use a .co domain for a space born in Peru? (Two-letter domains are national domains and .co is Colombia’s.) Was it a decision made from the heart (because of the implied meaning, like collaboration, coworking, community,…) despite the fact that it would harm their online positioning, especially at the beginning?
“Comunal was born as comunal.pe but someone hacked into our account and we lost it. It wasn’t too bad because I had been thinking for a while that we should target the region and not be seen as such a local player. When that happened they decided to move to comunalcoworking.com to boost the category “because at that time nobody understood what we were doing.”
In those years, it was common that not even the people in your family were clear about what you were doing. In fact, “my grandmother thought that I had some kind of mental problem when I left P&G” Ernesto explains, “and she told my mom ‘Little Ernesto is not ok… talk to him.’” Ernesto’s solution was to take his mother and grandmother on a tour through one of their spaces in Lima’s financial district so that both of them would understand.
Comunal positioned itself very well. “We built the coworking category in Peru but then we found that it had a bias towards small business.” Before you start objecting, Ernesto’s words does not refer to what coworking is or is not, but rather to the meaning that the greatest percentage of people associate with the term — it has to do with how you optimize your efforts. “When I started the project I give it a name and a surname: Communal Coworking. I created the category, I want to own that. But when I started to push big companies I told to myself now is the time to take it out and the reason for .co is exactly as you mentioned: it stands for collaboration, companies, collaboration,…”
Many local leaders from across Latin America are starting to make the jump to other countries. In the case of Comunal, their expansion has already begun and they have chosen Mexico City (CDMX) as their first stop. Although the potential of the Mexican market, and specifically that of CDMX, is beyond doubt, what would seem natural is to make the jump to a market like Bogotá: “the natural thing for Colombians, Peruvians and Chileans is to move within these three countries, but…
If you think about all the labor-hours you have to dedicate to open a new country, the most logical thing is to invest it where you can potentially have the greatest return. It is better to do it in the biggest city of the region (in coworking) and according to all the data I have analyzed this is Mexico City.
I can add two hours to the flight [compared to the flight to Bogotá] but I get a much bigger market. However, greater opportunity implies greater risk, since it is a market in which there are already well-established competitors that stand out in the region.” What is clear to me from Ernesto’s reasoning is that he does not back down from a good challenge.
That was just the first of three reasons that led him to the Mexican market. His background in mass market products provides the second: “It is a market that is very similar to the Peruvian one. We led many initiatives in Peru that were replicated in Mexico and just worked because the culture and consumer behavior is similar. I had been thinking about it for twelve years and it was natural for me that Mexico it would be the next country.”
The third and last reason Ernesto mentions is that they saw that his value proposal was relevant to Mexican companies: “Our differentiation is in the customer service and that we work the sense of community from the construction of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
Comunal Insurgentes Sur Ave. Mexico City
In November 2019 they inaugurated their space on Insurgentes Sur Avenue (CDMX). “We had a very good start and we are waiting for the current situation [with COVID-19] to stabilize a little more to resume the upcoming openings.” I guess you can imagine what my next question was. “Days before the general lockdown of the country I had landed in Lima from Mexico City having almost closed my next location. Clearly the project was put in standby, and I still can’t reveal the location, but I’d like to take it up again soon.”
Far from the complication of some of its competitors’ websites, Comunal’s website is tremendously simple and communicates what it has to communicate. That’s all. There are only two partners that stand out: Endeavor and Grupo Wiese. I asked Ernesto about the relationship they have with both partners.
Of Endeavor they elaborate: We are part of the international Endeavor network, which allows us to have access to talent and their mentors in Lima, at the same time that it impels us to enter other markets. I wanted to know how this materializes in the day to day and expansion project of Comunal. “I’m in love with Endeavor: I think they have a spectacular purpose. I feel identified with that purpose and often depend on their support. Endeavor is a global network of entrepreneurs and basically what they do is push you to think big. Pre-Endeavor I was not even clear that I wanted to take Comunal to Latin America: for me it was a friend who made the suggestion and we did it. You feel cool saying you are an entrepreneur on the weekends when you have a full-time job with good corporate pay. When I went through the Endeavor process, which was enriching, I was challenged and told: ‘Why don’t you make it bigger? Why not Latin America?’”
This is where this new vision of what Comunal could become was born.
“When I entered Mexico, they helped me a lot, because you don’t have a name, you don’t have a track record, and in Latin America they ask you a lot of questions like: ‘Who are you? Who supports you?’ There is a certain level of mistrust in business and that is normal. In this sense, Endeavor is a good introduction. In fact, when I wanted to hire the first employees [in Mexico] it helped us attract talent because it gave them confidence.
Comunal Insurgentes Sur Ave. Mexico City
One of the factors not discussed much in the industry is how WeWork’s failed IPO may have protected the sector to some extent from the COVID-19 crisis. Events in the second half of 2019 made many investors decide to be more cautious, and some coworking chains slowed down growth rates or halted them completely (except for launches they already had underway).
“There have been two major industry investment milestones in our business: the fall of WeWork pre-IPO and the second milestone is the current moment.”
The fall of WeWork, Ernesto tells us, drove away a group of investors, but those who had been “investing or analyzing our industry very thoroughly, who knew and understood the real drivers of it, fell even more in love with it.” That knowledge made them understand why WeWork fell:
“It grew at all costs, and that’s wrong. In technology you can grow at all costs and fix it later, because of the medium, but to grow in a business with a structure like ours, where you sign long term contracts, it is not easy to fix backwards.”
In fact, Ernesto confesses: “I have been in negotiations against them and they accepted a lot of space at an absurd price. The math didn’t work and then, when you saw their rates, you knew they were selling at a subsidized price.”
“This type of investor was more reassured after the fall of the US giant, since they had read the situation correctly, and this global player, which previously acted like a car without brakes, now has someone behind the wheel who is responsible and will not do anything crazy.
The next question was very clear: Did the investors who understood this business know [as did all of us who have been in the industry for some time] that the valuation of WeWork was wrong? “In my case I never used the valuation of WeWork as a reference to make an investment proposal. I always said: ‘Here are the responsible coworkings, and up here coming out of the curve is WeWork.’ I would disassociate myself from them, I would show them that I was from the scheme of the responsible ones and within that scheme I had my own set of valuations much more realistic. It was part of my pitch: I had to get away from them, to understand why they fell. I have to show my knowledge of the industry, that I understand why what happened happened.”
In summary, the fall of WeWork strengthened the investors who knew the industry. “[The investors who had deep knowledge of the market] were validated in their decision making, valuations were corrected, and the global player with their infinite wallet and irresponsible behavior is now in control.”
Comunal Insurgentes Sur Ave. Mexico City
WeWork competition, in situations like the ones Ernesto mentioned above, caused the market to break down and it reminds me of a metaphor that Scott Galloway uses in the book The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google when talking about Amazon. “Competing against Amazon is like having a competition to see who can dive the most, but Amazon dives with the largest oxygen tank in the world.”
“WeWork clearly expanded the category [in volume], but it destroyed value.
That same investor, at this stage, given the pandemic, is now analyzing how things are going: “You know very well, what they always criticized us for was how will [coworking] work in a crisis? Well… we are going through the test now and those investors are seeing not only those who are surviving, but those who are best prepared for the rebound.”
We continue to talk about the impact of COVID-19 and Ernesto responds: “I am a true believer, and this crisis is making me believe even more, that coworking and flexible offices are the future of work: This is the most efficient and intelligent way to consume workspace”.
“I am very sure that this crisis that we are living through is going to accelerate our industry much more strongly than before.”
“The accelerator until a year ago had clearly been WeWork, constantly pushing global growth disproportionately and crossing certain limits. They may have gone too far, but they boosted the category everywhere in the world, and that is real. But the next big driver of the category will be post-COVID-19 stabilization. Companies are realizing that they need flexible schemes, they need the flexibility to grow or shrink, to be able to combine remote work and central offices, to have rotating schemes over the workspaces. All this can only be given to you by our industry, only via flexible spaces, not by a traditional landlord.
This, far from being a simple theory, is backed up with real data from the information requests they receive. “The number of leads doubled from pre-pandemic times. Until a month ago the conversion was very low, there was a lot of interest but too much uncertainty, but since then people have already begun formalizing workspace contracts with us. Billing, for obvious reasons, is still in a valley but I think who can best endure this and who is best prepared for the rebound. That’s where our effort should be and that’s where we’re focusing, because whoever prepares better for the rebound is going to win.”
Next you can read the third and last instalment of this mini series with Ernesto de Olazával
If you aren’t already using Cobot as your coworking management software, give it a go! You’ll find that our features can help you run your coworking space more effectively and grow your community. Just sign up for a free trial or a live demo session. And if you have questions, our support team is all ears!
Happy Coworking! | https://blog.cobot.me/co-creating-a-better-future-with-comunal-expanding-to-mexico-investor-behavior-and-other-37eaf8e8aa4e | ['Marc Navarro', 'Coworking', 'Organization Consultant. Content Director Of The Coworkingspain Conference. Created The Coworking With Social Return Concept.'] | 2020-11-20 09:53:33+00:00 | ['Cobot en español', 'Interviews', 'Coworking Latin America'] |
Your Child Is Hurting My Child’s Feelings | When my son was in first grade, a mother approached me one school morning. Our two boys, both almost seven at the time, had played together once or twice a week as well as at school for several months, but that had come to an end. I knew why.
Your son doesn’t want to spend time together
“Something has happened,” she said. “Your son doesn’t want to spend time together…and my son is so hurt. Can you talk with your son, and convince him to play? Do you know what happened?”
Yes, I did know what happened. Or at least, from my son’s point of view; he’d caught out the other boy in a silly lie, and my son had zero tolerance for lies… to the point that, when his dad attempted to smuggle in a bag of treats to the movie theater to save them the cost of concession stand goodies, my son refused to go to the movie. “You’re not supposed to do that!” he said. For him, any form of dishonesty was abhorrent. He also told those who gave him gifts that he wasn’t certain if he liked it…but he might in a few weeks… You get the picture!
I could not tell the mother this, so I said something about how, really, it was up to my son. She looked taken aback by that.
Easy assumptions
I did, of course, feel badly that her son’s feelings were hurt, and that he was missing a friendship, but I was also stymied by the easy assumption that these two boys, by dint of being boys-born-in-the-same-calendar-year, should just be friends. As if it was that easy.
I so wanted to point out to her that we were two 35 year old women — did that mean we had to hang out and be friends? We had grown up in the same town, had three sons, had many mutual acquaintances…we should be besties by all counts! (Or we might just bore each other…?)
How do our children finds peers and mates?
People make choices about just who they choose to spend time with. They develop thoughts and feelings about who they most enjoy. They learn this by coming to know their own selves.
In my son’s case, he’d spent a number of hours with this play-mate, and then had put thought into why he was choosing not to spend time with him. (It went beyond the one “lie.” But is not relevant here.) I wanted for him to pay attention to these thoughts and his decision; I wanted for him to understand himself and his needs, and how to find solid friends. To put together a picture of what he looks for in others.
While the search for a mate is many years off, and he may have very different ideas about the finding of “the one” than I have, I could see even all those years ago, and with a young child, that these childhood steps to growing form who we become and how these “things happen” in life. If you don’t have the freedom to choose who you spend time with in primary school, how will you ever determine connections in later life?
In a lifetime, how many truly good friends do we have? A small number of really close people, if we are lucky, and a bigger circle of those we enjoy and get along with…but wouldn’t want to travel or hike with…
If we do not allow our children to come to this knowledge, by their own “trial and error,” how will they know?
It might mean some hurt feelings…but the learning is on all sides, both kids, and parents (if the parents are going to get involved!). We may need to talk through this — from both sides.
On speaking with my son, I realized he had tried to explain to the other boy, but that had proven not easy. I was glad he had tried though.
The path to becoming
Life is complicated, and so are human emotions. To stand back and allow children to reach out, pull back, be hurt, and then find those who do become friends, and see those friendships grow — it is all on the path to becoming.
Learning to say “no” to something, and to someone, is a significant step in growing up. | https://medium.com/a-parent-is-born/your-child-is-hurting-my-childs-feelings-cbde286e3392 | ['Alison Acheson'] | 2020-12-03 14:22:47.096000+00:00 | ['Growing Up', 'Parenting', 'Children', 'Play', 'Mental Health'] |
Learn How to Get a Microsoft Certification | Microsoft is one of the greatest organizations that exist in the realm of data innovation nowadays and getting a Microsoft Certification can give you a truly decent preferred standpoint. Acquiring such accreditations can demonstrate the information you have with regards to Microsoft administrations and items. This sort of Pass Certification is certainly essential when you might want to find a decent line of work as a Microsoft proficient. Obviously, affiliating with Microsoft can give all the more significance your portfolio. All things considered, it is a regarded organization and numerous different organizations on the planet perceive its capacities.
There are numerous canon printer setup aptitude levels with regards to a Microsoft Certification. These many incorporate IT Professional, Microsoft Office Expert, and being a Technology Specialist. So as to acquire this Pass Certification, you should pass various tests, contingent upon the course that you have taken. In sets aside some effort to get ready for a test, particularly in the event that you are not exactly acquainted with how the framework functions. In any case, on the off chance that you as of now have the ability, without a doubt, you won’t experience serious difficulties with the tests.
To step through an examination, the primary thing you have to do is to select a particular Certification that you need to have. Get the program that will be most gainful for your vocation. You should need to begin with the fundamental things and step by step through different exams. Getting a Pass Certification for Microsoft is neither hard nor simple. For whatever length of time that you have both the aptitudes and learning, you won’t have any issues with the tests advertised.
Quickly taking the test without planning for it is never suggested. You might need to look at certain courses and survey materials offered everywhere throughout the Internet. The Pass Certification is a standout amongst the best hotspots for materials in getting a Microsoft Certification, just as other related IT courses. Some are given demo packs, course books, and so forth. You may likewise get model inquiries for the tests.
When you think you are prepared to step through the examination, you may contact the Pro measurement Services, the one that offers all IT Certifications, including Microsoft Pass accreditations. They will give you a calendar for the test. All tests are led on the web. On the off chance that you truly have the right stuff in Microsoft, passing is exceptionally conceivable. The score ranges from 1 to 1000. In any case, the score that you have to get changes on the test you have taken. By and large, you should get around 60% of the all out inquiries so as to be a Certified Microsoft proficient. After the test, your qualities and shortcomings will be appeared. | https://medium.com/@aditiiconnect/learn-how-to-get-a-microsoft-certification-2eec445f5771 | ['Aditi Jain'] | 2019-05-06 10:58:03.098000+00:00 | ['Certification'] |
Ponder Featured by Hackernoon | Ponder Featured by Hackernoon
The Blockchain Combination: Love, Money and Tech.
From Hackernoon “Since October last year Ponder has had a product in the dating marketplace that has brought high-impact matchmaking into the internet age by homing in on the talents of mutual friends and others.
With 70,000 registered users and rising, the Ponder app is already off to a good start, but it’s much more than just another formulaic dating app. Ponder will leverage the unique decentralising properties of blockchain technology to quantify the value of trust and relationships.”
Read the full article here! | https://medium.com/theponderapp/ponder-featured-by-hackernoon-5c4d2661c89e | [] | 2018-02-04 18:45:52.581000+00:00 | ['Blockchain', 'Dating', 'Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Token Sale'] |
Why I Do Not Support All Black Women | As the Trump era [prayerfully] comes to an end, the manifestations of who Trump came to be still remain. When we look back on Trump’s presidency and analyze the administration’s appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the lack of economic support during a global pandemic, and the support of police brutality while halting police investigations, we would be remiss to neglect the peculiar right-wing interest of funding Black women for Trump.
As a young, Black woman, it brings me a lot of joy to call another fellow Black woman, “sis.” The cultural term innately establishes trust, unity, and implies that no matter what, I will always have a fellow Black woman’s back. We can argue, we can disagree, you can even be dead wrong, but I will never not support you because you are my sister, right? Wrong. When using this term, what worries me is our cultural love being so open and inviting, that it could actually jade our loyalty and assume good intentions in someone who looks like us, but is not for us. Many of us in the Black community have heard the saying, “all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk.” I challenge us to take an extra step of precaution before we invite just anybody to brunch and partake in bottomless mimosas.
During this election year, I blatantly noticed support for Trump coming from Black women running for office. I am not here to say being Black and Republican don’t mix, but I am here to say that being a Black woman who believes in Trump, does not. Trumpism is rooted in political ideologies that do not work for the collective advancement of Black women.
Kim Klacik, a far right Republican, was endorsed by Trump to replace the late Elijah Cummings (D) congressional seat in Maryland. Kim had no chance of winning the 7th district seat, but she did outperform the last Republican by 12,000 votes. As a novice Republican, she secured 28.1% of the vote. Despite her loss, Kim continues to use her platform that fuels a severe lack of concern for Black women. On November 13, Kim released two videos on Twitter explicitly saying COVID-19 is not a government problem. In fact, having restrictions should not exist because it hurts businesses and people should be responsible for themselves.
Black women are often the primary caretakers who sacrifice their health to care for loved ones, all the while maintaining work. Klacik suggests if you have an underlying health condition, you should simply stay away from people. Her opinions negate the challenges many Black women experience related to: healthcare affordability and accessibility, economic insecurity, and a caregiver role. She proceeds to say “sorry not sorry,” in the following video.
As much as I would like to support every single Black woman on this Earth, I cannot support a Black woman on the pretenses of race and gender. As a Black woman, a community organizer, and a researcher, I want us to take note of the right-wing tactic overtly placed before us this election. The right proudly endorsed a Black woman to secure as much of the Black vote as possible in a predominantly Black district. I encourage us to take a deeper dive and elect candidates who are committed to supporting Black women. My sisters, we cannot afford to support every Black woman because it will, and in some instances already has, cost us our children, our parents, our savings, and our lives.
I do not support all Black women. Order your meal to go, “sis.”
Sorry not sorry. | https://medium.com/@jbrown171/why-i-do-not-support-all-black-women-7d3d67c670e0 | ['J. Brown'] | 2020-12-21 21:30:30.779000+00:00 | ['Blackwomenmatter', 'Trumpism', 'Black Women', 'BlackLivesMatter'] |
WeGrow Ambassador Program | Ambassador program Starting January 3rd.
This program is the first step in our vison of creating a DAO with a self funding treasury, so that anyone with a dream can apply for a grant to start a new business or project under the Ethside umbrella. More on the community flag and DAO later.
We would like to give anyone in the world an opportunity to earn by working for the success of the project. Users may work in one of many ways to earn WG token. 200 tokens will be issued per week split between the hours put in. Individuals can do work throughout the week and email in their work with results to:
email us at [email protected]
Discord Name:
Eth address on polygon network:
Hours worked:
Jobs performed:
Any results:
Once hours are approved the tokens will be split between users the following week. These tokens will forever earn 3% of the 5% secondary sales royalties the the avatars bring in. Payouts from avatar’s secondary sales will be paid out monthly when the amount to be dispersed reaches a minimum of 2 ETH
With this we can provide jobs or a side hustle to anyone in the world that is willing to put in the work and bet on the success of themselves and the collective Mafia family.
WeGrow is our ambassador token on the polygon network. Users can participate in helping the project grow and earn a share of 200 tokens that are minted each week for 200 weeks. These tokens will recieve 3% ETH rewards monthly from avatar’s secondary sales forever. Rewards in ETH in the early days will be issued manually, later we will add a staking platform to stream Eth payments for the rest of time.
Available jobs, gigs, and talents examples.
promo materials
fan art
marketing services
advertising
twitch
invites
collabs
youtube
tiktok
bot builders
community events organizer
twitter spaces
podcasts
blogging
education/ tutorials
contributing art for upcoming NFT community to buy from upcomming artists
upcoming artist onboarding
edm and rap artist onboarding
creating music
game development
translation
administrative
website editing
SEO
if you have any hobby, profession, or skills and you would like to build something amazing together. Let’s hear what it is. | https://medium.com/@ethsidemafia/wegrow-ambassador-program-c5ff6c62239b | ['Nate Zee'] | 2022-01-02 20:14:55.380000+00:00 | ['Nftcommunity', 'Nft', 'Nft Drop', 'Nft Collectibles'] |
Migrating from AWS Glue to BigQuery for ETL | Photo by Andrew Ruiz on Unsplash
I documented our journey with AWS Glue pretty heavily https://tymlez-au.medium.com/
Why migrate?
I had been interested in AWS Glue ever since I saw the keynote on it at AWS re:invent a few years back, it seemed to have a really nice balance of “tools you know” vs “no setup”, and for a while it worked nicely.
It kind of filled the missing gap of Orchestration & Serverless that these tools often have.
Unfortunately in order to do this it has to wipe out some of the USPs that those tools have, and in doing so it creates complications.
AWS Glue served us well for our batch ingestions but it became clear very quickly that it wouldn’t scale to real time ingestion in it’s current version despite AWS Kinesis being a supported input.
We needed an alternative solution that was less painful.
Our Glue Pipeline
AWS Meter Data setup at TYMLEZ
In a nutshell out glue pipeline took in batch data that our Behind the Meter technology and Smart Meter readings dumped into S3 (more on this later as its important) and ran it through various scripts to ETL the data into what we require.
You can read more about the specific setup here: https://tymlez-au.medium.com/smart-meter-data-etl-systems-at-tymlez-5643e232dfbb
Orchestration was done serially via AWS Glue Triggers (e.g. when this step is done run the next step), unfortunately this meant that everything required deployment to use them each time, this slows down the development process massively and due to other problems (discussed here: https://tymlez-au.medium.com/aws-glue-is-a-mess-886cc1d13ca9) there was no easy way to set up an easy local environment to run these items manually.
In short — it was producing more hassles than it was solving.
Why GCP?
Simply — because of BigQuery. There is nothing on the market like Google BigQuery when it comes to processing huge amounts of data easily.
It comes down to simplicity, our workflow is quite standard when it comes to reading from devices, a device emits JSON every x minutes — we need to take that JSON and write it to our data warehouse.
AWS Flow:
Device -> “Processor*” -> Kinesis -> AWS Glue Table -> Athena
Getting Kinesis working with AWS Glue Tables was a near impossibility (and trying to develop this locally even harder).
GCP Flow:
Device -> “Processor*” -> BigQuery
*Processor is some form of processing capability like EC2, Lambda, Cloud Functions etc
The GCP flow just works, it works so easily that I can include the code right here that I use to ingest for Dev:
Once the data is in BigQuery then we just use a standard ELT pattern to mangle the data into a bunch of new tables as required and set them to run via cron.
Our pipeline now looks like this:
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE data_clean AS ( SELECT x FROM data…) CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE data_business AS ( SELECT x FROM data_clean…) CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE prediction_input AS ( SELECT x FROM data_business…) CREATE OR REPLACE MODEL usage_forecast OPTIONS(model_type=’ARIMA_PLUS’...
Notice that as part of this step with SQL we can also train a model directly from within BigQuery? Not only have we ETL’d our data into the required tables we need for BI and other reporting — we have also generated an ARIMA+ model for forecasting of the data based on a number of different inputs. Additionally we can separately use the same data to train an AutoML model for testing.
ML Pipeline — Sagemaker vs Vertex.Ai
Sagemaker is great, it allows for really clean deployment of models via the SAGEMAKER.invoke_endpoint request. It handles a load of things like creating endpoints easily for trained models to allow for predictions to be run against.
GCP has Vertex.AI which is similar to this although it is much less mature and doesnt support endpoint creation for AutoML models, at the moment it is much simpler to simply batch process the days prediction models and make them available in a BigQuery or other table which can then be queried via a static API.
This again can be done via Cron very simply by batch creating the days prediction_input based off previous days and running the batch prediction against the retrained model.
No need for step machines, triggers or anything — its all nicely idempotent too if things need updating intra-day.
Data Visualisation — Quicksight vs Data Studio
AWS has Quicksight as its BI tool, however I have never got on with it, it always seems too restrictive. Sometimes you want to just throw together a really quick dashboard to produce some exec or board level insights from data without spending hours on producing it.
Google has Data Studio, which in my opinion is a really nicely honed product that just feels like a true part of the Google Suite of products.
I can create a dataset and share it with anyone in our business to allow for specific BI dashboards to be created.
Who can then drag and drop charts and hook it up to easily understandable representations of data:
I particularly like the Blend Data interface which abstracts a lot of the underlying joins that need to be done in order to get the majority of the data out from the system and easily lets you join several tables to get the results you need:
Conclusion
Our journey with AWS Glue was a bit of a struggle once we started to dig deeper into the streaming functionality of it, the orchestration of so many layers added a huge overhead that we weren’t expecting and whilst most of that is handled within the AWS suite of products, there are just too many benefits to switching our pipelines over to GCP and BigQuery to be ignored.
Next steps are to finalise our deployment by using Cloud Composer (Airflow) to orchestrate the creation of each of the tables and provide a monitoring dashboard to help us detect failures and act on them.
Update — 13/09/2021
I will say that AWS got in touch with me after my previous article and I got on a call with the AWS Glue product team, in their words I had “hit pretty much every sharp edge possible” (seems to be a running theme with me — perhaps I should switch careers to QA engineer?), they have a bunch of exciting updates in the pipeline that should solve many of these items, I look forward to seeing them because I do still maintain that for less complicated batch processing of data AWS Glue is an excellent product with great visibility.
About the author
Dan Voyce — CTO
Dan leads the technology strategy, architecture and development at TYMLEZ.
A start-up veteran of over 20 years, with a specialty of building high performance development teams and leading them to successfully deliver solutions for some of the largest names in Australia and the UK. | https://towardsdatascience.com/migrating-from-aws-glue-to-bigquery-for-etl-ac12980f2036 | ['Daniel Voyce'] | 2021-09-14 14:47:50.560000+00:00 | ['Etl', 'Data', 'Vertex Ai', 'Bigquery', 'Aws Glue'] |
Why Study IT Management? | In an ever-changing business landscape, it is increasingly more important for companies and large organizations to invest in the best information technology services they can. Without maintaining the quality of their IT, it quickly becomes impossible to conduct daily business and maintain their integrity. For round-the-clock availability, maximum performance and security, organizations need IT professionals which are where study IT management comes in.
Why is a Master’s in IT Management so Important?
A degree in IT Management will prepare you for many things. For instance.
Your Master’s will help you understand what your employees are doing. Whilst it is true you don’t have mastery of all the tasks your team members perform, it is still important to familiarize yourself with business-critical issues those you have expectations of how to handle. Masters will teach you how to support your employees as they seek to overcome the challenges they face. Good team leadership skills are essential and taking a master’s degree gives you opportunities to practice and refine them. They are a key part of what makes a good IT management.
Once students graduate, each is certified as being equipped with the knowledge, skills, and understanding they need to deliver IT services effectively so that wherever and however IT is used, its use contributes towards achieving the organization’s goal.
As a graduate, students possess up to date knowledge and understanding of the latest advances in a wide variety of IT-related fields. They will know how to best use it so clients get value for money. They will also know which kind of organization would benefit most from them.
Better Job Positions After Study IT Management
After taking a master’s degree, you will be in a much better position to set achievable goals for your team. As a manager, it will be your responsibility to monitor team progress and to maintain and reinforce a shared vision to deliver the best outcome.
The people skills you refine during your degree will help your professional reputation and attract a good team. Because a Master’s degree in IT management offers its students a curriculum based on the whole IT industry, as an employer, you will be able to recognize and develop new talent.
After you graduate and begin offering your professional IT management services, you have the option to become an outsourcing solution. It is a great way to earn a living if you need a flexible way to work. These days, it’s pretty usual for mid to large organizations to outsource all their IT requirements for the IT specialists. Managers to work off-site remotely.
Final Words
You may already be working as an IT professional or know you have the technical skills. But if you’re contemplating a transition into management, a Master of Information Technology Management is well worth considering. The program provides a solid foundation to help you design, deliver and operate business technologies more effectively. | https://medium.com/visualmodo/why-study-it-management-9c3463f3a8ff | [] | 2020-04-21 00:38:34.034000+00:00 | ['Management', 'Study', 'Study Abroad', 'It', 'Why'] |
My Law Firm Interview Was On A Hotel Bed In West Hollywood | How One Kind Act Boosted The Confidence Of A Young Lawyer
Photo by Dmitrij Paskevic on Unsplash
I first met Mr. Baker (not his real name, but close enough) on a hotel bed in West Hollywood; an unlikely place for a law firm interview. I was there for a job fair where thousands of baby crab lawyers crawled over one another in an attempt to escape the terror of student loan debt, crippling self-doubt and the sinking realization that living at home with overbearing parents forever was a distinct possibility.
All of us crabs scurried about into various hotel rooms that had seen better days and smelling faintly of a combination of Pine-Sol, dirty feet and French fries. We were all there for the same reason — to beg any law firm, shadowy government entity, rich old lady with legal problems, whoever, to give us a job. None of us had any practical skills (why teach lawyers how to be lawyers in law school?), but we could recite the Statute of Frauds authored by Lord Nottingham in 1677 with aplomb.
I entered the hotel/interview room exuding false confidence while trying to simultaneously remember the name of the law firm I was interviewing with; make eye contact and smile (not too much eye contact to look creepy and just enough of a smile to not look desperate); and keep the waist of my ill-fitting suit from slipping. I bought it on sale at Nordstrom, so that should count for something.
When I shook Mr. Baker’s hand and met his gaze, I immediately felt at ease. He smiled slightly, but warmly and his eyes seemed kind. He looked like a lawyer to me, at least like the ones that I saw on T.V., with his navy blue suit, white shirt and red power tie. He had thinning brown hair that needed a trim and was graying around the temples (like very important people in stressful jobs.) He had a firm handshake and calm demeanor that said, “I’m nice and fair,” with just the right hint of, “Don’t test me.” Gotta respect that in a person.
I glanced at the hotel bed — the only place to sit. I sat down tentatively, started talking about myself and before I knew it, my allotted 15 minutes was up. As I rose to leave I could hear the clawing of the other crabs at the door.
I was pleased that I was called back for a second interview to the firm’s offices in downtown L.A. I walked into the firm’s conference room and what seemed like hundreds of eyes turned towards me; not really hostile but not really warm either. I instantly felt overwhelmed. I sat down at a conference table that could easily seat 50 people. It was the largest table I had ever seen. All those eyes waited for me to speak. And all that I could say was, “Wow. This is a big table.” With that, I knew that I had blown the interview and my one chance for that prestigious law firm job. To my surprise, the eyes collectively chuckled and miracle of miracles, I was hired.
For a new lawyer, the elation of gainful employment immediately turns to dread. The first few weeks (strike that, years) of being a new lawyer, the feeling of being a fraud, a grifter, a con artist is never really far from your heart, head or blank computer screen. You feel as if you know nothing, yet you are supposed to dive into the cavernous firm law library and come to the water’s surface with a pearl — a well-researched and expertly crafted legal argument. What the hell? I’m not a Supreme Court Justice!
I received my first assignment and spent one solid week diligently researching in the law library. I didn’t feel very confident about my legal research nor did I think I belonged on the 25th floor of a 75 year old law firm in its mahogany paneled library. I felt what I perceived as disapproval from the portraits of the firm’s founders that I walked by every day on the way to my office.
I heard the snarky comments around darkened corners.
“There aren’t many women in litigation.”
“She better be able to write, he’s tough.”
“They tried to hire one once, but . . .”
“Where did she go to law school?”
My first litigation department meeting was in the conference room around that same enormous conference table; young and seasoned lawyers alike. Mr. Baker, the Chair of the litigation department strode in confidently as always. But his booming voice was clipped and he seemed mildly annoyed. Everyone around the table subconsciously slumped in their chairs and looked down at their yellow legal pads.
“I read all of your briefs,” Mr. Baker said. “They need work. I’ve made corrections in red.” Then he dismissively tossed a pile of documents on the table.
“But, Ms. Bridges.” He turned to me as did everyone else at the table. I felt his deep voice penetrate my sternum. “Ms. Bridges, your brief was . . . .” (This pause seemed like an eternity, and it was). “Your brief was excellent. It was well written and well-researched. Have your secretary make copies to distribute to the group. Thank you all.” And then he was gone.
What remained in the conference room as the crab lawyers clawed at the pile of legal briefs covered in scribbles of red pen was uncertainty, mild panic and the realization that weekend plans would need to be scrapped. But I felt on top of the world because what remained for me was the greatest gift. A feeling of confidence and belonging that I carry with me always. | https://medium.com/swlh/my-law-firm-interview-was-on-a-hotel-bed-in-west-hollywood-ccc018dbf550 | ['Maj-Le Bridges'] | 2020-01-17 10:51:09.898000+00:00 | ['Lifestyle', 'Lawyers', 'Law', 'New Job', 'Humor'] |
21C Superpowers, episode 6: Sacred Vessel | In a network, 8bn sacred vessels, experiencing pictures at an exhibition.
POODLE
A generative sequence, a superset of OODA, Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.
perceive, observe, orient, design, learn, enact
Perceive
“Each voice, each side of the duet, mimes a bit of the other’s melody while adding its own inflection and style, and then is echoed by the other in turn — the two singing bodies thus tuning and attuning to one another, rediscovering a common register, remembering each other.
It requires only a slight shift in focus to realize that this melodic singing is carrying the bulk of communication in this encounter, and that the explicit meanings of the actual words ride on the surface of this depth like waves on the surface of the sea.”
— David Abram
Observe and Orient
“In this paper, I aim to show how a phenomenological naturalism might be seen as a necessary step towards the development of a non-reductionist and non-scientistic approach to scientific inquiry.
A key to this is a reconceptualization of nature as inclusive of meanings and of mind. It is a conception developed by Merleau-Ponty, especially in his later ontology of nature, and one that is shared by American pragmatist philosopher of science, C.S. Peirce (1839–1914).
For both philosophers, meaning must be understood in terms of an ontology which is relational rather than atomistic, and dynamic or processual rather than static and substance-based. For Merleau-Ponty this is an experientially-derived ontology; for Peirce it is a more conceptually-based one. In this paper, I explore this connection between these two philosophers in two stages.
The first is by reference to Peirce’s theory of signs or semiotics. More specifically, I look at the application of this theory to the study of biological processes as developed in Peirce-inspired biosemiotics.
In the light of this, I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s account of intentional relations in nature might be articulated as semiotic relations, and can serve as a philosophical basis for a non-reductive biological science.
I then turn to questions relating to the ontology of nature. I explore Merleau-Ponty’s experientially-based “ontology of flesh” and Peirce’s distinctive form of naturalism to show affinities at this ontological level.
These affinities consist in commitments to a reality that includes possibility, meaning, temporality, and final causation — that is, an ontology which is far more inclusive than that of conventional positivistic science.”
— Maurita Harney
Design and Learn
Producing a premise, place and scene for enacting, in a context of connectivity, generativity, play, mutuality, learning, dialogue and nature.
Enact
Enaction as a win^n superset of action, including inviting into shared understanding.
21C Superpowers, episode 6: Sacred Vessel | https://medium.com/@johnkellden/21c-superpowers-episode-6-sacred-vessel-13d461934e3d | ['John Kellden'] | 2019-10-05 09:59:47.200000+00:00 | ['Transitions', 'Superpowers', 'Mindset Shift', 'Collective Intelligence', 'Conversations'] |
Crypto News: Digital Sports Collectibles are the ‘New Baseball Cards’ | If you enjoyed sports as a child then you may have had an affinity for baseball cards. Small pieces of cardboard paper with your heroes on the front and miniature numbers on the back representing that player’s stats.
These trading cards were as good as money ‘back in the day’. Children would be given packs of these cards for their birthday or other events — sometimes kids would buy the cards themselves. But once they had the cards, and some valuable ones for that matter, it was then time to trade.
For children, the act of trading cards was likely the first time they would negotiate with a person their age.
In 2018, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology has provided us with a new way to trade baseball cards. Digital Crypto Collectibles present a secure and decentralized way to collect digital assets.
Many of you will probably scoff at this and ask: “who in the world would want to collect digital cards?”
As it turns out, the market for these cryptocurrencies is massive. Digital collectible card games (CCGs) will generate $1.5 billion (yes Billion with a ‘B’) in 2018! It is projected that this market will generate $2 billion worldwide by 2020.
Those who are in this market generally play collect, trade, and hunt these digital assets on their phones and enjoy collecting these cards by partaking in tournaments or games. However, 3/4 of these players usually buy additional digital collectibles in addition to the ones they earn/collect.
Major League Baseball is officially the first sport to take advantage of the market by partnering with Lucid Sight to release crypto baseball cards that feature players from all 30 major league franchises. They will aim to release 15,000 crypto collectibles before the end of the 2018 season.
“That is 100% one of the strategic goals of this initiative,” said Kenny Gersh, MLB’s executive VP of gaming and new business ventures. “Collecting items related to your team, engaging with your team in a new way. For me, say the Red Sox win the division in a couple months, I want to buy something that symbolizes that. These will be event-based things — those moments in sports that happen that you want to remember and cherish, and have a sense that you were there, even if only digitally.”
What this Means for Crypto…
This is a sign that millennials are starting to embrace the changes in technology specifically blockchain and cryptocurrencies. According to a study in 2013, the average age of digital card collectors was just under 22-years-old, and it’s pretty safe to say that the age has probably not differed too much since 2013.
If anything, the age of users has probably become younger.
Blockchain technology is becoming more widespread and advanced each day. People around the globe are beginning to adopt the concept and treat it like it is a second-coming of the internet.
What these digital collectibles are doing is integrating the younger generations into accepting blockchain and cryptocurrencies as a normality. This similar to how the generation prior began accepting high-speed computers and smartphones as the norm. Soon enough blockchain won’t be a concept but rather a necessity for everyday life, to interact and trade valued items in a decentralized way. | https://medium.com/instant-sponsor/crypto-news-digital-sports-collectibles-are-the-new-baseball-cards-b28f75fa7a1f | ['Mike Murphy'] | 2018-08-22 13:01:01.153000+00:00 | ['Baseball', 'Crypto', 'Sports', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Bitcoin'] |
Every State Has Its Price | Every State Has Its Price
A Look at BEA’s Regional Price Parities
BEA recently released the 2014 data for their Regional Price Parity series. This data series tracks cost of living for “parity” goods and services across states and metro areas. Much of its conclusions are driven by housing, but not all.
Prices vary widely across the US. But here, let me just share the map the Tax Foundation made, because they do a good job:
As you can see, there are big price differences around the country, from expensive New York and California, to much less costly Arkansas and Mississippi. These cost differences partially offset often-observed income differences between some of these states, such that real income varies less between states than nominal income, as much of the higher income earned in richer states and cities is just poured into paying higher prices. Ultimately, the only people who reliably enjoy higher real incomes in the richer states are people who own lots of rental property.
But the Tax Foundation covers that stuff pretty well. I want to look at something else.
The BEA publishes this data annually because, no surprise here, it changes. Because there’s inflation, prices change, and they don’t change at the same rate everywhere. Now, there’s a fun argument that can bubble up from the wells of economic history about the geographic distribution of price changes due to monetary supply shocks *coughCantillonEffectscough*, I really just want to illustrate how prices have changed at different rates in different states.
So, let’s illustrate!
The above map shows in darker colors states with a larger increase in cost of living, and in lighter states with a smaller increase. Of course, the fastest increase of all wasn’t in any state, but in the District of Columbia, too small to see here. DC’s price deflator rose 13.3 points. It went from being the second highest-priced area in 2008 (behind only Hawaii), to being the highest priced place as of 2014. Congrats, DC, you’re not just expensive, but you’re getting moreso, and fast! Prices also rose by a large amount in New Jersey, North Dakota, New York, Colorado, Maryland, West Virginia, Vermont, and Washington.
Meanwhile, the slowest price increase was in Arizona, followed by Nevada. Both had middling-level prices in 2008, and now have just a bit-below-middling prices. Major declines in housing prices are probably at work here, as Nevada and Arizona have both seen fairly fast price rises in the last 2 years. Other lower-price-increase states were Idaho, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Montana, Florida, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and New Hampshire.
But it should be noted, every state saw rising prices over the period. Arizona rose from a deflator index of 100.4 to 105. DC rose from 115.4 to 128.7. The cheapest state in the union, Mississippi, rose from 86.2 to 94.5. There have been no inflation-proof states.
The headline IRPD doesn’t let us break out subcomponents. But if we look at just the regional price parity core data, we can, so let’s do that. Let’s see what’s driving these trends.
First of all, we need to look at the headline regional price parity. The RPP differs from the IRPD because, each year, the RPPs are calculated fresh, showing each state’s price level as a ratio of the national average price level. So for example, West Virginia’s RPP in 2008 was 87, meaning its cost of living was about 87% of the national average. In 2014, its RPP was 88.9, meaning it had risen to about 88.9% of the national average; i.e. West Virginia got more expensive compared to the rest of the nation.
States colored in red saw their price relative to the national average rise, while states colored in blue saw their relative prices fall. In other words, even though there was inflation around the country, meaning that prices were higher everywhere, prices were a lot higher in, say, North Dakota, but only a little higher in Nevada, compared to the national average.
RPPs are pretty stable. As you can see from the scale, most states had less than 1 percentage point change in relation to the national average. By and large, local area price levels are not exceptionally volatile, but reflect enduring differences in local economies. That said, which states are cheap and which are not can and probably will change over time.
But what drives that change? Well, unlike the IRPD, the RPP is broken out by some categories. | https://medium.com/migration-issues/every-state-has-its-price-daddfba78fed | ['Lyman Stone'] | 2016-08-05 20:51:22.295000+00:00 | ['Economics', 'Game of Thrones', 'Migration', 'Housing', 'Urbanism'] |
Saudi Arabia sends Joe Biden mixed messages | By James M. Dorsey
Saudi Arabia appears to be drawing lines in the sand as the kingdom prepares for a new era in relations with the United States once President-elect Joe Biden assumes office in January.
In doing so, the kingdom is seemingly signaling that it is willing to go only so far in seeking to get off on the right foot with a Biden administration.
Saudi Arabia seems to be betting that Mr. Biden will be cautious not to rupture relations with the kingdom despite criticism he expressed at times in strong language during the US presidential election campaign.
The Saudi bet is not unreasonable.
US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Samuel D. Brownback echoed this week what is US policy and could well be the attitude adopted by a Biden administration.
Asked why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave Saudi Arabia a waiver even though his department designated the kingdom in its recently published annual religious freedom report a Country of Particular Concern under US law for its failure to respect freedom of religion, and apostasy and blasphemy laws that include the death penalty, Mr. Brownback said:
“Saudi Arabia is a country that the administration and prior administrations have deemed as having a strategic interest… It’s the major, obviously, Gulf state country. It’s a major source of trade… We have a great deal of frustration at times in what Saudi Arabia does… But there’s also a national interest here, and that’s something that you’ve always have to weigh back and forth in diplomacy. And in this case, the Secretary weighed it that we needed to provide the national interest waiver.”
Recent events indicate the parameters of the Saudi bet.
The kingdom seems prepared to accommodate both outgoing President Donald J. Trump as well as Mr. Biden by engaging with US and Kuwaiti efforts to lift the 3.5-year-old Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led economic and diplomatic boycott of Qatar.
Mr. Pompeo, Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in law and Middle East negotiator, and other senior US officials have travelled to the Gulf in recent weeks to push for a breakthrough in the Gulf stalemate as well as Saudi recognition of Israel in the wake of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UAE, Bahrain and the Jewish state.
Kuwaiti, Saudi and Qatari officials have said they were progressing towards a resolution as Gulf leaders gear up for a summit later this month of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups the region’s monarchies. The UAE, alongside Bahrain and Egypt who joined the boycott, indicated their support for an end to the dispute.
At the same time, recent Saudi actions send the message that recognition of Israel and human rights constitute red lines that the kingdom, at least for now, will not cross.
Saudi Arabia last week, shortly after the visits by Messrs. Pompeo and Kushner, sentenced Walid A. Fitaihi, a Harvard University-trained doctor and dual US Saudi citizen, to six years in prison for allegedly tweeting his support of the 2011 popular Arab revolts and for obtaining US citizenship while studying in America.
Mr. Fitaihi was released from pre-trial detention in 2017 but, together with his family, barred from travelling abroad.
The Trump administration has repeatedly raised his case with Saudi authorities, including during the recent high-level US visits
Similarly, Saudi Arabia transferred to a terrorism court the case of Loujain al-Hathloul, one of 12 women’s rights activists, accused of conspiring with foreign organizations hostile to the kingdom, on the eve of last month’s virtual G20 summit of the world’s largest economies hosted by King Salman.
The move came amid a groundswell call for their release in advance of the summit.
The court’s first hearing in Ms. Al-Hathloul’s case was held last week on the day designated by the United Nations as International Human Rights Day.
At about the same time, a campaign on Twitter, believed to have been instigated by the government, accused detained former crown prince and interior minister Mohamed bin Nayef of plotting to topple his successor, Mohammed bin Salman.
The campaign was in response to concern expressed by British parliamentarians and Mr. Bin Nayef’s lawyers about his circumstances.
Saudi Arabia’s moves contrast starkly with those of the UAE that appears geared towards anticipating expected changes in US foreign policy once Mr. Biden takes office.
Having already taken a lead that pleased both the outcoming and incoming US president by becoming the first Arab state to recognize Israel since 1994, the UAE this week said that it was launching a review to strengthen its human rights framework.
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said the review would focus on women’s empowerment, humanitarian aid, religious tolerance and workers’ rights. The official made no mention of political rights such as freedom of expression, the media and assembly that are one focus of criticism of the UAE by human rights groups.
By contrast, in what appeared to be another shot across Mr. Biden’s bow and rejection of Trump administration pressure, former Saudi intelligence chief and ex-ambassador to Britain and the United States, Prince Turki bin Faisal, launched a blistering attack on Israel.
Speaking days before Morocco and Israel announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between their two countries, Prince Turki described the Jewish state as “the last of the Western colonizing powers in the Middle East.”
He charged that Palestinians were “incarcerated in concentration camps under the flimsiest of security accusations — young and old, women and men, who are rotting there without recourse to justice.”
It was not clear whether Prince Turki’s remarks reflected not only King Salman’s sentiment but also that of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who reportedly met recently with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
A recent public opinion poll suggested that Saudis are divided in their attitudes towards relations and commercial and cultural exchanges with Israel.
Forty-one percent of those surveyed in September saw relations with Israel as a positive development while 54 percent were opposed. Yet, the percentage of those who favored commercial and sports exchanges jumped substantially to 37 percent compared to nine percent in a poll three months earlier.
Prince Turki made his remarks as the kingdom was seeking to lower tensions with Turkey, a major challenger of Saudi leadership of the Muslim world, and like the kingdom, uncertain about its relationship with the US once Mr. Biden takes office.
If Saudi moves to draw a line in the sand implicitly acknowledge that relations with the United States could become rocky, rapprochement with Turkey suggests that Riyadh and Ankara see virtue in seeking common shelter. That could prove to be a fragile structure in a part of the world where the sands shift continuously.
A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, and Castbox.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute | https://medium.com/the-turbulent-world-of-middle-east-soccer/saudi-arabia-sends-joe-biden-mixed-messages-d8dd27b9c70c | ['James M. Dorsey'] | 2020-12-11 10:22:50.898000+00:00 | ['Biden', 'United States', 'Saudi Arabia', 'Trump', 'Middle East'] |
TechNY Daily | TechNY Daily
Keeping the NYC Tech Industry Informed and Connected
1. NYC’s Beyond Identity, a passwordless identity management platform, has raised $75 million in a Series B funding. Investors included NEA, Netscape founder Jim Clark and Koch Disruptive Technologies. The company seeks to replace passwords “with fundamentally secure” X.509-based certificates. (www.beyondidentity.com) (VentureBeat)
2. NYC’s Ro, a healthcare technology company, has acquired Workpath, a Richmond, Va.-based platform for healthcare companies. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Workpath’s platform, which coordinates on-demand, in-home care and diagnostic services, will remain a standalone platform but will also be integrated with Ro’s three digital healthcare clinics and pharmacy. (www.ro.co) (www.workpath.co) (Press Release)
3. Brooklyn’s Gotham Greens, an operator of tech-enabled greenhouses, has raised $42 million in a Series D funding. Manna Tree led the round and was joined by investors including The Silverman Group. The company also raised $45 million more in a debt round. Gotham Greens’ eight greenhouses, including facilities in Gowanus, Greenpoint and Jamaica, Queens, sell 35 million heads of lettuce annually to retailers such as Whole Foods. (www.gothamgreens.com) (Forbes)
4. Long Island’s Soil Connect, an online dirt marketplace for the construction industry, has raised $3.3 million in seed funding. TIA Ventures and Heartland Ventures led the round and were joined by CEMEX Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Situs Real Estate, Altmark Group, AB Investment Group, J.G. Pertucci Company and Bazella Contracting. The company aims to eliminate the high costs and inefficiencies associated with the transport and management of soil. (www.soilconnect.com) (BusinessWire)
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Small Planet partners with the world’s most innovative companies to create inspired apps and websites. Development, UX design, monetization strategies, user acquisition, and more. Contact us. (Sponsored Content)
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5. NYC’s GoHenry, a pre-paid card and finance app for 6–18 year olds, has raised $40 million in a venture funding round. Princeton’s Edison Partners led the round with participation by Gaia Capital Partners, Citi Ventures and Muse Capital. The company now has 1.2 million members — which includes both parents and children — and has doubled its customer base annually for the last six years.(www.gohenry.com) (TechCrunch)
6. Car-sharing startup Turo is returning to New York. Seven years ago, the company left New York, its largest market, after a dispute with insurance regulators. Starting in January, small independent car rental companies will be able to list rentals on the Turo website and app. (www.turo.com) (Insurance Journal)
7. NYC’s Supergreat, an app for beauty enthusiasts, has raised $6.5 million in a Series A funding. Benchmark led the round and was joined by NYC’s Thrive Capital, TQ Ventures, K5 Global, Shrug Capital, Hannah Bronfman and Rent the Runway co-founder Jenny Fleiss. The community-based Supergreat app allows users to review, shop, and share tips on their favorite products. (www.supergreat.com) (BusinessWire)
8. NYC’s Welcome, an HR software developer, has raised $6 million in a seed funding. FirstMark Capital led the round. The company’s platform is designed to help organizations close candidate offers by providing a clear picture of compensation, particularly around equity. (www.heywelcome.com) (TechCrunch)
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Nazis and cryptocurrency: the evolution of Telegram | Nazis and cryptocurrency: the evolution of Telegram
How a tiny technology company became a platform for the far right, challenged authoritarian governments, and invaded the cryptocurrency world.
On March 24, Timothy Wilson, a 36-year-old white supremacist who had been on federal law enforcement’s radar for at least seven months, died in an exchange of gunfire with an FBI tactical team in Belton, Missouri, about 20 miles south of Kansas City.
Wilson, according to federal agents, was attempting to create a car bomb to use on the regional hospital in Belton, which he assumed was caring for coronavirus patients.
If you’re wondering what white supremacists see in the pandemic that might advance their cause, Wilson made it clear in a post on the messaging platform Telegram:
“If you don’t think this whole thing was engineered by Jews as a power grab, here is more proof of their plans…Jews have been playing the long game we are the only ones standing in their way,” he wrote under the name “Werewolfe 84”, in a post uncovered by The Informant, a website that reports on hate groups.
Timothy Wilson (Source: Facebook)
When you’re posting a selfie or sharing a cat video, Telegram probably isn’t the first social app that comes to mind. Unless you’re a true member of the digerati, you probably haven’t even heard of it.
But Telegram has an estimated 300 million users worldwide — the vast majority not white supremacists — and is growing. It may never become your favorite social media platform, but there’s a lot to like about Telegram.
It’s completely free and, unlike other social media, doesn’t vacuum up private information and bombard you with ads. It has also taken the right side in privacy fights with oppressive governments like Russia and Iran.
But there’s also the fact that the more unsavory groups banned from platforms like Facebook and Twitter — ISIS, Nazis, the far right conspiracy group QAnon — have all found a home on Telegram. The extremists have been so at home on Telegram that some refer to it as “Terrorgram”.
Telegram’s open door policy for extremists has long been known to law enforcement, journalists and academics. But Telegram may now be on the way to becoming a cryptocurrency trading platform, which could open up new avenues of financing for those very same hate groups.
And that’s something new and potentially troubling.
“Telegram has become a petri dish for extremism,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.
“The introduction of crypto currency can create a whole lot of networking that wasn’t previously there,” Levin said. “If propaganda is the motor oil of extremism, financing will be the gasoline.”
The Telegram story
Telegram founder Pavel Durov (Source: LinkedIn)
In 2006, Pavel Durov founded the Russian social network VKontakte, often shortened to “VK”, which was so successful that it became known as “the Russian Facebook.”
By 2014, after repeated disputes with the Russian security service, the FSB, VK had been targeted for acquisition by two companies with ties to President Vladimir Putin.
Durov lost control of his company, but ended up with a nice payout. According to the Moscow Times, he sold his 12 percent stake in VK for $300 million.
And Durov had a surprise. He and his brother Nikolai, a math and computer science whiz with expertise in cryptography, had been working on a new encrypted messaging service: Telegram, which was specifically designed to thwart the prying eyes of government security services.
Sometime around 2014, the Durovs and the Telegram team departed Mother Russia. In 2018, after refusing to provide encryption keys to the FSB, Telegram was banned by Russian government Internet censors.
The ban was never entirely successful. Telegram adopted a strategy of hopping from one proxy server to another, staying a step ahead of Russian censors. It remained available for most Russians and was even used by members of the government.
Last month, the Russian government lifted the ban on Telegram, effectively admitting that it had been defeated by Telegram’s hide-and-seek strategy.
“The Digital Resistance movement doesn’t end with last week’s ceasefire in Russia,” Durov wrote on his personal Telegram channel. “It is just getting started — and going global.”
Over its short life, Telegram has become known for two policies, both grounded in Durov’s bedrock libertarian philosophy:
A refusal to cooperate with snooping by governments all over the world (Russia, Iran, Indonesia, Bahrain, China, Pakistan, India), resulting in it being banned in many countries.
An open door policy to groups like ISIS, Nazis, and white supremacists, along with the far-right conspiracy group QAnon. Many of the groups landed on Telegram after being banned from platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
“I think that privacy, ultimately, and our right for privacy is more important than our fear of bad things happening, like terrorism,” Durov said at a conference in 2015.
But there’s more to Telegram than Nazis, terrorists and conspiracy theorists.
Pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong use Telegram to share information on abusive police officers. It has also become a popular messaging platform for the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency community. And respected news outlets like The New York Times, Bloomberg and Forbes magazine use it to promote their content, much as they do on Twitter.
Like many tech entrepreneurs, Durov has become something of a celebrity. In 2017, Bloomberg News reported spotting him “half-naked” on the hookup site Tinder.
In March, he shared wellness and lifestyle tips with his followers on Telegram. “In the last 15 years, I’ve had no alcohol, no caffeine, no meat, no pills and no fast food,” he wrote, adding that he limited his diet to nothing but fish and seafood.
To “improve will power,” Durov swims in the icy waters of Finland or Switzerland every winter. “If you ever faced the necessity to stay in a lake with a thin layer of ice on top for a few minutes, you are less likely to procrastinate when it comes to starting on a boring but necessary project,” he wrote.
When you sign up for Telegram, you get the following greeting: “Telegram is free and will always be free.“ It carries no ads. And some tests that I ran detected no personal data being sucked up for sale to advertisers.
All of which is laudable.
But it raises the question of how, exactly, Telegram stays afloat and continues to grow.
Monetizing 300 million free users
It’s not easy to determine where Telegram is actually located.
In addition to the server hopping strategy that defeated Russian censors, corporate records and statements by the company have linked it to locations in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Singapore and Dubai.
Currently, its corporate office appears to be in London, with an operations center in Dubai. Durov is a citizen of Saint Kitts and Nevis, which is part of the British Commonwealth.
Telegram is not a publicly traded company, which means it is not required to publicly disclose its finances. But there are hints about what keeps it afloat, the first being the reported $300 million payout Durov received when he sold his stake in VK.
“Pavel Durov, who shares our vision, supplied Telegram with a generous donation, so we have quite enough money for the time being. If Telegram runs out, we will introduce non-essential paid options to support the infrastructure and finance developer salaries. But making profits will never be an end-goal for Telegram,” the company said in a statement on its website.
There’s also the fact that Telegram appears to run lean and agile. The corporate analysis site Crunchbase estimates that it has somewhere between 11 and 50 employees.
And it’s not known for burning piles of cash acquiring other companies and products. Since its rollout in 2014, Telegram has remained laser focused on its core business: secure, private messaging.
Finally, and most interestingly, there’s Telegram’s cryptocurrency venture, rolled out in 2018, known as the “Telegram Open Network” or simply “TON”. The TON idea was to sell a blockchain-enabled crypto currency, much like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but known as “Grams”.
Visual representation of the “Gram” (Source: Bitcoinwiki.org)
Users would be able to buy, sell and invest in Grams. And — most important — each of Telegram’s 300 million users would have an online “wallet” that could be used to buy and sell goods and services with the cryptocurrency. If “User A” wanted to transfer funds to “User B”, it could all be done seamlessly using Grams and the Telegram platform.
The practical effect of offering the groups who populate the darker, extremist corners of Telegram easy access to cryptocurrency may be best illustrated by a white supremacist group known as the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM).
RIM, which seeks to re-establish a Russian monarchy, offers paramilitary training to extremists from Russian and other western European counties. In 2016 and 2017, two members of the far right Nordic Resistance Movement, who had been trained by RIM, carried out a series of bombings in Sweden. The targets included two sites housing asylum seekers.
In April, the U.S. government designated RIM a terrorist organization and placed sanctions on it, including a ban on any material support of the organization. But if that support were to come in the form of cryptocurrency, it’s likely that the transaction would already be complete by the time it was detected. The sanctions would be defeated.
And RIM, as it happens, is already on Telegram. It maintains an active recruiting channel, which is updated several times a day and has 487 subscribers.
Through analysis of blockchain data, it is sometimes possible to identify an account holder with “a high degree of mathematical certainty, “ said Hans-Jakob Schindler, a senior director at the Counter Extremism Project, an international policy organization that studies the extremist ideologies and financing.
“However, there is still a legal question whether such an analysis would be admissible in a court of law.”
Cryptocurrency ventures are often funded by an “initial coin offering” or ICO, which is much like the initial public offering that comes when a new stock goes on the market. The difference is that investors are buying coins, in this case Grams, instead of stock.
For the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Telegram ICO was in fact exactly like an IPO, except that the offering had not been properly approved and registered for sale with federal regulators. And for the SEC, that made it illegal.
By the time the SEC went to court in October 2019, seeking an order to halt the ICO, Telegram had already raised $1.7 billion from early investors. And according to the SEC suit, Telegram would soon be able to “flood” U.S. markets with Grams.
“Once Grams reach the public markets, it will be virtually impossible to unwind the Offering, given that many purchasers’ identities will be shrouded in secrecy, and given the variety of unregulated markets where Grams may be sold, including platforms that promise anonymity and encryption capability to mask transactions,” the SEC suit alleged.
A federal judge in New York blocked any further sale of Grams, which might have put an end to the prospect of Telegram’s 300 million users — white supremacists and QAnon among them — having easy access to encrypted financial transactions.
Or maybe not.
On April 30, Telegram announced that it would not be issuing Grams. But the software developed for selling Grams, including the “wallets” for every Telegram user, had already been made widely available by its developers on the open source sharing platform GitHub.
Within a month, at least three new initiatives based on the software developed by Telegram had appeared. And one, the TON Chinese Community, claims among its members companies offering a “TON mobile wallet” and an “open source client for Telegram.”
Telegram already offers a feature called “Bot Payments”, which allows developers offering goods and services to attach a “Pay” button to the bottom of their messages. When users tap the button, they are prompted for credit card and shipping information.
“Then you get what you paid for. Voila!” according to the Telegram promotion.
“Telegram is an open platform, so bot developers can implement the necessary APIs and accept payments from users starting right now, without lengthy approval dramas,” according to the promotion.
It is uncertain at this point whether the open APIs that Telegram already offers, in concert with the TON software, could be used by independent developers to offer cryptocurrency transactions to Telegram users. But a TON whitepaper published by Telegram said: “All these services can be integrated with third-party messaging and social networking applications, uniting the centralized and decentralized worlds.”
Telegram says it has no involvement in efforts to revive TON.
As for the $1.7 billion that Telegram took in from initial investors, it agreed to repay $1.2 billion to investors as part of its settlement with the SEC. It also agreed to pay an $18 million fine to the SEC.
“We look forward to continuing to pursue our other projects and avenues for innovation, and we hope the regulatory environment for blockchain technology in the US becomes more favorable for others in the future,” Durov said in a statement.
Far right groups
On June 21, the FBI and federal prosecutors announced that Ethan Melzer, a U.S. Army private stationed in Italy, had been charged with using an encrypted messaging application to share sensitive information about his unit’s upcoming movements with the Order of 9 Angels, also known as “O9A”.
O9A is described in court papers as a “Satanic anarchist organization” believing, among other things, that “Adolf Hitler was sent by our gods to guide us to greatness.”
According to the court papers filed against Melzer in Manhattan, he confessed that his goal was to “to facilitate a mass casualty attack” on his Army unit. The charges against Melzer do not mention Telegram specifically, but there are indicators pointing to Telegram as the platform used to pass the information to O9A.
First, the charges state that Melzer used the alias Etil Reggad. A check of Telegram shortly after the charges were announced turned up a user named Etil Reggad, pictured wearing a black ski mask.
Etil Reggad user information on Telegram. (Source: Telegram)
Second, the charges state that some of the planning for the attack took place on a messaging channel used by a neo-Nazi group known as the RapeWaffen Division, whose members promote rape as a weapon in race war and have connections to O9A. The RapeWaffen Division also has maintained presence on Telegram, although its public channel is no longer accessible.
Archived posting on the RapeWaffen Division’s Telegram channel (Source: ADL)
Telegram’s basic messaging features place it pretty much squarely in the same space as other encrypted services like Signal. But it has steadily added security and privacy features, such as end-to-end encryption of secret chats and the ability to easily delete messages across devices.
All of Telegram’s security features, however, don’t help white supremacists in their plotting if they aren’t careful about who they communicate with. And in at least two recent cases, they haven’t been.
The charges against Melzer state that while plotting the mass casualty attack on his Army unit, he was actually communicating with an FBI informant. Timothy Wilson, the white supremacist killed in a shootout with the FBI while planning an attack on a hospital in Missouri, had also been in touch with an FBI informant.
Levin sees the aggregation of extremists on Telegram as a tradeoff. “They’re obviously easier to track when they’re all on a large platform. But it’s also a bigger pool for them to recruit from,” he said.
In 2015, Telegram added a feature known as “broadcast channels”, which allows users to broadcast messages to unlimited numbers of followers, much as they can on Twitter. That feature is a benefit for groups seeking to recruit new followers.
“For clandestine radical right extremist groups, these public Telegram channels are indispensable for spreading their memes, forwarding content from similar channels and attracting new recruits,” wrote Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who tracks radical right activity online.
Telegram offers other benefits to its users, including the ability to store and share books, instruction manuals, videos and other content. A study by the Combatting Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy found that the file sharing feature had been particularly useful to the Islamic State and its followers. “Telegram has changed the landscape of instructional material distribution by developing a platform that combines extensive file sharing capabilities
in multiple file formats with lax regulation,” the study found.
Last year, Telegram apparently decided that when it comes to ISIS, there are limits. Europol, which acts as an information exchange for law enforcement agencies in the European Union, reported in November that it had collaborated with Telegram on the removal of terrorist content from the platform.
The Europol statement didn’t mention ISIS. But the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks radical right and jihadi groups online, reported that ISIS channels and accounts were in fact disappearing from Telegram, along with the accounts of many administrators of the channels.
“It’s unclear how Telegram’s removal algorithm worked, specifically, but it was far more targeted than anything the company had employed before,” SITE founder Rita Katz wrote in WIRED last month.
On June 23, there was further news about Telegram that might be alarming to extremists. The Russian news site KOD.RU reported that a database with information on several million Telegram users had leaked and been posted on the dark web.
No discussion of extremist groups on Telegram would be complete without touching on QAnon, the conspiracy minded group best known for spreading the theory that Democratic party leaders and government officials are members of an international pedophilia ring.
QAnon channel on Telegram (Source:Telegram)
QAnon and its followers, like other extremist groups, have been tossed from Facebook and Twitter. And like the others, they found a home on Telegram. QAnon maintains a channel called “Q Alerts” with 6,397 followers. Its on that channel that new statements from the group and its anonymous leader “Q” are announced to followers.
The FBI, in a law enforcement bulletin last year, described QAnon’s beliefs as follows:
“An anonymous government official known as ‘Q’ posts classified information online to reveal a covert effort, led by President Trump, to dismantle a conspiracy involving ‘deep state’ actors and global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring.”
It may sound ludicrous, but the FBI found that such theories from the political fringe are likely to “motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity.”
A QAnon follower with more than a dozen knives was arrested by New York City police in April after threatening in social media posts to kill former Vice President Joe Biden.
A month earlier, a Staten Island man, said by his lawyer to be influenced by QAnon, was arrested and charged with the murder of a Gambino crime family underboss.
Recently, some of the best known far right channels have been removed from Telegram, including “RapeKrieg” and “Terrorwave Refined.” It’s not clear whether Telegram is launching the sort of board cleanup effort that it used against ISIS, or is simply targeting a few of the worst offenders.
“It’s worth noting that there are several other channels still up that are part of the ‘Terrorgram’ network, which raises questions about why those were not removed,” Joshua Fisher-Birch, a research analyst with the Counter Extremism Project, wrote in an email.
“In short, this is a first step, but it’s unclear what happens from here.” | https://medium.com/the-innovation/nazis-and-cryptocurrency-the-evolution-of-telegram-10b30681c240 | ['Ray Robinson'] | 2020-07-20 18:10:35.586000+00:00 | ['White Supremacy', 'Telegram', 'Social Media', 'Cyrptocurrency', 'Technology'] |
Why Positive Thinking Works | From “Thought-Forms” (1905) by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater
Why Positive Thinking Works
Toward a Theory of Mind Causation
Why should positive thinking, “manifestation,” or the “law of attraction” work at all? Before you cry “confirmation bias!” (materialism’s equivalent of “lock her up!”) take a deep breath.
In my book The Miracle Club I propose a theory of mind causation. It may be wrong, it may be grossly incomplete, but I feel that we need to at least try to theorize from the intersection of testimony, science, and mysticism. It’s necessary, I believe, for our generation of seekers to do more than tell the same stories over and over. We must experiment, we must experience, we must have results — and we must attempt to come up with reasons why mind causation just might work.
I’ll start by quoting something that mystic Neville Goddard (1905–1972) said in 1948: “Scientists will one day explain why there is a serial universe. But in practice, how you use this serial universe to change the future is more important.”
It was a striking observation, because it wasn’t until years later that quantum physicists began to talk about the many-worlds theory. Physicist Hugh Everett III (1930–1982) devised the concept in 1957. He was trying to make sense of some of the extraordinary findings that had been occurring for about three decades in quantum particle physics. For example, scientists are able to demonstrate, through various interference patterns, that a subatomic particle occupies a wave state or state of superposition — that is, an infinite number of places — until someone takes a measurement: it is only when the measurement is taken that the particle collapses, so to speak, from a wave state into a localized state. At that point it occupies a definite, identifiable, measurable place. Before the measurement is taken, the localized particle exists only in potential.
Now I have just about squeezed all of quantum physics into roughly a sentence. I think it’s an accurate sentence, but obviously I’m taking huge complexities and reducing them into the dimensions of a marble. But I believe I’m faithfully stating what has been observed in the last eighty-plus years of particle experiments. And we’re seeing that on the subatomic scale, matter does not behave as we understand it to.
Our understanding of matter in our macro world generally comes from measuring things through our five senses, and experiencing them as singularities. There is one table. It is solid and definable. It’s not occupying an infinite number of spaces. But contemporary quantum physicists have theorized that we may not normally see or experience superposition phenomena because of information leakage. This means that we gain or lose data based on the fineness of our measurement. When you’re measuring things with exquisitely well-tuned instruments, like a microscope, you’re seeing more and more of what’s going on — and that’s actual reality. But when you pan the camera back, so to speak, your measurements coarsen and you’re seeing less and less of what’s actually happening.
To all ordinary appearances, a table is solid. The floor beneath your feet is solid. Where you’re sitting is solid. But measuring through atomic-scale microscopes, we realize that if you go deeper and deeper, you have space within these objects. Particles make up the atom, and still greater space appears. We don’t experience that; we experience solidity. But no one questions that there’s space between the particles that compose an atom. Furthermore, we possess decades of data demonstrating that when subatomic particles are directed at a target system, such as a double slit, they appear in infinite places at once until a measurement is made; only then does locality appear. But we fail to see this fact unless we’re measuring things with comparative exactitude. Hence what I’m describing seems unreal based on lived experience — but it’s actual.
In any event, my supposition is this: if particles appear in an infinite number of places at once until a measurement is taken; and if, as we know from studying the behavior and mechanics of subatomic particles, there’s an infinitude of possibilities; and if we know, as we have for many years, that time is relative, then it is possible to reason — and it’s almost necessary to reason — that linearity itself, by which we organize our lives, is an illusion. Linearity is a useful and necessary device for five-sensory beings to get through life, but it doesn’t stand up objectively. Linearity is a device, a subjective interpretation of what’s really going on. It’s not reflected in Einstein’s theory of relativity, which posits that time slows down when it begins to approach the speed of light. Nor is it reflected in quantum mechanics, where particles appear in an infinitude of places and do not obey any orderly modality. Linearity is not replicating itself when a measurement taken of a particle serves to localize the appearance or existence of the object.
If we pursue this line of thought further — and this is where the many-worlds theory comes into play — the very decision to take a measurement (or not to take a measurement) not only localizes a particle but creates a past, present, and future for that particle. The decision of an observer to take a measurement creates a multidimensional reality for the particle. This is implied in the famous thought-experiment called Schrodinger’s Cat, which I describe here (yes, pre-tattoos, but remember there is no time):
So whatever that particle is doing, the very fact that a sentient observer has chosen to take a measurement at that time, place, moment, and juncture creates a whole past, present, future — an entire infinitude of outcomes. A divergent set of outcomes would exist if that measurement were never taken. A divergent set of outcomes would also exist if that measurement were taken one second later, or five minutes later, or tomorrow. And what is tomorrow? When particles exist in superposition until somebody takes a measurement, there is no such thing as tomorrow, other than subjectively.
And what are our five senses but a technology by which we measure things? What are our five senses but a biological technology, not necessarily different in intake from a camera, photometer, digital recorder, or microscope? So it’s possible that within reality — within this extra-linear, super-positioned infinitude of possibilities in which we are taking measurements — we experience things based upon our perspective.
Neville Goddard’s instinct was correct in this sense. He taught that you can take a measurement by employing the visualizing forces of your own imagination. You’re taking a measurement within the infinitude of possible outcomes. The measurement localizes or actualizes the thing itself. Hence his formula: an assumption, if persisted in, hardens into fact. But the assumption must be persuasive; it must be convincing. That’s why the emotions and feeling states must come into play. And Neville observed that the hypnagogic state — a state of drowsy relaxation — helps facilitate that process.
You can use several different techniques in connection with Neville’s ideas, and, as he did, I challenge you to try them and see what happens. You’re entitled to results. I believe strongly in results. I believe that every therapeutic and ethical and spiritual philosophy should result in some concrete change and improvement in your life or your conduct; if it doesn’t, then such an idea should have no hold on you. I feel similarly strongly that the ability to describe a concrete outcome in your life is vitally important, and that too was always part of Neville’s teaching. Testimony is both an important source of ideas and an invitation to others.
One way of using Neville’s approach to mental creativity is to enter into an inner state of theatrical or childlike make-believe. Not childish but childlike: a state of internal wonder and pretending. Children are so good at this. We get embarrassed about this quality as we age, but Neville talked about walking the streets of Manhattan imagining that he was in the tree-lined lanes of Barbados, boarding a ship to some desired destination, or in a location where he wanted to be.
He would say: “Unfoldment will come. You will see.” He would always say that an assumption, although false, if persisted in, eventually hardens into fact. He would say, “Assume the state of the wish fulfilled. Live from the end. Live from the state of your wish fulfilled.” Remember, Neville would remind listeners, you’re not in a state of wanting; you’re in a state of having received. Your aim is simply to occupy the emotional and mental state that you would experience after having received.
One simple way to use Neville’s method is to freely enter this state of make-believe, as you used to when you were a child. Of course, you must also continue to go about your adult life in this world of Caesar and currency and commerce, and fulfill your obligations and do the things you need to do. You cooperate with the world. You must abide by the world. You must do the things that the world needs you to do. But the secret engine behind what’s really going on is what you’re imagining. Within are the hidden currents of emotionalized thought, which are the actual engine of what’s occurring.
How long will it take you to see your desired changes in outer life? How long will it take for outer life to conform to your internal focus, your living from the end of your ideal? This question of time intervals has recently become very hot for me personally, because with all the stresses that life throws at us, it is not easy to adopt a feeling state and stick with it for weeks. It’s very difficult, in part because the world we live in does everything possible to disrupt our inner quietude.
Neville noted later in his life that there could be a substantial time interval between your visioning, your mental imaging, and the appearance of the wished-for thing. He would point out that the gestation period of a human life is nine months. The gestation period of a horse is eleven months. The gestation period of a lamb is five months. The gestation period of a chick is twenty-one days. There is almost always going to be some time interval. You must persist. If you want to find yourself in Paris, and you wake up every day and you’re still far away from Paris, you’re naturally going to feel disappointed or dejected. But if you really stick with it, I venture that you will see that your assumptions eventually concretize into reality, and the correspondences will be uncanny.
I’ve had such experiences in my own life; but I’ve personally observed that in some cases, there have been extended time intervals. This has been true regarding my career as a writer, speaker, and narrator. The philosopher Goethe made an interesting observation. We’ve all heard the expression “Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.” It actually has its roots in Goethe. Taking a leaf from Goethe’s play Faust, Ralph Waldo Emerson noted this dynamic in his 1860 essay “Fate,” which led to the popular adage. Emerson wrote:
And the moral is that what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us; as Goethe said, “what we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in old age,” too often cursed with the granting of our prayer: and hence the high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we must beware to ask only for high things.
We are being warned to act with perspective: what we wish for when we are young will come upon us in waves when we are old. Many people would object to that claim, saying that they have all kinds of unfulfilled wishes. But unlocking the truth of this observation requires peeling back the layers of your mind and probing formative images and fantasies from when you were very young. What was the earliest dream you can remember when you first came into conscious memory, maybe at age three or four? I mean a literal nighttime dream. What were your fantasies when you were very young? I do believe that children — certainly this was true of me — have very intense fantasy lives even at age four or five. What were your earliest fantasies?
I believe that Goethe’s observation relates to Neville’s remarks about the perceived passage of time and the gestation period between the thought and the actualization. If you take Goethe’s counsel, you might be surprised to discover an extraordinary symmetry between the things that you’re living out in your life today and things that you harbored and thought about when you were very young. These can be positive, negative, or anywhere in between.
Neville recommends that you avoid thinking in terms of, “It will happen this way or that way” or “I’ll do something to make it happen.” His attitude was that the event will unfold in its own lovely, harmonious, perfect way. Your job is not to draw the map. Your job is to live from the destination.
I believe that Neville is going to be remembered, and is being looked upon today, as having created the most elegant mystical analog to quantum physics. He was thinking and talking about these ideas long before the popularization of quantum physics. He had a remarkable instinct in the 1940s, which has been tantalizingly, if indirectly, reiterated by people studying quantum theory — people who have never heard the name of Neville. Yet it wouldn’t surprise me if, within a generation or so, some physics students begin to read him as a philosophical adjunct to their work. That may sound unlikely, but remember that many of the current generation of physicists were inspired by Star Trek and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and I believe there is greater openness today to questions of awareness and mind causation.
***
We all live by philosophies, unspoken or not. Even if we say we don’t have an ideology, we obviously have assumptions by which we navigate life. When I look back upon people like Neville and Zen teacher Alan Watts (1915–1973), I realize that their greatness is that they lived by the inner light of their ideas. That is a rare trait in our world today. We are a world of talkers. People are sarcastic or cruel over Twitter, and they think they’re taking some great moral stand. Is it brave for someone who lives miles away and doesn’t even use his real name to call people out online? That’s no victory. It’s make-believe morality.
When we look back on certain figures in the political, cultural, artistic, and spiritual spheres, those we remember are the ones who lived by the inner light of their ideas, who put themselves on the line, for success or failure, based upon an idea.
My wish for every one of you reading these words is that you provide that same example. And I really must say the following, and I mean this in my heart: if you sincerely attempt what I am describing, I believe that you will find greatness, because, if nothing else, you will be making the effort to live by the inner light of an idea.
(This article is adapted from Magician of the Beautiful: An Introduction to Neville Goddard.) | https://medium.com/the-philosophers-stone/why-positive-thinking-works-fa1ca49e3d61 | ['Mitch Horowitz'] | 2020-08-02 22:39:39.342000+00:00 | ['Science', 'Paranormal', 'Occult', 'Mysticism', 'Self Improvement'] |
The Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey kicks off its 24th season on Nov. 2 | The Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey kicks off its 24th season on Nov. 2 Admin Follow Nov 1, 2014 · 2 min read
The Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey kicks off its 24th season on Sunday, Nov. 2 with a concert to honor veterans. The performance includes the New Jersey premiere, and only the second performance ever, of composer Jake Runestad’s “Dreams of the Fallen,” co-commissioned by the Philharmonic and a small consortium of orchestras nationwide, led by the Louisiana Philharmonic and the National World War II Museum. Combining the musical forces of solo piano, chorus and orchestra, with powerful texts written by Iraq War veteran and award-winning poet Brian Turner, “Dreams of the Fallen” explores a soldier’s emotional response to the experience of war. Pianist Jeffrey Biegel joins the Philharmonic, along with the Rutgers University-Camden Choir and the Temple University Concert Choir. Led by music director and conductor Matthew Oberstein, the all-American program includes Morton Gould’s “American Salute,” Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait,” and the stirring “Armed Forces Salute,” a medley of the marches from each branch of the armed forces.
Tickets range from $15 to $30 and are now on sale through www.psnj.org. The concert begins at 3 p.m. Music director Matthew Oberstein leads a pre-concert talk with the guest artists at 2 p.m.
“I would like to congratulate the Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey on its 24th season and we are proud to support this special tribute to our veterans. It’s important that in addition to providing services to our veterans, we thank and honor them with special tributes like this special performance,” said freeholder Ed McDonnell, liaison to Camden County Division of Veterans Affairs.
The Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey’s 2014–2015 season honors heroes on the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. The season includes residencies with Grammy-winning composer Joan Tower (March 1, 2015), Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon (May 3, 2015) and Jake Runestad, all of whose work is featured during the season. Holiday Pops returns for the second year, featuring 15-time Emmy Award winner Sonia Manzano (“Sesame Street”) as guest narrator.
This program is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. | https://medium.com/the-voorhees-sun/the-philharmonic-of-southern-new-jersey-kicks-off-its-24th-season-on-nov-2-2624bca567bf | [] | 2016-12-19 14:40:52.679000+00:00 | ['The Voorhees Sun', 'Families', 'Concert', 'Entertainment', 'Headlines'] |
Top Selling Sony Home Theater System USA 2021 | Introduction: Top Selling Sony Home Theater System USA 2021
Nowadays it is easier to find high-quality and affordable options for the home theater. All of today’s picks are from a trusted brand SONY. So all the Sony home theater system will guarantee to give you big end offerings.
It doesn’t matter how big your tv screen is if it is lacking in sound quality. Which means you are only getting half of the experience. Trust us your tv speaker won’t be doing much. Fortunately, you can upgrade to a home theater system regardless of budget.
We have basically focused today on high audio and high video quality. The best home theater system provides an excellent balance of good quality sound and easy installation. And well many people prefer that.
In 2021 a sony home theater speaker can give you a great audio experience. And for that, you don’t even need a complicated setup. So do read further and find the best Sony home theater for yourself.
Top Selling Sony Home Theater System USA 2021: List
The quality of the product is excellent, and it is easy to use. The compact contemporary design of this system fits anywhere in your home. The built-in power can easily fill a bedroom, kitchen, or office space with its great sound.
Feature a tiny powerful device that converts any aux speaker into a Bluetooth speaker. So that you can stream your music or take phone calls. You will enjoy the convenient Bluetooth connectivity with compatible Bluetooth devices.
And you will be able to stream music without wires. The near field connections technology takes Bluetooth connectivity to a next level. Allowing users to simply align their enabled device. And tap them together to pair and activate the connection. Well, you can also use the integrated AM/FM tuner to receive the local broadcast signals.
You can also play your CDs or your personal recorded CD-R by using the integrated motorized slot CD player. Well, you can also play MP3 files that have been recorded to CD discs.
Striking the Pros of using Sony Compact Stereo Sound System for House with Bluetooth Wireless Streaming
The classic three-box design makes a statement in any room.
Allows a separate place for the placement of the speakers for a wider stereo effect.
Has a built-in CD/DVD player for your disc collection.
Striking the Cons of using Sony Compact Stereo Sound System for House with Bluetooth Wireless Streaming
The build and control are average.
Equipped with 4 woofers and 1 tweeter, the Sony SS-CS8 2-Way 3-Driver Center Channel Speaker handles up to 145 watts. The woofer of the speaker uses a mic-reinforced diaphragm. The upper surface of which is fashioned to provide faithful sound.
While the lower layer is designed to provide a powerful bass response. The cabinet is built up of wood. Which is designed to provide a natural resonance. The network crossover of the speaker is mounted directly to the cabinet. So that it becomes vibration isolated. The foot of the speaker has rubber pads to avoid shelf vibration.
The crossover network in the SS-CS8 is intended to assure minimal signal loss. For an energetic vocal response with even the most delicate nuisance. It is mounted directly above the cabinet to avoid vibration.
Striking the Pros of using Sony 5.1-Channel Surround Sound Multimedia Home Theater Speaker Bundle
Has a powerful bass response.
The rubber pads make it vibration isolated.
Has a powered subwoofer.
Striking the Cons of using Sony 5.1-Channel Surround Sound Multimedia Home Theater Speaker Bundle
A lit bit costlier.
Enjoy the wireless audio streaming with the Sony 7.2-Channel Wireless Bluetooth 4K 3D HD Blu-ray A/V Surround Sound Home Theater System. Features Bluetooth with NFC connectivity. And also have four HDMI inputs with one HDMI output. All support 4k resolution.
It has a 7.2 channel that surrounds sounds and a two-channel stereo. Everything is huge. All speakers and receivers are huge. Whenever you play the music the sound quality would be great. The sound is crystal clear and with so many options music and movies are awesome.
Striking the Pros of using Sony 7.2-Channel Wireless Bluetooth 4K 3D HD Blu-ray A/V Surround Sound Home Theater System
It is very versatile.
The sound is crystal clear.
Offers dramatic and cinematic sound.
It is compatible with blu ray 3D movies.
The setup of the speaker is very easy.
Striking the Cons of using Sony 7.2-Channel Wireless Bluetooth 4K 3D HD Blu-ray A/V Surround Sound Home Theater System
There is a lack of sound adjustment.
Enjoy the clear mid and high frequencies from the soundbar. Brings every music and movie to life. In the volume and clarity, with a total 320watt power output. The contours of the soundbars fit perfectly with the design of your tv.
And it is also very simple to connect it. The seven sound modes enhance your entertainment experience. The Cinema mode is for movies, game studio mode is developed by PlayStation developers. Music mode helps you to listen to every detail clear. And the news mode is designed for clear dialogue.
Hear the sound that will be coming from all around. The virtual sound surround technology puts you right in the heart of movies. That is done by emulating the wide stage of cinema-style surround sound. Even without the need for additional rear speakers.
Striking the Pros of using Sony HT-S350 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer
The sound is very powerful.
Solid Bass.
Supports Dolby digital.
Bluetooth supported.
HDMI and ARC capable.
It is easy to set up.
Quite affordable.
Striking the Cons of using Sony HT-S350 Soundbar with Wireless Subwoofer
Has no Dolby Atmos, but it features S-PRO front surround instead.
There is a need for an HDMI splitter for multiple connections.
This Sony home theater system gives your favorite shows and movies the sound they deserve with a 2.1inch soundbar. This space-saving solution is designed to match the decor of your home. The compact one-bar design with a built-in woofer completely matches your room.
There is no need for another box and extra cables around your room. With HDMI, ARC, one cable can give an easy connection for all your tv audio. You can also connect it Wireless to your tv via Bluetooth. And can control tv and soundbar with the help of only one remote.
Virtual sound technology just puts you right at the heart of movies and music. The low profile design of the soundbar does not obstruct the view of your tv. The voice enhancement features strengthen the listening experience.
Striking the Pros of Sony S200F 2.1ch Soundbar with built-in Subwoofer and Bluetooth Home Theater
It is great for dialogue content.
Performs well even on high volume.
Striking the Cons of Sony S200F 2.1ch Soundbar with built-in Subwoofer and Bluetooth Home Theater
Doesn’t get too loud.
It does not support DTS.
Always stays on sound surround feature.
Well, that sums up our list for Sony home theater. I hope it would help you out to find “which Sony home theater is best?”
Acknowledging Questions
How To Setup Sony Home Theater System?
The two most common connections used to hear TV sound from the A/V receiver or from the home theater system is:
Option 1: HDMI connection using the ARC feature.
Option 2: Connection with the help of an HDMI cable, coaxial digital cable, or audio cable.
Which option you will be going to use depends upon the ports of your products. Suppose if your tv and audio system both support the ARC feature. I will recommend then using option 1 to connect your products. Otherwise, you can use option 2.
Originally published at https://shoppingpossible.com/ on August 16, 2021 | https://medium.com/@shoppingpossiblenow/top-selling-sony-home-theater-system-usa-2021-fb8c5980feb3 | ['Shopping Possible'] | 2021-08-16 17:53:14.239000+00:00 | ['Sony Home Theater', 'Home Theatre System', 'Technology', 'Electronic Items', 'Home Theater'] |
Swimwear That Empowers Women and Beats the Corona Wave | With outdoor pools and beaches starting to open up… get your swimwear on! But especially for many women, it’s not about just getting any bikini or one-piece. It’s about getting the perfect one with the perfect color and the perfect fit.
nUde Swim has all the modern, innovative looks to hit the water this summer. With the variation of shapes and patterns of their swimwear and cover-ups, there ought to be something for everyone. I like to compare many of the styles to the ones you see famous instagram models and famous people wear.
In nUde Swim’s words, the idea behind every suit is “to exhibit the raw, fettered beauty of a woman in her truest form”. This is a groundbreaking idea for such revealing attire like a swimsuit. Many women have insecurities when they wear a swimsuit, but nUde Swim believes it should be changed to self-empowerment and self-love. Her line of swimwear and cover-ups have a goal for women to feel free and confident and the swimsuits should just be an encouragement for that positive attitude. It breaks norms because bikinis and revealing swimwear are often associated with negative images because women are not a certain weight or a certain style.
The founder, Latoya Anderson, has especially made every swimsuit to accentuate a woman’s accents. The sustainably sourced Canadian brand is the running forefront of empowered womenswear, a whole new genre of clothing. After the company’s debut in 2018, they have continuously come out with more designs and colors.
*All information and photos are from https://nud3swim.com*
Website: https://nud3swim.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nud3swim/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nude.swim/ | https://medium.com/@tenatch10/swimwear-that-empowers-women-and-beats-the-corona-wave-5657c063c015 | [] | 2020-07-08 14:01:03.353000+00:00 | ['Tenatch', 'Summer', 'Swimsuit', 'Canada', 'Swimwear'] |
“Excuse Me, Do You Speak Crypto?” From n00b to whale in 4 minutes… | still shot from giphy.com
Every community has its own language. It’s an identifier of belonging.
When we enter a new space, a new industry or a new community and we do not speak the “local lingo” yet, we’re immediately being spotted and recognized as a stranger or “newbie”. Especially as women entering a men’s world, this can really suck…
Luckily, the online community of the cryptocurrency, DASH, is a welcoming and supportive place. We even have a sub group especially for the “Women of DASH” in there (which we’re hoping to grow. So if you’re reading this, and you’re a woman looking for your new crypto home, join us in the DASH Nation Slack Channel!)
Unfortunately, that doesn’t go for every crypto community, so…
If you don’t want to out yourself as a complete crypto-newbie, use this list as a head start and avoid having to ask “stupid” questions.
Below you will find a list of terms you’ll come across in the world of crypto currency. Some are actual official terms and some are slang. While you don’t have to use this language yourself right from the start, I hope it will enable you to understand the conversations and threads in the online forums.
(Some words are not specific to crypto, but you may have never heard them before you entered the crypto space.)
Photo: unsplash.com
So let the translations begin…
noob — That’s you. But only for another minute. A noob is a newbie who doesn’t have a lot of insider knowledge yet. Also spelled “nOOb” sometimes.
pwnd — as in “He got pwnd”. He got owned. Burnt.
rekt — “wrecked”. As in “something might go rekt” or “He got rekt” (similar as “pwnd” in that case). Usually refers to losing a lot of money.
hodling — “holding”. As in, “I’m not selling my Bitcoins, I’m holding them.” You must put this spelling mistake in. Only n00bs would spell this correctly by accident…
fiat — our regular money (Dollars, Euros, etc). Isn’t it weird that hardly anyone knows that’s what our money is called?
DAO — Decentralized Autonomous Organization — the kind of organization the blockchain supports. Basically a network without a boss. As opposed to a Centralized Organization — our traditional pyramid shaped organizational model with a central controlling entity on top.
altcoins — every coin that is not Bitcoin. Bitcoin was the original. The blockchain was invented together with Bitcoin. It’s an open source code — meaning everyone can find it on the internet and make a few alterations and create their own coin. Every new coin is then also an alternative to Bitcoin, the original.
Polo — Short for Poloniex, a coin exchange where you can trade crypto currency.
FUD — “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt” often heard in the Bitcoin fork debate for example. As in, “Don’t listen to them, they’re just spreading FUD!”
trustless — this means something good! It actually means the opposite of what your dictionary says. Trustless in crypto means that trust is not required, because the blockchain makes sure everything is correct. You don’t have to trust a third party, or a middleman.
permissionless — similar to trustless. It means “no permission needed”
block reward — another name for the “free coins” the miners receive as a reward for processing transactions and securing the network using specialized hardware.
shapeshift — changing one crypto currency into another without having to exchange them through an official coin exchange. Warning: because of its convenience, the costs for this service are also higher than at exchanges. Shapeshift.io.
wallet — this is where you keep your coins. Sort of like a PayPal account. Only completely different ;) There are core wallets for each single currency — like the DASH wallet here — and there are also third party multi-currency wallets, in which you can keep different kinds of coins, and where you can also shape shift them directly within those wallets. Jaxx.io is one example of a multi-currency wallet with a shapeshift function.
whale — describes a big player — a big fish — in the crypto scene. Someone who owns such a large amount of coins or funds, that they could influence the price by selling their holdings or buying more.
***
So there you go! You’re not a n00b anymore, yay!
Next stop: whale!
***
This is obviously not an exhaustive list… More experienced non-noobs are welcome to add to it in the comments!
***
About the author:
Anja Schuetz is a Cryptocurrency Mentor for absolute beginners and a Customer Communication & Operations Consultant for Start-ups. She also runs the Conscious Crypto Community, which currently consists only of women. Sign up for her free Crypto-Fitness Museletter here. | https://medium.com/dash-for-newbies/excuse-me-do-you-speak-crypto-from-n00b-to-whale-in-3-minutes-f19ea13f4d8b | [] | 2018-07-12 14:46:09.727000+00:00 | ['Dash', 'Blockchain', 'How To', 'Women', 'Bitcoin'] |
B21 Top FIVE FAQs of the Week — Part 2 | Our last FAQ blog, took a look at the top questions that we have received in relation to our Airdrop. Here are the top FIVE frequently asked FAQ’s from the B21 Telegram community this week. If you have any questions, which are not in our Whitepaper, or our website, feel free to ask them in our Telegram group.
Each week we will aim to answer the most commonly asked questions and concerns from our community in our FAQ blog series!
This week we have seen a trend in questions about our private sale, public sale and our investment app.
1)What is the minimum contribution for the private sale?
The Minimum contribution is $20,000 for the private sale
2) Why do you need to have a token to settle fees within the app when it says in your Whitepaper that you can use fiat?
B21 is a utility token, the token will be required to access the platform and to pay fees, and the token is also a system of reward and incentive to users.
It’s kind of like the Binance token. With the B21 token, you get access to premium services and reduced fees. Fiat is converted to the B21 token and then collected as fees. Or fees can be paid in B21 tokens.
The fees will be charged to the customers when they invest in cryptoassets, which is transaction fees. These fees will range from 2 to 5% based on the payment method being used.
3) When are you going to launch the B21 app?
Our team is working on the Alpha release at the moment. This is planned to be live in the coming months.
For this to be LIVE, we need license, partnerships and tech development to all come together. This is what we have been working on behind the scenes at the B21 headquarters in Gibraltar.
4) Are you going to add more cryptocurrencies to your platform offering?
Our platform will accept BTC, BCH, ETH and EOS at the start. Due to popular demand and feedback, we are also working on adding more cryptoassets from the beginning.
The cryptocurrencies we add will be chosen by the management and advisory team from the coins that have been voted on by our community. We will undertake an appropriate level of due diligence on all coins on the platform.
5) We would like to contact your marketing department, which email should we use?
Send an email to [email protected] and our marketing team will look into it and get back to you.
Follow B21 in below Social Media Channels
Twitter(English): https://twitter.com/B21Official
Twitter(Japanese): https://twitter.com/B21Official_jp
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/B21Official/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/b21-limited/
Telegram(English): https://t.me/b21official
Telegram(Korean): https://t.me/b21korea
LINE(Japanese): http://qr-official.line.me/L/rmOuyjpsA8.png
KakaoTalk(Korean): https://open.kakao.com/o/gxDpiHP | https://medium.com/b21official/b21-top-five-faqs-of-the-week-part-2-389eb46c37a7 | [] | 2018-06-26 10:10:44.152000+00:00 | ['Cryptocurrency', 'Blockchain', 'Bitcoin'] |
Covid-19 Infecting the Music Industry | What will happen to music festivals?
Coachella has been delayed, SXSW and Ultra canceled, Live Nation and AEG tours suspended all causing a severe financial loss for not only the companies and festival organizers but also the customers that so eagerly wait for these events every year. As most tickets are pre-sold months in advance, many have already invested in attending these events, however, due to the unexpected circumstances brought by Covid- 19 people all over the world are taking a financial hit.
Ultra Music Festival Source: Creative Commons
Will customers get their money back?
As all of the upcoming music festivals for the spring/summer seasons have been either canceled or postponed, ticket holders all around the world want to know what to expect with their purchases. Ultra Music Festival, for example, has emailed ticket holders that they do not intend to grant any refunds. Instead, clients will be offered a benefit package that supplements their tickets that will be valid for the following 2 years. Clients will have until April 9th to decide which festival they would like to attend. Like Ultra, South by Southwest notified their customers, through email, that their tickets would be valid for the upcoming years, however, didn’t mention any specificity on offering reimbursements.
During these times, you must be thinking how can these festivals not give people their money back, when they need it most? Well, it’s simple. When buying tickets from most music festivals, including Ultra and SXSW, you sign a clause in its terms and conditions that reserves the company the right to postpone an event and reschedule without issuing refunds. This leaves ticket holders extremely angered, as they don’t know if they will be able to attend the festival the upcoming years, as well as, not being able to get their money back in a time of economic crisis.
Official notice Tweet from Ultra Music Festival
What do cancellations mean for artists, staffers, vendors, and festival organizers?
Festival cancellations have financial repercussions for all the artists, staffers, vendors, and organizers involved. Of course, there are contracts put in place that solve any legal issues that might come up. In the case of the Coronavirus, local or state governments have issued mandates to stop these events from happening which means cancellations might be different.
Due to Force Majeure, most artists and vendors won’t be paid except for work or expenses from before the festival was canceled. This is because according to Force Majeure, payment will not occur for a performance that didn’t happen. On the other hand, festival organizers that didn’t have insurance for viruses and pandemics may encounter some expenses out-of-pocket for the planned staffing and marketing.
Overall, the expenses from the cancellation and postponement of festivals are immeasurable. Music festivals serve as massive revenue for their local economies. SXSW alone was intended to bring $356 million to the city of Austin. According to NBC, $805 million was going to be made by Coachella Valley, and the city that it takes place in, Indio, was going to receive approximately $212 million of that money.
The Coronavirus has made artists and festival organizers have to deal with legal issues that have never occurred before, therefore, insurance is not enough to handle the present circumstances. From now on, we know that festival organizers will have to find ways to adapt to the realities of our world and come up with ideas to take precautions for coming events. No doubt music festivals will never be the same. | https://herasoysal.medium.com/covid-19-infecting-the-music-industry-857ca9a49fa1 | ['Hera Soysal'] | 2020-04-05 22:38:49.916000+00:00 | ['Music', 'Coronavirus', 'Music Industry', 'Music Festivals', 'Spotify'] |
My Medium Goals And Plans For 2021 | Photo by lavnatalia on Pixabay
We all want to succeed in our endeavours. We make plans striving to achieve them. Sometimes we follow through sometimes we don’t.
Success on Medium is something most of us writers on the Platform want. I may not have a thorough breakdown on every step I plan to take to reach my goals, but here are my Medium Plans for 2021.
Publish 5 articles a day
The goal is to publish 10 articles a day if possible -five is the minimum number. I plan to publish the articles in five different publications daily.
Gain 2K followers by end of March
I planned to gain 1K followers by the end of the year but with only 10 days to go, realistically I do not think that goal is reachable for now. But I am planning to remain steadfast and to keep going.
Make $300 a month
With five articles published in different publications daily I imagine that goal is possible. It will help me gain more followers, reads, views and earnings by extension. Making $300 a month translates to $10 daily. I need to gain more followers and publish more stories for that as so far I average at $1 in earnings daily.
I also hope for a miraculous curation 😉 . Fingers crossed 🤞.
Become a top writer
Damn! Would that make me happy or what! I hope to achieve that highly coveted and wonderful achievement soon. But I know I have to put in the work and I am ready for that!
Get published in big publications
I have already been added as a writer in The Ascent and The Startup but the stories I have submitted to them so far have been rejected. It hurts, but as it is a goal of mine to get published in them I will keep trying.
I also hope to be added as a writer in other big publications.
Writing for a bigger publication can give you more views, reads, and followers which can translate to more earnings.
I do enjoy submitting stories to small and medium publications though and I intend to keep doing so as some of my stories do considerably well in them.
Grow my publication
I created a publication called A List Of My favourite Things here on Medium and I have been researching a lot about how to make it grow through dissecting other publications that I like.
I plan to gain more followers and writers for it and ensure that more writers on Medium are interested to share lists of their favourite things. | https://medium.com/illumination/my-medium-goals-and-plans-for-2021-3bafa821f7f6 | ['Gal Mux'] | 2020-12-27 09:57:40.659000+00:00 | ['Goals', 'Plans', 'Goals Objectives', 'Writers On Medium', 'Ｍedium'] |
Ultimate Function for Classification | Background
I was given a simple project: use a premade data set to create a use case for a classification model, then create that model. Essentially with a blank slate, I faced an entire internet’s worth of possible data sets to take as the one. Eventually I settled on something sports related, and out of all of the sports I expected to come across, I found one on UFC fights.
If you aren’t familiar with the sport, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) is a mixed martial arts promoter. Mixed martial arts, frequently referred to as MMA, is a fighting style that is a non-specific blend of multiple traditional fighting disciplines. A great example of blending fighting styles is the fighter Jon Jones. He went from a national junior college wrestling champion to obtaining a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) and a black belt in Gaidojutsu; Gaidojutsu itself being a fighting style developed in 1992 by Greg Jackson using techniques from catch wrestling, BJJ, kickboxing, and judo.
Beyond the greater freedom in how one is allowed to fight in MMA matches, the structure generally follows that of others combat sports such as boxing or wrestling. If you are curious about how it all works on a finer level, I recommend reading the “Rules” section on this Wikipedia page.
I was a big fan during the early 2010s; I had the video games, watched the shows, knew the fighters, etc. If there was one thing I remember about watching these fights, it’s how unpredictable they felt. It seemed that until someone gets knocked down or put in a submission that either fighter could win, no matter the situation. No matter how much of an underdog a particular fighter was statistically, they still had a chance to win and occasionally would shock the MMA community in doing so. It was those unpredictable moments that inspired me to use this data set for my project. The big question I wanted to answer was:
Can I predict the winner of a MMA fight based upon their prior performance?
Data Set
As mentioned before, one of my few restrictions in this project was that the data set needed to be already compiled before I start working with it. I started by going to Kaggle and a lot of time looking up data sets. While using the “sports” tag I found “UFC-Fight historical data from 1993 to 2019” posted by Rajeev Warrier (link). This data set had an extensive amount of information on over 5,000 fights, containing 145 features on various aspects of the fights.
There is information about:
A fighter’s Win/Loss/Draw record prior to fight
A fighter’s method of winning a number of fights
Preferred fighting Stance
Physical Attributes
Fight related averages
**These averages dealt with advanced stats such as: significant strikes, submissions, passing on the ground, etc.**
What to Bring
You will need to have these packages installed in order to follow along:
Sci-Kit Learn for the classifiers and most metrics
Matplotlib for the plotting methods
Pandas for the plotting method
Yellowbrick for the ROCAUC class
I will be walking through the creation of this function with respect to my project on the UFC, although this function should work on any cleaned data set prepped for machine learning. If you need any information on how to do that and some good strategies, check out this data cleaning guide by Omar Elgabry (link).
Otherwise, for brevity I will skip directly into the point where I can create my classifier evaluation function. At this point with the data set I have:
Filled and/or removed any missing data
One-hot encoded categorical features
Min-max scaling on numerical features
Train-test split into X and y data
Used SMOTE to synthetically resample training data (fixes target class imbalance)
Here’s a small peek into what the DataFrame looks like:
Columns detailing red corner fighter’s scaled information
Fitting and Predicting
This is the easy part! Sci-Kit Learn really makes it simple to fit a model to training data and predict on new inputs. All you need to do is first instantiate your Sci-Kit Learn machine learning model of choice and use it’s .fit() and .predict() methods.
Setup, fitting, and predicting using multiclass logistic regression model
One unique aspect about this code is the use of the multi_class= parameter, which will only be relevant if you are trying to predict more the two classes. In my project, for each fighter I was looking to predict if their match will end (for them) in a:
Win
Lose
Draw
This important detail is why we will need to use the Yellowbrick package later when visualizing the performance of our model when predicting outcomes, but for now let’s look at how to functionize this process.
Fitting and predicting on a Sci-Kit Learn classifier generalized
If you take a closer look, there really is not much of a change here. The variables (including the classifier itself) needed to be generalized and placed as required parameters. But besides the addition of a “return” statement for the predictions, that is all I needed to do!
Getting Results
So now that I have a model that can predict the winner of a UFC fight, I need a way to confirm it’s accuracy. I can do this by using the data fed in as inputs for those same predictions as the ground truth, since we already had the correct outcomes for the model to learn from. This is why this type of task is called supervised learning, as we will be able to adjust (or supervise) how our model learns in hopes of improving it’s performance when predicting on unseen data.
Once again, Sci-Kit Learn makes this super easy to do once a model has been trained upon some data. The classification report function found in the metrics module can generate the four commonly used classification measures in a convenient manner for the user. All that one needs to do is feed in the true and predicted labels for the data to get results!
Here’s an example from my project:
Example classification report from K-Neighbors classifier
For such a simple implementation, the classification report from Sci-Kit Learn brings a lot to the table when trying to evaluate the performance of a classifier. It provides the main classification metrics on an aggregate and individual label level, which can help to identify strategies for tuning your model or explaining it’s performance. In a general sense, these metrics are:
Precision — The ratio of true positives to all predicted positives; Models with high precision rarely predict the incorrect label but often have many false negatives
Recall — The ratio of true positives to all possible positives; Models with high recall often capture many false positives
F1-Score — Computed using precision and recall scores; Used in an effort to minimize both false negatives and false positives
Accuracy — The ratio of true positives to all predictions; Simply the percentage of how many predictions were correct
If this stuff seems a bit off and you’d like to know some more, I recommend checking this post out Clare Liu (link).
Showing Off
Although it may seem as if the classification report has everything already (it kind of does), there is actually couple more things that can be easily added into this function to help round out the information displayed. I will next show how to create a confusion matrix and a ROC curve before putting it all together into one function.
Confusion matrix
A confusion matrix is a great tool for visualizing the performance of a classification model. In a nutshell, it is a square divided into smaller squares that represent the values for true and false positives in addition to the true and false negatives. It’s a bit easier to understand visually:
Example confusion matrix for binary classifier
Starting from the top left and going diagonally downwards, these values represent true values; alternatively they are the recall values for that specific class. Additional information about them can be found in this post by Sarang Narkhede (link).
Confusion matrices are also easy to implement thanks to Sci-Kit Learn, here’s how to do it:
ROC curve
The second plot that I added into my function is a bit advanced, but can offer some interesting insights when evaluating a model’s performance. The ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curve, in simple terms, illustrates the tradeoff between the true positive rate (TPR) and false positive rate (FPR). If you want to get more into the math behind these rates, Wikipedia does a dense, but great job detailing the formulas.
The ideal ROC curve will look like a smoother, sloped version of an upside-down “L”. Hopefully this will make more sense after looking at one:
Example ROC curve (bad performance)
The above example is from one of the poorer performing models I tested during my project. The two lines representing the TPRs and FPRs for each class stay relatively close to the black dotted line; this black line represents the “random chance” line, where the chance of being correct is essentially 50%. Thus, this model was not much better than flipping a coin and choosing which fighter would win. An ideal ROC curve would have a TPR that increases faster than the FPR, resulting in that upside-down “L” shape I was referring to.
Normally, if one is training a binary classification model, this plot can be produced using Sci-Kit Learn. However, since I was predicting three different classes, I will show how I created a ROC curve using the Yellowbrick package that allows for multi-class curves (no need to specify either).
Here’s how I did it:
Single implementation of Yellowbrick ROC curve
Wrapping It Up
Now its time to put all the code from above together into one, reusable function that can produce everything previously discussed in one line of code!
I’ll break it down in steps:
Fit the model and create predictions Generate classification report using predictions Create figure and axes for plots Generate and stylize confusion matrix Generate and stylize ROC curve Display plots Return predictions
Here we go! (Mario voice):
Functionized version of previous sections
Side note: In line 48 I use a custom function named plot_importance(). It’s purpose as an add-on is to display, as an option, an additional plot that is only relevant to a decision tree classification model. More on feature importances; code for plot_importance().
Here’s an example of what this outputs:
Example of vanilla logistic regression trained on UFC data
What Now?
So if you’ve been following along, you should have a fully functioning, function that will easily display a general report and two plots concerning the performance of a supervised classification model. Through the use of this function, one can quickly assess how well a model is learning the training data; doing so on a deeper level than each of the three tools could provide alone. I intended this function to be used as a judge for multiple classifiers when selecting one to train on a specific data set and also as a way to give insight during the tuning process. I would be interested to see what other uses may come of it as-is or altered (let me know!).
Granted in order to create this function, there does need to be some preparation, but overall using it saved me a bunch of time during this project. I hope it will do the same for others!
Link to UFC classification project | https://towardsdatascience.com/ultimate-function-for-classification-82f1fc711ab9 | ['Darius Fuller'] | 2020-10-01 00:10:37.808000+00:00 | ['Data Science', 'Classification', 'Scikit Learn', 'Functional Programming', 'UFC'] |
Micklecoin Presale Is Live | Micklecoin Presale
Micklecoin presale is ongoing. Join our presale now and acquire your own MICK.
ABLE OF CONTENTS:
ABOUT MICKLECOIN (MICK)
TOKEN SALE INFORMATION
HOW TO BUY MICKLECOIN (MICK)
TOKEN DISTRIBUTION
EXCHANGE LISTING
MICKLE STABLECOIN
ABOUT MICKLECOIN (MICK):
Micklecoin (MICK) is an ERC20 utility token built on ethereum platform to power Mickle Dpps/platforms. It was created to serve as a medium of exchange for services in our platforms. When people use MICK to pay for services on our platforms, they will get 10% -20% discount.
TOKEN SALE INFORMATION:
Micklecoin sale will be done in 2 phases. (Presale and crowdsale).
Presale is ongoing. Crowdsale will start immediately after the presale.
Presale Tokens: 1,200,000 MICK
Presale Price: $0.5 (0.00092 ETH)
Accepted Currencies: ETH
Minimum Investment: $20 (0.037ETH)
HOW TO BUY MICKLECOIN (MICK):
To buy MICK, send ETH to our official address: 0x105078aa3d2de7815d46acaca0b1fea4cfcda7fe
MICK will be sent to the same address you used to make purchases automatically after 48hours of the presale
See our token sale page: https://www.micklecoin.com/coin/micklecoin/
TOKEN DISTRIBUTION:
Tokens will be distributed to investors after 48hours of the presale. Example: Once we announce that the presale is over, then 48hours after the end of the presale. Investors will receive the tokens in their various wallets. So the same thing will also happen when crowdsale is over.
EXCHANGE LISTING:
Micklecoin will be listed on multiple exchanges both on centralized and decentralized exchanges immediately after our token sale. Our major target exchanges are PROBIT, P2PB2B, TOKPIE, LATOKEN, UNISWAP AND BANCOR. These exchanges doesn’t included others we plan to list MICK while the sale is going on
MICKLE STABLECOIN:
Mickle stablecoin is a new token we plan to launch in the future. It can also be used as a medium of exchange in our platforms and as a store of value. The stablecoin will be distributed to all Micklecoin (MICK) holders based on the amount of MICK they are holding (i.e. 1:1 ratio).
Example:If an investor is holding 1000 MICK, he/she will receive 1000 of our stablecoin.
NOTE: When buying MICK, make sure to use wallet that you have access to, because that is where your MICK will be sent to and also the future mickle stablecoin too. Please don't send from exchange wallet.
If you want to contact us, get in touch with us through the following means:
Official Email: [email protected]
Join us on telegram: https://t.me/Micklecoin
Visit our official website: https://www.micklecoin.com | https://medium.com/mickle-blog/micklecoin-presale-is-live-d487ef9ac071 | [] | 2020-12-07 16:46:07.665000+00:00 | ['Mickle Token Sale', 'Cryptocurrency Ico', 'Micklecoin Presale', 'Mick Presale', 'Token Sale'] |
The Pilot Who Wanted to be Steve Jobs (aka What makes a great entrepreneur) | Great entrepreneurs have four key qualities that they are born with.
Photo credit — AP
Recently I met a airline pilot who has been flying for more than 20 years. Now in his early fifties, he confessed to having a mid-life crisis. He wasn’t sure if he had spent his life doing what he wanted. He felt very inspired by Steve Job’s famous Stanford commencement speech. He quoted to me, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” He wanted to quit and start a business. But he didn’t know what in…
And so I asked him, what are you passionate about. He said, “I don’t know”. Our conversation last 40 mins. I asked him that question three times. Each time it drew a blank.
Image credit — Entrepreneurfail.com
Passion
Some people love money. They become successful at sales or business because of it. That’s fine. Some people are obsessed with solving a particular problem. They become a scientist or start a company to provide a solution because no one else would or has. Some people believe in their ideas or products. They want to sell it to the world.
But many founders start a business today and they immediately think about how to secure venture capital; millions of dollars of it. As an angel investor I make it a condition that anyone I fund would have to put most of their savings into their startups. Or if they had no money to begin with, they had to be prepared a take a meager salary for years.
Any startup founder who wanted to pay themselves a market rate salary isn’t passionate about what they’ve started. They’ve obviously started the business to secure a job and pitched an idea just to raise money! I would only believe in those who sacrificed their jobs and their pay checks to start a business.
And I would only support those who raised capital to pursue their passions, not because they think their idea could become the next billion dollar ‘unicorn’.
Success is relative. If you love what you do the money will come.
Grit.
Many entrepreneurs love to quote this statement from Jack Ma, but they always leave out the last part of what he actually said, “…but most die tomorrow evening.”
Still not convinced? Perhaps the richest man in China today can say whatever he wants and it will sound credible?
Watch this TED talk by Angela Lee Duckworth which had 15 million views at this time of writing. She studied both children and adults in various endeavors and found that only one quality was a reliable predictor of success. “It wasn’t social intelligence, it wasn’t good looks, it wasn’t physical health, and it wasn’t IQ. It was grit. Grit is passion and perseverance, for very long term goals.”
I rest my case on grit.
Resourcefulness
If you landed up on a deserted island with three other survivors, this might be the scenario you are faced with. One survivor will sit down and cry, mumbling over and over why she had to land up wet and cold and hungry on this desolated beach. Another may start to think about setting up a SOS signal and how to get rescued as soon as possible. And then the third may scout the island and figure what he had around him for food and shelter to stay alive first. If you had to follow just one, who would you go with?
Entrepreneurship is often described as a lonely, 24/7 endeavor, in a jungle where things often go wrong and people around you doubt you. Passion and grit will keep you going, but it doesn’t solve the problems you’ve encountered. Resourcefulness will — the ability to stay level headed and find different ways and means to help you survive and overcome obstacles.
Risk
In my first startup I had a business partner who worked for many years as a casino VIP manager. He remarked that most of the ‘whales’ in a casino were businessmen. There seemed to be a lot of entrepreneurs who also loved to gamble.
Many so called gurus and academics describe this trait of successful entrepreneurs with a more palatable terminology: risk-takers. The very definition of ‘entrepreneur’ by the Oxford Dictionary says “a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.”
I once read in a book that doctors usually make bad stock investors. Because doctors are trained not to make mistakes. When they do make mistakes, they are often reluctant to admit it. Read “ Medical Culture Encourages Doctors to Avoid Admitting Mistakes”. On the other hand, any good trader or fund manager will tell you that making mistakes in judgment and recognizing them as quickly as possible are a natural and immutable part of their craft.
Towards the end of that conversation, the pilot who confided in me also remarked that based on his observation, most of his pilot friends did not succeed in business, save for a couple who ran modestly successful pubs.
He didn’t have an explanation as to why. I kept silent but I was suddenly reminded of what I read about doctors and investing. Civil aviation pilots are trained to perform a tried and tested routine, follow permitted routes, adhere to strict rules, and take no gambles in their jobs given the lives they have at stake.
Entrepreneurship is pretty much the complete opposite… Entrepreneurship can’t be taught. | https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/what-makes-a-great-entrepreneur-aka-why-pilots-make-bad-entrepreneurs-7730d632ebab | ['Lance Ng'] | 2018-12-04 02:00:23.629000+00:00 | ['Entrepreneurship', 'Risk', 'Passion', 'Entrepreneur', 'Startup'] |
David Bates: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became CEO of Bokeh | Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Stupidity. Plain and simple. Based on my personality, I knew that I was not cut out for the traditional ladder-climbing route most film school graduates commit themselves to. I was nobody’s intern. So I worked retail behind a Genius Bar at an Apple Store where I honed my communication skills. On the weekends, I did whatever I could to stay creatively active, be it video for weddings and engagements, contests through the now-defunct Poptent, and even maternity films. When I was hired at Google I discovered two things: 1) companies needed content, nobody knew how to produce it, and agencies took advantage of this knowledge deficit; and 2) if I pitched the right creative I could have Google pay for my travel. These realizations led me toward starting my own agency without any previous experience in advertising.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?
Early in our journey we found ourselves $5 away from insolvency. The Visa Design Team had a ‘move fast and break things’ mentality and they nearly broke us. Most of the time they were moving faster than their finance department — so SOWs and POs were being approved at a sluggish pace. But the timelines were expedited. We turned campaigns around in a matter of days, not weeks. Kick-starting production requires a lot of capital. Before we knew it, we were $250k in the hole. This was before we had the discipline to make sure POs were approved prior to starting a project. We didn’t believe in letting the formalities get in the way of efficiency. In some ways we still don’t.
Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?
I am driven by the people I work with. They annoy the crap out of me half the time, but they bought into a culture grounded in hunger and humility. Every individual recognizes how and where they want to grow but is also open to and resolute in finding solutions for the challenges they never expected to encounter. This “startup mentality” continues to persist even though we no longer have the luxury of saying that Bokeh is a “side project.” Except now we need to do more than grow our employees creatively. We need to foster an environment that supports everyone’s personal growth as well. The perfect example of this is when my business partner and Bokeh’s chief creative officer, Doug Smith, told me he was going to propose to his then-girlfriend Sara. I cried. When he told me two years later they were expecting a baby boy, I bawled. What I didn’t realize in my early-twenties became all too real to me on the cusp of my 30s. This is the real reason we do what we do. This is what we are building Bokeh for.
So, how are things going today? How did grit and resilience lead to your eventual success?
I hate the word “success.” We are not a success. We are a work-in-progress. That is not to say that we don’t appreciate our accomplishments. It’s simply to say that I always strive to maintain the mindset that “our best work is ahead of us.”
To put it simply, we’re not there yet. And I’m not sure we will ever be “there.” But I’m going to push for it every day.
The toughest thing about building an agency from the bottom-up with no connections is exactly that. You are only as good as your last work, and the work is only as good as the opportunity permits it to be. Mind you, I entered my first pitches with a portfolio consisting of wedding highlight films. Every new connection has to be earned and even then it requires the person across from you to show a bit of faith. There’s a lot of pressure to deliver when the investment isn’t just monetary, but also faith-driven. Disappointment is a powerful motivator. We have to consistently find ways to deliver slightly more than expected. To create additional scope when there are no extra dollars to be had just to show additional value. To convince partners that they can trust us with larger, more integrated, more significant campaigns. If there has been any silver-lining to this hustle, it’s that the job of convincing has become easier and easier over the years. And we no longer use wedding videos in our pitches.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The van stories:
On a production for Caviar in the Meatpacking District, we parked our production vehicle to do a quick scout of Ivan Ramen’s Slurp Shop. After five minutes our vehicle was gone. We did the 10-minute walk-of-shame over to the impound and actually arrived before our van was taken off the tow. Still had to pay the $400 fine. Lessons learned: pay attention to street signs, and always have a spotter. This was on a four-day marathon co-marketing film for Airbnb and Outdoor Voices. It was an emotional rollercoaster. We brought the OV leadership team to San Francisco from Austin and filmed them on a business off-site. After finally wrapping, we stopped in the sunset for a slice of pizza. The van had been ransacked. We lost everything. The equipment, the footage, all of our work. A total disaster. Similarly, a month later on a road trip project for Google Street View, a completely different production team did the same thing. Parked the van, got some breakfast, and returned to chaos. Backpacks and bags had been lifted. By the grace-of-god our camera was where we left it, sitting below the front seat covered only by a windbreaker. Lessons learned: San Francisco needs to do something about break-ins. Always, ALWAYS have a spotter. Pay your insurance. And don’t be an idiot.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
My goal isn’t to scale a company, but rather to scale the type of relationship we strive to foster with our partners.
We look at ourselves as a partner, not an agency. We are not ad people. We don’t come from the advertising world. We’ve worked internally, and we practice empathy for the logistical constraints and bureaucratic loops our partners often have to navigate. We want to navigate these and troubleshoot with creativity alongside them; to act as a true extension of their creative selves. Every campaign is a mutual endeavor. Let’s be in the trenches together. Let’s grind. Let’s hustle. Let’s sprint. Let’s grow. And let’s always keep our partners connected with the work they are actually doing by refusing to dilute our agency structure with too many layers of account management, project management and producing — the layers that are typically meant to insulate a creative team from their client.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
To the other agency founders and CEOs — invest in people who free up your time to make decisions. The only thing you should be spending time on is the agency itself. Your job is to shake hands, not get them dirty.
Investing in the right people and the right experience can be expensive and painful. Painful on your wallet, and painful on your ego. If you aren’t hiring people that make you feel a bit like a fraud, like you don’t know what you’re doing, like you’re a mess that needs cleaning up, then you’re likely not hiring right. Early on, you should be scared of every hire you make. These are the people who will grow the company and lighten your load because they don’t put up with bullshit. They squash it.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Early in my career I was working at Google Maps as a content producer. I was 22-years old and completely smitten. I took a bus with wifi to work, got 3-meals a day and a mandate to travel around the world and capture content. It was a dream. I thought to myself, “this isn’t a bad life.” So to help set a trajectory of growth I asked for a meeting with Dave Kim. He was the lead product marketer for Google Maps. His advice was concise and cutting: “David, you are too creative for Google.”
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
We try to bring goodness into the world with a lot of the community-focused content we create for brands, but in all honesty, the world is a bit of a mess right now. Doug had a baby though, so that’s some goodness.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me before I started leading my company” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
Don’t start a creative agency without agency experience. If you do, don’t try to channel your inner-Steve Jobs and do it your own way. Hire people who have agency experience. Efficiency is as important as creative ability. PR matters. Get your work out there. Don’t try to do it yourself. You don’t have time. If you founded an agency, chances are that you’re probably a creative person. Don’t get too attached to the creative work. That isn’t your job. This will be a hard reality to accept. The sooner you redirect that creativity the better it will be for your people, your culture, and your company. Apply your creativity to painting the big picture, not tracing the lines.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Reaganomics had failed. The middle-class can’t shower clean if wealth only comes down in a trickle. Wages haven’t increased to match the costs-of-living. People are struggling to afford a home to buy, let alone rent. Our democracy is stressed and yet our politics have become too hyperpolarized to make any significant reform or investment.
Our infrastructure has not been updated in a major way since the 1950’s. Whether it was the creation of the railroads with the nail at Promontory Point or the interstate highway system by President Eisenhower, the United States has always unlocked enormous amounts of prosperity and economic opportunity when it has made our interior accessible. We are at a unique moment where we can do this again.
Technology exists to transport people and goods on-the-ground at speeds of 760 mph. That means you can live in a suburb of Denver and commute to work in Chicago in 1.5 hours. It means you can live in Orange County and commute to San Francisco in 40 minutes. Suddenly States have more power to compete for businesses to relocate headquarter offices because reasonable commute times exist even if employees live hundreds of miles away. You no longer have to live in a city to experience a city. The result of building the network should completely invigorate the economy by creating millions of jobs that will last for years. Rent and housing costs should reasonably decrease across the board. And as businesses and people move, the demographic layout of States should shift, making “red” states bluer and “blue” states redder — creating more geographic (as opposed to party) loyalty among elected politicians.
That would be my platform.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
@bokeh.agency
@dbates0623
http://bokeh.agency/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bokeh-pictures/ | https://medium.com/authority-magazine/david-bates-5-things-i-wish-someone-told-me-before-i-became-ceo-of-bokeh-e7596e77684d | ['Carly Martinetti'] | 2020-07-27 22:40:05.472000+00:00 | ['Startup Lessons', 'Leadership', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business'] |
01/11/2019 | Daily stoic:
Notes:
make it and keep it simple
54. CHESS-LIKE ASSIDUITY & ARMCHAIR MEDITATION
(The real use of deep thinking)
You can be always working in the bussines you need to work on it also (same for life)
You have to step back and see the big picture
Chess thinking
1. Get a chair
2. Step back from everything
3. Maybe some reading to stimulate the brain
4. Then some thinking ahead on some moves that you can make regarding some problem that you have (just one problem, who runs after 2 rabbits catches none)
If you are in your problem you can’t see other solution you need to step back and get an eye bird perspective
Meditation — getting a higher perspective and detaching from your problems so you can see them clearly -> less reactive more solution and innovation
Without solution you go nowhere fast
Your life is mostly a product of your decisions (not quite)
So:
1. Step back
2. One problem
3. Go deep and think through all options you can (5 whys)
4. Outside knowledge for creative solutions
Day review:
Up by 6:30
Move
Shower
Breakfast
Send message to mom
Out by 7:57
Office by 8:12
Some UML
Call from a colleague for a training
Continue with my UML diagram
Lunch
Finish diagram
Some training
Out by 16:10
Back for phone
Lidl
Move
Dinner
Freud:
Tai 54 step — thinking through problems (moves ahead)
Notes
This song
And this drawing | https://medium.com/one-year-journaling-challenge/01-11-2019-6486650ad46b | ['David Cap'] | 2019-11-01 19:19:31.995000+00:00 | ['Review', 'Thinking', 'Notes', 'Sketch', 'Stoicism'] |
Fireside Chats | I went to the mouth of hell
Asked Lucifer why he fell
He said you could only take too much Heaven
Before it got to you as well
Nothing good stays
Even when you pray
Eventually your words will lose their meaning
And you’ll twist your faith
And he told me it wasn’t about falling from grace
It was about finding a space where you could breathe
Because sometimes smoke and flames
Are better than penance and shames | https://medium.com/@cambriacovell/i-went-to-the-mouth-of-hell-54425e753bd3 | ['Cambria Covell'] | 2020-12-19 00:02:56.595000+00:00 | ['Poetry', 'Poet', 'Poems On Medium', 'Poem', 'Poetry On Medium'] |
Are you tired of proprietary IT tools? | Are you tired of proprietary IT tools?
Then, my friend, we are on the same boat. Adopt GNU/Linux, Free, and Open Source Software (FOSS) as early as possible. You won’t repent, I guarantee. I had adopted GNU/Linux and FOSS as early as 1999. I seldom (or never) use a single piece of proprietary software. My computing life has become so smooth and secure. I never experience malware and virus attacks. And I spend zero dollars on software!
Source: [email protected] Larry Ewing and The GIMP (GIF animation is by the author)
If you are interested in joining me on this learning journey, please don’t hesitate to write a comment or ask me any questions here, on Twitter or LinkedIn. Cheers, Debesh Choudhury. | https://medium.com/technology-hits/are-you-tired-of-proprietary-it-tools-8f04556ec9ee | ['Debesh Choudhury'] | 2020-12-19 07:20:23.681000+00:00 | ['Open Source Software', 'Software Engineering', 'Technology', 'Self Development', 'Linux'] |
Localization / Multi-Language In Flutter | Google’s Flutter is a very attractive app development platform. It allows to development of apps like android ios etc. based on a single codebase. It is compiled in machine language for its great performance. It is built with Dart language. As we create an app in Flutter in which we want to do localization, then we load it using the localization widget to see all the objects in which we have a collection of localized objects. ‘flutter_localizations’ library is used to set up localization in Flutter.
Hello friends, I will talk about my new blog on Localization / Multi-Language In Flutter. We will also implement a Localization / Multi-Language In Flutter. describe his properties, and use them in your flutter applications. So let’s get started.
Table Of Contents :
Flutter Localization Implementation How To Implement Code In Dart File Code File Conclusion
Flutter Localization:
The Flutter localization widget is used to view and load objects from a collection of localized values. If we create an application and want to increase the use of the application, we have to support multiple languages in our apps.
With the help of localization, we can change the language of our application as android and ios is the most popular operating system of mobile so we using flutter localization will show localization on both types of device and will be localized for both field
Some Basic requirements of multiple languages.
Flutter localization application works by default according to the language configured in the smartphone.
If a language is not supported in the application, then English is the (en)default language of the language.
The end-user can change the working language from a list of supported languages.
When the user selects any of the other languages, the entire layout of the application is refreshed to display the values for the chosen language
Implementation :
You need to implement it in your code respectively :
Step 1: Add dependencies.
Add dependencies to pubspec — yaml file.
First, we will add flutter_localization and intl library to pubspec. yaml.
dependencies:
flutter:
sdk: flutter
flutter_localizations:
sdk: flutter dev_dependencies:
intl: ^0.17.0-nullsafety.2 flutter_test:
sdk: flutter
Step 2: import the package :
import 'package:flutter_localizations/flutter_localizations.dart';
Step 3: Run flutter package get
How to implement code in dart file :
Create a new dart file called flutter_localization_demo inside the lib folder.
First, we create a dart file named l10n of l10n package in which arb file initializes the to local list which contains all our languages which we provide in our project.
We have app_in. arb defines its language, which is a type of localization code, as an arb file is a kind of translator toolkit that is used as an input to a translation tool.
For Example:
app_en.arb, app_es.arb, app_id.arb, app_it.arb
We have initialized the English language in the app_en.arb file regarding the code given below.
Here is the code for app_en.arb:
{
"english_language": "English Language",
"hello_world": "Hello World"
}
After this, we have created a class named LocalProvider, in which the value has been set and get with the help of the provider.
class LocaleProvider with ChangeNotifier {
Locale? _locale;
Locale? get locale => _locale;
void setLocale(Locale locale){
if(!L10n.all.contains(locale)) return;
_locale = locale;
notifyListeners();
}
}
Localization adds for MaterialApp:
To implement localization in our application we will add MaterialApp widget supportedLocales and localizationsDelegates inside MyApp() class.
Add supportedLocales:
This is used to set all the languages we provide locally as it recognizes the US English language by default.
supportedLocales: L10n.all,
Add localizationsDelegates in Material App:
GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate is used to get localized strings and other values for material components.
is used to get localized strings and other values for material components. localizationsDelegates is a listed property in materialApp to get collection localized values from localizing delegates.
is a listed property in materialApp to get collection localized values from localizing delegates. GlobalWidgetsLocalizations.delegate is used to define the default text direction for the widgets library.
localizationsDelegates:[
GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate,
GlobalWidgetsLocalizations.delegate,
GlobalCupertinoLocalizations.delegate,
AppLocalizations.delegate,
],
After this, we will create a class named FlutterLocalizationDemo inside which we are using a dropdown button inside which we will set the value in our widget text and we have created a function named title which we will set the title of the language in which the language code, Country code, etc can be anything as soon as we select the language in the dropdown it will also change our given title.
Center(
child: Column(
mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
children: [
Text(
AppLocalizations.of(context)!.english_language,
style: TextStyle(
fontSize: 20.0,
fontWeight: FontWeight.w500,
),
),
SizedBox(height:85.0),
DropdownButton(
value: lang,
onChanged: (Locale? val) {
provider.setLocale(val!);
},
items: L10n.all
.map((e) => DropdownMenuItem(
value: e,
child: _title(e.languageCode),
))
.toList())
],
),
)
When we run the application, we ought to get the screen’s output like the underneath screen capture.
Final Output
Code File :
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:flutter_localizations/flutter_localizations.dart';
import 'package:flutter_localiztion_demo/l10n/l10n.dart';
import 'package:flutter_localiztion_demo/providers/locale_provider.dart';
import 'package:flutter_localiztion_demo/providers/localizations.dart';
import 'package:provider/provider.dart';
import 'package:flutter_gen/gen_l10n/app_localizations.dart';
class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
return MultiProvider(
providers: [
ChangeNotifierProvider(create: (_) => LocaleProvider()),
],
child: Consumer<LocaleProvider>(builder: (context, provider, snapshot) {
return MaterialApp(
locale: provider.locale,
localizationsDelegates:[
//AppLocalizationsDelegate(),
GlobalMaterialLocalizations.delegate,
GlobalWidgetsLocalizations.delegate,
GlobalCupertinoLocalizations.delegate,
AppLocalizations.delegate,
],
supportedLocales: L10n.all,
home: FlutterLocalizationDemo(),
);
}),
);
}
}
class FlutterLocalizationDemo extends StatelessWidget {
const FlutterLocalizationDemo({Key? key}) : super(key: key);
@override
Widget build(BuildContext context) {
_title(String val) {
switch (val) {
case 'en':
return Text(
'English',
style: TextStyle(fontSize: 16.0),
);
case 'id':
return Text(
'Indonesia',
style: TextStyle(fontSize: 16.0),
);
case 'es':
return Text(
'Spanish',
style: TextStyle(fontSize: 16.0),
);
case 'it':
return Text(
'Italian',
style: TextStyle(fontSize: 16.0),
);
default:
return Text(
'English',
style: TextStyle(fontSize: 16.0),
);
}
}
return Consumer<LocaleProvider>(builder: (context, provider, snapshot) {
var lang = provider.locale ?? Localizations.localeOf(context);
return Scaffold(
appBar:AppBar(
title:Text('Localization Demo'),
),
body: Center(
child: Column(
mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
children: [
Text(
AppLocalizations.of(context)!.english_language,
style: TextStyle(
fontSize: 20.0,
fontWeight: FontWeight.w500,
),
),
SizedBox(height:85.0),
DropdownButton(
value: lang,
onChanged: (Locale? val) {
provider.setLocale(val!);
},
items: L10n.all
.map((e) => DropdownMenuItem(
value: e,
child: _title(e.languageCode),
))
.toList())
],
),
),
);
});
}
}
Conclusion:
In this article, I have explained Localization / Multi-Language In Flutter, which you can modify and experiment with according to your own, this little introduction was from the Localization / Multi-Language. In the Flutter demo from our side.
I hope this blog will provide you with sufficient information in Trying up the Localization / Multi-Language In Flutter. In Flutter in your flutter project. We showed you what the Localization / Multi-Language In Flutter is and work on it in your flutter applications, So please try it.
❤ ❤ Thanks for reading this article ❤❤
If I got something wrong? Let me know in the comments. I would love to improve.
Clap 👏 If this article helps you.
Feel free to connect with us
And read more articles from FlutterDevs.com.
FlutterDevs team of Flutter developers to build high-quality and functionally-rich apps. Hire a flutter developer for your cross-platform Flutter mobile app project on an hourly or full-time basis as per your requirement! You can connect with us on Facebook, GitHub, Twitter, and LinkedIn for any flutter-related queries.
We welcome feedback and hope that you share what you’re working on using #FlutterDevs. We truly enjoy seeing how you use Flutter to build beautiful, interactive web experiences. | https://medium.com/flutterdevs/localization-multi-language-in-flutter-5cedb6ff459b | ['Naveen Srivastava'] | 2021-06-16 14:04:44.284000+00:00 | ['Flutter Ui', 'Flutter Widget', 'Localization Service', 'Dart', 'Flutter App Development'] |
Top 5 ways to detect malicious file manually | If you are not security professional and no idea what malware's can do to you and how you can tell if the file is malicious or not this is an article for you. You may have an AV solution installed in your machine but there may be situation when don’t have an AV in your machine and you are suspicious about an attachment you recently got through an email or in worst case your AV is not capable to detect file may be because signature pattern are not update or any other reasons. To know how to classify file into malicious or good category is skill everyone should know. Following are the top 10 ways to determine it by your own without help of an any third party application. So lets go !!!
#Number 1: Virus Total
Who don’t know about virus total? who? Its an open source platform which cross check your file and do some automated analysis to determine weather file is good or malicious. Its simple and easy just visit https://www.virustotal.com/#/home/upload and upload your file and wait.
Virus Total file uploading portal
After analyzing the file virus total show the result , we can quickly know about the status of the file. Following is the result of malicious file i have uploaded on portal
Malicious file result on Virus Total
Its good idea to check any file before you download or open on virus total if you are in doubt.
#Number 2: Sandboxing
Sandboxing is an quick and easy approach to check the internal working of a malware. Many organisation today have there own sanboxing solution but if your not fortunate enough then don’t be sad. There are many open source sandboxing services which do it for you free. Like Anibus , anyrun , Cuckoo sandboxing . You can find more list here https://zeltser.com/automated-malware-analysis/
For me i am using CAPE sandbox services its again easy like a virus total you just need to visit https://cape.contextis.com and click on analysis followed by uploading your file. After an analysis complete you will have your case ID , after clicking on the ID you will be redirected to the result section when you can see result of your file. It will look like this if file is malicious .
CAPE sandbox result of malicious file
#Number 3: HASH Value check
Another way to check your file is to compare the hash values of two file. It may be possible that software or file you are downloading come from the legitimate site but in between if some has changed the code of the file then hash value will also change , so by quickly comparing it with original file hash value you can detect a tampering.
For widows system there is an awesome utility in command line called as certutil wich can be use to determine hash values.
certutil -hashfile <file path> <Hash algoritham>
You may get any hash you may wish by putting right algorithm.
#Number 4: Unusual Desktop behavior
If your system is already compromise then first visual signs can be found on your desktop environment. There was a rootkit virus recently discovered has a very specific behavior in the desktop environment, infected users has a small black dot on left of their screen. That dot was nothing but a command prompt, and scripts were running in it to download additional payloads. following could be an indications that your system may be infected by malware’s.
Multiple shortcut creation on desktop Sudden blink of command prompt or powershell after reboot or once connected to network. Some unusual icons. Delay in your typing response (may be an indicator of key-logger)
#Number 5: Processes, Registries And Netstat
Once malware is installed in the system first thing it attempts to start its process and hide it under name of legitimate windows process by technique called Process replacement .Many process with same name can be sign of the virus infection. It take little bit more to tell which process is genuine and which is not. There is a tool written by mark russinovich called as Process explorer, you can download it from https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer is very helpful in analysis of process. There are many criteria’s on which we can check the process is malicious or legitimate, for example CPU utilization. A typical Cryptominer will utilize your CPU to its limit if you notice that your CPU is utilization is too high abnormally it could be a sign that there is a cryptominer in your browser cookie or installed on your system.
Checking registry values can be give clue about file being malicious many virus put the file in auto run section of registry to trigger the virus once system is up.
Netstat is a windows utility use for checking network status along with open or listening port . One of the behavior of malware is to connect back to C2 server to download a payloads . You can try command netstat -anb which will show you open ports and destination IP’s along with which file is resposible for a connection.If your suspected file or software is connecting some unknown IP then this could be a sign of danger . | https://medium.com/@whiteheart0/top-5-ways-to-detect-malicious-file-manually-d02744f7c43a | [] | 2019-02-17 17:30:37.182000+00:00 | ['Virus', 'Security', 'Malware'] |
How the Justice Department Helped Bring Down the Largest Criminal Marketplace on the Internet | Commentary by Riley Walters.
The Department of Justice announced the shutdown of “the largest criminal marketplace on the internet.”
The site, AlphaBay, was launched in 2013 after authorities shut down a similar dark web marketplace known as the “Silk Road.” According to the Justice Department, AlphaBay has been hosting over 200,000 users and at least 40,000 illicit vendors.
While these efforts may only slow the selling of illegal drugs, weapons, and other “dark” material, the announcement shows a continued effort by U.S. and international law enforcement to crack down on criminals.
On July 5, the creator of AlphaBay, Alexandre Cazes, was arrested in Thailand. The United States and Thailand were not alone in the investigation.
As Attorney General Jeff Sessions noted in a speech regarding the incident, “international partners at Europol and in Thailand, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Canada, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany … worked closely with [the United States] to take down the criminal enterprise” that used computer networks across numerous countries.
At the time the site went offline, it contained over 300,000 listings for drugs, toxic chemicals, stolen identification documents, and illegal software.
Shutting down the site was more difficult than one may believe at first glance because of a lack of a central location. The dark web is not accessible through usual browsers like Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, and thus is not easily accessible.
Moreover, the site is only accessible if users operate through a “The Onion Router” (Tor) network, which makes IP addresses difficult to trace.
The site also used only digital or crypto-currencies, which allowed users to maintain anonymity during purchases unless the digital code assigned to each purchase was already known by authorities. Its data can be used across numerous systems.
The shutdown of the Silk Road clearly led to an increase in demand for AlphaBay’s services.
After international law enforcement took control of AlphaBay’s infrastructure, they were able to monitor specific sellers and buyers — and once AlphaBay shut down, authorities were able to watch as buyers and sellers migrated to other dark web marketplaces.
One site, known as Hansa Market, was quick to populate with AlphaBay’s users. Coincidentally, Dutch law enforcement were simultaneously working to shut down Hansa Market.
The case is still under investigation by the FBI, and more such cases are sure to follow.
These efforts highlight the need to combine traditional law enforcement, both domestically and internationally, with law enforcement’s cyber capabilities to crack down on new-age cyber threats.
This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal | https://medium.com/the-heritage-foundation/how-the-justice-department-helped-bring-down-the-largest-criminal-marketplace-on-the-internet-6aa8b4edd860 | ['Heritage Foundation'] | 2017-07-28 20:29:06.285000+00:00 | ['Cybersecurity', 'Alphabay', 'Law Enforcement', 'Defense'] |
Here I sit, | Here I sit,
Looking out at an imaginary audience that never had a chance to be overwhelmed by the immense beauty of a single act.
Here I sit,
Picturing a crowd that would’ve been buzzing with excitement, but instead hearing only the bitter stillness of an empty room.
Here I sit,
Imagining the heat from the sweltering stage lights that never had a chance to shine.
Here I sit,
Behind the curtain that should’ve held actors before they took their final breath and walked on the stage to perform, but now only hold silenced memories of what should’ve been.
Here I sit,
Behind the curtain that should’ve held a radiant actor after they perfected their part, but only a somber stillness remains.
Here I sit,
On top of the paintings that for some people hold cherished memories of belly laughs and heartbreaks, but are now just arbitrary splashes of color on the floor.
Here I sit,
Looking at a place that holds no major significance to me, but that holds the livelihood of others.
Here I sit,
With no emotion, on a stage where others have felt true joy, excitement, and passion.
Here I sit,
On a stage that holds bittersweet memories that will never be lost.
Here I sit,
After the pandemic.
Here I sit,
In the after. | https://medium.com/@taliaelise219/here-i-sit-fb4f4c2acb7a | [] | 2020-12-26 20:11:03.362000+00:00 | ['Theater', 'Covid', 'Pandemic'] |
CSS Logical Properties Are the Future of the Web & I18N | I can’t remember how many years ago it was, but during my first interview for a Frontend position, I was asked to sketch out the CSS box model. I outlined the margins, borders, and padding and even denoted each side with its physical description–left, right, top and bottom.
I had committed that model to memory, and have never really reconsidered it since. It never occurred to me that something so fundamental could change. Yet here I am, writing an article to tell you that it, in fact, has.
Enter Logical Properties
Properties like top and left are physical in nature. They describe the specific side of an element, and stay attached to that physical location no matter how that element may render. Whereas, logical properties describe locations of an element based on the content flow, like start and end .
Why is this important?
If we’re going to adjust our fundamental approach to writing and visualizing CSS, it’s fair to ask why.
The web has firmly shifted into an expectation of responsive, user-friendly sites and products. That fluidity has allowed the platform to scale at tremendous rates, and has fully altered entire markets and industries.
But in the pursuit of supporting more and more devices, what happens if one of those devices isn’t in English? Or French? Or any other language that flows from top to bottom, left to right?
Building inclusive products doesn’t mean supporting devices, but supporting the people using them.
Looking at Hebrew specifically, a language written and read from right to left, there’re plenty of styling challenges in handling this minor variation. Instances of text-align: left would need to be conditionally updated to text-align: right or an entirely separate set of styles is loaded, essentially creating a second unique version of the site or product.
What happens then with Japanese, where text flows from top to bottom, and content from right to left? Or Mongolian where the text flows the same, but the content is flipped to flow left to right?
Previously, elements were positioned with CSS physically into place where content would start or end with properties like bottom , left , right , and top . Then depending on the specific use case or situation, like Hebrew, reposition everything again.
This is where CSS Logical Properties shine. When writing text-align: left , it’s likely because the text should be positioned where the content is expected to start. Only, as mentioned, content doesn’t always start at the left. So what would be ideal is something like text-align: start to ensure our content is aligned with its expected starting point.
And that’s exactly what CSS Logical Properties do.
Logical Approach
We’re likely familiar with how the web is broken into two main axes– X and Y. While this hasn’t changed, the naming conventions have.
The horizontal, X-axis becomes the inline-axis, while the vertical, Y-axis becomes the block-axis. But before breaking down individual property comparisons, let’s dig a little deeper into understanding the inline and block axes and how they relate to this shift to logical properties.
Logical Axes
The inline and block axes determine the content and document flow of a page. Each axis, though, and their corresponding flow, can be set using two CSS properties — direction and writing-mode .
Inline Axis (direction)
The direction property affects the inline axis. This property can be used to set the flow (or direction) of text, columns, and horizontal overflow from left to right or, like in the case of Arabic or Hebrew, right to left.
direction: rtl | ltr
Block Axis (writing-mode)
The writing-mode property affects the block axis. This property can be used to set the flow of block-level containers either horizontally or, like in the case of Japanese, vertically.
writing-mode: horizontal-tb | vertical-lr | vertical-rl
The three keyword values shown here represent:
horizontal-tb : Horizontal, top to bottom
: Horizontal, top to bottom vertical-lr : Vertical, left to right
: Vertical, left to right vertical-rl : Vertical, right to left
What happens to the axes when direction or writing-mode are set?
Logical properties will replace styles like text-align: left with text-align: start . This is because, when defining the direction property, the start and end points of the inline axis are set.
In Latin languages, setting direction: ltr will define the start of the inline axis to the left. Whereas, in a language like Hebrew, direction: rtl will define the start of the inline axis to the right.
Aligning content with text-align: start will align the text to the start of the inline axis, relative to its direction value.
How the direction property affects the inline axis flow
The block axis is where changes to the page can become dramatic. It’s one thing to define the direction of the content flow, but another to define the flow of block content and containers with writing-mode .
For this, maybe it’ll help to show the graphic first. | https://medium.com/swlh/css-logical-properties-are-the-future-of-the-web-i18n-c7d554c6dd72 | ['Daniel Yuschick'] | 2021-01-20 00:08:44.729000+00:00 | ['I18n', 'Front End Development', 'Accessibility', 'CSS', 'Web Development'] |
I spend too much time in Zoom… | I spend way too much time on video conferences. Between my day to day at VMware, and the Kubernetes/CNCF communities I probably spend >50% of my time on Zoom.
There are two big things that have really bugged me about my interaction with zoom.
It is too hard to find the mute/unmute button — especially when the zoom app doesn’t have focus.
When you say goodby to someone there is an awkwardness as you both much around trying to find the “Leave Meeting” button.
(There is an option to enable keyboard shortcuts when zoom doesn’t have focus but that does it for all the shortcuts. I’m too afraid of conflicts with other apps. A lot of folks have also suggested some system level or hardware mute. That would work but I really want the “mute” icon next to my face. There is a subtle etiquette to video conferencing and that is part of it.)
I started by asking Twitter. Based on suggestions there, my solution has evolved over the last couple of days and I’m pretty happy with the direction it is going.
Keyboards Maestro
The first utility that solved a critical problem was Keyboard Maestro. This is a staple utility for the Mac that has been around in one version or another. It does way more than I need and I’m not sure I want it so I turned off things like the custom paste and switcher stuff as I didn’t need that.
Keyboard Maestro lets me capture global shortcut keys and send commands to Zoom without having to change the foreground application. Beyond this, you can set things up for keys that aren’t actually on your keyboard. I’m using F19 along with a bunch of modifier keys.
You can download my macros here.
Other options considered: AppleScript looks cool but the zoom client doesn’t have any bindings and I’m not sure you can send commands without changing focus. Hammerspoon also looks really interesting and I haven’t had time to figure out if it would work for me or not.
Programmable Keyboard
WhiteFox Keyboard. I reprogrammed the right Alt key.
Before I ordered any hardware, I wanted to try with stuff I already had. I have a WhiteFox mechanical keyboard that has open firmware that is fully reprogrammable. I was able to assign a high function key to an extra key there and use that as “Push To Talk”. That was very cool. Depending on your keyboard you may be able to do something similar and have a dedicated zoom PTT key.
Finally: a Pedal
I was confident enough at this point to order some hardware. I started with a pedal. There are a lot of options out there and many of them are focused on transcriptionists. I decided to splurge a bit and got a high end pedal — the Kinesis Savant Elite2. It seems like some really solid hardware.
Programming this pedal is interesting. You flip it into “programming mode” and it then mounts as a USB drive. You can use their utility or, even better, just edit a text file on that drive. Note that I had to upgrade the firmware on the pedal to have it be able to address F19. But after that things we easy.
I set it up with the left pedal as “push to talk” (F19) and the right pedal as “toggle mute” (shift-F19).
[lpedal]>[f19]
{rpedal}>{-shift}{f19}{+shift}
Getting Fancy: Stream Deck
While searching for the right pedal I ran across the elgato Stream Deck. This thing is awesome. It is a programmable keypad with LEDs in each key. The 15 button version ran me ~$150.
The colors look a little strange here. It looks better in real life.
While primarily aimed at streamers (with builtin in actions for twitch and OBS) it is more general purpose than that. I was able to program it to hit all the various flavors of F19 that I needed and created custom images for each key. I also was able to put a world clock on there, volume controls, and OBS scene buttons for when I’m doing TGIK.
I ginned up some icons quickly in Illustrator and exported them as 72px x 72px PNGs. If you want them let me know and I’ll post them someplace. For reference the Zoom icons are: hang up, push to talk, toggle mute, toggle camera, bring Zoom into focus.
The one downside: the state of mute/unmute isn’t reflected on the button. That’d be cool.
Next steps?
I’m probably done for now. I’ll probably tweak a bit but no major changes. I wish that the Zoom Mac app had better interfaces or an SDK as that would make integration easier. But oh well. It does look like the Stream Deck does have an SDK and that would be fun to play with.
Thanks for everyone that had suggestions and pointers through this project! | https://medium.com/@joebeda/i-spend-too-much-time-in-zoom-5eedcea5cc90 | ['Joe Beda'] | 2019-06-23 19:48:24.620000+00:00 | ['Productivity', 'Hardware', 'Zoom', 'Pedal'] |
Visualize multi-dimension datasets in a 2D graph using t-SNE (Airbnb bookings dataset as an example) | Visualize multi-dimension datasets in a 2D graph using t-SNE (Airbnb bookings dataset as an example) Paul Lo Follow Jan 15 · 6 min read
Using 31 numeric features in the user booking dataset which has 12 different travel destinations for prediction— and yeah, I know it’s really messy, at least we immediately know we have some feature engineering work to do :D
t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) algorithm
First of all, what is t-SNE and when and why are we using it? It is an unsupervised and non-linear dimension reduction algorithm, people usually use it during exploratory data analysis , an early stage in the whole machine learning pipeline. It helps us surface high-dimensional datasets (e.g. many features) through a 2D or 3D plot (or other relatively low numbers), and thus get a quick intuition about the data. It is NOT designed in a way to apply it directly to a classification task.
How about PCA? In the dimension reduction area, people often compare it with PCA , or Principal Component Analysis . Actually, t-SNE is a much newer approach that was developed by Laurens van der Maatens and Geoffrey Hinton in 2008 (see paper “Visualizing Data using t-SNE” here), while PCA was developed by Hotelling H. back in 1933 (Analysis of a complex of statistical variables into principal components), almost 3 generations ago!
As mentioned in the t-SNE paper, there is certainly some limitations for the linear type of models like PCA, “For high-dimensional data that lies on or near a low-dimensional, non-linear manifold it is usually more important to keep the low-dimensional representations of very similar datapoints close together, which is typically not possible with a linear mapping.”
To understand better about this, we can take a look at the underlying algorithm (and many great ‘PCA vs t-SNE’ articles online), aside from the Algorithm section in the original paper, I also highly recommend this An illustrated introduction to the t-SNE algorithm read, which provides a very intuitive but mathematical perspective to the model. In order to move on to the coding section, here, let’s just say t-SNE is more effective in handling certain types of complicated data, compared with PCA ‘s linear approach. As shown in the following pictures, a Kaggle script created by puyokw demonstrates t-SNE’s capabilities clearly.
Code
For R
Step 1: Install and load Rtsne package
install.packages("Rtsne") # Install Rtsne from CRAN library
library(Rtsne)
Step 2. Load a dataset for our example use case
> iris_unique <- unique(iris) # remove duplicate rows
> head(iris_unique) Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
1 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.2 setosa
2 4.9 3.0 1.4 0.2 setosa
3 4.7 3.2 1.3 0.2 setosa
4 4.6 3.1 1.5 0.2 setosa
5 5.0 3.6 1.4 0.2 setosa
Step 3. Fit with t-SNE and visualize
Yes — it’s really that simple
> iris_matrix = as.matrix(iris_unique[,1:4]) # note: we can only pass in numeric columns
> tsne_out <- Rtsne(iris_matrix)
> plot(tsne_out$Y,col=iris$Species) # graph is now generated
t-SNE visualization for a simple Iris dataset, the three types of flowers are clearly divided into different 3 clusters
Now, let’s try with another real-world dataset, but much more complicated — Airbnb’s user booking dataset in a Kaggle competition. With the following code, we can check out its visualization in a 2D space.
Step 1. Load the data: Airbnb dataset (there are 213,451 rows in training dataset)
> library(readr)
> df_train = read_csv(“train_users.csv”) # subset numerical features
> numeric_columns = sapply(df_train, is.numeric)
> countries = as.factor(df_train$country_destination)
> df_train = df_train[, numeric_columns]
> df_train$country_destination = countries # put destination column back
> df_train_unique <- unique(train) # de-duplication
> dim(df_train_unique) [1] 213451 31
Step 2. Fit t-SNE and generate the plot
> matrx = as.matrix(df_train_unique)
> tsne_out <- Rtsne(matrx)
> plot(tsne_out$Y, col=countries, main=’t-SNE of airbnb dataset on Kaggle (31 features)’)
31 numeric features and 12 different target variables
It took 20–30 minutes on Rtsne() and unique() , and the resulting graph was bad, which implied that I hadn’t come up with good features yet to separate 12 different country destinations for an accurate prediction.
(The speed can be improved with parameters like theta, max_iter, etc.)
> colnames(df_train) [1] “timestamp_first_active” “age” [3] “signup_flow” “-unknown-” [5] “Android App Unknown Phone/Tablet” “Android Phone” [7] “Blackberry” “Chromebook” [9] “Linux Desktop” “Mac Desktop” [11] “Opera Phone” “Tablet” [13] “Windows Desktop” “Windows Phone” [15] “iPad Tablet” “iPhone” [17] “iPodtouch” “total_elapsed_time” [19] “-unknown-_pct” “Android App Unknown Phone/Tablet_pct” [21] “Android Phone_pct” “Blackberry_pct” [23] “Chromebook_pct” “Linux Desktop_pct” [25] “Mac Desktop_pct” “Opera Phone_pct” [27] “Tablet_pct” “Windows Desktop_pct” [29] “Windows Phone_pct” “iPad Tablet_pct” [31] “iPhone_pct”
Python code
For Python folks, we’ll be using TSNE package under sklearn.manifold , a simple use case looks like the following, while there are optional parameters including learning_rate, n_components (dimension of the embedded space, default=2), n_iter (maximum number of iterations for the optimization) to play with
from sklearn.manifold import TSNE
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt X_tsne = TSNE().fit_transform(df_train_unique)
scatter(X_tsne[:, 0], X_tsne[:, 1],
c=countries,cmap=plt.cm.spectral,alpha=.4,
edgecolor='k')
The Tradeoff: High time and space complexity
When I passed in completed 150+ features (including categorical fields added by dummyVars() ) of 200K data points to build a 2D t-SNE visualization, it took forever and ate up 25GB of memory in my MBP, pretty scary….!
Other than that, t-SNE is computationally expensive. As shown in the sklearn documents, in the same Manifold Learning (non-linear dimensionality reduction) family, t-SNE can take 6–100 times more compared with other models such as Spectral Embedding (SE) and Multi-dimensional Scaling (MDS).
t-SNE is very computationally intensive, even compared with other non-linear dimensional reduction models
When we think about the underlying algorithm, t-SNE has to compute the distances between all the points and maintain a pairwise N by N distance matrix (N = # of examples). Therefore, its space and time complexity are at quadratic level, O(n²), and this problem naturally becomes another popular research domain people are trying to optimize, one example is Fast Fourier Transform-accelerated Interpolation-based t-SNE (FIt-SNE), the details can be found in the paper here.
To be continued……
Going back to the Airbnb dataset example, we should be able to generate a better visualization result with t-SNE — please stay tuned, let me share more next time!
Reference
End Notes: | https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/note-visualize-multi-dimension-datasets-in-a-2d-graph-using-t-sne-airbnb-bookings-dataset-as-824541cc5388 | ['Paul Lo'] | 2020-01-15 12:23:46.859000+00:00 | ['Machine Learning', 'Dimensionality Reduction', 'Clustering', 'Data Visualization', 'Data Exploration'] |
How to Turn a Trip into an Adventure | I am an avid traveler. Luckily, I have a job that provides me the opportunity to travel to places I normally wouldn’t go to for pleasure, so I get to experience the best of both worlds! When I travel, while I do visit famous tourist places, such as the Louvre Museum in Paris or the Colosseum in Rome, I also like to find more out of the way places that aren’t the number one attractions for a tour bus.
Sometimes you run across something by happenstance, including when you get lost, but other times your pre-travel research reveals interesting places to visit that are off the beaten path.
What are some of the fun things I’ve done to make a trip into an adventure?
Reykjavik Food Walk
Boris Pasternak: I stayed in Moscow for five weeks one year, working on a short-term project. Of course, I had to visit the Kremlin, Red Square, and the Bolshoi Ballet. But then I read that Boris Pasternak, the author of Dr. Zhivago, a movie I love, was buried near Moscow and that his dacha had been made into a museum. I just had to go and pay homage. I hired a driver to go the cemetery and dacha, I think he thought I was crazy. It took us a while to find the places. Afterwards, I told him that now he knew where to take the next crazy tourist who wanted to see these sites! I also searched for Merlin’s tomb in a forest in Brittany. These are just two examples of setting out on a “mission” to find a particular place. Local suggestions: I always ask the locals for recommendations, whether for a restaurant, bakery, or their favorite ice cream stand. If I pass by a place that seems to have a lot of locals frequenting it, that’s the place I want to eat. I also will try to find books or blogs that recommends restaurants by a local or someone that knows the place well. A hole in the wall or family place is perfect for me. I’ve been known to go miles for recommended food, including a seafood restaurant in Follonica, Tuscany; a winery restaurant for lunch with tea pairing in Hermanus, South Africa; or a small place for fresh white fish in Paradise, Michigan. And don’t forget the farmers’ market to see what is in season and watch the locals in action! Special activities: Plan some special activities for your trip. I have joined food tours in Reykjavik, Iceland and Burlington, Vermont. Not only do you get a chance to taste local foods, but the guides also tell you a lot about the city and history. You can always go back to one of the restaurants to have a full dinner. I’ve also arranged for special activities in China, including painting Chinese opera masks, learning how to do Chinese calligraphy, and making our own dim sum! How about a tour to climb on a glacier or walk into a glacier, as I’ve done in Iceland? Or take a tram to the top of a mountain in Switzerland, then hike back down. Additionally, you can plan your trip around special exhibits or sites, such as visiting the Marco Polo bridge or the Cultural Revolution Museum in China.
Lastly, as you participate in activities such as these, you may run into new things that you’d never encounter as you drive to someplace special. Or you can see something on the spur of the moment, such as the small aquarium we visited in Venice, only because we were hot, and they advertised they had air conditioning!
Whatever you do, see the tourist sites, but then go off the beaten path and experience some things that most people never see or do. You’ll be glad you did. | https://medium.com/welcome-back-to-abuja-once-again/how-to-turn-a-trip-into-an-adventure-1ca3f3e84b6d | ['Carol J. Yee'] | 2021-04-01 14:37:56.718000+00:00 | ['Travel Writing', 'Food', 'Boris Pasternak', 'Travel Tips', 'Traveling'] |
Mysteries of Thee | Mysteries of Thee I harbour in my breast,
Each timeless and an eternity vast.
What dreams born of my consecrated heart
Becomes a rapture-song of Thy delight.
Why then this strange mystery of death and decay,
This life unfurled into pain and bondage?
Why the noble suffer and the wicked rejoice, eh?
Why my heart wedded to Thee broken in siege?
Why my nights are long, and unending seems?
Why Thy gleam lost in the twilight of the Inconscient?
Why the long road to Thy divinity wrought with dangers,
Why Thy godhead hidden in me and evil dominant?
My heart says Thou art there in the darkness,
My spirit living in Thy sun knows the coming hour.
My mind set to Thy compass moves towards Thy shoreless bliss,
My body a skiff upon Thy golden seas of Matter.
I shall bear within me the asteroid’s strike and the storm’s fury,
I shall live in death until death is no more:
I shall walk in the heartless brood of earth’s falsity
Till earth turns to Thy gold of vast pliant matter.
I shall still ask Thee why and wherefore of things;
If not to Thee, to whom shall this banter worthy of bliss? | https://medium.com/inevitable-word/mysteries-of-thee-609f1976f3a0 | ['Murli R'] | 2020-12-28 15:23:26.649000+00:00 | ['Sri Aurobindo', 'Poetry On Medium', 'Poem', 'Poems On Medium', 'Poetry'] |
hair-removal Online in UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arab, Dubai | hair-removal Online in UAE, hair-removal Online in Kuwait, hair-removal Online in Saudi Arab, hair-removal Online in Dubai
https://eyshopp.com/hair-removal.html
Hair removal, otherwise called epilation or depilation, is the conscious removal of body hair or head hair. Hair ordinarily develops all around the human body and can differ in thickness and length across human populaces. Hair removal is super durable. Super durable: Electrolysis is the main FDA supported technique for extremely durable hair removal. Adaptability. As indicated by the American Electro logy Association, electrolysis is successful for individuals with any skin type, skin tone, hair type, and hair tone. Electrolysis is reasonable for any space of the body — including the eyebrows. Epilation utilizes a mechanical gadget called an epilator. The gadget eliminates hair by culling it by the root as you skim it along toward hair development. Dissimilar to waxing, epilation should be possible wet or dry and doesn’t include a wax-like substance. Removal of body hair is fundamental to keep up with sound cleanliness propensities. Ladies will quite often go for this more than men, for cleanliness reasons. It is fundamental for all kinds of people to comprehend the significance of clearing off the additional hair from the body. Part of the insight that your pubic hair develops a lot quicker than the hair on your head might be because of the development cycle it follows. That implies the very pubes that began to develop will shed in with regards to a month to a month and a half. Hair on your head follows a considerably more spread out process. | https://medium.com/@manorani_27011/hair-removal-online-in-uae-kuwait-saudi-arab-dubai-25c1124af8aa | ['Mano Rani'] | 2021-12-28 06:29:59.251000+00:00 | ['Hair', 'Uae', 'Saudi Arab', 'Online', 'Removals'] |
Where Startups Fail? | According to a recent survey 8 out of 10 IT employees have always thought about entrepreneurship.
Why and where they Fail ?
Lack of knowledge about how the company operates. Financial instability Lack of Perseverance
Based on my personal experience when you’re an IT EMPLOYEE being paid well, Always begin your startup in Parallel . Do not resign your current job as Startup takes atleast 3 months to be up and out.
You can always work on weekends and put extra hours to make sure you’re ground work is done
Rethink before resigning your current job and make sure your taking the right decision in the ongoing pandemic as you want to be financially stable | https://medium.com/@nitingowda081/where-startups-fail-75341383e31e | ['Nithin C'] | 2020-12-26 17:28:35.198000+00:00 | ['Startup', 'Startup Lessons', 'Entrepreneurship', 'Business Strategy'] |
Area Charts with Plotly Express | Area Charts with Plotly Express
Image by Pawel Czerwinski from Unsplash
Plotly Graph Objects
Plotly Express, an object-oriented interface to figure creation, was released in 2019. It is a high-level wrapper for Plotly.py that includes functions to plot standard 2D & 3D charts and choropleth maps. Fully compatible with the rest of the Plotly ecosystem, is an excellent tool for the rapid development of exploratory charts.
But if you want to enhance your plots, you need to import a group of classes named graph objects.
import plotly.graph_objects as go fig = go.Figure()
The plotly.graph_objects module contains a hierarchy of Python classes. Figure is a primary class. Figure has a data attribute and a layout attribute. The data attribute has more than 40 objects, each one refers to a specific type of chart (trace) with its corresponding parameters. The layout attribute specifies the properties of the figure as a whole (axes, title, shapes, legends, etc.).
The conceptual idea is to use fig.add_trace() and fig.update_layout() to manipulate these attributes in order to enhance already constructed figures.
Let’s analyze this methodology with different types of area charts.
Area Charts
An area chart is a form of line chart with the area between the horizontal axis and the line that connects data points filled with color. They are used to communicate an overall trend without being concerned about showing exact values.
The vertical axis represents a quantitative variable while the horizontal axis is a timeline or a sequence of numerical intervals. Data points are connected by line segments forming a polyline, and the area between the polyline and the horizontal axis is filled with color or some type of shading.
There are four types of area charts (AC): 1) Standard AC; 2) Stacked AC; 3) Percent Stacked AC; 4) Overlapping AC.
1. — Standard Area Chart (AKA Area Graph): they are particularly effective to show the evolution of a numerical variable over time. The idea is to put more emphasis on the overall trend and on the peaks and troughs of the line that connects the data points.
2. — Stacked Area Chart: it’s like several area charts stacked on top of one another. In this type of chart, there is a third variable, usually categorical, with its corresponding data series. Each data series representation begins where the previous data series ends (they do not overlap). The final figure indicates the sum of all the data represented.
3. — Percent Stacked Area Chart (AKA 100% Stacked Area Chart): just like the previous chart, several areas are stacked on top of one another and a third categorical variable is represented. It is a Part-to-whole chart where each area indicates the percentage of each part referred to the total of the category. The final height of the vertical axis is always 100%. This means that there is a second baseline on the top of the chart that helps to track some particular trends.
4. — Overlapping Area Charts: in this kind of graph there is some overlapping between areas. Colors and transparency must be properly adjusted so particular lines can be easily seen. They allow us to make very good comparisons between trends.
Area Charts with Plotly Express
We worked with a dataset downloaded from Kaggle [1]. The dataset contains records related to Video Games Sales & Game Ratings Data Scraped from VzCharts. We particularly selected a csv file with 1031 records about Video Games sales on the Playstation 4 platform by Sony. We would like to know how sales were distributed in different regions of the world in the period 2013–2018.
First, we imported Plotly Express as px, the Pandas library as pd and converted our csv file into a dataframe:
import pandas as pd
import plotly.express as px path ='your path'
df = pd.read_csv(path + 'PS4_GamesSales2.csv',
index_col = False, header = 0, sep = ';', engine='python')
The screenshot below shows the first ten records of the dataset:
Remember: real-world data is dirty. So we did some cleaning before using the data. Particularly, we used dropna to eliminate rows with N/A values in the Year column, and used drop to delete rows with 0 values in the Global column. Then we split the data into groups based on the Year column and applied the function sum() on each group.
df.dropna(subset = ['Year'], inplace = True) df.drop(df[df['Global'] == 0.0].index, inplace = True) df_area = df.groupby(['Year']).sum().reset_index()
Now we are ready to draw our first chart.
For the standard area chart in this article, the Plotly Express function is px.area and the corresponding parameters are: data_frame; x= a name of a column in data_frame representing the timeline; y= a name of a column in data_frame representing the statistic calculated. We updated the chart with update.layout: set the title, the size of the font, and set the figure dimensions with width and height. Then we updated the x-axis and the y-axis (text, font, tickfont). We saved the chart as a static png file and finally, we drew the chart using the default template (plotly, “Histograms with Plotly Express, Themes & Templates”, https://towardsdatascience.com/histograms-with-plotly-express-e9e134ae37ad).
fig1 = px.area(
df_area, x = 'Year', y = 'Global') fig1.update_layout(
title = "PS4 Global Sales",
title_font_size = 40,
width = 1600, height = 1400) fig1.update_xaxes(
title_text = 'Year',
title_font=dict(size=30, family='Verdana', color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig1.update_yaxes(
title_text = "Sales (MM)",
range = (0,160),
title_font=dict(size=30,family='Verdana',color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig1.write_image(path + "figarea1.png")
fig1.show()
Fig. 1: Standard Area Chart. Graph made by the author with Plotly Express.
The graph above indicates the evolution in the number of PS4 global sales for the period 2013–2018. The same story could have been told with a line graph but without the visual power of the area chart.
But remember that we would like to know how sales were distributed in different regions of the world during the same period. So we need a stacked area chart where each area (each region) contributes to the total (the whole, sum of sales). The height of each area represents the value of each particular region whilst the final height is the sum of those values.
Now we used the module plotly.graph_objects with a different methodology [fig.add_trace()] and a different trace [go.Scatter()]. x= is the name of a column in data_frame representing the timeline while y= is the name of a column in data_frame representing a particular region. The stackgroup parameter is used to add the y values of the different traces in the same group. We must include mode = ‘lines’ to draw lines instead of points.
import plotly.graph_objects as go
fig2 = go.Figure() fig2.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['North America'],
name = 'North America',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5, color='orange'),
stackgroup = 'one')) fig2.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['Europe'],
name = 'Europe',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5,color='lightgreen'),
stackgroup = 'one')) fig2.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['Japan'],
name = 'Japan',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5, color='blue'),
stackgroup = 'one')) fig2.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['Rest of World'],
name = 'Rest of World',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5, color='darkred'),
stackgroup = 'one')) fig2.update_layout(
title = "PS4 Global Sales per Region",
title_font_size = 40, legend_font_size = 20,
width = 1600, height = 1400) fig2.update_xaxes(
title_text = 'Year',
title_font=dict(size=30, family='Verdana', color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig2.update_yaxes(
title_text = "Sales (MM)", range = (0,160),
title_font=dict(size=30, family='Verdana', color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig2.write_image(path + "figarea2.png")
fig2.show()
Fig. 2: Stacked Area Chart. Graph made by the author with Plotly Express.
Let’s see if a percent stacked area chart improves the storytelling. We only need to make one small change: add groupnorm = ‘percent’ to the first add_trace().
fig3 = go.Figure() fig3.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['North America'],
name = 'North America',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5, color='orange'),
stackgroup = 'one',
groupnorm = 'percent')) fig3.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['Europe'],
name = 'Europe',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5,color='lightgreen'),
stackgroup = 'one')) fig3.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['Japan'],
name = 'Japan',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5, color='blue'),
stackgroup = 'one')) fig3.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['Rest of World'],
name = 'Rest of World',
mode = 'lines',
line=dict(width=0.5, color='darkred'),
stackgroup = 'one')) fig3.update_layout(
title = "PS4 Global Sales per Region",
title_font_size = 40, legend_font_size = 20,
yaxis=dict(type='linear',ticksuffix='%'),
width = 1600, height = 1400) fig3.update_xaxes(
title_text = 'Year',
title_font=dict(size=30, family='Verdana', color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig3.update_yaxes(
title_text = "Sales (%)", range = (0,100),
title_font=dict(size=30, family='Verdana', color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig3.write_image(path + "figarea3.png")
fig3.show()
Fig. 3: Percent Stacked Area Chart. Graph made by the author with Plotly Express.
Figure 3 is a Part-to-whole chart where each area indicates the percentage of each region referred to the total of the world sales. The emphasis is on the trend, how the percentage of each category changes over time, and not on the exact values.
Finally, we can compare the regions with the highest sales using an overlapping area chart. Instead of stackgroup, we add fill = ‘tozeroy’ to the first add_trace() and fill = ‘tonexty’ to the second add_trace().
fig4 = go.Figure() fig4.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['North America'],
name = 'North America',
mode = 'lines', line=dict(width=0.5,color='lightgreen'),
fill = 'tozeroy')) fig4.add_trace(go.Scatter(
x= df_area['Year'], y = df_area['Europe'],
name = 'Europe',
mode = 'lines', line=dict(width=0.5, color='darkred'),
fill = 'tonexty')) fig4.update_layout(
title = "PS4 Sales North America vs Europe",
title_font_size=40, legend_font_size = 20,
width = 1600, height = 1400) fig4.update_xaxes(
title_text = 'Year',
title_font=dict(size=30, family='Verdana', color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig4.update_yaxes(
title_text = "Sales (MM)", range = (0,70),
title_font=dict(size=30, family='Verdana', color='black'),
tickfont=dict(family='Calibri', color='darkred', size=25)) fig4.write_image(path + "figarea4.png")
fig4.show()
Fig. 4: Overlapping Area Chart. Graph made by the author with Plotly Express.
To sum up:
We use Area Charts to communicate the overall trend and the relative contribution of each part to the whole without being concerned about showing exact values.
We use the plotly.graph_objects module to add traces sequentially by means of the add_trace method. Then we manipulate the chart attributes through update_layout, update_xaxes, and update_yaxes.
If you find this article of interest, please read my previous (https://medium.com/@dar.wtz):
“Scatter Plots with Plotly Express, Trendlines & Faceting”
“Histograms with Plotly Express, Themes & Templates”
References
[1]: https://www.kaggle.com/sidtwr/videogames-sales-dataset?select=PS4_GamesSales.csv | https://towardsdatascience.com/area-charts-with-plotly-express-510a1f12ac11 | ['Darío Weitz'] | 2021-03-17 14:45:06.494000+00:00 | ['Data Visualization', 'Data Science', 'Plotly', 'Charts And Graphs', 'Storytelling'] |
Ethical Dilemma: Self-Driving Cars | The Rules
There are three laws of robotics set out by Isaac Asimov in 1942.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human to come at harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Later, Isaac Asimov added a fourth:
0. A robot may not harm humanity or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
A world of self-driving cars seems to be something that many people in the Artificial Intelligence field fantasize. However wonderful you believe this fantasy may be, we can’t disregard the ethical concerns that many researchers have. Can cars truly make a right decision when someone’s life is on the line?
When you’re on the road and there is about to be an unavoidable accident, you simply makes a reaction in that given moment. It is sudden and understood as just a reaction. However, in the world of self-driving car, there is no driver to make a reaction. Instead, there is a programmer who decides what the car’s course of action will be beforehand. If you were to drive left into a motorcycle, it was your reaction. If the car were to turn left into a motorcycle, it was premeditated murder.
Many may argue the benefits of self-driving cars will significantly decrease car crashes because it eliminates the risk of human error. Although this may be true, crashes will still occur and their outcome can be seen as unethical. What happens in a car crash will have been determined years in advance by programmers. By saying “minimize harm” is the answer, it still brings up questions. If the car needs to decide between crashing into one of two motorcyclists, which one should it choose? The one wearing a helmet or the one without? If you chose the one with a helmet because it “minimizes harm”, then you are punishing the responsible citizen. And in the reverse situation, the car wouldn’t be “minimizing harm” anymore.
The algorithms in self-driving cars will favor certain objects to crash in to with no fault given to the humans involved. Additionally, many question whether they would buy a car that saves as many lives as possible, or one that would save the passenger no matter what. Should self-driving cars be programmed to make a random decision, or a decision based off of fatalities and priorities? If you were to ride a self-driving car that made a random decision, then there would be no morals involved.
The Trolley Problem
David Engber / Source
It’s all a question of morals. Therefore, we can analyze a famous philosophical problem, the Trolley Problem.
If a trolley with broken breaks was approaching two paths as depicted above and you had control over which path it would take, which would you choose? More importantly, why did you make your decision? This example is pretty simple, having to choose between five or one. However, MIT made a Moral Machine where you can test to see what you would do. There are many more factors involved including: age, species, gender, social values, and fitness.
MIT Moral Machine / Source
Whatever we think we would do, it’s either that we probably wouldn’t do or it just isn’t morally correct.
There are a couple things that all autonomous vehicles should do:
Align with our values
Perform even better than humans
Use machine learning
Machine learning is thought to solve all our abstract problems by using logic and math. When trying to solve this problem, manufacturers are trying to use an evolutionary approach. By setting out simple rules at the very beginning, the machine can learn on its own what is good and bad. Through the evolution, we can provide checkpoints such as a situation and analyze whether the machine’s decision makes sense and if people agree. If not, we tell the machine that it was wrong to make that decision and it can keep learning from there. A good analogy would be raising a child. You don’t tell them everything, but they figure out lots on their own. At the end, the self-driving car would end up matching our own values.
Although not everyone may agree, this is believed to be the best approach to solving the dilemma. There will much more debating for what is morally correct, but we need to come up with something because the benefits of self-driving cars are astronomical. | https://medium.com/@zoepetroianu/ethical-dilemma-self-driving-cars-a69b97194f41 | ['Zoe Petroianu'] | 2020-12-13 14:49:36.528000+00:00 | ['Self Driving Cars', 'AI', 'Technology', 'Artificial Intelligence', 'Computer Science'] |
US v. E-6 — Sexual Assault. When we were first hired on this case… | When we were first hired on this case, the assigned military counsel thought that the client should plead guilty. The situation looked dire. My client was an E-6 Navy Diver and one of the first African Americans to graduate from the Navy Diver program. When I first reviewed the charge sheet, I realized that this was a two-accuser case. One accuser worked with my client and one accuser was dating one of the divers in my client’s unit.
Accuser One, the co-worker, claimed that my client waited until everyone in the office left, walked into her office, and essentially attacked her. She did not report the allegation for several months, but she made a statement to NCIS, and my client was charged. Accuser One claimed that my client attacked her, threw her against a desk, tried to rip her clothes off, and she only got away because she fought my client off.
Accuser Two was dating another diver in my client’s unit. She claimed that my client assaulted her at a party while everyone else slept. In her allegation, she asserted my client grabbed her breasts and her buttocks without her consent.
We immediately began to investigate both allegations. As for Accuser One, she claimed that during the assault, she screamed, threw things at my client, and that she was thrown on a desk, causing significant damage to the desk. We interviewed the person who sat at that desk and the janitor who was scheduled to clean the office that night. Both witnesses confirmed that the there was no evidence of an assault. No scattered papers, no sign of a fight, and the desk was not in disarray. We also spoke to a witness who was sitting in an office located a few doors down. According to the desk log, this witness was still in the office as the alleged assault took place. Yet, she did not hear a thing. She heard no yelling, no fighting, and otherwise had no knowledge that a fight had occurred. We also uncovered text messages exchanged between our client and Accuser One that indicated they were very friendly with one another in the days immediately after the alleged assault. We felt good about what we had found.
As for the second accuser, we discovered that she had a motive to falsely accuse our client of assault. The week before she accused my client, my client reported her boyfriend for using a racial slur against him. While on a dive in Key West, Florida, the second accuser’s boyfriend called my client the N-word. My client immediately reported him, and he faced a misconduct investigation. Ten days later, his girlfriend accused my client of sexual assault. Plus, I spoke to two different witnesses who attended the party where the alleged assault occurred. Both of those witnesses denied ever seeing an assault even though they would have been feet away from my client when the alleged assault occurred.
After 4 days of trial, the military jury fully acquitted my client. The lesson we learned is that our client cannot rely on military law enforcement investigations to get justice. This is why at Capovilla & Williams we employ our own investigators to ensure that our clients are given a fair opportunity to defend themselves.
____________________________________
RESULTS: Full AQUITTAL. NOT Guilty of all charges. NO jail time. NO sex-offender registration. | https://medium.com/@mickeywilliams454/us-v-e-6-sexual-assault-4276f741f9ea | ['Mickey Williams'] | 2020-11-16 17:56:45.337000+00:00 | ['Military', 'Courts', 'Lawyers', 'Attorney', 'Sexual Assault'] |
Trader’s Journal #6 | 1. Australian residents will be able to buy bitcoins in stores
The Binance Cryptocurrency Exchange has announced the launch of the Binance Lite Australia. It is a platform, through which Australians will be able to purchase Bitcoin at more than 1,300 newsstands across the country.
To buy a cryptocurrency, the user will need to go through the KYC procedure, after which he will be able to place online orders and receive coins to his addresses. Transaction fee is 5%.
2. Bitwise Announced that 95% of Volume on Unregulated Crypto Exchanges Is Fake
Bitwise company has prepared a presentation for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It states that 95% of trading volumes on unregulated exchanges are fake and devoid of any economic sense.
The analytical report begins with the thesis that approximately $ 6 billion of the daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies on the market are fake:
“Under the hood the exchanges that report the highest volumes are unrecognizable. The vast majority of this reported volume is fake and/or non-economic wash trading.”
3. Jack Dorsey: Square will pay Bitcoin developers to create an open source ecosystem
Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey revealed a large payment plan for developers to create an Bitcoin ecosystem with open source technology. In a move that underlined the assessment of a technological magnate of both cryptocurrency and freely available innovations, Dorsey said he would hire “3–4 crypto engineers and 1 designer” to contribute to the cryptocurrency.
On Wednesday’s tweet thread, Dorsey added that improving the crypto ecosystem seems to be “the most impactful thing” Square can do for the community, going on to say:
4. BitGo Adds Support for Blockchain Capital’s Security Token
According to press release, Blockchain security firm and BitGo wallet service announced support for ERC-20 token Blockchain Capital.
The BCAP Blockchain Capital token is a security token based on the Ethereum blockchain (ETH), which was launched during the initial coin offering (ICO) in April 2017. BCAP is of indirect economic interest for a limited share of participation in an investment fund with tokens. This is the first security token in the world that was sold via ICO.
“We wanted to be sure that the chosen custodial solution was as safe as possible, but at the same time easy to use,” said Brad Stevens, co-founder of Blockchain Capital.
5. OKEx, Huobi and Kucoin Jump Into the IEO Game
OKEx’s
OKEx has announced an IEO platform dubbed OK Jumpstart.
Resource: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/okex-announces-upcoming-launch-of-ieo-platform-ok-jumpstart-300811412.html
Huobi’s
Huobi exchange has provided plenty of details about Huobi Prime product. Huobi uses the term “Direct Premium Offering (DPO)”, although the concept is almost identical to the IEO model.
Resource: https://medium.com/huobi-global/introducing-huobi-prime-a-better-path-to-premium-projects-8c5e3c2ee647
Kucoin’s Spotlight
Kucoin’s IEO platform will be called Spotlight. As it is now almost standard practice for IEOs, participants in the token sales will have to pay with the exchange’s own KuCoin Shares.
Resource: https://www.kucoin.com/news/en-introducing-kucoin-spotlight
Prices for main crypto coins today:
Bitcoin $4 030,77
Ripple $0,308562
Ethereum $137,29
Stellar $0,105239
Bitcoin Cash $166,28
EOS $3,68
Litecoin $60,19
Investy Platform Traders’ Stats
The highest rate of profit — ~ 40%
Week Trading Pair — BTC to ETH
Week Exchange — Bittrex
37% of trades were closed with Take Profit
40% of trades were closed with Stop Loss
Other trades were closed by users themselves | https://medium.com/investy/traders-journal-6-e9263fd5aee1 | [] | 2019-03-25 15:39:09.917000+00:00 | ['Bitgo', 'Bitwise', 'Jack Dorsey', 'Okex', 'Binance'] |
The 4th Person Perspective: The Emergence of the Collective Subjective | The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. - Muriel Rukeyser, The Speed of Darkness (1968)
As the world advances technologically, the more we are experiencing changes that affect how we identify ourselves individually and as groups. The rise of digital communication has shifted the paradigms of what it means to be a global citizen. Digital technology has opened the floodgates of information and now narratives flow from infinite sources into our daily lives. As such, understanding today’s world is incredibly complex due to the incredible amount and variation of information out there.
The 4th person is a framework and theory to better understand some of these contemporary changes. Some of these problematic changes include: the rise of “fake” news, a shifting sense of truth, disillusion with establishment, mass surveillance, and the rise of populist movements along with mass protests.
Parallel with the rise of these new societal issues is the development of new technology such as: blockchain, extended reality (XR, encompassing virtual and augmented reality), machine learning, deep fakes, and social media like Youtube, Twitter, Instagram and more.
These new societal changes combined with new technology create for a uniquely confusing atmosphere. Some call it the post-truth era but I believe that the post-truth is merely symptomatic of something more — the emergence of the 4th person and 4th person perspective.
What or Who is the 4th Person?
Fundamentally, the 4th person is about narrative, storytelling, and perspective. When it comes to narration, there is the 1st person and 3rd person (The 2nd person exists but I will exclude talking about it since it is uncommon). When we read stories, watch movies, or play video games, we view and interact with the narrative through one of these points-of-view.
The 4th person is a new emerging point-of-view. It is a group or collective perspective corresponding to “we” or “us”.
A global top-down perspective.
The 4th person functions as a collection of perspectives rather than a single objectivity. Commonly, “4” refers to the globe, or an outside observer (the 4th wall) — words like global, objective, truth, and omniscient come to mind. But instead of understanding truth as a single clear fact, the 4th person makes us realize that truth and clarity actually emerge from the sum of many parts and perspectives, a collective subjective.
The conventional paradigm is that there can only be a single dominant narrative that flows from a single source. This frame of mind is harmful and shortsighted. A single narrative with only one point-of-view is similar to a king’s authoritarian rule — it’s an outdated hierarchical structure in which to understand the world. Today’s digital environment levels out the playing field in the struggle for narrative dominance. Within the paradigms of narrative, the rule of one is now being replaced by a collective plurality.
Emergence Theory — Narrative as a Complex System
Before diving into the what of the 4th person and narrative, we must first understand the why and how. The existence of the 4th person can be understood through the framework of emergence. Economist Jeffrey Goldstein defines emergence as:
“the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems.”
Birds in a flock create an emergent pattern.
Emergence can be seen in natural phenomena like snowflakes, flocking birds, schools of fish, but also human social systems, like the formation of cities, and social revolutions. Every emergent structure is composed of separate individual parts creating a new distinct entity unique from its parts.
The 4th person is an emergent structure in which our individual narratives function as those separate individual parts or nodes that combine to create a larger complex narrative system. All of our individual subjective narratives, consisting of I, group together to create us. This grouping of subjectivities becomes an enclosed narrative system creating a new single entity — the 4th person.
Conway’s Game of Life — A digital emergent system stemming from algorithmic rules that govern how the pixel patterns form.
Global Perspectives
Where does the 4th person come from and why have we not considered this narrative voice before? The 4th person has emerged due to globalism, global awareness, and digital technology. It is only by understanding the interconnectedness of our collective actions and behaviors due we understand we exist in the same system. And through digital technology are we able to view more concretely what the 4th person looks like.
Finding Nemo — An emergent school of fish schooling Marlin on his self-centeredness.
Oxford defines the word emergence as “the process of coming into being”. When a child grows older, the child comes into their own consciousness and identity. With maturity comes a shift away from self-centeredness towards empathy and acknowledgement of others — an understanding of the effects of our actions on others and our environment.
Likewise, significant developments and events in the world such as space exploration, global internet communication, and the world wars have made us realize our interconnectedness and interdependency. Thus a stronger sense of global identity emerges. The world is “coming into being” as it matures.
Points-of-View in Narrative and Art
The 4th person emerges from the many. It corresponds to group identity and thus the pronouns “we” or “us”. Likewise, the 1st or 3rd person are easily understood with the pronouns I, and She, He, They or It respectively.
Perspective in Video Games — there is no better or worse but some say 1st person is more immersive because you inhabit the scene as the character.
In the 1st person, the narrator speaks about herself. She is not only the narrator but also a character within the story. With the 3rd person, the narrator is often invisible — observing and narrating about someone else silently.
What is common between these two points-of-view is that the narrator is singular (one person telling the story) and is unchallenged in their perspective. The narrator speaks with authority because no one else can challenge the storyteller. Like a king who can change his kingdom at will the narrator can also alter her story-world at will.
What is unique about the 4th person we is that it is composed of multiple narrators but acts as a single unit. It is plural while also being inclusive. This is compared to they which is plural but exclusive. They describes a group of other people separate from the narrator. With we, there is no divide. The 4th narrator is no longer a singular person but a collective who tells the story. Because of the plurality within the 4th person, there are many checks and balances to any narrative that is put forth. Thus, nothing is ever whole, absolute or in total unison within the 4th person.
The 4th Person in Art
What is the 4th person visual perspective? Traditionally it is considered omniscient. It’s often associated with an objective deity who exists outside Earth and thus, this 4th point-of-view is portrayed as a global perspective which sees the world from above. Visually, it is associated with 360º all-around aesthetic or a bird’s eye view like in the video game The Sims.
Kendrick Lamar in Humble — a 360º video curled into a globe creating an “all-seeing” omniscient aesthetic.
The issue with this portrayal is that it places the single perspective camera, the narrator, on the outside-looking-in.
This outside-looking-in insinuates that the narrator is not of us on the ground but someone else observing us. Like the king in his high castle, we’d still be ruled from the narrative point-of view of one. In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is a literal all-seeing eye on the top of a tower. But as powerful as he was, he was never fully omniscient because he only saw from a single perspective (and that’s also why he had the ringwraiths, to help expand his perspective).
Cubism by Picasso and Braques — a better approximation of what the 4th person vision, narrative impressionism, looks like.
What the 4th person point-of-view should truly look like is more of a fragmented collage. The concept of cubism is that a figure or object can be drawn from multiple perspectives and combined into a singular composition. So instead of a single perspective from above, it is a plurality of perspectives from within that creates the vision of the 4th person. I call this 4th person vision narrative impressionism which I will write about in-depth in another essay in the future.
The collective combination of these perspectives, eyes, and cameras creates a vision that pervasively looks everywhere in all directions — not just from the top down. A single camera is only one version of reality but the collection of many creates a more comprehensive image yet one that is naturally fragmented. We then realize we live within the sight of all cameras and thus the narrative itself. There is no existing behind a camera or outside the narrative when there are cameras, and eyes everywhere.
The 4th person point-of-view is not from the outside but rather from within.
Omniscience and objectivity doesn’t belong to an outside deity but rather to us collectively who form the being. A true objectivity is one that is so pervasively pluralistic that the space itself becomes the camera observing itself.
Chuck Close painting
Conjoined fragmented points-of-view from cubism, David Hockney, George Condo, or Chuck Close approximate the look of this 4th vision. Chuck Close’s pixelized paintings are similar to Conway’s Game of Life. Eventually the fragments become so small that we’re left with a single image.
David Hockney — Fragmented point-of-view artwork he called “Joiners”
The 4th Narrator
If there is a 4th person point-of-view, then there must be a 4th person narrator. The question is, who is the narrator exactly? The 4th person, who consists of many narrators, is the new narrator and narrative in one.
The 4th person is the group as a whole speaking, not just a single person who speaks for the group.
One could compare the concept to the 1st person. You, as an individual, have a life story and you also act as the narrator of that life story. You don’t need an external person to narrate your life or write your narrative. As a narrator, you are also a narrative. The 4th person, as a collective, is a plurality of narrator voices speaking as one.
But this doesn’t mean that the voice of the 4th person is uniform and homogenous. It can be chaotic, confusing and contradictory because of the varied perspectives. Only from afar do we see the larger pattern. Like Conway’s Game of Life, the nonsensically behaving pixels eventually form a coherent pattern and as such the varying voices and narratives form into coherency. This shift towards all voices combined, as opposed to a single voice and narrator, comes about from the fall of the 4th wall which divides the real from the unreal.
The Fall of the 4th Wall
The 4th wall is usually thought about when characters on screen look at the camera, acknowledging the presence of the audience — thus breaking the invisible wall that divides audience from image. Commonly thought of only as the division between audience and story, real and unreal — the concept of the 4th wall can also be applied to real life and how we relate to one another.
Instagram Reality — extreme romanticization or vilification is a product of the 4th wall, dividing the imaginary from the real, the image from audience.
The image (being things like fictional stories in movies, novels, comic books, etc.) does not only concern the imaginary but also things in real and regular life. In life, we often romanticize or vilify things that are far away. Because we only see one perspective of things that are far away, our views skew to the extreme. This is called one dimensionality. Metaphorically, this applies towards many things: vilifying people from exotic cultures, romanticizing unreachable celebrities, vilifying lower or higher class people, even unhealthily romanticizing a romantic partner. Image is not solely the fiction we consume in entertainment but also the fiction we experience in real life. And this division between so-called real life and image is the 4th wall. The 4th wall is really about division, stratification, centrism, and hierarchy.
The 4th wall means that story flows only in one direction — from the image to the audience. The image actively creates and defines reality while the audience is passive with no power to participate or contribute to the narrative. But in today’s global digital environment, the 4th wall is beginning to erode and fall. This means that the flow of story can now go in both directions. The audience is no longer passive observers but active participants.
When the 4th wall falls, the within atmosphere of the 4th person is created. The audience and the creators (narrators) are the same. The concept of exclusivity does not exist once the wall disappears because we are all within the narrative acting as both image creators and audience.
Instagram Live — We now are both creator and audience in one, creating narratives of our own. The historical separation between image and audience is gone when the audience can also create image.
Virtual Reality
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. - William Shakespeare
Apple’s 1984 Commercial — In conventional media like film and theater, the 4th wall separates the active image from the passive audience.
To exemplify the fall of the 4th wall, consider the rise of virtual reality (VR). VR creates a within atmosphere of being a participant rather than a separated passive observer. You yourself are a character who helps write the narrative instead of only watching from afar. VR creates the atmosphere that everywhere is a narrative, the stage, and we are participants in the story.
The VR guest is placed within the story world making him an active participant in the narrative experience.
The Collective Subjective
Now that everyone is able to be a participant within narrative, there is an influx of subjective voices. And thus, even though the 4th person is composed of all subjectivities, what makes the 4th person point-of-view unique is that it is neither fully subjective nor objective. It is a collective subjective viewpoint which resembles objectivity. Like Chuck Close’s paintings, all the pixelization makes it appear as if there is a clear objective image but upon closer inspection it is only a resemblance of an image from a collection of pieces.
Hierarchical structures in society have been gradually flattening for the last few hundred years. With the invent of the internet and digital structures, any single voice holds less gravitas and power than it used to. In today’s online world no single narrator wields total power of controlling narrative. The increase of voices and participants helps create checks and balances.
What this creates is a vacuum of power and a struggle for “objective” narrative dominance. Like all hierarchies that suddenly fall, that vacuum creates an opportunity for someone to seize power. History is written by the victors. But due to the new checks and balances from the plurality of voices and the flattening of power structures, no single narrative voice can rise to the top to be the new “objective”.
What we are left with is a chaotic network of subjective viewpoints: the plurality of perspectives seen collectively. The truth is no longer held within a single “objective” but rather held collectively.
Fact vs. Truth
I’d like to briefly clarify a point when I talk about objectivity and truth. When I talk about the collective subjective that does not mean objectivity doesn’t exist. The distinction can be understood between the terms fact and truth. Known officially as the fact-value distinction (with value being what I call truth), philosopher Max Weber has written:
It is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual contents and the question of how one should act in the cultural community and in political associations.
In my terms, “fact” would replace the word “truth” on the bottom.
Fact is boring and unchanging. It is pure information about events and things. Examples like: “Yesterday, it snowed in New York City” or “J.K. Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter novels” or Newton’s laws of physics. These are “matter of fact” facts. A fact would be, “this cup contains 100ml of water.” And two different interpretive truths would be, “this cup is half full” and “this cup is half empty”. Both are truths, neither are wrong, but they are seen in different perspectives and are two different realities. Facts emerge, and then we interpret or realize a certain truth.
People often conflate truth with fact or want to convince people that their truth is fact. This doesn’t mean that all truths are far away from fact — just that no singular truth can be wholly fact. Likewise, there are no “alternative facts” but there are various interpretive truths.
Narrative Groupings
How does the concept of the 4th person really appear and function in the real world? We often say phrases like: “Twitter” reacted or “the internet” did this. We refer to these collective groups as single entities that have one opinion though they are made up of hundreds or thousands of opinions. And through hashtags we can view a network of various perspectives on any given topic.
Imagine an Ariana Grande concert. It is being filmed by her official production team but it is also being recorded by audience members from all angles in the arena. If you search Ariana Grande related hashtags on Instagram or Twitter, you’ll find a collage of pictures and videos from all sides and times during the concert.
This is the collective subjective or decentralized narrative in action— a collection of all the various viewpoints creating a fragmented yet holistic narrative.
#sweetenerworldtour — the hashtag for Ariana Grande’s 2019 tour.
Ariana Grande’s official cameras become just another point-of-view, its narrative powers reduced in the plurality of other perspectives. In previous times, the only way to view a concert would be through official channels that would air on TV. But the official video wouldn’t necessarily tell the whole story — it only tells one side. It may cut out mistakes and alter the music. Through narrative groupings do we understand the nature of the collective subjective — holistic yet fragmented truth.
The Self-Authoring Narrative
As I described earlier, the 4th person is both narrator and narrative simultaneously. Because of the shift to bilateral flow between creator and audience, the two sides propel one another creating an autonomous and self-generating narrative — a system within itself. We create and publish stories online while also being audience members to narratives in the same ecosystem.
Self-authorship is opposed to authorship from another entity. When someone else is writing your story, it is determinist with definite beginnings and ends. But self-generation is not dependent on this external force. This larger shared narrative does not need an external author because we, the story creators, are already perpetuating the story forward ourselves. The self-generation means the story is open-ended and perpetual.
Characters in Ian Cheng’s simulation narratives.
Contemporary artist Ian Cheng creates self-generating narratives. In his own words, his simulations are “a video game that plays itself”. Cheng programs the characters to determine their own fate within the narrative boundaries that he programs. Rather than being a determinist scriptwriter who authors every step, Cheng lets the narratives play out by themselves, never replaying the same scenario twice. There’s no need for a puppet master to control every movement. They are their own self-perpetuating systems — living stories, narratives embodied.
Ian Cheng’s “video games that play themselves” is an example of the self-authorship of a 4th person narrative.
Narratives Embodied
Everyone has a story. It might or might not be a love story. It could be a story of dreams, friendship, hope, survival or even death. And every story is worth telling. But more than that, it’s worth living. - Savi Sharma (Everyone Has A Story)
Each of us, by virtue of living, contain a story within. The cashier at your deli, the pharmacist at your drug store, all the people you encounter during the day have an interesting life story, not just the normative protagonists on the screen. Each of us are living embodied movies of which are then manifested through the human body.
AI drones creating large human — Example of a networked body.
Some of my favorite movies and TV shows are not necessarily about a specific character but about how disparate stories connect and affect one another. It is a story about their connections rather than the centering on one story. These inter-narrative connections and the sharing of story create a network. The more we encounter one another and the more we share stories the stronger this network becomes. Narrative sharing and encountering are the drawstrings that pull together the separate parts creating a tapestry of stories and a unified body. Envision a literal body that is made up of its individual biological parts. A body is both an individual as well as a complex system consisting of other microbial living beings. The 4th person narrative body is manifested from our individual narratives pooling together like cells.
I’m reminded of films like Osmosis Jones or Inside Out that are about the lifeforms residing within humans. Those characters go about their lives and have their own problems all the while being part of a human who has a completely unique life separate from its parts. Thus, like the sentient microbial beings that are within us, human sentience together create a larger entity. The 4th person is very much like a body, and as such, its own autonomous character independent of us as individuals.
Inside the Brain — In Inside Out, the characters have their own stories whilst inhabiting the mind of a human girl who has her own separate individual narrative.
Where We Are Now — The 4th Monster
Emergence is an incremental process, taking time for its effects to be seen. The 4th person can be likened to an infant. And infancy can be understood as the “process of coming into being”. As a maturing entity, it is destructive, irresponsible, and has little self-control or awareness. Like an infant that puts itself in danger without realizing it, it is a monster.
The Incredibles — Jack Jack is not old enough to have self-coordination and control and is thus an uncontrollable literal monster.
As a toddler grows into consciousness by becoming self-aware, so too does the 4th person as it matures. The 4th person self-coordinates itself from chaos to organization. The 4th person authors itself into coherency.
The reason why I use the term monster is because, to us, the 4th person is uncontrollable. On our human scale, the 4th person is like Godzilla, Cthulu or the Titans from Attack on Titan.
Like a baby, the monster hasn’t learned to coordinate its separate parts into functionality. There is miscommunication and infighting. On a group scale, the only way to obtain control of the monster is to find coordination within the group. The ideal way to do this is creating harmony without hierarchy. We can follow the philosophy of blockchain to understand how we could somehow achieve this.
Blockchain is a decentralization mechanism. Instead of large institutions acting as a central hub and conduit (and thus holding the power of control), blockchain technology shares this power with everybody. Suddenly everyone collectively acts as the conduit. Blockchain has no power unless everyone is able to access this power. It’s a checks and balance system spread evenly to everyone who participates, thus eliminating hierarchy.
Blockchain Structure — From imbalanced hierarchy to harmony without hierarchy.
The traditional central institutions that sit at the top are biased and fallible much like the biased perspectives of a single point-of-view. Narrative decentralization would distribute the power of determining reality to more people. A decentralized structure could be an answer to how we move forward in a 4th person world so we don’t only follow the dominant narrative of one.
Implications of the 4th Person
The emergence of the 4th person changes how we operate and think of ourselves on the individual level and as groups.
Realizing Bias and the Existence of Narrative Impressionism
The 4th person causes us to reconsider our relationships to others. There is danger in believing that a single perspective is absolute truth without the consideration of other points-of-view. Especially in the age of digital echo chambers, we must work harder to make sure we are not locked into our own worlds and biases.
Echo chambers cause us to be locked within our own story and bias. In the 4th person, we go from seeing image and narrative from afar to co-existing with it up close.
If we only ever listened to one account of a narrative, we would never receive a complete picture. Every story is a truth in itself and every story could be movie in their own right. But living within the 4th person puts us up close with other truths. Like a detective who takes the narratives of many to piece together a clearer narrative, we have to realize the inherent unreliability of single-point perspective and the inherent impressionistic nature of narrative.
Loss of Power and Control
Living within the 4th person reduces individual power. The 4th person is a vast network of checks and balances. And with more checks and balances, it is harder to gain total power and control.
In the 4th person, history and narrative won’t be determined or created by a single voice. Because it is self-authoring, and through the collection of all our narratives, we have less control of things larger than ourselves. In Ian Cheng’s simulated narrative worlds, Cheng, as the artist, has less control compared to a conventional artist or author. Cheng can can only program the boundaries for which his characters will act within. After that, he has no control over which story path his characters will take. And in a virtual reality environment, a director loses control because there is no frame to center attention. A director can’t cut to other perspectives and must let the audience determine themselves where they want to look.
Empowerment in the Present
Because of the loss of control over things larger than us, our attention instead refocuses on the things that we can control — ourselves. Living within the 4th person, we are empowered to be protagonists within narratives rather than passive observers. Escapism can’t exist in the 4th person because there is nothing to escape from or into. The 4th wall that separates these two places evaporates leaving us solely with ourselves in the present. We refocus our attention to the here and now where every moment is alive.
This is not to say that there is no aspiring or hope for the future or someplace far. In order to move forward effectively, we need to know where we’re going. What must be cautioned against is using escapism as an excuse for non-action and passivity. Escapism idealizes and romanticizes the far — paralyzing us from acting in the present.
Mario 64 — Mario falls asleep if you, acting as the protagonist, don’t act in the present to move the narrative and game forward.
Like in a video game, the narrative does not evolve unless we interact. We become the main characters who must propel the story forward. Escapism and romanticism falters because reality becomes the new image. The real fiction.
Conclusions
To summarize, the 4th person perspective is the collection of points-of-view in a group — the collective subjective. The 4th person is not about one specific story — it is about the relationship and overlaps between stories and how that creates a wholly new story and image.
We live in strange times and truth is stranger than fiction. Narrative fiction is very real and blending with our IRL (in real life) world. This may explain why meta media is on the rise, movies like Into the Spider-Verse, or The MCU Universe. These stories that explore alternate worlds, dimensions, and reality feel relevant to the time. They reveal the existence of other versions besides our own — the co-existence of different opinions and narratives.
The 4th person is the narrative that concerns us, not a singular image on the screen. We become part of the image, compelling us to take self-control and act. It is a perpetual narrative that has presence with us rather than being media that is separated from us. Our own lives and stories become the media. Like the “video game that plays itself”, the 4th person story has not been written yet. | https://medium.com/@CellestialStudios/the-4th-person-perspective-the-emergence-of-the-collective-subjective-5bb10302dd14 | ['David Koh'] | 2020-02-20 21:03:05.520000+00:00 | ['Perspective', 'Media', 'Narrative', 'Theory', 'Art'] |
Solidity Best Practices for Smart Contract Security | Solidity Best Practices for Smart Contract Security
By ConsenSys Diligence, our team of blockchain security experts.
If you’ve taken the smart contract security mindset to heart and are getting a handle on the EVM’s idiosyncrasies, it’s time to consider some security patterns that are specific to the Solidity programming language. In this roundup, we’ll focus on secure development recommendations for Solidity that may also be instructive for developing smart contracts in other languages.
Okay, let’s jump in.
Use assert() , require() , revert() properly
The convenience functions assert and require can be used to check for conditions and throw an exception if the condition is not met.
The assert function should only be used to test for internal errors, and to check invariants.
The require function should be used to ensure valid conditions, such as inputs, or contract state variables are met, or to validate return values from calls to external contracts.
Following this paradigm allows formal analysis tools to verify that the invalid opcode can never be reached: meaning no invariants in the code are violated and that the code is formally verified.
pragma solidity ^0.5.0;
contract Sharer {
function sendHalf(address payable addr) public payable returns (uint balance) {
require(msg.value % 2 == 0, "Even value required."); //Require() can have an optional message string
uint balanceBeforeTransfer = address(this).balance;
(bool success, ) = addr.call.value(msg.value / 2)("");
require(success);
// Since we reverted if the transfer failed, there should be
// no way for us to still have half of the money.
assert(address(this).balance == balanceBeforeTransfer - msg.value / 2); // used for internal error checking
return address(this).balance;
}
}
See SWC-110 & SWC-123
Use modifiers only for checks
The code inside a modifier is usually executed before the function body, so any state changes or external calls will violate the Checks-Effects-Interactions pattern. Moreover, these statements may also remain unnoticed by the developer, as the code for modifier may be far from the function declaration. For example, an external call in modifier can lead to the reentrancy attack:
contract Registry {
address owner;
function isVoter(address _addr) external returns(bool) {
// Code
}
}
contract Election {
Registry registry;
modifier isEligible(address _addr) {
require(registry.isVoter(_addr));
_;
}
function vote() isEligible(msg.sender) public {
// Code
}
}
In this case, the Registry contract can make a reentracy attack by calling Election.vote() inside isVoter() .
Note: Use modifiers to replace duplicate condition checks in multiple functions, such as isOwner() , otherwise use require or revert inside the function. This makes your smart contract code more readable and easier to audit.
Beware rounding with integer division
All integer division rounds down to the nearest integer. If you need more precision, consider using a multiplier, or store both the numerator and denominator.
(In the future, Solidity will have a fixed-point type, which will make this easier.)
// bad
uint x = 5 / 2; // Result is 2, all integer division rounds DOWN to the nearest integer
Using a multiplier prevents rounding down, this multiplier needs to be accounted for when working with x in the future:
// good
uint multiplier = 10;
uint x = (5 * multiplier) / 2;
Storing the numerator and denominator means you can calculate the result of numerator/denominator off-chain:
// good
uint numerator = 5;
uint denominator = 2;
Be aware of the tradeoffs between abstract contracts and interfaces
Both interfaces and abstract contracts provide one with a customizable and re-usable approach for smart contracts. Interfaces, which were introduced in Solidity 0.4.11, are similar to abstract contracts but cannot have any functions implemented. Interfaces also have limitations such as not being able to access storage or inherit from other interfaces which generally makes abstract contracts more practical. Although, interfaces are certainly useful for designing contracts prior to implementation. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that if a contract inherits from an abstract contract it must implement all non-implemented functions via overriding or it will be abstract as well.
Fallback functions
Keep fallback functions simple
Fallback functions are called when a contract is sent a message with no arguments (or when no function matches), and only has access to 2,300 gas when called from a .send() or .transfer() . If you wish to be able to receive Ether from a .send() or .transfer() , the most you can do in a fallback function is log an event. Use a proper function if a computation of more gas is required.
// bad
function() payable { balances[msg.sender] += msg.value; }
// good
function deposit() payable external { balances[msg.sender] += msg.value; }
function() payable { require(msg.data.length == 0); emit LogDepositReceived(msg.sender); }
Check data length in fallback functions
Since the fallback functions is not only called for plain ether transfers (without data) but also when no other function matches, you should check that the data is empty if the fallback function is intended to be used only for the purpose of logging received Ether. Otherwise, callers will not notice if your contract is used incorrectly and functions that do not exist are called.
// bad
function() payable { emit LogDepositReceived(msg.sender); }
// good
function() payable { require(msg.data.length == 0); emit LogDepositReceived(msg.sender); }
Explicitly mark payable functions and state variables
Starting from Solidity 0.4.0 , every function that is receiving ether must use payable modifier, otherwise if the transaction has msg.value > 0 will revert ( except when forced).
Note: Something that might not be obvious: The payable modifier only applies to calls from external contracts. If I call a non-payable function in the payable function in the same contract, the non-payable function won't fail, though msg.value is still set.
Explicitly mark visibility in functions and state variables
Explicitly label the visibility of functions and state variables. Functions can be specified as being external , public , internal or private . Please understand the differences between them, for example, external may be sufficient instead of public . For state variables, external is not possible. Labeling the visibility explicitly will make it easier to catch incorrect assumptions about who can call the function or access the variable.
External functions are part of the contract interface. An external function f cannot be called internally (i.e. f() does not work, but this.f() works). External functions are sometimes more efficient when they receive large arrays of data.
functions are part of the contract interface. An external function cannot be called internally (i.e. does not work, but works). External functions are sometimes more efficient when they receive large arrays of data. Public functions are part of the contract interface and can be either called internally or via messages. For public state variables, an automatic getter function (see below) is generated.
functions are part of the contract interface and can be either called internally or via messages. For public state variables, an automatic getter function (see below) is generated. Internal functions and state variables can only be accessed internally, without using this .
functions and state variables can only be accessed internally, without using . Private functions and state variables are only visible for the contract they are defined in and not in derived contracts. Note: Everything that is inside a contract is visible to all observers external to the blockchain, even Private variables.
// bad
uint x; // the default is internal for state variables, but it should be made explicit
function buy() { // the default is public
// public code
}
// good
uint private y;
function buy() external {
// only callable externally or using this.buy()
}
function utility() public {
// callable externally, as well as internally: changing this code requires thinking about both cases.
}
function internalAction() internal {
// internal code
}
See SWC-100 and SWC-108
Lock pragmas to specific compiler version
Contracts should be deployed with the same compiler version and flags that they have been tested the most with. Locking the pragma helps ensure that contracts do not accidentally get deployed using, for example, the latest compiler which may have higher risks of undiscovered bugs. Contracts may also be deployed by others and the pragma indicates the compiler version intended by the original authors.
// bad
pragma solidity ^0.4.4;
// good
pragma solidity 0.4.4;
Note: a floating pragma version (ie. ^0.4.25 ) will compile fine with 0.4.26-nightly.2018.9.25 , however nightly builds should never be used to compile code for production.
Warning: Pragma statements can be allowed to float when a contract is intended for consumption by other developers, as in the case with contracts in a library or EthPM package. Otherwise, the developer would need to manually update the pragma in order to compile locally.
See SWC-103
Use events to monitor contract activity
It can be useful to have a way to monitor the contract’s activity after it was deployed. One way to accomplish this is to look at all transactions of the contract, however that may be insufficient, as message calls between contracts are not recorded in the blockchain. Moreover, it shows only the input parameters, not the actual changes being made to the state. Also events could be used to trigger functions in the user interface.
contract Charity {
mapping(address => uint) balances;
function donate() payable public {
balances[msg.sender] += msg.value;
}
}
contract Game {
function buyCoins() payable public {
// 5% goes to charity
charity.donate.value(msg.value / 20)();
}
}
Here, Game contract will make an internal call to Charity.donate() . This transaction won't appear in the external transaction list of Charity , but only visible in the internal transactions.
An event is a convenient way to log something that happened in the contract. Events that were emitted stay in the blockchain along with the other contract data and they are available for future audit. Here is an improvement to the example above, using events to provide a history of the Charity’s donations.
contract Charity {
// define event
event LogDonate(uint _amount);
mapping(address => uint) balances;
function donate() payable public {
balances[msg.sender] += msg.value;
// emit event
emit LogDonate(msg.value);
}
}
contract Game {
function buyCoins() payable public {
// 5% goes to charity
charity.donate.value(msg.value / 20)();
}
}
Here, all transactions that go through the Charity contract, either directly or not, will show up in the event list of that contract along with the amount of donated money.
Note: Prefer newer Solidity constructs. Prefer constructs/aliases such as selfdestruct (over suicide ) and keccak256 (over sha3 ). Patterns like require(msg.sender.send(1 ether)) can also be simplified to using transfer() , as in msg.sender.transfer(1 ether) . Check out Solidity Change log for more similar changes.
Be aware that “Built-ins” can be shadowed
It is currently possible to shadow built-in globals in Solidity. This allows contracts to override the functionality of built-ins such as msg and revert() . Although this is intended, it can mislead users of a contract as to the contract's true behavior.
contract PretendingToRevert {
function revert() internal constant {}
}
contract ExampleContract is PretendingToRevert {
function somethingBad() public {
revert();
}
}
Contract users (and auditors) should be aware of the full smart contract source code of any application they intend to use.
Avoid using tx.origin
Never use tx.origin for authorization, another contract can have a method which will call your contract (where the user has some funds for instance) and your contract will authorize that transaction as your address is in tx.origin .
contract MyContract {
address owner;
function MyContract() public {
owner = msg.sender;
}
function sendTo(address receiver, uint amount) public {
require(tx.origin == owner);
(bool success, ) = receiver.call.value(amount)("");
require(success);
}
}
contract AttackingContract {
MyContract myContract;
address attacker;
function AttackingContract(address myContractAddress) public {
myContract = MyContract(myContractAddress);
attacker = msg.sender;
}
function() public {
myContract.sendTo(attacker, msg.sender.balance);
}
}
You should use msg.sender for authorization (if another contract calls your contract msg.sender will be the address of the contract and not the address of the user who called the contract).
You can read more about it here: Solidity docs
Warning: Besides the issue with authorization, there is a chance that tx.origin will be removed from the Ethereum protocol in the future, so code that uses tx.origin won't be compatible with future releases Vitalik: 'Do NOT assume that tx.origin will continue to be usable or meaningful.'
It’s also worth mentioning that by using tx.origin you're limiting interoperability between contracts because the contract that uses tx.origin cannot be used by another contract as a contract can't be the tx.origin .
See SWC-115
Timestamp dependence
There are three main considerations when using a timestamp to execute a critical function in a contract, especially when actions involve fund transfer.
Timestamp manipulation
Be aware that the timestamp of the block can be manipulated by a miner. Consider this contract:
uint256 constant private salt = block.timestamp;
function random(uint Max) constant private returns (uint256 result){
//get the best seed for randomness
uint256 x = salt * 100/Max;
uint256 y = salt * block.number/(salt % 5) ;
uint256 seed = block.number/3 + (salt % 300) + Last_Payout + y;
uint256 h = uint256(block.blockhash(seed));
return uint256((h / x)) % Max + 1; //random number between 1 and Max
}
When the contract uses the timestamp to seed a random number, the miner can actually post a timestamp within 15 seconds of the block being validated, effectively allowing the miner to precompute an option more favorable to their chances in the lottery. Timestamps are not random and should not be used in that context.
The 15-second Rule
The Yellow Paper (Ethereum’s reference specification) does not specify a constraint on how much blocks can drift in time, but it does specify that each timestamp should be bigger than the timestamp of its parent. Popular Ethereum protocol implementations Geth and Parity both reject blocks with timestamp more than 15 seconds in future. Therefore, a good rule of thumb in evaluating timestamp usage is: if the scale of your time-dependent event can vary by 15 seconds and maintain integrity, it is safe to use a block.timestamp .
Avoid using block.number as a timestamp
It is possible to estimate a time delta using the block.number property and average block time, however this is not future proof as block times may change (such as fork reorganisations and the difficulty bomb). In a sale spanning days, the 15-second rule allows one to achieve a more reliable estimate of time.
See SWC-116
Multiple inheritance caution
When utilizing multiple inheritance in Solidity, it is important to understand how the compiler composes the inheritance graph.
contract Final {
uint public a;
function Final(uint f) public {
a = f;
}
}
contract B is Final {
int public fee;
function B(uint f) Final(f) public {
}
function setFee() public {
fee = 3;
}
}
contract C is Final {
int public fee;
function C(uint f) Final(f) public {
}
function setFee() public {
fee = 5;
}
}
contract A is B, C {
function A() public B(3) C(5) {
setFee();
}
}
When a contract is deployed, the compiler will linearize the inheritance from right to left (after the keyword is the parents are listed from the most base-like to the most derived). Here is contract A’s linearization:
Final <- B <- C <- A
The consequence of the linearization will yield a fee value of 5, since C is the most derived contract. This may seem obvious, but imagine scenarios where C is able to shadow crucial functions, reorder boolean clauses, and cause the developer to write exploitable contracts. Static analysis currently does not raise issue with overshadowed functions, so it must be manually inspected.
For more on security and inheritance, check out this article
To help contribute, Solidity’s Github has a project with all inheritance-related issues.
See SWC-125
Use interface type instead of the address for type safety
When a function takes a contract address as an argument, it is better to pass an interface or contract type rather than raw address . If the function is called elsewhere within the source code, the compiler it will provide additional type safety guarantees.
Here we see two alternatives:
contract Validator {
function validate(uint) external returns(bool);
}
contract TypeSafeAuction {
// good
function validateBet(Validator _validator, uint _value) internal returns(bool) {
bool valid = _validator.validate(_value);
return valid;
}
}
contract TypeUnsafeAuction {
// bad
function validateBet(address _addr, uint _value) internal returns(bool) {
Validator validator = Validator(_addr);
bool valid = validator.validate(_value);
return valid;
}
}
The benefits of using the TypeSafeAuction contract above can then be seen from the following example. If validateBet() is called with an address argument, or a contract type other than Validator , the compiler will throw this error:
contract NonValidator{}
contract Auction is TypeSafeAuction {
NonValidator nonValidator;
function bet(uint _value) {
bool valid = validateBet(nonValidator, _value); // TypeError: Invalid type for argument in function call.
// Invalid implicit conversion from contract NonValidator
// to contract Validator requested.
}
}
Avoid using extcodesize to check for externally owned accounts
The following modifier (or a similar check) is often used to verify whether a call was made from an externally owned account (EOA) or a contract account:
modifier isNotContract(address _a) { uint size; assembly { size := // bad
modifier isNotContract(address _a) {
uint size;
assembly {
size := extcodesize(_a)
}
require(size == 0);
_;
}
The idea is straight forward: if an address contains code, it’s not an EOA but a contract account. However, a contract does not have source code available during construction. This means that while the constructor is running, it can make calls to other contracts, but extcodesize for its address returns zero. Below is a minimal example that shows how this check can be circumvented:
contract OnlyForEOA {
uint public flag;
// bad
modifier isNotContract(address _a){
uint len;
assembly { len := extcodesize(_a) }
require(len == 0);
_;
}
function setFlag(uint i) public isNotContract(msg.sender){
flag = i;
}
}
contract FakeEOA {
constructor(address _a) public {
OnlyForEOA c = OnlyForEOA(_a);
c.setFlag(1);
}
}
Because contract addresses can be pre-computed, this check could also fail if it checks an address which is empty at block n , but which has a contract deployed to it at some block greater than n .
Warning: This issue is nuanced. If your goal is to prevent other contracts from being able to call your contract, the extcodesize check is probably sufficient. An alternative approach is to check the value of (tx.origin == msg.sender) , though this also has drawbacks.
There may be other situations in which the extcodesize check serves your purpose. Describing all of them here is out of scope. Understand the underlying behaviors of the EVM and use your judgement.
More on this topic: | https://media.consensys.net/solidity-best-practices-for-smart-contract-security-54d309a622c2 | [] | 2020-08-22 16:01:01.846000+00:00 | ['Developer', 'Solidity', 'Smart Contracts', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain'] |
Pinterest Presents: Black Gold Competition | [Competition now closed 30/10/2020]
Calling all creators and brands
Are you a creator who regularly creates content on social media, are passionate about educating and inspiring your following and have become an expert on a specific topic?
or
Do you own a business or work for a company everyone needs to know about? Do you have a product that the world needs to see? Could the product you sell change the world?
This is the competition for you!
As part of our celebration for Black History Month, we are hosting a competition for creators and brands. This is your chance to get set up on Pinterest, inspire a new audience with your content and to get your Pins in front of new potential customers. If that wasn’t good enough you’ll also be in with the chance of winning some amazing prizes!
Here’s what you need to do to enter:
Brand Criteria
Brand identity: UK and Ireland Business owner or acting as an authorised representative on behalf of a UK and Ireland business
Create a business account
Link to your website
Create 5 x boards with a minimum of 20 Pins per board
Link shopping feed (where applicable of selling a tangible product)
Enter via the form linked below
Creators Criteria
Creator identity: Individual based in the UK or Ireland representing themselves as an individual
Create a business account
Link to your website (if applicable)
Create at least 3 new boards for your profile
Create at least 10 new Pins (image or video)
Enter via the form linked below
Prizes
If you haven’t already set up your profile, or just need some tips to help you get started check out these resources:
The competition closes on the 30th October 2020 [Competition now closed] | https://medium.com/pinterest-creators-blog-uk/pinterest-presents-black-gold-competition-a17aef850ce3 | ['Georgia'] | 2020-11-02 13:13:28.343000+00:00 | ['Black History Month', 'Brands', 'Competition', 'Pinterest', 'Creators'] |
Best Games of 2020 | by Stuart Urback
Coming into 2020 I assumed that one of my preferred social activities — tabletop games — would be pretty insulated from any societal catastrophe, given its small footprint and lack of electrical requirement. Yikes was that wrong. The legacy game I had been playing with friends was put on hold. What happened was an experience in pragmatism. I focused on games that brought my closer together with friends, digitally. I played more digital board games this year than any year previous: starting with Istanbul over my birthday, Jackbox with coworkers in April and May, and Fall Guys, Root, and Scythe closer to the end of the year. The pandemic forced me to stop and reflect on what I wanted from games instead of chasing a new mechanic.
I spent a lot more time watching movies, especially mainstream ones. I watched the Mission Impossible series, most of the Ghibli films, and rewatched Avatar: the Last Airbender. Content that was easy to consume became helpful because my attention span decreased dramatically from the stress and the stress of dealing with a new living situation. Large, sprawling games that I was already disinclined to play became unapproachable, and medium length titles that I could schedule time for became distant.
At the same time, I felt like I should accomplish so much more, now that I wasn’t bound by all these social obligations. That didn’t pan out. While I might have had more time, adjusting to a new reality at work and home and trying to drag myself away from the news left little effort towards personal achievement. But the reflection, and the new perspective, gave me an opportunity to rethink how I thought about the world and what sort of media I value. The conclusion I came to is: I hadn’t given enough direct feedback, I overvalued big progress and undervalued iterative change, and that my personal perspective was too informed by defensiveness and not by opportunity.
I’d like to think my favorite games this year reflect that. They probably don’t. But, as the author of this piece, I get to define the types of games I enjoy and then explain why the games I pick fit that. The theme that I felt most notable from all of these games is how they forced me to rethink how I thought about the world and spent time with other people. The other main criteria I used was playing enough of something to have an interesting opinion. Games like Last Campfire and A Monster’s Expedition have a beautiful art style and got me to start playing, but I hadn’t gone far enough to feel they impacted my year. It is a bit of a high bar to clear but deeper understandings feel like a core theme. This kept another Apple Arcade title Crossy Castle off my list. It’s a snappy implementation of a platformer (I appreciated that it was playable in portrait mode on my phone), but it stayed within well worn territory that experiences like Super Mario have already led.
The games I picked are ones that shaped the way I thought about the world in 2020, that uniquely responded to the demands of my life, and that represent directions for design and publishing that I hope to see more of in the future.
Honorable Mention
I want to call out five games that didn’t hit every note, but are worth taking a look at. I might talk about them more in the future
They’re either games that I felt I would never put in the top-5, but wanted to call out for their impact, or games that I felt were this close to being a game of the year for me, except for a lack of a play time, or a couple of small disconnects.
Tussie Mussie was a re-introduction to the tiny game format that Button Shy games develops, where rules for a game made up of 18 cards fits into a wallet sized containers. That it happens to be a drafting theme and by one of the most famous board game designers of the last 5 years didn’t hurt either.
World Next Door was one of the first games I played this year. It’s an interesting take on the “Match-3” genre (Bejeweled, Candy Crush) that expanded the themes into a narrative format rather than leaning into the procedural “high score” goals that are typical of the genre.
The Solitaire Conspiracy is a late entry by Bithell games, in their shorts line. The shorts line is cheaper, smaller games that put a high level of polish on games that are playable in 5 or so hours. It’s an interesting take on solitaire where the face cards have powers, but sometimes those powers hurt you instead of help you. The twist for face cards to have special powers was an energizing change, but I found myself avoiding all of the “negative” specials. This made me feel like I was able to avoid a decent chunk of the game.
Before We Leave is an inviting take on the civ-building genre. The art style feels similar to Pixar, with big round worlds built up of hexagonal tiles. I appreciated that the interface options which helped me maintain control and focus (a typical reason I give up on the civ genre rather quickly). I dropped it because it required a bit more time than I could give but I look forward to picking it back up in 2020.
For the King is the closest thing to a popcorn game on this list, but as a tactical strategy game, I appreciated that the exploration was exciting, and the fights were quick. One of my biggest frustration with most tactics games (like Pokémon) is that fights can drag on, and strategy depth is just confusing enough to require more time than I’m willing to put in. It delivered a pleasurable, if unchallenging experience.
Certain games are games you can carry a conversation while enjoying. In baseball vernacular, it’s what you’d call a pastime. Falls Guys is a pastime for me. It’s a game where you control a bean character/person through an obstacle course (think Wipeout meets American Ninja Warrior). Starting with 60 competitors, you either race to the finish or try to be the last one(s) standing. Each level waves of opponents are eliminated until only 1 player remains.
Mechanically, it feels almost possible to play Fall Guys with only two commands: move and jump. Before I figured out the controls I was mostly limited to those anyway. There are some occasions where you’re have to dive or cling to a wall, though those come up less frequently. Its simplicity means it’s easy to learn, but there are enough moves that you can develop skill while you play. Dan, my frequent playing collaborator is much more adept with controls so he often makes it into later rounds while I failed early and often.
Even when losing, Fall Guys is a fun game to spectate and play with friends. It’s easy enough to have idle conversations while the game is ongoing. Playing the game meant staying in touch and forming new, fun memories while talking about how our weeks went.
I would like to see more battle royale games with concepts outside of shooting. This is where the success of games like Fortnite has a positive impact on the overall industry. Because Epic, the makes of Fortnite, also own Unreal Engine (a premier game engine), many of the toolsets used to create royale games have become accessible to teams with fewer resources. But Fall Guys simplicity masks design complexity that isn’t obvious to see. Games that might be fun in person can drag or feel unfair against an anonymous (if adorable) hoard of enemies. Finding an engaging combination of speed, multi-player elimination, and skill seems like a fun area for future games to explore.
Playing over the summer, when online games were the main ways I interacted with friends, Fall Guys presented a genuine way for me to connect. It’s complex and active enough to be engaging but not so complex as to become a game of silent intensity, without discussion or chatter.
In a pandemic-free world, Wavelength might have been my game of the year. It was the first game I brought with me to a company retreat. I played it again a month later at a going away party. Each time it brought hilarity and insight. It was a game that held up even though we would play for hours each time.
For a party game, Wavelength is surprisingly hard to explain. It has a similar structure as Charades where one player knows a secret (in this case the location on a dial). Everyone gets to see the words representing either end of that spectrum (let’s say hot on one end, cold on the other). Then the clue-giver has to give a single concept (without explaining themselves), that will get their team to turn the dial toward the right spot.
This might be easy if the secret is towards one end or the other. You might say sauna, if it’s on the hot side, or igloo if it’s on the cold side. But what if it’s on the 60% hot. What do you say then? You might say “lukewarm coffee” but will players think that’s actually 60% cold, instead? The uncertainty leads to deep conversations about how players see the world, and the reveal at the end of the round ends with drama as the screen is flipped back to show whether guessers were wrong or right.
The other thing that surprised me about Wavelength was how often we’d ditch the rules and play collaboratively, taking turns trying to get the group to guess, rather than competing in teams. I usually dislike “conversation starter” type games immensely, because I think they’re feeble attempts at faking social interaction without a lot of support from the “game” in terms of how that’s supposed to happen. Wavelength is the right amount of structure (it’s clear what the clue-giver is supposed to do, and what the clue-guessers are supposed to do), with uncertainty (who knows what anyone else is thinking) to bring excitement and insight.
Good Sudoku almost didn’t make the list. It’s a re-imagining of Sudoku by Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger. It contains a lot of UI and UX tweaks that make it easier to see some of the core concepts of Sudoku. At the bottom of the screen there is a number pad and some notation options. The notation options allow you to mark, highlight, or cross out numbers on the grid. If you tap on a number by itself, it will shade the other areas of the board, illuminating patterns more easily.
I’ve had an off-and-on relationship with this game. When it was released over the summer I played it non-stop. The combination of new notation system, haptic feedback when it auto-filled a space, and the bright colors made me feel fast while playing the game. It’s take on teaching the rules helped me learn new concepts and got me excited about a world of Sudoku puzzles I hadn’t thought of before.
As a design enthusiast, I found it exciting because it felt like a different experience without changing the rules of the game. It opened up a concept to how different UI and feedback transform a player’s experience. I also appreciated that they had daily challenges, and that those challenges use the same system that the New York Times Crossword uses (each day Monday to Sunday gets harder).
I gave up the game after I felt like I’d hit a wall. I knew all of the somewhat nuanced problem solving techniques, but was struggling to see anything new. That’s when I realized that I was playing games for time rather than the enjoyment of solving the puzzle. It felt rote because I could go through all my techniques but would get stuck and was unsure how to think creatively. I came back to it this month, and still find myself enjoying the daily challenges but sticking away from the other formats. It’s fun for a 5–10 minute puzzle.
Calling this game “flawed genuis” feels a bit over the top, but that’s where I’m at with it. The concepts it introduces change the game of Sudoku to feel more electric and high-powered. They also push Sudoku into a different experience with the puzzle that feels slightly more formulaic and less free. It reminds me of the relationship between becoming an expert and being blind to a beginner’s mindset. Good Sudoku is incredible because it gives you all of the possibilities of being an expert, off the bat, but it also locks you into that expert way of thinking, without necessarily developing it on your own.
For the moments when I felt stressed and trapped, when I wanted anything else to think about, it was there with a puzzle, and helping hand to solve it. I appreciate the energy and the concepts so much that it overcomes the flaws but it might be the type of game that you enjoy for a few days and put down, rather than the one that you build into your life. I’ll keep it around because I wonder if there’s maybe an update that’ll unlock that next level for me to push, advance, and get faster at solving puzzles.
I wrote an entire review of this, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Lonely Mountains made it almost to the peak, as it were. It’s a great game. Go read the review. Listening to podcasts while playing this game became an important part of my daily routine for a few months. The game gave me the opportunity to develop a skill, riding down the mountain. It did so through precise feedback that helped me learn and grow in its systems while my brain pondered and turned thoughts over. The game’s rigorous implementation of feedback created an immersive experience.
But I realized that anything I took away from the game would be the result of my own actions. As Ian Bogost says in Shit Crayons, humans are capable of spinning endless situations into positives, but it doesn’t make the situations themselves any better. It would be easy to read this as a critique of Lonely Mountains, that I believe the game would be better if it had tried to find a mirror for me to look at. That’s not my intent. The technical brilliance in Lonely Mountains is meditative rather than transformative. In 2020 I looked for something more. I looked to a game that tried to imagine a better world.
That game is Carto. | https://medium.com/@playthistonight/best-games-of-2020-d1c59472f381 | ['Play This Tonight'] | 2020-12-20 18:57:31.136000+00:00 | ['Tabletop Gaming', 'Game Design', 'Games', 'Game Of The Year'] |
TDD stands for Test Driven Development, hah. | I did a mock technical interview once and was asked to explain what TDD was. It sort of went like:
Interviewer: “What is TDD and explain instances of how you incorporated this.”
Me: “Uhh, come again?”
Interviewer: “TDD?”
Me: “Sorry, could you remind me of what that stands for again?” (Felt pseudo-smart about directing a question back)
Interviewer: “Sure, Test Driven Development?”
Me: “Ahh, yes” (Translation: “Ah, noooo” as heart rate spikes)
…I’m going to stop sharing right here because I don’t even recall the hodgepodge of nonsense I tried to jam into not only the blank space handed to me but the entire volume of the interview room.
So look, I was more of a novice than I am now, cut me some slack — I now know this is something I need to get acquainted with and apply. That being the case, I present to myself, “Test Driven Development”:
What is it?:
Basically a programming practice that ensures that new code is only created only when written test has failed.
Why do we need it?:
It allows us to design, plan, document before we build out the code and through each test we get closer to proving that our code accomplishes the design. Essentially, this practice which focuses on breaking things down into smaller pieces, yields to clearer and more comprehensible code and less needing to debug.
How does it work?
Decide what we want our code to achieve. Write a test that will pass if the code does just that. Run the test to make sure that the code fails. Proving that the code fails is crucial. If and only if it does fail, go ahead and write the code. Run the written code for it to pass. Knowing that it passes, refactor, optimize, and repeat this process for every single method, every couple lines of code, everything that you are building!
Yay.
Things to keep in mind:
Be sensible. Some things are just too difficult to test! And some tests can be too minor to be of real use.
Over-testing exists.
There are cases when you cannot simply start with writing a test because you do not know what you want to achieve yet. As soon as you have messed around a bit and have an idea, stop everything and write a test!
Resources:
https://www.guru99.com/test-driven-development.html#2 | https://medium.com/@therealgracechoi/tdd-stands-for-test-driven-development-hah-36337d811ae8 | ['Grace.Exists'] | 2020-02-20 02:49:24.743000+00:00 | ['Test Driven Development', 'Tdd'] |
JavaScript Class vs Prototype — Organizing JavaScript Code | The story about the JavaScript language is quite interesting. For those who are not aware, below are some highlights of the popular multi-paradigm language:
Brendan Eich (@BrendanEich) a programmer at Netscape Communications Corporation created Mocha in just 10 days in 1995.
Mocha would soon be named JavaScript — which has nothing at all to do with Java — and was likely a marketing approach to leverage the popularity of Java.
JavaScript was introduced as an option to provide dynamic programming experiences at a time when websites were mostly static.
Since 1996, ECMAScript Language Specification (ECMA-262) has defined and standardized the JavaScript language, now in the 11th edition.
JavaScript runs on approximately 97% of all browsers around the world.
JavaScript has become the leading choice for client frames like Angular, React and Vue.js, plus the Node.js run-time.
Since JavaScript became mainstream, I have been a part of projects which have used JavaScript in one manner or another. In those early days, JavaScript was referenced by HTML files to perform simple validation before sending requests to a back-end service. Now, every web-based project I have worked on in the last 7 years uses a client framework built entirely with JavaScript.
However, JavaScript is not free from design challenges, which I noted in my “Will JavaScript Pass the Test of Time?” publication back in June of 2017.
One of the items not mentioned back then is a discussion on when to use a class and when to use a prototype in JavaScript. My goal of this article is to focus on these concepts — even when utilizing an existing framework, like Salesforce Lightning Web Components (LWC).
The Prototype Concept in JavaScript
For the purposes of this article, it is best to talk about the prototype concept in JavaScript first.
In JavaScript, all objects inherit properties and methods from a prototype. Let’s consider the following prototype example:
function Vehicle(vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType) {
this.manufacturer = manufacturer;
this.vinNumber = vinNumber;
this.productionDate = productionDate;
this.fuelType = fuelType;
} Vehicle.prototype.vehicleInformation = function() {
var productionDate = new Date(this.productionDate * 1000);
var months = ['Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec'];
var year = productionDate.getFullYear();
var month = months[productionDate.getMonth()];
var day = productionDate.getDate(); var friendlyDate = month + ' ' + day + ', ' + year;
return this.manufacturer + ' vehicle with VIN Number = ' + this.vinNumber + ' was produced on ' + friendlyDate + ' using a fuel type of ' + this.fuelType;
}
As a result of this code, there is a Vehicle object available and a new instance can be created using the following code:
let rogue = new Vehicle('5N1FD4YXN11111111', 'Nissan', 1389675600, 'gasoline');
With this information in place, the vehicleInformation() function can be called using the following approach:
alert(rogue.vehicleInformation());
This will produce an alert dialog box containing this message:
“Nissan vehicle with VIN Number = 5N1FD4YXN11111111 was produced on Jan 14, 2014 using a fuel type of gasoline”
As one might expect, a second prototype called SportUtilityVehicle can be introduced to further define a given type of vehicle:
function SportUtilityVehicle(vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType, drivetrain) {
Vehicle.call(this, vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType);
this.drivetrain = drivetrain;
}
Now, we can new up a SportUtilityVehicle instead of a simple Vehicle .
let rogue = new SportUtilityVehicle('5N1FD4YXN11111111', 'Nissan', 1389675600, 'gasoline', 'AWD');
We can also define a new version with the SportUtilityVehicle prototype:
SportUtilityVehicle.prototype.vehicleInformation = function() {
return this.manufacturer + ' vehicle with VIN Number = ' + this.vinNumber + ' utilizes drivetrain = ' + this.drivetrain + ' and runs on ' + this.fuelType;
}
Now, when the vehicleInformation() function is called using the following approach:
alert(rogue.vehicleInformation());
An alert dialog box appears, containing the following message:
“Nissan vehicle with VIN Number = 5N1FD4YXN11111111 utilizes drivetrain = AWS and runs on gasoline”
The JavaScript Class
Starting with ECMAScript 2015 (released as the 6th edition in June 2015), JavaScript introduced the concept of a class. While this might pique the interest of developers using languages like Java, C# and C++, the goal of introducing the class option was to allow classes to be created using an easier and cleaner syntax. In fact, the documentation goes on to state that classes are merely “syntactic sugar” to make things easier for the developer.
Converting the prior example from prototypes to classes would appear as shown below:
class Vehicle {
constructor(vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType) {
this.manufacturer = manufacturer;
this.vinNumber = vinNumber;
this.productionDate = productionDate;
this.fuelType = fuelType;
} vehicleInformation() {
var productionDate = new Date(this.productionDate * 1000);
var months = ['Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec'];
var year = productionDate.getFullYear();
var month = months[productionDate.getMonth()];
var day = productionDate.getDate(); var friendlyDate = month + ' ' + day + ', ' + year;
return this.manufacturer + ' vehicle with VIN Number = ' + this.vinNumber + ' was produced on ' + friendlyDate + ' using a fuel type of ' + this.fuelType;
}
} class SportUtilityVehicle extends Vehicle {
constructor(vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType, drivetrain) {
super(vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType);
this.drivetrain = drivetrain;
} vehicleInformation() {
return this.manufacturer + ' vehicle with VIN Number = ' + this.vinNumber + ' utilizes drivetrain = ' + this.drivetrain + ' and runs on ' + this.fuelType;
}
}
If we need to add getters and setters to the SportUtilityVehicle class, the class can be updated as shown below:
class SportUtilityVehicle extends Vehicle {
constructor(vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType, drivetrain) {
super(vinNumber, manufacturer, productionDate, fuelType);
this.drivetrain = drivetrain;
} vehicleInformation() {
return this.manufacturer + ' vehicle with VIN Number = ' + this.vinNumber + ' utilizes drivetrain = ' + this.drivetrain + ' and runs on ' + this.fuelType;
} get drivetrain() {
return this._drivetrain;
} set drivetrain(newDrivetrain) {
this._drivetrain = newDrivetrain;
}
}
As you can see, the syntax resembles languages like Java or C#. The class approach also allows functions and attributes belonging to the prototype chain to not reference the Object.prototype syntax. The one requirement is that the constructor is always called “constructor”.
JavaScript Class v Prototype
As noted above, a class in JavaScript is merely syntactic sugar to make things easier for feature developers working in JavaScript. While the approach allows for a more-common design for those coming from languages like Java, C# or C++, many Javascript purists advise against using classes at all.
In fact, one concerning issue is mentioned by Michael Krasnov in “Please stop using classes in JavaScript" article:
Binding issues. As class constructor functions deal closely with this keyword, it can introduce potential binding issues, especially if you try to pass your class method as a callback to an external routine.
Michael goes on to present four other reasons to avoid using Javascript classes, but advocates of the class option were quick to lessen the weight of his thoughts.
Starting in 2021, I have been adhering to the following mission statement for any IT professional:
“Focus your time on delivering features/functionality which extends the value of your intellectual property. Leverage frameworks, products, and services for everything else.”
When it comes to use of a class or prototype in JavaScript, I feel like this is a decision that should be made by the team supporting and maintaining the code base. If their comfort level has no issues following the prototype approach, then they should design their components accordingly. However, if the preference is to leverage the class concept, developers on that team should have an understanding of the binding challenge noted above, but should proceed forward and stay within their comfort zone.
Impact on Lightning Web Components
Salesforce introduced Lightning Web Components (LWC) a few years ago, which I talked about in the “Salesforce Offering JavaScript Programming Model" article. Nearly three years later, I find myself talking about the impact of using the class and prototype approaches for Salesforce developers.
The quick answer is … it doesn’t matter. Salesforce allows for Lightning Web Components to leverage a prototype or class. JavaScript’s typical model for inheritance is via the prototype. But to appeal to developers who are used to classical inheritance, there’s this syntactical sugar to help developers implement prototypal inheritance by using an approach that looks very much like classical inheritance.
And so, when it comes to LWC — which is all about inheritance since LWC has built an awesome base class component for you to extend — you also can take advantage of this syntactical sugar.
You don’t need to worry about prototypal inheritance even though it’s all happening under the hood. Just do the classical inheritance thing, and you’re golden.
Here’s an example of how this might look:
import { LightningElement } from 'lwc'; export default class VehicleComponent extends LightningElement {
// properties go here vehicleInformation() {
return this.manufacturer + ' vehicle with VIN Number = ' + this.vinNumber + ' utilizes drivetrain = ' + this.drivetrain + ' and runs on ' + this.fuelType;
}
}
See? LWC — knowing that JavaScript gives you this syntactical sugar — makes it so easy for you.
Conclusion
I will admit that JavaScript is not the language I have spent a majority of my time in developing features. Aside from client development in Angular and small endeavors using Node.js, my primary work as a services developer often focuses on other language options.
At the same time, using the class approach over the prototype approach provides a similar bridge to Java, C# and C++ developers. While there is not a right answer here, it is important to have an understanding behind how both class and prototype work in JavaScript.
In the end, our role is all about being able to support your code base, resolve defects, and quickly turn around features and functionality. The implemented approach should always be purely driven by the feature team’s understanding and ability to maintain the selected standards.
Have a really great day! | https://medium.com/nerd-for-tech/javascript-class-vs-prototype-organizing-javascript-code-d909ce1c5f6a | ['John Vester'] | 2021-07-07 01:53:26.654000+00:00 | ['Webdev', 'Prototype', 'JavaScript', 'Salesforce', 'Lwc'] |
What is going on with OAuth 2.0? And why you should not use it for authentication. | A few weeks ago I was planning to write an article explaining why it is not a good idea to use OAuth for authentication (as Auth in OAuth stands for authorization and not authentication for a reason), but the draft of OAuth 2.0 Security Best Current Practice has been published and an interesting discussion appeared on Twitter.
Given this, I decided not only to explain why you must not use OAuth 2.0 for authentication on example of quite twisted vulnerability, but also I tried to review the current best practices for OAuth 2.0, argue whether we should or should not deprecate the implicit grant type and explain the idea of PKCE, which I found a great example of best practices.
Quick introduction to OAuth 2.0
Let’s introduce the OAuth 2.0 and its grant types. If you are familiar with that, you can jump to the next section.
OAuth stands for Open Authorization Framework and is the industry-standard delegation protocol for authorization. OAuth 2.0 is widely used by applications (e.g. SaaS platforms) to access your data that is already on the Internet. That includes for example your contacts list on Google, your friends list on Facebook, etc. If you were ever asked by web or mobile application to give permissions to access your personal data, you have probably used OAuth 2.0.
OAuth includes 4 actors in the process of access delegation:
resource owner (basically a user who has some private resources like email, photos, etc.),
client (usually an application that wants to access these resources),
authorization server (who asks the resource owner for access to the resources on behalf of the client),
resource server (who stores user’s private resources and shares them with authorized clients).
In some cases the same application acts as both, the authorization server and resource server (e.g. Facebook).
There are four flows (called grant types) to obtain the resource owner’s permission (technically called access token): authorization code, implicit, resource owner password credentials and client credentials.
I am going to skip last two, because resource owner password credentials flow is used for trusted clients that require resource owners to provide their credentials and client credentials is used to access resources owned by the client itself. These two flows are usually used when the client and authorization server are part of the same system. Otherwise, you should not use it (both as resource owner and developer of client application) because resource owner’s credentials to authorization server are revealed to third party!
The authorization code and implicit grant types are more interesting as they are used by public clients and users give their permission to third party applications. That introduces higher risk! The main difference is that implicit grant type returns the access token right away in the response to the authorization request. The authorization code grant type returns the code instead and client has to send the second request to exchange the code for access token.
The implicit grant type looks simpler (less requests), but this slight difference has also some security implications. So, if you wonder why the implicit type was included in OAuth 2.0, the explanation is simple: Same Origin Policy. Back then, frontend applications were not allowed to send requests to different hosts to get the access token using code. Today we have CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing).
Why did the discussion start?
It started after the draft of OAuth 2.0 Security Best Current Practice was published. The authors proposed that clients should not use implicit type (“or any other response type causing the authorization server to issue an access token in the authorization response”) and use authorization code type instead.
The justification for that statement was the existence of multiple threats, like Insufficient Redirect URI Validation, Credential Leakage via Referrer Headers,
Attacks through the Browser History or Access Token Injection and “no viable mechanism to cryptographically bind access tokens issued in the authorization response to a certain client”.
To put it in simple words, there are two main threats for implicit type:
the leakage of access token transmitted in the URL (also as fragment),
the injection of access token, undetectable by the client.
Token leakage
The leakage threat is covered in RFCs related to OAuth. For example, the open redirect vulnerability was mentioned many times, even in the first OAuth 2.0 RFC [6749]. So basically, when you follow the standard, you significantly reduce the risk. Of course, the truth is that if something is prohibited in the standard it does not mean it will not happen and we should strive to create recommendations as secure as possible, minimizing the risk. Actually, that was the motivation of the published draft. On the other hand, if you do not follow the standard properly, you are always at higher risk.
Futhermore, the history shows that bugs in software beyond the reach of OAuth server’s and client’s developers (like the one in Chromium) introduce new vectors for token leakage such as beforementioned leakage via referer header or browser history. That is another motivation to adjust standards to the current situation.
Token injection
The injection threat comes from the fact that client cannot assume that only the resource owner can present it with a valid access token for the resource. Therefore, an adversary can easily inject the leaked or stolen access token (and impersonate the resource owner) when client accepts access tokens from sources other than the return call from the token endpoint. That happens when client uses an implicit flow.
This threat is also related to the fact that OAuth framework must not be used for authentication. The OAuth 2.0 RFC stays as follows:
Authenticating resource owners to clients is out of scope for this specification. Any specification that uses the authorization process as a form of delegated end-user authentication to the client (e.g., third-party sign-in service) MUST NOT use the implicit flow without additional security mechanisms that would enable the client to determine if the access token was issued for its use (e.g., audience- restricting the access token).
The assumption that possesion of a valid access token is enough to prove that a user is authenticated is true only in some cases (when the access token was freshly minted). Indeed, there are other ways to obtain a valid access tokens than authenticating resource owner. For example, using the refresh token. Furthermore, in some cases access grants can occur without the user having to authenticate at all. The anti-pattern of using accessing of a protected API as proof of authentication has been explained here in details.
Using OAuth 2.0 for authentication is really, really a bad idea…
Problems arising from the use of OAuth 2.0 for authentication does not refer only to the implicit grant type, but also other types, including authorization code type.
Lately, I have found an interesting vulnerability in Single Sign-On (SSO) authentication mechanism based on OAuth 2.0. It allowed to log in using accounts from Active Directory.
However, a few of client applications integrated with this mechanism allowed users to log in using Google accounts. Therefore, when user was redirected to SSO from one of these clients, the button to log in with Google account was added on the login page. On the other hand, when user was redirected from another client, the button did not show up.
The clients that accepted Google account either verified whether the logged in e-mail address is accepted (there was a list of accepted Google e-mail addresses) or simply allowed anyone (any Google e-mail address) to have a valid account.
Unfortunately, the other group of clients were not aware of the fact that users can log in to SSO also with Google accounts and additionaly, they did not verify whether the authorization code, that was returned to them with redirection, came from the login process initiated by them. They just used the code to get the access token.
Summing up, the attacker could start the login process for the client that accepted Google accounts, then log in to SSO using any Google account, switch the context of login process to other client that accepted users only from Active Directory and provide it the valid code from SSO. The attacked application generated valid token from the code and let the attacker in.
The result
The above threats convinced authors of the draft to propose a big change in OAuth 2.0 to remove the implicit grant type.
However, it is important to mention that this recommendation does not have to apply to all existing implicit flows, but the OAuth’s only. For example, the OpenID Connect (that should be used for authentication) built on top of OAuth 2.0 also uses implicit type and solves the problem of token injection by introduction the ID token data structure.
The ID Token is a security token that contains Claims about the Authentication of an End-User by an Authorization Server when using a Client, and potentially other requested Claims. The ID Token is represented as a JSON Web Token (JWT).
However, it can be still vulnerable to the leakage attacks and the general advise is not to put access tokens (which have long expiry time) in any part of URLs.
The authorization code for the win (with PKCE)!
The authors of the draft proposed the authorization code type together with the Proof Key for Code Exchange (PKCE) as a mitigation for the implict type threats.
As mentioned before, the primary difference between implicit type and authorization code type is that in the second one the authorization server, upon authenticating resource owner, returns the code to the client. In order to get the access token, the client sends the POST request with the code to the token endpoint thanks to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). The response contains the access token.
As the access token is no longer present in the URL, authorization code type is not vulnerable to access token leakage. However, instead of access token, the code is returned in redirected response. That brings back the possible leakage attack on the code parameter (e.g. the open redirect vulnerability would allow to steal the code).
Here comes the PKCE, based on the challenge-verifier scheme. The flow is following:
Client creates a code challenge (type of challenge function is selected by the client, e.g. the hash of some unique secret) and sends it in the authorization request.
Authorization server authenticates the resource owner and returns the code.
In order to get the access token client must send the code and prove that he initiated the flow. Therefore he sends the code verifier (e.g. unique secret from the first step) together with the code.
Authorization server verifies whether the hash of code verifier matches the code challenge and returns the access token.
The security introduced by the PKCE comes from the fact that no one, but the legitimate client knows the code verifier. PKCE gives sufficient protection against code leakage (e.g. via open redirection) as the attacker does not have the code verifier.
Besides PKCE, the code should be one time use and have very short expiry time (unlike the access token). That protects the leaked code from being used some time after its creation (minimizes the duration when code is usable). | https://medium.com/securing/what-is-going-on-with-oauth-2-0-and-why-you-should-not-use-it-for-authentication-5f47597b2611 | ['Damian Rusinek'] | 2020-11-10 08:15:07.967000+00:00 | ['API', 'Pkce', 'Security Testing', 'Oauth2', 'Authorization'] |
What We Do Not Understand About Judgement[1] | In the past, when Western society was still influenced by Christian values, judgement was a very serious thing. It was only reserved for God. And he only did it on Judgement Day — the end of the world — or when you died — either you were going to heaven or hell. Though judgement was an excruciating experience, you only had to endure it once.
However, in modern times we have toppled the Christian faith and now judgement has become a free-for-all sport.
Then, in all our kindness and humility, we remind other people that they ‘should not judge’ or ‘have no right to judge’. So kind of you. In this way, it becomes about ‘should not’ and ‘do not have the right’, which is a very different thing altogether.
We have quite forgotten that ‘we cannot judge’ and ‘only God can’. The word ‘can’ implies ‘ability’ or ‘capacity’ as opposed to ‘should’ or ‘have no right’ which infer a moral obligation not to.
And even with our moral keenness, as much as we should not, we do, and as much as we do not have the right, we consider ourselves so smart, so intellectual that we do indeed have this privilege (De Botton, 08H18).
I am not at all suggesting that when the Christian faith was more ingrained in our societies that no one judged. I am sure judging was just as much a sport as it is now. The difference was that back then we taught that people do not have the ability or capacity to judge. They simply ‘cannot’. Furthermore, believing that we ‘should not judge’ still connotes a sense of moral and intellectual superiority — it is because we are super awesome people that we are refraining for judgement. Nonetheless, our moral capabilities remain intact. This is anything but humbling — and worse it encourages this belief that we are not only superior minded but truly virtuous. It is comparable with winning an award for best jazz musician when all you can play is air guitar.
The Modern Judgement Crisis
We judge all the time.
We confuse our opinions for overarching moral codes for they reflect predominant values, even if what we believe has nothing to do with morality, but just norms.
Before I continue, I want to say that I am not proposing any kind of moral relativism. I think moral relativism is absurd and its pervasiveness in non-violent countries would be less case if the countries had more incidents of violence[2].
However, what we take to be moral codes or principles can more accurately be classified as ethics[3] and norms. It is the predominance of the latter which concerns this paper.
Attitude, culture, and lifestyle habits inform much of our judgement.
A clear example is the very controversial subject of gun control. Many city-slickers have no need for guns. Generally, the police live within a reasonable distance and violence for the most part has been decreasing, so they are generally safe. Guns are an absurd idea in such areas. However, for farmers, game rangers, security guards, cash-in-transit workers and other groups, guns are necessary. For instance, farmers in my country have massive issues with caracals — a lynx-looking wildcat. Though, they are real beauties, caracals are absolutely crazy. In one night, a caracal will kill all the sheep of one farm and only eat just one leg. Ideally, it would be better if we could reason with the wildcat and ask it just to kill the one sheep, but like most of nature, it cannot be reasoned with. While I am unsure where I stand on the topic of farmers shooting caracals to save all the livestock, I know that if the farmers do not, more of the population will go hungry.
This is one example of a heated discussion of contemporary times.
Most people are against guns, but most people are not farmers, and most people do not have to worry about feeding 90% of the population.
The same goes for most debates. You are only acutely aware of your context, and if you listen to others and if they are honest, perhaps you could become slightly informed about another’s situation.
Like with the above context, norms dictate opinions which are disguised as morals. When someone suggests different, they become immoral as opposed to contrary.
Who Can Say ‘Deserve’?
In response to a question on equal pay, the Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman said, “Deserve is an impossible thing to decide. Who deserves what? Nobody deserves anything. Thank God, we don’t get what we deserve.”
When we conceive of ‘who deserves what’, we try to measure what we think we should get based on who we think we are and how we act in a comparison to everyone else. It is a very advanced form of judgement, but one that is impossible as it involves judging oneself and others.
Below are some contentious questions aiming to show how difficult it is to arrive at a conclusion on the nature of deserving. Some may say ‘yes’, and some ‘no’. There are equally strong arguments on both sides.
> Do people who burn down schools deserve to be educated?
> Do individuals who burn down hospital deserve healthcare?
> Do individuals who severely neglect their own health deserve free and good quality healthcare?
Furthermore, we can never know the full extent of someone’s behaviour or circumstances so arriving at a conclusion of what they deserve is impossible. We do no know what they have being saying to themselves for most of their lives. Not that people should be judged by their thoughts. Yet, thoughts do have a certain impact. We do not know how much time another person has spent pursuing their goals and how much time they have spent neglecting to pursue them. We simply do not know, but often I have heard people making overarching statements about who deserves what: a promotion, to be rich, to be poor and to have a nice car.
While Friedman believes that deserve is an impossible thing, I do feel we can estimate what we deserve for ourselves — but only for ourselves.
We know how we spend almost every minute and we know the full extent of our past actions. At the same time, we have to be fair and honest to ourselves and that is not easy feat. Nevertheless, when it comes to others, we cannot judge.
Positive Judgement
There are two dimensions of judgement we tend to overlook. The first is good judgement. Good judgement is good. We enjoy it very much and we endorse it fully. When someone compliments us, agrees with us, or simply gives us attention, we encourage it. However, good judgement remains judgement. Like its negative counterpart, the people who flatter us and give us positive remarks too lack proper capacity to make an informed comment. In such contexts, not only do we welcome the opinions and comments of others, but now suddenly they acquire ‘the right’ to them.
Is it simply because their comments are positive or complimentary that now someone has attained the moral authority to judge?
This seems to be the case in the contemporary world. Mantras such as ‘if you do not have anything nice to say, you should not say it’ seem to suggest that only good judgement is acceptable. However, good judgement remains judgement — and it could be more nefarious than its honest relative, Judgement. For example, if you get into the habit of spending more money than you earn, you can have friends or acquaintances who support this excessive behaviour. These people may only express positive remarks on your spending habits, but it is in no way helpful. There may not be any insidious reasons for their encouragement. They may be higher earners or have fewer financial responsibilities and are hardly in the position to be vigilant over their finances.
The problem is that positive commentary is almost the only kind of judgement encouraged in modern society.
In such instances, you gain “the right to judge”. Even if it is completely inaccurate and destructive, as long as it sounds nice and pleasant you have the moral authority to do so.
Self Judgement
Photo by Maximiliano Estevez on Pixabay
The second dimension of judgement we forget about is self-judgement.
Every now and then, I peek at the pages of my past and immediately shut the book. Self-judgement is not easy. We are probably our harshest critics.
When we state those defensive mantras such as ‘you have no right to judge’ or ‘you should not judge’, we have this naïve belief that judgement will end.
The problem is you will always be judging yourself. This process of self-improvement is hard-wired into us.
What do you think evolution is? Everything in nature is in a continuous state of becoming more resilient, adaptive, and more streamlined.
You may think just shut off your critical voice as if you were an engine or machine, but engines and machinery are pretty comfortable rusting away. Humans are not as fond of rust and also have no switch[4].
Though we are calling for judgement from others to end, judgement by no means will. Even if people keep their harsher opinions to themselves, individuals will search every gesture, every word, and every instance of eye contact or rather absence of eye contact for an indication of judgement — positive or negative — from others. In fact, if others stopped sharing their nastier comments, we would probably investigate their behaviour more closely, and as a result, we will probably grow more paranoid and intensify self judgement.
Conclusion
Judging someone else and trying to help them fix them problems is comparable to me giving Alex Honnold advice on rockclimbing. It is at best nonsensical. Honnold lives rock climbing.
Other people live their lives. I do not. I do not have the faintest idea about their lives.
In the contemporary world, we have no idea about anyone else.
Yet, when we say that others should not judge or have no right, we make them believe that they can judge but have an obligation not to.
If they believe themselves particularly intellectual, perhaps they then convince themselves that it is in their best interest to judge.
Saying people ‘should not judge’ is like feeding peanuts to a lion. We can preach soft skills and empathy all we want, but like the lion’s indifference to the peanuts, we are hardly conscious of the realities of other people.
An alternative to such idealistic beliefs of eradicating negative judgement is rather to simply acknowledge that no one ‘can’ judge. This is reserved for God — whatever that may mean to atheists.
And though judgement will prevail in our societies, perhaps, we can take what others think with a pinch of salt knowing fully well that they know nothing about our worlds (our issues, our thoughts, and our relationships) and knowing fully well that we know nothing about theirs.
In this way, we are not weakened by a careless comment or an unkind remark, but rather comforted by its sheer ignorance. I would like to close the with the following quote from Epictetus.
“If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: ‘He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned.” (Enchiridion)
References
Alain de Botton. A kinder, gentler philosophy of success. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY
Milton Friedman, Case Against Equal Pay for Equal Work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsIpQ7YguGE
Notes
[1] Naturally, judges and lawyers are in the business of judgements, a court procession has to convene to form a judgement on the action of an individual. This is an arduous and in-depth process requiring much investigation and discussion. It is simply trying to make a decision and judgement on one event or action and not nature of your character. That is why if you are charged with two crimes, you are tried on two separate charges. This article is more devoted to reaching a conclusion about your character and circumstances.
[2] This is one main factor of morally relativist countries. It is not limited to violence, but the simple belief in moral relativism in countries with decreasing violence allows people more room to adhere to absurd claims of moral relativism.
[3] The discussion of the divergence of ethics from morals is a complex subject and not urgently relevant to this paper. However, it should be mentioned that ethics generally derive from a moral basis but tend to lack the controversial nature of morality. For instance, most people agree with the idea that judges should be partial when overseeing cases. We do not consider a moral obligation for judges but rather a professional necessity, and thus an ethical one.
[4] Brick Pollitt of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof yearns for a mechanical click — which can be likened to the ability of pulling the switch down and entering a state in which engines and mechanical items can rust. If you do not switch your smartphone, television, or computer on, they will cease to operate. Unfortunately, while humans remain animals this switching the judgement process off will never occur. Perhaps, when we integrate with Biotechnology this will be possible. Perhaps, we might have to enter a state of harsh critical judgement, but one where we update ourselves with specific software and we will have reached self-improvement. | https://medium.com/choose-the-good-life-over-the-happy-life/what-we-do-not-understand-about-judgement-1-2c4ff6087c92 | ['Lauren Shepley'] | 2020-12-23 15:37:34.617000+00:00 | ['Kindness', 'Happiness', 'Empathy', 'Acceptance', 'Self Improvement'] |
Going the Extra Mile for DC Residents and Businesses | Across the Bowser Administration, District Government agencies are working hard to support Mayor Muriel Bowser’s vision of providing every resident with a Fair Shot. At DCRA, we work with thousands of business owners and residents each month, but the people who reach out to us for help aren’t just cases to us. We know that going the extra mile has a big impact on the people and businesses we serve.
Among the people DCRA helped last year was a family in Georgetown who paid a contractor to install solar panels on their roof. The family spent $19,000 to make their house more energy efficient, only to have the contractor disappear and refuse to complete the job or give the family a refund. With limited options, they turned to DCRA for help. An investigator from our Consumer Protection Unit was assigned to the case, and in less than 20 days, our investigator was able to recover $17,000 for the family. Our Consumer Protection Unit was able to recover more than $150,000 last fiscal year.
DCRA’s Small Business Resource Center (SBRC) specializes in simplifying complex situations for customers. Take Charlton Woodyard for example. He started his lifestyle and fashion business, Avi8ted Thoughts in 2019, but had trouble with some of the paperwork needed to get things up and running. He came to the SBRC to help get his business in good standing, and to apply for a grant that could give it a financial boost. In short order, the SBRC helped Mr. Woodyard get a corporate registration and general business license, register with the DC Office of Tax and Revenue, and receive a home occupation permit to allow him to operate his business from his home. Within a month, Woodyard’s business was in good standing and he was able to apply for the grant before its late September deadline.
These are two examples of some of the thousands of residents and businesses DCRA helped last year. Despite the challenges fiscal year 2020 presented, DCRA met or exceeded the goals we set for successfully delivering core services. Take the area of business licensing for example. During the last fiscal year, our goal was to review license applications and process them within one day of submission at least 80% of the time. We met this goal 95.08% of the time, ensuring that entrepreneurs could make their vision a reality as fast as possible.
We’re proud of our staff’s hard work in the last fiscal year, but we’re not slowing down. For example, in the first two months of the new fiscal year, DCRA received nearly 10,000 permit applications — 97% of which have been reviewed, with permits issued.
To learn more about DCRA’s performance and keep track of our progress, check out our agency dashboard. | https://medium.com/@dcracommunications/going-the-extra-mile-for-dc-residents-and-businesses-5708158eddad | ['Department Of Consumer', 'Regulatory Affairs'] | 2020-12-22 17:45:38.879000+00:00 | ['Customer Experience', 'Washington DC', 'Small Business', 'Consumer Protection'] |
E Pluribus Unum in the Age of Peak Polarization | E Pluribus Unum in the Age of Peak Polarization
A far-right activist shakes hands with a Black Lives Matter activist during opposing rallies in Louisville, Kentucky, 9/5/20. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston
Out of many, one.
E pluribus unum was the de facto motto of the United States from its earliest beginning. The thirteen-letter phrase is included on the Great Seal, reflecting the concept that from the union of the original thirteen colonies emerged a new single nation.[1] Although the motto still appears on the Great Seal as well as on all coins currently in production, “In God We Trust” became the country’s official motto in 1956, a political Cold War response to the state-sponsored atheism of the Soviet Union.[2]
At once inspirational and aspirational, “out of many, one” signifies not only the unification of the colonies but also the shared sacrifices, common goals, and idealism of the new country and its people. This motto is a declaration that we would be greater than the sum of our parts; our unique diversity — ignited by liberty — would be our strength. How do we live up to this promise?
…
With few exceptions, our culture has become so fractured and fragmented over the past 50 years that we have lost our connection to many of the experiences that used to unite us. The evening news, NFL Football, and even Thanksgiving, some of our great secular institutions, have all come under assault from politicization and identity politics.
The causes of the erosion of the ties that bind us as Americans are manifold, but an interesting effect is evident in our media consumption. In 1970, Marcus Welby, MD, and Gunsmoke were among the top-rated shows on network television, consistently garnering Nielson ratings in the 30s. By 1990, however, top shows Cosby and Roseanne were only achieving ratings in the low-20s. This trend continued with shows like Friends (12.6) in 2000; American Idol (14.5) in 2010; and The Bachelor (12.0) this past season.[3]
NFL Football largely resisted these forces, growing its audience over this same period. But from 2015 to 2017, its numbers dipped over 15%, although they have begun to recover in the past two years.[4] While it’s easy to see the conversation around racial equity playing a role, the explanation for the decline will depend upon one’s views of President Trump and Colin Kaepernick. Trump’s supporters will likely credit his call for a boycott of the NFL, while liberals might point to the NFL’s lack of support for the league’s Black players.
I would suggest another possibility. Perhaps it’s the polarization itself that has diminished fans’ enjoyment of this weekly ritual and caused the decline in viewership. Maybe, despite all the rage and fury that appear to be targeted at “the other side,” many people don’t like this division in our society and don’t want to see it infiltrate every aspect of American life. This emphasis on our differences over our shared experiences is corrosive and antithetical to our earliest aspirations as a nation. Out of many, one.
…
If we want life to be different, where do we start? Recently, The New York Times published a series of proposals from leaders and thinkers to meet this moment in our history.[5] Most focused on legislative responses to gun safety, racial equity, mental health, and the like. But one idea, from Heidi J. Larson, professor of anthropology at the University of London and University of Washington, encouraged readers to listen to the people you disagree with the most. She approached this from the perspective of the vaccine divide, specifically, but I took her broader point to be that empathy is at the core of any solution for our most pressing problems. And empathy begins with one person, one conversation at a time.
Fundamentally, empathy is the desire and the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes, understanding that each person’s past experiences and their particular circumstances influence the decisions they make and the opinions they hold. The challenge, clearly, is that we can’t always know the totality of another’s life experience and context.
I was thinking about this as I read Natasha Trethewey’s searing memoir, Memorial Drive.[6] Natasha, a former US poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, and I attended the same large public high school in Stone Mountain, Georgia. I’m sure she didn’t know me, but I knew of her. She was a popular cheerleader at our football-crazy school. She was pretty and smart, just one grade below me. What I couldn’t have known, however, was the torment she endured at home and tried to hide from her classmates, that her former step-father went to prison for assaulting her mother, and that he would eventually follow through on his threats to kill Natasha’s mother just a year after Natasha would graduate from high school.
What I might have surmised, however, was the depth of difficulties she faced as a biracial child growing up in the literal shadow of the world’s largest shrine to the Confederacy, a sacred site to members of the Ku Klux Klan. But as a white boy, growing up in a home where the N-word was used, I couldn’t — or just didn’t — imagine how difficult the life of this popular, perfectly pony-tailed girl might have been. In retrospect, I saw our differences without ever realizing what we might have had in common — that we both lived with volatile father figures we feared, that we both felt relief coming home to an empty house, that we both wondered about our biological bonds with our brothers, that we both wanted to escape.
I’m reluctant to draw too many parallels between our lives, but her story resonated with me. We clearly shared certain fears and insecurities that connected us as fellow humans. Out of many, one.
…
Our founders and all those who fought to establish this great country, as well as those who fought to preserve the Union a hundred years later, understood the value of our diversity but also recognized the importance and strength of our shared purpose. Out of many, one. It’s more important than ever for each of us to assume some responsibility to listen to each other, to respect each other, to practice empathy. We have so much work to do to improve our prospects for a safer, healthier, more prosperous future, but, if the last four years have shown us anything, it’s that fanning the flames of hatred with name-calling, derision, and disrespect isn’t the path forward.
[1] The Great Seal of the United States, U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, p. 6. https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/27807.pdf
[2] Merriman, Scott A. Religion and the Law in America: An Encyclopedia of Personal Belief and Public Policy. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2007.
[3] Nielson Media Research
[4] https://dawgonnit.com/2020/09/16/nfl-ratings-a-bit-of-history/
[5] Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jason Karaian, Michale J. de la Merced, Lauren Hirsch, and Ephrat Livni, Some Ideas for Fixing America, The New York Times, December 4, 2020.
[6] Trethewey, N. (2020) Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir. Ecco. | https://medium.com/@beaueverett/e-pluribus-unum-in-the-age-of-peak-polarization-1a11b179ccd6 | ['Beau Everett'] | 2020-12-15 02:35:23.349000+00:00 | ['Empathy', 'Polarization', 'Listening', 'E Pluribus Unum'] |
# 82: Dear Women, Do Not Train Yourselves Out of the Game! | Mohr, Tara (2014). Playing Big: A Practical Guide for Brilliant Women Like You, 146.
Story behind the Passage
On some days, it is really hard for me to decide on the topic I want to write about. On other days, it is very easy. Today is one of the easy days because a dear friend of mine asked me via WhatsApp which further qualification program I would recommend her to complete in 2021. My answer?
NONE!
O.k., this needs some explaining, right? This is exactly why I have chosen Tara Mohr’s book again. I know, I am kind of breaking my rules of the 365-day blogging challenge because I already blogged about the book about three weeks ago (BOOK OF THE WEEK “Playing Big”). Still, I just have to talk about it again because I immediately thought of the passage above when my friend asked me today.
Mohr is not the only author who addresses this issue of ‘overtraining’ or ‘training yourself out of the game,’ as I would call it. You find plenty of books and articles abou this phenomenon. Whatever you want to call it: it is quite common. And it is not only common among women, of course. But I do encounter it with women more often. Since I know the pattern from myself as well, I do understand the “I have to get more training on this” reflex. Yet, it is harmful if you do not really pay attention why the hell you actually want this or that training.
Certainly, I am not against training in general. For sure, I have completed some further education programs in addition to my university studies. Still, I would say that I never got addicted to this certificate collection self-sabotage as much as I am seeing it in other women now. For sure: The times have changed and, after all, I am the one blogging about this all the time. Yes, we have arrived in the age of lifelong learning and non-linear career paths as the soon-to-be norm. That also makes it a necessity for people to always keep on learning new things by completing further education programs. But as with anything: the balance counts.
There needs to be some balance between passion (I love learning; I want to grow…) and the pragmatic (If I get this certificate, I am eligible for…) aspect. In the case of women, especially the highly-educated and reflected ones, there is often a third aspect involved: self-confidence. Women very often think that they have to get training abc because otherwise, they have no chance of making it. They think, they win the “expert” label by paying for an immensely expensive part-time study program which they do in the evening with a tired baby screaming in their lap just because they think, they need this first.
No!
My Learnings
“’This before that’ are the false beliefs we hold about the order in which things need to happen…” Mohr calls this a “hiding strategy.” I would actually call it a deferral strategy. You can call it whatever you want to call it. The label is not important, but the consequence is. You end up NOT ACTING, NOT PERFORMING, NOT PROCEEDING IN YOUR CAREER. Again, I am not saying all this because I am some smart ass. I am saying this because I was caught in this mode of thinking for a long time and I still experience backlashes once in a while. In my case, this is very much related to my personality and the fact that I get bored very quickly as soon as I have figured out how something works in depth. However, I have also learned some things. So, here is my personal checklist on when additional training makes sense.
You know exactly which certificate would raise your salary/status: Think of yourself as a brand. Your brand value might increase if you have some additional training. But the point is: These kinds of certificates that add value to your personal brand are quite limited (e.g., MBAs from the five top business schools in Europe). Still, if you are pretty sure that training x gives you financial or “power” benefit y (e.g., a promotion, more affluent clients), then you can consider it.
-> Please note: In this case, a question like “which training should I complete” never comes up. It is very clear what you have to do. If you are a physicist working at an industrial corporate and you see that all other people with MBAs are moving forward but the company does not trust in technical people having senior management positions, then, go ahead, raise your chances by getting the certificate.
2) Your employer pays for the training: There are sometimes cases when you hae been thinking about one particular training program for a very long time and then it jumps at you again. In my case, this was coaching. I had met great coaches in my life so far and I admired their pragmatic techniques. Then, I saw the demand rising. And then, I also saw that my position allowed me to do it. Actually, in this case, I did not end up getting the money from the institution, but the circumstances were great. In a previous case, I had actually convinced my employer to pay for a distant study program because I immediately showed him which additional value I would create with this knowledge.
-> Here, it is not about the brand of the certificate, it was really about the knowledge and the skills. In other cases, you might be aware that your employee is supporting additional training very much and nudges people to get some. In all these cases, you can of course get the training. But again, the programs better have a clear input-output relationship for your career and they do not cost you anything/too much personal money or time.
3) Personal Development/Challenge: Yes, there are always things in life that simply come to you and you feel it is the right time and the right thing to do now. This is the exception to 1) and 2). In this case, there might not be such a strong use-value calculation. There is simply an unexpected opportunity and your gut feeling says: Let’s do this, it feels right. Still, even then, you should sleep over it at least one night to allow for some reality check. Is it affordable? Does it give you any career benefits or is it simply some hobby? Pursuing hobbies is fine but please do not assume that this will advance your career. If everything still feels right, then go ahead.
-> Interestingly enough, also in this case, there is no long-term planning involved in the sense of “which training shall I take part in next year?” No, some things come unexpectedly and this also applies to the content. Imagine you are in HR development and always thought you were a complete idiot when it comes to technical skills. And now, there is some really cool training that simply sounds interesting and valuable for your career, why not accept the challenge? This is also the reason why I am not only talking about personal development in this case but also referring to personal challenges — doing something that you still think you cannot do — this will make you grow because you will most likely succeed in it.
Since these are the cases in which you should say “yes” to some further education program, from my observation, this also means that in all other cases: forget about it, it is not the first step that is crucial. And this thing about the first step is really my biggest learning from the past two years. If you really want to become a high-performer, everything is about implementation. That does not mean that you should stop thinking. No, of course not. Sometimes the first step needs some more thinking because that is the only way that you can really make use of your brain power. Still, the first step is all it takes.
In most cases, this first step is related to collecting hard facts about something. This also applies to my points 1) and 2) above. In order to assess whether some further education will really advance your career, you have to be sure about this based on evidence. If you find out that many people in your company got an MBA for whatever reason but none of them ever got promoted afterwards. Well, think about this. The MBA could still make sense but only if you used it to become more independent, e.g., by changing companies or starting your own business.
By the way, this thing about “participating in some program” in order to climb the career ladder also holds true for internal coaching and mentoring programs. Especially this year, I asked some women about their experiences with internal “talent” programs for women. In most cases, these programs had no actual return on investment, even if the women “just” invested time. Well, time is the most valuable thing in life ever. Some people just realize this when it is too late for pushing the break of self-sacrifice.
Does that sound hard?
Maybe.
I am just putting it into such matter-of-fact words because I am really frustrated about this “addiction” to getting certificates before taking the real first step. And it is an over-performer issue. Especially women who already have plenty of high-level education achievements on their CV tend to have these issues. The reality is: in business there are many things that could be improved. But there is one thing that still counts more than in politics and in science: implementation, getting things done. This also means that you gain trust and credibility by doing things on the job. Hence, completing some extra training, even if you then actually get to apply your knowledge, mostly has a psychological function of giving you self-confidence, that is it. And self-confidence you can build up much quicker and with more fun if you “just do it.”
This “just do it” spirit is also contained in the example Mohr gives to highlight what she means by the “this before that” hiding strategy. I want to quote this passage here in full and not just paraphrase it because, from my perspective, it is a really striking and typical example of how this deferral mechanism kicks in:
Mohr 146–47
I do not need to add more. You have it all in this one short story. I can just encourage everyone to think about these two simple things with respect to your career: 1) What is your goal? 2) What is the first step (based on where you are right now) to get there? If “lack of qualification” as OBJECTIVE CRITERION is NOT part of the feedback, then further education is not an issue RIGHT NOW. It might still turn out that you need some additional training while you are already in the position. But then case 1) kicks in and it is a completely different story than the “training yourself out of the game scenario.”
Finally you might say: “What if I just want to learn this or that because I like it? Why do I have to become a successful career woman?” Answer: This is not what I am saying. I am saying you should be whatever you want to be. In fact, you already are what you want to be — you just need a different perspective to see it. The only thing I am saying is: Be whatever you want to be by DOING whatever you feel like doing. And DO this by taking the easiest route possible, not the hardest and most expensive one just because you are running in the hamster wheel of “I need confirmation by others; I want others to tell me that I am smart and good.”
No, just take the first step and the rest will be history.
Reflection Questions
1) Are you also thinking about some further training program these days? Is this really the first necessary step that takes you closer to your goal? Do not speculate, ask the responsible department and alumni.
2) If you have no specific career goal right now — what is it that you love doing (not just at work?
3) If you completed further training programs in the past which you paid for yourself — which tangible benefits came out of it/them? Write down your answers. | https://medium.com/@silkeschmidt-32637/82-dear-women-do-not-train-yourselves-out-of-the-game-bb798259096f | ['Silke Schmidt'] | 2020-12-23 20:40:26.226000+00:00 | ['Results', 'Books', 'Women In Business', 'Leadership', 'Career Development'] |
The crypto market now | The cryptocurrency market is undergoing a major transformation in the upcoming period. The greatest challenge is the security issue, as due to the high number of hacker attacks, users suffer serious losses.
The ideology of decentralization and its interpretation are important in different contexts. The limitations of application possibilities are obviously a serious disadvantage; however, mining and the security of coins must be a priority for everybody.
Solutions available on the market are only half-solutions. If we look at the two largest systems, Ethereum and Bitcoin, we cannot assure that the 51% possibility of hacker attacks would not exist at either of them.
Bitcoin, as the digital gold of cryptocurrency, plays a primary role on the market. We can talk about a competition here, however, if we look at the exchange market movements, it is clear that the prices of the largest ones move as Bitcoin does.
The real competition will not be determined by the exchanges, but by the application possibilities of the blockchain technology. Those projects will be successful in the long run that are technically capable to deliver such tangible results which reflect the real value and essence of blockchain technology to the users.
Most of the successful projects face such basic technological challenges that represent an immense distance for usability. Decentralized applications and smart contracts will only make sense if the adequate basics are given for them. Block size, speed, and data storage capability.
By storing data in the cloud and just linking the private key to the blockchain, the real value of the blockchain technology is actually lost. The costs of data storage are obviously debatable, but in my opinion, instead of cost-efficiency, the lack of capability of the technology is the driving force behind the solutions.
We at the ILCoin Development Team are committed to real solutions. We do not think that results could be achieved with dummy solutions. In the coming years, we will prove that no one can compete with us in technological capabilities. We do not say that only our solution is the right one, but we state that there are no other real value solutions on the market. Such, that bring practical benefits for users as well. | https://medium.com/@norbert-goffa/the-crypto-market-now-a6f44d4da132 | ['Norbert Goffa'] | 2019-05-06 15:46:03.164000+00:00 | ['Bitcoin', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Ethereum', 'Blockchain', 'Market'] |
Trust: Story of Belief | Soon the king found that while hunting he was lost in the jungle and there was no sign of his retinue, in no time a poison dart hit him, and when king came back to conscious he found himself in a drowsy state tied to a tall bamboo tree upside down, now the only thing he was wondering was how helpless he is and what is he face next.
Uncertain of this he heard the people’s voice who were the tribal’s and they were shouting sacrifice kill kill. N Then he felt more helpless.
The tribe’s priest came to observe the king, while looking king’s body he saw the cut on the king’s fingers and announced that this body is impure and cannot be offered to the deity, so he ordered to release the king and find someone else. As soon as the king was released he straight away went to the kingdom, realizing his mistake and being sorry king, ordered to free the elderly and noble minister whose advice once he refused to accept, today had saved kings life.
He gifted the minister with gifts and released him with honor and respect. Again the minister with a sweet smile replied:
“No need to be thankful or sorry for what happened my king, that day I had trust in god and believed that whatever was happening, was happening for good. ”
King didn’t understand and asked, how you being trapped is now good ?
The elderly minister replied, as your senior minister I need to travel to every place wherever you go as a duty, if on that day I had only been with you, instead of you I could have been the one who got sacrificed because I have no slices or cuts on my body right.
The palace broke into laughter, and king had a good lesson learnt of trust which he remembered for the rest of his life.
Moral: Trust God And Believe Whatever Happens, Happens For Good.
For the readers:
This is the very first value story I wanted to start with. Maybe you had heard it earlier, maybe not.
No worries because stories are made to be told and retold by adding little experience of yours with love. I learnt that every story is provisional, only stories of love, told with love are the real stories.
You can share this with your friends,younger ones, elder ones, and share this moral lesson. I will share one story or value experience I had gained in these 20 yrs.
So you can be a part of me in this journey where I tell these stories and you listen to the same 1 value per 2 days. | https://medium.com/@yuvrajdhepe/trust-story-of-belief-819f66a9dabe | ['Yuvraj Dhepe'] | 2020-12-08 08:17:16.659000+00:00 | ['Values', 'Goodness', 'Happiness', 'Stories', 'Trust'] |
My Story | Hi, I’m Abby and this is my first story or article, I don’t know what there called. Anyway I’m 12 years old, 13 in may (Can’t wait!). My story isn’t crazy or anything but it’s mine, so that’s good, right?
Hmm where do I start. I feel like there’s gonna be a fade out into a flashback. Ok I’m weird but this totally feels like a teen movie in a way, lol. I think it’s funny how I write all formal-ish then there’s lol.
Ok, I’ll start for real this time. I was born in good old Massachusetts, with an ear-infection thing because of that I had trouble hearing so learning how to speak took a little longer and I also didn’t learn words correctly. That made me go to speech thearpy. My brother was really the only one that understood me when I talk and that made me upset because I have a lot to say. Speech (I call it seech.) helped me and I don’t have to miss class tme at school anymore. I still say words wrong sometimes but it is all good. Fun Fact: When I was younger I loved the gas station shell, yes a gas station, kinda odd but they had the best ice cream ever. I couldn’t pronouce sh, so when I asked to go to shell it would sound like, “Can we go to h*ll?” (I don’t swear, promise.) I was 5 at the time…
Ok, more about me, cool. (I started this section at like 12:00 so sorry about mispelled words.[see the joke there…funny, ok but a parentheses in a bractect wowwwww!])
Anyway I have a stomach bad thing. Don’t you love my use of words. It’s related to, yes, gas… It’s actually really bad but I use bad jokes to mend the pain. :) Some things I have to do for it or done for it, I don’t know, are really blah. You know what I mean, right? Any who, I had to drink this thing that tasted like old juice and it was warm. I hate warm drinks so much! I also had to get bloodwork, it took 3 doctor vists. That was the start of this year. So, yep. I also had to get a tube down my throat, afterwards I was kinda up in the clouds, my parents thought it was funny. I do remember ranting about a duck… (I use … way to much…) *Yawns* Well I should go to bed or play snake and rage quit I don’t care which one.
It’s now the second day of writing this, so cool. Another thing about me is that I have really bad anxiety. Wow, we just jumped right into that one. Ok, I’m been struggling with it for a long time. I used to go to therapy and it worked for a little bit. I’m starting a new therapy at my school in the new year and I’m really excited about it. The anxiety really intervenes with my stomach problems which is great. (Put in sarcastic tone.) I don’t know what else to really say about it.
This is the last thing about me so get ready! I love to act, dance and draw. I take acting classes but the first semester ended so I’m probably going to start a different kind of class. I love to draw but I’m not the best at it. My drawings can turn out great or it can look really bad. It’s a 50% chance. I also love to dance and I took dance lessons when I was 6 but then I moved so I’m going to start them again. That’s basically it.
If you liked this please give me a follow. Why does it sound like I’m a youtuber? Byeeeee! | https://medium.com/@abbyrose5178/my-story-a84823fcfb8a | [] | 2020-12-20 19:27:20.849000+00:00 | ['My Life', 'About Me'] |
Even Sex with A Nymphomaniac Isn’t Enough For A Narcissist | Even Sex with A Nymphomaniac Isn’t Enough For A Narcissist
Photo by Erik Lucatero on Unsplash
Up until recently, I thought I had figured out why men cheat.
Having been involved with 2 married men and listened to their stories as well as speaking to many of my friends and their experience, one of the main drivers seemed to be the lack of sex they were getting in a long-term relationship.
My husband was no different, as soon as I started withholding sex, he went elsewhere. Of course, there are other factors, like the feeling of being desired and “in love”.
When I first started seeing my ex, it appeared to be exactly what happened. We became friends, we flirted, we fell in love, and then he discovered just how sexual I was.
I have always had a high sex drive and I am open-minded and love to try different things. It seemed like we were perfect for each other. We’d spend entire days in bed, starting with morning-sex, cuddling and kissing until he was ready again and we could try again.
There were days that we hardly worked, just occasionally flicking the laptop keyboard to keep it from going into a screensaver, or had sex while on a conference call. Some days we forgot to have lunch. Our little “naughty box” under his bed kept filling up with sexy outfits and new sex toys by the week — something his wife had never been interested in.
When we couldn’t see each other, we’d send sexy pictures and messages, reminisce over the crazy sexual connection that apparently both of us had never felt before.
Every day that we were in the office together we’d stare at each other, undressing each other with looks, only he’d know what outfits I was wearing underneath and it drove us both wild.
We’d escape to the shower room to kiss passionately and tease each other as much as we could, then spend the lunch-break having sex in his apartment. Sometimes we had sex at work, or the gym.
He was very dominant and I loved it. My goal was to tease and please him in any way I could until he was so sore that he had to take a break. We’d try new positions and locations, everything he’d always dreamed of or wanted to do. I knew we couldn’t go on like this forever but at the time I felt the happiest I had ever been. I had found my perfect sexual match.
When I started to notice that his sex-drive changed — I was gutted,
I wasn’t ready to settle for “normal couple sex schedules” yet. What seemed to have been a mutual desire at the start, quickly turned into “my addiction”. Suddenly I found myself to be the one initiating everything and the comments from him increased:
“You are crazy.” “Your sex-drive isn’t normal” .“Of course! You are always ready”. “You are going to break me”. “I am not even surprised anymore you can just come any time”. “All you ever want is sex”. “Here we go again, I should have known.”
A couple of months into the relationship, I brought it up. I said I worried how quickly we “faded” and that his initial desire to spend every minute of the day with me as well as the sexual attraction had dropped. He got upset. I had crazy expectations, we could have never gone on as we did at the start, it was normal for relationships to progress this way. He loved me like he never loved anyone in his life before and that just meant that he wanted to spend more time with me doing non-sexual things.
I agreed, he was right, I had to get some work done during the day and I enjoyed doing other things with him too. Yes, I missed not having sex as much (though it was still a lot) and I missed the crazy desire he had felt at the start, but I adapted.
There wasn’t a moment where I wasn’t ready for him, but I tried to focus more on the other aspects of our relationship. I still continued to buy sexy lingerie, new toys, and sending him sexy messages but I learned to be more patient.
And then, every time we did have sex, it still felt magical and exciting. Over 1 1/2 years there wasn’t a time where it felt “normal”. “It’s amazing how much sex we are still having even when we are together each day”, he’d say after a year.
There were moments in our relationship when everything felt wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it, because I didn’t know anything about Narcissism and emotional abuse at the time, but I remember times where I caught myself thinking: “But the sex is so great, that alone must be worth it?”
One time we had a massive fight. He got so upset, saying I didn’t really love him and just wanted sex. And I got upset too, that it even crossed his mind. I loved him.
When he left he still said that his love for me had never faded, he had never felt for anyone like me before but he just had to do the “right thing”. And chances are I might have believed him, I might have forever thought that I had crazy expectations when it came to sex, that I was selfish for even wanting it and he was the sensitive, compassionate guy who just wanted my love more than he wanted sex.
But I am more of a detective than he gave me credit for. And over the past months, I have uncovered so much about him and became friends with one of his mistresses. The period where I noticed his declining sex-drive was when he started seeing her.
I remember the day at the office when it really kicked off with her. We had had morning sex, most likely lunch-time as well, then I went to his flat, dressed up, and waited for him.
He was having drinks with some of his colleagues, 2 meters away. We were texting most of the night, he asked me if it was OK for him to stay for a while since he rarely went to work outings. I waited a couple of hours until he came over, commented on my outfit and we had another incredible night.
I had no idea at the time that he wasn’t with his colleagues but with her, touching her under the table all evening until he eventually asked her to come to the shower room with him. “Our shower room”.
They didn’t have sex that night, but he didn’t stop messaging her about how crazy he was about her and how he regretted not going all the way, having to leave to “meet some friends”. She had no idea about me at the time either. “The sex was awful, most of the time he as impotent”, she’d say to me when we finally link our stories, but nevertheless he kept coming back to her, sending her intense messages, staring at her at work, commenting on her outfits, telling her he had never been as crazy about someone. It was her who eventually stopped contact, 7 months later.
There are so many things that I understand about him now, I have come to so many painful realizations. But this, I find the hardest to wrap my head around. If you are already with someone who offers you everything you have ever wanted and dreamed of sexually, why would you even go out looking for others?
It wasn’t just her, there were more, even at the very start of us. Why would you gaslight a “Nymphomanic” (what he called me) and pretend you don’t want the relationship to have too much emphasis on sex when on the other hand your only emphasis in life seems to be sex?
I will probably never get an answer to these questions, and I will never understand it. But maybe that’s a good thing, as it means I am healthy, human, and normal.
Maybe I am a nymphomaniac, maybe I just have an unusual high sex-drive but if I find someone, I am committed. If I am in love, I cannot even imagine looking at other people, everyone else seems unattractive to me.
And if I find someone who matches with me in bed, I have absolutely no desire to sleep with anyone else. And maybe that is the only answer I will ever get: He wasn’t normal, or sane, or human.
There is no logical explanation for his behavior, no emotions or love, just the constant need for supply, from as many sources as possible.
More from Kara Summers: | https://medium.com/heart-affairs/even-sex-with-a-nymphomaniac-isnt-enough-for-a-narcissist-af8da31d935a | ['Kara Summers'] | 2020-12-17 03:45:05.743000+00:00 | ['Infidelity', 'Relationships', 'Nymphomaniac', 'Narcissism', 'Sexuality'] |
October 2019 | October 2019
My entries more often than not have a BDSM and femdom angle to them, enjoy.
She was the devil incarnate, getting exactly what her black heart desired.
#Storyin12
Devil, Oct 31st
She was drawn by her demure nature, the opposite of her usual.
#Storyin12
Opposite, Oct 30th
She’d plotted out a wicked night of passion and entrapment for him.
#Storyin12
Plot, Oct 29th
“Don’t.. stop..” she moaned, legs flailing as the overwhelming orgasm overcame her.
#Storyin12
Moan, Oct 28th
She trailed the rose over her breast, letting thorns catch the nipple.
#Storyin12
Thorn, Oct 27th
She had to discipline him repeatedly as he wouldn’t listen to instructions.
#Storyin12
Listen, Oct 26th
Bound and immobile, he couldn’t reach that agonizing itch on his back.
#Storyin12
Itch, Oct 25th
He was starting to learn what she’d meant by ‘payment in kind’.
#Storyin12
Kind, Oct 24th
He was hung like horse, and she quite enjoyed getting fucked silly.
#Storyin12
Horse, Oct 21st
She flogged him again, he was getting too sassy for his britches.
#Storyin12
Sassy, Oct 20th
She giggled, his beard was unbearably ticklish on her soft inner thigh.
#Storyin12
Giggle, Oct 19th
Spent and exhausted, she flopped over from her position astride his hips.
#Storyin12
Flop, Oct 18th
In the blindfolded darkness his imagination ran wild.. what was she doing?
#Storyin12
Darkness, Oct 17th
Her edging him was pure evil, but the eventual orgasm was bliss.
#Storyin12
Evil, Oct 16th
“Why marriage, when so many other relationships in kink abound,” she mused.
#Storyin12
Marriage, Oct 15th
She crushed his testicles under her heels, and he begged for more.
#Storyin12 #femdom
Crushed, Oct 14th
She opened her big box of toys, “What will it be today?”
#Storyin12
Box, Oct 13th
The whiff of pussy awoke the beast inside, and he was insatiable.
#Storyin12
Beast, Oct 12th
“What’ll it be, whip or paddle?”, she asked, brandishing both to him.
#Storyin12
Paddle, Oct 11th
Quickly she became as adept with the paddle as with the flogger.
#Storyin12
Paddle, Oct 11th
She fucked him until his dick ached, and still she wanted more.
#Storyin12
Ache, Oct 10th
He yearned for release, her teasing and edging fueling his sheer desperation.
#Storyin12
Yearn, Oct 7th
Truth is stranger than fiction, especially so when trying to write erotica.
#Storyin12
Write, Oct 6th
She felt a familiar tingling down below, the itch needed scratching, badly.
#Storyin12
Tingling, Oct 5th
He licked their commingled cum dripping down her thigh, slick and viscous.
#Storyin12
Viscous, Oct 1st | https://medium.com/@uncmfrtblynmb/october-2019-2b88d645adbe | [] | 2020-12-22 13:02:28.241000+00:00 | ['Kink', 'Erotica', 'Femdom', 'BDSM', 'Microfiction'] |
Recent clicks of International Space Station!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! | Recent clicks of International Space Station!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The International Space Station ( ISS ) is now sharing the awe-inspiring details and photographs.
* Shot of September: The NILE !!!!!!!!!!!!!
The earth’s longest river is shot aboard from Space — The river just sparkled under night-sky — This river flows in North-East Africa. It is 6,600 km long and its drainage basin covers eleven countries.
The two major tributaries — The White Nile and the Blue Nile.
* NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins made history when she harvested the first ever radish crop grown aboard the International Space Station — Rubins harvested as many as 20 radish plants on November 30 that were grown in the ISS Advanced Plant Habitat. | https://medium.com/@sundarramamoorthyus123/recent-clicks-of-international-space-station-7e94c0017347 | [] | 2020-12-11 15:29:30.148000+00:00 | ['Trending', 'Trends', 'Space', 'Moon', 'Google'] |
Dignity by Design: Bringing Humanity into Product Design | Background
Code for America partnered with the amazing Detroit-based design firm Civilla to make the signup process easier using modern technology. For our part, Cylinder Digital worked together with Civilla on the product design and built the web application which signed our first applicants up for SNAP. You can see the results of our work here on our demo site.
The typical application process for SNAP assistance is lengthy. Folks have to fill out a very long form on paper or using an online service. The paper application — called “DHS-1171” in Michigan (PDF) — is FORTY TWO pages long and looks like this taped end-to-end:
Form 1171 (Bridge photo by Joel Kurth from this post.)
The online application is called MI Bridges and looks a lot like the paper version.
Customer Context
In designing a web application, our first step was to understand the applicants and where they are coming from.
The applicants are in a very vulnerable position. First, they are unable to afford enough food for their families. Second, most applicants visit the Michigan Health & Human Services (HHS) offices to get help completing the web form and assembling the required documentation. Asking others for help in this context can be a humiliating process.
Our goal was to make signing up for SNAP easier and bring dignity back to our customers.
The completion rate for the form isn’t great — it was not mobile responsive, it’s very long, and the copy on the form fields ranges from clinical to downright confusing.
It can also be... invasive.
“Tell us as much as you can about the conception of your child…”
There are a lot of questions which go pretty far into personal experiences, in this case current or previous pregnancies. It’s hard to imagine why this is relevant information for getting food support, but those are topics for another project. We were concerned with the completion rate and how questions like this could lower it because they embarrassed the applicant.
The Impact on Experience
Long web forms are notorious for low completion rates and aggravating the applicants. There are lots of easy wins when improving a long form like breaking up long forms to multiple pages (AKA The Wizard), saving work as you go (and allowing people to finish later), and better help text copy.
These address very understandable behavior: people will find almost any reason to abandon a long multipage webform.
Hypothesis
We hypothesized that asking sensitive questions in an insensitive way did not feel dignified and likely increased form abandonment. Instead, if we asked questions in a more human way, can help both treat people with dignity and encourage form completion. | https://medium.com/cylinder-blog/dignity-by-design-bringing-humanity-into-product-design-d7455e56a559 | [] | 2018-03-21 23:00:41.655000+00:00 | ['Interaction Design', 'Forms Design', 'Humanity', 'Civictech', 'UX'] |
My Father-in-law Loved America and I Loved My Father-in-law | “Hello beautiful,” my father-in-law always said when he saw me. A formidable bull of a man, opinionated and outspoken, he intimidated those who never glimpsed the tender heart of a man with a magnificent capacity for love.
My father-in-law grew up fatherless, the youngest of seven, after his father deserted the family during the throes of the Great Depression. But the women in his life armed him with strength, faith and the surprising tenderness residing beneath his rough exterior.
His mother managed to eke out a living by running a boarding house, and he remembered his grandmother saying, “Have faith and work and good things will happen.” His grandmother would later give him a steel-covered New Testament that he carried with him into the trenches of war, and in those trenches, without benefit of clergy or church, he read his Bible and became a believer.
The third woman in his life
My father-in-law’s religion had been born apart from clergy in the heat of battle with nothing standing between him and his God, and nothing would stand between him and his bride, either.
He met the third influential woman in his life when he joined the Marines. Like him, she joined the Marines in a patriotic response to Pearl Harbor, but unlike him, she hated the Corps that assigned her to numerous punishment duties as a result of her rebelliousness.
When he warned her that the big safety pin secured to the left strap of her bib overalls was not uniform compliant and would probably upset her Sergeant, she replied, “It’s none of your business what I wear.”
It didn’t take him long to decide he wanted to marry the feisty, beautiful brunette. But before they married, he went on to fight in Iwo Jima where the ocean was, as he described it, “red with American blood.”
Following the war, they married despite a minister’s attempts to discourage their union. From the reverend’s perspective, a marriage between a country boy from North Dakota and a sophisticated city girl from Maspeth, New York could never last, but 56 years of marriage proved him wrong. My father-in-law’s religion had been born apart from clergy in the heat of battle with nothing standing between him and his God, and nothing would stand between him and his bride, either.
They started life together working as janitors so my father-in-law could finish an education interrupted by war, and many years later, he would become the CEO of a large utility company.
Personal Photo
He was a company president when I met him and married his son, but his story emerged over the years, unspooling bit by bit, threading present to past and illuminating the man behind the success. When he was 13, he ran away from home and hopped a train, riding box cars across country. When he was a high school football star his father tried, unsuccessfully, to come back into his life.
I found out there were three things he hated: racism, men who mistreated women, and people who disparaged the country he had fought for.
As my father-in-law grew older, he told the same stories over and over, but with each re-telling I glimpsed a little more of the man behind the success. I found out there were three things he hated: racism, men who mistreated women, and people who disparaged the country he had fought for.
When my mother-in-law became ill his toughness crumbled. A man used to finding solutions, he took her from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor.
But there were no solutions, so he cared for her tenderly, lovingly, and when she died he was never quite the same. A piece of his heart went missing. He dealt with his grief by plunging headlong into activities, filling his days with volunteerism and charitable causes.
After my mother-in-law died, he drove 400 miles to our house for Christmas every year until he turned 89. When he was unable to drive so far, my husband picked him up.
At 91, he stopped going to exercise classes. “I need to work out more, but I’m feeling weak,” he complained. That was in October. By November, he was so weak he didn’t think he could make it for Christmas.
“I’m coming to get you,” my husband said. “All you need to do is sit in the car. I’ll take care of everything else.”
But we never picked him up. The cancer that ravaged his body was fast and relentless, although he was never in pain. Or at least, he said he wasn’t. He died on Christmas Eve.
It didn’t surprise us when, a few years before his death, he gave $100,000 to the local hospital and was recognized at a banquet as one of their top donors. We were surprised (and I was secretly delighted) to discover, after his death, that he had given to almost anyone who asked; checks written to people and churches and organizations that came to him with their stories and their needs. Beneath the toughness was a tender and generous heart.
I already mentioned the three things he hated most. The three things he loved most were his wife, his family, and his country.
He passed those values along to his son, who has passed them to our sons. He broke his own father’s legacy to forge a new one, and for that I’m grateful. When I think of him now, I imagine him somewhere dancing with the love of his life. | https://bknicholson.medium.com/my-father-in-law-loved-america-and-i-loved-my-father-in-law-21fb99417037 | ['Bebe Nicholson'] | 2019-07-03 13:10:28.784000+00:00 | ['Family', 'Love', 'History', 'Patriotism', 'Relationships'] |
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